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.
Chapter 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 was able to be defied and the clouds could be treaded 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?"
"Depends who�s home. If Tom�s here, then he�ll come up. If not, we�ll be left alone," I informed her. Davy, although he was home, seldom went into our room, unless he was punished or had to sleep. Even if I merely slept in the room, he remained apprehensive about coming upstairs, primarily from the shock of seeing his older brother in a dress.
Walking to the door, Glynis stopped to listen for familiar voices. "Have you been hearing what Tom�s been saying about you?"
"Why? Do you hear his voice?" I asked, slightly stymied by her rather random question.
"Maybe, but in school whenever someone asks him about you, he�ll say, �I hope that faggot�s lost permanently,� or something like that, to end the conversation."
Tom, as soon as he realized that I could never be as authentic of a man as he and my father, rejected and disparaged me at every opportunity offered. "I can�t lament about it," I replied. "It�s only trivial."
Glynis suddenly jumped away from the door as if it became heater iron. Contorting her face, she paced across the room and threw up her hands in hopelessness. "I can�t leave you like this.
They - they�ll through you out again," she said, dismayed by the situation.
Analyzing the silence, I listened for Heather�s voice among the several jarring sounds I noticed downstairs. "I think I�ll be somewhat safe," I replied, as soon as I heard the mellifluous tone of Heather�s words. "I�ve lived here for twenty-four hours already."
"And, perhaps, to seem trite unfortunately, the night is young," Glynis sighed, slouching as she stood. Her shoulders and back curved and caved at various points, and she shoved her hands into her pockets, as her brown hair, still streaked with blue, fell upon her pale visage, shrouding her eyes. "And I�ve done my deed; I saved the Androgyne for the time being. Now I�ll go look for the Drifter to see if she�s recovered her motorcycle."
Shaking away her maudlin expression like excess water, Glynis headed toward the window again and opened it. Frigid air inundated the room, as Glynis hesitated before sliding out the window. Resuming her maudlin expression for a transitory period, she sighed, leaning against the windowpane. "Are you positive that you don�t want me to stay here, just in case they all gang up on you or something?"
"No," I bluntly replied, setting my books aside.
"I hate to leave you here like this."
"Tom might come upstairs."
Changing her countenance, she said, "And I�ll strange him until his face turns purple."
"I�ll meet you at the cafeteria tomorrow and tell you how it goes."
Glynis seemed agreeable to this proposal, but, before completely climbing out the window, she said, "Goodbye, Jesse" - not in a melancholy fashion, but in a neutral tone that indicated her satisfaction in leaving the scene. Watching her climb down a drain pipe in back of my house, I knew she headed off in any direction to find the Drifter and ride the Drifter�s motorcycle through the desolate streets.
However, more obstacles confronted me that the moment. Downstairs, my family waited, talking amongst themselves, as if I were a ghost - invisible to their eyes and mute to their ears. Walking silently into the bathroom, I decided to shed my skin for the next hours to appease, especially because Heather was downstairs and I didn�t wish to instigate a fight in front of her. As I soundlessly closed the door behind me, my reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror caught my attention; truly, I thought, I have reached the penultimate state of androgyny - clothes designed for a man, flowing purple hair, and my own coveted gaudy makeup. But, Heather�s voice resonated in my ears, as I knew I had to eradicate as much color as I could to assimilate myself with the bodies. Filling the basin with water, I felt my heart implode in its own sadness, but for the moment, I had to repress my desires. And, although I felt as if I were drowning as soon as I immersed my face, I could not be the Coward - effeminate and ashamed. In future hours, I could become Jessi, and move through the streets as a superficial woman, without suspicion, but this hour was not the time. Parting my hair down the center of my scalp and tying it back in a ponytail, I held my breath for a moment as I stared into the bathroom mirror again. Gazing into my dark, deep-set eyes, I realized that I knew who I was - but didn�t, really. Life is an interminable movie, I thought, and each character goes through several costume, makeup, and scene changes before another character terminates him. In this picture, I was one of a myriad of actors, but I oscillated between the two roles of Jesse and Jessi. To greet Heather and my family without causing a fracas, I transformed into Jesse, characterized as the Coward. In my room, however, as I sat upon my bed reading my latest finding from the library, I became Jessi; with Glynis, drinking coffee in the cafeteria, I was also Jessi. In school, I was Jessi in the body of Jesse. This juxtaposition caused a war in which Jessi was determined to win, and in the abyss of my desires, I wanted her to be victorious, slaying Jesse into a grave in my memory.
Fate had to be met, and I had to shake his hand without a sweaty palm from my fears. The top of the stairs served as a dividing line - between fears and facing my family. You know who you are, I kept repeating to myself, but my heart pounded without remorse inside my chest, filling my body with its warm blood. Heather�s voice resonated in my head, and as the stairs stretched before me, I descended the soiled carpeted steps to join her. Clutching the railing, I moved down slowly, as if I were a child learning to walk across a floor but still desired to retrogress into esoteric ways of crawling. But, neither my black trench coat adorned my frame nor my rose-patterned dress caress my shoulders. Other than my purple hair, I appeared to be masculine - as long as I did not speak.
