Going to the cinema is an exercise in counting down the minutes until I can leave. My ADHD makes me struggle to sit still and be quiet for the hours it takes to watch a movie, and the lack of subtitles means I'll likely miss half the dialogue anyway. Books are friendlier—able to be

put down and picked up at my leisure, not requiring me to sit in a cold, dark room and read the lot in one sitting.

And no offence to my friends, but we have vastly different tastes. If this one is anything like the last dozen we've seen together, the highlight of my night will be the snacks.

But I'm a pushover who likes to feel included, so I eat my popcorn without complaint. We're in the back row, stretched out over four recliner seats. Beside me are three of my longest-standing friends, some of the only people I still talk to who knew me before I came out the first time around.

The movie starts and I settle into my boredom. I cross my feet over each other, then uncross them. I wonder if I should've looked up the guy this movie is about before watching it. I'm cautiously confident that he's a musician, but I can't name any of his songs or a single fact about his life. Couldn't tell you if he's still alive. Onscreen, an orange-clad man storms down a

hallway in slow motion. I take a sip of my Coke as the scene jumps back in time to a vibrant musical number during the character's childhood, and maybe I won't hate this as much as I thought I would. My favourite movie is Ella Enchanted. I like a good musical number.

My brain tunes out until adult-Reggie is back, singing a song I unexpectedly recognise. I guess I have heard some of his music.

His gaze lingers on a man dancing around him, and I let myself read into the fleeting glance as the music continues and the man disappears into a crowd of dancers. I know I'm overanalysing the scene. I do the same to everything that gives off the slightest suggestion of being anything but cishet, despite (or maybe because of) my adolescence being repeatedly burnt by queerbait.

I've learnt to stop expecting these things to have a payoff, but I let myself indulge in the fantasy.

A musical montage begins, and my feet tap in time with the music. Before Reggie can climb the steps to a small stage and take his position at the keyboard behind the singers, one of the other musicians stops him. The man gently but urgently pushes him backwards until he's pressed up against the wall and he kisses him and

my

brain

stops.

‘Have a good show,' he says as he walks onstage, leaving Reggie—and me—stunned.

I stop thinking, stop blinking, stop breathing.

It's overwhelming. It's 2019. I'm not used to surprise representation.

I went to a Catholic high school whose library was void of characters like me. I'd never read a book with a gay protagonist until earlier this year, and I had to specifically seek it out. It'll be another two years before I read a book with a trans protagonist, and a further six months until I read one written by a trans author.

I sit, electrified and motionless, goosebumps prickling my skin.

For a moment, I'm living in a world that doesn't need to advertise gayness because straightness isn't default. If I want to see myself, I don't need to scour tiny, curated lists for scraps. It's just there.

When the movie finishes, I follow my friends outside, talking with an enthusiasm that I rarely experience, that I hardly know what to do with. Ella Enchanted has been officially stripped of its favourite movie status.

‘Hang on,' Sophie says, ‘you didn't know he was gay before now?'

‘No,' I say. ‘My parents didn't listen to his music when I was growing up, so I never heard anything about him.'

My friends give me endless shit about it, but I'm grateful for the ignorance that left me overwhelmed and breathless and limitless.

Even if it is baffling that I made it into my twenties without knowing Elton John is gay.

 

© Jesse Galea

 

This story was first published in Ourselves: 100 Micro Memoirs by Night Parrot Press (2024).

 

 

Jesse Galea is a checkerboard-wearing spreadsheet enthusiast whose writing has appeared in the queer speculative YA anthology An Unexpected Party and litmags like #EnbyLife, Portside Review and Pulch Magazine, among others. They can be found posting countless photos of his cat and occasionally talking about books on Instagram @JesseGalea_

 

www.nightparrotpress.com