This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.

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I decided to write this week’s The Parlour like an actual diary entry, loosely documenting my Very Florida Day from exactly a week ago.

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On Wednesday, I wake up early. Lately, I’ve become obsessed with looking at seasonal sunrise maps and joking that my ideal life would look like moving from city to city throughout the year in order to always live someplace where the sun is up at the hour I deem most appropriate for the sun to rise (between 5 a.m. and 5:45 a.m.). I love my early mornings, but I do not like rising so long before the sun. Due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, I have learned, the sun will never rise as early as I want it to in Orlando, no matter the time of year. I instead will have to learn to be comfortable in darkness.

I drive to the gym and lift weights. During benchpress reps, T-Pain sings the words “up down” in my ears, which is exactly how I describe lifting weights: up down up down. You’re just picking a heavy thing up and then putting it down. Over and over. I think I thought it would be boring before I started, but it has proven to be anything but.

It’s arm day, and I feel strong, though I’m recovering from a weekend of high-intensity tennis. My team made it to Florida’s USTA sectionals, where I played and won two singles matches against players from way up north in the state’s panhandle. I’ve got a bloody knee struggling to scab over and two toes jammed dark purple. My sister keeps telling me the nails on them will fall off but that I can’t know when, could happen in a week or a month, maybe more. She’s a runner, so I take her word for it.

After the gym, I pick up my newly strung racquet at the local pro shop. I need to be better about not leaving my racquet in a parked car for too long. This Florida summer heat will wreck the string job.

We drive to St. Augustine so Kristen can speak at a press conference about book bans in Florida. We stop for coffee along the way and so I can work a bit from the road, and I pick up a local newspaper to later use as collage materials (my latest obsessive hobby). At the community college where Kristen will speak, a small but passionate group of defenders of literature and the first amendment rights of Florida’s students have gathered outside, under a tree, hoping the shade will provide relief from the scorch of mid-afternoon August.

Under the tree, Kristen speaks about her love of Florida, and tears well in my eyes. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve heard her say these things; they gut-punch me every time, make me proud. Of her and also to live here. A high school student speaks, too, practicing the speech she hopes to use on debate team this year. Her last name is my middle name, and I mean to tell her this, but I forget in the flurry of group photos and people talking about next steps.

The organizers of the press conference tell us the district meeting that took place before was rough. Book banners — think: Moms of Liberty types — screamed in their faces, called them awful names, accused them of wild transgressions. The people who want to take books out of classrooms want to do far worse than that, too. Book bans are just the beginning.

None of these people show up to the press conference, thankfully. Under the tree, everyone is fighting for the same thing.

We could have driven the hour and half home to Orlando after, but we had decided to stay the night in St. Augustine and have a little adventure after the press conference, so we drive to our hotel to check in.

Later, we drink wine and eat cheese and fruit outside, again shaded by a big, old Florida tree.

Later, we get popsicles from the same little shop we went to together more than five years before, my first time in this old city.

Later, we look at shark teeth in a novelty shop in downtown historic St. Augustine. I’m obsessed with sharks as of late. Shark horror films, to be exact. Non-Jaws shark horror films, I have to specify, not because I don’t like Jaws but quite the opposite. It has been one of my favorite films ever for quite some time. But lately, I wanted to see what the rest of the canon holds. More on that later, in future writing, I’m sure. We do not buy any teeth. Why would we when we can so readily forage for them in the wild on New Smyrna’s beaches back home?

The streets are spookily empty. It’s off-season, a server explains. But even given that explanation, it’s too empty. I’ve read day-trip tourism is down. The middle class has less expendable income for day and weekend trips. Hotel prices have skyrocketed. This seems like exactly the kind of city to be affected by that, and I tell Kristen we should make the trip more often. It isn’t far from us, and lately I’ve been enjoying long drives and exploring the side-of-the-road restaurants and cafes throughout Florida and beyond, like when we took the scenic route home from Savannah and ended up in a seafood joint with killer fried clams and burgers that looked, from the outside, like a gas station.

