A young woman sits at the window, looking over her balcony into the distant horizon. A wedding procession passes by down below. Colours glint off the finery of people dancing in celebration. She wonders whom this beginning might belong to, as the flashy band fades into the distance. Lights flicker across the city in scattered rhythms, each searching for another that answers at the same frequency. Her own room is shrouded in darkness, pitch black and so different from the glimmer of the city lights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A notification ding pulls her out of her thoughts. The soft glow from her phone screen fills a corner of the room. It\u2019s a familiar tone, one she has specifically chosen for messages that should not be checked in public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHome already?\u201d she wonders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She sits down with her feet tucked beneath her. It\u2019s a locked notification. She unlocks the phone. The homepage springs up. She scrolls down to where the honeycomb app sits, right beside another one which she doesn\u2019t name. She skips the former and goes to open the new message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHi, beautiful. Got a chance to see what I\u2019d sent?\u201d
\u201cHmm. Cool new gear, I must say,\u201d she teases.
\u201cAnnnd you like it?\u201d comes the prompt response; they\u2019re clearly not someone who doubts themself.
She laughs as she stretches her legs and types back. \u201cYes, a lot. You know I adore those and I only have a beginner\u2019s version.\u201d
\u201cAnd yet so mean to make me wait half the day for a compliment.\u201d
\u201cDid you try it on already?\u201d
\u201cNo, I want to show you when I try it. But I\u2019m still stuck at work. Catch up later?\u201d
\u201cOh yes! Our usual time\u2019s fine.\u201d
The username shines brightly at the top of the screen: SecondFred.
What a strange username, she\u2019d thought. Who wants to be second? \u201cIt\u2019s like the second coming,\u201d they\u2019d explained jokingly, \u201cbut not like Christ.\u201d A simple name that meant something only to them. She thought it made sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This wasn\u2019t her life a year ago, when evenings were spent chasing after promises of togetherness. The aisle of dating apps had led her to a dead end. Two-line bios she had tried to compress her existence into, and icebreaker questions too irrelevant to get to know her. An endless masquerade of carefully curated selves while searching for an authentic spark. She was constantly toggling through filters and trying to find a label that described her best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How could she name something she\u2019d never been taught to name?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The apps didn\u2019t ask the questions she needed to ask; there was nobody to hold her hand in those spaces, nobody to guide her through them. She drifted away from them as she began spending more time in online communities. Here she found people who told the same stories as she did, and she finally let her curiosities unfurl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s still in her bedroom when the notification blinks again. The city lights have dimmed now, and her bedroom is lit by fairy lights. She knows what it is before she even opens the message. She flops back on her pillow with a satisfied smile and looks at the picture for a moment. It\u2019s Freddie showing off their gear.
\u201cYou\u2019re gorgeous, Freddie,\u201d she responds.
\u201cOf course, I am, Love.\u201d
\u201cCan I see yours too?\u201d A second message appears, more hesitant.
\u201cRight now?\u201d
\u201cYeah.\u201d A third text arrives immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She hesitates. Nobody has seen her wear it yet. So she picks it out and wears it. She rechecks the screenshot blocker setting before responding this time. A snap, a crop, and a version of her goes out into the digital world with the possibility of never being erased. She waits, then looks at the \u2018seen\u2019 check marks again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat do you think, Freddie?\u201d
A voice note arrives this time. \u201cYou are so pretty. I think my heart stopped beating for a second there. You should give me better warnings.\u201d Laughter follows, but she knows they meant it.
\u201cThat\u2019s enough compliments for tonight. I\u2019ll probably sit in this until I go to bed.\u201d
She asks them questions about how to wear the new style, and they talk some more late into the night. It\u2019s a wonder, she feels, how someone she hasn\u2019t met understands her better than anyone she has met before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She looks at herself in the mirror before taking it off. She does feel beautiful like Freddie said. Why do people think they\u2019re so different? She doesn\u2019t look like any of the caricatures people imagine. But when she looks into her own eyes, she finds it there: a flame that burns just a little differently. It\u2019s always been there, she thinks, but overlooked by her usual lovers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The night doesn\u2019t stretch indefinitely. By morning she is rushing back to her hustle. Her clothes are nothing like what she wore last night. Another notification, unlocked this time. A colleague has sent her a screenshot of a mutual acquaintance\u2019s dating profile. Her attention catches on the words in the bio: \u201c..can see all colours, but I\u2019m gender-blind. Unicorns are still mythical though.\u201d Her colleague looks over from his desk, clearly waiting for her reaction. Is she supposed to snicker and judge in communal solidarity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s glancing through her Instagram feed during her coffee break. Oh! Isn\u2019t that a make-up look she\u2019d like to wear? But where can she wear it? Another ad appears, something she keeps away from her main profile. The algorithm seems to be figuring out her tastes.
\u201cDid you see that weirdo\u2019s profile?\u201d someone chimes in.
\u201cYeah. It\u2019s not that strange though.\u201d
\u201cOh, you knew? Anyway, what\u2019s happening in your dating life?\u201d
\u201cNothing much,\u201d she says with a cryptic smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another locked notification dings. She rushes aside with her phone, but her heart no longer races with the anxiety of being seen. She doesn\u2019t know how many like her start this journey and then abandon it too soon, unable to reconcile their two parallel lives. Still, she\u2019s curious about what she\u2019ll find next. Faith is all that holds her right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Long ago, she\u2019d asked a friend why they\u2019d cut off their long, luscious hair. \u201cIt feels more like myself now,\u201d they\u2019d said. She is beginning to understand what they meant. She\u2019s looking for her own equivalent of cutting off her hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cover image by Ekaterina Grosheva<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2026a flame that burns just a little differently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":29201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5151,3401],"tags":[488,1826,3059,5317,1912,4769,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-29198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-digital-intimacies-and-sexuality","8":"category-fiction-poetry","9":"tag-coming-out","10":"tag-gender-expression","11":"tag-queer-desire","12":"tag-queer-fiction","13":"tag-queer-love","14":"tag-self-discovery-2","15":"tag-sexualities"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29202,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29198\/revisions\/29202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}