#i started thinking about it because of television families and their fall away from subject-oriented ontology

[vermiculated]

His newfound “transparent, peerless power . . . required no object at all.” No need of others, no object at all: This is what you might call a highly subject-oriented ontology. But unlike the Kantian subject—the individualist “I”—the fascist subject is plural, as Mishima will eventually discover.

Meanwhile, he is pursuing an impossible holy grail: a sensorium without a brain. “Oh, the fierce longing simply to see, without words!” Perception without thought is the necessary precursor to the “ultimate sensation,” “the essence of something extremely concrete, the essence, even, of reality.” Representation in any form, including language, is a “dubious” diversion from sensory experience. As for expression—the representation of emotions, individual consciousness, interiority—it’s “a crime of the imagination.”

Elizabeth Schambelan, In the Fascist Weightroom

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: You sound like a remarkable woman out of her time. Your posts suggest you are modern and feminine yet your cultured intelligence and cleverness seems from an earlier lost time. Would you prefer to be living in 18th Century Georgian England? One imagines you would fit right in as a heroine in Jane Austen’s Regency world of aristocratic manners and clever barbs over tea in the drawing room.

I had to smile to myself a little because the last thing I ever saw myself was a Jane Austen character. I certainly don’t see myself as heroine of Austen’s world. After all don’t most if not all of Austen’s literary heroines spend their time pathetically pining away for the socially aloof and yet heroically vulnerable gentlemen they profess to love, men who are usually too dense to know that these whining women have childish schoolgirl crushes on them? I know I’m going to angry mails now from pouting Austen fans but I have to speak my mind.

Like most people I do profess to liking a nice, cosy Jane Austen adaptation on television. The fabulous frocks, fans, feathers and finery soothe us with images of a gentler, well-mannered time when gentlemen in cravats and breeches wooed perfumed ladies across ballrooms and well-manicured lawns.

However the reality was not quite so lovely. It’s not that women - like Austen’s literary women - were caught up in the social constraints of their time but also I would get restless just sitting down all day to tea and gossip. I would sooner catch the first ship bound for India and have adventures in the Orient along the way. Tea with Mr Darcy in well stuffed breeches might not be enough for me but then again a well stocked library as most landed gentry homes had would make me reconsider.

I’m fortunate that within my family we have a wealth of diaries, correspondence, private papers, and other family heirlooms that go back a few centuries which we have scrupulously stored to hopefully pass onto future generations.

So when I can decipher some letters of my ancestors it gives me some insight into what life was like for them as men and women of their time. It’s not always easy to read as they loved to scribble in ink (now faded) in the margins on nearly every page of the books they read. And so the penmanship is stylish but minuscule and therefore sometimes hard to make out. The letters are somewhat more legible but it requires patience and perseverance to make sense of what they were writing about. It’s a wonderful way to flesh out the genealogical tree with titbits of personal anecdotes that could be perfunctory, mundane, scandalous, salacious, romantic, and even political.

I’ve read Jane Austen like every other girl at boarding school I imagine. I like her writings but I wouldn’t say my heart is in it to actually live through that time.

Life for Georgian women, even of high birth, was harsh enough in a time when men still held all the power and husbands could beat and even rape their wives. Noblewomen caught diseases passed on from their husband's prostitutes and were still subjected to confinement and the barbaric medical practice of bleeding when pregnant. Even their fashions and frippery provided cold comfort when their make-up poisoned them, unwashed dresses and undergarments stank and their fancy foods made their teeth rot and fall out.

The fact that women did survive and even thrive is a testament to their strength and fortitude which I find admirable. 

I’m used to mud and sweat and even living rough because as ex-army officer I was trained to suck it up but it’s also in my nature because I love going rough when I hike or climb mountains or trek to other places off the beaten track. So I’m not squeamish so long as at the end of the day I can bathe or shower my aches away and I can put on a fresh change of clothing. However even I recoil in some horror when I consider that despite their elegant appearance, Georgian women carried a world of stench. While hands and faces would be washed daily, immersive bathing was considered bad for the health and was only indulged in occasionally.

