Coming Out in North Baldwin, NY

Six Colors on a Chain
by MJ Halberstadt

When I was eight, I loved The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, so when I woke up one morning and stumbled upon a necklace with six colored rings that looked just like the medallions Link collects during his adventures in Hyrule, I knew I had to wear it. I put on the necklace and went into the Toy Room to play Nintendo.

When my father looked into the room, he was shocked to see his son wearing a rainbow choker necklace. He immediately burst into my sister Melissa’s room.

“You need to get your necklace off your little brother’s neck.”


“Hey Mike… can I talk to you for a second?”

I did not want to pause my game.

“You know that’s not your necklace, right?”

I wanted to make the guilt lecture go by as quickly as possible so I could get back to my video game, so I went to take it off. Melissa was not the type to get angry, but I was the type to feel guilty.

“There’s a reason why you shouldn’t wear it—that type of necklace is for people who are gay. Do you know what gay means?”

I only knew that ‘gay’ meant something awful. I’d heard it on the playground, and knew that it was something that I didn’t want to be, like ‘retarded’ or a ‘pansy’. My sister proceeded to explain just what gay meant, and confessed to me that she was, herself, gay. I remember thinking, ‘Okay, whatever, can I get back to my game!?’

“Are you okay with that?”

Yes! Who cares?

I told her, “I’m gay too.”

This begged explanation.

“Well… a gay boy is one who loves other boys, and I love Daddy and he’s a boy, so that makes me gay too.”

“No,” she laughed, “what I mean is when a boy loves a boy the way Daddy loves Mommy. And I’m a girl who loves other girls. You’re a boy who loves girls, so you’re not gay.”

I brushed this off, still confused, and asked if I could get back to my video game. Melissa kissed me and left.

- = -

Melissa was wrong about three things:

1) Our parents weren’t the best example of romantic feelings—they got divorced two years later.

2) She is not a ‘girl who loves other girls’—she is a FTM transgender man who I have since began to refer to as ‘he’, ‘my brother’ and ‘Levi’.

3) I am gay, as a matter of fact.

- = -

For Christmas some years ago, Levi handed me a small box and said, “Happy Solstice,” a sort of inside joke. I found the necklace inside and laughed.

“Sorry for telling you you weren’t gay—that probably confused you even more,”

Six colors on a standard chain. It’s not flashy, it’s not intrusive, it’s just a suggestion of the multi-faceted nature of my life and one of the many things that defines me.