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- 05/27/2013
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Bad Stereotypes - 5. Thursday 6th of June 2013
I still hadn’t come out to the people I worked with.
Monday the South Alaska was shut, properly shut. Tuesday was bar only, with no club, as was Sunday until 10pm. I’d spent Monday unpacking, gone into town and bought some new clothes, hated the look that the guy in the shop had given me, a sneer that didn’t hide the fact that he thought I was just some camp idiot ‘dressing up’ in black. I’d run every day, and I loved it, especially early in the morning before the sun was really up, running in the light grey sky. If I timed it right, I could see the sun rising like a fireball over the skyline of the city.
It was nearly midnight, still slow on a Thursday, and I’d joined Batty up top with Zoltan, mostly to avoid the sight of James and Sal making out really heavily behind the bar.
“So what made you come to the city for the summer?” Batty asked, blowing smoke rings into the air. I didn’t smoke, neither did Zoltan, and she had the good sense to stand down wind.
“I just got sick of home I guess.” Not exactly a lie, but telling half-truths sucked.
“Yeah?” Zoltan arched an eyebrow sceptically, “You don’t talk about your friends or anything much though. You don’t miss them?”
I snorted in response.
“A fat lot of good that would do me. They don’t miss me.” I kicked at the step with my boot, I’d got them back home, ex-army gear with thick sole and steel toecaps, “Nothing good came about after…” I stopped realising what I had been about to say. The sum and total of the people I knew down here were Dale, Batty, James, Sal and Zoltan. And while if they didn’t like what I had to say they would still have to work with me, they could make my life uncomfortable. On the other hand… going back into the closet was a shitty sort of choice, especially if I wanted any chance of getting laid this summer.
“After?” Zoltan repeated.
“After I came out. My friends figured that I would want to make newer, gayer friends and stopped speaking to me.” At that moment a gaggle of boys walked by who were archetypally camp and totally not my type. I sneered at the pink and stupid hairstyles, skin tight jeans and shrill cries of ‘ggggirlll!’ “They assumed I was going to change and be like them.”
“Sorry?” Batty was flicking her heavily made up eyes between where I stood and the receding backs of the pink parade, “You’re gay, and you don’t like gay people? Huh?”
I sighed.”
“I don’t see why being gay has to be all there is about me. Making your sexuality your defining feature like the faaaab-ulous crowd down there is just pathetic. Being gay is part of who I am, it’s not everything I am.”
“Dude.” Zoltan sipped at his drink, looking thoughtful, “If you hadn’t just told us you dig guys I would have said that you’re really repressed. That’s fucked up.”
I grunted a response, and stomped back inside to stack glasses. It was going to be a long night.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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