There was so much blood coming out of my mouth, that they had smeared it as if it were lipstick with another rough punch, two guys holding me by the arms.

Queer.

Faggot.

Homosexual.

The slurs were the same, repetitive like every punch I had received and then I would just shake it off. I would end up coughing out the blood from my mouth on the floor once they would be done with me and Anthony would watch, stretching out his skinny arm, as if he could snap in two. But instead I would grumble, angry that he would always show up at the end, as if he was the reason for all of this. My only friend, who didn’t even dare to stand up for me. His thick frames held nothing in them and his eyes were blank at times, I knew that he had dabbled into weed, just like the rest of the class to ease the anxiety of the coming exams, but it never seemed to do the trick with me, while vodka made much more sense. I liked knowing what was going on, instead of giggling at everything or having no effect whatsoever.

That’s why I didn’t understand the purpose of the student hangouts, which were pure dystopic with the photos of kama sutra, as if they all weren’t queers, but they somehow weren’t, because they were too deviant to even be queer. Me and Anthony were frequent visitors, just because I could get cheap vodka there and Anthony could smoke some weed and we would discuss things.

Once-

Twice-

More than that-

I had hit on Anthony, just because he was the only one who would stretch his arm towards me, that he would rub the wounds in the basin carefully, silently. But he would dodge every single one of our interactions, he would say that even if college was the time for experimenting, he had no interest.

I guess that pissed me off, that pissed him off.

I went back to his house, to knock wildly at the door, cigarette long ago smoked in my mouth, so I threw it away once his mother opened up, by miracle not noticing that a cigarette butt was on her lawn. She was the usual type, a mother you could put in the dictionary, and Anthony always talked about how miserable she seemed but stern on keeping the family together, just because her own parents and friends had divorced. Anthony’s mom wanted none of it.

It reminded me of my own mother, who would put a thin veil until she couldn’t hold and divorced my father. She still invited me in, telling me to wait for Anthony and I sat in the living room with her for a while. She had the telly on and wasn’t even sure what to speak about, nervously looking at me and I looked back.

She had a white picket fence, two children and a husband. She was a housewife. She was the dream that they sold all women, yet she was miserable and it was something I would never achieve for being a queer gay faggot or whatever slur they would use next.

Sometimes I wouldn’t understand the fate of a woman, her choices and what would lead her to decisions absurd to me, but I couldn’t blame Anthony’s mom who decided on comfort over turmoil. I couldn’t blame that he didn’t want to go through the misery and become bitter just like my mother had become. She would curse that I was attracted to men, that I was robbing a girl of a good future with someone as nice as I was. Quote after quote after quote showed up in my head.

I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes, wondering if Anthony had even mentioned to her that I was into men. I felt disgusted by the whole white fence all of a sudden, and by her entire existence, the fact that I was supposed to somehow want the same comfort was fucking me up.

I had the thought of just brushing past her, as she had offered me juice and just kick the fence down or maybe find the china behind the glass doors and break it all.

For luck.

What luck could a fucking queer have?

“Is everything alright?” She asked me calmly, I had been biting on my lip for quite a while now, not even touching freshly squeezed orange juice she had made for me and I looked at her.

Why would gay men always relate to women when in reality we were supposed to marry them, and many of them were just as homophobic as the men? I had no idea. Specifically in this day and age, it was something which was foreign to me. Sure, the guys would beat me up to come home to a mother who would spit venom at me, saying that God had punished her for giving her a homosexual son. I didn’t understand why should we even relate to straight women?

I looked at her, her brown hair in a neat bun, a plain t-shirt and pants. She felt like a post card so often, every time I would go to Anthony’s she’d wear a variation and she would have Murakami books in the kitchen, as she would wait for the pastries to cook. I wasn’t even sure what she had found in Murakami. I understood that all my hatred was coming from my mother, from the lack of a father.

If he was around I was sure he would’ve made a fuss with mom… who had made me gay and they would argue, argue, argue for me to hold my ears with my hands, crying, just like I did as a child. I don’t know why we put them on such a pedestal. Why are we supposed to look up to people who find themselves in misery only to spread it further?

Why do we have such a wet dream and fantasy about it?

There was a misery among the both of us, which I couldn’t help but notice. Anthony’s mom just wished to be doing her own things, maybe reading a novel or housekeeping, I wasn’t sure, but here I was with her, as she watched over me, while Anthony would come over from wherever he was coming from.

