“Well, I saw your video on the Facebook,” says Grammy as she taps her nails on the arm of her hot-pink rocking chair. “Delores down the road shared it from her grandson.”

“Keith Fuller,” I mutter, an epic bully from when I was in ninth grade who dropped out.

I lie on her bench swing, my limbs dragging off every edge and side as the chains creak beneath my weight. When Dad first installed the thing I was convinced I’d break it if I even looked at it the wrong way, but he swore he’d reinforced it plenty and that if I broke it, it would be no big deal. He could just fix it. So for today, this swing is my fainting couch, and it’s sort of comforting to know that my dad is still there to fix things when I break them.

“What’d you think?” I ask, feeling a little timid. Grammy has always encouraged me in everything, but we don’t talk a lot about Clem and me being gay, which is nice, but sometimes I wonder if it’s a topic Grammy is nervous to tackle. I’m wild with anxiety at the thought of everything I’ve so carefully kept to myself just being out there for everyone to see, but my ego still wants to hear her impression of it all.

“I think I ought to teach you how to do your makeup.”

I laugh and relief swells in my chest. “Grammy, drag makeup isn’t the same as regular makeup.”

“Well, either way, we’ve got to fix that face. But honestly, Pumpkin, I found it charming. You’ve always been such a star. I wish you’d picked up theater or dance. I told your mama to get you started young, but she insisted that you’d find your passions on your own.”

I sigh and reach down for a sip of coffee. Ah, it burns so good. “I have passions,” I say.

I know. I should be super into theater or dance or something. But people who commit that hard to something kind of stress me out. In some inexplicable way, I feel embarrassed for them, but a tiny part of me has also always wanted to be them too. Like, I can’t help but wonder how freeing it must be to love performing so much that you’re okay with auditioning and not getting the part.

Choir, though, is the exact amount of commitment I’m comfortable with. There’s something almost mathematical about how you either hit your note or you don’t, and at least in our choir, there’s little to no competition. And then there’s the fact that if I’m going to be onstage, the only role I want to play is me.

“Well, you’re still young,” she says. “You’ve got plenty of time to explore every crevice of the world.”