the new trend
July 9th, 2009
She watched me from across the store as I dispelled the boy hitting on me with ease. Her perfectly made-up face made a face and she pretended to examine her fingernails, but I knew she was burning to talk to me.
I went to her, complimented her hair, gave her the opportunity to talk to me. She took it. “How did you get him to leave you alone so easily?” Her voice, tinged with upper-class sarcasm, trembled. I looked at her, my pierced eyebrow raised.
“I told him I’m gay.”
To my amusement, she flinched. “Oh.” She looked me over, I stood my ground. Her manicured nails tapped on her pressed pants, held in place by a belt that probably cost a month of my salary at the coffee shop, with a perfectly pressed shirt tucked perfectly therein. She hesitated. “Are you?”
I took a defiant step closer to her. “I am.” To her credit, she didn’t back away – though she clearly wanted to.
“Do you think it would work… if you weren’t?”
I laughed. “Sure, if I was good enough at pretending. It’s gotta come across as real, or he’ll think I’m lying.”
She nodded. “Can I… take you to lunch? Will you teach me?”
Many hours later, yet another cute guy makes his approach. She deflects him easily, confidently, with a glimmer in her eye that I alone understand.
Weeks later, and it’s the new trend. All the uppity high-class girls are claiming lesbianism to fend off overzealous would-be suitors.
But then, something shifts. The pretending shifts. It becomes more than a game, it becomes reality. The girls slowly realize they are more than claiming, they are becoming. Hundreds of them over a period of weeks, then thousands. It becomes a global shift, and woman by the millions are coming out.
Men become largely unwanted. Over years, they become unneeded. We stop having sons, then stop bearing children in ways dangerous to our bodies. War ceases, communities grow, peace spreads. Women dismantle the patriarchal systems that rule over us, and shift into communal systems that allow power to spread, until every woman on the planet is important, empowered, known, loved.
Memories fade. Thoughts of the old ways die out with the last of the men. I look out over the world from my station high above and wonder at how far we’ve come… and wonder what we’ve lost.
