I insulted other boys for their suppossedly gay behavior to avoid being called out for my own. That was one of the twisted aspects of these heterosexual competitions: They forced queer kids to play on a toxic field of self-hate. Hardly anyone back then hesitated to use a homophobic slur, including me. The message was always the same: I’m a man, and you’re a faggot. We created a blood sport out of spouting macho brags and striking each other down with crude jokes. It made no difference that all of us were juveniles and most of us were virgins. In high school, I felt I had to course correct, especially when affirming one’s masculinity became an obsession among the boys my age. My trajectory was unignorable: This boy is turning into a sissy. I didn’t join the other boys in their locker-room talk about sports, cars, and girls. In the checkout line at the grocery store, I pressured my mother to buy me Soap Opera Digest whenever actors from Another World or The Bold and the Beautiful were on the covers. ![]() I favored silk and rayon shirts in bold colors. My style of dress could accurately be classified as fastidious. If I was talking and got excited, my wrists became loose hinges that let my hands flap and twirl freely. ![]() I rolled my eyes and pursed my lips to show annoyance or disapproval. I unintentionally sent out signals about my sexuality by behaving in a manner commonly considered effeminate. This wasn’t a case of clever detective work. When I was fourteen years old, after years of denial, I privately accepted that I was gay, but many people had figured that out long before I did. But I couldn’t find examples in my everyday life or even reflected back at me on movie and television screens. What I needed to know was how effeminate Black men could move through society without shame, without concealment, and without accepting a fate of victimhood. This, I thought, was a natural law like gravity. For years, I blamed myself because I believed it was my responsibility to mask my “girly” mannerisms. Even if I did, no one would have heard it over the roar of laughter crashing in from every direction. But at the Children’s Museum, it was about more than my stride. But those insults were purely observational-like wisecracks about ashy skin or chapped lips-and didn’t suggest anything deeper about me as a person. I was no stranger to the merciless teasing of childhood she wasn’t the first to call me out on how I walked. When I stood still, I often looked like a ballerina on pointe. So I walked on my toes without my heels touching the ground. ![]() What came to mind was the truth: I walked funny because I was born pigeon-toed and refused to wear my corrective shoes as a toddler. ![]() I tried to think of a quick response that would put my inquisitor on the defensive. The loose gathering of children, once engaged in more than a dozen separate conversations, found a common focus and turned into a crowd. The edge at the end of her question signaled to everyone within earshot that she was about to go in-I was gonna get clowned. Her voice was accusatory with a hint of disgust. A bunch of kids were hanging out nearby, and a girl-maybe eleven or twelve-asked me loudly, “Why you walkin’ like that ?” I was walking past the Giant Water Clock, a 26.5-foot tall Rube Goldberg contraption that relayed the time of day by filling sixty thin glass disks for the minutes and twelve large bulbs for the hours with dark blue water. I made instant, temporary friends with whoever was around, playing hide-and-seek in the rock cave or freeze tag up and down the wide spiral staircase. I was ten, my brother was seven, and dozens of other Black kids our ages were also left largely unsupervised in the museum for hours on end. On Sundays, my mother dropped off my younger brother and me at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and we’d spend the afternoon exploring the exhibits.
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