fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Please Don’t Say You Love Me
By: Alexandria Brown
Tags: Relationships, Love, Self, Creative Non Fiction, Dating

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

I’m scared. I’ve never said those words before to someone like you. I’ve never had those words said to me by someone like you either.

Sure, I’ve said I’ve loved people before but it’s not like this. I didn’t say those three words while staring into someone’s eyes while our fingers are intertwined. I haven’t said those words so slow and deliberate that the receiver feels every ounce of the weight I mean them in the depths of their soul. I have left trails of my kisses along their jawline while whispering those words in between my lips colliding with their skin.

And I don’t want to do it with you. Not yet. Not because I don’t feel it because I really, really do. But don’t say love because we’re not yet ready. We’re not ready for the significance of what those words carry but it doesn’t make this any less real.

I told myself the next time I say those words I would mean it forever and never go back on it. I told myself if I feel those words start to fall out again I would make sure that this would be the right time. Even though I know it is, it’s scary when you know. Fear will always be something that holds people back.

With love sometimes comes pain, and I’ve been in pain so many times before with the misuse of ‘I love you.’ I’ve told myself past situations were love. I really believed it too. Then those relationships ended so excruciatingly that it made me question if love is even something that’s attainable.

I’ve carried the weight of past heartbreaks on my back for so long now that it’s almost difficult for me to set it down. It’s almost difficult for me to accept that maybe this is different. Because this is completely different.

Something happened when you walked into my life. My walls that were so indestructible, crumbled with the touch of your fingers. Something happened the first time you slept over and I woke up to someone I didn’t instantly want to kick out. Even though somewhere deep inside of me was screaming at me to get out, my heart told that voice to quiet down. My heart told me that this was different.

My heart explodes the second you say my name. It’s almost like when you’re around, I’m reminded what it’s like to feel alive. It’s intoxicating and I’m completely addicted to the high. I know that I won’t be letting you go without a fight.

So, don’t say love. Say any other word but love and I’ll understand what you mean. I’ll know that this is going somewhere and you’re not going to run scared. We don’t have to dive in so deep so fast because we have all the damn time in the world. We’re in this together.

Please don’t tell me you love me, because where we are right now is perfect.
Raymond Bern
By: Joe Fair Phd
Tags: Alcoholism, Suicide, Creative Non Fiction

Raymond’s own mental voice was an urgent chorus:

I need help.

I need help.

I need help.

Raymond said nothing.

The embrace faded and his arms came down.

He kissed his Sarah on the forehead and gave her a subtle nod paired with a small smile.

Her pleading expression asking: What’s wrong?

I love you. Goodbye.

His lips did not move.

He began looking around the room, searching for something, anything

that could delay what was now inevitable.

He picked his pajamas off the bed and folded them into his dresser drawer.

He would wait until Sarah left the room, then tuck his pistol into the back of his pants.

He could see himself backing the car down the driveway for the last time.

The phone rang. It was uncle Robby.

Raymond answered.

Robby’s chronic cheeriness never ceased to puzzle him.

“You wanna go shoot something?”

There was a pause as Raymond processed the question, deciding there was only one way he could honestly answer.

“Yes. Yes I do.”

“Great! I’ll pick you up.”

“Ok.

I’ll be here.”

.
Putting the Disco Back into Discourse
By: Bradley Wester
Tags: Artist, LGBTQ, Art, Creative Non Fiction, Contemporary Art

The body of work I call DISCOurse is a non-medium-specific practice combining painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, and photographic digital imaging into larger works/installations. The work formally manipulates the glitz and glam aesthetic of early queer disco, reimagining its diverse site as a rehearsal for inclusion. In that era of the color-blind disco club, the veil of repression was lifted, if only for a few hours, to make otherness or queerness attractive and dazzling — even for the straight interloper. From Andy Warhol to movie stars, Drag Queens to S&M queens to Jersey teens with good haircuts, at the Disco you came home.

Before the eventual elitism of the velvet rope, or Disco’s arguable devolvement into sex, drugs, death, and exercise videos, the Disco was, for a time, a dreamland of marginal belonging. From this utopic perspective, 70’s Disco heralded progressive change by reveling in its flamboyant, radical aesthetic of shine.

With DISCOurse, I mean to celebrate and critique our pervasive shine obsession. I look soberly at the dangers of contemporary shine through a nostalgic filter of disco toward a re-queering and re-radicalizing of shine. This work elevates the imperfect, the perforated, the broken shine, to reveal the interstices of societies’ reflection, the spaces between our fragments, androgynous spaces filled with potential.

The site of DISCOurse, like cross-border economies, is where material goods, ideas, and definitions are hybridized and repurposed, are new and possible, where culture and the imagination anticipate a future diverse, optimistic, joyous and fun — it puts the disco back into critical discourse.
People Will Say
By: Hannah Mae
Tags: Domestic Violence, Creative Writing, Creative Non Fiction, Poetry

Why didn’t you leave?

I couldn’t leave without him.

Why didn’t you tell me?

Guilt. Shame. The love of secrecy.

I hate him.

Me too.

You know, I always knew there was something wrong with him.

You were right, I guess. Congratulations.

If I ever saw him again I would kill him.

