 And I grew up in Miami where there's this really intense Republican, conservative way of being. And, you know, it was just really hard to be like this gay Latino on fine looks like gay Latino world. I didn't even find it. I ended up moving. I ended up here. And, you know, Miami is an interesting place. It's changed a lot. But, you know, and if you were there in 1995 and you were 12 and you're like really like butch with like one long braid and you're like, I don't know what to do with this because, but so then you discover Green Day and then you figure it out that way. I'm going to start from the beginning. When that move this cassette single appeared on my kitchen table, I could have died. It became the soundtrack to my forbidden jeans. The sacrilegious ones that ran loose beneath my kid-like exterior. The organic jeans. The repressed jeans. Move this by Technotronic took my hand and led me to a promised land as did La Isla Bonita and Vogue by Madonna and Moviendo Las Caderas by Oro Solido. These songs were verbally daring and synonymous with the spice of my life. Sexuality. What was this and why does dance pop and merengue penetrate the fibers of my nerves, my fingers and my eyeballs? My eyeballs stared at the women dancing wondering if I had to be them in order to maybe date them someday. I kept my identity to myself as soon as I found it. I had seen it before in cartoon characters. Androgynous, soft-spoken cartoon characters like Big Bird and the brave little toaster. They didn't have to be a young girl or a young boy with dark insecurities and stigmatized daydreams. They could transcend ambiguously between boy, girl, hero, villain and martyr. I kept everything to myself including my relationship to merengue and dance pop. It was what I listened to when I imagined love. Conflicted on compromising adult love. When I imagined youth, hope and building the bridge to myself, I listened to Aerosmith. I feared what my family would think but I tried to stay calm. I tried to pretend everyone on earth was gay. I tried to pretend the religious icons throughout the house could hear me and accept me. Lavid Heng de la Caridad talked to me the most that year. Sometimes she seemed degraded but secretly affirmed because I think that she too wanted to break herself off from the evangelical herd. Lavid Heng was the martyr of our entire value, that our entire value system was based upon. So we looked to her for blessings. Of all the figurines which were scattered throughout the house, Lavid Heng spoke to me the most through the perspective of a female martyr and not just the mother of Christ. Aware of the... Oh man, where am I going to do this? A clicker? No, it's fine. I'll live. Thank you though. Aware of the political allegations tied to Catholic symbolism, I like to see, at all as my family's art and folklore, Lavid Heng was an heirloom rather than a pioneer of a social revolution that shackled my organs. I, however, was on a quest to feel that folklore searing through my veins as I listened to my heart and to the devil's music. I was on a quest to demystify the nuts and bolts that transformed the Catholic doctrine into a needle rather than a celebration. This was a really special era manifested through the 15-minute revelations brought to us by Vogue, by Madonna, chatty things exposed cleavage behind her sequined top. Oh there, that was... I did that backwards. That one should be first. Anyways, behind her secret tops and the Ren and Stimpy show, unfortunately this knowledge hardly left the confines of my allegedly sick head. During this era, the definition of salvation plunged into a new Armageddon of preteen self-sufficiency or at least as much self-sufficiency you can have when you're 11 years old, living a room with your older sister who bears strikingly different tastes than you and you are sort of in the closet. My sister was named Angelina but we all called her Fifi. Fifi and I didn't talk about sex and identity politics but she shared my fond dislike for the world as it was. Together we could hate popular culture and be great friends. She was quick and wise and I was angry but alive on the surface. She was a Capricorn and I am a Gemini. She helped me worry less by seeming so sure of herself all the time. I lived with my mama, the Pisci and Ma, a matriarch of the household who always kept the peace and led us through life. My grandma, Yeya, whose birthday is today, she's 84, you guys. Grandma Yeya, a Sagittarius with such uncompromising sass, I'm certain she must have had some fiery aspect in her chart. Fifi, my sister, the other things, is a Libra high school teacher and Princess Penny Archewawa, who was Yeya's biggest admirer. Next door was Dia Esperanza, another Sagittarius, whom I could trust with my deepest secret celebrity crushes on sensitive guys like Ron Palillo and Bob Costas. With her lived my two cousins, Santiago and Little Gabriel. Given our astrological makeup, I was clearly the one in the family with all the uncertain feelings. Identity was precious and scary. Communicating its potency in the most tender manner possible had become my life's work, despite the uncharted depths my brain was tumbling into. And despite the traditions of La Familia Cubana, there was love in my family, whether we bickered, sulked or escaped. I looked forward to being old and done with this whole finding myself spiel. But for the time being, I was okay hiding in my pastel pink concrete square where my four loving Kuanasas were always calling my attention and offering me food every so often. Home felt safe enough to not have to be anyone I did not want to be as long as I didn't