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CAIN
(2028)
"YOU MOTHERFUCKER."
I'm running after the ice cream truck in a full-on white tux, sweating out of my ass. The July heat is sweltering.
"Cain, shut the fuck up!" shouts Atlas as he chases after me like the lovesick idiot he is, clad in a matching black one. "There are children out here."
True to his word, my eight-year-old little sister Liv lags several feet behind us, yelling for us to wait up, she's got little legs. Livvy's the entire reason we're in this predicament. She doesn't fuck around when it comes to ice cream.
(I think the ice cream truck driver is genuinely scared of her. She has his route memorized. She knows when he's coming, and she waits for him, and she gets very, very upset when he doesn't have anymore Spongebob-shaped popsicles. Once, they were completely out of them, and she had to settle for Spiderman instead. She swears to me that she hasn't seen that particular driver since.)
As you might have guessed, my father married Bianca Mendoza after we returned to our home dimension. The ceremony was small and sweet. I was my dad's best man; Rachel Bianca's maid of honor. They combined their last names. Me and Bianca might have gotten off on the wrong foot, but that last year or so I spent living at home was pretty great. She wasn't some evil step-mother. And, like, two years after their marriage, Bianca had little Livna Mendoza-Terranova. I live-Tweeted her birth and made the local news. It was awesome. Anywho, she's the first (and only) legitimate child of my dad's, so go her. And go him for having three children with three different women, one of whom is still in prison. Love you, mom.
I seriously love Liv. She's the cutest thing in the entire world, but she's a handful. Crazy smart like Rachel and her mom, but, like me and our dad, always getting into trouble. She skipped first grade, but just last week she was kicked out of summer camp for giving a boy a black eye. That girl is something else. I'd do anything to protect her.
A brief spiel on Rachel while on the topic of my sisters: she graduated summa cum laude from Stanford and was immediately picked up by NASA. She's worked there for the past two years, and I know she's some kind of engineer, but I honestly couldn't tell you what she does. It's "classified." I hope it's something to do with aliens. She also told our dad that she's bisexual and he took it swimmingly. She lives in Huntsville, Alabama with two dogs and a cat. We Skype a lot. I miss having her around.
And speaking of my dad: he shut the Villa down before he married Bianca. This old Italian restaurant in Berlin, Mama Abbatelli's, was looking for new owners. The old one was like three-hundred years old and dying. Dad and his forever-business-partner, Eva Villa, somehow managed to be the highest bidders. They're still running it today.
"That man isn't gonna rob me of an ice pop," I grumble, suddenly catching a burst of speed.
What, did you think I was out here trying to make my little sister's day by getting her her favorite ice cream, no matter what it costs me? No. I want this for me and only me. This is my day.
The truck makes a sharp turn. The driver leans his head out the window, suddenly seeming to realize that he has two grown men and a soon-to-be-third-grader hot on his trail. Easy kills.
"HALT, SLUT!" I order the innocent man. Then I turn to Liv. "That's a nasty, nasty word and you're never to use it, understand?"
The car finally stops.
"Okay." Liv breaks out in a toothless grin. "Slut."
"What can I get for you?" asks the driver. He seems a little nervous. Probably because I just called him a slut.
"A cherry ice pop, please. I'm sorry for calling you a slut. You seem like a respectable man. You were just getting in the way of me and my ice pop." I tilt my head back towards Atlas and Liv. "What do you guys want?"
"SPONGEBOB!" shrieks Liv, who has no manners and was raised in a barn. She's jumping up and down out of sheer excitement.
"May I please have a Spongebob popsicle?" Atlas corrects her.
"May I please have a Spongebob popsicle, slut?" Liv repeats. She mumbles the last word under her breath, and Atlas doesn't hear it, but I do. I shoot her a stern look.
"Good girl. And may I please have a strawberry shortcake bar?" Atlas asks, all proper and shit. I cannot handle this man.
The man nods solemnly and roots through the freezer. "You all are dressed awful fancy, aren't ya?"
Liv grabs at her purple dress. "My papà tells me not to comment on other peoples' appearances."
"Don't mind her," Atlas tells the guy, beaming. "It's our wedding day."
My dad and Bianca aren't the only two getting married. Meredith and Silas got married a couple years ago and moved to Atlanta. They both made it pretty big. She's a Democrat Georgian representative, and he works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And, most importantly, me and Atlas are getting married. Like, TODAY. What the fuck. I'm still kind of in shock. I can't believe I'm marrying my best friend and the love of my life. My gay heart is so happy.
We were actually in the middle of the ceremony when Liv and I heard the ice cream truck and took off running and, like the good soon-to-be-husband that he is, Atlas followed after us. Probably to make sure that neither of us ran out into oncoming traffic. As in, all of the groomsmen and women had been walking down the aisle, trailed by Liv, the flower girl. They're gonna get a real surprise when neither me nor Atlas show up. Oh, and my dad will probably lose his shit when Liv goes missing. Considering everything that me and Rachel put him through, he's raised her with a heavy hand.