The heavy gowns of the period would have caused the wearer to sweat profusely, with only perfumes such as rose water and orange blossom to mask the smell. The clothes themselves would also be pungent. Due to the huge amount of work involved in laundering, most households would have a maximum of one wash-day a month. Linen undergarments were changed as often as possible, but their "clean" smell would still be unappealing to us. Linen was often bleached in chamber lye, a kind of soap made from ashes and urine.

As if bodily odour was not bad enough, there was also the whiff of rotting teeth. A sugar-rich diet led to frequent tooth-decay in the upper classes. Cleansing tooth-powders had started to emerge but most of these featured "spirit of vitriol", known to us as sulphuric acid, and stripped teeth of their enamel. Often the best remedy for smelling teeth and bad breath was to chew herbs such as parsley. Where a tooth was past hope of redemption, it would be pulled with pliers or a tooth key, a claw that would fix to the teeth so it could be loosened in the jaw. To avoid a gummy smile, ladies of fashion sought false teeth made from ivory or porcelain but, where possible, they preferred to have "live" teeth in their dentures. Poor people were encouraged to sell healthy teeth for this purpose. While such a practice was unethical, it was better than the other method of sourcing human teeth: pillaging them battlefields and graveyards.

Georgian women were renowned for their snowy faces and dark eyebrows but achieving the fashionable skin tone could be extremely dangerous. White face powders were lead-based and some also featured vinegar and horse manure. Years of coating the entire face, shoulders and neck with such a mixture could lead to catastrophic consequences. Society beauty Maria Gunning died at the age of just 27, having spent her life addicted to cosmetics. Lead-poisoning could cause hair loss and tooth decay but ingeniously, these problems were elegantly adapted into the fashion and it became desirable to have a high forehead and pencil-thin eyebrows. If your own eyebrows failed you completely, you could always trap a mouse in the kitchen and use its fur to make a new artificial pair.

I usually wear my hair straight or tied up in a bun so I don’t fuss too much over my hair. This would certainly be out of place if I lived in Georgian times. Georgian ladies were the mistresses of big hair. They piled their frizzed and curled locks over pads or wires to create show pieces for the drawing room. Often their own hair was not sufficient and had to be supplemented by horse hair and false pieces. Styles from the 1760s were domed or egg-shaped, elongating into the pouf in the 1780s. But Georgiana, the infamous Duchess of Devonshire, had to take things a step further. She introduced the three-foot hair tower, ornamented with stuffed birds, waxed fruit and model ships. Following her example, women competed with one another to make the tallest headdress. Since these styles were costly and took hours to arrange, they were worn for several weeks. Ladies had to sleep sitting up and travel on the carriage floor to avoid spoiling their creations. With no combing possible, lice were inevitable so a special scratching rod was invented for irritated ladies to poke into their piled up hair.

It wasn’t any real fun being a woman and I often think Jane Austen is selling a false bill of goods in her books. You never see women in her novels deal with their menstrual problems. No one has proved for certain what they did, if anything, for sanitary hygiene. With no knickers to hold in strips of linen or rag, they were left to Mother Nature’s mercy. I can imagine that being a conversation stopper in the drawing room over tea with the vicar and his prissy wife. Their toilet habits were a little more civilised. When ladies at the royal court were caught short, they resorted to porcelain jugs much like a modern-day gravy boat. This contraption, called a bourdaloue, was stuffed up beneath the skirts and clenched beneath the thighs. Apparently it was quite normal for a lady to continue her conversation while urinating into the device! I think Jane Austen missed a trick by not having at least one scene with Elizabeth Bennet urinating under her skirts whilst trading clever barbs with Mr Darcy.

Speaking of which marriage was not a box of chocolates in the early 18th Century or indeed later in Austen’s day. Upon marriage, a lady and all her worldly goods would become property of her husband. It was therefore essential to guard a well-to-do bride’s interests with a legal marriage settlement before the ceremony took place. I read somewhere that Henrietta Hobart, later mistress to George II, had reason to be thankful for the settlement drawn up before her marriage to Charles Howard in 1706. It stipulated that two thirds of her dowry should be invested, with the interest at her sole disposal. Should Henrietta die, the funds were to pass to her children. This arrangement was to prove life-saving when her husband became an abusive gambling-addict and alcoholic.

