I don’t exist.

 

You won’t find me on TV

or in the well-paged-through back issues

of waiting room magazines.

I’m not in the paperbacks or hardcovers

or in between the static on some

oft-forgotten AM station.

 

I’m a phase.

I’m just a way to beg attention,

so teenage girls can appeal to boys

who think casual lesbianism is

oh-so-hot

and teenage boys can still say “No homo”

while doing things that,

I’m sorry,

can be very, very homo.

 

You know, I still haven’t told my parents

I don’t exist.

In my mind,

it’s none of their business,

but I can tell you exactly what they’d do

if they ever found out.

 

My dad would hypocritically thump the Bible

(sorry, Bible, you don’t deserve this abuse)

and pass off some self-patented sexism

guised thinly as concern for my well-being,

and maybe a few insults if he felt feisty.

My mom?

She’d say something about how

she didn’t understand “that lifestyle,”

but she would love me as I was.

I guess some strained tolerance

is better than nothing.

 

I’ve told a few friends that

I don’t exist.

They don’t seem to mind,

so either they weren’t

surprised

or it doesn’t affect whatever opinion

they have of me.

 

I suppose it helps that some of them

don’t exist,

too.

It’s nice to have company.

 

You’re wondering about me now, aren’t you?

What could I possibly not-be

if I don’t exist?

 

Well, you see,

in a world where people usually ask

for either chocolate or vanilla,

I’m the person

that asks for the twisted cone

(or strawberry, just to see whether

the ice-cream guy will bother

to bend down and check).

 

But if I walk down the street

enjoying my twisted ice cream

and some passerby happen to only see

the chocolate side

or the vanilla side,

the questions and comments

are inevitable.

 

“Didn’t you like chocolate before?”

“Oh, shame, I thought you were a vanilla type.”

 

And to them, I reply

my well-worn refrain,

the one very few people seem to understand:

 

“Why can’t I like both?”

 

And the answer from them,

the hackneyed killjoy answer,

the one few are bigoted enough to say in person:

 

“You want too much.”

“Why can’t you just be happy with one?”

 

My friends,

there are simply too many flavors in life

to partake in just one.

 

So I’ll keep not-existing

as a phase,

an attention-seeking tactic,

a condemnation

and abomination.

 

But damn, twisted cones do make it delicious.