Later, we watch tennis in a dive bar. Kristen says she’s excited to watch the U.S. Open with me in a week, now that she finally understands the rules better. She was at all of my Sectionals matches, cheering me on from the stands, carrying my things, even sweeping my side of the clay court after. A good tennis husband. I was the only member of my team with a spouse there the whole time. Yes, I’m flexing.

Later, we eat seafood at a restaurant we’ve been to before, only once, the same trip as the popsicles. After dinner, we walk to a small spot along the water known for its martinis. The night has cooled; the air smells like saltwater, briny as our drinks.

The next day, we will stop at the beach on our way home, a beach we’ve never been too and already want to return to. I’ll snap a picture of an informational plaque about the Anastasia Island Beach Mouse (peromyscus polionotus phasma) and joke it’s me, the beach mouse. I’ll find a perfect spiraled shell and present it to Kristen. She’ll drink hot coffee, me iced tea. And we’ll watch surfers catching larger-than-normal waves, presumably made by the faraway storm.

All of this, all of it all of it, is the Florida my wife writes and talks about. Florida, never boring, she always reminds. Florida, full of big, old trees, many hundreds of years old, offering shade, refuge.

This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.

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In a fit of bipolar disorder-induced mania in 2012, I took all 800 dollars I had in my bank account and flew to Paris. While I was there alone one day, I went to the train station and planned to get on whatever train was leaving next, which turned out to be one to Brussels,  a place I knew nothing about. I barely looked up tourist spots on my phone on the way. I can’t remember where (probably at the Atomium), but I met a guy named Ben from Australia. He was also alone. We decided to spend the day platonically together. We got waffles, fries, and chocolate. Then we headed to a bar where we met an entire Midwestern family (like a mix of a dozen kids and adults) visiting someone from their group while she was studying abroad.

Noting that Ben and I were young and alone, the adults invited us to dinner with them. We kept insisting it was too much, but one of the women said (very Midwesternly), “Oh come on. I’m sure your parents would do the same for any of our kids.” (I do think that’s true.)

We went to a seafood place and sat at a long table. The family paid for our meals. We went to another bar afterwards, and they paid for our beers. We all took a lot of photos together with early Instagram filters on them. I think me and some of the kids followed each other on Twitter, but when I left Brussels, we didn’t keep in touch.

Ben was staying the night in a hostel and invited me to stay with him. I knew enough to know that though he had only been friendly, I didn’t actually know Ben from a hole in the wall. I said thank you and boarded the late night train back to Paris. I don’t believe we exchanged information. I never saw anyone from that day in Brussels ever again.

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One of my exes who struggled with ADHD told me he wished for the simplicity of the way characters on the show Downton Abbey say goodbye.

The PBS masterpiece opens in 1912. There’s obviously no social media or texting. There’s maybe radio transmissions, though they’re not common for the general public. The Downton estate doesn’t get a telephone until season five and, when they do, it’s a big deal. (Carson, the butler, struggles with how to use it.) Cross-country and international letters took a while to arrive — weeks or months, according to the National Postal Museum. The first mail delivery flight (AirMail) took place in 1911, so that mode of communication was in its infancy. Travel times were anywhere from five days with a horse and buggy or two months or more on a ship.

Most likely, people in the 1910s would have an experience with someone and then never see them again. The ex with ADHD loved this idea. There was no pressure to immediately reply to messages or follow up via Instagram. It was enough to say goodbye and hope to see each other soon but also understand that you probably won’t see each other at all.

What about someone you meet on vacation who actually lives in your city? What a coincidence. You say you’ll hang when you get back, but then you never do. Maybe you see on Insta that they got engaged and you type a heart emoji. Why does it feel so weird to get coffee with them in your neighborhood? Did you have more to talk about outside the immediacy of the resort you were both in?