Lower class women were known to take extreme measures to protect their future husbands from their own debts. "Smock weddings" were intended to show that the bride brought no clothes or property to the union, thus exempting each spouse from the other’s financial liabilities. The woman would be married wearing only her undergarment or smock – or sometimes nothing at all. Of course no marriage settlement, however generous, could save a woman from a violent husband and it remained legal for a man to rape or kidnap his wife. While excessive beating was frowned upon, whipping was considered a reasonable measure to discipline a wife.  Even so, it would appear many men pushed their rights beyond the limit, for laws were later amended to say a man could only beat his wife with a stick "no thicker than his thumb".

Escaping an abusive marriage then was well-nigh impossible. Divorces were so expensive that they remained the privilege of the very rich. Even if a lady did have the money to appeal for divorce, she was by no means certain of success. She would have to prove both adultery and "life-threatening cruelty". And if she won her freedom, it would come with more than just a social cost - any children from the marriage would remain property of the husband. Certainly in my family - on my father’s English side of the family - they had their fair share of scandalous behaviour that didn’t reflect well to our 21st Century minds.

Certainly the Georgians were not sexless and they enjoyed their carnal pleasures but of course being aristocratic they never did things that would publicly expose them to scandal. I was reading one such letter of an ancestor who was writing to her older sister about how hard it was for her to conceive her first child - a son naturally - that her rakish husband first took to prostitutes in an era when such things were common and the risk of infection from sexually transmitted diseases was rife. And then later settled on one mistress whom he seriously gave thought to impregnate her. However the mistress was an actress and thus such a union was frowned upon in landed gentry circles and so he was shamed back to his high born wife and to ‘try harder by God’s Providence’. The duty of any aristocratic wife was to produce a healthy son and heir but if nature did not take its course, they could seek help and so these ancestors of mine did.

Like many other aristocratic couples with trouble conceiving children they sought out quacks who made promises to cure infertility. One such person was a Dr James Graham who had invented what he called ‘The Celestial Bed’ that guaranteed conception and unearthly sexual pleasure. The bed itself was electrified and stood on insulating glass legs. The mattress was stuffed with stallion hair to increase potency. Mirrored floors and music from a glass harmonica heightened the experience, while the air swirled with exotic perfumes. Having made love on this bizarre contraption, the couple were encouraged to take ice baths and have a firm massage. The lady would also be advised to douse her genitals with champagne.

It must have worked because the family line did not die out but flourished. It proves to me that champagne is the answer to almost every question in life. A woman’s travails were not over just because she was successfully pregnant. More hazards lay in her path. Despite advances in medicine, a shocking number of medieval practices remained in the Georgian birthing chamber. The long period of rest or "confinement" leading up to the birth was still enforced for wealthy women. The rooms would be kept dark and sweltering with the expectant mother wrapped up in fustian waistcoats and petticoats. As soon as she had given birth, the room was made even hotter, with the curtains round the bed pinned and even the keyhole in the door stopped to prevent a draft. When I lived in China I discovered this is what Chinese mothers did and still do to this day. So I wasn’t so surprised when I read such a practice happened in other cultures like my own.

Those more fortunate might find themselves in a birthing chair. This had a sloped back and a semi-circle cut from the seat, designed to let gravity aid nature. It was certainly a better option than staining expensive bedding and linen. With only female relatives and an unofficially trained midwife to help, many women and their babies died in childbed, as it was known. Even when male surgeons became involved in obstetrics toward the end of the century, treatments were woefully inadequate. I read in the correspondence of one of my female ancestors that she was frequently ‘bled’ during her pregnancy. Somehow she survived any risk of post-partum haemorrhage.

Even when a birth was successful without complication the wife/mother was not out of the woods just yet. In keeping with custom in landed gentry circles of the times, the new mother would not suckle their own babies. In keeping its custom this taks was given over to a wet nurse. In the case of one of my ancestors whose correspondence I read she got a village girl from the family estates to breast feed the baby. The reason for doing so was brutally simple. Firstly, it was to ensure that the lady could conceive again as soon as possible. And secondly, Wealthier women often had difficulty breastfeeding due to their tight corsets or stays. It was also believed that a child would grow up stronger and hardier with a country-woman’s milk.

But even when the baby sprog was weaned, it was common practice for it to be handed to foster-parents until it was old enough to run about and talk. Interestingly enough Jane Austen and her siblings were fostered by a cottager in Deane village, two miles from their family home.

