You don’t look gay.

Oh, sorry. How should I fix that?

Do I give myself the bisexual bob?

Do I cuff my jeans?

Do I bring lemon bars to potlucks at work?

Do I listen to girl in red?

Do I wear Vans and throw peace signs and sit incorrectly in my chair and do everything I can to try to speak this code, in the hopes that someone will speak it back?

What if no one does?

Or what if they do, and they see me?

Then what?

What do you do when you come out, and get a wrinkled nose followed by, “but you’re married to a man.”

Or “have you ever even been with a woman?”

Or “you’re just saying that for attention.”

Or “I bet your husband likes the threesomes!”

Or what about when a coworker decides to take me under her wing and “teach me to be gay?”

(as if that’s even possible)

and what do I say when she interrogates my attractions

asks me what I’ve done with women

what I haven’t

where the lines of fidelity have been drawn within my marriage?

What do I say when she tells me she cheated on her partner last year

with a girl around my age?

What do I do when another coworker, my work mom,

tells me to stay in the closet?

She’s a butch lesbian; she tells me, “I can’t hide, but you can. That’s a privilege.”

Erasing my identity is a privilege?

How do I present myself as me—the whole me, and nothing but the me—without also attracting the opinions of people who think they have the right to tell me I’m doing it wrong?

I don’t like the way my hair frames my face when it’s bob length.

Jeans are uncomfortable; I’d rather wear skirts.

Lemon bars are delicious, and I like girl in red, and if wearing Vans, sitting cross-legged, and throwing awkward hand gestures make me a meme, then so be it. 

But you don’t get to fix me. You don’t get to tell me to hide.

And you don’t get to tell me who I am.