FebulousFebruary 2025: Lost and Found

day twenty two

He? It? She!

That *awkward* relationship.

Standing in the bus shelter.

Speaking highly of your lover.

“What happened to your boyfriend?”

Well I guess he went undercover,

Once she climbed out of the closet.

“Oi mate check this lad out”

Her top’s a little tight,

I can bet you they have noticed.

Her jaw line strikes my attraction.

But only their lurid attention.

Almost like that “newspaper”,

And failing “entertainment” they are viewing.

I’m almost tired of hearing,

“Why she’s sitting on your lap love?”

Perhaps because I have more to offer.

Than some inconsiderate genital featured face.

Or in your terminology;

“Gayboi”.

And I’m moaning and I’m whining,

“So why not stay at home?”

To avoid that painful conversation.

When awkward are your relations.

And they approach your space without thinking.

Only to give no question in audio,

Because they don’t believe it plausible.

When we should come far from being her and him? Or it?

Siobahn Deborah, 24, Canterbury

22nd January 2014

©TwiceTheTaste Poetry (of Siobhan Deborah) 2014

http://twicethetaste.wordpress.com/

day twenty one

Bristol, 1967

History

When does it start?

Then, like always,

It was toilets.

I stood.

He stood.

I glanced down,

He did too.

Eyes meet; a grim, resigned, relieved smile.

Extend the moment. Wash hands.

Together, with a tsunami of silence,

We climb the steps (please don’t leave me);

Reach the top (SAY SOMETHING!);

“Want to walk?” (Thank you, God!)

With names we capture each other.

We speak of the weather, the church, the situation, the guilt.

Then a quiet explosive,

“I can’t help it. I know I’m homosexual”.

Like

‘Let there be light’

Like

‘I have a dream’

Like

‘No man is an island’

Verbal history is created.

Mine, now also visual, branded on my sleeve, without escape, and unremoveable.

History has begun.

Roger Newman, Margate

day twenty

Her dreams of a fairy tale white wedding, to a handsome, successful, independently wealthy Philosophy or English Literature lecturer, who had been a swimming champion in his School and University days (with a Bronzed Adonis physique as a result), 2.4 children, both with romanticised Celtic names with unpronounceable spellings, white cottage with dreamy garden and brace of effervescent Labradors (One chocolate and one black), all by the age of 25, had not only vanished, they had been roundly ground to dust and had disappeared into the corners of the sofa of life.

She sat staring out the window of the train from Glasgow Central to London Euston, wishing that the guy opposite would stop imitating a Friesian by chewing his gum with his gormless, open-mouthed and vacuous expression. Worst of all, people kept assuming they were a couple, the stewards speaking to them both at the same time while regurgitating the menu, or offering drinks.

The lights outside punctuated the gloom in her mind, as they flew past, illustrating random habitations that would remain unnamed. At least the complimentary wine was quaffable. As was some of the view at least! There were at least two very fuckable women on board her carriage, along with one guy that was making her drool. So drink in the view she did! That was, however, where it stopped. Much like sitting in a fine restaurant, but being on medication that required meal times to be strictly observed, and not when you are there, she wouldn’t be able to sample the fare! She was quite firmly off the market. And not through any choice or commitment, but simply that she had reached that point in life when to be with someone else was far too inconvenient and complicated matters inordinately more than was necessary.

Besides, who in their right mind would want to take her on, with her small warehouse of baggage and unfeasibly high standards in a potential partner? The baggage and the high standards we will come to later, however, when you match these aspects with an unfalteringly crap choice in partners, an inability to read the most blatant of signs and the self confidence of a juvenile pony beside the M25 at 6pm on a weekday, it becomes much less surprising that she had just spent yet another Christmas and New Year single, and but for the kindness and pity of her family, alone.

