The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart

by R. Zamora Linmark

  “You got us all worried,” CaZZ says. “You’ve never been late before.”

  “Yeah, what’s going on, Ken Z-licious?” Estelle says.

  “I overslept,” I say.

  “What? Ken Z? Overslept? I don’t believe it,” CaZZ says, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Something’s different about you?” Estelle says. “I can’t put my butterfinger on it. But you look…um…”

  “I saw it, too,” CaZZ jumps in. “Soon as he came in. He has a bounce to his walk, like the universe only weighs an ounce.” Pause. “Ken Z?” She pauses again, waits for me to respond. I don’t. “What happened this weekend?” she finally says.

  “Nothing,” I say, then, more convincingly: “I swear.”

  CaZZ isn’t buying it.

  Neither is Estelle. She usually comes to my defense whenever I’m being drilled by CaZZ, but this time, she’s on her side.

  Finally, I let the cat out of the bag. “Okay, if you must know…I went to Mirage,” I say.

  CaZZ gasps in shock.

  “You did what?” Estelle says.

  “What the heck, Ken Z?” CaZZ says. “Why?”

  “We already told you that place is hatrocious,” Estelle says, spewing a word from Estelle’s Dictionary of Made-Up Words.

  “Those racist pigs turned us away, remember?” CaZZ says.

  “Because of their stupid dress code,” Estelle adds.

  “I know,” I say.

  “I thought you didn’t care about the place,” Estelle says.

  “You better have a good reason,” CaZZ interrupts.

  “If I tell you, you won’t believe it,” I say.

  “Try us,” CaZZ says.

  “I went there to…bunbury,” I say.

  “OMG, Ken Z,” CaZZ says, overlapping with Estelle’s “Seriousness?”

  I nod.

  “Which means you had to dress up,” CaZZ says.

  My yes prompts Estelle to ask if I took a selfie.

  “Get real, girl,” CaZZ says. “Ken Z can’t even be bothered to look at himself in the mirror.”

  “I wish I had been there,” Estelle says.

  I shake my head.

  “It wouldn’t be bunburying then,” I reason.

  “Yeah, Estelle,” CaZZ says. “The whole point of bunburying is to get away from everyone you know.”

  “True,” Estelle says.

  “So what did you bunbury as?”

  “An anthropologist”—I smile—“on a tight budget.”

  “Hilariousness,” Estelle says.

  “So how did it go?” CaZZ asks. “They treated you like shit?”

  “Yeah, prithee, tell us what they thinkest of thou,” Estelle says.

  “Surprisingly, they were nice.”

  “Nice-nice or fake nice?” CaZZ says.

  “I don’t know.” I shrug.

  “They probably thought you had money.”

  “I did. But lunch ate up all the money I had in my wallet,” I say. “So I went home. The End.”

  “How anticlimactic—” Estelle says.

  “Then…” I interrupt her, pausing just long enough to irk the heck out of them.

  “Then what?” CaZZ says, ready to yank the rest of the words out of me.

  “Ken Z, you’re killing us softly,” Estelle says.

  “Then I waited three hours for the bus,” I lie. Actually, the bus miraculously arrived shortly after I got to the bus stop.

  “That’s the punch line?” CaZZ says, disappointed.

  “Good cliff-hanger, Ken Z,” Estelle says, laughing.

  “Still,” CaZZ says, “that doesn’t explain why you have that dreamy look on your face.”

  This is the downside to having best friends. They know me so well they can see right through my daydreams.

  Finally, Estelle comes to my defense. “But he always has that glazed look in his eyes, especially when he’s got a haiku on his mind. Right, Ken Z?” She winks.

  This is the upside to having two best friends. One of them is bound to side with me. Usually it’s Estelle.

  “Look at that face,” CaZZ teases me. “Whatever world you’re in, Ken Z, it can’t get rid of that smile.”

  “What smile?” I say, and make a face.

  “You’re such a goofball,” CaZZ says.

  “Stop it, Ken Z,” Estelle says, “you look de-mental.”

