Every now and then I post on the weekly Rainbow Snippets page https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974 where we post six lines from a work of ours, published or in progress, or a recommendation of someone else’s work that has at least one LGBT character. From my story “All The Bells And Whistles,” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2025/03/14/all-the-bells-and-whistles-friday-flash-fics-from-jeff-baker-march-14-2025/ we meet Steve, Horacio and Corby. Lifelong buddies now in their twenties, hanging out in Steve’s family garage like they did when they were in school.

Steve had invited them to lunch with Lance the day before. It had gone well, Steve had introduced Horacio and Corby as “My straight best bros,” and they had hit it off. Steve had been nervous as hell, but everything had been fine, even the burgers.

Steve looked around the garage again and smiled. “I really can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“Doing what?” Horacio asked. “Getting hitched?”

Steve looked over, surprised. “It’s written all over my face, isn’t it?”

“You two were holding hands under the table,” Corby said.

Here’s just a little more (okay, here’s more snippets going over the six-line thingie again.)

“Yeah,” Steve said with a grin. “We got a license and were planning on this coming fall. Big wedding. Reception. All the bells and whistles. But we decided, you know, we’d better speed it up. We wanna do it next weekend.” Steve took another deep breath. “My folks are gone, and my cousins live out in California so would you two be there? Kinda best men, family, standing up for me, witnesses kind of thing?”

“Hell, yeah” Corby said.

“Same here, bro” Horacio said. “Whad’ you think, we wouldn’t want to be there?”

Over the limit, but what the hey, it’s worth it. I consider little stories like this even for my little audience a form of protest. As a friend of mine said, visibility is protest.

See you next time. ——-jeff