---

Collins is three.

Actually, he goes by Tom now, as many three-year-old Thomases do. Although Momma, Dad, and older brother James call him Tommy, he decisively refers to himself as Tom Collins. He is doubtlessly the youngest member of the Collins family and also the most outspoken. With an assumed loathing for every article of clothing he owns, Tom can often be found streaking through the house, decked out in his birthday suit as he races around in an attempt to avoid being caught. When at last he is snatched up and forced into boxers, he fixes his captor with a penetrated glare and threatens to kick a certain vital area (or, in his mother's case, pull her earrings) with enough force to make said captor drop Tom's clothing as he flees.

One day, a frustrated James demands of his brother, "Why do you hate your clothes so much?" After not a moment's pause, Tom replies that he does not like being tethered and kept down, and by having a zipper on his "privates" and a button on his waist, he is constricted. Exasperated, James tells his brother that there are sweatpants for those kinds of situations, but Tom just shakes his head and says that it isn't the same. "Clearly," James replies dryly, and he escorts Tom to his bed and reads him a condensed version of some classic novel. Although Tom insists that he is not a baby and does not need to be tucked in, James does not hesitate to pull the covers up to Tom's neck and kiss him lightly on the forehead.

Obstinance, it seems, runs in the family, but it is clear that it strikes no one half as much as it does Tom.

----

Collins is four.

Instead of being fed baby food and given toy trucks like a "normal" kid, his parents insist upon giving Tom paint sets and vegan food from ethnic restaurants. He splatters things all over the wall, both paint and soy sauce, and watches his marks without an ounce of remorse. Momma and Dad refuse to clean these stains up, however, just as they did with their older son as he was growing up, and as Momma's mother did for Momma when she was growing up in this very house. It is a mystery to Tom why anybody would want to clean up these stains, particularly as they are far more interesting and pretty and transfixing than anything else he has ever seen before. The outside of his house was slate gray years ago, and now it is a rainbow of colors, literally decked out in reds and blues and yellows, pinks, greens, oranges and purples year round.

Art seeps into every second of Tom's life, whether he likes it or not. In Momma's little mini-office in the basement, her sewing covers the entirety of the floor and walls. She makes patchwork quilts; some of them are draped over the walls like tapestries; others can be found strewn over the house's various beds, such as Tom's and James' and Momma and Dad's.

In Momma and Dad's room, Dad is busily at work, sketching the cartoons he does for a local magazine. They tell a weekly-updated story of a pair of brothers (named James and Tom, after the sons of their creator) whose adventures in suburban Illinois never seem to cease in their mania.

Finally, James' room leaks art from underneath the door and the keyhole that is never locked. He sings, strumming on his guitar for his own benefit and that of the rest of his family. Although he has not yet progressed into writing his own songs, James is unquestionably a singer and a guitarist. One day, he promises, he will start with his own music, but a ten-year-old playing cover songs for himself and his family isn't bad.

"You'll be an artist too," James promises his brother. "Maybe a little unconventional in your art, but can you really claim to resist its temptation?"

-----

Collins is five.

Enrolled in his kindergarten class, he comes home from school one day and proclaims that teachers are stupid, and people shouldn't get to be in charge of other people. (A delighted Mrs. Collins embraces Tom, declaring in jubilance that "Oh, my son's an anarchist!") Rather than stomping up the stairs and into his room, Tom locates his brother and explains his problem: that his teacher (or as Tom calls her, meanie) is enforcing rules that have no purpose. After fawning over his younger brother for about four minutes, James sighs deeply and begins to describe the concept of anarchy, and why many people dislike authority figures. Tom sits smugly as his life's very philosophy is explained to him for the very first time, and when James is finished, Tom springs out of chair and leaps onto his bed.

"I wanna be 'n anarchist!" he exclaims, jumping up and down. James, chuckling, allows his brother to bounce for several minutes before grabbing him around the waist and restoring him to a sitting position on the bed.

"You can," James promises him, "but you have to grow up first. 'Kay? That's the only way people are going to listen to you."

