The Gamma-Ray Casino Resort on Monte Carlo, Alpha Centauri, Milky Way— was the current favorite in an ever-evolving list of preferred gambling clubs which belonged to Mr. Hue and Harold Tincture (whom Hue often quaintly referred to as “Tint”). This was largely because it was one of the few in that corner of the galaxy that had not yet permanently banned them; this particular planet was not yet familiar with Hue and Tint’s infamous reputations. The number and repetition of times the boys had won Roulette the last few hours would change that shortly.

The Gamma-Ray Casino Resort was vivacious: it had large chandeliers that hung from the tall ceilings; the whole of the building was bathed in electric purple light, and the music felt much the same. It buzzed in one’s head the way alcohol did on a late midsummer evening. Mr. Hue’s head was buzzing, too.

Hue was sitting at the table, whilst Tint had gone to get yet another round of drinks for the both of them.

Hue watched the table with his chin resting on his hands; his eyes whirred, calculations running through his head faster than the Roulette wheel spun on the bright green table. His “focusing” expression was broken suddenly by a wide grin that spread across his face. The wheel had not yet stopped spinning.

“What’re you smiling about?” another player asked him, sounding terribly irritated. Hue couldn’t say he blamed him (the man had lost the keys to his brand new Zephyr spaceship two turns ago).

Hue shrugged, feigning ambivalence. “Oh, nothin.’”

He got a scowl in response. “What kinda android did you say you were again?”

Mr. Hue was a Histogram-based Universal Expectation android. He was manufactured by the Simon Hero-of-Alexandria Robotics Company, to specialize in maths and probability. The engineers who built him expected great success for him— he was a prototype, and if he worked, they would build another one thousand just like him: to be assistants to meteorologists, doctors, mathematicians— even sports coaches. But this idea fell through quite rapidly and quite ungracefully when they discovered Hue’s incredible disinterest in the tests he was given. He was no good at predicting the weather. He hated solving equations. He wasn't interested in sports. What he was interested in was games— specifically, gambling games.

In the late hours of the evening when all of the testing had finished for the day, and the engineers had all gone to sleep (even the most prone to insomnia)— Hue would sneak out through the mechanical doors of the lab and run out into the clubs and casinos of the city. The laboratory was on the outskirts of the colony, rural and isolated; but the city was bustling. It was lively, and it gave much to Hue’s CPU to work with. He was kicked out of his first club the first night he snuck out.

He was awfully good at gambling, and that was what got him into trouble: in the beginning, Hue had merely been a disappointment to the government; a failed project. Now, he was a nuisance. He was promptly decommissioned– which is a nice way of saying that a warrant was put out for his arrest and subsequent dismantling. Hue was not very keen on this idea, and so had made a grand escape in a dingy little rocket ship, to the rest of the galaxy. And damn everyone else, he would continue gambling and continue winning, because that was what was fun, and fun was all that mattered in all the universe.

“I was a waiter,” Hue told the player, humbly.

“Why’s your boyfriend the one getting drinks, then?”

“I’m retired.” Hue closed his eyes, a serene smile on his face. He heard the wheel come to a stop, the marbles fall to their final resting places, and another player across from him make a pained sound. Then, he heard Harold Tincture.

Tint was not standing anywhere remotely close to him. He was, indeed, standing by the bar, and ordering two more drinks. However, he was also watching the game play out from a distance— close enough that he could see the players’ expressions, but far away enough to not draw suspicion. He was speaking to Hue through an earpiece.

“Time to wrap it up, man.”

Hue, though also possessing an earpiece to speak to Tint— could not answer him without revealing to the other players that he had help. He opened his eyes and took in a breath.

“They won’t quit after that," said Tint. "Not until they’ve won at least something back. But that’s not gonna happen, is it?”

Hue pursed his lips to avoid a smile.

“What they will do,” Tint reminded him, as he so often did, “is get so angry they’ll beat the copper out of you. And steal the credits,” he added.