If I ever saw him again I might leave all of you.
How can I put this …?
By: Where Angels Fear
Tags: Red Nose Day, Thankmas, Creative Non Fiction, Family, The Weekly Knob

How can I put this …?

‎

You know Preacher, right?

And you know Billy Bob Bobbs and Lorie Bobbs, yeah?

‎

You might want to think about rephrasing that particular sentence.

</just sayin’>
Good People, Good Food, Questionable Music
By: Aura Wilming
Tags: Red Nose Day, Thankmas, Creative Non Fiction, Family, The Weekly Knob

My uncle with his trumpet. My two oldest cousins on the flute. The middle one on a clarinet. Her sister on a recorder, because she only just started lessons. There was a man with a trombone too, a great uncle perhaps? He was bald and wrinkly and always smiling, even when he was blowing on his instrument. The rest of us singing along.

We’d start out on Christmas carols and when we ran out, we’d play and sing whatever came to mind. It didn’t matter if we went out of tune, good was never the objective.

Grandma at the head of the table, proud as a peacock.

Funny how memories work. Grandma passed on when I was six. I have a hard time remembering anything about her, but when I see the dark green china with the gold trim, it all comes flooding back. So many memories are wrapped up in these plates. Decades worth. Generations worth.

The plates crossed the Atlantic with us, ready to make even more memories. An ever changing group of expats made up a new adoptive family for the holidays. Guitars and cuatros replaced the wind instruments. But the basic recipe stayed the same: good people, good food and questionable music.

Mom at the head of the table, proud as a peacock.

My brother and I grew up, married, had kids of our own. Holiday diners dwindled in numbers, but that was okay, over the years, so had the china. The acoustic guitar became an electric guitar. We knew more rock ballads than Christmas carols. We still went off key.

New Grandma at the head of the table, proud as a peacock.

I’ve learned to live with the people I love far away from me. I’ve even learned to live with this “new normal”, in a sense. But pulling out the Christmas decorations, and seeing the dark green plates with the gold rim, and leaving them there in the closet? That was unexpectedly hard.

Maybe next year everyone can come together again for good people, good food and questionable music.

The Weekly Knob writing community proudly joins #Thankmas and Red Nose Day with the publication of our Charity Plate edition. All donations made through THIS LINK go directly to The Full Plate Project, making sure no hungry child or family faces an empty plate this holiday season.

Remember- Your donation, in any amount, is a beautiful thing, and donations of $5.00 or more will receive a link to download a free copy of our first ever holiday e-book. Peace to all!

The Weekly Knob is solely responsible for participation in this charity campaign and in no way holds Medium responsible for any liability which may arise.
Parallels in Struggle: Alcoholism and LGBTQ
Tags: LGBTQ, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Mental Health, Creative Non Fiction

Parallels in Struggle: Alcoholism and LGBTQ

Photo by christopher lemercier on Unsplash

“That must have been scary” she said. The look on her face spelled concern.

I didn’t think it was scary. I was just having fun. Everyone did this, right? There’s nothing to be scared of. I don’t know why her concern made me feel so agitated but it did. I guess it revealed the things I thought were a normal part of life were just the opposite.

I was explaining how much I used to drink.

“I’d black out two or three times a week,” I’d said.

“But I only drank two or three times a week,” I added, like that made it better and not infinitely worse.

The signs were there from the beginning but I just couldn’t place them. It was clear as day for anyone looking in, but I wasn’t looking in, I was looking out. I was looking for reasons to explain away what I described as “having fun”.

“When did you know?”

People ask me this every time I tell them I’m gay. I always say nine. It’s easier than explaining the long hard process of actually discovering it.

I think it’s pretty damn cheesy when people say they’re finding themselves, but that’s what it was.

“When did you know?”

I should have known in elementary school when I sat in class writing a boys name in my notebook over and over again. I should have known in middle school when I had to append gay to any of the porn I watched — but it was probably just a phase.

I told others before I fully accepted it myself. I had come out to a friend, and when we weren’t friends anymore, I went back to being straight. I tried to convince myself I was attracted to men sexually but woman romantically. I tried to convince myself I was “turning straight” as time went on. I tried to convince myself I was bi.

It was all a futile attempt to grasp on to the safety I thought existed elsewhere.

It happens again as I try to convince myself I’m not an alcoholic.

“When did you know?”

Even as I write this — I’m not sure I do. My logical brain knows being sent to the ER thrice for drinking means you’re an alcoholic. My logical brain knows getting blackout drunk every time you drink means you’re an alcoholic. My logical brain knows refusing to give up alcohol even when it’s taken so much means you’re an alcoholic.

It’s another part of my brain that tries to fight that. The same way I tried to convince myself that being attracted exclusively to men didn’t mean I was gay. The same way I took online “quizzes” to find out if I was gay, and ignored the results when I didn’t like them, is the same as taking quizzes on whether or not I’m an alcoholic and laughing off the severe results.

I can say it out loud, and still not admit it to myself. That’s the problem with taking the first step. Admitting you are something is easy. Believing it is an entirely different battle.

The same way I’d wake up some days thinking I wasn’t gay — making up reasons as to why I could still be straight is the same way I wake up some days thinking, “today I can drink.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t kill me this time.
Glimpses: Anniversary
By: Gustavo Mendez
Tags: Life, Writing, Journal, Nonfiction, Creative Non Fiction

A gift from my Love

“I’m going to the hardware store after I get some diapers. Is there anything you need from there?” my wife asked.

