Ginger and the Painful Ordeal

Ginger: this part is a bit more emo – i didnt realise so many of your emotional troubles were related to being queer

Scar: gotta have emo hey

Ginger: most certainly. this 2nd part is way nicheER than the 1st one tho

Scar: rilly?

Ginger: at some points i was like, ok i dont get it, even tho i consider myself to be relatively queer-literate in some limited aspects

Scar: what didnt you get?

Ginger: maybe its just me

Scar: it is rather very queer tho

Ginger: definitely, of course it is, i mean you wrote it hey

Scar: lolol yeh

Ginger: there is this whole “painful ordeal” thing to the queer scene at times.. and of course i dont get it because i have never had to get through all those emo troubles myself.. i guess… i dont know how to put “what i dont get” in words

Scar: mmm, i think i do need to explore dyke drama more actually

Ginger: what do you mean?

Scar: whole tendency to get all emo/drama about everydamnthing

Ginger: its perfectly justifiable even (or especially) from a straight viewpoint.

Scar: not always

Ginger: well generally i think it’s a huge emotional thing to realise you’re not exactly what is expected of you in a heteronormative society

Scar: yeh sure, but then do ur relationships HAVE to all be soap operas?

Ginger: yes, its human nature

Scar: how depressing

Ginger: what may seem insignificant to your friends is a huge drama for yourself, its always like that in life BUT i totally understand the painful ordeal thing

Scar: i guess it is human then …

Ginger: it just sometimes seems, from my outsider viewpoint, like the lgbtqi scene is SO CAUGHT UP in their painful ordeals and oppression and whatnot that there is no big picture anymore.  i mean how many more letters do we have to add until everyone is satisfied

Scar: yeh i think thats what i meant – ghetto mentality

Ginger: talking about the big picture, one of my lgbtqiabcdefghijkl… friends is campaigning for gender-neutral toilets… and gets totally hostile when i dare to mention that there are bigger problems for the lgbtqiabcdefgh… movement than flippin TOILETS – because obviously and apparently, there are no bigger problems….

Scar: maybe they REALLY need to go?

Ginger: what about diapers? JUST TOTALLY POLITICALLY INCORRECT KIDDING. but then again – which ones to buy?!?!?!  the ones for girls or the ones for guys?

Scar: gender neutral ones duh

Ginger: but DO YOU KNOW how difficult it is to find gender-neutral diapers?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!  they always have a baby on the package and the baby will most probably be either a boy or a girl.  do you know WHAT THIS IMPLIES?!??!

Scar: tell

Ginger: that the diapers are for baby GIRLS or baby wan.. i mean BOYS!!! BUT we can’t actually SEE if its a girl or a boy because the babies are WEARING DIAPERS on these photos…

Scar: hahahaaaaaaaaaaaa

Ginger: and do you know how much it would cost to install a third toilet section like EVERYWHERE just so the lgbtqiabcdefg movement is STILL UNHAPPY? i think it would be more useful to spend this money on the actual people.

Scar: like what? how would you spend it?

Ginger: ok lets assume that for the UK it would cost a few billion to install toilets  everywhere – schools, kindergartens, universities, town halls, cinemas, everywhere.   and of course under the anti discrimination whatever law the govt would have to pay at least subventions for all of this, even if it was in the private sector.

Scar: ok wtf is a subvention

Ginger: financial help… towards something

Scar: oh thankies

Ginger: i would take the money, put it in an account, and pay for things so lgbtqi people will DEFINITELY be less unhappy. e.g. those who cant afford gender related surgery for example. or spend it on those who are out of work because no one will hire a f2m security guy or a m2f gynecologist. and a few politicians and beaurocrats with an actual brain so they can legalise some necessary legislature concerning those things.

Scar: ah good one gooood, dyke-hag

Ginger: and keep the rest and go on the flippin holiday that i deserve.

Scar: you know ima rape this for my “novel” right?

Meanwhile Back at the Coffee Shop

Helen pushed a few buttons, straightened up, brushed her fringe from her face and then started as she realised she was being watched.  “Siri!  Welcome … coffee?”  Scar just nodded and followed Helen to a booth.  Helen leaned forward, both hands cupped gently around the coffee mug and her knee touching Scar’s, but only just.    “It’s safe to talk here right now, it isn’t always,” said Helen and Scar breathed a sigh of relief.  “Helen …” she began, but Helen interrupted, “I’ve made certain compromises – many compromises, to be a part of Plan Q.  I won’t deny what I feel for you, but there’s too much at stake to be selfish.”