There was one area of gambling Hue lacked skill in. That was the matter of reading people. Probability was fine and good, but problems would arise if a player was particularly good at bluffing, or had a mean poker face. That was where Tint came in. He excelled in everything Hue fell short on. Simply put: he was a people person. So it was that they developed a system, based on their perfectly balanced abilities; Hue would predict, Tint would verify— they would play, and perform so perfectly it was infuriating. It was important to note that, although this method of an earpiece was often utilized— neither Hue nor Tint ever used it to look at another player’s cards or the dealer’s. That was cheating, and that was an abhorrent thing. They were civilized men, not lowlifes.

“Well, gents, I suppose I will call it a night after all.”

“Oh, will you?”

“Yes, I think I will.”

“Hey, Hue,” Tint said over the earpiece. Hue got up from his chair, putting the credits into his pockets. Once he had walked away from the table, he said, with the air of an annoyed housewife:

“Yes, dear?”

“Stop walking this way, and— actually, no—“

Hue raised a metallic eyebrow, adjusting the earpiece. “Huh?”

He heard a crash, then, and looked up to see Tint running towards him. There were two police officers behind him.

“Forget what I said,” Tint shouted. “We gotta run.”

Hue waited until Tint had reached him to follow; as if in a relay race. They dashed across the casino floor, bumping into a couple of people (and apologizing as they did so).

“That’s a pleasant surprise,” Hue yelled to Tint, over the loud music in the main room. “I was expecting security guards. I’m kind of flattered.”

Tint laughed. “Shut up, and don’t drop the credits.”

“Aye, cap’n,” Hue said, saluting. They turned a corner, and Hue grabbed Tint by the sleeve of his jacket, noticing he was falling behind slightly.

“Halt!” called one of the officers.

“Not on your life!” screeched Hue. Tint laughed, unwillingly, as he had no breath left to do so.

They were out the door in seconds, and sprinted to their ship. It was the same dingy little rocket ship Hue had escaped from his home planet on. He couldn’t bring himself to scrap the poor thing. It had gotten him and Tint out of many a perilous encounter. And it was going to do it again.

“Come on, come on!” Hue motioned to the ship. He and Tint hopped aboard it, and Tint, swiftly, despite his fatigue, got to the controls before Hue. The door sealed shut behind them, blocking out the officers who were chasing them.

Hue and Tint offered them a respectable fifteen seconds to vacate the landing zone and therefore not be burned to a crisp. Once they had done that, the rocket ship lifted off, and it went up and out of the atmosphere.

“Well,” said Hue.

“How many credits did you drop?”

Hue put on a deeply offended expression, putting his hand to his chest for extra drama. It made a little “clunk” sound as he did so.

“Why, Tint, I am offended.”

“How many?”

“Ten, probably. Sorry.”

Tint sighed. “It’s fine.”

“I was going to say thank you for telling me to quit when you did.”

“You’re welcome. And thank you for gettin’ us our pay. I’ll try to be quicker about warning you next time.”

They counted their credits at the single tiny table in the ship that night— the same one they used for playing their card games, for mealtimes, and for talking late into the night. The size of the ship didn’t matter, at the end of the day. It was small, cramped, and poorly lit– it was easy to assume that there may have been cockroaches hiding in the walls, had they not been 4.637 lightyears from Earth. But none of that mattered, because it was theirs.

To their surprise and joy, Tint and Hue discovered they had made just enough money to buy themselves some new crisp suits and hats. They went and bought them immediately at the next planet they stopped off at, spending every last cent.

When they walked out of the store, they spotted another gambling house across the road. Hue shot Tint a look that said: “Oh, we shouldn’t, but…” Tint responded by silently raising his eyebrows, which said: “Yeah, we shouldn’t. But.”

Minds made up, they strode into the club, arm in arm.

My mum asks me why I feel like I’m getting old, and I remember the morning when she came to my room at 10:00 AM and I had been trying to wake up since 8:00, and forcefully put lotion on my dry, cracking hands, while I was half-asleep and unable to protest against the terrible texture.

