Her Siren Song

It’s PRIDE MONTH and my dear friend and muse’s BIRTHDAY!

In honour of the double occasion, I give you a birthday extract from my work in progress tentatively titled Some Kind of Something.  

Though set in the mid 1980s America, the emotions and situations of my main character Len/Lenny/Helen remain relevant.  Growing up and falling in love are complicated enough without questions of queerness and identity and, while things are much better now than they were, the world continues to challenge anyone who is different. 

This is a work in progress, so feedback is appreciated.

Len believes that Althea has put a love spell on them.  What else could possibly explain all these strange and unfamiliar feelings?

April 25^th, 1986

The rest of my birthday passes in a haze of giddy sunshine.  Despite Althea’s obvious wickedness, I don’t feel the strange effects usually brought on by her presence.  My salt and iron cure worked.  Obviously, I must remain vigilant to future plots but, for now, I have put a stop to Althea’s wicked plan. 

I’m totally a hero!

My inner monster sighs. 

Hector, unable to stomach all the attention I’m getting, makes himself scarce over my entire birthday weekend.  Best present ever.  I eat three bowls of Dad’s famous French Onion Soup and keep down ever hot, cheese-topped bite. 

 

On Saturday afternoon, Daisy and Isaac come over.  The three of us sit on my screened-in front porch eating birthday pie, drinking rootbeer and feeding nacho cheese tortilla chips to Achilles the Cat.

‘I love how he just licks the cheese off them,’ Daisy giggles as Achilles crawls across the back of the sofa and down her shoulder to get at the chip in her hand. 

‘Right.  Like that’s really cheese,’ Isaac smirks. 

‘Licks the nothing like actual cheese cheese-type topping off them,’ Daisy corrects, not missing a beat.

‘What’s this?’ Isaac jerks his thumb at the open window in the direction of the living room stereo. 

‘Court of Possibility.’ 

 ‘I like,’ Isaac nods in time with a punklike polka song about a pencil case.  ‘Make me a copy?’

‘For sure.’

‘Althea coming over?’ asks Daisy while Achilles drips from her left hand to her right and back again like a furry slinky. 

‘She’s got a swim meet today.’ 

‘Swim meet,’ Isaac echoes thoughtfully. 

‘Yeah,’ I shrug, then grunt as Achilles, bored of being Daisy’s slinky, leaps from her hands to my lap, claws splayed.  ‘Apparently she’s a swimmer.’  I clench my teeth in pain and pry the kitten one claw at a time from the leg of my jeans.

‘She’s not just a swimmer,’ interjects Daisy, ‘she a Swimmer,’ she capitalises, emphasising the word with a jazzy hand gesture. 

‘What you mean?’ Isaac tempts Achilles with a nacho chip. 

‘Brendan says she’s like, ranked ninth in the state.’

Daisy steals the chip and shoves it in her own mouth.  Isaac is too agog to protest the theft.  I’m a bit shocked too.  Not just at Althea’s swimming prowess (I take for granted that she can do whatever she puts her mind to) but that Althea has been a topic of conversation between Daisy and her jock boyfriend.  I don’t doubt the information.  Brendan swims for The Josiah Youth Squad and probably knows all about local swimmers.

‘Ninth?’ Isaac gasps, ‘in the state?’

‘I know, right?’  Daisy steals another chip.  ‘What can’t that girl do?’

‘Bake,’ I sneer.  Daisy laughs. 

‘So, where’s this swim meet?’ asks Isaac.

‘At the river,’ answers Daisy.

‘The river?’  I assumed it would be at the pool.  Then I vaguely remember Althea saying something about currents and water temperature. 

‘It’s like some big national event,’

‘Tri-State Championship,’ I murmur, like it’s something I heard in a dream.  

‘A Tri-State Championship open water swim meet?’ Isaac exclaims. 

‘I think that’s what she said,’ I gulp back the image of Althea dripping on a rock surrounded by sea foam.  Curse after-shocks. 

‘Oh, we gotta see this!’ Isaac is halfway off the sofa when Daisy snorts in protest.

‘It’s like ten miles outside town!’

‘Perfect opportunity to take Len’s new wheels for a spin.’

Three pairs of eyes drift from the nacho cheese licking kitten to the shiny, green mountain bike leaning against the edge of the porch.  Mom and Dad decided I have enough high-end stereo equipment and what I really need is to work off my long-lingering baby fat.  They didn’t actually say that, but I’m pretty sure they think it.  Isaac practically drooled on it.  He loves bikes.  I named her Gretl.  First name that came to mind.

‘You guys can go,’ Daisy waves her hand in premature farewell.  ‘I am not biking twenty miles.  Not even to see Althea in a swimsuit.’ 

My face flames.  Blood rushes to my ears.  I bury trembling hands in Achilles’ fur to hide the electric sparks exploding from my fingertips. 

‘Lazy ass,’ sneers Isaac. 

‘Damn right,’ hoots Daisy, pushing herself out of the couch.  ‘Besides, Brendan gets off work in like an hour.’

‘Booty call,’ Isaac grins, rolling his shoulders and rhythmically snaking his neck suggestively.

