The Book of Delights

While watching the movie Moonlight, Gay is most moved by the scenes of Black children playing, dancing, chasing each other, and holding each other, filling the frame with their childlike joy.

In this short essay, Gay describes the way a new friend uses air quotes boldly to indicate emphasis, rather than to attribute what someone might have said. This friend uses air quotes so frequently and extravagantly that Gay thinks of it as a dance characteristic of this friend.

On Gay’s mother’s 76th birthday, he remembers the time she went to the supermarket after getting oral surgery to buy soup. After leaving the store, she saw she has a line of snot dripping from her nose into her mouth which she couldn’t feel due to the numbing agent used in her surgery. Gay’s mother is one of the most proper, self-berating people he knows. In the past, she would have used this embarrassment to beat herself up and never return to the grocery store. Now, however, she laughs hard telling the story. Gay thinks she is finally accepting that she is a variety of light.