I Have Something to Tell You

I often tease Peter because I have a master’s and he doesn’t—his Rhodes Scholarship covered a second bachelor’s. Nevertheless, I still have to listen to his introduction five times a day: “Harvard-educated Rhodes Scholar who was elected the youngest mayor of a town over one hundred thousand, who took a seven-month leave of absence to serve his country in Afghanistan.” There’s no animosity here, because he always builds me up, especially when it comes to areas I excel in. If anyone in this relationship is bragging too much about the other at dinner parties, it’s him. He never makes me feel like the dumber one in the relationship, even though I totally am the dumber one in the relationship. Not to be self-deprecating—I just married a polyglot superhuman.

Now I know that suppressing a major part of your identity will make it feel like nothing is enough,

We drank wine, he was charming, but that’s all it was. Wine and Will & Grace. No touching! Finally, after a few weekends of laughing and watching Jack-and-Karen hijinks while sipping chardonnay, I asked, “So, uh, what’s going on here?” He then proceeded to tell me—are you ready for this?—that he was just trying to figure out if he still loved his husband while they were on a break. I have never left an apartment faster. I may have left a shoe behind. MEN!

I was swimming in a sea of whiteness, and I didn’t even know I was wet.

Mark Twain: “A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth puts its shoes on.

Working at Starbucks was an eye-opening experience, and not always in a good way. Our location was next to a private high school, and every afternoon we’d be subject to a steady stream of privileged teenagers messing around with their iPhones as they paid for their vanilla bean Frappuccinos with Starbucks cards. A thought I had not infrequently was I’m (basically) a college graduate working forty hours a week serving milkshakes to teens who have more money in their bank accounts than I do.

the experience has shown me that this story of mine isn’t apolitical. Politics is in all our living rooms. It’s around our kitchen tables and in our mailboxes.

In 2019, almost overnight, I went from being a middle-school teacher from Traverse City, Michigan, to becoming a person strangers looked to for guidance, reassurance, and the perfect reaction GIF on Twitter.

That no matter what I said or did in my private life, there was always going to be some version of me out there shaped by and beholden to the expectations, biases, and hopes of complete strangers.

That gay expereince in Tulsa is just as gay and valid as other, more visible experience in the media, and attempting to police anyone’s gayness sets a dangerous precedent. It equates identity with presentation and prioritizes lifestyle of the conditions of someone’s life. It places even more needless pressure on a population that is already struggling.

I was reaching my hand over the person in front of me to shake hands with Obama when a random guy barreled into me from behind. I turned to look at what had happened, and in the meantime, I felt a hand on my hand. I turned back around, saw Barack Obama was holding my hand, and immediately recoiled. About halfway into this maneuver, I realized what I was doing so I tried to recover by grabbing his pointer finger and shaking it. Like an infant. But not in a cute way! ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. President!’ I exclaimed, red-faced. ‘Yes,’ he replied, staring at my hand shaking his finger.

felt like I was destroying the dream they’d had for me: that I get a good job, marry a woman, and live nearby so that they would have full access to spoiling their grandkids.

I was growing up in a system designed to keep me from questioning them in the first place.

There’s a saying commonly attributed to Mark Twain: “A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth puts its shoes on.

But students from George Washington would ask him something about civic innovation or sewer-system management (which is a real thing people are interested in), he would answer, and they'd giggle and walk away, looking like they'd just met James Dean or a Jonas brother.

I stopped Peter just as she touched his shoulder to turn him around, and she immediately began to tear up. 'I'm so sorry to bug you guys,' she said. 'It's just -- I'm the mother of two gay children and what you're doing for this country and for them . . . I am just so proud of you and so happy you're getting out there.' Her children had caught up with her -- they were a little embarrassed, but excited to meet us, too. 'Hi, we're the gay children,' the daughter joked as an introduction.

needed to tell my own story, as cheesy as that might sound. The more time I spent out on the campaign trail reflecting on my own life and seeing myself in other people’s stories, the more I realized that the experiences and memories I was scared of, embarrassed of, or keeping hidden weren’t as weird, mockable, or inappropriate to discuss in the context of national politics as I’d assumed they were.