The Drifter, the Girl, and the Androgyne � Glynis
From the mechanical hum of the voices of my classmates surrounding me, I felt disconnected, yet loathsome simultaneously. Was I indeed supposed to be here, I wondered, as I stared at the golden, vine-like strands of hair from the girl sitting in front of me. Ironically, I didn�t even recall her name or the names of the boys sitting adjacent to me. However, all three of them knew who I was, shunning me away because of my notorious reputation. Candidly, I couldn�t care, I thought, as I longed for Lena. For two weeks, our eyes had not met, on the street or in the dreary cafeteria over lukewarm cups of coffee, but I desired her beyond the frenetic, uplifting, and exhilarating rides on her candy-red motorcycle. Perhaps, I�ll seek her today, I thought, checking the clock behind my shoulder - twenty-four minutes left until the day inside this cinderblock institution terminated.
Burying myself in my schoolbooks, I had increased my average to one of mediocrity - a number in the low seventies, maybe. Weeks of doing extra-credit assignments, in addition to the required ones, have paid off, I realized complacently, and next year, I would no longer need to extend this lie I fabricated to impress - or at least, seem average - to Lena; officially, I�d be one of thousands of students vandalizing the crumbling walls of North High. The irony of it all, I chuckled to myself. All of these faces I recognized, but, indeed, they were all nameless, aside from one. Sitting behind me, Tom, Jesse�s younger brother, contemptuously glared at me. By the smirk and haughty expression upon his face, I could accurately assume his thoughts, but I should resume my Algebra work, I reminded myself, steering away from a vituperative encounter; impress Lena, ignore Tom.
However, as I continued to determine the myriad of values of "x," Tom became irked by the fact that I did not regard his already prominent presence. After the bell rang, I could predict that were would probably become involved in the usual fracas, in which I would pummel and spurn his followers in an attempt to defend my paltry amount of dignity. In front of school on the sidewalk, our encounter would be followed by several curses and crude, acidic phrases from our mouths. My first, first in the air, would have the sole purpose of assailing his contemptuous visage, but, today, I did not desire such a puerile encounter.
"My brother�s home," he said, toward my back, in his usual insincere drawl. Without responding, I focused my energy on "x," "y," and "z."
"Hey, blue-girl, my faggot brother�s home." Let him play his game, I indolently thought, but I would not become induced into his adolescent angst-laden battle.
Tom was insatiable in his attempt to provoke me. "Loser, Jesse, the fag, is home," he whispered, accenting each insolent word, in a coarse, belittling voice.
Although I controlled my behavior in the classroom, as the final bell rang its shrill pitch and I drifted with the pretentious bottleneck through the doors and into the sordid streets, the anger from his caustic, but childish, words boiled inside of me. No one should taunt Jesse, I thought, with determination from his past humiliations, since he couldn�t retaliate in any physical or verbal way. Even his own brother mocks him like his peers, I shuddered in contempt. Once my shoes crashed against the concrete slabs of the sidewalk, I erupted, hunting like a predator for Tom, my prey. No one ever spoke of Jesse in such a negative way, I reminded myself, as the images of my first year in eighth grade traversed my mind.
Two years ago, I stood on the same concrete, wearing the same boots, flannel shirt, and contemptuous stare - no one was going to topple my crown. Behind me, but not directly facing my back, Jesse timorously stood, as I led us through the crowd of our peers. Despite the jeers from each mouth of every body surrounding us as we approached the street, my fists were balled and I anticipated pummeling anyone that harassed Jesse. The girls were jealous of his hair, I knew surreptitiously, since most wanted to have theirs styled like his natural long brown locks flowing to his shoulders. He wouldn�t associate with either sex because he did not fit into any stereotypical gender mold. Crossing the street, I felt my tension mitigate, since we now stood yards - which seemed like miles - away from the daunting, taunting crowds.
Now I stood in isolation, and Jesse remained and enigma. After his hiatus, I heard he came home - if Tom�s caustic words were indeed accurate. A half-hour ago, the high school had dismissed, and I could safely assume that Jesse was sitting on his bed, doing his homework - if Tom were indeed veritable. That�s how the day used to be at this time, for most of the year, except for the rare occasions when Jesse attempted to walk over to the junior high to meet me after two hours of detention. But, I knew, aside from seeing me, his main motivation was to visit the library, which happened to be across the street, next to a decrepit subway station. Unlike he, I never was capable of losing myself in the written words upon a page; my mind wandered and drifted too often to stay focused on the details needed for proper comprehension. A world existed outside the confinements of the pages that were supposed to immerse and assimilate me. Lena wasn�t in a book; the cafeteria wasn�t in a book; and Jesse, although he vividly thrived away from most people, was tangible as well. With my eyes, I wanted to see the entire lucid picture before me; pretending had become ostentatious now with age and cynicism. The reality spurned my face, and I headed toward the subway terminal to go across the city in seconds.
While the library had recently been renovated, with new bricks and new sheets of glass in front, the subway terminal decayed in its and its patron�s own filth. No one bothered to clean up the spilled trash that piled in front of the doors, and no one attempted to remove the vagabonds and underage drug dealers that lurked in its corners to grab their next victims. With a ninety-cent fair, I could cross town, below the streets and the laggardly moving pedestrians, and by inserting three quarters, a nickel, and a dime, I crossed from one side of the turnstile to the other. To go to the actual platform to wait for the train, I had no choice but to descend down a dimly-lit stairwell, littered with trash and an occasional dead rat or pigeon. As the train would enter, the platform would shake from its improper construction, and, thus, the stairs would, as well. Today, no one stood on the platform, aside from a few dark, unrecognizable figures on the other side - one even smoked a cigarette, and I became insatiable, after not smoking for two hours. Stepping down onto the solid platform, I waited close to a light, in order to be seen; I would not be mistaken for a drug dealer or teenage vagabond. However, from the sounds echoing behind me, someone else ventured down the steps into the murky depths of the terminal. But, before I could turn around to observe, her voice rang with familiarity in my ears.