I thought about asking for a new socket set, but I didn’t really have an immediate need for it. The only other thing I could think of was a particular bush I wanted to plant in the backyard, “How about some bougainvilleas?”

“DAMMIT! WHY THE HELL DID YOU HAVE TO SAY THAT!?”

“… I’m… sorry…?”

“Ugh… I was going to get them as an anniversary gift! NOW YOU RUINED THE SURPRISE!”

I was in shock, speechless. Then out came the roaring laughter. “I am sooo sorry!” I said repeatedly between bouts of laughing.

I could feel her glaring at me through the phone. Then, another question, “… which kind do you want?”

Suddenly, I wasn’t sure quite what to say. I knew the plant I wanted, but which variety? What color? And where would I even plant it in a backyard full of nothing but rocks?

I could only think of one thing, “A small one…?”

Silence, until finally, “I’m getting two… surprise.”
Nothing Ends, Not Even COVID
By: Andrea Loewen
Tags: Science, Transformation, Covid 19, Creative Non Fiction, Covid Diaries

That’s what they tell me, at least. The scientists, about nature. Things don’t end, they change. They transform. It is, as they say, the circle of life.

Does this mean COVID will never end?

Yes, I guess so.

I mean, it really only exists (as we know it) thanks to a whole host of other transformations. It has continued to change, in tiny ways, since we got to know it on such a personal level, and perhaps one day it will change so much it doesn’t even recognize itself.

Our medical interventions transform. We’ve developed a treatment that does whatever treatments do — the molecular version of dismantling the virus and selling it for parts? Kneecapping it so that it’s rendered ineffective? Making our bodies into bad hosts so that it has to transform into something else in order to stay alive?

At some point, too, the public health restrictions we are living under will change. One day, officials will stand before us at a specially-scheduled press conference. They will try to contain themselves, but smiles will take over their faces (can you IMAGINE how they will feel on that day?) and their message will have changed completely. The records of the restrictions will be filed away. The webpages will be edited or archived. The social media posts will go stale. They will be replaced with new papers, new webpages, new posts.

Our behaviour will transform. We will hug. We will go to brunch indoors. We will attend concerts and stand right next to strangers. We will hopefully never shake hands again because that is now a repulsive and unnecessary act.

Our boredom and anger and isolation will transform into — well, they won’t. We will still feel bored, angry, and isolated, although perhaps less often. We will feel those things while we host dinner parties and crowd into movie theatres and wonder if a stranger in a bar is looking at us and stand in line right next to each other and completely forget where we put our homemade masks.

Meanwhile, the virus will still exist, floating around us. Or maybe it will transform into something else, without 7.5 billion human bodies as nice, squishy hosts?

The only thing that ends is our perception of things. We decide, once this, now nothing. Once we had COVID, then we didn’t. Once we had love, now we don’t. Once we had life, now we won’t. But really, it didn’t end, it just changed enough that we gave it a new label.

There is a forever-ness to life that doesn’t quite make sense because eventually, we transform enough that our bodies don’t work and our consciousness doesn’t exist anymore. Or it changes. Into what?

Nothing ever ends. (That’s what they tell me.)

The Receptionist Delivers!

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Face your fears
By: Georgia Lewitt
Tags: Fear, Writing On Medium, Motherhood, Creative Non Fiction

“Sweetheart, just stop and stay still for a moment, yes, like that.” I flicked the spider crawling on the back of my son’s trousers.

“See that?” I whispered to my spouse, “I’m so proud of myself. I didn’t scream at all. And I touched the spider with my nail. That’s what motherhood does to mothers, devoids them of their wildest fears. The little ones always come first.”

“What spider?” My son jumped looking around in terror.
Gravity (let me feel you)
By: Mariana Picea
Tags: Trauma, Prose, Prose Poem, Flashback, Creative Non Fiction

I wanted you to leave me on the steep slant of the old hill, smooth quartzite rock grabbing my skin, my body magnetizing for the bottom, for down. I wanted just this heavy pull (all physical), and the friction (all hard white rock and fissure), and the uncertainty of which of the two would win me.

And I wanted to feel your departure like this: you leave, the sun leaves, darkness (stamps out visual cues) leaves only the lean of the mountain under me and the refusal of the earth to love me stable, love me flat.

I wanted to feel it sharp inside me, and even sharper, being abandoned by love into nothingness. To feel not only its absence, but also love’s hateful rejection of me: double edge, double storm, tumbling down.

I wanted the marbles to slip from my pocket and roll away from me to the very bottom, to the parking lot, to the car, to the lifeline back to baseline, well away from me.

I wanted to be allowed this at least: to break fully, to crack the quartz, to be swallowed.

But you stayed. Your body anchored me to my bones, your hands pushed consciousness into my legs, your strength held my crevice closed. Your shoulders loomed over me like a second mountain, this one benign and set to exterminate all danger: bugs, sharps, edges, rolling marbles (decisive arm reach, slipped back into pocket).

