This, the Toastiest piece ever written, is brought to you by our own Tia Baheri on behalf of Abigail, who really doesn’t need more Navy in her closet this holiday season.
It’s 9PM on a Tuesday and I’m in a U-Haul cargo van with my two female-bodied romantic partners riding fifty minutes outside of Boston to look at the king-sized bed Victoria found on Craigslist that will hopefully, as Finn puts it, “withstand the force of our lovemaking.” We’ve already exhausted every possible joke involving lesbians and U-Hauls (which are especially amusing because none of us identifies as a lesbian, and two of us don’t even always identify as women), and are now trying to remember the words to “Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong” for an impassioned impromptu singalong after we swiftly deem the Soft Rock station not schmalzy enough for our current mood/s.
“There are like, eagles in it,” says Victoria, who’s driving and therefore powerless to Google lyrics. “And mountains high.”
“Hold on,” says Finn, who has crammed his/her 5’3” embodiment into the open area between the two front seats that’s probably meant for a suitcase. She/he finds the song on his/her phone and we’re in business. We even manage bizarre bluegrass-style harmonies that are an affirming surprise to everyone. Finn kisses Victoria on the shoulder and it hits me. Holy fuck. We’re all buying a bed together.
I’ve been dating Victoria and Finn for six months. I generally sleep over at their place between three and five nights a week, but they only have a full-sized bed, and I’m horribly allergic to the two puffy cats that live in that part of the house. I therefore hardly ever set foot in the bedroom.
Problem-solvers we are, we’ve all had sex together mostly on a queen-sized blow-up mattress in the living room. We navigate actual sleeping in various configurations of 1:1:1 or 2:1 or 3:0 on the bed, blow-up mattress, and/or sofa. It’s worked out up to this point, but now that the manic wave of wanton, heedless snuggling that comes with new relationships is wearing off, this arrangement is starting to cause problems. The upstairs neighbor has taken issue with the noise from the living-room hookups, and has started banging on the floor with a broom like a cardigan-wearing curmudgeon in a seventies sitcom. Not to mention banishing one partner to a transient blow-up mattress when it’s time to sleep doesn’t exactly enkindle a sense of trust and equality within a three-way relationship. We all decided that if this is going to continue (which, we all decided, it is) we needed to be grown-up queers and do one of the things grown-up queers do best: buy second-hand furniture.
Victoria parks the U-Haul and we stand in front of a picturesque New England house with a “For Sale” sign in front. Finn and I are both in half-drag, wearing men’s shirts and blazers. Victoria, who is more typically seen in three-inch heels holding a martini, is in yoga pants, Danskos, and a hoodie. She’s brought her tool kit. When Victoria brings tools, you know it’s serious.
Newburyport is an upper-middle class coastal suburb that reminds me of the conservative midwestern suburb where I grew up. The woman who answers the door is everything I think of as heteronormative. Straight mousy brown hair, slumped shoulders, thin lips. The house’s interior is fifty shades of beige, and the television is mindlessly on in the living room even though no one is in the living room. Every surface is antiseptic. This is the type of place I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to forget exists.
Victoria makes adept small talk with this woman, Joan, while we walk up the stairs. Joan performs the New England traditional courtesy of pretending to be surprised by the late-October chill and Victoria puts her at ease by pretending to pretend to be surprised.
At last, we enter the bedroom and see it: a heavy maple sleigh bed, elegant in spite of its beige surroundings. Victoria sets to inspecting it while Joan, Finn, and I remove the mattress and box springs. I can feel Joan try not to linger too curiously on the two drag kings and ladyfag all shopping together for an enormous bed. We may as well be holding a sign that says, “Exactly what it looks like.”
We prop the last box spring against the wall and stand there. Joan says, “Are you all from Boston?”
The three of us exchange glances. We don’t know how out we want to be here. It would be horrifically annoying if straight-laced, cow’s-milk-drinking Joan were so offended by our lifestyle/s that she refused to sell us the bed. Finally, I say, “I live in Cambridge.” Joan nods and watches Victoria as she examines three deep grooves on the side of the headboard.
“I mentioned those in the ad,” Joan says. “I wasn’t trying to hide them or anything.”
Victoria smiles and nods and touches a gap between the headboard and bed frame. “I’ll just need to make sure this fits together properly before I buy the bed.” Joan is visibly unnerved by Victoria’s scrutiny.
