By Maya Afilalo

The Featured Art is “Blossoming” by Greta Delapp

The summer after ninth grade, I had my first kiss. All school year, I’d been on a mission to no longer be “prude”—the kissing equivalent of a virgin. It seemed other girls were always talking about their conquests. Who they had kissed, and where, and whether the boys felt them up over or under the bra. I longed to be part of these conversations, to offer my own tale of triumph, to sagely weigh in on others’ dilemmas. Instead, I stood to the side, quiet, fiddling with my razr flip phone. That summer was the Summer of Death: Michael Jackson, Walter Cronkite, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays. Others, whose names I didn’t recognize. I was fourteen years old, and death was no deterrent to my desire.

I wondered if my lack of suitors had something to do with my appearance. Through middle school, I had sported frizzy curls cropped into an unfortunate bob. Every day, I wore a Life is Good T-shirt or a hoodie or both. Adidas track pants. I had what my well-intentioned cousin once called “only a little bit of a mustache.” When high school started, I made an effort. I traded my swishy pants for jeans, my shapeless T-shirts for fitted tops from Old Navy. I got my ears pierced. I kept the bob, though I began styling it with John Frieda mousse that came in a tall silver can. It was my cousin who showed me how to apply the mousse. He was my age, also curly-haired, had been kissing girls for years.

“You put some on your palm like this,” he said, demonstrating with imaginary product, “then flip your head and work it in.” He tossed his curls perpendicular to the floor. I replayed his demonstration in my head on the drive home, so I wouldn’t forget.

I asked my mother to take me to get the mustache waxed, and my eyebrows done, too. The salon was always playing too happy pop music, like they got kickbacks from Cheryl Crow. A woman named Enid applied hot wax to my upper lip with a popsicle stick. She smoothed it dry and ripped it off. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I liked the smell of the wax, like a glue gun in art class. As she pressed the wax between my eyebrows, I thought back to elementary school, when a boy at the park had called me “unibrow.” I had looked to the ground in shame. Enid tore the wax off as she and my mother chatted about her plans to spend Labor Day at the Jersey Shore.

I hoped these changes would attract the boys’ attention. That they would text me and ask to get a slice at Tony Roni’s on Friday after school. But they didn’t. The only people who texted me were my parents and my best friend, Emma. It was Emma who I went with for pizza. Emma, Jewish like me, but Eastern European instead of Persian and Moroccan. Athletic, blonde hair, and not a trace of it on her upper lip. She’d had a boyfriend for a few months in eighth grade. They’d done a lot of making out. The background of her chunky flip phone had been a photo of them at someone’s Bar Mitzvah. I had no siblings, and I considered Emma the authority on all things dating and relationships.

One Friday afternoon in the fall, tucked into the laminate booth at the pizza joint, she exhorted patience.

“It takes time,” she said. Grease seeped from her slice into the paper plate. The mounted television was tuned to CNN, Obama running for president. “Justin and I were friends for a while before we started going out.”

“That makes sense,” I said. I didn’t feel like I had a while. People were kissing left and right. Even the weird kids were getting some action. If it didn’t happen soon, I could end up the teenage equivalent of a spinster.

I took a bite of white pizza. Emma didn’t have a boyfriend at the moment, but she’d kissed other guys since Justin. She always had at least a flirtation going. For her, they seemed to materialize. We tossed our plates and stacked our trays. That night, I lay awake in bed, running through the kids in my grade and whether they’d locked lips. I clung to the names of the people who might also be “prude,” and said a silent prayer that I wouldn’t be last.

*

The only summer that came close to the deadliness of ’09 was 2003. Johnny Cash, Barry White, Katherine Hepburn, Bob Hope. I didn’t know who any of those people were. I was nine years old. I only wore clothing from the boys’ department. My mother took me to Super Cuts to get my hair cut short. The stylist asked how old her “son” was. People expected it to bother me, but it rarely did. I had a child’s concept of gender. It was something of a miracle that children rarely bullied me. Maybe it was a remnant of nineties androgyny. Or the bullies were occupied with lower-hanging fruit, like the kids with rolling suitcase-backpacks.

The only place I ran into trouble was the bathroom. On the first day of first grade, I went to pee. A girl with glasses and bangs was at the sink, washing her hands.

“Boys aren’t allowed here,” she said, heat in her accusation.

“I’m a girl.”

“Oh.” She looked unconvinced. I didn’t go to the bathroom in school for the next five years, until middle school, holding my bladder every day until I got home.

There was a Sunday afternoon at the movies. One of the Harry Potter films. I went to the bathroom before it started. A prototypical Karen, sunglasses perched on her head, cornered me.

“You’re too old to be in here.”

I had no idea what she meant. I was ten years old; she was in her forties. The logic didn’t compute.

