Totoro and a Visit from 2016, Part Three

 

The jump scare is coming up, but first, lacy things and dancing! Angel Boy and I were laying around (By the next date, this part would be named Being Cats and I love that so much for us!) talking about our Feeld profiles and I told him one of the reason he'd intrigued me was that he wears girls' clothes in some of his pictures! Heart eyes emoji!

And, OHlook, I have a closet full of lingerie, would he like to try something on?

"You pick something for me," he said, and I picked my Barbie-est pink teddy.

"I warn you," he'd said earlier, "I might look prettier than you in a dress..."

I'd say the pretty was about even, but I still can't stop thinking about how beautifully the lace covered his chest. I put on my favorite see-through bodysuit and Rumors by Lizzo and Cardi B came on. I couldn't stop myself from dance-flailing around, the joy was so profound! I'm gonna leave that silly rhyme.

Kissing and dancing with him in our pretty outfits was a wild, childlike joy, and it made me feel so unhinged that I kept apologizing even though there was no reason to. In my dancey exclaimings, I accidentally sprayed spittle all over his cute nose and he winced. I wiped off his face and we kept laughing and dancing. Life was free and beautiful and silly and horny and PERFECT.

Soon it was time to take him home, though, and (jaws music) he spotted the picture I keep by the door of me shaking Hillary Clinton's hand. Spite sparked up in his eyes out of nowhere and he said "Oh is this from when she was friends with Trump?"

"No that was the eighties, I think." My heart fell down several flights of stairs. Not this conversation.

But it was exactly that conversation, similar in tone if not content to the last fight I had with my dad. OHREALLY?! A man telling me what's wrong with Hillary and (by extension, in my mind) all the free election/protest labor I've done in the past decade?! The far left sure loves labor, unless it's women and people of color doing it.

Friends, he used the phrase "charisma lessons."

But! When I made points about Russian interference and how shitty/misogynist it is to say Bernie's primary losses were rigged, Angel Boy listened, or at least pretended to.

This conversation transports me instantly to my own personal Backrooms, and here I was having it for the nth time with someone I really, REALLY liked. I can't keep running into the same thing over and over and having the same flight response. But oh! This hurt my heart and made me worry that the easy equity between us had been an illusion. I had a lot to think about.