by Radclyffe
“Yeah, I saw you guys dancing together. I was kind of jealous. I thought about asking you…”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “No way! I thought about dancing with you too, but I figured you’d just think I was some weird girl from the GSA you barely knew…”
She grinned sheepishly. “I kept counting down in my head, saying I’d go up to you on three. I told my friends too, to try to get them to dare me to do it.”
“No way.”
“Seriously. You’ve been in my diary for a while.”
No way no way NO WAY. “Wow. Thank you.” It was the wrong thing to say. Silence fell, and we both stared awkwardly at the floor. “I think we should date,” I finally blurted out.
Jane looked at me with slight amusement. “Yeah. That’s what I meant by hanging out.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“Cool.” Silence again, but it was a delicious, adorable awkward this time. We smiled at each other and blushed.
Then it was time to go upstairs. I was far too terrified to kiss her like I so desperately wanted to, but she took my hand, and the pleasant jolt I got from contact with her skin was bliss. None of our fellow volunteers noticed our new hand-holding status, but as we sat together through the song-and-poem part of the evening, we shared our secret joy through quick looks and smiles. I was conscious in that moment, as I am at the time of writing this story, that I was experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime moment of romantic perfection, so I made sure to take in my surroundings.
So here was my community. People both straight and queer, who had come together to celebrate survival and mourn loss. I saw couples who had once gone through the magical moment I was in the midst of, and my younger friends who had yet to experience it for the first time. I saw people crying as we sang together at the close of World AIDS Day, and people comforting each other, and some people with no one with them at all. It was overwhelming.
That was the true magic of that night: the fact that it was overwhelming, exciting, and confusing, and in the landscape of my memory so, so big that it defied any single triumphing emotion. Wonder? Joy? Incredulity that I had discovered something so unexpected? Gratitude that we lived somewhere and sometime that allowed it to happen? No single conclusion could possibly cover it all. I could only hope this was only the first of life’s magical moments waiting in store for me.
This has been my tale, of dating and being queer, and of the real world, modern magic that people can create simply by being together.
Indulge Me
Ashley Bartlett
I don’t remember our first meeting. Or any of the times we met, not until I really saw her. They have all fractured and bled and coalesced into very vivid thoughts that I can’t pinpoint in time. I know that in those early meetings I only thought about one thing: This bitch was old. Thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty, it didn’t matter. Just old. And I pitied her for it. How sad that this woman is coming into my bar (it wasn’t mine, but I thought it was) and sitting alone and chatting up the young, hot bartender. That was me, the young, hot bartender.
I didn’t know then that young and hot were subjective and I didn’t know that not everyone wanted young and hot. That those traits weren’t everything, and that more often than not, they were nothing.
It took weeks for me to realize she was charming. I knew right away that she was funny. Old people can be funny. But charming? No, only twenty-year-olds could be charming.
It was months before I realized she was sexy.
I had noticed, in some far-off, detached way that she had physical features. She wasn’t just a body leaning against my bar. Though the body wasn’t bad. She worked out. To have a body like that at that age she had to. Her hair was short. Buzzed in back and long up top. A good haircut. She had dark blond hair, but as summer progressed the sun bleached it lighter. I’m not sure when I noticed there was some gray in there. But I remember disregarding that as a sign of age, thus unimportant. I think, weeks, maybe months, later the gray was what got me. One of those moments of disabling clarity. I was pouring her a beer. She had her head turned, talking to some other regular. The lights caught the line of silver rings in her ear. Her hair was getting a little long, curling into the rings. And I was like, damn, she’s sexy. Just like that. She wasn’t pretty or beautiful or anywhere in between. She just went from old hag to sexy. I’d laughed at myself. Sexy? I had to be drunk. The beer I was pouring overflowed onto my hand.
She asked what I was laughing at. I shrugged. Handed her the beer. She smiled at me.
