Fictionlet
“I am not going to any family reunion without a man wrapped around my elbow; I don’t care if he’s really my boyfriend or not,” Brigid said. “Not until Aunt Edna’s firmly planted, anyway.”
Greg furrowed his brow, as if reading an obscure text without footnotes. “Aunt Edna?”
“My mother’s mother’s sister,” Brigid said. “Basically, my Aunt Edna’s older than space, and convinced that any woman who isn’t married — or at least firmly attached — by, say, twenty, must be a lesbian, no matter what they say.”
“So what’s wrong with that?” said Greg. “Let her think you’re a lesbian, what’s it going to hurt?”
“Are you crazy?” Brigid demanded. “I’m not going to go around being the family’s pet lesbian! All my aunts would be getting their friends to send ’round their family’s pet lesbians to hook me up!”
Greg raised his eyebrows and smothered a giggle.
“Don’t laugh, they would!” Brigid said. “And even if most of them are just misunderstood singles like me, I imagine a fair number are bona fide lesbians, which I don’t have to tell you would be awkward as hell.”
Greg smirked. “You heartbreaker, you!”
“Get knotted.”
“Too bad they’re not evangelical — you could go through a miraculous cure and make everybody happy.”
“Ha!” said Brigid. “Not likely. Good New Englander liberals? The only thing that would make them happier than a pet lesbian in the family would be if I married a black playwright.”
“So, Arthur, pretty much. Maybe you should get him to go.”
Brigid frowned. “I tried. He told me to get knotted.”
-The Gneech
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