I awoke with the memory foggy, and wondered if I had dreamt it: I, a senior, chained to my bed— my fresh-faced mother putting ointment on my old, wrinkly hands (“I’m a Delicate Fucking Flower," the brand label read).

A name: Omicron

bringer of Chaos; destroys

my peopled cities

let us seek refuge

here upon, within, your skin

we don’t mean no harm

“Parasites!” He cried

“they (too) shall know my wrathful hand!”

we regret it all

-

(2022)

(Or: In which I attempt to bring up the topic of

queer coding in Lawrence of Arabia to my mother)

1

I know I am wrong to have brought it up as soon as I see my mum’s reaction: the shock that’s conveyed; then the denial; then the insistence that it doesn’t quite make sense, that she didn’t see any sign of it.

— CAPTAIN: I must say, Lawrence.

— LAWRENCE: Sorry.

I think my mum only has a problem with people being queer if she knows them well enough before they tell her that they are. By that point, she has built up an image of them in her head, and it is somehow shattered with this sudden, shocking (perhaps even disturbing) information. Her reaction to my admittance of my own queerness had gone much the same way (although, at this point, she came to terms with it long ago, and is now even supportive, the memory of her initial response is still unpleasant).

— ALI: “A man can be whatever he wants.” You said.

— LAWRENCE: I’m sorry. I thought it was true.

I tread lightly, now, crafting my reaction in response to her own expressions. I’m trying to remember why exactly I decided to tell her about this, anyway. (Probably because I found it interesting, and I like to tell my mum about interesting things.) No, it wasn’t obvious, I say. Of course it wasn’t. Even though I am speaking about a quote from the director, who had deliberately intended for him to be portrayed as gay:

“As to the suggestion that the film is pervasively homoerotic, [David Lean] says: ‘Yes. Of course it is. Throughout. (...) it does pervade it, the whole story, and certainly Lawrence was very if not entirely homosexual. We thought we were being very daring at the time: Lawrence and Omar, Lawrence and the Arab boys.’” (Yardley)

I don’t want this to get any worse, so I end up saying, almost instinctively, that I hadn’t seen any sign of it either. Though that’s a lie, of course. In spite of my own ambivalence regarding the act of “pairing up” a historical figure with a fictional one— an amalgamation of all the people he worked with side by side in the war— I did notice things.

— ALI: Aurens, one more failure and you will find yourself alone. I do not include myself.

Obviously, a close friendship seen in a film is not necessarily grounds for anything suspicious. A scene set on a beach where the sun is setting, where one character gives another flowers; or even an admittance of love, does not have to imply anything other than a close, open friendship. If it were, I would be happy to see it (heaven knows we are starved of close male companionships in stories). But now, with my added knowledge of the intentions regarding the character, my perception of the characters’ relationship changes ever-so-slightly. I wonder if, for my mum, the relationship changes completely with the new information, making it less valuable, less meaningful; as if the movie is trying to be obvious about it in an uncomfortable way (in spite of the fact that, before, it was somehow so subtle she hadn’t even noticed).

2

I end up finding it a little bit funny that a movie my dad loves about his favorite historical figure (his “hero”, as he puts it— of whom he has pictures of, a portrait, and books both of and written by him) is queer coded. And then just like that, I feel a little bit guilty, like the queer elements threaten to ruin the film for him if I were to ever point them out. All the same, I wonder how he would react to knowing they were there; or if he had seen them before. I wonder if he has any idea of the speculation of the real T.E Lawrence’s sexuality, and I wonder how he feels about it. I decide he probably doesn’t care.

The phrase “doesn’t care” in this context may be viewed as positive, but I have come to decidedly view it as neutral. Sometimes I wonder if my dad’s lack of a reaction to my coming out was truly better than my mum’s bitterness and tears. In the moment, compared to the weakness in my legs and the nausea in my chest after having the third argument with my mum that week about my own identity— it seemed like a godsend. Looking back, I wonder if he even took me seriously. I wonder if he takes me seriously now. Indeed, he has told to me that the rights of queer people is a problem reserved for my generation, that his own people simply did not feel a need to focus on (although queer rights have been an issue since long before he was born). Oftentimes, I worry his lack of care was merely a different kind of rejection than my mother’s, forged from the same material. He does not care to speak about it with me; he does not wish to. He and my mother still, after more than a year, refer to my partner as my (best) friend— and I, terribly enough, have followed their example (perhaps out of discomfort, perhaps out of fear).