The train ploughed on into the darkness. The ‘Train Manager’[1] swayed along the aisle checking tickets. She looked around at the other passengers while Ed Sheeran played his cheeky/melancholy juxtaposition sounds in her ears. Across the aisle was a young man that looked particularly virile, though she strongly suspected he would be less than engaging once they were laying, panting into the bedroom air. He was Mr Right Now, as opposed to Mr Right. The Friesian was still trying, vigorously, to reduce the same piece of chewing gum to molecules. Two seats up on either side sat the women that would form the focus for an amazing threesome fantasy later that night, we’ll call them threesome a and b. It must be understood that she was aware that they are far more than just numbered fantasy items, she just didn’t need to delve that far to benefit from their presence in her thoughts. (And of course there was always the possibility that Mr Right Now would dander into the bedroom of her subconscious while her, a and b were getting funky.)

Yet again alone with her thoughts, she wandered off into the, darker, recesses of her imagination.

day nineteen

Lesbian Laptop Life

Looking for some ocado food to shift my virtual mood

Then looking at a pink sofa virtual girlfriend on my screen

Dancing to some you tube tunes around my bedroom

My porn hub moves are virtually obscene

My virtual job is paying a virtual salary

Whilst I am pointlessly occupied on twitter

Escaping into a virtual shop

Enabling Amazon to get much richer

Whilst I slowly kill myself with inactivity

My brain feeds on Facebook drivel

I need to divorce my service provider soon

I’m gonna tell them to virtually swivel!

Kerry Mitchell, 50, Brighton

day eighteen

Being gay isn’t always what it seems,

Sometimes it’s a collage of hopeless dreams.

People spreading rumours about you loving men,

Telling you things you’ve known since you were ten.

 ‘What if you get HIV?’ ‘ What if you get AIDS?’

‘At your wedding will you have Best Men or Bridesmaids?’

The questions are endless, but they all make me laugh,

I made my choice to walk down this path.

 I can date who I want, my friends don’t care,

I have enough love for everyone to share.

Coming out was hard, but loving is great,

The world’s too small to dwell on petty hate.

 My friends all love me, my family too,

I love men, and you can too.

Be strong, have faith and smile every day,

Because if you smile, nobody can take your love away.

Paul Willis, 20, Canterbury

day seventeen

Coming out – again.

Let’s be clear, it wasn’t lust.  She wasn’t my type at all but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.  I hovered by the stall just looking but trying not to be seen staring. She made everything suddenly crystal clear.  She was my revelation.

She was a vision of the 50’s right there in the middle of Europride 1992. Petticoated red skirt, wide red leather belt, eyeliner, blue-black pony tail and fringe hair and the highest of patent leather stiletto heels (how did she walk on the grass in those?).  And the lipstick.  Unapologetic ruby red lipstick. My gender neutral vest and Levi’s suddenly felt all wrong.  She was a validating vision.  I was like her, I may never be able to walk in the heels or wear the outfit with such panache but I bought the lipstick, the reddest I could find, and set about discovering who I really was.  A lipstick lesbian.

Lel Meleyal, 54, Brighton

day sixteen

Coming Out…..

The prospect of coming out whether young or old is a daunting one. It is the point in which we are committed, prepared, psyched up for telling our loved ones, our friends, our world how we feel, who we are, something that defines us, it is a scary moment that we have to go through just to be us.

So that day comes and we do it, we feel petrified yet proud, some of us get a negative reaction some of us a positive one.

I am one of the lucky ones in which my family and most of my friends were great, they were positive, supportive and happy for me, the way we would hope all our families to be. For many we lose our families our friends our homes, the experience can be devastating and for what? Loving someone, being ourselves!

Down the line it hasn’t been easy; we think we have come out, job done? No!

Every day we have to come out in some way, whether it is from that glare from across the street, stare from behind a counter. The constant feeling that I have to identify who I am to you!

I have had my fair share of abuse, verbal and physical just because someone didn’t like the look of me, because I am me a lesbian.

Yes I am me and with that come so much, much more than what you see or think you see.

So take time to think when did you choose to be a heterosexual? Was it a hard choice? Was it easy to tell everyone? Does it affect you every day?