“So you’re selling your house?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah,” Joan says. “You wanna buy it?” She laughs stiffly, then says, “I’m moving in with Denny.”
Before anyone can ask who Denny is, a short, blond bulldog of a man enters with a screwdriver. “Hey, d’ya need me to take the bed apart?” he says in a barking New England accent. He looks at the three of us like a dilettante birder trying to classify a murder of yeti crabs, then walks past and starts to unscrew the headboard from the frame. Victoria asks Denny to show her that the bed can fit together properly and he ignores her and continues to unscrew. Finn and I look at each other. We hate Denny.
“Once again,” Victoria says in her loudest, most authoritative man-voice, “I just need to see that these parts fit together before I spend money on this.”
Denny responds. He looks at the gap. “Oh, yeah,” he says to Joan. “It looks like this wasn’t put together right when you moved it in.”
Joan looks worried she might lose the sale. “Oh, that could have been the movers. Or Steve.”
Denny rolls his eyes. “Steve,” he says with the particular disdain reserved for a new boyfriend regarding an ex-boyfriend. Then he starts to bang on the bed frame with an open palm trying to force the two pieces together. It doesn’t budge, so he switches to a fist and bangs harder. I’m suddenly reminded of Finn and Victoria’s upstairs neighbor with her threesome-damning broomstick. I shudder. Victoria flares her nostrils. Finn grumbles behind his/her bowtie.
Denny’s face turns red as he pounds on the wood. We can feel him becoming more and more frustrated. Finn starts to get puffy-chested in anticipation of aggro bed-construction mansplaining. She/he is ready to fight Denny the instant he barks at me or Victoria. Victoria and I can feel that he’s ready to bark the instant we do or say anything about his methods. If we don’t do or say anything about his methods, he’s going to break the bed frame, and we won’t get our bed, and Joan will be stuck with a broken bed that she can’t sell because her boyfriend, who she’s selling the bed for, broke it. Someone needs to do something.
“May I try something?” I say, kneeling down next to Denny, who’s shining with a thin layer of sweat. He stops banging, looks around at the four female-bodied people in the room, and shrugs.
“Sure,” he says.
I look at the gap in question. There are three pegs and three holes that need to line up perfectly in order for the bed to fit together that are currently not lined up. Like, not at all.
“Here,” I say, “If you wouldn’t mind just lifting up the headboard here, then I can re-angle the bed and we can slide these in here.”
Denny wants the bed out of the house as much as we do. He grunts and lifts and I re-angle and we manage to slide the pegs into the holes. Everything fits.
Victoria, Finn, and I exchange facial expressions that mean, loosely:
“Do you feel good about this?”
“Yep.”
“Yes. You?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
Victoria takes out her tools and helps Denny disassemble the bed. Finn and I carry the box springs, bed frame, and footboard down to the U-Haul.
“I don’t like the way he’s talking to you and Vic,” Finn says as we head back in for the final piece.
“He hasn’t actually done anything, Finn. Everything’s fine.”
Finn shrugs, then kisses me. “I just had to queer this place up a bit,” she/he says.
When we reach the stairs, we can tell there’s a problem. Joan, Denny, and Victoria are attempting to maneuver the headboard down the staircase, but it doesn’t seem to fit. They lift and reposition it, but it still gets caught on the wall.
“I think it must come apart more,” says Victoria.
“How did Steve get this up here?” says Denny, grunting as he lifts it again. “Did he hoist it?”
“He didn’t hoist it,” says Joan.
“He must have hoisted it.”
“I’ll get Scotty. Scotty!”
A teenage boy with short, dark hair materializes. He’s in gym shorts and an athletic t-shirt and looks like he’d been in the middle of some important teenage business when Joan called him. He moves past me and Finn to the staircase.
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Scotty, come help us get this out to the van.”
They raise the headboard enough so Scotty can get up the stairs. Scotty suggests a repositioning that Denny ignores. Denny is concerned about marking up the walls. Denny says he would sooner take an ax to the headboard and give Victoria the money for the U-Haul than mark up the walls. Denny is absolutely certain there’s no possible way to get the headboard down these stairs.
Five minutes turns to ten minutes, then twenty. Finn and I can hear the frustration in everyone’s voice upstairs, but no one yells. Denny does not lash out at Joan. Joan does not snap at Scotty. Scotty does not shout, “You’re not my real father!” at Denny.
