Page 50 of Down My Chimney

It had this giant sunflower painted above the door, and I begged my parents to stop, and they did. And once inside, I found a pair of Tinker Bell wings on a dusty mannequin in a back corner, and I needed to have them.

I’ll give you a second to appreciate that imagery, to think about how very appropriate it was for an eight-year-old Henry to fall in love with a pair of fairy wings. I wasn’t even old enough to know what being gay was, but I was already representing.

Anyway, I don’t know if my parents were feeling generous or if they could just sense an impending tantrum if they said no, but for one reason or another, they agreed to buy them for me. I put them on right there in the store and didn’t take them off the whole ride home.

I wore them through dinner, even tried to convince my mom to let me take a bath with them. That, at least, she said no to, but the second I was in my pajamas, I put them back on, swearing I would sleep flat on my back so I didn’t mess them up.

Now, the larger miracle that I was hoping for did not come true. I did not turn into an actual fairy overnight (that wouldn’t happen until I discovered gay porn many years later, ba-dum ching!).

But the smaller miracle of not breaking them in my sleep did indeed come to pass, so I woke up with fully intact fairy wings and insisted I was going to wear them to school.

You and I didn’t go to school together yet, so you didn’t see what happened.

You didn’t see the way the other boys in my class ran away from me when I tried to play with them at recess, all because of what I was wearing.

You didn’t see the meanest ones circle around me, push me down, and kick dirt on me.

You didn’t see the biggest one, Caleb Martin, take a woodchip and tear through the sparkly mesh of the left wing.

And you didn’t see me come home crying, asking what a ‘fag’ was because that was what he called me.

I must have led a truly sheltered existence, because I’d never even heard the word before. My parents explained what it meant, and that he was wrong to call me that, but that it was nothing to be ashamed of either.

And you know what they said next? That they were proud of me, for being so brave. For not being afraid to be myself.

I didn’t want to go to school the next day, but they made me, obviously. Two professors were never going to let their kid play hooky for such a trivial reason as major childhood trauma.

I tried to dress as boringly as possible, though. I just wanted to fit in. To be ignored, really. Left alone. But when I was getting out of my mom’s car that morning, I could see it on her face.

She was disappointed—hurt, even—that I was letting the bullies win. My dad had taped the left wing back together with four Spongebob Band-Aids, and he’d put the wings on the seat of the car next to me, and I could just see how much I was letting them both down if I didn’t take them.

I was eight, you know?

All I wanted was for other kids to like me. But my parents were so proud of themselves for raising their little gender-non-conforming revolutionary, and I could tell how much they wanted me to wear them again. Like they were the ones sticking it to the patriarchy, even though it was me who had to bear the consequences.

But I put them on, because I was eight, and they were my parents, and what else was I going to do? And I went into school, and I got made fun of, and I ignored it like they told me to. But the whole time, I just wanted to take those stupid fucking wings off.

You told me I was brave once. But I don’t think I actually am. I think I’ve just been doing what I thought I was supposed to do. What I thought would make my parents proud.

I do agree with their principles. You shouldbe able to wear whatever and not have it matter. Guys should wear dresses, girls should wear boxers, non-binary people should wear whatever they want. Misogyny poisons everything and homophobia is a scourge. That’s all true.

But today, I had this moment where for a second, I felt what it would be like to just blend in. To not always be challenging the status quo. And I likedit.

I feel kind of gross, actually, about how much I liked it. About how easy it would be to just go unremarked upon. How tempting it is to pass as straight.

If you were here, you’d probably laugh and point out that I wasn’t exactly in hunting camo and Carhartts, but I promise you, for me? This was the masc-est I’ve looked since kindergarten.

Actually, no, that’s not true, because in kindergarten, I stole a Sailor Moon sweatshirt from Fliss and wore it non-stop for three months. This was the masc-est I’ve looked since pre-school.

And if you were here, you’d laugh and tell me that I should dress how I want, and that I’m not letting down the gay agenda if I wear khakis for an afternoon, but the thing is, I kind of feel like I am?

And that’s messed up.

I’m starting to wonder how much of what I do, how I act, how I exist in the world, is actually something that I want to do, and how much is me trying to meet other people’s expectations. How do I even know which expectations are mine?

I’ve always felt that because I can be out and open and vocal about being gay, that I should. That I owed it to people who weren’t safe to do that. And that by being outspoken, I was helping make the world a little safer for them.

I still think that might be true. But I’m kind of freaking out when I think about it now, because how much of the boy my parents think they raised is actually real? How much of him—of me—is just trying to make them happy?

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