Choir Boy

by Unknown Author

  Hours passed. Application forms seemed written by the same people who devised the Book of Common Prayer. Judy had given Berry index cards containing stock phrases for him to sprinkle into his short essay answers, and even into the little blanks on the forms themselves.

  “I don’t really have an interest in multiculturalism that comes out of my choral background,” Berry told Judy.

  “Compared to most dirt dumplings your age, you’re a positive cultural studies guru. You don’t watch TV, you read books. Besides, don’t drag the old Berry into this. We’re talking about the new Berry, who only just arrived.” Berry was surprised to hear Rat and Mr. Allen had both agreed to write recommendations.

  “And what does ‘gender gifted’ mean?” Berry asked. “Search me.” Judy flayed the Internet seeking information for Berry. “Ah,” she said while Berry was on his fifteenth form. “This Lambda Youth organization has a transgender support group. It’s the perfect thing for you, Berry. They’ll be people your own age, who can identify with what you’re going through.” The group planned a meeting that evening at six.

  Judy drove Berry in circles for fifteen minutes before spotting the Lambda Youth center, which hid under a big awning that said “The Art Sanctuary.” The staircase to the awning’s right, below street level, led to a big metal door with a tiny sign bearing a midget triangle and the letters “LY” in even smaller print. Berry hopped out of the car, waved at his mom, and ran down the staircase. He rang the bell and waited five minutes before a shaved-headed man with a pierced septum and tattoos opened the door and said, “Yeah.”

  “Name’s Berry. I’m here to be supported as a young gender queer person.”

  The skinhead shrugged and led Berry to a clammy room with posters of Nelson Mandela and Brandon Teena. Motley people slouched in folding chairs clustered in a circle. Berry grabbed one of the still-folded chairs by the wall while he checked out the roomful of grown-ups. Everybody there looked way older than Berry. And then he saw Maura out of the corner of his eye. Berry sighed and pulled his chair into the circle across from Maura.

  “Welcome to the Young Gendernauts. I’m Zulu NoGender and I’m the facilitator here. We were just doing personal introductions and affirmations.” The speaker looked kind of like Whoopi Goldberg, only with more tattoos and piledriver hands.

  “Oh.” Berry slumped forward, head to knees.

  “My name is Bakka,” someone to Berry’s left said. “I’m a male-born female. I go to Holy Mystery Technical Institute. My personal affirmation is that I’m a quail.” Berry looked up. Bakka was easily six feet tall, with athletic shoulders and hairy arms. She wore huge numbers of bangles on her wrists and a diva’s ransom in makeup.

  Most of the Young Gendernauts looked like men to Berry. He didn’t understand who they were trying to fool. Some of them even wore men’s clothes and had beards, for God’s sake. Maura was one of the few pretty ones there— nobody else was as glamorous as most of the girls at the Booby Hatch.

  Soon the introduction chain reached Berry. “Hey. Berry. Think I’m in the wrong place. Looking for the Transgender Youth Group.” Various people assured Berry he was there now. “But you’re all old,” he said. Maura gave him a javelin stare.

  “Don’t mind Berry,” Maura said. “She’s awfully young. She doesn’t think about what she says to hurt people. Dearie, everyone in this room is twenty-five and under.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Anyway, I’m a ... I don’t know what. I’m a kid. Oh, and my personal affirmation is that I killed a man yesterday.” It felt good to say it aloud for the first time.

  “That’s nice,” Zulu said. Then she opened the discussion to “free topic.” It turned out the guys with beards weren’t men doing a weak job of looking like women, but women working to be men. Pretty much everyone felt oppressed, and talked about hegemony and landlords. Their parents didn’t talk to them. Their families and friends didn’t understand. People threw them out of their homes and they couldn’t get jobs because of discrimination. Half a dozen people there were some kind of homeless. In fact, Berry recognized one from Hungry Souls.

  “So, Berry, tell us about you,” Zulu said.

