Ly Rosengard
I live in a house full of light and wood panels and everyone who has never made me come. The ones that have, live in their own homes with their wives, and, in one unfortunate case, their husband. The house is very large with a garden out front full of rounded stones. There is no gate.
In this house, people bunk up, stacked on top of each other like pancakes. The ceilings are very tall so each bunk can sleep three people. It’s like a city tower, but with beds. Very space saving, much room for activities. Even so, I make sure they have a lot of privacy—little beige curtains that they can pull back and forth and doors without panels of glass in them. I want them to feel at home, so I never call it “my house.” Instead, I call it “our house.” It’s mostly semantics, but it’s something.
I used to room them chronologically, but now it’s just a free-for-all. There is only so long you can keep such a system up before it gets tedious, especially when it pertains to humans. If they complain, I hear them out, but then I always tell them: hone your craft and one day you can find a house of your own. It’s like rehab for average lovers—my very own sapphic halfway house.
I like to keep us active. We pile onto the L train like we're on a school trip and I say get ready, the next stop is ours, so that we don’t leave anyone behind. Most of us, apart from Star, take hot yoga classes together. I have to book the moment the class goes live, and even then, we fill out the whole studio. When the teacher asks how we know one another, I say women’s circus troupe. No one corrects me. I wonder if she knows that I’m the glue.
Despite the reason they’re all here, everyone gets on quite well. I like to purchase us every type of hydrating facemask at Walgreens and CVS. If I happen to pass by K-town I always pop in to buy some more. Most of us, apart from Cara, enjoy them—it’s always more fun to do skincare en masse. A little too grotesque to do alone—sad little ghouls with large eye holes and flapping tiny mouths. We play monopoly on Mondays and Fishbowl on weekends. Most of us, apart from Thyme, cackle as we try to act out phrases like “the cat sat on the mat in a hat,” and “pussy pussy pussy marijuana.” It's a collective effervescence of the Durkheimian variety. Akila is the best at it, then Rania, then Moss. If they’re all on the same team, you’re toast.
As it stands, the house is at capacity. I place a hold in my calendar and decide not to have any more sex with outside sources until some of the current people move on. At first, I want them to succeed, to press the right buttons in the right order, at the exact right time, but then I grow attached to them and almost hope they fail. They might be really good at vacuuming without being asked, or remembering when to take out the recycling, or providing light comic relief when tensions arise. But I have to remind myself this is not a forever home. Not for them.
You would think we have incorporated study nights, time for skill building and group shares, but we don’t. There was a time when Amma suggested it and people nodded, but then Amma left soon after and no one stepped up, and so we filed that along with the other ideas we do not do, like collectively raising chickens in the backyard, or that each person must sew a small 5 by 5 patch to contribute to a larger quilt.
* * *
A couple months ago it was Jessica’s birthday. Most of us, apart from Noa, stayed up all night blowing balloons and crafting papier-mâché heads. In the morning, we threw streamers into her room and blew horns, the way we usually do. But she wasn’t in her bed. Jen and Juniper—Jessica’s two bunk mates—both remember saying goodnight to her. They searched all four corners of the room, even lifting up the rug as if she had become paper thin in the night.
We split up the search force: a few upstairs, a few downstairs, a few outside, and a few assigned to digital—hashtags, WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, that kind of thing. No one could find her, so that was it. It’s not the kind of circumstance you can involve external folk in because then questions will be asked, and of course, in legal terms, Jessica is a free agent to live wherever she likes. So, after some unsuccessful searching, we strike her name off the chore chart and then put on whichever facemasks we have left and agree that if anyone else feels like leaving, to at least say goodbye, or leave a little note. No one likes a ghoster.
