“Ansley” © Donald Patten

 

Something About Her

You wanted her as much as you wanted to be her, although you wouldn’t have known it at the time. You were thirteen. Francesca’s Bear-Paw boots thumped against the staircase like a love-struck heart, and you were stumbling behind her in a desperate attempt to match her pace. Her legs, unlike yours, were long and slender. Her ass looked better than any thirteen-year-old’s ass had the right to look. It wasn’t a perverted thought. She was climbing the steps right in front of you. If she stopped suddenly, your face would’ve slammed straight into the plush, womanly seat of those Levi jeans she wore.

Some stifled part of you—like a caged bird ramming against your chest again and again—longed to reach out and touch her. In doing so, maybe you would finally understand the illusion. Maybe you’d discover that Francesca’s jeans were stuffed with cotton, or that Francesca was cotton herself: light and airy and easy to pull apart.

The warning bell chimed overhead. Behind you, a pack of prepubescent boys yelled obscenities and motioned between their legs as if tugging on tiny dicks.

“Better get to class, Frannie,” said the ring-leader.

“Yuh-huh,” sneered his second-in-command. “Wouldn’t want you to be late.”

The boys high-fived with crude, inexperienced hands and clapped each other on the back. Only one of them refrained from the festivities. He was shy; or more properly, distracted. He fumbled with the drawstring on his sweatshirt. His eyes sported a murky sheen as they fixated on something far ahead of him, drifting up and up and up.

Francesca’s ass loomed at the top of the stairwell, just barely out of reach, but you didn’t think much about that. You were more interested in her gazelle-like legs. The way she whirled around on them to look at you—and only you. She didn’t so much as glance at the boys as she rolled her eyes and said: “Idiots.”

“Boys are from Jupiter,” you replied, dumbly.

And you figured you must’ve done something right, because she smiled. It was a glorious, gap-toothed smile, full of admiration and mirth. You wondered vaguely what it would’ve been like to lick her there, in the space between her front teeth. The taste of candied apples blossomed on your tongue.

Then a thump. Your biology textbook thudded to the terrazzo floor, knocked from your grasp by the distracted boy, who still stared at Francesca as if he couldn’t even conceptualize looking elsewhere. He didn’t apologize—likely, he hadn’t noticed you were there. He shoved past you as if you were a desk, or a bookcase, or a cardboard box. You couldn’t blame him, either. If the roles were reversed, and he was the one occupying Francesca’s attention, you would have thrust him over the railing without pause.

The other boys quieted on the steps beneath you. They weren’t making innuendos now. Instead, they watched—furtively, sporting paper-thin masks of indifference—as their friend ascended the staircase toward Francesca like Mercury approaching the Sun.

“Hi,” the boy muttered. Then, because she hadn’t heard, or had chosen not to reply, he cleared his throat and said, with a little more gumption: “Hey.”

“Hey,” said Francesca, coolly. She cradled her stack of books to her chest. “Your friends are idiots, you know.”

He blushed. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice was louder now. His chest inflated as if concealing a balloon. “Though maybe not as well as you do.”

Francesca laughed—a melodious, tinkling sound—and you realized too late that you should have interrupted. You should’ve grabbed her by her shirt sleeve, slapped her across the face and screamed, Don’t fall for it! I’m right here! But she was already melting. Her cold exterior thawed to reveal a tender, gap-toothed smile—a smile that, two minutes prior, you’d believed belonged to you.

“Need help carrying those?” the boy asked.

“No,” Francesca said, but she unloaded her books onto him regardless, and you tried to convince yourself that she couldn’t have done it on purpose—she couldn’t have known how badly you wanted to die—as the two of them strode into the florescent light of the hallway and away from you, as perfect as anything.

A second passed, and the other boys returned to their usual shenanigans. They clambered up the steps, skirting around your fallen textbook, cracking jokes and making vivid gestures about the impressive size of their friend’s balls. But you could tell that their humor was in bad taste. Their faces smiled, but their fists were like stones in their pockets as the final school bell rang and pealed and began to sing.

Years down the road, your therapist would tell you that you’d probably imagined it. “A coping mechanism,” she’d explain, in her sugar-coated manner, “to minimize your negative feelings.”

But you swore, in that moment, you had felt an energy pass through you like an invisible hand, rummaging around your insides, cutting wires and rearranging gears. And for the rest of your life, you would hear it—that eternal click—as the hand exchanged your weak-willed heart for something much sturdier, much stronger. After that, it didn’t even matter that you were alone on the staircase, dreading the detention slip you’d receive for missing class, just like it didn’t matter that the girl of your dreams was strutting her perfect ass down the hallway, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with a boy who was not you, and who would never be you. It didn’t bother you one bit, because you had already decided that you didn’t like Francesca. Or rather, that you didn’t like girls.

And someday, when your therapist asked, you would sigh and shake your head and say: “No, no. I can assure you, I’ve always been straight.”

 

Katie McHugh (she/her) is a writer from Long Island, New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BULL, Folly Journal, Wilderness House, and Riddle Fence, among others.

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He creates oil paintings, illustrations, ceramics and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries throughout Maine. To view his online portfolio, visit @donald.patten on Instagram.

“I attend weekly figure drawing sessions in my hometown Belfast, Maine. Models pose for 150 minutes so artists can draw them. I have attended these sessions for the past 3 years to regularly practice and improve my drawing abilities. Many confident and proud people of LGBTQ Identities model at these sessions, such confidence and pride they have are very inspirational to me. So I try to honor their willingness to pose by drawing them to the best of my current abilities.”