There comes a time in every young queer’s life when they are struck by lightning.



For me, that time comes on a brisk spring morning in rural Oklahoma, when I’m standing behind the middle school, waiting for the bell to ring for first period. Two people are standing with me: Matt and Patrick, both of whom I consider friends. But it’s complicated. They’ve been acting differently around me lately. Sometimes they suddenly stop talking when I walk up to them. They smirk. They know something I don’t. It makes me nervous.

Today, I’m wearing a green John Deere tractor shirt and jeans that are one size too big.

“Hey,” Matt says to Patrick. He nods in my direction. “Talk to him about shirts.”

An electric pulse shoots down my body. This is it. I’ve been caught. All I can do now is play dumb.

“Shirts?” I say.

Patrick looks at me. He points. His posturing seems rehearsed, like this is something he’s been planning to do. Something he’s been practicing.

“That’s my fucking shirt,” he says.

It’s true. It is his shirt.

The person I’d like to be doesn’t wear John Deere tractor shirts. Instead, he is dressed like the beautiful people in my mother’s fashion magazines, which I keep secretly stashed under my bed. He wears elegant jewelry, blouses in exciting patterns and vibrant colors, fabric that flows and moves.

Every night I watch The Look for Less (hosted by a pre-Fox News Elisabeth Hasselbeck) on the Style Network with my sister. We like to tear apart the bargain outfits they come up with, because they always fall short of the designer original. I am perhaps the only boy in our little patch of countryside who daydreams about Tyra Banks finding him and recruiting him to be on America’s Next Top Model.