The F-Bomb

That's what the other boy's called me in high school when they knocked the cafeteria tray out of my hands. My food hitting the cold rubber floor.

I felt diminutive. Disgusted with myself. How did they know? Did they really know? I didn't date; so maybe that's how they knew. Alone and gay, paying for a crime I had yet to commit. And they probably didn't even know.

But still I was suffering alone, because I didn't want to suffer alone.

My skin still crawls every time I hear that word. Every time someone else is called that word. In magazines, in newspapers, on TV. My skin crawls.

I am that fag. The one getting pushed, getting beaten, getting ridiculed. Because I don't want to be alone, I am made to feel so alone.

Whenever a coworker or a friend of a friend makes an innocuous comment that I'll soon discover my paternal instinct, I want to scream "don't you get it, I'm a fag!"

And I feel worthless, in so many different ways.

Partly because I chose that word. Partly because I am wounded. Partly because I remained silent.

I won't remain silent. I won't be intimidated. And I won't be alone.

I am a fag.

Liam '14