When school was dismissed Anne marched out with her red head held high. Gilbert Blythe tried to intercept her at the porch door. “I’m awfully sorry I made fun of your hair, Anne,” he whispered contritely. “Honest I am. Don’t be mad for keeps, now.” Anne swept by disdainfully, without look or sign of hearing. “Oh how could you, Anne?” breathed Diana as they went down the road half reproachfully, half admiringly. “I shall never forgive Gilbert Blythe,” said Anne firmly. “And Mr. Phillips spelled my name without an ‘e,’ too. The iron has entered into my soul, Diana.”
Since it’s not socially acceptable to read a book while you’re at a party, I want to host a party where everyone brings a book or two, and just reads together in the same room. It will be beautiful, and everyone will have a lovely time. I will be everyone’s favorite hostess.
Snacks and drinks will be provided (please let the hostess know of any allergies or intolerances 24 hours before the party’s start time). Please bring your own blanket/throw/quilt. Unfortunately, furry, four-legged reading buddies (ie dogs and cats) are prohibited, due to allergies.
Addition: No one is allowed to pass judgement on any of the books that attend the reading party. Violators will be forced to watch the worst book-to-film adaptation ever, which the hostess has already selected. (No, she will not tell you what it is.)
“Excuse me, terribly sorry to bother you. I was just wondering, where is everyone?”
“Where do you think? Quarantined inside their homes like the rest of the world.”
“Right, yes, silly of me to ask.” The man clasped his hands together. “Now, if everyone else is at home, why aren’t you?”
You shrugged. “It’s too beautiful a day to be inside, even if there’s a worldwide pandemic going on. I’m still isolating myself from other people; I’m just doing it at the park.”
“Oh, of course!” His exclamation almost made you jump. “This is 2020, isn’t it?”
“Sure is,” you sighed. “Worst year of our lives.”
“Well then, why don’t we get out of here?”
“Not like there’s anywhere else to go. Coffee shops, movie theaters, everywhere’s closed.”
“I wasn’t talking about the park. I meant we should leave this whole year behind.”
You laughed at the stranger’s comment. “If only we had some kind of time machine.”
He grinned and adjusted his bow tie. “Well, actually…”
I identify as an FTM, non-hormone, non-op, transsexual heterosexual man. That’s the whole string of it. I was in the lesbian community when I was younger, but I never really fit. That was the 1970s and there really wasn’t the language then about transmen or FTMs or any of that. I didn’t have that accessible to me as an identity. I thought, “I’m the only one on the planet like me,” but then in 1985, Lou Sullivan sent his little booklet through the mail to the archives I was working on. It was “Information for the Female-to-male Crossdresser and Transsexual,” a little booklet that he self-published with a little handwritten note that said, “Maybe some people in your archive would want to read this.” Even though he didn’t know me, he didn’t know who he was sending this to, I read it. I read it and within two hours I called him and I said, “I gotta meet you, because now there’s two of us, you know, on the planet.” And I flew to San Francisco to meet him.
When I got there, I dressed up super masculine. I even wore temporary facial hair, because I wanted to demonstrate to him that I was a man. So, he opens the door and he is this little frail ninety-eight pound gay guy with a t-shirt on and I thought, “Well, he’s a man and he’s kinda like me, but he’s kinda not like me.” We ended up talking for five hours straight in his kitchen. In the middle of it, he told me he had to get up and take his AZT. I hadn’t known that he had HIV/AIDS, but I realized then that I was making the closest friend of my entire life, the most pivotal individual for me, and that I was losing him at the same time. We corresponded until he died and when he died, I started the East Coast FTM Group because I had nobody and he had asked me to head up his group in San Francisco, which I couldn’t do.
I always felt some resistance to the fact that I didn’t transition medically, but over time I started to find transsexuals who had not transitioned medically, or who had transitioned partially and then stopped, like my friend Leslie Feinberg. Eventually I found more people with the idea that, “I’m already me, I don’t need any medical intervention to become me.” It took a ten-year journey with a gender counselor to give myself permission around this, because it is not popular, even in our community.
I’ve done a lot of organizing, much of it pre-internet. I did it the way Lou did it at first, all by mail. I remember the first big conference I went to, a True Spirit Conference, and I think there were 300 guys, FTMs, from all over the country and Canada, and I remember thinking, “It’s starting. The movement for FTMs is really starting, big time.” Now I have a vision for making the Sexual Minorities Archives a national comprehensive LGBTQ educational resource center with a museum and an art gallery with many rooms to show the collections, to have a youth room, to have a meeting room, to have a community room, and to be the preeminent LGBTQ archive on the East Coast. That’s what I’m most looking forward to as I age and that’s what I want to accomplish before I die.
jack kelly x davey jacobs(freshman college roommates au)
summary:daveymightlike his new roommate more than he was expecting to.
a/n:hi@faded-dragon-flys !! i’m your secrect santa for @newsies-secret-santa !! this is being posted a little later than i wanted so i’m really sorry about that but i hope you like it!! i hope you’ve had a happy holidays and that you have a wonderful new years :)
College was….okay. It wasn’t that Davey wasn’t excited to have more freedom and to finally be able to pursue his interests, but the entire experience was incredibly nerve-wracking. Classes and coursework were enough stress on their own, but the addition of living away from home for the first time in a new place with a stranger for a roommate wasn’t exactly ideal. Not that his roommate wasn’t fine, he was —mostly. He had a horrible sleep schedule and he was a little messy and he sometimes listened to his music too loud, but Davey had many of the same flaws. So, yeah, Davey could mostly handle Jack.
It had been a bit of a shock the second week when he had been up at an ungodly hour writing for one of his classes and Jack, who he had assumed was sleeping somewhere else for the night, had returned from one of the school’s art studios splattered with paint. From the look on Jack’s face, it had been a bit of a shock for him, too. But after the initial surprise had passed Jack had laughed quietly and Davey’s cheeks had flushed the lightest of pinks because, oh, Jack had a really nice laugh. Davey had laughed a little, too, once he got his faint blush under control, and they had stayed up a little longer to talk before going to sleep. There were plenty of late night encounters in the following weeks, but that first one lingered in Davey’s mind — the way the paint on Jack’s face had accentuated his jawline, the way his smile had spread across his face so easily. His laughter had been soft but, with the quiet of the room, the sound of it had wrapped itself around Davey so firmly that he had felt it in his chest.
![helenation:Autographs of Helena Bonham Carter and Helen McCrory [x]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mduk85rK1J1qctn7wo1_500.jpg "helenation:Autographs of Helena Bonham Carter and Helen McCrory [x]")
![helenation:Autographs of Helena Bonham Carter and Helen McCrory [x]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mduk85rK1J1qctn7wo2_500.jpg "helenation:Autographs of Helena Bonham Carter and Helen McCrory [x]")
