light-hearted - Stories

Sometimes, you just want to go out to a bar and enjoy some peace and quiet when the holidays are rapidly approaching. Nothing wrong with that.

But, every once in a while...you get a mini blast from the past when you least expect it. And it just might turn out to be the holiday cheer you've been looking for.

When Josh and his family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he knew he'd be helping his dad to renovate their new apartment. It hadn't been touched since the building opened in the mid-1950s and it needed a ton of work. Even so, it cost as much as they got for their old matchbook house in Brooklyn - close to a million dollars - and the only way they could afford it was to gut it and renovate it themselves. Josh was no stranger to handiwork, having helped rebuild after Hurricane Sandy, when he was just seven and could barely hold a drill. Little did they know that this time they'd face a hurricane and a global pandemic.

It's 2010, and Peter “Trout” Spencer is thirty-two, living a gloriously gay one-night-stand life. That is until an instance of mishearing by his grandmother at her eightieth birthday party throws his world off kilter. What she hears as “I’m going to get married in June,”—to someone called Wendy—is in fact, “I’m going to get Marisse and June,” his stepsister and her girlfriend. When she offers her six bedroom Hamptons house as a wedding present, Trout has a dilemma; in the world of fake news, could he be forgiven for seeking out a fake wife?

Shiro keeps fighting the cook at Waffle House who makes his eggs wrong.
Keith doesn't even work at Waffle House, but he's never had so much fun outside a kitchen as he does throwing punches out back.
Adam is really fucking sick of this nonsense and wants his boyfriend to grow up.

...poor Adam, we won't miss him.

I used to be like you. I used to think that the zombie apocalypse would be kinda fun and exciting. I secretly hoped it would happen like everyone else. But that’s because, like you, I thought it would be like all the videogames or movies or books. Let me tell you one thing though: It’s not even close.

Tanner has just won the best prize ever - an opportunity to meet one of his favorite singers, Jonathan White. Little does he know that the prize includes more than he bargained for!

In Devon’s world, love is free and sex is fun. Unfortunately, not everyone shares his openness, which is really inconvenient when he finds himself deeply attracted to a former fling’s boyfriend. Maybe there is a chance, though. After all, things have a tendency to turn out okay in the end for Devon.

On my way back from a meeting in Preston, I take pity on a cold-looking hitch-hiker standing on a deserted back road...

Do you believe in Leprechauns?

A part of Cia's 'Flash Fiction' challenge for the GA Newsletter, this short 'one-shot' story details the experience of a gay sibling coming home from college to meet his younger sister's boyfriend for the first time. Is he imagining things, or does he see more of himself in this boy than he expected?