Earlier this year, we told you about the super exciting new short story anthology coming from Dzanc Books called Be Gay, Do Crime, which is edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley. It’s a “celebration of gay chaos” that features an all-queer roster of authors, including Myriam Gurba, Anna Dorn, Venita Blackburn, Alissa Nutting, SJ Sindu, Mac Crane, Temim Fruchter, and Francesca Ekwuyasi! And more! Including me, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya! I’m in it! I wrote a little story about some very unlikable lesbians, a cursed hat, queer archives, and anger issues coupled with alcoholism. Fun stuff! But truly, this is a collection that speaks to my soul in terms of its giddy reverence for mess and filth. I really think you’re going to love it. The book is slated to come out on June 3, 2025, a perfect way to kick off Pride. But today, we have an early treat for you! A cover reveal! And an excerpt! Take a look at the gay and crimey cover:
And now, enjoy one of the many tales of queer chaos featured within. This story is by past Autostraddle contributor and the author of the wonderful City of Laughter, Temim Fruchter. And don’t forget to preorder Be Gay, Do Crime! In fact, if you send proof of preorder to editor Molly Llewellyn, you can receive a download of a digital print by the cover artist, @arose.garden. And you can help support the book by adding it on Goodreads.
Redistribution
by Temim Fruchter
At the famous writer’s house, the lights were always on.
This wasn’t privileged information. Anyone at all could see it, walking past at dusk, when all the other kitchens and living rooms pooled with golden light that illuminated dinner prep or cartoons or cocktails. People in the neighborhood didn’t seem to care for curtains, or at least the people who had something to show off.
But at the famous writer’s house, it was every room. Each window was a bright block, revealing high shelves of books or mysterious abstract sculptures or assemblies of lush plants. It wasn’t the only large house in the neighborhood, but it was the only one that never went dark.
At night, M took walks. She liked her neighborhood at night. It was stately, but the lit houses gave it a kind of warmth, the curtainless people in their bayed windows seeming almost as if they were inviting her inside. Come for appetizers? Or a soda? Stay for pot roast? Or curry? Her favorite windows were the ones through which she could see people, little animated domestic scenes. Someone chopping at a counter, or the backs of two heads on a couch, a pair of gesticulating arms coming from one of them.
But not at the famous writer’s house. Always all the lights, but never any people.
She thought she remembered reading once that the famous writer had kids. Were they grown kids? Kid kids? Or somewhere in the middle? She was also certain the famous writer had a famous ex. But did she have a current, famous or otherwise? M liked the feeling that the famous writer might be something of a recluse in plain sight, an ill-hidden secret in a brightly lit house for all their neighborhood to keep. Whenever M walked past, she fantasized about somehow making her way inside that house. There would be something glamorous, she thought, about getting closer. About being invited inside.
It should be noted that the famous writer was a handsome woman. Not beautiful, really, but extremely handsome. Tall and broad-shouldered, thick eyebrows and cheekbones that looked a little bit photoshopped. M did not know this from seeing the famous writer in person, only from looking at the famous writer’s photo in the jackets of the many novels she’d written over the decades. The famous writer might be getting on in years, but in photos, she looked ageless. Or maybe timeless was a better word for it.
M’s life, meanwhile, was, to put it politely, in shambles. She’d been doing the paycheck-to-paycheck hustle for as long as she could remember, but a couple of her gigs had petered out, so now it was more like paycheck-to-almost-paycheck. Rent for her apartment—the third floor of a Brooklyn Victorian she was going to stay in until she died unless it killed her first—wiped out most of her income. But she was a creative, she kept insisting, if only to herself, as though this justified all the rest of it. The truth of it was, while she was indeed a writer, she had not written much in recent memory. She’d published a couple of essays and one short story several years back, but now was mostly stalled out, save for the lackluster sentence or two she periodically typed into a Word doc just to remind herself she could. Her sister wasn’t speaking to her, though this was not uncommon. M and her sister fought viciously once a season. They always reunited, but the lonely aftermath of these fights was the worst. And perhaps most devastating of all, Jack had just left her.