Finn and I go to hang out in the living room. The flatscreen TV sitting on the faux fireplace is playing Chopped. We check Facebook on our phones to assure ourselves our world still exists.
“His masculinity is the worst part of my masculinity,” says Finn, after a while. She/he is talking about Denny.
Finally, Denny and Scotty descend with the headboard. Victoria and Joan follow. Victoria takes out her wallet.
“Thank you so much,” Victoria says as she hands the cash to Joan. “The bed’s perfect for us. And we needed it. Our family is growing.”
Joan takes the cash and folds it awkwardly. “Oh, how great!” she says. “I guess mine is, too. Just not in the traditional way.”
Denny and Scotty pass back through to remove one more long piece of maple. Victoria nods and us and we follow her out to the U-Haul.
“I was right,” says Victoria as she reorganizes the contents of the van. “The headboard did come apart more.”
“That guy was rough,” says Finn. “I was about to bite.”
Victoria closes the back. “He wasn’t as bad of that type of guy as he could have been,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “He wasn’t nearly as bad as I was worried he would be.”
“And they all worked together as a weird little family unit pretty well,” adds Victoria. “It was a stressful situation and no one raised their voice.”
Finn shrugs. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Victoria and I kiss. “How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Good,” I say. “We have a bed.”
Victoria raises an eyebrow. “We do,” she says.
“Hell yeah, we do,” says Finn, with a smirk. “Now let’s get outta here.”
It’s 11:20PM on a Tuesday and I’m riding back to Boston with my two female-bodied romantic partners and our king-sized bed. The Soft Rock station plays “In Your Eyes.” We are all cautious and exhausted and in love.
Tags: jade sylvan, lgbt, our favourite piece ever in the world, polyamory, weird true tales
A puzzle game about fitting a queer poly triad onto a bed: http://auntiepixelante.com/triad/
Squee. We use that as a demo in nontraditional video games class. QUEERTRIS.
Is there a way to mute the music? How’s a girl supposed to watch Netflix and play the game at the same time?
I love this so much! Sounds like you have a happy and healthy family, something to admire!
What a merry christmas tale! Awesome 🙂
Amazing! Perfect Toasty Christmas present.
This is the Toastiest damn Christmas article. I’ve been sailing around Toronto camping with every member of my extended big gay family because of the power out, and it has been lovely, to know I have so many couches to qu’a coucher upon.
Lovely! I especially liked the part where no-one yelled at anyone else.
I hope your power came back!
This weather, eh?
It came back. Then the furnace went out. Then an 18″ branch crushed the van around the corner totally and the power is out again. WINTER HAS COME FOR US, AS WAS FORETOLD BY ATWOOD.
Oh man, hope your furnace gets fixed soon! We were going to go up to Ontario the day after Christmas (my in-laws have a lake house north of Kingston) but the weather foiled our plans and we stayed in upstate NY. Just think…3-4 hours south of you everything is warm and snow-less! End Times…or something.
I think this is a lovely story…except I agree that it was about as fair to the woman who sold you the bed as you expected her to be to you. When I was reading it I couldn’t help thinking that being condescending to heterosexual or even heteronormative people is entirely unfair. If people are being themselves and clearly not rude to you, why judge them so condescendingly? Perhaps she’s acting just as she feels comfortable, just as you would like to. No need to raise eyebrows or make assumptions about her just because her reality isn’t as uncommon as yours.
That aside, you guys seem like a fun, loving family. It’s inspiring to see that kind of mutual supper and teamwork.
I agree! I also read as heteronormative and am really really really not. I bet you three made Joan’s whole day. I would have been chuffed to sell you a bed. Lots of love from us straight-looking ladies, Jade!
Exactly, we don’t know anything about Joan other than she wanted to sell them a bed because she’s moving in with Donny. We don’t know who she dated before Donny or who she may be dating in addition to Donny so it’s weird to make assumptions about her that you wouldn’t want people to make about yourself.
But, like, I thought that we’d all agreed by some unspoken contract that until The Day When True Equality Comes discriminated against groups can poke gentle and harmless fun at traditionally privileged groups? I totally get your point though and it would have been uncomfortable were it not for the ending. The “moral of the story” was that no matter how your family seems from the outside, good on you if it works for you! So in the end she comes to the conclusion that Joan’s family was perfectly lovely and worked for her and that the initial impression wasn’t true. And that was really cool.
