Together We Will Go

by J. Michael Straczynski

  Funny how fast group dynamics change when somebody new enters the circle. Lisa had just started to calm down when Theresa and Jim got on board and now she’s back up to ninety. Totally pissed. And I can sort of understand it. Everything about the newbies says Death Tourists, like they’re just acting out and not as serious about this as everybody else. Lisa refers to them as TheresaAndJim, one word without a breath in between because they’re always together. They’re not even trying to engage with the others, which makes them feel even more like outsiders.

  Theresa’s one of those people who seems nervous all the time, super thin with long auburn hair she combs straight like a curtain and is constantly peeking past it to see if anyone’s looking at her. Of course the more she does that, the more we’re all looking at her and the more nervous she gets. Jim seems like a nice guy, maybe too nice to be with someone who is clearly high-maintenance. He’s always talking low and reassuring her and getting her sodas or munchies from the cooler when she could just as easily get them herself. And she’s constantly holding his hand but not in a romantic way. Some people hold the other person’s hand like they want you to know She’s with me, all protective, while others want you to know I’m with her, because they’re proud or maybe showing off a little. With Theresa, it’s like I’m holding your hand to keep from falling off the earth, which is weird.

  So yeah, I can see where Lisa’s coming from, and I’m not sure she’s wrong, but for now I’m going to let them stay and see what happens. They still haven’t entered anything into the group chat, which is a requirement for staying on board, so I can always use that as grounds to boot them out if things get too tense.

  As to the other newcomers… I’m not sure what to make of Theo, but I suspect that’s kind of the point. Shanelle is super friendly, an easy laugher full of energy who won everybody over in five minutes. Zeke seems okay, but my antennae are up. He’s pale and way skinny, with a backpack twice his size, a beat-up old army jacket, and a tangle of blond hair that doesn’t seem to know which way it wants to go. First time he smiled and I saw his teeth, it was the smile of a meth addict, but for now he seems straight and friendly and funny in a goofy, almost shy kind of way, so he may fit in fine with the rest of the group.

  And just when I finally started to fall asleep, this showed up:

  * * *

  Username: IamTheo

  Most of my friends put their preferred pronoun in their Instagram bios—he/she, him/her, they/their—but I respond to any and all of them. I like to think of it as collecting pronouns: the more I get, the more fun I’m having. To get the obvious out of the way, because that’s apparently important to people, I think of myself as post-gender. I was trying to figure out how to explain that because sometimes it’s a paragraph and sometimes it’s a term paper depending on who I’m talking to, and I have no idea who will be reading this in the aftermath. Then I noticed that one of my fellow passengers has a cat with him, and that’s perfect.

  When you visit a friend and find they have a cat, you just see it as a cat in all its pure catness, it doesn’t require further definition. You’ll probably get a name, and if you ask, whether it was born male or female, but even after you have that information you still don’t think of it any differently. It’s not a He-Cat or a She-Cat or a They-Cat. It’s just a cat. And unless the cat’s name has any gender-specific connotations you’ll probably forget pretty fast which gender it was born into.

  My name is Theo, and by that logic, I am a cat.

  What I was or was not born into has nothing to do with how I see myself. It’s not about going from one gender to another, or suggesting that they don’t exist. Some of my friends say that the moment you talk about gender you invalidate the conversation because you’re accepting the limits of outmoded paradigms, but I’m not sure I agree with that. I just think gender shouldn’t matter.

  If you’re a man, aren’t there moments when you feel more female, like when you’re listening to music, or your cheek is being gently stroked, or you see a spectacularly handsome man walk into the room? If you’re a woman, aren’t there moments when you feel more male, when you have to be strong in the face of conflict, or stand behind your opinion, or when a spectacularly beautiful woman walks into the room? Well, in those moments, you are all of those things, so why deny that part of yourself?

