Hashtag Queer: LGBTQ+ Creative Anthology, Volume 3

By Qommunicate Publishing

The queer lit is back & the third time's the charm! More LGBTQ+ fiction, nonfiction, poetry and scripts from over two-dozen writers, including two from India where homosexuality was only just legalized. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Qommunicate Publishing
• Release date: Apr 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781946952264

Book preview

Contents

Editor’s Note | Sage Kalmus……………………………………………..iii

Fiction | Short Stories

Character Driven |Brian Rowe…….……………………….…….…1

The Atomic Principle of Bathroom Graffiti | V.F. Thompson..…..38

annulus | A. Poythress……….…………..…………………….……56

Last Innings | Shreya Chakraborty………….……………..…….…68

Healthy Enough | Christina M. Wells…………….………………..82

The Hunter | Laramie Dean.………………………………..….…106

Olwethu & Zachariah | Jason Maseko..….………………………134

Fathers’ Love | Hunter Liguore……….…………………………..149

After the Rains | Tanima Das Mitra….………………………..….160

Reporter | Stefen Styrsky……….…………………………………173

Sweet-talk | Cila Warncke…..…………………………………….193

A Beginning | Lupin Thurrott………………………………….…..208

Nonfiction | Essays & Memoirs

Other Intimacies | Cheryl Wollner………………………..….……30

Transference, Transition | A.J. Winder……………..…………….101

A Certain Type of Brilliance: Claiming Femme | Meg.….…..….200

Poetry | Poems

All Glory Be | Ian Duncan……….……….…..……….………..….20

Love Glitter | Joyce Frohn………………………….………………21

First Date Jitters | Violet Mitchell……………….…………………52

I’m Reading the Vagina Monologues | Violet Mitchell.…………..53

Storm Emma | Violet Mitchell………………………….…………..54

Batman Doesn’t Scare Emma | Violet Mitchell……….…………..55

Encircled | Sarah Bigham………………………….……………….66

When memories fracture and we learn to make do |

Sarah Bigham…………………………………..……………………67

A Widow Speaks #2 | Anthony DiPietro….…………………….…96

An Apostle Breaks His Silence | Anthony DiPietro….………..….99

The Tacit Poems | Melanie Bell…………………………..……….155

How to Fail With a Lover | Marie Hartung………….…………..171

Scripts | Plays & Screenplays

The Seasons Speak in Four Parts | Addison Rizer….……………..22

The Parrots of Heaven | Evan Guilford-Blake…….……………..119

Melody | Amy Fox and Wren Handman..……….…….……..….184

Contributors…………………………………….………………….219

About the Editor…………………………..………….……………225

About the Publisher…………………….…………..……….….…225

Editor’s Note

Since the release of Hashtag Queer, Volume 2 just last year, the country of India ended its criminalization of homosexuality, a point expressed by two writers from that country published in this volume. Both celebrated that they could even write and submit work that, only months prior, would have jeopardized their safety. Indeed, the world has come a long way, even in our lifetimes, and yet one look at Brunei’s recent government-sanctioned stoning of queer folk reveals how far we still have to go.

Queer literature is arguably more relevant now than ever, or at least more vibrant and prolific. The need to express our struggles is more than therapeutic: it’s political. By continuing to write and publish our experience, we refuse to let others push us back into the shadows and pretend we don’t exist or are an aberration. By stepping into the light, again and again, we make it impossible to deny us.

When we published Hashtag Queer, Volume 1, our premiere publication, we didn’t set out for it to have a theme other than queer literature. We found however, in the submissions we culled, a common thread we identified as: A life in the day, or a firsthand experience of queerness from the earliest awakenings of youth to the last breath of old age and death. In Volume 2, we noticed a different theme emerging, that being the innately human struggles all people face, revealing queer people are people too. This third time around, we struggled at first to identify a common link until it hit us that the struggle, or struggle itself, was the link.