So overall I’m no so sure I would be thrilled to be living in the Georgian and Regency era even if it meant challenging that scoundrel Mr Wickham to a sword duel (and kicking his arse), match making with Emma, or even missing out on the pleasure of taking tea with Mr Darcy.

Sorry Mr Darcy.

Of course I’m fascinated with history and one sometimes wonder what it might be like to live in a particular time. However it’s just a flight of the imagination because to paraphrase Sir Roger Scruton I prefer to live in “the pastness of the present” rather than the past itself. This is the difference between being an historically illiterate reactionary and being a true conservative.

Thanks for your question

[hopetofantasy]

Wandering Romance

- A future with child fic -

Square Filled: Future, Family, Past lovers Ship: Sander Driesen/Robbe Ijzermans   Trigger Warnings (if applicable): none applied.   Created for @skamevents Summary: “A perfect, tight little family. But happy. Until one unfortunate day in May, in the year that David turned six.”  

In the future, Robbe and Sander have a son named David. The only tie they have left with each other, actually. Because our lovers split up years ago, due to mistakes that were made in the past.  

So is their love strong enough to sustain a healthy friendship? Will they find their way to each other again or break all connections for good?

Also available on AO3

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CHAPTER 2: 'No one sees what I see in you’

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“So this is it then?”

A beautiful boy with mesmerizing eyes lying in arms. The warmth of love. It felt like puzzle pieces finally fitting together, after months of frustration and searching for anything that might look like it. Something that had been missing for quite some time. It just didn’t add up? Long sighs, hurtful eyes, loaded silences that made them more sad than happy. Their love wasn’t strong enough to deal with this...

No, he didn’t believe that.

They were strong enough.

Just not now...

He was caressing the cheek of his lover, his best friend, his partner in crime. Another part of the pair, the amazing family they had. Fathers. Their boy. All tossed away, like it was nothing. A paper crumbled in the trash. Like they never even were. And because of what? Why? Why now? Why this? This wasn’t right. They both knew it wasn’t.

He sighed to stop the spiraling.

His hands started to clench into a fist. He was so angry at first, he was so angry and sad at the world. He was promised forever, they both promised each other that their love would survive anything. The perfect man in a beautiful white suit and him wearing the black one. Ying and yang. Always complimenting each other, begging for a deeper connection, receiving it and now cutting it away.

Like his heart.

“Is this it? Can’t we keep trying? Please?”

His eyes were staring inside those deep ones. His tanned skinned hand slightly caressing his lover’s arm. Mindlessly. They were used to pillow talk until the early morning, the sunrise. The night sky turning from dark blue to light orange hues, exactly the color he once made by accident, trying out the paint samples on his palette. A beautiful coincidence. Just like the night they met.

As if faith knew.

When the other boy didn’t answer, he just went for it. His lips trying to convey everything he felt inside the troubled mind, his hands feeling every hitched breath taken away from his other half, the softness of a wanted caress, but also the sting from nails digging in his back, the bite of pleasure, the strained movement of legs  - as if love couldn’t be felt without some pain. It suited them, he thought. Every day could be a high. Every day could be a low.

His fingers gripped the sheets of their shared bed. Sharing it for the last time.  

“Oh my god, schat”, exclaimed the one.

“I love you”, answered the other.

“I love you too”, was moaned.

“Don’t leave me, please”, was said.

A tear rolling off a heated cheek.

Kissed by soft eyelashes.

The silence that followed wasn’t wounding. It was passion, it was love, it was a high that never experienced a low. A white light behind the eyes. Stars for their lights. Something shared only between them. And never would be again.

“Let us go... please”

The whisper.

And that’s when Sander woke up from his dream.

When he started to cry.

-^-

“Papa, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, darling, always. What is it?”

“How did you and paps meet?”

Oof, that was such a loaded question for a Monday morning. And he didn’t even have his first coffee yet. His eyes instantly analyzed David’s face, which was just a pure reflection of playfulness and wonder. The tiny boy seemed to concoct something on his breakfast croissant. It looked like choco spread, decorated with speculaas cookies.

What is this? Where the hell did he get that idea? This can’t be healthy right?