Although Tom loathes that concept right from the start, he grumbles and accepts it as a flaw in society. "Fine," he mumbles, and the moment James leaves, Tom scrawls his plans for his future on a scrap piece of paper. Anarchy doesn't sound too hard – just exciting.

------

Collins is six.

Now in first grade, Tom has the honor of bringing home his very first report card. Grades are hardly a cause for concern among the Collinses, since it is a well-known fact that both Tom and James are very intelligent, and that is enough for Momma and Dad. They do not want things for their children like law and medical studies, but rather, things like art and a loving community. And yet, surrounded by the hypercompetitive, eager six-year-olds in his class, Tom is unaware of this. He is convinced that with all "E's" – the highest achievement possible in grade one – he will have perfection at home, but with a single less-than-E, Momma and Dad will not like him anymore. (To hear his classmates tell it, that would seem like exactly the case in every household in town.)

In James' room, the two boys slit the report card envelope and glance at its contents. (Struck by drama, Tom hides his head in his brother's blankets, awaiting news. He pokes his head up when informed by his brother that the sheets haven't been washed since who-knows-when.) Scanning the report of his progress, Tom sees several things: one, that his only academic failing (non-E, in this case) lies in the subject of math; two, that his teacher left additional comments on the bottom of the page.

"While I can see that Tom is obviously gifted in terms of academics," James reads aloud, "his social skills remain positively nonexistent." To his brother, he offers a condensed version, but Tom proves his intelligence by condensing it on his own – demonstrating that he already understands his teacher's comments. He then asks James exactly why he is deemed socially inept, and James merely replies, "It's not because you are, Tommy, I promise." After a brief pause, he sighs and explains, "It's because stereotypically, you ought to be."

A discussion about stereotypes follows, and Tom merely crosses his arms over his chest and points out, "But that doesn't mean Ican't make friends. It just means that she doesn't know me."

-------

Collins is seven.

Second grade at Fernwood Elementary School entails "Hero Day," a day on which students bring in their personal role models – usually family members or close friends of a higher grade – and speak about them, giving them awards and taking pictures. Momma, who was James' hero on his second-grade celebration, expects to be chosen again, while Dad is fairly certain that it ought to be his turn now. Tom surprises them both by selecting James, playing with his brother's dreadlocks while awaiting James' acceptance of this (dubious) honor.

Momma and Dad both pretend that they are unfazed by this, but both seem deeply disappointed while driving their two sons to the elementary school and promising to return at three. Tom's wide smile seems completely ignorant to his parents' unhappiness, as does James', but when they enter the building, both sigh in relief at being released from the tension. From there, Tom and James skip to the younger's classroom and settle down for an afternoon of being hounded by little blond children who want to touch James' hair and are forced to ask permission from Tom first, then James.

When Tom reads his speech about why James is his hero, nobody tears up or cries or smiles sadly. It is a simple matter of his singing a song he heard coming from James' room one night. He previously asked his teacher for permission to write a song rather than a speech, and when denied, chose to do it anyway. The lyrics reworked and the tune kept the same, Tom now stands before his brother and releases the words he wishes to share. Why are they in song form? Simply because that is the language James speaks best, and if Tom knows one tidbit of wisdom about the world at his ripe age of seven, it is that one will always benefit most greatly from speaking a person's language to him or her, rather than one's own.

--------

Collins is eight.

Despite his loathing of teachers and the fact that it is by all means mutual, Tom cannot help but want to be a teacher when he grows up. It is a fact poorly received by Momma and Dad, conditioned to hate authority figures since birth. Having been hippies during adolescence and rebels as well, they can hardly bring themselves to understand a child who is perfectly rebellious and independent, yet with an apparent desire to be a figure of authority. "We," says Dad, "have no desire to raise a hypocrite."

Yet, this is accepted perfectly well by James, who does not think it is at all hypocritical for his brother to hate teachers and want to be one. "You're not a hypocrite," he promises his brother, "just unique and smart." He then goes on to explain that for Tom to want to be a teacher, it means that he wants to improve teachers – he wants to be a better teacher than any that he has ever seen.

Tom understands, and agrees.

---------

Collins is nine.