I work specifically with LGBT young people and want to say from the bottom of my heart they should be so proud of who they are and for coming out in such a hateful world.

So please homophobes, haters, in the words of Heather small “what have you done today to make you feel proud”?

Tell you what I did, I came out!

Hayley Rees, 32, out n proud lesbian from Herne Bay, Kent

day sixteen

Islington

Pavement blood splatter glints metallic in the morning sun,

I’m hoping it’s cherry stone bird shit but no, it weaves a linear trail away up the street.

The midnight sirens I romanticised to a city backdrop come back into my mind, a figure running from a blue flash heartbeat into the dark.

Chopping block blood splatter sluices down the market stall pavement, end of the day swilling to foam and wet tarmac.

Son of the market trader, voice barely broken, calls out the wares

‘Pork steaks, lamb chops two for a pound now, lovely pork steaks’

Every accent is a local one in London, twenty languages I can’t understand, filled with city movements, purpose and time, lyrical laughter with a story unfolding behind.

A black man with a heavily scarred face weaves between my feet and wheels, with arms length wielding of a litter picker, in the ten minutes I’ve been here he has covered the whole square of the shopping mall under the watchful eye of the Angel sculpture. I’m assuming he is a refugee from a war torn African state and is probably a well-qualified doctor, but he could just as easily be born and bred in this borough, scarred in a car crash as a teenager.

A building contractor hauling sheets of plywood behind a boarded up vacant plot offers to help me up the not so dropped curb.

He begins apologising for the condition of London’s pavements.

‘Well it’s not so bad’ I say, ‘at least they’ve started and it is getting better’

Yes, it’s getting better.

The last hundred yards feels like a mile.

I stop at the entrance, haul myself up to standing with the iron railing, taking a breath before the final effort.

Two women come by smiling, dykes I think, the black one with the stylish denim jacket and the sharply cropped hair bleached to orange, offers to help.

Effortlessly she picks up the chair and puts it at the top of the short flight.

She waits, holding on to it while I make my way up behind her

‘Didn’t want it rolling away on you’ she says

I thank them, wrestling with tears as they head off, animated chatter, plans and protests fill the air, then fade away round the corner.

JJ 09

Janet Jones, 49, Brighton

day fifteen

The thing I feel most guilty about is that I ate his pasta. I accepted his hospitality, ate his pasta and a day later slept with his wife.

Wait.

I can be honest with you right?

I know what you’re thinking.

Why don’t I apologise for the affair?

But, how could anyone not have fallen for Her, listened to her honeyed words and devoured each sweet lie she told? I wasn’t naive, it was worse, I was headstrong and she fed my ego, transformed my dull greying world by Midas-touching it all, without bringing any of the consequences.

We planned time together and I’d almost forgotten she was married, because for that time in London, she’d been only mine.

I didn’t know till I got to Vancouver that his flight was delayed and this meant I arrived before he left…the “friend” from out of town that I was, a lupine judas in a sheeplined coat.

How do you do?

Yeah, awesome y’all flew over.  I made you my special Italian Farfalle…you must be famished, plane food sucks. Anyways, s’nice out here this time of year and ****** would only get bored with me away on business.

No, no she won’t … I thought as I filled my fork shamelessly

Yet, seasoned with experience, now I would cough a little deeper than I should, were I to smell the savoury tang of salty capers, the sizzling of pungent garlic and rosemary leaves releasing their fragrant oil. (And now I know why you were a coward to shoot your rivals in the back rather than look them in the eyes…but I was 19 then and had no time for wisdom as I knew it all ) Yet, to break bread with him, and really see him, this real person, made what we’d secretly planned a more explicit betrayal.  Because I knew what I was going to do was wrong for him but right for me and that being with Her was more vital than morals or self respect or denying myself supper…

I cooked that meal once long after she  was a memory, and I choked a little on the stalks of guilt I’d folded in, guilt that I could have been a better person and declined his hospitality or hers, but I needed to feast on both.

Serena Gilbert, 36 , Maidstone