Month: February 2018

I spend about $50. Two pairs of golden tights, the first of which are too matte. Two pairs of angel wings: first children’s size, then what I believe are adults, but are actually smaller in person. A bow and arrow which went unused beyond selfies. Two hooded, sleeveless tops, one pink and one red; the latter works. Boyfriend buys me the wig, a yellowy blonde cosplay one. The gold shoelaces never arrive in the mail and I swap them for magenta.

I fantasize. I imagine a piece of performance art where I go around as Cupid, shooting Trump for President signs with a bow and arrow.

I have to catch the train. I throw the majority of the costume in a plastic grocery bag and put on the wig. I carry the angel wings and hold them tenderly to my chest, so the wind won’t hurt them. I sprint the the sidewalks near the pizza place in a pair of cotton gym shorts. I’m wearing the red top, and a pink Jigglypuff crop-top underneath, but not the gold tights even though it’s almost Halloween. I live in a quiet place but some people really hate gay guys, you know? Especially cute ones who like to be shiny sometimes.

I get to the train platform. “We could use an angel,” says a woman waiting. I laugh and as I get closer she adds, “Aw the little angel’s freezing.” I’m relieved when I finally board the commuter rail and sit on the familiar red of the seat cushions.

I am even happier when I emerge from the bathroom in my friend’s apartment fully costumed. Legs encased in cheap liquid gold. Skinny arms adorned with Valentine’s Day tattoos. Cheap party wings strapped in at the armpits. A few glasses of white wine. Bacchus swished and swallowed and an Uber called. Then we’re at the disco.

Here is a me I haven’t met before. The one wearing a cute gay costume in a crowd. My crack of smile a fissure in the dark.

I suddenly feel self-conscious as I near the front of the dance floor. I start to retreat but a twentysomething and I start dancing. Not touching, just sort of swaying. Together. As night deepens, she removes her sash and gifts it to me. It reads DEBUTANTE BRAWL. I awkwardly accept.

“I have to confess something,” she says. “I’m wearing a wig,” and she pulls it off. 
“That’s fine,” I say. “I am too.”

 

---

Alexander Castro (b. 1992) is a writer and journalist based in Massachusetts. He regularly contributes reporting and criticism to Big Red & Shiny, Mercury, and GLASS Quarterly. His writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, untethered, Don’t Take Pictures, and SUSAN. He is currently working on a collection of essays that combine research, memoir and criticism. OhNoCastro.com

 

There’s a street without a name on an estate without any lights where, in a house without any rules, God talks to me. He says, Robbie, why you thinking about Paul, and not the football?

But I don’t want to hear it, so I grab my coat from the banister at the bottom of the stairs and go out. A piece of fiber-board is nailed to the bottom half of the door, where some git kicked it in. I take out my cigarettes. Blue smoke billows from my mouth, making me look hard. I use my thumb and first finger to hold the cigarette butt, because that’s how proper lads are meant to do it.

Because I’ve no money in my pocket, me and Paul are pissing about on the riverbank. Paul has my rolled-up coat under his head. He’s wearing a yellow t-shirt that makes his skin look nice. We’re watching the lines aeroplanes draw across the pink sky, guessing where they’re going. “Spain?” he says.

“Wrong way,” I say.

“How d’you know, mate?”

“Just do.”

Every now and again his arm pushes up against mine. I like it so much it hurts. Feels like if I stay right by his side I’ll throw-up. That’s when I roll away and say, “We should go to Spain.”

Paul hops up off the grass. “You wanna go swimming?” He hustles to the water’s edge.

“Nah,” I say, watching him strip off. His arse is moon white. I close my eyes when he turns around. The colours on my eyelids change from red to blue and back again. When I open my eyes, he’s gone.

“Stop messing about.” I light another cigarette. “Paul—”

There’s a ripple in the muddy black water where he was a few seconds ago. I’m waiting, begging for him to come back up. But it’s useless. God hates me.

 

---

 

Jon Ransom is a queer writer living in Cambridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holding both of my hands in his, I could feel my calluses against the ones in Justin’s palms, the ones that protect him from kitty-litter granite, the ones that keep his bones from being bothered by the cold. He looked me in my face and said “The timing is just bad, that’s all.”

He talks with his hands cupped, his fingers never separating, in a way that looks like paws. He uses them to flip pancakes. He doesn’t need a spatula. When he wakes up early, before his voice is working, he grunts like a pup in my hair.

At work, a Veteran brought in his grandson and told me about his time in Vietnam. He runs 11 miles a day, but still, last month he had a heart attack. Behind him, his grandson was having a nerf gun war with another customer’s kid. “I pulled out my wallet. That’s the last thing I remember before I dropped,” said the Veteran. As he talked, his grandson took a foam dart to the gut, and crumpled.

Justin told me his life has amounted to many things, but a recurring theme is convincing women not to commit suicide; his mother the first in the series. Later, it was a girlfriend. That was the first time I saw him cry: his head on my shoulder late one night, downtown, beside my car. He picked his head up, and pulled his collar up around his muzzle.

“Bad timing,” he said, and he shook his head. In the distance, the sound of a dog chain.

---

Katie Quinnelly is a climbing instructor in West Virginia. Her work has appeared in Occulum, Moonchild Magazine, The Ginger Collect, and b(OINK), among others.