  “Um . . . Well, did I mention I killed someone? Speaking of which, how long does it usually take the police to arrest someone when they’ve committed murder, because I wTas kind of expecting the cops to bust in at any moment and save me from having to write ‘learning is my wings’ for the tenth time on an application form today. Somebody obviously wanted to punish me in advance before they carted me off to maximum security to be an extra in the next Dr. Dre video, speaking of which, Dr. Dre is really weak, there I said it, and speaking of which, music is my life and my life is over even if I hadn’t taken a life, and I don’t know why I’m here.” Twenty gender outcasts transferred their oppression to Berry with their stares. Only Maura looked concerned.

  “Berry,” Zulu said. “I understand you’re nervous about being here, and we’re all older than you.”

  “Dr. Dre is not weak,” Bakka interrupted.

  “But let’s back up. You’re on hormones, right?”

  Berry nodded.

  “How does your family feel about this?”

  “Dad’s disturbed. Mom couldn’t be happier, now that she’s over the shock. She’s paying attention to me for the first time since the birth thing. She’s really hyped on the ‘I have a daughter now’ trip.”

  Several people gasped. “So let me get this squared away,” Bakka said. “You have a supportive moms who doesn’t push you onto the streets. You’ve managed to start hormones young. And you’re upset why, exactly?” Maura gave Berry a look that said, I told you.

  “So have you transitioned?” one of the other beardless men asked. “Or are you planning on transitioning soon?” “That’s where the wine becomes actual blood, right? I’m Episcopalian. I’m pretty sure we don’t believe in that. I always thought it was way gross, even before I spilled it on Canon Moosehead’s crotch.”

  “That stain is not coming out, by the way,” Maura volunteered. “He’s very upset, poor baby.”

  “Shut up, Maura,” said the other girl, whose name was either Sophie or Sojourner. “Transitioning is when you start living full-time as your new sex.”

  “Oh,” Berry said. “I’ll probably do that next week, if I’m still walking around.”

  The other gendernauts decided to ignore Berry’s weird non-answers and go back to their own problems. Sophie/Sojourner had lost her job just as she was saving up for her operation, so she had to spend her savings on rent, and her parents persecuted her every way they knew. Another woman traded sex for a couch to sleep on. Berry felt more depressed than ever listening to these stories.

  Finally, the group broke up. Everybody shunned Berry except Maura.

  “Hey. So you sure you want your pals here to see you talking to me? I don’t think they like me,” Berry said.

  “You’re fine. They offend easy here. So, you want to get a milkshake?”

  “My mom’s picking me up.”

  They walked out into the dark hallway. “So what was that stuff about killing someone? You on the lam?” Maura asked.

  Berry started to answer, then he spotted something. At first he thought he must be wrong, like the time he thought he’d seen Mr. Allen in the supermarket but it was an old lady. But then he looked again, and it really was.

  Through the window on the door across the hall, Berry sighted Wilson fidgeting in another folding chair. “What’s he doing here?”

  Maura leaned into the door and chuckled. “No idea. Could be anything. Maybe it’s a bestiality encounter group. I could imagine Wilson with a hamster, they’re on the same wavelength.”

  “Shush,” Berry said. Wilson saw the two people outside the door and tried to cover his face too late. The leaflet he used to cover his face said Young? Gay? OK! on the cover. “Just a guess, but I think it’s a gay group.”

  “Oh. So much for Wilson’s dark secret. Big fucking deal. Everyone’s a homo now
adays,” Maura said.

  Berry tried to see the rest of the room. Like the young trannies, most of the people looked ancient compared to him. There were probably a dozen gay youngsters in there, under a big flow chart showing the relationship between self esteem and self improvement. Wilson finally uncovered his face and sank into his chair.

  “Can I gloat? Please tell me I can gloat,” Maura said. “Mister Pm so normal and perfect that Pm going to bang some chick at Harvard and spawn two baby brain surgeons ...” “Shush,” Berry said. He saw something else. A big waxed mustache in rapid motion at the fringe of his view. “I think it’s that Bishop guy you introduced me to.” He ran out front and didn’t see a Toyota Corolla waiting. He ran back in.

  “Hey, Maura. Do me the biggest favor on Earth? I don’t want to miss my mom in case she’s circling the block. Can you go out and wait for her? I really need to talk to Wilson.” “Doesn’t your mom still hate me?”

  “Why don’t you ask her yourself? Please?”

