You're all so fucked up. Head-to-toe fucked up, and it's no secret to any of us. I've seen so much of it. I've held out downtown, deep in city lights, drunk in kitchens early in the morning. I've seen it all. The ways you talk about graduating a year late or the way your father refers to you and your brother as "fatties"; your eagerness to show us back issues of Playboy at the only bookstore in town that's open until midnight; how everyone in your life tells you that it's good you're finally getting out of the house, and that we of all people are good for that; the way you hide beautiful truths in jokes, as if they're precious enough to be smuggled. I can tell how much shame swamps all of that for you guys. It's so clear. You can still it into a concentrate, pungent in odor and solid in colour. But I hope you know I judge none of you for it. Everyone has, but nobody should. I have spent my entire life wandering around towns at night with weirdos like you guys. I would have learned nothing if I didn't get it. I wore trench coats to high school and hung out with trans kids who went on to immediately drop out of high school. Unfortunately, we are a people, and you're one of us. And I will do my best to have your backs.
"All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us."
Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son
