by Shaw Sander
“She missed the dancers entirely. That was so cool, those men in body suits with the air machine blowing those long scarves around. Like Isadora or something. And the dry ice was a nice touch. Very modern. I had a great time. I just wish Shelly hadn’t disappeared.”
“Drake sure had fun, though, didn’t he? That stripper boy with the spangly g-string was nice to him.”
“It was the money Drake was waving in the air, Al. But who knew Drake was brave enough to put it in the guy’s banana sling with his teeth?”
“Give him one too many Tanquerays and he’s a wild man of sorts. I had fun, too. I especially liked the ball bearing wrestling pit at Mandrake. “
Like an adult fun-ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese, the greased wrestlers had rolled around in slippery little silver balls. In the blue light you could almost tell they were stripping each other.
“I swear I saw some dick flash around.”
I got serious again and sighed, my mind fretting over my friend.
“She’ll be okay, Al. Shelly’s a smart cookie, she’ll turn it around.”
“I’ll have to believe you, Gitta, because I don’t believe it myself. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Stripper-boy’s number turned out to be bogus,” Drake informed me. “Why do people do that? Just say no, if you aren’t interested. Leading an old man like me on like that. I was once a pretty boy just like him but I never did that. It’s simply bad form.”
“Well, then, he isn’t as refined as you are and he’s not worthy of you. Thank goodness he showed his true colors before things got serious.”
I wondered if Drake had gotten a number at all. Was this all for my benefit?
I decided to change the subject with the best distraction known to gay men.
“Hot gossip alert.”
“Tell me!” he squealed.
“I ran into Andrew.”
Drake’s gay-excitement voice dropped a few levels.
“Who is Andrew?”
“Diane!”
“Holy shit, you saw her?”
Drake’s curiousity meter ran back up to full.
“Him.”
“Him. Tell me.”
“Well, actually I ran into him at McClellan’s hardware store in Kent, literally ran into him. I turned a corner and smacked full-body into this really handsome white guy with a moustache and muscles and when I took a step back, apologizing profusely, it was him.”
“How did he look?”
“Like a guy. It was unbelievable. It was still Diane underneath it all, I mean, the person was the same and now there was facial hair and a slightly deeper voice and something about him was more…square.”
“And…?”
“What?”
“C’mon.”
“What?”
“Annalee, you’re a self-proclaimed byke. You went on a date with this hot woman and her motorcycle not even a year ago and you drooled over her then. Okay, so now you run into her as him. My question, Miss Density Award, which should be obvious and go without saying, is: were you attracted to him as a man?”
“I’m not sure. But we’re getting together for coffee on Thursday.”
Drake shrieked, holding the phone away and laughing hard.
“Oh, honey, that’s hysterical! I want to know everything.”
“It’s just coffee.”
“What about Malcolm X’s Rules For Dating?”
“Andrew and I are friends. It’s just coffee.”
“Tomorrow’s your birthday, right? Come to my office in the evening. I’ve got something to show you. Can you come after work?”
I sighed. It was the last thing I wanted to do.
After work I couldn’t get home fast enough to peel off my uniform and take a shower. Dinner was something heated up, eaten in flannel jammies watching yesterday’s re-run of Jon Stewart. My friends knew I didn’t answer the phone during The Daily Show. It was my special down time.
Besides, it was my birthday and it was on a school night. I sighed again.
“Drake, why on earth would you be in the office at seven at night? I don’t get off until then and I just want to go home after work. What do you have to show me?”
“Can you come? It’s a one-night one-time offer, for this birthday only. Something you can tell your grandchildren later.”
“Okay, okay.”
On my birthday evening, Drake was waiting outside the Ban Roll-On Building as the sky started to get dark. I was rarely downtown at sunset in my personal vehicle, as FedEx people called their cars.
“Peaches, I’m so glad to see you. We have to hurry!”
“What? What’s the hurry? What’s the thing you’re showing me?”
“It’s…how do you say at FedEx? Time-sensitive?”
“That one’s old. The latest is time-definite.”
“Oh, it’s definitely definite. C’mon.”
Taking my arm, Drake let me in the secured building after hours, signed in with the lobby guard and held my elbow as we got in the freight elevator.
“This is the last place I want to be after work,” I insisted. “What the fuck is this? Some birthday. I hope next year I have a freakin’ husband instead of a gay companion.”
Drake pulled from his pocket the building engineer’s key and stuck it in the elevator firefighter lock, turning it one click to the right. The secured top floor button lit up and we began our ascent.
I instantly knew what this meant. My mouth fell open in amazement.
“How did you…? Are you kidding? At sunset? Holy shit, Drake. That’s phenomenal. Omigod. How did you pull this off?”
“The janitor wanted a blowjob the other day.” Drake smiled. “We negotiated.”
“For me?”
“For you, Your Highness. Happy birthday. I’m glad you can appreciate what I had to endure.”
The elevator door opened to a green glow. I inhaled sharply, amazed at the aquarium feel under the rounded tinted glass on top the Ban Roll-On building. Industrial compressors, machines and blowers made a steady hum as we walked to the edge of Seattle’s famous skyline dome and looked out over a little rail.
