It's so hard being a Romani lesbian. It feels contradictory at best, unthinkable at worst. You are raised with the explicit goal to become a wife and to have children one day. I can't remember the first time my mother talked to me about marriage, but I remember being around 6 and being told that I will have a wedding one day, that it will be the most important day of my life and that I would make my family so happy. Growing up I'd constantly, almost daily hear about having children and having a boyfriend and getting married some day. It was always one of the most important topics of conversation. Your relatives - even your female relatives - don't seem to think you can make decisions by yourself, for yourself. Everything you wear, everything you say, everything you do is about appealing to men. When I was 5 I asked my mom if I could wear a dress to go outside because it was very sunny and she just told me I wanted to dress that way because I was in love with the male friend that I had. If you want to wear jewellery, if you wear "revealing clothes", that means you want to flirt with a man. This is not even an inconscious, internalized mindset: it is very overt and I was explicitly told that anything I did was because I was in love with a man - a classmate, a friend, a neighbour, an adult family friend (yes, even if I was 8), a male relative. I felt disgusting anytime I wanted to dress the way I wanted because I felt I was inviting men to have sexual thoughts about me.
As a Romani little girl you are groomed to accept relationships with men, especially older men. When I was about 8, my then 15yo sister invited me to her bedroom and showed me condoms and told me that I would need them one day. When we were 12, my female cousins all had boyfriends. My female cousins usually got their first serious relationship at 14-15yo. Two of my cousins had their first kid before they turned 17 (one was with a 28yo man). And this is seen as normal and you're weird for criticizing them. Any heterosexual intercourse is seen as good, as a positive value. The majority of my Romani female relatives sided against another relative of ours who had been raped by her stepfather. My mother and my sister also sided with my abuser and told me that I was being unfairly mean to him because he is my stepfather and I should be nicer, actually.
When I was 12, I had never had a boyfriend. All my other relatives, both male and female, started piling on me. We had family gatherings almost every couple of weeks, and the conversation would always somehow land on me. I was told I was weird, I was a dyke, I was probably a lesbian, my mother usually said she didn't want me to be some ugly dyke but she would also say that I was so mean to her for not coming out to her. This was discussed among my relatives while I was in the room. My mother usually pressured me every couple of nights to tell her if I was a "dyke". Because even though my group doesn't practice child marriages anymore, it's still the norm for Romani girls to be in serious relationship with (older) men when they are in middle school, and you are the weird one for not fitting that norm.
When gay marriage was being debated in my country, I was in middle school and my mother's favourite joke was about a gay teenager committing suicide. It was a joke made by a stand-up comedian and she would listen to it once in a while when driving me to school.
And I am so lucky because my family isn't even very traditional. They aren't even religious. Most Roma are very intense about religion. In my country, there are a lot of Evangelical Christian Roma, who told me that lesbian Roma should be murdered, should be ousted, that gay Romani teenager should be beaten by their parents, should be thrown on the street, that lesbian Romani Holocaust survivors should have been killed. All under the guise of "culture". Because a lot of those people have a "let it be" attitude when it comes to non-Romani LGBT people, but they don't extend that attitude to their own kids.
And then I talk to antiracist and "progressive" Romani activists, usually male, usually straight, who tell me that "being Romani is about being raised with Romani culture and embracing and respecting that culture", but what does that mean for LGB Roma who are constantly being bullied and abused by their own family and community? Heterosexuality lies at the core of Romani culture and LGB Roma won't be free until we start challenging religions and the patriarchal and homophobic bias engraved in Romani culture
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19. dare
nsfw x
"I dare you to text Christian." Max says, his eyes narrow slits, gin & tonic clasped in his hand. His cheeks are flushed, but Daniel watches, in the moonlight eclipsing their Monaco balcony, as they become a slight tinge darker.
"Text him what?" Daniel asks.
Knowing Max, it could be something insane, stupid, dumb. Tell him you're abandoning the reserve driver role to replace Pierre at Alpine, is one thing. Offer to babysit his kids next race weekend, is another. Ask him how many more race weekends Checo has to fuck up till you're put in the car, is the one Daniel wants him to dare him to do.
Daniel could have sit for hours, drink another whole bottle of wine, and come up with thousands of things Max could choose to dare him to do. But when Max says, "A photo...of us," Daniel audibly gulps, feels his own cheeks become filled with blood, and blinks slowly.
Christian knows. And Daniel knows. That Max and Christian--used to. When Daniel left. Then Max won. And Daniel and Max started again. Max and Christian soon stopped.
