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9 years old
Harry insisted they see the final film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy on its opening weekend. If it had been up to him, they would’ve gone for the midnight showing, but Anne vetoed that idea immediately— there was no way she was staying up that late for a film, and she definitely wouldn’t let Harry do it either. Instead, they got tickets for Friday evening, heading out as a family, even though it was mostly Harry who was excited.
He could barely sit still as the cinema filled up around them, and he was far too jumpy to eat any popcorn until after the lights went down and the previews started. He’d spent the past couple of nights rewatching the first two films (though he practically knew them by heart) in preparation, and when the music swelled at the beginning of the final installment, he held his breath and shut his eyes for a moment, overwhelmed with emotion.
Hours later, after the final credits had scrolled by, he quickly wiped away the tears in his eyes, wanting to hide the fact that he’d been crying. It wasn’t until the lights came up that he saw other fans with red noses and wet cheeks, making him feel a bit more justified in shedding tears. Even Anne dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
“How did you like it?” she asked, looking at him expectantly.
“It was good, wasn’t it?” Even as young as he was, Harry was hesitant to share too much of his emotional journey, not wanting to be teased over it. Gemma reached over Anne and gave him a little shove anyway.
“C’mon, Harry, you’ve been talking about this for weeks. Don’t tell me you didn’t love it!”
He shook his head, deciding to reveal at least some of his thoughts. “No, I loved it! I did! I think it might’ve been my favourite, even. The part with the Ents was sick, right? And the battle scenes— I didn’t think they could get better, but they did.”
“That’s more like it,” Gemma said, leaning back in her seat. The theatre was emptying slowly but surely, and Harry wondered how much longer they’d have to sit.
“It was a wonderful film, wasn’t it? Did you have a favourite part, love?” Anne asked, perhaps wanting to fill some of the time as they waited for their row to empty out.
“Probably the part where Sam saved Frodo? M’not sure, guess I’ll need to watch it again, yeah?” Harry shrugged, looking away in the hopes that his mum wouldn’t catch his little lie. Fortunately, she just laughed, standing up to herd them out of their now-empty row.
“We’ll see. Might let you come back with one or two friends during the holiday break. Now come on, who’s feeling peckish?”
Harry breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Maybe it was silly to keep his favourite part to himself— his mother and sister probably wouldn’t think it was too strange, they might even agree with him —but there was something about it that made him nervous. As much as he’d loved Legolas firing arrow after arrow and Sam’s bravery at Mordor and nearly every other moment, his favourite scene was Eowyn’s.
When she’d ripped her helmet off to declare, “I am no man,” before stabbing the Witch King, Harry had felt his heart clench and his breath catch in his throat. It was a feeling he’d felt the ghost of once or twice before, but it had never been quite this strong.
He couldn’t quite identify what was behind it, only that it existed. Part of him wanted to think it was a crush, but he hadn’t felt strange the rest of the time Eowyn was on screen, so that didn’t seem quite right. It was just that one moment: the revelation and the strength of an underestimated character stepping up and claiming her space.
In the end, he dismissed it as admiration. His mum was a proud feminist, and Harry already considered himself one as well, so naturally he loved seeing strong women succeed. He never told anyone about the sensation he experienced in that moment, and when it returned almost every time he rewatched The Return of the King , he simply stopped thinking of it as an aberration.
Still, when he would lie in bed and stare at The Lord of the Rings poster on his wall, he’d imagine himself in her place. A bold, unexpected hero with the power to defeat anything. So what if Eowyn was a woman?
14 years old
One of Harry’s friends gave him a shove, not allowing him to continue hesitating outside the bedroom where a small group was gathering in a circle. Claire had suggested a game of spin the bottle earlier in the night, but that was before the lager and a cheap bottle of vodka arrived to get the party going. When she mentioned it again, picking up her half-empty bottle and waving it back and forth playfully, a couple of the boys whooped and the girls who were sat behind her whispered and giggled.
As he joined the circle, he chanced a look at Amanda, his current crush. She caught him looking and smiled back at him, and Harry felt his cheeks warm as he quickly looked away. He’d first noticed her when they were put together in a group assignment at school— she was the only other person willing to meet up on the weekend to get everything completed, and she’d laughed at Harry’s silly jokes and complimented the music on his iPod when she snuck a look at it.
She was pretty, with her honey blonde hair cut into a shaggy bob and an easy smile that always made Harry want to smile back at her. His friends talked about her body a lot once they’d noticed that Harry fancied her, usually commenting on the size of her tits and telling Harry he’d have to report back whenever he actually grew balls and copped a feel. It turned Harry’s stomach.
He didn’t like Amanda for her tits— though, yeah, they were interesting, to say the least —and he hated the way he felt hearing his friends talk about her, though he hated it even more when he’d join in to get them to shut up about it. The things he liked about Amanda weren’t like that. He liked the bit of blush she wore across her cheekbones that made her look perpetually sun-kissed and excited, and he loved to watch her hands when she talked.
