Cack-Handed

by Gina Yashere

  The first night we arrived at Mars, we lined up dutifully to get in. It was a hot summer’s evening, and there was a varied mix of people hanging outside. This was no sleek, built-up area. The club looked like an abandoned warehouse, and this image was very much confirmed by random piles of rubble dotting the surrounding area from which rats dodged in and out. I was wearing one of my brand-new pairs of Reebok Pumps, so I kept a wary eye on the rat activity. When we finally got into the club, we excitedly explored all floors but finally settled on the hip-hop floor, where we danced till 7 a.m., and slept happily on the subway back to Brooklyn. We went to Mars three nights in a row, but on the last night, a Sunday, as we approached the club, we noticed a distinct change in the clientele. The surrounding area was packed with people I’d heard of but never seen in real life: cross-dressers, men dressed just like the characters from the pop group Village People, drag queens, and a lot of girls who were dressed similarly to us but were holding hands and kissing! Oh! We’d obviously turned up on gay night. We still wanted to go to the club, so we all hatched what we thought was a novel plan. We’d pair up and hold hands, pretending we were lesbians so no one would bother us.

  I grabbed Maggie, Antoinette and Nasima paired up, and Tucker and Lara, another friend who’d joined us on the trip last minute, did the same. And in we went. The hip-hop floor was the same, and we soon forgot our discomfort as we danced and enjoyed ourselves.

  At some point I became separated from my friends and a tall attractive Black woman sidled over to me. “Hey. You wanna dance?”

  I was flustered. “Er, I’m not gay!”

  “Really.” She looked me up and down, assessing me slowly.

  With my baggy jeans and tee, my sneaks, and my shaved head with blond dreads poking out of the top like a pineapple, I could understand her confusion. I tried to clarify. “Yeah, we all dress like this in England!”

  “Oh, that’s why you speak funny!” She laughed.

  I was indignant. “No, you speak funny!” I countered. “I’m from England, and we’re speaking English!”

  She laughed again and offered to buy me a drink, and I wandered over to the bar with her, enjoying her company and the lighthearted banter. We chatted and laughed for a while, then all of a sudden she stopped talking, looked at me for an uncomfortably long time, and said, “Come with me.” I was intrigued so I followed her through the crowd. Before I knew it, we were in the ladies’ bathroom. I assumed she just wanted company while she went for a pee. She couldn’t be inviting me to listen to her take a dump, surely. A cubicle opened up, and she walked towards it, turned back to me, and said, “Come on!” Huh? I followed her into the cubicle. She shut the door behind us, pushed me up against the wall, and kissed me passionately. Holy shit. I felt an excitement I had never felt with any of the guys I’d been with, and I was terrified. I was too shocked to kiss her back, but she was unperturbed. Eventually, she pulled back. “You liked that, huh?” I just stared, dumbfounded. “Honey, you’re a lesbian. You just don’t know it yet!” And with that, she took a pen and scrap of paper out of her purse, scribbled a number, squeezed it into my hand, and walked out of the cubicle.

  I stumbled back through the club, found my friends, and never mentioned what had transpired. I was scared, confused, and turned on at the same time. Several times in the middle of the night over the last days of our trip, I sneaked away from my friends to find a pay phone to call her. I left messages, but she never called me back, and I never saw her again.

  When we got back to England, I put that first lesbian experience out of my mind and threw myself back into straight life. I didn’t hate men, so surely I could forget what happened, live a regular life, work, meet a man, get married, have some kids. I wanted to be normal. I was finally at a place in my life where I had good friends, who thought I was cool and funny, who really liked me. I’d finally left those awkward, unpopular years behind, so the last thing I wanted to do was risk being alienated again.

  You never know when a chicken sweats because of their feathers.

  The Fridge attracted an eclectic mix of people, but I’d only ever met one person who might have understood my dilemma, although we’d fallen out, so that door was closed.

