You’d think that growing up in my house, I’d have a better understanding of human sexuality. At the very least, I ought to be able to figure out my own. I know I land somewhere on the demisexuality spectrum, because I don’t always notice whether or not I’m physically attracted to someone until I really get to know them. My brain tends to make a few exceptions, though. Like, um, there was that one summer that I realized a few of Brian’s teammates looked really good in their baseball uniforms. I had to stop going to the games because, goddamn. The last thing I needed was a crush on a bunch of straightboy jocks.
Anyway, the other exception to this rule (besides tight baseball pants) is that lately I’ve been finding myself drawn to gender nonconformity. I’m sure Mom could analyze that all day, and it probably does say something about my attachment to you. On the other hand, I’d like to say for the record that you always looked like a girl to me, even when you had to present as a boy. You didn’t put off that tough, boy/girl aura I’ve been intrigued by lately. Not like the person staring at me in the Laundromat.
“Whatcha reading?” They were sitting in a squishy beanbag-type chair by the window. This thin, attractive person of ambiguous gender. Spiky teal-tipped hair. Vaguely Asian-looking, American-ish accent.
“Oh, this?” I said, like a dork. I plopped into the next bean chair over and showed them the cover of your book. “My girlfriend and I put this together.”
Then I remembered that flirting usually doesn’t involve mentioning to the new person that you have a girlfriend.
“I mean, I guess she’s not my girlfriend anymore. It’s . . .”
“Complicated?” they said.
I shrugged.
“Wait. Is that Mixtape?” They grabbed the book out of my hands. “I read that.” A pause as they handed it back and something must have clicked in their head. “Oh my God, you’re Vivian’s boyfriend? Um, Milo?”
“Miles.”
“Right! Miles! I love Mixtape. Good stuff.” They nodded and sipped their coffee. In the window behind them, I could see a young couple arguing on the street. I got that pain in my gut. I know it’s stupid, but I miss having someone to argue with. “It’s gone now, right? Such a shame, really. What happened?”
“Legal bullshit, pretty much. Domain expired. Lots of red tape to get it back,” I said, keeping it short and sweet. “So, um, loyal reader. You got a name? Pronoun?”
“I think I’m feeling like a she today.” She stuck out a hand. “Frankie.”
I put down my tea and shook her hand. Funny, isn’t it? I just have queer in my bones. The LGBT community can and will find me, wherever I roam. Anyway, we got to talking, and Frankie said she’d taken a year off from uni to travel. I always hear about kids doing this, but I don’t understand how in the hell they can afford it. Me staying overseas for a month seems absurd! A year? Wow.
“Saw you chatting up that waitress. You could not have picked a worse time to try to get with an Icelandic chick.” Frankie tilted her head toward the bar where the snooty waitress was laughing with co-workers and making lattes.
I felt my cheeks turning red. I hadn’t known I had an audience for my pathetic attempt at flirting. “Oh yeah? Why is that?”
“She probably got laid just last night. And now she’s pissy and hung over and ready for the workday to end so she can get out and do it all again tonight. If you want Icelandic pussy, you’ve got to catch ’em when they’re smashed, man. Their legs are only open during ‘normal business hours’—Friday and Saturday from two to five a.m.”
I have to admit now that, yes, I did look at that horrible how-to-score-with-Icelandic-babes website that Brian told me about. And, yes, it does state that these beautiful Nordic women like it drunk and late, late at night.
“That’s a pretty narrow time frame. Where will I find Icelandic pussy that will work around MY schedule?” (Lawd, if my mothers could hear me now!)
“Well, I suppose I could help you out. There are these French girls in my hostel—” Frankie followed me around the café as I slid your book back onto the shelf and went to check on my laundry.
“French girls? I like where this is going. Continue.” I crammed my clothes in the dryer and loaded it up with coins.
In the corner, another tourist was unloading a sack of laundry into the wash. He tugged his pullover off, and his T-shirt rode up a little, revealing the smooth tanned skin of his lower back. I stared at him a little longer than I meant to.
