• Diaries,  slice of life

    The Gauntlet of Beauty

     I am 31.5 years old, and with the onset of the thirties comes relentless reminders that I’m aging. I’ve accepted my crow’s feet because they look sexy, and the general firmness lacking from my skin is unavoidable, so I don’t stress it.

    Unfortunately, with the onset of the thirties also comes a certain surrender to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as vaping nicotine. I started doing it this year. I don’t recommend it. (Prior to this, my only nicotine exposure was occasional social hookah, as you do in your glowing twenties.)

    Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, meaning it basically dries you up like a big walking corpse. Perhaps you can get away with being shriveled by poison in your youth (I wouldn’t know, I waited until a responsible age to start destroying myself) but in your thirties, it makes fine lines rather promptly. In the last ~6 months since I started vaping nicotine, my mouth has developed pucker lines. They are small but noticeable to me.

    Sooooo I am quitting nicotine because suffering vanity is much more obvious than whatever hellstorm I’m making in my throat/lungs. I need another coping mechanism that won’t make me look like Aunt Bertha who lives at your neighborhood bar. But still, I have these lines, the beginning of them, and now I can’t see anything else in the mirror.

    Being that I am a clever, dogged, calculated Aunt Bertha, I immediately researched What The Fuck To Do About This, assuming the answer is Botox. It turns out that Botox is ONE answer, but there are cheaper, less botulismy methods to remedy this as well. 

    I got an inexpensive high frequency device and a micro derma roller. The science on whether or not these actually DO what they claim is still out, as far as I can tell, because a cursory Googling yielded only clickbait and no scientific papers. My assumption is that they’re utter hogwash, but maybe if I believe hard enough, the placebo effect will plump my skin.

    The high frequency device looks like a phallus where you insert a delicate glass wand and then poke yourself in the face. Did you ever play with those plasma balls, where you touch the glass and it lights up? It’s like that but for your face. You can turn the frequency high enough (what frequency is it talking about anyway?) that it feels like constant static electricity. Apparently this does something. Like it microwaves under your skin to terrify your body into making more collagen. Yes you put this on your face.

    The other thing is the micro derma roller, which is like a handheld iron maiden, also for your face. It’s a ball covered in spikes and you rub it on your face. It feels the way you would expect it feels to rub spikes on your face. Then you follow up with a soothing acid treatment, which can now penetrate deeper because you cut holes. Into your face.

    I’ve now done both of these rituals once, and I suppose I plan to do them again, and at least once or twice a week for a few months. Whether or not they work, I’m optimistic that 31.5 years old is young enough that I’ll produce more collagen and fill out these lines to a small degree with time anyway, as long as I stop filling my lungs with nicotine clouds. The effect of the devices may be strictly placebo but time is not.

    Some resentful cave-feminist within me is nonstop irate with this, running some high frequency wand over my lips and then jabbing myself in the face with needles. It doesn’t escape my notice that they both hurt. You can feasibly jab yourself with the needles hard enough to bleed, which may or may not be a desired effect. (Kardashians bleed from micro derma rolling but Kardashians also marry people like Kanye so I live a less extreme life.)

    There’s something to be said about beauty rituals raging against the inexorable march of time and the consequences of our bad decisions being so painful. On one hand, it feels like the beauty industry is laughing at the stupid things people will pay to do to themselves. On the other hand, it feels like an illusory gauntlet through which many of us pass on our way to accepting middle age; it hurts, so it must be doing something, it must be changing me.

    Sometimes I look at getting plastic surgery done. Or even just Botox. I look at the websites, I look at the prices, I read about healing difficulties. I could probably do it. Then I remember that learning to love myself has zero cost and zero recovery time, and we’re all aging at the same speed anyway. So I won’t do that, probably. But I will spend forty dollars for the privilege of scraping my face with tiny needles and then dripping hyaluronic into my cavernous pores, bleeding my fear of aging in fine red lines down either side of my mouth.

  • resembles nonfiction,  writing

    Productivity tools for the discerning writer

    Do you write? The answer is probably no, even (especially) if you consider yourself a writer. Why write when you could do your dishes or wash the floors? Well, it’s time to neglect your house because in our age, there are fewer excuses to ignore the blank page than ever before. Here are some of the best aids to the storytellers out there.

    A good pen. Start with the basics, right? You can go as simple or fancy as you want. Quill and ink is a classic for a reason, just as the evolved and less messy versions have appeared for their own reasons. Having a writing implement at hand is the easiest way to make sure you can get those ideas down when you have them. You can’t use the excuse that you don’t remember when you can scribble on whatever’s handy!

    A good notebook. And why use loose-leaf paper if you don’t have to? Bound books keep it all together in one place, both so you can travel with your notes and so you’ll have them all in one place! Just make sure not to get too many or the notebook you’re looking for will be buried under a pile of half-filled copies, and cleaning away from your workspace will look a whole lot more appealing than writing.

    A page marker. Save time by using a bit of ribbon or paper to show yourself where you left off. You can get creative with this, too; some leaves work for this really well and have fun differences in texture. Watch the passage of time as your bookmark goes from fresh and vital and green to brown and well-loved to crumbling to dust. Feel the passage of time as you hibernate in the winter and await a fresh crop of leaves. Try to avoid thinking about how you’ll be part of the ground you walk on before too long.

    A good carrying bag. Crafters can do wonders with a bit of fabric and imagination. Your pen and journal probably doesn’t need more than a pouch with a couple of straps, but you can go as big as you need. Bags of holding are very popular in the writing community for the portable workspace – very helpful when you’re traveling, as it can double as a bedchamber if you tuck it out of view just right – but make sure you don’t get one used and uncleansed. The whispers in your head will let you know if it’s new or not, and if you need to see someone to clear your dreams again.

    A reliable scrying tool. Sometimes, the ideas in your head aren’t enough. There are a variety of options to commune with the spiritual force of your choice. If you’re traveling light, a good set of cards or a coin might do the trick. If you need more complicated help, a ball or mirror, supplemented with the herbs and spells of choice, can bring a full advisor to bounce that difficult plot point off of. Just cast a circle if you don’t have a direct line to your god or spirit; you never know who else might be listening.

    A ritual knife. When you’re really in a tricky spot, blood must be spilt. Your own can do in a pinch – make sure to not drag the blade across one of your palms, or it’ll make writing harder – but small vermin is usually ideal for both its accessibility and utility, if your mouser isn’t keeping up. A big plot tangle might need more of a hunting trip, but use your knife to slit the buck’s throat before you take the antlers for your purpose.

    A flask. Sometimes, you can’t use the blood you’ve gathered right away. You don’t need a fancy tool to paint the blood on yourself – fingers always do – but a crystal vial or a forged tin is necessary to keep blood for later, especially if you’re on the move. Infused flasks can give the blood power to destroy your enemies…or make your manuscripts more visible to seeking editors.

    A good attitude. Whether you live in the bogs where the dead never rest, or the deserts where the wind will leach your soul at first opportunity, having a can-do mindset will get you far! (Just don’t go too far, especially at the turn of the day and night, or you might not come back.)