  For over a year I’d seen this handsome guy on the dance floor at The Fridge and marveled at his skills. These were the days when dances like the Running Man, the Roger Rabbit, and spins and splits ruled the dance floor, and every week was like a dance competition. And I am extremely competitive. I’d spend the previous weeks scanning MTV videos for the latest moves so I could show them off that weekend. On the dance floor, I’d slowly weave my way to the vicinity of the best dancers and dance my ass off in their periphery until they acknowledged my prowess. That is how a lot of my friendships back then were made. This dude caught my attention because he usually came to the club alone but seemed to know everyone. He would spend the entire night dancing by himself, occasionally stopping to sip from a single glass of water. He was an enigma. And boy could he dance. I was determined we would be friends. A couple of my crew had also expressed their attraction to him, so I’d be killing two birds with one stone. My normal tactic of dancing in his general vicinity hadn’t worked, as he always seemed to be dancing in his own music video in his mind. It was frustrating.

  Eventually I approached one of the girls I’d seen him occasionally greet. “Yo, your mate is a really good dancer. Where’s he from?”

  “Which mate?” she responded.

  “The guy with the red shirt.”

  “Oh, him?” She smiled slowly with a glint in her eyes.

  “I don’t fancy him, I just like his dancing!”

  “Yeah, sure. Lemme introduce you!”

  Cool. We waded through the crowd, and she tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Gina, this is Sharon. Sharon, this is Gina.”

  Huh? Sharon?

  Although Sharon was a name historically used for both genders, in the UK this hadn’t been the case. I knew a lot of Sharons, and none of them were male. This was why her friend had smiled like that. The bitch. I tried to hide my shock while Sharon’s friend grinned beside me. I made some small talk, complimented Sharon on her dancing, then I rushed back to tell my friends of my discovery. “That boy is a girl!”

  I’d never met anyone like Sharon. She wasn’t just a tomboy like me. No matter how rough-and-tumble I was, there was no hiding the fact that I was female, and I was never in any doubt that I was. I wanted the same freedoms that boys had, but I didn’t want to be a boy. Sharon was different.

  Most of us dressed similarly in those days, so it wasn’t the clothing that caused people to misgender her. She wore the same high-top fades that the guys were rocking. She carried herself in the same way that the guys did. She had no discernible female features, no breasts, no curves. Her face was that of a very cute young guy. Her physicality was on a level with the guys. There was absolutely no giveaway that she was in fact female. I didn’t know at the time, because that knowledge was not readily available, but Sharon may have been trans.

  I didn’t care. She was a great dancer, and we were going to be friends. I introduced her to my crew, and we all began hanging out. I learned a lot about Sharon through observing her. Most people who knew her accepted her for who she was. She was just Sharon, who looked like a boy. Others who didn’t know her just assumed she was a cute guy. Until I dragged her into my friend group, she had pretty much been a loner, just drifting through, dancing, then leaving. The reason why she sipped on just one glass of water all night at the club was because she never went to the bathroom. As in never. She didn’t feel comfortable using either gender of bathroom.

  On one occasion we were having a conversation as we walked through the club. She was so engrossed that she hadn’t realized I was walking towards the ladies’ bathroom. We stepped in, and she stopped dead in her tracks as she realized where we were. All the girls in there stopped and stared at her. Sharon turned and rushed out like she had been chased. That was the
only time in over a year of being friends with her that I saw her enter a public toilet. We became close, but we never discussed sexuality. We swapped records, we went to the movies, we danced at the club, and she even came and hung at the house a few times, obviously when I knew my mum was at work.

  Looking back, she may have been attracted to me. There were times when she’d throw her arm around my shoulder as we walked, knowing that no one would bat an eyelid, as we looked like a regular girlfriend-boyfriend combo. But I was in such deep denial about my inclinations then that I saw nothing in it. I was convinced of our platonic friendship.

