Femme Read Online Free

with a bat?”
    “Come on, you are kind of a stereotype. You’re not stupid, you know that.”
    “I’m a fucking stereotype?”
    “I didn’t mean it that way.” I was sure there was a nice way to say what I wanted to say, I just had no clue what it was.
    “No, that’s fine. You meant it that way. And, yeah, I’m a fucking stereotype. Knock-knock, so are you. So is everybody. It’s how we identify one another. It’s how we communicate with strangers. Every single person is a stereotype until you get to know them. Getting to know someone you find out all the ways they don’t fit their stereotype. You find out the other things they are, the stereotypes they’ve played and rejected. When I was a little boy, I was a mama’s boy. That’s a stereotype. Except my mother died when I was ten. So I was a mama’s boy without a mama. No one knew what to do with that. Then when I was a teenager, I was very emo, borderline Goth, very Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice . That’s another stereotype.”
    Winona Ryder? Was she that singer? He must have misread the confused look on my face because he kept going. “I know, I know, not even my generation. But the aughts suffered a real lack of teenage rebellion. I mean, I certainly wasn’t going to model myself after Amanda Bynes. When I turned eighteen, my father had had enough of a depressed, semi-suicidal teenager and threw me out. Best thing that ever happened to me. I got a job as a bus boy. Went to beauty school. I know, a gay boy at beauty school. Stereotype. Then I realized no one wants to actually pay for a haircut anymore and I got a job working here. And, yes, I’m nelly, I’m femme, I’m a flamer, I’m a queen, whatever you wanna call me. But I’m me. And I’m good at being me.”
    “Okay.”
    “Okay? What does that mean?”
    “I don’t know. It seemed like what I should say. That was a lot of words.”
    “And your response is one word?”
    “I’m sorry your dad threw you out. He shouldn’t have done that.”
    “See, you’re the strong silent type, that’s a stereotype. And you’re kind of a bear, that’s another stereotype. And you’re straight-acting. That’s also stereotype. Oh Gawd, why do I bother?”
    He pushed off the wall and started to go back inside.
    “Wait—” I said, then couldn’t get anything else out. I was caught by the way his skin looked flushed in spots by anger, and the incredible blue of his eyes. He was sexy and I couldn’t figure out exactly why. Yeah, he was good-looking, but the world is full of good-looking guys. And very few of them are sexy for more than a minute. Lionel struck me as the sort who’d be sexy no matter what he looked like.
    Stopping, he looked back at me with a sort of leer, seeing exactly what going on in my head, and said, “Oh honey, that ship has so sailed.”
     

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    Yes, yes, yes, I hear you, darling. I should have kept my big fucking mouth shut. The customer is always right. What does the occasional insult matter when it means I’m not living in an alley eating out of trash cans? Believe me, all of these thoughts crossed my mind as I walked home from The Bird. It also crossed my mind to wonder what the fuck I should do with my life.
    I couldn’t be a cocktail waiter forever. I knew that. But when you’re on your own there aren’t always many options. I mean, I was doing okay. I had a job. Well, hopefully I had a job. I had an adorable little apartment. I even had a thousand dollars saved in a CD to buy a car so I could stop begging people for rides. I had a pretty good idea how I wanted the next year of my life to go. Beyond that things were fuzzy.
    Deftly, I managed to avoid Chuckie Cooper for the rest of my shift. Carlos was nice enough to take care of the Birdmen and their orders, so I didn’t have to go near them. I dealt mainly with a swarm of older guys there to see Larry Lamour. Some of them were a bit handsy, which compared to