I looked at her and I couldn’t help but wonder briefly about the fate of a woman. I wouldn’t want it. I understood why so many felt compassionate, but I kind of grew up to be bitter as the teenage years rolled by. I couldn’t connect to my mother and I had no interest in understanding a gender’s woes when I would come home to screaming if I had managed to sneak out to get laid briefly with a much older man, because then I would be the talk of town according to my mother.

But just like everyone else, I couldn’t lump everyone together. Some were downright miserable.

And where would Anthony’s mom go anyway?

I remembered a documentary I had seen about Stalin’s first wife who had killed herself, about how they had poorly hidden the gunshot wound in her head so that no one would even utter the word suicide. Was that it? Was that what led a woman to the brink of insanity, if the husband was a powerful figure? I really wasn’t sure and of course Anthony’s dad didn’t hold any power, just a regular worker who had enough money to make a child with his beloved wife, but mom had heard that she was being cheated on with some younger version of herself.

Mom knew all the gossip.

Maybe that’s what was getting to Anthony’s mom. I couldn’t ask that without getting kicked out. And so we sat in silence. Me and Anthony always hung out together, playing different video games and ignoring all the bruises I had received which would earn a yelling and cries from my mother. I didn’t know if she preferred the hickeys from older men or the beatings. Probably the latter. When Anthony showed up, she took off to the kitchen, not even kissing her child, absorbed in her world and I couldn’t help but wonder.

“What’s up with your mom?” I asked him, as casual as possible.

“Found out that I had known that dad was cheating on her and didn’t move a finger.” His voice sounded like venom, but I couldn’t help but notice how unphased he was. I even missed a combo in a fighting game, staring at her son.

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“Do you think I care?”

“I fucking cared when I found out that mom was getting cheated on.”

“Well, I don’t.” And all of a sudden I kept on playing, feeling awful about Anthony’s mom. Why was cheating so normalized and how come her own son didn’t care? Sure, my mom was a bitch, but I would’ve told her, if I had known much earlier, maybe that would’ve spared her bitterness towards men, but who am I to know what would’ve happened if the future unfolded already.

Anthony had turned the page of my attraction over, I guess because we both were very well aware of our own lack of friends. Somehow, I was thankful that I didn’t end up sucking his cock now. Funny thing, fate is. One misery helps another.

I ended up going to Anthony’s the next day, I couldn’t help but think as much as I could, wondering how it was really to be locked in such a marriage. What would I have done? My mom had clearly done the right thing… But what if the greatest struggle in your life was your partner? I didn’t know how I could act. My mom noted my silence all of a sudden, maybe because I had been staring at the mashed potatoes, which she knew I didn’t like much since I was a child, but she would do them anyway. It reminded me a bitter taste of dad leaving us, it reminded me how much I despised both men and women in a way. There was myself, which I had hated enough and then I was surrounded by women who I was in no way interested with and couldn’t understand too many things about.

I just shrugged my mom off, feeling even more irritated to the part of not touching the garnish and excusing myself from the table, to head to my room. To my surprise she just sat there, I could see that her voice got stuck, ready to ask me what was wrong and I’m sure that if I had been a daughter she would’ve asked, but I wasn’t.

I was her fucking enemy.

As if I wasn’t my own enemy enough.

I didn’t understand why I had to be lumped with so many, but then I was doing the same thing. I ended up biking around Anthony’s without thinking much the next day and only the day after, I waited for Anthony to leave somehow and knowing that he’d be back from some nerd shit, I rang the doorbell, as if I owed an apology to his mom for being all weird and taking her time or maybe I should tell her that her husband was cheating on her? I didn’t know what to even do. Maybe I should’ve told her to turn her life around, but then would she have listened?

She opened the door, as if she had been waiting for me. She was a smaller woman than I was and I had already caught up with her by height a while ago, I was taller. I didn’t really know what to say, so I just accepted the invitation to go inside and wait for her son. How the fuck did Anthony do nothing?

Suddenly, I felt really bad for her, as she rearranged a bouquet in the living room.

“They’re lovely.” I said, looking at the flowers and knowing absolutely nothing about them. I never cared for them and my mom adored them enough that I’d have to buy some fucking bouquet, because that’s what you get women, she’d say.

“Thanks.” She said, holding back all her real emotions about them, maybe her husband had come clean about the cheating?

