Winner, 2023
The Anne C. Barnhill Prize for Creative Nonfiction

Three Fairies

I stood in the apartment of a Grindr boy whose name I can’t remember. In the low light, I scanned the bookshelf, unsure how much to prolong the post-sex haze. A sepia spine stood out to me, the subtitle Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land. Still in underwear, I pulled the book off the shelf and asked him if he liked it. He said he hadn’t read it, but his mom had sent it to him. I was welcome to borrow it. I took the book home, snapped a photo of the haunting cover, and texted it to Sam, my oldest friend.

Is your mom also obsessed with this book?. 

The “haha” reaction appeared next to the photo. 

Omg is that the gay book they read for book club? 

Our mothers had been in the same neighborhood book club since we were little. They recently read a gay coming of age story and emailed us the link incessantly, imploring us to read it. They had never before included us in their book club. During our childhood, this gathering was a mundane mystery of moms chatting indecipherably on sofas with glasses of wine. Their adult playtime was irrelevant to us, as we were absorbed in our separate games.

The magic wands were kept in an old tin soup can on top of the refrigerator. Three twigs with glittering ribbons trailing from their ends. They were always there, just out of reach. Our capes were in a trunk in the attic. The three of us scrambled upstairs and adorned ourselves in our self-assigned garments. We transformed from three mortal boys into Flora, Fauna, and Meriweather, the three fairies from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Sean, my older brother, was Fauna. He wore a shimmering green silk cape and pointed green hat. Sam, our neighbor, was Flora in an identical red costume. I was Meriweather, in matching blue. Once transformed, we flitted downstairs to my mother, the only one able to reach the wands on their perch. She had to grant permission before we could take flight, though I can’t remember a time she refused. When we needed them, she handed us each our shimmering branch, our key to a world both grounded on the pavement of Ashland Avenue, and soaring above its quotidian routines. 

Our mothers moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, from Long Island, New York, before we were born. It was a fortunate coincidence that these two New Yorkers found themselves in houses facing each other on either side of Ashland Avenue. They became pillars of familiarity and mutual support in this icy land of passive-aggressive niceties and mediocre bagels. They had their sons within three years of one another: Sean, my older brother was born, Sam soon followed, and I came one year later.  I don’t remember meeting Sean or Sam. They were my brothers, one biological, the other through proximity and an interfamily bond forged before my birth.     

We spent our early childhoods ensconced in the rhythm’s of each other’s homes, which were separated by a narrow stretch of asphalt, navigable for our small feet. Sam grew accustomed to my mother’s restrained Irish-Catholic sensibilities, her calm psychologist’s gaze over her glasses, rosary beads dangling from the grandfather clock, Virgin Mary icons resting against stacks of books. Sean and I tiptoed into the lively Jewish life across the street: curly hair in the bathtub, Sam’s mother’s shouts reverberating with a distinctly Brooklyn volume, fruits and cheeses strewn across counters during the autumn holidays, shining brass menorahs in the winter. Both of our homes, while full of the trappings of middle class modernity, carried something mysterious from an older world. Both families knew candles lit, prayers recited, and immigrant grandmothers who visited from New York bringing strange accents and distant stares. 

Once the wands were bestowed, we soared past older neighbor boys, who barely looked up from their Pokemon cards. Our capes trailed behind us, our wands outstretched with ribbons streaking across the sky. If the boys’ glances carried any hostility or confusion at our flagrant disregard for the rigid rules of boyhood, we were oblivious. For those hours, we knew only each other, flitting through our magical world in which the trees lining our urban street were a fairy forest and the streetlamps were glowing towers of a princess’ castle. At that time, our bodies were the bodies of fairies; we inhabited them seamlessly, vessels of joy. We flew, we pranced, we twirled. This was a game with no competition or set rules. When Sam peered through our screen door and shouted, “Wanna play three fairies?”, we knew what to do.

Boys reach an age where we know we can’t be a fairy. As we grew taller, around first grade for me, the magic wands became more out of reach. We slipped into our attempts at boyhood. Silence replaced speaking, homework replaced drawing. We morphed our limitless fairyland into the lines of the kickball diamond. 

I tried, but continually failed. In Kindergarten, a saleswoman snatched sparkly red shoes from my hands. “You can’t try on girl’s shoes.” In third grade, a boy in my class told me I had girly fingers. In sixth grade, my teacher told me I hung out with the girls too much. In eighth grade, soon after I won a popular student government election, a classmate sneered, “Only queers sing in choir.”

Over the years, I watched Sean become chubby then lanky, disappearing more often behind a closed bedroom door. Sam’s pearly voice turned to gravel, his soft angelic curls became coarse. The soft fairy fuzz on both of their legs turned darker, stiffer. I observed these changes, knowing they were coming for me too. I watched them escort girls to prom, lanky and flushed in tuxes. One at a time, they disappeared to college. I was left, still the baby of Ashland Avenue at 6 foot, 2 inches. 

During a frigid Minnesota winter break, I was squashed in the back seat of an old friend’s car, music pounding next to my ears. Everyone was home from colleges across the country and gathering to show off our new selves. Over the din, a friend posed to the group, 

“Did you hear Sam is gay? He brought this cute boy from Madison for Hanukkah.” 

My stomach clenched. I hadn’t heard, but I pretended I had. I stared at my forced blasé reflection in the car window, my face eclipsed by the winter sky. He had done it. Sam had somehow found his magic wand away from home, among frozen Wisconsin cow fields. Through the frosty window, the golden street lamps glinted like the princess castles of our forgotten world, out of reach.  

