Felix Ever After

by Kacen Callender

“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.”

Watching, watching, watching. It feels like that’s all I ever do sometimes. Watch other people dance, watch other people kiss.

Why am I always the person who just sits to the side and watches? What is it about me that no one likes, that no one wants?

“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.”

Do you ever feel like you’re only ever watching? I ask Declan. Never really participating. Never really doing. Just always watching.

Yeah, of course, but is unrequited love being IN love, or is that admiration, love from afar?

It’s easier, I think, to love someone you know won’t love you—to chase them, knowing they won’t feel the same way—than to love someone who might love you back. To risk loving each other and losing it all.”

“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.”

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.