The Queer Femme Manifesto

Oh my.

This is easily the rawest thing I will ever write. I really wanted to get in a lot of aspects of the queer femme experience in, not just the stuff I knew. While a lot of it is inspired by guttural feelings, it's meant to be the main's story first and foremost, and branch out into the stories of others. A lot of it was the desire to really communicate for the Trans community, which I'm a part of. I swore awhile back that I would try and bring the queer and trans experience to media and give it a little more honesty at the cost of glamour. Works just as well bc I can be pretty vanilla. Apologies, I tried to pump up the sex scene but it is very circumstantial in the story.

CWs in case you need it: mental illness, abusive/neglectful parents, transphobia/queerphobia, panic attacks, violence, homelessness, and things like that.

I.

Fuckmylife666

Putting yourself together is hard work you barely bother with most of the time.

Not like you have the greatest canvas to work with.

Shave the scruff off. Apply basic makeup. Practice your voice and make yourself sick with how sweet and formal it sounds (you won't maintain that). Tie your red hair into pigtails (the ends of which are just starting to reach the caps of your shoulders). Look yourself in the mirror.

You're never satisfied, but you make do.

You go to leave and wonder how anyone even recognizes you anymore.

II.

Fabric

Esther's kind. That's the first thing you noticed about her.

Immediately you were suspicious. Still are, to tell the truth. In your world, no one's nice without wanting to take advantage of you, and you've had enough of that.

Yet, she's still kind to you. In your disasters, your sorrows, your anger, your changes. You aren't the same girl now you were a few years ago, yet in many ways, this is how you always were.

You're her greatest lapse of judgment. A better woman would warn her away, but you've long since stopped being a better woman.

III.

Kim & Jessie

It's a different world when you see her.

Before, it's a lot of many things. A lot of shouting matches and youthful rebellion, a lot of runny mascara and chipped nails, a lot of bruises and crossed out locations on maps. When you see her, it's still a lot of those things, but you're numb to everything except the good.

It's your own world, even if you're just a visitor.

IV.

Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover

Esther probably doesn't know it.

She loves you, sure, but it isn't that way. You know she likes women, but the way she acts sometimes you're pretty sure she likes everything, even and especially that which she shouldn't (like you). She's always been so formal to people, so formal to you, that it should probably keep you at a distance, but you're too stupid to care. You should know better, but she's such a soft-spoken, loyal, sincere, wonderful, oblivious, naive soul in such jagged, wiry, elegant tissue-paper casing that Esther almost feels perfect in her imperfections.

Every time you think you've come to your senses, she does things- small touches of the skin, kind smiles with a blush, comforting reassurances when you're breaking down- that keep you following along with false hope. She doesn't know that when you look distant and daydreamy, it's those actions that make pushing her against a wall and asphyxiating against her lips seem less like a daydream.

You're in misery and you love it.

V.

Young Girls

You and Esther talk about things that young girls talk about. College applications for her, community college life for you. Sometimes you'll exchange beauty tips, and somehow she always asks you for advice more than you from her. She'll tell you something funny her friend did once (though her stories seem to take place years ago), and you'll complain about your mother. Nothing summarizes you two better than that contrast.

Then there are things most young girls don't talk about. You talk about them in hushed tones and voices of condolences. You'll casually recount tales of danger and she'll try to echo that without the gravitas it deserves but cannot have without wounding you. Some of it is talked about with the excited gleeful escape of no one watching. Sometimes Esther will talk without inhibition about her desires, about how fun it would be to kiss every girl who would kiss her back (the most romantic you've ever seen her), and you wonder how, after all that you've been through, she hasn't been inhibited at all.

VI.

Just Friend

She hugs you with all her might when you two set to part.

You hate that she lets go and leaves you faced with the graceless barren March chill.

VII.

Heads Will Roll

You wake up feeling like murder but drink it in like coffee as it energizes you. It makes you feel like everything you hate about yourself is vicious and violent in a good way.

VIII.

Woman King

Sometimes you wonder how you two look together.

You're a mouse in Esther's presence. You are loud, but she is a force. How can such a thin girl stand so prominently? She's her own archetype, a rumbling wave set to conquer the Earth, and she isn't even trying. She's a small, frail girl with faded black hair that she never lets far past her chin, tired olive eyes just under a headband and just over a perfectly daring lolita fashion sense. She hasn't acted upon a need to try to be anything, and that baffles you because she is.

She's Esther. Biblical queen of Persia, the morning star. She's the queen of the night as it surrenders to the horizon. You're just... you.

You used to look at her across high school hallways with lust and resentment, jerking your head away with a biting retort when she noticed you. Sometimes she still tells you she feared she did something wrong when you yelled at her. In your college days and your faulty celebrations of yourselves, she doesn't realize that sometimes you still look at her that way.

She always was a hopeless bitch.

IX.

Mind on Fire

You stay quiet during math class, begrudgingly participate with your lab team of exchangeable partners in physics, and give them hell throughout history class. Gods, this is college level history? No wonder society is going down the shitter. No one really seems to appreciate it when you talk about the falsehoods and omissions, and maybe you shouldn't get so angry, but you know the damage that whitewashing history and statistics can inflict.