“What?” She was standing close to me. My back pressed against the beige tiled wall. The lighting was warm and dim. I felt dizzy.

“Where’s your mom?” she interrogated.

After a moment, I understood. She thought my mother had taken me, her “son,” to the bathroom with her, like an overgrown toddler.

“I’m a girl.”

Her face lit up. “Oh! I didn’t know.” She was suddenly cheery. “That’s fine, then.” She left, leaving me standing there in my oversized T-shirt and Vans sneakers. I slipped back into the dark theatre, next to my friends, took a fistful of salty, buttery popcorn.

The last time it happened was middle school, sixth grade. I was on the precipice of puberty. A substitute teacher called me “young man” and I corrected her.

“Oh my God,” a girl next to me said. “Are you okay?” She looked at me as if I would burst into tears. I hadn’t felt embarrassed.

“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s not a big deal.”

The next year, I developed breasts, and people stopped asking about my mother’s son. By then, it was a relief. I no longer had a child’s concept of gender. I was tired of the cases of mistaken identity. I was tired of the way people expected I would react.

But, with the breasts came the hair. Under my arms and on my legs. Over the summer, Emma, a couple other girls, and I snapped a picture of our tanned feet and legs on a disposable camera. The mother of one of the girls took us to get the photos printed.

“Someone needs to start shaving,” she said, pointing to one of the legs in the photo. It was mine. I desperately wanted to shave. It was another thing that girls talked about, in addition to kissing, that I couldn’t participate in. How much they bled when they cut themselves, what razors to buy and to avoid, whether they used shaving cream or soap.

That evening, I filled the bathtub and locked the door. I took my mother’s razor, a cheap blue Bic, one blade, and drew it carefully across my legs and under my arms. The hair floated in clumps across the water. I didn’t cut myself.

*

At first, my desire to be kissed was untargeted. Any boy would do. I imagined one would materialize from the ether, like a genie out of a bottle, and grant all three of my wishes: to be kissed, to be kissed, to be kissed.

From age eleven, I had willed myself to have crushes. Emma had them. It seemed like the right thing to do. The first was a green-eyed, curly-haired boy, with whom I’d exchanged approximately nine words. Later, another, with long dark lashes and a thirteen-year-old’s dreamy introspection. Other names and faces. I never conveyed my feelings, but I knew all of the crushes were unrequited. Deep down, I wanted them to be. I was more interested in playing The Sims 2 than kissing or holding hands. Though I was as horny as I suspect the other girls were (which is to say, very), it wasn’t until high school that I desired to act on it with anyone besides myself. When the time came, and I actually wanted to engage in some hanky-panky, I didn’t have my sights on anyone. Not at first.

Daniel and I were in the same grade, but because I had started school young, he was sixteen to my fourteen. He was six feet tall and flirted with the teachers. His voice boomed. He played the Beast in a middle school production of Beauty and the Beast and made out with three different girls at the cast party, including the one who played Belle. He wore cologne a half-step more refined than Axe.

At first, I thought he was loud and obnoxious. I refused to laugh at his jokes, which often consisted of Keanu Reeves impressions. I avoided pairing off with him for biology class experiments. Considering how far apart we were in the social hierarchy—he was quasi-popular, and I had one friend—it wasn’t difficult to keep my distance.

But when he started paying attention to me, to me, I softened. It was the second half of the school year. Winter. Obama’s inauguration. One day he sat next to me in biology. He pulled his stool closer and placed his arm on the table, pressing against mine. Somehow a conversation started. We both played video games and liked movies.

“Have you seen The Matrix?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Is it good?”

He brought me his DVD copy the next day. Three afternoons in a row, before doing my homework, I watched the film forty-five minutes at a time. I thought it was alright. On Monday, I brought the DVD back.

“What did you think?” he asked.

“It was awesome,” I said. The next day, I lent him my copy of our shared favorite video game, some shoot-‘em-up military propaganda. From then on, we sat next to each other every class. My crush filled me up, buoyed me through the hallways and home after school.

Emma agreed: this was my chance. She was friends with Daniel and often performed reconnaissance. We strategized on Thursday evenings, when we called each other during the commercial breaks of Grey’s Anatomy.

“You need to text him,” she said one night.

“Why does he think he’s the shit, just because he’s tall?” I said, deflecting. I cradled the landline to my cheek. Then I admitted, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Talk about video games or something,” she said. “Besides, he thinks you’re really funny. He told me.” My ego gave a jolt of delight at the thought of Daniel talking about me. A commercial played for Empire Today flooring and carpet installation.

“Okay, the episode’s starting.”

“You’re totally going to hook up,” she said before ending the call.