  • Diaries

    How I Didn’t Spend My Summer Vacation

    Idea #1: Going to Disneyland. Checking out Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge would have been part of it, mostly in the forms of getting a lightsaber and riding the Millennium Falcon attraction. Most of it would have been getting to laze in Disneyland in my favorite ways in the summer: fastpasses to the water rides, Pirates and Ariel in midday when it’s hottest and I’m about to go to the hotel to take an afternoon nap, seeing what new Marvel face characters are around that I like and haven’t taken pictures with yet. Maybe my dream of being on Space Mountain when it goes down, and getting to see what it looks like when the lights go up, might finally come true. And if I went down there, I could venture out of Anaheim and go to places in Los Angeles I’ve always wanted to visit, like the Ripped Bodice.

    Variation: Going to a non-Disneyland Disney park. Maybe Disney World, except…Florida in the summer? Maybe not. The dream would be either Disneyland Paris, which I could pair with other French touristing because I’ve never been to Europe at all, or Tokyo Disneyland, which I have been to but not since I was a kindergartener, and they have DisneySea there now. (Also, visiting Japan as an adult!)

    Why it’s okay I didn’t go: I’ve been to Disneyland a fair amount, and I prefer going in October or January. This is probably even more true with a new, very popular section of the park; the combination of summer heat (and a lot more humidity than my home turf) with on-season crowds are no joke even without Galaxy’s Edge open. And I’ve been having less fun on water rides lately. (Not that I ever rode Splash Mountain for anything other than the drops. That ride. Oof.) Plus, traffic down there is never exactly fun, especially if you are going into Los Angeles itself.

    Idea #2: Las Vegas. Frankly, all I would have to have is an AirBNB with a pool (or a hotel with a pool that isn’t also a club, I guess), but I enjoy so much about hopping on- and off-Strip. Maybe I finally would have done the New York, New York roller coaster that I’ve always thought about. I’ve also always wanted to see a big artist’s residency there, although I don’t have anyone particular in mind at the moment. The Super Rich Person’s Dream would be to do designer shopping, particularly at somewhere like Alexander McQueen. A more modest dream would be a helicopter ride, probably over the Strip, but hopping somewhere like the Grand Canyon would be fun, too.

    Why it’s okay I didn’t go: I’ve been in Las Vegas in August before. Ovens are more comfortable. (Late September has been a great time to go in the past, by the way. Like, Life is Beautiful time period, although I’ve never gone there specifically.)

    Idea #3: San Francisco, possibly during Pride weekend. It’s a big dream of mine to do a gay tour of the city; I’ve been there a few times, but I’ve never ventured anywhere near the Castro, for instance. There’s also more generic touristy stuff I haven’t done, like go to Alcatraz or art museums. I could sneer at the gentrification and tech bros that have ruined a lot of the city while also eating great food and pretending I’m in a less soapy version of Tales of the City (2019). And if I felt like venturing out of the city, I could walk amongst the redwoods, which I’ve never done, and visit Monterey again.

    Why it’s okay I didn’t go: Did I mention the gentrification and tech bros? I really do want to do gay things in San Francisco in the not-too-distant future, though.

    Idea #4: Seattle. I almost applied to Clarion West this year, and I’m really hoping I get an application together and accepted in the next five years. I’ve never been to Seattle, but I have some online mutuals there that I might meet up with, and even if I didn’t, I could get suggestions of fun things to do from them online. I don’t know that I have a lot of interest in things like the Space Needle, but I would definitely swing by the first Starbucks and the Museum of Pop Culture (to name just one museum—can you tell I like museums?). And yes, potentially pretend I’m in 10 Things I Hate About You. If I didn’t want to just stay in Seattle, I would absolutely cross over into Canada, and if I drove there and back, I could also go to Portland and meet up with some friends there.

    Why it’s okay I didn’t go: I don’t have a super overpowering urge to go to Seattle specifically, although visiting a new-to-me big city would be swell.

    Idea #5: New York City. Romance Writers of America is having their yearly convention there as I write this, and even if I didn’t go to the conference itself, I would love to meet up with online mutuals who are there for it (and other online mutuals who aren’t). There’s way too much in the NYC area that I would love to do to list; just the Broadway musicals I would try to see could be its own post. One thing I would definitely do, if possible, is Sleep No More. Immersive Macbeth! There would almost definitely be a concert I would want to see while I was there, and you’d better believe I’d go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and dream of Harry Styles as I walked through the Camp: Notes on Fashion exhibit.

    Why it’s okay I didn’t go: I follow enough NYC-based people online to know what a clusterfluff the subways are right now. I suspect everything I’d want to do would be super spread out, and I tend to like to go on vacation and stay in a closeish radius to my hotel, which would probably be even more true if the trains weren’t a super-viable option.

    So what have I done this summer? Go to a concert in Sacramento, mostly. Go to a movie and eat a giant soft pretzel. A lot of struggling to sleep in my own bed and failing. A lot of looking at the front door and shaking at the thought of stepping outside. Navigating breakups, both in terms of medical professionals in my life and the fallout of other people’s falling outs. Enjoying the cool summer evenings and the thunderstorm we had. Cuddling with a pit bull puppy and missing the cat who I used to cuddle with who died in the spring. Playing the Spider-Man game and seeing the sights of a fictional Manhattan. Playing the Sims 4 and pretending I could be a mermaid in a Hawaii-like place. Trying to regain the pieces of a life poor mental health likes to steal from me again and again.

    Why this is okay: I’m tired. God, I’m tired. Time to close my laptop and go back to sleep.

    (Big thanks to my Patrons for sponsoring this essay!)

  • novelette,  republished

    Dragonet

    Military policy required two coachmen for Carriages in those days, and it’s a good thing they did; otherwise, Aja Skytoucher would never have survived the crash.

    In a blink of plasma and dancing electricity, she lost AI navigation. Her control panel’s lights went dark.

    The Carriage spun out.

    “He got us! He got us!”

    That was the second coachman, Emalkay. The numbskull didn’t try to recover. He just screamed and thrashed in his five point harness, face plastered against the viewport to see when the next plasma blast was coming.

    Aja seized the reins in one hand and tossed repair film to Emalkay with the other. She kept the film under her console, right between her feet, so she could find it even when smoke flooded the compartment. “Get to the rear quarter, Em!”

    He stared at her with baffled eyes. Drakor III pinwheeled orange and red behind him, its jagged-edged ice cap growing nearer at a terrifying rate. “The rear quarter? Why, Aja?”

    She wanted to say, Because I told you, idiot, but even with her heart clawing at the inside of her ribcage the words came out cool. “The fireball must have hit on the left. We’ll be venting oxygen. Patch it.”

    Clearly, all Emalkay heard was “venting oxygen.” His eyes got wider.

    “We’re going to get sucked out!”

    “Patch it.” Aja’s biceps strained as she hauled back on the reins.

    Emalkay’s hands flew over the control panel. There was no response. He banged his fists into the buttons for the communication device—the mochila—which should have given them instantaneous contact with the rest of the fleet. “Why aren’t they connecting with us?”

    Because the mochila had gone down with the navigation, of course.

    Everything had gone down with the navigation.

    Aja’s patience frayed. “Patch the rear quarter, Emalkay! That’s an order!”