  For me, it’s not about being binary or non-binary. It’s about moving the needle to the center of the dial and accepting all definitions as equally true while remaining free to shift in emphasis from moment to moment. It’s about being a Person, not a She-Person or a He-Person or a They-Person.

  There are three parts to this: how I see myself, who I’m attracted to, and how I’m seen by the world that I have to live in. The first I can manifest on my own, the second is what it is, and I have no control over the third. So I live and thrive in the space between them.

  So I’m just Theo, which could be short for Theodore, or Theodora, or anything else that fits. And yes, I have a last name, but it has not been kind to me so I left it behind. Technically it remains on documents because it’s a legal identifier, but it doesn’t define me; it has no more to do with who I am than my social security number.

  When you go into a clothing store, you don’t just go to the “one size fits all” rack. You look for clothes that fit your waist, hips, legs, chest, and neck, clothes that complement your form and shape, and reflect not just how you see yourself but how you want to be seen by others. If it’s still not quite right, and you can afford it, you get the clothes tailored to fit exactly who you are.

  That’s what I’m doing. Post-gender is one term for it. Another might be tailored gender. Maybe bespoke gender. But definitely not one-size-fits-all. The world doesn’t get to decide what best fits who I am and how I choose to be seen. I do.

  So rather than let the world define me, I’ve chosen, in an admittedly grandiose sort of way, to define myself. Unfortunately the world does not always take kindly to self-definition. You’re all unique, we’re told in school, but as soon as we try to be unique the world insists that we have to conform, to act like everyone else or face the consequences. Not to put too fine a point on it, this world sucks. So a few years ago, to preserve what little remains of my sanity, I began writing stories, just for myself, about a world that is better than the one I was born into. Fairer, gentler, and more decent; honorable and just; a place of clear streams, blue skies, and silver cities, free of cruelty and meanness of spirit. A place where the bullies and the hurtful can never find me.

  Viewed through the lens of those stories, this is not a bus and we are not driving on a road. It is a ship with golden sails taking me across the sea to the great cities I have created with my thoughts, where I can simply be who I choose to be. A place where I will finally be free.

  And it will be beautiful.

  * * *

  LIsa

  From: Debbie Rousseau drousseau@aol.com

  To: Lisa Rousseau lisarousseau@ccop.edu

  Subject: Washing my hands of you

  I was cleaning the front room and found the note you left for your father. How selfish you are. How destructive. Mean doesn’t even begin to describe you. Cruel, maybe. Assuming this isn’t just another of your “moments” of acting out, do you have any idea what this is going to do to him? Of course you do. That’s why you’re doing it. It’s not enough that you kept hurting him when he was just trying to help—you want to hurt him even more by letting him know what you’re going to do and then making sure he can’t save you, because you know that’s what he’s going to want to do. Not that you WANT to be saved. Not that you CARE about him or me or anyone but YOURSELF. You never have. Selfish.

  That’s what suicide is, you know. It’s selfish and self-indulgent, the easy way out for you, but the hard way for everybody else. You never gave a single goddamn thought to how this will affect the people who will have to clean up your mess and keep going after you’re dead, because it’s all about YOU, because you always MAKE i
t all about you. It’s what narcissists DO. I said that three years ago when I married your father and saw the kind of person you were then, and it’s even more true now.

  Well, I want you to know that I’m not going to show him your note. I’m going to burn it. I don’t want him to sit here frantic and upset waiting for the news about how and when and where you died. You don’t deserve the chance to say anything to him, not after what you’ve done and what you’re doing.

  You want my advice, not that you’ve ever taken it? If you really are going to kill yourself, do it someplace where the body won’t be found, so your father will never have to know what happened and the rest of the family won’t have to put up with the scandal. And if he does find out about it, me getting rid of your note will save him the burden of thinking he could have done anything to stop you.

  Don’t bother to respond. I’m blocking your email address as well as your number on both our phones, so you can’t call or text him—not that you will because you’re too much of a COWARD.

  Do whatever you’re going to do. I really don’t care anymore.