"So, who do you want to be?" Lena asked me, randomly. "The Girl or the Boy?" I assumed she changed slightly after two weeks, for I know I had.
In shock from her sudden random statement, I swerved in my stance, until I observed her, loitering on the steps, with that bomber jacket zipped to the collar, and smoking a cigarette.
"I�m neither," she confidently asserted. "I�m the Drifter, and the cops confiscated my motorcycle. How�s that for a flagrant abuse of authority?"
"I�m thinking I�ll just be the slacker," I tepidly responded, remembering the incident that caused me to not see her for the past two weeks, in which I became drunk, in my bathtub, on Mike�s liquor.
"I don�t think so." Her lips cracked a similar smile that I had not set eyes upon since we met in the cafeteria. "I think you�re the Girl and you�re madly infatuated with the Drifter."
"So where does the Boy come in?" I questioned, with poor repartee. I then assumed Lena had forgiven me.
"The Boy isn�t a boy at all, but, in fact, a woman in a man�s body, on the verge of suicide. What a waste."
"So why�d they take your motorcycle?" I asked, attempting to veer the conversation in a new direction, away from her inaccurate archetypes.
"Ah�" she hesitated, as the cigarette between her lips burned a constant stream on gray into the darkness of the subway terminal. "I supposedly had it parked illegally during school hours today."
In my own randomness, I mumbled, "I�m sorry I got drunk," into the collar of my shirt.
"What?" she asked, raising her brow.
"Um, drunk. I don�t remember too much," I inaudibly stated, as the train thundered down its tracks and into the subway terminal, filling up the dank space with its sickly greenish light and graffiti-laden body.
"I don�t remember much, either." She stepped ahead of me, striding into the train with her usual audacity, although today, without her motorcycle, she seemed slightly restrained. Enchanted as before, I followed her into one of the subway cars. Without sitting, she leaned against a pole, as the train took off again. "So, Girl, where are you going?"
"To make sure the Boy doesn�t kill himself just yet." I decided to play her inane game.
"What?" she raised her brow again, and the cigarette fell from her lips. In the lit subway car, her countenance appeared paler and her dark hair glowed with excess hair gel. "Are you in love with the Boy, or something?"
"The Boy�s been my friend for a while-"
She interjected. "Perhaps we shall call the Boy the Androgyne?"
"Maybe," I sighed, uncertain with her archetypes. "Or maybe he�s just another girl."
"Well, then, but is the Girl still infatuated with the Drifter?" she smiled again, discreetly smirking at the corners of her mouth.
"Yeah, she�s still infatuated."
"That�ll satisfy me. Perhaps the Androgyne won�t kill himself just yet."
The subway car halted suddenly at its next stop, and Lena nonchalantly stepped off. Glancing behind over the broad shoulders of her jacket, she continued to smile, until the doors closed, and I lost sight of her pale visage. Perhaps the Drifter was indeed infatuated with the Girl as well; I sensed it. The Girl was now trying to clean up her act and to quit feigning her life. However, the Androgyne was in silent pain, and only the Girl knew how to rescue him from his agony.
The train moved at its steady but rapid pace, but halted suddenly at each stop, throwing me from my seat. Each station appeared identical, although each possessed its own unique name that corresponded with the street in which it was located. Dark and graffiti-scrawled, they appeared almost monochromatic, or, at least, having some kind of similar pattern, until I knew where to step off. Jesse�s home stood two blocks away, like a stooped invalid staring nostalgically at the sordid sidewalk.
Ascending the flight of stairs, I reached the street level, only to find that none of the snow had been cleared away from the sidewalks of Jesse�s neighborhood. Unless I ventured to Jesse�s house, I had no excuse for loitering around in this part of town; my mother particularly scoffed at this section of the city, but I seldom listened to her rants. How could she speak disdainfully of Jesse, when she, herself, was a corpulent, middle-aged woman without a job requiring cognitive power. Mike also insisted that Jesse was a "worthless, white trash fag." How could I agree? Mike should have graduated from high school three years ago, but now, he was complacent with being a twenty-one year old senior, continuing to fail; at least I became motivated to achieve mediocrity.
The sidewalks were desolate as I tried to find Jesse�s house amongst the rows of identical two-story brick homes. However, every house appeared to be similar in a superficial sense; a monolithic wall, dotted with shaded windows, stood about me. The snow laid about in piles, with being shoveled for months, obstructing cars, the sidewalk, and the center of the street. As I stood for a moment in front of a black car, the silence and deadness of the setting swept over me. I lived in a black and white silent film, only I was the singular colored object on the screen. No voiced spoke and the wind, sounding like a distant flute, howled in my ears. The coffin was prepared and the grave had been dug, but the body barely had life in it; on a bed, it lay, nearly moribund.
Continually stepping over frozen piles of rubbish, I heard the first sound of life since I exited the subway station. Discreetly, a television murmured from one of the houses, and, through a pair of transparent lace curtains, a light illuminated a room. Peering through the curtains, I noticed a boy, no more than seven or eight years old, sat on a couch, watching afternoon cartoons. However, this boy appeared familiar, for I encountered him before - perhaps once or twice. Then, the notion of the boy�s familiarity struck a chord with me; I knew who he was - Davy, Jesse�s youngest brother. Ascending the steps, I pressed the doorbell, and Davy laggardly stood up from the couch. Barely able to reach the window, he hesitated before opening the lock.
