Fitting
Ava Shaffer
Ava Shaffer
The first time I went to New York City, I saw a woman living with another woman.
I was nine years old and going to visit my aunt who has lived there longer than I’ve been alive. She told me her friends invited us over for dinner, so we rode the cramped and unsanitary subway to their brownstone apartment in Brooklyn. I wore my favorite purple silk scarf in an effort to look fashionable for the New Yorkers.
In my head, I pictured a man with a goatee and black rimmed glasses wearing a turtleneck opening the large oak door. This man would have his arm wrapped protectively around a petite woman with long red hair and earrings the size of golf balls. To my surprise, two women opened the door. Their smiles were a million times brighter than the goatee man and his red-haired wife.
These two women treated each other in a way I had never seen before. A way I didn’t know existed. A peck on the cheek, an arm around the shoulder. They fit one another better than anyone I had ever seen before, which shocked me because I didn’t know two women were even allowed to fit together.
They would pad around their paint-splattered floors with bare feet, carrying trays of grape leaves and margaritas (I was always given a Shirley Temple). They had clunky jewelry they made in art class together and white linen pants that looked like hell to keep clean. They had bookcases that lined every wall of their house, stairs that creaked like a symphony, and a large flag draped from their balcony. Red and pink and white, all mixing together to form a sunset.
It was then that I realized that in New York, love wasn’t constrained. Not like it was in the home I call Medina, Ohio.
Once, when I was on the swingset at the park, the girl next to me and I started swinging together. Our paces ended up matching and we were swinging in unison. The wind tossed our hair back and forth wildly as she shouted, “Look! We’re married!” because that’s what kids would say when your swinging matched the person next to you. My grin was so wide it hurt my cheeks. A boy on the monkey bars stuck his tongue out at us and proclaimed, “Girls can’t marry each other!” My new friend next to me, obviously embarrassed for forgetting such a well known fact, swiftly jumped out of her swing and ran away. I never saw her again.
Then there was the time I was invited to a sleepover at Amy Mitchell’s house in middle school. Sitting amongst thousands of blankets in our pillow fort, the smell of slightly burnt popcorn filling the air, we decided to steal a DVD from Amy’s older sister’s room. When we watched Twilight, I wondered if my friends also had a crush on both the vampire and the girl.
One day, my French teacher told us he was gay. His warming smile and pride flag in his room made me believe it was okay to ask him questions. I visited him after class. In a tone reserved for tough conversations, he explained the term bisexulaity. The word fit me the same way the women in New York fit each other. Suddenly, standing under the harsh fluorescent lights of an empty classroom, everything started making sense.
There was that one time where my high school boyfriend had told all of his friends about my sexuality. I can still remember the heat of embarrassment on my face as teenage boys would slide me their phones across the table in class. I can still remember the bile I felt bubbling in my stomach when I saw the vulgar images and videos playing on their screens. The fetishization, the mockery, the humiliation. All of it made me wish I was anywhere but there.
In France, my host student and I would walk to the school bus stop every morning. Waiting under the blue street sign of a road I couldn’t pronounce the name of, was my first girl crush. Enora had wavy black hair, a button nose, and countless freckles dusting her cheeks. She wore red lipstick that made it difficult for me to concentrate and black jeans every single day. When we would exchange our customary bonjours with kisses on the cheek, I found it hard to talk, and not just because I could barely speak French.
Later on that year, I joined my school’s LGBTQ+ Alliance Club. There were about five of us, all too nervous to actually speak to one another, but at least we were there. The silence was deafening but at least we were all hearing it.
I was nine years old and going to visit my aunt who has lived there longer than I’ve been alive. She told me her friends invited us over for dinner, so we rode the cramped and unsanitary subway to their brownstone apartment in Brooklyn. I wore my favorite purple silk scarf in an effort to look fashionable for the New Yorkers.
In my head, I pictured a man with a goatee and black rimmed glasses wearing a turtleneck opening the large oak door. This man would have his arm wrapped protectively around a petite woman with long red hair and earrings the size of golf balls. To my surprise, two women opened the door. Their smiles were a million times brighter than the goatee man and his red-haired wife.
These two women treated each other in a way I had never seen before. A way I didn’t know existed. A peck on the cheek, an arm around the shoulder. They fit one another better than anyone I had ever seen before, which shocked me because I didn’t know two women were even allowed to fit together.
They would pad around their paint-splattered floors with bare feet, carrying trays of grape leaves and margaritas (I was always given a Shirley Temple). They had clunky jewelry they made in art class together and white linen pants that looked like hell to keep clean. They had bookcases that lined every wall of their house, stairs that creaked like a symphony, and a large flag draped from their balcony. Red and pink and white, all mixing together to form a sunset.
It was then that I realized that in New York, love wasn’t constrained. Not like it was in the home I call Medina, Ohio.
Once, when I was on the swingset at the park, the girl next to me and I started swinging together. Our paces ended up matching and we were swinging in unison. The wind tossed our hair back and forth wildly as she shouted, “Look! We’re married!” because that’s what kids would say when your swinging matched the person next to you. My grin was so wide it hurt my cheeks. A boy on the monkey bars stuck his tongue out at us and proclaimed, “Girls can’t marry each other!” My new friend next to me, obviously embarrassed for forgetting such a well known fact, swiftly jumped out of her swing and ran away. I never saw her again.
Then there was the time I was invited to a sleepover at Amy Mitchell’s house in middle school. Sitting amongst thousands of blankets in our pillow fort, the smell of slightly burnt popcorn filling the air, we decided to steal a DVD from Amy’s older sister’s room. When we watched Twilight, I wondered if my friends also had a crush on both the vampire and the girl.
One day, my French teacher told us he was gay. His warming smile and pride flag in his room made me believe it was okay to ask him questions. I visited him after class. In a tone reserved for tough conversations, he explained the term bisexulaity. The word fit me the same way the women in New York fit each other. Suddenly, standing under the harsh fluorescent lights of an empty classroom, everything started making sense.
There was that one time where my high school boyfriend had told all of his friends about my sexuality. I can still remember the heat of embarrassment on my face as teenage boys would slide me their phones across the table in class. I can still remember the bile I felt bubbling in my stomach when I saw the vulgar images and videos playing on their screens. The fetishization, the mockery, the humiliation. All of it made me wish I was anywhere but there.
In France, my host student and I would walk to the school bus stop every morning. Waiting under the blue street sign of a road I couldn’t pronounce the name of, was my first girl crush. Enora had wavy black hair, a button nose, and countless freckles dusting her cheeks. She wore red lipstick that made it difficult for me to concentrate and black jeans every single day. When we would exchange our customary bonjours with kisses on the cheek, I found it hard to talk, and not just because I could barely speak French.
Later on that year, I joined my school’s LGBTQ+ Alliance Club. There were about five of us, all too nervous to actually speak to one another, but at least we were there. The silence was deafening but at least we were all hearing it.
//
Ava Shaffer is a first year student at Miami University, studying Creative Writing as her major. She has been published in Miami’s Inklings literary magazine. She is an avid reader and writer, and spends most of her free time with her nose buried in a book. However, when she is not reading or writing, she likes to spend time with her beagle, Gustav.
Ava Shaffer is a first year student at Miami University, studying Creative Writing as her major. She has been published in Miami’s Inklings literary magazine. She is an avid reader and writer, and spends most of her free time with her nose buried in a book. However, when she is not reading or writing, she likes to spend time with her beagle, Gustav.