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missyflamingo · 1 year

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Pride to Paper: 30-Day June Writing Challenge

DAY TWO: BEARD COUPLE

We’re like two puzzle pieces with no straight lines. A math equation that was wrong on every step and got the right answer at the end. An expert ASL interpreter and an over-enthusiastic Italian-American. These are a few of the ways my partner, March would describe our relationship. We complete each other, we love each other, we carry the title “couple”, but we are as far from in love as you could possibly get.

Like all great couples, we met at a social gathering: my aunt and her fiancé’s engagement party. My mom was best friends with her mom, Amelia, so Amelia got an invitation. That meant dragging her 16-year-old daughter along to start the process of steeping her in the life of what any girl in her late teens should want: champagne, a strange obsession with off-white decor, and - most of all - a man. My aunt didn’t object to the invitation, frankly she was delighted to have as many eyes as possible on her and her dazzling left ring finger, which was actually sporting cubic zirconium but she told everybody it was diamond.

It was in the third hour of the function when I spotted March across the room. She sat alone on a loveseat couch with a paper plate of finger foods on the table in front of her. She had long dirty blonde hair under a fitted cap the same red as her hiking boots and a left hand covered in silver rings. Her eyes wandered around a room alien to her, not because she didn’t know anyone (though that was also true of the situation), but because she didn’t care for them. Seeing the bride-and-groom-to-be passionately embrace, she didn’t react in jealousy or longing like I saw the other girls her age do. She only seemed bored. Maybe it was living in a big family from Iowa that tuned my heat vision for fellow homosexuals so well, but I knew I had to talk to her.

“Bored?” I asked.

She stared at me for a second, reading me up and down; I imagine I wasn’t the first male stranger to approach her with an icebreaker. Then, a sigh. “Is it obvious?”

“Very much so. I am, too. I’m just here because the fiancée is my aunt. That, and the food.”

“My mom invited me and she’s my ride. That, and the food.” She smiled and ate a piece of melon off the plate in front of her.

“I don’t even know why engagement parties are a thing. Isn’t the wedding enough?”

“That’s what I was thinking! Like, we’re already gonna know you’re together, you don’t need to pre-game.”

I paused, then decided to cast a line to see if she’d catch it. “Yeah, it’s like they’re shoving it down our throats. I mean, hey, I’m not against that kind of stuff, I’m not a monster, you know? I just think you should do it in the privacy of your bedroom, you know?”

A hook right in the cheek, she almost choked on the melon she was still chewing. I chuckled along with her, quietly at first, before she swallowed and replied, “I’m just worried about the children.” I couldn’t hold it in after that, but tried my best to subdue my reaction as to keep the punchline a secret from the rest of the crowd - habit, I guess.

She held out her hand, which I saw had a stick and poke tattoo of a single Venus symbol on the side of the wrist. “I’m March.”

I took it in mine. “Wallace.”

We talked for the rest of the event, about anything we could - games, TV shows, animals, a brief stint on American politics, and especially our identities. We kept the last two out of earshot the best we could, and it seemed to have worked given how the night ended. My aunt thanked the guests, everyone began filing out, and I gave a last goodbye to March with a side hug - it seemed intimate for a first meeting, but you’d be surprised what kind of bond can form between a gay man and a lesbian.

I had to stay behind to help my mom clean up, who stayed behind to help my aunt clean up. She had a cheeky swagger to her when she collected the plates and cups around the living room.

“So, Wallace,” my mom called to me as I was drying dishes, “you seemed to get along pretty well with Amelia’s girl.”

“March? Yeah, she’s cool.”

My aunt chimed in from behind me. “That’s how they all start, don’t they, Debora?”

My mom hummed in agreement. “Come on Wallace, she was touching your leg when she talked. ‘Cool’ girls don’t do that.”

I remembered that moment, she was telling me how much she loved albatross-related folklore and got really into it. Possibly the farthest from flirting a subject could be.

“We just met.”

“Okay, Wally,” my aunt responded, closing a pair of cupboard doors. “But whenever you two get involved with each other, don’t be mad when we’re not surprised.”

