by Michael Cart
thank you! i like your pictures, too. you look so hot, especially that one in the hat with the shadows on your face and the cigarette hanging from your lip. your artwork is beautiful. i love those dark paintings of the mermaids and centaurs. tell me more about them.
ms. r. e.
i stare at my wrists. they have these white seams along them. sometimes i hide them under sleeves and jewelry. some times i want you all to see them. i want you to worry about me, to be impressed, a little afraid. i want you to hold them to your lips and see if you can feel the marks, like braille, and if you can read the story they write.
dear ms. r. e.
i did those paintings when i was in rehab last year. it really helped me. i was having a hard time. they were about not feeling integrated in my body. how are you doing? your blog sounded really sad today. what story do your scars tell?
bb
hi blue
about two years ago i started cutting myself. it was the weirdest thing. i felt so powerful. i don’t admit this to most people but it was almost beautiful. the way the blood beaded on my skin and that feeling of being close to death but in control of how close. which is not how it is when your dad dies of cancer. that is pure out of control.
after my dad died i got together with this guy and it helped at first but after a while it got really crazy. i think i scared him. i’d write to him all the time and give him things and want to talk about my feelings. he broke up with me and i wanted to take the cutting further. now i’m in therapy with a really good therapist and it is helping.
yesterday the guy called me and wanted to get together. that kind of set me off. i think i said too much. sorry. i always say too much.
i’m sorry you had a hard time last year. you can tell me about it if you want to. i hope things are much better.
today the weather can’t decide what it is doing. there was sun trying to break through the clouds but now the darkness hangs overhead waiting to turn into rain.
rebecca
dear rebecca
thank you for sharing that with me. you didn’t say too much. i am glad you trusted me. but may i ask you why you trust me?
b (garret)
garret
i trust you because of your eyes in the pictures. they are wide open and very kind. i trust you because you like old cat stevens songs and are not afraid to post them. also, anyone who loves krishna das is cool. he opens my heart and makes me cry. but mostly, it’s your artwork. there is so much pain in it but also beauty.
my therapist told me that i should wait and see if people are deserving of my trust but i don’t always do that.
rebecca
why aren’t you here? what did i do to frighten you away? i used to think this capacity to love was going to draw you to me. i had no idea it would scare you so much. i stare at the untouched skin on my wrists. it is so white and smooth still. it reminds me of a canvas waiting for its paint.
rebecca
i am worried about you. i hope you are not hurting yourself.
thank you for your kind words about me. i am feeling a little blue today. staying at home with my cats. they keep walking across the keyboard and sending strange messages so don’t be shocked if you get one that seems to be from me but is actually written by a feline.
take care. really.
g.
p.s.
i am attaching a self-portrait i made. it is a little dark, well a lot dark actually, so i didn’t post it in case my mom saw it, because she has a myspace account now. my art therapist encouraged me to make art instead of drinking too much. do you feel you could keep from cutting yourself by writing more? i don’t mean to interfere but you are on my mind.
blue boy
i’m doing o.k. thanks. i’m sad about that boy i like. i don’t know why i still like him. i have so much love inside of me and i don’t think boys can handle it. you seem different.
you look like you are in so much pain in that painting. have you ever thought about the word pain in painting? it is amazing, though, how you can take pain and make it into something so beautiful. the way your hands are tearing your chest open so tenderly and the color of your heart…
what are your cats’ names?
bec
hi
i am sitting here with my cats climbing all over me. their names are piggy and sassafras. i love them very much. i understand how you feel with all that love to give. it is a beautiful thing. tonight i wish i could give you a hug and make you feel better.
i’m sending you a drawing i did of you from one of your photos.
xo garret
blue
i love that picture! thank you so much! i don’t really like how i look but that picture is how i want to look, how i feel inside.
can i ask you something? why do you seem to understand me so well? you aren’t like any boy i have ever met. do you want to meet in person sometime? i think i have a myspace crush on you.
r.
this is weird to write.
i am not like any boy you ever met because i was not born a boy. i should have told you this right away. i’m attaching a picture of myself before. if you are freaked out and don’t want to contact me again, i under stand. you said you trusted me and i guess it was not very trustworthy of me not to let you know right away.
g.
p.s. i know one thing about myself and that is that i am a very accurate artist and that picture i made looks just like you in the photos. you are beautiful.
rebecca
i hope i didn’t freak you out. i don’t mean to bug you but i’m a big worrier and i think i might have upset you and that’s why you haven’t written back. i’m sorry if i upset you.
garret blue
dear garret
i was really surprised by your message. but i understand. i’m sorry i didn’t write back immediately but i had to process everything for a couple of days. i just kept staring at that picture of you as mandy over and over again. you looked like you then, too. i am not as shocked as you think.
