Writing Club will officially go out on the second of every month! Happy late Pride Month to everyone!

This month’s prompt is:

PRIDE

//content warnings for violence

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     Jump to:
                  Bear          Lance

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Bear (Host of With Strange Aeons):

T4T

We bite first
at each other but then
at ourselves,
and we’re gnawing inward but
teeth never quite meet bone.

My most lurid fantasies involve you
and I sprawled out on the floor, muzzles
discarded four feet to the left in a pile
of clothes and sinew, teeth
around the other’s throat.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t want
to be cannibalized by you, all-
consuming warmth gathering
our thoughts into 
something palatable.

Our hands grab and scratch. If this
is the way things are then so be it.
Teeth hit teeth; chipping away
whatever’s left.

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Lance Stanford (Host of The Fight Club Minute)

"Don't look at them," my mom said as the two men walked by. "Don't look! They're an abomination to God."

Her pious voice rang out loud enough for everyone to hear. The men turned and looked at us. Their faces held both contempt and sadness.

I was young, maybe eight or nine years old. I didn't understand why she was so angry. To me all I saw was two people walking. I was too young to notice the intertwined fingers. How their faces smiled when they looked at each other. How they would sneak little kisses in the middle of talking.

I was too young to recognize happiness.

As the years passed I would hear my mother talk about the pollution on television. She would say how the world needed saving. Primetime lineups were the work of the devil, or so I was told. Between the beer commercials and the women in bikinis trying to sell chewing gum, or life insurance or whatever it was she would tell me how ashamed other parents must be.

I never could figure it out. I would watch and listen. I paid attention, hoping to know what was so bad so I wouldn't repeat these sins. All I saw were people laughing. I saw people loving.
More time went by and my parents separated. Mom continued to curse the women kissing or the men sharing a bed. Her condemnation would come through slurred words as she took the second bottle of wine to the trash that night. I started to understand the sin these people were committing. 

They were happy.

They were proud.

I was old enough to leave the house now, go for a drive or to the movies. Old enough to leave the despair and judgment. Mom would be there when I got home though, asleep in the chair with the TV still on.

One time I asked her why she was so mad at the people just trying to be happy.

"It's wrong in the eyes of the Lord," she told me.

"Seems like they love each other same as most people, same as you and Dad," I paused. It wasn't the same. The people I saw on TV or at the park fought for their happiness. They believed in it. It wasn't like my parents at all.

"That's… that's not like us at all!" Mom screamed.

I thought about it for a minute. Maybe she was right. This whole time she was telling me that these people were different and it hit me she was right. They weren't different because of who they loved, she was wrong about that. They were different because of how they loved.

Over the years I had watched how people fought off hate and bigotry to be with the ones that make them happy. I saw how they embraced each other despite being put down or abused. They truly loved each other, and I think my mother resented that.
She believed that her misery deserved to be everyone's misery. Her suffering belonged to the world. She was wrong.

Her love was lost but others were just beginning to blossom. Others were finding their place in the world, shining through the darkness of the hate. They had found themselves. They found happiness.