We did get involved with each other after that, as best friends. Soon, it was all kinds of social functions that we were spotted at sitting hip to hip: New Year’s, Easter, Fourth of July barbecues, even Labour Day Weekend where we sat on the same gingham blanket and watched the fireworks together. And at every spotting, there would be a remark or a question that revolved around our relationship status. I wondered how many people fully believed we were dating. Neither of us had the guts to say why we weren’t, so the most we could respond with was “we’re just friends”, which, for adults talking to teens, essentially translates to “we’ll be dating very shortly.” It seemed like everyone in our lives wanted us to be in a relationship more than we did, whether that was with each other or with anyone of the opposite sex.

This back-and-forth charade of awkward heterosexuality continued for well over a year before it really had to be put to the test. June of our final year of high school approached quickly, and with it the ever-pestering question of who we were taking to prom. It was a late night of drinking iced teas on my front porch when the topic came up between the two of us. March painted a dire picture of the amount of pressure she got from her mom to go with someone, and I joined her in solidarity with the pressure I was getting from my dad.

“Sometimes,” I took a sip, “I wish we could just be straight so we could actually date. Then people would stop asking who I’m going to prom with.”

The crickets played a steady, slow, monotone beat as we sat in quiet. I like to think they were simply expressing the speed that my brain was moving at, because I must’ve been a massive idiot to not think of what she said next at any point before then.

“We don’t we just go together?”

I tapped a nail on the side of my glass. “Like, as a date?”

“Why not? You don’t have to go with a straight girl, I don’t have to go with a straight guy, we’re already really close, and people will stop asking questions.”

“Wouldn’t that be lying?”

“Who cares if its lying? We’ve already been lying this whole time. Everyone except me thinks you still like girls.”

I rolled the idea around my head for a few moments to find the downside, but I couldn’t see any. “And if a slow dance song comes on?”

“We slow dance. Or are you forgetting the ABBA binge in my room last month?”

I pointed at her. “Hey, that’s not fair, Chiquitita is different.”

“Then just pretend whatever Ed Sheeran song they play is Chiquitita.”

I sighed and smiled to myself. Setting down my iced tea, I turned to her and cupped her hands in mine. I put on my best romance-movie-heartthrob face. “Marcella Caldwell, will you make me the happiest fruitcake in the world and go to prom with me?”

She laughed, quickly firing back, “Only if you let me be the happiest butch by saying yes.”

With a firm handshake and a clink of our glasses, we began a long con to live the best we could in a world that tried to fit us inside a box. I will admit, to a degree, we did. Prom became Thanksgiving, which became Christmas, which eventually escalated into moving in together - for ease of rooming situations and rent, of course. Not once did someone question it, and no one batted an eye when March’s new gal pal Kelly moved into our apartment two years into our “relationship”.

On occasion, I’ll have thoughts of taking it too far, if we were doing something wrong by lying to our family and friends like we were. But every time, March’s words on the porch resound in my ears: Who cares? We’ve been lying this whole time.

#pridetopaper #lgbtq fiction #lgbtq #wlw #MLM #wlw/mlm solidarity #beard couple #writers of tumblr #creative writing #writing challenge #queer #closeted #gay men #lesbian

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missyflamingo · 1 year

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Pride to Paper: 30-Day June Writing Challenge

DAY ONE: STRAIGHT CRUSH

Allison was perfect. She had a brown bob that matched her skin, like the cap on an acorn. When she’d tuck a lock behind her ear, her lobe was revealed with accents of gold. She only wore hooked, dangly earrings, never studs. She told me she hated how they pricked into her neck when she wore her chunky JBL headphones, which was constantly.

I wasn’t an audio tech nerd, but how I loved to watch her talk about it. Her hands would move with a passionate fervour that always threatened to knock her steel water bottle off her lecture hall desk, and occasionally did. Her eyes would sparkle and, in the right light, I could see flecks of gold in the cocoa brown of her iris to match the chains hanging from her ears. When she offered to let me listen to something on her pair, wearing them felt like a hug. She was absolutely right, too; they’re excellent headphones. After I met her, I solely bought JBL audio tech, half because of their overall quality and half because it always felt like I was being hugged by Allison. I still wear my old pair from my university days sometimes when I feel like I need a hug from an old friend.