M had grown accustomed to being left. She had behaved less-than-virtuously in a string of relationships. In this one, she nitpicked. In that one, she was controlling. In monogamy, she wandered. In polyamory, she was unethical and greedy. She had, in fact, never been the one to leave, though it was on her bucket list. Leave someone for once. It was right above Rock climbing in actual nature and below Bake a fancy pie that doesn’t look fucked.
But Jack had been different. Jack had once dipped her under a moony sky, just like they were dancing in an old movie, and told M that she wanted to be with her for a very long time. No one had ever wanted to be with M for a very long time. M usually fucked things up way before the very-long-time phase. But Jack was generous and funny and charming and, somehow, instead of finding M’s questionable behavior only insufferable, found it charming, too. Until, of course, M slept with one too many other people, and said one too many mean-spirited things, just to see how Jack would react. Usually, people left M with a dramatic bang of the door or a stream of screaming expletives. Jack, though. She left with a sad smile and a gentle kiss right in the center of M’s forehead. I can’t do it anymore, she’d said. This was too much, even for M, who thought she’d seen every single angle of the wrong side of a slammed door. She’d lost an entire day, evening included, to crying.
On their first date, Jack had insisted on paying for M’s dinner. No, M had said. We’re queer, we’re not beholden to that chivalrous masculinity shit, let’s split it. Oh, Jack had replied, sliding her credit card into the leather folder the server had left on their table. Not like that. It’s just that I make more than you. I simply believe in wealth redistribution. M was only slightly embarrassed she hadn’t thought of this herself. Did she know the difference between communism and socialism? Only vaguely. Did she consider herself a socialist? Marginally. But did she know what any of this actually meant, in practice? Clearly not like Jack did. She decided right then that Jack had more wisdom and integrity than anyone she’d ever dated. She proudly accepted Jack’s wealth redistribution every time they went to dinner.
M did know something about redistribution, though. In fact, she’d been engaged in a kind of cosmic redistribution for several years now.
As soon as M began to realize she’d become the kind of person who might be regularly dumped, she understood she was going to be at a deficit. The breakups, she thought, were the world taking something away from her. So she decided to start taking something back from the world, just to even the score. Just one theft, every single time, to bring things into balance. It came to feel almost evolved, like a ritual.
She started small. When Jenna dumped her, she stole a silk scarf from the woman whose children she’d occasionally been babysitting back then. She didn’t know if the woman figured it out, but she was never asked back. When Lee dumped her, she stole a pair of earrings from a boutique. It was risky, but it was a small item, slipped easily into her bag. But when Melora dumped her, she was especially angry. It had been a vitriolic breakup, and she’d felt excessively defensive. She’d been working for a florist then, making deliveries, and one day, out delivering a bunch of extravagant wedding bouquets to a big house on Long Island, she took a small piece of original artwork from the garage where they’d left the flowers. It was art, but it had also been leaning against a dirty wall in storage, so she thought it might take them some time to realize it was gone. The painting was kind of ugly, lots of dark blobular squares, but it was still something unique, and M liked that about it. She had enjoyed the thrill of taking something likely irreplaceable and the elevated chances of getting caught. But no one had caught her. She’d never heard about it. In spite of her generally dirtbag luck, she sometimes felt a little bit invincible.
So far, she had mostly evaded consequences. After Sabrina left, she’d attended a party at an acquaintance’s house and stolen a limited-edition Marilyn Monroe figurine from her collection. M was sure she’d gotten away with it, but then the acquaintance called her, saying she was so sorry for the random call, but she was baffled by the disappearance of this favorite of her vintage things. She knew M had been at the party, and did she remember seeing it? No hard feelings, said the acquaintance, if it simply shows up on my doorstep. M fingered the figurine’s plastic contours as she said nope, sorry, she didn’t remember any such thing.
The famous writer was indecently rich. She was among the very small percentage of writers who got notoriously rich simply by writing. Four of her seventeen novels had been made into movies, two of them Hollywood blockbusters. M did not even love the famous writer’s work. She did not hate it, but of the three of her books M had read, she’d liked only two, and felt fairly neutral about the other. Unmoved. Nonetheless, she could understand that the famous writer was talented.
Still, M felt strongly that the famous writer’s palatial estate was wasted on her. She started to think that if she herself could sell even one novel, she would buy a house, too. It might be a much smaller house than those of her neighbors, but she would use it well. She would entertain. She would decorate. She would be responsible about turning off the lights.