It's not over. The more people say it's over the less it is.

X.

Nothing, Not Nearly

You don't tell Esther about your latest histrionics at school when you meet up at a nearby cafe. She just assumes you have them (and you were that way in high school, so this isn't anything new). You've already bitched her ear off about how invisible it all makes you feel. How it feeds into bad memories, horrid events that you hate to call traumatic because trauma implies that you have a permanent flaw. You're a big fan of making things bigger than they are because the smaller things always hurt you.

She often asks if you're feeling okay. If she's adventurous, if you're having a low moment. When she asks the former, you tell her that you are. When she asks the latter, it's so authentic, so off-script for someone who often operates like she's in the thick of reading a book on humans, that you quietly admit that you aren't. She'll hug you with all her limited might and remind you "You know... no matter how bad it all gets, nothing matters more than love. Sometimes you just need to give some to yourself."

You shrug it off. That's easy for her to say when she already has so much in her heart.

XI.

13 Ghosts II

Sometimes you drift off onto Esther's shoulder when you're together. The way she lets you despite the fact that she isn't very strong is the most peaceful feeling you can think of. You apologize every time you wake up, but she waves it off, probably because she should just nudge you off when you do. Maybe still, she's just being polite, but either way, it means the world to you just to be tired and broken near her.

When you fall asleep in your bed alone, it is never nearly as restful.

XII.

Sleepover

Sometimes when you wake up your arms stretch across the bed where you imagine her being someday. You shake your head and growl at your own stupidity. You're usually so demanding, but mere fantasies sustain you so often.

When you and your mother get into a shouting match over how much you changed, so violent that you forget to take your depression medication, you conclude that it may be the fantasies of things being better.

XIII.

Jenny

You aren't sure when the feelings changed.

Well, that's not true. You know when you realized them. It punched you in the face about three years into knowing Esther, and six months into being her friend. You were just 17, so you had the most teenager reaction to it that you can think of- that being, you hated everything and loved it, and probably loved it because you hated everything else. In a world of dead grass and bramble, it drowned you in a sea of emotion. You never struggled against the waves because the idea of being in love felt so soft. It still drowns you two years later.

You just don't know how you got there. Hell, even after you fell for Esther, even after you became friends, you were still yelling at her half the time she looked at you or got too close. As a friend, she wore on you with her endless kindness and admirable stubbornness enough for you to allow her nearby and eventually soften near her. So what about her made you love her?

You can't say.

But it's probably how she never left the more you changed.

XIV.

We Forget Who We Are

Sometimes when you talk to Esther it's the quiet before the storm. It builds up into something you never say, but feel. It's always a bit more serious. It's more honest and undressing than you originally meant to be going in. It's never talk about what happens, but how it leaves you. When you tell her about your fight with your mother, it's about your guilt- she's a single mom, she's raised a problem child all alone in a poor part of town, she's done fine, until Esther tells you that your mother should do better. That you are not the problem. That she should respect you more. Whenever she does, there's grit in her voice and fire in her eyes that you never miss, and it always draws your defenses up on instinct and you mouth off to her, far weaker than her words.

"I think I know what to do in my own life," you lie, knowing it's a lie, knowing she knows it's a lie.

She never apologizes, but those talks always disarm you because it's way too close to who she doesn't want to be, but it's also very kind of her. You usually never have a way to easily recover from that. It's a reversal of roles that you have to remember to gather the parts of you back from.

You just make sure to thank her before the subject changes.

XV.

Dangerous Woman

Sometimes being you is a thing of beauty.

You shave thoroughly- not just your face, and not just the parts of your body that can be seen. You paint your face like a renaissance woman. You wash your hair a few times over a near half-hour, then overload it with product. You throw on your useless bra, a gray shoulder-less shirt that falsely advertises you as curvy, and a dangerously short skirt over pantyhose. When you're done, you don't look like a natural woman, but the dissonant tones you leave empower you rather than cut you down.

The sun starts to set. It's Friday night and you're feeling frisky. You shout that you're going out. Your mom no longer tries to stop you, and sometimes a cold goodbye is all you get.

It's really all you need.

You've got better things to be than what she thinks you are.

XVI.

New Romantics

Esther meets you at the club that same night. It's unspoken, but when you feel like being queer and darling, she's your chaperone. The gays have to stick together, you suppose. You show the bouncer (or their butchiest bartender; it wouldn't shock you with this dive bar) a fake ID with your name on it. Esther follows suit. With little inspection, she lets you in.

"About time," you tell Esther. "It's fucking freezing."

She takes her coat off to hold, dressed in heels and a floor-length white and green dress. "Short skirts will do that to you."

"Buzz off, bitch," you bite back. Used to it, she giggles.

The club is filled with people you relate to. A lot of wallflowers and a lot of loud talkers. Butches who can drink you under the table and scream excited curse words at a Hayley Kiyoko song. Femmes playing pool in the back room and who lead the charge when making out with you. You observe a lot of them and rarely interact in a way that isn't challenging them. She just dances alone as you watch too closely while she avoids eye contact and rejects advances from other people, sitting alone at the bar when she's done.

