Hey all! This one is a little bit shorter. I meant to include a lot more in this part, but I think it would have been really ridiculously long if I had tried that…plus I would have been up all night typing probably… So here is a short and sweet one!
It’s probably one of the most vulnerable parts so far. So I appreciate your encouraging LIKES and COMMENTS.
I was listening to “Cheer Me On” by Malcolm Todd the whole time I was writing it— NOT “I Want You” by Mitski…. but I was THINKING about “I want You,” as I wrote. Hence the title.
Without further ado…
I broke up with Jason on a rainy Saturday in the middle of March. I told him (and myself) that it was about the squirrels and the lying and the fact that we hadn’t kissed yet. He pleaded with me. He told me we could work it out. He told me he could change. He told me we could kiss.
we could kiss TOMORROW, he texted. i could come to you and kiss you tomorrow. please, just say the word.
I responded:
it’s going to rain all weekend. I don’t want you to get sick from riding the longboard.
didi, please.
But I was at Michelle’s house with Wesley and Solaria. We were busy half-paying attention to movies on Michelle’s TV and half-paying attention to the card game we were playing. I didn’t have the mental space or the energy for anything else. I couldn’t be bothered with thinking about alternative solutions for fixing how I felt. I needed something quick, and I couldn’t be asked to wait any longer; my mind was made up.
My responses to Jason’s pleading were half-hearted. I was performing CPR on a goldfish, with the bowl right next to me. I supplied him with one-word responses until his texts stopped coming at all.
It was dead.
I shifted my attention from the phone screen to the TV in Michelle’s room, we were watching Legally Blonde.
It rained all that week. It was that charcoal gray, foreboding rain so characteristic of early spring on the East Coast.
At lunch, the space that Jason once occupied next to me was abandoned. I didn’t see him for most of the period. Despite the weather, he still decided that the tables outside were his best option. I guess it was the only place in the cafeteria where he wouldn’t have to look at me.
At the end of lunch for five days, he would come in looking like a mess. He was dripping wet like John Cusack in Say Anything, only instead of a cool trench coat, he was wearing a gray sweater with the hood up, and instead of a boom box, all he carried with him was his cold, dead stare. His eyes would stay glued to me for the last five minutes every day that week, to remind me what I’d done. I never knew I could have such an effect on a person.
Other than that, things were peaceful. Solaria and I were in our prime forms. We were finally able to be our true selves together, all the time. Without Jason around to stifle things at lunch, Solaria was causing me to laugh and riff the same way she could at home. I was happy. It was perfect.
I went to her house that Friday. I didn’t go to her house as often as she went to mine, so it felt special any time I got to. Her family was interesting in a different way than mine.
Mostly, she lived with Grandma Weathervein. Grandma Weathervein was a strong, Christian woman. To me, she was always nice because she thought I was a very good girl (which was correct for the most part), and she liked to believe that I was a good influence on Solaria.
As expected, Solaria’s experience with Grandma Weathervein was different. As she told it, Grandma Weathervein was not above hitting and name-calling when things were not going her way. Being the oldest child in the house, most of the blows landed on Solaria. She was always getting into trouble for not doing her chores right, spending too much time in her room, or back-talking. All normal things that would leave Solaria with bruises on her arms.
All I ever saw were the passive-aggressive ends of it. The parts Grandma Weathervein couldn’t quite cover up when company was over. Little utterances of mind your manners and be good in her spooky soft voice.
Grandma Weathervein didn’t like gay people. She was one of the only True Homophobes I’ve ever met, to this day. Even in the South, most homophobes try to rationalize their fear and hatred by making rules and exceptions. It’s usually not just “I hate gay people”, usually it’s “I don’t mind gay people, I just…”— ”I just don’t want to see it in all the movies or on TV”— “I just wouldn’t want my kid to be gay”— “I just don’t think it belongs in schools”— “I just don’t think it belongs in public”— “I just don’t know why they need to get married”. You’ve heard it all before, but not from Grandma Weathervein. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Being gay, any kind of gay, was a sin.
