CREATIVE FICTION

Please Say You Love Me If Only For the Weekend

By George Leipold (they/them)

Author statement on piece: “I write from the heart. This is an often gut-wrenching piece of work. I have grappled with the words in it a lot, they are the best way I can communicate. This collection navigates the ups and downs of queerness, of finding your sexuality, and heartbreak. I hope everyone can see themselves in at least one piece in this collection.”

——

There are 84.9 miles between Baltimore Maryland and West Chester Pennsylvania. The drive back took exactly two hours. Two hours to sit and think about the weekend with Ollie. To think about kissing them in the shower. To think about waking up on their white sheets. To think about kissing goodbye in the Parking garage across from their apartment.

“I taught someone else your smoke trick.”

I didn’t know why I said it. I didn’t know why the words slipped out of the slippery slope of my tongue and teeth and lips. It hung in the air for a moment as Ollie exhaled a long hit of the joint we were passing, out the passenger window. 

The rides where Ollie came back to Baltimore with me were the best. The rides where I didn’t have to think about them because they were sitting in my passenger seat. Holding my hand. Rubbing my shoulders as I hunched over the steering wheel in lines of traffic.

“It’s still ours, Isobel.”

They rarely said my full name but I only liked the way it bounced off their tongue. 

They passed me the joint, putting one hand on the wheel.

“Hey Izz?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you still like it when I call you Isobel?”

“Of course!”

“I just didn’t know since you came out and all.”

I had come to terms with being non-binary two months into dating Ollie. Until I met them I didn’t know that I could be something more than a girl. I didn’t know there was something else out there.

“I still like it when you call me by my name.”

Being with Ollie was like the longest day of summer every day. Just before the sun sets. When it’s started to cool down for the night and a breeze starts to slip underneath your sundress.

When we broke up I loved and missed them like I love dead rappers. I can listen to the old songs and love them just the same, but everything is tinted with a melancholy blue haze. 

It was like the longest day in winter when you’re awake too early for the sun to have risen. You scrape the ice off your car and clench your frozen fits on the steering wheel as you beg and plead with your car to just warm up. When you return home, it’s already dark by four. You dodge the black ice on the roads as you drive home. 

“Do you want the last hit?”

Ollie passed me the roach. I took a bitter drag as they cued songs. 

“I’m withdrawing from Goucher.”

I loved college. I had breathed it. But one day, it left my body like a bird and never flew back. It was around the time we broke up that I had started to feel it setting in. We were together again before I made the decision not to go back. I had stopped breathing it. I realized one day that I wanted fresher air. 

“Have you told your parents?”

“I will.”

Ollie was only a few months from graduating University of West Chester. Though we both talked about withdrawal with such a frequency that it was no shock when I made the declaration. In the end, it was Ollie that was destined to finish school. I didn’t know what was destined for me. But I hoped every day that wherever I was it stayed summer forever. 

We didn’t talk about it for the rest of the drive. Sometimes Ollie just knew when to let something die and this was one of those. 

Sometimes loving Ollie was like smoking a cigarette as you drive by a gas station. Not close enough to catch flame but just close enough that you think you can smell a fire. 

Most of the time though, loving Ollie was the moment you sit at the top of a rollercoaster. Waiting for your stomach to drop and your throat to catch but you face the fear with exhilaration.

Sometimes, it felt like the weekends were just for Ollie and I. Only they were ours. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We were the weekend warriors of love. Then Monday always came, except for the occasional Monday holiday, those were the forbidden fruit. We were together for several months before I ever got to see them on a random Wednesday in January. Sometimes it felt as though the whole world was stacked against Ollie and I. Like it was us versus the whole wide world trying to keep us apart.

It wasn’t just 84.9 miles. It was everything else. Driving in my beat up SUV was the easy part. It was immigration threatening to send Ollie back to Germany next July if they didn’t get their citizenship.. It was their transphobic parents who knew nothing about their personal life and had no idea they even had a serious partner. It was our hopes and aspirations possibly landing us in different countries. It was my trauma. It was their trauma. It was the breakup. Our friends taking sides. It was it was it was. But mostly, we were weekend warriors and made do. 

