NANOWRIMO 2020

11.19 Plaid Hipster

"Lemme see a picture of her," Kayla grabbed my phone and scrolled through my photos. "Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah, I see. Cute, but not gay, unfortunately."

"Noooo," I moaned. "How can you be so sure? Why is your gaydar so much better than mine?"

"Years of practice," Kayla intoned. "It's really just a guessing game. And you learn to pick up on these cues, y'know?"

"No, I don't know. I keep guessing wrong. A 50/50 and I still manage to flop each and every single chance I get," I sigh. "I'm just a potato trying to find love, and the Irish famine keeps interrupting."

"You'll meet someone, don't worry," Kayla said. "I think you as a potato will be quite fine."

"Who are we meeting ladies," Professor Andrea pulled up a chair and plopped down in between me and Kayla. "And when did we become potatoes?"

"Ahhhh the dean," I began and looked at Kayla for prompting. "Of the department of agriculture."

"Uh huh," Andrea said.

Kayla smacked herself in the face.

"And why would we be needing to talk. To the Dean. Of Agriculture?" Andrea asked.

"We're trying to plant a rosebush in front of the school's trustee wall," I deadpan.

Andrea laughed and got up from her seat. "I like that. I'm looking forward to seeing that happen." I laughed. Kayla laughed. Andrea walked away.

"Learn to stop a bit," Kayla hissed at me, shuffling her notes together and turning to the front of the classroom. "Now we might actually have to ugh," she shivered. "Garden."

I laughed too, because as much as I doubted my gardening abilities, I doubted our power to cover the trustee wall with so much as a sticker, much less a rosebush.

I opened my phone again and sighed, channeling those late Victorian women bemoaning the landscape from their well-lit drawing rooms.

It's not creepy, but I had several photos of the girl I was crushing on saved to my phone because she was one of several cheerleaders I had to take portraits of for my part time gig. I scrolled through them now: her smiling at the camera. Her kicking her foot into the air, pom poms flying out into a star shape. Her tucking a spare strand of hair behind her ear and whoop there goes my heart, bouncing along at an incriminating speed and making me feel like the scummiest algae to ever succumb to tank water.

I slammed my phone down and Kayla gave me the evil eye and mouthed obscenities at me. Andrea pretended not to notice and continued writing about grammar and syntax and something about semantics. I tried to melt into my seat, my face was so red and I was so done being in that classroom.

It was just that...

It was just the way that she smiled, the way she opened her arms to her friends, the way she radiated such pure, happy energy.

I didn't care if she wasn't gay.

I loved the energy she had and how warm and open it was.

Okay maybe I did care a little if she was gay. Maybe I was hoping a little bit for a little sprinkle of gay in her, but Kayla dashed that hope a little too well after perusing her social media for less than 10 minutes.

"Boyfriend," she had said.

"Really?!" I had said, surprised at how fast she found that information out.

"Mostly straight. Could be bi. Definitely a hipster."

"Ugh," they were always a hipster. Always friendly, holding my hand and hugging me a little too long or smiling at me when no one else was.

Maybe I'm just touch starved. Attention starved. Starved in general for some sort of relationship and desperate to get it from anywhere that even the most taboo of loves was sounding enticing: the straight girl.

No reason to fall in love save for a little bit of attention sprinkled on a sapphic puppy with eyes too wide and a heart too open for hurting.

The straight girl was the stuff of nightmares, but also the stuff most of my gay friends had experience with.

Maybe if we all had little wristbands telling our sexual orientation, this whole dating thing would be a little easier. Maybe we wouldn't have to guess and check and guess and check all the time if we had little ID cards with our preferred partner's gender so we could just flash a bouncer and he would slide you into the right room with all the pretty girls.

I was ready to throw money down for this, but Kayla told me what I was looking for was a rainbow bracelet and I had to agree, it got the point across and it was subtle. A splash of color more than I was used to in my wardrobe, but still better than fishing where I knew all the men set up camp.

Better than falling in love and out of love and thinking that this time, this time would be any different. Why would it be any different? I'm doing the exact same things, with the same cast of people, just rotated.

Is it insanity to do the same and hope for a difference?

Damn straight girls making me question every single thing in life.

And not just any straight girl. Just the really nice ones. The kind ones, the ones who hold open the door for you, the ones who smile shyly at you when you notice them staring, the ones who say "my partner" and refer to inanimate objects as "she/her/hers" and ask you out to coffee to only drop a mention of Trevor or Chad or Bingley and how he always hangs out with the boys and so she needed more girl friends as well.

Emphasis on that little space between girl and friends. A tundra of space that I would never traverse or connect into one word on a spreadsheet.

Straight girls who act a little gay.

Straight girls who are more gay as an aesthetic.

Those straight girls I could do without, but could never seem to get enough of.

Damn plaid hipsters.