Eden foresaw a real possibility and was determined to knock it on the head. “You’re not stealing the sex machine.”
Willow yowled in outrage.
“I mean it, Sloan Williams. Do not. Secretly mail. That sex machine,” she pointed at it. “To Australia.”
“Whatever,” Willow sulked, then instantly brightened. “Still, we’ve got this thing ‘till Tuesday. All right, missus. Get on it. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Rolling her eyes, Eden walked to the bathroom to collect the dildo. Their future wasn’t close to being resolved. She would have to sign with Sony. Find a place to live in LA. Willow would probably need to meet with a therapist. She’d have to learn to talk about her feelings. She’d make a record with a former Disney star, move back to Melbourne, enrol the girls in school, grow old, grow up.
Change was coming, whether they wanted it to or not, but hopefully in ways that kept her and Willow kind and flexible instead of freezing them in place. But all that would come in time. Right now was just for them.
The End
WHERE THE HEART IS
1
The heart-shaped tassels Sal had pasted over their nipples were peeling a little at the edges. They turned sideways, adjusted their cupless bra, and tried to stick them down subtly. Their burlesque troupe, Magenta Milk, had been hired to perform at Pyramid, a fancy kink bar that hosted slutty events. It had been a good show. No one had fallen over. No one had accidentally kicked anyone else in the tits. The crowd had seemed a little too drunk and horny to really appreciate the dancing, but it was fun anyway. Now the bar’s atmosphere was hotter, darker, the evening morphing toward the all-in sex party that kicked off after midnight.
Sal sipped their mega can of IPA, hoping to drown a couple of the butterflies in their stomach. They didn’t know the rest of the dance troupe as well as the others knew each other. And Ammy, their roommate and best friend, was on the other side of the club, flirting with some middle-aged couple who clearly couldn’t believe their luck. Ammy liked playing unicorn; Sal, not so much. In their heart—though they’d been trying their best to deny it—they wanted something serious—a person to watchmovies with. Order takeout beside. Someone to, though merely thinking the word made them cringe,love.
But looking for love at a sex party was pretty damn silly. Sal rarely ran across someone they wanted touching their left ass cheek at these kinds of things, let alone a person to have and to hold for the rest of our lives, so help us God, and so forth.
Sal could have left right after the performance like the dancers who were either monogamous or not into the group thing, but part of them always struggled to cut the cord at events. After all, what if tonight was The Night? What if the stars aligned and theydidmeet someone cute outside the unisex bathrooms, and it was immediately fireworks and forevermore?
“Highly unlikely, Sal-Sal,” Klaus would have said, but he wasn’t here. He had a new girlfriend, and he and Molly were probably at home, frothing over their honeymoon vibes.
It had been three years since Sal had lived with Klaus, and the relationship had become more ‘best friends’ than ‘partners’ even before they’d split. But it was strange to see the guy who’d taught them so much about non-binary gender identity and self-acceptance fall head over heels for a cis girl. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed, nary a tattoo to be seen, cis girl, at that. Not that Sal wanted Klaus—exactly the opposite. Despite identifying as non-binary for almost a decade, they still wanted tobeMolly. Sure of who they were and how to present themselves. Comfortable in the pronouns that got slapped on them every time they left the house.
Other cultures had more flexible terms for gender than the Western binary, but Sal was living in the Western binary world, and they werenota Western binary girl.
They could choreograph a drag performance to Material Girl, Sal mused as they knocked back the last of their IPA. Change the lyrics, and get one of those half-girl, half-boy dress tuxedos. But that wasn’t the right metaphor. They often didn’t feel like theywere either of those words. They moved between roles like aliens through different dimensions.
Here I am, a teaching assistant to young children.
Here I am, a queer femme on stage.
Here I am, a sister, a sister-in-law and an aunt to sweet baby boys.
Here I am, a winter bimbo.
Here I am, a warm-weather fuckboy.
Sal thought of a line from Natalie Wynn, the trans YouTuber who’d blown their mind back in 2021.“I look inside and ask, ‘Do I feel like a man or a woman?’ And after all these years, the answer is still that I feel like shit.”
As always, the quote made them snort and instantly feel better. Who gave a fuck why they were non-binary. All Sal knew was that it worked for them, and since that didn’t hurt anyone else, it wasn’t a problem. Even if the dude they’d gone on a date with last week had spent the last twenty minutes of it banging on about DNA.
“Being non-binary isn’t biology,” Bradley had drooled into his pint. “You can believe whatever you want, but it’s not natural.”
“Fuck off,” Sal had snapped, grabbing their purse. “You told me you’re on dick pills.”
“So?”
“So that’s pretty unnatural. If your dick doesn’t work,that’sbiology. No pills, no solutions. You got that dead dick.”
They’d walked off without another word, but that didn’t stop Bradley the Binary Gender Biologist from texting the next day to ask for nudes.
You can’t judge me just for having my own opinions, he’d written, whacking a sad face emoji on the end to make it extra pathetic.I still really wanna hook up.