She wore two or three rings on each hand, some of them simple silver bands with designs pressed into them and others that were big, showy things— a hazel eye that matched her own and an antique that opened up to reveal a picture of her cat. When she lifted her hand, Harry always wondered how it felt. Was it heavy, or had she gotten used to the weight of all those rings?
Harry pictured himself sitting beside her and holding her hand, imagining the contrast of the cool metal and her warm palm against his. If he told her she was pretty, would she blush? Would he even be able to tell, or would her peachy cheeks hide it too well for him to see?
These weren’t the kinds of things he would ever dream of saying aloud to his friends, of course. If they knew how Harry really thought about Amanda, they’d never let him hear the end of it. It was probably better to keep it a secret. Besides, he reasoned, noticing little things about her and not just her body probably meant that he actually really liked her.
And now, they were almost definitely going to kiss. Harry could feel it inside his stomach, a sort of itch that he couldn’t scratch as he watched person after person spin the bottle. They’d all agreed not to do any same-sex kisses, so they sat alternating boy/girl to make it easier to know who the bottle had landed on.
Amanda’s turn landed on Evan, and Harry looked away instead of watching, not wanting to see if Evan decided to be bold and feel Amanda up as they kissed. Judging by the sounds of everyone who was watching, it hadn’t been much. The girls didn’t even make their usual cooing noises.
Finally, it was Harry’s turn, and he spun the bottle with as much force as he could, watching it go round and round until it came to a stop right between Amanda and Stephen. Though he’d prepared himself for kissing her, it didn’t stop Harry from blushing once he was actually faced with the reality of it. He got up and shuffled toward the middle of the circle on his knees, Amanda doing the same until they were close enough to touch each other.
She laid her hand on his shoulder, and he touched her waist in response, not wanting to push past anything she was willing to give. Her eyes fluttered shut as she leaned forward, lips shiny with gloss that Harry could smell from such a close distance. Her mouth was open slightly, and Harry took that to mean she wanted more than a chaste peck. He parted his lips, too, his free hand clenching into a fist at the anticipation of actually kissing her.
The first thing Harry noticed when their mouths touched was the chemical sweetness of her strawberry lip gloss. He sucked at her lip, tongue darting out to touch hers tentatively. She breathed out through her nose, pushing a little closer to him and opening her mouth wider, turning her head to one side to invite Harry in further.
He experienced the kiss like he was standing back and cooly observing each second, watching for the moment when it would end. When he pulled away, Amanda smiled at him, looking pointedly down at his mouth before she moved back to her seat. Around him, Harry’s friends reached out to slap his back and congratulate him on one of the longer kisses of the night.
All he was thinking about was the lingering taste of strawberries and the tacky feel of the gloss that Amanda had left on his mouth. He excused himself a moment or two later, studying his face in the mirror while letting the water run for a moment. His lips were stained pink, and he wondered why that was what his mind was stuck on instead of kissing the girl he liked.
He shoved such thoughts aside as he rejoined the game, and later on, when Amanda pulled him into a dark closet and asked him to kiss her, he didn’t refuse. And when she offered to let him feel her up, he took the opportunity, wondering how his friends would feel if they were in his place. How many of them would still be thinking of sticky pink gloss on their lips instead?
18 years old
The bar was loud and packed full, and Harry had to grab ahold of his friend’s shirt to keep from losing him in the crowd as they made their way back to the booth. It was summer in LA, the next-to-last day of his holiday before he had to head back home to find a job and figure out the next few years of his life.
Mark was two years older than Harry and had moved to LA for uni a year before, writing an email to Harry almost immediately upon arrival to say that he was never leaving “the most perfect place on earth.” Naturally, Harry had to take him up on his offer of a place to stay if he ever wanted to experience it for himself.
It didn’t hurt matters that Mark was gay. He’d come out to Harry just before leaving, prompting Harry to come out to him as well, which had cemented their friendship in spite of the physical distance between them. Harry didn’t know that many gay people in Holmes Chapel— not any out ones, at least —and that kept him from feeling like he could come out, too. It was a vicious cycle, and he often wondered who else was hiding themselves in plain sight. Did they know he was like them just by looking? Or did most of them feel as clueless as he did?
LA wasn’t Harry’s idea of perfection, but it beat Holmes Chapel easily. Mark’s flat was near a coffee shop that Harry went to daily during his week there, and he quickly acclimated to the searing heat and the cool, aloof way that people ignored one another in public, even if it went against everything he’d been taught about etiquette growing up.
For his last big night out, Mark got Harry into a gay bar for their weekly drag show. Harry had never seen drag queens in the flesh, and Mark promised he’d love every minute, so when he snagged a booth near the stage, he let Harry sit on the outside, closest to the stage.