Friend. Even after all this time, the word leaves a bad taste in the back of my mouth.

Sometimes I wonder what he’s like, the guy she’s married to. I wonder how much we have in common. From the wedding photos I saw on her Instagram, we look similar. Our hair texture is the same, his face is just as covered in freckles, we even have the same nose. Would she have thought of me as beautiful the way she thinks he is? The way I think she is?

From what I’ve heard, lesbians fall for their straight friends all the time. At some point, it starts to feel like criteria for being a lesbian, alongside softball and an affinity for small potted plants. I’ve asked my other gay friends what they did with their straight crush. The main divide was between letting it fizzle out or risking the relationship with honesty. I opted for the first option, so I kept my lips shut whenever she doubled over against me laughing or offered me a sip of her drink when we went out for dinner or offered to braid my hair while playing with a strand between her fingers or anything else that made it horribly difficult to keep my mouth shut.

But I did, for years. I even kept them shut on those lonely nights of a half drank bottle of Absolut and no one around to stop me, as if my fear of driving her away was carved into me and time couldn’t erode it. The fact is, we’re born how we’re born. She never wanted me to change who I was, she accepted me in my entirety so long as it made me happy. I think I owe her the same.

Still, there are fleeting moments where I like to think of what our lives would be if she was born how I was. If it was my freckles pressed up against her cheek as she’s veiled in white. If I could feel her against me and she wasn’t laughing. If I could add “date” to the end of our dinners together. Maybe then I wouldn’t yearn for a beat up pair of headphones.

#pridetopaper #lgbtq #pride month #wlw #sapphic #straight crush #queer artist #yearning #lesbian pride #writing challenge #creative writing #writers of tumblr #jenny by the studio killers-core

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missyflamingo · 1 year

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A Few Questions Before You Go - an original flash fiction

The way the sunlight glints off of that shiny chrome grill is blinding. It makes you squint at the metal closing in towards your face, slowed by time beginning to crawl. It’s so close, you can feel its heat warming your skin. There’s less than a second before a moment of explosive exhilaration, followed closely by wet pavement and a yawning stretch of the purest silence. You know this. But before all of that, you still have a few questions:

What will your parents be doing when the police ring the doorbell?

What will Charlie say when Yu-Jun asks why you’re not answering your phone?

Why did you agree to go to lunch with them today? Was it really worth dying for?

Were Frosted Flakes and a blueberry bagel with peanut butter really the best final meal? It wasn’t fancy, but it was yours; that must have its own meaning, right? You hope it does.

What about that Vamps concert next week? They never come to Canada!

Why does it hurt to realize that The Vamps won’t know you died?

Why did you go to bed early last night? It was a pleasantly warm summer night. You could’ve spent it in a bar eating wings and drinking juleps with Yu-Jun, or in a park picking midnight flowers while you sing Bon Iver, or laying down on Keaton’s rooftop, staring at the few stars that can be seen in the city.

How did you go seven thousand nights never seeing the Milky Way?

Will they mention you by name in the news tonight, or only as “girl, 19”? Will you make the news? Are you as unique as Mumma said you were?

What will your funeral look like? Where will it be? You know they’ll choose a church but you hope they won’t. Would your work friends show up? Mrs. Stone from high school? Your ex, that bitch?

Is it worth it to spend your energy still hating her at this point? Yes, it definitely is.

Did Yu-Jun ever want to kiss you back?

How long will it take for people to forget you without any siblings or kids to talk about you? Is this why people want kids?

Will you live on in your things instead? Will Mumma keep the necklace you’re wearing right now? You carved it yourself; maybe when she holds it, it’ll be like holding your hand again.

What will you come back as? You hope it’s a Sessile Oak, a hail of your soul’s home soil. You hope you’ll grow in the Maplewood Flats so Dad will visit you every Saturday. You hope he’ll still go when you’re not playing guessing games in the car with him.

Do you have any regrets? You didn’t live long enough to get any. That’s not so bad.

Rubber tires screech against asphalt in vain. You have no answers. You can already smell the cedarwood on the other side.

You’re happy to die on a sunny day.

#writers on tumblr #original character #original story #cw death #dying young #existential #lowkey queer #wrote this for a school assignment and it's somehow one of my best works

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