The sun was turning Elliot Bay a brilliant orange on top the shimmering blue water. The mountains were out over by Bainbridge Island, snow-peaked and postcard perfect. Seagulls circled the ferry coming in while a ferry heading out blew its deep horn. A Foss tug pushed a freighter loaded with orange and blue Hanjin rail cars. A rainbow-colored parasail drifted by above the piers. To the south Mount Rainier was beginning to turn pink.
It was the most beautiful, panoramic Seattle sunset I’d ever seen.
“Drake, it’s sensational. The view is amazing.” I turned back toward the curved green glass dome feet from me, huge, radiant. “The tour boats say there’s a law library up here inside the dome.”
“I’ve heard rumors it’s a swimming pool in an exclusive health club.”
“It’s just compressors. What a disappointment.”
“The white rim on the edge?” He touched it and it shifted in his hand. “Its just plastic covers for the huge fluorescents. At Christmas they put red covers on to make the red-and-green Santa hat.”
“It seems so…pedestrian somehow. I expected more glamour.”
“Well, now you can say you’ve been inside the Ban Roll-On Building dome. Only you have to swear never to tell what’s here. It’s a tradition.”
“I swear. It’s the best present ever, Drake.”
“Do you still have your motorcycle?”
It sounded totally lame as soon as I said it. Why would a gender switch change that? I felt stupid.
“Of course I do. Why not? Just because I grew some facial hair doesn’t mean I don’t like to go fast.”
Andrew took a swig of his coffee but there was no Adams’s apple bobbing up and down. I wondered if he’d had the big surgery yet. His tits seemed to be either bound or gone altogether. He’d grown a moustache and sideburns while some chest hairs sprouted at out his open shir
t collar. There was even hair on his knuckles.
“Everything else okay? Your work going alright?”
“I’m getting a lawyer. I’m suing my silent partner. I’m being forced out of the business now that I’m not a woman.”
“Good for you. Go get ‘em. Find a girlfriend yet?”
The hotness was gone for me with Andrew as a man. Somehow, I’d liked butch Diane better. Maybe it was all the facial hair.
“Not really. Not looking.”
“Oh.”
“What, you thought maybe you and I…?”
“Oh, no, not at all…” I blushed deep red and took a big drink of coffee. It burned the roof of my mouth and I started coughing.
“No offense, Al,” Andrew said, pounding me on the back, “but I just can’t think of you that way anymore. You seem kinda confused to me, dating men and women.”
I was astounded that someone who had physically morphed their birth gender was judging my sexual ease between worlds.
“You’re kidding, right?” I laughed, blinking hard as I tried to swallow the rest of my coffee without killing myself.
“No. I mean, I’ve always known who I was, even in my female body I knew I was a man who loved soft, feminine women. I had to be with dykes to have women at all but now I can get a straight woman. I’m a real man now.”
“Good luck with that, Andrew,” I smiled, hugging him and leaving a five-spot on the table as I got up to go. I was glad we hadn’t fucked back then and I could walk away from this transaction with my side of the street clean.
All the same, I wondered what would become of Lavender Labyris.
“Mom, I need to call AAA because my car got broken into and I need the keys but they’re locked in my apartment and everyone’s stealing my stuff and no one understands, no one gets it, but I cut my hand when I broke into the car and Spot needs water but no one will give it to me, no one understands, I’ve talked to seventeen people and no one understands, I’m a poet, an artist and a writer and no one understands….”
Dew started crying.
Cars were honking and I heard his dog bark.
I held the phone tightly to my ear, heart pounding in insane wild terror as the scariest red flag of all waved madly before my eyes.
He was the perfect demographic, white male, 18-25 and I hadn’t heard schizophrenia talk since the Sunshine People, when Ziller took too many peyote buttons and never came back.
Setting my enormous fear aside, I aimed right for the practical. Find out where he is and get his ass off the street.
“Where are you, Dew?”
Completely exasperated with me, as if I should already know where he was in Chicago, he said he was at Taylor and Racine, where else? He had his dog, and no one would listen, he couldn’t get into his car so he’d smashed the window himself, and seventeen people didn’t understand…
“Stay there, sweetheart, and I’ll get on a plane.”
“Because you understand, no one understands but you,” he began crying again, then straightened back instantly as someone approached. “Hey buddy, hey buddy,” he called, setting the phone down, and I listened in horror as he handed over his PlayStation II and his TV to a complete stranger.
“It’s so great, Mom, I’m free, I’m free, they need this stuff but I don’t need this stuff, I went to Trader Joe’s and got organic sandwiches and passed them out to the homeless people and I got all my money out of the bank and gave it away, just gave it away, isn’t it great? What am I gonna do, Mom, Spot’s so thirsty and I can’t get in my apartment. Here’s my new phone number because I don’t have my old phone anymore, I need to go under the radar because too many people are looking for me. And I never need to eat again, do you realize we spend all our energy eating and I don’t have to do that anymore. I’m gonna live on protein powder and water, that’s all I need. And we spend a third of our life sleeping so if I just stop sleeping I can get it all done because I’m a poet, an artist, a writer and no one understands…”
“I’m getting on a plane. Stay there, stay in touch with me.”
