by Rachel Gold
As October turned cold and rolled into November, I kept getting up early, walking Wolvie and thinking of ways to talk to Brock, none of which would work.
Saturday morning in the pre-dawn deep blue of the world, I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. How could I see this parasite in a way that helped me defeat it?
All the times I’d seen black people around the neighborhood, the parasite-voice had said “lazy” or “rude” or “dangerous.” Not loud enough or clear enough for me to catch it, just laying back there whispering that evil shit to me. About Aisha, who was the best person in the world! But even if she hadn’t been. Even all the people who weren’t as amazing. Nobody deserved that.
Nothing had forced me to stop and think about this. Someone should’ve already told me! But everyone close to me had been white. Did they all have this same voice inside? Even Milo and Pops?
And maybe there was another voice that spoke to guys, to Brock and Jon and told them not to listen to women, said words like “trivial” and “shallow” and “weak,” and they thought this voice was them.
Like most of us had been infected or influenced by some massive villain who could mind control people. But it only worked if you didn’t notice, so he had to make sure he sounded like you. He had to make sure you didn’t question.
I had to see this evil. I’d left the bathroom light off and my face in the mirror looked blue-purple, reminding me of Apocalypse from the X-Men movie. He imbued his followers with power, but he could also control their minds. He even had a creepy old dude voice.
In the movie preview, Professor X says, “Oh God, he can control all of us.” And then when they fight, Professor X takes Apocalypse into the house of his mind, Apocalypse gets super big and starts crushing him in his house.
Evil had come into the house of my mind like Apocalypse—a parasite that promised to empower me if I listened to it. But listening didn’t give me power, it made me destructive.
If I didn’t pay attention to this voice, it would gain power, it would overtake me when I wasn’t aware. It would use me to hurt Aisha. It would hurt me in order to hurt Aisha.
Still staring in the mirror, at the blackness in the center of my eyes, I tried to see him in there, to fix him in my mind so I’d always hear him, always fight him. I said, “Not in my house, fucker.”
From the hall, Milo cleared her throat and I jumped, spinning a half circle to face her.
“Talking to myself,” I said. “You know, like usual. Do you sometimes have thoughts that aren’t yours except you didn’t realize that before?”
Her bushy eyebrows drew closer together. I figured I had to say more about it. I didn’t want to say what the thoughts were because maybe she didn’t have the voice, maybe when she read the books about racism she was all, “Oh yeah, the struggle,” and I was worse than average.
I went on talking. “Like maybe there are things that other people think, but you’ve been thinking it too… Like how a lot of people think it’s gross when two guys kiss but it isn’t. But I thought that too when I was a kid.”
Milo gave me a look that said I was clearly still a kid, but she knew what I was driving at.
I did not add, out loud, that I’d thought it until I realized that if I was a guy—or when I was a guy—I’d want to be kissing Jon. Suddenly this idea that naturally men only kiss women became ridiculous. The belief that two guys kissing was gross now seemed so fake.
If it was all that unnatural, people wouldn’t have to keep saying it was unnatural. But people had to keep saying that two men kissing was unnatural and wrong—because it wasn’t. It only seemed that way because I hadn’t seen it on TV and because kids, and sometimes adults, made jokes about it. There was this whole structure in place to make sure we believed it was unnatural and apparently we needed a heck of a lot of persuading.
Milo folded her arms and leaned against the wall. She’d rolled up the arms of her faded blue flannel and her crossed forearms looked thicker, more powerful stacked like that.
“Do you mean social conditioning?” she asked.
“Maybe. If I knew what that was.”
She snorted. “You and me, but more me, we both grew up being told and shown that men are only certain ways and that includes not kissing other men.”
“Yeah,” I said, hopeful because that’s what was in my head, that black people were certain ways. Like, all of them. Which, when I thought about it, was so obviously untrue. “What do you do about it?”
“Keep taking it apart,” she said. “That’s what feminism has been doing for decades: taking apart the idea that women can only do some things and not others, that a woman’s place is in the home, women can’t be leaders. Look for examples outside of the socially approved roles.”
“How do I get it out of my head?” I asked. “I don’t want to think those things.”
“You can’t do it all at once. Think about how many TV shows you’ve seen that reinforce it, how many books, magazines, ads. You have to keep fighting it. Talk back to it. Prove it wrong, over and over. Collect examples that are outside your conditioning. Keep looking at the real world, not all those fake ones on TV.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re kind of a superhero, you know.”
“Glad you think so. Should I go use the downstairs bathroom or are you done talking to yourself for now?”
I laughed and scooted into the hall and then my room. Milo said to collect examples. That seemed like a great place to start for myself but also for Brock, to have so many examples that he’d have to hear me.
That voice, Apocalypse’s evil mind control, had to keep telling me that black people were dangerous—the same way it told me women were less than men and that gay was unnatural—to keep reinforcing those ideas.
I knew that women were as powerful as men, Milo made sure of that. I knew that gay guys were beautiful together, my body made sure of that. But what was the truth of the situation with black people? It took me a long time to work through because there were a lot of truths, but the one that hit me hardest was this: in America, black people were in danger.