‘Damn right,’ Daisy smiles, shameless. 

‘You and me, then Len.’  Isaac holds his hand out to me, palm up.  Let’s see what Gretl can do.’ 

I can’t go to Althea’s swim meet.  I’m trying to keep my distance from that witch.  If I go, she’ll re-thrall me or something. 

My head argues this.  My hand, however, has other ideas.  It dutifully high fives Isaac then reaches for my helmet. 

Stupid hand.

 

Riding Gretl is nothing like riding my antique banana bike.  The speed alone is a little dizzying.  And awesome.  I want to take off my helmet to feel the wind, but that would mean taking a hand off the handlebars—and I’m clutching them for dear life.

Iowa looks beautiful at this speed.  Freshly furrowed cornfields fly by on either side of the rural highway: line after smudged line of ankle-high, green tufts and dark, rich earth, with cow fields in between to break the maize monotony.  Midwestern spring.

Most of Iowa is covered in gentle, rolling hills.  Our part is not.  Our part of Iowa is flat, flat, flat.  Flat as pancakes, flat as paper, flat as my chest.

‘Look to the sky, Lenny,’ Dad told me once when I complained. 

‘Why,’ I whined, ‘is it flat too?’  I was nine.  Nine and smart-assed.

‘You tell me.’

Dad put a granite finger under my chin and pushed my face upward.  I looked, straining my head left and right, leaning and turning circles to see the whole of the sky.  There was a lot of it.  I’d never noticed.  So much sky.  Too much.  I stumbled backward, overwhelmed.  Dad tried to catch me and we almost fell on our butts. 

‘You’re right,’ I gasped, half impressed but holding as tightly to my thread of sarcasm as I was to Dad’s arm.  ‘That is one big sky.’  Dad ignored my snark.  He was still looking up.

‘Our land may be flat, but it lets us see the whole of the sky,’ Dad rhapsodised.  ‘Who could doubt the world is round with a dome like this overhead?  Makes me feel humble.’

He was right.  The sky was a great big dome.  Like a glass lid on a vegetable steamer or a cake.  A giant, blue and white swirled cake stand lid—as if the world were on display for someone. 

But it didn’t make me feel humble.  It made me feel suffocated and exposed.  Pressed to the earth like a bug on the card of an godlike entomologist. 

Not today though.  Today I feel free.  Ten miles is nothing on Gretl.  Soon I see a ribbon of blue alongside the green and brown corn and cow fields.  Once upon a time, steamboats chugged up and down this waterway.  One or two still do, but they’re just tourist and special occasion boats. 

A hundred bobbing yellow buoys knock heads with the current across the length of the river.  The bouncing buoys are arranged in twelve precise lines, marking out swimming lanes, Along both shorelines, stick people with brightly coloured swim caps, like wrapped lollipops, move back and forth, taking positions at the water’s edge.  Twiggy limbs twist and stretch to warm up.  Any one of them could be Althea.  From this distance, they all look the same. 

‘How cold you think the water is?’

‘Somewhere between shrinking balls and hypothermia,’ Isaac quips.  ‘Not that Althea has to worry about shrinking balls.’

 ‘They’re not going to swim from one side of the river to the other, are they?’  It seems like a Herculean task from where I’m sitting, perched on my bike beside what passes for a slope around here.

‘No.’  Isaac shields his eyes from the sunny glare, the better to see the lollipop people drown.  ‘They’re going to swim from one side to the other and back again.’

‘No way!’

‘Way.’  At a tiny pop of a starting gun, ten lollipop stick people launch themselves into the river.  ‘I think this is the men’s race.’

‘Why?’

‘No tops on the swimsuits.’

‘Oh.’  I exhale the breath I held thinking Althea might be in the water, struggling against the river current. 

‘That’s discrimination really,’ Isaac comments.  ‘Women should be free to go topless if they want to.’

‘You just want to stare at boobs,’ I accuse.

‘Duh.’

The swimmers start making their way back to our side of the river.  Somewhere nearby a loudspeaker gives commentary, but I can’t understand a word of it.   Isaac remounts his bike.

‘Come on,’ he urges.  ‘Let’s see if we can find her.’

I want to protest, but my traitorous body follows Isaac through the parking lot crammed with vans and minibuses.  Some have waves painted on the side, logos of various swimming teams and clubs.  Aside from all the Iowa plates, there are two or three Missouri ones and at least five from Illinois. 

Tri-state indeed.

The female competitors cluster in a pack.  It doesn’t take long to spot Althea.  I just look for the bright spot in the universe. 

‘Hey!’

‘Hey.’

‘I can’t believe you’re here.’

‘Isaac wanted to come,’ I say, not looking her in the eye.  ‘He’s never seen an open water swim meet,’ I babble.  ‘So here we are.  To cheer you on.’

‘Well, I better impress you then,’ she slaps my shoulder and I risk a look at her face.  She smiles that uncertain smile just for me.  My legs wobble. 

Before I can look away, she shrugs out of her red and gold warm-up jacket and I see more of Althea’s body than I thought I ever would.  I never realised just how far up her legs go.  All the way to her hips.  I never noticed her hips before either.  They circle her like planetary rings brought too close by gravity until they merged.  Before I can back away, she passes her jacket to me, then flounces off to the shoreline. 

