Xavier Lundstrom
April 28, 2022 6:36 AM
LGBTQIA+ Cafe - it's not fair by Xavier Lundstrom
It was a Queer Cafe Saturday. Those were supposed to be good. Admittedly, there’d been a lot of meetings where Xav couldn’t muster a smile because of everything else that was going on his life. He’d drifted through a few meetings feeling sort of numb or disconnected, but there had always been a little part of his brain that was grateful for this bright little rainbow corner, which kept on trying to shine however dark the world around him got.He guessed it was still ‘good,’ that he had a space to go to, now that he needed it more than ever, although right now it was hard to see through the tears in his eyes, and to believe that anything would be nice or he’d ever feel whole again.
He’d lost a lot of his day, including a solid chunk of the meeting, to crying in his bathroom, and still hadn’t really stopped. He’d just realised the window where he could seek sympathy from people who actually understood was rapidly closing, and if it meant making his way through the corridors with an obviously tear-streaked face well… so fricking what? He had no social life, and the only good thing he’d thought he had going for him had just been ripped out, along with his heart.
The meeting was already in full swing when he threw open the door, sending it smacking back against its frame with a furious thud. It seemed to be a chit-chat meeting, rather than any kind of organised event, so everyone was just milling about.
“No. I’m not okay,” he pre-empted the question from the nearest person who was staring at him, his voice easily loud enough to carry across the whole room. “I know we don’t “out” people here,” he added. Ellie had a lot of rules and check ins about who was comfortable with what level of disclosure about their membership of the club, even though basically everyone here was openly in a queer relationship. “I know that’s a crappy thing to do, so…. Fine! I won’t name names! But don’t you think it’s also a crappy thing to do to go fake date some stupid girl? If, for example, you had MADE OUT WITH ME, and then went off and did that because you can’t admit to being a MASSIVE FRICKING HOMO because your stupid, fragile masculinity can’t admit that about yourself? Like being one of us is SO FRICKING TERRIBLE? Not naming names, but if there was some stupid, meat-headed jock who thinks like that and does that, wouldn’t you think that was pretty solidly crappy too?!”
He looked for something to take his rage out on, finding a little stack of plastic cups on the table. He picked one up, hurling it as hard as he could against the back wall, not in the direction of any person. It made a small, pathetic thud, and dropped to the floor without making him feel much better. He just felt rude and destructive, and also like nothing he could do was going to make a blind bit of difference to how he was feeling. He dropped down to the floor, burying his head on his knees, and sobbing.
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Xavier Lundstrom
LGBTQIA+ Cafe - it's not fair
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Bonabelle Row
May 03, 2022 4:39 PM
Life rarely is. by Bonabelle Row
It wasn't that Bonabelle was staring exactly, just that she attended these events with the general expectation that she'd come with Val and that Val would eventually be distracted enough to go socialize with someone else, and Bonabelle could enjoy some alone time without actually being alone and they both won. It was great. And so when someone came barging the heck in, apparently set on disrupting the peace, she was having exactly none of it and of course she was looking at them.Xavier Lundstrom. He wasn't someone who exactly flew under the radar, even if they were enough grades apart not to be properly friendly, just classmates. It didn't help that he was often absent from class, of course. Still, he wasn't someone Bonabelle would have expected a big spectacle from and she couldn't help feeling both bad for him and also a bit embarrassed for him. On the whole, everyone at these Saturday things was nice - sometimes too nice in Bonabelle's opinion - and more the Val type than the Bonabelle type. So she took it upon herself, suddenly sure she'd found her own personal niche way to comfort people: tough love.
"Come on, now," she said, kneeling beside Xavier and putting a hand under his elbow to help him/pull him to his feet. She'd been told her British accent made her sound both more motherly and more frightening, and she wasn't really sure if that was just some sort of weird stereotype for Americans or a real deal thing but she figured she could wrestle it to her advantage in cases like these. "Up we get."
She'd been halfway through a biscuit when Xavier had barged in and she took the napkin she'd been using as a plate to offer him a way to wipe his face.
"We don't need to be doing any of this yelling business or flopping about," she told him as she wrapped her arms around him in a hug. This was the part she hated about comforting people but at least her own tone being so much quieter meant that fewer people were staring now. "Tell me quietly what's going on."
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Bonabelle Row
Life rarely is.
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Xavier Lundstrom
May 04, 2022 5:24 AM
Okay, but surely I'm due a break soon? by Xavier Lundstrom
Someone was pulling his elbow, telling him he was going to get up, and the person doing it was a prefect who spoke like Mary Poppins. Xavier didn’t like being told what to do or overly mothered by interfering girls, but between being completely incapable of making his own decisions right now, and being unsure whether he was being…like… prefect arrested, he’d been pulled to his feet and propelled across part of the room before his brain had a chance to do more than vaguely flail at the idea.He got given a napkin, which was sort of useful except that he was far from done with crying yet, and a hug, which was a bit awkward and unexpected but also not awful. It helped a lot of things to be hugged.
He allowed himself to be steered to a chair, although he very definitely disagreed that screaming and flopping were unnecessary as he wasn’t sure he was capable of avoiding those right now. Well, screaming he probably wouldn’t do now that he was in close range to another person. But, as they took seats at one of the small tables, his head crashed forward, though it was onto his arms rather than the table’s surface, and he was still looking at Bonabelle. It just felt like a lot of effort to, like, actually have posture or vertebrae or whatever.
He considered her request to tell him what was going on, trying to work out how to say.
“Oz…” he said softly deciding it wasn’t outing if it was just to one person. His mouth closed around the little, round syllable, saying it so softly it might have just been a sigh, had it not been for the buzz of the ‘z’ at the end. “He kissed me. And I thought it meant something. It did to me. I keep thinking about him—I was already thinking about him, like that,” he said, deciding the story went further back than where he’d started. “I’ve been daydreaming about him for ages, and I thought it was just stupid, cos he’s like… the most blatant heterosexual imaginable. But then he kissed me, and I thought it would all change and—and—” he made a couple of attempts to get the vision of himself and Oz to uncurl from his throat where it was choking him, but gave up, sobbing onto his arms and letting Bonabelle fill in that blank for herself. “He won’t talk to me about it. It’s like he wants to pretend it never happened. And now he’s going out with some stupid girl. If he never meant it, why’d he have to go and do it? I’d been telling myself it was hopeless to like him, and then he made it seem like it could happen. And it should happen! He likes me, I know he does! He’s supposed to be my boyfriend, not hers!”
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Xavier Lundstrom
Okay, but surely I'm due a break soon?
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