How Beautiful the Ordinary

by Michael Cart

  “Actually she was a corsetiere.”

  Noah leans on the counter so he can see all the way to Robbie’s feet, bare in a pair of dilapidated moccasins. “Is a corsetiere what I think it is?”

  Robbie nods. “She made corsets, and not just for women, either. Drag queens came by, B & D people, or just guys who liked tight things under their suits. She was discreet and egalitarian.”

  “I know what you’re going to say next. That I’m wearing one already, the Closeted Queer model.”

  “If you say so.” He turns to Noah with a smile and points to a large bowl of salad. “What kind of dressing do you want on this?”

  INT. HOSPITAL: DAY

  ROBBIE

  Don’t bullshit me. You weren’t hit by any van. Somebody beat you up.

  NOAH

  Shut up.

  ROBBIE

  Where?

  NOAH

  Just…off Santa Monica Boulevard. Where I’d parked the car.

  ROBBIE

  So you lied to the cops.

  NOAH

  They’re not going to catch the guys. What’s the point of getting into all that?

  ROBBIE

  All what?

  NOAH

  All that “What were you doing there at two A.M.?”

  ROBBIE

  The police don’t care what time it was.

  NOAH

  I wasn’t talking about the police.

  ROBBIE

  Ah, the Aimee & Martin show.

  NOAH

  It’s not a show. It’s real.

  ROBBIE

  It’s drama, Noah. Everything’s drama to you. How many screenplays have you shown me? All you care about is the story arc. Well, do this one justice and give it a satisfying conclusion.

  NOAH

  But if the cops know, everybody will know.

  ROBBIE

  Everybody doesn’t care if you’re gay or not.

  NOAH

  My parents, then.

  ROBBIE

  You mean your dad.

  NOAH

  He treats me like a dog, I swear to god. Sit up, roll over, heel. I should just run away.

  ROBBIE

  Except a dog that runs away is a lost dog. Tail between his legs, flea-bitten and pathetic.

  NOAH

  So what should I do? I can’t bite him. You know what they do with biters, don’t you? They put them down.

  ROBBIE

  You don’t have to bite him. Just lose the collar and leash.

  NOAH

  It’s hard.

  ROBBIE

  Nobody said it wasn’t. But you’re not a stray dog or a lone wolf. You’ve got me.

  NOAH

  I wasn’t doing anything that night. Just playing pool and, you know, dancing a little and being someplace where everybody was like me.

  ROBBIE

  The bars are fun. We should go. Shoot some stick. Dance a little. Get all sweaty and take off our shirts.

  NOAH

  Kiss me, okay?

  ROBBIE

  Here in front of Doctor God and everybody?

  NOAH

  Absolutely!

  Everybody calls it Bark Park, and Noah loves it. He gets to come here whenever he wants—no ride in the car, no waiting at the corner, no commands, no lord and master to tell him, “Go!” Especially no master.

  He works his way through the bushes at the deep end of the park, then bursts onto the scene. There are so many dogs, so many owners, so much tumult, so many high spirits that nobody notices him on his own. Free, unshackled, uncurbed, unsane, un-everything.

  He breaks into a trot, then races a malamute named Soldier, nips playfully at Sue the collie, vaults over Puppy Longstocking. Half-drunk on the scent of all things wonderful, he picks up a stick and gets into a tug-of-war with Lewis, a big, yellow Lab. They brace and growl, their teeth glow in the dusk. They drop the stick and sprint recklessly. Noah’s body is beautiful and perfect. It will do anything he wants. This freedom is a passport to everything.

  Lights come on in the buildings across the way. Owners check watches and answer phones. Whistles of every kind—sharp and dark, soft and light. Commands gentle or harsh but always commands. Hand to the collar again. Click of the lead, the choker, the harness, the tether, the rope. The pat on the head. The heel.

  Except for Noah, panting and alive, exhausted and ready for more. Standing there on his own four feet.

  INT. HOSPITAL: DAY

  MARTIN

  The police are still looking for that blue van. I made some calls. I know people.

  NOAH

  They won’t find it, because it wasn’t a van. It was just two guys who beat me up because they thought I was gay.

  AIMEE

  Oh, my god.

  MARTIN

  Didn’t you tell them?

  NOAH

  They weren’t in the mood for explanations, Dad. And, anyway, they were right. I am gay.

  MARTIN

  This is the medication talking.

  NOAH

  I should have told you before. A long time ago.

  MARTIN

  You were engaged to Jo Ann.

  NOAH

  That’s what you told people. Jo Ann and I got to be friends. We still are, actually. I only went out with women because you wanted me to.

  MARTIN

  This is going to destroy your mother. After all we’ve done for you.

  NOAH

  Actually, you treated me like a dog. And I let you, all for a rug by the fire and a biscuit. But not anymore, Dad. Not anymore.

  MARTIN (as he exits)

  I’m not listening to this.

  AIMEE

  I’d better go take care of your father. He’ll drink too much coffee. (kissing him) I’ll see you tomorrow.