  Sharon lived in South London with her Jamaican mother, who’s opinion on her masculine-presenting daughter I never knew. I only met her once, and at that time she was attempting to smash my house up.

  I’m not sure when I started to feel resentful towards Sharon, but over a period of time I began to feel used by her. I was the only one in my group of friends with a car, and when we were going out, I would often drive to pick them all up at their homes or very close by. I’d also drop them all off individually afterwards, only once in a while asking for gas money. Whenever it was that asking time, Sharon would slip out of the car and make a run for it. The first few times, I let it slide, but as time went on, my other friends began to tire of her failure to contribute, and when I finally told her she’d have to, she pulled one pound out of her pocket. I’d been picking her up and dropping her off for a year at that point. She was taking the piss. The next time we were all going out, I told her my car was full.

  She still made it to the club, but when she saw me, she ignored me. Over the next few weeks, she kept blanking me in the club, so I assumed our friendship was now over. I asked her to return a large batch of records I’d lent her a few weeks earlier. She didn’t. I asked again. I sent one of my friends, Maggie, as a mediator to meet her and collect my stuff. Maggie returned with just two records. At the time I had a large vinyl collection of all the big rap records of the era—Sweet Tee, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Public Enemy, Pete Rock and C. L. Smooth, Chubb Rock, Queen Latifah. I’d lent Sharon almost my entire collection for her to put on tape. That’s what we did in the ’80s and ’90s. Either we recorded stuff off the radio, hoping the DJ didn’t talk too much through it, or one of the crew would buy the record and the rest of us copied it onto tape. I’d lent Sharon forty records. She’d returned two and was refusing to return my calls. I was furious.

  Two weeks later, Maggie and I drove to Sharon’s house. I told Maggie to wait in the car while I knocked on the door. A Jamaican man in his fifties opened. Presumably her mum’s partner.

  “Hi. Is Sharon in?”

  “She’s upstairs. Sharon!”

  I didn’t wait for her to come all the way down but walked into the house and met her at the bottom of her stairs. With barely any acknowledgment, she turned and headed back up to her bedroom as I followed. Once we got in the room and closed the door, I wasted no time getting to the point. “Where the fuck are the rest of my records?”

  “I gave them to Maggie.” I wanted to punch her right then, but I struggled to control myself. I hadn’t written down all the albums and singles I’d lent her, but I reeled off at least eight of them that we both knew she hadn’t returned. I watched the realization dawn on her, that my memory was better than she’d hoped, then saw her face harden. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You ain’t getting those records back, so come out of my house.”

  I completely lost my temper and launched at her. The fight didn’t last long before I felt myself being grabbed from behind and pushed facedown on her bed. The man had obviously heard the commotion and ran upstairs to Sharon’s defense. He held both my arms behind my back while pushing on the back of my head and forcing it into one of the bed pillows. Sharon at this point was punching me in the head as I lay immobilized, struggling to breathe. I began to panic, as I was running out of breath and was beginning to black out.

  Suddenly I heard “Get off her!” And banging and crashing noises. Maggie, God bless her, had run into the house and to my rescue. I found myself free and able to breathe again, as Maggie had pulled the man off me. I staggered toward Sharon, but Maggie pulled me out of the room and dragged me down the stairs and out of the house. Sharon followed, screaming obscenities, as the man slammed the front door behind us. I was apoplectic with rage. I ran back and karate kicked the door several times, smashing one of the windowpanes and bowing the doorframe. I wasn’t getting those records back, so I was going to make her pay in other ways. Maggie dragged me back to the car, and we screeched away.

  Two nights later there was a loud bang at the front door and several long incessant rings of the doorbell. “Ah-ah, who is that?” Mum rarely had visitors at the house, and all her kids were home, apart from Taiwo, who had long flown the coop.

  “I’ll go check.” I walked to the front door, and through the frosted glass, I saw two people. One, a slim Black woman I hadn’t seen before, but the other, standing behind her, I immediately recognized as Sharon. Shit. I turned and walked back the way I’d come. Sharon’s mum began hammering on the door.