Solaria told me about the time she tried to come out to her grandma as pansexual. Grandma Weathervein said she would disown Solaria. Then she shunned her. Then she ignored it altogether. It was easier for her to just pretend Solaria was still straight, especially while she was still dating boys. It didn’t get brought up again.
This scared me.
I’d been scared before, but never the way I was around Grandma Weathervein. I was lucky, because despite my family’s flaws, they were all about as far away from being homophobic as anyone in the Deep South could be. If I’d decided to come out to them as anything other than straight, they probably would have taken me out to dinner. There was fear about people at school finding out I wasn’t straight, but it didn’t carry that much weight, because I was already so used to getting called “f*****”. The only other time I came close to being really scared for myself was when I considered the possible outcomes of coming out to Annapolis Maryland. There was the possibility that if her mom found out I was gay, she wouldn’t want me coming around anymore. Usually, this thought didn’t bother me too much because it was A.) conditional (I would have to come out for it to happen) and B.) It wasn’t very realistic, because Annapolis’s mom loved and cared about me.
With Grandma Weathervein, I felt like I was walking alongside a pack of angry dogs. I was positive that she could smell the queerness in the sweat on the back of my neck. I was convinced she could see it sitting in the crease of my brow and in the twitch of my lips. I always looked like I was lying when she was around. I knew that if she found what she was looking for, if I slipped a microscopic amount, she would put an end to my communication with Solaria. Luckily for me, she wasn’t looking too hard.
Solaria’s father, Sir Arthur Weathervein, was a complicated figure, though his relationship with Solaria was fairly kind overall. He was a generally laid-back guy, from what I saw. He didn’t care much one way or the other about anything gay, I think what bothered him most about Solaria’s coming-out was the fact that he didn’t know what the hell pansexual was.
He traveled for work, that’s all I remember about his job. He did something vaguely rugged, somewhere between hanging power-lines to selling antiques. When he was home, he lived in an RV parked in Grandma Weathervein’s backyard. The backyard was so wide that walking to his RV was like walking over to the neighbor’s house. He would sit outside in a folding chair and wax poetic to us about the state we lived in.
I liked going to Solaria’s house regardless of anything. I loved her big backyard and the pond it led out to. I loved her woods, which were so much bigger and more marvelous than mine. I loved her room. I loved that her walls were the same shade of pink that mine were years before. I loved her toys. I loved her drawing supplies. I loved her pictures (some of them of friends I knew, like Jannette and Wesley, some of them of her many exes). I loved her posters (One Direction and Robin Williams). Her body spray (Sweat Pea from Bath and Body Works). Her makeup (black pencil liner, mascara, and a coral lipstick she never ever wore). There were stacks of books she liked and stacks of books she hadn’t read and stacks of books I’d lent to her (some of which she liked, most of which she hadn’t read). She had letters from her mom and poetry written on notebook paper. She had everything. I was enchanted; there was so much to discover about her in that room, and I’d barely had a chance to explore.
On Saturday, we went with Sir Arthur to the flea market. Hours went by as we oggled all the little ~treasures~. Hundreds of miniatures, crystal doorknobs, decks of cards, and the jewelry. Solaria stole one from an unattended display case: a heart, half red and half black, on a tarnished silver band.
“Like us,” she said as she placed it in my hand.
I tried not to think too much about what she could mean.
She took one for herself, too. Just a small black stone on a similarly tarnished band.
That night we watched Different Strokes and The Walking Dead on the TV in her room into the wee hours of the morning. I’d never seen either show, but they were two of her favorite shows. As much as I wanted to focus and to understand what Solaria liked so much about them, I couldn’t. The whole time we were lying in her bed, my mind raced through one cluster of thoughts.
I wanted to kiss her. I needed to kiss her. It was bursting out of me. It was making my skin too tight for my body. If I kissed her, she would know how I felt. If I kissed her, Grandma Weathervein might have seen us— or one of Solaria’s little sisters could have. Or worst of all, she could have not felt the same. It was all too much. So I did nothing. I did nothing.
A few days later, Solaria and I were texting. It was late again, but I didn’t really care about school in the morning. It wasn’t nearly as important as anything Solaria, and I could have been talking about.
i have something to tell u… She confessed in a message.
what is it? I responded
I was nervous.