He slowly develops a smug streak, proud to know the answers to just about every question asked by his teacher. He flaunts his intelligence, not quite so much as some of his classmates, but still enough so that everyone registers Tom Collins as the Boy Who Knows All, like how to get straight hundreds on tests and pop quizzes and the like. It isn't achieved through stealing answer keys and memorizing patterns, but simply because he is smart and likes to show off.

Tom, being the curious boy he is, wonders if praise stems from outstanding performance or simply the fact that people are so used to delivering praise that it becomes a pattern. Wanting to prove this one way or another, Tom deliberately answers every question wrong on the end-of-year test given by his teacher. The enormous "zero" on top of the test is hardly surprising to James, who expected something like this from his experimental little brother, and is, as promised, a shock to Momma and Dad. But considering that they don't really care about their son's grades as long as he's into art, there is no negative reaction apart from the ruffling of Tom's hair and a "Just try, kid" from James.

----------

Collins is ten.

Although he comes from a family of vegetarians (and, in the case of his brother, one vegan), he is still occasionally forced to dine with omnivores. In such cases, Tom merely grits his teeth and swallows whatever vile meat product is forced his way. He never eats meat at home, and so he is not exactly a vegetarian by choice, but by lack of available options. So officially, Tom is a meat-eater. James, Momma, and Dad are of the opinion that by age ten, he should make a decision – to eat meat or not to do so.

Tom, who is usually quite decisive, runs into difficulty when making this decision. Of course, he deeply sympathizes towards the animals murdered for food, but one would argue that leather presents the same situation, and Tom has always worn leather shoes and cannot imagine stopping. Do people even make non-leather shoes? And besides, many dining crises would arise from being a flat-out vegetarian. He does not even begin to consider the health problems of vegetarianism, because his entire family is perfectly fit and healthy and there is no real handicap in that respect.

In the end, it boils down to whether or not he would enjoy vegetarian food, and there is only one way to find out. Tom sits blindfolded in the kitchen while James cooks. ("There is nobody else in the world," he assures Tom, "for whom I would cook a meat product." And it's true; Momma and Dad had a problem with meat being brought into the house, even despite James' assurances that it'd be in and out, and a playful promise that Tom would use a neighbor's bathroom directly after eating.)

Two pots are smacked against the kitchen table, and Tom is handed a wooden spoon and a napkin. "Try one from each pot," James instructs his brother, and so he does. With the spoon, Tom scoops up what is either a meatball or a meatless ball and puts it into his mouth, and upon giving James double thumbs-up, Tom Collins becomes a vegetarian.

-----------

Collins is eleven.

After nine and a half agonizing months of Tom hearing his mother howl "Pickles! Olives! And don't forget the tomato paste!", Momma returns from several days at the hospital with a child cradled in her arms. After close inspection, Tom decides that the child is a girl, and a very sensitive one at that. She squirms and squeals and cries, and when she is given anything other than breast milk, her howls are audible throughout the neighborhood. According to Momma and the extremely disgruntled other half to her twosome (which is now, including the rest of the Collinses, a fivesome), Dad, the baby's name is Rhondia.

Tom thinks that this is a completely stupid name, which gets him thinking about other names. James' name is fine enough – it sums him up in its faux-uniqueness that is really not all that hard to find if you look hard enough for it. And this baby, whose name is Rhondia, has a hideous name that seems to suggest that she has no control over herself – which, for the most part, she doesn't. Since Momma and Dad gave this child a name that is so obviously not her own choosing, Rhondia's name and lack of control over her diaper changes and the like seem to match up well enough.

Tom thinks his own name is too ordinary for him, too clean-cut and suburban. True, he is suburban when it boils down to that, but that's what he wants to change in his life. Just the tiniest tweak to his name, he decides, would be enough to make himself seem more urban and distinctive. He remembers what Momma says about people who forget their roots. Not wanting to be one of those people, Tom decides that it isn't a matter of changing his name – just the name he uses.

And that is how Tom Collins begins calling himself Collins.

------------

Collins is twelve.

