The butch and the faerie festival

One Saturday, a butch went to a May Day celebration held on a small farm in rural Pennsylvania.  The event was actually called the “Faerie Festival,” and many attendees came in costume.

The butch went because it was supposed to be a nice spring day, and she wanted to spend time with her girlfriend.  Her girlfriend was a babe.  Plus, they always had really good black bean quesadillas and lemons with peppermint stick straws, which made the butch smile.

While they were waiting in line to enter the festival, the butch spotted elves with pointy rubber ears and faeries with wings made from wire and panty hose.  There were knights in chainmail and ladies in waiting in long velvet gowns.  The green men covered themselves with leaves and mud and sticks.  The garden gnomes carried small plastic watering cans and wore tall pointy hats fashioned from sheets of red felt.

The butch wore jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers.

Soon after she entered the festival, the butch was jumped by a pair of elves, a rogue troll with bright green horns and three faeries.  The butch was strong but there were too many of them.

The faeries threw something in her direction that caught the light as it floated down on her like snow.

“We thought you could use some faerie dust,” one of the elves said.

“Yeah,” the other elf said.  “You’re so plain.  No wings, no horns, no sparkle, no nothing.”

The fairies laughed in their high-pitched faerie voices.

“What are you supposed to be?” the troll asked.  “A person?  Ha!”

The butch stood up and tried to brush the sparkles from clothes and hair.  But, as glitter does, it clung to her shirt and her face and her hair.

The glitter took the butch back to the 70s and reminded her of the pink and yellow T-shirts in the girls’ department emblazoned with decals of unicorns and rainbows and that damn “Thank God It’s Friday” cat.  She thought about glittery nail polish that sparkled as bright as the night sky and Bonnie Bell lip gloss that smelled like extra ripe strawberries and left an iridescent glow.  She thought about My Little Pony, Barbie in a silver sequined ball gown, a girl’s bicycle with shiny streamers erupting from the handlebars like fireworks frozen in plastic.

Even as a child, the butch preferred sports jerseys with their boxy cut and primary colors.  And eyeblack that she wore like war paint on game days.

The butch pushed the troll because he was standing in her way.

“Hey, you don’t have to get so angry,” he said.  “It’s just dime-store glitter.”

But the butch knew better.

Question for Discussion