She said:
i have a crush on someone.
My heart plummeted. Of course, it was a crush. Of course, it was someone else. Our short era of perfection was over. A new era with a new boyfriend was beginning. I was going to have to re-adject to Freddie’s replacement. All there was for me to do was swallow the feelings. I couldn’t be too sad about it, because that could ultimately lead to me actually losing her. But acting unbothered is easy enough over text, so it is what I did.
oh really??? who is it??? I acted excited to know.
it’s complicated. She said.
How complicated could it be? I wondered. Of course, one thing about Solaria: she liked it when things were complicated, so I thought it was maybe just a little drama she was adding to give the situation more flair. Probably another boy with a girlfriend or something, I couldn’t judge.
how so? I asked.
She said:
it’s one of my good friends. i don’t know how the person will react if i tell them.
I ran through my mental index of Solaria’s friends. She had plenty of friends from her classes, whom I only knew by name. It could have been any one of them
She went on:
…i’m not sure how anyone would react.
Why would anyone care? Solaria dated anyone. She didn’t seem to pay much attention to aesthetics or social standing. Everyone from the extreme preps to the total weirdos was fair game in her eyes. I couldn’t think of why it would be a problem for her.
Then— a familiar feeling settled on me. Deja vu. I’d had a conversation eerily similar to this one just a couple of months prior. I couldn’t believe it could possibly be true. I needed to know more.
I asked:
is it someone i know?
She said:
it’s someone u know VERY well.
I asked:
are they in my classes?
She said:
they are in ALL ur classes.
…
…
I asked:
is it a boy?
She said:
no.
There was no one else she could have been talking about.
I never thought it would be so scary, but it was. It was the end of the world. The life I had before was stretching out behind me as the past. The time before this moment and everything after would only be after this moment. It wasn’t just her (but a lot of it WAS her), it was the end of everything. What happened next would decide the fate of the rest of my life. Depending on the next messages we exchanged, I would either start my life as a gay person doing gay things. I would land on an identity, and then I would start living it. I would need courage. I would need to be strong. I felt Solaria could give me courage. Solaria could give me strength.
I asked:
can you tell me who it is?
She said:
i’m afraid.
She must have known that I knew. She must have known that I felt the same. She must have known that it had been crushing me for months. I wondered if she was taking pleasure in taking her time with the reveal.
I said:
i wont judge you.
I pushed:
i promise.
…
Each minute that passed was like a needle in my heart. I was on the verge of screaming out and waking my whole house. The message came through.
promise?
I repeated:
i promise.
…
it’s u.
Pure elation was coursing through my veins. I was overflowing with it. It was escaping only through choked giggles and clapping hands. Me. Me. Me. It’s me! At last! It’s me! And at last, I felt everything I was waiting to feel all year long. I felt everything I was waiting for with Caylin and Jason in every hug and kiss, and I love you. It was hitting me all at once, and I was overwhelmed with it. I could hardly breathe or see to text her back.
I said:
i knew it was me 🙂
She said:
really??? 😯
yes 😉
She asked:
…what do u think of it?
I said:
i feel the exact same. i’ve felt the same for sooooo long. it’s been awful.
She said:
thank god. i was so afraid you wouldn’t feel the same or you wouldn’t want to hang out anymore.
I said:
that could NEVER happen.
We both soaked in the glee and jubilee of our shared spark. We talked about all the different moments where one of us wanted to kiss the other. All the moments where one of us was ignorant of the other’s feelings.
She said:
when u called jason ur glue… it made me really mad, because i feel like if ANYTHING, i’m ur glue. and u are my glue. but i didn’t say anything because i thought u loved him.
I said:
i never meant ANY of that.
good.
Then she asked the big question, because neither of us could stand to lose any more time.
would you want to be my girlfriend?
With no regard for the potential consequences, my focus was only on my desire for her love and affection. My thoughts were inundated with ideas of what it could be like to be hers. Suddenly, the end of my world didn’t seem so scary. It seemed like it was right all along.
I said:
absolutely.
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