Just Who Is Skittles Anyway?

Skittles is a brand of fruit-flavored candies, currently produced and marketed by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, a division of Mars, Inc.. They have hard sugar shells which carry the letter S. The inside is mainly sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oil along with fruit juice, citric acid and natural and artificial flavours.

- Wikipedia

Well there's a very literal definition, but I'm sure we all know the Skittles Motto, "Taste the Rainbow." Well as a gay teen, sorry, let me rephrase that, as the gayest gay teen to have ever have gayed this far east of San Francisco, with a penchant for Rainbow Brite T-Shirts, glitter, and the very candy mentioned above, it didn't take me very long to earn the nickname Skittles.

Although the term was a failed attempt by some dumb jock in my school in using it as a pejorative I quickly fell in love with the name, and quickly adopted the alias. It was loud, it was obvious, and it was pretty in your face. Three things that I prided myself in being.

Growing up, I was never really allowed to be myself, I had an abusive father and a step father, and my way of rebelling, once I had discovered their disdain for my sexual preferences, was to make sure they couldn't make me hide this part of me, make sure that they could not make me feel shame for who I was. I was who I was, and I used that to spite them.

Maybe not the healthiest avenue to take, I can freely admit that now, but I am not going to pretend that I wasn't trying to make them feel the shame they tried to make me feel every day of my life, by making sure that everyone and their priest knew that I was a homo.

My alias though, quickly consumed me. I went from being, "A quiet kid with glasses, curly hair, and an Orange Plaid Shirt" to a raging flaming queen. The quotation being from a woman who led a gay youth group in my hometown of Guelph.

I started becoming a statistic. I was partying, way too had. Drinking away the depression I had from being kicked out of my house and not being able to have much of a relationship with my mother, because of her emotionally abusive second husband. I was sleeping with pretty much anything with a penis, in attempt to fill some void of a daddy complex that I had. Seeing as how I never really had a good male role model.

Skittles was vapid, shallow, hedonistic, and narcissitic. In fact, if I met the person I was a decade ago, I'd probably want to slap myself silly.

I'm not going to go through everything that happened to me as Skittles. Those stories will come out as I reminisce in future blog posts. Although, that's not all I will talk about. No, this blog is a place for me to rant and rave about those things that mean a lot to me. To discuss the socialization of queer men and where I fit in with that, or don't as the case may be. To talk about sexuality in a frank and honest way.

You see, Skittles is no more, I'd like to say that the alias went away over night. But the truth is, is that he didn't. Without making it sound like I have Dissociative identity disorder, more commonly and incorrectly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder, part of Skittles is still alive in me, but I'm no longer that vapid and shallow gay teen.

Instead, I'm somewhere in gay limbo, trying to find a place I fit. Feeling a lot like I'm in highschool again, with the cliques and judgements.

Skittles may have left the building, but to be honest, it doesn't feel like I ever left high school with the way that gay men tend to socialize.

You may be writing this off as the rantings of a bitter, fat, gay man, trying to recapture the days when he was young and sexy. And sure, you know what, let's be honest, there is a part of me that wishes I still had the sex appeal I did back then. Partly because I'd better know how to exploit it now for my own personal gain, ha! Kidding. But seriously, I miss being attractive by mainstream gay standards, it allowed me to have a level of ignorance that I no longer have. And let me tell you, ignorance really is bliss.

So a third of you are thinking, this guy is a pathetic whiner, another third is thinking of trying to find words to tell me I don't need to be skinny to be beautiful without being condescending and the last third of stopped reading and moved on to another blog by now because my writing is so disjointed and the grammar is probably atrocious, but I'm too tired to really care about catering to the last third

As for the first two, you're both right But hey, this is my blog and I'll say what I want to. If you want to argue, dialogue, discuss anything with me, you're welcome to comment. If you want to lurk that's okay to. I welcome you all to my inner dialogues, and I hope you don't need to run away screaming.