Will a young girl’s social media smear be the final straw that breaks a marriage? What exactly did Ronnie do? And what are unicorn moments? A look at the psychic toll of keeping secrets told by a snarky narrator. Features a tribute to the Invisible Girl of Fantastic Four fame.
As a bonus, this Kindle single features an alternate version of story with different ending is included.
“The Night Ronnie Fagged Out!” is one of nine stories in the debut collection of sexy gay-themed speculative fiction “The Man Who Lost His Gayness” from David M Hancock.” The Kindle single has two versions of the story, including an elaborately different ending in the second take.
Sexy speculative fiction where magic is manifest and disaster lurks in every trick gone bad.Twisted tales of the boudoir told with kind, if sharply-barbed, wit.
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From “The Night Ronnie Fagged Out!
When he was a boy, Ronnie’s favorite comic book character was a hero who wielded powers of concealment and self-protection. Her name was the Invisible Girl and she could both disappear, as billed, and cast protective force shields. In the comics these force fields were drawn as semi-translucent white domes; with a dotted line depicting concentration from her forehead to the inner circumference of her invisible wall. You could see her, and anyone with her, inside the bubble; but in muted colors, as if she were in a different, less-vital, dimension.
Later on they souped up her powers and gave her feminist attitude. But in the beginning, Invisible Girl was a classic wimpy girl sidekick. She got kidnapped a lot, and her powers were mostly unsuccessful to the task. She might spy on Dr. Doom or The Puppet Master and gain valuable information. And then be tripped up by sleeping gas or a dog barking to reveal her unseen presence. Her shields would mostly provide only momentary protection before crumbling under an enemy’s onslaught.
Given this feminine identification with passive attributes, you might be picturing Ronnie as some precious Dickensian sissy boy in knee pants, with pale skin and delicate golden locks; quick to tears, cosseted by his mother and battered by a universe of schoolyard bullies.
But in truth, Ronnie was a vigorous boy. Wanting to hide inside your own little fortress is a wish dear to many, many boys of all persuasions. Ronnie grew up with older brothers and learned to claw for the things he wanted, just as any other child.
It was this very aspect of, if not exactly butchness, passable masculinity that gave Ronnie varied options later in life. Landed him, some would say, in the drama about to unfold.
We join Ronnie – all grown up with a wife and kid – on an ordinary Sunday morning in his household on Hastings-on-Hudson, one of many comfortable suburbs along the Metro North train line flowing out of New York City.
Our scene begins on the first floor of the 3-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath Shaker Style bungalow on a corner lot her parents helped them buy. Gotta hand it to her, Peggy has successfully married a French country kitchen with a New England beach cottage den – browns and greens in the kitchen married with white wainscoted walls and navy blue woven fabrics in the sunken family room. It sounds like it wouldn’t work together, but it somehow does.
Ronnie is sitting at the oversized – for the three of them – farmer’s table, working on his first cup of coffee. He’s wearing the royal blue terry towel bathrobe Peggy got him for Christmas. Oh brother, did she match his robe to the downstairs decor? Ronnie’s wishing he’d brought his slippers down from upstairs. His bare feet are cold on the over-sized terra cotta tiles in the kitchen. And he’s more than a little hung over.
Ronnie is trying to pull himself together after an unusual night of carousing. As he scans the headlines, head propped up in hands, our protagonist has no clue of the dangers awaiting him. The fabric of his universe will hang in the balance, as he deals with the fearsome consequences of … The Night Ronnie Fagged Out!
Enter the sidekick. Ronnie’s 12-year-old daughter Miranda shuffles down the stairs and joins him at the kitchen table. She fetches her smart phone from the basket where they make her leave it each night. Ronnie and Peggy are a little old fashioned about the whole social media, networking, Internet thing for their little girl. Miranda has a cellphone for communicating while she’s away from them; but the rest of it, the texting and sexting and God knows what else – that stays downstairs until she’s older. At least while she’s under their roof.
Without a word to him, Miranda huddles over her phone.
“Good morning,” he says, but his ironic tone goes unacknowledged.
There was a time when Miranda was Ronnie’s little pal. Co-conspirators plotting minor anarchies against the Peggy regime. Miranda was what made it all worthwhile. He could look at her antics, her Dora the Explorer phase, the awful ballet recitals and softball games, and know, really know in his heart, that he’d made the best choice with his life.
But now Miranda is all transition: blemishes and braces and chest bumps. And prickly attitude; she doesn’t collaborate with her dad anymore. She has, much too early to Ronnie’s mind, slid into the generic Disney Channel diva phase. He does blame the media, all these little girls on TV with pointy nails and painted lips, carrying designer purses and tossing off withering putdowns. So beyond their years, little sexualized bitches, and now they want to recruit Miranda, too. Ronnie can only hope he’ll see his daughter again at the other end of the self-involved tunnel she’s entered.
Ronnie turns back to the newspaper. Between waves of nausea, he’s been trying to wade through a story about the Hadron collider in Switzerland. He has never understood what the God particle is. It sounded like a small piece of a molecule; but what made that godly? In another few years better microscopes would prove that the piece of molecule was made up of even smaller particles. It would be like the time the Fantastic Four chased Dr. Doom into the microverse — worlds within worlds.
“Lisa texted me. She says ‘your dad really fagged out last night.'”
“What?”
Miranda turns the face of her phone to him, illustrating for her dull father the concept of a text message: a brief missive sent from one phone-holding person to another to convey key information or emotional status.
“It says ‘your dad really fagged out last night.’ That’s all it says. What did you do,” she asks accusingly.