  “You can’t wipe it away,” CaZZ says. “Because it’s in your eyes, too.”

  “Smeyes,” Estelle says, “and smose and smorehead and smears and swinks.”

  “Whatever,” I say, and roll my eyes.

  “It’s your aura, Ken Z,” CaZZ says.

  I shrug. “What aura?”

  “Who cares,” Estelle finally says. “Whatever zone you’re in, Ken Z, don’t leave it. It makes you really cute.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I still remember my first day of friendship with Estelle. Second grade. She had just moved to South Kristol from Saipan, the island closest to us. It and North Kristol are the alternative destinations for tourists who can’t afford to splurge in Hawaii or Guam.

  A group of boys were picking on me, taunting me with every synonym they could come up with for nerd. I paid no attention to them. I never understood the point in fighting back, especially when I was outnumbered. Besides, the rest of the world was already engaged in bloody, useless wars. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were a word war. But it would’ve still ended in punches and kicks, as their vocabulary was limited to hate.

  So I did what my mother always tells me whenever I want to punch the world in the face. I made a list and prayed that the hateful names left my body as soon as I wrote them down. Some did, others didn’t. Because I was—and still am—some of these names. I am a nerd, I am a bookworm, I am a geek.

  On that memorable day, Estelle told them to back off. Some did, two didn’t. Mike Perez and Jimmy Burns. Bullies then, cyberbullies now. They began taunting her. As any young girl would do when pushed to the edge, Estelle fought back. Mike threw the first punch and almost hit her in the face. She went with an uppercut and got him in the gut. Mike turned beet red. He doubled over. I thought he was going to die. We all did. Tears streamed down his face. While he gasped for air, the other bully, Jimmy, tried to kick Estelle from the side, but she caught his leg just in time, pulling it so hard he thudded on his butt. Everyone laughed. Estelle could’ve done more damage, but our teacher, hearing the clamor, rushed into the classroom. “Shame on you,” she scolded the boys, “picking on a girl.” The news smacked them hard in the face.

  Later that day, Estelle said, “Stick with me, Ken Z. We can protect each other.” Protect each other? I could never be her bodyguard. That’s what I thought at the time. But after nine years, I came to understand that being a friend doesn’t mean protecting someone from just physical pain but from emotional battles, too. Even if it simply means being there to listen and hand her a box of tissues when she had an unrequited crush on a girl. That is, when she wasn’t falling for a boy.

  * * *

  • • •

  Conjure up the past and it’ll slap you right in the face.

  That’s the minus of memory.

  It doesn’t only recall beauty; it also summons assholes—Mike Perez and Jimmy Burns. They strut into @ Wired and head for the restrooms. But not before they stop at our table.

  “Look, Jimmy, the faggots are here,” Mike says.

  “Freak I am, faggot I’m not,” CaZZ says. “Get it right, dumb and dumberest.”

  “What did you say?” Mike asks.

  “I said I’m a freak of nature for modern science to correct,” CaZZ says.

  Mike and Jimmy look at each other as if she’s lost her mind. If there is one thing that messes with bullie
s, it’s when their targets embrace the names meant to break them. I learned that from CaZZ. “They don’t have power over names, Ken Z,” she once told me. They lose it once the people they’re terrorizing take those names and make them theirs. Names like “queer,” “queen,” “freak,” “dyke,” “lesbo,” “trans.”

  Estelle laughs. “Dumb and dumberest. Good one, CaZZ.”

  “Shut it, lesbo.” Now it’s Jimmy’s turn to harass.

  “You two want a rematch?” Estelle asks. “Come on. Let’s go. One-on-one.”

  “Nah, I’m not into hitting tomboys,” Jimmy says.

  “Just say when, asshole,” Estelle says.

  “Whoa, dude, she just called you an asshole.” Mike laughs.

  “What?”

  “Ass. Hole,” Estelle enunciates. “Rhymes with black. Hole.”

