PREFACE: Hello my wonderful readers.
I am so sorry this post is going up a little bit late, I know I keep saying this but things have been crazy.
I want to talk a little bit about what has been going on for me and why it has been hard for me to keep it together as of late.
1.) I recently lost a friend of mine. She was my high school theater director and also a well established member of the slam poetry community in Denver. She left a major impact on myself, my friends, and our community. This loss has had a larger impact on me than I have expected, but it has been really nice to reconnect with old friends I haven’t seen in a few years.
I should say, she will appear as a character in some of the next installments of a blog, probably, because she was a character in that part of my life. At this point, it feels a little silly to give her a random fake name… it almost feels disrespectful? I’m not sure.
2.) Right after publishing my post “Things Fall Apart,” my little sister messaged me. I hadn’t talked to her in over ten years, because my dad has been keeping her isolated from her entire family in South Carolina for the past decade. It has been a very odd situation. She hasn’t read my blog and I told her she probably shouldn’t for a while, because she does not remember most of the things I write about. Still, it is kind of haunting knowing she’s out there and could read these pieces at any given time.
I think it is good for me to continue to speak my truth, and maybe one day she will be ready to read it for herself…but I don’t expect that time to come very soon.
Mostly, I feel kind of haunted by my father when I talk to her. She is nothing like him, but I feel his presence when we speak. He hasn’t been honest with her about anything, and it breaks my heart and makes me resent him even more. That’s dads for you I guess.
Finally; I know I always say this, but I didn’t expect to dedicate fourteen parts to the 9th grade. This part is officially the last part that takes place in South Carolina or in/around 9th grade, so I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I am thinking about potentially using a lot of this material to write a novel… we will see. Either way, thank you again for the support and for reading. I hope you are still enjoying it and I haven’t bored you… and if I have, you can look forward to getting to know an entirely new cast of characters next week.
Tata for now!
-Milkweed
*****
Having a secret gay lover was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.
When Solaria and I awoke the next day, we were both still woozy from the high of having kissed. We were all smiles and we could barely contain ourselves. Though containment was compulsory.
If Grandma Weathervein found out about Solaria and my sleepover activities, everything would have been completely halted. We would have been ripped apart without proper goodbye, and our situation would become even more tragic than it already was. Already we knew that our love would come to a premature end, but we refused to let the thought taint our time together. We had to thoroughly enjoy every fleeting moment we had together before I went back to Colorado permanently, and we had to move carefully to avoid being caught under any circumstances. Really, it just made everything a little more interesting.
It was a game: cram as much horny-teenage-lesbian behavior into three days as possible without being seen by anyone. We played this game deftly and we made the time count: We brushed our teeth, and then we kissed. We went swimming in the pond outside her house; we watched the tadpoles swimming frantically from stone to stone, we practiced our hand stands, and we floated in the water, and then we kissed. We made macaroni and cheese together for lunch, and then we kissed.
When kissing was too risky, when family was around the corner or even in the room, we let our thighs touch, we let our fingers intertwine, we brushed our shoulders together. We did anything to let the other know we were still there and we hadn’t forgotten and we still felt the same way we did before.
She was my first and long awaited make-out. We were watching The Walking Dead in her room, but we weren’t really watching at all. We were busy, we were kissing. I was just following her lead; every time we kissed, I was too dizzy to think about what I was doing. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if we had already been making out or not— the kisses we shared were the most passionate, lasting kisses I’d experienced, and I was starting to think that maybe kissing with tongue was a myth. I was thinking that maybe making-out was just prolonged kissing.
I realized I was wrong about this new theory when Solaria asked me flat-out if I wanted to make-out with her. Not doing much to hide how eager I was (and not seeing the point in doing so), I answered Absolutely.
I probably would have gone years and years thinking I don’t like making-out had my first make-out been with a boy, simply because boys are statistically worse kissers than girls (I will not be citing my sources). This is not to say that only boys are bad kissers, but generally I believe a boy needs to learn how to kiss again every time he kisses someone knew. Boys rarely have a sense of the natural and right way to kiss any given person. Often they need to be shown.
Girls seem to know how to kiss each person they meet inherently. Maybe it comes from the empathy we are conditioned from birth to stay in touch with. Maybe a girl can read the kind of kiss a person needs in their eyes. I can’t possibly say…
All I can say is that in my teenage years I went on to kiss several other girls and boys, and the boys always seemed to approach kissing like a competition rather than an art form.
Either way, making-out was terrifying. So terrifying, that when Solaria’s tongue found its way into my mouth, I nearly fell off her bed. The sensory experience was one I had no way of imagining, making it all the more shocking. However, when I got over the surprising coldness of her tongue and when I got a feel for the way things were supposed to go— it was everything I’d hoped it would be. Everything was electric.
It was everything I wanted to feel. Everything I waited to feel with Caylin and with Jason, to no avail. I felt all of it and more with Solaria. Maybe, I told myself, it’s because we were such good friends before. Maybe it is our inherent and perfect understanding of each other that is making everything feel so strong. I was terrified that the significance could have gone even further than that. Maybe…just maybe….I was not one to feel those sorts of feelings with people like Caylin or Jason… Blaize Huckabee or Jamie McMeen or Seashell Luke…. Maybe only people like Solaria could…
It wouldn’t have been the worst thing, I knew that (especially with everything else I had going on, being a lesbian would have been relatively inconsequential). But it would be another thing to deal with and it would have been a more drastic shift in how the world saw me. I didn’t think I was ready for a change that big.