  Mum came out of the front room. “What is going on?”

  “It’s a girl I had a fight with. She’s turned up with her mum. Don’t let them in!”

  “So I will leave them out there until somebody calls the police? Don’t be stupid. I will talk to her, mother to mother,” my mum said and went to open the door.

  “But they’re Jamaican!” I implored. At that point I was willing to use anything to stop what was about to happen, even defunct prejudices.

  Mum opened the door, and Sharon and her mother stepped in. Sharon’s mum was a petite woman. She was dwarfed by Sharon, but in height only. The woman was furious, and her body thrummed like a tightly strung guitar. I marveled at how a woman with no car had been able to hold on to that angry energy for the hour and a half journey it must have taken on public transport to get to us.

  In contrast, Sharon stood behind her, with her head down, looking decidedly meek. Not the screaming, hitting banshee she’d been just forty-eight hours previously.

  “Your daughter came to my house, attacked my daughter, and smashed up my property!”

  “Did your daughter tell you that she stole my property?” I began but was swiftly shut up by my mother’s hand across my chest, pushing me backwards.

  “Let her speak.”

  Sharon’s mum went into a long rant about my lawlessness while my mum stood patiently letting her get it all out. I itched to intervene, but not enough to openly defy my mum, even if this woman was only telling half the story.

  When she had finished, my mum apologized on my behalf and tried to reason with her. The whole time, Sharon hadn’t said a word.

  “Well, my property is damaged, so I’m going to damage yours!” Huh? What?

  We were all standing in the front hallway at that point, and the only available item for damaging was our house phone. In the olden days, before landlines became a relic, most households kept the family phone somewhere central, so everybody could hear it. Usually in the lounge, kitchen, or front hallway. These were the gargantuan plastic rotary phones that took pride of place in the home, usually next to the Yellow Pages, and displayed on some kind of decorative side table.

  Ours was in the hallway, and Sharon’s mum focused on that as an outlet for her wrath. She grabbed our phone and threw it to the floor. I instinctively stepped forward to stop her, but again Mum barred me with her arm, as if to say, “Let her get it out of her system.” Sharon’s mum began jumping up and down on the phone and kicking it.

  They obviously didn’t have a landline at home, as anybody who had one would have known that these phones were absolute bricks. They were mainly thick plastic, and the mechanics were well protected within that shell. They were virtually indestructible. This poor woman jumped up and down, trying to break the telecommunications equivalent of a boulder. If this wasn’t such a fraught situation, I would have laughed my
ass off. But I didn’t. We stood and watched. The only sound was Sharon’s mum huffing and puffing with the effort. She picked up the phone again and smashed it into the floor. Nothing. The phone landed undamaged. Mocking. Her anger grew with her humiliation. She began kicking the door nearest to her, which happened to be the door to my brothers’ bedroom. It was closed and made of sturdy wood, and it barely budged with this woman’s onslaught. This was becoming really embarrassing. She then tried to pick up the phone to use to smash the door.

  This was when finally Mum said, “Okay, enough. You can go now.”

  Mum moved like a ninja. In one move, she had the front door open, had Sharon’s mum by the scruff of the neck, as she screamed and cursed at us, and was throwing her out onto the street. I stepped forward, just in case Sharon tried to defend her mother, but she didn’t. She walked out after her, without so much as a peep. Mum slammed the door shut, and it was only then that Sharon suddenly found her voice. She joined her mother in screaming abuse from the street, then ran at our door, kicking it. Luckily, it was made from much better wood than hers, but she succeeded in ripping off the letter-box cover.

  Mum calmly picked up the phone, put it back on the side table, and went back into the front room, but not before turning to me. “You will replace that letter box, and any other damage done to this house, you will pay for it.” The phone rang about ten minutes later. It was a wrong number. The phone worked perfectly.