All Out--The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages

by Saundra Mitchell

  “We should’ve brought stuff,” Annabelle sniffles in my ear when we pass each one, on the pavement, on the grass. “Of course we should’ve brought stuff.”

  I wish I’d thought of it—anything to make her smile. The need to help her through this is a fiercely fluttering thing in my chest, if only just to feel her clammy palm in mine again. She grasped it only once, quickly, when we first entered, and the tingles that shot up my arm were decidedly un-best-friend-like.

  Now that she’s let go, my hands are cold.

  I have no idea how this happened, or why I suddenly can’t look at my best friend without my eyes straying to the Dr Pepper–scented sheen on her lips. But when she collapsed in my arms two days ago and I kissed the top of her head, all I could think was that I wanted her to look up. I wanted to kiss her again, somewhere it counted. I wanted to kiss away every tear—but really, I didn’t want her to have any to begin with. I wanted the fact that she had me to be enough.

  But of course I’m not enough. We’re here because I’m not enough. She’ll never love me like she loves a man she’ll never meet.

  The sound of overhead-speaker static stops us in our tracks, and chills ripple down my body as I recognize Courtney Love’s voice—or at least a teary, stuffy-nosed distortion of it—filling the air. This time, I grab A.B.’s hand, and I’m relieved when she squeezes it and lets me hold it close to my heart.

  “I don’t really think it takes away his dignity to read this, considering that it’s addressed to most of you.” Courtney’s words are only decipherable because the crowd is stone silent. “He’s such an asshole. I want you all to say asshole really loud.”

  I glance sideways at Annabelle, wondering if she’ll do it, if she’ll desecrate her hero like that. But I don’t wait for her before I do it myself.

  “Asshole!” I chime in with I don’t know how many other voices. Feeling A.B.’s nails digging into my palm, remembering the way her entire body shuddered as she cried on my shoulder the other day, how can I think he’s anything but?

  Courtney continues on, and it feels like a kick in the gut as I realize what she’s reading is his suicide note, his very last words. Next to me, Annabelle weeps quietly, tears streaming down her smooth cheeks, her eyes like polished copper.

  We’re quiet as Courtney reads on, interjecting her own anger every few lines, and then, suddenly, Kurt’s widow breaks down, and now I’m crying, too, wondering with her what she could’ve done, what would’ve saved him. And next to me, Annabelle cries louder, harder, red splotches blossoming on her cheeks.

  Without thinking, I gather her up in my arms and whisper, “I’m sorry,” over and over again while she soaks my shirt for the second time in three days. I don’t know what to do to make this better. I don’t know what else I can do. I don’t know what Annabelle needs. I don’t know why this is destroying her from the inside out like she just lost her father, her mother, her sister.

  Her best friend.

  I don’t know how to save Annabelle from this pain I don’t quite understand.

  “A.B.,” I murmur into her ear. “It’s okay. I know it hurts, but it’s okay. You’ll be okay.”

  “I won’t.” She’s shivering in my arms now. “I won’t.”

  “Annabelle.” I stop while I choose my next words carefully. I don’t want to say his death doesn’t matter. It does, to her, and to me, and everyone gathered here and everyone who couldn’t be.

  But the crack forming in my heart at the knowledge I don’t matter more is stealing all my thoughts.

  “Talk to me” is all I manage.

  “You won’t get it.” Annabelle wipes her nose on her sleeve. “No one does.”

  “Try me.”

  She hesitates, then reaches into her pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. No, not paper—liner notes. Well-worn ones I immediately recognize as being from Nirvana’s Incesticide. She doesn’t say a word as she hands them over, then hugs herself into her flannel shirt.

  There’s nothing scrawled on them, no words but the text itself. I scan it in case there’s something I’ve forgotten, but there’s nothing new. I know these words; probably every Nirvana fan does.

  Whatever Annabelle’s trying to get me to see, I’m failing. I hate, hate, hate that I’m failing her, today of all days.