Very good!
This is lovely. I like the toast at its toastiest.
Okay fine, I’ll be the hungover impolite Grinch. This piece rubbed me absolutely the wrong way. So judgmental! I get that these strangers are not people the author wants to befriend or spend any time being around, but as far as a Craigslist furniture purchase goes it sounds pretty par for the course. Blah this was stressful to read. Yes the world can be a rough place and everyone has a strategy to deal with that but sometimes our coping mechanisms make us act like assholes.
I will be a grump with you. I was looking forward to this piece, but it really just screams queerer than thou.
I just… thought it was more about the author dealing with the feelings brought back by the appearance of the situation, which matched a situation really difficult for them because of much worse and more pervasive (and active!) prejudice than they displayed toward Joan. Like, to restate a commonplace, the prejudices of a member of an oppressed group toward a member of a predominantly oppressive group is not equivalent to the reverse in harmfulness. It was about the author’s totally understandable feelings, and then about how the particular situation played out, and then about the aftermath of that for the author.
I’ve casually spent the last 24 hours loving this piece.
Does anyone else worry constantly that their overwhelming social awkwardness might make them seem standoffish when meeting folk queerer than they? Because I know I come off as uncomfortable and/or intimidating meeting new people, and that makes me PETRIFIED I’d get dismissed as a bigot in a situation such as Joan’s.
I do feel uncomfortable with it, but I try to remember that the onus is on me to make them feel comfortable as the person with hetero privilege (sorry if this is not the appropriate term). I don’t want to make anyone else feel like the compulsion is on them to make me feel more comfortable, there all the rest of society pushing that on them.
[I’m just taking my slight irritation at the occasional “but X person of color or racial/ethnic signifier makes me feel uncomfortable, oh noes, why can’t they cater to me and my white people needs” and extending outwards, which may or may not be appropriate. Of course, everyone can use a dose of compassion, but in terms of moving through the world, some people tend to get a lot more compassion than others.]
I’m not saying X person of non-me signifier makes me more uncomfortable than anyone else, is the thing. Everyone makes me uncomfortable and awkward, which is why on the rare occasions I go to parties, I will be found looking at bookshelves and talking to cats.
But if I’m introduced to someone who shares my particular mix of gender/sexual/racial identity and come off as a standoffish weirdo, they’ll just think I’m a standoffish weirdo, and that’s OK (although it makes it difficult to make friends IRL). I’m just not sure how to differentiate that from coming off as a bigot when I’m meeting someone of a different mix, and hence make them feel uncomfortable/dismissed/disliked. It’s not on them, but it’s also sort of not on me because I can’t help it? My question was more “tell me I’m not alone” and also “does anyone in this same predicament have tips “?
One of the great blessings of awkwardness, I think, is that awkward people come in all shapes, colors, and sexual orientations. This means: a) awkwardness has an equal chance at being identified or mistaken for something else by any given random subset of people and b) it is entirely possible that the person you are running into may also be very awkward, in which case, they will also want to look at bookshelves and talk to cats.
Long story short, my theory is that folks is folks and keeping that in mind is just about the best thing we can do.
Oh, okay! I was projecting a bit in my response to you because honestly, it could extend to a couple of other responses to this piece as well. My response was the crystallization of a couple of things I was thinking when reading through the thread. Sorry about that.
I’ve been in a similar place before as the standoffish weirdo (I think) and the person who thinks that they might be talking to a standoffish weirdo*. With the latter, I try to just roll with it as “maybe they’re just a standoffish weirdo and it has nothing to do with me” and try to empathize with them because fuck it, I’m not exactly Ms. Social Butterfly either. And I think you can generally get away with that as long as you don’t say anything openly (or covertly) hostile to them and whatever their non-you signifier is.
It’s hard though, because at the end of the day you’ll never know where they’re coming from and you can’t really control or make up for that. :/ So I don’t really have tips, but I hope that is somewhat reassuring. Everyone is a benign standoffish weirdo until proven otherwise!
*this phrase appeals to me, I’m not sure why.
Oh, I wasn’t offended, just realized I hadn’t expressed myself precisely enough, so thanks for that. I suppose “try to be nice and then excuse yourself to go talk to a cat” is a good default MO. (This is why I really prefer talking to people in writing.)
