Felix Ever After

by Kacen Callender

What does it feel like, to love someone so much that you’re willing to publicly bare your heart and soul with a black Sharpie? What is it like to even love someone at all?

“What if this is my midlife crisis?” he demands. “What if I’m going to die in exactly seventeen years and I’ve wasted my life on this, on art and painting and fashion and all this creative bullshit, because I thought it was my passion, when really, I’m meant to be doing something else?”

Oh, yeah, I’ve been there. Was just there actually. ...fine, I’m still here.

“I want to be in love. I’ve never, you know—felt the kind of passion great artists talk about. I want that. I want to feel that level of intensity. Not everyone wants love. I get that, you know? But me—I want to fall in love and be broken up with and get pissed and grieve and fall in love all over again. I’ve never felt any of that. I’ve just been doing the same shit. Nothing new. Nothing exciting.”

Some people say we shouldn’t need labels. That we’re trying to box ourselves in too much. But I don’t know. It feels good to me, to know I’m not alone. That someone else has felt the same way I’ve felt, experienced the same things I’ve experienced. It’s validating.

“What if it’s your destiny to miss out on your destiny?”

“That’s never who I was. That’s who you assumed I was.”

“I see at least one thing a day that makes me wonder if the straight people are all right.”

“The shows aren’t making people gay,” Austin says. “They’re just making people realize it’s even . . . I don’t know, a possibility. It’s like we’re all brainwashed from the time we’re babies to think that we have to be straight.”

“The straights say that we’ve got an agenda to turn people gay,” Marisol says, “but then will try to force toddlers on each other and say it’s so cute and they’re destined to get married. Seriously.”

“I get that labels can be important.” “They connect us. They help create community,” Leah says. “I can see what you’re saying. If the world was perfect, maybe we wouldn’t need labels. But the world isn’t perfect, and labels can really be a source of pride—especially when we’ve got to deal with so much crap. I’m really freaking proud to be a lesbian.”

I totally get this. The second I learned what bisexual meant when I was a kid I was like -that’s got to be me, right? I don’t like only the one gender I’m "supposed to like”,- but it still didn’t completely accurately describe how I felt, so after a while, I just avoided a label for it. Bisexual was close, but not fully. Then, years later, I found out about what pansexual was and it instantly clicked. That one word, that label, makes me feel understood.

“I don’t know. I mean, isn’t all art a piece of the creator’s soul? If the creator is an evil piece of shit, doesn’t that mean we’re being influenced by evil in their work?”

Basil Hallward would love to have a conversation with you.

“Listen,” he says, “I didn’t mean anything by bringing up the gallery. I was just making a point—” “You don’t get to use my pain to make your point.”

“I mean,” Ezra continues, “no one likes to admit it, but we can all be assholes. We all fuck up sometimes. As long as we learn and grow and do better next time. Right?”

Just because you haven’t evolved to realize gender identity doesn’t equal biology, doesn’t mean you get to say who I am and who I’m not. You don’t have that power. Only I have the power to say who I am.

know grandequeen69 isn’t the only person in the world who would think my identity is based on the gender I was assigned at birth—to force me into a box, to control me for their own comfort, because they’re afraid of what they don’t understand. Because they’re afraid of me.

“How do you know which one does feel right?” I ask. There’re a few smiles, and I wonder if I said something stupid again. “It’s different for some,” Bex offers. “For me, it was just that feeling. The feeling that my identity—nonbinary—explains so much of who I am, who I’ve always been, in a way that other labels never did.”

grip my hands together. “What if I never get that feeling?” “It’s possible that you never will,” Bex says. “There are some who go on questioning forever. That’s okay, too. But when it’s right, you’ll know. There’s a confidence that spreads through you, and you know you’ve found the answer.”

“I’m not flaunting anything. I’m just existing. This is me. I can’t hide myself. I can’t disappear. And even if I could, I don’t fucking want to. I have the same right to be here. I have the same right to exist.”

You refuse to be anything but yourself, no matter what. I look up to that. I admire that.”

I am Felix. No one else gets to define who I am. Only me.