You were an addition to the mountain and by extension earth too: Material and of consequence to bruised skulls, puckered lips. I went only as far as your physical self could travel. You: a tethered anchor on a mountainside. Me: a slippery fish fighting buoyancy for her right to know gravity, if only for a sunset.
Crabs, Crows, and the Places We Leave Behind
By: Ryan Frawley
Tags: Nature, Animals, Self, Creative Non Fiction, Personal Essay

The wolves here go on two legs

The wet street might have risen humpbacked from the sea below. I followed the path, peering through gaps in the houses down into the harbor. Shipping containers rose in great cuboid towers, piled up on concrete docks under cranes that glowed with sulfurous lights against the gathering darkness.

I had just returned from sunny Italy, and was already regretting it. How many of these ships recently called in Naples or Salerno? Containers filled with pasta sauce and machine parts that I might have seen a few months earlier in some Mediterranean port as the train whisked me past, peering out at the bright beauty that becomes more real the further away from it you get. The same containers catching up with me again under a rainy Canadian sky.

Close to my house, an Italian deli offered mozzarella bufala that had been sweating milk in Campania the day before, flown in at enormous cost. In the toilet of a neighborhood bar, graffiti on the back of the door disparaged the city of Terni in Italian. Some ancestral hatred carried halfway across the world to be scrawled in a bathroom in a Canadian city where few people could find Terni on a map.

It made me homesick, a moment before I remembered Italy was never my home. I just lived there for a while. Then again, I could say the same about Vancouver.

What you want and can’t have will find you everywhere.

A lost city or a wronged lover. A way of life you can’t get back. Our brains, bigger than those of the crows by a factor of ninety-six, function like pattern recognition machines.

We see faces in clouds and deities on a piece of toast, and wherever we go, we drag around a whispering echo of everything we’ve lost. In the looping graffiti on the back of the toilet door or the beady eye of some cunning corvid.

We don’t know what crows do. We can’t see as far or fly as high. But those black fluttering wings have brought me here, following hot hoofprints through the snow until I hear the breaking branches. Just around the next turn in the trail, the crows would say, lies everything you desire. Hot blood and red meat and life in the leafless winter. An echo of summer’s sun in the heart of the trackless cold.

Don’t believe them. They’ll say whatever they think you want to hear.
Sometimes Love Hurts
By: Loren A Olson Md
Tags: Relationships, LGBTQ, Equality, Marriage, Creative Non Fiction

Relationships/Creative Nonfiction/LGBTQ

Sometimes Love Hurts

Source: wernerimages/DepositPhoto/170560288

Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead. — Adele

I drove my best friend, Bruce, home after my husband, Doug, and I had eaten dinner with him. When he opened the door to get out of my Camry, I shivered as premature winter-cold rushed in. But the brisk temperature outside stung less than my frigid relationship with Doug.

As Bruce stepped out of the car, I said to him, “I don’t know what’s up. Something’s really wrong between Doug and me right now.”

For a moment, Bruce sat there half in and half out of the car, considering how to respond to my comment. Then he stepped back into the car and closed the door against the cold. He deliberated for several moments before he responded.

“Do you think he could be seeing someone else?”

“Oh, no!” I said dismissively. “Doug made it very clear the first night we met that he was monogamous, very monogamous.” He emphasized very to make it clear that monogamy was absolute. It was a question I thought I’d never be asked.

Doug’s integrity was one of the things I loved about him after we met. We both believed monogamy was like a reinforced-concrete foundation for long-term, committed relationships.

Then I added, “That can’t be the problem. But I don’t know what it is.” I continued to ponder just how and when the killing frost had entered our relationship.

Bruce considered his response carefully. “One night, while you were out of town, we’d had a lot to drink. Doug told me that he’s been seeing someone by the name of Kevin.” In the muddled thinking of his alcohol-induced lunacy, Doug had loose-lipped this deeply personal secret. He regretted it for a long time.

I felt as if Bruce cannonballed me in my mid-gut from close range. The revelation pulverized my soul and flung fragments of it in all directions. In this moment of insight, I knew that what I had so vigorously denied was obviously true.

The something-really-wrong problem had been exposed. I sat there, stunned and silent. Bruce — like all keepers of secrets about affairs — had been thrust into a no-win position. Either he broke trust with me, or he betrayed Doug.

Bruce broke the silence and continued, “I think the two of them have been spending a lot of days together while you’re at work.”
Sean Bennett, you have nailed exactly the reason why I never say “LGBTQ community.”
By: James Finn
Tags: LGBTQ, Creative Non Fiction, Identity, Transgender, Community

Sean Bennett, you have nailed exactly the reason why I never say “LGBTQ community.” That phrase is an oversimplification that obscures reality.

Instead, I say “LGBTQ people" (which emphasizes our humanity) or carefully use the word “communities,” in the plural.

But, you know, there’s a reason why we fight collectively for our interests. The general public doesn’t much distinguish between different kinds of queer people. Members of gender and sexual minorities fight many of the same fights based on many of the same prejudices.

Just because we distinguish carefully among our identities doesn’t mean the public in general do.

So, why do I as a white gay man fight the good fight for queer people in general? Why, to leverage my privilege of course, where I enjoy it.

I don’t just raise awareness about same-sex couples who are being denied parental rights, though that is an important issue I’ve just written about.

I also raise awareness about homeless queer youth, among whom lesbian and gay young people are actually more present in total numbers than trans kids, though trans kids are disproportionately present.

