"I have to give myself a pat on the back for this one!" Anna said triumphantly. "Somehow, I've pulled you through an all nighter."
It was Saturday morning, and the sun was just beginning to peek through my curtains which were open a crack. We were a couple weeks into the school year and had grown closer than ever, speaking every day and hanging out after school. I'd grown closer to her friends at school, as well as her older sister, but needless to say it was Anna who I felt most comfortable around. "You're lucky my mom is on a work trip until tonight. She would never let me do this otherwise." I said into the mic of my earpieces, speaking with Anna over a discord video call.
"You look off. Is something on your mind?"
Yeah, something was on my mind.
Ever since the first day of school, I'd been grappling with the idea of coming clean to Anna. Coming clean may have been the wrong word since I didn't do anything wrong, but I couldn't think of any way else to describe it. I felt like I had to open myself up completely to her but I just didn't know how. And every week, I was still changing in the shower cubicle.
"How did you come out to your mom?" I asked.
"Text."
If I had been drinking something, I would have done a comedic spit take. "No way. You're kidding."
"Of course I'm kidding! You can't do that stuff over text! I mean, of course you can if distance is a huge issue. But not only do I live in the same house as my mom, we're also just super close in general so I knew I had to tell her verbally." I listened intently, hanging on to her every word. "I had debated for ages on when to tell her. Of course, I knew I was going to. You know my personality. Staying in the closet just wasn't an option for me period. Being lesbian was something I've known about myself since middle school, but I only came out entirely last year. It still worried me that she might say I was too young to know, but Mom was really accepting of me. The key was to know the best way to tell her. What gets to her most. For my mom, she loves being back home in Norway. One of our winters there, I took her on a walk in the Enchanted Forest, just the two of us. and just spilled the beans."
"Is it really enchanted?" I asked, full of skepticism.
"Mom likes to call it that. Only because she found a blue salamander there when she was a kid and thought it was magic, not knowing it's a species native to that region." She paused to yawn. "Why do you ask?"
"Okay, well, this might just be the fatigue talking, but I've gotta be open with you." I braced myself for the confession. She's not going to judge you. "So, I'm a lesbian." Anna perked up a little in my browser window but kept her mouth shut. "And, well, I've told you about my Aunt Gothel. What I haven't told you was that that was the trigger for her cutting off all my hair that night, when I came out to her. The only other people who know are Cass, Officer Hopps and Calhoun, the woman from the bar who helped me get to the police station. I don't want to keep this part of myself hidden anymore. I want to just have the liberating freedom of being out. I figured the first step would be with Mom, but I don't know how to tell her, or how she would react."
Her rosy lips broke into a smile. "Oh, Punz, I'm so happy you felt like you could tell me!" she squealed, bouncing up and down in her chair. That girl was just a bundle of energy. "So now you wanna come out to your mom?" I nodded wordlessly. "Knowing your mom, I don't think she needs any huge gestures. She seems pretty low maintenance. I'm thinking something small, something genuine, something intimate." Intimate wasn't exactly the word I would have used, but I didn't say anything. "Maybe make a home cooked meal for her tonight when she gets back from her trip. I'm sure she'll appreciate not needing to cook for a change. Then… just spit it out. I'm not sure what other advice I can give you." Each sentence was punctuated with a yawn, eliciting a giggle from me.
"Okay, okay, I got the message," I giggled. "You should go to bed though, I've never seen you awake for this long."
She panned her camera over to the many fluorescent empty cans of Monster Energy that littered the floor. "Who needs sleep when I have the power of caffeine on my side?"
I rolled my eyes. "Bed!"
"Yes Mom," she replied sarcastically, before cutting off the call.
XXX
"Okay… spaghetti and meatballs…"
Mom was due to be back soon, and I was determined to have a hot meal waiting for her upon her return. After a well deserved sleep, I ran to the store to pick up ingredients, including white, orange and pink food colouring to dye the pre-shredded mozzarella. In my head, Mom's voice guided me.
"Canned, whole tomatoes, garlic, shallot, onion, salt, pepper, tomato paste, dried oregano and dried basil for the sauce. Leave it to blip on the stove with the lid half on the pot." Her neat, cursive writing wove its way around the written recipe, stuck onto the fridge with a magnet shaped like a head of lettuce. "Ground beef, ground pork, more diced onions, breadcrumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, lots of mozzarella cheese. Mix everything together and form the meatballs. Be sure to properly seal them to prevent cheese leakage. Bake in the oven before adding them to the sauce and spooning on top of cooked pasta, preferably spaghetti, but pretty much any shape will do."