Those smiles, I found later, were an indulgence. Unlike mine. I handed them out like pocket change. Something I’d never miss. And I thought I was doing the recipient a favor. As if my smiles were coveted currency. They weren’t. But hers were. She gave them to me because I was a kid, the same way she let me open doors for her. One night, it was after closing, she stayed while I cleaned up. I thought she wanted my company. Because she was old, clearly lonely. I know now that I was drunk that night. Too drunk to walk home alone. When we left I held the door for her. And she let me. She knew I needed to hold that door. I wasn’t butch. But I wasn’t not either. That’s why I needed to open doors. Just like my mama taught me. She thanked me, as if she were incapable of opening her own doors, or pouring her own booze, or walking down dark streets alone.
My attraction to her became sort of debilitating. I could function. Even when she was standing in front of me looking all sexy. That wasn’t the problem. It was me. I didn’t know what to do with it. It had been bad enough admitting it to myself—I couldn’t very well admit it to another person. So I flirted with her. Shamelessly. Just like I flirted with everyone else who asked me for a drink. There were moments when I panicked, sure I had given myself away. I wondered if I had said that comment with the right amount of flippancy. If I had smiled at her just a little too long. If I’d defended her against some imagined enemy just a bit too strongly.
All my worrying was pointless. She’d known the whole damn time.
It was my self-indulgence that eventually got me. The obsession wasn’t going away. Obsessions don’t work like that, fading quietly into the past. So I was like, fuck it. I was horny, drunk, stupid, bold. Why not just hit that?
I looked straight into her eyes one night and asked her to come home with me. She laughed and I laughed and I poured her another drink. I went home alone. Same thing the next night. It became a joke. Other customers got in on it. And every time I felt like I was dying inside. Twenty-two is like that. Every denial hurts. And every time you laugh it off like a joke. ’Cause you’ll never admit the pain. That would mean you cared. I didn’t fuckin’ care.
I’d almost resigned myself to the fact that it was going nowhere. Almost. So when she came in and offered me the ticket I almost didn’t take it. Just the show she’d been working on. Well, not just working on. Directing. I fuckin’ hated theater, but that was still impressive. I was going to politely thank her and ignore the ticket. I was going to give it to someone else. I was going to throw it away.
I went to the show.
Maybe someone else would have been into it. Had an epiphany about the woman. Like, damn, she did all this? But not me. I was kinda bored.
I didn’t tell her that, though. Instead I waited at the back of the theater after it was over. Watched the actors and stagehands and everyone else leave. When she finally came out the door I played it cool. Gave half a smile and half a wave. Didn’t want to commit too heavily to my excitement. She gave me a nod. I waited. Watched as she hugged a couple people, said good-bye. And then she came over to me.
I thanked her for the ticket. Told her the show was great. Not a lie, exactly, but not the truth either.
She called me on the fib. Then mocked me for my politeness.
I asked if she wanted to get something to eat. It was late. There was a burger joint. She knew the place. Everyone knew it. It was in the middle of the two blocks queers had claimed in the city. Hard to miss.
We walked. We ate. She s
uggested a late-night coffee shop. We talked. Joked. Nothing new. Neither of us mentioned going to my bar. Our bar.
And that was it. I went home alone.
She didn’t come in for a drink for a long time after that. An eternity. Fuckin’ millennia. Two whole days. And when she did come in she greeted everyone. Laughed and smiled. Teased me. The usual. But when it got late she hung around. Asked if I wanted to get another burger. Said it like it was only more of the usual—as if we had added late-night burgers to our repertoire.
I wasn’t stupid. I said yes.
After that it was part of our repertoire. A maddening addition. She was even sexy when she ate French fries. Sexy when she drank through a straw. Sexy when she tore into a burger.
Something was seriously wrong with me.