We’ve since had some reshuffling, but mostly the house has returned to a comfortable equilibrium. A letter was recently delivered and it's a photo of Jessica and a smiling woman, holding hands in a field at golden hour. It looks like a wedding invitation, but it’s only the front part. I look closely and notice it has been cut at the spine, providing the photo but not the invite. She seems happy. I go to stick it on the fridge, next to the other joyous couples, and as I place a magnet over her fiancée’s face, I whisper you’re welcome.
After some steamy back-to-back nights, three people leave and we wave them off, wishing them well. After some consolidation, we now have an entire empty room. Most agree we should turn it into an office, but then Darcy says she has a former lover that never made her come that has recently been evicted. Paris says they also know someone who never made them come that is in need of accommodation. Everyone suddenly has people in mind, and it triggers a whole cascade of names. I feel a knot being pulled tight inside my stomach. This whole thing was my idea, I want to say. It only functions when there is one central hinge, I want to scream. If everyone starts bringing people in, when will it end, but we all know full well that when one resorts to a slippery slope argument, the other side has already won.
That night, I sleep with a knife under my pillow, and I sleep like a baby. In the morning, I go down to the kitchen, and it is full of people I don’t know. Hello? HELLO? I say, but no one can hear me over the chatter. Who are you? Who invited you? I say. Everyone is in cocktail dresses—even the mascs. I am in sweats. No one makes eye contact with me. Not Star nor Thyme nor Paris nor Darcy nor Jen nor Jupiter nor Noa nor Amma nor Moss nor Rania nor Alika nor Cara nor anyone else I didn’t know. I isolate one of the new people as they are searching for the bathroom and ask them why they’re here, and they tell me it’s for the party. I ask them what party, and they just repeat the party.
I go back upstairs and put on a cocktail dress. I hate to be underdressed, and I start to think that might be the point. I brush my teeth and ruffle my hair. I coat my lashes and rouge my cheeks. I spray the air and walk through it. By the time I go downstairs, things are much quieter. Everyone has migrated into the living room. Dresses are littered across the floor. Everyone is in various states of disarray. Boxer shorts, thongs, pants, sports bras, lacy bras, tit tape. They look up at me as I enter the room, now wildly overdressed. I slip the straps of my dress down and Jupiter says no. I pull them up again and Jen says very good. I move my arms out in front of me and no one says anything. After a number of seconds, I become very aware of the weight of my limbs so I put them back by my side. They go back to ignoring me and some start kissing.
The new girls follow the lead of the older ones, and everyone seems to have at least two points of contact with another, sometimes three. They start to move as one giant piece of machinery, like a steam-operated locomotive. Cara and Akila and Rania and someone with long red hair and another with a brunette bob make up the engine. Moss and Amma and Noa and a team of people with shaved heads form the carriages. Jupiter and Jen and Darcy and Paris and a few blondes act as the chimney, whistling away. There is a lot of lingering and slowness and subtle touches with ripples of pleasure peppered throughout. I stand by the door and watch for a long time, transfixed by each part of the chain, how they all move individually yet in unison. I am fascinated by the beautiful simplicity of it all, despite the many many bodies.
Time no longer exists, but at some point, the moans rise, rumbling the foundations and shaking the walls. The windows steam up and the air in the room feels tropical. It smells sour and sharp and delicious. I have transcended my body and am peering down from a bird’s-eye view. I feel omniscient, but far from omnipotent—the Big Bang occurring with spontaneous autonomy. I am not at all needed and my initial jealousy is overridden by euphoric freedom. It peaks into a crescendo, and I am starting to get concerned about the roof. The force of pleasure in front of me is so raw that a tear drips down my cheek. I don’t wipe it away. I hold back my impulse to clap, or at least snap.
When it’s all over, I can swear I see an orb of light radiating outwards. I rush to the kitchen and grab every cup and mug and wine glass on the shelves and put them all onto a large wooden tray with a green apple painted on it. I fill them one by one with water from the tap. I suddenly feel very light, so I tether myself to the sink as a smile spreads across my face. I walk slowly down with the tray so as not to spill, but when I arrive at the living room, the sofa cushions are strewn about and it smells like sweat, but everyone has gone. I stare out the window, and I see them all arm in arm, walking away from the house, right down the middle of the street. I want to yell out to them Have a nice life! but I don’t want to seem bitter or insincere. They don’t need me. Perhaps they never did.