I’ve just reconceptualized the whole thing and have decided that being a standoffish weirdo is part of my charm. Also I have decided that if I am too queer, not queer enough, not the right kind of queer, that is someone else’s problem, not mine. Also, I like cats and books way more than I like people, which is a useful preference to have when you are a prickly aggressive standoffish weirdo like I am. Also, judging people by what’s on their bookshelves is one of life’s great pleasures.
I think this comment is probably not that helpful.
Buying furniture from an individual, going to their home, seeing it in situ, getting even a hazy sense of how it fit into their lives – and having them see the flip side of that: your own personal presentation, discussion of how it might suit you – is so weirdly intimate. This is a great example of that phenomenon.
And then it’s over and you have your bed! Congratulations!
This is stereotyping! When you stereotype race it's racism, when you stereotype sex it's sexism, when you stereotype gender, I'm not sure what to call it (genderism?) but its stereotyping like any other! You should not judge someone by their outward appearances but instead by how they treat you.
The article made me very disappointed by including that line. If the author had that thought but kept it to themselves, that would be one thing. But including it in the article gives the impression that for some reason the author believes this behavior is correct, or justified. It isn't!
Oh man, hope your furnace gets fixed soon! We were going to go up to Ontario the day after Christmas (my in-laws have a lake house north of Kingston) but the weather foiled our plans and we stayed in upstate NY. Just think…3-4 hours south of you everything is warm and snow-less! End Times…or something.
Yes, it's stereotyping. Which is a thing that we all do, every damn day, because human beings are REALLY GOOD at finding patterns (so good that we find them even when they don't exist) and because categorizing things into groups takes a lot less mental effort than getting to know each and every noun on its own terms.
We all judge other people by their outward appearance, and we all KNOW that we're being judged by our outward appearance, which is why we wear suits to job interviews and "take to the sea" shirts to Toast meet-ups. If someone's outward appearance indicates that they are a member of a group whose members have historically treated you badly, it is basic self-preservation to prepare for the same to occur again, and then be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't. I'm from a conservative suburban area originally and based on my name, appearance and default cultural expectations, when someone first meets me, they tend to assume that I am straight, cisgendered, vanilla, monogamous and Christian (even though some of those things aren't true). If that means that someone who presents as trans or queer or Jewish or as any member of any one of the many groups that get treated like shit in this country feels defensive/uneasy/unsure when showing up to buy Craigslist furniture from me, I would completely understand.
Besides, the sentence isn't necessarily about a judgement of Joan, it's about the writer's reaction and it helps give you the sense of the "fish out of water" that the author is feeling.
ETA: I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to defend racism or sexism here, or making serious moral/character judgements about someone by their external appearance, especially factors they can't control. But I think it is important that we recognize that we all make snap judgements about people based on the way they present themselves. Sometimes the assumptions we make are correct, sometimes they're not. Many times they say more about us and our own experiences than they do about the people we're stereotyping. But they are a part of the human condition, nonetheless.
I love that what makes this the Toastiest post ever is not just the post itself, but the thoughtful yet respectful discussion in the comments. <3 u, my Toasties, happy New Year!
I love that what makes this the Toastiest post ever is not just the post itself, but the thoughtful yet respectful discussion in the comments. <3 u, my Toasties, happy New Year!
Hi everyone. I understand this criticism. I intentionally made my judgment of Joan a little harsh at the beginning to show that in my expectation of being discriminated against, I engaged in discriminating behavior. By the end of the story, I feel like the family we visited showed me that I had judged them too harshly. I feel like it's important for me to be honest about my own assumptions as a means to start dialogue. This is really a story about sameness, not difference. I hope that comes across. Love!
I would like more stories from you, Jade Sylvan. You are fascinating.
it came across fine! some people, when they see something that makes them uncomfortable, they get on the defensive and that takes a hit on their reading comprehension. I too noticed the judgmental-ness, but by the end I realized what you were trying to say and really appreciated it as a result 🙂
I just… thought it was more about the author dealing with the feelings brought back by the appearance of the situation, which matched a situation really difficult for them because of much worse and more pervasive (and active!) prejudice than they displayed toward Joan. Like, to restate a commonplace, the prejudices of a member of an oppressed group toward a member of a predominantly oppressive group is not equivalent to the reverse in harmfulness. It was about the author's totally understandable feelings, and then about how the particular situation played out, and then about the aftermath of that for the author.