I didn’t think either Chilli Oil or Rooster would have liked that very much. To say nothing of their humans, who were glad not to be alone in this world that had just become so much wider.

*

I painted a lantern with a picture of two women gathering herbs together, and above them two phoenixes curled towards each other, forming a perfect sun.

My mother smiled when she saw it, and said she was proud.

Xiayin smiled too when she saw it, and kissed my paint-speckled hands.

All right, choir. Let’s do this.

I’m sorry – I know how much some of the others like this song, but we should be singing ‘Born This Way’ instead.

Why did Tim have to put me next to Joe?
I know conductors can be cruel, but this … this is too much.

Is Tyrone really ghosting me?

I mean, Tyrone understands we’re in this choir together, right?

Just because there are two boys kissing in the video, it doesn’t make it a gay anthem. ‘Born This Way’ is clearly a gay anthem.

Project, Dan. Stop looking at your feet.

Joe has to stop smiling at me. I cannot even hold a thought, not to mention a song, when Joe is smiling at me.

I can see him in the audience. Right there. And if you had told me two years ago that my father would be sitting in the fourth row at a queer choir concert with me on stage – I would have laughed, and it would have been the most pained, excruciating laugh you’d ever heard, because it would have been the laughter of someone who’d completely, utterly given up. I’d thought he was going to see it coming. But when I told him, there was genuine shock, the kind that’s so strong you can’t even begin to hide it. Loss for words, then the wrong words rise up immediately after. He reacted like I’d told him I was dying, when really I was telling him I wanted to live. He didn’t understand. And then he made that foolish demand, telling me to fight it. Telling me he’d get me all the help I needed. As long as I fought it. As long as I was still his daughter. Not his – whatever the other word was. He wouldn’t say it. He wouldn’t come close to giving me that.

I never, ever would have made out with Tyrone in that supply closet if I’d known he wasn’t going to acknowledge my existence the next day.

I’m singing extra loud for you, Tyrone.
Hear that?

Rakesh, this isn’t a dance show. They came to hear you hit the notes, not audition for Drag Race.

I waited outside the Forum overnight before Gaga played because I wanted to be in the front when they opened the doors to general admission. I sacrificed a night of my life and honestly I would have gladly given up a year of it, because that night was the most amazing night of my life. When she sang ‘Born This Way’ she was singing it right to me, and I was singing along so loud, I swear she could hear it. I was elevating her and she was elevating me and there was no doubt in my mind that this way was the right way, that I was born to wear what I want to wear and say what I want to say and kiss who I want to kiss. She unlocked all that for me.