Pansies (Spires #4)

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

1 . Paragraph begins with : J.D. Jarndyce (formerly Jarndyce & Dance) paid him enough that he didn’t have to care.

Alexis: The love interest in Chasing the Light is Leo Dance, the son of the Dance who parted ways somewhat mysteriously with his professional partner Jarndyce, as referenced here.

2. Paragraph begins with: “Yorkshire, Manchester, same difference.”

Alexis: The thing about Alfie Bell? I think he has a type, and a bit more directly than a lot of my characters, who just fall in love where they fall in love. I think Alfie, as well as being gay, is very attracted to queerness. Like as a feeling, as an aesthetic, as an identity: he seems to be drawn to people who have a certain boldness when it comes to self-expression. Maybe because he’s so self-conscious about his own queerness.

3 . Paragraph begins with: “And,” finished Alfie decidedly, “they do egg and chips for ￡4.99.”

Alexis: With inflation, egg and chips is probably more like ￡8.99 now. But this is still the perfect pub.

4 . Paragraph begins with: “Oh, what’s that?”

Alexis: I bet Greg is the sort of person who, if you order chips, says he isn’t hungry and then eats loads of them when they arrive.

5 . Paragraph begins with: “I’m not,” he protested.

Alexis: A friend of mine related doing something similar once by accident and was guilt-wracked for weeks. I am more on the Alfie scale of ill deeds (not, I hasten to add, that I ever bullied anyone at school).

6 . Paragraph begins with: “God.” Alfie tried to get to his feet…

Alexis: Obviously one of the complicated things about writing a character who has never had to think about things like identity before is that they’re sometimes going to come out with ridiculous shit. I hope part of Alfie’s journey across the book involves breaking down ideas like this—i.e., that there are straight things and gay things. I mean, I think it can be complicated to aspire to things that are idealised in a heteronormative context…but, also, it doesn’t have to be. It’s okay to want a life partner, just like it’s okay to want to be ravaged by six or seven incredibly gay fireman.

I also think Greg is both a good and a bad first boyfriend for Alfie. Good, because he’s a sweet if occasionally shallow man. But not so great because he’s so comfortable in himself that he asks as few questions about queerness as Alfie has previously asked about straightness. He’s not taking Alfie all that seriously here, for example. Or, if he is, he’s offering the wrong kind of reassurance and not really interrogating wtf Alfie thinks he’s on about.

7 . Paragraph begins with: It was not a good time for Greg to roll his eyes.

Alexis: I also think part of the reason Greg is fucking this up (not that Alfie should really be slut-shaming him in reaction) is the fact he feels a lot more for Alfie than he’s letting on or even willing to admit to himself. Greg definitely is the horny little bunny he claims to be, but there’s an extent to which he uses promiscuity as a defence mechanism. He feels safer in shallowness. Someone should probably write a book about him where he deals with that.