In juxtaposition, I felt elated about the thought of seeing Heather after two years, and I wanted to appear presentable to her, not to retrogress into the past, when she first encountered my habit of wearing her old clothes. Originally, even in my convoluted thoughts, clothing myself in her attire seemed to mollify the fact that I gravely missed her. However, my sorrow didn�t always prevail - to both my desire and dismay. To appease my desires, I covertly enjoyed the swish of her ruffled skirts about my legs and the intertwining patterns on the fabric of the shirts she once wore as a teenager.
At this moment in time, I yearned to please her, but I would not regress into the Coward; in front of her, I would not become that archetype, timorous and morose. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, with my arms stemming from my shoulders and hanging at my sides in a neutral position, I attempted to assimilate into the room but hoped that Heather would still recognize me. The room had no distinguishable setting - bland and beige - but reminded me of the night my parents forced me from the house a month ago and into the world to inadvertently stumble upon Vince. Perhaps, in their transient, callow hopes, I would have learned my "lesson," but I found Vince instead. Maybe if they left me amongst the monolithic rows of houses and in the frigid winds I might have abandoned my reproachable desires for survival. But, contrary to their hopes, my desires pulsated through me like an electric current, even when I tried to appear staid and innocuous.
Tonight, the folding table stood alone in the center of the room, with Davy sitting at one of the places about its periphery, with that longing look of innocence upon his face, as my mother finished making tasteless dinner. Tom, in a languid manner, lay on the sofa - aged, shabby, and discolored - but his entourage of peers was absent. In fact, aside from glancing with his dull, glazed expression toward the television, he was mute, although furtively glared with scorn at me. My father had left the room and had not returned for several minutes, however, although his voice seemed present in the noise. Heather, I assumed, was with either my mother or father, discussing whatever they needed to discuss. My heart - disconsolate, to reflect my already melancholy mood - sank into my chest with disappointment.
Sitting down next to Davy, I wanted to and assumed an air of competence and mundane neutrality. Both of my brothers, engrossed in their lassitude, silently ignored me. But, from in my chest, as I heard footsteps of varying degrees in crease in volume, my mood ebulliently leaped, although my countenance kept its equanimity. Perhaps my brother felt similar, but their visages merely indicated indifference to her radiant presence. However, as Heather, followed by my mother, entered the dreary, trite beige room, my restraint no longer held, and a slight, almost discreet, smile crept itself upon my lips. My mother, like my brothers, remained expressionless, obeying the monotonous routine, while Heather, urbane and experienced, gazed into my eyes for a transitory moment with her own smile. As the four of us sat about the table, my mother set a bowl of spaghetti down at the center. My father - strangely but logically - did not enter the room, but I felt content with his absence.
To fabricate a countenance of confidence, my mother put on her own set of airs to shroud her displeasure with me. As her four offspring remained defensively silent, she spoke with no pauses but refrained from epithets and religious allusions. Heather�s countenance was an ivory mask, an unblemished pale shade carved immaculately, and she herself refrained from speaking as my mother inundated the air with her words, describing the ethereal life she wished she had as if it were reality.
"Tom�s doing excellent in school, mind you. For a few years, I was worried if he would ever succeed, but now, I�m almost happy with pride. Already elected class president, and with all those friends he has, I�m surprised that he ever comes home. Jesse�s also doing well - made the honor roll again. And Davy -" I could no longer listen to the euphemisms, and thus, her voice became muted in my ears.
Heather�s visage now transformed into a plaster mask, covering the pained expression on her flesh. She�d witnessed this routine before, I knew, and now she just receded to follow along with the haphazard, erratic rules. Ignoring my mother and her pompous, pretentious words, I consumed the spaghetti in ample quantities, without caring about the inevitable weight gain. In fact, I realized that I started to put on weight again, for my hips pressed tightly against the coarse fabric of my jeans, but my anger overshadowed any reasoning. Unlike me, however, Heather ate slowly, chewing each portion of spaghetti into a paste inside her mouth, I assumed, as she also pretended to listen to our mother�s inanities.
For a moment, Heather made furtive eye contact with me. In the dull, dimly-lit room, her pupils were the only globes of light to guide me through this fog of words. But, her eyes merely glanced in my direction for a brief period, before focusing on my mother, continuously talking. The radiance, however, still lingered in them as she turned them from me. Like a magician, she had a deceptive trick up her sleeves that only she knew how to execute appropriately.
From my mother, she turned toward me again. "Jesse, do you mind if we go to your room? I haven�t been up there in a while." To my mother, she said, "You don�t mind if I go upstairs to Jesse�s room, do you?" In the same vein as my admiring of her pulchritude, I adored her tactics of deception and manipulation.
"I don�t," my mother replied tersely.