*

When I was twenty-one, I had my second first kiss. That year Alan Rickman, David Bowie, and Muhammad Ali were among the dead, but the media’s attention was on the upcoming presidential election. Kiera and I met on a dating app. OkCupid. She had finished college a few years before, and my own graduation was looming. We texted for weeks before we found a time to meet. Every time my phone buzzed, I believed I felt the true meaning of joy.

She bought us tickets to The Franklin Institute and offered to pick me up, which I found strangely formal and endearing. My roommates helped me decide what to wear. We settled on something nondescript, boots and jeans and a sweater. When it was time to go, they wished me luck.

Kiera drove a silver Honda Accord that smelled like pine air freshener and cigarettes. She tossed an empty soda bottle into the back seat when I got in.

“Sorry for the mess.”

“I didn’t even notice,” I said, though I had.

We chatted as she navigated us through the city. The conversation was strained. By the time we arrived, I decided I felt no chemistry. But, after we explored the life size model of a human heart, the only young adults among a throng of eight-year-olds, I still accepted her invitation for a drink.

I had realized my queerness a few years before. Contrary to what I’d been led to believe by Blue is the Warmest Color and all coming out films, women did not immediately emerge from the woodwork ready to date me. I had stared wistfully at people in my gender studies class, and no one had stared wistfully back. I bemoaned the lack of a lesbian bar. Finally, I downloaded the apps. Before Kiera, I’d met several women. Some I really liked. But our mutual timidity has led to zero (0) kisses. To leave college without one felt like some kind of failure.

I suggested a bar near my apartment. Kiera drove us there, the radio set to oldies. The day was overcast.

“Did you like the museum?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I hadn’t been there since I was a kid.”

“Me too.”

It was still light out when we arrived. We sat at the bar. I didn’t want to ask for some idiotic drink only a twenty-one-year-old would order. Like the White Russians I asked for with my fake ID at a loud Irish pub on campus. I said a rum and Coke. Kiera ordered a beer.

“I have to ask you something,” she said.

I gulped my drink. “What?”

“What does homoflexible mean?”

I laughed, but my face warmed. The app had many options to choose from to describe your sexuality. You could pick multiple. Very progressive. I had selected “bisexual,” “queer,” and “homoflexible.” I suddenly felt it exposed me as young and naive. Like I was a kid who couldn’t decide what flavor of ice cream I wanted. When I began dating women, people assumed that was that. I was a homosexual in the singular sense of the word. They would say things like, “If you want people to know you’re a lesbian, you need to stop carrying a purse.” I knew some lesbians didn’t want to date bi women, in case they went back to men. Despite the 1995 Time Magazine cover featuring three ominous-looking white people and the headline, BISEXUALITY. Not Gay. Not Straight. A New Sexual Identity Emerges., it felt like an invalid identity, or at least one that had to be qualified.

“It means I’m mostly dating women right now,” I told Kiera.

“Okay.” She sipped her IPA. “I like that.”

I wanted to change the topic. By then, Trump was the likely nominee and it was easy to shift the discussion to him. His daughter Tiffany was a student in my graduating class, though I’d only ever seen her once or twice. There were rumors about secret service cars parked outside the dorms. I knew Kiera would be interested, and she was. She paid for our drinks and we stepped outside. It was getting dark, early spring chilly.

“Do you mind if I smoke this?” she asked, tipping a cigarette out of the pack.

“Go ahead,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if I did mind.

We walked back to my apartment and I invited her up. My roommates introduced themselves and smiled knowing smiles. Kiera and I went to my bedroom and closed the door. I suggested we play Bananagrams. A friend had advised me this was a great way to flirt on a date. We sat on the low-pile carpet floor and shuffled our tiles around.

Kiera initiated the kiss. Her mouth tasted smoky, not as bad as an ashtray like people said, and I didn’t care. She held the back of my head, gently, and I placed my hands on her knees. I liked the feeling of her mouth against mine, fleshy. After a minute or two, we pulled apart, exchanged a shy look. I could hear my roommates watching something in the living room, on the TV we’d hauled out of my dad’s basement. I walked her out and hugged her good-bye. We went out once more before I broke it off. I graduated. People booed when Tiffany Trump’s name was called. I rubbed Kiera’s kiss in my pocket, like a silver dollar.

*

In the spring, all of the high school biology classes took a trip to the zoo. Normally, I sat with Emma on the bus, but that morning she was sick. I found Daniel. It was a warm day, and our legs stuck to the brown vinyl seats. We listened to his iPod, one earbud for each of us. He played “Believe” by Cher.

“This is possibly my favorite song ever,” he said.

“It’s a great song,” I agreed. Across the aisle, a rumor was being discussed, that someone at another school “lost her prudence” to a dog. A girl I knew sat in front of us, texting a boy she’d met. He was asking what her favorite zoo animal was. Emma was right about texting Daniel. It had brought us closer. It started with video games, then progressed. He told me his parents had separated when he was younger, then gotten back together. I told him about my parents’ divorce, when I was five.

