3
" Kisses bring viewers out of the woodwork. That’s pure and simple fandom fact, and #KevinThursday is a prime example. A kiss is the culmination of everything unspoken—all the hints and hopes and uncertainties in a budding romance. Until that moment, it’s heat and simmer, heat and simmer. It’s a look, a word, a gesture. But the kiss is the boiling point. It’s what everyone waits on and cheers for.
I get that, but personally? I prefer what happens before the kiss: the accidental brush of a shoulder, the spark of a stolen glance, the seemingly throwaway comment that is steeped in history and means so much more. That’s what I love best, and it’s what I best direct. "
― Kathryn Ormsbee , Tash Hearts Tolstoy
9
" I reflect, not for the first time this week, that the twenty-first century is a screwed-up place to be. How is this even a normal human interaction? Back in the old days people waited weeks, even months, to receive letters, and that had to suck. But on a regular day, when they were out and about having normal chats, no one had to wait in crippling suspense to see if their conversation partner would deign to answer them. If said partner remained unresponsive for a full three minutes, the only possible explanation would be that they’d had a stroke, not that they’d heard the question and didn’t want to answer for another few hours. "
― Kathryn Ormsbee , Tash Hearts Tolstoy
10
" I’m worried that telling Jay will be the equivalent of stomping on his foot. To throw out my lack of sexuality when Jay is getting harangued every day for the expression of his own? It seems so insensitive. It’s not like people are telling me I can’t get married or that I’m going to hell.
I’ve been part of Calhoun’s gay-straight alliance since freshman year. When I joined, I identified myself as an ally. During one of our meetings this past year, Tara Rhodes said, “Allies are important. They’re the ‘A’ in all our acronyms, after all!” And I wanted to stand up right then. I wanted to shout, “I’m real and here and just as confused as a lot of you!” But I stayed quiet, because I didn’t want to come out right there, in a basement classroom that smelled like whiteboard cleaner. Still, Tara’s comment bothered me for months after that. It made me feel like no one saw my “kind of people.” That we didn’t exactly count. And if I didn’t count in an effing GSA meeting, then where the hell was I supposed to go? "
― Kathryn Ormsbee , Tash Hearts Tolstoy
13
" You know,” he says, “people always say if they could take their loved one’s pain away, they would. But think about if you actually could. It’d be such a nightmare. You would take someone’s pain, but then they would love you, so they’d just take it back, or someone else you love would take it from you, and someone they love would take it from them, and it would go on like that until the pain ended up with some person who loved but wasn’t loved back. Some sad, unloved person. And they would get stuck with the pain.”
“Damn, Paul. You go to dark places. "
― Kathryn Ormsbee , Tash Hearts Tolstoy
16
" I spent several days desperately begging Jack to reconsider sending in that application. Each time, Jack calmly responded, “I’m not going to change my ideology, so why would I change the letter?”
Here’s the thing: I totally understand where Jack is coming from. I know plenty of really talented students at Calhoun who were turned down by GSA. And yeah, I know it’s a kind of beauty pageant, and that’s not fair. But if I had a chance to learn about filmmaking and screenwriting from qualified professionals, to meet artists my age from across the state, to earn scholarship money for college, why wouldn’t I take it? Sometimes you have to play by the world’s unfair rules. Unless, of course, you are Jack Harlow. Then you play by your own rules, no matter how many opportunities you have to deny yourself for the sake of “ideology.”
I don’t like Jack when she gets like that. Honestly, it scares me, because when Jack takes a stand that unflinching, it means someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong. And while I like to think Jack was just being way too persnickety about GSA, there’s this suspicion in the darker part of my mind that maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. Maybe I am weak in spirit, a total sellout, the kind of human that ancient Greek philosophers warned against associating with. "
― Kathryn Ormsbee , Tash Hearts Tolstoy
