26
Lillian
It’s Monday night and I can’t make my body play another note. I’ve been working on a guitar part since I got home from school, my half-healed fingertips stinging every time I slide across the low strings, making me grit my teeth.
I love to play guitar. More than singing, more than songwriting. The first love is the truest and all of that. I’m preoccupied with sound, chronically distracted in stores by the distant intricacies of guitar parts on speakers overhead. How’d they get that delay? How can I attain the same reverb? I’m mapping out pedals, different dials compensating and combining and generating new sonic problems. I have to go home and try it.
This is why I didn’t stop playing tonight. I’m sure of it. I need to get this part sorted because I love music.
It’s about love.
It’s about love.
I look at my guitar and it feels like a weapon I’m using on myself. Like something I push against that pushes back. I have the urge to grab Butler by its neck and smash it against the floor. To feel it splintering.
Because anything you can destroy surely has no power over you. As long as I can cause ruin, I am owned by no one.
I stop playing.
What am I doing? This doesn’t feel like the tortured artist moments I’m sometimes prone to. It recurs, persists.
For a while, I blamed all the turmoil on being queer and raged against myself. But I didn’t believe it. It was a false explanation.
Because I love being bi. To wish it away is to negate one of my favorite parts of myself.
To wish away who I am is to let the bastards grind me down.
Of course it’d be easier and safer if I wasn’t queer. Obviously. Someone had the gall to decide research was necessary to prove repression and discrimination and all that ugliness is bad for your mental health. I suppose it’s nice confirmation that being queer isn’t what hurts you. Being in constant fight or flight, unfortunately, rips you apart.
But personally, I’m fortunate. I’m mostly in contexts where I don’t have to hide it. I lost a couple people when I came out, but only ones who were pretty shit to begin with.
Whatever makes me want to smash my guitar started before I had a real concept of sexuality. My dad being in and out of the picture doesn’t cover it either, like I used to think as a kid. I still have family who care about me and tell me they care about me and tell me they’ll care no matter what. They’ve shown it time and time again, and the friends I’ve added along the way have too.
Still, I wind up here, throwing myself at something and unable to figure out why.
Lately, I’ve pinned it on the breakup, but Emelia didn’t buffer against all the moments like this. I know she tried. I think I had to believe she could do it. That she could be a wall between the parts of me that burned bright and the parts that burned dangerously.
I don’t know how to distinguish between all the fire. I’ve lost Emelia, and now most of the things I care about most are getting scorched. From the newest, like Sasha, to the oldest, like playing guitar.
Someone’s got to step in. I can’t.
I knock on Jasper’s door. When he opens it, it’s laugh or cry, so I pick the easier one and say.
“You’re right, I have girl problems.”
“What?”
He doesn’t remember the conversation, plus some soccer video game is open on his monitor. But I’ve made it this far.
“You said you had girl problems too. We should form an alliance.”
“Don’t tempt me by making it sound epic.”
I take a stab at the deep tones defining every bad movie trailer.
“In a world torn asunder by high-stakes teen relationships …”
He tries to resist for a second before taking on a much better version of the dramatic voice.
“… one ruggedly handsome protagonist and his ratty sister will form an alliance to solve their problems and find the answer before it’s too late.”
“Too late”
is a major concern of mine.
Jasper sits in his desk chair, spinning one way and then the other. His room is always tidy in a way that makes me feel like I’m something an animal dragged in. The bed is made too tightly to disrupt, so I take the floor and fiddle with the closest thing I can reach, which makes Jasper twitch a little.
“Why are you the protagonist?”
I ask.
“You have none of the qualities.”
“Well when we were kids it was always you,”
says Jasper.
“so now it’s my turn.”
“What can I say, some of us were born to be heroes.”
“But are you ruggedly handsome enough?”
He makes a frame with his hands to look at me.
“I’m seeing orphan, street urchin, rogue.”
I flip him off with both hands.
“What’d you do to your fingers? Was it toast again?”
Seeing them from his perspective, they look worse than they did in my room. I don’t want him to look at me like he’s worried. Then everyone in the house will.
“So girl problems,”
I say.
“Or romance problems.”
“Ooh, is there a boy?”
I give Jasper a look.
He spins his chair around again.
“There’s no drama like queer drama. Who are they?”
“Sasha Weaver. They just moved here and they’ve hung out with me and Cyprus and Quinn a couple times. They go to our school. They’ve got really excellent hair and outfits. They’re like friendly, but shy. And also honest. And sort of bold?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know who you’re talking about. I can see how you’d be into them. Or you can keep waxing poetic about this dream-person if you want.”
I cover my face with my hands because I’m blushing.
“They’re into good music too.”
“Oh dear lord.”
“But.”
“But?”
