Parallels

There is nothing for you where you grow up. Most of the people who are like you you know only online handles of, and you'll have to go to a big city to find others like you in person. If you can make it out, you hear the biggest and most glamorous contingent is out in the bay area. == You were different from others, in a way that made it so that you were unpleasant to be around. Your peers did not take pains to hide this from you. You learn, slowly and carefully over your second decade of existence, how much it hurts to hide who you are, and how much it hurts others around you when you do not. You build a little shell around yourself. You find ways to be otherwise likeable, valuable. You take on a certain apologism for the way you are. The first time you meet more of your kind in person, it is in a quiet bar in a new city where you otherwise know no one. How queer the sensation, to have looked around at every strange new face, and felt at home. They didn't just tolerate you; they…