On the way to the zoo we played a game, something that involved touching each other’s arms. I liked the feeling of his large palms on my forearm. I could see the stubble on his upper lip where he’d shaved.

“Give me your phone,” he said, teasing. I handed it to him. I had just gotten one that had a full keyboard. He turned the phone around and took a picture of himself, silly face, his tongue sticking out. He had to try a couple times to get in frame.

“I’m adding myself as a favorite,” he said. “That way it’s easier for you to message me.”

“Cool.” My cheeks flushed. I tried to add myself to his phone, too, but it didn’t have the feature. The bus arrived and we spent the day together at the zoo. We ate lunch outside, next to a strutting peacock. On the ride home, our legs touched. That night, I tapped the icon of his face on my home screen. I started a conversation. Innocuous at first, it turned flirty.

Can I ask you something? he wrote.

Yeah, of course

What turns you on?

I masturbated often, to fantasies of nameless and faceless people. I had no idea what to reply. It was late. No Emma to coach me. I made something up.

Kissing and cuddling, I guess.

Haha. Okay

How about you?

Hm. A light brush of the arm and across the stomach

I was both mortified and excited. I knew if Emma were there, she would tell me to seize my chance.

I have a question for you, I wrote.

Yeah?

I hesitated before pressing send. Do you wanna hook up?

In our town’s teenage lingo, this usually meant making out.

Hm. Maybe at some point?

What kind of an answer was that? I drew on every ounce of directness I had.

Some point meaning when?

Yeah. Soon. I want to.

We hung out a couple weeks later, but his separated-then-back-together parents were around. The school year ended. He texted me the day that Michael Jackson died. Others mourned. I used it as an opportunity to arrange another hangout.

June 30. I remember because it was my aunt’s birthday. I invited Daniel to my dad’s house to play a video game in which your mission is to save the galaxy from evil robots. I knew that unlike my mother, my father would make himself scarce.

Are your rents home? Daniel texted.

Nah I said. To be doubly sure of no intrusions, I had timed the occasion to my father’s daily walk with our German Shephard Lab.

We descended into the basement, cool, a little damp, beige-carpeted. We sat on the floor with the controllers in our hands. I was conscious of Daniel’s body next to mine. The minutes ticked by, robot guts spraying across the television screen. I didn’t know how to initiate a kiss, and I hadn’t anticipated that he would fail to get things going. An hour and a half, and nothing.

“My mom’s going to be here to pick me up soon,” he said finally. I panicked. We were both leaving for the summer and wouldn’t see each other again until school resumed. I imagined two months of girls replaying their latest kissing conquests, me quiet on the side.

“Do you want to…?” I began.

“What?”

I was old enough to desire a kiss, but not to articulate that desire. I put my tongue to the roof of my mouth, and I made a clucking noise.

“Do I want to cluck?”

“…hook up.”

“Oh! Well, usually when people do that, they go on more than one date,” he said. I was as still as a robot corpse.

“But, what the hell,” he said. “It’s like this.”

For the next five minutes, we rolled around on the floor, his tongue in my mouth, my hands on his chest, his hands on my breasts (under the bra). His mouth tasted like a mouth. I had worried that I wouldn’t know what to do. But I knew. It was glorious.

When we ascended, his mother was waiting in the driveway.

“See you,” he said.

“Bye, Daniel.”

As soon as I closed the door, I texted Emma. I would never hang out with Daniel again, would barely see him except to retrieve a loaned video game, and I didn’t care. I could finally join the ranks of the other girls, sing my conquest with theirs. I felt beautiful. Desired. Years later, it occurred to me that half of those girls’ stories were probably lies. It wasn’t until even later that I realized beauty was not in the eye of a basic white boy, that it was not in the in the eye of anyone at all. Someone’s mother didn’t decide how I embodied my femininity. And I knew that one day, I would join another set of ranks, cross another threshold, take my place with all the dead celebrities.

In the bathroom, I appraised myself in the mirror, expecting something to be different. Emma replied to my text in celebration, a million exclamation points. Nothing had changed—my frizzy curls, the hair on my upper lip. I wore a pair of exercise shorts and a striped orange shirt from Target. All my life, I was told that to be the object of another’s desire would change me, perhaps fundamentally. Standing there, looking at the can of my John Frieda mousse on the vanity, I was glad it hadn’t.

---

Maya Afilalo is a queer writer based in Philadelphia. The recipient of the 2022 James Hurst Prize for Fiction, her stories and essays have appeared in The /tƐmz/ Review, Lilith Magazine, The Pennsylvania Gazette, and elsewhere. She recently attended a residency with Sundress Publications and was a Tin House Summer Workshop 2023 participant. Maya has an MFA from North Carolina State University, and is currently working on a short story collection and a novel.