Dance freak

in 2003, my state made gay marriage legal. where she grew up, it wasn't legal until 11 years later - 10 years ago. if legal protections for gay marriage were a person, that person would be entering 5th grade. online, a white gay man calls the fight for legal marriage boring, which isn't kind of him but it is a common enough opinion.

it has only been 9 years since gay marriage was nationally official. it is already boring to have gay people in your tv. it is already boring to mention being gay - "why make it your entire personality?" i know siblings that have a larger age gap than the amount of time it's been legally protected. i recently saw a grown man record himself crying about how evil gay people are. he was begging us, red in the face - just do better.

i am absolutely ruined any time my girlfriend talks about being 27 (i know!! a child!), but we actually attended undergrad at the same time since i had taken off time to work between high school and college. while walking through the city, we drop our hands, try not to look too often at each other. the other day i went to an open mic in a basement. the headlining comedian said being lesbian isn't interesting, but i am a lesbian, if you care. as a joke, she had any lesbian raise their hand if present. i raised mine, weirdly embarrassed at being the single hand in a sea of other faces. she had everyone give me a round of applause. i felt something between pride and also throwing up.

sometimes one thing is also another thing. i keep thinking about my uncle. he died in the hospital without his husband of 35 years - they were not legally wed, so his husband could not enter. this sounds like it should be from 1950. it happened in 2007. harassment and abuse and financial hardship still follow any person who is trying to get married while disabled. marriage equality isn't really equal yet.

and i don't know that i can ever put a name to what i'm experiencing. sometimes it just feels... so odd to watch the balance. people are fundamentally uninterested in your identity, but also - like, there's a whole fucking bastion of rabid men and women who want to kill you. your friends roll their eyes you're gay we get it and that is funny but like. when you asked your father do you still love me? he just said go to your room. you haven't told your grandmother. disney is on their 390th "first" gay representation, but also cancelled owl house and censored the fuck out of gravity falls. you actively got bullied for being gay, but your advisor told you to find a different gimmick for your college essay - everyone says they're gay these days.

once while you were having a hard day you cried about the fact that the reason our story is so fucking boring to so many people is that it is so similar. that it is rare for one of us to just, like, have a good experience across the board. that our stories often have very parallel bends - the dehumanization, the trauma, the trouble with trusting again. these become rote instead of disgusting. how bad could it be if it is happening to so many people?

i kiss my girlfriend when nobody is looking. i like her jawline and how her hands splay when she's making a joke. there is nothing new about this story, sappho. i love her like opening up the sun. like folding peace between the layers of my life, a buttercream of euphoria, freckles and laughter and wonder.

my dad knows about her. i've been out to him since i was 18 - roughly four years before the supreme court would protect us. the other day he flipped down the sun visor while driving me to the eye doctor. "you need to accept that your body was made for a husband. you want to be a mother because you were made for men, not women." he wants me to date my old high school boyfriend. i gagged about it, and he shook his head. he said - "don't be so dramatic. you can get used to anything."

If tomatoes are spicy, you have an allergy to tomatoes.

If your mouth hurts, feels raw, or itches when you eat something, please don’t eat it! It might not be a full-blown allergy, could be something like a sensitivity to the acid content or maybe even Oral Allergy Syndrome, but also, you might very well be allergic. Unless it’s explicitly designed to be sour or spicy, it’s not supposed to do that.

Bananas are not spicy, prickly, or tingly! Kiwi is not unbearably sour and tingly! You people probably have an allergy! Stop eating the death fruits!

Mango and pineapple are a little odd. A lot of people react to pineapple because of an enzyme it contains which breaks down proteins; depending on your sensitivity level, it can make it feel like your mouth is being dissolved, because that’s kind of maybe what’s happening? You might not have a full-blown systemic allergy, but if it hurts, listen to your mouth and respect its stopping point. Mango has a compound super similar to urushiol, which is the stuff in poison ivy. A lot of people get oral allergy symptoms with fresh mango. Again, not necessarily a systemic allergy, but also, your body doesn’t like that. Please listen to your body.

Honey is not naturally spicy, sour, or tingly. (Spicy and infused honeys do exist, but I’m talking plain honey.) It might be a bit rich/overly sweet, but no, it should not make your tongue funny, ‘prickle,’ or otherwise hurt your mouth. You are probably allergic to honey. (insert “ghost bees” post here lol)

Many peppers are spicy, but bell peppers are not. Repeat after me: Bell Peppers Are Not Spicy. If they are spicy, you are probably allergic! This is yet another one my husband learned recently. Bell peppers/capsicum are also called sweet peppers, because they are sweet.

On that note, here’s a handy metric: If you find yourself wondering how people just looooove this food, or how they always fail to mention the weird sensory feature about it–primarily the spiciness, ‘fuzziness’ in mouth, or pain it causes–your experience is probably out of the ordinary and could very well be some kind of allergy.

And now, an update on my husband’s journey of allergen discovery, because I’m sensing from the tags and comments this might be relevant to a lot of y’all.

Yes, he is definitely allergic to tomatoes. Went and got him allergy tested to confirm it, and it came back pretty darn high on the list. Along with a crapton of other foods he’d been eating his entire life. We immediately got rid of all of those things in our diet, and wouldn’t you know it, his lifelong “IBS” went away.

So here’s a further PSA.

If you have “IBS” or a “sensitive stomach,” try to get tested for food allergies, too. Not all food allergies send you into anaphylaxis. Sometimes they give you smelly gas, diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux, recurrent tummyaches, nausea, and headaches. And it doesn’t always happen right away, sometimes taking several hours or most of a day to produce the unpleasant results, so you might not be noticing what your specific triggers are.

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team.