I can’t believe all that black hair has been restrained under that tiny red swimming cap.  Now I see her back, shoulder blades winging out either side of a sinewy spine, I resent her hair’s existence.  How dare her hair cover up her amazing back! 

The starting gun blows to start the race.  Althea dives with all the elegance I’ve come to expect (outside the kitchen).  Her lithe body barely makes a splash in the gently waving river.  Like the water isn’t repelling an invader, but welcoming home a lost sister. 

My little mermaid, I sigh to myself and hug her jacket to my chest. 

‘Holy shit,’ Isaac murmurs, stunned.  ‘Who is that girl?’

‘I have several theories,’ my mouth replies before I can stop it. 

‘I’m going with siren.’  Isaac sounds uncharacteristically serious.  ‘I mean,’ he adds, ‘look at her swim.’

‘You should her hear play cello.  Or violin.  Or viola,’ My slumbering inner-beast growls in remembered jealousy over the easy way she’d played my instrument. 

‘Definitely a siren,’ Isaac pronounces.  ‘Musical and aquatic.’

‘Witchcraft,’ I add before I can stop myself.   

‘Maybe.’  Isaac grins. 

Am I talking about magic?  With Isaac?  Is this happening? 

I should be relieved but I’m terrified.  I’ve never told anyone about my belief in magic.  It’s private and embarrassing.  I wrap my arms protectively across my heart. 

‘Did I say something wrong?’ Isaac asks.

‘No,’ I grunt.

‘Why are you getting defensive?’

‘I am not—

‘It’s ok, Len.’  Isaac gently pries my arms apart.  ‘I’m not attacking you.’  He holds my released hands; gives them a reassuring squeeze.  ‘Talk to me.’

I pause.  I don’t know what to do.  I breathe and take a leap of faith.

‘What do you believe in, Isaac?’

‘You mean, like, God?’

‘Not specifically.  But maybe other supernatural stuff.’  

‘Like ghosts?’ 

‘Ghosts.  Aliens.  Fairies.’ 

I search Isaac’s face for signals.  He doesn’t look worried or like he’s about to burst out laughing.  He tilts his head to one side, twists his mouth to the other side then looks directly up, as if consulting with that great entomologist in the sky. 

 ‘I like to keep an open mind,’ concludes Isaac.

‘Tadah!’ Althea runs up to us waving her winning gold medal. 

‘You won!’ I cheer, waving an imaginary pompom in my free hand—the other still clutches her jacket. 

‘We should totally celebrate,’ enthuses Isaac.

‘Well, the team is going for pizza,’ Althea explains. 

‘I could go for pizza,’ Isaac suggests.  He looks from Althea to me, then backtracks.  ‘Unless we’d be crashing.’  Althea looks from me to her teammates then back to me. 

‘Free country,’ she shrugs.  Isaac beams. 

 

Monica’s Pizza is Josiah’s oldest and best pizzeria.  Isaac and I get a table for two, usually reserved for romantic couples judging by the raffia-wrapped bottle of Chianti stuffed with a dripping candle.  Althea’s swim team squeezes into a corner booth and quickly becomes the centre of attention for the harassed waitresses. 

‘So, you think Althea is a witch?’ asks Isaac as I start on a slice smothered in Monica’s Homemade salad dressing (don’t knock it til you try it).  I think while I chew. 

‘Well,’ I lick thick red dressing from my thumb, ‘She put a curse on me.’

‘What kind of curse?’  I still can’t tell if Isaac’s making fun of me or not.

‘You know the brownies we’ve been baking?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She bewitched them.’  Isaac chews thoughtfully at his own slice dripping with dressing.  He sips his coke.  ‘Bewitched them with what?’ 

‘I don’t know.  Bat wings?  Newt eyes?  Henbane?’

‘I mean, what kind of curse?’  He wipes dressing off his chin with a napkin.  ‘Or is it part of the curse that you can’t talk about the curse?’

 ‘Love curse,’ I blurt.

‘Okay.’  He waits for me to say more, so I do. 

‘But I cured it.’

‘How?’

‘Salt and iron.’

‘You hit yourself with a frying pan?’

‘I gorged on burgers and fries.’

‘And that helped because…’

‘Iron and salt defend against magic.’

‘Okay.’

Another thoughtful pause.  Isaac chooses his words carefully.  Like he’s tiptoeing through a conversational minefield. 

‘How do you know you’re cured?’

‘I don’t feel the effects of the curse anymore.’

‘And what effects were those?’  My turn to tiptoe.

‘I felt kind of tingly every time Althea touched me.  And feverish.  And I felt compelled to always be around her.  Like, my feet took me to her house the other day without me noticing.’  I hear what I’m saying and I know how it sounds, but I keep going.  ‘Sometimes I have trouble breathing when she’s around.’ 

‘And you feel these things because Althea bewitched the brownies with a love curse?’  Isaac doesn’t sound judgemental or dismissive, he sounds like a doctor asking for clarification from a patient. 

