Flowers are weak. They're naive. They reassure themselves whatever way they can. They believe their thorns make them frightening.

I've been doing interviews for our coulmn on Autostraddle, "I'll Have What She's Wearing," and every time I talk to someone, I've been trying to figure out how much they think about their clothes. Full disclosure: the only reason I wanted to do this feature was so that I'd have a reason to talk to the cute girl who worked in the men's department at Nordstroms, but now my nerdy side has taken over. Hello sociology.

When I get up and go to pick out my clothes [or more realistically, when I pick out my clothes the night before so that I can sleep in longer in the morning], I think, "What am I trying to say today?" I don't mean that I think that my clothes are everything, but I don't even get a chance to talk to most of the people I see every day. When you're in a city, you've only got a few seconds to make an impression on anyone you pass and since we all seem to have this incredible and specifically city loneliness; I'm not that weird for trying to catch someone's eye.

I know I know I know that you can't judge a book by its cover but why can't I communicate what I'm thinking through my body? It's the only thing that I carry around with me everywhere. Like I could never date someone with dirty toes. Maybe you're thinking that I need to get my priorities straight but guess what; I'm neurotic [case-in-point: this entire post is about how I try to control how other people see me] and I like things to be clean and if you don't, we're probs not going to get along and that's fine because everyone's different.

The thing is, I don't even know what I'm trying to tell people.

You could say that I'm trying to say, "I'm gay," but that would be such an oversimplification. That's definitely not the most important things about me or even maybe in the top ten. But I've been figuring out how I fit with the world and a lot of the time, being gay affects that. I get it now when people say they look at things with a queer sensibility; it doesn't mean that it defines me, it's just another pair of 3-D glasses that I can wear. I also think that I'm young and I have raging hormones and I like love and stuff so I spend approximately seventy-five percent of my time thinking about girls [and the other twenty-five percent thinking about me] which means I'm wondering if it means something when you sit with your legs crossed that way or if you walk with a swagger.

When I wear boys' clothes I feel safe. They're big and they hide me and men don't talk to me like that and if a girl likes it then maybe she's fun. Anyone who understands that layers and layers of clothes can be sexy because it's like unwrapping a present is someone I could get down with. I like dresses but them seem to invite too much attention. I mean, there's not really anything wrong with being called "babygirl" by strangers on the street, but sometimes I want to go YOU DON'T KNOW MAH LIFE all over their asses. Or maybe I just wish I could be all smooth hitting on girls like that.

If I wear girls clothes, I don't want to be weak. You know those women in commercials who are really beautiful and have their ish together and everyone watches in awe as they walk down a street? That does not happen in real life. Even women with muscles who look killer in little club things that would look awful on anyone else and who work for the C.I.A. get their faces licked by gross men. Simone and I have been watching a lot of Alias lately.

I JUST WANT TO BE HARD.

I don't want to be unapproachable and scary [which is good because that is something that could never happen], I just want a good balance of don't-fuck-with-me and hello-I'm-nice-let's-be-friends because I'm a Libra and that's how we do. I want balance but like radical balance.

Maybe I'm trying to tell people that I'm here and that I'm moving and I'm thinking. I watch people all the time and look for subtleties, but I know that not everyone reads the world like I do. Maybe it's about how I move and not about how I dress. I hope it's in the way that I walk, with my eyes to the sky instead of looking at the ground because my feet and I have finally grown comfortable with each other. Or in how loud I laugh because when I scream, it's out of joy. I'm going to stop before this turns into a bad version of that poem that they always used to read during morning prayer in high school.