The next winter, I sat in my Portland, Oregon, college dorm, a freshman agonizing over finals. My roommate plopped a letter down on my desk; from Sean, who was studying abroad in Ireland. The letter began with funny accounts of parties in Galway, news from our Irish cousins. 

By the end of the first piece of paper, Sean had a boyfriend. He wanted me to know that he was gay. 

I snapped shut my laptop, exited into the foggy night, and sprinted across campus. Sean had done it. Sam had done it. I knew it was coming for me as well, and I didn’t feel ready. I reached the campus Christmas tree. Each pine branch was wrapped meticulously in colored lights. I heaved, inhaling the fresh scent of Pacific Northwest soil. The smell of wet pine bark was so far from the maples of Ashland Avenue, farther from the brackish tides of my mother’s New York. I stared up at the massive pine and its glowing rainbow of lights.  

Within months, I was naked and pressed up against a man under the scratchy sheets of a twin bed in the all-boys dorm. It was my turn now. His stubble, both soft and bristly like what I had seen sprout up on Sam’s face when we were pubescent boys. His voice was deep, hushed the way we three fairies used to whisper long into the night at sleepovers. It seemed natural that my first intimate experience so close to another naked male body would be like this. Low light like Sam’s mother’s Shabbat candles, beads of sweat like my mother’s rosary. Reverence for the flesh, ecstasy and pain intermingled. I knew I wanted more of this feeling. Hairy legs intertwined, hot breath, moisture under thin bed sheets.  

The next morning, I sent Sean a Facebook message from my dorm. 

I slept with a guy last night. 

His reply-

Cool. Was it fun? 

Relieved, my fingers hovered above the keyboard. Before I could answer- 

Tell mom whenever you want. She’s totally cool with it. 

In our fairy days, we couldn’t appreciate who our mothers were; the gift they gave us when they bestowed us with magic wands, the boldness of being who they were, unabashed New Yorkers among the goyim and Protestants of the Midwest where all things ostentatious are contained inside church walls. My mother chipped away at centuries of patriarchy, a female department head at a Catholic university. She advised “Allies,” the only campus club for queer students. She stood before a committee of all priests, demanding they hire openly gay staff. Sam’s mother was a founding member of the local gay synagogue. When their rabbi was fired in the early 90s for being lesbian, she opened her home so the rabbi could lead renegade services. As our mothers worked for justice in the adult world, we flew above it all, oblivious to the danger. 

Sean, Sam, and I have flown away to make our own lives in bigger cities. Sam lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany, a place likely unrecognizable to his grandparents who survived death camps. Sean and I are in Brooklyn, part of the vast urban archipelago our mothers called home. Millennial gay life isn’t quite the fairy world we created as boys. Straining to hear a first date over the sound system of a Hell’s Kitchen bar, strained eyes from the glow of apps, ringing ears after the last hit of poppers. 

On one such fumbling, low-lit night, I walked home from my date’s Brooklyn apartment with the gay memoir his mother had given him. In my bed, I became lost in it; a gay boy coming of age, ultimately disowned by his homophobic parents. The writer lacked our communal life, the safety of our city streets. Why did our mothers want us to read his story? To show that they were better allies than the protagonist’s mother? I paged through the book hungrily. The writer’s conservative childhood felt alien to me, but his early lessons on the rigid lines of masculinity resonated through my stomach. 

I snapped a selfie holding the book open in bed. I’m ordering copies for you guys, I texted Sean and Sam.  

I needed them to read it. I was fearful that they may not find commonality with the writer’s experience. Would they think I was crazy for seeing myself in this sad boy? Ungrateful for a childhood filled with progressive lawn signs? I wanted to know that I wasn’t the only one who had felt alone. I needed to know that they also felt fear permeate our fairy fortress.  

On the phone with my mother, I stroll Flatbush Avenue listening to her praise the book. All I need to say is, “Hmmmm” and “Yes” and “I know.” She names a particular scene in which the writer was out camping with a group gay friends. When approached by a pair of straight men, the writer panicked, deepened his voice, and told the men they were there for a bachelor party. “I’d never thought of that before”, my mom said. “Have you ever felt afraid because you’re gay?”

My face flushed. I paused. Of course. Every time a man looks at me on the subway. Every time I’m not sure I’m walking the right way at night. Every time I remember I have girly fingers or want to wear sparkly shoes.

All I said was, “Well I don’t live in North Dakota.”

Sean, Sam, and I texted about the book, agreeing and disagreeing, but we quickly moved on to what holds us together now: the minutiae of our lives, men, politics, work, family, memories. Photos of Prospect Park, of Frankfurt gay clubs, of Grindr boys, of new clothes to be kept or returned. Sam sends a screenshot of a Tinder message he received in Germany: Hello my Jewish King with heart eyes and Star of David emoji. “Lots of guys with Jew fetish here…lucky me??” Sean and I send a selfie of our foreheads marked black for Ash Wednesday, me ironically holding up a peace sign. Our mothers are not privy to our conversations, some of which include the phrase “don’t tell your mom.” We can only imagine what our mothers discuss at book club, presumably wine glasses in hand and books forgotten on the coffee table. Like our magical world in childhood, we share a private life as gay men. While we exclude our mothers from this world, we owe its existence to them.

We have learned how to survive without wings.  

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Kevin Hershey is a writer, early childhood educator, and graduate student of clinical social work. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Crab Creek Review, and Open Global Rights. He lives in New York City.