"Davy?" I asked, slightly irked by his indolence, as he stared at me. "Where�s Jesse?"
Jesse�s towheaded brother continued to remain mute and motionless, but, after a few minutes of his lackluster behavior, I grew impatient. "I want to see your brother; now, where�s Jesse?"
Rocking backward and forward in his pace, he stared at me, with his large grayish-blue marble eyes. "It�s Glynis," I stated. "Y�know, Jesse�s friend."
Continuing to remain silent, he attempted to close the door on me, but I seized its edge in my grasp, prying it from Davy, whose face now began to twitch with fear. As I stepped into the room, nearly dark, aside from the flickering television screen, Davy began to run farther into the house. Although I felt a tinge uneasy, considering that I frightened Jesse�s brother, I was satisfied for pushing past him and into the house.
"He�s upstairs!" Davy yelped, as soon as he was far from my sight. I could have assumed that, I thought, bounding up the stairs to Jesse�s room, the first on the right on the second floor. No one else was home, for the second floor seemed as dead as the rest of the street outside. Apathetically facing me was his door, with a sign, haphazardly placed, that read, in scrawled cursive, "Keep out, son of a bitch;" Tom, I assumed, recently put that up, although he didn�t seem to have much of a reason to, until Jesse came home.
"Jesse?" I whispered into the door. No answer. "Jesse, it�s Glynis." For a minute, or maybe less, I waited, leaning against the wall outside his room but listening to the metronomic murmur of my heart. Blood pulsated through my body like an electrical current - I was indeed a machine. Joints grinded like gears and thoughts propagated through the wires to my mouth, to be released as a monotonic string of data. Jesse, are you there? Jesse, are you there?
If I were to fire a gun, my bullets would have hit nothing in the dark. The hallway became still, as if time had been captured at that particular second and froze in its frame. And who are you? The string of data was interrupted.
How could he be a man, I asked myself, in recognition of his pale, dancing fingers and long, flowing hair that undulated as he moved - brown once, purple now. As he spoke, his words were not articulated, although I knew articulate thoughts were traversing his mind, unlike mine. Why had I left, I asked myself. Why had I left him to writhe in his sufferings?
Leaning into the door, I whispered, "If you a woman, and I, a man, this would all be considered ethical."
After not receiving a response, I opened the door, but slowly, curving my fingers upon its edge and extending my arms forward until I created a space large enough for me to walk inside. The door opened, and I stepped inside, but only found Jesse, asleep in a supine position upon his bed. Stalking silently across the room until I stood over him, I was in awe of his made-up features, unblemished by tears. Where was the Boy, I asked myself, and realized that Lena, the Drifter, had given an accurate premonition - the Boy had transformed into the Androgyne.
However, the Androgyne did not completely mirror the superficiality of a girl. Despite the rose-patterned dress, gaudy makeup, and wavy purple hair, the Androgyne�s shoulders were broad and he stood at a height above six feet. And, thus, I knew the Boy was moribund. But, was the Androgyne as well?
Jesse lay motionless, with his arms outstretched until his finger tips touched the edges of his bed. To scorn myself would be useless, I thought, for there is no use to cast blame when you can�t find any substance to draw from. Then again, I left, probably selfishly, for a month and fell in love with Lena, before I made a buffoon out of myself by getting drunk in my own bathtub.
The rest of the room remained still, as well. The yellowing lace curtains did not flutter, the shadows upon the floor were dormant, and the air seemed stifling and dry. Every motion I made disrupted the entire picture, as if I were supposed to be absent. But, I knew that I was not innate; Jesse himself was never innate to my own realm, either. Strangely, Jesse blended into the picture and faded into the sheets that covered his bed. His world, like the streets outside, had begun to become monochromatic and toneless. Perhaps my mission was to pull him from his pit that he dug for himself.
"Wake up," I whispered close to his ear and nudging him slightly. However, stir he did not. Unlike Davy, his face didn�t twitch, remaining still as a mask. Observing him more closely, I noticed his chest rising and falling beneath the thin blanket that covered his body, and a raspy sound came from his throat. But, he appeared to have found contentment; all of the makeup on his face was immaculately applied, and no tears stained his cheeks. As he slept, his composure seemed undisturbed, and I wished to leave him in his blissful slumber. Despite my immediate desires, I became rooted on the floor and fixed on his placid face and breathing.
Perhaps the scenario seemed too perfect - his house was never this calm and Jesse was not smoking. Thinking about cigarettes, I took one out from my shirt pocket and lit it to divert my attention until Jesse awakened. The smoke blended in with the rest of the room with its grayish tone - Jesse and I possessed the only colored lines between here and the subway station. With the burning cigarette between my chapped lips, I contemplated the state of this immaculately placid room; only Death and his captives could be this calm. A chill of apprehension slid through my thoughts, as I obsessed over and scrutinized every line on Jesse and the bed. No tears, no cuts, no tousled hair, I observed. The Adam�s apple in the center of his neck emerged to the surface of his skin, before sinking back into obscurity. About the collar of his dress, no fabric was folded and a necklace of round, black beads graced the boundary between the dress and his pale flesh.
As I observed him closer, bending down until my face was inches from his body, Jesse was alive with motion in his face, although his torso remained like a block of stone. Crimson lips quivered and fluttered like a flag during a light afternoon breeze. Subtly below his eyes, with lashes laden in black mascara glaze, his cheeks indeed twitched, but the movement subsided as I traced it down from his jawbone to his chin. And, I knew society rejected him, even his brother with his diffident manner. Yet, I could not abandon him and his corrupted innocence.