talk about all those things that I was usually thinking about. Gay people in the 90s. My home life consisted of a forbidden exploration of the politics of desire. I would waddle into the bathroom several times a day, locking the door, chasing after the liveliest benediction of my functionality. I didn't even know that jerking off was an actual thing people talked about until I heard about it on Roseanne. The mechanics were unfathomable to me, especially that whole orgasm part that I heard was supposed to move mountains. On the spring day in 1993, jerking off felt different, like a slid into a portal of semi-adulthood where I could define sexuality on my own two feet with my own two hands. There was less mental diversion and my thoughts settled in an unusual plateau. Sorry, that's so small, you guys. In it, I found more pleasure and less sin, less of a quest for knowledge and more of an ignition. As some girl danced around in a cop show, I fell face first into an unparalleled state of euphoria. My brain tugged at the back of my eyeballs, my ankles froze and I wanted to scream or crawl or otherwise explode, and as the afternoon sunset behind me, I had an orgasm for the first time, except that actually had no clue as to what had just happened. The sensation was comforting but frightening when paired with the rest of reality. You hear over and over from the Christian right the notion that masturbation must be an infestation because you don't know where those hands have been. But was that Jesus and the Apostle or their present-day conspirators? I had little education on this, so for a second I wondered if I had actually impregnated myself. I wondered if sex didn't happen to you guys. I wondered if sexual liberation was actually unhealthy or did they just want us to think that because right then and there I felt alive. I lived inside of my head on an isolated membrane concerned with reality but afraid of the answer. My family was a traditional Cuban concoction of unbridled love and protection that cared for my well-being and showed me how important I was. My family also protected me from hyper-sexualized American culture, gay themes on television and slumber parties until I turned 18, of course. It's the Cuban way, you guys. For the time being I didn't really mind much. I could just sit here with Mr. Horst, Cuban food, TV dinners and these kid-centered role models that screamed gay, farts, boogers, tomboy hood and dirt at the end of the day. My family did not seem to see how gay, ren and stimpy truly were. It was finally the last semester of grade school. I maneuvered through bodies that were entanted and I felt relatively alone as every girl in my fifth grade class had a little boyfriend to send notes to. We were 11 years old, dry of any explanations of why the world was the way it was and why sad and thought-provoking was scary while Perky and Vivacious was alive. Fifth grade had been a dark tunnel of chance encounters with little people or maybe my friends or I wish would just go away. Somewhere far, far away. I felt proud of my convictions but my outsides were tormented and if another 11-year-old boy ever made fun of my unibrow or my sideburns again I swore to myself I would cut him. And then there was Natalia. Natalia felt better than everyone because her father had property in Bal Harbor which is like a really rich island off the coast of Miami because God loved Cubans. Maybe God loved all Cubans and just some more than others or if people only prospered when God loved them or if God only loved rich people maybe God would love my family more and make us rich like Natalia's family if I stopped having orgasms or maybe God loved everyone and rich people just stopped. God loved them more because they put $20 bills in the donation basket when it's passed around at weddings. I never cut anyone. I learned that being too uncharted so far I learned rock musicians were most likely outrageous drug addicts gay people were uncouth and not for children's virgin eyes and masturbation was an act of filth. I learned chubby short girls with hairy faces like me couldn't run fast and may never kiss anyone on the mouth. I learned that human beings should not be gay if they wanted to survive a day on this earth conventionally with ease. I learned I was walking on thin ice if I continued to develop a young product of the identity I was born into. So I feel sad sometimes and deconstructing the fabric of my cardboard box and the antibodies which surrounded it felt more fun than a bullshit slumber party anyway. Who needed love and gossip with a bunch of straight 11 year olds in order to exist when bodily pleasure was accessible without the vast diatribe that was talking to people or about people who I might want to kiss on the lips maybe. At slumber parties all the girls were probably just going to sit around and rave about Jason Priestley signaling the cross while secretly getting wet from the thought of him. God, at least stop making me feel like the only freak who jerks off for crying out loud. I personally thought Jason Priestley looked like bullshit. I like the made up people and my thoughts prancing around me with long ratted hair big asses in the way of everything empowered breasts in varying shapes of anything and aggression. All my thoughts were based on the occasional glimpses I got of adult body parts and women's sports. So I didn't have anybody to explain the unfathomable unforgiving warmth of an orgasm at 7am because of some guy named Jesus Christ or rather the governments that tainted his humanity. I forget that's just I forget that's just the system we are born into and we