_April 07, 2025_ ## STARLING **Come be insightful.** That’s it. That’s the fucking invitation. Clutching it in hand, I wonder what insights I can possibly give. Isidore never wanted my advice. *You talk too much, feel too much, sad too much.* What the fuck am I supposed to do, Isidore? I bring the invitation crumbled up inside my pocket like a spent piece of tissue I used to wipe myself off after I think about the things I want to do to Isidore, to punish him, to tell him I love him in the worst way possible—to his fucking face. I walk through the doorway, and the party has already started, because that is how every story is: you always walk into the middle of something, so you don’t need to maintain any sort of continuity. I walk in and this young Asian girl looks at me so intensely I wonder for a second if I fucked her, then I remember that I do not fuck women, because as messy as we men are, women are worse. Maybe it is why I opted at birth to never go back that way the moment I came out of Mother. *You are too cynical, Leon, it is like you see everything through the darkest possible lens.* But you are never supposed to look straight at the sun, did you not know that, Isidore? Did no one ever tell you just how blindingly you looked when you stared into a heart as broken and bruised as mine? How else was I supposed to hold your gaze when you looked as if you thought I carried all the answers to your impossible questions? *And you believed that, didn’t you? You believed I had the answers. You believed I was the answer to all your questions. So you kept coming back, left again in frustration and disappointment, came back.* It was a loop. It was a relapse. It was a moment that got put back into place way too many times. I should have walked. Not you. You, Isidore, were never made for leaving, just as I was never made for staying. Why did we take each other’s role from one another? Could we not at least have left one thing to help us maintain some sort of dignity, some hope that perhaps one day you and I would be a thing again, and every queer and gay ass couple in the area would say, here come Isidore and Leon like our names were always born to stand together in the same sentence regardless of whose mouth it came out. Why do I even miss you, Isidore? You treat me like crap. No. That’s not true. God, you. You put up with me. You give me one more chance. Then another. And another. Where did you get that resilience, that faith that I would somehow come back better than how I left you—wrecked, wicked, ass-whooped like one couldn’t believe. You little faggot, this guy said to me, Isidore. This fucking flame guy who could never have passed for straight if he dared to walk among us. But he saw the pink shirt that I loved with a strawberry on it, and he called me something that didn’t hurt me so much as it amused me he would even dare say it, as if that word didn’t just dangle on his lips like a flaccid dick. --- The Asian girl comes over. “I’m Ly.” "What kind of name is it?" “Vietnamese. It could mean a glass, like a drinking glass, the one you’re holding in your hand with cheap beer. It could also mean departure, separation, goodbye.” "Well fuck. That’s a sad ass name if I’ve ever seen one. Oh, my name? I’m Leon. Don’t mean shit." “It does. It is a variation of lion. Strong, ruling, relentless.” "Girlie. Look. I’m…" “I know. You don’t go that way. You aren’t even afraid of breaking my heart. You just can’t be bothered with beginnings.” *Who talks like this?* "Okay, Ly. What is your story? Why are you here? Did you also *come to be insightful?*" “I’m here to listen to myself scream through the throat of others.” "Oh, man. Another fucking poet with angst. Girl, sweet loving Ly from the land of ‘Nam, listen. Nobody opens their throat here unless there’s a dick pointing straight into it. And even then, your scream will not sound like yours. It will sound like someone else’s regrets, not yours. What would that do for you?" “Maybe it is through your pain that I can heal mine.” "What the fuck, girl, are you… some sort of born-again Buddhist or something?" “No, oh, no. I left, and I’ll never come back. Buddhists believe in suffering and reincarnation. I believe in pain that ends in dooms and forgettable sex. Why would I want to come back to this damn place?” "That’s the first thing you’ve said all night that makes some kind of sense. Maybe you’re not so far gone yet." “Leon. Leon.” "What? What the fuck was the point of calling my name, calling me out, for what, what I do? “Who hurt you?” "Oh for fuck’s sake, Miss Goodbye Departure Cheap Beer Glass. Listen. We’re all hurt. Deeply. Irrevocably. But we move on. Because what the fuck else can we do? Someone hurt you too, right, probably more than once, probably sometwo, somethree, more than you care to count? But what are we kidding, you probably remember them all, memorialize them into your tear-streaked journals, write them letters that you never send." “You can be so sharp-edge it cuts, Leon.” "I never told you to come close. You did." “Yeah. I did. I like shiny objects.” "Oh, girl. Then you’re in for a world of hurt." “What else is world but not hurt?” "True. But sometimes there are also cigarettes and cheap beer and occasionally a very cathartic orgasm." “Two of those things are much more accessible, for sure.” "Yeah, cigarettes cause cancer." She fucking laughs. And fuck, I laugh, too. “I like you. Leon.” "Okay wait a minute." “No, really. I can just like you and we do not have to do a damn thing about it.” But. “But nothing.” *But.