Lilac Mines Read Free

hallway.
    â€œWhy would they want to film anything here anyway?” Robbie asks. He pulls a brown plaid flannel over his white T-shirt. “We live in a pit.”
    â€œOur landlord makes more money renting that apartment out to film crews for a couple of days than he would from renting it out to some poor Section 8 family with, like, three kids,” says Crane. She crosses her arms and look like an angry elf. She’s 4’11” and wearing an Anpanman T-shirt. Anpanman is an anime superhero with sweet bean bun for a head; when people are hungry, he gives them a bite. Then his friend the baker toasts him up a new head. Felix appreciates the simplicity of his heroism.
    â€œBesides, I think they’re making a movie about the ’hood,” Crane adds.
    â€œCome on, you guys,” Felix says impatiently. “We have to hurry if we want to find parking.”
    They’re off to West Hollywood, where you go when your girlfriend disappears from the continent. Where you go when you’ve had a terrible day at work. Where you go if you can’t stay home.
    The first stop is Sourpuss. There’s no sign exactly, just a neon lemon over the entrance, so they suspect it’s a good club. Better than that sweaty, shirtless boy club (what was it called?) that occupied the same space until a few months ago. Sourpuss is a girl club so Felix, Crane, and honorary lesbian Robbie feel duty-bound to check it out. Otherwise they’d be in Silver Lake, where no one even bothers with distinctions like gay and straight. Silver Lake is gritty and funky and underground whereas shiny WeHo nearly pulses with its ache to be mainstream. So they also feel duty-bound to make a few comments to reassure themselves that while they are in West Hollywood, they are also beyond it.
    â€œRobbie, please tell me you did not just check that guy out. He was such a FOB,” Crane hisses when Robbie’s eyes linger on a pale-haired man wearing an Old Navy T-shirt tucked into tight, light jeans.
    Robbie shrugs. He is the gentle offspring of the forested Oregon college at which he spent his pre-transfer years. “He had a nice body.” Robbie’s weakness, hardly original. “What does that even mean, FOB?”
    â€œFresh off the boat.” Crane’s Japanese. She has positionality, a term seemingly coined by one of their activist professors; at least, Felix hasn’t heard anyone else use it in the three years she’s been out of college.
    â€œI know, but how does that apply to him?” Robbie wants to know.
    â€œFine. Fresh off the bus. From, like, Iowa.” Crane smiles. “He’s so in love with WeHo, you can tell.”
    Sourpuss is sort of… sour. Brushed aluminum surfaces, aloof bartenders. Too new to have settled on a look, it’s a crazy quilt of lesbians and near-lesbians. Slim glittered bellbottoms, swingy flowered skirts, work pants, cargo pants, and giant raver jeans all cradle animated asses. Hopeful swinger couples work the margins of the dance floor, and gay boyfriends grind like the place is theirs. It’s times like this that Felix loves West Hollywood. It’s just cheesy enough that she doesn’t feel self-conscious. She’s wearing one of her dykiest outfits: black Dickies, black wifebeater with red silk-screened lips that hover between her boobs, steel-toed boots, and a choker that looks like a handful of ball bearings strung together. Her short brown hair is gelled into chunky spikes. For the sake of juxtaposition, she carries a purse adorned with a white poodle appliqué. The ensemble makes her feel angry-happy.
    The three friends shimmy into a platonic triangle. Near the bar, Felix spots Eva putting the moves on some neo-butch dyke, a woman with cutoff sleeves and sinewy biceps who probably loves knitting and getting fucked with a strap-on. One of Eva’s many types. A few minutes later, Felix catches Eva whispering to the DJ, a pixie-faced