“My husband got them for me. They’re for our anniversary.”

Perhaps not. That’s when I noticed that she wasn’t wearing her usual attire and she was shaking her leg impatiently and biting her nail, when she thought I wasn’t looking and she would sit in the living room again with me, in total silence.

“And he’s late.” She said under her breath and I caught it. So that’s why she was wearing a nicer outfit than usual. Well, that explained a lot of things. I knew that she wasn’t talking about Anthony and when I looked up at her, I saw the tears in her eyes, I was frozen.

What the fuck does one do?

I rushed towards her and that’s when she started crying against my shoulder, as I held her.

“Everyone knows.” Shit. Fuck. She muttered even quieter and I didn’t really know what to do. “He’s just doing a poor show and I’m a puppet that isn’t even on the list. Even Anthony knew. He didn’t bother to tell me.”

A giant lump in my throat was choking me.

“I’m sure you knew, too.” And she wailed even harder. I couldn’t bring myself to hug her properly and even then, what consolation could I even do? Her hair was let down and she was properly crying now, when all her dedication had gone to her son and her husband, who seemed to have her like a trophy and all of a sudden she wasn’t young enough for his dick to stand up or whatever.

I broke the hug and she stopped crying, but before she could say anything, I just wondered a bit. What the fuck could I do?

“When do Anthony and your husband come back?” I asked in haste.

“In an hour, why?” Her reply, just as fast.

“I’m no son, no husband, but I don’t think sitting here would do you good.” I couldn’t comprehend what I was saying. I took out the phone from my pocket and tried to find the Uber app and she noticed that.

“You do know that I drive, right? I’m not that stupid.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“No one does.” She said that and that seemed to be the story of her life summarized in a plain sentence.

“Neither did I think that you didn’t drive.” I note.

“Oh.” Her voice so faint, as if she were a ghost, but her idea of going anywhere seems to have highlighted her honey coloured eyes and given them plenty of life. Anthony’s mom excused herself to have a moment and I’m pretty sure she just locked herself up in the upstairs bathroom and washed her face clean, maybe brushed her teeth out of anxiety and done nothing really to change her attire, for now. She came back downstairs, her eyes still a bit puffy, but I tried to show no signs of distress.

“I’ll show you where I go…” The words got stuck in my throat.

“When you get beaten up?” She completed it. I tried to speak up, but she continued. “I know it. Everyone knows. No one does anything either.”

Anthony’s mom gave out a bitter laugh filled with regret, I could hear it’s note rather high.

“And here I was thinking… that…” She tries to trail off, but I know what she’s talking about. Everyone in the city would’ve been happy if they could cleanse themselves off the homosexuals, which I seemed to be top of the list when it came to the neighbourhood and if to believe I had destroyed someone’s marriage, but it’s not like that guy hadn’t been fucking eighteen year olds for a good while, as he had sucked off me good and told me later how much he enjoyed the company of younger boys.

“I deserved it?” I ask gingerly, but we’re being honest here.

“Yeah. Life’s a funny thing. You’re the worst that could happen to a mother, yet you care.”

“I don’t care about my own mother.” I say before I can hold it back and she just shrugs.

“I hated my own until the day she died, because she never liked my husband George, Anthony’s father.” I just nod, to which she shrugs, and I notice her bag in her hands. We’re both ready to leave.

It’s awkward when we make our way to the garage, and I don’t know why I am showing a housewife where I usually hide. What if she would tell others and then I would have nothing? She turned around and paused for a bit, her dark eyes looking at me and clutching her bag with both hands, nervously.

“I’m Claire. I’m more than a mom.” She mumbled the last bit and I just nodded, because I needed no introduction and she seemed pleased with that. I made a mental note in my mind to refer to her as Claire from now on. “And a wife.”

We went on, we drove in silence until she turned on the music, which was Queen to my surprise, but then I guess all the moms like Freddie Mercury as long as he wasn’t their son. What else could I say? It seemed absurd and something I didn’t understand. Once I came out my mom stopped listening to Queen, probably muttering that she had been the reason of my sexuality all along. To make it short, we really fell apart.

I looked out of the window and opened it up slightly, just to have some breeze. Claire seemed to be a bit chilly, but didn’t comment on it. She just kept on driving quietly and I wondered about her day to day life and if she had any friends, and how come her female friends didn’t even bother to talk to her about her husband? Was that what friendship had dried down to? I wasn’t sure.

