The Charm Offensive

by Alison Cochrun

Dev can really relate. When they’re filming, Dev can throw himself into it completely, feeding off the energy of it all, giving his busy brain the perfect outlet for all its extra. For nine weeks, he flies through twelve-hour days on a steady diet of coffee and cookies and feels no need to ever stop moving. But invariably, after they film the Final Tiara Ceremony, he crashes. The energy bottoms out, creating a vacuum inside his head. He climbs into bed and stays there for a week until he can recalibrate. It’s how he’s always worked. In college, it would come in huge bursts of creative energy. He would spend two weeks writing a script—open up his heart and pour it all onto the page—and then, out of nowhere, he would sort of wake up, realize every word was shit, climb into bed, and watch The Office until he could face the real world again.

but not everyone needs a romantic partner to be happy.”

he waits for the feeling he generally associates with how kissing another person should feel. He waits, and he waits. He doesn’t feel anything at all.

“I… I… am not good with words, or with trying to communicate my thoughts. People always think I’m weird, so it is easier if I never talk.”

He doesn’t explain that he never enjoyed those dates either, that he hated the pressure to be perfect, to conform to the assumptions people made about him based on how he looks. He doesn’t explain how the dates were something he did out of obligation, because dating was something he was supposed to do. He doesn’t explain how they always felt wrong, like Charlie was putting on a costume that didn’t fit quite right.

“That seems like a low bar. I thought you were a hopeless romantic.” “I am. When it comes to other people’s romances.”

“Why would you want to read it?” “Because you wrote it.”

“I can’t just not stress about it!” Charlie’s fists slam onto the countertop. “My mind doesn’t work that way!”

it almost feels like he’s glimpsing Charlie Winshaw in his entirety—anxious and obsessive and still so fucking beautiful—leaning

The way he felt every time they sat him down and begged him to just tell them what was wrong, and even though he loved words—loved using words to build stories and escape hatches from the real world—he could never find the right ones to help his parents understand his heart and his mind.

Charlie hasn’t met many people like this—people who don’t make assumptions about you when they discover your brain doesn’t work like theirs; people who don’t judge you; people who simply stay with you and ask what they can do to help. People who trustingly hand you all of themselves in PDF form.

Because things were fine before, when he was not feeling things, when all his feelings were stashed away, unexamined.

No, it’s more that he can’t quite wrap his brain around being attracted to anyone. He can appreciate the aesthetic beauty of other people, and he’s had intellectual crushes on women—he’s admired women, respected them, had a vague desire for an intimacy and a closeness he’s never been able to achieve. But he’s never really wanted a woman before, and his sexual fantasies about women are usually vague and abstract. They’re not usually even about him. But this—this is something else entirely. This feels wild and intoxicating, and all of his fantasies involve Charlie himself. Charlie and Dev. If that were always the issue, though—if the reason he could never make things work in his relationships was simply because he was dating the wrong gender—then isn’t that something he would’ve figured out about himself by now? It’s not like he hasn’t had opportunities with men. He’s generally hit on by people of all genders equally, and he’s been told on several occasions by well-intentioned men that he would make a very successful gay (whatever that means).

Charlie touches Dev like he doesn’t know where to start, like he’s overwhelmed by his options; Dev touches Charlie like he knows this is his only chance. He touches Charlie like Charlie is going to disappear at any second.

He kissed Dev, and it was what kissing is supposed to feel like. He enjoyed kissing Dev in a way he’s never enjoyed kissing anyone.

Charlie wants to remember that feeling most of all—the feeling of Dev bringing to life parts of himself he didn’t know were there.

labels can be nice sometimes. They can give us a language to understand ourselves and our hearts better. And they can help us find a community and develop a sense of belonging.

You’re allowed to want the romance parts without the sex parts. Or the sex parts without the romance parts. All of those feelings are valid. You’re deserving of a relationship in whatever form you want it.”

“I can’t explain it, but when I’m kissing Dev, I’m not in my head about it. I don’t feel the pressure to make it work. It just works. And I don’t have to force myself to feel anything. I feel everything.”

But burning that bright and that fiercely must be exhausting; no one can sustain it forever.

“You can just stay,” he says, at last. “No one ever stays.”

it was like drowning from the inside. Like his brain was filling with water. Like sitting on the bottom of the deep end of the west Raleigh public pool the way he would as a kid, letting the silence and the pressure crush him until he couldn’t stand it any longer.

Dev is usually the one who takes care of people. No one ever takes care of him.

“For someone who claims to love love, you’re really good at pushing it away.”

sometimes easy is better than happy.”

Dev tilts his head down until their mouths find each other, and Charlie feels parts of himself realigning, slotting into place.

a brain that never stopped and a heart that was too big.

And it’s okay if you don’t love me back yet. I can love enough for both of us.