I glug down all the water. Wine glasses first, then mugs, then cups. I have never drunk so much water in my life. I think about how there are people on earth who drink so much water that they die, their cells swelling dangerously with excess fluid. I think about how a Californian mother of three died after drinking two gallons of water as part of a radio show contest to “hold your wee for a Wii.” All she knew was that drinking water is good, the radio contest had a silly name, and she couldn’t otherwise afford the console for her kids. Sometimes what begins with a kernel of truth or fun becomes bloated and lost and you find yourself years later still doing that thing that was meant to be a joke but turned into something real and you don’t know how to stop it so you just keep going and see how long it will last. I wonder if that’s me, now.
I go upstairs and pass the empty bunks and notice all the beds stripped, a giant pile of sheets left in the middle of the corridor. Placed on top, I see a single note that reads “goodbye” in several different handwritings. I hold it to my chest then sidestep the pile to get to my bedroom. I lay down and take out my vibrator, which dies almost immediately. I resort to manual labor, my wrist contorted and out of practice. I attempt it slowly, then confidently, like I’m trying to parallel park pleasure, but can’t quite figure out the perfect angle or speed so I give up.
I walk to the bathroom and stare at the litany of abandoned toothbrushes and run my fingers across their splayed bristles. I tip them all into the trash with a loud thud. I pull out the drawer and there is one facemask left. I rip open the packet with my teeth and smooth it onto my skin. I look into the mirror and see a single ghoul looking back, black holes for eyes, blinking.
In this house, people bunk up, stacked on top of each other like pancakes. The ceilings are very tall so each bunk can sleep three people. It’s like a city tower, but with beds. Very space saving, much room for activities. Even so, I make sure they have a lot of privacy—little beige curtains that they can pull back and forth and doors without panels of glass in them. I want them to feel at home, so I never call it “my house.” Instead, I call it “our house.” It’s mostly semantics, but it’s something.
I used to room them chronologically, but now it’s just a free-for-all. There is only so long you can keep such a system up before it gets tedious, especially when it pertains to humans. If they complain, I hear them out, but then I always tell them: hone your craft and one day you can find a house of your own. It’s like rehab for average lovers—my very own sapphic halfway house.
I like to keep us active. We pile onto the L train like we're on a school trip and I say get ready, the next stop is ours, so that we don’t leave anyone behind. Most of us, apart from Star, take hot yoga classes together. I have to book the moment the class goes live, and even then, we fill out the whole studio. When the teacher asks how we know one another, I say women’s circus troupe. No one corrects me. I wonder if she knows that I’m the glue.
Despite the reason they’re all here, everyone gets on quite well. I like to purchase us every type of hydrating facemask at Walgreens and CVS. If I happen to pass by K-town I always pop in to buy some more. Most of us, apart from Cara, enjoy them—it’s always more fun to do skincare en masse. A little too grotesque to do alone—sad little ghouls with large eye holes and flapping tiny mouths. We play monopoly on Mondays and Fishbowl on weekends. Most of us, apart from Thyme, cackle as we try to act out phrases like “the cat sat on the mat in a hat,” and “pussy pussy pussy marijuana.” It's a collective effervescence of the Durkheimian variety. Akila is the best at it, then Rania, then Moss. If they’re all on the same team, you’re toast.
As it stands, the house is at capacity. I place a hold in my calendar and decide not to have any more sex with outside sources until some of the current people move on. At first, I want them to succeed, to press the right buttons in the right order, at the exact right time, but then I grow attached to them and almost hope they fail. They might be really good at vacuuming without being asked, or remembering when to take out the recycling, or providing light comic relief when tensions arise. But I have to remind myself this is not a forever home. Not for them.