In the few days since Jack’s very recent absence, the famous writer and her house had become even more of an obsession for M than it had been prior. This was not unusual for M. My toxic trait, she’d cracked on the internet one recent night, is taking my obsessions seven steps too far. It was a joke, but also, it was a sincere confession. M was not great at letting things go.
But she was ready now, as she hadn’t been a few days prior, to steal something. For Jack. From the universe, as payment for Jack’s departure. For this one, though, she knew she had to go big. Here, she hadn’t just lost sex, or even affection. She’d lost integrity. She’d lost redistribution. She’d lost a very long time. The fucking universe owed her big.
Shockingly, the opportunity presented itself almost immediately. That night, on M’s anxiety walk through the neighborhood, the famous writer’s lights were off. She swore she could not remember a single time the lights in that house were off. It was quarter after eleven, a time by which most of the houses in the neighborhood had finally gone dark, but never the famous writer’s. You could walk by at one in the morning, as M had on a couple of particularly insomnia-ridden nights, and every single light in that house would still be blazing.
The famous writer, she thought, had to be out of town. She felt like someone had given her a present. M stopped where she was on the sidewalk, staring down the house like an opponent in a fight, or like someone who had just dared her to do something outlandish in public. It was almost too obvious, she thought: This was as close as she was ever going to get to an invitation. And what bigger get was there than something from the famous writer herself? Jack had always teased M for her fixation on the famous writer’s house. You might need a new hobby, my love, Jack would say, and her tone was kind, but now, when M replayed it in her mind, it curdled with condescension. She had not, in fact, acquired any new hobbies, but her old hobby was about to pay off. She steeled herself and decided to accept the dare. She truly had zero to lose.
She moved closer to the house, slowly and gradually. On this block, all giant houses and affluent residents, you never knew who had cameras or who might be surreptitiously watching out an upstairs window. She got to the front porch, walked slowly up its steps, and all the way up to the front door. She looked around her, looked up and out. No sign of anyone watching. The handle to the front door was large and wrought iron and looked very old. It was, of course, locked. She made her way around to the side of the house. There was a side door, which she tried, and which was also locked. Then she unlatched the wooden gate and walked around to the back.
She marveled at the hidden paradise the fence had been obstructing. Where some people had one garden, the famous writer seemed to have several gardens, each beautifully landscaped. A cobbled path threaded them together, leading to an in-ground pool and an adjoining hot tub, and then to a patio where luxe outdoor seating flanked a stone table. There was a sliding door out to the patio. M tried it. The door slid open, and M walked inside.
M could not believe it. She was standing inside the famous writer’s house. She slid the glass door shut. In the dark, she couldn’t see much, but worried that turning on any lights might call attention to the house. She turned on her phone flashlight, which she shielded with her hand.
She was standing in a room she’d seen many times only from the outside. Around the periphery, she could see several giant plants with dark, shiny leaves. A large oak desk on one end, and a big leather armchair in the corner. In the middle of the floor, an asymmetrical shaggy rug. M wondered what, exactly, the purpose of this room was. She moved from this room into a spacious entryway, the ceilings unnaturally high for any living space in Brooklyn. She’d seen pictures of this home in an online magazine about New York architecture and home décor, but it was strange and different to be seeing it for herself, in three dimensions. To be able to touch things, as one simply cannot do through a stranger’s lit window.
She touched her way around what seemed to be a living room. A soft leather sectional couch so big and deep, it was all she could do not to fall rapturously onto it, to feel its skin on her cheek. A chair covered with a wool throw blanket that felt scratchy but in a high-quality way. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the dark, with help from the light coming in through all the curtainless windows, and she saw walls covered in expensive-looking artwork. There was some kind of sculpture in one corner. Several bookshelves. An ornate fireplace, its mantle tastefully dotted with small plants and knickknacks. M moved into the dining room, out of whose walls little sconces jutted, and at whose center, under an opulent vintage crystal chandelier, was a long, beautiful, live-edge dining table with a jute runner all along its middle. At one end was a beautiful glass bar cart, fully stocked.
