Swimming. Fish stretch the corners of my room in a coral reef on the deep, blue walls. Schools of vibrant color are frozen in motion. There’s no space untouched, unused in my room. It’s packed with knick-knacks from a budding life. It’s got old books and boardgames, an old violin, a stretched-on yoga mat. My whole life is in the ocean-blue walls of my room. I’m not there right now. I’m homesick and alone at a summer camp in The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Wisconsin. Everywhere I look I see home. I’m surrounded by constant reminders of the place I chose to leave. I’m only 10, and I’ve never left home before. I want to be in my room. I want to go home.

-*-

            Prison. The yellow and orange bars across the walls leave no space to breathe. He’s stuck. He’s got nowhere to run, nowhere to go, but he wants to leave. A mask hangs on the wall. Staring. It’s staring at him. Rounded cheeks protrude from its long face. Teeth that are too white stretch across its long chin. His dad carved it. His dad won’t take it down no matter how much he begs. He shares a room with his brother. He sits. He thinks. He sits. He thinks. He can’t leave the house on the warm, sunny day. He leaves regardless. The window creaks as he lifts it. Swimming. He wants go to swimming with his friends because his friends don’t ground him or tell on him for sneaking out to go swim like his little brother.

            His brother (Kerry) tells on him for sneaking out (again). Kerry saw him from the pool. He’s grounded (again. He was already grounded). He comes home from the pool, sneaking through the window before family dinner starts. His dad served in the military during the Korean War. He was in Germany, but the punishments were the same. Go pick up rocks. Go find a stick for his dad to hit him with. Make sure its wide enough to impress his dad but not too wide to hurt too much. Sit. Think. Sit. Think. He has no home. He wants to go home.

-*-

            Quacky is a stuffed duck with a blanket on the end. He’s older than I am. I’m not sure when or where he was made, but my parents tell me that he’s my guardian angel. I ask him questions a lot, as if he’d ever answer. Maybe one day, he will . I hope not. I’m using the washing machine for the first time all on my own. I’m washing Quacky, his tail is covered in gunk. I’m crying. I spilled five-dollar Walmart slime on him just moments earlier. Quacky doesn’t stain. He can’t. He’s my guardian angel. I don’t know what to do when I pull him out of the dryer, and a dark blue, sticky stain on the bottom left corner of his tail remains. He can’t stain. I cry more. My mom comes down the thirteen steep stairs into the laundry room. I’m still crying. She holds me in her arms and tells me that it’s okay. She tells me that things change, but Quacky is still Quacky. I don’t want things to change.

            I ask Quacky if he’s okay. I don’t get an answer. Maybe Quacky is still Quacky, but now he’s stained. Guardian angels don’t stain. He’s just Quacky.

-*-

            His father doesn’t want to hurt him. His father tells him to never come to come home again, as if he had a home in the first place. The stairs in the stadium are made of cold metal, but he ties a piece of old tarp to them to create a rough tent. He sleeps on the damp pavement with a sleeping bag his (other) brother brought him from home. Home. Gum and empty cans litter the underside of the stadium, but the yellow and orange prison bars are gone. There’s no mask to stare down at him. There’s no one to tell him he can’t go swimming, but there’s no guardian angel watching his step. He’s alone. No one knows that he sleeps under the steps. He’s alone.

-*-

            My parents are people. They are not gods or angels sent from above or below to raise us. They’re people with human emotions that cry. I am lying in my tiny, single bed with the fish swimming around in quiet protection of my thoughts. Bedtime was hours ago. My mom runs by. I think I hear a soft cry. I creep out of my room and walk carefully down the creaky, wooden hallway. The smiling faces of my family and I look down from their photos as I stumble toward the dim light seeping under my parents’ door. I hear her crying from outside, but the door is closed in front of me. I lift my ear to the wooden frame. I hear two people in the room, whispering.

            “My babies aren’t babies anymore.” I hear. “My babies are all grown up.” I’m not listening anymore. I sneak back across the hallway of the smiling faces. The smiling family looks younger than when I first passed, but maybe I feel older. Before, I looked like me. I feel different now. I’m not those pictures. I’m not who I was before. I crawl under my covers and try to sleep. I lie with my eyes open. The fish seem to swim faster around me. I’m not a baby anymore. The nightlight glows next to my bed, as it always does. I’m not a baby anymore. I reach over, stretching to the outlet and unplug it. It clatters to the floor.