You would think we have incorporated study nights, time for skill building and group shares, but we don’t. There was a time when Amma suggested it and people nodded, but then Amma left soon after and no one stepped up, and so we filed that along with the other ideas we do not do, like collectively raising chickens in the backyard, or that each person must sew a small 5 by 5 patch to contribute to a larger quilt.
* * *
A couple months ago it was Jessica’s birthday. Most of us, apart from Noa, stayed up all night blowing balloons and crafting papier-mâché heads. In the morning, we threw streamers into her room and blew horns, the way we usually do. But she wasn’t in her bed. Jen and Juniper—Jessica’s two bunk mates—both remember saying goodnight to her. They searched all four corners of the room, even lifting up the rug as if she had become paper thin in the night.
We split up the search force: a few upstairs, a few downstairs, a few outside, and a few assigned to digital—hashtags, WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, that kind of thing. No one could find her, so that was it. It’s not the kind of circumstance you can involve external folk in because then questions will be asked, and of course, in legal terms, Jessica is a free agent to live wherever she likes. So, after some unsuccessful searching, we strike her name off the chore chart and then put on whichever facemasks we have left and agree that if anyone else feels like leaving, to at least say goodbye, or leave a little note. No one likes a ghoster.
We’ve since had some reshuffling, but mostly the house has returned to a comfortable equilibrium. A letter was recently delivered and it's a photo of Jessica and a smiling woman, holding hands in a field at golden hour. It looks like a wedding invitation, but it’s only the front part. I look closely and notice it has been cut at the spine, providing the photo but not the invite. She seems happy. I go to stick it on the fridge, next to the other joyous couples, and as I place a magnet over her fiancée’s face, I whisper you’re welcome.
After some steamy back-to-back nights, three people leave and we wave them off, wishing them well. After some consolidation, we now have an entire empty room. Most agree we should turn it into an office, but then Darcy says she has a former lover that never made her come that has recently been evicted. Paris says they also know someone who never made them come that is in need of accommodation. Everyone suddenly has people in mind, and it triggers a whole cascade of names. I feel a knot being pulled tight inside my stomach. This whole thing was my idea, I want to say. It only functions when there is one central hinge, I want to scream. If everyone starts bringing people in, when will it end, but we all know full well that when one resorts to a slippery slope argument, the other side has already won.
That night, I sleep with a knife under my pillow, and I sleep like a baby. In the morning, I go down to the kitchen, and it is full of people I don’t know. Hello? HELLO? I say, but no one can hear me over the chatter. Who are you? Who invited you? I say. Everyone is in cocktail dresses—even the mascs. I am in sweats. No one makes eye contact with me. Not Star nor Thyme nor Paris nor Darcy nor Jen nor Jupiter nor Noa nor Amma nor Moss nor Rania nor Alika nor Cara nor anyone else I didn’t know. I isolate one of the new people as they are searching for the bathroom and ask them why they’re here, and they tell me it’s for the party. I ask them what party, and they just repeat the party.
I go back upstairs and put on a cocktail dress. I hate to be underdressed, and I start to think that might be the point. I brush my teeth and ruffle my hair. I coat my lashes and rouge my cheeks. I spray the air and walk through it. By the time I go downstairs, things are much quieter. Everyone has migrated into the living room. Dresses are littered across the floor. Everyone is in various states of disarray. Boxer shorts, thongs, pants, sports bras, lacy bras, tit tape. They look up at me as I enter the room, now wildly overdressed. I slip the straps of my dress down and Jupiter says no. I pull them up again and Jen says very good. I move my arms out in front of me and no one says anything. After a number of seconds, I become very aware of the weight of my limbs so I put them back by my side. They go back to ignoring me and some start kissing.