That was a truth the voice wanted to hide.
Chapter Seven
November-December 2016
I told Wolvie, “A diabolical force has taken over Western Civilization. I don’t know how to fight it, but I’m going to figure it out.”
She thumped her tail and perked up her ears, like: Thank goodness you’ve realized this! We’ve needed to have a talk for some time now about the vacuum cleaner.
* * *
Then the elections ate November.
* * *
The days after the election got hazy. Any time I tried to sleep, I couldn’t settle, but walking around I felt only half-awake.
“We need something good,” Aisha said, looking as dazed as I felt.
She started with more books and comic books, and by December, she’d found our school’s very unofficial Gender & Sexuality Alliance. Our junior high didn’t have a GSA because the grown-ups all thought we were too young for that. (So not.) Aisha was in the prep classes for the high school’s International Baccalaureate program and two years ago one of those classes had been almost all queer and trans kids, so they’d started going out afterward, on Thursdays, to the Chinese buffet in our town’s Main St. strip.
A lot of those kids still went, though they were at the high school, and they brought other high school kids and passed the word around the junior high that we were all welcome. Aisha told Jon and me, and that’s how we all ended up in the back of Jon’s cousin’s pickup truck in early December. The open bed of a pickup was cold, but at least it was a quick, bracing cold compared to the bone-deep cold of walking from our junior high to the restaurant.
I told Mom I’d be home late because I was going to a study group. I’m sure Aisha told her folks it was a queer & trans student group and they cheered.
Five Star Chinese restaurant had a narrow front but went back a long way, filled with booths, dark wood,
red paint, gold highlights. Walking in, I got hugged by the heavy scents of egg rolls, tangy soy sauce, hot sugar, pork and ginger. I relaxed a bit. Pops loved this place so much that Milo brought him here for monthly brunch dates where he could spend a few hours indulging in the buffet. The whole family ate here every few months and more often got their takeout.
Way in the back, the restaurant had a party room with a single, oval table. Kids sat around it in clumps. It was only three p.m., so the place was glad to have us, even if only half of us ordered (and the other half stole fried, round donuts off the plates of the first half). I saw a few other kids from our school and some who looked older and taller, from the high school.
One pretty, frenetic girl called us to order and had people say their names and anything they wanted people to know about them.
There were three gay guys from our junior high and one tough-looking girl with them. Then it came to our group. Jon went first, waving cheerfully and saying, “Jon, totally gay!”
I wanted to grab Aisha’s hand under the table, but that felt extra meaningful here—like I should have her permission—so I just said, “Uh, I’m Kaz and I’m some kind of queer and trans, nonbinary, genderqueer or probably all of the above.”
Aisha was super smooth. “Aisha Warren, moved here from Cali almost three years ago and haven’t warmed up yet. I’m bi—the kind of bi that covers girls and nonbinary people but not cis guys. Not into that kind of emotional labor.”
“Is that even bi?” one of the guys asked.
“Girls plus people equals two,” Aisha told him. “Bi doesn’t have to mean girls and guys and it doesn’t have to mean you’re into everyone. Nobody I know is into everyone. So bi covers all the genders and bi-erasure is a thing and I’m going with bi until there are so many out bi black folks that it gets boring.”
After us came a group from the high school: a curvy, pretty trans girl and two trans guys—one heavy, white, shortish, brown-haired; the other was maybe an inch shorter than me, tan-skinned, stocky, and growing a pretty great goatee for a high schooler. The second guy introduced himself as Zack and said, “I hope it’s cool if we hang with you all even though we’re seniors. The GSA at the high school is trans-skittish and straight-up no fun. But you tell us if you need us out of your space, cool?”
Nobody said anything for a minute and then Aisha straightened up and said, “I want you here. It’s not like you’re that much older than us. You belong.”
Nods and murmurs of agreement went around the table, mine being the loudest. I missed the next introductions, including the group leader, because I was checking out the trans guys, especially Zack. He had a mop of black hair emphasized by shaved sides, and big, square, black-rimmed glasses.
The girl leading the group tried to get us talking about how to get through the December holidays with family if you weren’t out. Only a few people here were out to their parents: Aisha, of course, Zack, Jon and the organizer girl, whose name I’d forgotten. Of course every single person turned this into complaints about the election, how many of their family members were gloating about it, not realizing the pain this delivered to their queer and trans kids, cousins, nieces and nephews.
When we ended the formal part of the meeting for general chatting, Aisha’s intro about being from Cali and not having warmed up led to her getting the most cheeseball pickup line, “Maybe you need someone to help you warm up” from the most beautiful girl in the room, Dani Mehta. And she made Aisha giggle, which pissed me off.
I had a twenty-sided die out on the table, rolling it between my hands, deciding if I got a twenty, I’d break into the conversation between Aisha and Meta.
“Working on your saving throws?” a guy asked me, sitting in the chair next to me.
A quick glance showed the grin and neatly-trimmed goatee of Zack.
“I need a twenty,” I told him.
“No modifiers?”
“Not in the real world.”
He held out his hand and I put the die in it. He rolled four times, getting a 20 on the fourth. “There you go.”