“Sweetie, did you eat a hearty sandwich before shoving this in your mouth? You can’t live on sweets, you know that. You won’t grow to be a big boy, then!”

“But, papa, I like it. Can I have this, like... one time?”

Oh no, not the puppy eyes.

He was a real manipulator with those big brown orbs. The kid was 9 years old, for God’s sake, how could he be this smart? He knew exactly how to play the game to convince them of mischievous things, things that were bad for him and stuff they needed to say ‘no’ to. But it was sooo rewarding to just say ‘yes’. Just to see the beautiful grin creep up onto the face he loved so much.

Something Sander wanted to collect in a jar and pull out whenever he had his ‘cloudy days’. David didn’t understand the concept of bipolarity yet, so once he was old enough to notice something, they had sat him down to explain. “David, sweetie. You know how papa is sometimes a bit different?”, Robbe tried to approach the subject, while their son stared with unsung tears in his eyes.

“Yeah, he lies on the bed and sleeps and don’t eat and is very, very sad. I don’t understand. Does papa hate me? Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry...”

If the room was a stethoscope, the family would’ve heard a heart breaking. It was one thing that Robbe had to deal with his mania and depression. Now another innocent soul was being corrupted by his stupid brain and Sander just couldn’t deal with that. The pain he might induce, the worry in his soul almost growing too much. But as always, his other half seemed to know what to do. While holding his hand, to anchor him back to this world, Robbe explained.

“No, darling. Papa will always love you. Even if you did bad things. But now you didn’t do anything wrong, okay? You see, people have a bright sun inside them. And sometimes that happy, beautiful sun will have clouds blocking their light. Clouds who bring in bad weather, like being tired, not being hungry, not wanting to talk, have sad thoughts, just wanting to sleep all the time. And that’s okay. Because after a few days of rain, comes the sunshine, right?”

“And sometimes a rainbow!”, their beautiful boy exclaimed.

A couple of teeth missing in the front, but his smile was beaming nonetheless. It melted their hearts. “Yes,” Sander whispered softly. If he wasn’t sure about how much he loved his curly angels before, he knew now. When did he become so lucky to have such beautiful love? Him and his loving partner hugging their soft boy, giggling all together, without a care in the world. A fulfilling life.

Perfection.

“Papa, are you there?”

Sander blinked back some tears, while trying to focus on the situation at hand. David was glaring at him, already halfway through the disgustingly sweet croissant in his hands. Some crumbs were falling down the plate. And the choco paste tainting his pink cheeks. The look in his face was peculiar, like he tried to figure out what his dad was thinking. If he was going ‘cloudy’.

“David... I do remember that I never told you ‘yes’, right?”

The answer was a simple shrug.

“You didn’t answer my question about paps, either. C’est la vie.”

To say that Sander was perplexed, is an serious understatement.

-^-

When Sander was thirteen, he knew.

He wasn’t normal.

This was way before he was diagnosed with bipolarity, but that wasn’t the only thing not fitting the ‘standard normal’. He knew the boys in his class and he simply didn’t like them. They were all talking about video games, Call Of Duty: Black Ops, while eating their weight in greasy snacks and referring to girls like pieces of meat. Making jokes about what they learned from their older siblings or watching too much nighttime television.

And he didn’t.

He liked to write, he wanted to be a writer someday. And paint. Drawing was amazing. Sander loved walking around with cut jeans, graphic band t-shirts and a bleached buzzcut. One day, he’d love to have a pierced eyebrow. That was considered cool in his book. Maybe his career would be ‘rock-and-roll’ artist, since he played the drums too. Something to get his energy out.

Because he had ADHD.

At least, that’s what his doctor said. He just wanted different things than others and sometimes all at once. Was that weird? Apparently so. But he wasn’t entirely convinced about having the disorder. It sounded ill-fitting. Like a shrunken skinny jeans in the dryer, the broken mug in his room where he put his discarded pencils. It didn’t make sense.

Because he was who he was.

He liked who he was.

But who was he exactly?

He knew the day he changed schools. His mom somehow knew, the way only mothers do, that the previous school wasn’t the right fit for him. His course orientation was ‘sciences’ and he almost failed everyone of his classes. Sander was struggling to keep afloat. Almost drowning at the formulas and facts and figures. Those were more abstract to him than art. Art made sense, somehow?

And that’s why his mom send him to an art school.

There he saw people with asymmetric hair, nose rings and cut t-shirts. Girls with alluring auras, rainbow shoes and paint covered arms. Boys with mesmerizing eyes, fresh make-up and decorated backpacks. Beautiful souls who talked about art like breathing. Who understood things like writer’s block, portrait frustration and tunnel vision.

And he fell in love with them, all of them.

His people.

It took him a few years to understand what else made him special. Because he did fall in love with people’s souls, their auras, instead of a specific gender. It was a highlight in his life when he figured that one out. He finally knew another piece of the puzzle. Life was complicated, but knowing something more about yourself, made it so much easier.

His first crush was on a dark skinned boy from his drawing class. He didn’t reciprocate feelings, but liked Sander as a friend. Ekon appreciated the way Sander caught him in his art pieces. Complimented him on how he perfectly attained his off-beat smile, when someone made a joke at his expense. He was a quiet boy. But a boy, nonetheless.

And then there was Saartje. An unconventional girl, even for an art school. She seemed to walk around like an ice queen surrounded by raging fires. Hated every thing he suggested to lift her sculptures to a new level, always answering his comments with a cold stare. Such a soft girly name for such a raging bitch.

And Sander couldn’t help but fall.

Hard.

Without parachute.

But she used that to her advantage.

His love was treated as an exchange. If Sander would shut up about his newest passion called David Bowie, she’d give him a kiss. When he asked her on a date, she would think about it. Maybe if Sander could persuade the teacher to give her a better grade? And if he paid? Being the hormonal teenager he was, he obliged. And he believed. He was tricked into uncertain love.

Something he carried with him.

Especially after his eventual diagnosis. He dated Britt. He thought he deserved this kind of love. The uncertainty, the doubt, the hardships. It was all his brain’s fault, for being the way he was. Love? Love was something to be earned, not to be given. And nobody would give that up so easily for someone as broken as him.

Until that one boy,

in the moonlight.

He never saw true beauty ‘til this night.

And his heart,

did love as true again.

-^-

“Do you want any help with that?”

“Papa, I know how to make myself look like Bowie, you know.”

Sander snorted. He was truly a son of his, wasn’t he? This tiny boy was sitting on a high chair, right in front of a mirror, attempting to put on the make-up in a dramatic way. The tip of his tongue spilling out his lips, trying very hard to focus. He couldn’t stop staring at this sight, which filled him with pride. He must have taught him well.

The next generation was secured.

“Dad, stop staring at me and go find my other dad.”, David said sternly.

Ok, but who was the parent in this relationship exactly? Sometimes Sander didn't know. Yet, catching the eye of the supervisor right behind him, he was sure that everything was going to be a-okay. Maybe he did needed to find Robbe and the boys. It’ll do him some good. It had been ages since they had some real interaction that wasn’t through a phone.

It wasn’t difficult to spot them through the crowd of curious adults. The exaggerated screaming at each other was enough. Robbe had been pulled into the biggest hug by Milan, flanked by a jumping Moyo, giggling Aaron and a serious Jens. It sounded like the weirdest end of the world. But the feeling that coursed through his heart wasn’t unusual.

Pride.

For what they all achieved.

How they all stayed together.

Through hell and back.

Moyo had, somehow, become a successful club owner of a couple of nightlife establishments all around the city. From an only-known-by-initiates speakeasy to a high paid, high-end sky club, he knew what he wanted to do with his life and brought it to the table. Jens, on the other hand, went on a totally different route. After failing to start a few start-ups, he became g a video editing/sound mix freelancer and stay-at-home dad to help his lawyer-wife.

Aaron was still on the grind as a social worker, working until late at night to fight for the hardest cases. “These people deserve a happy ending”, he’d always say. And Sander couldn’t agree more.

Last but not least, Milan. The interior designer with an ecological mind. He had helped them out with the decoration of their home, which was totally picture perfect. And still cheap as f.

After the whole ordeal of greeting, Robbe seemed to have a huge smile plastered on his face. That was good, Sander though. Lately he looked so lost, certainly in Sander’s neighborhood. And he didn’t know why. As far as he knew, he didn’t say or do anything wrong. On the contrary. He’d encouraged Robbe to bring Wouter along, saying it was totally okay to find love again.