either like it or we don't. I did not. A different sort of isolation shaped itself beneath my feet and inside of me. Isolation paired with ecstasy and a smear of womanhood. All we need is love it's true but there is a monster rumbling beneath the surface of any Cuban household with traditional Catholic values. Casual homophobia it's the social acceptance of gay jokes slurs and homophobic remarks when in the presence of a feminine man or masculine woman. I saw it as a side effect of money and power destroying spirituality. Family values were now tainted with the learned concept of homophobia. Because of this homosexuality a potentially common identity trait was now doomed. Classified as rebellion like rock and roll gangster rap and skipping class so I found my closet with the truth sealed tight. My life at home was the only safe middle ground I knew where I could be confused without having to constantly justify or explain it. Every so often I left my family worried about the disconnect exposed by my blank stares as everyone else laughed at that funny thing someone may had said about gay people. I had my secrets but I like to pretend that there wasn't much to hide. I like to pretend that the cuffs in my jeans and the dirt on my knees told my story. I like to pretend the single braid that draped across my back gave the illusion of a butch haircut I might never feel safe enough to have. My cousins my sister and I were still best friends but as adolescents began to take over the isolation trundled beneath us and held me at night. As everyone slept I hid in a cocoon with my blood vessels and my inhibitions. My interests had diverted from the usual games Fifi Santiago Gabriel and I enjoyed together. Now that it was summer and I hadn't really made any friends I missed talking to strangers in class. I still felt deep commonality with the other kids in the family and with Hortensia. Horti was my liberally minded aunt a high school government teacher who was a kid at heart. Horti represented the trailblazing of my family's political values. During the 1992 elections we were asked to write about our choice for presidential candidate. As Miami's Cuban population and the entire student body of Josephine Santa Cruz Elementary happily supported George Bush Sr. and his anti-abortion policies which the kids called abortion that thing where you're killing babies is legal which is so tragic you guys teach the children well. Horti pushed that Bill Clinton really cared for women's rights so she helped me write my paper allowing me to be the only student in the entire classroom who chose Clinton and the class clown who chose Ross Perot but he didn't really have a reason for why Ross Perot should be the president besides he's like funny. Perhaps she was also tortured by our local society and its inability to question tradition. Perhaps my sister and cousins were also at a loss as far as where to go from here and what to believe in. Perhaps we were all perplexed but unable to express it. Together we entered the dark tunnel of adolescence that chastised our organs and accentuated our fear of God. Having grown up around salsa and Latin pop I wanted something foreign because fuck I felt foreign like an alien from gay space. I wanted something slightly more tortured than Madonna or Oro Solido no matter how much I needed to vogue myself to sleep every night. Thank God I recognized Queen from Wayne's World when I saw that tape at Esperanza's house. My love for musicals brought me as close to outcast as anything could. Sometimes I sat below a lime tree and I listened to Queen picking at the thorns when thinking became tedious tearing apart a lime when picking became compulsive. My love for Freddie Mercury gave me wings and together we existed in an imaginary vortex of the future. I knew what punk rock was I was actually obsessed with the idea that these punks trolled about the planet questioning the status quo. I saw punks one on Alvin and the chipmunks I was floored for 24 hours I was about four years old and I saw this episode called Chip Punk where the chipmunks pursue a punk rock identity and end up running from the cops after playing an underground club. As they ran they daydreamed of what jail would feel like. The images deeply affected me partly because it hurt to see the chipmunks in jail and partly because somewhere there was music so frowned upon by the mainstream but so important the punks would risk arrest for the sake of playing a show. So I saw that and I thought punk was illegal um I didn't think that but it was a noise complaint like that's why the cops came to the chipmunks show I like to believe La Virging de la Caridad didn't mind my interest in punk or queen despite her flocks interpretation of the devil's music running the tips of my fingers through the folds in her gown I wondered if her persuasion was real and the Christian right appropriated saints and apostles were in fact correct about the fabric of the earth putting my finger between the crevices the passengers on the ship and along the sculpted waves I tried to pull out the one displaced figurine that I used to steal and play with I realized I had been glued down everything was now changing I decided La Virging reconstructed the meaning to everything dismantling the typical doctrines of her followers for the sake of my own salvation she wasn't a toy anymore she was an artistic tradition an ideology that needed work and a woman who might have honored other women but we will never know cause so much of her history had already been destroyed by patriarchy okay so I'm gonna skip over a little now to when I start um sixth