  * * *

  Username: SunnyShanelle

  Hi, my name is Shanelle Rose and I just turned 21 last June. Glad to be here! What a crazy and beautiful idea!!! I can’t wait to get to know everybody better before we do the Big Jump together!

  Last year, my therapist asked me to write a short essay about my past and why I started hurting myself. So if it’s okay I’m going to copy and paste that here, just to get things going. I’m looking forward to the journaling, though. That should be fun!

  Okay, here goes!

  I was born in Middleton, Wisconsin, which is about twenty minutes west of Madison. My dad was a welder for a company that made custom cars, and my mom worked sales at Macy’s during the day and sometimes waitressed at night when we needed to fill in the gaps.

  We moved from Middleton to Fitchburg after an incident with some white guys who ran a gas station down the street from our apartment. My dad didn’t talk about it much, but it was enough for him to pack us up in the middle of the night and move out. He said that even the worst part of a small town would be safer for a family than any of the nicer parts of Middleton. Even so, Mama didn’t let me hang out with other kids until I was old enough to go to school, and if she could’ve kept me home even then, I think she would have.

  There were only a few black families in Fitchburg, so on my first day of school Mama said there might be some problems because I probably wouldn’t look like anybody else in my class. She was right, but not for the reasons she thought. From across the street, in a hat or a hood, you couldn’t always tell I was black. But you could for sure tell that I was fat.

  Before I started going to school, being fat was something I never really thought about. My dad was a big guy, had to be to push around all that steel he worked on. Mama used to say that she wasn’t fat, she was big-boned, and just had more bones than anybody else, which I believed because at that age I didn’t know how many bones people were supposed to have. Gramma? Big. Grampa? Big. Runs in the family. Well, waddles. My dad used to joke that when we joined hands for dinner prayer, we looked like an eclipse.

  “If anybody says anything about your color, you just smile and keep on walking,” Mama said as she dressed me in new clothes for the beginning of first grade. In the pictures, I’m wearing a pink pullover sweater and jeans with glitter-butterflies on the back pockets. “You got a sunny disposition, baby girl, and that’ll get you through anything bad and bring lots of good people to stand with you on your side.”

  We’d had this talk many times, so I was ready, I was prepared, I knew exactly what I should and shouldn’t do if anybody gave me a hard time for being black.

  What we never talked about was what to do when the other kids called me fat, which they started doing the second I got off the school bus.

  “Fatty!” one of the boys yelled as I started up the sidewalk. “Hey, fatty-fat-fat!”

  Other kids picked it up, yelling “Fatty!” until the teachers hustled everyone inside.

  I refused to cry about it until I got home, then I just let go as my mama held me and rocked me back and forth. She went with me to school the next day to talk to the teachers, and they said they’d put a stop to it.

  But it kept right on happening anyway. Worse yet, the other kids started going after my mama for being fat, too. Which is how I got into my first fight.

  “They had it coming,” Mama said when I was sent home early. “Don’t worry, baby girl, kids like these have no attention span. Give it time, they’ll get tired of picking on you and find somebody else.”

  It was the right thing to say.

  It just wasn’t true.

  There’s a lot of good about growing up in a small town where everyone knows everybody else from way back. But there’s also a lot of bad, and the worst is that once they decide who you are and what you are, that’s all you are, ever. When you’re the fat girl or the ugly girl or the poor girl at five years old, it doesn’t change when you hit twelve or fifteen. It’s who you are, and anybody who wants to treat you different has to fight their way through years of you’re not hanging out with HER, are you? Kids are cruel, they move in packs, and who you are is all about who’s in your posse. Nobody wants to get second-hand fat all over them, or second-hand ugly, or second-hand poor. Easier to stay in your own pack.

  Starting in fifth grade, we did Valentine’s Day cards for class, but I never got one because, as one of the other girls told me, “Nobody sends hearts to chubbies.” I pretended I didn’t care. Then in seventh grade, as the cards got passed around, there was one with my name on it! I was so excited to think that somebody liked me. But when I opened the card, there was a picture of a hippopotamus with APRIL FOOLS! written on the other side.

