Reilly Horan - Uniform

 

I am working in a restaurant on an island, not too far from here, actually Nantucket Island. It is the dead of the summer. It’s a peak dinner hour, and I have been assigned the section they refer to as the backyard barbecue. The backyard barbecue is a patio section behind the restaurant where they just throw all the families with little kids with no shoes and no clothes, just throw rice everywhere and leave. We don't even serve barbecue food at this restaurant. We call it the backyard barbecue in honor of the servers who go out there and then come back at the end of the night, like burnt and charred to a crisp. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I'm making my way outside, and I push open the server screen door to head out there. I'm reminded of this ritual I used to have the first time I worked in this restaurant about four summers earlier. It was the summer I got my heart broken for the first time, so it was the first time I was confronting my own sexuality by myself since I ever really started thinking about it. And if you're not familiar with restaurant jargon, when a server is coming in and out of a kitchen door, they call, "Coming out," so that the folks on the other side don't get trampled. 

 

So, imagine me coming to terms with being gay for the first time, really ever, in the silent depths of my own heart, being forced to scream, "Coming out," roughly [audience laughter] 60 times a day as I come in and out of the kitchen door. [audience laughter] [audience applause]

 

So, I push my way through this door and I approach this family, this table. I'm wearing my server's T-shirt, and khaki shorts and calf socks. Actually, these leather bucks that I'm wearing right now. That is to say, I looked like a Boy Scout, but in a great way. [audience laughter] I make my way down the table, I'm taking everybody's dinner order and I get down to this final six-year-old kid. He's wearing a policeman's uniform. I ask him what he wants for dinner, and he flashes me his badge and says that he wants an elephant quesadilla, which is weirdly not on the menu. So, his mother clarifies he actually means a cheese quesadilla. 

 

And because he's a little kid, I have to ask him, "Do you want black beans or corn?" And he says, "Are you a boy or a girl?" And the whole table erupts into emergency protocol. "Oh, my God, we're sorry. He'll eat in the car, don't listen to him." They're ready to put a burlap sack over him and send him into the ocean. [audience laughter] But the spirit of this question is, "Hey, I noticed you. Do you mind telling me a little bit more about who you are?" And this is definitely not the first time I have fielded a question like this, nor is it the worst way it's been phrased or hurled at me. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I say, "Well, what do you think?" And he says, "Well, I'm not sure because of your socks and your legs." [audience laughter] His parents are in that sort of shame paralysis where you can't move, but you also just want to die. [audience laughter] And all of a sudden, I'm tunneling through my shoes back in time, back through like every piece of clothing I've ever worn, like a literal tour of my closet. I'm five years old again, and I'm dressed as Mary in our Christmas pageant. Mary, the mother of Jesus, the coveted role of all the girls in my class, the little epitome of womanhood. 

 

I'm making my way down the aisle. And I have this Jesus baby doll in my hand. I'm smashing him against every pew on my way down the aisle. [audience laughter] And my mom ushers me over and says, "Reilly, my dear, why are you so angry?" I say, "Because I wanted to be Joseph." [audience laughter] 

 

Fast forward through 15 years of Halloween costumes, him handcrafted by my beloved mother, the mailman, the headless horseman, the two-headed man. Then there's this litany of gender nonconforming inanimate objects like pizza slice, Lego. [audience laughter] Jump to my middle school play, Fiddler on the Roof, where my sister is starring as the dancing daughter and I'm co-starring as the military general. Jump to school picture day, where me and my brothers are wearing a tie and a blazer. Jump to these cargo shorts that had these huge pockets, so that when I walked in the woods, I could collect as many rocks as I could possibly hold, so I could sort them in my room later. 

 

Fast forwarding all the way to that summer of first heartbreak, where I'm up in my bedroom folding my clothes, there’s men's blue Oxford shirt that I always wore to occasions that mattered, so I could dress up. I'm folding it, and my father walks in. He puts his hand on my shoulder and says, "My love, you did everything you could have to have kept her." The way he would have said it to any of his four children, because my goodness, no matter who you are or what your laundry looks like as you're folding it, a broken heart is a broken heart. 

 

Fast forwarding to just the week before this kid asked me his question, I'm at a ferry dock right by the restaurant, and this woman accidentally directs a question toward me about lifeboats, because I happen to be wearing one of my sensible fleece vests at the very docks. She thinks I can save her. [audience laughter] I'm starting to think like, "God, if this kid had been around, if this tiny little police officer had been around 20 years ago to ask me this question, it probably would have been clarifying or freeing or something." But we don't always get that. The questions don't always come at the right time. Honestly, I'm not even sure if they had come at the right time, if I would have even been ready to answer them. 

 

And all of a sudden, I'm reemerging back through my shoes to this dinner table. And his parents are looking at me, and the kid is looking at me. He has his police baton and he taps his ear. [audience laughter] And I decide I'm not going to come out to him or his parents, because we've all already been through enough tonight. [audience laughter] And also, he is still facing the monumental decision of black beans or corn. [audience laughter] But what I do decide to say to him is, "I identify as a woman, but I really like dressing like a tomboy, because it makes me feel more like myself." And he says, "Oh, like a costume?" And I say, "Yeah, like a uniform."