C7

C7 by Oh Kashi (王菓子), with art by Riso first appeared in issue Issue 94 in 2021.

Creator's Notes

I’ve been wanting to write for S2B2 for a while, and had a few false starts before I finally hit on something solid. When I was first thinking about this story, I knew I wanted to write about two things: music and disability, and then 75k words of gay music emotions happened. First things first: a huge thanks to my beta Togi Kayako, who helped me put a lot more polish on this story than I thought I could, and a mega thanks to Riso for the frankly incredible and lively illustrations, which I CANNOT stop staring at. And a big thank you to Max, Celene, and Dorian for being my alpha readers, without whose cheerleading I might not have finished this <3

Music is as central to the story as the romance, and it’s titled after the GO!GO!7188 song of the same name, which provided the original inspiration for the general mood of the story and the central conflict. It’s a very musical story, so naturally I have a carefully curated whole-ass playlist, which I highly recommend listening to while reading (or, if that’s not your bag, after reading) — there are a lot of sick jams on there, especially if you’re tickled by 90s/00s nostalgia of both the anime and pop/rock variety, and it really highlights the overall mood of the story.

“C7” is about what happens when chronic illness permanently disrupts your life, what happens when you realize you and your ex are different people and you aren’t as over it as you convinced yourself you were, what happens when you start a high school band in your 30s just keep yourselves together — it’s about how sometimes, even the hard things are worth the work. It’s also about how powerful music can be, especially when you most need it, and how parts of your childhood never really leave you.

Among other things, I really wanted to write about my experience with chronic illness and with music, and it was initially going to be from Caio’s POV — but it’s a romance story first, and Felix makes for a much more interesting and entertaining POV character. I’ve always wanted to write about disability and never could figure out a way to frame it that I found satisfying, but this one sort of presented itself unceremoniously: what Caio went through prior to the events of “C7” has been happening to me in realtime over the last several months, and I wanted (needed) to write about it happening to someone with a happy ending.

Seems like a weirdly personal story to write for an erotica zine, maybe? Except that it also felt like the perfect story to write for S2B2, because I also wanted to write a story about two people who struggled to stay together without hurting each other, and how messy and uncomfortable and full of explosive joy that struggle can be. And there is, of course, the extremely emotionally charged porn, because I wanted to write about the myriad, innumerable, and sometimes unexpected ways we find each other sexy.

This story is fully fictional, of course, but it’s made up of parts borrowed from my own life and childhood and draws on real life events. I, too, was a queer kid in the 00s whose social circle was largely based around watching anime in our basements (and because I knew exactly which demographic I was writing for, I indulged myself in a truly silly number of references). If you grew up in southern New England, particularly around this time, you’ll probably catch all the little nods and references. And if you’re at all familiar with the Rhode Island accent, please imagine all four of these boys sounding exactly like they ought. (Jake’s is the thickest, of course.)

If you’ve read all this commentary and haven’t gotten to the story yet, I highly recommend it — and if you already have, thank you for reading a story I’m pretty proud of. It’s the first piece of writing I’ve managed to finish in over a decade, and considering it was written on a whole lot of drugs and during some of the most intense fibro flareups I’ve experienced in a while, I think it came out shockingly coherent. I’ll be pretty delighted if you enjoy this story, and I’d be thrilled if it resonates with you. I was going to end this with something cute and pithy, but my brain is empty so instead I’ll just insist again that you listen to this extremely rad playlist that I probably spent as much time curating as I did writing.