I was with my friends at the local mall, and they were looking for prom dresses as I was looking for a guy to look at me and a vanilla milkshake to sip on (if the night went that well, I would have also bought cinnamon pretzel bites). Unfortunately, all the guys seemed to have been hiding somewhere because I only saw a couple of twelve year olds and some guys that looked like they make puppies drink alcohol for fun. After scarfing down a chicken pesto Panini (I thought “dieting” would help my luck), we decided to look at Lord and Taylor’s with small hopes of finding prom dresses. Instead, we found some outfits that looked like we were going on an elderly cruise, and we decided to try those on in the back. When I was watching my friends try on their outfits, one of the female employees (she looked like a woman whose name is Tal- so I will call her Tal) came in the back and quietly said with an accent (country of origin was severely unclear), “He can’t be in here….” Before I could say two words, Tal left the room. Tal did not know who I was at all, but there definitely a picture that she was trying to interpret the best way she could. Three girls and one guy, how are you supposed to interpret it? Trying not to ruffle Tal’s feathers, I plopped down on the husband chair, which is the chair on the side of the dressing room, with one of my girl friends by my side, and instead we talked about the attractive guys on MTV.








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I had just turned fourteen years old when I came out to my best friend behind the shelves of the local library, and I have no idea what the librarians could have possibly thought about that dramatic scene. Those ladies have probably seen the worst teenage meltdowns you could possibly create at a library, and I have wondered what they could have seen from a distance when I finally told my best friend a secret that I have kept for years. Those librarians, and some nosy students, probably do not know the details of what happened that day, but it truly ended up being one of the best days of my life. One thing I truly did not know, however, was how my life would have changed after that day.
Ever since I was a child, I have watched television and movies and have always hoped to be like the characters I would see. For some strange reason, I had an obsession with watching 1990s television teen dramas. I don’t know whether it was the extremely skinny teenagers (I looked like I ate a teenager when I was in middle school), or the amazing weather (New Jersey gets cold and sometimes smells like rotten eggs if you are on the turnpike- so basically the 90210 but really not at all like the 90210). Nevertheless, I would spend a good portion of time watching Brenda and Dylan become a couple and then break up because Dylan cheated on Brenda with Kelly (Beverly Hills, 90210 reference for any of the 90s kids/2000s kids that didn’t have anything more productive to do with their time besides obsessively watch the show). I don’t know if that was one of the motives to me coming out to my friends, but it seemed that teen dramas had some influence on the way I wanted to live my life. Truthfully, it seemed that I wanted to have an interesting story to tell instead of just telling people that I spend my weekends in my bed watching teen dramas that ended over ten years ago.

On a less superficial level, I also wanted to come out because I felt that coming out would lead me to have this very extravagant love story that would prove to me that coming out was the right decision after all. Let’s be honest- when you are thirteen years old, watching a couple of thirteen year olds hold hands is something that is scandalous and equally thrilling. I wanted someone to take me to the movies and hold my hand. I wanted someone to love me (or whatever thirteen year olds feel love is). Even as an almost-seventeen year old, I still want those same things. Part of me is ashamed to say that I still want that love story that would make the girls in high school drop their Starbucks drink and be jealous of. I still watch teen dramas (and HBO, of course), and hope that I will have the same stories that those characters had written for them.
One of the things that I did not have for a long time, though, was an ounce of self-confidence. I remember constantly feeling stuck inside my own mind. I have always wanted to pursue different things (one being comedy), but I was always afraid to try anything. To this day, I have to push myself to try different things. Specifically, I have always wanted to try acting and comedy classes, but I was always afraid that I was not funny enough. I would watch different comedians doing stand-up comedy or performing on Saturday Night Live, and I was always too afraid to try and attend classes. I realized that watching from the distance, besides being extremely creepy, is something that would not suffice in years to come. I had to, and continue to have to, be able to put myself out there to be able to be noticed for something that I do.

At the same time, I was not even comfortable with myself to be able to “put myself out there” at the time. Calling my fourteen-year-old self a mess is an understatement. It all revolved around the hideous and oddly warm husband chair at the mall. It represented where I belong when I go out with my girl friends. When I was fourteen, I wanted to be treated like them in the sense where I wanted to not feel so “different” because of my gender. Looking back on it, it was a ridiculous notion. I could not make the obvious differences between myself and my friends vanish away, but I hated having to sit at the husband chair for strange reasons. I think it is because the husband chair represents the clear divide between my friends and I, no matter how much we could say that there were no differences between us. Surprisingly, after an entire school year of feeling this way, there was a moment where I just thought about my own feelings. I had to accept that my life wouldn’t change no matter how much I wanted it to over time. Sitting around watching teen dramas with scoops of ice cream would not change my life, even though I always wished it would. At one point, I realized that I had to embrace who I am, and I had to embrace the husband chair for it’s dark, uncomfortably warm, and possibly sweat-filled self. While it is the main divide between my friends and I, I had to learn to be able to laugh at the husband chair and appreciate it for what is was: something that allowed me recognize and accept the unique qualities of my own self.

Trying to embrace my own self, I began working on my comedy. I began to put myself out there. I began to laugh at my own experiences because you can’t do anything else but embrace them and laugh at them. I began to embrace the role of the husband chair-sitter, and the chair has gotten used to me by now. I put down the Beverly Hills, 90210 DVDs and went out with my friends (but we all need to binge watch television shows sometimes). I stopped caring about what others had to say about me because life is truly too short to worry about how others feel about our own lives. I began to let go of the insecurities that held me back from what I’ve always wanted to. If I kept those insecurities, I would be watching people from the sidelines and not allowing myself to truly become myself. If I did not embrace the husband chair for the purpose it served in my life, then I would just be sulking in it. This year, I performed stand-up comedy for the first time, and I talked about my own experiences and finally began to laugh at them. Later that weekend, I went to the mall with my girlfriends, and I found the husband chair waiting for me by the corner of the dressing room, and I knew it was where I belonged. For the first time, I was content with that.