In an environment of force-fed media and ethics, Jesse and I were both revolutionaries, but he, in particular, even beyond his attire and effeminate manner. Surviving for him was not a matter of waking up in the morning to a generic breakfast, before leaving for school to see supportive friends; instead, he had to avoid crawling back into himself and imploding in his antipathy.
However, I lived through the daily wars, only to surface as another casualty. Bending down closer to his face, once my cigarette was finished burning, I murmured, "Jesse, wake up. It�s Glynis."
The crimson lips pursed together and his long, elegant black lashes soon separated to reveal his vacant eyes. Despite his equanimity, his pupils revealed how disarming his room appeared. "L-leave me a-alone," he mumbled into the blanket and shifted onto his side.
"Jesse, what the hell happened?" I said generically, using a trite line out of a banal drama. Clutching his pillow, he made no response. Despite, I was adamant in my efforts and refused to exit through the doors of his room.
"I-it�s the whole action of breathing, waking up in the m-morning into a world that expects you to change, and walking around as if you have to hide yourself." Pausing, he buried his face into his pillow. "I can�t tuh-take it anymore, Glynis. I�m sick of being this-" he then stopped, sinking beneath his blankets.
"This what?"
"I� I can�t fully describe it."
Veering the direction of our discussion, I asserted, "Tom told me you were home again."
"Tom says lots of things," Jesse mumbled indolently, pulling the blanket over his head. Wisps of purple hair could still be seen upon his pillow.
"You called me once to tell me about Vince-"
He interrupted me. "Vince is the past, but�" his voice faded. "I just can�t say it, Glynis. I don�t want to be what they call me. Cross-dresser, transvestite, She-man - I know what I am, but why is it so demeaning, a chore to get up and go to school and hide my own identity?" Although his face was not visible to me, the modulation of his voice into a restricted, high-pitched utter indicated that he had begun to cry.
Soon, in a matter of minutes, I�d have my Goth rock star, with the mascara streaming down his cheeks and the smeared lipstick on his upper lip and chin, like blood. He�d lament to the sounds of wailing guitars playing minor chords, and the lone pitch of a bass, carefully and slowly plucked to the rhythm of the drips of a faucet into a sink in an androgynous bathroom. But, I didn�t want to watch the spectacle from the audience. Backstage, I would want to embrace my Goth rock star once the show was over and to wipe away his makeup, to reveal a woman beneath.
A cross-dresser. She-man. A transvestite. The Androgyne. And, I am the Girl, I cynically thought, who has come to save the Androgyne from dying or wilting away. His agony? I had to make it dissipate.
"Jesse, where�s your wrists?" I asked, but refused to whisper this time.
"On my arms, as always," he murmured into his blanket again.
"The one with the cigarette burns or the scars from the exacto knives?"
The room became silent again. Cars no longer drove outside; people halted their activity on the streets; the television stopped its incessant blaring; Jesse�s breath became small gasps that were barely audible beneath his blankets.
"Neither," he laconically replied.
The Drifter had told the Girl that the Androgyne, the former Boy, is suicidal. Now the Androgyne is in denial. In the Girl�s nostrils, the pungent scent of death and dried blood flowed in, as if an instantaneous breeze blew it there. The Androgyne desired death and hid the knives beneath his skirt, between his thighs, to obstruct his sorrow with contentment and composure.
"Jesse, sit up," I insisted, but restrained myself from seizing his collar and forcing him from his supine position.
"What�s the use, Glynis? As soon as I get out of bed, I�m a mockery." As he moved until he was prone into the bed, Jesse shifted his position again, the blanket shifted with his movement to reveal his legs. Usually, he wore black stockings or tight pants below his dress, but today his legs were bare, appearing recently shaven. But, as my eyes changed their gaze from his thighs to the sheets, I noticed each red blemish upon the yellowing, wrinkled material. Browns and red spots, like rotting raspberries, littered the sheets, concentrated in an area, in splotches. Crouching onto my knees, I knelt near the side of his bed and the familiar scent intensified. Between his thighs, I noticed as I squinted, the mystery revealed itself. Indeed, his secrets were hidden beneath that rose-printed dress, but the thorns had not stabbed him. In his bout of rage, I assumed he stabbed himself between his legs and then had lain down to die. No, I thought to myself, the mistaken drifter I had become, the Androgyne is not in denial. The Androgyne had discovered his identity and wanted to hide from it.
XI
Jesse or Jessi � Jesse
Aimlessly wandering through the dark cavernous passages that clouded my thoughts, I oscillated between the desire to live and the desire to die and the desire to feign and the desire to step out from my walls. Throughout the murky darkness, a sonorous hum pervaded the silence. The sound elevated me; I was able to walk without weights forcing me down into the floor. The shackles rusted until they disintegrated about my wrists and ankles. No blood, I thought, not even a cut or a single scrape upon my flesh.
Yes, I knew, I had truly reached euphoria; no coffee, no cigarettes, but pure, unadulterated bliss. The winds, fragrant of rain and damp soil, whipped about me like ethereal spirits, ensconcing my body, encircling my face, and filling my blouse with its breath. Gravity were able to be defied and the clouds could be tread upon. Age and sexuality had no bounds but no meaning simultaneously; I was ageless and androgynous without question. No other beings bombarded me with questions and incoherent, ethical answers. And, money did not reveal itself.