I write about LGBTQ youth suicide, and I’ve learned that more lesbian and gay kids than trans kids get bullied and suffer toxic consequences, though again, trans kids are disproportionately bullied compared to LGB kids.

Nobody wins in a game of Oppression Olympics.

And while it’s critical that people speak in their own voices, standing together is critical too. I’ve written an essay called “One Queer Umbrella to Bind Them” that explores the history and commonality of the LGBTQ movement, recognizing that our communities are diverse, but that common interests bind us more tightly than differences can (or should) drive us apart.
Mental health and literature
By: Literary Impulse, Shabd Aaweg
Tags: Literary Impulse, Illness, Mental Health, Creative Non Fiction, Letters From Li

Mental health and literature

Serenity by Steve Hendersona

I have suffered from mental health issues throughout my life. They are not because of an inherent tendency of one trying to dump his unhappiness on others out of anger towards injustice-I am too intelligent to know the concept of happiness is one of the contradictions, like all others. The reason is physical. Being a transplant recipient takes a greater toll on your mind than your body, and this is something most of us don’t get, simply because they are not in my shoes.

I feel uncomfortable with my body- the only thing I have. The only thing I can call my own.

That is why, throughout my life, I have felt distant from NORMAL people around me even while knowing no one is normal. All are steeped in the delinquencies of their fate, which they make a by comparison with others.

And yet, there is a HAVEN. A sort of spiritual space, where I find a shred of calm-LITERATURE, which I like to think is the case with others as well. We all seek a space where we can feel comfortable with ourselves. And for most of us (specially those reading this brief note), this space is created by the matrix of words, lying about on pages and pages-healing us.

I can go as far as saying — Literature is born out of humankind’s need to deal with their existence.
Joy in Grief
By: Georgia Lewitt
Tags: Life, Grief, Joy, Creative Non Fiction, Writing On Medium

My demeaning thoughts hang on me like grapes on vine, unpicked, ready to shrivel and decompose, to leak putrid into a mind too frail to push away.

The landscape I live in would pin me to the window until my muscles screamed for movement, distressed. Tears of joy roll unsummoned, heralds of what life is and of how it should be treated. I’ve been waiting for those buds of incandescent delight, nudging them to come through, to create beauty.

I’m humbled and embarrassed. I shake off the cobwebs of grief for what was and let my mind brighten my eyes with glistening hope.

It’s not the newness that excites my being enough to banish decaying thoughts, it’s the realization, time and time again, of the gift of life: it cannot be wasted, it’s far too precious.
That Night’s Encounter
By: Lexus Ndiwe
Tags: Women, London, Fear, Night, Creative Non Fiction

That Night’s Encounter

Photo Credit: Rene Asmussen for Pexels.

The man’s spit-spray splatters across the ashy concrete. I don’t know what is scarier. Him? Or the beady eyed, red-orange fox that edges ever closer. The night conceals us like a lid on a coffin. The tinted streetlights find us, creating an eerie, luminous blanket. It’s like we are actors playing in a washed out, black and white film. But this is not fantasy. This is real.

My keys-embedded hand clenches tighter into a fist. I exhale deeply. My breath, immersed in the air’s bitter chill, is tainted by that funky, weed smell. The man lounges on the curb with his legs spread wide and head held high- like his mind. The hungry fox, wild and young, eyes up his pray. My eyes glance around, pleading for an exit.

Just. Walk. Straight. I’m nearly home, I think to myself.

I draw my cardigan tighter around my body, trying to conceal the flesh and fabric that lay beneath it. The very same fabric that I had admired online for its vibrant, patterned yellow has become too loud for comfort. It screams femininity with its floaty quality, contrasting greatly to my usual black attire. Around here, I am usually mistaken for a man, but tonight I cannot hide under that guise.

My flesh, smooth and springy with the energy of youth, recoils at the thought of being touched. ‘She asked for it’. We’ve all heard of this before. So if something happens tonight, will it be my fault?

“Hey baby! Looking good,” says the man.

My fast pace only increases as I pass him. The man attempts to grab my attention by whistling. I do not look back. He looks old enough to be my dad.

“Chuh. Stuck up b*tch!” the man jeers.

Each footstep’s echo is magnified.

*Click clack. Click clack.*

When I hear a *clip clip* in between my own steps, I am terrified.

Why did I wear these heels? I’m so stupid. Why did I not stop to consider safety over cuteness? Maybe I should have just left earlier. Why didn’t I do that?

Before hysteria engulfs me, the realisation hits.

I can hear what I presume is the fox nose-diving into the nearest bush. Walk faster. Faster! It is hit with something. I hear the rustle of its fur against the bush’s leaves and a high pitched, whining sound.

As I reach my apartment building, I look back to check that the man hasn’t followed me home. My lactic-filled legs throb with each step. It’s only when I bolt the lock on my front door that I stop to breathe.

“Huh. Huh.”

My hands tremble as the keys stutter into the keyholes. Sh*t.

“Isabella?” my Mother calls from the living room.