grade and it was really awkward like it must have been for a lot of us I started the sixth grade at JR Rivera Middle School in September 1993 this was after all the beginning of junior high the beginning of the end of childhood so I spent the entire first semester and the entire winter break figuring out what my identity was going to be boy did it suck to realize that I might have been wrong all along that my stake at rebellion was guided by counter-revolutionary ideals that made me feel uglier by the second whether my soul belonged to Freddie Mercury or the classic rock or heavy metal none of it answered my pleas I didn't mind that the heavy metal girls were over sexualized as long as the men kept on their spandex G-string leather pants sets on I just wish there was a range of women appearing in various places performing in bands representing an array of body types and haircuts and while we're at it maybe some out male performers maybe some cage boys maybe some gay people and since the representation of women in heavy metal will never be deconstructed I sought something better junior high was just the right time to start it was time to reclaim the idealistic image of women the women I dreamt of and the women who never spoke in either poison nor Aerosmith video I marched to school going against the tide in order to invent a new ideal whether or not crying on get a grip still felt like the best song that had ever been written my computer is getting old guys I felt drive enlightenment on my first day of second semester of the sixth grade I was however exhausted from all this coming out to my soul and finding an identity business I didn't expect this semester to be anything different I expected for people to make jokes about my lack of athletic ability I expected to only do good in art class and to occasionally hate myself while rummaging on an endless trek to find a voice to release some homos Carlito was the first person I was really fascinated by a junior high we met at the back of science class it was the first time the subject of homosexuality ever appeared without me even trying our teacher Mr. Suarez was gay making it clear through the most genius of expressions and although everyone loved his easygoing attitude towards formal education the inappropriate gay slurs and unintelligible acronyms I exited the kids mouths at lunch when he wasn't around the acronym isn't in this photo but it's in the book and kids used to say faggot was female ass grabber they were like you faggot and then the kid would be like yeah I'm a faggot I'm a female ass grabber including tits which means faggot is spelled f-a-g-i-t it's not even you guys it's really bad where I really hope that that was only a Miami thing because of that spread I'm real concerned for the future I heard rumors of the words of wisdom Mr. Suarez would casually toss out in his other classes particularly the 8th grade biology class I became mesmerized by Mr. Suarez so right here he's saying an orgasm is the best feeling you will ever experience in your whole life um and that was the the biology class and suddenly I felt mildly enthusiastic about this place school about this place school was unfair but it was still the outside world I had a problem something I was not talking about so he told me I should listen to punk rock music because punk rock is psychotherapy for psychos I believed I was part psycho so I asked him to lend me a few tapes of the war by black flag dookie by green day and rock and roll nightmare by the rich kids on LSD I took them and holding them gave me a new sense of security I rubbed the artwork on each cover with my index finger smelling the folds like it was the night before Christmas or the first day of spring the touch renewed my senses and I held them until school was over that day oh I should have clicked that earlier you guys sorry these are the album covers I didn't really like black flag or rich kids on LSD I found both of them really boring and nothing I could feel connected to because of this I was embarrassed by the truth that I only enjoyed music that resembled Broadway musicals, Disney soundtracks like Aladdin and the Lion King or television theme songs I put on the green day CD expecting a similar caliber of boredom instead I was transformed I felt protected and warm alive and in love I entered the world of dookie and I found myself lying under a pile of dog shit and diving off the bad year blimp or rather I entered the world of dookie and green day found me my great grandmother Mimita was the matriarch of the family I was sure that my family had created their own version of Mimita's value system in order to fit their more conventional world I believe Mimita was some sort of pre-adolescent explorer I thought she was okay with homos she just didn't talk about it because the bible asked her not to she and I had an electric pulse that amplified when we spoke I like to believe every member of my family had some kind of deep internal sympathy for homos because isn't that what being a Cuban exile is all about? clasping the arms of your brothers and sisters who were dismissed by the communist revolution because of their identities grasping onto your brethren who stole in culture and identity was in fact not compensated with tax-free bonuses and a three-story fountain on their front lawn no matter what they did with their life La Virgen made those male saints look like homophobes like Roseanne Barr made all of television look misogynist it's like they were these greater entities who adjusted to the understanding that there's a billion kinds of people on this earth Roseanne Barr really