‘I—’ I start to say yes, but the word dies in my throat.  I sigh deeply.  An exhale of defeat.  ‘I don’t know what to believe anymore.’  My head drops into my hands, the weight of my stupidity presses my elbows into the thin linen of the red and white checked tablecloth.  ‘I don’t know what to think or how to feel or who I am,’ I confess, my weary head slipping through my fingers.

‘What about your heart rate?’ Isaac presses.

‘What about it?’

‘Does your pulse speed up when you’re around her?’

‘Yes.’  I sit up straight in my seat, alert.  Isaac understands. 

‘Can I offer a semi-professional opinion as a boner-fide science nerd?’

‘Please,’ I urge, ignoring his use of “boner-fide”.  

‘The reactions you describe could be symptoms of a panic attack.’

‘Yes!’ I leap onto his theory, eager to make my problem something easily solveable.  ‘I get those sometimes.’

‘Or,’ Isaac cautions.

‘Why does there have to be an or?’

‘Science demands it.’  I make an exasperated, horsey exhale and drop back into my waiting palms.  ‘Or,’ Isaac pauses, then delivers a prognosis: ‘you might be in love.’

‘Well, duh,’ I slump in my seat.  ‘Althea browniewitched me.’

‘You said you cured the curse.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you should no longer be showing symptoms.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So why do you keep looking over your shoulder to stare at her?’

Shit.

The Monster Inside Me

It’s PRIDE MONTH!  In honour of the occasion, I will be giving you weekly extracts from my work in progress tentatively titled Some Kind of Something.  Though set in the mid 1980s America, I feel like the emotions and situations of my main character Len/Lenny/Helen remain relevant.  Growing up and falling in love are complicated enough without questions of queerness and identity and, while things are much better now than they were, the world continues to challenge anyone who is different. 

The character of Sammy Strader is a tribute to two friends of mine who contributed their stories of growing up gay in Midwest America during the 1980s and 1990s. The incident described in this extract is inspired by an actual experience–sadly not an uncommon one. Part of my motivation in writing Some Kind of Something is to remind my young, target audience that, though we have come a long way, it was a brutal journey to get there and the destination is still distant and uncertain. Never take progress for granted.

This is a work in progress, so feedback is appreciated.

October 25^th, 1983

Over the years, my brother has used many weapons against me. His favourite weapon is Sammy Strader.  Sammy Strader grew up in Josiah, but he doesn’t live here anymore.  I never met him, but I know all about him.  Everyone does. 

One day in early October three years ago, a month after Hector started at Josiah High, my brother came home with big news. 

‘There’s a gay at our school.’

‘What?’ Mom exclaimed.  Her hand fluttered to her heart. 

‘Yeah.’  Hector nodded, acknowledging her horror.  ‘An actual, honest to gods fag.  Sammy Strader.’ 

At the name “Sammy Strader” Hector struck a pose.  His hip pushed to one side while his opposite arm flicked upward just before his wrist dropped down and his eyes rolled up.  At the time, I thought he was demonstrating a new dance move he had learned at school. 

‘Did you touch him?’ Dad asked, voice urgent.

‘No way!’  Hector swept the idea and his recent dance pose aside with a gesture.  ‘I’m not touching that girl.’

‘See that you don’t.’

‘Is Sammy a boy or a girl?’ 

For several minutes I had silently followed this bizarre conversation, my head swivelling from one family member to the next searching for some explanation of what was happening.  The only part I really followed was the name.  I thought Sammy could be a name for a boy or a girl.  Dad said “he” but then Hector called Sammy “that girl.” 

Can there possibly be someone besides me in Josiah that’s hard to categorise?

‘Good question,’ Hector sneered.  This did not help.

‘Hector,’ Mom whispered. 

‘Huh?’

‘Sammy is a boy.  Dad settled my question with a long drink from his usual before supper beer. 

‘For now maybe,’ Hector jeered then threw a side-long glance at me, grinning. 

‘Drop it, Hector,’ Dad snapped.  But I still had questions.

‘Why can’t Hector touch…err.  Sammy?’

‘Len,’ Mom whined.

 ‘As if I would!’ Hector winced. 

‘Make sure you don’t,’ Dad warned. 

‘But why?’ I wondered.

Dad explained that gays had a disease they could pass on if people touched them or sneezed on them.  According to Dad, you could die if you touched a gay person.  I was a little worried about the possibility of being infected by a deadly disease, but that wasn’t my main question three years ago. 

‘What’s a gay?’ asked eleven-year-old me.

‘A freak!’ retorted fourteen-year-old Hector.

Hector called me a freak on an almost daily basis.  Did that mean I was gay?  Did I have a disease?  That might explain a lot of things.

‘They’re monsters,’ Hector added. 

‘Hector,’ Dad hissed, and my brother fell silent. 

‘Someone who is gay,’ Mom began, paused, sipped her wine, then continued, ‘is someone who likes…umm…’ she faltered, took another sip of wine.  ‘A boy who chooses to have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend.’

‘But Hector’s got boyfriends,’ I protested, still confused. 

‘No I don’t!’ shrieked Hector. 