  I look up into her teary blue eyes, trying to convey all the sadness and guilt I feel. “I’m sorry, A.B. Whatever it is, I don’t...” I can’t bring myself to say “I don’t get it,” so I just don’t finish.

  “The end,” she says in a rasp.

  My entire body ices over. “The part about the girl who was raped to ‘Polly’? Ann—”

  “No,” she says quickly. “No, not that. The part before.”

  The part before...where Kurt (well, “Kurdt”) basically tells homophobes, racists and misogynists to fuck off. It’s a good part. It actually makes me feel a little bad for calling him an asshole a little bit ago. But I still don’t get it.

  “I’ve never had anyone stick up for me like that.”

  Her voice is so soft that I almost have to ask her to repeat it, but then I process her words. Really process them.

  Oh my God.

  “You’re not talking about the ‘women’ thing, are you?”

  She shakes her head. Or maybe her head is still and it’s the rest of her shaking.

  “Annabelle.” My voice comes out in a whisper, and I reach out to stroke her hair before I can stop myself. I don’t even know what else to say.

  “Do you hate me?”

  “Do I—Annabelle.” I step closer, bringing my other hand to her face so that my palms lightly cup her cheeks, which are flushed and tear-sticky and so, so soft.

  She jerks back, out of my grasp. “You don’t even know the worst part. How much I actually hate that album.”

  Of course she’d think that was the worst part. “Annabelle. It’s pretty inarguably their worst. I mean, other than ‘Sliver,’ ‘Aneurysm,’ and ‘Molly’s Lips’—”

  The words die in my throat as she wrenches her gaze away from mine and another tear slips down her cheek.

  After what feels like endless silence, she finally speaks, broken and brittle, her eyes on some far-off point in the sky. “It’s like it was mocking me, you know? That song.”

  That song.

  My heart hammers in my chest as I think about all the different ways I could interpret her meaning, and the only way I want to, which rises above them all. “You mean ‘Molly’s Lips’?” I feel like I need to shout over the rushing in my ears, but my words come out a whisper anyway.

  She gives a jerky nod. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Molly. I have tried so hard not to, and I’ll keep trying, just please don’t...”

  The rest of her words are drowned out by that rushing, joined by the pounding in my rib cage. Is she saying what I think she’s saying? I’m trying to process her words but my brain is nothing but static.

  “Mol?” Her voice is timid, tentative, nervous.

  And suddenly I feel anything but.

  I grab the flaps of her flannel shirt and mash my mouth to hers in what’s probably the least romantic kiss of all time, both our faces damp and the crowds around us both cursing and celebrating a dead man. But it’s perfect, still, the way her arms wrap around my neck and squeeze me like I am a lifeline and I squeeze her right back the same way and then we finally remember that we know how to kiss like normal people and we do but it’s so much better than normal and in fact it’s actually everything.

  She pulls away, just a few inches, just far enough for me to see a glazed look in her eyes that I don’t think has anything to do with her tears. “Mol? Really?”

  “I’d take you anywhere, I’d take you anywhere, as long as you stay with me,’” I say with a grin, brushing her damp hair out of her face so I can kiss her again.

  “Did you j
ust use a Nirvana quote to flirt with me, Molly Oliver?”

  “Of course not. I paraphrased a Vaselines quote to flirt with you, Annabelle Mason. Nirvana just covered ‘Molly’s Lips.’ They can’t be blamed for your years of anguish.”

  A smug, know-it-all smile curves her mouth. There have been times I’ve dreaded that smile, but now it’s beautiful to see on my Annabelle, and I am ready for whatever factual shredding she’s about to toss my way. “Actually, Kurt changed those lyrics slightly from the original Vaselines version, so those were uniquely Nirvana lyrics, smartass.”

  I sigh. “Dear Annabelle, I am so sorry I tried to out-Nirvana you. Now will you please kiss, kiss Molly’s lips?”

  She does.

