They Called Me Fag. That’s When I Stopped Flying.
It would come in my sleep, this dream of flight. Arms outstretched, soaring over my house. I see my mom in her bedroom, petting a grinning cat’s chin. I see my dad on the back porch in the shadow of the old oak, plumes from his pipe circling him.
He called me Supe as a kid, for Superman. I would soar above the city, grabbing acorns off trees, tunneling through clouds, kissing a star.
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Then the kids teased, “Fag!”
Now, when the dreams of flight came, my hands and feet were bound with rope. For years. Until I reckoned with those taunting schoolboys. They knew something about me before I could admit it to myself. They weren’t wrong. But they weren’t nice.
When I did, the bindings came loose. I could rise again without restraint. And the dreams no longer visited me.
There was freedom in the waking hours.
