The Gays

Back when I was in sixth grade, I didn't know how you caught the gays. My mother, who was a great mother and very handy with a sewing machine, made me a new backpack for my entry into junior high school. It was made of sturdy green canvas, which I thought was especially thoughtful because the colors of my new school were green and white. She put two felt appliques, one a happy face and the other a snarky frown. It said that there would be good days and  there would be bad days. Little did I know it also gave me the gays.
It did not happen immediately. It took a week or two, but they caught up to me. Mostly eighth and ninth graders at first, but soon after the rest of the seventh grade were anxious to get in on the message: That backpack is gay. I didn't know at that time that sexual preference was determined by the backpack I wore. I didn't know what sexual preference was, which may have had something to do with it. Which is also why I had to surrender to the insistence that most everything I did or said was just bringing on the gays. I was made to understand just how awful the gays were by just how much every other boy and most of the girls would do anything they could to avoid them. Whatever it was that they were, I knew that they could get me tormented in gym class or beat up in the hallway. How I dressed, how I sat and even the way I looked at my nails were outward signs of contracting the gays.
There were some who had it worse than me, and I was assured by my friends that if I just got rid of the backpack, I might be able to find my way back to the straight and narrow. That, and I had to stop listening to Elton John. The thing is, I didn't want to. I loved that backpack. Maybe that was what "sexual preference" was all about. Love and respect for my mother and the backpack she made with her own hands gave me a case of the gays that I could not shake. Would not shake. I really liked "Rock of the Westies" too. I wasn't giving them up without a fight.
It wasn't ever really a fight, per se. It was primarily abuse. Most of it was mental. Some of it was physical. It all hurt. Not bad enough to stop carrying the backpack. Or the lunch box inside of it. I wore it out. Eventually it was replaced by a more traditional nylon rucksack from a sporting goods store. My mom and I never talked about making a replacement. We didn't need to. And it turned out that I wasn't gay after all. Just a little odd. And stubborn.