Chapter Sixteen

February arrived with hot wind under the roller door and a whisper in the group chat:

We should plan for Pride.

Tracey posted it like an announcement rather than a suggestion.

“June will be big,” she wrote. “We should build a campaign.”

Marcus added rainbow emojis as if that settled it. Finn replied with a breathing gif. Ruth typed, “We can discuss at next staff,” then sent me a private text:

I can already feel the migraine.

In the studio, the heat lifted glazes to a tacky sheen and made the concrete sweat. Ebony opened the kiln, peered in, and closed it again, unimpressed by the air’s refusal to cooperate with physics.

Tracey arrived with a folder and a pace.

She placed the folder on the bench like she had won an award and opened it to a colour-printed mood board: rainbow gradients, slick slogans, a wheel dusted in glitter in a way that would have given Ebony a rash.

“Gay Soirée,” Tracey said. “It writes itself.”

I looked at the glitter wheel.

Then at the slop bucket.

“We don’t do glitter in the glaze room,” I said. “Ever.”

“It’s metaphorical glitter.”

“Good. Keep it metaphorical.”

Marcus appeared at the door, attached to her by mood and timing.

“We could curate an evening,” he said. “Queer facilitators, queer playlists, a vibe.”

“We are already welcoming,” I said carefully. “That’s not a campaign. That’s what we are.”

Tracey smiled slightly.

“Being welcoming isn’t the same as being targeted.”

“Our rule is no campaigning.”

“Pride isn’t politics,” she said. “It’s a demographic.”

Ruth shot me a look that said:

careful.

Then, gently:

“If we do this, it has to feel like us.”

Tracey turned her laptop around.

A flyer filled the screen. The type screamed. The subheading read:

A night for the alphabet mafia. Allies tolerated.

Finn inhaled.

Ebony did not look up from the bucket, but her shoulders suggested a comment she had decided not to say.

“We keep the rules,” I said. “Everyone is welcome. Nobody campaigns. The wheel is Switzerland.”

Tracey’s expression cooled.

“If you’re afraid of visibility—”

“I’m not afraid,” I said, hearing the thinness of my own voice. “I’m protective.”

The room paused.

“We’ve built something that holds all kinds of people without asking them to pin a badge to their chest. That’s the point.”

Ruth nodded once.

“Everyone is the right crowd,” she said.

Tracey made a note.

“That’s not how you sell out Friday nights.”

We circled the problem for forty minutes.

My brain was a queue. Tracey’s was a list. Lists win in the moment.

Finally I said:

“We can plan the year. Monthly rhythm. But we keep the rules. No glitter. No splinter accounts. No slogans that fracture the room. If we do anything Pride-adjacent, we do it by making our welcome obvious, not by auditioning for a parade.”

Finn softened.

“Clay Soirée,” he said. “Everyone in. No sermons.”

Tracey closed the folder.

“Fine. I’ll lead on design.”

“We have brand guidelines,” Ruth said, and I heard the capital letters.

Tracey smiled without her eyes.

“Your Canva is a cry for help.”

Ruth’s face flickered, then closed.

I touched her elbow.

“We’ll do this together,” I said.

Tracey nodded as if that had been her plan.

Two nights later, Tracey’s girlfriend arrived.

Ren.

Short hair. Navy overalls. Forearms that spoke fluent drill. A grin that looked like mischief pretending to be charm.

Tracey installed her at a wheel during staff practice as if we had hired her.

Ren threw confidently and badly. On the fourth pull she tipped her head toward Marcus and coaxed the clay north into a shape that was not suitable for the internet.

“Don’t,” I said before I could stop myself.

Ren looked up, eyes shining.

“It’s funny.”

“It’s not funny online,” Ruth said quietly.

“It’s also a mop no one wants to pick up,” I added.

Ren shrugged, collapsed it back into a lump, and smoothed the clay down without complaint.

But the message had landed:

lines could be drawn.

Lines could be tested.

Ebony passed with a tray of bone-dry mugs.

“If I find glitter in the trap,” she said, “I will move out and take the kiln with me.”

Ren laughed.

Ebony was not joking.

That night I found a new Instagram account following ours.

@everyonesclay_says_gay

It used our name, our photos, and Tracey’s captions.

The first post showed hands at a wheel under a rainbow filter:

We’re here. We’re clay. Get used to it.

The second featured Tracey in black:

Building a program that serves community, not capital.

The third was a poll:

Should we host a Gay Soirée? Yes / Obviously yes.

I messaged Tracey:

Can you take the handle down please and use the studio account like we agreed?

She replied instantly:

I’m building audience in my own time. This is labour. It needs compensation.

I breathed carefully.

It isn’t in the job we agreed on. Please stop posting for now. Use Ruth’s content calendar. We’ll review together.

Seen.

No reply.

Twenty minutes later, the story became a black square with white text:

Some people are afraid of colour.

I put my phone face down and scrubbed slip from William’s sideboard before it set.

When I looked again, the post was gone.

The official account had posted instead: hands holding a bowl, soft light, Ruth’s caption.

Everyone welcome. Same rules as always. Friday and Saturday booking link in bio.

It earned a neat pile of hearts.

Ruth had tidied the internet like it was a bench.

William drifted downstairs at lunchtime the next day in striped pyjamas and said:

“Yoddlers.”

“Toddlers?”

“Exactly. Small yoddlers. We should have them at halftime.”

“There is no halftime. This is pottery.”

“We are also a community centre in disguise.”

He poured tea as though I had agreed.

By March, bookings doubled and the room learned a new pitch.