    She kicked the latch release for the harnesses. Both she and Emalkay floated free from their seats. They continued to rotate with the Carriage, drifting slowly.

    Another plasma ball struck.

    The Carriage shuddered, panels rattling, emergency lights flickering. Without the harness latched, Aja was shaken from her chair. Still, she clung to the reins, braced the rubber treads of her boots against the panel, and she pulled back.

    Manual control on those Carriages were a fine art—a careful dance of tiny microwaves that could tweak their trajectory this way and that, assuming the coachman’s hand was fine enough. Most coachmen weren’t good at it. They relied on the automation that Aja had lost when the rear quarter when up in a ball of fire.

    Aja had cut her teeth on older vehicles, though. She’d had a Chariot XIV, for the love of Thal, and those had been fashioned in the days when artificial intelligence hadn’t been able to assemble paper airplanes, much less steer space vehicles.

    She hadn’t manually steered a Chariot since she was too small for the driver’s harness. But her muscles remembered the movements and she’d always had a cool head. She could do this now, even as they plummeted toward the surface of Drakor III. The enemy stronghold.

    Aja needed to do this.

    Leathery wings flashed past the viewport. Aja only glimpsed shimmering gold before it was gone again—a color that reminded her of the glittering hide dresses her trapper mother used to wear.

    “He sees us!” Emalkay wailed. “He’s coming back again!”

    Aja gritted her teeth, clutched the reins, and kept pulling. Harder. Harder.

    The bucking Carriage whined. Drakor III spun. Her wrists trembled with effort.

    “The patch,” she said.

    He listened this time. Emalkay’s hand flashed through the air, seizing the film, and he kicked off his chair to drift into the rear of the Carriage.

    Lords, but Drakor III was growing fast.

    Fresh plasma splattered over the viewport. It pushed them into a faster spin. Shoved them out of orbit.

    Gases whipped through the compartment, blasting Aja’s hair free of its ponytail. It obscured her vision but she didn’t need to see. She only needed the tension in the reins, the feel of the yoke on the other end. She could have steered it without any sense but touch.

    She pulled. Microwaves pushed. The Carriage stabilized and then overcorrected.

    Aja’s stomach lurched as her view of the planet below centered, and then began rotating again in the opposite direction. Her hair whipped over her eyes again.

    Emalkay shouted over the hissing. “You’re right! It’s the rear quarter! Oxygen’s venting!”

    Yes, Aja knew that. They’d lost the feed on the surface sensors in the heartbeat before they lost the rest of navigation, which meant that those sensors had been struck first, and they were situated inside the elbow line on the rear quarter.

    Eyes shut, hair tickling her nose, she steered.

    Aja didn’t see their enemy swoop past again, but she felt his passing wings clip the belly of the Carriage. She twisted the reins to the right to compensate.

    She heard repair film torn by the dull belt knife Emalkay was carrying. She could tell that he hadn’t sharpened it recently just by how many cuts it took to get through. He probably hadn’t charged his plasma rifle, either. Lazy Emalkay, stupid Emalkay—yet she needed him. If he didn’t patch that hole, they would both be dead.

    She couldn’t keep steering through the force of the venting oxygen. Not under the plasma barrage, not with the thin upper atmosphere they were entering, not without navigation.

    “Got it!” Emalkay cried.

    She already knew. The Carriage was calming under her hands.

    Their spin stabilized.

    Aja had control.

    “Yes,” she breathed, eyes opening.

    The Carriage’s spin had ended when it was oriented to face away from the surface. The Drakor system’s single red star glowed at the upper edge of the viewport, painting Aja in the foul light depicted on so many propaganda posters.

    Other Carriages in higher orbits glimmered. At this distance, their slow dance through space was beautiful. She couldn’t see the fleet’s insignia. Couldn’t tell which Carriages belonged to members of her unit, which ones were strangers, which had been licensed from private companies. The only way to tell that any of them were still working was the occasional flare of thrusters. They were slow as seeds drifting on the surface of a pond, confined by orbital mechanics and basic, clumsy physics.

    Unlike the enemy.

    The enemy was agile. Tireless. Capable of moving outside of orbits. Propelled at unimaginable speeds.

    And the residents of the Drakor system had responded to attack in full force.

    The raid should have caught them by surprise. Their army should have been deployed elsewhere that day, distracted by defending outposts in other systems. But they were there at the home world, prepared to receive the Allied forces, so the Drakor must have known the fleet was coming.

    There were thousands of them above Drakor III.

    Dragons.

    They looped around the Carriages, tailed by The Fog—a force that Allied scientists barely understood, though it seemed to be something similar to fire that their bodies generated. Nobody was certain if the fire’s origin was magical or biological. That Fog flashed behind the dragons in colors even brighter than Drakor’s sun, and the clouds of writhing plasma chewed through the fleet like it was nothing.

    Many Carriages were succumbing to attacks similar to the one that had disabled Aja and Emalkay.

    And now the attacker that had knocked out Aja’s systems was descending on her Carriage.

    It moved faster than she did, even though gravity had caught the Carriage and dragged her toward the surface. She was pinned between a dragon and Drakor III. Death under the claws of a dragon, death on the surface of the planet—the odds of survival either way were poor, very poor.

    Especially since she was watching the fleet getting pulverized far above them.

    “I think I can fix the mochila.” Emalkay clattered in the rear of the compartment, banging off of the walls and ripping open panels. Hope tinged his panicked tone. “You’ve just got to maintain low orbit long enough for someone to save us.”

    Nobody was going to be able to save them.

    A crack slithered from the lower right quadrant of the viewport, inching its way toward the center of the glass. It wouldn’t take much pressure for that to shatter. The crack bisected the dragon’s cruel face as it undulated through space to close in on them. It was bare moments away from catching the Carriage now.

    There was no time for a rescue.

    Aja swallowed hard. “No, keep off the mochila. Redirect everything into the microwave engines.”

    “The manual controls?”

    “Yes,” she said.

    “What about the AI?”

    “Forget the AI, Em!”

    Gravity tugged. They entered atmosphere. The exterior panels on the Carriage heated with the friction. Flames streaked on the edges of the viewport, blotting out Aja’s view of the fleet’s distant and serene demise.

    The dragon plummeted with them, folding his wings to catch up.

    “But how will the fleet find us if I don’t fix the mochila?” Emalkay asked.

    Aja didn’t reply.

    The Carriage’s manual controls became stiffer as the atmosphere’s density increased. Microwave propulsion took much more thrust to be effective in the atmosphere. But it was all they had—they couldn’t do a hard burn in atmo, not when they were already heating from the scrape of air, not when plasma was still crawling over their paneling.

    They’d be incinerated.

    Sweat rolled down Aja’s hairline, dripped into her collar. Her palms were slick.

    But she twisted the reins, the Carriage obeyed her command, and she felt the moment that Emalkay put all of the power into the microwave engines. The entire vehicle bucked in protest.

    “Come on, girl,” she whispered.

    The engine roared. Acid clouds billowed around the Carriage.

    The dragon blazed toward them like a hawk closing in on a rabbit.

    Aja tangled the reins around one arm, steering with a single fist. She fumbled with her belt. Grabbed the plasma rifle, loosened the strap, propped it against her shoulder.