Standing up from her seat and removing her plaster mask, Heather rapidly walked up the stairs to my room. Following her, I tried to keep up with her pace, although that seemed futile; eventually, we would stand, facing each other, in the same room. And, indeed, as I closed the door behind me, hearing the closing of the lock sound like the snapping of a twig, our masks intentionally fell off, exposing our visages and scarred flesh in the bluish dark of my room. As I stood wholly in the shadows, Heather�s stance was partially in the dark and partially in the thin beam of moonlight creeping through the window, onto the floor in a phosphorescent stream. With her face fully exposed, the line of light caressed her skin, giving it a complexion like that of porcelain. Contrasting with her visage was her hair, still in the dark and reflecting the bluish black of the room. With the door closed behind, neither of us spoke immediately. To her, I must have vaguely resembled the boy she remembered from two years ago - the last time I saw her. However, that Jesse had not begun smoking, lisped, stuttered, and appeared innocuous to, but was emotionally battered by, the rest of the world. In the precarious present, in front of Heather stood an androgynous person, injected with poison and hatred, bleeding melancholy blood from a ruptured spleen.
"Jesse, stop the act and reveal yourself," she murmured. Her words could be so direct and her statements so blatant sometimes.
In my stance, I froze, gazing into the beam of light passing through the glass and onto the floor. Who am I, I asked my own self; the trite, adolescent question did not have a tacit, facile response. But, to completely remove my mask and strip my visage of its assumed masculinity only donned to appease the masses, I allowed my flowing purple hair to fall to my shoulders and parted it to one side again.
"I�m not the person you used to know," I mumbled, cringing at such a hackneyed remark. "Physically and mentally. I think you can probably see that."
"Jesse, you�ve changed every time I�ve seen you. I�m glad you�re no longer a twig; you needed the flesh." She paused. "But the Jesse I used to know used my makeup and old clothes when he was at my apartment last."
"Turn around," I sighed. "I�ll tell you when I�m ready then."
Immersing herself fully into the light, Heather faced the window, as I moved farther into the dark to my closet. The shirt and pants were the next objects of disgust to fall from my limbs. In the dark, my pale, voluptuous androgynous body appeared in the mirror on my closet door. My nakedness, however, was soon shed when I slipped a purple blouse on and fastened a black knee-length ruffled skirt about my waist - both of which I found at a thrift store with money I would�ve used on cigarettes - before applying makeup and sliding a necklace of black beads from my neck to my chest.
Evasively, I glanced at myself to observe that the "I" was meticulously in place. Yet, amidst the purples and blacks of color, jewelry, and makeup, everything to superficially describe myself at the moment, the immaculacy revealed itself like � oddly enough - a brightly-colored phantom, lurking but nevertheless present because of its blatant, but not pretentious, display of hues. Turning my head toward the window, I noticed that Heather continued to peer out the window to the stretch of cracked, weathered pavement behind the row of houses that included ours. Perhaps, could she have indiscreetly glanced out of the corner of her eye to catch a glimpse of my transitory metamorphosis? But, unlike the rest of our family downstairs, I trusted Heather, despite some of the misconceptions of the past and the long hiatuses between our occasional meetings. Tonight, as I stared longingly at Heather�s silhouette in the light, we both understood the concrete bond of trust and confided in each other the words in this room. Like Glynis and Vince, Heather would not betray me and would not forcibly hold me down into the bed to make me become a man by removing my garments. But, despite the ruffled skirt, the garments did not fabricate a man. In recognition of my childhood, I recalled that I physically resembled a boy, like any other, but behaved rather effeminately, which, at the time, I thought, came from Heather�s influence on me and my desire to be like her. At this period in the present, in my room, both of us repudiated the "be a man" phrase, as I told Heather to turn around. Joining her in the thin stream of light, we affectionately embraced each other - my arms about her neck, and hers, about my waist. Positions, however, were futile, for in our embrace, synthesis occurred, as if we became a being unified by the empathy of all its parts. The stabbing pangs and the superficiality of the whole pretentious evening created the unified understanding between us, as if we were Siamese twins of the brain and heart. But, from downstairs, someone called for Heather - my mother, perhaps, but her voice did not ring with any tone of recognition to my ears. And, with that descent into reality again, our embrace broke amicably; we recognized the fact we had to part for the tine being. Before slipping out my door, she scrawled an address on a piece of paper on my bed. "Come here tomorrow," she murmured.
"Where�s this place?" I asked cautiously, for I did not recognize the address of the location she handed me.
"I�m living there temporarily, until I�m done with the business I need to do with them. I�ll explain it all to you tomorrow, after you�re done school and I�m done talking - or more like bullshitting - with them," she answered succinctly. However, being laconic, she said no more. Gazing into my eyes one more time, she turned, closing the door softly behind and joining again the inanities of the fabricated subjects of conversation downstairs. I decided to not have any part of it. But, then again, the falsely ostentatious mood bothered me to the point of desiring aloofness. Let them pretend, let them lie, I thought with disdain, let them succeed in their futile games. Myself, however, I continued to stand alone in the darkness again and stare out the window - not at the pavement, but at what lay beyond this row and every row of houses. Once again, I would exit this pretentious mess, but tomorrow, that leave would be my own. Noticing the straightness of the long crack in the pavement, in which weeds had begun to grow, I felt my mind elevate to the ultimate state of euphoria I desired after sixteen years of silent misery.