Ollie cued our song and we screamed the words.

(And she said babe, you look so cool)

“It’ll be a year soon.”

Ollie was also better than me at keeping track of dates but they were right. It was Fall again and we had fallen in love in October. The orange leaves and the foraging squirrels and Southbound flying birds could tell anyone that it was the season.

We didn’t talk about the dark month in August. We had only been back together for six weeks. Some people might pick up where they left off but we vowed to be different. To be better than before. 

“You know my parents are flying from Berlin in two months.”

“I know.”

“I’m gonna tell them.”

“What?”

“About us.”

“Really?”

“I want them to meet you. But you have to be prepared.”

Preparing to meet Ollie’s parents was like preparing to go to war. I knew it was a losing battle I would be beaten down from the beginning of. They owned a major Porshe company and had been millionaires before Ollie’s existence was even a thought. I wasn’t raised from high enough stock and I knew that. My parents were high school English teachers and I wasn’t finishing college. I grew up in a hundred year old house in run down Baltimore. I had yet to leave my home town at twenty-one. I had too many tattoos and not enough clean skin.

“Do you think my hair will have grown by then?”

“Your hair is fine Izz.”

“The Müller’s won’t think so.”

“They won’t be shocked. I have shorter hair every time they see me and my mom just asks me when I’ll look like a girl again.”

I had let Ollie shave my head with a dull razor the month before and the light brown peach fuzz was only now starting to conglomerate on my bare scalp. I had done it to explore presenting more masculine and while I didn’t regret it, I was painfully self conscious of the way I stuck out in a crowd now.

Ollie though, Ollie was happy to stick out in every crowd. They were only 5’1 but always seemed to make rooms feel full. They had a shock of blonde hair that I dyed for them every few months and always seemed to have a guitar strapped to their back.

Ollie reached over and ran their fingers through my new hair growth.

“It’s gonna be okay, babe.”

“What if your parents don’t like me?’

“It doesn’t matter. They will learn to love who I love.”

Those words. Those were the ones I had been waiting months to hear.

We had broken up because I was scared. Scared for our future. Scared that I wasn’t good enough for Ollie. Scared that I would only ever fit into their life on the weekends but I could never fall asleep in their bed on a cold Tuesday afternoon. 

“Have you called lately about getting citizenship?”

“No, I will.”

“We can do it together.”

Ollie accepted love through acts of service most of all. So I made their bed in the morning. I cooked them dinner at night. I helped them make phone calls.

Ever since we had broken up in me lived the fear of going back to that cold winter morning. Fingers clenched around the steering wheel. Begging my car to just drive itself. I wasn’t yet settled into a spring day. I had forgotten my sundress at home. 

I took the Baltimore exit and settled into the Sunday afternoon traffic. 

I passed a few green lights and saw my apartment complex. I looked at Ollie in my passenger seat. I hope this lasts forever. 

“Hey Ollie?” I said as I put the car in park. 

“Yeah?”

“I have an idea of how we could get your citizenship.”

It would be a warm summer day forever. Not just on the weekends. 

untitled

By Dani Gonzalez (they/them)

Balancing Act One: No Training Wheels 

Falling flat on your ass is a part of the learning process for roller skating. Later in the Covid-19 pandemic, I would learn how to laugh off not landing a trick. But in the Fall of 2020, I was petrified at all the risks to my body and ego when visiting a roller dome for the first time in a decade. My date was fantastic at skating, it was one of the things about them that wooed me. They were cool in lots of ways I did not feel cool. Both at the rink and in life I felt like I was desperately trying to catch up to my partner. Pandemic-induced isolation made me feel inadequate socially, professionally, and romantically. I was struggling to maintain any sort of control and balance. Every insecurity felt punctuated as I was clinging to the railing at the rink. Despite my initial failure at skating, I did genuinely want to connect with my partner through their interest. So some weeks later I asked if my partner would teach me to skate and they agreed. Then, two days later, they broke up with me. It was dramatic in every way one queer Pisces dating another queer Pisces could be.