I steady my hand with the other before answering back. There’s no point in worrying her.
Respond to “I Can’t Tell if You’re Male or Female” with These Two Words
By: The Transgender Therapist
Tags: Advice and Opinion, LGBTQ, Transgender, Creative Non Fiction, Narrative

Being told that one cannot tell if you’re a girl/woman or a boy/man is certainly not a universal experience. For those of us who do endure it more than once, or even regularly, it can bring up reactions and emotions including but not limited to:

neutrality

frustration

disgust

amusement

shame

confusion

exasperation

excitement

If you couldn’t tell, this isn’t an exhaustive list. There are countless ways to react when someone makes this ignorant statement, all depending on one’s gender identity, expression, the way they want to be perceived, and more.

It also depends on context — in certain situations and places, it can be downright dangerous to have someone question your gender. Other times, someone who may not fall into a binary gender category might be a bit pleased.

While I have had a range of reactions when faced with this unsolicited observation, one of the most flippant and jarring times happened to me while I was at a gas station. An attendant approached me and said, “I’m curious about something.” Oh, no. Here we go.

“Are you a man, or a woman? Because you sound like a man, but you look like a woman.”

Astounded, I mumbled something along the lines of “I don’t care.” He went on to say how his best friend “chopped her boobs off” and started calling “herself” ‘X’ name when “she” used to be called ‘Z’ name, and how it was really weird because he had known “her” since they were kids, but he had nothing against transgender people.

I was just there to put gas in my car.
One Day I Flew Away
By: Shaheena Chowdhury
Tags: Life, Lockdown, Pandemic, Creative Non Fiction, Creative Writing

One Day I Flew Away

Photo by Nidheesh Kavalan on Unsplash

One day I flew away … and what did I see?

I saw …

… lamp posts plastered with election manifestos crisping at the edges in the heat of the pre-monsoon sun. Politics played second fiddle to the pandemic.

… roadside shutters opening to reveal aquariums. Bettas, corys, minnows and mollies feasted on snails and brine shrimp. Oblivious to the potentially covid-positive street beggars squatting on the pavement.

… slum dwellers queuing behind the municipal pickup for rations of flour and potatoes. Rice paddies defied the corona-virus, but crops couldn’t get past lock-down patrols. They spoiled in poorly kept silos instead.

… the merry-go-round standing still. The candy floss pole disappeared and the fairground gathered windfalls. Stay home, stay safe — Cartoon Network’s new mantra.

… teachers staying up till sehri time to watch Zoom tutorials. Hours of staring at a screen gave them headaches that even Iodex couldn’t cure.

… sturdy hands massaging spatchcocks with tandoori masala. Even though the virus was claiming lives, naan and kebab had to be ready for the iftar rush.

… bright orange spirals sizzling in a cast iron wok. Fasting customers scrambled for Kashem Miah’s famous jilapis. Social distancing floated away in open sewers.

… the tailor’s shears sitting idle. Threads unspent. Bobbins untouched. Who’s the culprit? Covid-19 or Aarong?

… the jhal muri wala gazing wistfully at clouds above the unusually quiet Shapla Chattar roundabout. Business was bad. Stolen guavas sufficed his starving family of five for the day.

… an expectant mother exhausted from crying all night. Blood trickled down her thigh. In the ambulance, she helplessly waited for the inevitable.
On Reading
By: Literary Impulse, Shabd Aaweg
Tags: Literary Impulse, Editions Li, Writing Tips, Creative Non Fiction, Reading

On Reading

Young Man Reading, by Octavian Smigelschi (1892)

When I start reading something, I look for its second line first.

That is important to me. The first line is always evocative. It helps you enter the story, but the thing is- you always read the first line. If you don’t, you can’t say that you even tried your eyes at the story. The second line, though, is more important. As for the question, “Did you read the second line?” If you were able to read it, and move onto the third, it means that the story might keep you with it for long. But that’s not enough. And that’s where the second step of reading comes.

I read the first two lines again. Often aloud, with my tongue and lips, and most importantly my head- the image it creates. And if I feel like continuing, I read the first para on the trot; expecting to miss something, except for a gist, about what the story is about.

And that does the deal. Often.

If I feel like jumping to the second para, I will read the first para again, and often finish the whole story, even though I may not like it in the end.

If I like it in the end, I will encore. And congratulate myself for being worthy of the story.
Rockin’ the World With Prism & Pen
By: James Finn
Tags: LGBTQ, Fiction, Storytelling, Creative Non Fiction, Poetry

by James Finn

Another week of Prism & Pen storytelling is here!

Since I’m leading off this edition with an interview by Liam Heitmann-Ryce, now is a great time to announce a small change to P&P we decided some time ago without telling anybody. (Because we’re artists with poor PR skills.)

Besides our regular storytelling, P&P is now publishing reviews and interviews about art with a queer focus.

Stories will always be our raison d’être, but stories about stories are cool too. We will occasionally add film, book, music, and poetry reviews to our menu, and artist interviews when we can snag them.

Readers, we hope you enjoy! Writers? Take note, because we welcome your pitches and submissions.

If you’re not a Medium member, please click on the underlined links to read for free. If you can afford a membership, you help support your favorite writers.

Editor’s Picks —

Interview

Hey, Barracuda! Queer TV in Australia, with Composer Bryony Marks

Bryony Marks is a prolific composer whose scores grace screen adaptations of some of Australia’s best-loved authors. Liam Heitmann-Ryce got together with her to talk about his love for her work in general and his passion for the ABC miniseries Barracuda in particular.