‘What about Riaz and—

‘Riaz!’  Hector’s face screwed up in horror and disgust.  ‘He’s my friend not my boyfriend.  I’m not going to f—’  Dad hissed and Hector hesitated, then continued, ‘fornicate with him and kiss him and…’  Hector trailed off and mimed puking into his open palms then wiping imaginary vomit on his jeans. 

‘What’s forni—

‘That’s enough,’ growled Dad.  He rose unsteadily from the table, crossed to the refrigerator and selected his second bottle of beer.  ‘I don’t want anyone talking about it in this house.’

With that, Dad closed the fridge and the subject.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about Sammy Strader.  Apparently, he was a boy, but I still wasn’t totally clear what “gay” meant.  I tried to look up “fornicate” in my Dictionary for Kids but wasn’t sure how to spell it.  The only thing I found for “gay” was: “happy or jolly”.  That made no sense.  If Sammy was jolly, why did the topic of Sammy make everyone in the house angry?

How did Hector know Sammy was gay?  Did someone touch Sammy and die?  Was it in the newspaper? 

Mom and Dad read The Josiah Journal every morning.  Hector skimmed it for articles featuring himself (Honor Rolls, Soccer team results, announcements of concerts he was going to play in or had just played in).  I read the comics and tried the crossword puzzles, but I never read the news before.  If everyone knew about Sammy Strader—if he had killed someone, that would have made the front page of the Journal.  And maybe I could learn more about this gay plague Dad warned Hector about it.  

That night, I read all nine pages of The Josiah Journal news section but found nothing about Sammy Strader or gays or plagues.  Until three weeks later. 

It wasn’t in The Josiah Journal.  It was in The Gazette, Griffin College’s student newspaper.  But I didn’t read it in the Gazette, I read it on my bedroom door, where Hector glued the article so I wouldn’t miss it. 

October 25^th, 1983.

Student Attacked on High School Football Field

In the early hours of Saturday morning, police were alerted to a public disturbance near the football field of Josiah High School. Adam Jones, Jamie Smith and Seth Wilson were taken into police custody by the arresting officers for the assault of a fourth student, Samuel Strader. 

Strader was rushed to Josiah General Hospital.  The victim, aged 17, appeared to have suffered multiple injuries to his face, legs and torso, allegedly inflicted by Jones, Smith and Wilson. 

“They assaulted him just because of who he is.  For daring to be himself,’ quoted Katie Strader, a Griffin College freshman and sister of the victim.  ‘Sammy has received threats.  Anti-gay messages painted on his car and on his locker.  They called him a girl and said they would make a man out of him.”

‘This is crime of hatred,’ stated Griffin College’s Gay-Straight Alliance President Brian Marks.  ‘Sammy came to us for support and this is what happened.’

Josiah High School Principle George Wilson refused to comment on the actions of his students or his son, Seth. No charges have been pressed against Jones, Smith or Wilson. 

I read the article, hands shaking, tearing the edges of the fragile newsprint.  Certain words and phrases stood out.  Anti-gay. Because of who he is. Multiple injuries.  And over and over again: they said they’d make a man out of him.

Don’t tell me monsters aren’t real.  Jones.  Smith.  Wilson.  A three-headed hydra.  Cerberus at the gates of Hades.  Why hurt him?  Did they think Sammy would pass on this gay plague?  And what’s a Gay-Straight Alliance?  Some kind of chivalric order?  

I sat at the old wood and metal one-piece school desk that used to be my Grandpa’s.  Under the seat was a compartment where I kept drawing paper, coloured pencils, stickers and notebooks.  Aside from my bed, my viola and my small collection of stuffed animals, this desk was my favourite thing in my room.  That night, after reading the news article Hector left on my door, I wedged myself into the desk which, by this time, was way too small for me.  I sat the desk with my paper and my crayons and coloured a better image of the world to erase the one of Sammy Strader bleeding behind the bleachers. 

 ‘Do you think it worked, Helen?’

I heard Hector’s voice around the edge of my door.  Ignoring his use of my full, feminine name, I chose a golden yellow coloured pencil and returned to my half-finished picture of a sunflower.  Hector crossed the threshold into my room.

‘Go away.’  I carefully outlined the sunflower, struggling to keep my hand steady.

‘Sammy Strader.’  Hector closed my bedroom door behind him.  ‘They didn’t just beat up that fag.  They did things to him.  Things you don’t understand yet.  But you will.’ 

‘Go away,’ I repeated, pressing my pencil harder to the page, trying to block Hector.  I had a lot of sunflower to colour and I didn’t want to hear this. 

‘You think they made a man out of that girl?’ Hector closed the distance between us.  ‘He’s a real brother to you, isn’t he?  More than me.’  I kept my eyes on my sunflower, tracing each spiky, golden petal.  ‘I know what you are,’ Hector whispered.  They’ll know too.  Jones.  Smith.  Wilson.  Everyone.  Maybe they’ll make a man out of you.’ 

Hector yanked the pencil out of my hand and snapped it.   Two shards of golden yellow fell on my unfinished picture.  Like he’d broken a sunbeam—my own, precious sunbeam—right in front of my face. 

That was the moment Hector first unleashed my monster.