Eventually I started giving her pointers until we were out of town and she held firmly onto the steering wheel. It was quite a bike ride, but I couldn’t help but not care if I needed to reach the said place. We parked along with other campers, but we were going the other way. I was thankful for the forest and I noticed another few bikes, because it wasn’t that smooth to bike around here. I told her to follow me and she did, still clutching onto her bag for no exact reason.

We kept walking and walking until we reached a spot with less trees, maybe a location where you could’ve summoned the Black Lodge if you tried hard enough, I wasn’t sure. There was no good or evil in this life, all we had was different masses of gray, some bigger, some smaller. There was nothing else to it, we were all just miserably trying to get by with all possible means. Some through drugs, some through prescription pills, some through countless lovers, but that was all because we couldn’t help but love ourselves and those who said they loved us-

Did they really?

“…I would’ve never accepted you and Anthony, if that were to happen.” She said quietly and sat down, between two trees. I bit my bottom lip and sat, right next to her. It hadn’t rained in a while so the ground was rather dry and I knew that we’d both have to change our jeans.

“Yet, here you are with a faggot, escaping your marriage struggles and an indifferent son, who you don’t recognize.” I spit with the same tone and venom. Claire looks down.

“I never said faggot-”

“But that’s what you meant.” She’s stirring the subject away and we just sit there, wind making a mess of our hair and not even sure what would there be in common between a queer and a housewife. Eventually she nods.

“No one wants to have a son who won’t be able to give grandchildren… Because that’s what life is supposed…” She looks like a broken record, her eyes scanning the surroundings and finding nothing to grasp onto.

“Is it though, Claire?” I ask her.

“I… honestly don’t know anymore.” She looks away.

“There’s trans people who are gay and can reproduce, yet you judge them too.”

“I do.” She shrugs. I don’t even know why I brought her here and I want to leave suddenly. I can see that too many things are racing through her daft head, she is a closed-minded woman after all. What’s new? “If my own son isn’t there for me… what’s the point? Husbands and love are an obligation.”

Claire is determined in her words and I can’t help but feel disgusted by her.

“Love is never an obligation.” I say it rather loudly and I’m started to get pissed off. “Love is when you truly love someone else and you make it worse. Just because people like you ruined and tainted love in such a degrading way, that reproducing is all there is to it… You’re the ones to blame. You’ve ruined love for yourself too, Claire, just by being a fucking bigot.”

All of a sudden she lays down and I see the clouds in her eyes. I hesitate for a bit and I lay down besides her. She turns her head to face me, as she puts her hands on her body, putting her bag aside and we look at each other for a while. I don’t really know what to say. It’s strange to even think that we’ve peeked into the other side of the fence and the ball keeps going from one side of the court to the other, like in tennis, I can no longer keep track of the ball, I don’t understand the score and she’s just watching it.

I’ve taken some guys here who I was sure wouldn’t find the place again just to have sex.

She turns even more and I start feeling a bit uncomfortable. We’re both out of our depth and box.

Claire doesn’t do anything. I knew she wouldn’t do anything, because that’s what she’s taught and even if cheating crosses her mind very vividly, to make her whole world crumble, to stir her awake, to make her divorce happen…

What would happen then?

I get closer to Claire.

I feel sorry for her.

Her eyes are fixated on me and I can see my fish eyed reflection in her eyes.

“Your world will crash, Claire.”

“It already did when my husband laid eyes on another woman and when my son grew distant from me.” That’s when I sit up and hug my knees. Claire takes off her hairclip, letting her hair loose and I grab her hands before anything can be done.

“Claire, I’m gay.” Her eyes and mouth say things I don’t even want to hear. I close my eyes and I expect her to kiss me, but she doesn’t. Instead I excuse myself, ask us both to leave.

I sleep carefully that night. I wake up to every stir and around 3:45 am I dream of someone screaming, which causes me to scream in my own dream, waking me up, my own mother shaking me.

“Anthony’s calling you for the past half an hour. His mom hung herself.” I sit up and cover my mouth, before a deep gasp followed by an actual scream comes out. My mom doesn’t hold me, just how I didn’t hold Claire.

The night of Claire’s funeral I go to her house and I take the fence down, by kicking it, knowing how much it had meant to her, because her life was like fence, pretty, average and symbolized every single fucking struggle an average woman would have with all the demons inside. I had released them all.