We have no control over what labels others give us, but we can define who we are by the ones we choose to give ourselves.

The thing about revealing secrets is, your mind is always anticipating six million scenarios of how it’ll go before the secret is ever out: the good, the bad, the zombie apocalypse version. It never goes the way you’re expecting.

I’m one of five black kids at school. My freshman year, I was the token gay kid until others finally came out. I’ve been the token everything. I’m like a dragon in a city of unicorns.

“Everything okay?”
Instinct tells me to lie. This is the first time I’ve been in the same breathing space as Mr. Ivanov. He’s always been a ghost with a whimsical yard. But I reply, “No,” because something tells me he knows what it’s like to not be okay.
“Most of us aren’t okay,” he says. “We’re simply good at hiding it.”

Life is a journey, Rembrandt. You don’t know all of it at seventeen. Or as an adult. In fact, I think when you finally do know all of who you are, the universe stops the clock and ends the journey.

Fourteen is a strange place to deal with sexuality and hormones and math. I managed two of those things—I still suck at math.

After the first six times, coming out became as basic as telling a stranger my name. It became a joke: “Hi, my name is Gay and my sexuality is Remy Cameron.” Over and over, I’ve had to acknowledge my sexuality as if it’s a warning. The thing is, you always have to come out. Every day. To new people, to people you’ve known forever, to people who keep trying to ignore it.

There are some people who leave our lives and it’s not our job to hold on. To ask, ‘what if,’ even if we want to. We’re supposed to let them leave.

“I’m not ready to be a grandmother.” The urgency has faded, replaced by humor. “I haven’t even gone through my Britney Spears phase yet.”
“Which one? Catholic schoolgirl? Snake girl? Shaved head? Barefoot at a gas station?”
“Oh, honey,” Mom’s mouth curves upward, “All the Britney phases are important.”

Here’s the thing: Just because I came out at fourteen doesn’t mean I’m one-hundred-percent secure in myself all the time. Coming out doesn’t equal indisputable confidence. It means that, for those precious seconds it takes to identify yourself to someone else, you’re brave. It doesn’t last.

That wild, weaponized smile of Ian’s emerges—locked, loaded, and I’m its target.

“Excellent academic institutions that have environments created to support students whose identity falls under the LGBT umbrella.”
“Umbrella? Is it raining queerness?”

“Mom,” I say, sighing, “I take back that badass title. You’ve been demoted.”
“To what?”
“A basic, wannabe hipster.”

I nod along, watching him sing under his breath. He’s off-key but doesn’t care. Ian’s in his own world. I love how music does that—takes us to the middle of a packed arena with a spotlight and a microphone, even if we can’t sing the ABCs without our voices cracking. Music doesn’t just seep into our souls; it wraps careful fingers around our nerves and presses new life into them.

“You don’t hate the system. You fit in with it. You’re popular.”
“So are you.”
She laughs harshly. “By association. I’m popular with an asterisk. With a disclaimer.”

Weekends are for being anything other than yourself. Weekends are for irresponsibility and treating the world like that bowl of uncooked cookie dough you’re not supposed to eat, but you do.

But, for whatever reason, these conversations always lead back to me being the loud-and-proud leader of the New Gay Millennium. It’s as if coming out at fourteen defined my destiny from then on. Hey, there’s Remy Cameron, the Chosen Gay One, as if I’m Harry Potter, except, instead of the cool scar and endless sexual tension with Draco, I was given a rainbow patch and all these expectations.

He’s one of those teachers you can’t help but like. He tells the worst jokes, dresses like a recent college graduate applying for his first real job and talks to students like people instead of this colony of ants marching toward their demise.