Keeping my fingers curled like a claw, I got to work chopping onions until I teared up, mincing garlic until my fingers smelled strongly of the pungent ingredient, and assembled the sauce on the heat. Then, the meatballs.
This is gonna be so cheesy, I thought as I procured the bag of shredded mozzarella, dividing it into three parts. Both literally and metaphorically. I knew the lesbian pride flag technically had five shades, if not more, but there's only so much cheese a meatball can be stuffed with. I meticulously formed the spherical mounds of meat, stuffing each with a different colour and separating them so I could ensure we each got a bit of every hue. Setting it on a baking tray lined with aluminium foil, I popped it in the oven and prayed the colours would remain a surprise.
"Hi, Mom. Welcome home. I'm gay," I practised as I got out the fancy silverware, setting two places at the dining room table.
"I'm gay? I'm lesbian. I am a lesbian. A lesbian is me." There was a blue vase in the back of the cupboard which matched the nice bowls, so I put that out, taking a moment to pick some wildflowers growing on the corner of our street. Filling it with water, I tried to do a nice arrangement, and thought it had turned out half decent by the end of it.
"I like girls," I rehearsed, checking to see that the meatballs were almost done, before mentally slapping myself when I realised all the meatballs had to go in the sauce anyway, so I would have no way of controlling who got which colour anyway. Grumbling a little at my own stupidity, I added the meatballs to the sauce, watching them sink in, mocking me with their hidden contents.
"The male species does not attract me." Man, I'm really bad at this. Glancing at the clock, I saw Mom was to be home in fifteen minutes, just enough time for the pasta to cook. The water was boiling and I watched in fascination as the individual strands fanned out in the most satisfying way. I used the tongs to swirl it around, making sure every bit was submerged before putting the lid on the pot.
"I am gay," I muttered. "I am a lesbian."
The timer for the pasta went off. Carefully, I drained it with a colander like how Mom did and swirled each portion into a bowl. I spooned ladles of sauce and meatballs onto the yellow noodles, making a mental note to try to do a pasta drawing soon. The colours were nice.
Just as I placed the food on the table, I heard a key turn in the lock and my nerves skyrocketed.
"Rapunzel, I'm back!" Mom called. Her suitcase could be heard clattering behind her. She immediately stopped in her tracks when her eyes fell on me, and then her nostrils were filled with the scent of homemade spaghetti and meatballs. "Something smells amazing in here," she commented with a smile.
"I made you a welcome home meal. And set the table to look all nice. With flowers and everything."
"Oh how romantic."
"Mom!"
"Teasing," she laughed. "That was really sweet of you, honey. Give me a minute to leave my bag in my room and kick off these heels. My feet are absolutely killing me."
After she was settled, Mom sat herself opposite me, pulling the steaming bowl of pasta closer to her and mixing it up, coating the noodles with sauce before twirling some around her fork and taking a bite.
"How was your trip?" I asked casually, trying to put off what I actually wanted to talk about.
"It was really good. I always find it refreshing to see a different city, but I've missed being home with my daughter."
My cheeks warmed.
"This is really amazing, Rapunzel. I can't believe you made these all on your own considering the last time we cooked together you could barely chop an onion."
"I used your recipe on the fridge," I squeaked, trying to play it cool. "I coloured the cheese inside the meatballs too. Just… thought we could have some fun with it."
"Oh?" She split open an orange one, watching the cheese flow out and combine with the rest of the dish. "Any reason on the colour choice?" She asked it like a true artist.
This is it. Just say it. Spit it out. I'm a lesbian. I'm a lesbian. I'm a lesbian. I'm a lesbian. "It's very cheerful, I'll give you that. Bright and bubbly. I like it."
"I'm equestrian." Fool.
"What?"
"What?"
"Is that an extracurricular?" she asked, clearly confused.
"Dang it!" I ran a hand through my hair nervously. "No no no that came out wrong." I watched, tongue tied as she bit into a pink one, the rosy cheese stretching out, linking her lips to the meatball attached to her fork. My heart felt like it was going to beat straight out of my chest. My palms were like mini waterfalls.
