Crumpled Origami Swans

Its 1999 and I’m in Union Square with three gay friends. A car full of college boys yell "faggots" as they whiz by. Faggots. I think of a friend who once told me that when he came out to his mother her response was, "I would have loved you just the same if you had Down’s Syndrome." So now we’re retarded. I think of another friend whose mother asked in seriousness if he would now start wearing a dress. And women. Retarded women. A third friend told me how his mother’s main concern was that he would live a "sad, lonely life." Lonely, retarded women. I think of the irony in the word "gay" – it so seldom means the happiness it implies. And "positive" -- possibly the most frightening word in the gay lexicon. Gay and positive – two riddles, unsolved.
Now, in 2007, when I hear the word "faggot" I feel so much. There’s so much beauty in life, in being gay, in just living. But when I hear "faggot" it’s like somebody has unfolded a fragile and intricate origami swan and discarded it in the incinerator. To hear "faggot" is an undoing of sorts. It’s a constant battle between the unravel and the rebuilding – that is if you’re strong enough. It’s not weakness if you’re not. Who wouldn’t succumb? It’s the degrees in which we can succumb that’s frightening. When I hear the word "faggot" I think of mothers, dresses, nurses in HIV clinics, Down’s Syndrome, disease, isolation and how all the stupid boys in cars yelling "faggots" can do little to hurt us now.
In 1999 when that car of boys rode by my friends and I did the thing that made sense. Without consulting one another we extended our arms and raised our middle fingers, "Fuck You." We riotously laughed at the absurdity of it all – we’ve come far. These are the boys who taunted us in school, some of the same types we’re trying to be, trying to sleep with – the same types we’re trying to exist with and as. It’s complicated. But somehow it feels like a victory, like recovery.