My face burned.  Red hot.  So hot.  I knew if f I opened my mouth, fire would pour from it and burn my brother to a crisp.  Heat singed my throat as it travelled from my head to my shoulders, down arms and across fingers that, until recently, held a stick of gold between them.  My anger burned so hot it scared me. 

  A monster in me.  

That’s what it felt like.  A growling, angry thing stirred under my skin.  Hungry for meat dangling just out of reach. 

I uncoiled my legs from under the desk and stood on the chair I’d been sitting on.  It made me taller than Hector by a head.  His head. 

Off with his head! the monster inside me roared.

I launched myself at him. Unfortunately, my inner monster, blind with rage and hunger, wasn’t very co-ordinated.  I tripped on the table part of my desk and brought the whole thing down on me and my brother.  We tangled in the desk, but it didn’t stop us.  Coloured pencils and coloured pages flew everywhere, but we didn’t stop.  I cried and kicked.  Hector screamed and punched.  We unleashed the worst cuss words we knew. 

Don’t fuck with my monster!

I don’t know how long Hector and my monster fought each other and the desk before Dad awkwardly separated us.  Hector blackened my eye with his elbow.  My beast made his knee swell up like a grapefruit.  The desk survived unharmed. 

That was the first time I remember feeling angry.  More than angry.  Like a vicious thing living inside me was let it out of its cage. 

‘I’m a monster,’ eleven-year-old me sobbed at my father while I picked up my desk.  ‘I’m cursed and there’s a monster inside me.’ 

I cried and tried to put the pieces of my room back together.  Almost half my coloured pencils were broken; my drawing book buckled and warped.  Dad sat on my bed and said nothing.  Normally when I was upset, Dad would comfort me with words or hugs, stories or tickles, ice-cream or hot chocolate, but he said and did nothing that night.  He just sat on my bed with the Griffin Gazette news article clutched in his hand. 

‘Dad?’

My voice tip-toed, unsure how much trouble I was in for—technically—starting a fight with my brother.  I waited for Dad to look at me, talk to me, yell at me.  His eyes locked on the news clipping.  His hands—his large, hard, loving, capable, hairy at the knuckles hands—shook slightly. 

‘This won’t be you,’ Dad trembled.  ‘This won’t ever be you.’

‘OK,’ I mumbled numbly. 

‘You hear me, Len?’  When Dad finally looked up at me, his blue eyes burned fiercely.  Like there was a monster inside him too, scorching his edges.   With scaly paws, he screwed up the newspaper clipping until it became a tiny, insignificant ball between his claws. ‘Don’t let this be you.’

Three years later, Josiah still sings The Saga of Sammy Strader.  He left but we didn’t forget him.  His story remains a cautionary tale.  The moral is pretty obvious: don’t be gay.

Corn Zombie

It’s PRIDE MONTH!  In honour of the occasion, and because it’s been way too long since I’ve posted, I will be giving you weekly extracts from my work in progress tentatively titled Some Kind of Something.  Though set in the mid 1980s America, I feel like the emotions and situations of my main character Len/Lenny/Helen remain relevant.  Growing up and falling in love are complicated enough without questions of queerness and identity and, while things are much better now than they were, the world continues to challenge anyone who is different.  This is a work in progress, so feedback is appreciated.

The first time Dad ordered me into the car without explanation was after my first panic attack on my first day of high school.  Because who wouldn’t have a panic attack on their first day of high school?  Josiah High was basically designed to be a red brick panic fortress. 

The almost one-hundred-year-old building takes up an entire block between First and Second Street of Josiah Avenue.  Six mighty brownstone columns stretch across the front of the school like stone cold sentries.  The peculiarly shaped scrolls at the top of each pillar resemble clenched fists—as if the school is ready to throw down a gauntlet at your feet or, more likely, on your head, should you chose to infiltrate its hallowed grounds.

Like every good medieval fortress of torture, Josiah High comes with its own moat infested with dangerous monsters.  It’s called the student parking lot.  If you manage to dodge the slings and arrows of cigarette butts flicked at you by the ring of smoking ogres that surround it; if you ably avoid the nyphos making out in their shining metallic pick-up truck bowers without seeing anything so blindingly horrifying that it seals your eternal virginity, then—and only then—will you face your final hurdle: the teachers.  Don’t make eye-contact.  Their death stares drain the souls of all who dare. 

On my first day of high school, I perched by the Second Street sidewalk as my world inhaled sharply around me.  My skin broke out in cold sweat.  My heart exploded. 

It was obvious what was happening.  I was turning into a werewolf. 

The signs had been there for a year.  Monthly mood swings, blood, unexplained rages.  It didn’t matter that it was broad daylight with a crescent moon clearly visible in the sky, any minute now I would transform into a thirsty beast and devour the entire student body. 

Lycanthropy is stress related, not just moon related.  There is plenty of mythological evidence for this, I rationalised.  I must avoid crowds and stress. I can’t possibly be trusted around the hormonal tasty treats of Josiah High.

I need a bathroom.  Somewhere to calm down, throw up, freak out.  Whatever.

Nothing looked like a bathroom.  I walked past classrooms that smelled like old books, classrooms that smelled like chemicals, classrooms that smelled like pencil shavings.  Where, I asked myself, was the room that reeked of urine and peace?

