by Joey Comeau
We went for drinks after the party, and she wouldn’t let Richard off the hook for backing down. He said, “It just wasn’t right. It felt too much like rape.” Alex pointed out that he got his ass kicked anyway.
In retrospect, the non-consensual nature of the thing does make me uncomfortable. I got so wrapped up in the idea of turning the boy’s gender expectations on their head that . . . Well, fuck it. I’m glad Richard didn’t do it, and I told him so.
Now I’m sitting on the balcony and watching as the city moves with morning energy. Richard wants to pay out of his own pocket for this elementary school action we have planned; I want to steal the money. I want to break into another hetero’s house and take something we can sell, but he’s got it in his head that the money behind these children’s books should be clean money, should be pure somehow. We fought about this last night.
I gave in. We both have different ways of doing things, and if I’m honest with myself I have to admit his way is more noble. He’ll feel good about spending some of his money on these books for children instead of on pornography and me. Also, giving in on this is my way of telling him he was right about the blow-job thing with the blindfolded high school kid.
When Richard wakes up I hustle him out the door without breakfast. “We’ll eat out,” I say as we climb into the car. The first bookstore we go to is in the city, a big chain outlet. We need at least thirty copies of the book and a chain’s the only place we’re likely to find that kind of stock, but it still makes me uncomfortable.
There’s a lineup to the in-store coffee shop, and we start looking around for a children’s book with gay-enough pictures. There’re two books in the whole store, and Richard doesn’t like them.
“This book doesn’t even say the kid’s uncle is gay. He’s just got his hand around the guy’s shoulder, and the little girl is saying, ‘I love you anyway, Uncle Jeff!’ It could be a children’s book about coming to terms with an uncle who has a shoulder fetish. I don’t think we’re going to find anything here.”
I nod, but I’ve caught the eye of a clerk two aisles over. He’s tall and blond and his glasses are prissy as heck. I wink.
“What we need,” I say to Richard, “is a book called something like Grandpa’s Gay! Maybe I Should Be Too. But I don’t think those make it past the editors very often, do they?” The clerk is closer now, and he nods his head toward the bathroom. I nod back and Richard looks over his shoulder to see what I’m nodding at. “I’ll just be a minute,” I say, and he shrugs and picks up another book to flip through.
In the bathroom I pull off the clerk’s uniform shirt and put it on over my own T-shirt. He’s got a nice chest, and he shaves it. I certainly don’t mind. He has the key to the bathroom, and he locks us in, so we don’t have to squeeze into a stall. I push him back against the door and my finger presses the bumps around his nipple. He goes straight for my belt, a gentleman.
While he sucks me, I’m running my hand through his hair and doing this fake voice the whole time: “Good afternoon, is there anything I can help you find today?” and “Good evening, sir, did you know about our storewide sale today? Everything is ten percent off. Also, we do blow jobs. Would you like a blow job?” I pause and let out a small moan of encouragement. “We’re very good at it,” I say. He has to stop a couple of times because he’s laughing too hard.
We exchange numbers, and I give him a kiss on the cheek. Richard’s waiting outside and, without any emotion at all, he watches the guy walk past and sizes him up. “There’s nothing here,” he says.
Back in the car, I say, “I don’t think we’re going to find what we need.”
“What about my brother?” Richard says. “He’s a pretty good cartoonist. Couldn’t we get him to illustrate fifteen or twenty pages for us? We could print up our own books, about anything we want. Grandpa’s Gay! Maybe I Should Be Too. And that way we can control the message completely.”
It’s not a bad idea.
“You’ll write it?” I say, and Richard is nodding.
“Yeah, or we can all write it tonight.” He smiles and turns back to face the road. “So, the problem with those big chain bookstores is the service, I find,” he says, and I’m already rolling my eyes.
When we meet up with Michelle and Alex, Alex has her hair chopped off and she’s wearing a sweater vest over top of a button-up shirt. Her angular face looks much more boyish framed by the hair, and my reaction to her facial tattoos is more visceral than I’m comfortable with. She takes Richard’s hand and leads him off into the backroom of Michelle’s apartment. Michelle brings out some tea for us to drink, and we sit down.