            I’m not a baby anymore, but the darkness is closing in on me like a pressing force, squeezing the air from my lungs and choking me with fear of the unknown. The creaking of our century-old house sounds louder in my ears, and the fish can’t protect me from it anymore. I reach down and plug it back in again. I’m not a baby anymore, but a little light never hurt anyone.

-*-

            There’s a whole, new city far away from the ever-watching mask for him to live in. His father gets reported for childhood abandonment, and the cold metal steps become wooden and dark. He’s deathly afraid of them, and he’s so far away from where he used to be. He misses it in the most bitter, frustrating way. He wants to go up the second floor of the townhouse he in peace without the dark steps trying to trip him and pull him down. He’s afraid.

The group home has eight boys and each has their own set of problems, but Kenny is an entirely different set of circumstances. Both assigned the same therapist, Kenny spends a lot of time with him. Every day, they sit together in the therapist’s office. He’s scared of Kenny because when he loses his temper he loses it with every fiber of his being. There is no self restriction when Kenny gets angry. Kenny will throw himself into his feelings, no holds barred. The little boy swears to himself he will never be Kenny because Kenny breaks things and people.

            Kenny talks about his own death. He thinks Kenny is, in fact, obsessed with his own death. As they sit in the room and talk about their actions, he avoids Kenny at every moment he can. Even the stairs look better than spending an afternoon with Kenny in the therapist's office. It is then that he realizes he doesn’t want to die. He wants to live far and wide and smile broadly. There are four bunk beds in his room, but that’s all. The room is barren, empty, void. The stairs have character. The room doesn’t. It’s a blank slate that will never be filled by the knick-knacks of a life well-lived. Blank. Void. Alone.

-*-

            Words are more than their dictionary definition, but even the dictionary knows that homophobia is more than fear. Still, my dada sees the Latin root in our argument, and he insists that there must be some element of fear in both homophobia and transphobia. The gas fireplace heats our feet as Ben Shapiro plays on the TV. I hate Ben Shapiro. I was once asked if he’s the face of the Jewish nation. He’s not. He doesn’t understand that I have experienced homophobia, and it’s not fear. It’s anger and bitterness and frustration twisted into an amalgamation of hate. Ben Shapiro is talking about transgender people, and he’s not scared of them, he says. He just doesn’t believe they’re valid. I’m just trying to get him to understand that what I’ve experienced isn’t fear. It’s far more than fear, and he can’t understand me. Please. I beg him to listen to what I’m saying because I’m only fourteen, but I’m fourteen with experiences far beyond that. My mom stretches across the fireplace, just as my cat does next to her. She doesn’t say anything. Her silence hurts. I leave the room.

            My door is plain and white and has absolutely no working lock. If I shut it, I’m telling the house I’m either having a meltdown or my cat won’t leave me alone. I do the former. My parents don’t understand, and how do I make them because it’s so hard to just be gay. It’s so hard to doubt myself and the place I belong in the world as I’m spiraling downward and downward because why did I have to be gay. How do I help them because I know they’re just trying to learn and be learned about their own son. They try so hard, and they still remain painfully ignorant. How can I be their teacher and their child? Still, I can hear their footsteps lumber into the hallway, and they know I’m upset. One thing my parents can do is help me feel safe. The plain white shield to the outside world is broken when my dad opens the door. He doesn’t say anything as he holds me tight. I squeeze him like he’s never going to leave as he tells me I’m fine just the way I am.

            As I lie in that room, held by my dad, I never want to leave. I want time to freeze around me, and the fish to stop swimming through the passage of time. Maybe I want them to swim forever, never leaving, never travelling far away from home like I have to do one day. Somewhere deep inside, I know I have to let go. I’m not frozen in time because time doesn’t freeze. The fish keep swimming, and I have to leave one day.

            “I’m trying to understand,” he says. “I’ll always try.”

            He holds me until I fall asleep, tear-stained and wet. Still, he holds me, his little boy growing up.

-*-

            He petitions the state to live on his own. The wooden steps are too scary, and he wants a home, a real one. In the blink of an eye, he’s living in his own apartment. It’s another blank slate hours from the eight-person group-home, but slowly, he fills it with life. He’s finally home on his own. He’s happy.