disappointed me recently so if anyone wants to process about it later it would be really great she made a really transphobic comment on Tumblr and this is about 1995 back when she was cool and really down I wanted to believe there was a glitch in the things we were taught rather than the way that we are so I never fought back I just sat back scared and angry and holding on to myself when a shitty comment was made about the girl who might be weird about the bisexual who spread diseases about the disgusting lesbians who did disgusting things in order to attract attention about the sick people who reject their gender they were assigned at birth about the disgusting homosexuals who lure you into their haunting grip by rooming with you in college sneaking into your pants at the slumber party and looking at you enough until you are undressed there was no way on earth that homosexuals could be powerful enough to anger an entire nation because I for one usually felt fucking silenced but I tried to see through this reality when I sat alone in my closet which I could decorate and redecorate as often as my serotonin needed a jump start in a way I justified my existence through Mimita's projected way of thinking Mimita passed away when I was about 8 years old I had my own constructed reality then when I still lived in my cardboard box and everything felt secure the more I learned how much Mimita and I shared the more I could support the notion that she would have understood Mimita kept candy in a tin in her drawer and one of her favorite pastimes was watching boxing matches on television this is going to be a lot easier now I too hid the forbidden sugar left over from several halloween's ago I too enjoyed a diversion from the falseness of usual television I enjoyed sweaty suffering people in an incandescent world where self-expression became some sort of a weapon a weapon against feeling insecure about all the fucked up words and fucked up ideas that were in the way of fully embracing this thing that nobody understood this sexual identity I wanted a weapon of my own but in the meantime it was just easier to get lost just get lost in a potential reality it was spring of 1994 and I wasn't even sure that anyone could see the process of reinvention that I was undergoing the closest I remember coming to expressing my identity around my family was when I would get takeout from KFC I felt full when I would request the hot wings because according to the commercial hot wings were food for men in my repeated attempts to balance my masculinity I constantly slipped in the two new words that would now define the next sharp turn in my representation the next sharp turn my representation was due to make green and day green day felt real and tangible so I wondered if there was more beyond their music in their punk rock scene maybe things that existed before green day fell into that circuit of polished flesh sculpted torsos and Hollywood perhaps there was more out there more salvation besides a single song that I could mold myself into an old song, a cartoon about farting or a bodily sensation that justified my claims on humanity perhaps it will find me whatever it may be I'm certain it was nothing like green day Tina's strong out on confusion trapped inside a roll of disillusion I found out what it takes to be a man your mom and dad never understand secrets collecting dust don't forget skeletons come to life in my closet I found out what it takes to be a man your mom and dad never understand what's happening to me on myself I think all I did that whole summer was find myself over and over and over again the summer of 1994 I listened to green day every day until my ears bled sometimes I put on the lion king soundtrack or get a grip in order to calm myself but still those moments were undoubtedly followed by a 39th rotation of dookie by green day I knew this was the ultimate initiative behind self assurance finding a favorite band a lot of people had boyfriends or sex or money or popularity or sports an identity based on ability or love rather than unsuspected passion this passion evoked abilities because green day made me want to be someone green day seemed to have perfected the art of pop punk pop punk was a hybrid genre of punk rock influenced by late 70s early 80s power pop and the driving rhythms of melodic punk rock like the Ramones and the sex pistols green day gathered their own influences from lo-fi alternative rock like the replacements and husker do metal like black sabbath and their own punk rock heroes like crim shrine bikini kill and operation ivy I had never heard of any of these bands besides black sabbath who I had just read about them in green day biographies and let's get real the only reason I came to know Ozzy's changes was because Billy Joe seemed to always break into it during the intermission at green day shows but I was eager and passionate about investigating it all green day basically sounded as if my musicals were punk as if television theme songs were angry and as if the world was rejoicing and foolish merriment all the while owning their self-loathing tendencies seventh grade this is when I start how much time do we have this is about starting seventh grade I started seventh grade at a new school marina hernandez junior high in September of 1994 it was just the first day but the gender based submission had already begun basically we all got these gendered gifts bag gift bags the girls received secret brand deodorant and mascara and the guys received speed stick and chewing gum I was immediately offended and buried my gifts at the bottom of my backpack in case I ever