— LAWRENCE: Look, Ali. Look. That’s me. (…) That’s me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

— ALI: “A man can do whatever he wants.” You said.

— LAWRENCE: He can. But. He can’t want what he wants.

And he doesn’t realize I still hear him in his office during nights I am home, sometimes, before I’ve fallen asleep: snapping in irritation at seeing another person on his list of patients with a gender identity he doesn’t understand. I hold my covers closer, and squint my eyes shut tighter; and pretend that he doesn’t remember that my partner is transgender, and pretend that I don’t ever think about what it would be like to have a mustache and to have people look at me and think that I’m a man and how that might make me feel.

— MURRAY: You’re the kind of creature I can’t stand, Lawrence.

There’s debate around what kind of queer T.E Lawrence was exactly. Whether asexual, or gay, or both, or something different all together. Either way, I wonder how my dad would feel knowing his hero was, in some small way, similar to myself.

— LAWRENCE: Leave me alone.

— ALLENBY: That’s a feeble thing to say.

— LAWRENCE: I know I’m not ordinary.

It’s a little bit ironic; he tells me again and again that he’ll build a shed for me one day, and proudly reminisces about the day I was able to get into my own “personal” Oxford (that is, my favorite pick of the universities to which I applied). I have even, at his suggestion, picked up Lawrence’s habit of writing in libraries. It seems to me at times that all that will be left for me to do, when I am older and have done whatever great thing it is I hope to do with my life, is to buy a motorcycle and become a hermit, so as to fulfill this bizarre, hilarious prophecy.

— MURRAY: All right, Dryden. You can have him for six weeks. Who knows! It might even make a man of him.

3

Of course, to compare myself, in any sense, to someone of the sheer importance of T.E Lawrence, is, in itself, hilarious.

— SECRETARY: You’re a clown, Lawrence.

— LAWRENCE: Ah, well. We can’t all be lion-tamers. (…) Sorry.

And yet I can’t help but see myself in his character in the film when, after regarding his reflection in a polished knife, he looks at his shadow in the sand and revels in his new attire, having found something he feels wholly comfortable in— and with it, a feeling of belonging; of unexplainable rightness, even if not understanding why. I somehow see a bit of me, wearing a suit for the first time after getting my first short, boyish haircut and staring at myself in the mirror. I think we share the same giddy smile.

— ALI: Tribute for the prince, flowers for the man.

— LAWRENCE: I’m none of those things, Ali.

— ALI: What, then?

— LAWRENCE: Don’t know.

I write, two days after watching the film, that I have decreed a new personal artist’s rite of passage. But maybe, instead of drawing a portrait of Lawrence of Arabia as a gift for my father, as I had initially imagined— maybe I will draw a portrait of him for myself, instead.

4

Afterword:

I referenced the movie’s original screenplay to make sure I quoted all of the dialogue I used properly. I found out that there were several cues in the script that were almost purely metaphor–  just notes about what each character felt so the actors might portray it. There’s one cue for Lawrence about controlling a “surge of gratitude - dangerously similar to love (Bolt 80)” before he responds to Ali. I saw that line while editing what I had written at 2:00 in the morning, and I felt it break my heart. I decided to tell my mum about it when I next saw her; once again, I’m not sure why. Maybe I just like to tell her things I find interesting. Maybe I hoped it would be different; maybe I hoped this piece of writing could be considered inaccurate, or outdated. But she just pulled a face, like she had eaten something sour. And we moved on in the conversation. Oh, well. The trick, after all, is not minding that it hurts. For what it’s worth, even though the portait has yet to be drawn, I did eventually end up creating a lantern based on the film.

—————

Works Cited:

- Bolt, Robert. “Lawrence of Arabia.” Daily Script, www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Lawerence_of_Arabia.pdf. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.

