I.

I always loved going to school. Being surrounded by equals really imprisoned the inner rebel-rebel. The monster used to be fully awake at home. Bothering my parents has always been my favourite sport. In fact, the only sport I played competitively. A funny thing about families, we all think our own is built on the norm, so I thought that wanting to constantly run away from the vertical power dynamic was a given. I remember having the best time with my classmates, my school uniform coming back home filthy and stained every day. I even had a girlfriend. I loved dinosaurs, nature, and space. And I remember finding a cassette in my house, and playing and rewinding one song in particular, Surfin’ USA by The Beach Boys. The old record player stood silent next to the TV embedded in a huge piece of furniture, in the living room. The vinyl were dusty, and never caught my eye. I used to interject my adventures as a space explorer on a ship with the thrill of discovering what the boxes of music would contain. My fantasies run free when no one else was home. That’s when I played the few records I liked and which covers did not scare me. In my solitude, the silence became harmonized voices and happy beats, jumping around the sofas while travelling through unknown places.

II.

I shared the room with my brother. And when the bedtime was long gone, I lit the bedside light to keep on reading whatever I was addicted to in that moment. The clicking of the electrical mechanism would trigger a series of actions that would always happen sequentially. I would switch on the light, that would face the wall on the left side on my bed, just right below the window, so I could read sideways, with the book on one hand, disrupting the darkness just enough to not bother my sibling. My parents were tyrannic with one stupid commandment that I hated then, and I hate now, many tears later: You shall never fully close the door. Every night, the door projected and angle of forty-five degrees against the frame, becoming an exchange of light and sound for both sides. Not even reading was allowed. Late night academic development, acquiring wisdom in the darkness, under the moonlight, was wholeheartedly forbidden. The few light particle / waves would travel from the reflection of the wall further than the doorstep of the living room, alerting either of my parents, triggering a command that I would disobey, an argument, and a final surrender, with the book still open on whichever page I was reading looking down in the – click!- dark. Rinse and repeat.

III.

Tuesday is a weird day. All the other weekdays have some energy to them. A specific sound that gives them personality. On Mondays we come back to reality, reflect and gather energies. Wednesday is to jump, the hump day for all those nine to five busy people running with their lattes and holding more than three items in the other hand. A tablet that slithers softly, their phone, and folder that flops to the floor, making their owner angry and agitated.
Tuesday was the day that my dad chose to have a telly blackout. It was the day chosen to make me and my little brother think outside the idiotic box. I was never fully absorbed by the hypnotizing magnetism of the childish cartoons anyway. I liked to read, to play with toys, to do whatever with my brother as long as our interests collapsed in the Venn diagram that kept us six years apart.

My father insisted. On Tuesdays, the TV was off so we could have dinner all together. Me, my brother, and my mum. This only made me even more interested on watching the TV on that weekday. Just to piss my father off, of course. Every Tuesday, when he would get back from work, we would exchange very articulated angry statements, we would get violent, and I would act like a brat just to get slapped. My mother always used to tell me that we were way too much alike.

The days in which the stupid rule was not enforced I used to sneak into my room, and under the umbrella of the internet and the freedom of being on my own, explore all the things that are left to explore in the world with the naughty mind of a twelve-year-old who was discovering himself. Closing the door of my room was creating a vault, a safe space where I could, for a brief period of time, escape. Escape from the lies to the real world. To the real me. One day, when I came back from high school, with my backpack full of notebooks, sweaty and tired, the door of my room was gone. The hinges stood still, helpless, without sound, as if a horrible wind would have taken the wooden symbol of my liberty away.

IV.

I memorized all the lyrics of Morning Wood – The Nth Degree
I got obsessed with the first verse of The Strokes – You Only Live Once
I saw a gay man on TV when watching the video of Scissor Sisters – I don’t Feel Like Dancing
I downloaded Daft Punk – Discovery because I fell in love with One More Time.
I burned Wu Tang Clan on a virgin CD.

V.

I first realized I was different. You are called a faggot before you suck a dick. Actually, you are called a faggot several times before you suck a dick. It is said that queer people lost their teen years, all that social and sexual self-discovery is sacrificed. Misfits are still trying to identify why they don’t fit in, why they don’t act like everybody else, why they don’t want to do the same as everybody else.

Was not my case. Mine was not completely lost. Lucky for me, I grew up with a bunch of outcasts. All queers in my eyes, but not all of them homosexuals. Being deviant in your sexual orientation or gender identity does not make you queer.

Queernes comes from making questions, from not accepting the status quo, from being a rebel. From provoking. From making the people around you question themselves and the world surrounding them. My teens were a trainwreck, but not in vain.

I had beautiful people surrounding me. Two celiac twins that turned out to be lesbians. Two of the uptight cool bitches that were cool enough to smoke in the back of the bus on the way back home. A surfer girl that has had relationships with both boys and girls.
One of my best friends was gay like me, although we wouldn’t talk about it openly until much more later in life. But a silent connection brought us together. We were friends with the outspoken girls that wore way too much make up. We were friends with the lads that used to skip class to skate and smoke weed. We used to get along with the teachers and get good grades.

We used to always ditch physical education and go smoke under a bridge nearby. The teacher came around to pick us up every time when class was done. He was cool with it.
I drank my first beers when I was sixteen, I got caught drunk in the summer festivals when I was seventeen. I ran from the local police for trying to paint graffities and performed even more acts of naive vandalism before leaving to uni.

I went to concerts, I totally fell in love with the music, with the night. All while I was trying to tell the truth to myself.

That I wanted not only to fuck boys.

But love boys. Hold hands with boys. Kiss boys on their cheeks. Cuddle with them.

I didn’t know at that point, but I was already less lethargic. I was outspoken, shameless, and dangerously sassy. My mum used to call me ‘golden beak’, and for a good reason. In Spanish has a ring to it, I promise.