    The plasma rifle was a new invention. They had gotten a living dragon specimen and somehow procured Fog from its organs—she didn’t know the specifics—and repurposed it into a weapon that could penetrate even the thickest, scaliest of dragon hides. The raid on Drakor was the first field test, so Aja wasn’t sure the gun would work. The men in the armory had said it would, but they’d also said the fleet’s arrival would be unexpected.

    The crack on the viewport spread.

    Aja manipulated the reins as Emalkay fed every terawatt of remaining power into the engine, slowing their descent, allowing the dragon to converge upon their location. The Carriage cried out. The exterior panels flamed. Mountains appeared at the edges of Aja’s vision—hostile alien terrain that made her heart beat with sheer panic.

    “What are you doing?” the other coachman roared. “Why aren’t you evading him?”

    Aja didn’t want to evade him. She wanted to land as soft as possible.

    She wanted to get out of the Carriage alive, even if it meant being stranded on Drakor III.

    It was getting so hot inside the Carriage. Sweat drenched her uniform. But her grip on the rifle was sure, and she was as steady aiming at the dragon’s heart as she was in steering the Carriage down to their death.

    Dragon claws glimmered, huge and sharp.

    Only meters away.

    “Aja! Aja!

    She fired directly into the viewport twice: once to finish shattering the glass, and once to deliver a shot of plasma directly into the heart of the dragon.

    Her bolt drove into the chest of her enemy.

    She didn’t see what happened after that—because that was when they finally crashed.


    Aja Skytoucher had a headache and Emalkay was screaming.

    Realistically speaking, both of these were good signs indicating survival.

    Consciousness scrabbled through Aja’s skull. She was on hands and knees before her senses returned, shoving twisted metal off of her body, seeking the shape of the plasma rifle. Her fingers curved around a handle.

    She felt a trigger. Good enough.

    Angry red light bathed Aja as she stood, squinting across the harsh landscape.

    There was wreckage at her feet. The air smelled sulfurous and her body felt strong despite the ache. Drakor III was low-gravity with a thin atmosphere, which made it feel like she was breathing on top of Mount McKinley, but it was habitable for humans and dragons alike.

    With her eyes blurred, everything looked to be red and indistinct.

    Everything but the wrecked Carriage.

    That was never going to fly again.

    Lords, the men weren’t going to be happy when they saw what she’d done to such a recent vehicle. Yet she hoped she would have an opportunity to be punished for it. Punishment, like her headache, would mean that she hadn’t been killed yet. It would mean that the fleet had enough Carriages surviving the dogfight in orbit to retrieve her.

    It would mean Aja might see her family again.

    Emalkay was still screaming, the shrieking made her headache pulse. She kicked wreckage around to search for him. If not to save him, then to put the whiny thing out of his misery.

    Her eyes had relearned to focus by the time she found him crushed under the rear quarter, where he had still been working when they struck.

    Though the blood was profuse, it seemed to originate from a single cut on his forehead. Other bruises had yet to develop. Aja had slowed their fall enough that both coachmen had survived—miraculously.

    But what of their attacker?

    “Shut up, Em,” she said, hauling him to his feet.

    “I can’t see! I’m bleeding!” He clutched his face.

    Aja yanked a rag out of the wreckage, pressed it to the wound, guided his hand to hold it in place. “You’ll survive if the dragons don’t get us.”

    The reality of the situation settled over Emalkay. He paled under all the blood.

    “We’re on Drakor,” he said. “We’re on Drakor!” He spun to look wildly around the harsh landscape, became dizzy, grabbed Aja to steady himself. “Where’s the beast that tried to eat us?”

    “I was wondering that myself.” She found Emalkay’s plasma rifle among the wreckage, tucked it into his free arm. He remained standing when she released him. That was good: she needed to be able to use both hands when the dragon attack came.

    And the dragon attack would surely come soon.

    Now that Aja could see, it was possible to estimate the length of the crater the landing had carved into Drakor’s surface. It must have been at least a mile. The smoke was impressive. It would act as a beacon for rescuers as well as the enemy.

    There was a second crater alongside theirs. A trail of Fog and blood led away from it, toward the mountains in the distance.

    That was where the dragon would have landed.

    How long had Aja been unconscious in the wreckage of the Carriage? Could the dragon have gotten far enough to notify reinforcements of their landing?

    One thing was certain: she needed to find the dragon and terminate it before it could bring all kinds of chaos on her head.

    It was her only chance of survival now.

    “Move,” Aja said.

    She leaped lightly across the surface. She had enough low-gravity experience to quickly adjust to the movement; it couldn’t have been significantly lower than the Station’s 0.5g. A single push of her legs vaulted her over the Carriage to the dragon’s trail.

    “Wait for me!”

    Emalkay was clumsy behind her. She decided to be generous and attribute that to his head trauma.

    Though movement should have been effortless, Aja’s breathing quickly grew thready, her chest laboring to inhale. It was impossible to tell if her dizziness was from injury or because of the strange atmosphere. Her eyes burned in it.

    She squinted to keep the blood in her sights, plasma rifle lifted, avoiding The Fog with her boots. She’d seen that melt through Carriages as though it were candle wax. If it contacted her body, she might as well resign herself to an amputation.

    As the trail continued, the blood grew in quantity. It tinted the iron-rich dirt brown.

    That, and the fact that the trail continued on the ground at all, suggested to Aja that the plasma rifle had done its job against the dragon.

    They moved into the foothills without finding a body. She must have been unconscious longer than she realized for it to have traveled so far, even with the minimal gravity on Drakor III. Aja was not moving quickly now, either. Emalkay held her back, slow and cautious from fear.

    She grew increasingly fatigued as she hunted.

    Just when Aja felt like she might collapse, she saw it.

    The dragon that had attacked them loomed out of the crimson darkness, sprawled between two jagged rocks overlooking a crater. It seemed even larger now that she didn’t have the Carriage as a protective shell. The arch of its spine was three times her height. The feet were each long enough that they could have gripped her with toes overlapping.

    Her heart leaped into her throat. She gestured to stop Emalkay halfway down the slope and prepared to fire.

    But the dragon didn’t move.

    Aja held her position halfway behind a rock. She watched for any signs of breathing or the faintest glimmer of active Fog.

    Nothing.

    She proceeded forward slowly, muzzle trained on the center mass of the body.

    Still, it didn’t move. Not even when the rubber treads of her soles ground against gravel and her uniform’s straps scraped against the metal of the rifle. Aja was too exhausted to be silent, yet the dragon didn’t react in the slightest.

    She rounded the body.

    Her enemy was dead.

    The monster had collapsed in a puddle of its own fluids, its massive head resting on one arm, the other hand stretched toward the top of the crater. The eyes were shut. A black tongue lolled from its open beak.

    Now that Aja got a good look at the wound she’d inflicted, she was impressed by how far the dragon had traveled on the surface. The hole was large enough that Aja could see all the way through from underneath its breastplate to the world framed by fragments of its spinal cord.

    She never would have expected their modified version of Fog to be so deadly against dragons, but she thanked the lords that it was.