  Estelle’s and CaZZ’s fighting spirits must’ve possessed me, because I tell Jimmy and Mike to scram.

  “Whoa, Minnie Mouse has a voice after all,” Mike says. “Stand up and say that.”

  I get up from my seat, surprising everyone, including myself. If there is one heroic moment in which I am going to stand up for my friends and look my assassins in the eye, it’s right here and now. Gutsy-glory thing to do, especially since I’ve never been in a fistfight before. My training as a boxer takes me as far as the front-row seat during screenings of all the Rocky movies.

  Mike looks me in the eye.

  CaZZ stands up, but it’s Estelle who steps between Mike and me.

  “Come on,” Estelle says, clenching one hand into a fist.

  “Next time,” Mike says. Then he and Jimmy turn and leave.

  We all sit back down.

  “Wow, Ken Z!” CaZZ says.

  “Yeah, Ken Z,” Estelle seconds, “wow!”

  “Wow what?” I ask.

  “What just happened,” CaZZ says. “Where did that come from?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know,” I say, though it feels like the right thing to have done.

  “First the bounce, then the smeyes, and now you almost got a black eye from Mike.” CaZZ laughs. “Pretty soon you’re going to be a kickboxer, like Estelle.”

  “I like this”—Estelle pauses as she searches for the perfect Estellar words—“brazening side of you, Ken Z.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say.

  “You know, I used to feel sorry for assholes like Mike and Jimmy,” CaZZ says, “because for all we know they’re getting bullied at home.”

  I look at CaZZ. The scars on her face are still visible. Someone sliced it with a broken beer bottle. To this day, no one knows who was behind the hate crime.

  She was already fierce when Estelle and I met her in seventh grade, but the constant bullying and beatings only made her tougher. She transferred to our school when the school on the Pula reservation shut down.

  Now she doesn’t care anymore. She figures if she’s going to get beaten again, she might as well die fighting. “I can’t let them win,” she told Estelle and me when we visited her in the hospital last year. “I’d rather die than stop being me.”

  CaZZ, my fierce friend. The girl warrior from the Pula race.

  “You know Oscar Wilde was bullied too, right?” she says. “By Bosie’s father. But Oscar Wilde fought back. Even when he knew he was going to lose. He fought back. To the very end.”

  “That’s why we love him,” Estelle says. “He knew how to fight a losing battle.”

  CaZZ’s phone beeps. “Estelle, Gramps will pick us up in front of the grocery store in an hour,” she says. “You sure you don’t want to join us, Ken Z? It’s gorgeous there, you know. Like a tropical Antarctica,” she continues, trying to entice me with Antarctica.

  “Can you imagine Ken Z sleeping outdoors?” Estelle says. “I can’t.”

  “Mount Pula is gorgeous,” CaZZ says of the dormant volcano where she, her grandfather and her brothers, and Estelle will be camping this week. “Plus you get to witness Estelle and me go through smartphone withdrawal.”

  “But you two can’t live without your smartphones,” I say.

  “They’re addictive, like drugs,” CaZZ says.

  “And we’re Wi-Fi addicts,” Estelle says.

  “This camping trip will be like our rehab,” CaZZ says.

  “It’s going to be hard,” Estelle says. “CaZZ and I will probably end up murdering each other on day two.”

  “You sure you don’t want to see us suffer?” CaZZ asks.

  “Tempted,” I say, “but no thanks.”

  “What are you going to do for a week without us?” CaZZ asks.

  “More like what are we going to do for a week without him?” Estelle says.

  “I’m going to read Oscar’s fairy tales,” I say. It’s what we’re reading next for the book club.

  “You don’t ever get lonely, Ken Z?” CaZZ asks.

  “Nah,” I say, which is the truth. Reading a book can turn into pages of boredom, writing haikus can be equally frustrating, and making a list can get tiresome. But they never make me lonely. “Nah,” I say again.

  “Nothing is ever lonely if what you’re doing makes you happy.” Estelle smiles. “Right, Ken Z?”

  “Right.”

