The bass line from Heart's "Alone" thrums through my bones as I settle onto the cracked leather barstool, watching Miguel's graceful hands work magic behind the scarred wooden bar. The basement reeks of vanilla candles and stale cigarettes tonight, with an undertone of whatever fucking disaster Della's wrestling with in the kitchen—sounds like she's murdering onions with the fury of a woman scorned.
"Evening, Mom," Miguel purrs in that sultry-childlike voice that always makes me think of honey poured over broken glass. "Got something special for you tonight."
He slides a rocks glass across the bar, amber liquid catching the rainbow light from our pathetic string of Christmas bulbs. I take a sip and nearly choke on the smooth burn of what tastes like twenty-year-old Macallan.
"Jesus fuck, Miguel, where'd you get this?"
"Don't ask questions you don't want answered," he grins, that mischievous glint in his dark eyes. "Besides, figured you'd need the good shit tonight. Phoenix has been pacing like a caged tiger for the last hour."
I follow his gaze to where Phoenix sits hunched over in Ezra's usual beanbag throne, their cotton-candy pink hair falling like a curtain over their face. Ezra's perched on the arm of the new couch—still pristine compared to our old battle-scarred furniture—gesticulating wildly while they speak in hushed tones.
"What fresh hell now?" I mutter, taking another pull of that liquid gold.
"Beauty pageant drama," Della's voice cuts through the kitchen noise as she emerges with a plate of what looks like jalapeño poppers wrapped in enough bacon to give a cardiologist nightmares. "Phoenix got asked to compete in some Miss NonBinary America bullshit."
The words hit the room like a grenade. Conversations die mid-sentence. Even the pool players—Marcus and River bent over the new table, still bitching about how the old one's rightward lean gave them an edge—straighten up to listen.
"They what now?" I ask, setting down my glass harder than intended.
Phoenix looks up, their makeup smeared and eyes red-rimmed. "River's ex-girlfriend Sierra—the one who works at that modeling agency downtown—she said I had the 'look' they're searching for. Young, pretty, inspiring enby story, all that commercial fucking bullshit."
Keira, nursing a beer at the far end of the bar, lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snarl. "Let me guess—they want you to parade around in swimwear and evening gowns, answer questions about world peace while they judge how well you fit their narrow-ass definition of feminine beauty?"
"That's exactly what they fucking want," Phoenix's voice cracks like thin ice. "And the worst part? Part of me wants to do it. Part of me thinks maybe if I win, maybe if I'm pretty enough, feminine enough, perfect enough, then people will finally see me as valid. As worthy."
The room goes cemetery quiet except for Rush's "Red Barchetta" bleeding through the speakers. River abandons their pool cue and moves to Phoenix's side, their hospital scrubs still creased from a double shift.
"Baby," River says softly, using they/them pronouns for Phoenix tonight, "you know that's not how validity works, right?"
"Do I?" Phoenix snaps, then immediately looks stricken. "Fuck, I'm sorry. I know you're trying to help. But look around this place, River. Look at all of us."
They gesture wildly at the assembled crowd. "Ezra with their blue hair and vintage band tees, refusing to conform to any gender binary. You, switching between he and she and they depending on what feels right. Mom here, who transitioned later in life and gives zero fucks about passing as some magazine-perfect woman. We're all beautiful in our own fucked-up ways, but the world doesn't see it that way."
Marcus straightens up from where he's been chalking his cue. "Beauty standards are just another way to keep us fractured," he says, his voice carrying that particular exhaustion of a man who's spent years hiding half of himself. "They pit us against each other—who passes better, who's more feminine, who fits their idea of acceptable queerness."
Renee, all six feet and three inches of pure lesbian muscle, snorts from her corner booth. "Acceptable queerness," she repeats, voice dripping with disgust. "Like there's a goddamn Goldilocks zone for being different. Not too butch, not too femme, not too trans, not too gay. Just the right amount of palatably different for straight consumption."
"But that's just it," Phoenix says, voice rising. "I want to be consumed. I want to be seen as beautiful. I want to walk into a room and have people think 'gorgeous woman' instead of 'enby person.' I'm so fucking tired of being brave and authentic and all that inspirational bullshit. Sometimes I just want to be pretty."