    Aja had never seen a dragon so close, dead or alive. Now that her adrenaline was dropping off, she could admire the bulk of its form, huge yet graceful, almost more feline than serpentine. It was as elegant as the surroundings were harsh.

    “It’s safe,” Aja called.

    Only then did Emalkay proceed.

    He startled at the sight of its head, mouth open to expose fangs. His forefinger twitched. The plasma rifle in his hands clicked without firing.

    Yes, Emalkay had forgotten to charge his sidearm.

    “What are you doing?” She ripped the rifle out of his hands. “These things make noise like thunder. Do you want to draw every dragon within a hundred miles on us?”

    “It didn’t fire,” he said.

    Only because you’re stupid. She still discarded his gun. Her superior officer would be angry that she’d lost such a valuable new weapon, but she was so angry at Emalkay that it didn’t seem to matter.

    More than anger churned within Aja. She felt no satisfaction at the sight of one of those great beasts killed. They were frightening, yes, and if all the propaganda were to be believed, then they would happily have murdered the entire human race. But they were still majestic. And Aja’s mother had taught her to honor all lives; when they’d been hunting deer in New Dakota, they had prayed over the carcasses of their victims before cleaning them.

    Was it possible she regretted killing the dragon?

    It would have killed her if she hadn’t.

    “The good news is that we might just win the fight in orbit,” Emalkay said. He was bolder now that he realized the dragon was dead. He walked up to the hole in its chest and stuck his whole fist in. “Every Carriage up there has one or two of these plasma rifles. If folks suit up, open the sash, and start firing, we’ll be able to rip them apart!”

    Aja’s mouth tipped into a frown. “Don’t touch the body.”

    “I won’t get any Fog on me.” He pulled a fragment of rib out. “I’m gonna show this to my girl. She’ll be so impressed, her panties will vanish.”

    “If we ever get home,” Aja said.

    His confident smile faded.

    “I’m gonna get high,” he said. “See if I can spot any of the fleet. If they’ve started using the rifles instead of the cannons, it wouldn’t take them long to beat back the dragons.”

    “Emalkay…”

    He ignored her.

    Emalkay scrambled up the slope to peer over the edge of the crater.

    Aja set her hand on the dragon’s beak. It was leathery, pebbled, and still warm.

    “Oh my—Aja! You have to see this!” Emalkay shouted.

    She followed him up.

    At first, she thought that the volcanic crater was filled with some kind of strange mushrooms. It was peppered with clusters of swollen white spheres, too organic to be rock. Many of them were covered with dust the color of paprika. Those that were clean glistened.

    But the longer she looked at it, the more she realized that there was deliberation to the placement. They were grouped in handfuls all throughout the crater. There were footprints leading from cluster to cluster as though dragons had been patrolling them.

    It was a nest.

    “Thal be blessed,” Aja hissed.

    There was clicking inside the nearest eggs. It was easy to imagine the tiny beaks and claws that were bumping against the inner surface, attempting to tear away the membranes, devour the yolk, and break free of their warm home.

    Hundreds of dragonets.

    How many human lives could the inhabitant of a single egg terminate?

    “Lords,” Em said. “Give me your rifle.”

    She was so stunned that she handed it to him automatically. Only when he began clambering down the slope did she think to ask, “Why?”

    “You saw the fleet,” he called back to her. “We’re losing the fight up there. We’ve got to keep them from making reinforcements.”

    He was going to destroy the eggs.

    Aja understood little about dragon biology. To be fair, nobody understood a thing about them aside from the fact that they wanted to kill all humans, probably to seize the Allied Colonial States for resources.

    It was assumed that dragons would nest like many lizards did.

    But nobody really knew.

    Now Aja knew. And her mind spun at the sight of the nest, which Emalkay approached with at a rapid clip, leaving dust trailing in his wake.

    They had expected the dragons to be attending to the outpost raids, but instead, caught them by surprise at the home world.

    The dragon Aja killed had obviously been struggling to return to this nest.

    “Oh no,” she said.

    The fleet had caught the dragons when they returned home for the breeding season. All those enemies fiercely defending their world—they were also trying to defend their young. It must have hurt for them to abandon the nests.

    Aja’s heart hurt at the sight of the dead dragon lower on the slope.

    “Stop, Em,” she said.

    He rapped his knuckles against one of the eggs, then stooped to listen for a response. “Stop what? Do you think they’re going to hatch and eat me?”

    “They might. We don’t know. Be careful.”

    “I’ll be careful all right,” he said, swinging the rifle to aim. “I’ll be so careful that they won’t even see me coming.”

    Aja was only a few steps into the crater when he fired.

    The modified Fog emerged in a plug the size of her arm. It consumed the entire cluster of eggs with shocking speed.

    She had been unconscious instants after firing upon the first dragon. She hadn’t seen the damage wrought by the plasma rifle. Now she had the luxury of watching the eggshells melt, the fluids sizzling, small bodies within devoured as though dropped into acid.

    It struck Aja that the dragonets were roughly the size of her childhood dog, Beetle.

    “Stop it,” she said again.

    Emalkay didn’t hear her because he was shooting another cluster of eggs.

    They really did sound like thunder.

    Aja stood over the first nest that he had destroyed. Only moments had passed since he fired, but there was already no more motion within the wreckage of eggshells and leathery bodies. They had been making such a lively clicking when she’d approached. They must have been near to hatching.

    Emalkay sprinted to a third nest.

    She reached it first, putting a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

    “There are hundreds of these things here,” he said. He fired again. Aja flinched as more eggs melted away. “It only took ten dragons to wipe out all of York Prime! This many of them could kill us all!”

    That was probably true, and Aja had been thinking something similar.

    She hadn’t grown up anywhere near York Prime. Emalkay had. Perhaps she’d be the one firing on all the nests if she’d had to attend a school in the shadow of skyscrapers wrecked by dragons. If her family’s water supply had been poisoned by Fog, then her rage could have been equally fierce.

    It was easy to think that he was doing the wrong thing when she had grown up out on a farm untouched by the war.

    But watching Emalkay move to the next group of eggs sickened her.

    Another gunshot, and she shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see.

    Each discharge of the plasma rifle shook the crater. The untouched eggs shivered with inner motion, as though the dragonets within could hear what was happening and grew afraid. The walls of the crater looked like they were threatening to break as well, and rocks were sliding down the surface.

    Surely dragons would hear them and come save their nest.

    They couldn’t be that distracted by the fight in orbit.

    Emalkay destroyed another, and another, and nobody came to defend against him.

    “I think I missed one of the dragonets back there,” he said, jerking his thumb a cluster he’d already passed. His cheeks were flushed red with excitement. He must have been imagining how many panties he could drop once he told stories of his heroism against defenseless eggs. “Want to go stomp the survivor for me? Bet it’ll go down easy! You could take some claws home!”

    Aja reached the broken eggs with a single leap. She felt strange descending upon them now, her motions slowed by the weak gravity, as though she were an angel of death.

    He was right. There was movement within that cluster, writhing under shattered shells that dissolved slowly.

    Emalkay had encouraged her to stomp it.

    She kneeled, flicking aside a few pieces of eggshell. Despite their large size, they were very light, almost paper-thin.

