I first met Robin Buckley when I was eighteen years old, at a Summer Camp in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Throughout the two months I worked there, most of my coworkers were entirely convinced there was something going on between me and a boy who (in truth) I had come to love very much. Only not in the way they understood it. In deeper truth, he was the only one there who knew my secret.
I watched series three of Stranger Things in my top bunk between hideously long child care shifts in the scorching July heat. It was everywhere, laptops in the staff common room, someone’s phone on that spot on the hill that got signal. It wasn’t a wait-until-the-summer’s-over-and-we-all-go-home kind of event. We all wanted to know what came next.
That summer, and in the years after, I fell completely in love with the friendship between Steve and Robin that series three gave to us. So much so, that there’s two pictures of Maya Hawke and Joe Keery tucked into the frame of my mirror behind me as I write. Across the whole show, every moment between them is perfect. Spiders in Steve’s hair. “Julie Christie is b-b-bonkers hot”. Tied together, drugged up, and laughing on the floor. It’s only natural though, that the loveliest moment between them, with Robin drunkenly coming out on a dirty bathroom floor, came to mean the world to me. It still does. If Netflix had records of how often we scrolled back and forth to watch certain scenes, I would start to look a little obsessed.
I watched series three of Stranger Things in my top bunk between hideously long child care shifts in the scorching July heat. It was everywhere, laptops in the staff common room, someone’s phone on that spot on the hill that got signal. It wasn’t a wait-until-the-summer’s-over-and-we-all-go-home kind of event. We all wanted to know what came next.
That summer, and in the years after, I fell completely in love with the friendship between Steve and Robin that series three gave to us. So much so, that there’s two pictures of Maya Hawke and Joe Keery tucked into the frame of my mirror behind me as I write. Across the whole show, every moment between them is perfect. Spiders in Steve’s hair. “Julie Christie is b-b-bonkers hot”. Tied together, drugged up, and laughing on the floor. It’s only natural though, that the loveliest moment between them, with Robin drunkenly coming out on a dirty bathroom floor, came to mean the world to me. It still does. If Netflix had records of how often we scrolled back and forth to watch certain scenes, I would start to look a little obsessed.
I was (mostly) out in the sixth form before this. The way I tend to describe it now is that I was ‘out to all the boys but only some of the girls’. But, for whatever reason, that summer at camp, the courage escaped me and I just kept… not saying it. And it’s not as though it wasn’t on my mind. I had a huge crush on Laura in the bunk below, who used to sneak her boyfriend into our room during the day, and Paisley who had amazing dark hair, a permanently attached pink water bottle, and the uncanny ability to make me forget how to speak when I saw her.
My circumstance was very different to Robin’s. I first came out in 2018 not 1985, and I knew I wasn't at risk of being the "town pariah".
Nevertheless, something in that scene between the two of them has always spoken to me. I think it's that look on Robin's face. I can bring it to my mind at will. That sort of resigned, yet pleading expression as she repeats Steve’s quiet “oh”. I know that look. Even now it reaches through time and grabs me.
In series 5, there’s a wonderful moment when Will asks Robin who it was that she told. Who she was able to be brave around. She says, ‘oh, the obvious, Steve.’ Will, of course, can’t wrap his head around it. ‘Your Steve?’
That’s the funny thing though, it makes perfect sense to me.
That’s the funny thing though, it makes perfect sense to me.
The one boy that knew was my best friend that summer. He was the first person ever to know without being told. He turned to me one day and said ‘can I ask you a question,’ and I said ‘no’. That’s always my response to that question. It’s terrifying. He asked me anyway.
It was all so much easier then. I’d been so terrified he’d misunderstand our friendship and for those first few weeks I’d been really quite on edge with it. Once he knew, it was just funny. I could laugh at every ‘are you and…?’ and wave it off with a knowing smile.
On the last night of camp, I got (illegally) drunk on someone’s contraband vodka and finally told a bunch of people around a campfire we probably weren’t supposed to have lit, that I was a lesbian. I did my usual job of pretending that it wasn’t a secret and it just hadn’t come up all this time. I’d like to think that Robin and her truth serum had their influence that night, but that would be editing retrospectively. Really, it was just that the group of people who happened to be sat on that hill, though not the people I’d been the closest with all summer, were people who (for whatever reason) I just wasn’t as scared of telling.
A few hours later, I'd bumped into him and as we were saying our tearful goodbyes, he said he had a secret to tell me. ‘Oh?’ He told me that at the beginning of summer, before he’d worked out that I only liked girls, he’d planned on asking me out. Learning this after everything, after brushing off so many questions about us all summer, had me laughing so hard I honest to god fell over. He had to help me back up. (And tell me to shut up, because we were out way past curfew and someone was gonna hear).