“The queens are going to love you, Hazza! That curly mop of yours, you’re bound to have a few of them come right up to you.”
Harry laughed, shaking his head. “Whatever, mate, we’ll see!” He wasn’t sure whether he wanted them to come to him or not. Would they think he was straight and tease him for it? Would they flirt with him in earnest, trying to go home with him? He had no idea what to expect, and it made him anxious, leg twitching as he tried in vain to tune into the conversation that Mark was having with his friends and boyfriend.
By the time the show started half an hour later, Harry had downed the pint that Mark’s boyfriend bought for him as well as two shots of something that burned his throat all the way down but left him feeling loose and happy. The first act nearly had him up and dancing with her ode to a classic Britney song, and when she finally left the stage to work the audience, Harry waved a couple of dollars in the air to the beat until she came closer and accepted them, popping her hip out so that he could shove them beneath the waistband of her pleather shorts.
She smiled at him, and he grinned right back, drinking in the sight of her. Up close, her exaggerated makeup, with its overdrawn lips and thick arched brows, looked strange, but when she was under the stage lights, it looked just right. He wondered how she did it. Did someone show her by hand, or did she copy what she’d seen elsewhere? Could anyone do it? Could Harry?
The notion sent a thrill through him, and he giggled, throwing his hand over his mouth to cover his laughter lest anyone think he was laughing at the show itself and not just a stray thought that had rushed through his head unbidden. Mark noticed, though, and squeezed Harry’s shoulder, leaning in to ask if he was having fun. Harry’s giddy expression was answer enough.
Mark’s prediction ended up coming true a little later that night. One of the queens came right up to Harry during Rihanna’s “S&M,” and noticing his blush immediately, chose to return to sing to him twice, brandishing a riding crop that she used to slap at her own exposed ass before dragging it across Harry’s cheek. He didn’t think he’d recover from it, but he really didn’t have much of a chance.
The emcee was up after the Rihanna number, and she stepped off the stage to work the crowd, giving the crew a chance to clean up the mess that was left behind before the show could continue. She made a beeline for Harry, and he felt his eyes widen and his heart race at her approach.
Unlike the other drag queens in the show, the emcee wasn’t wearing pads to give her an hourglass shape or over-the-top makeup that would only be read from the stage. She was about Harry’s height, maybe a little taller and— if she hadn’t been wearing a sparkling slip of a dress —rather burly compared to the other performers and most people Harry had seen in LA. She had a swirl of chest hair right between her pecs that was dyed pink to match the wig she wore, and she made no effort to cover up the dusting of hair on her face.
Still, her lips were a deep shade of pink, like raspberries and watermelon and summertime, and her thick, winged eyeliner made her look powerful and intimidating. Harry’s jaw dropped when she turned her eyes on him, and he felt the simultaneous desire to shrink down to the size of a fly or jump from his seat to meet her head on. He ended up settling on smiling at her and looking away, which she took as an obvious invitation to come over.
“Ohh, this one is new. How you doin’, Mary?” A spotlight had followed her over, and the queen leaned against the side of the booth, casting a shadow over Harry’s face for just a moment as he looked up at her.
“It’s Harry, actually.”
The queen laughed. “Oh, girl, you’re new here and everywhere else, aren’t you? Miss Marva is gonna take you to school right now, baby. You ready?”
Harry’s face flushed as he nodded, the lights making it hard for him to look her in the eye.
“Mary is what some of us like to call each other so we know we’re sisters in the struggle. Gays in all ways. Queers who are heres.” She turned to play to the audience with each description, smiling beatifically when they whistled and cheered in response. Turning back to Harry, she patted the curled-up end of her pink wig. “Now I’m gonna ask you again: How you doin, Mary?”
“Really happy to be here,” Harry said, bumping his nose against the microphone in his enthusiasm to respond. Miss Marva winced almost imperceptibly before continuing.
“She’s learning! Little Harry-Mary, you’re almost ready to graduate, aren’t you?”
Harry decided to ham it up a bit, clapping his hands together and looking up wistfully as he answered, “I hope so...I‘m ready to get out into the big gay world!”
“Yes, you are, girl! That’s it! I know how good I am at playing teacher, so I’ve gotta get out there and school some more gaybies,” Miss Marva winked at him before turning away and moving on to another part of the crowd. He watched her go, the excitement of his moment with her not fading, even if the spotlight had.
“Told ya, H,” Mark whispered, squeezing Harry’s shoulder. “You’ve smashed your first drag show, haven’t ya?”
As the show was ending a bit later, Miss Marva thanked everyone who’d performed as well as everyone in the audience for a great show. “I’ve been your most fabulous them-cee, Miss Marva Luss! Please stay for the dancing and be sure to tip your gorgeous bartenders!” The music swelled behind her as some of the queens who’d performed made their way to the dance floor on the other side of the bar.