    The dragonet she exposed was not quite the size of her childhood foxhound—maybe half that. It was more immature than the others. The size had probably been what saved it, since there had been more amniotic fluid to provide cushioning, and the modified Fog had burned out before melting all the way to the hatchling within. Lucky dragonet. Unluckily, such a small thing seemed to have no chance of survival after such a premature birth.

    Stomp it, Emalkay had said.

    What little Fog remained stung Aja’s hands as she reached in to scoop the dragonet out.

    It was heavy in her arms, though not as heavy as she would have expected. The scales had yet to take on the ridged edges of an adult dragon. Its soft body smelled almost sweet, as though coated in maple syrup.

    Lords, the eyes weren’t even open yet.

    It didn’t look like a potential mass murderer now that she was holding it.

    Emalkay destroyed another cluster of eggs. He was on the far end of the crater, having destroyed more than half of its inhabitants, and there was still no sign of defense from the dragons.

    “Aja! Look!” he shouted.

    His finger thrust toward the sky.

    She followed it up to see gold sparkling in high orbit. Those were the telltale glimmers of Carriages on the approach, accelerating toward their periapsis in order to drop toward the atmosphere.

    If they were moving in, then they must have killed most of the enemy dragons.

    The Allied fleet had realized what deadly weapons the plasma rifles were.

    Humans were winning, at long last.

    Aja caught herself stroking the dragonet’s pebbled flank. It was a glorious shade of dark blue, like the sky in paintings of the First Earth.

    It stirred at the touch, and she couldn’t help but think that this touch should have come from the hand of the dragon she had killed. It would have murdered her, yes, but this dragonet was harmless, innocent. Its future wasn’t written yet. Maybe it would have been the creature who convinced its brethren to end the war. They would never know now. Emalkay was bent on killing them all.

    One of those slitted eyes opened. The dragon’s long neck draped over her arm as it focused up on her face, stretching its beak toward her chin.

    Instinctively, Aja ducked her head to greet it as Emalkay fired yet again a few hundred feet away.

    “Hello,” she said. Her voice hitched on the second syllable of the word.

    The dragonet brushed its forehead against hers.

    Electricity jolted through Aja.

    For an instant, she had no thoughts, no sense of her body, no sense of time. The crater vanished around her.

    She could only feel the dragonet.

    It was such a powerful sensation that she almost thought that she had made a mistake picking up this little newborn to cradle it as she had cradled calfs while bottle-feeding them. It certainly felt like her skull was folding inside-out. Like her brain was going to spill onto the ground.

    Memories of her entire life flashed through her.

    Aja’s childhood at the Skytoucher farm. Her rejection from the Academy. Enlistment with the Allied military when she’d been only fifteen years old. Boot camp, followed by cross training in driving Carriages, and then the war.

    Then she regained all her senses, and she was still holding that dragonet, neither of them injured. Its faceted silver eyes gazed at her.

    Help us, it said.

    The words entered her mind directly.

    Aja was certain that it was the dragonet speaking to her. She had never heard of dragons speaking before—there was no way to communicate with him. But she knew that the plea had come from the dragonet, and she somehow knew that it could understand her as well.

    She set the dragonet on the dusty ground a safe distance from the Fog still devouring its nestmates. She turned to look for Emalkay, who roved at the far end of the crater.

    “We’re enemies,” Aja whispered to the dragonet.

    It only looked at her. There were no more words. Their moment of connection had passed.

    Maybe such a little thing simply couldn’t speak more than once.

    Emalkay was about to shoot the last cluster of eggs. Aja leaped smoothly through the air, heart pounding.

    There was a lot of debris on that side of the crater. All of the resonating gunshots had shaken rocks loose from the nearby walls. Aja found one the size of her fist and picked it up.

    “Want to shoot this last one?” Emalkay asked, turning to greet her.

    Before he faced her, she struck.

    The rock cracked against the back of his skull.

    Emalkay was probably still hurting from the crash. It didn’t take much force to knock him out. His slow collapse was graceful, and there was plenty of time for Aja to scoop the plasma rifle out of the air before it struck, risking an accidental discharge.

    He stirred when he landed, so she kicked him again, just to make sure he would stay down.

    The plasma rifle was warm from being fired, taking so many dragonets’ lives.

    “Thal forgive me,” Aja said.

    The fleet was landing nearby, lighting up the sky with the blaze of their propulsion. She hastened to return to the surviving dragonet.

    It was barely alive on the ground, struggling to breathe. Its skin was cold when she picked it up again.

    This little killer, this larvae that could become a mass murderer, wouldn’t survive once the fleet landed. If premature hatching didn’t kill it, then other coachmen who shared Emalkay’s sentiments would take care of it once they reached the crater. Aja could already hear them approaching. Their distant voices echoed over the barren mountains.

    Help us, it had said.

    Now it said nothing. It was sleeping, curled against her for warmth.

    There was nothing Aja could do about the other eggs. They were at the mercy of the Allies.

    But she knew what she needed to do about this lone dragonet.


    Nobody seemed to understand why Aja Skytoucher, highly decorated survivor of the Battle at Drakor III, would have resigned from service the instant she returned to the Station. The coachmen who had been at Drakor III were guaranteed promotions for each dragon they had killed. Since she and Emalkay had slaughtered an entire nest, they would probably get to pick their next deployment.

    They never needed to see battle again. They would have more money than any coachman knew what to do with.

    Yet resigned she did, and she returned to New Dakota a hero.

    She watched the parting message Emalkay had sent to her on the mochila while riding the space elevator to the surface. It was a lengthy message. The man didn’t know when to shut up.

    Emalkay told her she was nuts for leaving the service. He said that he never wanted to be deployed with another coachman. Aja had saved him twice, after all: once from crashing on Drakor III, and once when a rock had broken free of the crater and nearly killed him. He was still in the hospital recovering from his concussion.

    But even though he claimed that he wouldn’t work with anyone else, he hadn’t resigned. He was staying in the service to enjoy the salary.

    She turned off her mochila. She had no interest in what he had to say.

    The elevator landed smoothly. Aja was greeted by the yellow plains of New Dakota, the colony covered in swaying grass and rimmed by jagged mountains not unlike those on Drakor III. She lifted her duffel bag carefully and went to the transport.

    “Aja!” her mother greeted, wrapping her in a tight hug. “You look so thin! I’m glad I made bone broth for you. I expect you to drink a liter of it as soon as we get home.”

    She gave a shaky laugh, drawing back so that her mother’s embrace wouldn’t crush the duffel bag. “I have been craving your broth.”

    “Of course you have! I still make the best broth in all of the Colonies.” Her mother was convinced of this even though she’d never been off of New Dakota. Aja didn’t correct her.

    It was nice to be home after so many years, watching the farms rush past their speeder. Little had changed since she left. Everything looked so small now.

    The Skytoucher farm had been repainted recently, and its blue paneling gleamed in the sunlight. The corn stood as tall as Aja. The cattle grazing in the pasture were fat. The farm was clearly doing well, which her mother was eager to reinforce as she babbled on about how many new clients they’d gotten. They were going to be rich, she said. And richer still now that they would enjoy all of Aja’s retirement bonuses.