A giggling frosted blonde in a pink minidress asked me if I was lost.  Two other pastel-clad girls with similarly frosted, teased and tortured hair flanked Miss Pink.  They looked like a coven of bitter flower fairy witches.  I told them I was looking for the bathroom.

 ‘Which one?’ asked Pink.  The other members of her coven giggled.  

‘Nearest one,’ I croaked. 

‘Which one?’ Pink repeated.  More laughter from the coven.  I said nothing.  Pink sighed in annoyance at having to spell it out for me.  ‘Do you need the little boy’s room or the little girl’s room?’

Something spiked inside.  Adrenaline, magic, panic, werewolf rage.  Whatever.  My face burned as Miss Pink and her coven of wicked witches looked me up and down trying to figure me out.  They laughed. 

Oh, very original.  Witch, you think you’re the first person not to know what to make of me?  Screw you.  Screw your coven.  Screw every bathroom sign in this school! 

I marched away, intent on completing my quest for the bathroom.  Hot on my heels, the three cackling witches followed.  I tried to lose them, but they wouldn’t give up.  They chased me through floor after floor, down corridors and up stairways chanting: ‘which one, which one, which one’ and laughing their frosty heads off.’ 

After hearing about my horrible day, Dad ordered me into the car.  I hoped we were going out for ice cream, instead, he drove to a cornfield outside town.  Josiah is surrounded by corn fields—like a defensive maize maze.  After parking at the edge of the field, Dad ordered me out of the car.  Soon I stood amidst the sad remains of what, a month or two ago, would have been a crowd of corn plants taller than me.  Now, it was a field of pathetic, post-harvest corn corpses.

‘See this?’ Dad asked, ‘This is you.’ 

‘I’m a corn zombie?’

‘No,’ he grinned.  ‘You’re outstanding in your field.’

‘Daaaaaaaad,’ I groaned.

‘Outstanding in your field,’ he insisted.  ‘That’s how you should be.  You should stand tall and above it all.’ 

Stand tall and above it all.  Be outstanding in your field.  I’m not sure I am, Dad.  Not yet.  But I want to be. 

The Dandelion Fairy

It’s PRIDE MONTH!  In honour of the occasion, and because it’s been way too long since I’ve posted, I will be giving you weekly extracts from my work in progress tentatively titled Some Kind of Something.  Though set in the mid 1980s America, I feel like the emotions and situations of my main character Len/Lenny/Helen remain relevant.  Growing up and falling in love are complicated enough without questions of queerness and identity and, while things are much better now than they were, the world continues to challenge anyone who is different. 

This is a work in progress, so feedback is appreciated.

 

There was a girl in my pre-school that wanted to be a boy.  Lasandra Guthrie.  She was the tallest, blackest four-going-on-five-year-old girl I had ever met with hair that added at least half a foot to her height—an explosion of head fluff that made her look, to four-going-on-five-year-old me, like a dandelion fairy.

‘Are you a dandelion fairy?’ I asked her.

‘Yes,’ she confessed without batting an eyelash.

‘Cool.’

‘I’m Larry,’ she asserted.

‘But isn’t your name—

‘I am not Lasandra anymore.  I want to be a boy and that boy’s name is Larry.’

‘Can you really do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Become a boy?’

‘My mom says I can be anything I want to be.’

‘Mine too.’

This was a lie.  My mother suggested a range of options for my future, but they were limited.  With those hands, you’ll be a pianist.  You’re going to be tall like a fashion model.  You’re so kind—you’ll make a great mother someday.

‘Can I be a boy too?’ I asked Larry.

‘Not with a name like Helen you can’t.’

‘What about Lenny?  I could be Lenny.  Larry and Lenny.’  I liked the sound of those names together.

‘Copycat,’ sneered Larry.

‘Am not.’

‘Are to.’

And so on.

Larry’s hair obsessed me.  I got in trouble at least three times a day for trying to touch it.  Larry would slap my hand away and say: ‘You ain’t allowed!’  This made me wonder if Larry’s hair, like mine, was cursed.

My earliest memories of are of Mom doing things to my hair: brushing it, patting it, stroking it, arranging it, sticking things in it, washing it, spraying it with mysterious substances.  Never cutting it.  Never.  No one was allowed scissors around me.  Like Sleeping Beauty’s spinning wheels, scissors took on a dark, supernatural aura of horror.

‘How could anyone think of cutting this?’ Mom would croon.

She wasn’t wrong.  I’ve seen the photographs: perfect, pale golden curls twisted and tumbled artistically around my plump, cherubic face.  Fairy tale hair.

‘Like an angel,’ said Mom.

‘Little Shirley Temple,’ said Grandma.

Except my hair refused to grow.  It curled around my ears and tickled the back of my neck, but never reached further.  Year after year after year the same exact length.  It grew darker, morphing from pale gold to tawny gold, eventually, settling on a dusky shade of sand.  But it never grew longer.

Mom tried everything.  Special foods.  Hair tonics.  Potions.  Spells.  Nothing worked.  My hair stayed permanently short, dooming me, along with my taller height, deeper voice and angular features, to forever being mistaken for a boy.