You're pulled away by a familiar older goth in a black sheer dress and quickly say goodbye. She watches you go with a sad smile as she drinks her milkshake which isn't even spiked with anything. Before you can tell her to live it up a little, you're gone, pressed against the wall with a leg wrapped around this different woman. You know her enough that you're kind of bored with her. It's a meaningless exercise, a hollow statement of lesbianism. Usually, you two make out and never speak to each other again, but something about her feels unsatisfying. This time, she's greedy like she's trying to consume you. She's pressuring you into caring more than you do. Into wanting her.

When she moves her hand onto your chest and her other on your ass, you yank away with a sneer. Like she's done anything to warrant that, like you've done anything but make out that would make you desire giving up your secrets. She looks confused and angry, but you don't care. You leave, your waist scraping against her leg in a way that feels like trouble.

"The hell is the matter?" At least she's not insulting you by feigning cordiality.

"Bug off, will you?" you shout behind you. Before she can respond, you've walked away, already committed to repressing the memory.

XVII.

Tranz

The people at the bar take your real name at face value. You always perk up when you hear it with a smug smile, and she giggles, joy in her eyes and a familiar blush on her cheeks that illuminates her dimples and the freckles near her mouth. You're working hard for that name, so you reckon you damn well deserve to hear it, but why she's so happy for you every time, a year of bar-surfing in, you can't say.

You've been called to pick up an order of onion rings, so you leave your corner booth and do so. Her eyes tell you to stay safe, but you wouldn't ask her to join you if she wasn't comfortable. Besides, you grab them and bring them back in half a minute.

"You having fun?" you ask, picking one up from the basket and playing with it.

"Oh, I am," she promises. She sees the dubious look on your face and adds "I swear! Like, this is the most I've done for myself in a while."

You smirk and say "Well, I don't know how much sitting alone and watching your friend get her freak on is 'you time', but like hell I'm gonna judge."

She snickers. "So that means you have to stay with me, doesn't it?"

It's her turn to look smug. She's so cute and not smug at all. Feigning tired defeat, you say " Sure " but add "That'll be nice."

She nibbles at an onion ring with a content, adorable smile. "Thanks, Scarlett," she coos. When she says your name, it always sounds like she means it.

XVIII.

Skin Of The Night

She says she wants to dance.

You set your drink down and get up, making her smile graciously. Esther generally gets tired part way through the night but always has a second wind in clubs like these. She's generally very polite and well-mannered, but something about her skin seems to light up when she's here.

At first, you watch her dance on her own. She doesn't have many steps and prefers to let the music guide her, but she's always so pretty doing so. You get lost in her movements as they flash by in the strobe lights, enjoying seeing her show a little life from a distance more than you enjoy making out with any broad in the back of the bar.

XIX.

Cosmic Love

You don't notice Esther holding her hand out at you until she clears her throat. When you do, you swear the whites of your eyes are visible through the walls. She beckons again, telling you to join her, and you're powerless to resist. She holds your hand as you two sway to the music. It's like you forgot how to dance. You've never been this vulnerable with her before. It's all choreographed admissions of struggle or spontaneous rage that you can shrug off.

Right now, she's terrifying you, and she loves it.

You kind of love it too.

XX.

Then The Quiet Explosion

You don't remember how the fight started by the time it stops. You reckon the goth bitch from earlier had something to do with it by the way she was storming up on you. You recall her yelling about your dick, and then it all went to hell from there.

She's a frail thing, but when something triggers her, she's more violent than you are.

She breaks first.

When she does, the fight leaves your heart, but rage drags your body through hell.

XXI.

Ribs

It's hard to walk and you're coughing up blood. You miss when the only pain to your ribs was laughter.

Just as you dreaded, you and your mom scream at each other loud enough that you hear her on the phone apologizing to her landlord. She uses the wrong pronoun a lot but gives you the excuse that she has to in order to clarify things to other people. How is being you so confusing? You remember her yelling about how unsafe it was for you to be sneaking into bars with dangerous women, and you yelling back no shit it's dangerous, being me is dangerous, but if I'm not I'm gonna fucking kill myself.

There's a map on the walls. Stop being so dramatic repeats in your head as you cross off the intersection that the bar was on.

XXII.

Coloring In The Void

"Remember when you told her you'd shove your dick in her fat dyke face?"

Esther laughs accommodatingly from her end of the phone, even though she rarely remembers blackouts like that. It's both of you trying for normal while not being normal enough.

She says she didn't see her mother Sally when she got home and still hasn't. She may not be there. You growl, at this point not even hiding how much you hate Sally even if Esther does not. She asks if things were okay with your mother and you just say that it was bad. She sighs, knowing not to press any further.

You don't apologize to each other, because that would mean that simply being was the true offense of the evening. You weren't looking to start a fight. You weren't looking to have her labeled as a tranny-lover for sticking up for you. You weren't trying to make it so you're too banged up to see each other. You were just trying to be.