Mark seemed eager to join them, but before he could go, Harry leaned in to ask him a question. “Did she say them- cee? Or did I hear it wrong?”
“Oh, yeah, I think Damien uses they/them pronouns. You can always talk to them, H, I think they liked you.” Mark waggled his eyebrows, and Harry slapped him away, shaking his head.
“Not trying to have a one-night stand, just wanted to know.” He was grateful for the low lights that hopefully made his embarrassment a bit less obvious. Mark just shrugged and shook his head, then gave Harry a little shove backward, leaving him stumbling into someone else. He turned around to apologize and found himself face-to-face with Miss Marva— or Damien, apparently —still in her dress but now sans wig.
“Harry-Mary! Thanks for letting me play around with you, doll. I saw you sitting with Mark and wondered if you were the friend he said was going to visit.” They sipped at their drink through a cocktail straw as Harry nodded back, a little too nervous to speak just yet, even if he couldn’t think of any good reason to be. “I’m Damien, by the way. I always say Miss Marva is my mother’s name.”
Barking out a laugh, Harry doubled over for a moment before standing back up, nerves dissipating. Damien looked back at him, pleased at his reaction. “How’d you start doing all this?” Harry nodded toward the stage, and Damien shrugged.
“Watched a little Drag Race and kept thinking how I’d do things differently. Also, I guess I thought it was weird that there weren’t more genderqueer and nonbinary people visible in the drag world. Sometimes it feels like all of it’s drag, you know? Might as well do a little of it in sequins if I can.”
They ended up in a booth, Harry leaning in intently as Damien talked about how they’d actually gotten into performing and how much their personae— it turned out that in addition to Miss Marva Luss, Damien also performed as a drag king under the name Papa Colour —intersected with their life and identity. Most of it was inspired by things they’d seen or lived, by people they’d known or always wanted to imitate. They compared it to watching a scrambled cable channel as a child, distorted images that would sometimes resolve into the negative of the picture on the screen in momentary blips that felt like clarity, and though Harry couldn’t quite identify with it, he thought he understood.
“Sort of, like, you take all the stories you’ve seen that are stereotypes or images of people, and you flip them around till they feel real, maybe? Or, like, they feel like something you can hold onto, when usually it’s not like that?”
Damien looked back at Harry with their lips pursed, studying him for a moment before they leaned in. “It’s not not like that. But maybe it’s like that for you, y’know? Everybody comes at this stuff differently. We all just figure out what we can, when we can, how we can, and we hope it’ll make sense to someone else.”
Harry nodded. He’d never had this particular sort of deep conversation before. With his friends back home, late-night talks usually veered toward expectations of where their lives were headed that Harry couldn’t always relate to: which girls they’d marry or which jobs they’d work, which city they’d move to if they could. And often the answers were the same ones over and over, none of them anything Harry wanted to claim for a future of his own.
“Don’t know many people who think about it, I guess.” Harry played with the ring he’d bought himself at a shop near the ocean, twirling it around his forefinger. “And I dunno, I mean, for me, it’s there, but it’s not— I don’t think I quite know where to start, maybe. Haven’t had a proper boyfriend yet, even.” He looked up when Damien touched his hand.
“You’re eighteen, right? You’ve got a lot of time...I’m twenty-three, and I think I’m still figuring it out. You’re on your own time.” They leaned back and let their hand drop. “And you don’t need a boyfriend first or ever, if you don’t want one. Who you love and who you fuck don’t always play into who you are.”
The song changed to something that Harry didn’t recognize, and Damien sat up a little straighter. “This is one of my favourites. Wanna dance, Mary?” Harry grinned at the nickname, giving Damien a playful shove out of the booth. They extended a hand to him, and he followed them to the floor where the two of them danced until the bar closed down and Mark called a car to head back home.
Head resting against the cool glass of the car window as they drove through the city back to Mark’s flat, Harry watched the lights sparkle until his eyes blurred and he drifted off to sleep, snapshot images of himself in sequins, glitter, and lace playing against his eyelids.
24 years old
“Just give me your phone.” Chris grabbed Harry’s wrist, snatching the device from his hand with a triumphant shout. “There! We’re gettin’ you laid, mate, just calm down.”
Harry huffed, leaning back against the couch. This wasn’t the first time his friends had decided that it was time for him to hook up with someone. They didn’t always get far enough to actually make a profile for him— the last time they had, he’d been cooking dinner and only realized what they’d done much later, when his phone made a sound he didn’t recognize and he saw a notification for a Grindr message. He had deleted the profile without looking at it or the message he’d received, much to his friends’ chagrin.
Chris cheered as the app finished downloading. “We’re in, Colin! Come help me make Harry appealing to all the fit lads out there.” Colin emerged from the kitchen with fresh drinks in his hands, handing one off to Harry as he sat. Their other friends were still in the kitchen talking, music playing low enough that it was hard for Harry to make out anything distinct. The party was close to dying out.
