midnight

rosewood straddled art and the study of it, an anxiety disorder and an inflated ego, a yellow sertraline pill and a jeweled black corset. they straddled boys and girls, sometimes. they loved the clinical study of the body, naked in chiaroscuro; sex; being a drag queen; being an academic; pop music; and lady gaga praising ryan murphy for being unafraid to reference or to not reference. sometimes they thought they were better than everyone else.

the room closed in on rosewood, a square shaped den without a window; the posters really just made it more claustrophobic, but rosewood called it cozy. not today, though, as they had feverishly been trying to understand NFTs all afternoon while hopped up on coffee from the local market. this was for a journal article. their actual assignment for class was to comment on the concept of furniture and decor as “pleasure objects,” which was on the backburner for now.

they crouched over the laptop, which was placed on a large cardboard box, a makeshift desk—the only one that could fit given the space rosewood had. so little space. it felt closeted, mordant. all their drag, makeup, mirrors, and textbooks ate them up.

with downturned eyes, they returned themselves to the blindingly white document before them. not a single word written down for their essay. yet. it reminded them of those late nights in high school, when rosewood couldn’t bother to follow the strict instructions of standardized test practice.

why are they valedictorian

they took all the easy advanced courses—no. that was just gossip.

rosewood worked hard to succeed, but with that came the attention of their high school peers, who couldn’t stand themselves in comparison to rosewood. rosewood was always smarter, more mysterious, more intimidating.

they’re so full of themselves

rosewood let their thoughts sink in and muddle up whatever focus they had. within the strange ooze moving through their brain, they dredged up their tainted thoughts and entertained them until they couldn’t take the self-deprecation any longer.

rosewood closed their laptop and headed towards the bathroom, hoping that spontaneously going out for the night would ease their problems. they were a complicated matter and no less without the drag on. rosewood, the drag persona, was much worse, but they had no one to apologize to for the person they became every weekend.

they danced to intoxicating loud pop music in front of the mirror, piling on makeup that rendered their face dark, stormy, and inhuman. it took them a couple of hours, but they barely minded, seething in determination to prove some amorphous idea of everyone they despised wrong.

they then shimmied into a simple black Mugler-inspired dress that fell to the ankles. with a sizable slit up the thigh, rosewood, in short, looked like some sort of evil slut (that was good). most of the time they didn’t pad, and tonight was no different. their legs stretched far down from the four-inch heels, muscles taut.

they felt like a thing, a man and a woman finally. the fantasy, realized.

oh, and the dress had pockets; they slipped their sertraline pill into one of them and embarked.

****

their heart pounded in heavy, steady beats as they paused at the bar. don’t act nervous.

adjusting their fur stole for the last time, rosewood closed their eyes, feeling fake lashes press against their eyelids, before approaching the bar. their heels clicked loudly against the tile floor. they’d never worn a dress that showed so much skin. at least, not out in public. although it was uncomfortable, they felt a certain freedom in how it draped over their bare chest. even their lined lips, dramatic eyeshadow, and arched eyebrows comforted them, somehow.

forgoing the happy pill in their pocket, rosewood opted for a rum and coke, double shot. it came with a cute little umbrella because of the night’s tropical theme.

they then sat in the back and observed the show, leaving tips surreptitiously in the jar that the bartenders passed around. the queen on stage slithered to the music with an imperceptible fire, one that belonged to a muse. as the song hit its climax, she twisted and dropped to the floor. getting up just as fast as she had fallen, she hit what seemed to be a choreographed eight count, shooting her arms out, then bringing them back towards her chest.

the crowd cheered, but rosewood only sunk further into their shadows. their face, their flaws, masked by the dark enclosing in.

“i love your dress,” someone said from behind rosewood, tapping on their shoulder. despite the loud music, it seemed as if this stranger didn’t even need to yell. rosewood turned, clinging to her words. their dress was too black for anyone to notice its intricacies. rosewood relished in the finely placed details—the upturn of the shoulder pads, the handspun lace—for themselves. they loved art devoid of dirty eyes and unbearably cishet critics that might taint rosewood’s fantasy.

