Secret Cities: A Short Story

Secret Cities

This story is dedicated to Pride month.

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For a while I have been fascinated by the concept of secret cities. People might have heard of paper towns which are invented places that solely exist on maps. Secret cities are the opposite. They are not immortalised on maps or any other bearers of knowledge but do exist in reality. They are temporary memories that will vanish with the people. A romancesurrounds the myths that these hidden places have become... or at least I believe there is something romantic about them.

I was sitting on a swing in the empty playground next to the beach. A mild wind was blowing my hair my medium long, dark hair across face. I tucked the loose hair strands behind my ears before pulling my sweater's hood over my head. With my hands in my pockets, I looked up at the stars, trying to connect the burning lights of the cosmos and make up the few zodiac signs of which I knew the formation. I raised my left hand, pulling it out from the pocket, and traced the forms in the air with my index finger.

"Hey beautiful!" A voice from behind me said, as two arms wrapped around my waist. It was Mara, my girlfriend of four months. I immediately started smiling, happy that she is finally here. She placed a peck on my jaw before letting go of me and sitting on the swing next to mine.

"Tonight it is thankfully not as cold as yesterday," Mara argued and softly swung back and forth, without lifting her feet off the ground. She then reached for my hand and intertwined our fingers, holding it tightly. We stayed in silence for a moment before Mara spoke up.

"Any updates on your theories? Any philosophical insights?" She asked and smiled at me. She doesn't mock my stupidest or weirdest interests but rather encourages them, which I love about her. Mara had her very curly hair tied in a bun on top of her head with a few shorter curls framing her face.

"Oh you know. Just the usual... metaphorical use of secret cities as being individuals."

"So each person is a secret city?" Mara asked to confirm that she understood me right. I nodded and hummed in confirmation to which she replied by swinging once. We waited until she slowed down herself by the force of gravity.

"Can I ask you something, Liz, and I want you to be completely honest." Mara warned and got up from the swing. She walked over to my side and stood in front of me. "I never really asked you but why the fascination with hidden towns? Weren't they mostly created for the means of creating weapons for war? That's actually really dark."

"Rather than the real use of secret cities, I've always liked the concept, just like secret societies, the thought of secret hiding places to where people were able to escape. And the reason I came to know about them was actually my mother. She used to tell me fantasy stories which she invented about these different abandoned towns that would hold the answer to existence, which were marked on no map in the world but would be known through oral transmission. In her stories, these secret towns would—when drawn on paper—create the formation of the Gemini constellation."

"Your zodiac." Mara added to the new information and I nodded once again, agreeing.

"She was really creative, my mom." I said with a smile on my face and then she reached for my hands, pulling me up from the swing. We began to walk out of the playground and towards the wooden path along the coast.

"She really was. I wish I could've met her." We slowly walked down the long and empty path. Except from the waves crashing, nothing else was audible. Occasionally, a car in the distance could be heard driving past our location but not too often. Tonight weirdly felt different. Was it because I'm thinking of coming out soon to my dad and brother? Or was it the nearing of my mother's anniversary of her passing from cancer? Was it the need to bury all of my childhood stories and theories once and for all? All of these questions were swirling around my mind, all unanswered.

"I've known you for a while now, Liz. And I think there is another reason for your attachment to the theoretical existence of secret cities." She cleared her throat, thinking carefully about how she is going to formulate what she wants to say. "Could it be that your fear of coming out makes you want to believe in these places where you can escape to? Where you can be unbothered by another people? Since for you each person is a secret city, does that mean that I am your escape every night?" Mara asked but we kept walking more slowly than before. I felt a crushing weight of sadness pushing down on me. I let go of her hand as different thoughts flooded my mind.

"I think so—is my answer to all of your questions. I think being Bisexual didn't make it really easier for my relationship to my family especially since it was already strained from when my mom passed away but keeping it secret did make it easier. I just... I don't know. I think every person is a secret city because everyone keeps secrets. Isn't it better to have secrets? To have something mysterious about you?" I asked desperately, knowing and fearing why she asked all these questions.

"No, I don't think secrets are good to keep. Not when it's secret that hide parts of your identity. Not when people are your secret like I am to you." Mara said with anger in her voice's undertone. I knew that there would be the day we would have this conversation, especially since Mara is from an accepting and open family. She doesn't understand the pressure of a culture that is still not acceptant of different sexualities other than heterosexuality, that still prefers to procreate within its own ethnicity and culture over having different ethnicities as a partner. With such a background, do the metaphoric escape to secret cities appear that bad?

"I want to tell them the truth, it's just not that easy, Mara."

"With this excuse many things wouldn't have changed in the history of human kind, Liz. Nothing is easy in life that challenges the comforts of people. The liberation of African Americans wasn't easy but my ancestors didn't stop believing in equality and change. The fight for LGBTQ+ rights wasn't easy but people still fought for the cause. Fighting racism isn't easy but we still fight against it even though it is much better now than it used to, because we want positive change. The feminist and #MeToo movement isn't easy but people of all backgrounds still are coming forward with their hurtful and traumatic experiences because they want change. You need to realise that in order to change your dad's and brother's view you need to work for it, you need to tell them even when it's not easy. All of this was possible because people supported each other. I support you." Mara argued with passion and I realised a fundamental thing in all of her examples. In every case, people supported each other and fought together. It wasn't many secret cities interconnecting. And that was when I realised something that I misunderstood all this time. People aren't individual secret cities but parts of it, just like a building isn't a whole city but a collection of them, just like one star isn't a whole constellation but a whole network of stars.

A person is not its own secret city. A network of people—friends, family, schoolmates, work colleagues—create a whole secret city, and many of these secret cities exist simultaneously and overlap. Secret cities aren't an escape into solitude but into a connected community that changes and morphs with different other secret places creating intersections that lead to multiple groups of people.

I am not a secret city that is separated from my father or my brother. We all are a part of a secret city, I just need to embrace that and trust in that.

The End