The Big Squeeze
By Clare Fisher
fiction | 10.24 min read
‘There are two types of people in this world. Those that hate picking pimples and those that love it. And by love I mean, are hot for it.’ Eli wiggled their eyebrows, as if they knew that my cock was now unbearably hard, and that, although said cock did not, as such, ‘exist,’ it was realer then everything that ‘did’. ‘Which are you?’
I said: ‘I think you already know the answer.’
‘I’ve a massive one in the middle of my back,’ they said. ‘Squeeze it for me?’
‘This,’ I said, as we joined the seemingly-endless queue for the Pump’s one and only toilet, ‘is what I mean when I say that I’m a gay boy trapped in a lesbian’s body.’
‘Lucky,’ said Eli. ‘I’m a lesbian trapped in a gay boy’s body trapped in a bisexual ciswoman’s body.’
‘Too many traps?’
‘It’s comfy. Like wearing three layers of fishnet.’
‘That makes me think of that documentary about the evils of the fishing industry.’
‘You eat fish?’ said the mulleted baby queer in front of us.
My phone pinged. How’s the Maybe-Date?! If it fizzles into another chaste ‘what’s your favourite vegan baking recipe’ chat, wanna grab a drink later??! It was Bea. My best friend since primary school.
Out of this world, I texted back, then regretted it. What if I’d jinxed it?
‘There’s fish,’ said an older femme who’d been staring at a ‘Stop the Anti-Protest Bill’ poster for a very long time, ‘and there’s fish.’
Worse Leader had passed the Bill four months ago, and yet, every time I saw that badly photocopied infinitive, my heart flapped around my chest, as if, maybe, just maybe, there was a chance things might still turn out differently.
‘No one should shame anyone for what they eat,’ shouted a queer who was wearing the same oversized cord shirt, rolled up jeans and stripy T-shirt as me.
I wondered whether, if the Council had accepted Pump’s petition to take over the derelict brewery buildings that surrounded it, if the queers of Leeds had, lo and behold, two or even three spaces to choose from, I’d be ripping off Eli’s dungarees about now.
‘Wanna piss and do… other stuff… at mine?’ they whispered, and I chased away the thought that they were telepathic.
The walk back to theirs was, thanks to to the lack of buses and the profusion of tents, both of which were thanks to Worse Leader’s cuts, lengthy. By the time they were unlocking their front door, we’d got the whole lesbian bit — relationship histories; star signs; attachment styles; childhood traumas; dungaree styles — out the way.
‘Cup of tea? I’ve got this amazing loose leaf Oolong.’
The lesbian in me was imagining us in six months’ time; three shiny cheese plants, homemade vegan ‘feta’ marinading in the fridge, Sunday debates re should we or should we not get a cat.
The gay boy, however, was in the ascendant: ‘I want a cup of whatever is between your legs.’
Their left eyebrow arched. They stuck their fingers between my belt buckle and my skin, and pulled me up to their room.
What happened next: you might say it was sex. You might use words like yes yes more more. Your throat might be tangy with sweat.
But you would not see how, as their fist travelled up my vagina, a crack appeared in the bedroom wall, which their ex’s ex had, for reasons they did not explain, persuaded them to paint mustard.
I screamed.
Their housemate threw something.
I closed my eyes, but the crack was right here, behind them. My eyeballs burned.
Then the not-sex, was, like all things, over. The wall was now crackless; healed; and purple. And Eli, Eli looked — different. Their eyebrows were dull and droopy. They handed me a cup of Oolong.
‘When did you make that?’
Their dungarees were decidedly buckled. As were my jeans.
‘Just now.’
‘But didn’t you just cum for the fifth time? And weren’t your walls mustard?’
‘If that’s a joke, it’s not funny.’
My heart felt like it was a fish trapped in the net of a conversation a person I didn’t know, and who didn’t know why they were talking about fish, had started. ’You still haven’t let me touch that pimple.’
They made a face. ‘Why would I let you touch my pimples? That’s gross.’ They folded their legs up to their chest and cowered behind them.
I handed the Oolong back to them, then left — before they told me to.
Just as I was in danger of feeling seriously sorry for myself, a bus pulled up. It was new and shiny, of the sort I’d only ever seen in London. The driver stared at me. ‘Getting on or not?’
I got on. I pulled out my bank card but there was no card reader, and when I asked how to pay, he screwed up his face and said, ‘where have you been, another planet?’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘Well now you’re here and no one is going to get there unless you bloody sit down.’
I sat down. The walls were adorned with posters in which the leader who I’d tried, without success, to persuade the older residents of the city to reelect, smiled as if she’d won. I Googled her name. Yep, she was the PM, though she was in the middle of reforming the political system such that it was less reliant on personalities, less centralised.
Which lesbian base are you at — long gazes, finger brushing, or shoulder bumping?!
Bea’s text pinged right over the news story.
