Hello. My name is Faggot. Well, that’s what seems to stick.
It rolled off their tongues like a freight train’s laugh—rustic and venomous. I could feel the sparks erupt off the iron wheels in the core of my skull. It sizzled for a moment and I held onto the sensation—the rust of their gratification licks my stitched wounds open. I’m shifting my jaw to the side creating friction over my molars. I’m chewing the empty sockets of their words. I’m digesting the hollow glisten in their eyes. What the hell did they know? Yet, they knew how to crawl beneath my eyes and into the core of my being. They knew where to slice me open and where to pour their poison. I felt my breath gurgle and drown with the chemicals they poured through my ears—their words of hatred. They watch me stumble where my feet don’t move. They’re looking for me to crack open. They think I’m fragile and they’re waiting for me to burst. They’re waiting for me to choke out my last breath, to pop a pill or two, to jump off the boundary of my sanity. But they can’t have me.
Some days I pity the naive more than the mistreated.
I’ve shattered a mirror or two. I’ve also danced in front of a few. And on many others I’ve pressed my lipstick upon my own reflection. I’ve written a dozen love letters on the gas station bathroom stalls. I signed it: Sincerely your fellow Faggot.
I’m searching for the troubled soul—the troubled man breaking at his majestic nature, fraying where he stitched himself close. He may have stitched himself close to his friends—what would they think of him if they knew he was a faggot too. He may have stitched himself close and reeled in a lady just to have an hour glass figure clinging to his side. He may have ripped himself open when he had sex with a man for the first time. Yet there he crumbles because his feet can no longer carry the weight of humiliation. There he’s not the courageous hero who saves the innocent civilian. There he’s not the emotionless stone of a man. There he is the man who can’t support himself. He’s not the man that society or culture has stapled on his heart. He becomes a human being—ripped open and raw. Society can’t have him—wouldn’t have him. Society declares him an abomination. But I don’t.
I was once the broken man—the broken image of man. But it was then that I realized I wasn’t the broken image of man. I wasn’t going to listen to someone’s justification or someone’s unwritten code of ethics in gender roles. I wasn’t someone’s clay to mold. I wasn’t going to fit in the box they threw me in.
There, upon the bathroom stalls, I spoke to the masked faces when I drove across county. I spoke beneath the toilet lids and circled around their bases. I spoke on the side of the urinals, the corners of the mirrors, and over the creases of the tiles. Wherever eyes drifted, my words would be. There is no escaping me.
There’s no escaping yourself.
He wanted to run through the states, the tourist attractions, the Historical landmarks, and past the little critters alongside the road. He secretly wanted to run from himself. I ran for him because his feet can no longer carry him. I’m not running away for him. This is his memorial.
They found my friend in his bathroom. His shirt ripped off, his boxers in a tangle mess between his legs. His soul surfaced where his mask lied. He may have shown a smile every day, he may have laughed at stupid remarks or bore a shoulder for someone’s tears. He may have teased a friend and posed for a camera. Maybe he didn’t want to be saved. And so society stole him away from me.
I remember the smell of his cinnamon mocha hair—it had a way of reaching towards the heavens. Bed hair was the generic term but I called it a hair of chocolate swirl, or hair kissed by a winter’s blizzard—maybe kissed by the spring’s wind or the spiral of autumn’s tumble.
I wasn’t there to pull his hand from his lips. I wasn’t there to steal the pill or two that he digested. I wasn’t there to write on his mirror, to write on the rim of his toilet. I wasn’t there to tell him that he matters to me.
Some days I pity the lovers more than the haters.
As I ran through the states and past the tourist attractions I stopped in every restroom. There, I wrote a love letter to my dear friend. There I wrote to the many others like him. Because like him, there are many others who do not speak out, call out, reach out, or come out. Like him there are many others who feel isolated, dislocated, and their stitches are fraying. Sometimes we run to our fellow toilets to puke out our miseries, to dry our blood pools, to smear our tears, or to drown in the lies we string. And sometimes we run to our mirrors to stare ourselves down—who are we beneath flesh and bone, beneath the frizz of hair, the shades of skin, the freckles, the scars, the diseases, the handicap boarders of our mobility.
We are human beings.
We are the pulse, the heartbeat, the rhythm of society. We are the hum in the core of our earth, the hum in the sparrow’s chirp and the whisper of a flower’s petal. We are the essence of life. We are not the creators—we humans—we are vessels of thought, morals, dreams, and fizzing emotion. We are believers. We are not dictators. We should not tell others who they are, how they act, and proclaim love as a sin.
I am the man dressed in the suit deciding your laws. I am the jersey with a million dollar contract beneath my cleats. I am the wise old fool who comes in the coffee shop every Wednesday. I am your favorite teacher who taught you what books never could. I am your best friend that fell in love with you and you’ll never know it. I am you.
I am a person with a melting smile, a jagged soul, and yet I still keep pushing. I cannot let my friend’s voice leave him in vain. And when someone escapes to their bathroom let them remember when their face stares them down in the mirror—masked or not—they are not alone. I speak for you because I know you fear for your safety and your acceptance but they fear because they do not know your story. Somewhere along the way people have forgotten that emotion is universal.
Hello. My name is Faggot and I am a human being.
