Page 53 of Sizzle Reel

Romy stretches, bones in her shoulders popping. “I don’t wanna be mad right now.” Her eyes light up. “In fact, pick a movie off this list that took me a million years to do.”

Romy hands me her phone, the screen boasting a Note titled ESSENTIAL SAPPHIC MOVIE/TV LIST FOR BABY LUNA. A very welcome warmth pricks as I see the first ten films. But as I scroll down to at least twenty-five more, my heart drags down my body. By the time I realize there are more than a hundred films on this list and individual items include shit like THE ENTIRE FILMOGRAPHY OF SARAH PAULSON, I feel like I’ve been handed a very potent psychedelic and am having a terrible trip.

“Um, why is this list so long?” I ask.

“Look, this is for your benefit.” Romy seems to have gotten her bounce back. “It’s the only way for the sapphic meme accounts to make sense. So you can build a community.”

I scrutinize it. Surely there cannot be this many films that depict sapphic feelings and/or star a sapphic actress. In the larger scheme of cinema history, it stopped being illegal to be gay, like, a very short time ago.

“Do you wanna start with a single icon and work through their filmography or start with the gay classics?” Romy asks. “I can adjust the first film based off that.”

I flip to her ICONS section—Cara Delevingne, Cate Blanchett, Kristen Stewart, Gillian Anderson, Aubrey Plaza, Kate McKinnon, Tessa Thompson, the aforementioned Sarah Paulson, Princess Diana (insert: Since when?), Winona Ryder, Jodie Foster, etc.

“Uh, is this every film they’ve ever done?”

Romy huffs. “Yes! Every film!”

I hand her back the phone. “Okay, but if I’m going to commit to a yearlong ‘Watch All of Romy’s Nineties Idols’ disguised as a sapphic movie marathon, I can’t do Panic Room—”

“What? Why can’t you?” Romy scowls.

I look her in the eye, trying my damnedest not to smile. “Because you masturbate to it.”

A beat passes. Two. More, as Romy sits there, utterly caught. Her mouth opens a few times, sounds come out, but nothing forms into words until: “I see no reason I can’t respectfully admire a beautiful woman—” She speaks through gritted teeth.

“She is fully clothed in that movie.”

“—in a cami—”

I happen to be wearing a cami and pajama bottoms right now, and it’s too hard to resist. I lean over right in her eyeline to grab her phone again. “Where, if I recall correctly, she puts on more clothes.”

I pull Romy into a side hug and laugh a little while she blushes as hard as I’ve ever seen her. I let this rare moment of vulnerability soak in for as long as I can. This moment of Romy loving me, trusting me enough to be her raw, depraved, hysterical self.

“Luna.” She’s trying so hard to be as authoritative as she usually is, but she’s still bright red. “If you understand anything about the sapphic gaze, know the fundamental principle of sometimes more clothes is sexy.”

“It’s fucking weird, and you’re my favorite person.” I look back at the list for whatever is—a small mercy for Romy—not a 1990s-slash-2000s thriller with a female protagonist. “Was Princess Diana gay?”

Romy literally shakes the embarrassment away. “The Crown it is.”

For a while, the two of us exist in our little bubble as we put on season four, Romy’s hand on my thigh and my cheek on her shoulder, only breaking away to sip whatever cheap wine we had in the fridge, watching young Princess Diana have a really bad time. I send my mom an apology text between episodes one andtwo, saying I’m just on my period. Easy out, even though theanger still purrs inside me.

Romy usually gives color commentary when we watch stuff alone, but she’s quiet when the third episode starts.

“Do you think I could be like Emma Corrin?” she says suddenly. I look down at my sapphic cheat sheet; that’s the actor playing young Diana.

I smile. “I think you have to be five-eight or taller to play Diana.”

But Romy doesn’t even reply to my joke. She just keeps staring at the TV. “I mean, hot, talented, adds they to social media bios.”

She doesn’t pause the show, but I look at her like she’s what we’re supposed to be watching. The hand not on my thigh is clenched into a fist at her side. She stares hard at the screen, but it’s the tiniest things in her face that really give it away: the flexed muscle in her jaw, the glassy quality in her eyes. It hits me suddenly, the shame and the anger shifting into a full-on lump in my throat at Romy’s cracking facade.

She doesn’t need to say it again after saying it in so many ways throughout our friendship. How even now she dreads asking her relatives to call her their child/nibling/grandchild instead of daughter/niece/granddaughter. How she didn’t originally go with dual pronouns because of how much she can’t stand the idea of the seconds before her parents pick which pronoun, which side of her they’ll honor while being overheard on the phone.

Up until now, Romy hadn’t done any explaining of the sapphic nature of this show. It’s sitting here, looking at her, processing what little she’s said, that I get it. This isn’t sapphic, and Princess Diana wasn’t gay. Emma Corrin’s presence comforts Romy. I wonder if they make Romy feel as solid, as real and important, in her gender identity as watching bi actresses in movies does for me.

I put my hand over hers, squeeze. “You can be those three things. Already got two.” I wink.

“Maybe someday. Ask me later.” She smiles at me, inhaling slowly and taking the glassiness in her eyes with it. “That’s the trick with all this, Lunes. You never really stop coming out.”

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