A Miracle

Well, not a miracle so much as proof that Life Is Funny. For my Queer Identity class I wrote an essay about AIDS and in it I told an anecdote about when I was 10 and learned about queerness:

I knew what gay meant because every Friday night since I was 8, I would watch 20/20 with my mother (I used to want to be Barbara Walters) and on one episode there were two men who had a daughter from a surrogate. My mom asked for my thoughts and I said, “I guess that’s okay.” Then she said her brother, my Uncle Albert, was gay. “Oh my God, really?” And that was it. That summer I learned more when we took a family vacation to Provincetown. It was the first time I saw two men holding hands on the sidewalk. I was torn between thinking it was cute and thinking it was silly. That night waiting to get dinner at the Lobster Pot, I saw a cross-dresser roar down the street on a scooter, wearing a black lace jumpsuit. At first my little sister and I were terrified, then amused. “Grown-ups play dress up too!” mixed with, “Eeeek, that was a boy! Mom, Dad, why’d you take us here?”

Next to that my professor wrote "I was probably there that summer too!" and next to the part about the drag queen he wrote "Randy Roberts!" So, I googled Randy Roberts and the very image from nine years ago appears on my screen! All Randy Roberts was was someone who I saw for literally ten seconds, and here he is again!