Page 18 of Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run

Winc: ::very gently:: When we were playing het characters, when we were gay guys, you took the “lead” both times.

Scratch: True. ::Sigh:: That disappoints me. I feel like such a shape-shifter in other ways…

Winc: ::fingers moving through the leaves::

Scratch: ::bewildered::

Winc: ::speechless::

Scratch: Don’t like being dominated.

Winc: Like when I was Yar and starting to dominate you?

Scratch: Right… ::wriggling uncomfortably:: Makes me claustrophobic. But I don’t want to smother *you*!

Winc: But you wanted to take me down as Yar?

Scratch: Right.

Winc: And suppose you had? Then what?

Scratch: In the best of all possible worlds?

Winc: Uh huh.

Scratch: Then I’d have set you free, so you could move again. Literally and figuratively.

Winc: Do you like playing the top?

Scratch: Emphasis on top, or playing?

Winc: ::smiling:: yeah.

Scratch: A lot of the time it’s unconscious…

Winc: Jeeze, we’re so similar, well I mean we fit together. I like playing the bottom…

Scratch: Ah. No matter the gender?

Winc: ::nodding:: No matter the gender. I spend so much of my real life days being warrior, fighting off labels, being in third space, I *like* the traction you and I create. ::blinking:: at-traction?

Scratch: Hah!

Winc: The idea of traction has been bubbling in my brain ever since you said it. So we need traction to realize desire and that would equal… attraction.

Scratch: That’s what I meant earlier! Maybe you need a place to *stand* in order to act on desire, to feel desire.

Winc: ::smacking my forehead with palm of my hand:: DUH!

Scratch: We were initially drawn without roles/gender, but then chose personas to act out in, like ghosts who choose bodies to be in.

Winc: Ohhhhh good one. Boo! But most people don’t play from a third space either. ::shivering:: Scratch…

Scratch: I can’t think of one sexual connection where I haven’t chosen some kind of role. What?

Winc: Whenever I post something about this genderless space, there’s inevitably one person who’s thinking it’s a space with no desire. No! If anything it’s desire of… everything, anything, nothing.

Scratch: ::smiling:: When I fucked you online, I mean, when it got deep, so to speak, it was the closest thing to being in genderless space, while being sexually intimate.

Winc: YES… I was… I was me. ::softly:: And I knew you were you.

Scratch: I didn’t want to move or talk or breathe, I didn’t want to change anything. That’s why I was so quiet at the end there. When you were boy and I was girl.

Winc: Yessssss. And that, my darling, is what we call desire in a third space.

Scratch: Oh, great, *now* you can explain it on Geraldo…

Winc: ::cracking up::

Scratch: Guess what…

Winc: ::smiling:: what?

Scratch: I have to go…

Winc: ::small voice:: no.

Scratch: Um… I’m excited!

Winc: Oh, Scratch, I am too. ::blushing:: Excited at what?

Scratch: These ideas! You! Me!

Winc: ::kicking leaves up in the air::

Scratch: What do you see when you “see” me? ::bracing::

Winc: Ummmmm… ::shy smile:: Puck.

Scratch: From *Midsummer’s Night*?

Winc: Yes.

Scratch: Oh good! That fits!

Winc: ::smiling, pulling a loose grape leaf out of your hair::

Scratch: I could talk with you for hours.

Winc: ::looking up at the sky through the treetops:: Ever think about being dominated, topped while you were more in yin space?

Scratch: Oh, yes. And it’s happened sometimes. But it’s short-lived. Scary.

Winc: ::nodding:: As it would be if you topped me while I was more in yang space.

Scratch: So, forget your actual gender, you’re saying you are more inclined to the yin?

Winc: Yes, and you to the yang.

Scratch: But I don’t want to be trapped in that either!

Winc: You can’t solve everything all at once.

Scratch: Frankly, the first time I thought of your boyspace I wanted to top that. And now I don’t want to always have to top everything, like some rutting dog pissing on every tree.

Winc: ::shiver:: Some of us *really* like that!

Scratch: ::shaking head:: I know. I’ve discovered that.

Scratch: OK, we leave together on the count of three… One

Scratch: Two

Winc: ::sniff::

Scratch: You say three!

Winc: thr… thr…

Scratch: You little… Why I oughta…

Winc: thr….…. . eeeeeeeee!

Scratch: Bye doll.

Winc: Doll? Isn’t that a particularly female term?

Scratch: that was fast!

—L.

P.S. Why are you still using your department’s generic account?

P.P.S. You requested wording of the law making Registration mandatory. Attached Executive Order from the president. Note: Section 3, Paragraph 6: Enforcement, Arrest and Arraignment

Budge writes a conversation with himself on a yellow legal pad:

Who are these guys? Gals. Whatevers.

They’re my perps, that’s who they are.

But what exactly are they perpetrating?

He takes a deep drag on his cigarette.

Is there any criminal intent in this dance of theirs?

Doesn’t matter. There’s a law, and they’re breaking it.

“Alright Miss/Mister Toobe,” he says out loud in his best Telly Savalas, “ready or not, here I come.”

END JABBA NARRATIVE ENTRY