With utter calm that covered my sheer terror, I hung up the phone and called Amanda.
“Amanda, I know I haven’t talked to you in years but I need you, Sunshine style. My family doesn’t live there anymore and I can’t get to Chicago until tomorrow morning.”
“What’s the matter, Al?”
Amanda was all ears.
“My son Dupree’s gone Ziller.”
“Where is he?” Amanda asked, her vibe tensing into action instantly, the time between us unimportant.
“Taylor and Racine, by some apartment I thought he’d just moved out of. There is a girlfriend somewhere, from what I can gather, and a few friends who don’t understand. I think its mushrooms.”
“I’m on my way. I’ll take Colin, they’re about the same age. Is he still a redhead?”
“Yup. Six foot. Skinny. He’s got a Golden Retriever with him.”
“Gimme an hour.”
I called Dew back and kept him on the phone, my heart breaking over and over as he raved, taunted passers-by, described the violent vengeance he wanted to wreak on everyone in his reality, sobbed into his dog’s shoulder, and paced around his car with the shattered glass. He still hadn’t found the keys, for which I was grateful, since he wanted to go to Wisconsin to see his sister, Seattle to visit me, California for his dad, even France, because he hated America and wanted out, no one understood. Finally, my other line rang.
“Annalee? It’s Amanda. We’re with him. I’ll call you later.”
Nail-biting eternities later, after five hours of listening to his spin, Amanda, her husband Josh and son Colin had delicately coaxed Dew into their car, set the child locks so he couldn’t jump out and drove him to the hospital ER, where he was admitted into the psych ward.
My early morning flight and rental car got me to the hospital almost 24 hours after Amanda had “run into” him on the street.
It was Memorial Day weekend and the hospital was short-staffed. His assigned doctor wouldn’t even be in for two more days. My six-foot-four baby was in a single locked room in two hospital gowns, one backward, and a pair of hospital pants and hospital non-skid socks that barely covered his size 13 wide feet.
I finally placed my hands on my firstborn child.
“I told you not to come,” Dew snorted, appearing after the psych staff retrieved him from his room.
He stood stretching in a doorway as I rushed to hug him tight. He didn’t reciprocate, just waited for the touching to be over.
Dew didn’t stop talking for a single instant, saying the same loop over and over, begging every fourth sentence to get out, how can he get out, what do I need to sign, why aren’t you on my side?
Now a complete babbling stranger, Dew grew enraged and almost violent within ten minutes of my arrival. I heard doors locking tight and a Code Something, some color, was quietly announced over the PA. The floor went into lockdown.
Two beefy security guards in rubber gloves appeared and manhandled Dew down the hallway where I could not follow. They pushed him into his barricaded room and sealed the door.
I was asked to leave. Dew was screaming, his voice muffled as he threw himself against the metal door time after time.
“Come back tomorrow. He’ll have calmed down by then,” the nurse said, buzzing me off the locked ward.
I waited in the silent hallway for an elevator, weeping in huge gulping sobs, astounded that two days previous my deepest concern had been losing ten pounds.
Amanda handed me a cup of hot tea.
“How about Chinese?”
“I can’t eat. I can’t. Jesus, Amanda it was like listening to Ziller all over again. I was young then but it stuck with me. Three days he raved and then he got quiet and we were all so grateful he’d shut up, remember?”
“I remember. It was frightening listening to the elders discuss if we needed to get the authorities involved.”
“And then he got quiet a
nd he never spoke another word. Just glazed over.”
“Fernfeather is still taking care of him, I heard. The Canopy had a little blurb about her dedicated service on the website. Ziller’s almost 70 now. I hear he’s fat, too, since he sits in a chair all day.”
“What if Dew never comes back?” I whispered then started to cry.
“He’ll come back. He has to. It’s gonna take a few days for the ‘shrooms to get out of his system. How long can you stay?”
“Thanks for the housing on short notice, A. I’m staying until he’s done. Work can suck my dick.”
“He’ll be okay, Annalee. He’s young, healthy, bright. He just got overwhelmed, maybe?”
“Maybe. But he’s so far gone. He smiled at me with this maniacal smile, like an evil clown. It gave me the chills. He kept telling me he was lying to me, that he lies all the time, that he’s an actor, a poet, a writer, and no one cares. If I use logic, like saying I care, he gets angry. I have forgotten how to think Sunshine.”
“Ah, thinking Sunshine. The path of least resistance. Go along with whatever he says. Agree with him, don’t contradict. See if that calms him down.”
“The drugs they’re giving him are calming him down to sleep. I just called there and they said he was sleeping. Or maybe they say that to the parents so they sleep. Jesus, it’s creepy there. And my kid, my kid is one of them. Omigod, what can I do?”
Amanda set my tea down and pulled me closer, letting me weep on her shoulder.
“I have to do it,” I said. “I waited all this time, waited to see how he was with my own eyes, waiting to be there before any of his family found out.”
“Call him.”
I wiped my eyes and found my phone, calling Dew’s father to break the news.