Before too long, I’ll be a full-on zombie. I’m starting to have serious cravings for human flesh.
“They are French feminist graffiti artists. Even better, right?” Frankie leaned against one of the machines, looking sort of like a greaser in a 1950s movie. I guess that makes me Olivia Newton-John? “They don’t speak any English or whatever, and I’m French-Canadian, so I’ve been helping them out a little. Anyway, we’re going to tramp around town later and tag some stuff, then maybe go swimming. You up for it?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said to Frankie. I wasn’t sure about the graffiti, though. There’s a lot of really beautiful street art in Reykjavik, and I wasn’t sure if random people could paint up random places, but this huge part of me was like, God, Miles, can you please just shut off your brain for a while? Why not flirt with French girls and make my mark on something? It sounded like fun, and that’s what I was supposed to be having, right? You’d have gone in a heartbeat. And, unlike me, you would’ve been okay.
But we’ll get to that.
Frankie gave me directions to a skate park and told me to meet up with her when my clothes were finished, then she wandered off down the street. Once we were alone, the eye candy in the rumpled T-shirt smiled at me, but I couldn’t tell if it meant something or not. Then four or five of his buddies showed up and started their laundry. They were talking about football in some European accent, and I decided he was probably straight.
And I had a bunch of French women waiting for me, right?
I spent the rest of my laundry time looking for a French phrase book. No luck. Finally the dryer stopped and I tossed it all in my bag. I should point out that, other than my swim trunks and maybe a spare pair of socks, this was every bit of clothing I’d packed for the entire trip. I decided to head straight for the skate park, rather than dropping my stuff off at the hotel. I was nervous and eager, afraid that if I took too long, they wouldn’t be at the park when I got there.
But they were! Frankie and these two long-legged beauties. They were punky—one of them had that haircut where the side of her head was buzzed, and the other girl had a wicked septum piercing—but they both had these gauzy, flowy dresses on. In other words, they looked like music festival girls. I bet you a thousand bucks at least one of them owns a fake Native American headdress. Anyway, there wasn’t much chitchat since I don’t know a word of French. One of them handed me a plastic bag she’d been swinging around, and Frankie asked if I would stash it in my backpack for them. Inside was a manila envelope and three cans of spray paint. I managed to cram it all in my backpack and then we started walking around, looking for little secluded alleyways and interesting nooks for the girls to tag.
Now, when I think of graffiti artists, I tend to think of giant artsy murals, detailed work. These girls just had a couple of stencils. But whatever makes you feel like a badass, right?
And I did kinda. Feel like a badass, I mean. It was sort of fun, especially when one of them wanted to climb up on my shoulders so she could paint some out-of-reach place.
Frankie and the French girls took turns tagging all over the city. A couple of times, one of them would try to pass a can over to me, and I’d politely wave my hands.
“Pussy,” one of them said to me in English, loud and clear.
But it wasn’t that. I wasn’t so scared of getting caught. I could handle that. It might even be an interesting story to tell when I get back home. No, something else was holding me back.
I wasn’t sure I could do it without you. It’s hard to find the will
to make something new and beautiful when I feel like a withering houseplant on the inside. Art was something you and I did together, passion to pass the time.
I will, reluctantly, tell you about the street art the French girls made, because if you were here with me, that’s what you’d want to know. And, yes, you would have loved it.
First, a vine stencil. Green paint. Clink, clink, clink, hissssss. A stem. Next, pink paint through a petal-y stencil, the rose. Oh, but the rose is not a rose. It only looks like a rose if you aren’t looking close enough. Actually, it was a vulva. Then the black paint, a framing piece. French words that Frankie translated to me. It’s a Simone de Beauvoir quote: “One is not born a woman; one becomes one.”
Yes, see? Like I said, you would have loved it. And I hate that so fucking much right now.
And so I never did take my turn with the stencils and paint. Instead, I pulled your boots off and snapped a cell phone picture of them next to one of the French girls’ fresh tags. Frankie asked me what that was all about, so I said, “It’s for Vivian.”