On a message board for Fodor’s Travel Guide from 2005, I dove into the hot goss of travelers discussing how hard it is to stop talking about their vacation with friends who weren’t there. “Anyone else been shunned by friends after you return from a great vacation?,” the title of the post says. One person said he doesn’t even bring a camera with him anymore because his friends from home have such little interest in how his travels went and what he saw on them. Another said she has to try not to seem braggadocious by starting every sentence, “Oh, that’s just like when we were in…”

Instagram launched in 2010, so live updates of our trips weren’t possible in the mid-2000s. Now, if someone has a destination vacation, you’re gonna see and hear about it inside your own phone, whether you want to or not. It’s true what these people are saying though. It’s better to leave the vacation where it was.

***I used to find it stressful not to keep in contact with people I was once close to. How strange to see someone every day for a chunk of time and then poof, they’re gone. Was that friendship real? Was it situational? How can we continue it? Does it matter if we do?

When I was in high school, I spent a week at a journalism program at the University of Florida. I had three roommates. We got along really well at the camp to the point that one night we sat in one of the girl’s rooms and talked about some secret problems that had plagued us. We cried together in a way I did not do with my long-time friends from home. Then, as far as I remember, we never spoke again once camp was over. We really had nothing in common.

At my former job, I spent eight hours a day with people who, a year ago, I did not know at all. In real life, we’d probably have never met. Here, though, we were forced to bond over the ridiculousness of our bosses or the unfair minutia of working for a corporation that was clearly going under. We had fun with our boredom and helped each other out when floundering. We got into a rhythm. I saw these coworkers more than I saw anyone else in my life. We opened up to each other. Two of them started dating and moved in together. I also got to know the regular customers. They came in and talked about their divorces, their pets’ illnesses, and their job stresses. The dog of a man who came in every day passed away, and he invited me and another employee to the dog’s funeral. One of my favorite customers unexpectedly died, and I was shocked, blurting out to her husband how lovely she was when he sadly relayed the news.

The aspect of quitting that job that bothered me the most was that I would suddenly never see these people and their pets ever again. The job was an hour away, which made the decision to find a job closer to my home a priority. The hours were also long for very little pay. I knew in my head that I had to leave, but I was devastated by this big change. I’m in a group chat with a couple of my co-workers, but we don’t have a lot of instances where we’d organically cross paths. I definitely don’t have any reason to hang out with my old customers again. The store is now so out of my way that a spontaneous visit wouldn’t be very spontaneous. I’d have to make the time despite having a new job to think about.

I need to make peace with never seeing some people again. They exist in one place in your life, and you don’t have to force them to exist somewhere else. I can cherish that time without chasing it. Maybe we’ll run into each other again, but probably not.

***The most jarring parts of my breakups have been the number of people who I will never see again. A breakup I experienced in 2016 hit me so hard because I’d become close to his friends. I’d even started a podcast with one of his roommates. And yet, there it was: cut off entirely. I never saw him or his housemates again, except once on the picket line for the Writer’s Guild strikes. I said hello, and my ex ignored me and walked on.

I was also extremely close to one of my other ex’s nieces to the point that she would ask for me upon seeing my then-partner even if I wasn’t in town with him. My ex and I talked about how wild it would be when she was a teenager and had never known life without me. I would just be Uncle Gabe, a member of her family. She would trust me the same way she would trust someone she was blood-related to, even though to the larger family, I would always be a recent addition.

I still think about her, and I feel incredibly guilty about the conversation my exit must have caused. Where did I go? Why did I leave? Would she never see me again? Is this her very first experience of someone disappearing from her life? I feel awful that it probably is. She also loved my dog and asked for him by name. She crouched down to pet him with her uncoordinated baby arms, and he would just allow it, accepting her love even if it was a bit rough. She’d never see my dog again either. I think, by now, we’re both just fuzzy memories to her.

This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.