The honesty in their voice cuts through me like a rusty blade. I drain the rest of my Macallan and signal Miguel for another.
"Pretty according to who?" Della demands, wiping her hands on her apron as she emerges fully from the kitchen. "Pretty according to some panel of judges who think beauty comes in one size, one shape, one acceptable level of passing?"
"Pretty according to everyone who matters," Phoenix shoots back. "Pretty enough that River's family stops looking at me like I'm corrupting their precious child. Pretty enough that employers don't find excuses not to hire me. Pretty enough that I can use a public bathroom without calculating escape routes."
The weight of that truth settles over us like a lead blanket. Because Phoenix isn't wrong—beauty, especially conventional feminine beauty, provides a kind of armor in this world. The prettier you are, the more you pass, the safer you become.
Ezra shifts in their seat, blue hair catching the light. "But what happens when you conform to their standards and they just move the goalposts? I've watched too many people chase their idea of perfect and lose themselves in the process."
"Maybe losing myself is worth it if I gain safety," Phoenix whispers.
Keira sets down her beer with a sharp crack. "That's survival, not living. And you deserve more than survival, Phoenix."
"Do I?" The question comes out raw, scraped from some deep well of pain. "Because every day I wake up and have to decide which version of myself the world can tolerate. Femme enough to be taken seriously as a woman, but not so femme that I'm seen as performing. Pretty enough to be desirable, but not so pretty that I'm fetishized. It's exhausting, and some days I think it would be easier to just give them what they want."
River reaches for Phoenix's hand. "What you're describing isn't freedom, baby. That's just a prettier prison."
"At least it's prettier," Phoenix mutters.
The brutal honesty hangs in the air like cigarette smoke. Miguel busies himself cleaning already-clean glasses while Della returns to her kitchen, the violent chopping of vegetables providing a soundtrack to our collective discomfort.
Marcus breaks the silence. "I spent twenty years trying to make myself smaller, more palatable. Thought if I dated women, if I acted straight enough, if I fit their definition of masculine, I'd finally be acceptable. You know what I got? A wife who loves a version of me that doesn't exist and a life that feels like borrowed clothes."
"But you're here now," Renee points out. "You found this place. You found us."
"After decades of self-imposed exile," Marcus replies. "And I still go home to a woman who thinks my queerness is just a phase I'm working through with 'therapy friends.'"
Phoenix looks up sharply. "So what's the answer? Conform and hate ourselves, or be authentic and get trampled by a world that thinks we're too much?"
"Maybe," I say finally, surprised by the sound of my own voice, "the answer isn't choosing between authentic and acceptable. Maybe it's about finding spaces where those aren't mutually exclusive."
Everyone turns to look at me, and I feel suddenly exposed under their collective gaze.
"This place," I continue, gesturing around the basement, "this shithole sanctuary with its mismatched furniture and water stains—this is where Phoenix gets to be beautiful without quotation marks. Where Ezra's blue hair is gorgeous, not rebellious. Where Marcus's bisexuality isn't confusion, it's wholeness."
"But we can't live in the basement forever, Mom," Phoenix says softly.
"No," I agree, "but we can carry this feeling with us. We can remember that beauty isn't about conforming to their standards—it's about the way River's eyes light up when they look at you. It's about Ezra's laugh, and Marcus's courage in showing up here week after week. It's about Della's fierce protection of everyone who walks through that door."
Phoenix wipes their eyes, smearing mascara into abstract art. "You make it sound so simple."
"It's not simple," I admit. "It's the hardest fucking thing in the world. But the alternative—losing yourself to become their idea of acceptable—that's not beauty. That's erasure."
River squeezes Phoenix's hand. "What if we redefined the whole thing? What if instead of asking whether you should compete in their pageant, we ask what Phoenix's definition of beauty looks like?"
"I don't know," Phoenix admits. "I've spent so long chasing their standards, I'm not sure I remember what mine are."