“Alright, what have we got so far?” Colin asked as he hooked his chin over Chris’s shoulder, looking at the phone as Harry shook his head and sipped his fresh gin and tonic. “Piccies first, yeah?”
“Obviously.” Chris slid his finger across the screen, scrolling through Harry’s phone. They wouldn’t have much luck; Harry didn’t take many selfies, and the ones he did take were tucked away in a folder he’d titled “Nature” to keep anyone from finding them if they looked.
“Harold, you pretentious fuck! All these pictures are black and whites and absolutely none of them feature your dick or your body,” Chris scoffed, turning his face to Colin to silently ask for a sip of his drink. After taking it, they exchanged a kiss before Chris turned his attention back to Harry. “We’re going to have to take some now, you know. Nobody gets laid without pictures.”
Harry groaned, head falling back until he was looking up at the ceiling. “You’re not getting more than this,” he said, lifting his drink. “The clothes are staying on.”
“At least let me butch you up a little.” Chris’s voice took on the whiny tone it got when he was annoyed. “You work out enough to be a muscle fag, but you never show it off. There’s not even a point to it.”
“I like working out,” Harry argued goodnaturedly, shrugging his shoulders with an easy grin. If Chris was already annoyed, there was a chance that annoying him more could get him to drop the whole thing, so Harry was willing to push for it. “And I’ve said I’m not showing off any more than I am now.” He turned to look at them and saw Colin and Chris eye him up, clearly not pleased.
Harry’s style was something he considered shapeless entity/grandpa chic. He wore loose trousers and oversized sweaters and clothes that felt like they formed a protective layer around his body. They were the cocoon to his chrysalis, the unassuming cover that hid the stories he didn’t want to tell just anyone. And as much as he liked his friends— and he did, they were always invited to his parties and to Sunday brunch —Colin and Chris weren’t in the select group he was willing to reveal himself to.
“We’re trying to do you a favour, babes. Be reasonable— one little ab pic, yeah?” Colin emphasized his request with a little pout, but Harry was immune to that sort of thing, especially in matters like this. He simply shook his head.
“Ooh! Finally, here’s one!” Chris had apparently gone back to scrolling and found a picture that suited his needs. He showed it to Colin, who hummed his approval, and Harry had to resist the urge to sit up and demand to see what photo they were looking at.
“It would be so much better with a filter, don’t you think? Or facetune?”
Chris oohed at the suggestion, and Harry laid back against the couch once more, closing his eyes and trying to pick out what song was playing in the kitchen. It sounded a little like “Edge of Seventeen,” but it was too faint for him to be sure. He tapped out the familiar beat of the song against the side of his glass anyway, fingers wet with condensation, and let himself drift.
He understood why his friends pressured him like this. They cared about him and wanted to see him with a steady boyfriend— someone lithe but sturdy, masculine and handsome —someone who would join them on dinner dates and nights out, dancing. The sentiment wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t at all what Harry wanted.
His previous perfect-on-paper boyfriends hadn’t wanted the real Harry, cringing or growing disinterested when he ceased to be anything other than what they’d initially been attracted to. When they decided he was strong, he wasn’t allowed to be soft because soft meant he was also weak. It was black and white, either/or. He knew that’s what would happen on Grindr or any other app like it— nuance would be lost, and he’d be a void to be filled by the assumptions of whoever was scrolling past his picture.
What he wanted was to chart his own course. To be whatever it was that he felt like in the moment without needing to explain or justify it. And he wanted that to be enough, not only for himself but for the people around him.
“We have two drafts of text for you if you want a little say in what you’re looking for,” Chris announced, his voice interrupting Harry’s reverie and dragging him back to the present. He lifted his head and gave a confused look as Chris sighed, holding the phone up so Harry could see the screen .
Harry, age 24. Likes working hard and playing hard. Half gym rat, half brunch queen, ALL man. 8in uncut pic for pic 😘
Harry, age 24. Sensual lover wanted for fit vers out gay man. Not afraid of commitment but won’t say no to a good hard fuck.
“What, no measurement and winky face for the last one? Seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?” Harry bit back a laugh at Chris’s expression and decided to push a little more. “And when exactly did you measure my dick? I don’t remember it, but I hope you bought me dinner first.” Colin cackled, earning himself a hard look from Chris.
“8 inches is standard nowadays. If you say anything less, you might as well say you don’t even have a dick.” Chris rolled his eyes as he pulled the phone away from Harry. “I’m going with the first one for you, I think. The commitment thing isn’t gonna get you laid.”
“That’s true, that’s an immediate no for me.” Colin drained the last of his drink and wrapped his arms around Chris’s waist. “Or it used to be.”
Looking down at his mostly empty glass, Harry stood, dizzy for a moment as the alcohol buzzed to life in his head. “Well, Chris, I’m gonna have a wee while you finish your little masterpiece there. Need a refill, Col?”
