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Let me begin with an acknowledgement that in my earliest years I had no notion anything was at all amiss. I think fondly of those years I did not know my difference; even at the age of seven—the age of reason for Catholics, mind you—that golden time had begun to crumble, slowly, as most deep changes occur. I remember my birthday party: balloons, hats, noisemakers, and the seven candles on my cake. My mother, father, and four-year-old brother chanted out the numbers from one to seven, and when they hit seven, I woke up, so to speak. While they counted—a temporal space of no more than seconds—I realized something had changed, or that something about my existence had always been different.
How can I remember what took only a few seconds my seventh birthday? I identify this moment