-*-

            I’m adamant people call me Jake, not Jacob. Jacob makes me sound like I’m old. I’m notold. It sounds like I’m being banal, but it’s important to me. When someone calls me Jacob, it makes my bones ache, and suddenly, I’m sixty-five and have a cat named Tina with a favorite lounge chair. I was two and believed the same thing, that Jacob was an old person’s name. My mom tells me how I asked people to spell their name. “Hi, I’m Jake. J-A-K-E. How do you spell your name.” She tells me I was on the playground and that’s how I made friends. The booth’s pleather cover squeaks as I settle in for an interview. Why do meatball restaurants have such nice booths? I think they’re nothing like the seats of a high school stadium. The manager sits in front of me and looks at my application. He asks me if I like to be called Jacob. I shrug. I’m not sure who I am anymore. Do I ask people how they spell their names while swinging on the monkey bars? Do I lie back in my favorite recliner with Tina sitting in my lap? I’m neither man nor child. I’m straddling the middle. I tell him he can call me whichever.

            I’m neither man nor child. I still ask my friends to spell their names for me, so I’ll never forget. I walk the line. My cat’s name is Bacon. I’m too tall to swing on the monkey bars, but I was always more of a tire swing person, anyway.

-*-

            He bartends a Latin nightclub to pay the rent. Every night, the most beautiful woman comes to dance with the Latin men, and she wears one of two dresses, a purple and a brown one. He notices this. She loves the Latin men, but he is… not Latin. He’s white, so very white. Neither is she, to be fair, but he thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the room. When she walks in, he thinks everyone turns to look. She orders a $1.00 Coke because she doesn’t drink and leaves a dollar on the bill. He draws smiley faces on her napkins, but he does that for all the ladies.

            He asks her out on a date. She declines, saying she doesn’t date bartenders.

            He quits and asks again. She declines. He leaves his number anyway.

            Her step-mother tells her to give him a call. She’s never dated anyone, right? She was married to a Latin man when she was only 18. It didn’t work out; she was young, and he was too. She calls.

            It seems like only a minute goes by and they’re sitting in a restaurant on their second date for hours; the first was unremarkable but successful. The people next to them in the uncomfortable booth have three boys. They call the poor boys toe-heads. The toe-headed family doesn’t notice as the couple beside them talk about family and children. He’s Jewish. She’s Christian. How will that work? He says he wants his kids to be Jewish if he ever has them. She says she can’t have children. He’s okay with that. He’s happy. He finds home.

 -*-

            My parents huddle at my desk to watch baby videos. It’s Valentine’s Day. My dad says it’s the best present he’s over gotten: baby videos. My mom had taken all of the hours and hours and hours of baby videos on a handheld camera and turned them from VHS into CDs. Twenty disks laid in a tiny basket that could barely hold them beneath my desk. I’m not thrilled to see my tiny, chubby face staring back at me on my computer. My dad asks me if I want to stay and watch. I tell him that he knows how I feel about baby videos. Doesn’t he remember? Doesn’t he remember the many meltdowns?

Baby videos remind me of time hurtling on without a care in the world, that one day my parents will no longer be here. They will no longer be sitting at my desk with a pile of CDs. I close my door. I can hear my mom asking me to stay and listen to me call myself “J-A-K-E” or tell them that I’m two. Two. I was only 730-some days old. Everyone was only 730-some days old at some point. I’m not that young anymore.

            I hear laughter as I escape to the empty, giant dining room table. I slump into a chair and try to tune out the thought that I’m graduating soon. A year and a half. I will swim out into the deep, blue ocean of possibility and college. I’ll leave home. I think I’m never ready. 

-*-

            He starts his own company, but it bankrupts. She doesn’t mind paying most of the bills as an import/export worker until he’s on his feet. They’re lying on the couch after a long party when he asks if she would marry him. It wasn’t a proposal. It was a hypothetical question to which she said, “If you asked me.” He asks her. She says yes.

            Her father already paid for her first wedding, but he agrees to a second one. She has pictures in her mind of 150 people watching her walk down the aisle of a beautiful vineyard in May. There’s a koi pond, probably, and they’ll swim in joy during her wedding. She receives the check from her father to pay for the wedding. They both squint at the $5,000 check. That won’t cover a wedding.

            They elope to Florida. Five people come to their wedding on the beach. That includes the bride and groom. The sand shifts beneath their bare feet, and there’s no koi pond, but they’re in love. That’s what matters. They find a palm tree next to a cheap bar called the Junkanoo. The Junkanoo is on the beach, and it’s all they could ask for. They five of them: the justice of the peace, the bride, the groom, and two witnesses, stand under the palm tree. It’s leaves bend down to cover them. Mother Nature blesses their holy matrimony. After the wedding, she sits on a scrappy lawn chair, and her dress tears, splits right down the back. She’s pregnant. She thought she couldn’t get pregnant. She was wrong.