At this point in the pandemic, I was confusing balance with control. I couldn't understand the idea of a calculated risk in the context of the pandemic or skating. I needed control to feel safe. When I couldn't control my ex’s feelings I hyperfocused on the one thing I could seemingly control, ordering a pair of rollerskates and teaching myself. 

Balancing Act Two: Forwards, Backwards, Transitions

It was lonely teaching myself how to skate and it was also healing in many ways. After work, I would walk to my local tennis court to skate in circles for hours at a time all by myself. Meeting new people didn’t seem worth possibly exposing myself to the virus — or to social embarrassment. During that time I became accustomed to the ways my body was reacting to stress. Skating forced me to confront my tense shoulders, loss of strength, and inflexibility. I had to learn to trust myself to take care of myself alone. 

When skating you have to focus on where your body weight is so that you can maintain balance. For example, it’s recommended to lean forward instead of backward. This isn't only to gain speed, it’s also so that if you fall, you fall on your knee pads instead of your butt. Even falling is a skill. All first steps are worth congratulating and they shouldn't be embarrassing. When I accepted that I felt ready to start skating with others.

Balancing Act Three: Drop In

After I left the tennis court and started skating parks and streets with other people I felt my newfound internal balance be tested by external forces. Every community has it’s own culture and skating is no different. My trust in myself had to extend to other skaters, park features, and gear setups. I continued to fall on my ass, but this time with a new attitude and encouragement. Community care manifests in different ways. Sometimes it’s offering a band-aid,  lending your sweaty wrist guards to someone, or witnessing your friend cry when they land a difficult trick. 

When “dropping in” the skater starts from the coping of a raised feature like a half-pipe. It’s like a controlled fall and it’s scary as hell. Falling wrong from an elevated height can land a skater in the hospital with a broken tail bone. I learned to drop in alongside a friend I’d made who started skating around the same time as me. We both landed the trick on the day of a small road trip. I couldn’t be more grateful for the mutual encouragement and trust I have with this friend. And I feel similarly towards all the other skate friends I’ve made as well. During the pandemic, Roller Derby skaters were no longer able to participate in the team sport and many turned to venues like parks or the streets where I was also learning. Quickly I was absorbed into a social group that is predominately queer and femme. Since then, I’ve felt seen and loved by others and by myself in a capacity that wasn't possible when dating my ex. 

Balancing Act Four: Rolling Stone

I’ll be moving to a new state in a month. It’s scary leaving the stability of an established community network. The skaters I’ve met show up time and time again to care for me, including in contexts outside of skating. Two of them will be helping me move. As the queer Pisces that I am, I could write pages of sentimental gratitudes. What I’d like to prioritize is relaying the lesson that balance requires accepting the uncontrollable. Remaining inflexible during times of change will cause more harm than good. All my love goes to the skaters who have taught me how to steady myself, laugh when I fall, and pick myself up to try again.

ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

Butterflies

By Katherine Noble (she/her).

Digital format of a mixed media zine featuring original writings, illustrations, and collaged materials.

My Colorful, Queerantined Life

By MusiqReiV (Reina Violeta Palencia; she/they).

MUSIC & DANCE

Untitled.

By Lady Grace (@ibtiae), SHE/HER.

Freeflow (1:22) to Epoca (Goran Project).

Pretty

By holly smith, she/her.

Pretty is a three song EP chronicling my experience as a trans person and my journey to transition. The EP was recorded and produced over the spring and summer of this year.

Audio Track Listing:

1. Patchwork

2. Playing The Hits

3. Our Room

These songs were written over the course of a year and represent three distinct emotions in my experience: beginning with confusion, leading into denial and ultimately acceptance. My idea was to represent my experience authentically, exploring both the beauty and pain that comes with being a trans person today and capturing the ethereality of transness.

COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS

Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project (RRFP)

Conversation with Billie Kate

Mutual Aid Richmond (MADRVA)

Conversation with clara carlson