Weird.
Please come to PUMP rn and explain.
OK.
I hoped that by returning to the scene of what may or may not have been a crime, I’d find the detail that would make everything make sense.
Pump was no longer an ex-petrol station but a whole section of the city of which the ex-petrol station was a sort of gate house serving complimentary fluorescent shots and pills.
Where previously there had been bins, rubble and concrete, there were now benches, tables, planters, fairy lights, and a giant swing over which several ghoulishly high adults were fighting. The brewery was foaming at the windows with lights, music, people, and plants, as was its roof. By the time Bea found me, my face was soggy with tears.
‘Was it that bad?’
I shook my head. ‘It — this — it’s’ — I’d never seen so many queers, just… being queer, in one spot. ‘I — where are we?’
She tilted her head to the right and to the left, as if there was no angle from which she could see me clearly. ‘We’ve been here at least twice a week since we were twenty-three. Are you… OK hun?’
‘Yes. But also no. Also…’ I squeezed her hand. It felt exactly as it had always felt, and nothing like a pimple, and for this I was glad. ‘Let’s go inside?’
The ground floor was a bar; big, but reassuringly chaotic, and soupy with the smell of deep-fried Seitan. On our way up to the second floor, we got extravagantly shooshed by a bow tie queer; apparently there was an ‘intergalactic meditation’ in progress. On the third, a film screening. On the fourth, there was a felt-tipped sign saying the rave would now be in the Other Building. Then the cold air smacked our cheeks; we were on the roof.
The sky, despite being in the middle of the city, was crowded with stars. People were dancing, talking, standing, sitting, in big groups, couples, threes, and alone. Someone was selling flapjacks for 50p each. Someone else was selling alcoholic kombucha —homemade! —from a freezer box. Behind all this, was a wall of ferns with a gap-cum-doorway in the middle; and behind that came what was either extremely experimental music, or sex noises.
‘This is everything I hoped and dreamed of,’ I said, my body moving towards the ferns without me telling it to, ‘Except that it’s nothing like anything I ever hoped and dreamed of, and that makes it so much better.’
Bea squeezed my shoulders. ‘Something’s… happened to you.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Then why are you staring at The Beyond like it’s the best thing since sliced bread?’
She meant the gap between the ferns. Before I could ask what she meant, she said she was going to check out Drag Towers, and was off.
I could say that I walked through the gap and landed on a huge fabric “lily pad,” on which I proceeded to engage in group sex. I could say that the laws of physics on this pad were such that whenever anybody touched anyone else, their bodies fused; that the fusing was almost as painfully pleasurable as cumming; as squeezing an overripe pimple; and squeezing an overripe pimple whilst cumming; that neither I nor anyone said anything for some time, because neither I nor anyone existed; we were here, neither one nor many, neither alone nor together, and this was enough.
But none of this would explain why enough was so swiftly over. And why, when it was, my skin felt like it was missing something.
‘Is this some sort of post-identity utopia?’ asked a voice that yes, I had to admit it, was mine.
‘Only a cis white man would say that.’
‘It’s not a utopia, it’s a fucking cushion.’
‘A cushion for fucking on, yes, not talking shit.’
‘Is this fabric biodegradable? I am pretty sure I can feel the microfibres grazing my liver.’
It was all starting to sound, feel, and indeed, smell, like that toilet queue.
‘I’ve got a massive pimple on my back that I can feel but can’t reach… will someone squeeze it?!’
‘Eli!’ I yelled.
‘That’s gross!’
‘No kink-shaming in The Beyond.’
‘No rules in The Beyond’.
‘Pimple-picking is not a kink.’
‘A kink can be anything.’
‘Are we still on that date? Is this an elaborate story we’ve invented to escape the boredom of the queue? Have you wet yourself?’
‘I’m not Eli.’ A toe grazed my calf. ‘And I thought dates died out like last decade.’
‘Oh.’
‘But you can still pick my pimple. If you want.’
‘OK.’
As they directed my fingers towards the pimple, my cock bumped my thigh — if I’d been on a London tube train, I’d take up four seats, at least — and the lily pad began to shake. I knew that if I let it go — if I could resist the desire to reach the limit of whatever this was — this world would remain. If I continued, however, it would end. It would end, and what followed might be worse. It might contain zero spaces for queers. Then again, it might be better. It might be beyond the structures that produced the feelings that necessitated words like ‘better’ and ‘worse.’ I’d like to say that it was whilst thinking of the latter that I did what I did, but it wasn’t.
Reader, there was no world at that moment; there was just one big squeeze.
One big squeeze, and much sweating and panting, but nothing came out: not puss, not blood, not even water.
‘Too early,’ they sighed.
‘No,’ I said, ‘It’s too’ — but the roof was all crack, and I was falling into it, and so I grabbed the lily pad, which was definitely not biodegradable, and would be here way longer than whichever human had dreamt it up.