Ezra bounces slightly in their seat. "That's why we're here! To figure it out together. To remind each other that beauty isn't a competition—it's a fucking revolution."
"Pretty revolutionary of us to exist authentically in a world that profits from our self-hatred," Renee adds with a grin that's all teeth.
Miguel slides another Macallan across to me, and I notice the way the light catches the pride flag tattoo on his forearm. "You know what I think is beautiful?" he says. "Phoenix walking into this place six months ago, scared and alone, and choosing to stay. Choosing to trust us with their real self."
"That's not pageant beautiful," Phoenix protests weakly.
"Fuck pageant beautiful," Della calls from the kitchen, her voice carrying over the sizzle of whatever she's creating. "That's human beautiful. That's brave beautiful. That's the kind of beautiful that changes the world."
Phoenix looks around the room—at River's gentle smile, at Ezra's enthusiastic nodding, at Marcus's understanding nod, at Renee's protective stance, at Miguel's warm eyes, at Keira's fierce expression, at my own weathered face that's learned to find beauty in survival.
"Maybe," Phoenix says slowly, "maybe I don't need to win their pageant to prove I'm beautiful. Maybe I just need to remember that I already am."
The room erupts in a chorus of "damn right" and "about fucking time" and other affirmations that would make a church lady clutch her pearls.
River pulls Phoenix into a hug. "Now that's the person I fell in love with—not the one trying to fit into someone else's definition of perfect."
As the night wears on and Def Leppard's "Hysteria" fills the basement with its familiar energy, I watch Phoenix slowly come back to themselves. The makeup gets wiped away completely, revealing the face I've grown to love—not because it fits any standard, but because it's authentically theirs.
Miguel starts another round for everyone, and I notice how the light catches differently on each face. Ezra's unconventional beauty, Marcus's quiet strength, River's gentle fierceness, Renee's powerful grace, Phoenix's emerging self-acceptance, Della's protective love, Keira's unwavering support—all of it gorgeous in ways that can't be judged or ranked or awarded.
"You know what?" Phoenix announces suddenly, voice stronger now. "Fuck that pageant. I'm beautiful on my own terms."
The cheer that goes up could probably be heard upstairs at Murphy's, but none of us give a shit. This is what victory sounds like—not a crown or a sash, but a young person choosing authenticity over acceptance.
As I finish my second glass of impossibly good scotch and prepare to head home to where Charlie's probably waiting to tell me about their day and where Alexander's probably lost in some book that's too smart for me to understand, I think about Phoenix's journey tonight. About the weight of trying to be pretty enough for a world that profits from our insecurity.
The basement empties slowly, people heading back to lives that require daily navigation of a world obsessed with narrow definitions of beauty. But they're carrying something with them now—a reminder that their worth isn't measured in how well they conform, but in how courageously they exist.
Phoenix hugs me before leaving with River, and I smell their natural scent mixed with the basement's atmosphere of candles and acceptance.
"Thanks, Mom," they whisper against my shoulder. "For reminding me that I don't need their permission to be beautiful."
"You never did, kiddo," I whisper back. "You never fucking did."
"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
In a world that commodifies beauty and weaponizes conformity, the Sanctuary becomes a space where authentic existence itself becomes the highest form of beauty. Phoenix's struggle with beauty standards reflects our collective journey from seeking external validation to discovering internal worth—learning that the most profound beauty emerges not from meeting society's narrow expectations, but from the courage to exist authentically despite them.
Our societal ideals of beauty, female male end the lives of our children. Teenage, cisgender boys and young men off themselves because they're not masculine, handsome, fit, toned and macho enough. CisGirls, young women and LGBTQIA youth have higher rates of suicide, but it takes the lives of thousands of young, 'straight' males too. This psychotic nonsense leaves older people alone and isolated too. Even our elders!...
Our 'culture' has become sick, toxic and deadly...
Wait—Phoenix is trans? I thought she was non-binary…
For me? Attractiveness depended on their eyes and faces—did their eyes hold humor? Honesty? How do they respond to me and others around them. That all makes the biggest difference to me as life goes on. Their body is just the frosting on the cake, however it’s shaped.