  After that, I begged my parents to move somewhere, anywhere else, but we were stuck where we were.

  I tried losing weight. I’d go days without eating until I was ready to pass out, but every time I looked at the scale, nothing changed. So I gave up and began eating more. If they were going to call me fat, I might as well go for it.

  I wasn’t invited to parties or dances. Nobody called to say, Hey, let’s go to the mall. Things might have been a little better if I was white, because it seems like everything is, but to be a fat black girl in a small town that was 99.99999% white folks? Forget it.

  High school was even worse, because it was the same kids from elementary, but now older and meaner. Some of them broke into my school locker and smeared everything with dog shit. Other times, girls would trip me during gym so I’d look stupid when I fell, then yell that a whale had beached itself on the racquetball court. They’d wait in the hall and follow me, making fun of me and knocking my books out of my arms and pinning me against the wall or pulling my hair until I cried.

  Girl bullies are worse than boy bullies. If a boy beats up another boy, he gets bruised or maybe it goes too far and he breaks an arm and then the cops get called and the bullies wind up in a lot of trouble, so they usually don’t go that far. Still, it’s all on the outside. Girl bullies are just as hard on the outside, but they also know how to hurt you in all the soft places on the inside, where you thought you were safe.

  Halfway through my junior year, I couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t even remember what set me off, or if it was any one thing. I think it was just the All Of It that finally tipped me over, and I was tired and I was done and when the bell rang for lunch I went home while I knew my parents were out working and swallowed every pill I could find in Mama’s bathroom.

  I woke up later in the hospital with my dad and mama. She was crying, and he had this stone-statue look on his face, real hard, like one of those Easter Island statues, but his eyes kept leaking the whole time. After that they took me out of class for a while and I saw a therapist twice a week. The teachers said they’d make sure that nobody in school heard about the suicide attempt, but when I finally came back, the first girl I saw, one of
the worst bullies, knocked my books away and said, Oooh, drama queen, gonna kill yourself. Next time, call me and I’ll make sure you finish the job, bitch.

  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. No prom date, no corsage, and graduation was just a party with my dad and mama and some of our relatives who came into town for the day.

  Anyway, that’s as far as I wrote for the therapist. I need to get some sleep now, but I’ll write more as soon as I get a chance. I hope I’ll fit in with everyone. If it helps, I have a sunny disposition!

  * * *

  Hi, I’m Audio Recorder!

  Tap the icon to start recording.

  MARK ANTONELLI: Hey, Zeke, got a second?

  ZEKE: Yeah, sure. We’re not getting breakfast?

  MARK ANTONELLI: In a bit. I wanted to talk to you about something first.

  ZEKE: You recording this?

  MARK ANTONELLI: Just want to get clear on a few things.

  ZEKE: Okay, cool, cool.

  MARK ANTONELLI: Someone said you’ve got a cat in there.

  ZEKE: Yeah, Soldier. You want to see him?

  MARK ANTONELLI: No, you don’t have to—

  ZEKE: I fixed my bag up for him special, put holes in the sides, see, and a place where he can lie down.

  MARK ANTONELLI: It’s just that we can’t have pets on here, Zeke.

  ZEKE: The form didn’t say that.

  MARK ANTONELLI: No, but it’s common sense, I mean, once we’re gone, there won’t be anyone to take care of anybody’s pet and that’s cruel, so—

  ZEKE: Here he is. Say hi, Soldier.

  MARK ANTONELLI: Is he okay? He looks—

  ZEKE: Yeah, I know. And no, he’s not. But he’s got spirit, don’t you, pal?

  MARK ANTONELLI: What’s wrong with him?

  ZEKE: Kidney disease. Way advanced. Blood levels are like off the scale. Spent pretty much the last of my money finding that out.