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Ultimate Fantasy 92 Banana Split

Let me begin by telling you my ultimate fantasy.

It begins innocently enough. I was fifteen. I had just come in from an all-night cram school for gifted children in Columbus, Georgia. At breakfast I ordered a banana split with extra coconut shreds. As I was finishing my banana split I looked at my plate. I noticed a small, semi-circular object in the middle of the split. Immediately I knew what it was. I picked it up, marveling at the shape, and then immediately, without thinking, I removed it from my plate and ate it.

Nine months later, I was in the kitchen of a motel in McKinney, Texas. I had just gotten in from a four-day clinic in Arizona and was on my way back to the town of Tyler, where I was to attend my junior year of high school. As I made my way to the lobby to pay the bill, I noticed two gentlemen waiting for me. As I passed by, passing them, I noticed they were both beginning to laugh. I turned and, noticing they were all wearing dark suits, I asked who they were. Immediately they recognized me as the gay student who had just been beaten up. As I passed them again, another gentleman asked who I was. Immediately I understood. I was in the process of becoming famous.

The next morning, I found out that my story had gone viral and was being read by millions.

The next day, my mother, who had known me since I was four, called me into her office. She was a registered nurse and not exactly tech savvy, but she knew a story when she saw one. She said that in the third grade, when I came down with a cold, my mother took me to a doctor and asked him which shampoo to use. The doctor told her he did not know, of course, and she asked him what brand. He told her Tide, of course. Her eyes lit up. She asked him to describe her. He told her she looked like a swimming pool, big and blue, with sparkly sparkles that matched the blue of her skin.

My mother was speechless.

It was a beautiful sentiment, sweet and simple yet powerful. A sentiment that still rings true for me and so many others who suffer through the shame of our sexuality.

My mother looked at me with such pity. I knew the shame I carried inside me. I knew I could never be like her. She looked at me, smiled, and asked me if I wanted coffee. I told her no. She then asked me if I wanted lemon Coke. I told her no.

Seed

In this chapter, I share a number of stories from my experiences of becoming-queer, of methodological anarchism. these stories are not true, for I am in agreement with the notion that there is ‘no such thing as a true story’. Nor do they follow a single line of direction or desire; they connect to each other in many ways. they form a rhizome. In sharing these stories, I do not have a simple message or a particular argument to convey. Like Ursula Le Guin, ‘I wish, instead of looking for a message when we read a story, we could think, “Here’s a door opening on a new world: what will I find there?”’

Let me begin by telling you my ultimate fantasy. . .

Corpus

Credits

Prompt adapted from Queer Methods and Methodologies

· queer, GPT-2, RunwayML