Colin shook his head. “I think we’ll go soon, right, honey?” Chris hummed in response, too focused on Harry’s phone to pay attention.
When Harry returned, Chris was finished and had turned Harry’s phone off to make it harder for him to delete the app before his profile was seen. Harry rolled his eyes and shook his head, promising not to delete the app until at least the next day. Colin and Chris left, and the last couple of guests— the ones who’d been in the kitchen for the last hour or so —sheepishly got their things and walked out together, claiming to have lost track of the time. Harry was secretly pleased they’d got on as well as he’d hoped they would.
He took ten minutes to tidy up the flat, gathering up empty glasses and bottles and moving them into the kitchen and throwing lids on the containers of food that were left over before popping them into the fridge. He’d still have some tidying to do tomorrow, but it wouldn’t be as terrible. As he walked back to his room, he grabbed his phone and turned it on, considering whether or not to delete Grindr right away or to keep his promise.
As his phone booted up, he was greeted with texts from both Colin and Chris threatening to keep an eye out to make sure he hadn’t deleted his profile yet. Harry sighed, tossing the phone onto the bed before stripping out of his clothes and heading to the bathroom for his nighttime routine.
Standing naked in front of the mirror, Harry watched himself as he brushed his teeth, tracking the movement of his biceps and pecs and running a hand over his stomach. The butterfly he had tattooed there had changed meaning for him over the years, turning a personal reference and inside joke with himself into a reminder of change and emergence. He traced the lines of its wings with a slow and careful finger, watching his belly expand and contract under the ticklish touch.
He washed his face, patting it dry with the extra soft towel he’d bought solely for that purpose, then reached into the back of his drawer to pull out the moisturizing balm he put on every night. It was unscented, but it smelled like plants, a little floral and green, and he liked to imagine that it was feeding his skin at night, nourishing him from the outside in. It left his skin looking dewy, fresh and wet and clean, and he smiled back at himself before turning off the light and going to bed.
Lying there in the dark, he picked up his phone, dismissing the notifications he already had from Grindr with a sigh. He hadn’t even bothered to look at the picture Chris had found, so he clicked into the app to view his profile, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw that it was a picture his sister had taken of him on a seaside holiday trip a year previously. He was shirtless, wearing his short yellow trunks and grinning, holding a perfect shell up like it was a prize.
His hair was longer then, his body a little softer, but the picture was recognizably him. Even knowing that other people would see it with entirely different eyes, pinning him down to whatever particular identity they found most desirable, he still felt at least a little at ease knowing that he wasn’t posting a perfect, stony-faced selfie (hard, tough, masc) or a posed half-nude mirror shot, the flash only just obscuring his face with his body turned just so (soft, flirtatious, less masc but definitely still not feminine).
Closing the app, he opened up his photos, clicked on the “Nature” folder, and tapped on the subheading labeled “Flowers.” This was where he kept most of his favourite pictures that he’d taken of himself, the ones that gave him comfort on hard nights and joy on the good ones. These were him or her or them— they felt expansive like that, like they held more than just a single version of Harry up to the light —and in a perfect world, they were how Harry wanted to be perceived.
Some were colour and some black and white, some perfectly posed and others taken on a whim, a blur of hand moving in the shot or laughter breaking out over Harry’s face. One of his favourites was a nude where Harry was reclined, hand draped delicately over hip and eyes on the camera. The angle softened all his hardest lines, and looking at it made him think of the curl of flower petals as they opened in a bloom, curving gracefully until the center was exposed.
In another, Harry wore an oversized orange cardigan that he’d found at a charity shop and a slip skirt that nearly matched the colour of his skin. He’d painted his lips and eyelids gold, smearing the pigment into his skin with his fingertips until they held the same metallic sheen. He’d left fingerprints of gold on his chest and cheeks and neck, the colour catching the light to glint in the picture.
His final favourite picture was one he’d taken at the gym after a late-afternoon boxing session. In the empty locker room, he had stood with one hand still gloved and the other not, nails painted with sparkling black polish. He wore a t-shirt, but his legs were covered with fishnet tights over red boxer briefs. Hands up at his chest and legs crossed, looking at the picture made Harry feel tough and dainty all at once.
With a contented sigh, Harry closed the picture and set his phone aside, letting his mind wander to thoughts of the next photographs he’d take of himself. It was the last thing on his mind as he fell asleep, and that night, he dreamed of building a boat out of leaves and twigs and flowers, sticky tree sap the glue that held it all together. He climbed inside just as water rose up around him, swallowing the ground whole.
Lying on his back and drifting out to sea, Harry let the calm surround him, the only sound the lapping of waves against the side of his boat. When the boat began to change form, twigs turning to vines and leaves growing wildly, instead of panic, he was filled with a deep sense of rightness and knowing. The smell of flowers was around him in the still darkness, and in that moment, he was becoming.