M heard a sound, then, jolting her out of her reverie. She couldn’t simply rest on her laurels here; the famous writer’s lights might be out, but who was to say she wouldn’t be home any minute? Who was to say she wasn’t somewhere in the house right now? She would decide what to take, and then get out of there. The trouble was, of course: how on earth did one decide in a house like this? She guessed one didn’t; one needed to choose arbitrarily. She returned to the living room, the mantle full of knickknacks. Those would be portable, she thought. Easy enough. She already had her work cut out getting out of here without anyone seeing or suspecting. She shone her phone along the mantle, selecting a slender and expensive-looking pair of candlesticks, which she dropped into her tote bag.
She started back toward the sliding door, but something stopped her. Jack had left her. Jack. Who’d promised never to leave. And here she was, in the famous writer’s home, the one who had so much money she didn’t even need to think about her electrical bills. This moment—this house, M thought—owed her more. She felt a surge of rage then, a righteousness about all that she was owed, and swept her arm along the famous writer’s mantle. All of the sculptures and knickknacks fell to the floor with a satisfying crash. At least one item shattered. M felt a stab of embarrassed regret that she swallowed. Who cared? The famous writer had more where that came from.
M walked into the kitchen. She opened several different cabinets until she found a tumbler. She held it under the chrome refrigerator’s ice machine until it released two perfect ice cubes, then returned to the bar cart, where she opened an expensive-looking bottle of scotch and poured an obscene amount of it into the tumbler, filling it nearly to the top. She stood there, sipping at it until the sharp, smoky taste of it neutralized in her mouth, until she started to feel a little bit heady.
Then she went up the stairs to the second floor.
Upstairs, M found a hallway that seemed wider and longer than any Brooklyn hallway should be. The doors along the hall were wide open, so M could see clearly into each. She chose one and entered an enormous bathroom with an embarrassingly large soaking tub. There was no window in the bathroom, so she turned on the light, which was orangey and warm, nothing fluorescent for miles. The white tile was so clean it gleamed. M imagined her own bathroom—the grimy old tub, the faded pink tile, the dirty grout, the dust motes that seemed to gather and appear out of nowhere. How did one keep a bathroom this clean? Almost without thinking, she turned on the water in the bathtub. She plugged the tub and lit one of the tall candles on the corner shelf. She set her drink down next to it. As the water ran, the room filled with steam, and M breathed it in. It relaxed her in a way she hadn’t relaxed in several days, even as she stood, very illegally, in someone else’s empty home. She took off her socks and shoes and peeled off her jeans and underwear. She pulled her sweater over her head and unfastened her bra, feeling her chest breathe again as it dropped to the floor. Then she climbed into the bathtub, sinking into the still-running hot water.
As she lay there, she thought about Jack. Jack’s steely dark eyes, Jack’s strong, stout arms, Jack’s way of walking into a room like she owned it, but gently. M grunted with frustration, sinking back against the edge of the tub and deeper into the water. The motion made several pleasant splashing sounds, and she relaxed again. She had only to expel Jack from her mind. Think about someone else, she thought. Immediately, she imagined the famous writer in this very bathtub. The famous writer’s long legs propped up on the edge and crossed at the ankles. The famous writer’s gorgeous breasts aloft on the water, just as M’s were now. The thought of this made M instantly hard. She put her hands on her own breasts, pinching her nipples under the water’s surface. She closed her eyes, thinking of the famous writer. She let her hands wander down her body, eventually fucking herself as she thought the famous writer might: with an almost cruel patience, torturous, and then, at last, permissive. She came so hard and so loud, she worried a neighbor might have heard. For a long moment, she lay still in the tub, but heard no sound in response to her animal scream, so she got out. She drained the tub, blew out the candle, and wrapped herself in one of the famous writer’s fat towels. She walked back out into the stately hallway.
In the room right across from the bathroom, where M’s dirty clothes still lay piled on the floor, was a beautiful study. A wooden desk looked out a huge window onto the street, and the shelves were lined with books. A laptop computer was shut on the desk. M opened it. It was, of course, password protected, and she didn’t have the patience for all that, so she closed it again. She sat down at the desk and started flipping through the famous writer’s notebooks. Much of it was unreadable to M, especially in the dark, but she felt thrilled peeking into the famous writer’s work behind the scenes. This, she thought, would be something to write about. She deserved that, too. Enough for the famous writer, who M thought had written plenty. She dropped one of the notebooks, chosen at random, into her tote bag. She picked up a fancy-looking pen and dropped that in, too.