“I talked her out of binding herself with ACE bandages,” Michelle says, nodding her head the way Richard and Alex have gone. “She’s decided to start self-identifying as a gay man, and she wanted to bind her breasts for when Richard got here.” I’m smiling, and Michelle shakes her head. “I told her I would introduce her to some real drag kings I know, and they’d show her how to do it properly. I don’t want her to hurt herself.”
The way Michelle seems to have taken Alex under her wing verifies my initial feelings about her, I think. She is smart and queer and awesome. If I weren’t gay, or she weren’t a woman, I might consider attempting to ensnare her in the ugly web of a monogamous relationship. Instead I’ll just be glad she’s a part of our “superhero team.”
“We couldn’t find any good books,” I say, “but Richard’s brother is willing to illustrate one for us. Richard will pay the printing costs, and this way we’ll have complete control over the end result. We won’t have to be sneaking watered-down garbage onto the shelves. I think that’d defeat the whole purpose.”
“We’ll write it ourselves?” Michelle grins. “That sounds awesome.” She pulls a bag out from under the coffee table and shows me the masks, Bert and Ernie and Velma and Wonder Woman. They’re cheesy and plastic and perfect. I feel the way bank robbers must feel before they go out on that last job that ends up getting them all killed. That is to say, optimistic.
When Alex and Richard come back, they’re holding hands and Richard is avoiding my eyes. Alex tells me they’re boyfriends. “But it’s not monogamous or anything like that,” she says. “Neither of us is that naive.” It’s cute that she makes a little announcement of it. Sorry, not “she” — “he.” Now I’m going to get my pronouns confused. It’s cute that Alex makes a little announcement of it. I like him.
“That’s awesome,” I say, and Richard looks to see if I’m being sarcastic. I meet his eyes and smile. “We ought to get that book written tonight,” I say. “We can drop off the text to your brother in the morning. We don’t need this to be a work of art, or subtle. We want something fun, that kids will really enjoy, and something politically effective.”
“The gay grandpa idea’s a good one,” Richard says, and he and Alex sit down. Alex crosses his legs, like a gay man might, and I grin. “My grandpa’s gay, maybe I should be too!” he explains to Michelle and Alex.
Michelle nods, but leans forward.
“That’s all right, but it’s so detached. All those children’s books are detached like that. We want something in the first person, you know? About a boy who likes to play with dolls, and who wants to be Christina Aguilera when he grows up, not Clint Eastwood.”
Richard looks pained.
“I wanted to be Clint Eastwood when I grew up,” he says.
“You are,” I assure him, and Alex laughs. He snakes his arm around behind Richard’s back. “That’s good though,” I say to Michelle. “Something smart too, not condescending. Something like, ‘Last year, when I turned eight, my mommy bought me a big bag of army men. She knows that I don’t condone the patriotic ideal of might makes right, but more importantly she knows how much those single-tone uniforms bother me. I made it perfectly clear that all I wanted for my birthday was a day at the spa.’ Or something fun like that?”
“‘Daddy found my doll collection and threw it out with the trash,’” Michel
le says. “‘And he got so mad when I asked him whether his anger at my eschewal of traditional gender roles was based on his repressed homosexual urges.’”
Richard is grinning, and he picks up the pen off the table.
“That’s good,” he says, writing it down.
“Are we writing this about being gay, or being transgendered?” Alex asks, and Michelle shakes her head. Alex leans back in his chair, and Richard takes his hand. He, he, he. I have to get the pronoun down properly, so that I use it without thinking. Alex’ll appreciate that, I think.
“Queer,” Michelle says. “We can have an older sister who comes out of the closet maybe. And she wants to be an astronaut and get married to her lady friend on the moon! And all the neighbourhood kids decide they want to be gay astronauts too.”
Richard writes furiously, and already I can picture the drawings, simple and elegant and fun. I wish I’d had a book like this. This is what publishers should be putting out. Fun and silly and positive.
