During the spring semester of 2002, while I was teaching my creative-writing class at Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn, a student finally shared and read aloud a poem that he had just written. And after he read, our jaws dropped with amazement, our eyes widened with shock, our brows curled with concern, our hearts stopped with empathy, and our bodies froze with fear.

I've been thinking of my own early years as a queer youth: how despairing I was, how wrong I felt, how terribly unseen and unheard. Then I remembered my suicide notes, how occasionally I would write one and leave it around to be found.

How many times have you heard someone ask, "Is everybody choosing to be gay these days?" Why, now that you mention it, my dear keen observer of universal truth, yes! And because of that, I now quit being gay! That's right, y'all. The jig is up.