there are days that it is hard, and unfair, and some horrible part of me wishes i could have been born in a different world. i love being queer, i hate how others react to it. when i first came out at 15, my mom whispered: please don’t say that. your life would be so much harder.
it is harder.
it is also a tuesday, walking my dog. we are both skiving off of work, and yes both of us have dyed hair and pronouns. mine is patchy - it was my first time trying bleach; i didn’t have enough. theirs is a resilient toadstool green. a little girl comes up to us and asks um, excuse me? is your hair real? ‘cause jason says you’re a fairy.
it is sunday brunch, all of us talking over each other, overfull on love. she is trying out a new name today, and we made her a cake with today’s name scrawled in shaky purple letters. she laughs so much she cries and then gets frosting in her hair. someone young at a different table keeps giving us these large, wide eyes: the same look we have all been on the other side of. the kind that says, breathless: wait, is that possible?
it is a half-fight in a supermarket because he loves “dance moms” and says abby’s tiktok is funny and meanwhile i think the children in that show should be allowed to sue abby lee miller for child abuse. i tell him that it led to the casual acceptance of child harassment for mainly adult views; and then i am standing, suddenly, in someone else’s thrown soda. there’s a white lady standing there, furious, saying something about hell-on-earth. i had forgotten i was wearing stuff with pride colors. and then it is this: he had just been casually arguing with me - and within an instant, he squares his shoulders and goes after her like i am his sister
on saturday i sat in a circle while beca played with my hair and we were all over 30 and we laughed about how much happier we are being this old, how much more we appreciate our community. 25 minutes from now, we will be on stage to dance in baggy beige clothing, but for now we look on with envy to the dancers in loud-and-bright buttondowns. where are they getting these shirts! i cry, distraught. everyone laughs. one of our friends has a mushroom witch hat. this would have been cringey in high school, probably. instead we are all delighted with each other; happy just to be here and alive and moving
it’s that last week my new friends cried with joy for me when they heard i’m getting top surgery. every so often i have the honor of being the first person someone feels comfortable enough to tell. i’m trying to make long fluttery butterfly wings to wear to pride; but i don’t know anything about fabric or dye, so my friends have been sending me their personal advice.
i think in a different poem i would talk about how sometimes you walk into a room and put the mask back on. but i’m sleepy and my whole brain is fuzzy so i think in this one, it’s a monday, and my dog and i took a nap on a couch, and i had missed texts from friends. i used to wake up lonely. i think this poem is about walking into a room and seeing someone and just knowing, the way you just-know-sometimes, and then giving them that little smile, and seeing them light up with joy and relief. it is how we always seem to be able to find each other in a crowded room. how we always seem to make friends with each other before even we know-it-to-be-true. it is saying: we’re very different people; but i belong to you.
it is harder, yes. but it comes with a built-in family.
Fantasy Guide to A Great House (19th-20th Century) - Anatomy of the House
When we think of the Victorians, the grand old Gilded Age or the Edwardians, we all think of those big mansions and manors where some of our favourite stories take place. But what did a great house look like?
Layout
All great houses are different and some, being built in different eras, may adhere to different styles. But the layout of certain rooms usually stayed somewhat the same.
The highest floors including the attic were reserved the children’s rooms/nursery and the servants quarters.
The next floor would be reserved for bedrooms. On the first/ground floor, there will be the dining room, drawing room, library etc.
The basement/cellar would be where the kitchens and other food related rooms would be. Servants halls and boot rooms may also be down here too along scullery, where sometimes a maid would clean.
Rooms used by Servants
Boot Room: The Boot Room is where the valets, ladies maids, hallboys and sometimes footmen clean off shoes and certain items of clothing.
Kitchen: The Kitchen was usually either in the basement or the first floor of the house, connected to a garden where the house’s vegetables were grown.
Butler’s Pantry: A butler’s pantry was where the serving items are stored. This is where the silver is cleaned, stored and counted. The butler would keep the wine log and other account books here. The butler and footmen would use this room.