Holy electronic creeping jezuz, thought Scar, it could take forever.  She met Helen’s gaze and said, “You know what?  It’s all about choices and I respect yours.  OK I’m faking it, I got that bullshit from a fortune cookie, but I will fake-respect it anyway.”  Helen stared harder.  Scar continued, “No really, you gotta do what you gotta do and so do I.  We’re not kids anymore, Helen.”  Helen was starting to look decidedly nervous, “Scar, if you’re not 100% behind Plan Q, you’re a risk,” she said.  Scar rolled her eyes, “Yeah … whatcha gonna do?  Kill me?  Go right ahead, doll.”  The pressure on her knee increased as Helen replied, “I’m stuck right between the devil and the deep blue sea here, Scar.”  Scar raised her eyebrows, stood and turned away.  Then she stopped and said, “Let me know when you’ve worked out which one of those I am.”

As she left the coffee shop, Scar cursed herself soundly.  Did she have to let that pompous fucking dykely brain-buzz of hers get in the way every single time?

Infiltration, thought Scar, is crap.  We get treated like dirt and moved to the Queer Quarter.  Can’t have this job, can’t go into that shop, gotta wear the pink triangle.  No votes, no benefits, no … no structure.  So along came Plan Q to usher the Queers silently and secretly out of the Quarter and back into the mainstream, to live fake-Hetero lives.  A closet, in other words.

You have [1] new message!

“I bet we can find 1 000 000 Trojans on Facebook!” now has [126 664] members!  Invite your friends!

Over a hundred thousand closeted Queers then, out of the Quarter and in amongst how many million Hets?  Suddenly Scar wondered what the authorities would prefer anyway; the Quarter, stuck out like an eyesore on the edge of the city, or closet-cases blending quietly in.  The numbers were never going to be enough to swing a vote or mount an insurrection, unless they recruited Hets to the cause and if they were all as deep cover as she was, how was anyone ever going to do that?  It was a real shame that protest marches didn’t happen anymore, thought Scar – even if they didn’t accomplish much, as least they were fun.

Log on

Who do you want to be today?

An old-fashioned dyke.

Syntax error

The kind with short hair and nails and faded jeans and big boots

Syntax error

The kind that fucks women and doesn’t hide it

Syntax error

Welcome to Facebook!  You have [5] new notifications!

*NEW*

Sender: Her0

Subject: 4TW?

Message: we need to talk

*NEW*

Sender: VETO

Subject: apple danish

Message .

*NEW*

Sender: Bear

Subject: Help

Message: scar, i can’t take this anymore, i just can’t.  i’m thinking of busting back to the quarter.

*NEW*

Sender: Troyville Admin

Subject: New Features!

Message: Show your support for the revolution – send Queer Flair today!

*NEW*

Sender:Nina Ragnarra

Subject: Siri?

Message: Siri is that really you?

They’d dealt with family issues back at the clinic by trying to get patients to contact their families, to reconnect.  Siri had no family – not in the standard Queer my-family-doesn’t-understand kind of way either.  She’d lost her parents in a waterway blowout when she was ten and her little sister too.  Nina …

Scar reeled away from the screen, sweating like a scared horse and breathing about as hard.  She drove her knuckles into her eyes.  It was impossible.  It was a scam.  It was … what the fuck was it?

This morning over breakfast, my girlfriend fixed me with one of her very special looks and said, “You know it’s going to get boring, right?  At some point it’s going to become a grind and you’re going to keep writing, right?”  I said I thought that offering me new and curious sex as an incentive might work and she agreed, on the basis that it’d be a community service.  Mind you, she’s grown a tad taciturn since I started quoting her verbatim here.

Feeling as if her head was a thousand miles from her feet, Scar bailed out of her chair and went to find a nice, reassuring pill.  Anna’s aesthetics, sweetie darling … and so she slept, better than babies ever do and the next day, she took her woolly head off to work.

She’d been picked for a promotion, her intense connection to colour sent her straight to Intermode Node Control, where she sat in a green glow with a bunch of geeks and made sure that shuttles and airway and waterway connected, that the signals timed in perfectly, that the dance went on smoothly for all of the drones out there in Generika City.  She celebrated by blowing her paycheque on a re-engineered stingray leather jacket.  She paced past the doorway of java Divers about 25 times without going in.  She ate a McJunk burger and went home.

