A Guide to Hiding Your Gay in 7th Grade

“Flowering” by Cecilia Martinez

I keep my gay in my gym bag. I stuff it into the back pocket, the one that I never unzip anymore because it smells like a noxious combination of old sweaty socks and baby powder. That’s the only place that my gay will be safe. It hides there in the dark beside an unopened deodorant and the crumbs of a weeks-old cookie. My gay likes to be swaddled in army green canvas purchased at Old Navy.

Most of the time, it stays like that in the bottom of my locker, the lumpy base upon which I stack my lunch box and winter jacket. But for one period every day, I carry my gay around on my shoulder. Out of sight, but heavy enough to feel it weighing me down. The frayed straps of my gym bag dig into the soft, fatty skin around my arms until I can set it down in the locker room.

I never loosen the zipper on my gay in the locker room.

I double check the zipper, make sure that it’s closed tight, and then I face the wall to change into my gym clothes. Keeping my eyes locked on the grimy beige tile is the only way to make it out of this room alive. I can hear the other girls talking and laughing with each other while I stare at the wall and know that I can’t do that here. It’s not like I want to look. My gay isn’t predatory. It’s just anxious. It doesn’t know how much eye contact is too much or too little, and I can’t afford even the slightest slip in social normalcy.

Usually, it’s easy to avert my gaze for as long as it takes to switch my jeans out for cotton shorts. But today, Elle yells my name from the cracked-open doorway and my head whips around on instinct.

“I talked to Coach,” Elle says, oblivious to what she’s done to me. “I told him we have our periods, so we can both sit out of dodgeball.”

Elle isn’t the kind of best friend that I would have chosen. Kind of like my gay, Elle walked into my life one day when I was too young to say anything about it and refused to leave me alone. But the Elle that chose me is a different person than the one standing next to me in the locker room. This Elle wears too much black eyeliner and calls herself Elle from Hell on the chat rooms of fetish websites meant for adults with serious problems. This Elle swears that she hates everyone but me.

I nod thanks as the lump swells up in my throat and Elle closes the door.

The zipper on the back pocket of my gym bag is open. I know even before I look, as if the locker room suddenly smells slightly more of sweat and baby powder. There’s only about an inch of space where the jagged teeth have separated, but it’s enough. My gay has slipped out and it’s looking at the girl across the locker room. She’s wearing a sports bra and is carefully braiding her hair. Her t-shirt is a crumpled pile on the bench.

My face gets too hot, and I think I’m going to die.

I meet Elle in the gym. I leave my bag on the bench, but my gay follows me. It nips at my heels like a pest, impossible to ignore. Coach is lining up dodgeballs along the centre line while boys steal the spare ones off the cart. They shove the red rubber balls under their shirts to pretend their pregnant or have boobs, because a girl is the funniest thing they can imagine being. Elle is waiting for me, sitting in the corner. I lower myself onto the floor beside her and pull my knees up into my chest.

Beside me, my gay does the same.

Elle has one earbud in. I can hear the aggressive guitar screaming from it, barely muffled. She offers the other one to me, but I shake my head no. The girl with the braids leaves the locker room then and I do everything I can to avoid looking at her. Even when it’s sitting right next to me, I will ignore my gay.

My gay doesn’t want to be ignored.

“I think I might be a lesbian,” I say.

It slips out before I can stop it. At least I say it like that to lessen the blow. I think. I might. The truth is that I know, but my gay is a creature that lives in the dark. It’s uncivilized. Unaccustomed to making new friends. Thankfully, it’s not asking to be introduced to the entire class. Everyone else in a nearby radius is distracted picking teams for the game, so nobody hears besides Elle.

She scrunches her eyebrows at me. They’re thick and unruly because she hasn’t discovered tweezers yet. “Why?”

Why not?

My gay isn’t much for conversation. I’ve never asked it questions – never knew that I could – so I don’t know why it’s there. It showed up unannounced one night and crawled into my cradle with me and snuggled up with my favourite teddy bear. It stuck onto me like a shadow, growing as I did. Never speaking to me, but never leaving my side either.

“I don’t know why,” I tell her.

“You’re not a lesbian,” Elle says. “If you were, I would know.”

She says it with so much certainty that I have no choice but to believe her. I know that if Elle says so, then it must be the truth because best friends know these kinds of things. I don’t have to tell my gay to leave. It retreats to the locker room and zips itself into the back pocket of my gym bag all on its own. It stays there until I find a better hiding space for it.

About the Author

Hailey Frenette is a grad student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This is her first publication but won’t be her last.

about the artist

Cecilia Martinez is an award-winning self taught artist from Jersey City, NJ, USA. She has learned how to manipulate different mediums through patience and practice, trial and error. In the five years she's been in the art scene, Cecilia has already had her work exhibited in more than 80 shows in venues throughout the country, including the National Association of Women Artists Gallery in New York City and the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Additionally, her work has been featured in a segment on Al Jazeera TV, which reaches more than 30 million viewers worldwide. Cecilia’s artwork is also regularly published in art magazines and journals in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe.