“They’re beautiful,” the clerk says. “Who are they for?” In this socially-oppressed, medieval-minded neighborhood, you can’t get away with being gay, so he lies. With his tongue in cheek and his eyes clear, he simply replies, “For my girlfriend,” with his face straight as ever. He thinks it’s ironic that he just thought that, but he tries to push the sentiments aside. Calling his boyfriend a ‘she’ doesn’t further diminish his masculinity, as there is a ‘he’ in the ‘she,’ so there isn’t anything to worry about, right? “Have a good day,” the clerk says, passing money into the man’s hand. He nods and leaves. He drives home with his hands on the wheel and his mind in the sky. His heart feels as though it will fall out of his chest and it aches like it’s been struck with a metal hammer. Bang, he imagines, it crushing his ribcage and hitting his soul, and boom he thinks, for he has just delivered upon himself a horrible realization. It is their three-year anniversary.
