okay so i already know how this sounds, just read it first
last weekend i went to a music festival with a few friends and it was genuinely disgusting outside. not cute summer hot, more like trapped in a crowd and sweating through everything hot. everyone around us looked shiny and miserable and was still acting like this was the best day of their lives, which honestly, respect. i am weak in the heat, so i brought this big black fan that says “Lesbian Princess” on it in red gothic letters. my friend gave it to me as a joke, but it was actually useful, so into the bag it went.
it became a thing faster than i expected. i was fanning myself, then my friends, then a couple of strangers near us who looked like they were about to fully leave their bodies. people kept laughing at it and asking to hold it for pictures. every time i opened it someone had something to say. i was not trying to be interesting. i was just hot and holding an extremely loud fan.
somewhere in all of that, this girl near me asked if she could borrow it. she was funny in a way i was not prepared for, and confident in that easy way that makes you suddenly forget what you normally do with your hands. we talked between sets, shared water, danced a little, and then somehow spent most of the night together. it did not feel like a big movie moment while it was happening. it felt like one small choice after another, and i kept making the wrong one.
i had a boyfriend at home. i know. i keep wanting to explain that part in a way that makes me sound less awful, but there is not really a version of it that does that. i knew what was happening. i knew i was crossing a line. i let it happen anyway. i think i had known some things about myself for a while and kept putting them under “probably just a phase” or “you are overthinking it,” and that night i ran out of places to put them.
the next morning was just awful and quiet. i sat there with my phone for a long time, picking it up and putting it down, because i knew i had to call him and i also knew there was no way to make that call without hurting him. i told him what happened. not every tiny detail, because i do not think that would have helped anyone, but enough. he was hurt, obviously. he was also kinder than i deserved, which made me feel worse, not better. we broke up. i cried a lot. there is no cute way to describe it.
i do not have a clean ending for this. the fan is on my wall now because putting it in a drawer felt weird and throwing it away felt too dramatic. i am not going to say it changed my life, because that would be insane. it is a fan. but i did go to a festival with it and come home with a breakup and a much shorter list of things i am pretending not to know about myself. that is the whole thing.