If America was going to hate me for being black and gay, then I might as well make a weapon out of myself. - Saeed Jones

These hands can’t find the walls,

People don’t just happen. We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ‘I’ it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, ‘I am no longer yours.

I hungered for the power of the all-American man, the Marlboro Man and the Marlboro Man's firstborn son, the high-school quarterback, the company's future CEO, Ernest Hemingway, John Wayne, Odysseus, Hercules, Achilles, the shield itself, the stone-cut archetype, the goddamned Everyman, the golden boy, the one.