Demon Twinks
A recurring dream about demon twinks and past selves sparked by a recent breakup.
I have been having a recurring nightmare for the last 4 months since breaking up with my ex. In this repeating dream I walk through a forest or tunnel or never ending corridor and emerge in my ex’s home and find him entangled with a porcelain skinned, hairless - demon - twink equipped with a thick hairline and plucked brows. Usually, I’ll catch a flash of their blood diamond eyes glistening in the mirrored wall by the bed, as their arched bottom curls up obediently. And then… their head will slowly rotate a full 180 degrees to me, their mouth will open revealing a perfect row of bleached white teeth and they will release a “haiii Qweeeeen”. By this point my body begins to kick into flight response desperately trying to wake myself out of what I am beginning to be aware, is a dream. The twink continues to stare at me, eyes now glitching and he starts communicating something to me. Actually.. nope he’s just lip syncing to a Gaga song now playing all around me.
“Look at him, look at me
That boy is bad and honestly
He’s a wolf in disguise
But I can’t stop staring in those evil eyes…”
My own eyes are now wide open. It’s 3am, I’m in bed during one of those summer weeks in Sydney where the heat is constantly dry and unforgiving, the air offers no breeze throughout the whole night, only waves of hot truth. I can hear my own shallow breathing, my only set of high thread count sheets are damp with sweat and tears. By the itchiness in my eyes I think I must have been crying for some time during this nightmare before I escaped. I can hear the final punters of the pub down the street making their way home singing along to an old tinny Samsung Galaxy blasting Lady Gaga’s 2010 hit ‘Monster’.
That boy is a monster (Mo-mo-mo-monster)
That boy is a monster (Mo-mo-mo-monster)
That boy is a monster (Mo-mo-mo-monster)
That boy is a monster-er-er-er-er
Usually by midday I have shaken off the dream and gotten on with my day focused on whatever it is I am doing. But I keep wondering about the twink, who is he? What does he want from me? Why does he upset me so much?
As a young gay millennial I didn’t become aware of the allure of my own youth until I was in my late teens, there were no references for hot young twinks. Troye Sivan had not yet bloomed; we weren't told that we could be seen as desirable, only delinquent. I would find myself somehow in the faces of Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears and Rihanna. I first learnt of my desirability from my first boyfriend, well, I think he was my boyfriend, I think he thought otherwise. . I was seventeen and he was twenty years my senior. He would meet me on the other side of Canberra for coffee dates, he’d order a cappuccino and I’d order a soy chai latte with extra caramel. Back at his apartment we would toss about and he would gently touch my skin telling me it was so soft (still is), so hairless, so perfect. The time he told me it was squishy I put myself on the lemon detox diet for the next 5 days passing out on the fifth day. I was learning about my sexual self in the way gay men back then did, by stumbling through a process of trial and error and for some, like me, through a process of restriction and restraint on my body.
When I was nineteen, I met my first real boyfriend. He was twenty-five years my senior and around my twentieth birthday when my body started to change and I began to grow more body hair he would insist I shave my entire body, sometimes meticulously shaving it for me whilst giggling and calling me his hairy little monster. We would joke about how I would become too old for him, apparently he wasn’t joking and I eventually did become too old for him, discarded with the rest of his twinks turned twunks. When I called in for a booty call some years later he told me he much preferred me with a full head of hair. I told him “it’s called male pattern baldness fuckwit” he suggested I go on Finasteride. I took my receding hairline and stormed out of there, but not before stealing his bedside stash of booger sugar.
I really struggled with the parameters of twinkhood. I was too insecure of my body to wrap it in a skin tight tank and parade it with pride. I wasn’t equipped with a natural twink physique or demeanour. To be a twink takes a certain type of no fucks given attitude to deal with a world that doesn’t value a young gay audaciously permitting themself to thrive in their body without having aspirations to gain a muscular physique. The kind of audacity to let their tongues sashay through a sentence and elongate every S with that salacious sassy drawl that attracts a judging eye in any space. I was envious of the twinks who would boldly be this way, watching from the sidelines secretly cheering them on. Whilst dancing around my bedroom like an absolute demon twink myself but not daring to be this way publicly. I can clearly recall the countless times family members, straight girlfriends, straight dudes, gays and randoms would say that horrendous line “I don’t care but I just don’t get why they have to be so in your face about it” Which meant.. I don’t understand why they are being So… GAY. So… Femme. It is a derivative of misogyny. But that’s a whole other essay.