The main screenfeed pulsed gently on the wall in time to someone’s heartbeat, but not Scar’s – she wasn’t sure she even had one any more.  Behind the screen, Nina or at least, the idea of Nina and a million memories of Nina.  Sweet, scatty little Nina, with the Jurassic Atari collection and refusal to wear any colour but green.  She’d have been 30 now, if she’d … fuck it.  Scar logged on again.

Reply: Nina Ragnarra

Subject: Yes

Message: it really is

*SENT*

Reply: Bear

Subject: Deer …

Message: i’m struggling too, is it safe to talk here?

*SENT*

Reply: VETO

Subject: apple danish

Message: hamlet?

*SENT*

Reply: Her0

Subject: o.0

Message: so let’s talk

*SENT*

You have [1] new notification!

***VETO*** would like to invite you to his lair!

*ACCEPT*

Veto’s Troyville “lair” was pretty blank, really and Veto’s avatar was, of course, a droid.  In meatspace, Scar grinned hard.  In cyberspace, she typed,

Scar: Hey

VETO: ‘sup dyke?

Scar: not digging the revolting, man

VETO: >_<

Scar: you?

VETO: its the tech

Scar: ?

VETO: cant explain here d, just remember what i say – its the tech

Scar: k

*SESSION TERMINATED*

You have [3] new notification!

* Her0 has sent you a [pink triangle] from Queer Flair

* Bear has sent you a [pink triangle] from Queer Flair

* VETO has sent you a [flatfeed console] from Facebook Flair

Cryptic motherfucker, but Scar thought she knew his methods well enough after all these years to work it out eventually.  Tech.  It’s the tech.  And it’s tech from the Hetero side of town, which is the better side, the uptown side … it’s the tech.  OK.  Save file and ponder later.

You have [1] new notification!

***Her0*** would like to invite you to her apartment!

*ACCEPT*

Her0: thanks for coming

Scar: i miss you man, it’s just that you look like a whole bunch of chaos to me

Her0: ouch

Scar: i need a quiet life man

Her0: scar would you get off that high horse for a minute?

Scar: >_>

Her0: irl, id just kiss you

Scar: XD!

Her0: are you asking me to give up the revolution for life in the quarter with you?

Scar: no … i dont know … i think im asking you to join another aspect of it all. the rev. and yes, life with me.

Her0: what other aspect?

Scar: cant tell you yet i dont even have all the details – i guess you gotta decide if you wanna keep on with the infilt or maybe trust whatever the hell we have, you and i

Her0: ur def the deep blue sea scar

Time to delete 20 more pink triangle notifications, time to say goodbye, time to sleep.  Time not to sleep, but instead to lie stimming – and thinking about Nina, Her0, Nina, Her0 … and Veto’s enigmatic tech thing.

Scar strutted into JD after work the next day with a whole new air of confidence she attributed directly to her stingray leather jacket.  Spending that kind of money on skin added to your height, no doubt.  “My that’s a rather dykey walk!” said Helen, “I think I like it.”

“It’s the tech,” said Scar, rolling up her overall sleeves and grabbing yet another mug of house blend.”  Helen looked mystified.  “I worked it out this morning.  The way to power is not conforming, it’s independence.  We’ve tried fitting in and it hasn’t worked since ancient Greece; you and I don’t have time to wait for another civilisation to fall, we have to do whatever the hell we can with now.”  Helen listened and as she listened, her knee began to touch Scar’s again.  “We sit there out in the Quarter, bitching because the Hets get all the cool screens and feeds and shit and meanwhile, those are just doorways to the real thing, to the net, to freedom and power.  We bust our asses scoring obsolete crap and then we’re limited to what we can access, because – we don’t have any servers!”  Helen was nodding now, “We need a fucking network!”

Helen sat back and stared at Scar.  “I’m in,” she said.  “Trust?” asked Scar and Helen replied, “ALT236”

Somehow a great ass looks even better when it’s on a geek, don’t you think?  ALT236 is, of course, the keyboard shortcut for the infinity symbol.

The way to get the tech components would be to use all the little Queer moles out there in Het land to thieve them and the Quarter to hide them and build them.  Scar flicked rapidly at her wristfeed and messaged Veto.

i’m in.

*NEW*

Recipient: Bear

Subject: just do it

Message: connect VETO

*SENT*

Recipient: Her0

Subject: next

Message: connect VETO. alt236

*SENT*

Recipient: VETO

Subject: +

Message: +Bear +Her0

*SENT*