Talking through it again doesn’t solve it. I hoped it magically would. It’s an impossible tangle that starts with how I’m not over Emelia.
If Sasha doesn’t like me how I like them, I might have scared them off. Cyprus and Quinn care about Emelia too, and they’re also becoming friends with Sasha, and I bet they don’t want Sasha to be scared away either. My singleness is not creating a fun time. I’m sure my friends miss how things were before.
And there’s the band.
When I finish, Jasper doesn’t even pause before saying.
“There’s an obvious solution.”
“Flee the city and change my name?”
“That would work. And I’d get your bedroom. This idea is growing on me.”
“What’s the real obvious solution?”
“Be patient for once. It requires some background.”
I’m not sure where he’s going with this, but okay.
“I had a summer thing at camp with this girl, and now we talk all the time. As in, a lot. She lives far away, I still really like her, but there’s nothing to be done. Tragedy, tragedy.”
This is the first time I’m hearing about this.
“I also maybe had a moment with Julia.”
“Volleyball Julia?”
“Yes, Volleyball Julia. Now let me tell my story. I like Julia.”
“Duh.”
“As I was saying, I like Julia. Does she like me? I don’t know. Good news is, I don’t just like her because she’s —”
“Incredibly leggy?”
Jasper stops spinning his chair and looks straight at me.
“Do you actually want to talk about how sexy Julia is? You want to have that talk with me, your little baby brother?”
There’s a memory from two nights ago, masturbating while my brain made frustrating, confusing jumps between fantasizing about Emelia and Sasha. Known desire, fresh desire. Nothing was occupying enough to pull me away from that confusion. Even recalling it while I’m in Jasper’s room is utterly distressing.
“Let’s stick to relationships,”
I say quickly.
“Let’s.”
He leans forward and takes the controller I’m fiddling with out of my hand.
“When I’m with Julia, I’m happy. I get home, I’m still happy. That doesn’t hinge on whether we hook up or not. Also Calvin’s into Julia and he’s my best friend and he thinks I’m hung up on Camp Girl, which I sort of am.”
“There’s no drama like straight drama.”
“Touché.”
“So, what’s your play?”
I’m looking for another thing to have in my hands, but Jasper’s room is so tidy that I’d have to rip something off the wall.
“Don’t say ‘play.’ You’re dangerously close to talking about sports and I can’t bear to watch you flounder.”
“I know about bases and how they reinforce rigid sexual scripts.”
“Please stop.”
Jasper spins his chair the other way like he’s resetting.
“So I’m going to be friends with Julia and give it time. If I stay friends with her, then great. If something else happens along with that, also great. Genuinely, either one. I’m not, like, waiting to pounce. I’m serious. I’m not going to use her as a rebound.”
I believe him, though I’m also wondering how he went and got so mature on me. It’s downright unsettling.
“The point is,”
says Jasper.
“if you’re friends with Sasha in the end and that’s it, will it be a disappointment to you?”
I’d like to answer no with confidence. I settle for the evasive truth.
“I’ll be most disappointed if I lose a new friend.”
Along with disappointment in myself that I’m not tough enough to simply get over Emelia. I’m not as bold as I thought I’d be. I thought I’d have fun, undirected desire to toss around. Instead the only people I want are my ex and someone who’s probably not interested in me.
“Now you owe me a game,”
says Jasper, gesturing to his monitor.
That’s Emelia’s favorite game. She used to make me play when I was at her house, and I always seemed to lose. I played with her anyway because I loved her. Also because I wanted to win.
Jasper knows all that, but he either forgets or understands that when your life has been woven together with someone else’s you can’t go avoiding every little thing that reminds you of them. Soon, you’re doing nothing and feeling sad about when you used to do nothing together.
I lose 6–1, but I called last goal wins, and that was me. In your face, Jasper.
Upstairs, Butler is leaning in the corner staring back at me, challenging me. Why did you quit? Why not work on that part a little more? Why not play a chord with your guitar facing your amplifier and let the feedback bury everything else? It offers me something to cling to.
I unplug my amp.
I’ve found a little focus somewhere else, enough to hold on to.
I’m going to text Sasha soon. Say.
“Hey, I haven’t seen you at school,”
or hopefully something better. I’ll send them a song by a weird artist they might like. I’ll slow the hell down and try to understand that slowing down isn’t stopping.
It’s hard to learn when your two speeds are sprint and impact.
My phone vibrates. And it’s Sasha.
It’s hard to learn when the world tilts between crashing and acceleration.
It’s Sasha and they’ve skipped messages and they’re just calling me here, now, with their voice in my bedroom. I watch my phone until it stops vibrating. I’m going to give this a minute and see what this is. I’m not going to throw myself in.
One missed call — Sasha.
One unread message — not Sasha.