However much coincidence did or didn’t play into it, the Hashtag Queer series was born at the birth of a major cultural shift in America, and the world. While hateful, divisive behavior, bullying and discrimination have been around since time immemorial, perhaps never before in the free world has it been so sanctioned and emboldened. As such, people living in society’s margins are feeling more threatened than perhaps ever in their lives. There appears to be a heightened level of fear, anxiety, anger, despair and desperation exacerbated over the past few years making itself evident in the submissions we’ve read and curated for this volume. For writers, who find self-expression in words on a page, those words convey an urgent and dire effort to contend with this struggle. Indeed, and at the risk of oversimplifying, if Volume 1 was about the queer part of being a queer human being today and Volume 2 was about the human part, this third volume in what has so far developed into a trilogy, is about the today part: that is, about being a queer person alive today, facing struggles distinctly modern and new.

This is partly evident in the amount of magical realism wending its way through the pieces, a genre defined by its uses to transcend and redefine boundaries, painting new worlds similar enough to our own for us to see ourselves in them yet different enough to describe the indescribable, convey the inconceivable, reveal the unfamiliar in the familiar. Other pieces confront the present struggle in more direct terms: stories of war, dating apps and the relentless march of progress. At the same time, themes of self-acceptance and personal empowerment continue to permeate the series, more queer voices beyond gay and lesbian, like trans, bisexual, non-binary and asexual, demonstrating that, no matter the faces of adversity at any point in history, some of the struggles queer people face are eternal and universal… at least so far. As I said in my introduction to the first volume, it’s only an issue until it’s not an issue.

Indeed we’ve come far, and still there’s so much farther to go. Until then, may we continue to archive our collective struggle as queer people today through the inspired words of writers like those featured here. A huge thanks to all of them for opening themselves so vulnerably for our betterment, and a likewise huge thanks to you, the reader, for giving their your time and attention.

—Sage Kalmus

Character Driven

BRIAN ROWE

Placerville, California, is like no other city in late September, thick gray clouds hovering, the smell of fresh doughnuts wafting through the misty air, tourists arriving from near and far to pick ripe apples and choose the perfect Cinderella pumpkin. On this breezy Saturday morning, Carson Road is backed up for miles, enough stopped cars on the slim two-lane street to suggest that a deadly crash has taken place. At least that’s what Jake is thinking, his chin resting on the top of his steering wheel. His stomach has been growling for the past thirty minutes, and his migraine’s gotten worse since they left that skeevy motel. He’s finally able to drive forward a bit, until all the cars before him slam their brakes again. His girlfriend Lahna sits in the passenger seat, and she’s loving every minute they’ve been stuck on the road, grateful really. Any time with Jake is special for Lahna. After three years together, and two short break-ups in between, Lahna is looking at this weekend adventure with the most optimism she can muster. At age twenty-eight, she was scared of turning thirty. Now, at age twenty-nine, she’s scared she won’t make it to thirty. She takes Jake’s hand and holds it tight, the car still stopped, no sign of movement anytime soon. She turns and smiles at her friend Danielle, who’s seated in the back with Jake’s younger sister Candace.

Jake lets go of Lahna’s hand and says, I give up. Let’s turn around.

Turn around? Lahna asks. You mean, leave?

We’ll come next year. It’s too crowded.

But, no. Next year… She slinks down in her seat.

Three cars speed past in the other direction, and Jake has an opening to get away from this mess. He pulls the steering wheel to the left and is about to make his move when he looks back at Lahna. Jake doesn’t know she has terminal cancer, doesn’t have a clue this is her last chance to pick those stupid apples and choose her lame pumpkin, but he sees a sadness in her eyes that stops his foot from even grazing the pedal. He keeps his foot flat on the car floor, for another minute at least, until the car before him finally starts moving, and he follows close behind. He tries to stay patient as he slowly creeps toward the top of the winding hill.

Jake looks in the rearview mirror at his sister, who he notices is whispering something to Danielle. They’ve been loud the entire car ride, and so Jake wonders what she could be saying that needs to stay a secret. Inviting Candace had been a last-minute decision, Lahna not wanting Danielle to be a third wheel all weekend, but Jake still isn’t comfortable with Candace being there; they get along fine, but he’s never had much in common with his sister. He’s thirty-three; she’s twenty. He’s white; she’s black. He’s conservative; she’s a die-hard liberal. To Jake it was like his parents had gone out of their way to adopt someone the polar opposite of him.

What are you two playing back there? he asks.

