hi! how have you been?
it has been more than eight months since i wrote to you, i might as well be in labor, legs spread, birthing this little letter into your inbox.
it’s been a good and overwhelming break from writing. am i even a writer anymore? but now is not when i figure my freudian relation to writing. i have known writing longer than i have known that i am [redacted]. i first found out when i was fifteen, but for years before, i had known i was different. who am i was a question, but who i was not, was not. i was not a womanizer, a fuck boi, an alpha who will steal your girl if you dare to blink. i did not dream of riding big bikes, wearing leather jeans, donning a french beard. it’s not so much that i hated those things as it was this squeamish thought that the opposite gender would present themselves to me like baboons were i to ride around town with a bullet between my legs, all ideas hammered into me (and you) as sane by our superculture.
but all this talk can wait. it isn’t apt to act like i have come out. i haven’t. all this can wait till i do. i am not coming out right now though. for all literal purposes, you do not currently know that i am [redacted].
i plan to tell you. very soon. it is a big day, a big week, a big year for me. a video is in the making. when i am done crying about how camp it is, i will get back to editing it. i want to enjoy this once in a lifetime chance to celebrate myself. it is nearing the stage where i can say its nearing completion.
but before that, if you’re wondering, maybe i should tell you why i am doing this. why am i coming out? what does coming out even mean?
i don’t know. i don’t think i should have to know. i think that’s the point. can i come out without having to explain myself? can it not require justification and explanation? can i just chill and exist and do my thing? (which is to do nothing, because pigeons just eat and shit and they’re fine) am i free like the cavemen were? (yes, i dream of going back to the era where humans were animals - we still are, and you did not hear it here first, but our denialist, egoist, civilised ways of living are going to end the planet in five decades - something that all seven billion of us being [redacted] really never could have accomplished.)
maybe it is a mistake, maybe these months of exercising complete freedom while i worked on my coming out video are the freest i will be. or maybe this act will be for you what i needed for me, growing up. maybe what saved me, the troye sivans and connor frantas and ally hills and elliot page, could save you too the crushing loneliness that settles in queer bones over years that feel like lifetimes.
maybe its that, maybe its me reaching out to my fifteen year old, scared to the marrows self, and holding him like i’ve known him since he was a zygote and telling him we’ve got each other.
maybe it is only meant for zygotes, and qualified adults wont get it. or maybe we’re all zygotes. bleh.
anyway, i should get back to editing now.
you will hear from me again once the video is out. i’m adding a link to my channel but i will also of course update you here. meanwhile, tell me what’s going on in your life, mail me at oofraghav@substack.com
i’m happy to un-redact myself, and to come out of the closet.
but not right now.