Fuck Dr. Seuss.
Chapter 4
Maybe Alex really is a boy. I’ve never seen him naked. Those could be unbound breast forms under his shirt. I watch him run his fingers up the back of Richard’s neck.
“What about a boy with a pet dinosaur,” Alex says. We’re still talking about the book. “The dinosaur could be gay, and they could ride around town cruising for hot dinosaur loving, and the other dinosaurs would be all like, ‘Can I pet your little boy? He’s so precious. Does he bite? I had a little boy just like this when I was a kid.’ And then the dinosaur gets the other dinosaur’s number.” He grins. “Little kids are a total dino magnet,” he says, and even in the near dark of the room I can see that Richard is smiling at him.
Michelle and I are sitting on the couch, and Richard and Alex are on the floor in front of us. I like Michelle’s apartment. It’s cozy without being too cute. Nothing is too clean, or too careful, but nothing’s disgusting either. It’s comfortable.
“I don’t know,” Michelle says. “‘Can I pet your little kid?’ That sounds kind of sketchy. We don’t have to be politically correct, but we should probably avoid implications of pedophilia. We want a positive message. What was wrong with the girl who wants to be a gay astronaut? We could have a book where she goes to class, and everyone has to say what they want to be. Her classmates are all saying things like, ‘I want to be a fireman,’ or ‘I want to be the first female president,’ or ‘I want to be a soldier,’ and then she goes up and says, ‘I want to be the first lesbian astronaut to get married in space!’”
Richard’s cell rings, and he hands it to me. It’s Chris.
“Hey,” I say, and motion for them to keep talking. I lock myself in the bathroom with the kitty litter and a shelf full of pills. “Did you send the TV back already?” I lift up one of the pill bottles. I have no idea what the drug is. Something to do with girl parts probably. “It was a nice TV,” I say, and then I duck my head to the sink and take a sip of water. “I hope you didn’t throw it away.”
“I talked him into keeping it,” Chris says. “He wanted to call the cops on you. Is that water running?”
I wipe my mouth and shake my head, even though he can’t see me.
“Where’s the boyfriend now?” I say. I pick another bottle off the shelf. Oxycocet. Painkillers. I think about pocketing a few, but decide against it. Anyway, if I ask, she’ll probably share.
“At work.” There’s a pause. “Are you busy? Do you want to come over?”
I can hear Richard and Alex and Michelle all laughing in the living room, and when I open the door to peek, Richard is making ridiculous, grandiose arm gestures. I don’t even need to think about the decision.
“I’m busy,” I say. “And anyway, I’d rather not have to sneak out before the boyfriend comes home.”
“What, you want to stay and cuddle all night?” His voice is sharp. “You’ve known all along what the situation was. I don’t need you pulling shit like you pulled today. If I want to tell him I’m fucking someone else, I’ll tell him. It’s not your place.”
And after I hang up, I feel stupid. It used to be exciting to be the other man. Now I just feel like I’m taking a passive role in the reinforcement of traditional monogamous beliefs. What would monogamy be if there wasn’t something to compare it to?
I call Mrs. Hubert, and this time she answers.
“Monogamy is defined by what it is not, just as much as by what it is,” I say. “We couldn’t have monogamy without infidelity, the same as we couldn’t have sad without happy, or down without up. By fucking around in secret, within a relationship defined as monogamous, aren’t I just playing the devil in monogamy’s Sunday-school pageant?”
I’m saying all this to a dial tone.
Back at the group, they’re still talking about ideas for the book. Now Richard’s got one.
“We could have a kid who just changes gender at random,” Richard says. “He wakes up and all of a sudden he’s a girl. He doesn’t feel any different on the inside, but on the outside he’s all pigtails and rosy cheeks. His mom and dad insist that he’s always been a girl. His toys are all replaced by dolls and tea sets.”
I sit down next to Michelle again.