Clad in a purple velvet ruffled shirt and a black lace blouse, I strutted about the street as myself - heels clicking against the pavement. Between my long fingers, topped with red lacquered fingernails, a slim cigarette dangled, slowing burning into an ethereal stream of smoke. Putting the paper to my lips to inhale, I breathed in the intoxicating aroma, and as I took it away from my mouth, a light residue of crimson lipstick spun itself about the white tube of carcinogens.
The world about me emerged from its shroud of gray snow. Upon the sidewalks, the pavement sizzled in the heat, emitting steam slightly, but the black and white facades, I remembered, from winter, melted away. Venturing down the street, I was inundated with the flood of color pigments. Greens, blues, oranges, and reds screamed to capture my attention. As if I were a character in a Technicolor film, I moved about boldly and gracefully - no beings stood in my way.
Like an occurrence from the past, the rose appeared again, but even more vivid now than in the winter. No longer was it maimed and wallowing in tepid water with other moribund flowers. Standing brilliantly in the park, between the dark groves of trees, it appeared with several other roses on a bush, all colored red as if blood kept their petals in their life-like state. Drained away, the absence of blood would make the plant wilt and die. And, as the blood dripped in a viscous stream from my lips onto a blossom, the flowers proved that they could only become more enrapturing by the transfusion of my blood. As a slave to their vampire tendencies, I gave my blood freely, without remorse; whispering "Euphoria," I knew that I would be immortal.
However, sterile scents flooded my nostrils, and the weights pulled upon my organs again. Elbows, neck, stomach, heart - the shackles bore into my flesh and proved that "euphoria" was indeed ephemeral. My wrists and ankles now bore cuts and red streaks from the iron pressing into my skin. Onto the floor, into the boiling cauldron of humiliation, I sank, with the air forced from my lungs.
A dream may become a nightmare as soon as any closet door opens and reveals your dark abyss of insecurity and fear. But, the darkness and mystery forcibly drew me in, until its embrace strangled me and barred my vision. The Secrets, as the inhabitants were called, jumped and slithered in and out of every corner, trying to debase me even more. No clothes clung to my flesh, however, but my body didn�t want to decide on a sex; the absence of genitalia, of hair on my limbs and face, and the flowing locks of hair falling on my back and shoulders tried to define androgyny. In the darkness, in a crouched position, I agreed with their assertions. Not a man but not quite a woman, I realized, putting a finger to my blistered, chapped lips. My secrets would not make me submissive, despite my legs now felt like isolated pieces of iron upon the floor.
However, the Coward surfaced more than the defiant Rebel. The Coward preferred the dark, murky corners of the closet and wished to find a weathered blanket to disappear beneath. The Coward hid his masturbatory fantasies in his head; images of Vince traversed his mind, but he dared not speak of them. Beneath the covers, he kept his shirt and flower-printed blouse on and applied his makeup in a covert, discreet fashion, hoping that none of his mocking, belittling brothers would see.
The Coward attempted suicide in the past and used to see images of buildings bursting into flames as an insecure fourteen-year-old with a lisp and stutter. The last time the Coward attempted suicide, he lay upon his bed in a supine position, caressing his hairless, pale thighs with the cold, reflective blade of a knife his parents left in the kitchen sink. Before he had lain down to rest, he cleaned his room and applied his makeup, both in an immaculate, flawless fashion. But, the Coward had to please and appease, and even in his imminent death, he did not want to appear as a failure to the world, which would eventually find him devoid of blood. However, before watching the blood viscously drip from between his legs, he desired a placid surrounding that would not care about his sudden, excessive weight gain, smoking habits, or cross-dressing. By placing his last pack of cigarettes on a firm pile of snow outside his window, he denied his addiction that had plagued him for several years. The exclusion of the cigarettes shut out the weight gain and only made the pounds and fat gathering on his belly, thighs, and hips appear aged.
The cross-dressing was embraced, however, before gliding the cold metal over his pale flesh. Standing in the bathroom mirror, he stripped off his trench coat and smoothed out the ageless rose-patterned dress. After fastening his belt, he took out the makeup from the medicine cabinet, which overlooked the sink, laden with gray veins. I will die as a man in everyone�s eyes, he told himself, as he coated his lips with crimson lipstick. The Boy was dead from the age of ten, but he lived on as a coveted cross-dresser for six years. With his face embellished with blues and purples, he strutted back into his room to slide the metallic blade between his legs before dying.
However, die he did not, as the sterile scents of a hospital awakened him, only to realize that he still was a coward - the Coward that was timid and frightened about his fate. How he desired to be in Death�s embrace; to be kissed upon the lips by him and experience the epitome of euphoria. Indeed, as the noxious scents inundated his nostrils, his head throbbed with pain, his dress was wrinkled, and his makeup, smeared. The Secrets exposed him, and he felt mortified, lying upon a bed with bandages between his legs.
In the background, machines hummed in an orderly pattern, typical of the world. The monotony swarmed about him like a large group of insects buzzing in his ears and crawling on his flesh - exploring the orifices and becoming lost in the purple waves of his hair. Perhaps the drowned, he thought to himself, but could neither shake his head nor nod when a question was imposed upon him. Lead, that�s what his tongue was made of, and his throat was filled with sand, like an hourglass emptying upon itself continually. The strangers couldn�t seem to understand his helpless state or his gender. A man or a woman? Jesse or Jessica? I have no genitalia, he thought, but medical records, a decade old. Contradicted his wishes. I was a man, died as a woman, but returned as another inept man. Grabbing a piece of paper from a table adjacent to his bed, he scrawled, "Jessi. I can�t speak right now," and placed it upon his chest for clarification.
