Felix Ever After

by Kacen Callender

Two gay guys cuddling in the heart of Brooklyn shouldn’t feel this revolutionary, but suddenly, it does.

Sometimes I try to find a white person to walk behind, just so that when everyone jumps out of that person’s way, they won’t knock into me.

He deadnamed me again.”

It makes me wonder if I really am Felix, no matter how loud I shout that name.

There’re some people who’re careful to only show the part of themselves they want others to see. I

“Well,” she said, “you deciding to be a guy instead of a girl feels inherently misogynistic.” She told me, “You can’t be a feminist and decide you don’t want to be a woman anymore.”

I wanted to date her so that I could prove I’m worthy of love. Instead, she managed to solidify this slowly growing theory that I’m not.

“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.

It’s like I’m constantly trying to prove that I deserve love—but how can I, when even my own mom doesn’t love me?

“Listen. The moon controls the tides, right? The human body is mostly water. It’d make sense if the moon controls us, too.”

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

There’s a lot that can inspire me. I don’t like to box myself in.

When someone hurts me, I either obsess over how to convince them I’m worthy of their love or obsess over how to destroy them.

You’re not your grades. You’re not your test scores or your college application or even your portfolio.”

This is its own particular brand of evil—telling someone that they can trust me, hoping that they’ll tell me something personal, just so that I can betray them.

I kind of immediately hated the guy. He’s the sort of person the world adores, just based on the way he looks, a little like the way people obsess over men like Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans and Chris Pine and all the other famous Chrises, plus Ryan Gosling, claiming that they’re liberal and that they aren’t racist and that they’re feminists, but not really thinking about why they’re so obsessed with white men, and why they don’t love any people of color the same way. I love that I have brown skin.

“It’s like every identity I have . . . the more different I am from everyone else . . . the less interested people are. The less . . . lovable I feel, I guess. The love interests in books, or in movies or TV shows, are always white, cis, straight, blond hair, blue eyes. Chris Evans, Jennifer Lawrence. It becomes a little hard, I guess, to convince myself I deserve the kind of love you see on movie screens.”

“Loving and accepting and celebrating yourself, and loving and celebrating and supporting the young women like you who will come next.

But creating our own world, not just for ourselves in our bubble, but one that can spread to those who need it most—one filled with our stories, our history, our love and pride—that’s just as beautiful. That’s just as necessary. Without that, we forget ourselves. Crumple under the pain of feeling isolated, unaccepted by others, without realizing that, above all else, we need to love and accept ourselves first.”

“If this was a perfect world, and there wasn’t any transphobia or treating other people like shit for who they are, then maybe there wouldn’t be a need for labels. But the world isn’t perfect, and when I have to deal with ignorant bullshit, it helps me to know there’re other trans guys out there.”

I loved her. Still do. Probably always will. But it took me a little longer to figure out that just because I love her, doesn’t mean it’s a good kind of love. It can be easier, sometimes, to choose to love someone you know won’t return your feelings. At least you know how that will end. It’s easier to accept hurt and pain, sometimes, than love and acceptance. It’s the real, loving relationships that can be the scariest.”

It’s easier, sometimes, to love when you know it’s a love that you can’t have.

“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.”

I don’t care that you’re fucking gay, because people like Felix are queer and trans and Black, and they have to deal with so much more bullshit than you or me. And, okay, yes, you are marginalized for being gay, but instead of being a fucking ally to other marginalized people, people even more marginalized than you, you buy into the racist and patriarchal bullshit and act like you’re above them because you’re a white guy, and you act like they’re taking your space, and you think that you’re owed this whole fucking world, and when you don’t get what you want, you act like a fucking asshole,

It’s almost like I was looking for the pain and the hurt, because it was easier to live with the idea that, even though I want love, I’m not the kind of person who deserves to be loved.