Kim Pine's Precious Little Knives

Chapter 17

"You seem a little distracted."

Looking up from my bongos, I blinked at Steph for a few seconds. "Was I not playing my part? I thought it sounded... like the song. Y'know."

"It's not that. You just aren't focused." Putting down her zither, she picked up her aloe drink and chugged it for a minute. I tried not to make a face of pure disgust. "Like, I can sense it even though you're playing fine, if that makes sense."

"What, with my chakras or some shit?" But again, she was impervious to my acidity. "Fine. But I don't wanna talk about it."

"You and Knives?"

"Don't wanna talk about it."

"How's that going?"

Sighing, I ran my hand down my face and gritted my teeth against my irritation. I knew by now that yelling at Steph to shut the fuck up and leave me alone made little difference. But to be honest, I was in a good enough place with Knives that I wasn't even that irritated.

"Nice. Now, can we get back to practice?"

"I thought you were worried about, like... the lesbian thing."

"Not really. Just..." Should I tell her about Knives? It didn't seem right, for reasons previously stated; that was Knives' information to share as she saw fit. Maybe she wouldn't care, but maybe she would. You never can tell how people will react; I couldn't even tell how I would react before I was told. I decided it was easier, safer, to maintain my vow of silence. "I dunno. It's good. She's really..." I ran out of words.

"Good? Nice?" My grumpy face turned grumpier. "It's okay, I just like seeing you doing better."

"Better than what?"

Another of her usual casual shrugs. "Before."

"Fine." Then I threw my bongos aside and stood, glaring at my current bandmate. "She's great. She's completely changing how I see life. Everything is perfect, especially her. Birds suddenly appear every time that she's near, alright? Fuck."

"Saying that in a sarcastic tone doesn't necessarily mean that it's not true." But I ignored her and went off to pee.

While I was in there, I came to a sudden realisation. Knives wasn't just a girl, wasn't just my girlfriend. Wasn't just a trans girl, either, whatever that meant; I was still kind of working my way through that along with the 'girlfriend' part. It hit me that she was just about every letter in the ever-expanding LGBTQIPA acronym, if you looked at it all in certain ways. Lesbian, for dating me. Gay, for being a person with a dick who didn't mind dating people with dicks — and I know it's not the same, but the sex would be. Bi, for dating me and Scott. The "T" is obvious. Queer because she's more than one letter, since that's kind of what that means as far as I can tell; it's the "gray area" checkbox. Maybe not the "I", since I'm fuzzy on that one, but if she was that would be cool, too. And as for the A...

Okay, so I did some reading at the library. I don't have internet at home, so I go there for email, to print resumes, boring crap like that. But I also have been doing a lot of research there lately. About Knives, about me... about all of this. Trying to wrap my head around a lot of new concepts that are still space alien type shit to me. And the "A" seems to stand for "asexual", which... I was starting to wonder if that was Knives. Or me, even, since I've gone without for a LONG fucking time and didn't really care until I connected with her. Maybe I do care more now. But she's fine if we don't bang, and thought humping my leg was good enough.

So like... I guess what I'm saying is, I'm trying to get comfortable with the idea that she might never want to have any sex. Or not a lot, or not for a while. Somewhere in there. If me literally getting naked in the kitchen — which, in Wallace's battle plans, sends the message that I'm dessert — didn't faze her, then maybe nothing would. And that's alright if it's what she wants. God will I be thirsty, but I'd rather just buy a new vibrator than ever make her uncomfortable again. It's the same shit in the end, right? If she was a normal- wait, no, wrong word. If she was a cis woman, then we'd be buying vibes, anyway. Acting all personally offended that she doesn't want to use a dick I didn't know existed a couple weeks ago to part my pussy lips doesn't seem like a wise use of my energy, does it?