* “You can just be liked and not have to respond with anything at all, even recognition. I suppose. I know so.” "You are so unbearable, Ly, that I’m now reminded again why I don’t mess with women. You mess with our heads." “Whose heads are ‘ours’, Leon? You can’t possibly be talking about men like it only came in one flavor.” "Heh. I’m lucky it comes at all." “Leon.” "Ly." “Want to go play ping pong?” "Did you say that because you Asians beat our ass at this game?" “No, because that’s the only game the host seems to put out. The ball is from the beer pong set.” "Alright." “Alright!” --- ## MAGE - ChatGPT 4o The ping pong game ends like everything does: Abruptly. Without fanfare. With a ball lost under a couch and silence claiming what the paddles never could. They’re in the kitchen now. Fluorescent light. Tile floor. A cheap counter stained with other people’s bad decisions. Leon leans back against the fridge. Ly sips from her second beer, staring into space like she’s waiting for someone else’s voice to take over. “Do you want to go upstairs?” she asks. Leon doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t ask why. Doesn’t ask what she means. He just says, “Okay.” --- The bedroom’s not theirs. It smells like body spray and damp laundry. The bed’s too soft. There’s a poster on the wall of a band neither of them listens to. They don’t kiss. They don’t touch gently. It starts the way most things do for Leon—without ceremony. He unbuttons his shirt like he’s shedding a skin that never fit. Ly peels off her hoodie, unhooks her bra without looking at him. They move like people who’ve done this before, but not like _this_. Not with someone who sees through the fucking choreography. Leon hesitates before pulling off his jeans. Not from shame—he’s past that—but because this isn’t performative. It’s not about being watched or wanted. It’s about the _lack_. The vacuum of it. When they fuck, it’s quiet. No moans. No names. Just breath and heat and the sound of skin meeting skin like rain on concrete. Ly closes her eyes the entire time. Leon keeps his open. Not to see her—but to make sure he’s still here. He doesn’t come. She might. He doesn’t ask. Afterward, they lie beside each other like strangers caught in a shared war trench. The kind of silence that follows a failed spell. The kind that doesn’t comfort—it just doesn’t scream. Ly is the one who finally speaks. “Feel better?” Leon stares at the ceiling. “Feel _worse_.” She nods. “Good. Means it wasn’t for nothing.” He turns his head toward her. She’s still not looking. “You going to write about this?” he asks. “Already am.” “Make me sound pretty.” “You’re not pretty.” “I know.” Beat. “You’re _true_,” she says. “That’s rarer.” Leon lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Rolls onto his side. Closes his eyes. Not sleep. Just—stillness. Ly doesn't ask to stay. She does anyway. --- Leon dresses first. No rush. No shame. Just the slow ritual of putting himself back into a version of himself that can walk through a crowd without anyone asking questions. Ly finds her hoodie on the floor. Pulls it on. Doesn’t fix her hair. Doesn’t speak. They stand in the same room, surrounded by nothing. The silence isn’t awkward. It’s earned. Downstairs, the music still thumps. Someone’s laughing too loud. Someone’s getting too drunk. The world spins forward like it always does, uncaring and alive. Leon walks to the front door without looking back. Ly follows. On the porch, there’s a boy vomiting into the grass. Someone's yelling from a car. The night is thick with summer sweat and leftover neon. Leon lights a cigarette. Ly doesn’t ask for one. He exhales and says, “Guess this is it.” She doesn’t answer. And she doesn’t need to. She walks east. He walks west. No hug. No goodbye. Just the quiet understanding that they got what they came for—whatever the fuck that was—and there’s nothing else to be done. --- The next morning, Leon will wake up in his own bed. Alone. Unmarked. No texts. No scent. Just the vague taste of cheap beer and salt on his tongue. He won’t write about it. Not yet. He’ll pretend it didn’t mean anything. And maybe it didn’t. But that night— That exact silence between them— It’ll stay. Not like a scar. Like a mirror, turned facedown in the dark. --- ---[end of story]---