“For Vivian,” she repeated, all gravely. I just figured she thought it was sad. How gullible could a guy get? Though it’s not like situations or people come with warning labels. No neon signs. No flashing lights.
Once the girls had had their fill of vandalism, the stencils went back into their envelope, and our priorities turned to the second set of plans for the evening: where to swim? Frankie and I asked around on the street until a local offered up an interesting enough sounding place. We walked to the hostel where the girls had a rental car, and we all piled in. The damn pool was an hour-and-a-half drive from Reykjavik, then a twenty-minute hike. But I was kind of enjoying myself. The scenery was pretty, and so were the French girls. I never even learned their names.
We followed the trail through the hills. I ended up lugging not only my backpack full of clothes and their spray paints, but also a cooler of beer that the French girls had brought along. And I had to piggyback one of them across a stream because she didn’t want to get her precious little shoes wet. But, yeah, I enjoyed it at the time.
I stopped once more to photograph your empty boots against the pointed green hills that surrounded the valley. I don’t know yet what the end result of these photos will be. I only know that taking them is starting to feel right.
So, this place . . . I’ll have to Google it because all I can remember is that it starts with an S. It’s Iceland’s oldest swimming pool, or something. It’s just this little secluded place. Nobody even maintains the pool anymore, so it’s super murky and all natural. There’s a building there—changing rooms, but they were disgusting. There’s like an inch and a half of mud and moldy beer covering the floor of the place. I took off your boots and tied them together by the laces and hung them up on this hook outside the door. None of us actually changed in the changing rooms.
The French girls squealed and stripped and frolicked, as we all know French girls are wont to do. Frankie and I watched them splash in the pool as our jaws slowly unhinged. Slow-motion perfection. I started to feel like I’d snuck onto the set of a movie about the life of someone much cooler. One of the French girls had a rainbow peacock feather tattoo down her spine. God, I wanted to taste it.
Beside me, Frankie undressed too. AFAB, in case you were wondering. Zero shame about her body, though. Yeah, you heard me, Vivian. A non-gender-conforming stranger got completely, shamelessly nude in front of me, and the world did not end. And then I took my clothes off and dove into the water, trying to be as nonchalant and graceful as the three of them had managed.
Fast-forward a few beers. Frankie and the brunette were putting their tongues down each other’s throats. I was cozying up to the peacock girl, but I couldn’t exactly bowl her over with my unique brand of wit. And, also, she was a lesbian. I asked Frankie to ask her, and she confirmed.
Well, damn. Who invited the straight(ish) guy?
More beer. Frankie had her head between the legs of the brunette, who was perched up on the ledge of the pool. I’ve never actually watched other people have sex, like, in person, before. I was mesmerized. The brunette squirmed, mouth open and head tilted back. She arched her back. Droplets of water trailed down the tendrils of wet hair that swirled around her breasts. I’ve never seen something so perfect in my life.
The peacock girl was watching, too. I tapped her shoulder, tilted my head toward Frankie and the brunette, then looked back at her. To my shock and delight, she shrugged and pulled herself up onto the ledge, spreading her legs for me. And I was happy to oblige.
(Sorry. Fuck. I just wish I could tell you these things for real. So you could scream or forgive. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel anymore. Is this cheating? I need you to tell me.)
But, the bad news is that I really have no clue how to go down on a girl. I mean, I guess this is a skill that I haven’t had much of a chance to hone. So after just a few minutes, the peacock girl put her hand under my chin and lifted my face. She shook her head and sank back into the water.
Strike two, Miles.
I was thinking about that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine converts a gay guy, at least temporarily, but then finds out later that she’s not as skilled as someone who has 24/7 “access to the equipment.” I was bummed, but not being a lesbian turned out to be one of the lesser problems of my night.
I’m tired of typing for now. Ready to bury my head in the sand and nap for a while. Later I’ll finish telling you this story. You know, the one where three girls beat the shit out of me, stole all my clothes and money, and left me bleeding in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Iceland? Yeah, that story. Part two’s a real riot.