The new girls follow the lead of the older ones, and everyone seems to have at least two points of contact with another, sometimes three. They start to move as one giant piece of machinery, like a steam-operated locomotive. Cara and Akila and Rania and someone with long red hair and another with a brunette bob make up the engine. Moss and Amma and Noa and a team of people with shaved heads form the carriages. Jupiter and Jen and Darcy and Paris and a few blondes act as the chimney, whistling away. There is a lot of lingering and slowness and subtle touches with ripples of pleasure peppered throughout. I stand by the door and watch for a long time, transfixed by each part of the chain, how they all move individually yet in unison. I am fascinated by the beautiful simplicity of it all, despite the many many bodies.
Time no longer exists, but at some point, the moans rise, rumbling the foundations and shaking the walls. The windows steam up and the air in the room feels tropical. It smells sour and sharp and delicious. I have transcended my body and am peering down from a bird’s-eye view. I feel omniscient, but far from omnipotent—the Big Bang occurring with spontaneous autonomy. I am not at all needed and my initial jealousy is overridden by euphoric freedom. It peaks into a crescendo, and I am starting to get concerned about the roof. The force of pleasure in front of me is so raw that a tear drips down my cheek. I don’t wipe it away. I hold back my impulse to clap, or at least snap.
When it’s all over, I can swear I see an orb of light radiating outwards. I rush to the kitchen and grab every cup and mug and wine glass on the shelves and put them all onto a large wooden tray with a green apple painted on it. I fill them one by one with water from the tap. I suddenly feel very light, so I tether myself to the sink as a smile spreads across my face. I walk slowly down with the tray so as not to spill, but when I arrive at the living room, the sofa cushions are strewn about and it smells like sweat, but everyone has gone. I stare out the window, and I see them all arm in arm, walking away from the house, right down the middle of the street. I want to yell out to them Have a nice life! but I don’t want to seem bitter or insincere. They don’t need me. Perhaps they never did.
I glug down all the water. Wine glasses first, then mugs, then cups. I have never drunk so much water in my life. I think about how there are people on earth who drink so much water that they die, their cells swelling dangerously with excess fluid. I think about how a Californian mother of three died after drinking two gallons of water as part of a radio show contest to “hold your wee for a Wii.” All she knew was that drinking water is good, the radio contest had a silly name, and she couldn’t otherwise afford the console for her kids. Sometimes what begins with a kernel of truth or fun becomes bloated and lost and you find yourself years later still doing that thing that was meant to be a joke but turned into something real and you don’t know how to stop it so you just keep going and see how long it will last. I wonder if that’s me, now.
I go upstairs and pass the empty bunks and notice all the beds stripped, a giant pile of sheets left in the middle of the corridor. Placed on top, I see a single note that reads “goodbye” in several different handwritings. I hold it to my chest then sidestep the pile to get to my bedroom. I lay down and take out my vibrator, which dies almost immediately. I resort to manual labor, my wrist contorted and out of practice. I attempt it slowly, then confidently, like I’m trying to parallel park pleasure, but can’t quite figure out the perfect angle or speed so I give up.
I walk to the bathroom and stare at the litany of abandoned toothbrushes and run my fingers across their splayed bristles. I tip them all into the trash with a loud thud. I pull out the drawer and there is one facemask left. I rip open the packet with my teeth and smooth it onto my skin. I look into the mirror and see a single ghoul looking back, black holes for eyes, blinking.
Ly Rosengard (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent Chinese-English Londoner living in Brooklyn. Ly is a writer of prose, poetry, and more recently, scripts. By day, Ly is a LGBTQIA+ human rights advocate, by night, they are a writer obsessed with the intersection of mental health & mental illness, queerness, friendship, love, and people power. Ly is currently working on a novel, short stories, and a documentary. They run The Mental, a Substack of candid conversations about lived experiences of mental health & mental illness. Ly has publications in The Rejoinder Literary Magazine, The Independent, The Times, Third Place Zine, and Deviant: Chronicles of Pride.