“thank you.”

“i’ve seen you around before.”

rosewood’s breath hitched. she had? because…

“me too.” not in the queer scene, but from their university—a grad student, at a talk on camera obscuras. she had been so prim and proper, and she still was.

she adorned her loose white shirt and perfectly fitted slacks with a healthy dose of silver jewelry. rosewood nursed their drink, swirling their nailed finger around the rim of the glass.

“did you enjoy my lecture?” she asked, and rosewood nearly crumbled realizing that she knew them from university.

rosewood nodded. they recollected her deep, smooth voice, and the way she had paced with confidence as she spoke. she had a brilliant thesis. eccentric, bold, clever, all at once. rosewood tingled at the thought.

it must’ve been that ache, their empty bedroom, the suffocation that drew rosewood to her. she noticed them, perhaps because she could see rosewood evoking art, even in the shadows—and rosewood found themselves even more drawn to her erudite energy.

the two of them didn’t really need words after that.

*****

she had rosewood against the wall of the white tiled bathroom, pliant. rosewood thought of the arch of their back, the spread of their body, movement carefully studied and portrayed just as da Vinci had studied corpses and men to paint the women on the Sistine Chapel. her hair curled over her forehead, smile upturned but the corners of her lips blended into her skin, and that’s when rosewood could lose themselves in the ecstasy of her art.

she pressed her hands into rosewood’s pockets, feeling their thighs through the barrier of the fabric. aggressive. after a couple moments of fumbling and kissing, she paused, her nail scratching against the bottom of the pocket. she dug up the sertraline pill and held it in the light, in between the two of them, to observe it.

they both paused.

she laughed a little, drunkenly. “i get it,” she whispered. rosewood’s chest seemed to sink and rise at the same time. or were they just breathing? what did normal breathing feel like?

“open up,” she then said, tapping on rosewood’s chin and very likely leaving a small imprint of foundation on the tip of her finger. she slipped the pill into rosewood’s mouth, pressing it against their tongue until its outer coating began to melt. once she took her fingers back, rosewood obediently swallowed.

“thank you,” rosewood breathed out. “i almost forgot.”

someone pounded at the door, most likely desperate to piss and ready to fight about it. the pulsing fire was fizzling under the surface and rosewood was not the same. they crashed in on themselves.

“let’s get out of here,” they whispered quickly.

she nodded, fumbling to give rosewood their purse. glitter stained the bottom half of her face as it brushed past the brighter rays of the purple light. eventually, they managed to exit the small bathroom.

rosewood’s head bent down like they were praying for forgiveness, the strands of loose hair shrouding their face, metaphorical thin gold halo hanging over their skull. they shielded their eyes delicately from the glare of the pulsing lights. with a cluttered mind, they clutched the hand of their makeout-partner-turned-official-hookup (was this really happening?), letting her guide them. they didn’t know how they managed to grab an Uber, how they decided to go to rosewood’s apartment.

rosewood let them in.

hours must have went by and they kept going past that, until rosewood couldn’t seem to recognize the unique little dents and crevices of their ceiling anymore (too much time spent with their eyes rolled back).

the fire under rosewood’s chest settled as their lover’s hands roamed over rosewood’s skin and vice versa, but it began bubbling back as the alcohol subsided and the heady realization of how ruined their makeup was settled in. rosewood knew then that they were a mess and not something to be perceived, no longer a piece of art but a dusty sculpture in desperate need of restoration.

“i think it’s time for you to go.”

they watched the shadow of her exit the room and listened to the apartment door slam shut.

*****

an alarm promptly woke rosewood at 7:50—for class at 8:00.

so they embarked, mistakenly wearing the underwear from last night.

night was one cycle of their life, and the day, another. the glitter from last night wouldn’t wash off entirely; nonetheless, rosewood engrossed themselves in lecture. Qing Dynasty pleasure objects were in fact a fascinating topic, and rosewood planned to pull together some more substantive research over the coming weeks. there was that research award to be won in the spring, after all.