Page 70 of Pretty ’n Peak

“It starts with little wisps over the pines. Gray and blue, like fairies danced across and left trials behind them. Hadas rociando polvo de hadas.”

“What does that mean?”

“Fairies sprinkling fairy dust.”

Austin found himself grinning. He could picture the sky in his head, but even more, it was this thoughtful, sweet man beside him.

“Then it warms to pinks and oranges. Maybe they’re puffy little dragons dancing around a campfire.”

“How do you say dragon in Spanish?”

“Dragón.”

Austin laughed. “How about clouds?”

“Las nubes.”

He repeated it back, mangling it horribly. The oo sound was too tight, and there was a softness to the s at the end that he couldn’t quite catch.

Mateo followed that with a flow of liquid Spanish. He could have been talking about anything and Austin wouldn’t have known the difference, but he knew he was describing the breathtaking scenery around them.

It was like entering another world. The dragons and the fairies weren’t the magic—Mateo was.

“Now in English?” he requested.

“Oh, I can’t remember what I said. Something about the craggy peaks waking up with the birds, and the slumbering mountain in the background.”

“Oh, just something like that…” he laughed. “Are you always so poetic?”

There was a long pause. “Sometimes. It’s, uh… People usually tease me for it.”

“Who?” Austin demanded. He already wanted to rip them to shreds.

“My brothers. You know, the guys. Even my ex-girlfriend sometimes. It’s just…” Mateo let out a long sigh. “You know how I said I just realized I was gay a couple years ago? Well, I think everyone else saw it before me. It… wasn’t easy as a kid. There’s a lot of demand to be tough. And I’ve read about toxic masculinity. I know it’s not healthy for anyone, and I can see it in my culture.

“But I feel like everyone else just… knew how to be macho. My family loves me, but, God, as soon as I stepped out of that little box, the teasing was relentless. The art was OK because it was classes at school. The part of me that was probably… gay… or something, that was what was hard. Poetry was just a little bit of it.”

Austin slipped an arm around Mateo’s shoulders, holding him close. His own problems from a few minutes ago couldn’t compete with the freshness of Mateo’s anguish. “So you’ve been hiding all that?”

“I guess so? I mean, it feels like everything is habit now. So ingrained. It’s funny, because my family still teases me for being a poet now. They actually call me that. El poeta. Or el profesor for reading too much. But that’s just a little bit of it.”

Austin pulled Mateo closer against his chest, but it was like moving a boulder. He wanted the boy closer still, but that wasn’t possible, so he combed fingers through his hair.

“So who would you be? Without all that programming?”

“Uh… God, I don’t know. More effeminate, probably.”

Austin shook his head, hating the way the boy made it sound. “No, don’t say that word unless you’re claiming it. It’s an ugly word that people use against a beautiful part of gay culture. Who would you want to be? More feminine? More ambiguously gendered? More fabulously, flamboyantly gay? Or maybe redefining what it means to be masculine and pretty at the same time? You could even identify as a woman, some or all of the time.”

Mateo stiffened further, and then slumped against him. “I don’t even know what most of that meant. I mean… I don’t think I’m a woman. But, the rest of it?”

Austin stroked through his soft hair, then traced down the roughness of his beard. His poor, darling boy. “It all means that you can step outside of the box and explore. And maybe some people will judge you, but there’s a whole community of folks who won’t. In fact, Sebastian and Jamie are both great resources.”

“Sebastian?”

“Yes, actually. Sebastian identifies as agender or non-gendered, at least the last we talked about it. In comparison, Jamie is genderflexible. Generally more male, but he likes expressing masculinity in different ways, and sometimes more female. The way Sebastian explained it to me, Jamie likes playing with gender expression like it’s a game. Sebastian just wants to opt out of it entirely. And those are just two options out of thousands. But I think you’d benefit from talking with Sebastian, because he might have some insights about the whole machismo culture, too.”

“Would you be there with me? I mean… I guess that’s stupid. I can talk with them. They seem nice.”