Pantry: The Pantry would be connected to the kitchen. It is a room where the kitchens stock (food and beverages) would be kept.
Larder: The larder was cool area in the kitchen or a room connected to it where food is stored. Raw meat was often left here before cooking but pastry, milk, cooked meat, bread and butter can also be stored here.
Servants Hall: The Servant’s Hall was where the staff ate their meals and spent their down time. They would write letters, take tea, sew and darn clothes. The servants Hall would usually have a fireplace, a large table for meals, be where the servant’s cutlery and plates would be kept and where the bell board hung. (these bells were the way servants where summoned)
Wine Cellar: The wine cellar was where the wine was melt, usually in the basement. Only the butler would be permitted down there and everything would be catalogued by him too.
Butler’s/Housekeeper’s sitting rooms: In some houses, both the butler and the housekeeper had sitting rooms/offices downstairs. This was were they held meetings with staff, took their tea and dealt with accounts.
Scullery: The scullery was were the cleaning equipment was cleaned and stored. The scullery may even also double as a bedroom for the scullery maid.
Servery: The Servery connected to the dinning room. It was where the wine was left before the butler carried it out to be served. Some of the food would be delivered here to be carried out as well.
Servant’s Sleeping Quarters: All servants excepting perhaps the kitchen maid and outside staff slept in the attics. Men and unmarried women would be kept at seperate sides of the house with the interconnecting doors locked and bolted every night by the butler and housekeeper. If the quarters were small, some servants may have to share rooms. Servants’ bathrooms and washrooms would also be up there, supplied with hot water from the kitchens.
Rooms used by the Family
Dining room: The dining room was where the family ate their breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was also where the gentlemen took their after dinner drink before joking the ladies in the drawing room.
Drawing room: The Drawing Room was sort of a living/sitting room. It was mainly used in the evenings after dinner where the ladies would take their tea and coffee before being joined by the men. It could also be used for tea by the ladies during the day. The drawing room was seen as more of a women’s room but any of the family could use it. The drawing room was a formal room but could also be used for more casual activities.
Library: The library is of course where the books are kept. The family would use this room for writing letters, reading, doing business with tenants and taking tea in the afternoons.
Bedrooms: The bedrooms would take up most of the upper floors. The unmarried women would sleep in one wing with bachelors at the furthest wing away. Married couples often had adjoining rooms with their own bedrooms in each and equipped with a boudoir or a sitting room.
Nursery: Was where the children slept, usually all together until old enough to move into bedrooms. They would be attended to be nannies and nursemaids round the clock.
Study: The study was a sort of home office where family could do paperwork, chill and write letters.
Dressing room: Dressing Rooms where usually attached to bedrooms where the family would be dressed and their clothes would be stored. The valets and ladies maids would have control of the room.
Hall: The hall was where large parties would gather for dancing or music or to be greeted before parties.
Furnishings and Decor
Most of these Great Houses were inherited which means, they came with a lot of other people’s crap. Ornaments from anniversaries, paintings bought on holiday, furniture picked out by newly weds, all of it comes with the house. So most of the time everything seems rather cluttered.
As for Servant’s Quarters, most of the furnishings may have been donated by the family as gifts. Most servants’ halls would have a portrait of the sovereign or sometimes a religious figure to install a sense of morality into them.
ID: cover of Uncanny Magazine issue 47 with the quote: “That first video of the flying man goes viral on social media and gets featured on the news. No jet pack. No hang glider. Just him, unaided, soaring over the cable-stayed bridge that leads into the city.”
ID: cover of Uncanny Magazine issue 49 with the quote: "It is an Angora rabbit, fluffy and white, and when Grace picked the icon out, she did not realize how much she would come to dread the sight of it.”
Writer of lovely & strange fantasy stories, with publications in Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Deadlands, Fireside, & others.
Tweeting about writing @JordanRTaylor13
Author Website @ jordantaylorwrites.com
