There’s a peculiar thing that happens when you are different, you hardly ever declare it. It bestowed on you by others. Sometimes, it’s a heavenly reminder that might let you skip a grade for your smarts or a more hell-ish with a push, stare or comment. We live in a world where what comes naturally to you can get extraordinary amount of praise or disapproval, and you learn at a very tender age which category you fall under.
I love unicorns. I’ve always loved unicorns. I don’t attribute it to anything, but me growing up in my Harlem apartment, seeing nothing majestic or worth fantasizing about. Unicorns were the personification of what magic, perfection, and dreams could be. That’s a lot for a young kid to wrap his brain around, I do admit. I came up with that assessment in retrospect, but there’s one thing I did know as a child; I did love unicorns. Me not being a very shy kid, I was proud of everything I loved and admired. One day I shared my love of those magical stallions with my peers during art class and I was combated with words like faggot, sissy, bitch, weird-o, and freak. I couldn’t wrap my head around why my love for a imaginary creature would be combated with such hurtful language. Granted, I didn’t know what half the words meant, but the tone was enough to induce tears. Not full-fledge tears, those tears that you try your best to hold in. The tears that live on the edge of your eye-lids, never becoming free to run down your cheek, but made to dry up and parish.
Years later, I found out what a faggot was and I was indeed one. In more politically correct terms, I was a gay boy. Never too flamboyant, but definitely not too masculine. My teenage years weren’t a “Glee” episode, I never got teased to the point of despair, but anytime I got too comfortable, I would be reminded that I was different (even when I was closeted). We all know what being different can mean in high-school, especially in terms of awkward sexuality. I had the worst luck of having the scarlet ‘G’ (or ‘F’) written on my chest. I know that pain and confusion.
There has been a intense case of coverage of bullying by the media, you know this. There has been a heavy coverage of suicides by the media, you know this. Plenty of these suicides (if not all) are amongst gay youth, you know this. What happened? Starlets across rainbow-Hollywood united to sing the tune, “It gets better!”. And poof! All the misery of gay youth in America disappeared and I got my unicorn! Well, erm, not quite. The suicides stopped getting covered, the media stopped caring because Lindsay Lohan got arrested, and gay youth are still in a huge crisis of self-genocide. These tragic queers are wallowing with Hurricane Katrina and Haiti victims in the Land of Unwanted Worries.
I know that pain and confusion, but I did survive it pretty successfully. I don’t have the answer for survival because I don’t know how I even survived such alienation, ridicule, and confusion. I don’t want to lie to anyone. Sometimes, it doesn’t getter better. Sometimes, well a lot of times, it gets worse. It gets scarier, you become more alone, and maybe your mother can’t pay the cable bill so you can’t see all of those beautiful celebrities telling you to keep trucking. Indeed, I don’t know anything, but one thing; I still love unicorns. Perhaps, it was my grip on a fantasy that kept me from squeezing the trigger or swallowing a colorful assortment of pills. Maybe, just maybe, we should give the troubled youth something to hold onto, instead of a lie that we all know is possibly a damn lie. Whatever the answer is, we can expect the news and media to promote it full-heartedly, unless they decide Charlie Sheen is more important again.
