Story Draft

In the dreams of Sol, Emily never saw her all at once and sometimes didn’t see her at all. She mostly appeared as parts: as a stand of her hair in her mouth, as the skin of her shoulder tucked neatly into bone, as her eyelids crinkled with laughter. Sometimes she was laying in a bed, suspended in the same heavy sleep as Emily.

The dreams began after Emily watched Blue Is The Warmest Color on her college laptop after attending a weird outdoor art show where she had overheard someone criticizing it because it was directed by a straight man who didn’t know anything about lesbian sex. Emily also didn’t know anything about lesbian sex. Her and the director were the same in that way, and she decided to watch it in solidarity.

She tucked herself in the corner between bed and desk, her laptop warm and murmuring on her lap. A few minutes into the movie, Emily felt there was something familiar about the main character, Adele. It was something about Adele’s powerful stride as she ran to catch the bus to school. Something about the way her lips parted as she rested her head on the window once seated, revealing large crooked teeth. It was Sol.

Each of Adele’s gestures confirmed the initial feeling of familiarity and, as the movie progressed, the familiarity slowly turned into something warmer, something like desire. But who was the desire for? The images on the screen were flushed with memory, Adele and Sol existing simultaneously. Adele’s face morphing into Sol’s then back again. The desire was for an essence beyond the particulars of each, yet the essence was comprised of particulars: the tenderness of their faces, the way they scratched their scalp with vigor and nervously plucked at strands of hair, how they cried with the raw force of a child, and carried themselves with an aloofness emptier and holier than distraction.

After the first few nights, the dreams began to bleed into Emily’s waking state. Objects in her environment, smells, even the sounds of her own body, would trigger a memory of Sol and a state of confused desire. Emily felt she could not trust herself anymore. It was as if Adele’s sexuality had been displaced onto Sol, tainting each of her gestures with the same dye. Or had the desire for Sol existed all along without knowing itself to be desire?