The girl with the dark brown hair streaked with blue, wearing a flannel shirt, burst into the room, carrying a cup of water and placing it to his lips. The stream of water dispersed the sand and changed the lead into flesh.
"Jesse?" she asked, but I could merely nod in response.
Hastily drinking the water, I attempted to move my mouth and tongue to talk, but only a squeak, an almost inaudible noise, emerged from my throat.
"Jesse, can you talk?" she asked.
"Yeah," I replied weakly. "Glynis, can you tell me where I am?"
"In a hospital," she responded, but her words were not laconic.
"Why?" I inquired. "The last time I was awake, I was in my room."
She interrupted me. "After you stabbed yourself and nearly bled to death before I called an ambulance."
Her words were reflected by her countenance. Although placid at first, her visage became pinched and twitched slightly with repressed anger as she recounted my unsuccessful attempt at suicide.
"Have I become a woman yet?" I asked. "Or am I waking up to continue the pathetic existence I tried to escape?"
"The last time I checked, the doctors marked you down as a man," she stated, as her countenance still restrained from becoming ubiquitously red.
"I haven�t been to a hospital since I was eight."
Slowly and gingerly picking up the paper from my chest, Glynis glanced at it, crossed out everything except for my name, and then placed it down on my chest again. "Maybe they�ll believe you. Your falsies still look like real breasts," she smirked, as a sincere smile traversed her mouth for a transient period of time. "I told you you�ll become what you are."
"The Coward?" I mumbled.
"No, the Androgyne," she replied. "My friend Lena told me about the whole ordeal. The Girl is apparently caught between this Drifter and the Androgyne. Although she�s infatuated with the Drifter, she doesn�t want the Androgyne to comit suicide."
"Who�s the girl?" I asked, but I already knew before Glynis pointed to the center of her chest.
"The Drifter is rather clairvoyant," she mumbled," but what would you expect from a person who moved about the shadows in her immaculate motorcycle?"
"Why the Androgyne?"
"She has a way with words," Glynis replied, "but, frankly, she�s somewhat of an androgyne herself. Perhaps that�s why I�m caught between both sides. But, yet, I barely fit the archetype tagging behind the Girl. What girl flits between a cross dressing girl and a cross dressing guy because of friendship or infatuation? Maybe like the Boy, the Girl isn�t much of a girl after all. Perhaps the Boy, the Drifter, and the Girl are all the Androgyne with idiosyncrasies. Wouldn�t you agree?"
"I guess so," I murmured, although the prospect of being labeled as either the Boy or the Androgyne had no appeal to me.
Glynis�s countenance changed; losing its pallor and angst, the reflection of familiarity that once prevailed before the hiatus resurfaced like an old fish coming to the surface of a pond.
"Have they informed me parents about the incident?" I asked, trying to steer away from the nonsense of the Girl, the Drifter, and the Androgyne.
"I don�t think so," she said, "but they�ll probably send a bill in the mail at some point."
With panic moving rapidly through my nerves like electricity moves through wires, I abruptly sat up in bed. "When?" I hastily inquired.
Languidly now, Glynis shifted in her seat. "I don�t know. I just remember when Mike broke his leg, my mom got billed in a few weeks. It was a lot, though, since Mike shattered one of his legs and was in the hospital for almost a week."
The thought of Mike - helpless and immobile - crossed my mind, and instantaneously, I smirked with satisfaction, but my focus immediately concentrated on the present. Unlike Mike, I could walk, and, for only a few hours, I rested in the hospital after someone bandaged up my wounds properly. "Glynis, we�re going," I stated immediately, adamant to stand up from the bed, leave the sterile-smelling hospital, and significantly decrease the amount on the bill that my parents would receive imminently.
"What?" Glynis now halted her lackluster, turgid stupor and become cognizant about the situation - I was not going to spend anymore time in the premises of the hospital.
"I said �we�re going,�" I asserted again, standing up from the bed and onto the linoleum floor.
"Jesse, are you insane?" Glynis seized the skirt of my dress, but she did not rise from her chair to join me.
"Depends," I replied, with a sigh, " you�ve known me since I was ten. You�ve seen me beat up, pummeled, almost drowned, and harassed; you�ve also seen me be more feminine than any other girl you�ve known. I�ve seen psychiatrists, and even they haven�t thought I was mentally or emotionally stable, or words to that effect. And, still I�ll say it again - you�ve known me for six years. Glynis," I enunciated her name properly, without stuttering, "is this any different?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed. "You just cut your legs with knife."
"They weren�t that deep," I said, in reference to the gashes under the bandages.
"Jesse, you passed out on the ambulance." Obstinate, Glynis became rooted in her chair.
"And I can stand up now. So now, we�re going. Taking the subway down two stops, to be exact." Lifting my chin from my chest and standing proudly in the doorway, I proceeded to exit the building without anyone�s - not even Glynis�s - consent. However, as I stalked, unnoticed, through the white halls filled with other patients in mobile or decrepit conditions, Glynis ran behind to catch up with me.
"I�m going home," I mumbled. "The subway station is just across the street." This time, Glynis did not attempt to pull me back into the room.
With the metallic snap of the hospital doors closing behind up, Glynis and I stood on the streets again after a month. Immersed in t he night, we stood, motionless and silent for a few moments, before Glynis removed her coarse flannel shirt to place on shoulders. "It�ll be cold tonight," she murmured into my ear before leading me across the street to the ominous, cavernous subway.