  It’s all too short, but then again, we are at a vigil. We came to pay our respects and to say goodbye, and hand in hand, we walk through the crowds to do just that. When we pass a particularly full and colorful cluster of candles and mementos, including a guitar, A.B. squeezes my hand and says, “Hold up a second.”

  I stop and watch as Annabelle pulls a bright-red lipstick from her pocket. She applies it messily to her lips, not caring how boldly she goes outside the lines. Then she pulls the liner notes back out and plants a kiss right over her favorite paragraph, leaving a flaming lip print. She sets it down right next to the neck of the guitar, then grabs my hand again.

  “Okay,” she says, then takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

  The crowd is getting wilder, the huge fountain teeming with kids hollering chaos, the candlewax-and-incense scent in the air mingling with scorched fabric as people burn their flannel shirts. The “asshole” chant continues, only partly drowned out by the Nirvana songs flowing from the loudspeakers, and Annabelle and I walk slowly and take it all in. And then the whispers begin, everyone spreading the word that Courtney Love is handing out Kurt’s clothing, and without exchanging a single word, we double back in the direction of the rumors, hoping to catch a glimpse of bleached hair and runny eyeliner.

  I dodge a girl wrapped in yellow police tape, dancing in the middle of the grass with her eyes closed and her hands waving, as if “Scentless Apprentice” were a rave jam. We don’t see any sign of Courtney, but we’re caught in streams of people slowly filing past us, talking about heading to Viretta Park.

  “Do you wanna go?” I ask Annabelle, bracing myself for her enthusiastic “Yes!” I don’t know that I want to spend the rest of the day creeping near the Cobain house, especially since it’ll probably be crawling with cops. The fact that I’ll be returning home reeking of weed and incense is bad enough. But I also know there’s no way I’ll say no to Annabelle, especially not today.

  “Nah,” she says, and she couldn’t have shocked me more if she’d stripped down to nothing but her choker and Doc Martens on the spot. “I’ve got a boom box, an Unplugged tape and a quiet garage. I can think of better ways to celebrate Kurt today. Let’s go.”

  We turn back to the crowd, to the speakers, to wherever the essence of Kurt Cobain drifts over this space, and blow kisses into the wind. “Peace, love and empathy,” Annabelle murmurs, and then we fade away.

  * * * * *

  THE COVEN

  BY

  KATE SCELSA

  Paris, 1924

  It was Gertrude Stein who first introduced us to the coven.

  I had been hearing about it for years at this point of course. There had always been talk of witches in the eleventh arrondissement. The excited whispers would start every year in early October, children daring each other to walk down certain streets where it was rumored that the witches held their secret séances. After Halloween the children always lost interest. For most people witches were a seasonal topic.

  I never thought much of them. Witches or people.

  Until Vivie brought me to Gertrude Stein.

  Vivie had made it her mission to gain access to the salon of the legendary writer. She finally succeeded by claiming to be a long lost niece. Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude’s de facto gatekeeper, didn’t believe the story for a second. But she let her in to see Gertrude anyway. And that is how things usually worked for Vivie.

  I often met Vivie after school in her favorite café. She was always sipping an espresso and scribbling furiously in her notebook. She had a few affectations that I put up with, some more reluctantly than others—the uninterrupted writing in this corner of the Café Select, drinking coffee late into the night. The hat that she stole from her brother that she liked to tip just so, down over one eye. The way she had started walking with her hands in her pockets, as if life was just a stroll for her.

  Actually, I liked that part. I liked the hat, too.

  I had been planning on trying to kiss Vivie for a month at this point. The idea occurred to me one day and then I just decided that I would do it. I was simply taking my time. I watched the other women in the café with jealousy—the girls who held hands and wore pants and didn’t seem to care what anyone thought. I wanted to say to Vivie “We are like them,” but what we had felt like a magic spell that I was afraid to break.

  And Vivie might have kissed me already if she wasn’t so busy teaching herself to be a “great writer.”

  “Like Gertrude Stein,” she said.

