Recently, a famous men’s magazine asked for some of my fiction. I told the editor I planned mailing him a good new story about a gay sailor, one stuck on a ship off Vietnam. The editor whistled. “Oh boy. I hoped you’d be professional. You planning to rub our noses in it, hunh?”

I wanted to tell him, “I bet if I were Toni Morrison and you phoned to ask me for a story, and I sent you one about my fellow black people, you sure wouldn’t use the term ‘rubbing our noses in it,’ I betcha.” Rubbing our noses in it? Isn’t that how you train a puppy who keeps shitting in your house? You jam his little nose in his brown illegal leavings. That’ll eventually cure him. Besides, your getting to punish him legally (for his own good and the Oriental rugs’) will certainly make you feel better, before cleaning up his mess again.

They sure rubbed Dan’s nose mighty hard, they broke it, rubbing it in.

Did I say so to the gentleman editor? No. I never even sent that story out, to anybody. He’d already jinxed it, see?

Still, I forgive myself. You learn to. You go crazy otherwise. But know what? It’s so damn tiring. I’m no natural hero. I just want to do my work, eat okay, have a place to live, and get laid once every month.—Okay, twice a year.

I pretend I don’t mind outing myself daily. (There’s one huge reason not to be a black person in the U.S.A.: you’ve got to talk about that all the time, if only out of enlightened self-defense.)

I claim I don’t mind the risk of getting marginalized. I keep putting my hands on my hips, like some Errol Flynn pirate, acting proud to be so wild and so well paid for it. I throw my head back and laugh to prove I just don’t care who knows. I care.

I pretend it doesn’t cost me every single bloody time I remake the point, every time I bust again toward full prison-break Out. But In keeps sealing over, the hymen grows right back so damn quick. And once you are Out in the Open once more, old threats feel fresh and jagged. Loud sounds make you jump. If you have, in your day, checked out a few boys’ butts, you’d best watch your back full-time.

It’s not enough to have healthy, Six Footers Club self-esteem; you’d best be Superman, and just to break even. You cannot marry your true love. Your idea of daylight is their idea of sewage. Make love, risk jail. You’re starting over absolutely every day. You’d best know why you bother. Assuming nothing, it can sure take major traction. You need psychic four-wheel drive, for life.

Q: To whom shall you, the cuckoo clock’s pet cuckoo, explain your calorie-requiring Self-Outings every fifteen minutes?