- Lean, David, director. Lawrence of Arabia. Horizon Pictures, Columbia Pictures, 1962.

- Yardley, Jonathan. “David Lean, Sorcerer of the Screen - The Washington Post.” Washingtonpost.Com, The Washington Post, 2 Feb. 1989, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/02/03/david-lean-sorcerer-of-the-screen/784a3547-60d6-47d6-96a4-1f99f3edea55/.

Alyx tells me I can never quit working, Dad tells me the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. What’s wrong? he asks again. The answer, of course, is nothing, and it’s the same answer he always gives to me.

What’s wrong, kiddo? What’s wrong?

Oh but I am only tired, old man— dog-tired, as you know well. Birds of a feather, you and I: mired. Only tired: tired, wired, and all dried up.

-

(2024)

Cowboy Jack thinks he’s Doc Holliday just because his dad’s a doc;

Cowboy Jack’s skinny n’ blonde, but for commonalities that’s ’bout all he’s got.

For one, he ain’t got no mustache, just a tiny, sad bit of fuzz;

For another, he’s a lightweight, can’t even stand to be a bit buzzed.

Sometimes he pulls on his shirt (nervous habit) and sometimes he’s out of breath;

Most times he fidgets with his hands (nervous habit) and can’t stand any talk of death.

I guess he’s got the spittin’ down (though it’s mucus, not tobacco or blood)

But his poker game’s weak; don’t know a straight from a flush… plays like a goddamned clown.

People are mean; out here it’s rough, and I’m just bein’ honest:

The little dude’s anxious, wants to be tough, and hell if it ain’t obvious.

No, Cowboy Jack ain’t no Holliday—

he ain’t even from the south.

But for what it’s worth, once, I called him a sissy, and he punched me hard in the mouth.

-

(2024)

O, Lord, if I am to die of asphyxiation,

let it be of carbon monoxide

let it be in the garage of my home

let it be the smell of my dad’s 1967 Porsche 911’s engine filling the room

it smells like nostalgia (purified)

it smells like a memory (fading)

it smells like home (home)

O, Lord, if I am to die of asphyxiation,

Lord, let me die at home.

-

(2023)

they say money can’t buy you happiness

rubbish!

poppycock!

what a load of shit!

do you know all i could do, if i were rich?

i’d travel

see the world

run my fingers along its edges

run along its plateaus

run through its great fields

along the sand in the cold

oh yes

buy me the moonlight in the night sky, that makes the ocean glow

buy me that time i played in the snow, and nearly froze

buy me the leaves that fell on the floor of the woods last autumn

buy me the first audiobook i heard while in the car with my father

buy me the scent of the museum i went to when i was five

buy me the first stuffed toy i lost, and cried

oh yes

i’d get to buy everything

i’d get to do everything

see all there is to see

do all there is to do

draw all i could draw

until my hands were dry and raw

oh yes

buy me the hand lotion left for me in my stocking on christmas

buy me the first song i ever heard, and listen

listen

buy me lots of clocks

i like to hear them tick

their hands running along their faces, while their laughter sounds

tick tick tick

laugh all you want

i wouldn’t worry then

because then

i’d be rich

oh yes

call me a selfish bitch

but god

if time is money, i wish i were rich

-

(2021)

“And, I think-- to be honest, I think most of the cake is crumbs, because that’s what tastes good [laughter]. And there’s also a reference (in the recipe) to ‘double the crumbs’, ’cause it’s better that way! Very little cake… lots of crumbs… delicious.”

- Mum (on the family’s recipe for Streuselkuchen)

If you Ate a Proper German Crumb Cake

you would drown in crumbs:

you would breathe in dry, sweet cinnamon,

asphyxiate in sugary dust.

taste one hundred years of family

of fondness

of love

the rest of the cake forgotten

buried deep underneath the fragments of

glittering, silver bronze

another memory gone to bed

another word yet gone unsaid

stuck in the back of the throat

since swallowed

and washed down with cold ice water

then,

finally break for air, again

-

(2022)