Novelist Christos Tsiolkas charted the determination of a young gay swimmer as he navigated the homophobia and racism of an elitist sports academy. Liam wanted to know how Marks used music to help tell the story with grace and power on the small screen. Her answers appear here in a Prism & Pen exclusive.
Thanks for an illuminating interview, Liam.
By: James Finn
Tags: LGBTQ, Music, Interview, Television, Creative Non Fiction

Thanks for an illuminating interview, Liam. You've given me a real taste for diving into some of films and music you highlight. Sadly, as you suspected when you pitched me the article, I don't think it's possible to stream or otherwise view Barracuda in the United States.

I wish all the intellectual property johnnies could come up with a way to make art available for purchase irrespective of geography.
Book Review: The Best of Brevity”
By: Jack B. Rochester
Tags: Flash Nonfiction, Rose Metal Press, Creative Non Fiction

When Rose Metal Press asked if I would consider writing a review of a forthcoming book entitled The Best of Brevity, I thought, Why not? I favor brevity. After all, that famous line, “Forgive me for writing you such a long letter, for I didn’t have the time to write a short one,” is one of my favorite [mis]quotations, even if we’re not exactly sure who first wrote it. Was it Montaigne? Cicero? Machiavelli? Pascal? Wilde? Twain? Mencken? Does it matter?

So the book arrived and I noted the cover read, “Twenty groundbreaking years of flash nonfiction.” Now I was intrigued; having written flash fiction for years and years, I was embarrassed to admit I knew little about this genre. First thoughts were, Hmmm, this might be boring. Then I began flipping pages, reading different works, and was confronted with the fact I had been quite wrong.

“Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction” is the name of the online litmag which has specialized in nonfiction works no longer than 750 words since 1997. After perusing at least a dozen of its pieces, I knew I had a very special anthology in my hands. So I sat in my favorite reading chair and began again with number one, Brenda Miller’s “The Shape of Emptiness.” The college professor is telling the story of a boy student whose mother has died and who needs to miss some classes. But the story quickly morphs into a literary-cum-philosophical exploration of white space, and that into a class exercise in the mindfulness of playdough, which inevitably curves back around to the shape of emptiness.

We may write and write, but what is it we say? Or, what are we to think about our writing when we don’t realize how profoundly we have thought about an instance of life and subsequently understand how truly profound our writing about it was? See what I mean? That’s what happens over and over in Brevity.

And equally important is, how best to say it? Would Ms. Miller’s story have had its empathic denouement had it not been written in the first-person present tense?

I’ve read Brevity cover to cover three times. To call these works flash, to my mind, does not give them full credit for their depth, their humanity, their profundity, their wisdom. Nor enough credit for their writers’ skills in storytelling.

I won’t tell you my favorites. They’re mine. They are secrets I share only with their authors. You’ll find your own favorites soon enough, and you will embrace them, sigh, concur, delight, dab at your eye without any encouragement from me. These works are slices of real life; you don’t have to wonder if the author concocted them from imagination or transcribed them from experience. They are incredibly interesting as well as entertaining. Don’t deny yourself. Buy this book of uncommon essays.

The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction. Edited by Zoë Bossiere and Dinty W. Moore. Rose Metal Press.com, Paperback, November 17, 2020. 256pp, $16.95. Please buy your copy at your local independent bookstore.
James Lingard’s “The Girl Who Disappeared”: a Fact-Based Historical Romance
By: Cheyenne Heckermann
Tags: Book Review, Romance, Writing, Creative Non Fiction

James Lingard’s The Girl Who Disappeared is a fact-based historical romance novel following Emily as she progresses in life from a young lovestruck woman in Yorkshire through her relationship with Walter Lingard beginning in the 1930s. The relationship persists through emigrating to another continent, raising a child, and the struggles that World War II brings. As Walter’s surname implies, it’s based off the author’s own parents. The book brims with lovingly described anecdotes to the characters’ behaviors and interests.

I first read Lingard’s historical British spy thriller, The Caucasus Cauldron, and found The Girl Who Disappeared a surprising and well-done shift between these two genres. Many stylistic choices in the writing differed between these books, and I felt surprised by the quality of The Girl Who Disappeared. Romance frequently holds presence in many novels I read, and often I find myself critiquing romance aspects of books. With this book of Lingard’s, I find myself invested in Emily and Walter’s romance. It’s littered with moments that would be hard on many couples: moving to a new and unfamiliar country after marriage, experiencing a marriage that frequently must be long distance due to new and changing circumstances, surviving a war in which both Emily and Walter find themselves changing while Emily raises their son on her own for a long time. It isn’t a quick and fast romance but one slow, sweet, and full of quirks with the characters. Emily expresses what she wants from her marriage and how her relationship with Walter changes through the book’s events.

While some minor errors are present, I highly recommend reading The Girl Who Disappeared with its range of tensions and humor, especially with the combination of genres this novel fills. After reading this, I look forward to seeing Lingard’s future books as his writing grows, especially any with similarities to The Girl Who Disappeared.
All That Glitters: Queer Comedy and Creativity
By: James Finn
Tags: LGBTQ, Fiction, Storytelling, Creative Non Fiction, Poetry

All That Glitters: Queer Comedy and Creativity

by James Finn

Prism & Pen bounces between absurdist and high comedy this week. Chandler Myer and his team of Amazon rainbow support staff help an elderly woman figure out the difference between a pussy and a pussy … while, with apologies to Samuel Beckett and the ever-tardy Godot, David Wade Chambers helps us all wait for covid-19.