Candace pulls away from Danielle and says to her brother, noticeably narrowing her eyes, "Wouldn’t you like to know?"

He focuses back on the road ahead and says, Actually I wouldn’t. He taps his fingers against the steering wheel, then turns up the radio volume. A song plays he’s never heard before. Something with lyrics like dying, dying, and now I’m flying, flying. He reaches the top of the hill and approaches a crowded intersection.

Lahna sits up straight and blinks her eyes about two dozen times. She hadn’t had any symptoms all weekend, but something bad is hitting her now, and it’s coming up fast.

Jake? Oh God.

What? What’s wrong?

Lahna brings her hand toward her throat. I feel sick.

He looks down at her feet, like he already expects something gross to be splashed against the mat. Do you need to throw up?

She nods, her right hand resting on the door handle. Can you pull over?

He glances through her window at the dirt turnout, then at the intersection ahead, and the small gas station on the left.

Give me a second, Jake says, and he turns on his left blinker. Everybody, hold on to something!

What? Why? he hears Candace demand from the back.

Jake doesn’t take the time to answer; instead he slams his foot against the pedal and whips around the car before him and for five horrifying seconds Jake drives his Accord down the wrong side of the road, so many drivers honking on his right, a police officer sure to be on his tail any moment. Jake jerks his car to the left at the intersection and swerves around another vehicle—a limousine, of all things—before he pulls into the gas station and stops his car next to the outdoor women’s restroom.

Oh my God, Lahna says. Do you want me to make a mess of your car, Jake?

Come on, let me help you. He steps outside, darting his eyes back toward the intersection, thankful no sirens are wailing in the distance.

Jake opens the passenger side door and helps Lahna to the restroom. Lahna thinks it will be locked, but she pulls against the handle and the door swings open, the growing wind slamming it back against the mini-mart wall.

I’ll be outside, Jake tells her.

Okay, Lahna says, and she hurries inside the restroom and closes the door behind her.

Jake shoves his back against the wall and watches Candace and Danielle get out of the car. They both yawn, then stretch out their arms and legs. They motion toward the mini-mart entrance, and Jake nods.

Want anything? Candace asks her brother.

I’m good, he says. Don’t take too long, or I’m leaving without you.

"Yeah, yeah, very funny. You’re hilarious."

Candace and Danielle enter the mini-mart, which is so tiny there’s barely any room to move through the two aisles. The only other person inside is a male cashier perusing a newspaper behind a large counter. Candace immediately goes for the candy bars, piling them up like she’s planning to hibernate for a month. Danielle steps around her and picks out a bag of potato chips. She looks at the nutrition facts. First the fat content, then the number of calories.

Then her phone rings.

Who’s that? Candace asks. She turns toward Danielle and drops one of the candy bars on the hardwood floor.

Danielle takes out her phone and stares at the screen. She purses her lips. Lets it keep ringing. It’s just my dad again, she says. "God. Why can’t he leave me alone?"

She shoves the phone back in her pocket.

#

Harrison Best paced back and forth in the men’s restroom, his phone pressed to his ear. He didn’t get a voice-mail until the seventh ring.

Hi, honey, he said. Look, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day, where are you? Can you call me tonight? I think I’ve waited long enough.

He put the phone away, then washed his hands in the sink. He made faces in the mirror. Funny. Bored. Serious. Then he pretended to be a model, narrowing his eyes and winking at himself. He tugged on his collar, which he noticed for the first time had collected some sweat. He rubbed it down with the tip of his thumb, then tossed the wad of paper in the trash and walked out of the restroom.

It wasn’t as lonely in the hallway. In fact the more Harrison walked forward the more people he could see, male and female, young and old, even some little kids seated toward the back. His talk was to begin any minute, and to this day he couldn’t believe the number of fans who still turned out for him year after year. He kept waiting to walk up to a microphone that faced a desolate hall, two hundred empty seats staring back at him, some lowly intern in the corner shrugging her shoulders.

Harrison felt a hand touch his back, and then Amanda, the event organizer he’d been in touch with the past few weeks, nudged his ribcage with her elbow.

Does this ever get old for you? she asked.

Not at all. I still get nervous every time, if that’s what you’re asking.