I remember walking home one night wondering what the hell had happened to me. Girls hit on me all the time. I averaged five numbers a week. Hell, there was a chunk of wall behind the bar dedicated to the creative way women asked me to call them. I was young and stupid and sexy and I fuckin’ knew it. Did I call any of the pretty, willing girls? No. ’Cause I was hung up on a chick twice my age who thought mocking me was a sport. And I liked it.
I musta been going downhill. Fast.
Until one night. It was late, almost closing. She had waited till the bar was nearly empty. I don’t know if that was for her pride or mine. All she did was look at me and say, “Tonight.” I swallowed hard. Put down my beer. Followed her out.
She could have been talking about another meal. Or a movie. Why not add two hours to the torture? She could have been offering more tickets to her show. But I knew that wasn’t what she was doing.
We didn’t talk when we walked to my apartment. Even when we got inside we just stood there and stared. So I offered her a beer. That was what I usually did, after all. She said no. Then she tucked two fingers into the front of my jeans, pulled me close, and kissed me.
The woman could fucking kiss.
All slow and torturous. Like she had forever. But I didn’t have forever. All I had was right then. Right fucking now. I walked her back and pressed her against the door. Kissed her hard and fast until she couldn’t breathe. Chicks liked that. But not her. Oh, she let me kiss her, but she slowed me down. Kept her mouth closed so I had to work to get in. Had to kiss her light and soft the way she wanted me to.
When I went to take her shirt off she stopped me, shook her head. Said “bedroom” and left it at that. It wasn’t a demand or a request. Somewhere between, ’cause she knew I would indulge her. I nodded and turned, her hand in mine. She followed me to my room.
I think that was the only time I surprised her. She thought I would go hard and fast and stop when the sun hit my open window. That wasn’t what I did. It wasn’t what I wanted. Maybe I knew then that I had to savor her. Maybe I just wanted to indulge myself.
I stripped her down, kissing, tasting her skin. The freckles on her shoulders. Her scarred knees. That dusting of peach fuzz low on her back. She tasted good, so I didn’t see any reason to rush.
We fucked. All night. Into the morning. Dozed in the afternoon. Ignored meals and coffee and beer. The sun started to go down again and all I could think about was the tone of her skin in the evening light. I wondered briefly what the sun would look like in her hair. Realized I’d never really seen her in daylight. But then she wrapped her tongue around my nipple and I didn’t give a fuck about the sun.
I woke up at two in the morning. I’d missed my shift at the bar. I was alone.
There was a frantic moment where I looked for a note in my destroyed bed. I even went to the kitchen and searched the piles of mail on my table. There was nothing. And honestly, I knew there would be nothing.
Time should have slowed down for me. But time is a bitch and she never does what you want. I was kinda heartbroken in that “saw it coming a mile away” sort of way. Foreshadowing didn’t make it hurt any less. So instead of counting the hour-long minutes until I saw her again, I begged time to slow down. ’Cause I knew she would be uncharacteristically kind and I couldn’t think of a worse fate. More than anything I wanted something to say. Something charming that would make her fall into obsession with me. Or something poignantly angry. Hell, I’d even go for the long shot of something mature. I couldn’t think of anything.
Her apology, when it finally came, wasn’t an apology at all. It was pissed off and sad and directed at someone that definitely wasn’t me. She didn’t bother suggesting that she had taken advantage of me. Which was good, ’cause I would have lost my shit. More than anything it seemed like she was pissed at herself for losing a buddy to grab late-night burgers with. So I told her I’d never wanted a damn burger or a beer or to watch a fuckin’ play. I’d only wanted to flirt with an attractive woman.
That was hard for me to say. It was the first time I’d actually said it. She was attractive. In far too many ways. In far too complicated ways. No, I wasn’t ready. She knew I wasn’t ready. That was probably what killed it. My inability to speak the truth and mean it. And my vehement insistence that age didn’t matter only displayed how much it did.
Maybe we could have been perfect for each other. Maybe perfection has a shelf life. Or maybe I thought my pretty face was more important than it was.