  INT. HOSPITAL: DAY

  NOAH (zipping up a small carry-on)

  This looks like everything.

  AIMEE

  Your father couldn’t come.

  NOAH

  I’m stunned.

  AIMEE

  He loves you, he does.

  At a knock on the door, they both turn. A POLICEMAN enters.

  POLICEMAN

  You wanted to talk to me?

  NOAH

  I, uh, wasn’t exactly candid when I told you about what happened to me.

  POLICEMAN

  And you want to be candid now.

  NOAH

  There wasn’t any van. I got beat up. It was a gay bashing. I’m gay.

  POLICEMAN

  Description?

  NOAH

  White guys. High-school kids, probably. Jeans and hoodies. They work at McDonald’s or one of those fast food places.

  POLICEMAN

  How do you know that?

  NOAH

  They smelled like grease and cheap meat. I know what I’m talking about. I have a highly developed sense of smell.

  END

  TREV

  BY JACQUELINE WOODSON

  The first dream came when I was five years old. Already, only in kindergarten, I was a head taller than the other students and sharing shoes with my ten-year-old brother. When my teacher first saw me, she stuttered, looking from me to my information in her book—Girl, it must have said. Or Female. Or She.

  But kindergarten didn’t last. Kindergarten was dangerous. On the first day a girl in a pink dress, her hair tied with too many ribbons, stopped me at the bathroom door. You are so not coming in here, she said, glaring at my khaki pants, my blue-striped button-down shirt, my new cowboy boots. We were sent to the bathroom in partners, and my partner, a girl named Rose who held my hand with her sweaty own as we walked down the hallway, let go of my hand quickly when the pink child spoke. Then Rose moved to stand beside the girl, her hand fluttering gently up to the ribbons.

  When I pushed past the pink girl, I pushed her down. When she was down, I didn’t know that I hated her for her too many ribbons, for every pink dress she’d ever worn and stepped out proudly
in, for her hand blocking my entrance, for the way she said You are so not… Because I was. I was going into that bathroom. I was going to walk where I wanted. I was going to kick her until someone pulled me off.

  I hated her because I am.

  Kindergarten was dangerous because I didn’t know the rules. And because of this, I was given another year at home to learn them, to understand. Another year away from girls in pink dresses saying how and when.

  And now, here I was, a first grader with a note from my mother. Please excuse my daughter’s lateness to her first day. The day started out wrong. But the day had begun as any other day—my brother’s rage hot in the room. You must be high if you think I’m walking to school with her. My mother’s frustration. Wear the dress, Trev, it’s your first day. And me, all of six and already rooted. Hell no, Ma.

  Our family is like that.

  All summer long my brother had managed to avoid me—turning corners when he saw me coming, heading upstairs if he saw me heading down, walking out the back door as I entered the front, tossing the remote on the couch and leaving the TV room when I came into it…. Always the summer had been coming to this moment—when he entered fourth grade and I entered first. The school-bus ride, the walking me down the hall and to my class, the handing me off to my teacher, his queer little sister who screamed when her mother suggested a cornflower blue dress—that’s what she’d called it, cornflower—as if the color or the flower made any sense. Corn. Flower. Cornflower blue. What the hell is wrong with you? my mother said, and even though she wasn’t supposed to, she lit a cigarette in front of us and took a deep drag of it before tossing the dress on the couch.

  What the hell is wrong with you? I didn’t move. Just folded my arms and stared at her. There was a knife in my pocket. A penknife my friend Alex had given me. Red handled and sharpened all summer long on the curb outside our house. The blade was as thin as a razor. I fingered the handle—cool and smooth.

  Then you figure out what the hell you’re wearing, my mother said.

  And I did. So here I was, standing in front of this pretty new teacher, the scent of my father’s Domme hair products wafting from my curls, the top button left just so, and my skin showing through it—caramel, golden, nut brown, honey, depending on who was looking and what mood they were in….

  But it was not the note my mother wrote that threw her—I know this now. It was the jeans and the button-down shirt and the hair, cut short over my ears and the tight curls just on top. Daughter? her eyes said. But she was young and pretty and it was her first year teaching, so her lips trembled up into a smile.

  Trev, I said. Trev Louis Johnson.

  Six years before, on a cloudy day in June—too cold for June, my mother said—I was born Trevana Louise Johnson. For my father, Trevor. For my mother, Dana. His father was Trevor, too. Her grandmother Dane Alise. The line goes back and back until old people can’t remember where it started. I was born a combination of grandmothers and grandfathers and blood and vowels mixing until I came into this world—a new combination of black and white, of my mother’s dark skin and my father’s pale. Dark-eyed and already mad about something, my mother said.

  I knew I wasn’t right.

  Have a seat right here, Trev, my teacher said. And in the way of great first-grade teachers everywhere, she folded herself around this daughter-boy that was me.

  That night, in the dream, I unzipped my six-year-old self and stepped out—free.

  Breathe, my mother said. Just breathe.