You know we sold out yesterday? We haven’t had that happen since Stephen King came here two years ago.

Is that so?

Mmm hmm. These people love you, Harrison. Can you imagine what they’d do if you actually published another book?

Harrison stared into her eyes not with anger, because he’d heard those words before about a thousand times, but with a growing sense of despair. He nodded. Tried to think of something to say.

But then the audience broke out into applause, and a finely dressed young man who looked about thirty approached the microphone and said, Good evening, my fellow book lovers! Who’s ready to meet the one and only Mr. Harrison Best?

The applause grew to such an overwhelming extent that Harrison, for a split second, thought they were cheering for a rock star.

Amanda leaned in toward him, close enough she could have kissed his cheek. She smelled of sweet peppermint.

Is any of your family here? she asked.

Harrison looked out at the vast, diverse crowd. Not tonight, he said. Unfortunately.

He dipped his hand in his pocket and turned his phone to silent.

#

Danielle shoves her back against the cold drinks door and shakes her head at Candace, who’s holding so much junk food she can barely take a step without spilling it. Danielle manages a weak, slightly condescending laugh. Are you serious right now?

Hey, don’t judge. I’m hungry. And candy’s practically my name.

That’s not an excuse. Danielle pulls out two bottled waters, then heads toward the front of the mini-mart. You know what’s gonna happen to your ass if you keep eating that stuff?

You’re just jealous my metabolism still works. You take one sip of a chocolate milkshake and it goes straight to your thighs.

Danielle pushes Candace, playfully. Take that back. She sets her bottled waters on the counter. "Take it back now."

What if I don’t?

Then you’re gonna be in lots of trouble.

Oh, okay, Candace says, and she drops eight candy bars next to the waters. I’m really scared, Danielle. I’m quivering.

Danielle rolls her eyes at Candace, then takes out a credit card and taps it a few times on the counter. The cashier has vanished. She stands still, waiting for the man to re-appear.

Where’d that guy go? she asks.

Who?

The cashier. He was standing here like thirty seconds ago. She leans over the counter and looks down, like the guy might have dropped dead from a heart attack. There’s nobody.

Maybe he ran away when he saw your ugly face.

Danielle slugs Candace in the chest, harder than before. Shut up. Seriously. What are we supposed to do?

Candace twirls her fingers through her hair, then grabs the candy bars two at a time. You thinking what I’m thinking?

What? No, no, no—

Come on. Nobody’ll see us.

There’s probably security cameras, you idiot! Let’s just wait. He’ll come back.

Candace leans in close to Danielle, all of the candy bars now safely in Candace’s hands. Haven’t you ever wanted to be bad, Danielle? Just once? Candace kisses her right cheek, then runs out of the mini-mart laughing.

Danielle looks toward the ceiling for a security camera. She doesn’t see one. "Is anyone in here? You have three seconds to show yourself before I’m forced to break the law. Key word there, forced, all right? Okay. One…two…"

She grabs the waters, a bag of chips, and a stick of cinnamon gum, and then she runs out of the mini-mart toward Jake’s car. She opens the back door, laughing the whole way, and tosses her stolen items onto the seat. Candace isn’t in the vehicle; neither are Jake and Lahna.

"Where is everybody?" she asks, but then she spots Candace standing on the side of the building, motioning her to come forward. She’s already finished inhaling one of the candy bars.

Get over here, Candace says.

Danielle shouts at her, No! What are you, crazy? We have to go now!

Why, what’s the rush? I think Jake’s still in the bathroom.

He is? Then where’s Lahna?

Candace grins, and points at the closed bathroom door.

It doesn’t take long for Danielle to figure it out. Eww. Gross.

Come on, Candace says, and runs all the way behind the building. Danielle glances around the gas station—there’s no one else around, not a single car on the road. She shoves her hands against her hips, then, reluctantly, follows after Candace.

As soon as Danielle finds the back of the mini-mart, Candace grips her by the arms, pulls her close, and brings her index finger to Danielle’s already quivering lips.

What are you doing? Danielle asks.

Whatever I want.

Candace drops her uneaten candy bars, then kisses Danielle on the lips.

Danielle breaks the lip-lock fast and glances toward the gas station, which is still empty. "Candace, please.