Idlewild

by James Frankie Thomas

Back then I often spoke in sexual innuendo. It was an act of aggression, intended to throw people off-balance so that I could win the interaction, if you counted terminating it as winning it, which I did.

Iago is gay like a black leather whip, like Paris in the 1920s, like calling non-food things delicious. Iago is gay like cold eyes and bony hips, like a pearl-handled pistol tucked in one’s suit pocket, like delicate fingers that could play a Chopin prelude or crush a throat with equal grace. Iago is gay in the way that we the F&N unit aspire to be gay, but it’s harder for girls.

To this day I’m chronically sleep-deprived for no reason except that staying up too late, past the point of exhaustion, remains a pleasurable form of self-harm.

phrase Invert Society dinner party echoed in my head. Maybe, I thought, this was just how it felt to have a cool gay friend group. Maybe it was always this exhausting and destabilizing. Maybe, in that sense, it was like being in love.