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The cardinal who lives in my yard waits for me to refill the birdbath so he can clean up and get ready for his date. He’s part of a mated pair, and I like to joke that I need their relationship to survive for personal reasons, to show me that true love is everlasting. I’m fixated on this bird because he has a genetic anomaly. His head doesn’t look like most other cardinals. It’s flat and completely black, as though God crafted the rest of him with extreme care and then, when it came time to make the head, he got bored and just scribbled in the rest with a black Sharpie.

He’s just one of many birds that have fluttered through my yard, perching on chairs, or the lips of potted plants. This is their home: Crows, Blue Jays, Ibis, Brown Thrashers. The occasional Wren or Bluebird. Owls that were uprooted during a summer storm, a baby pair sleeping along the exposed branch of a tree. They’d blink angrily whenever we’d dare approach the yard during daylight hours. Not just birds, though. Possums. Long black snakes. Scores of lizards and geckos. Feral cats that my own cat lovingly admires from his perch behind the sliding glass door. A family of raccoons whose babies washed their hands in that same birdbath where my cardinal likes to splash. I want to remember every detail, jot it down for posterity, because after three years spent cultivating this yard with care, I’m about to leave it to whoever comes next.

On arrival, it wasn’t much. Large oak trees shade either corner, which is pleasant and helps cool the long summer days, but the rest was all bare cement slab and patchy weeds. I spent time at Lowes, community plant sales at nearby Leu Gardens. Planted anywhere that wasn’t green. Lined up a slew of pots along the lip of the slab, made an outdoor living space. Things grew and things died. I watered too much or not enough. Some plants needed me more than others. I climbed on ladders alone (ill-advised, without my wife’s knowledge) and strung up strands of Edison bulbs, casting fairy glow over the leaves at night. We were gifted a griddle, made burgers and breakfast sandwiches. We bought a firepit. On nights when it got below seventy degrees (which wasn’t often), I fed sticks to the blaze and stared upward through the branches, counting the stars. I scavenged for patio furniture, collecting chairs from castoffs tossed in neighbors’ trash. Hooted with delight when I discovered a glass-topped outdoor wicker coffee table; dragged it down the street like I’d won the goddamn lottery. My wife was patient with me through all this. Knew I wanted to make something good.

Now, as if anticipating my departure, the Rosemary plant we’ve had for over two years has wilted and died. No more syrups for cocktails or sprigs for our Thanksgiving turkey. It’s the last yard where my constant companion of fourteen years got to romp and play — a small French bulldog named Lola Jane, black and white spotted pig-cow of a creature — and now when I leave, I must contend with the terrible fact that she won’t be coming with me. New yard, but not for her. It’s too hard to think about that, so I focus on where the new potted plants will live. Some need more sun than others. I’ll have to be careful where I set them (but regardless of my want, my dog loved to sunbathe, too, though we both knew it was bad for her).

It’s a rental. Even as I cultivated herbs and flowers, clipped back weeds, coaxed life into the stunted palms, I understood they were not mine to keep. The crows I befriended with fresh water and offering of pistachios will miss me, I hope. They left me gifts: shiny coins, foil stickers, a magnet in the shape of a gleaming rifle. It won’t matter if I’m not there to change out the bathwater. The crows are smart. They’ll find food and friendship elsewhere.

There will be new birds; I live in Florida for crying out loud. But there will never be another strange-headed cardinal. There will never be another fourteen-year-old pig-cow-dog, trundling around the grass, searching out dead things to roll in. There will never be this yard again, I think, and that’s where the heartbreak lies. I’ll make all new memories. But leaving these ghosts behind certainly stings.

Kristen Arnett

Kristen Arnett is the queer author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony, and the Key West Literary Seminar (upcoming 2024), and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career writers of fiction. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her next novel, CLOWN, will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House), followed by the publication of an untitled collection of short stories. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida. You can find her on Twitter here: @Kristen_Arnett

Kristen has written 9 articles for us.