The Weight of the Past

In a fantasy kitchen in a fantasy world, Losange is taking his time washing the dishes. They have come alive in his imagination. Metal spoons swim in the soapy water, flirting with the knives that wait to the side, smiles sharp as the blade of their bodies. Losange thinks to himself that there is no need to rush. His thoughts spiral out as he keeps up the barest pretense of working.

I serve no gods and I have no masters.

I am impervious to the siren call of the salaryman.

I will not work to earn money to spend money to need money to need to work.

There is no need to sacrifice myself in service to the God of Work.

He believes he has it all figured out. He will resist this indoctrination.

The chef appears, tall and broad, filling out the doorway into the kitchen, arms crossed across his chest as he glares fiercely. If Losange is the Moon, a cool, distant glitter that never comes close enough to touch, then this man who stands before him is the Sun itself, radiating a fury that burns with the power of a thousand ultraviolet rays…

Losange stares, awe-struck and afraid.

“Who the hell are you?” the chef asks.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Lalo closed the manga and stared at the back cover, his stomach twisting into knots. He felt a little dizzy from reading while sitting at the back of the bus, but it had been worth it. That chef was hot as hell. Losange was an idiot. He wanted to know what happened next.

Though Losange’s defiance felt a bit grating, coming from such a spoiled, privileged character, reading it still fed Lalo’s heart. When he was small, he’d learned that it was dangerous to be different. His older cousin bore the brunt of that kind of scorn, disrespected for being who he was: a soft young man who loved comics and anime. To be a soft man was unacceptable, and it was even worse that he didn’t hide his love of men. He never hid the trueness of his being, and he was punished for it. Ostracized. Belittled. Made to feel as if his life would never amount to much.

As the oldest of three, Lalo took these lessons to heart. He had a duty to play the perfect daughter. He had to pave the way for his little sister and little brother. He had to support his mother, aunt, and uncle. He owed his family complete allegiance.

That’s what it felt like to him, back then, before he had more of an understanding of the world. He’d buried his interest in anime and manga, just like he’d buried so many other interests that contained the seeds of truth within them, until he could transform himself into the daughter his family expected.

At twenty-seven, he’d uprooted his own life: No more husband. No more house. No more nursing job. Curled in on himself, covered in the detritus of debt and regret, he’d discovered a sensation of weightlessness. All of the heaviness of the past had melted away. His heart, broken as it was, welled over with both grief and joy as he learned to embrace the trueness of his being.

His little sister Paulina had bought him a transgender pride flag. His little brother Alonso had bought him pepper spray because “You never know what kinda haters you might run into on the street.” His cousin Claudio had hugged him and kissed him on the cheek and invited him over to meet his boyfriend Leslie.

Lalo stared blankly out at the city as the bus trundled on, thinking of everything and nothing all at once. He’d long made peace with the grief of having lost so much time while hiding, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still there, a permanent wound, healed over but twinging occasionally with phantom pains. Sometimes he forgot how much he had gained by losing that old life. Sometimes he lost sight of how much strength and resilience it took to be defiant. In this way, Losange’s naive defiance was refreshing. It was a good reminder of all the life he had left to live.

Commerce City was a collection of high-end shops built out of the skeletons of several industrial warehouses. The designers had kept some of the old architecture, and so the place was an array of confusing corridors and giant windows. It was bustling despite it being the middle of the week. Most of the other people here probably didn’t have the day off due to a retail worker’s schedule, however. They looked to be the usual mix of tourists and the independently wealthy that tended to overrun most of the city.

After wandering the eerie halls for a while, he finally found a directory that listed a store called The Anime Shop. Miss Geraldine’s guess hadn’t been that far off, though Lalo suspected she might have flubbed the name on purpose. As he climbed the stairs to the second floor, he noticed that his heart was pounding a little harder than the activity warranted. At this point, having returned fully from his side trip to Losange’s reality, he wondered for the first time why he thought it would be a good idea to interact further with this Valley guy. Granted, they’d only interacted for ten seconds or so, but it hadn’t been a very pleasant ten seconds.

He thought about abandoning the plan, but then he remembered he had the guy’s property, and wouldn’t want to be taken for a thief. Maybe he could just sneak in and leave it on the front counter with a note?

By this time, he’d reached the top floor and spotted the anime shop, which was bustling even more than Commerce City as a whole. He could see through the large shop front windows that the place was stuffed to the gills with manga, DVDs, and collectibles. The front windows themselves were lined with large glass display cases containing row after row of colorful characters. He didn’t recognize a single one of them, and just thinking of entering the shop made him feel like an impostor. He was almost certain Miss Geraldine’s nephew would take him for one, too.

He caught sight of the man in question sitting behind the front counter, playing something on a cherry pink GameKid. Another guy with a large mop of curly red hair was ringing some customers up.

Lalo considered his plan. Perhaps he could just give the book to the redhead and avoid talking to Valley altogether. He dug in his pockets for a scrap of paper, anything he could use to write a note, but he had nothing.

He hovered for a couple more minutes just outside the shop, watching customers mill around, absorbed in the merchandise. At one point, the redhead had to consult with Valley about something and Lalo actually witnessed an approximation of a smile bloom on his face. It was a little derisive, but still. It was something. Maybe this Valley guy wasn’t so bad. Maybe he’d been too upset with his aunt to be polite when they’d crashed into each other earlier.

Lalo took a deep breath. Yeah. He’d try to talk to the redhead first. He could be a good buffer.

You can do this. You can do this.

He finally stepped into the shop, making a beeline for the front. He was so intent on his goal that he totally missed the redhead scooping his pack onto his back. By the time he was coming out from behind the front counter—“I’ll be back in an hour, Valentine! Try not to make any kids cry today, all right?”—it was too late to abort the mission. Valley, or Valentine, or whatever his name was, had already spotted him.

“Hey, welcome in,” the redhead said to Lalo in passing, his lip piercing glinting underneath the overhead lighting.

Lalo stood frozen about five feet from the counter. He hadn’t really registered it when they’d run into each other earlier, but Valentine was gorgeous. Lalo remembered that black hair in his mouth, but he hadn’t noticed how perfectly tousled it looked falling in waves to his chin. He hadn’t noticed the row of silver piercings all up the shell of his left ear. He hadn’t noticed the shape of his mouth or his delicate jawline. He hadn’t noticed the black jean jacket or the purple v-neck t-shirt that showed just a glimpse of a tattoo.

Valentine arched his eyebrows. “Can I help you?”

Lalo was too busy panicking to answer.