  On this day when I met Vivie in the Café Select she had just come from another afternoon at Gertrude’s salon. She always looked brighter when she left there, as if a little flame had been lit behind her eyes. I tried not to feel jealous that someone else could make her that happy.

  She saw me come in to the café and waved. I was foggy today. That was what we had come to call it. Days when a cloud seemed to descend over everything around me. My thoughts went slowly, tripping awkwardly over each other to get where they needed to be. Moving through space became an exercise in walking through water. Vivie could always tell when I was having a foggy day. She noticed things like that.

  “Going slow today,” I said before she could.

  It was hard to say exactly when the problem started. The fog had crept up on me over the past year, like a nagging obligation. Days that felt a little “off” had led to strange visions, auras of color circling around objects and people. Then the feeling of dread that accompanied this underwater life, as if somehow I really was walking around on the bottom of the ocean, and it was only a matter of time before I realized that I didn’t know how to breathe down here.

  “I talked to Gertrude about you,” Vivie said when I finally sat down at her table.

  “Oh, really?” I said. I picked up a café menu and looked at it, not surprised to see the familiar words swimming in front of me. Things didn’t like to stay in place on my foggy days.

  “She wants to meet you,” Vivie said.

  I had not yet been admitted to Mme Stein’s famous salon myself. I was not a writer or an artist, so why would the woman known in these cafés simply as “the Presence” want anything to do with me?

  “I’m supposed to bring you to her,” Vivie said, “so she can decide for sure if you’re ready.”

  “What do I need to be ready for?” I asked.

  “I guess—” and with this Vivie took my hand “—you just have to have an open mind.”

  She smiled at me from under the brim of her brother’s hat. That smile that was my only true heart and confidant and home all wrapped up into one person.

  I looked down at the open page of her notebook. It was filled with words but also strange symbols. Circles in circles. Five-pointed stars.

  “My mind’s open,” I said.

  * * *

  The next day I found myself on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas’s famous doorstep at 27 rue de Fleurus in the sixth arrondissement. Vivie held my hand on the walk there, and I couldn’t tell if she was doing it to help me keep up with her through my fog, or if she was feeling what I was: actual electricity firing between our fingers. It took everything I had to pay attention to where I was s
tepping.

  The fog was a little better today. The electricity helped. It always helped. Back when the fog started, my mother took me to all of the doctors that she and my father could afford. But no one could find anything concretely wrong with me. I took pills that made me tired. Drank tonics that tasted like dirt. Nothing made a difference.

  “You’ve just got to be tougher, Dean,” my father would say.

  So I stopped telling them about it. It didn’t seem significant in the face of what we had just experienced anyway. The knock at the door that had confirmed all of our worst fears. That our family would never feel whole again. My brother, who had been so excited to go and see the world, would not be coming home. Not ever.

  Vivie was the only person that I told about the fog anymore. And now, at her insistence, I would tell Gertrude and Alice.

  “You know they’re married,” Vivie said to me as we stood on the doorstep, still holding hands. She hadn’t rung the bell yet. I wasn’t sure what she was waiting for.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Gertrude and Alice. Not actually married by law. But in practice.”

  “Oh,” I said. I wanted to say “I know, Vivie, like us. Like we will be one day.” But I didn’t.

  She rang the bell and a small birdlike woman with severe hair and even more severe eyes opened the door.

  “Madame Toklas,” Vivie said. “So nice to see you again.”

  Alice B. Toklas nodded at us and opened the door all the way.

  “She is expecting you,” she said.

  Still holding my hand, Vivie led me down a hallway and into a drawing room, where the Presence herself was perched in a chair that was slightly higher than the others. Her throne. The walls were covered in modern art, outrageous cubist faces made of shapes and women’s bodies with many breasts and even more eyes. Gertrude Stein was dressed all in black, as if she were in mourning, the buttons on her shirt done all the way up her neck. It was old-fashioned, in contrast to her shorn-short hair and the outrageousness of the art.