Paying both fares, Glynis descended the steps and I eagerly followed as a subway train simultaneously stopped its trail as we stepped onto the platform. Glynis took the subway much more than I did, for walking was usually my fancy. But tonight, I didn�t care as to how I would go home. The mistakes of the past were to be erased in my mind and in hers. By scrawling my name as "Jessi" on that piece of paper in the hospital, I opened up another chapter in my life. In the first, I was a discreet, coveted cross-dresser, hiding under his trench coat. In the next, Vince unbuttoned the folds of black, weathered material to let my skirts flow freely about my legs as I roamed through the streets. This chapter, at this particular moment, removed the fears I had about myself. No, I thought, I will not cower when my peers mock my androgynous appearance. The Coward stepped out of the corner and bathed in the sunlight for the first time in his life.
However, the sunlight receded for a brief period as Glynis and I walked through the unlocked doors of my house. Davy was watching television, sitting in the same position as he was when I came home from school this afternoon, before unleashing my misery and antipathy onto myself. Despite Davy�s presence, no one arrived home yet.
"Has anyone come home?" I asked him, as Glynis shifted nervously in her stance behind me.
"No," he mumbled, but refused to look at me. "Heather called. She�s gotta talk to Mom about something and she�s coming here around ten to talk to her."
My heart leaped with excitement. "Heather�s coming home?" I asked, but tried to restrain my ebullience.
"I don�t know," he said. The usual, I thought.
Ignoring us, Davy focused on the television again, as we walked upstairs to my room. Inside, Glynis had left her books on the floor near mine. "Aren�t you going to chance your clothes?" she asked, indicating the blood stains on my dress.
"Perhaps," I sighed, "but before my parents come home."
Lying on my bed, I stretched and crossed my arms across my chest, as a smile traversed my lips. Heather�s coming back, even if it�s only for a day, I thought, but she was returning nevertheless.
Sitting at the foot of my bed, Glynis tilted her head back and laughed - a neutral, but slightly pained laugh. "Want a cigarette?" she asked. "It�s almost euphoria."
An answer was not necessary, for she placed one of her cigarettes from her pocket between my lips. Leaning over me, she took out a stained lighter and lit the poison-laden stick of paper between my lips.
"Euphoria," I murmured.
The draft in the room displaced itself with our contentment after Glynis herself lit a cigarette. On our backs, inches away from each other, we lay together on the bed, upon my rumpled, blood-stained sheets. With a cigarette in one hand, I placed the rapidly burning paper to my mouth, inhaling the intoxicating aroma before removing it. Swirling about my head like passive spirits, the smoke clouded my vision and blurred all but the image of Glynis, erasing all of her superficial flaws. Brown eyes. Greasy hair. An undefined flannel shirt.
"All we need is some coffee," she stated as if coffee were the universal panacea and moved her face closer to mine, although she blew her smoke toward the window, away from me. Chuckling, she whipped the cigarette from her lips to a random point in the air. "I almost wish you were a girl."
"Why?" I asked, confused about this statement that was as random as the placement of her cigarette.
"I just might become infatuated with you and the Drifter. But, I don�t think that would truly be bliss. It�d gash you more than your knife if I chose the Drifter. Jesse� I," she halted her speech, covering her mouth with her free hand. "I hate to sound clich�, but I just want you to be accepted. I could care less about what�s between your legs, even though everyone else does. If you stayed and androgyne, I wouldn�t care, but neither would I if you became a girl overnight. But, I wouldn�t favor you more if you were a boy, either. I just want us to stay like this - not that this moment, I mean, but I don�t want a drastic change. I think the past month might have done that. I�d rather you be yourself than succumb to everyone else to appease them, if you get what I�m trying to say."
"Vaguely," I mumbled and inhaled the smoke about us. "Haven�t you ever thought about escaping this purgatory?"
"To where?" she inquired.
"Anywhere, I guess," I murmured, realizing this semi-trap I set for myself. "Any place where these ethics and rules don�t apply. Any place where I don�t need to keep my trench coat on to appear asexual. It isn�t a utopia, guaranteed, but it also isn�t some place where we�re going to be shot down like ducks above a lake, only to fall into black water to erase any trace of blood upon us."
Glynis seized my wrists in her excitement. "Why only imagine? Why not leave right now to search for such a place?"
"I don�t think it exists," I replied monotonously to try to dissipate her ebullience.
"We don�t know. Jesse, you�re only assuming it isn�t because you only think its in your head. Heck, I�d like to find such a place." The cigarette between her fingers had burned to a useless stub, and Glynis took another out of her shirt pocket. "Just suppose there is. Why would we want to remain in such a dreary, grayish place as this?"
Glynis interrupted me before I could reply. "Jesse, what if your �euphoria� actually existed? Imagine enough cigarettes to smoke and pools of intoxicating coffee to drink and inhale. What if you could wander about the way you are and no one would object? What if they all loved you for who you are and thought it strange when you forgot to wear your lipstick and mascara the next morning?"
The question remained unanswered, as the front door opened. In our conversation upon my bed, Glynis and I froze before she ran to the window to throw out our cigarettes and dissipate the pungent aroma that clouded the room. The chill returned and I resumed my role as the Coward in the corner, hopelessly trying to appease everyone but without success. Dashing to the closet, I undressed from the blood-stained rose-printed dress into benign, asexual jeans and a green buttoned shirt. Taking my books from the floor to start my homework, I tried to appear as if I never contemplated suicide and glided the cold-bladed knife between my thighs.
Closing the window, Glynis asked, "Do you think anyone�ll come up here?"
