Exceptional

5004 – Stephanie Schroeder, “Being Queer”

Before I am queer I am two or three years old with severe asthma. I have been captured and put into an oxygen tent. I am scared to death. The nurses are big and mean and they don't like me because I do not cooperate. I try – and succeed – at escaping the giant frightening contraption that is suffocating me despite Continue reading

Private: 5007 – Mars

Moscow, Summer '04. I was almost sixteen and spending the summer in the city with a friend who was a couple years older. In honor of being parentless in a sleepless metropolis, she took me to my first night club. My friend managed to coax the boy she liked into coming along, and around midnight it became clear that Continue reading

5014 – J.E. Reich, “The Places I Have Come Out”

In the school library. My father is away at a conference for a distant summer in Germany. He will be the hardest to tell, I reason, for the missed linguistic cues, the generational gap as precarious as a lion's hinging jaw, or rather, because he just doesn't get it. It's a safe bet. I write him a ten-page email, glancing at the other Continue reading

5024 – Carmen Barnes

I am 36, but my genes keep me youthful looking. Honestly, I have photo proof.

I came out almost three decades ago. Gay had no meaning to me. Love was the powerful thing I understood. I lived in Europe for most of my childhood and I did not know it was "wrong" to be gay until I moved to the

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Private: 5045 – Kim Kelsey

I came out at the age of 28. One Saturday evening I sat across from my mother at the Olive Garden grappling with how to tell her that the first date I was going on in four years was with another woman. Actually, let me back up quite a bit. Thirteen years to be exact. Continue reading