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Singularity. Singular. Strange, unusual, original, peculiar. An out-of-tune piano played by trembling, curious fingers, jittery notes echoing and ricocheting off the walls of a hollow room.

At the beginning, you look for this particular singularity. You want to be unique at all costs, to be different from the others. You get bogged down in absurd and childish games, always ready to go further than your friends, to show them who’s the strongest, the fastest, the smartest. And you convince yourself that being the most original is some kind of ideal that you must achieve at all costs. That it’s a goal in itself.

You’ll grow weary of this eccentricity, this uniqueness, as soon as you grow up just a little bit. Some aspects you try to hide early on, too early, when you start to understand that there’s something not quite right, rough edges deep inside your body, nooks and crannies you’d rather keep to yourself, stashed away, out of sight. Cheeks that burn when they shouldn’t, a fire that roars when you wish it didn’t, not for that person, not like that. You hear the words ‘homosexual’, ‘queer’, ‘gay’, dropped carefully, with a knowing air, around you, a glance slipped in to see if you’re listening, if you’ve understood that some think you belong in this category. Despite your best efforts, the label sticks too tightly to your skin. The snide comments and the cutting lips scrape against your flesh as you try to look past them, to ignore them; yet you can never quite get over them.

This singularity becomes a heavy thing you lug around, a cumbersome, indelicate, sometimes suffocating burden you’d rather keep buried away from prying looks. A bull in a china shop. A false note sung in falsetto voice. Too many suitcases to drag around on the tube. It takes up all the space, it’s impossible to miss. Cruelly obvious, some might say. Two fingers shoved down your throat whilst you have to keep talking, as if nothing happened. Bitter bile burning the corners of your mouth, but a smile that mustn’t be marred in any way. This oddity is painted on your face in indelible ink, even if you’ve tried so many times to scratch at it, to cover it up and conceal it, to no avail.Everyone can see it, or so it seems. You end up isolated, alone in the playground of a secondary school that’s a little too big, or a high school that’s a little too small, your locker covered in queer-phobic insults. You dread changing rooms, the benches full of reproaches and angry sneers, where you learn to look straight ahead and to never avert your eyes from the contents of your rucksack. You learn about how it’s apparently unnatural to feel that way, even though you can’t change what you are deep inside. You hide from your reflection and bite the inside of your mouth, heart thumping as you pray to appear inconspicuous, innocent of a crime you didn’t even know you could commit. You steer away from anything that might betray you, that might give away your thoughts, your feelings, you sanitise your own self in an attempt to desperately fit in with the others. But it’s plain as day; you can’t escape from yourself.

Disappear, blend in, embed yourself with the others, avoid any uncomfortable interactions with anyone. You try so hard. And this singularity only becomes impossible to hide, bursting like an abscess at the turn of a phrase uttered without much conviction. You spurt it out, one day, unable to hold the pressure you put on your own shoulders all these years. Your voice hurts your throat, scraping the insides of your body as it comes out.

“Me too”.

No one seems surprised. 

This secret, so taboo, so all-consuming, that you’ve been trying to dissolve for years, had already been opened up, exposed and nude, in plain sight. So you carry on living, under the radar, as if nothing had happened. You doubt yourself, and others. Have you overplayed this whole thing? Is it just to be interesting? You try to assimilate it, you’d like to be proud of it, but it’s all too easy to blush, red as a beet, when you like someone a little too much. And then, you get embarrassed because you feel ashamed, for something you have absolutely no control over. Guilt’s sharp blade glints against your jugular, dripping thin droplets into your system, until you can’t take it anymore.

Everyone can see this singularity. You have the feeling, from the inside, that it’s branded on you flesh, that you can’t miss it because it’s so visible, glaring, a raw wound someone forgot to cauterise. You feel it when you let go of their hand in public, too many insistent glances glued to your skins, your backs, your necks. You see it wherever you go, in disapproving pamphlets and god-fearing speeches damning you to a hypothetical Hell, and you blend it within yourself. You become it, and understand people can see it. It’s plain as day. And one day, you find yourself having to mention it, this particularity, to correct the pronouns of your partner in a colleague’s mouth. You’d forgotten what it felt like to no longer have that weight on your shoulders, that heaviness dug into the back of your mind.

And then, at last, it’s as if everything becomes colourful again. You suddenly understand how to breathe. You live again, you’re reborn anew, and maybe even laugh for real this time. Singular, with all the colours of the rainbow trailing behind you. You remember what that uniqueness really is. The sun caressing your almost-red-hot-burnt skin, freckles mingling with the glitter of soft light rays. You remember the taste of cherries, redcurrants and ginger, the fine sand between your toes and the waves that kiss your ankles, an unexpected and welcome freshness. The sourness of crisp lemonade mingling with their lips. The smell of bergamot and grass cut under their bare feet in the garden, the laughter in the hollow of their neck and their heavy eyelids. The welcome warmth of their smile in your heart, the laughable lightness of your life ever since they burst in it. The music notes scintillating like fireworks when they sing. The stars sparkling in their eyes, in your eyes, the tanginess of citrus on your tongue, the soft ease of their hand in yours.

Singularity. Singular. Strange, unusual, original, peculiar. A trembling, curious hand bracing for impact as it brushes against their back, playful tunes ricocheting against the walls of an impromptu party. This time, for once, you’ll be okay.