I found myself caught in a liminal space for much of my mid twenties. Too hesitant to embrace the audacity of twinkhood, but equally resistant to the expectations of conventional masculinity. I floated somewhere in the middle—performing a muted version of myself only calling for more attention if the perfect conditions would allow. It was a half-life of sorts, where I envied those who could unapologetically embody their sparkle full time while I shrank into the background, masking my desires for fear of ridicule. My reflection in the mirror wasn’t just a physical body; it was a battleground of self-perception, torn between the baddie I wanted to be and who I thought I had to be to survive. But one thing about a twink is that twinks never die, they just go to a secret other place where they lurk in the shadows. If you ever catch a flash of glitter in the corner of your eye or a whispered “YASSSS” that is the spirit of a banished twink spoken out of existence. And I had spoken my soft, squishy chaotic twink out of existence.
In my late twenties, I discovered a comfort in my body I had never felt before. I read somewhere on a self-love blog that you should be so captivated by your own reflection that catching a glimpse of yourself in a passing window could trigger an earth-shattering orgasm. Inspired, I began the ritual of standing before the mirror, speaking affirmations to the parts of my body I struggled to look at.
But these affirmations weren’t really for my past self—they were for the person I was now, teetering on the edge of thirty. No longer a twink, but not yet a dragon, I was learning to embrace my current form: soft, femme, masc-ara-ed, hairy, versatile in all the ways, the 2020’s evolved Queer. Still, I wasn’t acknowledging the little twink-adjacent version of myself—the awkward, horny, squishy hot mess who never felt quite enough of a twink. The one who had been told he was almost there but would only be "enough" if he fixed X, Y, and Z.
That’s the thing with affirmations, they speak to the present self. I wanted to be grown, evolved, and wise in the there and then —grown in a way that felt complete. But real growth doesn’t end, boo. Growth is messy and endless. It pulls you in every direction—up, down, in, out, backwards, forwards, beneath the surface, and beyond, into the cosmos where aliens are probably watching you try to figure it all out. You can’t just affirm your present without affirming the past.
When my father passed away suddenly a couple of years ago, I was thrust into the world of capital-G Grief, where everything that had happened before felt both benignly irrelevant and desperately important all at once. Grief for me has been many things. One thing that has taken me a while to articulate is the way it has made me deeply insecure about things that I thought I had dealt with. When I crossed the age of thirty years old and six months, half the age my dad was when he passed I began to spiral in all directions. I had possibly lived half my life already. Or perhaps more than half my life. I, at thirty years and six months, was looking at what I had to show for my life. I was looking at my body again with deep insecurity, obsessing over my balding head and keeping it closely shaved in fear that for it to grow out would reveal that it was not, in fact, a trendy choice but an attempt to hide my baldness. I started to wake up and closely study the lines of aging in my forehead, lines that I used to really like because they gave me a range of interesting expressions and road maps to portray my twisted humour with the rising of a single brow. I began to fear that perhaps when someone looked at me they could see my fear or see that I was beyond half my life's age. I was afraid of death. My dad passed away very suddenly and this became something I was deeply afraid of. That at any moment in my life or worse, the life of someone I love, could be snatched without valid reason.
When I went through the breakup it aggravated these feelings yet again, pushing them beyond the subconscious and right below the surface. Feelings of not being enough, not having done enough. The dreams began and I knew that the demonic twink was a messenger. A messenger from another realm. Was the twink my dad? No that would be weird as fuck. I couldn’t figure out who the twink was but I knew I was being presented with a fear of my own mortality. But what is a fear of our own mortality anyway, it is a fear of not having lived a life to its fullness up until the present moment. Or a fear that we may still have these parts of ourselves that haven’t met our current self. Parts that have never been told they are loved and incredible and not demons but protectors and angels. Demonic Angel Twinks!
The dream occurs again early January after not having had one for a couple of months. This time though the twink looks back with puppy dog eyes, their gaze searching my frozen face for a morsel of approval or some sort of an acknowledgement. They mouth something to me “What… What… Seee-men..?!” I mime back. “No dumbass.. SEE ME!” the twink responds. I see my hand reach out to the twink and my fingers are covered in Aldi 70% dark chocolate (because it’s a dream) and I open my mouth to say something, I feel my stomach twitch desperately trying to kickstart the words that have laid dormant in my gut, the words I so desperately want to say to every twink around the world.
I See You.