As always, our storytellers delve into much more than comedy. Dive in for a feast of LGBTQ creativity!

If you’re not a Medium member, please click on the underlined links to read for free. If you can afford a membership, you help support your favorite writers.

Editor’s Picks —

Creative Nonfiction

Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

In response to the the recent elections in the U.S. and to the last four years of turmoil and anguish for marginalized people, Chandler Myer makes a powerful, personal, provocative pledge. This is not his usual delightfully whimsical writing (which, see the pussy story below) but it’s a must read.
Rhythm and Flow: How Three Famous Writers Use It To Draw You In
By: Ramona Grigg
Tags: Creativity, Writers, Influencers, Writing, Creative Non Fiction

Rhythm and Flow: How Three Famous Writers Use It To Draw You In

Photo by Simon Matzinger on Unsplash

There is a rhythm to good writing — a flow that draws you in as smoothly and deliciously as a glide down a meandering brook. It moves along, pulling you from place to place, enticing you to go further, to explore, to feel, to breathe.

Every writer’s goal is to write as well as the writers who inspired her to write. Their writing seems effortless, as if they’re dreaming as they write, completely unaware that someone else is in the room. They write to satisfy themselves, and because they’re easily satisfied and not the least bit self-conscious, everything that comes out of them is pure and fully formed.

Or so we like to think.

I know and you know it never happens that way.

Barbara Kingsolver’s opening paragraph in her essay, “The Memory Place” might appear to the casual reader as if it came out of her just like that, full blown, each beautiful word lined up just right, leading to that perfect sentence at the end, but a writer who has struggled enough times would know it takes real effort to create this kind of seeming ease:

This is the kind of April morning no other month can touch: a world tinted in watercolor pastels of redbud, dogtooth violet, and gentle rain. The trees are beginning to shrug off winter; the dark, leggy maple woods are shot through with gleaming constellations of white dogwood blossoms. The road winds through deep forest near Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, carrying us across the Cumberland Plateau toward Horse Lick Creek. Camille is quiet beside me in the front seat, until at last she sighs and says, with a child’s poetic logic, “This reminds me of the place I always like to think about”.

You don’t have to know, at this point, where they are or who they are or even any detail of the trip. Not how it started, not why they’re there. You only have to be drawn in. The story starts here. If you know Kingsolver’s work, you know she’s a poet, a novelist, an essayist, and a trained biologist. She makes her home in Tucson, Arizona, but moves back and forth between the desert and Appalachia, where she was born and where her heart is.

This particular essay, from “High Tide in Tucson”, her collection of lyrical essays on the ordinary and the sublime, describes a meet-up with a Nature Conservancy guide who is inspecting the property the group has acquired around and along Horse Lick Creek, a fragile, dying-off area the conservancy hopes to bring back to life. These are Kingsolver’s old stomping grounds and she makes the most of it as she introduces her daughter, Camille, to the magic she has known since her own childhood in these woods.

It’s the kind of essay you might think you wouldn’t want to read, until, before you know it, you’re midway into it. You can see that nothing big is likely to happen but the writer has taken you on her journey and you’re hooked now; no matter where it leads, you’re with her to the end.

It’s the writing that does it.
She’s a Paradox
By: Carolyn Riker
Tags: Life, Prose, Aging, Short Story, Creative Non Fiction

She doesn’t stand alone but appearances are deceiving. Society points their long, thin finger, if only she would do more, less, always, never, should, could…. then all would be well.

Thankfully, their words drift into the wind and turn into the smallest particle.

There’s an invisible circle around her. Hummingbirds rest along her ancient arms. Woodland creatures, seen and unseen are welcomed. They find her and stand by her without worry. Eating the particles and returning the digestive fragments back to the earth.

By now it’s late autumn and only two ruby leaves embellish her: like lovely dangling earrings.

You can see her shape. Round and intricate. She has a thousand arms and her body is sturdy.

What you can’t see are her roots. They go on for decades and decades drinking the earth’s spirits. Fortified with love and hope.

Heartened with understanding. Drenched in wisdom. She knows pain. She’s seen hell and knows demons well.

She listens gently to stories from people. She’s flown with angels. Touched the stars. Sat on the moon.

She’s embraced her strangeness, comforts her self-doubts, and pulls up buckets of worries and pours them into the river of less shame.

She’s felt love, been in love, and betrayed.

Her circles are full, and this has enabled her to see. Not only with her eyes but with something more. Intuition flickers frequently fielding her information from the subtlest twitch, the eighth notes of despair, the grace notes of sweetness, the rapid trill of conceit.

Trusting those emotions as they dip deep into the sea to the base of her knowing, down, down, down to the roots of her lapis cave. The hidden places that know, those flickers felt are fragments of the truth.

She’s not alone and yet she is. She’s a paradox and that’s what is lonely.

So, she knows it’s time to concede and pull in the artillery of blankets, pillows and honey laced tea.