I often imagine an androgynous fairy waving a magic brush over my cradle: “Your daughter will be blessed with hair of finest spun gold that never grows as she gets old; though you may encase her in frilly dresses, it shall not lengthen out her tresses; gift her, if you will, with dolly toys, but she’ll only want to play with boys.”

And so on.

This is why people forever play the What Are You? game with me.  Are you a boy?  Are you a girl?  What bathroom do you use?  Everyone wants to label me pink or blue.

Grandma Mouse says: “Tell them: I’m lavender, honey and you best beware the sting of my bees.”

That mostly confuses them which gives me enough time to run.

Stake: an extract

It’s PRIDE MONTH!  In honour of the occasion, and because it’s been way too long since I’ve posted, I will be giving you weekly extracts from my work in progress tentatively titled Some Kind of Something.  Though set in the mid 1980s America, I feel like the emotions and situations of my main character Len/Lenny/Helen remain relevant. Growing up and falling in love are complicated enough without questions of queerness and identity and, while things are much better now than they were, the world continues to challenge anyone who is different.

This is a work in progress, so feedback is appreciated. If you think it’s too gushy or preachy, let me know. If you think: oh, wow—I’ve had this same conversation in my head, let me know that too.

Daisy, Len’s best friend, has just confronted her about her feelings for another girl, Althea. Even though Daisy tries to reassure Len that being in love with another girl is no big deal, they argue over Daisy’s attempt to shove Len out of the closet.

As I’m about to leave school, I find a carefully folded note in my locker. I know it’s from Daisy because of the “Happy Birthday” handwriting. She used origami witchcraft to force the paper into the shape of a triangle, smeared the triangle with neon pink highlighter then drew two purple violets in the middle, their petals crossing so it looks like they’re holding hands. Whether the violets are meant to represent me and Daisy or me and Althea, I’ll never know because I’m too enraged by the pink triangle to ask.

That’s when I dent my locker for the second time in one day. At least I manage to hit the same spot. My knuckles don’t thank me for it though.

Does she think I won’t get it?

I sat right next to Daisy in Modern European History the day Mr Snowden covered the classifications of concentration camp prisoners—gold stars and every colour of triangle. I know what the pink one means. She knows I know what the pink one means. If anyone else put this in my locker, I’d think they did it to be cruel, but Daisy did it and I can’t think why. If she doesn’t stop, she’s going to spoil the whole Althea thing.

Don’t let her, growls the rageful monster inside me. It doesn’t usually talk, but it has a lot to say today. She doesn’t choose for you.

But that’s the problem, I explain to my inner beast, I don’t get to choose.

In my heart, I know Daisy thinks she’s helping me come to terms with a version of me she’s imagined. Shoving me out of the closet she’s created into the pink triangle spotlight where I’ll live as her imaginary free and happy little lesbian. But it’s not her spotlight. I already live in an unwanted spotlight and most of the school already thinks I’m gay or lesbian depending on whether they see me as a boy or a girl. They can’t decide what’s in my pants, but they still care who gets in them with me.

Thinks is the operative word here. They think I’m a lesbian. It’s their label. Not mine. But if I were to claim that label for myself—stand up to them and say: yeah, that’s me and, oh by the way here’s my girlfriend; what you gonna do about it? Then they would know I’m a lesbian. And there is a big difference between people thinking you might be and people knowing you are because you’ve said it out loud and proud.

It’s all very well for Daisy. She’s got nothing at stake here and she won’t be the one tied to it. Me? I’ve got a stake hanging over me like a Damocles sword and a town full of pitchfork-wielding villagers hot for a reason to burn me on it.

And, the truth is, I don’t know how I feel. It’s complicated to think about boys because half the time I feel half-boy. Half-boy but not at all boy. Thinking about girls is just as confusing because I’m a non-girl—which is not the same thing as being a boy. I know other girls make a point of not undressing anywhere near me in the locker room. I also know they watch me when they think I’m not looking. And I know what’s at stake if I say anything to them about it.

So, I ask my monster, what am I supposed to make of all that?

Don’t care what they think, my monster grunts.

Which is exactly why I wear headphones so I can’t hear what they have to say and keep my head down so I can’t see how they look at me, I explain to my slightly soothed savage beast. It’s not a nice way to live, but it’s safe.

Then came Althea: funny, fierce, talented, smart, pretty, wild, magical Althea who can do anything. From the moment she found me on the bench outside Prairie Hall and decided it didn’t matter what I was and every moment since then. She treats me like a person—not a boy or a girl or straight or gay, but just a person she likes to be with. And that’s enough for me. Being her friend is enough.

But Len, I hear Daisy plead, if you could only see. You light up around her.

This is probably true, but I’m not sure it’s true for the reason Daisy thinks it’s true. The truth is that half the time I don’t know if I want to be with Althea or to be Althea. I don’t know if I’m her friend or her apprentice. Either way, maybe she’s training me to be a new version of myself? But it can’t be more than that. It can’t be like Daisy wants it to be. I don’t want to burn at the stake and I don’t want to see Althea flaming at the stake next to me.