Laura Villareal
Kelly Responds When Asked Why There Are So Few Bisexual Characters on TV
-after Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” episode
You can’t stay in the middle of the road without getting run over.
Bisexual characters, like me, are easy targets for typecast: Immoral,
homewreckers, sexual deviants. Our love— shameful
fantasy, cinematic sacrifice, one drunk night,
and if we’re lucky our stories are left as subtext.
We don’t need anymore queer characters written into concave
imagination. We don’t need our bodies to twist
the plot into tragedy for the final scene of a movie.
Even though in this episode I get to marry Yorkie
& she drives us along the coast as the sun sets in her red convertible
as “Heaven is a Place On Earth” plays I can’t help but wonder
when our happy endings will reside outside of speculative fiction.
-after Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” episode
You can’t stay in the middle of the road without getting run over.
Bisexual characters, like me, are easy targets for typecast: Immoral,
homewreckers, sexual deviants. Our love— shameful
fantasy, cinematic sacrifice, one drunk night,
and if we’re lucky our stories are left as subtext.
We don’t need anymore queer characters written into concave
imagination. We don’t need our bodies to twist
the plot into tragedy for the final scene of a movie.
Even though in this episode I get to marry Yorkie
& she drives us along the coast as the sun sets in her red convertible
as “Heaven is a Place On Earth” plays I can’t help but wonder
when our happy endings will reside outside of speculative fiction.
Laura Villareal is from a small town in Texas with more cows than people. She earned her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Apogee, Black Warrior Review, Breakwater Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and scholarships from VONA/ Voices, Key West Literary Seminar, and The Highlights Foundation.