28 years old
Sasha’s party was in full swing by the time Harry arrived. Wrapped up in a bulky coat to protect against the cold, he was grateful to find that the venue she’d rented was easy to get into in spite of being well packed with people. Slipping out of the coat felt like removing a mask, and Harry exhaled, shaking their limbs out, fingers stretching to work out the tingling chill that the cold air had left behind.
“H! You’re here!” Ari gave Harry a quick hug from behind before stepping back and demanding they turn around. “I need to see your outfit properly, give us a twirl!”
Lifting her arms, Harry turned in a careful circle, watching the pale green fringe of their sleeves move in the pink neon light that shined behind Ari like a halo. “Does it read?”
“You remind me of a garden, maybe. Or a field of flowers? Wait.” Ari took a step back, wobbling for a second on heels so high that he practically towered over Harry, even if they were typically the same height. “Yeah, a field of wildflowers teeming with life, I’d say. How close am I?”
“Pretty much dead on,” Harry replied with a pleased smile. “It’s a particular one that was near my house growing up. This would be springtime, though, not New Year’s Eve.”
“Well, of course! It is a life-of-the-party theme, isn’t it? No sense in coming as an empty field.” Putting his hands on his hips, Ari posed for a moment, giving Harry a challenging look. “And what am I?”
In addition to the heels, Ari wore a cropped jacket with fluff spilling out of it, threads of stuffing wrapped around his middle. His eyes were surrounded by white makeup in rounded shapes, his lips tinted a cool blue at the center. Harry narrowed their eyes. “Cloud?”
“Cumulus cloud, to be exact. Can be a rain cloud, but you’ll notice I have a silver lining.” Harry thought that must be the shimmer around Ari’s eyes until he opened his jacket to reveal silver fabric, making Harry laugh.
“That’s a terrible joke, and I absolutely loved it.”
They chatted until Ari spotted someone he’d been looking for earlier and excused himself to grab them before they slipped away again. Looking around the room, Harry tried to spot another familiar face. There were none that he could see, so they moved into another room, making their way to the dance floor.
When he had decided to move a little over two years earlier, Harry had worried about not finding friends or a community like the one he was leaving. What he didn’t expect and never would have predicted was finding people like the friends he’d made here.
Taking work assisting a photographer, it made sense that Harry would meet more artists and creative people than he’d known before. That had been part of the appeal of moving, really. The friends Harry left behind never seemed to want to go beyond what they already knew and understood, and they didn’t like it when Harry didn’t go with their flow.
The first time Harry had ventured out with his new friends— they were only coworkers and acquaintances then, really —he’d been blown away by how free they were. He still remembered seeing Ari arrive to meet Sasha on that spring afternoon, ducking into the pub from the rain and pulling his coat off to reveal a simple maxi dress, its yellow colour providing a sharp contrast to his dark skin.
Harry had introduced himself, and Ari had shaken his hand, giving his name as well as stating that he used he/him pronouns. He followed up by asking for Harry’s pronouns, holding up a hand when Harry began to apologize, not entirely sure how to answer.
Ari was one of the first people Harry showed her photographs to about six months later. Finding the words to explain weren’t easy, and Harry still cringed a little whenever the fumbling conversation replayed in her mind.
“I’m, I don’t know— not a man but not not a man? Or a woman, or —I feel like there’s not just one of me, maybe? Or there’s one, but it’s, erm…,” he had trailed off, fingers twisting for a moment until Ari gave him a comforting pat on the hand.
“You don’t have to explain it, love, I think I know what you mean,” Ari looked back at Harry with a warm, soft smile, and Harry had barked out a laugh in response.
“Think you can explain it to me, then? Because I’m still a bit lost.”
It turned out there really wasn’t an easy way for Harry to express what it felt like for her. Mostly, he thought of it as two whole pieces of herself that sometimes functioned as one but often didn’t. There wasn’t an easy way to convey the shift to anyone else, and so Harry had settled on they/them pronouns from anyone who was willing to give them and accepting he/him from the people who weren’t. Asking for she/her felt like a big step— one that she longed to take but wasn’t certain they could do without falling.
There were moments when she bristled as they got more comfortable, obviously, and more than once, Harry had thought about what it would feel like to be more open about stating which pronouns felt best. In a perfect world, people would simply see the change and respect it, but he knew realistically that that wasn’t going to happen and wasn’t entirely sure how they’d feel if it did.
And, of course, it didn’t help that Harry was still hesitant to share any of the things that had led to their new understanding with most of the world. It was a collection of moments and memories— experiences and beliefs —that she had a hard time teasing apart and turning into anything that actually made sense. You can’t tell someone that you remember feeling like Eowyn as a child or that you once sat with a drag performer who gave you a word you’d never known you needed but had always craved, especially if you then took care to hide those things from everyone who said they wanted to know you.