  Maura went. Berry kept vigil by the doorway to the Bishop’s gathering. He kept away from the door. He heard a shout outside and almost went to look. The door opened and guys Maura’s age wandered out in twos or threes. Probably going to a bar. Any youth group whose members could drink booze without fake ID was a sham in Berry’s book. Still no Wilson. Berry finally barged into the room, where Bishop Bacchus and Wilson sat with one empty chair between them. Bishop Bacchus had his chair turned around so the back was against his crotch.

  “Labels are for sticker guns,” the Bishop was in the middle of saying. “Those price gun doodads are the funnest part of retail, speaking from rich personal experience. But you don’t have to label yourself until you’re ready.”

  “Hey, Wilson.” Berry said. “So I hear you told Marc and Randy I was a fag. ”

  “Awkwardness,” Bishop Bacchus said. “Major on the spotness. Friend finds you at strange table eating wild fruit grown under the Earth.”

  “Underground fruit is called roots. Like a carrot,” Berry said. “Hey, Bishop.”

  “Oh, we’ve met? Here I go by Pete the Facilitator, or P-Fac for short.” The Bishop looked younger in a tank top and jeans, both of them slashed and tattered.

  “Got it. So what are you,” Berry asked Wilson. “L, G, B, T, or some other letter?”

  “Hey yo, label-free zone,” P-Fac said. “You seem all wound up, kid. Must be hormones.”

  “Hormones,” said Berry, “are the least of my worries. But I like the label-free thing.”

  “So you’re happy,” Wilson said. “Now I’m a weirdo too. At least I still sing.”

  “Sort of,” Berry snorted. “I heard you guys yesterday. Cracks.”

  “You know that thing where a calm surface hides a horrified chaos lurking beneath? That’s the choir right now. We’ve been nuts. Teddy’s basically a man. You’re gone. Randy, Marc, and I are unreliable. I don’t know if we’re going to do that recording session or not.”

  “If we don’t do that recording, it’ll be all my fault.” “Hell yeah, it will,” Wilson said.

  “Hey, judgment,” P-Fac said.

  Berry couldn’t stay mad at Wilson. For one thing, he needed to hear more about the choir. “I think my mom’s waiting. You should eat with us.”

  Wilson considered. “I’d have to call home.”

  When they got outside, Maura was sparring with Marco. The Corolla was parked nearby. Marco wore his blue parka and Hawaiian turtleneck. His moustache crinkled with rage.

  “Hey Berry,” Maura yelled. “You didn’t tell me your mom was transgender as well. I was just congratulating her on passing so well.”

  “That’s not my mom. It’s my dad.”

  “I thought Maura left already,” Wilson groaned.

  “Just get in the car,” Berry said. He opened the rear door, shoved a box of Steely Dan cassettes on the floor, and turned back to where his dad and Maura argued without making sense.

  “I just don’t hold with all this and neither does my son,” Marco shouted.

  “All what? Anyway, you have no son.”

  “No, you have no son.” Marco jabbed at Maura with a finger.

  “Huh?”

  “Dad can we get going?” Berry tugged at the parka sleeve. “Just a moment, son. My boy’s a normal kid. I see myself in him. I’m not even worried about him going to lairs of confusion like this. It’ll just help him realize faster that he doesn’t fit in.”

  “Newsflash, Magnum P.I. Your son has a shelf you could balance a bowl of nachos on.”

  “Thanks for the mental image, Maura. See you later, okay?” Berry opened the passenger side front door and clicked the safety belt home.

  Marco jumped in the front side and started the car without wearing his seatbelt. “Finally. Let’s move.” He pulled the car out of its illegal spot and sped down the street, running a light two shades shy of red.

  “So where we eating? I figured the burger joint.”

  “We’re not stopping for dinner, son. I’m kidnapping you and taking you to Vermont. I’m taking you away from all these bad influences and back to nature. We can do home-schooling and herd goats.”

  “Can I put in a vote for burgers instead of goats?” Wilson said from the back seat.

  Marco almost crashed into the on-ramp’s metal guardrail. “What the fuck? Who’s that?”

  “You remember my friend Wilson. You came to his house once,” Berry said. “He’s just come out as gay or something.”

  “Hey, label-freedom. Supportiveness,” P-Fac said. Berry turned to see both Wilson and P-Fac in back. “Hey, I thought we were going for food,” P-Fac explained.