People arrived waving DMs at Ruth as though they were tickets.

“We saw your post!” they said.

Sometimes their names were in the booking system.

Sometimes they were only on Tracey’s list, which lived mostly in Tracey’s head.

This was not the same as a database that paid rent.

We created a system:

ghost-list guests waited with a glass and a promise.

Some were gracious.

Some asked Tracey directly.

Ruth kept smiling through a narrowing window.

Finn tried to calm the wobble by making openings longer.

“We’re here,” he would say. “For the next two hours, we are here.”

It usually worked.

Then William would appear on the stairs and ask if the yoddlers were available.

It usually stopped working.

I began hesitating in conversations I used to own.

A guest would ask if they could take their bowl home wet.

I would say, “No, we fire it for you.”

Marcus would add, “Unless you’re comfortable with risk.”

Tracey would say, “We can create a policy.”

And an ordinary answer would become a seminar on sovereignty.

At home, the children noticed the edges of me.

The eldest returned my Myki to the kitchen bench and offered lifts without commentary.

The boy put a bag of ice on my shoulder because I had said the word ache too loudly.

Child Three drew a map titled:

Mayfield Street: Places You Can Breathe

The KC’s help kept arriving invisibly.

A supply invoice resolved itself.

The booking platform suddenly boosted us into Top Experiences for the month.

I pretended luck had become administratively competent.

Then around midnight I wrote a thank-you in the notes app and deleted it.

Tracey’s side account posted again in April.

A photo of her at the wheel.

Building spaces where we don’t have to ask to be.

This time I walked to the counter.

“I need you to stop using the studio’s name for your own channel.”

“It’s for us.”

“It splits us. It confuses people. And it puts your words in our mouth.”

She looked at me with the patience people reserve for children and men.

“This is visibility work,” she said. “It’s messy. It’s not tidy like your ledger.”

“Please stop,” I said. “If you want to design, work with Ruth. If you want to promote, use the calendar. If you want to advocate, use your own account without our name.”

“You can’t police me on my own time.”

“I can insist you don’t use our name.”

Ebony passed with a scoop of grog.

“Also glitter is banned.”

Tracey’s jaw tightened.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll do it your way. Slow and scared.”

She squeezed a sponge like a throat.

The Soirées kept selling out.

The platform sent us a badge.

We rolled our eyes and added it to the website because badges bring strangers and strangers bring money.

Ruth kept the tone balanced on a knife-edge: generous without pandering, clear without preaching.

Then Tracey slipped a sheet into the staff room titled:

FEELINGS ZONE: PROPOSAL

It mapped a corner of the studio where benches would move aside every hour for collective processing.

At the bottom:

This is not optional.

I looked at the diagram and felt something quiet in me harden.

I picked up a pen and wrote across the bottom:

Feelings are welcome. Wheels have priority. We will not move benches in the middle of classes. We will listen without disrupting the work. The wheel is Switzerland. — S.

Finn read it and smiled.

“There she is,” he murmured.

Ruth added:

We can build care into pace, not in spite of it.

Ebony drew a skull over a doodle of glitter.

Tracey went quiet, which is the version of arguing that takes longer.

She sent me a calendar invite titled:

Leadership

At the meeting she arrived early, notebook perfect.

“I need clarity on my scope,” she said. “I keep being asked to lead and then told to stop.”

“You’re being asked to teach well and work as part of a team.”

“That is not all.”

Then, softer:

“This place could be better. I can make it better.”

“It is already better than it was,” I said. “And we’ll make it better again. But not by splitting it in half and arguing about whose feelings get a corner.”

Tracey watched me for a long moment.

Then:

“Okay. I’ll take care of my zone.”

After she left, I sat very still.

My hands shook slightly.

Not rage.

Fatigue.

I walked out to Ruth, who was labelling jars.

“I would like a policy,” I said.

Ruth smiled as though I had handed her a holiday.

She reached for the good pen.

That night on the tram, the driver saw me jogging and waited.

“I’ve seen you before,” he said, which felt like both compliment and warning.

I tapped on, sat down, and fell asleep for two stops.

When I woke, the eldest had texted:

Dinner’s in the microwave. Also, your Google calendar says “leadership apocalypse?” Everything okay?

I wrote back:

Typo. Meant lunch.

She sent a skull and a heart.

On Friday, before the Soirée, William appeared with a flyer for the street library:

MAYFIELD STREET READS: TAKE ONE, LEAVE ONE, DON’T BE A MONSTER

He had chosen a font that looked carved from a turnip.

“We are a civic institution,” he said.

“We are a small business with a kiln that owes me rent.”

I kissed his cheek anyway.

We ran two Soirées back-to-back.

In the first, Tracey was competent and contained: a version of herself I could hire twice.

In the second, Ren appeared with a speaker and tried to hijack the playlist.

Ruth replaced it with cracked jazz from the café corner and the room immediately calmed.

Finn taught a beginner how to stop drowning her bowl.

Ebony retrieved a sponge from a drain with a move that made an engineer applaud.

Marcus took a bow he had not earned.

Tina told a guest to put her glass down and lift her spine, and the guest obeyed, and her cylinder stood up like it had been waiting for that sentence all its life.

After pack-down, I wrote four lines in the ledger, then added one more.

When I turned off the lights, the room looked back with that expression it has on good nights:

used, and ready to be used again.

I locked the door and stood under the streetlight, listening to the river being itself.

In June, perhaps, we would call a night something that made someone feel braver.

But for now we would keep the door open, the rules simple and the wheels turning.

That was not a campaign.

It was the work.