What if I woke up tomorrow and I was a girl? How would that be any different? I mean, I’d have to throw out all of my clothes, for one, and someday next month there would be a terrifying trip to the bathroom. I wonder if those trips get less terrifying. Would it be worth it, having to have breasts, so that I could be fucked by two men at once? Richard is looking at me, and I smile.
“And maybe he doesn’t understand what it means to be a girl,” I say. “That’s a good idea. He has to pee sitting down. He’s not allowed in the boys’ washroom anymore. People give him funny looks when he buys baseball cards.” Do people still buy baseball cards? I’m trying not to think about Chris’s body.
“And all his clothes are gone,” Alex says, getting into it. “He has to dress up like an idiot.”
I can already picture the cartoons that go along with the story — a little girl dressed in girl clothes, looking sour. Getting more and more frustrated as the book progresses.
Richard nods. “But then he starts having fun. He likes how nice his friends smell now. His new girl friends. He realizes that he likes dolls just as much as action figures. He even starts to get a crush on a boy in his class. The boy gives him a valentine, and he blushes. And just when he gets used to being a girl,” Richard says, “just when he’s accepted his fate, he wakes up and he’s a boy again.”
“Only now he doesn’t feel like a boy anymore either!” Alex says. “His friends seem dirty and rude, and he feels weird wearing a pair of pants instead of a skirt. He gives a love note to that boy from school. His mom comes in and finds him trying on her heels.”
Richard, who’s writing this all down, smiles. “Johnny’s a girl, sometimes,” he says, and the decision is already made. Johnny’s a Girl, Sometimes.
I lean back and look over at Michelle. I feel like we’re a band, recording an album so personal we’ll eventually refuse to play any of the songs in concert.
“We should celebrate,” I say.
She nods.
“We should get fucking drunk,” I say. “And break into something.” And we do.
Michelle is standing four feet away, keeping watch at the corner of the school. Alex and Richard are in the car, making out. I’m trying to hold a bottle of whisky with the same hand I’ve got the pick in. It’s complicated, but everything’s complicated these days.
“Picking locks is a lot like being queer,” I say. I’m on my knees in front of the door. “Taking the world as you see it, and not how you’re told to see it. There’s no real difference between turning the knob and picking the lock.” I don’t intend “turning the knob” as a euphemism for being gay, but I kind of like the way it sounds. “Both are a series of mechanical actions by which you gain access to the room beyond.”
Michelle runs her hand throug
h her hair, which is the signal that someone is coming, and I slide the tools out of the lock and into my pocket. She grabs me hard by the elbow and kisses me. We’re making out as the man comes around the corner, and I break off to smile and nod and offer him a drink from the whisky. “Sorry,” he says. He doesn’t give us a second look. There’s nothing to see. We’re just a couple of kids out for an evening of healthy heterosexual living.
“I love that,” I say when he’s gone. The whisky burns going down, and I feel like it’s going to eat right through my body and splash to the ground beneath me. “We’re using his preconceived notions of what’s sexually normal to create a sense of the everyday about our actions!”
Michelle laughs at me.
“We were pretending to make out,” she says.
I shove the whisky into her hands and bend down again and select a different pick. Women. After a minute, the lock turns, and I pull the door open and usher Michelle into the school. It takes less than a second before we’re standing in the dark. This is our trial run. It’ll be quicker when we’re sober.
“Listen,” I say, as we sneak along the row of lockers to the first classroom. “The education of children is too important to leave in the hands of their parents. Kids aren’t old enough to decide for themselves what to read, but should the parents really get to choose for them? I mean, children are the future, and the more of them who grow up free of bigotry, the more of them who are exposed to queer concepts and ideas, the better.”
“You sound like a radio commercial,” Michelle says. The bottle’s empty, and she winds up her arm and throws it down the hallway. It is like an alarm going off, it’s so loud. She grabs me and pulls me into the nearest room. “This is it,” she says.
The classroom is small, and the bookshelf is in the very back. It’s pitiful. There are hardly any books at all. “What the hell is wrong with people?” I say. “These kids should have a whole shelf full of books for our subversive addition to get lost in.” I step back and look around. Michelle is leaning forward to read something, and I move closer.