Regardless, being with Solaria made me feel like a lesbian. Besides the new found spark I felt any time we kissed… there was more to it. With Solaria I didn’t feel shy or awkward. I didn’t feel like I had to be quiet or hide myself away from her the way I did with the boys. I felt in touch with her. I felt close to her. I felt like I wanted to be touching her at all times. I felt like I needed to show her how much love and affection I had for her or else it would start bursting from my seams.
It made me wonder how people ended up knowing those kinds of things. I knew easily that I liked girls, but deciding if I actually liked boys or if society had just fooled me into thinking I must was impossible.
No matter what, I knew my time with Solaria was revelatory. I would return to Denver completely changed, and the thought made me a little more confident about 10th grade.
On our last night together, Solaria walked me across a final threshold.
Each night I was there, we’d taken our shirts off for the heat, but we kept our bras on to preserve our modesty. On the final night, as we kissed, Solaria took off her bra, and then she took off mine too. As we pressed our bare chests together and I felt Solaria’s fingers caress my back from bottom to top and back down again, I felt like we were merging. We were becoming one. I was reaching Nirvana.
I’d never understood all the hullabaloo about boobs before that. I was on the “they’re just sacks of flesh train”. I quickly realized why people were obsessed with boobs, I was instantly obsessed myself.
As I came to this realization, my inner voice chanted: You are so gay. You are so gay. You are the gayest person on Earth and you have been this whole time. You’re gay. You’re gay. YOU’RE GAY!!!!!!
Not bothering to put our clothes back on, we fell asleep in each other’s arms one last time.
****
One of Solaria’s little sisters, Pixie Weathervein, woke me up in the morning, Solaria was already gone from the bed, I thought maybe it was her standing above me. As my eyes focused on the girl’s blonde curls and her big blue eyes, I started, because I realized it was not Solaria and I did not have my shirt on. My shirt was on the floor, right next to where the girl stood.
Her eyes were wide with alarm and her mouth was as tight as a knot. For a moment we both stood, talking with only our eyes.
Do you know what you are looking at right now? My eyes asked.
You are in my sister’s bed and you don’t have a shirt on. I’m starting eighth grade next year. I’m not an idiot. Hers answered.
Are we cool? Mine asked.
“Breakfastisreadydownstairs,weareleavingtodropyouoffintwentyminutes.” She said it all like it was one giant word.
“Okay, thank—”
She was already out the door and shutting it behind her.
I felt certain that I was a goner.
With haste, I got dressed and threw my things together. If Pixie was going to rat, I had to rush downstairs so that I could try to mitigate the situation for Solaria. But when I got downstairs, everything seemed the same as it had all week, except for Pixie’s still gigantic eyes that seemed to avoid me where ever I went in the room. Otherwise, Grandma Weathervein was the same as she ever was, which is not to say she was normal, but she was normal for her.
I guessed Pixie hadn’t said anything by then, but I was still bracing for the impact the resto of the morning. I wondered what she was waiting for. Would she say it in the car? Would she wait until I was gone so that Solaria had to face the consequences alone? I had no idea.
I remained tense the morning for a blow that never came.
We all just piled into the car— All five of us, Solaria, Grandma Weathervein, Pixie and her twin Lola, and me. We drove the thirty minutes to my mom and Melissa’s Motel 6.
Solaria and I couldn’t kiss goodbye, for obvious reasons. Instead, we hugged for as long as we possibly could without drawing suspicion from anyone else. When we pulled apart, we gazed into each other’s eyes with matching sets of tears. Tears that made her olive eyes even more wonderfully vibrant and her rosy cheeks all the more flush.
“What am I going to do without you?” I asked, choking on the words.
“You?” she laughed as she wiped her face, “What about me?”
“I’m going to miss you… so, so much.” I said.
“I’ll miss you too.”
We went in for one more hug, and I whispered, so quietly that no one around us could have heard anything but a breath escape my mouth, “I love you.” For the first time, I felt the meaning of the words as I said them.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
Then we pulled away again. We let go. We said goodbye.
My mom and I stood together in the motel parking lot, watching the Weathervein car pull away. Solaria was the best thing to happen to me and the worst thing to happen to me. It was beautiful and it was awful. I was at once alive for the first time in my life and decimated all together.
When the car was out of view, my mom lit a cigarette. I sensed she could feel the weight of my emotion, even if neither of us said anything about it. My mom was more perceptive than any other adult in my life. I wondered if she would call me out. Ask if it was my intention all along to fool everyone so I could spend time with my secret girlfriend. But she didn’t.
I wished I could have asked her for a cigarette. I felt like I needed one for the first time in my life.
Unprompted, I confessed, “We were in love.” My eyes were still searching for their car in the distance, even though it was long gone. “We are in love,” I corrected, “and it’s real love. I know it’s love.”
Mom just kept smoking, so I went on:
“I might be gay.”
In her fabulous, Fran Dresher way, Mom blew a big cloud of smoke into the parking lot. “Honey, I know.”
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