THE FAGGOTS & THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN PANDEMICS

Text & Illustrations by Faguerreotype

This story is a love letter to the seminal queer, utopian text, “The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions,” by Larry Mitchell, illustrated by Ned Asta, published in 1977. Pick it up if this piques your interest.

PART 1: A Long, Long Island

It’s been a long time since the last plague, and yet the faggots and their friends are still not safe.

The first pandemics were made by the agents of Ramrod to destroy us, but in some ways set us free. The second pandemics were ignored by the peoples of Ramrod in favor of freedom, but in some ways destroyed us.

Now the faggots and their friends live in Cumton by the Sea. They used to have no leaders and only dead heroes, but are now led by a council of the many named the Livink. The Livink have forgotten the ways of Ramrod and weapons, and fierceness, and rich men without color, and tax-collectors, and bloodshed. The faggots and their friends have made a new way in Cumton by the Sea, long removed from memories of violence.

The plagues have felled all the empires, and yet the Men keep building them anew, looting and losing more and more things that they never owned in the first place. In Cumton by the Sea the faggots do not have to loot or lose with the Men, and are free to borrow all the colors and lend all the charming old rags, woven into new with patches made from flowers from the garden.

The faggots forgot the wisdom of oppression, they had been gone so long from the Men and Their Wombmen and their empires. The faggots and their friends instead learned from the wisdom of the dykes, who lived just over the Dunes in Vulvil by the Bay. It was always easy to find, even on the darkest night when the moon was but a sliver in the sky. Vulvil by the Bay has its own council of Livink.

In Vulvil and Cumton there are more queens and kings than every royal court in herstory, whomst are treated with dignity and respect as befits their elaborate titles. The queens and kings are special because they can live wherever they choose amongst the dykes and faggots and their friends, or even with the faeries who live in the Dunes and Forests.

A FAGGOT FABLE

Quill had been living with the faggots and their friends in Cumton by the Sea for a time. She had left her comfortable House in Vulvil by the Bay to stay with her new friend, Lullabye, in their House, Myrtle Broadway, one of the middle houses on the Pansy Path that the faggots had excavated from the sand. Myrtle Broadway was not a very lovely house, painted mint-green over bleached pine on the outside, with a startling variety of “accent walls’’ within. It was over-filled with bric-a-brac and memories from the BeforeTime, but it was a pleasant enough home, nonetheless. Quill liked to wake early, make some tea, and write plays which she would read to the boys in the house after lunch, and which they would reenact after supper. She sat in the garden near the lavender bush to nuzzle a stray tomcat whom she dubbed Shifty, and practiced forgiving his philandery.

Quill could always tell when it was time for brunch because the faggots and their friends would wake and fill Myrtle Broadway with old songs. Miss Hannigan, a spindly fellow with wispy hair and always a poly-satin robe, was the eldest of the three House Folks of Myrtle Broadway and Quill’s least favorite. Every morning, around noonish, Miss Hannigan would start the song, some faded showtune, always in E flat, while cooking the boys brunch. She was as reliable as a rooster and equally shrill as she burnt the flapjills and blushed the bloody marties with bathtub gin. Quill didn’t drink much back in Vulvil by the Bay, but the daily bloodies helped her forget a little, or at least remember less.

LOST MEMORIES

The faggots and their friends, sometime between pandemics, were foraging for fungi under the underpasses, and came upon a cluster of magic. They did not do the proper rituals because they had not been forged yet, and instead gobbled up the magic in the way they had been taught to gobble up everything by The Men. Also, they were very hungry and the magic made them less so. After they had stared and fucked and cried together, the faggots began to to search, for they felt very dry in their throats. They drank each other’s juices and napped in one another’s hair, but this did not quench them as it usually did. They followed the sound of water and came upon a nineteenpoint stag, lapping at a crack in the ice of a frozen river - for it was winter and they were cold - they just remembered. The stag was frightened by their forms and bolted off across the ice. The faggots and their friends followed, cautiously at first, laughing and slipping as they slid and they slid and slipped across the creaking ice...

...Most of them made it.

When the magic had faded from their bodies and the sun began to rise, the stag was nowhere in sight. Before them stretched a beach across a long, long island, between the Sea and the Bay, with a hundred, hundred, pine-clad mansions, all buried in the sand.

