okay so I'm gonna put liner notes in with my lyric, as there's a lot of very personal, hyperspecific lyrics here. Hopefully the song can be enjoyed without any liner notes, but I want to give some context. To distinguish between the two, my lyrics are in bold, the footnotes are under each verse/chorus as spoilers

TL;DR version: my song is a step by step guide to coming out, except there's no universal coming out experience, so I made it a step by step guide to MY coming out experience. And then the chorus is more generally attacking the heteronormative "handbook" we're all expected to follow by default and that's hammered into queer children growing up.

Here's the song:

THE HANDBOOK - THE LOWEST BITTER

Step 1,
admit it to yourself,
you've been thinking about;
- shirtless Jin from LOST a lot,
- the cover of "Lovesexy",
- and George, your lab partner in chemistry,
- and the time you kissed a boy while playing spin the bottle on the field by your house
Spoilerbasically a list of various gay eureka moments for me;
- Despite the fact that Sawyer and Jack were almost perpetually shirtless throughout LOST they clearly didn't do much for me, gimme shirtless Jin in the rain.
- I distinctly remember seeing my parents vinyl copy of the Prince album "Lovesexy" laying about at maybe around 10 or 11 and finding it... confusing.
- George, just a boy from school I had a crush on. He was sporty and popular and - despite me being a couple of rungs down the school's social hierarchy from him - nice to me. Dreamboat.
- So I actually kissed several boys in this spin the bottle game. Around the age of 14-15 me and a gang of friends used to hang out on the playing field by my house, getting drunk on cheap cider bought by whoever looked oldest. One time we played spin the bottle, despite the fact the ratio of boys to girls was about 2:1. It wasn't my suggestion. And obviously teenage logic dictates that the only thing gayer than kissing a boy would be being too chicken to kiss a boy for a dare, so there was no skipping if the bottle landed on someone of the same sex. So I think I probably kissed 4 or 5 of my male friends that night

Step 2,
admit it to a friend,
get drunk and tell Samantha,
drunk again and spell it out to Jack,
who you kinda had a crush on,
and you knew that he was straight,
you just wanted him to know that you were gay and say,
"it doesn't matter, mate"
SpoilerIt took me a while to come out to anyone after I'd come out to myself. Samantha was my friend who I worked with at Starbucks, I started working there aged 16 and she was (I think) the first person I came out to, either at 16 or 17. Samantha was a few years older than me and had a couple of gay friends so I knew she was a fairly safe bet to come out to. Jack was a friend who I must've come out to at around the same time, maybe a month or so later. He was totally cool with it. Way to go Jack! He did ask me which of our classmates I found attractive though and obviously I couldn't say YOU, JACK, IT'S YOOOOUUU!, so I flailed around and picked some vaguely good looking boy in my class.

yeah there's no one way to get it done,
all the toxic shit they taught to us,
we've got to overcome,
they make us children feel defective,
then expect us to glow up,
like we didn't lose years of our lives repressing this stuff,
well get fucked
SpoilerBasically, queer childhoods can kinda suck. It does seem like things are slowly getting better, but when I was a kid queer visibility in the media was minimal and as for schools, section 28 - which banned schools from “promoting homosexuality”, which really meant "mentioning gay people at all, ever" - wasn't repealed until I was 14 years old, by which point even if my school had attempted to talk to us about homosexuality (they didn't) it would've been too little too late.
Glow Up "1. verb To transform oneself in a significant way. The phrase can be applied to positive changes in one's appearance, but usually focuses more on one's successes in life and increased self-confidence. Modeled on the phrase "grow up." - It's a phrase which I see a lot on queer twitter, I've definitely seen stuff like #LGBTQglowup trending, and in general there's a lot of LOOK HOW WELL I'M DOING, FUCK YOU defiance in the way queer people present themselves on social media. Which is great, but the truth is a lot of the time we're not doing well.

take the handbook,
and tear it up
(get fucked)
yeah they can take their handbook,
and tear it up
Spoilerthe handbook - the ideal that parents/ school/ society hammer into you throughout your childhood - a heterosexual marriage and children

Step 3,
admit it to your parents,
mum will cry say that she just thought you were awkward around girls
she'll say "go out and tell your dad",
he's chopping wood,
wielding an axe,
like some cliched manly man,
and he won't know how to react
SpoilerI didn't come out to my parents until I was 21 I think? Maybe even 22. So anyway, what my mum actually said wasn't that she thought I was awkward around girls, she said "I thought you were like the 40 year old virgin", which is much funnier but which I really couldn't shoehorn into this song no matter how hard I tried. Thanks mum for assuming I had zero game before even considering I might be gay.
After I came out to my mum she told me to go tell my dad. My dad was out in the garden chopping wood, like some metaphor for heterosexual manly machoness. On the plus side I clearly wasn't too worried about him having a homophobic freak out, considering I came out to him while he was wielding a weapon.

Step 4,
admit it to the world,
and again,
and yet again,
and still again,
it never ends
yeah sometimes you'll feel amazing,
but most times you'll find it boring,
telling them "throw out your handbook,
'cause there's nothing in there for me"
Spoilercoming out is tedious and repetitive and it never ends, both as an internal process of becoming more comfortable with and confident of your sexuality, and in knowing that each new person you meet is another person you'll have to decide whether to tell or not. And yeah coming out can be a cathartic and joyous experience, but most of the time it's just really dull.

there's no one way to get it done,
all the toxic shit they taught to us,
we've got to overcome,
they make us children feel defective,
then expect us to glow up,
like we didn't lose years of our lives repressing this stuff,
well get fucked

take the handbook,
and tear it up
(get fucked)
yeah they can take their handbook,
and tear it up
(get fucked)