The quickest and easiest thing for my family to pinpoint it on was my sexuality. And then it hit me like a brick-since I didn’t subscribe to the traditional idea of black masculinity, something had to be “wrong” with me. I was confused and started to wonder if I had possibly outed myself after drinking maybe one too many glasses of champagne during Christmas dinner. I thought about the selfie calendar that I had gifted-I wasn’t wearing a shirt that screamed “I'M GAY” in any of the pictures. The second day, I wore black leggings, a black-and-white beanie, a simple yellow shirt with a maroon hoodie over it, and then a denim jacket. On the first day, I wore a colorful short-sleeved button-down (that I really could have tucked in), a vest, and rolled up jeans with high-top black Vans. The conversation surrounding my sexuality (or suggested sexuality) continued, and my mind drifted off onto what exactly I had been wearing over the course of the two days that I had seen said family friend.

“Maybe it was the hair or the clothes,' someone else retorted. I was in the same hotel room as my dad, my two siblings, and my two cousins, and had just gotten back from seeing a family friend who we hadn’t seen in years. I stopped twisting my finger in my curly bleached blonde fro and looked up from my phone.