This poem came out of the February 6, 2018 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from erulisse , manglefox , technoshaman , mama_kestrel , and rix_scaedu. It also fills the "complex" square in my 1-31-18 You Are card for the Valentines Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Damask thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. "Like a Road Through Mountains" [Monday, October 6, 2014] Maze It's hard enough get a grip on all this sex/gender stuff when there's only one of you. When you share a body with five other people, each with different tastes, it's a whole lot harder. Me, I like men well enough, but it takes time for me to get comfortable with them, and college guys aren't exactly made of patience, so I haven't gotten very far with it. Clarity I just don't see what all the fuss is about, myself -- a soul is a soul, and the body is no more important in love than the clothes. Well, I suppose that some people care a whole lot about clothes, but I don't. Ham I know what I want, the long clean lines of another man's body and I know how I want it, hard and fast and heavy, and I don't want to read too much into it, because my life is far too complicated for words, let alone relationships. The problem is, gay men want a man's body too, but what they can see me wearing is female. Maronna mia! Who wants to get mixed up in this? So I'm not getting any. Mira has gotten lucky a few times, though, with girls who like girls. Mira Even I like to be seen sometimes, so I have dressed up and gone out to the coffeehouses where all the Gender Studies students hang out. It's simple enough to find another lesbian who wants a quick fling, or a college girl who hasn't figured out what she is yet and wants to indulge her curiosity a bit. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe someday I'll want a real girlfriend, but not yet, not with a week-old baby howling the house down in the wee hours of the morning and my nemesis-cum-housemate cuddling up with Heron in a relationship that not even they can make sense of. Our lives are nothing if not complex. Keane When I think about sex, I think about women, but when I think about kink, I'm not that picky, and I think about kink a lot more than I think about sex. For me, sex is a want and kink is a need, something I require to keep ahold of myself and gather the energy to fuel my abilities. I miss Pain's Gray, because Urbanburg is a long way from Motor City, so we can't see each other as often as we'd like. Maybe someday that'll change. My headmates may not like what we do together -- they never like it when I work with pain, unless it's for their benefit -- but they won't go up against Pain's Gray, because he is formidable . I don't have everything that I want or need, but I have hope, and sometimes that's enough. Clement Even though being stuck in a female body bothers me, it's not as much of a barrier to my personal life as it is for Ham. I want men too, but I'm not interested in sex, only romance. Dace is taking a class in Figure Study this semester, and he keeps inviting me to come to Sketch Club with him at the Frances Gearhart House. They have an art studio in the front room alongside the kitchen, plus a reading room and multipurpose room in the basement where they host the Sketch Club meetings, and then the bedrooms upstairs. It's mostly artists and a few of their friends, so they always need more people willing to pose instead of wanting to draw. I don't mind sitting for Dace and his friends, even if I wish he could see the real me. It helps to have friends, though, when life seems like an Escher drawing and you realize that maybe you are not who or what you thought you were. It's fun to hang out with artists, who are colorful and energetic and careful with where they put their hands. I've even been up to Dace's room a few times, where I've admired the colorful paintings all over the walls, some done by Dace and others by his roommate. It's romantic to snuggle up beside the fireplace in the living room after the sketching is done and pass around the popcorn. I think Dace might ask me if I want to pose nude some time. I think I might even say yes. Mira There's nothing simple about us or our situation. It can be hard, and scary. Sometimes my headmates freak out about it, or each other, or our love lives, or lack thereof. As for myself, I am reading A Streetcar Named Desire in our Queer Theatre class, and so I know better: "A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains." * * * Notes: "What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains." -- Tennessee Williams , A Streetcar Named Desire , 1947 A Streetcar Named Desire is a famous piece of queer literature by Tennessee Williams . Queer theatre has a deep history and many modern examples . The Frances Gearhart House is a small building run by the Art Department at Urbanburg University. It has dorm rooms on the upper floors and function space on the lower floors. The basement includes a reading room and a multipurpose room . On the main floor, the dining table is off to the right side of this picture. The living room is beyond the dining room and kitchen . The art studio occupies the front of the house alongside the kitchen. The second floor landing has a sitting area. This is Dace's dorm room . maronna mia! – oh my God! (madonna mia!) [maa-ROAWN-aa-MEE-uh] -- American Italian Dictionary Figure study and figure drawing involve making art about the human body. There are simple and more detailed instructions for figure drawing . Here are some images for exercises .