    “Not that I’m unhappy to have you, but I am a little surprised you’d want to come back to this,” her mother said, watching from the doorway as Aja set the duffel bag on her bed. It was the same tiny mattress she had slept on as a girl. The sheets were patterned with pink flowers. “You must be used to so many more glamorous places after your deployments!”

    Aja forced a smile. “Yeah, but there’s no place like home.”

    Her mother planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll let you unpack.”

    She left. Aja shut the door behind her.

    In truth, no matter how beautiful it was, the farm did seem terribly small. But it was several hundred acres in reality. Their property extended beyond the land where they could plant crops into the inhospitable, cruel mountains. It was quite spacious, really.

    And very much like Drakor III.

    The planet was now inhabited by human forces, which had wiped out most of the population in the weeks since Aja’s battle there. They would spend years hunting the surviving dragons throughout their various outposts. It might be generations before humans managed to kill them all. The battles would be messy. Countless families would suffer for it—both human and dragon.

    The violence might never end unless someone figured out how to communicate with the dragons.

    Aja unzipped her duffel bag. A head the size of a terrier’s popped out from among her uniform, blinking sleepily at her.

    The dragonet reached its beak up to touch Aja’s forehead.

    Welcome home, Aja thought to it.

  • A double rainbow through a rainy windshield. But what does it MEAN?
    resembles nonfiction,  slice of life

    Wawwy

    I spent my childhood looking for a name different than my birth name.

    The first name was a variant of one of my paternal great-grandmother’s names. Appropriately enough, Grama didn’t go by the first name given to her at birth. She hated it so much that it took moving her belongings not long before she died for me to learn the name. She went by her middle name, and I was given a different spelling of that middle name for my first name.

    The middle name was from my maternal great-grandmother, a woman I never met but my mom assured me I would love. She played with her grandkids on the playground and skinned her knees and sent kids to get her bandages so no adults would see. She was Irish, and I suspect my late grandmother, her daughter, sounded like her.

    And then the surname given to me was the one given to most kids in the United States when they’re born: the surname of their father. I didn’t dislike the name on its own, but my relationship with my father is…complicated, at best. His relationship with the man who gave him the last name was probably even more complicated, and one he considered changing, or hyphenating, with one of his stepfather’s last names.

    I knew very little of this when I was a kid. Really, the search for something else was subconscious. I just knew, in the back of my mind, that my name was a nice name.

    But it wasn’t me.


    “If I had a name that wasn’t mine,” I wrote in response to a question for an assignment in elementary school, “it would be (name of one of my friends). She’s so pretty and her name is so nice.”

    I remember writing the response with a lot of passion. I remember the way her hair shined in the light, and how much I liked the way she smelled.

    That it took me until sixteen to realize I was attracted to women baffles me to this day.


    Middle school was a time of change, and I desperately wanted a nickname.

    I worked in the cafeteria during breakfast and lunch from the day I started; my older sister had worked there and left the June before, so I walked right into it. The job meant that I didn’t socialize with anyone during the regular appointed lunchtime; I only had the few minutes I spent eating before I got to work.

    During one of these times, with the empty cafeteria around us, I asked my fellow student workers for a nickname. I’d never had a nickname; my first name was too short to make one, my middle name was even less me than my first, and I had done nothing that had earned some kind of cutesy name unrelated to what I had crafted.

    We mulled for a minute, and they looked at a Babysitters Club necklace I wore and dubbed me BSC. (It was pronounced Bisk.)

    The name only lasted a couple days. But to this day, it remains the only nickname I’ve ever had.


    High school brought experimentation in a new realm: usernames.

    I had shared a username with my sisters as a child in AOL. Adolescence brought emails and LiveJournal and MySpace, all of my very own. Adults told kids my age, as a matter of safety, not to use our birth names. As a nerd, I naturally drifted toward fannish names as a substitute for the one I used in person; I went through more than one Harry Potter nickname, for instance. I finally settled on a generic fandom name so I wouldn’t have to change it every time my interests shifted.

    What was interesting about the online spaces I was in during the 2000s was that we didn’t really refer to each other by name. We used usernames, or cute shorthand for our usernames, when we had to, but with our usernames attached to our journals and comments, there was little need to actively use names. And I personally had an easier time identifying people by their default icons than I did by their usernames.

    There was something really authentic about the whole thing. Freeing, even.

    I continued in these spaces through college. I met queer people there, people who deliberately used their names online because they had deliberately chosen new ones. Ones that fit a gender they hadn’t been assigned at birth.

    Ones that fit genders that most people didn’t know about.


    A name that works is like a melody line in a song. It’s fun to say, nice to roll around in your head, easy to remember.

    My deadname has good name aesthetics. Good initials. But as I realized I wasn’t the gender I was assigned at birth, I realized the name I was given to go with that gender wasn’t mine. It was a good melody in the wrong key.

    Once I realized I could pick a new name, a name that fit me and kept the family connections I wanted, I asked people to call me Rory. And that’s what it’s been ever since.


    My younger sister’s eldest child was the first person to call me by my new name. He’s never known me any other way, and neither has his younger sibling.

    My deadname had an unconventional spelling with a conventional pronunciation. People who heard it first spelled it wrong, and people who read it first pronounced it incorrectly. I knew it, and I couldn’t stand it.

    When I met my brother-in-law, who had an even less conventional name and multiple pronunciations, I was baffled that he didn’t seem to care what people went with. He even went with a diminutive form just for when he was in restaurants and he was giving his name for a table, a name he never used anywhere else. Didn’t it sound wrong to him? Didn’t it hurt a little, jangle in the ears?

    As it turns out, “Rory” comes out as “Wawwy” when you don’t know how to say r in our version of American English yet. Nibling, the oldest of my sister’s kids, has just solidified Rory in the manner adults are inclined to say it at eight years old. Dosling, the youngest, is four and still says Wawwy.

    I came up with a gender-neutral term for aunt/uncle: ankle, pronounced like the body part. The niblings never use it. I’m Rory or Wawwy.

    Both are right to me. Both will always be right to me, I think.

  • A sleepy puppy sunbathing on a pillow.
    Diaries,  slice of life

    My dog is so gay. The gayest dog ever.

    Sara’s Diary, March 2019

    Sara’s Diary, March 2019

    I purchased a fifteen-week-old pit bull puppy on March first. He is a legitimate pit bull: an American Pit Bull Terrier (registered under American Staffordshire Terrier with the AKC), born of an “oops” litter between a dog trainer’s pet and a friend’s miniaturized tank. At least, I assume that the father was a miniaturized tank, because my pit bull is very good at running into things with his head and bad at changing directions before that happens.

    His name is King. All my pets are named after authors or literary characters, and I’ve been waiting to have a Stephen King homage for years. In truth, it’s a very silly name for a very silly dog; King sounds butch, manly, and my dog is a toddler with more skin than common sense.

    Even though this goofball with a whip-tail of destruction is a bundle of licks and nibbles, I’ve already heard a lot of praise for how manly he is. His name is manly. His American flag collar is so manly. (And patriotic!) This was the last thing I hoped to communicate about my pit bull, considering there are still anti-breed laws in many places that treat pit bulls as dangerous monsters.