it’s funny because i always wished i could like girls. i kind of idealized lesbians in some way. but i’ve never even kissed a girl. which is unusual, i think, at least among my friends, who are almost all basically straight.
this may sound like a too personal question but i’m wondering if you think that a straight girl involved with a boy who was born a girl is really a lesbian? i don’t mind being a lesbian but i’m not sure that would feel exactly accurate. i have other questions i would like to ask you but i am a little shy and don’t want to make you uncomfortable.
x
hi rebecca
thank you! i feel so relieved. i know that you are not queer but i wondered if maybe there is some strain of queer blood in you? i hope that doesn’t offend you. you can ask me any questions you like. it might help you to look at my pics again, especially the one in the white briefs.
tranny boy g.
dear garret
i think that i would rather meet you in person and ask you my questions then. except that i do wonder what it was like for you when you were little? when did you know that you weren’t comfortable being a girl? did your rehab have to do with all of this?
i also saw that picture you were talking about again. wow you are hot.
does this mean i am now a lesbian?
x
mist r. e.
dear mystery not misery
maybe? do you care?
i never felt like a girl. i always wanted to wear boys’ clothes and play with toys that boys usually play with. my body felt strange, like it belonged to somebody else. when i was a teenager i tried to stop eating so that i wouldn’t develop or bleed. at twenty-one i started hormone therapy and surgery. it helped but there is a lot of shame i still feel, which is probably why i drank so much, in addition to the fact that i have alcoholism in my genetics. i’m afraid to get too close to anyone because i think they will think there is something really wrong with me for doing what i did to
my body.
does this answer your questions?
dear g.
why do you feel shame? there is nothing shameful about who you are. you are a beautiful person. in some cultures, you would be revered as a representative of both sexes. i imagine you are the perfect lover because you are a man who can feel a woman in a true way.
you asked if i care if i’m a lesbian. no.
last night i got into a fight with my ex-boyfriend and i wanted to cut myself so badly but instead i wrote about my feelings. most of it wasn’t very good but i wrote something about you that i think is o.k.
i thought about what you have done to your body and how it is the same but different from what i have done to my body. it is different if you can still love the little girl who you were while honoring the man you have always been and have become. you were cutting to make yourself whole and i was cutting to tear myself apart. now i don’t want to do that anymore. i want to cut with words instead of a knife. i want to tell you the rest of my story.
i would like to meet you for coffee or tea or whatever. i have some more things i would like to share with you about my life and what my dad did to me and why i cut myself. i know i can trust you.
thank you for being my friend.
love
Sometimes you see them out walking around the city. It’s hard to figure them out at first. He looks like a very thin gay man with close-cropped white-blond hair. She looks like a slightly goth young woman, not much more than a teenager. Her hair is straight and black and falls into her eyes, partially covering her face. She wears black lace dresses over tattered leggings and lace-up boots. Sometimes a beaded cashmere vintage cardigan or a fake-fur jacket. They are almost the same height. To bulk up his narrow shoulders, he wears a white T-shirt, a gray hooded sweatshirt and a black leather jacket. He has on Levi’s and the same boots that she has. They hold hands a bit tentatively.
Sometimes people stare at them, wondering what their story is. If you look closely enough you can see it written on his chest and along her wrists, but they’re not going to show you because you are only a pair of eyes that can’t really see them, a pair of ears that won’t really hear.
They will buy groceries and go quietly back to their apartment with the cats and the claw-foot bathtub. They will make tofu and rice and vegetables for dinner. They will put on music intended to make them cry. They won’t be ghosts, little postage-stamp-sized faces floating disembodied on your computer screen. They will be there, in the scarred flesh. And they will tell each other.
A DARK RED LOVE KNOT
BY MARGO LANAGAN
The road was a ribbon of moonlight,
over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding,
up to the old inn-door.
—Alfred Noyes, “The Highwayman”
It was one of those wild nights. Ghost-horses rode up every little while. It was weather for unsettlement, not quite decided to rain, the wind not sure which direction it wanted to prevail from, so trying this way and that way, this strength and that. Even as I came around from the stables I was saying to myself, Get you back to your straw, Tom. It’s cold out and you have only just managed to warm what bed you have.
The yard was empty. Curse your ears, Tom Coyne, your ears full of horses. But then the wind wafted out the tip of a horse’s tail, a little net or veil across some of the moon-shined cobbles of the inn-yard, closer to the house than any horse ever was brought. The man’s voice was soft, but it carried on a purpose-shaped gust of wind: “I’m after a prize tonight.”
I knew what was up in an instant. I pressed my back to the ivy, and put my ear very carefully to the corner that I might hear without being seen, without him seeing that I saw him.