"So you're not a horse rider?" Mom selected one with a white inside, casually chewing on it as if I wasn't about to spill my heart out to her. Tell her.
"imalesbian." God damn my word vomit and my inability to articulate anything.
"Sorry, I really couldn't catch that," Mom chuckled. "The trip must have mushed my brain, you're gonna want to slow down a little, honey."
"I'm a lesbian!"
Mom paused mid bite. The sound that she made was a combination of a gasp and a sigh.
"Please don't freak out! Or choke!" I watched, bracing myself to need to perform the heimlich maneuver at a moment's notice. Thankfully. Mom safely swallowed the food, wiping her mouth delicately on a napkin before speaking. "You're a lesbian?"
I nodded. "Orange, pink and white. The pride flag colours. Tha main ones, at least."
Her face was unreadable. At least she didn't look angry or like she wanted to take a knife to my hair. "How long have you known?"
"I had been questioning for a few years but was only really sure a year ago. I.. that's… this is what set off the main conflict with Aunt Gothel."
"You told your aunt?" Her eyes were wide with… worry? Panic?
"That was before I knew she was a huge homophobe."
Mom nodded in understanding. "I was about to say. She was crazy religious when I knew her. Your dad less so, but he still held some pretty backwards values. Honestly, I'm surprised cutting off your hair was all she did. It seems to me that she's mellowed out over the years."
"That was mellowed out?" I gasped.
"Oh, sweetie, you don't even know the half of it."
"So, you're not mad?"
"Oh course I'm not mad!" she exclaimed. "Why on earth would I be mad? I could never be mad at you for something like this. I have no right to. That's your decision entirely and I don't need to have any say in it. No one does except you." Mom reached a hand out, cupping my cheek gently with her left hand like the first time we met. "I'm so sorry if you ever felt you couldn't tell me this."
"I've felt like I couldn't tell anybody really after what happened. I didn't want anybody to react the same way she did. You're maybe the fifth person to know? Most of the others were police officers when I had to give my statement."
"Listen. I will always love you. Nothing will ever change that, not even who you choose to love or even marry someday. You hear me?"
I nodded, the weight on my shoulders growing considerably lighter.
Surprisingly, I could sense Mom begin to get nervous, wringing her hands together. "Now it's my turn to be open with you."
"What do you mean?" I asked, a mixture of curiosity and fear coursing through my veins.
"Remember when I told you your dad found out something about my past and left me because of it and I said it would be a story for another day?" I nodded silently.
"I'm going to tell you about one of my best friends in high school. Helen. She was cool, she was spunky, she always kept things real, and she was smoking hot." I stifled a laugh.
"Don't give me that look! It's an objective fact. Anyway, we met freshman year and were inseparable until graduation and beyond. I still chat to her occasionally today. I'm not sure exactly when my feelings of friendship towards her developed into something more." Mom couldn't look me in the eye, her face as red as the pasta sauce.
"At the time, I kept a diary. Standard high school stuff. Family arguments, teachers who pissed me off, and more importantly, high school crushes. I have a bunch of boxes in the garage and could probably dig it up for you later if you want. But the crux of it was I didn't have the guts to tell Helen how I felt, so I settled for writing every painstaking detail in my diary, of how I imagined a future together, of how I wish I could just tell her everything but was too afraid of being rejected.
Obviously, I moved past that after graduation, when I went to college and met Frederic. I had almost forgotten that any physical evidence of my crush existed at all, until my parents sent my childhood stuff over. For some reason, Frederic decided it would be a good idea to look through my stuff before I had even known anything was delivered. He claimed that he wanted to make a scrapbook or something, when he came across my diary.
Now, like I said, he wasn't entirely religious. I mean, we eloped for God's sake. He never went to church, never prayed, but he was hompphobic, much like Gothel was. I never told him I was bi in the years we knew each other, and when he found out, he was absolutely furious. Mind you, he had no reason to be. Some backwards thinking drilled into him by an old hag named Roz"
"I met her at the wake."