A FAGGOT FABLE

Lullabye was a cum-hungry hole like most of the faggots and their friends, but this isn’t what made them noteworthy. What made Lullabye unique was how they liked to fall in love. Lullabye fell in love frequently and with great gusto. What struck the other faggots as curious, however, was Lullabye’s unusual penchant for falling in love with only one other faggot at a time. Scandalous, really. Lullabye would forsake all others, even during the sacred, biweekly gangbang Rituals, and sometimes Lullabye would give become very hurt and jealous when this behavior was not reciprocated. This did not deter Lullabye from getting jumping right back on the whores, as the saying goes, and falling in love anew, only to be inevitably crushed once more. Any faggot would do, really, as long as they gave Lullabye that look and a sufficient quantity of delicious orgasm juice. In return, Lullabye would give them their love completely for them to cherish or squander as they saw fit.

One night, Lullabye’s love was, once again, set aside by their then beloved. Distraught, Lullabye ran fully naked across the plank boulevards til they reached the Faggot Fuck Palace, which also served as as the Hospital and community Dining Hall for convenience. Lullabye was frantic to share themself between the faggots and their friends, collecting tiny bits of love to fill themself up.

As the first birds of dawn began to fill their air with chatter, Lullabye made their excuses and extracted themselves from the lips and hands and cocks and butts and fingers, still feeling impossibly empty and now also rather sore. It was still dark out as Lullabye made their way down to the beach, vowing, once again, to hurl themself into the sea, as was their personal breakup custom. Lullabye had become quite the adept swimmer by this point, an amends to Poseidon for their rather frail physique and lack of natural buoyancy.

As they approached the Bay, for the Sea was much too rough for such things, Lullabye saw, to their chagrin, that someone had beat they to it - and to add insult to injury, the barely submerged figure had the nerve to be wearing! Their very own Drowning Gown! The one they had embroidered especially for an occasion such as this. “You thieving cop!” Lullabye screeched as they dragged a sputtering body from the Bay. “Who do you think you are, borrowing my CUSTOM drowning gown without asking? It doesn’t even fit you right, and look: You ripped it! As they continued to chastise her failure to drown properly, Lullabye noticed a lovely white streak in the tendrils of black curls now plastered to her face.

Being low on sympathy, but full of drama, Lullabye gave her half-hearted CPR while tersely explaining that the dress was very precious to them and that they had handsewn in a single stone into the hem for every lover who had jilted them. At this, the gown thief began to cry. She too had been jilted by her lover, her one and only, for a younger woman with no name.

FAGGOT WISDOM

Your Lovers’ Lovers can one day your own, as long as you are patient, hung, or wealthy.

WOMEN WISDOM

Men are often wrong.

A FAGGOT FABLE

A Reconciliation was called between two Houses, the three Folks of Grover’s Coroners, and the three Folks of Myrtle Broadway, met with two queens and one king in the Royal Reconciliation Place of Belvedere Palace. The ancient Baroque palace was rarely used for Reconciliations of this small a scale, but since the Dispute was between the Houses of two different settlements, the kings and queens were needed.

Miss Hannigan spoke on behalf of the Myrtle Broadway Folk, explaining how precious the drowning gown was to Lullabye, and how they had not intended to prevent Quill’s suicide, only to rescue a beloved dress that was of much sentimental value. Then, all of them gave Lullabye words of love, and spoke of the good they had done, and the good they had yet to do. Even Quill, who barely knew Lullabye at all, said that they had sewn a beautiful drowning gown and that she would happily mend the tear she had made with the white threads from her very own hair.

Quill’s Folk spoke on her own behalf, explaining that she was sorry for stealing the gown, and that she had been selfish to borrow without asking, it was only that she had wanted to die because her Favorite had forsaken her for another. This saddened the queens and kings, and even Lullabye, and they understood. Then, all of them gave her words of love, and spoke of the good she had done, and the good she had yet to do. Even Lullabye, who barely knew Quill at all, said that she had looked very chic while drowning and that she was forgiven for ripping the gown by accident, and that she could even borrow it after Lullabye had died, if she wanted. Quill thought this was very generous.

Queen.Morticia.Antoinette.Godiva.Cat.Deity.of.Dance.Sex.Magic.&.POWER, dressed in her crystalline pantsuit with impossibly tall stilettos and a matching chapeau, spoke on behalf of the royals. She said, in her Magnanimity, that Quill and Lullabye had much in common, and proclaimed, in her Generosity, that both were in need of a friend who was not a lover. It was decided by all present that Quill would go to live at Myrtle Broadway for a time, until her ex-Favorite could be located and convinced to come back for a proper Reconciliation of their own.

A Mending was proclaimed and to end the Reconciliation they each uttered a prayer for unity, then recited, in unison, the motto of their sister settlements:

Non Utopia, Non Punitor.

The ritual closed with the sacred sound of Acab. And all were appeased.