I know I told you that Liv doesn't fuck around when it comes to ice cream, but neither do I.
"Oh, well, congratulations." The man deals out the good stuff. He doesn't look happy for us; he looks confused as to why we're chasing after an ice cream truck with a little girl on our wedding day.
Atlas tries to pass him a twenty.
"No, no, no, it's on me," the man shakes his head. "It's your big day. You shouldn't have to pay for anything."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive. Enjoy your ice cream, and enjoy the rest of your life." That's ominous, right? It's not just me reading too much into things?
We thank him, and then Liv's off. She rips her wrapper off, shoves her Spongebob into her mouth, and starts running back off towards the Stonewall. Yes, as in the Stonewall. Yes, as in the gay bar where the Stonewall riots took place. Me and Atlas are getting married at the place where the most pivotal event in queer history occured. Wack.
When I proposed to him a year ago, his devout Catholic grandmother was, to say the least, displeased. Not only was her precious grandson going to marry a Jew, but he was going to marry a man. She'd known that we were dating, but she never thought it was all that serious; she thought it was just some phase that would pass and one day he would settle down with a nice Catholic woman and have nice biological Catholic children. You should have seen her face when he told her that a) he was converting to Judaism and b) he was marrying me. She told us that she would only come to our wedding if it wasn't that gay.
But his mom stood up for him. She kept asking her how the gays are ruining marriage when she's been divorced three times and widowed twice, and then she started yelling at her about how all Catholics started off as worshippers of this pagan god or that and religious conversion is a natural part of moving forwards as a society. Atlas and his mom might have hit a rough patch when we were in high school, but today their relationship honestly couldn't be stronger.
Back to his grandma: naturally, we decided to have the Gayest Wedding Ever. At first, our plans consisted of having our groomsmen and women dressed in all colors of the rainbow, renting some gay bar as our venue, and only playing queercore during the reception. Oh, and perhaps getting married in drag.
But then we discovered something magical: the Stonewall riots took place in a gay bar. And do you know where that bar happens to be? IN NYC!
Honestly, I didn't know that. Atlas claims he did, but I think he's just lying to save his pride since he teaches APUSH and doesn't want to admit that he didn't know something about American history, especially something so close to home. Before we found out about the Stonewall Inn, I'd hardly known anything concrete about Stonewall. I'd known that it was important to queer history and I'd known that it involved throwing bricks. That was all.
But did you know that the Stonewall was originally owned by the Mafia? Or that the bar had been raided repeatedly by the police, and standard procedure was as followed: the female officers would take all feminine-presenting patrons to the restrooms in order to "verify their sex," and anyone caught with a penis under their dress was arrested? Or that they started singing We Shall Overcome before the riots started? Or that the harbinger of Stonewall wasâdisputablyâa black lesbian and self-proclaimed "guardian of lesbians in the [Greenwich] village" named Stormé DeLarverie, whose assault by police officers incited the riots? Or that Stonewall wasn't your average Joe gay barâit welcomed drag queens, transgender people, effeminate men, butch lesbians, male prostitutes, and homeless youth: the poorest and most marginalized members of the LGBT community? Or that the fighting was largely carried out by black trans women? Or that, in order to fight against the phalanx of NYPD's Tactical Patrol Force, the protestors formed a kick-line?
Seriously, the last one is my favorite fact. I love queer history. It's such a shame that so much of it is swept under the rug.
Anywho. I'm getting off-topic. You're probably wondering why I was so excited to find out that Stonewall happened in NYC, since I was living six hours away in New Hampshire the last you heard from me. Well. I'm not sixteen anymore. I don't live at home. I actually moved out when I was eighteen, but I stayed in Warwick through college. That's right: through college! I ended up going to college, and it was seriously the best decision I ever made. You heard it right here, folks: stay in school and get a higher education. It's so totally worth it.
I ended up going to Androscoggin, this community college in Warwick, and majoring in criminal justice. Which, I know, it sounds ridiculous. I don't know how often I used to say "fuck the police," but now fuck it, I am the police. I figured that I might as well put my own sketchy past to good use and use what I learned on the streets to track down other law-breakers. Plus, I kind of feel like I'm the Ron Swanson of the NYPD. Like, a lot of cops are corrupt and I hate them, but if I have my badge, that's one less corrupt cop on the streets, right? Also I get to carry a gun on the job and no one will yell at me for eating a dozen donuts by myself.
