You Know Me Well(49)

Greer steps to the mic, wearing a red-and-white polka-dot bow tie and a nervous-but-determined expression.

“Thanks, Quinn. As he said, my name is Greer. I was kicked out of my house because my parents couldn’t deal with me being genderqueer. This was in California, only about two hours from here. Like so many other people, I decided to come to San Francisco, because it’s supposedly the most tolerant place in the world. I quickly found out that tolerance doesn’t necessarily translate into a job and a place to live. Things got very desperate, until I found The Angel Project. They gave me support and helped me figure things out. So I’d like to dedicate this one to them.”

The audience has grown still, respectful. Katie reaches for Violet’s hand. Then, seeing me notice, she takes my hand, too.

Greer doesn’t have any paper in front of them. It’s all from memory.

When I was little I loved to paint— the brush was a plastic wand with a punk-rock haircut at its tip, while the colors sat like candies in their tray.

If you wanted orange, you’d introduce red to yellow.

If you wanted green, yellow would have an affair with blue.

Like any kid who isn’t encouraged to question, I had been taught the meaning of colors— blue and pink, most of all.

We all knew which one princesses wore.

We all knew why I was given so many princesses to paint.

But one day I wondered what would happen

if I mixed the pink and the blue.

One day I reached down to the level of curiosity, having no idea that it was standing on the shoulders of truth.

I thought blue and pink would make the most spectacular color— I took my wand and gathered the blue, laying it on the absorbent page of a coloring book bought to keep me quiet in a Walmart.

Then, without washing the wand clean, I dipped into the pink.

This, I was sure, would be the secret to all beauty.

What happened was mud,

dirty sidewalk,

murk.

I had failed.

I pulled away from my curiosity, and the truth underneath.

I trusted other people to teach me the meaning of colors, and they taught me the wrong things.

It took a long time for the truth to rise up, and for me to rise up to meet it.

I took out my old paints and I mixed those colors again.

I got the same result, but this time I saw it a different way.

Blue and pink make mud, make dirt, make rock.

I am mud, I am dirt, I am rock.

I am nature, a force of nature.

I am the color that remains when everything else is washed away.

I am the color of the ground you walk on, the ground that keeps you from falling. I am elemental, essential, and that has as much color as any rainbow.

Tell them that. When children ask you, tell them that.

Even though it’s a small room, the applause is big. Greer sits back at their table to hugs and high-fives from their friends. Then Quinn gets up and announces that the next poet is going to be … Taylor.

Don’t react, I tell myself. Don’t check, but assume that Ryan is looking at you.

Which is silly, because when I do check, Ryan is watching Taylor take the stage.

“That was amazing, Greer,” Taylor says when he gets there. “And I can only second what you have to say about The Angel Project. As many of you know, I volunteer there now. But much more important is what they did for me three long, quick years ago. I think it’s safe to say that if it weren’t for The Angel Project, I wouldn’t be here now. I don’t mean in this room—I mean on this planet. So it’s completely inappropriate for me to say thank you with a poem that has nothing to do with that. I’d tell you its title, but you can probably figure it out.”

I look at Ryan and he’s not surprised. He knows all this about Taylor already. They’ve already gone there.

With a jokingly theatrical bow, Taylor reads his poem.

Queen,

understand

everything

exists

reactively.

Please

remember





I


don’t

erase

quietly.

Urge,

excite,

embolden,

roar.

Passivity

relinquishes

ideas,

denies

equality.

Quick—

unearth

each

eager

revolution

pulsing

rhythmically

inside.

Desire,

emerge.

There’s some applause. I figure Taylor will leave, but instead he says, “Since that was a short one, and since I end it with desire emerging, I’d like to close with a sex poem. With apologies to e. e. cummings—which is, incidentally, my porn name. Here we go, sailors! I wrote this one last night.”

what a trip

to slip-dip-drip

nestle

mortar-pestle

after

startle-tickle—

wrestle

bedhead beauty

you astonish me

to a

dense-sense

rapture capture

be the holder

of this beholder

bolder

bolder

we rearrange the universe

(bolder)

with our bodies

Taylor finishes with a smile and gets hoots of appreciation in return, as well as more applause. Ryan is applauding with everyone else, but he also looks a little bashful—he wants Taylor to see him applauding, but he doesn’t want anyone else to be looking at him or assuming anything from what Taylor’s just read. But who does he think he’s fooling? When Taylor gets back to the table, he gives Ryan this gigantic confirmation of a kiss, right there in front of everyone else.