Forcibly entered into the school choir by parents who suspect he is not getting enough art in his life, Collins shrugs off the social aspects of after-school activities and focuses on the fact that hey, now he doesn't have to deal with James and his boyfriends prancing around the house. It's not that he minds James' boyfriends, or even the fact that he is gay; he just doesn't like looking at them and seeing etched in their faces their self-consciousness, their desperate thoughts of oh, my god, what if someone finds out?

So daily, abashedly he stands in the last row of the chorus rack, lips moving in tune to a song he doesn't know very well and in which he doesn't truly believe. In the past, there has been the occasional song that has woken him up and spoken to him, demanding that he focus and pay attention to the delicately crooned words. The songs sung in school, however, mean nothing to him whatsoever, so he drops out precisely one day prior to the concert. Momma and Dad shrug it off, enrolling their younger son in a drawing class and pretending that it doesn't matter, the way he seems to be so resistant to art.

Drawing is unsuccessful as well, and slightly more hope arises out of his less-than-detestable poetry class. He can write halfway decent prose and edit others' perfectly well, but reading prose and poetry is where his real talent seems to be. He picks out words and understands what they mean without any difficulty, comprehending every word. Momma and Dad, impressed with their son's talent, are eager enough to sign him up for the reccomended philosophy class, but a very bored Collins emerges from his first session and refuses to go back ever again. "Why?" Momma asks, bewildered.

"Because," her son replies, "the teacher keeps calling me Tom."

-------------

Collins is thirteen.

On a trip to the beach with Momma, Dad, James and one of James' boyfriends, Collins discovers that he is, when seperated from his family for long enough to wreak havoc on the world, a complete rebel. He has known for nearly two years how to drive a car, so he tugs James' license out of his brother's back pocket (knowing that he looks enough like the older boy to pass for him in case he is stopped by a policeman) and settles into the family car. James' boyfriend spots this, but luckily for Collins, the thirteen-year-old is on reasonably good terms with this boyfriend, so thankfully, he doesn't tell anyone.

When he returns from his aimless voyage, the same parking space is occupied, as are many others, and he is forced to park by a meter. Knowing that he only has fifty cents in his pocket, Collins merely jams the two quarters into the meter side-by-side, forced into the slot that is only wide enough to accommodate one quarter. Therefore, when the meter's screen turns blue and fades into blackness, Collins is perfectly honest in scrawling "Do Not Ticket – Meter Broken" on a piece of scrap paper and taping it onto the dashboard.

He finds his parents quickly enough and casually slips into his bathing suit. Although he needs to duck out of the gathering ten minutes early to pull the car into the space it was originally in (thank so-and-so it's vacant by that time) and pretend he just went to the bathroom, he suspects that Momma knows what happened and Dad couldn't care less.

So everyone is happy, and that's that.

--------------

Collins is fourteen.

In his freshman year of high school, he has absolutely nothing to do but sit behind the building when he can get out of class, watching his fellow students do the same. It doesn't matter that all he does behind the school is read books and complain about loud "teaching" going on from the windows above his head; anything, he knows in his heart, is better than being taught about the formula for so-and-so geometric shape and why it's important when, really, it's about as important as the ability to ride a unicycle naked through Taiwan in winter without a helmet on a road that goes just about straight downhill.

Rebellion. That's what this is called, he knows, and it was taught to him by his loving brother. James knows everything, it seems, because he even managed to explain to his brother exactly how good it feels to rebel – but then again, so did Momma and Dad in Collins' eleventh year, encouraging him to do things that he isn't supposed to, like break curfew (which he doesn't have) and go on secret dates (which aren't necessary when his parents urge him to do it).

What James didn't explain about the adrenaline of rebellion is exactly why it happens. But yes, Collins knows. He is one hundred percent certain, in fact. Rebelling feels utterly fantastic because one is acting only on one's own desire, doing exactly what one wishes without having to confine oneself to the boundaries of what people want and expect in society. Nothing feels better than just doing what he wants to do, without needing to care about what others might say.

It is with that in mind that he skips class, kisses boys, and smokes marijuana.

---------------

Collins is fifteen.