needed them for now I chose to remain partially insecure I suck my thumb off through middle school it made most people confused but my family seemed to find it cute and entertaining so I thought what fucking ever when anyone caught me at mid suck and judge me for sucking my thumb at 12 years of age despite these inevitable insecurities that came with being a gay cuban girl in 1994 I knew that I was mature now now that I had found a favorite band an identity oh I should have I should have clicked that earlier what fucking ever that's what I'm saying there granted reality was constricted whether or not I use these tools to meticulously mold myself confidence cause deep inside I still felt like la rarita la tortillera I could not be myself on a day to day basis I could not be fully free but I would try to be oops I would try to be as free as I could contained but free trying not to turn my soul and brain into dust my first class that day was geography with Miss Navarro I stepped into class I saw Miss Navarro and was swept into a whirlwind I could sweat giggle and burn on the inside but God forbid I show it on the outside the mild embarrassment made me excited and comfortable with my carnal urges I felt alone but I felt right and from then on I loved geography I wanted to learn in school and think about the earth and why it was the way it was I thought it made sense I could pull down the map and ask her about the bay area I could ask her where Rodeo is since Billy Joe and Mike Dern't were originally from there I could ask her if she even likes Green Day although I was sure she was into whatever was playing on the Sol 95 which is the radio station in Miami I thought I had progressed as a person but I still felt stupid or fake or processed like here I was eight hours of the day surrounded by strangers and nobody knows that I am gay I guess they would slip in the occasional shady comments about my masculinity because nobody ignores a girl with a mustache but as a Gemini would I actually feel better if I exposed the full package so far I was not doing anything to question things like the government and the Bible through my physical identity besides wearing a flannel t-shirt refusing to wash my hair and buying my shoes at the boy section at Payless I always waited impatiently for the end to choose to be a self questioning adult or a kid who lived with their parents all I wanted was 3pm in a moment with my subconscious I could take pride in punk rock its political inclinations and all the things I had read about that suddenly humanized and sometimes to my conflicting dismay fetishized my alternative lifestyle for now uninterrupted thoughts about the future where my escape as long as school continued to force me into choosing the decimal system over scheming my gender identity alternative to what was scribbled on my geography class folder Billy Joe said that once on MTV in reference to something other than my sexual orientation but still it was the word usage the use of alternative and its unified definition of otherness otherness to what exactly calling it an alternative lifestyle made it sound like this choice we made to live differently as if we had other options because deep inside I was a big homo pounding to come out with zero choices just desires which were haplessly falling apart and why should our otherness even matter to the point that we're alternative nevertheless I decided to own whatever examined the status quo and embrace this alternative dumb as an accessible identity I could use to explain to the rest of the world when they asked me why I looked the way I looked I could sigh or hold my breath and excuse my lies I could say that I'm just alternative and that is all that you should really worry about that for this one you guys thank you I could read one more or I could I don't know if there was a Q&A portion do you have a preference okay okay you guys yes you talk a lot more about how the cartoons affected you when you were like in fifth grade and then it seems that when you started to this movie you didn't really have cartoons there wasn't any more cartoons I didn't like cartoons I liked Reniston right yeah but I think after The Lion King there wasn't any I liked Hercules but there wasn't like good Disney music and Alvin yeah I liked Alvin the Chinmunks because it was like put on front of me I didn't really like pick it but Ren and Stimpy I like picked it I saw it and I was like this is everything I need to do for the rest of my life but yeah I liked the idea of Beavis and Butthead but then I would watch it and I'd be like this is kind of boring it's just it's just edgy that they're like doing edgy sometimes it was fun but I don't know I don't know there wasn't any more cartoons that were like ambiguously gay that I became like deeply in love with and I did become obsessed with punk because it was like a community it can be a part of that was like political and like there wasn't like a political like cartoon world there was like the fan fiction world on the internet and I wasn't really into that I felt I don't know so later on in seventh grade I fell in love with someone who I thought was gay the first gay the first assumed gay person and I'm going to read about that now my attention span had faltered for the eighth time that class period so I took the hall pass and claimed Diarrhea Diarrhea of the soul I admitted to myself as I wandered toward the nearest bathroom I already rolled my eyes metaphysically at two different homophobic comments both of which were celebrated by our teacher so I needed to walk I walked through the halls and steadily paced myself with