Where was that bastard, anyways?

“Heeeeeey, Jack Frost!”, the entire group turned towards him and engulfed him into an instant hug. Causing a lot of high pitched giggling, ‘omg, your hand is on my butt’-s and eye rolls. The warmth next to him was familiar, though. As was the scent. Which made his heart drum a little harder, like it wasn’t stating the obvious already. Pulling away, the electrified gaze lingered.

“How are you?”, the one asked.

“I’m good.”, the other answered.

He wanted to know more. Sander always wanted to know more. His heart never stopped beating for this boy, so everything he would say, would be engraved in his soul. His broken mind. His eternal love. That would never change. Even through the pain, he knew that they belonged together. That it was neither fault. Life just happened.

Like always.

But before he could ask anything else, a woman approached the brown haired man. Some colorful glasses, a beautiful classic dress and an intrigued smile on her face. Robbe immediately greeted her as ‘Mrs. Raymaeckers’. “I saw David backstage. Are you ready to see the performance, Mr. Ijzermans?”, she politely asked. Robbe slowly nodded his head with a careful smile.

“Ofcourse, David is going to be amazing, he was bouncing off the walls about this. I’m interested in what he’s going to play...”

“Ah yes. The David Bowie thing. He’s truly special, isn’t he? Unique in some ways.”, she giggled, while wrapping her hand around his arm. Causing a lot of heads unsubtly turning towards the gesture.

“I love how he has such a playful spirit. Does he have that from his father or his mother?”. She blinked rapidly. Auburn hair tossed over her shoulder. A beaming smile.

Wait...

Was she...

Trying to flirt with him?

A potential married man?

Sander saw how the other boys desperately held in their laughs. Some of them failed. Robbe’s cheeks reddened slightly, like he didn’t know how to answer this delicate question.

She just assumed he was straight?

That was such heteronormativity.

It irked the beach blonde man, that people could still think this way, like a child couldn’t have two fathers or mothers?

“He has that from me, actually.”

Six pairs of eyes bore into his. Most of them applauding the ballsy move on his part, one of them grateful for this way out. The last one, however, went through a whole process.

Confusion, calculation, realization and shame.

“Oh... I’m sorry.”, Mrs. Raymaeckers sheepishly stated. "I didn’t know. I just assumed... Ahem. Well, I’m gonna check the rest. Bye, Mr Ijzermans. Bye, Mr-”

“Driesen.”, he answered coldly.

“Bye, Mr. Driesen.” And with that, she was gone. As fast as the wind.

He didn’t like it.

He just didn’t.

How people could still think the way they did, how they would just come up to potential married men and flirt with them? How was that okay?

He knew he was clenching his fist, because of the pain. Fingernails making tiny half moons. It stung. Jealousy and anger tasting like poison in his mouth. His stare trying to find a fixated spot to calm his breathing.

He found it in some deep brown eyes.

A cautious smile coming towards him. He knew. Robbe always knew what Sander needed, even when he didn’t know himself. He was intuitive that way. His beautiful man, such a perfect human. The father of his child. And he couldn’t help, but sigh. Breathing slowly, heart thumping. A small caress around his fist, trying to soften the harsh ache. Only making the ache in his heart greater.

“Robbe”, he whispered silently.

“Yeah, Sander?”

He didn’t say anything more. He couldn’t. Robbe needed to live his own life, making his own mistakes, battle his own prejudices. Feeling his own real love. So Sander just stood there. Looking at the face he adored the most and he started to notice something. It almost looked like Robbe was anticipating this, was waiting for some kind of answer, some kind of truth.

And that's when they heard it.

A David Bowie lookalike coming onto the stage.

Childlike coughing in the microphone.

The first notes of a guitar riff.

The scratchy start of ‘doodoodoo''.

The song.

David Bowie.

The sign.

“You've got your mother in a whirl She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl Hey babe, your hair's alright Hey babe, let's go out tonight You like me, and I like it all We like dancing and we look divine You love bands when they're playing hard You want more and you want it fast They put you down, they say I'm wrong You tacky thing, you put them on.

Rebel rebel, you've torn your dress Rebel rebel, your face is a mess Rebel rebel, how could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so!”