In the pool hall, my sweetheart and a close friend tease me one night: “unimpressive,” “pure luck,” “you aren’t that good.” They were trying to get my ire up so that an hour later when I told them to stare into each other’s eyes as I fucked my sweetheart’s body, I would mean it with a snarky competitive vengeance, I would mean it with power and control, I would be pushed to take what I want.

I have every faith in you, baby butch. I know you will be careful with this word and its legacy. It looks like a badge but it feels like a battleaxe, and I need you to know that it’s five times as difficult to earn and ten million times more dangerous.

Why is it that time and time again, people act like they can’t make me uncomfortable? That as a butch — as well as a queer person, a top, someone who likes to flirt and be sexual just like most human beings — it’s impossible to sexually harass me?

Anxiety on a butch is no different than anxiety on anyone else, but somehow I feel an immense shame as a result of the two’s interactions.

12. Do your goddamned laundry.

“That’s what you wish you could tell her when you’re staring at your shoes or finishing that drink or pretending there’s nothing else to say.”

“If I wear my heart on my sleeve – and I do these days, much to the shock and dismay of a butch gone prematurely tender – then the sleeve itself is my masculinity.”