She didn’t come into the bar after that.
Ignite the Sky
Julie R. Sanchez
Day 47, late afternoon
California smiles like the sun. She throws her head back, her blond hair windblown all around her. Her laugh is loud and clear and brilliant even over the steady hum of the engine and the blaring beat of the radio. She’s radiant, glowing, blinding, gorgeous, and I can’t help but sneak sideways glances at her as she drives her cherry red convertible down the 99. I hope she doesn’t notice.
“You’re going to get us killed!” I yell, laughing just a little, because her laughter is infectious and I’m not really upset at all. The late afternoon is smoldering orange, beautiful, ablaze; nothing can possibly hurt.
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
She sticks her tongue out at me. Then she turns back to the road. She cranks up the radio and steps on the gas.
The highway runs by below us. We speed along in the fast lane, passing car after car, the wind howling in our ears. I have never felt so alive. “Now you’re just doing it on purpose.”
“What?” she hollers.
“Trying to get us killed!”
“Maybe I am!”
And then we’re going faster, faster, faster and I never want it to stop. But it’s dangerous and wrong and I shouldn’t want to go so fast with a suicidal maniac—even if she’s beautiful, even if she makes my heart and my stomach and my soul clench in ways I can’t explain—so I say, “Callie, slow down.” When she looks at me, I can see my reflection in her white-rimmed cat-eye sunglasses. My own short brown hair is disheveled, and my white scarf is flailing. I look pale, and through the image of my own aviators, I can see the fear in my eyes.
“Why?” she asks, and there’s something off about her tone. She’s deadly serious, staring at me instead of the road, demanding to know why she shouldn’t drive us straight into oncoming traffic.
I can feel the road and the speed and the hammering in my heart. I’m scared because she’s so captivatingly reckless.
“Wouldn’t it be better to go like this? If we live our lives as an adventure, there’s only one proper way to end them. Don’t you feel it? We’re young and free and beautiful and brilliant and so perfectly alive. We’re burning bright and fast, like supermassive stars, you know? And we can go supernova, ignite the whole sky in a fiery explosion when we die. Or we can just grow old, wither, let our outer layers float away as we wait for death to take us.”
“Callie,” I plead, hoping it’s enough. “Don’t.” I can’t say anything else because I’m not sure I can find the words to argue with her. My voice is caught in my throat. I don’t want to believe anything she’s saying, no matt
er how true it feels, but we’re driving so fast, and I feel so perfectly alive.
She smiles at me, her teeth straight and white behind her bright red lipstick. She leans over and kisses me, quick and square on the lips, before turning her attention back to the road.
Then we’re going faster, faster, faster and I know we’re never going to stop.
Day 1, midday
It starts when I drop the pack of gum I’m about to purchase at the local 7-Eleven. I squat down, cursing under my breath, and then I catch sight of her shoes—red, strappy, five inches high. My eyes go up (even when I tell them not to), and I take in her tan legs, which go up and up and—and I have to force myself to grab my gum and stand. She’s wearing a blue and white polka-dot halter dress, and between that and the curls her hair is set in, she may as well be a 1940s pin-up girl. She’s gorgeous, and I try not to stare, not at her neck, her waist, her cleavage—not at anything.
“Hi,” she says, shifting her Slurpee from her right hand to her left and then extending her right for me to shake, “I’m California. California Fiona Hadley, technically, but I’ve never cared for technicalities, so everyone calls me Callie.”
I shake her hand because I don’t know what else to do. Dumbly, I reply, “Grace Aldrin.”
She smiles. “Do you live around here?”
Something inside me seizes up because I’m half hoping that’s a proposition. “A few blocks away.”
“I’ve never seen you here before.”
“It’s a pretty big town.”
“It isn’t, really,” her pretty face scrunches in consternation, “not when you pay attention, which I do.”
“Well,” I can’t help but smile back, just a little, “you probably haven’t seen me because I just moved here.”