Daniel has lain below Max, as Max has kissed has down his neck, over his chest, recounted the stories. Grasped both their dicks and jerked them off whilst whispering to Daniel all the lewd things they did together in Christian's office. Daniel left Red Bull, left Christian, left Max, left Max, and had felt king of the world, left his once loyal subjects shocked. But they had coped--without him.
Had found each other.
Then Max had found Daniel again. Daniel had come back home.
And it was in that first factory visit, when Christian had ordered the cameras away, that Daniel was faced with the starkness of it all. Looked around and thought --
You pushed Max to his knees right here and fucked his face.
Max has bent you over this desk and cum inside you
You both jerked off into Max's first WDC trophy over here.
Looked around and thought when will that be me.
He knows, sitting here now, he's been played, toyed with, by both Max and Christian. That the lingering touches at the small of his back as Christian guides him around the paddock were meaningful. That Max's continuous insistence they should fly out to Oxfordshire soon and visit Christian and Geri is purposeful.
"Which photo baby?" He asks. He wants to crawl under Max's t-shirt and feel his chest heat up, hear his heart beat impossibly fast, as Max has to explain he doesn't want Daniel to send a normal, innocent selfie of the two of them.
He settles for walking over to him, leaving his wine on the side table, and watching Max's legs opening wider instinctively, so that Daniel settle between them. He leans over him, kisses him harsh and fierce, feels Max moan into it, and then gets down on his knees, bites down on Max's thigh and relishes the sharp intake of breath Max takes, then lavishes his tongue over it.
"The one we took in front of the mirror Monday night?" Daniel asks, kissing further up Max's thigh. Daniel stood fully naked, Max on his knees, Daniel feeding him his dick. You can't see Max's face, but you can see the way his hands grip Daniel's thighs tightly, his perky ass, the way he sits so pretty whilst he takes it.
Daniel looks up, locks eyes with Max, and Max shakes his head, lip caught between his teeth.
Daniel moves to the other thigh, bites, licks, kisses.
"What about the ones from Miami?"
A triumphant win for Max. One to silent all the people who suggested Checo would ever be in with a chance of the championship. They'd both gone out together afterwards, swarmed into a party attended by influencers, engineers and DJs galore. Max had pulled Daniel into a private bathroom cubicle, bent Daniel against the sink, and whimpered when he saw Daniel had already prepped. The photo is a mirror selfie, Max rucking Daniel's shirt up and coming across his back.
"No." Max responds, his voice quiet and high.
Daniel nuzzles into Max's clothed dick, feels where it's hard. He sits back on his legs, hands resting in his lap and pretends to think hard.
"Australia, my place?" He finally asks, and Max's head moves rapidly, nods quickly.
"Yeah, yeah that one. He'll like that one. That one Daniel." Max looks so eager in front of him, so desperate. Daniel doesn't even question if this is the right or wrong thing to do, if it's fucking weird to send your boss a picture of you and his star driver fucking.
Just reaches for his phone, goes to his locked album, and selects the photo, clicks Share, and opts to text it to Christian.
A blissful week where Max had stayed behind after the Australian GP, let Daniel drive him around in his beat up truck and show him the sights. He'd re-applied sun cream every hour to Max's pale skin, even though Perth was entering Autumn. Had watched pleasantly as Max had eaten gloriously, ordered Daniel's favourite sandwich from Daniel's favourite cafe, got three scoops of ice cream from the best deli in town, devoured Grace's cooking and comfortably asked for seconds.
The photo--golden hour. Settled on Daniel's porch swing. Covered in golden sunlight. Both of them stark naked, Max's back to Daniel's chest, Daniel's hands wrapped around Max, one twisting his nipples, the other jerking him off. Max's arm around the back of Daniel's head, tangled in his curls, pulling him impossibly close. They'd been kissing, but in the photo, this one screenshot Daniel had taken from the video, Max's mouth is wide open, a loud shout of Daniel's name falling from his mouth as Daniel had hit his prostate perfectly. They look glorious, blissful, hot. Daniel only has to look at the photo and can jerk off to the memory of it all. Doesn't need to watch the full video.
He ignores Max in front of him, can see in his peripheral vision the way he's palming at his dick a little, a small wet patch coming through his shorts, knows he's remembering it all as well.
Daniel opts to just stare at the photo.
Watches Sent turn into Delivered. Watches Delivered quickly turn into Read.
Watches a grey bubble appear with dots.
My beautiful boys. He reads.
"My beautiful boys." He repeats to Max.
"Do you think he'd like the video?" He asks.
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