I was in a school-like college kind of like Kansas City only also like high school. I left early a lot, like today to go to the beach of the great lake (ocean?) with my friends. Earlier I had been reflecting about about how I had stopped even thinking about whether not I was feminine enough to wear women's clothes because i was just realizing this is what I did and who i was. I'm pretty sure I was gay. anyway today was one of those days and we got to the parking lot but I had to go back upstairs to my room which was like a dorm room but also a classroom (and my class was still at music or something, and I was just locking up with my key which was on a lanyard when my class got back, led elementary-style by our teacher who was a kindly middle-aged short haired woman who smiled at me (even though?) I was leaving), and on my way back out with my swimming suit and the pillowcases that somebody else in the car had asked me to grab, I saw Nick Lewis sitting in the hallway for some reason. I said HEEEEEY, NICK LEWIS, and it was really good to see him. He looked mostly the same just a little darker and heavier but he was chatting with some people and smiling and I squatted down to talk to him. (I was wearing one of my friends' overcoats over my own slightly vulnerable pajama-ish clothes because the friend had put it protectively and helpfully over me before I had come back up here to fetch the stuff we had forgot.) And I told Nick where I was going and he got out a scrap of paper and a pencil and I gave him my number and said you should join us later, and he said he would text me and I was picturing my phone being stuck in my shoe while I was out swimming splashing in the waves, picturing the beach being very crowded but for some reason it wasn't a problem for me at the time, and he said okay. And he was looking at me kind of funny but not necessarily in a bad way I think he just, on reflection later, I think he just didn't really recognize me because I had changed from the outside more than I realized, because I still felt like myself on the inside. So I finally got downstairs and I was like jumping over little stone walls and stretching out my back, and finally I got down to the parking lot, got to the car that my friends were in, a Ford of some kind, and I was about to launch into my apologies for being late, for taking so long, you know "I saw somebody that I haven't seen since high school." But before I could get into that my one friend that was a little like Taelin only not quite as Taelin-y, a little lighter, said where were you, we didn't know what to think. Me and Mark just got stabbed by a visitor in the parking lot. I said what the fuck are you talking about. And he was holding his abdomen a little bit and there wasn't blood gushing, it obviously wasn't a *really* bad stabbing, but still. I said are you all right in a surprisingly stern voice and the other friend who got stabbed said we have to go see the lobby. And I was worried about them and a little feeling guilty for having taken so long but also I was disappointed because I really wanted to go to the beach. Anyway, after I woke up I just remembered the feeling of that lightness, that high bright being myself. That easy, no big deal gayness. That sense of having friends, having support, having help, and I realized that that is maybe my biggest problem right now, it's not so much that there's something wrong with me, but simply that I have a big responsibility and I feel like I am on my own. It's scary. But the high school plus college plus grown up feeling plus open femininity plus easy gayness was just so refreshing and rejuvenating, fills me with a deep wide bright sunlight.