No more words came, only his secreting voice, and then hers, higher, Miss Black-Eyes’, hushed with excitement. Oh, she was not the good girl she painted herself as, that one, chatting with gentlemen out the window of her father’s inn.
The ivy waved across my face at the corner, but I got a good look at him. Oh, he was worth seeing, too, standing in his stirrups and the velvet coat blowing around him, debonairness itself. Look at that hat—almost a lady might wear it, it had such style. And then the lace at his throat, like a flag in the moonlight, like a lady’s little signal handkerchief bunched in her fine hand at her window, it blew. It leaped and leaned and fought in the wind, which was all confused, that close to the house.
“Before morning,” he said.
“You are so certain?”
He laughed low; it rippled through me like horseflesh shivering off a summer fly. Oh, that was a fine beast he rode—stolen from nobles, no doubt—and some town boy had groomed it; the tail was trimmed straight as a girl’s long hair. It was as if he had set himself up, dress and horse and figure, on purpose just to tease me, with what I was not, or with what I could never have.
A rogue wind brought the next as a gift straight from his mouth to my ear: “If they should come after and harry me, I will hide out the day and come for you by night, this very time tomorrow, and our fortune with me.”
“You will be careful, won’t you?”
His soft laughter came again, again straight to my ears, as if he were just around the house corner from me and laughing for me. “I am always careful.”
Jealousy—of him, of her, I hardly knew which—stabbed me in the stomach. I looked again and felt rotten with it, at the sight of his smiling mouth, his teeth as white as the lace, his eyes shining at the edge of his hat brim’s shadow, his hips wrapped close in the brown breeches, his thighs and shins in the boots.
“You will come?” she said, even softer.
He ceased to laugh. He reached up, his face all sharp and intent. He swept his hat off, and bareheaded, he looked even finer, for the slight touslement of his gentleman’s locks, the sudden clarity of his eyes, his high, wide brow smooth and white.
“I will come for you, Bess, though hell should bar the way,” he said, thrilling me to my foot-soles as I stood spying there.
She reached for him, but the window was too high; she could only touch his fingertips. What a fine hand the man had, not tender and foppish, but long-fingered and strong, a good horseman’s hand, I thought, sensitive but commanding should it need to be. It was a hand to haunt my dreams, to make me miserable, while hers hung white and simple in the air above it, so ineffectual-looking—though I knew she was a capable girl and a hard worker—that I could not see why he would grasp after it so longingly.
“Wait—” she said. I half expected her to climb out the window, all petticoats and bosom. But no, she fiddled with her hair, and she loosed it from the knot she had just put it up in, and it fell, longer than her arm and, when she leaned low, longer than his, too, so that it blotted out his throat lace, and his chest was all velvet lapels and her curls.
He picked up handfuls of the stuff and kissed it, his gaze fixed on her face. And she hung above him reaching, blowing kisses, her breasts almost falling out of her bodice, which I dare say she thought would allure him; these shall be yours when you come, when you bring our fortune.
Then he tore himself away, out of her tresses as if from entrapping tentacles. They followed him some way out across the air on the wind. He rode out of the yard, he collected himself in the roadway, he stood his stamping mare and sat straight and sent back a look—it was not for me but it set my bones burning. Who was common Bess, that she should win herself such a look, from such a creature? My God, see him, would you? All a-glitter out there, hilt and pistol butts and boots and brooched hat, and the gleam of dark red velvet, and his burning eyes. He was like some extra constellation, propped above the black-wooded horizon by his gleaming horse.
A word and he was gone—thu-thudda, thu-thudda, thu-thudda—off into the night. She watched him and I watched him, and even after I could no more see the movement of him against the forest border she was there and I cou
ld hear her watching, love-love-love-love with her soupy girl eyes. Then slowly she lowered her window—she must have waxed it, that it didn’t squeak—and I heard her affix the shutters inside, slowly too, and there I was alone at the house corner with ivy waving in my face, and the yard and all the road empty.
I ambled back to the stables; I climbed up into the hayloft. “Wha-zah?” said Gramshaw in his pile, surfacing from his dreams of fat Sarah Plummer.
“I thought I heard a horse,” I said flatly. “But it was nothing. Just the wind.”
The thought punched me in the heart an hour later, sat me up and made me breathless: Tell Bracken. He will send for the king’s men.
I half scrambled out of my straw, then sat back in it. Bracken doesn’t like to be woken, not for anything.
But what if the gentleman, the robber, should do as he hoped, and come back before dawn, and out she jumps from the window and goes with him? I should be beaten senseless then, for knowing and not saying.
I lay back, my whole body pounding with my pulse. There, then, I told myself. Should that happen, I knew nothing and saw nothing. Should dawn come and the daughter still be here, I shall tell him then; he’ll have plenty of time to summon them from the barracks at Chafton.