Jesse was not going to live his fantasy of bleeding to death upon his bed. In determination, I dashed from the room and down the stairs to Davy, who continued to watch the television and was oblivious to the surrounding gray world. Jesse desired to lose his pinks and purples and become assimilated by the gray world that continually rejected him. After years of being a pariah, he attempted to join the masses that mocked and ridiculed him. However, his blood did not run from his veins in a dull, indistinguishable stream. Between his thighs and on his sheets, it dried, remaining a brownish red, like the color of cherries. Even his death wouldn�t give him mercy and allow him to talk and laugh with the same voice as his peers.
"Where�s a phone?" I asked in an exacerbated tone, as I approached Davy from behind. He didn�t react.
Jumping in front of him, I shut off the television, before seizing his shoulders. "Listen, where is a phone?" His lips did not move to form an answer.
To hell with his fucked-up, catatonic brother, I thought in haste, as I rummaged through the room in search of a telephone to call an ambulance. However, among the piles of newspapers that littered the floor and tables of Jesse�s house, I found nothing, as Jesse still remained bleeding upstairs in his room, trying to adhere to his morbid fantasy.
Thundering in my ears and pulsating through my veins, my blood flowed throughout my arms and neck. Swelling by my jaw, the blood stopped and grew warm, gathering in one place. Running up the stairs, I dashed into a dark room, which I assumed was his parents�. Groping along the wall, I turned on a light switch, and the room became filled with a dim, grayish light, which made the walls and bed have a disheveled appearance. Gray blossoms grew on the field of black on their sheets, which were immaculately folded upon the bed. The perfection was not pervasive, however, for the wallpaper was slowly peeling off the walls and stains made the ceiling appear mottled. Anachronisms glazed the room, and I felt as if I were born in the future, only to discover this wasteland of a past in Jesse�s house.
Upon the sheets, the flowers seemed animated, but from where I stood, they were just as dimensionless as the walls. By the bed, a telephone - also from the distant past - caught my waning attention. Black and coated with plastic, the metallic, massive body of it pressed into my lap as I picked up the receiver and prepared to dial. The blood moved again, and my jaw bolted with fright. What would I say? How would I describe Jesse to them, I wondered, as I tried to force my mouth to speak into the receiver. As I pressed each number, their pitches echoed in the silence of the telephone, before disappearing until I pressed another key.
Once I finished pressing the appropriate numbers, the signals began and panic flowed through out me like blood. Where was I? Who was Jesse? Was he still alive? The questions circled and collided, merging into incorrigible, indecipherable phrases. His blood - the blood - surfaced in my mind and spouted like a geyser between his thighs. Streaming down his legs and gathering in pools about his knees, the blood destroyed his innocence. Envisioned as a person lying supine, he lay motionless upon the sheets, as the fluids and color escaped him and drained the color from his face and clothing. The pink roses, formerly flowering upon their black vines, became gray and wilted, and the rainbow of shades upon his face lost their luster until his face looked like that in an old photograph. He will not become an anachronism, I thought, but my thoughts as themselves were futile. They could not move my jaw to speak, and as the tone kept breaking the silence, I panicked. Where was I? How would I efficiently describe the problem?
A voice broke the silence on the other end of the receiver. Stammering but creating no comprehensible sound, I tried to describe my location into the telephone. The voice kept asking me to repeat myself, but my lips moved independently from my control. "I�m at Jesse�s house," I wanted to say, but I could recall neither the street nor the address. In my memory, the subway station and the silver, snake-like body passed through the darkness to take me here. The dank, clammy darkness. The walls of graffiti. Creaking stairs. The trash. Lena. The Drifter, the Girl, and the Androgyne. Her candy-red motorcycle. My motivations? Why was I here, I asked myself. Why had I come inside Jesse�s house, went to his room, and awakened him, after months of ignoring him? One month, I disappeared and now, like a recurring nightmare, I appeared in Jesse�s life. "Never mind. Jesse�s fine," I wanted to say into the receiver, but I could only stutter and clutch the receiver, as if it were the only tangible object in my life.
The voice on the other end of the receiver was becoming irate, but my head became inundated with thoughts of insecurity and uncertainty. "Please trace the call," I mumbled into the receiver, with my lips brushing against the smooth, cold mouthpiece. "My friend stabbed himself."
The person belonging to the voice seemed to understand the message and hung up. For a few moments, I sat on the bed in the room, feeling as archaic and morbid as the sheets and the peeling walls. Any minute, I told myself, any minute and they�ll be here.
Exiting the anachronistic room, I entered Jesse�s room, to find it unchanged from when I left minutes ago, only now the darkness had intensified from the passed time. However, although he would not want to admit it, his cries were muffled.
"You don�t have to be a man anymore, Jesse," I said, leaning against the door frame. "In fact, I don�t want you to be a man anymore."
"I never was, never could be," he murmured but was motionless.
"I think I want you to be the Androgyne. Or maybe the Girl, unlike me."
"You�re not everyone. Are you every face on the street? Every student in high school? Each child that can�t comprehend androgyny?"
"Like I said before, it doesn�t matter."
"I can dream, can�t I, in my own room?"
Moving from the door, I planted myself on the edge of his bed and placed a hand on one of his quivering shoulders. "You�re going to become what you are. I think I�d hate you if you denied yourself that freedom."
Showing signs of life, Jesse shifted onto his back and moved the blanket from his face. Aside from his makeup, his face appeared unusually pale. On the white sheets shrouding his legs, I noticed the blood in darker, larger stains. The ambulance will be here any minute, but chose to revel in my moment with Jesse. "I know you�re not a man and as soon as we�re out of this crap, I�ll prove it."
Jesse said nothing, but his lips parted, as if he were going to speak. However, taking his hand into mine, I inferred that internally he was saying "Euphoria," as the ambulance wailed its lament song in the background.