  “Peter’s the bishop of a really lame religion,” Berry told Marco.

  “God dammit! I’m trying to abduct my son here!” Marco swerved between two lanes on the freeway, trying to fake out other, slower cars. Several cars surrendered the left two lanes to him.

  “Ya know, this whole abducting your kids thing is so old school,” P-Fac said. “My church teaches that children nurture their parents and forgive them for their mistakes. Parents give life to their children only once, but the children give life to the parents over and over after that.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll fucking pull over and let you out,” Marco said. “Just don’t talk any more.” He chose an offramp at random, zoomed through the exit and took a hard right into a gas station lot. The pumps looked rusted past the point where anything could flow. The lights were smashed and the lot held no other cars. Across the road was a deserted junk yard, past that some untended fields. “Okay, here you go.” Marco stopped the car.

  “Where the Hell are we?” Wilson asked.

  “North of the Dead Zone,” P-Fac said. “A mile or so out of town, but way further than that from anywhere you’d wanna be.”

  “Good enough for me,” Berry said. He lost his seat belt and jumped out. Marco grabbed at Berry’s arm, but he shook his dad off,

  “Come back here!” Marco screamed. Berry ran toward the gas station. Behind it was a tiny church, the Floly Day Revival Shack. Berry could hear singing and tambourines inside, even on a Monday night. It wasn’t European choral music, more like Elevator Gospel, dominated by a cheap synthesizer.

  “Your dad’s crazy,” Wilson panted. He ran right behind Berry.

  “Why are you running? He’s not trying to kidnap you.” “He doesn’t seem too jacked in. I don’t want to risk him deciding to take me to Vermont instead.”

  Berry looked at Wilson running with him in the dark and felt joy out of nowhere that his friend was with him. “So this gay thing,” Berry panted. “Did it start... I mean, when you and I . . . Did I make you?”

  “I started figuring it out before that,” Wilson said. “That’s why our kiss freaked me out.”

  They reached a parking lot, beyond which an alley led to a construction site, with a hole in the ground and rusty girders in uneven piles. They ran through the alley and stopped at the edge of the hole.

  “Where are we ru
nning to?” Wilson asked.

  “Not sure,” Berry said. He sat down on the border between lot and hole. Wilson sat next to him. “Do you think I could ever get back in the choir? If I don’t get dragged to Vermont.”

  “Maybe,” Wilson said. “We’ve been going over some new music. There’s this Schutz piece where we have to divide into two choirs, it’s way intense. I think Mr. Allen must have been nuts to give us this piece right after losing you and Teddy. Check it out, there’s this part where Treble A comes in and then Treble B comes in half a measure later and the melody gets fucked like a dog.” Wilson found the sheet music in his knapsack and spread it on the tarmac. “Yo, I be Treble A, you be Treble B.” He counted it off, and

  Berry picked it up pretty quickly. It wasn’t a fugue, more like two bugs chasing each other or mating. One bug would lunge and then the other one would swoop. Berry squinted at the music under the one lamp hanging nearby.

  The second time they sang it, the top twro Schutz parts meshed way better. Wilson’s voice led, still strong but with cracks. But Berry was right there and they blended, two instruments tuned just the same way and stained with the same brush. Their voices filled the dead construction site like a really dirty cathedral. When they finished, Berry and Wilson sat side by side looking into the hole. Berry felt like he was smiling for the first time in years.

  “Thanks,” Berry said. “I’ve missed singing.”

  “Cool,” Wilson said. “Can we get out of here?”

  “Sure. Maybe we can call your dad. Or I know this chick who has a car. Listen, Wilson. You know Lisa? I killed her dad yesterday.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mostly by accident.”

  “Well, she wasn’t at school today. But they told us her dad was in the hospital but he was going to be okay. And they totally said it was an accident. They didn’t say anything about a killer choirboy.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, like get over yourself, fuckin’ pimp daddy killa at large.”

  “I wondered why I hadn’t been arrested yet.”

  It took ages to find a payphone and call Mr. Fennimore. They went through some more of the choir’s other new pieces and Berry felt less out of the loop. Finally, the Rabbit pulled up. “I feel bad—this is the second time I’ve been stranded and needed a pickup,” Berry said.