Stan Smiths, Fake Glasses and a Tight Yellow Shirt

I walked into high school that day wearing Stan Smiths, the shoes I watched my female friends parade around in with pride and a 10th grade emblem of cool. Stan Smiths were how a sixteen-year-old living in the suburbs of Philadelphia showed they had style, but it was only the girls who attained this level of chic. I wanted in. So, I took the leap. I stepped out into my small, judgmental private school lobby with Stan Smiths and exclaimed to the crowd with my shoes, I’m here, and I’m trying to be myself. 

People stared at my shoes, at me. Or maybe, I told myself they were staring. The thought of them staring horrified me. I wasn’t yet out, but my shoes were screaming gay, or bi, or weird, or something other than what was expected of the guys at my school. I should’ve been wearing Nike sneakers with Elite socks, blue baggy jeans from Old Navy, a graphic tee-shirt and maybe a Champion zip up hoodie. That’s what was expected. It was straight and simple. But I didn’t fit into any of it, and every time I tried to conform to the clothes the guys around me were wearing, I’d fall apart. The jeans felt too baggy, too uncomfortable, too not me. The graphic tee seemed so middle school, so primitive and aesthetically displeasing. I wanted turtlenecks and tight black pants. I wanted a silver chain and bracelets and rings that screamed cool. I wanted to be myself. I wanted to break apart from what boys told themselves they were supposed to dress like in my high school. 

So I walked in with Stan Smiths. It turned into a start. Over the next couple years, I tried slowly to be myself, even if I couldn’t do it through words yet (it was years until I would actually come out). I could try to be myself through fashion. 

A couple months later I wore a ring for the first time. I kept it on my finger for two hours, mortified after my friend asked which girl I’d borrowed it from. I tried again the next week and slowly built my confidence. By senior year I was the kid who rocked his silver ring with pride. Not the only kid, but the only guy. The only guy around school wearing camo pants or tie dyed socks, sometimes even a bomber lined with a pink suede on the inside. Slowly pushing my boundaries, slowly coming out through my clothes. And not that these clothes were ‘gay’, whatever that means, but for me, they liberated me to a place of self expression, one that broke away from the heteronormative space around me. 

I decided to throw myself a party the night I told my friends I was bisexual in the spring of my senior year. I wore fake glasses. Big round flamboyant fake glasses I’d borrowed from my sister adorned my face and a bright yellow shirt wrapped around my body. I posted a picture on Instagram of myself from that party with the caption, ‘if you know, you know’. I wondered, after I posted that picture, if someone could see me in their feed and think, he’s not straight. I hoped that I had reached a place where people could sense some authenticity in my look and what I had been trying to tell the world. 

In college, I walk around and see guys with painted nails, rainbows on their backpacks and a full face of makeup. For me, gender at college has taken on a new role, moving beyond neat boxes defined by what you choose to wear, but lives in a more fluid state, an identity that can break down any normative wall around it. Maybe my Stan Smiths and silver ring weren’t as radical as I thought they had been. Maybe I can push my boundaries even further. Maybe this is a space where I can try to be myself, but first, maybe I have to figure out exactly what that means.