I peeked over at Aisha who was laughing at whatever Dani Mehta had said.
“You came in with her,” Zack said. “Is Meta moving on your girl?”
I raised my eyebrows at him because he’d said her name like the prefix “meta” not Mehta.
He explained, “Her nickname’s Meta-Mehta, because she’s both meta-meta and too meta, which is, itself, meta in a way that makes my brain warp. So… Aisha?”
I shrugged. “We’re friends, for now.”
Jon had been talking rapidly with two of the other guys from our school, but he could do this and eavesdrop at the same time, because he leaned back into my conversation and said, to Zack, “Kaz is totally into her but scared to ask her out.”
“Ass,” I said. “Get back to your group.”
He did, but not before giving Zack a meaningful look and saying, “Kaz likes guys too.”
“Double ass, get out!”
He went back to his conversation and damn if I didn’t still think he was so cute with his dark hair curling on his pale forehead and his wide mouth laughing. But then I looked across the room and Meta had her hand over Aisha’s on the table. Not holding Aisha’s hand, but touching her in a way that only I was supposed to.
Zack turned his chair toward mine, our knees touching, shutting us off from the room. “You want to talk or ask?”
“Ask,” I said. “But I don’t know what to ask.”
“You said trans, nonbinary, genderqueer.” He put a finger on the twenty-sided die and rolled it back and forth on top of the Chinese Zodiac placemat, from Tiger to Dragon.
“How do you know what you are? I mean, really know?”
“At the gender clinic they ask ‘if you were alone on an island, what gender would you be?’ or the one I like better, ‘if you had a magic wand and could be any way you wanted, how would you be?’”
“Is this a one-use wand or do I get to keep it?” I asked.
“Whatever you want.”
“What if some days I’d be a girl and some days I’d be a boy?”
“Sounds like genderfluid.”
“And some days I’m not either and sometimes I’m maybe…an alien.” It was easier to say “alien” than to say “tree” or “dog.” Especially that last made me sound like a really little kid. Plus I didn’t honestly want to be a tree or a dog, I just wanted to live in their super-straightforward world for a while. But that would put a serious dent in my dating capabilities so not a real option.
“Most of us feel like aliens at some point,” he said. “Look, for me, when my breasts started growing, they felt wrong, like malignant. And getting a period, like my body had decided to attack me.” He spread his hands and looked at them. “This feels right, like being home. You’ll find that place.”
I wanted to, but it was a moving target. I shrugged.
“Nonbinary covers a lot of identities,” he suggested.
“But I don’t feel like I’m non-something. I feel like a whole lot of something. Too much of it.”
“The way I see it—and this is me, so you do you—everyone is made up of patterns, in your soul. The energy of the Almighty, your higher power, nature if that’s your thing, this energy shines through the patterns that make up you. And some of those patterns give your gender. So my pattern’s a guy. And when the One made humans, some of us got made trans or genderqueer as a way to point to the mysteries of the world. Maybe you got extra patterns, extra blessings.”
“Doesn’t feel that way. I don’t understand how to do this. How does your body know what patterns you are?”
“What does your body feel like to you?” he asked.
I knew the answer—beyond trees and dogs and aliens—but I couldn’t say it, because as soon as I thought it, I heard Brock laughing and saying, “Do they have only one boob? Or is it like two boobs and a wang?”
“Impossible,” I told Zack. “My body feels impossible.”
/> “Give it some time and space, a lot of space,” he said.
Did I have time? I peeked across the room at Dani Mehta with her long, straight black hair and light brown skin, dark eyes outlined with a hint of shimmery eyeshadow. She and Aisha were beautiful together. Dani played with Aisha’s index finger and Aisha’s smile turned deep and dimpled.
That was supposed to be my smile.
How did genderfluid work anyway? Was I able to kiss Aisha on some days and not others because I was a girl only some of the time?
And anyway, if I was attracted to girls when I was more a girl, and if Aisha liked girls, the obvious next step was to be more girl. If I was genderfluid, I should get to pick, right?
Chapter Eight
December 2016-January 2017
So…girl research?
I went at it so hard Mom thought it was a homework assignment. I cut photos out of catalogues—Mom’s girly ones and Milo’s practical outdoor gear ones—and stuck them to the magnet board in my room, previously used only for dog training and dog walking schedules.
I asked Aisha what I’d look good in and she sent me a photo of Ellen Page with her tall, blond girlfriend and their new dog.
Am I supposed to be the girlfriend? I texted her. I think I already own that shirt. I’m looking for something more girly, but not too girly.
She sent an image of Wanda Sykes and her wife Alex, a tall, blond Frenchwoman.
Yeah I could maybe wear that suit in twenty years, I said.
She replied, I meant the overall style, not that exact suit.
I’m going to need exact examples, I told her.
Another photo buzzed into my phone: Angel Haze and her ex-girlfriend, Ireland Baldwin—but before they’d broken up—laughing together.
I said, Okay that’s a cool T-shirt, but do I also get Angel’s boots?
Aisha asked, Is that all you see in that photo?
I studied it: Ireland gazed up at Angel with a total love-face, while Angel laughed super hard.
One of us needs to get better jokes? I asked.