Terra Vance prompted me to write a story. Then, to continue it. I now post the chapters together as they get written. Following this blog will get you notifications for those. To help Kelsey Lou continue telling this story, please consider buying them a cup of coffee or a meal at CashApp $BrandynRiver.

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“Well ain’t you pertty as a chrome skull on the hood of a Chevy drivin’ down a paved road,” Junior smiled as he took off his hat.

Kelsey Lou Faye didn’t care for the dress her mama’d made for her. It waddn’t pretty like Dolly’s Coat of Many Colors. Kelsey Lou’s mama had stitched this dress with bitterness and spite — the kind that attracted the attention of good ol’ boys like Junior.

Junior spit a wad of dip on the ground and grinned again. He thought they was goin’ somewhere together. Amazing, she thought.

“I got more to me than looks,” Kelsey Lou rebutted.

“Don’t need too much more,” Junior assured her. “Yer looks is good enough for me.”

“I’m a lesbian,” she replied, blinking with pointed intent.

Junior laughed. “Ha! I ain’t heard nobody sayin’ that ’bout you b’fore. When’d you ‘cide you don’t like men folk no more?”

“When you ‘cided you like my mama’s awful dress more than the person wearing it. I’m done with the whole lot of y’uns. Done with men. Now let me pass on through here and get to my room. Star Trek is more interesting than you, and you’re keeping me from it.”

“How you know it’s more interestin’?” Junior asked insistently.

“Because I’ve seen every episode, twice at least. The longer I stand here wonderin’ why you ain’t as decent a human as your sister, the more urgently I need to go watch any of those episodes again. Right this minute. Alone.”

Junior stepped aside but whistled a cat-call as Kelsey Lou walked past to get inside her home. She latched the door behind her and didn’t stir nobody downstairs on the way to her room.

She sunk into the old, familiar, faded orange swivel chair in which she’d used to sit with her great-grandma on sunny afternoons helping answer the crosswords. The springs popped as the weight of her now-adult , fifteen year-old body paid the price for all those hours she’d spent spinning ’round and ’round, long after Grandma had told her to stop.

She clicked the remote to a newer television than seemed fitting for the old furniture she would never let go of, until she saw the man of her dreams.

Or was he? Maybe she really was a lesbian, she thought. She sure didn’t feel like a normal woman attracted to normal men. Hell, she waddn’t attracted to “normal,” for all the tea in China. She looked at the man of her dreams again, illuminated in LED hues of opportunity and possibility.

She was attracted to him, she admitted. But it sure would be nicer being with him as a man. If he wasn’t gay, he should be; and if she wasn’t the man he’d fall in love with, she should be.

Kelsey Lou breathed deeply. Cinnamon potpourri reminded her that what we cannot change can be made better by tidying what we can. She wondered, though, how much she might could change. How much truth could she manage not to cover up with cinnamon potpourri any longer?

“Alright, Captain Picard, you know just how I like it,” she said, pressing the button on the remote. “Make it so.”