my headphones streaming I want to be alone off of 39 smooth I walked slowly to savor the irreplaceable moments when I was alone 39 smooth is the first green day album just so you know um savor the irreplaceable moments when I was alone scavenging through the world that fed off of restricting me these were my favorite moments they stood apart from the rest of my life I was not scared of being judged I was not concerned with safety or anyone's expectations I was not accountable to anyone I had a hall pass a ticket to freedom if I concealed my destination in my alternative lifestyle I was not following anything beyond the course of my own visions I walked further taking wrong turns taking my time taking corners off of signs that had nothing to do with me and pulling the sticky tack off of the backs of posters so I can have something to hold on to oh I should have that's me doing that I stopped and peered into each window and each open door looking for people who looked like me I passed by the counselor's office and looked through the crack in the door may I help you sorry oh my god I'm so sorry I'm in the wrong room I'm sorry I ran off I started sweating and wondering I was still at Marina Hernandez Junior High or fucked up fantasy kingdom channeling high contrast between misery and ecstasy I saw a bald girl she was bald except with a little tuft of hair over her forehead maybe she shaved it all off for the sake of some kind of alternative visibility was it subcultural visibility gay visibility both I had never seen a bald girl in my entire life maybe you know except Susan Powder she was on television and while I definitely loved Susan this was totally different I was having a difficult time differentiating between how much I wanted to become this boyish figure who carried eons of homoerotic power and how much I suddenly just wanted to date them hold their hand as we escaped the dark damp closet where my skeleton slept and look the bird has a dental dam for us in my fantasy the bald girl's eyes stopped time as they moved between harsh fluorescence and the seafoam green body of water surrounding her pupils they stopped time as I finally felt what real infatuation was like and going to Pasalaqua by Green Day looped repeatedly in my mind here we go again infatuation tells me just when I thought that it wouldn't oh but then again you'll see much more than that but I'm not sure exactly what you're thinking when I toss and turn all night thinking of your ways of affection to find that it's not different at all and I throw words and content play my future that's what I say bald girl's face got me shocked and frazzled it got me shocked and frazzled she wasn't just there keeping to herself twiddling her fingers and undermining my existence she was looking at me I replayed the experience over and over in my head locking the inevitable path between the bald girl's face and mine punching in my name, birthday and blood type in the bank of her subconscious maybe she will think about me tomorrow I thought to myself half dismal half elated that's my one friend in soap opera Marimad I broke into a peculiar new kind of sweat thank god Clarita was, oh Clarita who's named after Luz Clarita the other slam pot soap opera, sorry thank god Clarita was in my class I had to say something to someone before I sat down I had to say something to someone before I sat down I paused and contemplated if I should gush over bald girl's perfectly positioned nose on the adorable roundness of her head I couldn't, I just couldn't dude, I just saw a bald girl oh yeah the one the water polo jocks were talking shit about her name's Alex oh, Alex I want to shave my head but my mom would kill me ha, yeah, I saw her in the counselor's office her mom's probably pissed too ha, ha, yeah yep uh, so I was on a fourth dimensional stroll through the future I didn't care if Alex even liked Green Day she was bald it was relieving and humanizing to have legitimate feelings for a living human who I could speck to run into on any old day I usually felt like I was floating in an unchartered space where my feelings were hazardous so my self assurance flailed with the wind but I was loud in nature interested in questioning everyone's every gesture and happy to be outlandish I could easily fool everyone while I laughed at everything still I don't think any of my friends could yet see the fire that surrounded me every day Glorita seemed generally amused and interested in the things I had to say and I could listen to her all day in return she made me feel normal like Green Day did as if in some other dimension I could exist and have an openly questionable sexuality and it's not really a big deal and if that identity was ever threatened I could roll my eyes or fart because who fucking cared I existed independently and consciously someplace else I wanted to stay in that place where the people who gave me shit didn't matter and the people who mattered felt confounded too sometimes everything seemed like it was going to be alright every time I talked to Glorita about the future and every time that I listened to Green Day I swear dude you really should give nine inch nails a try so that's eight you guys um thank you I can read more and not have lines to show but or I can answer questions or we can be done because everyone here looks very tired yeah there's copies of the book back there but does anyone have a really important question before we're done you can find me later thank you thank you thank you museum you should all really check out there's a documentary that's on nowish it's history of act up go find it go there now thank you