Chapter Eight
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 8 12:22 PM
Okay. I’m back.
I will say this in my defense: I could tell they were talking about me. All day. Even if you can’t understand the language, a not-so-subtle point and whisper is easy to decipher. At first, I kept trying to be positive about it, but that went downhill pretty fast.
Maybe they think I’m cute? Maybe they want to know what my shirt says? Maybe they want to know what I’m saying? Maybe there’s something on my face? Maybe I’m boring. Or just a bit uncultured? Maybe they think my dick is laughably small. I bet she’s telling her friend how much I suck at oral sex. They’re laughing at me. I know they are.
I didn’t think—because I’d been trying so hard not to think—that they might be whispering to each other about you. About me. About me and you. And why not? It makes sense, right? You had a million and one blog followers all over the world. Some of your writings had gone viral. The Mixtape book was in Reykjavik, and Frankie had recognized it. The damn court case made headlines worldwide. Why wouldn’t we be known in Canada and France, too?
Queers, gender rebels, feminists, activists, artists. I was reminded of you at every turn, but I kept pushing you out of the picture.
Have fun. Let go. As if I can just turn a key, press a button, and an elevator will shoot me above all this.
This part of the story is harder to tell.
I was a little drunk, but I remember what happened pretty clearly. Frankie and the brunette got out of the pool first. They put their clothes on and went into the changing room for a short while. I saw them grab the cans of paint out of my backpack, so I figured they were just tagging the place (and, technically, they were). I stayed in the water, floating next to the peacock girl. We’d found the spot where the hot springs trickle in, so we were warm and cozy, buzzed. She kept trying to float on her back, and even though I’d already proven myself a lousy lover, she didn’t seem to mind me watching her. And when I swam over to help her, placing my hands under her back and holding her up so she didn’t sink, she smiled up at me.
We were in that dusky late-night Icelandic sun, warm and drunk. I was holding her, that rainbow feather tattoo resting in the palms of my hands. Just me and a nameless French girl, her perfect breasts like little mountain peaks ris
ing out of the water. Light as a feather, stiff as a . . . ha. You fill in the blanks. I don’t know. I guess it’s important for me to say that I was having a good time right then. I liked that she let me hold her. Keep her afloat. If someone were to ask me what I thought of her, I’d have to say she was a nice girl. Even now.
“Miles!” Frankie’s voice echoed out through the valley. “Come look at this!” She was standing at the doorway of that filthy changing room, waving me toward her. The peacock girl skimmed away from me, and I got up out of the water, pulling my boxers on (thankfully, my boner had retreated at that point). I paused at the doorway to pull your boots on so I didn’t have to step in all that ick, but Frankie grabbed my arm and pulled me inside before I could even take them down from the hook.
“Frankie! Jesus! This floor is gross!” The sensation of sticky brown goo seeping between my toes really brought out my not-so-masculine side.
“Just come here. We want to show you this.”
I took two more steps inside. They lured me. That’d be the correct word for this.
I saw your name first. That was what stood out. On the side wall, under one of the windows, someone had used the can of Barbie/lipstick/labia pink to write C’est pour Vivian.
I didn’t need Google Translate to tell me I was screwed.
Frankie hit me with a brick. I think it came from the wall of the pool. White, rectangular cement. I found it later on the floor.
My head rang like a bell. One moment I was standing, and the next I was in the muck, getting the crap kicked out of me. Ribs. Stomach. Junk. Both of them kept on kicking me, and my head was so fucked that I couldn’t really do anything but curl into a ball and try to protect my more sensitive parts.
I’ve never actually been in a fight before. That’s not to say that people didn’t bully me. They definitely did. And I’m not proud of it, but I could be a real cruel kid to anybody that gave me shit about being fat or having two moms. I found ways to exact my revenge that left darker bruises than my fists ever could. Anyway, I can tell you that these two girls understand both methods. They kicked my ass and destroyed (what was left of) my soul.
Miles Away from You Page 7