  That summer before, as my brother ran away from me, I had learned to breathe—first with my mother and when that wasn’t enough, then with Dr. K, who had me draw pictures and choose clothes from wooden crates and play pretend with pale bendable dolls. Dr. K, with her patient Do you want to talk about it?, to which the answer was always No, but somehow the words made their way into the room. I’m wrong down there. All summer long I’m wrong down there, until Dr. K with her limber dolls and button-down dress-up shirts and mirrors and words showed me that other world, the world inside the world.

  Each night thereafter, I closed my eyes, took deep breaths until in that place between sleep and wake, I unzipped this world I wore.

  And now, a year since my first day as a kindergartner, I was allowed back again—a first grader—taller, breathing, a knife in my pocket as sharp as my brother’s rage. But it was all different. My father—the Trev part of me—had left in late July, a small suitcase packed, a kiss on each of our foreheads, my mother turning away from the window in tears. My father’s world inside his world was crumbling. He had dreamed me pink and girlie. He had dreamed princess parties and sweet six-teens, a wedding dance before handing me off to his new and beloved son-in-law. He’d said this: She’s killing me. I’m a man and my little girl is killing me. But in my world inside my world, I knew he wasn’t talking about me, because I wasn’t his little girl. I was Trev. And Trev was not a girl.

  Dr. K had sat them down, slowly re-explained me.

  But you can fix that, can’t you? my father had asked. Can’t someone fix her?

  Trev is Trev, Dr. K had said. Let him be so.

  And my father pressed his face into his hands and cried.

  I am not a little girl.

  You’re a fuckin’ freak! my brother had screamed. And for days our house was filled with a silence so sharp at its edges, so cold. For days our house was as cold and fragile as glass.

  You chased him away, my brother said, but my mother shook her head.

  Your father was already halfway gone.

  In first grade, my teacher was Ms. Riley. Call me Ms. R, she said, or Ms. Riley or Cara, if you like.

  Cara? we said, our eyebrows knitting up, our hands going over our mouths. Cara was too human, too right here and now. Teachers weren’t Cara.

  Cara, she said. It was my grandmother’s name.

  Then we spent time talking about where our names came from, whether or not we liked them, what we’d change them to. And when I told the history of my name, the class listened, some even smiled at me.

  Dane had come before me. She was my mother’s great-aunt, tall and cigar smoking and handsome. She laughed with her head thrown back and wore her hair cut low. In the pictures, Dane looks directly into the camera as though she’s daring something to come closer. It’s like she’s wearing a shield, right? I asked my brother one night when he was still a friend of mine. But he couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see that Dane was a true-blue superhero.

  Maybe I’ll be a superhero, too.

  Some nights, I dreamed I was flying above the world, my cape trailing out behind me, silver-gray and shining in the moonlight. I dreamed I looked down and saw others like me and I called to them and they flew up and joined me, and together we circled the earth all night long. And the world was safe. And we were safe.

  What happened to Dane? I ask my mother, staring at the picture of her for the hundred-thousandth time.

  She cut a man, my mother says. And they took her away. And when she got out, she never came home again. Mama looks at the picture and smiles. I like to think she found a friendlier place somewhere. She had a hard time in our town. But she handled it. She was something else, that Dane.

  Why’d she cut that man?

  He probably made her mad. Said something he didn’t have a right to be saying to her.

  In school sometimes, I touch the knife in my pocket, feel the smooth handle, think about the sharp edge of the blade. One day my mother will find it and lose her mind. Smack me or light up a cigarette or sit down and cry.

  Is that thing your sister or brother or whatever it is? the older kids ask my brother sometimes.

  Hell no, he says, flicking his eyes away from me, out into the schoolyard, over the other kids who walk the world all lost or safe inside their skin.

  On the second day of school, the day that was my first, I walked with a new partner, Raymond, down the hall to the boys’ bathroom. When I stepped inside and closed the stall door, I smiled. I was home. />
  Each night, when my mother kisses my cheek, she pulls the covers up to my ears and whispers, I wish on eyelashes and birthday candles, tomorrow you’ll be my sugar and spice and everything nice. Then, I turn onto my back, close my eyes, and breathe deeply until the dream is there.

  And in the dream, I am a boy, truly, everywhere. In the dream, no one looks twice at me. No one laughs. No little girl screams, no brother turns away. In the dream, there is one world, the right one, and superhero me has swooped down.

  And saved it from mortal destruction.

  MY VIRTUAL WORLD

  BY FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK

  i don’t have a body here. it is a relief not to have a body. i am just a face. i float around on the music of my choice. i have a lot of friends. they are disembodied, too. we don’t argue. we don’t hear each other’s voices, only the songs we love. we don’t touch but it’s all right. our words touch. it’s easier to live in this world we’ve created, everyone beautiful in their pics, all the pain contained in poetry and drawings and photographs. it’s easier to love this way. you

  feel seen. you

  feel

  heard.

  but you’re not really.

  dear ms. r. e.

  thanks for the add. i really like your pictures and what you wrote about in your blog. you look/sound sad/happy at the same time.

  yours,

  blue boy

  dear blue boy