Strangers have always stared at me. I get it. I like brightly coloured retro clothes and I’m in possession of a pair of comedically massive norks. As a teenager, I would regularly cry myself to sleep over the sniggers, feeling violated, ashamed and just plain wrong. But when I was 16, something happened that shifted my whole perspective and filled me with the determination to be myself to the hilt, gawking bystanders be damned. No, I didn’t have a breast reduction and discover the joys of brown hessian muumuus. I met Lela.
I still remember the first time I saw her. It was day one of sixth form college and she was a lame-haired vision, wearing a sunshine yellow top and strutting with theatrical lair to find a free seat in assembly. In a lock of denim-clad pigeons with identikit highlights, skinny jeans and blank, bored expressions, she appeared like a tropical bird of paradise. I couldn’t help but stare. I really wanted to be her friend.