-*-

            My room is covered in plush, dirty grey carpet. It’s been that way since the house was made. It’s soft and used to be white, and I love it. I walk home and take my shoes off and drag my feet along it, but one day I come home to my mom and dad in my room.

            I ask them what they’re doing, and they say I need to get rid of the carpet. No. No. They can’t do that. They say they know how I feel, but it’s too dirty. Too used. I try to explain how much the carpeted floors mean to me. The carpet held my feet up when I was two and said “J-A-K-E” took my first steps, when I left elementary school. It’s been there. It holds things in its fabric, its soul. I want to tell my parents that they can’t just take it from me, but they tell me I have to. I know I do. I know I can’t stay the same forever, so I ask to keep a bit. They say okay. I think they understand what I mean.

            I tell them I need to say goodbye. They look a little confused, but they aren’t opposed. I sit next to my bed and run my fingers through the carpet. I create heat and warmth through the friction of my fingers, and I don’t want the carpet to go. It’s who I am, in a weird way. I cry, again. The amount of love and care this carpet has seen. The carpet held the couple who lived here before us afloat, too. It held them as they raised their family in the very space I sit. Now, it must go. I can’t look anymore. I sleep in my room with the carpet one last time, but nothing lasts forever.

            I come home from school and there’s hardwood floors in my room. Hardwood. The boards glare at me, reflecting light into my eyes. I squint and spot a familiar strip of carpet on the floor. They did it. They saved me a piece of what was once my home, and I know I have to use it again. I lay it across the front of my room, against the fish. It’s still home, but a little different now. I’m thinking about what home is. I don’t know, but I know I have one.

-*-

            She’s in labor, and he’s holding her hand, helping her in every way he can. It’s been hours, but they’re prepared. Every Wednesday for weeks, they took classes on parenting and delivering a baby. He’s ready, and so is she. The hospital lights shine down on the miracle of life, the creation of a person. It’s time for a new life. His home will need child locks, baby food, toys, diapers. It’s going to be a journey. They’re ready together.

            When the kid (a baby boy) is finally born, they test the baby’s reflexes. The doctors ask him if he’s willing to lift him to check his grabbing abilities. He agrees, and when he lifts his child, one tiny hand on one sausage finger, the baby pees on him. Well, that’s just the beginning, he thinks. It’s just the beginning.

            He’s driving home with his newborn baby in the car. He’s in the HOV lane. Thinking. Sitting. Thinking. Sitting. The roles are reversed, and he knows things will be different. He won’t let his child suffer under the stairs of the high school stadium; he will have a bed with funny sheets and a grey, fuzzy blanket. He won’t have to live in a group home; he’ll have his own room with swimming fish across the walls.

            No one will be a better father than he will. His child will be safe. His child will have fish swimming across the walls to guard his thoughts. His child will have a guardian angel named Quacky, taking the form of a stuffed duck. His child will be loved. His child will love.

-*-

            Our family takes a vacation just about every year, normally somewhere that speaks Spanish. This year, my dad was invited to a compliance conference in Disney, so we all went. We packed our bags and boarded the flight, taking the exit rows for extra leg room, and landed across the country. Mom and dad tell my brother and I that there’s a surprise waiting for us in Orlando, so we pile into the car and take a drive.

            When they park in the Junkanoo, I’m confused. Why are we stopped at some rundown bar in the middle of an empty, dirty beach? I lean against a nearby palm tree and ask why we came. They hold hands and tell us they were married here, many years ago. My mom says she split her dress as she sat on the sands of this very beach because she was pregnant with me. Does this make me a bastard? Yes. Does this make me loved? Yes.

            Hurricane Irma strikes the Florida coast only months after we leave the Junkanoo behind, ripping up the palm tree and destroying the Junkanoo. The owner, a friend of the family, sends my mom a picture of the destroyed beach. Planks of shattered wood and shards of glass litter the sad, desolate beach. Any hope of a palm tree floats miles in the ocean. Dirtied, dead fish lie facedown in the sands. Still, it has a cruel, violent beauty of upturned lives and roots ripped from the Earth.

-*-

            His son plays in the park. His wife sits next to him on a bench, nursing their six-month old baby. As his son swings across the monkey bars, he says, “I’m J-A-K-E. How do you spell your name?”