She padded down the hall again. A plush rug ran along the center of the hardwood floor, and M enjoyed the feel of it under her feet. She peeked into several other rooms. At least one looked like it could be a child’s room, though not a young child. Perhaps a teenager. There was another that might be a guest room. And yet another that seemed to be simply for games and television.
Finally, at the very end of the hall, she found it: the famous writer’s bedroom. It was a chamber of pure luxury. The walls were painted a dark blue so creamy M wanted to lick it, and hung with a few very large pieces of abstract art. There were notably no photographs. Not of the famous writer, nor of anyone else. A huge, gold-framed mirror hung above a low, wooden chest of drawers. And in the center of the room, a king-sized bed covered in pillows and a velveteen golden duvet.
M dropped the towel, enjoying how it felt to stand in the middle of the famous writer’s bedroom stark naked. She wondered why she didn’t feel nervous. She started to think she should, and then she started to think that she actually might, but was simply too numb to access the depths of that. Whatever, she thought, taking another very long swig from her tumbler of scotch, which she placed on a blown-glass coaster by the famous writer’s bedside. Then she climbed into the famous writer’s bed. Climbed, because it was extremely high off the ground. She slid underneath the impossibly soft duvet, the impossibly soft sheets, onto the impossibly soft pillows. She lay there, staring up at the dark blue ceiling with a kind of wonder that made her feel like she was staring up at something celestial, instead of just a ceiling.
She didn’t know how long she’d been staring before a cold fear began to overtake her. It was sudden, and staggering. She didn’t understand what she was doing here. She didn’t understand what she had been thinking. She missed Jack so much she could feel the ache physically, right in the middle of her chest. Maybe it was time to do things differently. Maybe she could still bring Jack back to her. Maybe she could apologize to her sister. Make this all better somehow. She lifted her wet head up from the pillow, realizing she’d gotten the pillowcase wet, too. She sat fully up, looking across the room at the towel on the floor. She only had to get back to the towel, back to her clothing, to retrace her steps, to get out of there. But she was so comfortable, so scotch-drunk, so tired. It was so late; it hardly mattered if she left now or in a few minutes. She squeezed her eyes shut, laying back on the famous writer’s damp pillow.
It was in this way that M fell asleep. She dreamed of the famous writer. In her dream, she was also in the famous writer’s bed naked, but the famous writer was standing over her, also naked, except for a giant pair of blue hoop earrings. Are you warm enough, asked the famous writer in the dream. Yes, said dream-M. But I would be warmer if you got into this bed with me. Hold on, said the famous writer. Let me just get Jack. Dream-M tried to refuse, but she found she couldn’t speak, was plastered to the famous writer’s bed. The famous writer returned with Jack, who was also naked, except for a gold chain around her neck. Hi, said Jack, looking a little bit shy and wearing an expression that made M want to cry, to hold her, to say she was sorry. To say she would do better now. That she would take only what was hers and nothing more.
But then Jack’s expression changed. We know what you’ve done, Jack said, her voice cold. We know what you’ve done, echoed the famous writer, hissing. You won’t get away with it. Jack and the famous writer both got into the famous writer’s bed with M, flanking her, both naked, both looking very hungry, and not in a good way. M felt that she was about to be devoured, and while she was scared, she was also ready. Dream-Jack disappeared then, and it was only the famous writer mounting M, straddling M with all of her weight, looking down on M from on high, her fangs bared. In her dream, M prickled with both full-body excitement and profound dread. I’ll pay you back, M said in the dream. She wasn’t sure if she meant it as a promise or a threat or a plea. The words hurt her throat as she spoke them. She said them again, just to make sure she hadn’t imagined it. I’ll pay you back.
She was startled awake, then, by the sound of the key in the door, by the sound of the front door swinging open, by the sound of the rustle of bags, by the sound of a woman’s voice, by a garbled Oh my god, what, and then, much more clearly, almost like the sound of music, by a terrified Hello?
Be Gay, Do Crime comes out June 3, 2025.