"So you know what I'm talking about. Absolute insanity drilled into them at such a young age. I can't say I blame him, but at the same time, I do." Neither of us were touching our food at this point. "Your dad told me about this after we had you. About Roz, I mean. Of course, I was upset, but couldn't exactly do anything about it. I couldn't leave either since we had you to look after together. We got into so many arguments about this over those few months but I never had the courage to say why I was so passionate about the issue. I opted to just stay in the closet until he figured it out for himself and left. He said he didn't want it to spread to you, as if it were a disease." Mom paused to scoff.
"That whole experience put me off men forever, which is why I've never been with another guy. I guess our sexuality is another thing we have in common," she joked through a half smile.
"I'm sorry," I said awkwardly, not knowing what else I could have offered.
Mom gave me a comforting smile. "It's not your fault, sweetheart. I'm comfortable in my own skin and that's the example I want to set for you. I'm perfectly okay with who I am and I'm done hiding it."
"Have you ever gotten together with a woman after Dad?" I asked.
Mom just shrugged. "I've met some people here and there. Nothing terribly serious. The right lady just never came around, but I'm alright with that. I've still got time."
"Not even Helen?"
An adorable laugh filled the air. "No, dear, not Helen. She's lovely, but that was just a high school crush. And she was way out of my league. She's got a beautiful family of her own now, a real super bunch. Plus, you're the only girl I need in my life right now."
I gave her a sheepish goofy grin, my cheeks starting to hurt from how much I had smiled in relief throughout the conversation. "Well, at least now you know you have a shot at getting grandchildren."
"Yes, I guess so…" Mom paused for thought. "That reminds me. We still have to have the talk."
"The talk?"
"The talk."
All the blood in my body rushed to my cheeks when I realised what she was talking about. "Do we really have to? I'm nearly eighteen and I've been traumatised enough by the internet to know what people get up to."
"I think mother and daughter should be open about this stuff, don't you? Remember I said the day we met that a relationship between mother and daughter is especially special. Nothing should be too taboo to talk about. Sex is a natural part of life, Rapunzel. You shouldn't be ashamed because of it. You're pretty much at the age when you're going to start having romantic partners, so shouldn't you have a sense of preparedness?"
She did have a point. "I guess so…"
"You're already seventeen, I don't feel like I need to teach you about masturbation, especially since it's typically easier for guys to get the hang of rather than girls considering… you know… the penis. I remember something from my old science classes, surface area to volume ratio. It was used in chemistry but it's applicable to this scenario too. More surface area, more area for contact-"
"Yup, yup, got that down, no need to speak about that!" I said quickly, trying desperately to move the conversation on.
"And as for couples," Mom batted her eyelashes at me, "when two people love each other very much-"
"Dear God, kill me now," I groaned, burying my head in my hands.
"Okay, I don't have to go into all the details, but I do hope that when the time comes, you'll be safe."
"I know, I know. Condoms and all that."
"During sex too. You have to make sure she's properly worked up, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, it'll be uncomfortable for you and hurt like hell for her-"
"Okay, Mother-"
"-and both of you mustn't forget to pee after!" I facepalmed so hard I think I killed off half my brain cells. "But in all seriousness, safe sex is important. Especially since we're not exactly sure if you can get anyone pregnant. Unless your partner is on birth control, it's always better to be safe than sorry."
"I know I know. Moving swiftly on-"
"Have you had your first kiss?" Mom reminded me of Anna, bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement like she was the child in this scenario.
"I have literally just come out to you and I'm not even out to people my age, so no I have not had my first kiss," I huffed, sticking out my bottom lip at her.
"Don't look so disappointed, sweetie. You're still young, there's no rush. But gosh, you need to learn how! Of course, the first kiss isn't always glamorous like the movies, but having some frame of reference never hurt anyone. There's a movie I saw quite a few years ago about it. What was it, The Kissing Booth? Maybe it's still on Netflix, we should take a look after dinner." She took one look at my burning red face and burst into a fit of giggles. "Okay, okay, I'll put you out of your misery. No more sex talk for tonight."
"Thank you."
"...and if you're ever in the need for toys I know of a place in town-"
"Mom!"
A/N - Hello lovelies. Shoutout to Mama Kale for giving me plenty of material for the awkward "The Talk" conversation. Not like she'll ever see this, or I would be disowned. Now that Rapunzel and Arianna are officially out to each other, it should make things more open between them, but you'll just have to wait and see. Until next chapter, stay safe and wear a mask :)
