When the show began I didn’t care much for the lesbian storyline and viewed Melanie and Lindsay as an adjunct to the main story, which I perceived to be about Michael and Brian. By this episode, I thought Melanie was just a raving bitch, but Lindsay sort of was growing on me… she’s artsy… give me a break, ok? How funny that as the season progressed, I wanted to see more of them and was really happy to see their own stories develop in season two and beyond that were separate from the boys, which established them in their own right as stars of ‘Queer As Folk.’ Mel became one of my favorite characters on the show. And Lindz, well who couldn’t love Thea Gill? In retrospect, it would’ve been great to have seen them fully integrated in the beginning as well.

Though you can understand Mel’s fury when Brian interrupted the Bris, you can also see that he actually does have an interest in his son’s well being despite his continual protesting. In a world where the norm is to ostracize people who are different or to try and change them to be more acceptable, it made perfect sense for Brian to object to the circumcision on the grounds that the boy was just born and already people wanted to change him from the way he was born.

I was a little disappointed in Michael when he took a hit with Brian in the bathroom later on at Babylon. I had thought he had better sense, but Michael is still nursing his crush on Brian and may have seen that as a way to finally be with him, unfortunately it didn’t work and Brian stopped him. I’ve often thought that Brian put that boundary on their relationship because he knew that Michael deserved more then he was capable of offering him, showing that he loved Michael in a way that uniquely goes beyond relationships and sex. I’ve always been particularly fascinated with the Brian/Michael relationship and perhaps that’s because I myself don’t have the experience of childhood friendships that bridged over to adulthood.

Daphne reminds me a lot of a girl I knew in high school. The relationship that she and Justin share was very similar to ours. We’d talk all the time about everything and nothing, except that one thing that you didn’t discuss… being gay. We would sit next to each other in class and got in trouble for whispering, gossiping, and passing notes. But unlike Justin and Daphne’s friendship, it didn’t last. The summer between 10th and 11th grades I saw her at the town festival, but she didn’t acknowledge me. At the time I figured she just didn’t see me for the crowd. When I saw her in school that fall, her makeup looked more like war paint for battling the boys she was discovering and when I asked her how she liked the festival she said, “Oh that. I didn’t go. My mom is a dentist and so I spent the summer in Europe.” I was like, I know she is but huh? I saw you there. She didn’t stick around for me to ask anything else and seated herself away from me.

Another kiss off – the final one in a long line of childhood, elementary, and middle school friends that dropped me faster than a hot potato as we got older. I was always very friendly and outgoing – did plays, skits, talent shows, and sang in school. I was oddly eccentric beyond my years as well. My cousins say they were embarrassed to go shopping with me because I would strike up a conversation and chat away with complete strangers on elevators. And my brother, the jock, always told me I talked and acted like an old man, of course that was when he wasn’t trying to wrestle with me and tossing effeminate slurs when I complained he was hurting me. The optimism of that boy who always tried to reason out each dis and continual outcasting slowly died with each lost friend until all that was left was a closed off, sexless person with low self-esteem and confidence issues. I was like Justin when I was younger and became someone not unlike Ted through circumstances in my late teens and early twenties. Poor Ted. His desperation drew him down a path into another realm where television had never dared to go. In the beginning I thought Ted had all his crap together, more so than everyone else, but in retrospect I was wrong. The warning signs were all there and I didn’t see them, or maybe didn’t want to see them. Looking back now, it’s very easy to identify with him. When he met up with Blake at Babylon, someone finally showed genuine interest and wasn’t afraid to be seen talking to him.

There was one boy in biology class who didn’t fit or move with the in crowd. He was always nice to me and actually tried to strike up conversations. But by that point I had completely shut down and did my best to ignore him and even shun him. A couple of years after high school I ran into him (fiancée in tow – sigh) at a convenience store and he actually stopped and talked to me for awhile and was interested in how I was and what I’d been up to. After he left, my mom who was there too, came over and asked, “Who was that good looking guy you were talking to?” …. just someone I knew in high school. I never saw him again and not getting to know him in school and pursuing whatever kind of relationship could’ve come of it is still one of my biggest regrets.

For the longest time I thought something was wrong with me. I can’t be the only one who is like this? Whatever ‘this’ was. And if I was the only one, maybe I am supposed to be alone and by myself. ‘Queer As Folk’ and its array of strange and fabulous characters helped in so many ways to show that that is just not the case. People are different; people are strange; people all have eccentricities. Just because they don’t fit the mold or march to the same tune doesn’t mean they should or need to be outcasts. On the contrary, it’s what makes us all the same.