In front of Harry, the dance floor teemed with bodies, most of them with faces she didn’t know or recognize. She wanted to dance, but the press of all the other people felt like too much to move in, so they pushed through until they’d made it into a room off to the side where the music still pulsed vibrantly but where fewer people had gathered. In the center, a couple dressed like fauns danced with one another like there was nobody else around them, and Harry smiled at the sight, already feeling better about letting himself move with the music even if he still wanted to stay off to the side a bit.
There was a lot to appreciate from afar anyway: Sasha bouncing beside the DJ booth, wearing a leotard with a collar attached that swirled around her neck so she looked like a calla lily; M, one of Sasha’s partners, in an all-white outfit that reminded Harry of Galadriel, dancing alongside her; even the people hiding away in the smaller room were still full of life and joy. All at once, Harry was hit with a wave of happiness at the place he’d found, where even among strangers, they still felt at home.
As one song transitioned smoothly into the next, Harry started to move with the beat. Closing their eyes and lifting their arms up overhead, Harry let themselves enjoy the feeling of the fringe on their sleeves as it whipped about, occasionally wrapping itself around their arm like the tendril of a growing vine. The bright neon lights played out an array of sparkling shapes behind Harry’s eyelids, transporting her to the field she was dressed as on a starry night. It was heavenly, and he wanted nothing more than to keep right on dancing as the next song began and the next after that.
Lost in their own world, Harry was a little surprised when he opened his eyes and saw that more people had joined the room and were dancing in groups or on their own all around him. There was still plenty of room to move freely, though, and Harry was relieved to realize that she actually didn’t mind the presence of so many people around her. If anything, she felt better than she had initially, continuing to feel the music with eyes open this time.
Eventually, he decided it was time to join the main dance floor. It was just as packed as it had been earlier, but Harry felt emboldened by their earlier comfort and wanted to see how dancing would feel among a sea of strangers. Squeezing into the space to find a spot to dance, there was the familiar surge of anxiety that Harry remembered from his nights out with Colin and Chris and those friends— the sticky, persistent fear that he was too close to revealing too much, rejection and repulsion waiting for him if he made even one wrong move.
They felt caught out already and considered going back to the relative safety of the smaller room when they looked toward the DJ booth and saw Ari in his impossibly high heels, arms draped over Sasha’s shoulders as the two of them danced with bright grins on their faces. It was exactly the reminder she needed that this wasn’t a dance floor she’d been on before: these were their people, and there was no need to worry about getting anything wrong here.
Harry had spent a long time figuring out how to hide, which hadn’t changed when he’d figured out his sexuality— there was a part of them that assumed it would never change. He’d thought there was always going to be a part of themself that was held back, available only to him and only in shadows and dreams, and as they swayed and rocked and bounced to the music, they felt that aspect step out of shadow and into the light.
Nobody seemed to notice, which Harry found a little amusing. They threw their head back and laughed, the noise swallowed up by the sound of everyone shouting and singing and the music thundering like a heartbeat all around them.
She wasn’t sure how long it was before the music grew a little softer and Sasha’s voice cut in over the beat. “Hello, my darling lovelies! Your dancing and presence has given me life tonight, and I hope you’re as happy as I am.” Everyone whistled and whooped, making Sasha cackle into the microphone with unbridled glee. “But I interrupted our dance party to tell you it’s officially…,” here, she turned to M, who held up a wrist. “Forty-five seconds until midnight! Sorry, a watch doesn’t go with the outfit, does it?”
People laughed, and Sasha pulled a silly face. “We’ll begin the official countdown at ten seconds, so I’ll just natter on a bit until then, yeah? In the meantime, if you want to kiss someone at the new year and haven’t found them yet, now’s the time. Oh, twenty-five seconds…getting closer!”
Harry hadn’t considered kissing anyone at midnight. Though he’d had a few boyfriends and a fair share of one-night stands in his life, it had been a while since they’d really wanted to even think about making that sort of connection. Harry had stopped constantly pushing aside a whole piece of themself when entering into any relationship. That meant a whole new set of potential pitfalls that they might not be prepared for. Would she still feel the need to hide away? Would they even be able to do that if they wanted to?
They didn’t want to, anyway. Prepared or not, Harry felt like this was the moment to leap.
“Alright, we’re at eleven!” Sasha began the countdown, and everyone joined in, shouting out the numbers with her. Harry took a deep breath and turned their head to look all around them, figuring that if a kiss was meant to happen, someone obvious would be there for it. “Eight! Seven!”
To their right, just a few steps away, someone locked eyes with Harry as she scanned the room. The person smiled; it was a soft thing, mouth gathering into a little V and eyes crinkling on the sides, and Harry smiled back, wide and happy, teeth catching on her lower lip. “Four! Three!”
Harry didn’t waste any more time, closing the distance between them just as Sasha yelled, “Happy New Year!” and the room erupted into cheers.