    In much of white America, masculinity is a prickly thing, both hostile and defensive. It’s synonymous with being “tough.” I don’t ever want my dog to look tough—for his safety.

    So of course I bought my pit bull, King, with his tank-shaped head and shoulders and destructo-tail a very bright pink reflective leash.

    You can’t miss how pink this leash is. It’s a climbing rope, so it’s an inch thick. King likes to take himself for walks so he’ll often have it looped in his mouth while he trots home, looking for a good bed to nap in.

    Pink this vivid is culturally reserved for the feminine and gay. My puppy has done nothing to indicate his gender identity, but he does like to sit on my other boy-dogs’ faces, so it’s safe to assume that he is gay at this point. And why not? I’ll be removing his testicles soon enough. He’ll be left semi-infantilized for the duration of his brawny life. He yips like Satine in Moulin Rouge. He flings his head sassily when he argues with me.

    I don’t think he’ll disavow anyone of the notion he’s gay.

    He’s very cute. He looks harmless with it. And now people won’t immediately praise him for perceived toughness.

    This morning I walked my dog on his bright-pink leash. I passed a neighbor that I know to some small degree: he has two enormous German Shepherds, he loves football, and he’s got a military background.

    His dogs sniffed my dogs, and we briefly, happily chatted about the fact I had a new puppy.

    “How old is she?” he asked.

    “Oh, he’s only about four, four and a half months,” I said, trying to remember what day it was.

    If people “misgender” my dog, I will often avoid using pronouns so as not to deal with the awkwardness that follows. People feel like they have to apologize for misgendering your dog. They always apologize to me, rather than my dog, who does not care about his pronouns and actually has no idea what pronouns are, although he’d really like to chew on a pinecone for a little while.

    And indeed, it was like the conversation ground to a halt when I said “he.”

    My neighbor’s mouth fell open. He said, “He’s male?”

    I said, “Yep, he’s a boy,” and petted the enormous German Shepherds.

    His wife and I chatted briefly about something else, but we had not yet moved on from the leash issue. The husband interrupted me to say, “I guess I was just thrown off because of the pink leash.”

    “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Doesn’t it look nice with his fawn fur? Pink and fawn look so nice together.” Plus, my dog is light in tone on his paws, his chin, his eyes. He looks like a buttery Valentine’s cherub of a pit bull.

    The neighbor simply did not respond.

    He looked alarmed, somehow. They walked away quickly, and I won’t guess at whether they had places to be or if they really didn’t want to talk to the weird lady with her gay puppy.

    I’d been hoping that dressing my boy dog in a girly manner would make him more appealing. Now I realize that making him look gay never made him less threatening. Bold defiance to cultural norms doesn’t exactly make the conventional hetero cis white American feel more comfortable with any situation.


    Sara’s Diary: May 2019

    It’s now May and my little angel is six months old.

    We’ve had more encounters with our neighbor, again awkwardly stumbling over pronouns and being loudly reminded by his wife that the ambiguously-leashed dog is male. (“Oh! I’m so sorry!”)

    I’ve ditched the patriotic collar for a martingale with a silver chain dangling at his throat and a braided leather leash in all the colors of the rainbow. If he were to attend Pride, King would surely march with the burly, loving BDSM bears.

    His dressing doesn’t seem to matter. People are threatened by King even though he has roughly the genial personality of a Nutter Butter cookie sandwich and the vigorous affection of Elmira from Tiny Toons.

    Most people are happy to see him. The people who aren’t tend to be unhappy in dramatic ways.

    One time a man literally ran from a park because he realized I had a pit bull. King was so sad. He had no clue why that man didn’t want to pet him.

    Frankly, Park Guy was right to be afraid.

    King can’t be around other dogs at the same time as food or toys. He’s a feisty gay, sassy about his belongings. He won’t make you bleed for touching his Himalayan yak chew but he’ll drool into your ear while making Chewbacca noises. I’ve become hyper-alert to his tantrum pre-warning signals and become adept at crating him for a nap before he turns into a drag queen backstage who realized someone touched her wig.

    One time he hurt me because he jumped on me to say hello while I was wearing shorts. His little puppy claws hadn’t been properly manicured in too long—he made me bleed. Also, I have seventeen bruises on my shins from his tail alone.

    Also he stuck his tongue in my mouth. It tasted like farts. I drank a family-sized bottle of Listerine.

    Loving this puppy is deadly.

    But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Being unpalatable to society is a feature, not a bug. People who run from his big jaws and stubborn nose don’t get to snuggle in the hammock with him either. I’ve had three blissful months with my gay dog and I couldn’t be prouder or gayer.

    86228457-5285-43C8-93B5-DEA9EF58E2C7

  • slice of life

    Five Times My Husband Supported Me (and One Time He Didn’t)

    One

    It was late night in the spring of 2007. I couldn’t sleep with my boyfriend in my twin bed and my brain felt like it was on fire with random post-midnight fears. I was writing at my great-grandmother’s dining table, slouched over the slowest Vizio on the planet, when my tousled and confused boyfriend came looking for me. “I’m writing,” I told him. He smiled, eyes mostly shut, and dreamily encouraged me to get good writing done before shuffling off to bed.


    Two

    We were shopping online for wedding rings. He had brought me a pretty engagement ring with a prominent diamond, and we were thinking of getting diamonds to match. We didn’t have a lot of money, and they were pricey. There was also a writing conference I wanted to attend. My husband suggested we get cheap wedding bands and use the money so I could go talk to agents. We got the cheap bands. I took my mom to the conference.


    Three

    I’d been in labor for twenty hours. I was exhausted, depleted, no longer strong enough to push. My husband grabbed my leg and held it back, his cheek pressed against my head. I’d been vomiting in my hair. When I pushed, he pushed too, in the opposite direction. Our first son finally tore free. He fell into the midwife’s hands. We were done.


    Four

    My husband was supposed to spend a few days with his cousin in another state. I stayed home with our two sons. I had a complete meltdown—what I’d later be capable of labeling a panic attack. I called him in a sobbing fury. I demanded he come home early. And he did. He’d barely just gotten up there and he came right back. The panic attack was over by the time he made the twelve-hour return, but he was only worried. Not angry. Never angry.


    Five

    It was the end of my long week in a mental hospital, and I was exhausted, twitchy, and desperate to get out. My husband was waiting for me in the lobby. He’d forgotten to bring in my shoes. I joked he’d have to carry me to the car, and he picked me up in his arms, holding me as tightly as if he worried they’d try to take me back. He angled carefully so I wouldn’t get bumped by the door on the way out. I came into sunlight and cold with him, finally free.


    Six

    My husband wanted to go to dinner with his parents, and the kids didn’t want to go. “I can make them come,” he suggested, worry in his eyes. I still often didn’t parent the kids alone because of the panic attacks. But it had been almost a year since the mental hospital. A year of medication and therapy. And my husband still wanted to support me as much as I needed. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Go to dinner.” He did. He had adult conversations with other adults while I entertained the children and put the little one to bed. He was gone. He didn’t support me. I don’t always need it anymore, because of him.


    We’re married ten years today, and I’ve never been happier.