We’re not friends anymore, and for reasons I won’t write here, we can’t ever be. It doesn’t matter, because he’s not really the point of any of this, it’s just neat to use him in this story because of how the timelines cross.
A few hours later, I'd bumped into him and as we were saying our tearful goodbyes, he said he had a secret to tell me. ‘Oh?’ He told me that at the beginning of summer, before he’d worked out that I only liked girls, he’d planned on asking me out. Learning this after everything, after brushing off so many questions about us all summer, had me laughing so hard I honest to god fell over. He had to help me back up. (And tell me to shut up, because we were out way past curfew and someone was gonna hear).
We’re not friends anymore, and for reasons I won’t write here, we can’t ever be. It doesn’t matter, because he’s not really the point of any of this, it’s just neat to use him in this story because of how the timelines cross.
There are many other boys who have been ‘my Steve’, as it were. In the sixth form (before camp), especially. There was the boy I used to drag with me to the shop every day at lunchtime. Some days I’d turn to him, holding my food, and ask where his was, and he would reply that he brought in sandwiches from home.
‘Then why did you come to the shop?’
‘Because you asked me to.’
There was another boy I always hung out with at parties. We’d sit in a corner and chat for hours (often in very broken German), as his friends walked past making suggestive hearts with their hands, and he, entirely unfazed, would continue giving his (unconvinced) opinion on the girl I’d just told him I liked. He once came with me on an hour long excursion up-and-down a hill to the nearest shop because I’d run out of wine. If I remember right (and it’s hazy), he had to drag me a good way back up that hill.
There was another boy I always hung out with at parties. We’d sit in a corner and chat for hours (often in very broken German), as his friends walked past making suggestive hearts with their hands, and he, entirely unfazed, would continue giving his (unconvinced) opinion on the girl I’d just told him I liked. He once came with me on an hour long excursion up-and-down a hill to the nearest shop because I’d run out of wine. If I remember right (and it’s hazy), he had to drag me a good way back up that hill.
Robin means so much to me because I recognise her. Her friendship with Steve means so much to me because I recognise it.
Series four came to me in a very different time of my life. In a little flat in South Belfast, where I was largely housebound thanks to a concussion I don’t remember getting at my film degree’s final screening and after party. (I’m pretty sure the head injury occurred somewhere between the after party and the after-after party). Steve and Robin were my perfect comfort. We know from the moment we see them, that their lives are so intertwined now. They feel like real best friends. And my god does Maya Hawke look gorgeous. Myself and my flatmate at the time used to have many long and interesting conversations about our differing experiences with lesbianism. I remember walking with her through a park, and telling her about Robin.
‘She’s the one that’s most like me,’ I said, ‘most lesbian stories are about realising you like girls when you fall in love with your best friend, but I never had that. I’ve been out for four years and I’ve never had a girlfriend, but I've had had some really lovely friendships with really stupid but supportive straight boys.’
When the beginning of series five came out, I texted this to a friend:
I'm probably the only person ever to think it but I was so disappointed they gave robin a girlfriend this season
she is no longer my loser lesbian representation
she is now regular cool lesbian
I knew you were gonna say that lol
Maybe I’m just jealous.
My current housemate recently roped me into a full rewatch of the show, as she'd never seen it before. She asks me lots of science fiction questions I don't know the answer to because (as I keep telling her) 'the last time I watched this, I was concussed.' At one point during series four (and in response to Maya's short hair cut), I asked her the age old gay question of whether fancying a character and also thinking they're a lot like me means I fancy myself. She just looked at me confused. Despite this, and the show's admittedly declining quality, it's been nice to look back at the show, and remember what Robin has meant to me since I was eighteen.
(The finale comes out in a few days, and I'd just like to say for the record, that if they kill Robin, the level of crash out I will have will be so severe that it will be reported by several major news outlets).
At the end of series three, when Steve and Robin rock up to the video shop, to beg for what I can only hope is just the next in line of their long long list of part-time jobs on their joint CV, the guy-behind-the-counter asks why she’s helping Steve, if she has a thing for him.
“We’re just friends”, she tells him, with the most gorgeous smile. It’s a TV moment historically filled with heartbreak and longing. Historically, it’s a lie. But not for Robin. Right then, she’s allowed to be honest, about something, for once. As she watches him, in all of his lovely stupidity, at last content, at last just a little bit less terrified; it’s like I can feel her exhaling. It’s like I’m exhaling with her.