  “You can always go back to Mirage and bunbury some more,” CaZZ says.

  “Too bad you can’t bunbury up in North Kristol,” Estelle says.

  “How I wish,” I want to say as snapshots from last night flash through my mind. Cruising to the future inside Ran’s car. Ran’s arm across my shoulders. The bright moon bouncing in the palm of my hand.

  “You’ll miss us missing you,” CaZZ says.

  “Aw,” I say.

  “Write me a haiku,” Estelle says.

  “Me too,” CaZZ says.

  “I will.” I smeyes. “I will.”

  Twice Beautiful

  Estelle. So beautiful she’s twice beautiful. Like a glam-rock model out of the pages of fashion magazines. The boys go wild over her smooth and slender neck, her chiseled face and sharp jawline, her red-wine lips and bony cheekbones, her soul-stalking panther’s eyes. Until they realize she looks like them. Estelle, so gaga-gorgeous, the guys don’t know whether to hate her or date her.

  * * *

  • • •

  Girls, too, go giddy over her. As if they’re coming face to face with the auto mechanic of their dreams. And when she slicks her hair, removes her rebel-red leather jacket to show them her tattoo of a serpent coiled around a rose on her right shoulder, then flashes her smirk so cocky that it’s sexy, they start going cray-cray over her. Until the asteroid of reality hits them—he is actually a she sharing a locker room with them. Estelle, their third-person-pronoun nightmare. So devilishly handsome, the girls don’t know whether to date her or hate her.

  CaZZandra, from Roman to Greek

  CaZZ should’ve been born with double-Xs.

  Instead she was the kid who grew up with unwanted names.

  To her mother, who went to the liquor store one afternoon and never came back, she was Cassius. Not Gaius Cassius Longinus, the Roman senator who conspired with his brother-in-law Brutus to kill Julius Caesar. Not Cassius Clay, one of the greatest boxers, known to the world as Muhammad Ali. But Cassius Washington Jr., after a stranger CaZZ never bothered to ask her mother or grandparents about.

  To bullies, CaZZ was more than a fairy, from old French faerie, which means fata, or fate in Latin.

  Fate of the Freakazoid.

  To churchgoers, she was ABC for Anomaly, Bizarre, and Comic Relief.

  To jocks and cheerleaders, she was damned and doomed.

  To her grandparents, who ended up raising her, she was the light fading at the southern end of the Kristol tunnel. “Choose your god,” her grandfather said. “Make a quilt,” her grandmother said. “You’l
l need it someday to comfort you.”

  Not a day went by without CaZZ getting the H-treatment. Harassed. Headlocked. Found unconscious and hemorrhaging one early Sunday morning.

  ICU x 2 months. Intubations. Transfusions. X-rays. Physical/occupational/speech therapies.

  Quick, MRI the Queer.

  Each blood-drawn day as cruel and unbearable as the next.

  All because Jack is Jill. And believed and fought to stay Jill.

  Punch for punch, kick for kick, she fought back.

  No matter what she did, it was a no-win situation.

  So she changed her name. Cassius, meet CaZZandra with a double-Z. The girl Greek gods pine for. Apollo was so in love with her that he ordered the snakes in his temples to lick her ears clean, thereby granting her the gift of prophecy. When she refused to return his love, he cursed her so no one would believe any of her prophecies.

  CaZZandra. Madwoman. Disregarded prophet of disaster.

  Roman or Greek, Cassius turned CaZZ is still here, day in and day out. Always losing, always outnumbered, always fighting battles she never started. Endlessly collecting bruises and curses to offer to the beautiful, cruel gods.

  TRIPPING

  Walking home, tripping

  On a moonlit memory.

  Oscar, where are you?

  TALKING BUBBLES

  Monday, 4 March, 4:45 P.M.

  Ken Z!!!!

  Ran?

  I’m at Serendipi-Tea

  What?!

  You free?

  Give me ten.

  You Are Here

  The first thing Ran spots in my room is the map tacked to the wall above my bed. It is as if it were calling him.