I joined Atlas in NYC after I graduated. He went to Columbia (I'm so proud, my boy's an Ivy Leaguer!) andâas to be expectedâstudied education and history. He got a job teaching US history at an inner-city high school and was eventually promoted to teaching APUSH. He's in charge of their GSA. As for me, I started my career as a measly patrol officer, but I've made my way up the ranks. Today I work as a police detective, solving crimes and putting thugs behind bars. It's pretty badass, if I do say so myself.
Back to reality: your local badass cop is struggling to open his ice pop. He's also making fun of his little sister behind her back. And there's the whole thing about how he walked out on his own wedding to track down the ice cream truck. He should also probably stop speaking in third person. Anywho. Here's how I'm making fun of Liv: "Yes, little girl, lick every inch of Spongebob's delicious flesh."
"Never speak again," Atlas orders, sliding open his strawberry shortcake bar. He takes a bite off the top which, yes, is definitely a purposeful innuendo.
"Buy my silence. Permanently. For only $8,000 a month, I will stop."
"So I just have to pay eight grand to shoot you in the head? Where do I sign up?"
Every healthy relationship is built on love and mutual respect.
I roll my eyes at him and thrust my ice pop into his hands. "Open this."
Usually, Atlas is the one that needs things opened, not the one to do the opening. In typical fashion, he tries, fails, and gives up. "I literally can't."
I stick my tongue out at him, and he responds in the classiest manner possible by miming sucking a dick with his popsicle.
"YOU GUYS, WHAT THE FUCK?"
Meredith's waddling out of the inn, seven months pregnant and dressed in a forrest green ballgown. We might not be getting married in drag, and Dad might have not allowed us to play nothing other than queercore during our reception, but we still went with the all-rainbow themed outfits for our groomsmen and women. And Meredith's Atlas's best woman, so she got first pick on the color. She claimed the green matches her eyes, but that's ridiculous; her eyes are a brownish hazel at best.
Oh, also she's seven months pregnant. Which means that her daughter's gonna be a Virgo, which is hilarious, since her last name'll be Virgo-Darling. No one will believe her. I can't wait. I also can't wait to have another little god-baby. Even though I genuinely don't know why Meredith and Silas wanted me and Atlas to be their kids' godparents, considering that we're not Christian. But I guess the sentient is sweet, and I do love their first kid, three-year-old Ethan, to death. He calls me Uncle C and Atlas Uncle Attie. It's adorable.
I hope there's kids in our future, our own kids. Adoption's more than a viable option. I just want to be able to have a family of our own, to grow old together and retire to Vermontâyou know, Gay Florida.
But right now, this is enough for me.
"Ice cream?" I offer her my ice pop. "A little help here?"
She glares daggers at me. "It's your wedding, and both you two assholes walked out on it!"
Atlas frantically gestures at me with his thumb. "It was Cain's idea!"
"Shut up! It was Livvy's!"
Meredith crosses her arms over her chest. "You followed your eight-year-old sister out of your own wedding."
I shrug. "She could have gotten hit by a car."
Silas comes running out, thankfully less angry than his wife. He just seems nervous and confused, which is, honestly, his constant state of being. He's in a bright red tux and because he's my best friend in the entire galaxy other than Atlas is, of course, my best man. Together, the two of them look like Christmas.
"You guys, what's wrong?"
"Ice cream." Atlas sadly replies.
"Well, you need to get your asses back in there!" Meredith orders.
"We will!" I say. "Go back inside, we'll be right there. I need a moment."
Meredith stalks away, grumbling. Silas follows her, shooting us an encouraging grin.
Atlas grabs hold of my hands. "Babe, are you all right?"
I nod, putting my chin on top of his head. "Mhm, I'm just so . . . happy."
"Me too." He kisses my neck. "I can't believe we're actually doing this."
"It's kind of humbling that we're doing it here, you know? Like, this is where it all began. This is where people fought and died for our rights, so we could do this. So we could exist in public."
"It's humbling that we're able to do it at all."
"I know. I seriously love you so much. I'm so lucky."
"I love you, too. More than anything else in the world." He takes a step back. "Now, let's get in there, okay?"
We toss our ice creams in the trash can without even having had a chance to eat them and walk inside. My dad and Atlas's mom immediately greet us, chastising us for running off; the entire congregation turns to stare at us. Up front, the blue of the rainbow of groomsmen and women circled around the chuppah, Rachel rolls her eyes at us. Meredith and Silas are adjusting themselves on either side.
Just before the doors shut, I look out at the Village, something painful and happy stirring inside of me. I can feel the energy of this little Lower Manhattan neighborhood, the history pulsing through the cracks in the sidewalk, the air crackling with heat and love and life.
Across the street, a hijabi in a wheelchair cranes her neck to look at the buildings, obviously a tourist; young, innocent, wide-eyed. Not yet with the scent of gasoline rubbed in her nailbeds, not yet with blood dripping from her fingertips. Am I reading too much into it? Could it even be her?
The doors shut. The girl's gone.