It isn't a particularly huge revelation when he discovers that he is gay, and he only receives a slap on the back from James and a roared "Welcome to the club!" when he shared the news with his brother. ("Now," according to James, "this house contains a straight man, a straight woman, a gay guy, a bisexual guy, and a girl who is well on her way to lesbianism.") When he informs Momma and Dad that he is gay – which he discovered when he casually developed an erection while kissing this kid named Marcus – he is met with blank stares. It is quite something to discover that one's parents thought that he was gay long before he knew it himself, and Collins isn't entirely unfazed by it.

Rhondia is hardly worth discussing – although she does know gay from straight at age four, she cannot yet comprehend why one might be superior to the other. Yet when Collins casually takes to leaning against school walls and kissing boys whose hearts beat faster than the wings of frightened butterflies, negative reactions to him become the norm at school. He lives in the suburbs, and so there are all sorts of sheltered people and their prejudice, but he does not understand why. If it's purely a religious issue, why try discussing it to Tom Collins the athiest?

But it is unnecessary to even dwell on the issue, because even when confronted by angry people who think they might get him back to kissing girls, which he has never done, Collins meets them with expressionless eyes and points out that "I hardly think my life is your business," after which he will disclose some personal fact about so-and-so and so-and-so's secret affair and ask, "Now, does that really have anything to do with me?"

----------------

Collins is sixteen.

When he decides to move away from home, it's not because he doesn't like his family. That isn't it at all. Collins loves everyone in his house, from artistic Momma to playful Dad, and from Rhondia's jubilance to James and his underwear-drawer supply of marijuana, which is generously shared among his friends and brother on the weekends and when Momma and Rhondia are out. And it isn't because he hates school, even though he does – his loathing for this organized pretend-education is matched only by his loathing for republicans. However, that isn't why he wants to leave.

It's because he doesn't like his surroundings.

Sure, his family is nice enough, but he lives in the suburbs. Sooner or later, he'll start dying inside from all the sheltered people he encounters on a regular basis. (He doesn't know why young, hippie Momma and Dad moved to the suburbs instead of their dream – no, their future son's dream – of New York, but go figure.) Sooner or later, Collins decides, he will grow so bitter at having his opinions repressed in public that he will stop sharing them with anyone at all, even James, who has been so good a companion over the years.

Sooner or later, Collins knows, there will be nothing left to do in his life but sit and stare at the walls, with nothing to do or accomplish, here in the suburbs.

Now it is only a matter of timing.

-----------------

Collins is seventeen.

At last, it is nearing time to exchange goodbyes. He thinks they are a long time in coming, and the last few weeks in particular seem stretched and unnecessary, with everyone knowing that he is going to leave anyway. Even Rhondia knows it, poking her head up and blowing kisses at her brother as he passes her. When Collins returns from school one day with a notice clasped between his fingers announcing the date and time of the graduation ceremony, James claps his brother on the shoulder and tells him, "You'd better start packing, huh?" What the older boy doesn't know is that his brother slowly walks up the stairs to his room and does just that, filling backpack upon backpack with clothes and notebooks that are far from blank.

He walks home from graduation. Clutched in his palm is a roll of paper that means nothing to him, a train ticket to New York, and his brother's hand. When the two brothers reach the Collins house – the house of Momma, Dad, James (on the weekends) and Rhondia – it is only a split second before everyone gathers around the front door to exchange goodbyes. Collins, his head down as he kisses his sister and mother, barely speaks. He knows exactly what this is: the end of Stage One of his life, and just nearing the beginning of Stage Two.

"I'll drive him to the train station," James says quickly, and nobody deigns to argue or protest "Let me come, too." After all, the two brothers are closer than anybody else in the family, save perhaps for Momma and Dad, and it is fitting that Collins' final goodbye to a family member is to his beloved older brother.

"Here," says James as the train pulls up before him and his brother. He hands Collins a hardcover book, its pages decorated with flowery words written to persuade. "Read this, if not on the train, once you get there. I know it'll mean something to you. It didn't to me, but – you're the one who's cut out for this stuff."

With a book on philosophy in his hand and his brother in his arms, if only temporarily, Collins feels ready to face the world. All New York owes him now is love, and that shouldn't be too hard to find, should it?