❤ Pride ❤: Cameron Post, Lesbian (The Miseducation of Cameron Post)
❝ Even though no one had ever told me, specifically, not to kiss a girl before, nobody had to. It was guys and girls who kissed - in our grade, on TV, in the movies, in the world; and that’s how it worked: guys and girls. Anything else was something weird. ❞
the miseducation of cameron post by emily danforth
“I told myself that I didn’t need any of that shit, but there it was, repeated to me day after day after day. And when you’re surrounded by a bunch of mostly strangers experiencing the same thing, unable to call home, tethered to routine on ranchland miles away from anybody who might have known you before, might have been able to recognize the real you if you told them you couldn’t remember who she was, it’s not really like being real at all. It’s plastic living. It’s living in a diorama. It’s living the life of one of those prehistoric insects encased in amber: suspended, frozen, dead but not, you don’t know for sure.”
miles city, montana from the miseducation of cameron post by emily m. danforth
“Miles City had been cooking in the high nineties for days, and it was only the end of June, hot even for eastern Montana. It was the kind of heat where a breeze feels like someone’s venting a dryer out over the town, whipping dust and making the cottonseeds from the big cottonwoods float across a wide blue sky and collect in soft tufts on neighborhood lawns. Irene and I called it summer snow, and sometimes we’d squint into the dry glare and try to catch cotton on our tongues.”
“The first stars flickered on like the lights over the movie marquee downtown. Irene asked me, “Do you think we’d get in trouble if anyone found out?” “Yeah,” I said right away, because even though no one had ever told me, specifically, not to kiss a girl before, nobody had to. It was guys and girls who kissed—in our grade, on TV, in the movies, in the world; and that’s how it worked: guys and girls. Anything else was something weird. And even though I’d seen girls our age hold hands or walk arm in arm, and probably some of those girls had practiced kissing on each other, I knew that what we had done in the barn was something different. Something more serious, grown-up, like Irene had said. We hadn’t kissed each other just to practice. Not really. At least I didn’t think so. But I didn’t tell any of that to Irene. She knew it too.”
“I was doing my little stand up shtick, the one I did for pretty girls, so they’d like me quickly and wouldn’t try too hard to actually get to know me beyond my role as wisecracking Cameron, the orphan. Maybe it was a little like flirting, but also a kind of protection: Don’t get too close; I’m just jokes with no substance.” -Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a heartfelt and beautifully rendered story about growing up and becoming who you are even when it seems as if being anything else would be easier.
↳ the miseducation of cameron post by emily m danforth
“I was doing my little stand up shtick, the one I did for pretty girls, so they’d like me quickly and wouldn’t try too hard to actually get to know me beyond my role as wisecracking Cameron, the orphan. Maybe it was a little like flirting, but also a kind of protection: Don’t get too close; I’m just jokes with substance.”
