by Andrea Speed
It being Art Fair, it started to rain. I managed to find some air and got it inside me and sat up. Blood and rain ran down my face. My left eye was swelling shut, and I heard myself crying. I vowed to never say hello to anyone ever again. I felt cheated and shocked and like every bad thing anyone had ever said to me was true. I felt like it was my own fault I’d been assaulted and robbed, just like it was my own fault I didn’t have friends. I don’t think I’d ever been hit before. My mind careened through wanting to blame my brother and my dad. I wanted to blame everyone except me. But apparently, I was to blame in some horrible, unknown way. Something was obviously wrong with me. And I didn’t know what.
Catching my breath, trying to make the best of it, I decided it was time to go home. Then I realized I didn’t even have bus fare anymore, did I? Since it was going to be a long, wet walk, I figured I’d better try to clean myself up first. I could barely see. I managed—I thought—to stop crying, and stood up, shakily. I almost fell over again. Lightning hit nearby, and I saw I was next to one of the area’s many coffee shops. I opened the door and went inside, wondering if I could use their bathroom. I really needed to pee and was surprised I hadn’t already done so. Silver lining in the clouds, huh?
As soon as the warm air hit me, though, I got very dizzy, and suddenly someone had my arm and was leading me to a chair over in the corner. “Sit here,” a male voice said quietly, “and I’ll get some paper towels.” All I could see was that he was one of the baristas, and the few letters I could make on his name tag said “Mark.”
My head was still spinning when he came back. I could barely see him: tall, young, dark hair curling over his forehead, and the deepest, most caring eyes I’d ever seen. My dick twitched. I looked into his eyes with my right eye and his lips were right in front of me, his mouth just slightly open and the tip of his tongue sticking out. He was holding a cold, wet paper towel against my left eye, pressing firmly but gently on my eyebrow, which apparently was cut. I wanted to hold my breath and just let him take care of me, but then I heard myself whimpering like a puppy. His lips shifted into a cockeyed smile, and suddenly I heard myself blurting out the whole story. I felt pathetic, and I didn’t even care.
He pulled back from me a minute and just watched me with his big, beautiful eyes, shaking his head gently. He spoke. “Never mind, dear. I’ll drive you home.” Then as I nodded fatuously, he added, “You look like you need someone to kiss you and make it all better.” He didn’t even blush as he said it.
I couldn’t take my eyes off this man. I was feeling electricity all over my body now, from my toes up, and then more up. My chest, my—I realized I was nodding dumbly to what he had said. For the first time since toddlerhood, I remembered I had nipples. They felt like radar guns, pointy little laser guns. I could feel my pupils expanding to the size of pools. My dick now felt like an anchor; it was so hard, I almost felt proud. All I was really aware of, however, at that moment, drowning in the man’s eyes, breathing like a steam train, my face either flooding or flaming or draining—all I really knew was I did need someone to kiss me, badly, and was slowly and terribly bravely, nodding my head.
“Will I do?” he asked with a smile.
I didn’t know who moved closer to whom… but as our breaths merged into one, I held back just for a second, put my finger on Mark’s lips and said, quietly, “Hello.”
There. I’d done it. I’d made a friend—my first friend. A friend with whom I had something major in common.
Friends are God’s way of apologizing for our families.
—Tennessee Williams
EMERY WALTERS is the prominent author of nine books ranging from sexual abuse recovery to coming of age stories of gay youth. Despite the serious nature of the subjects, he fills his stories with the irrepressible humor for which he is well known. His eighth book—a completely straight children’s adventure—was published in 2014 along with his ninth, a pure, gay, piratical farce. He is now finding success in a new venue: individually published short stories.
Born in Illinois, he has lived in many states from Connecticut to Arizona to Washington. He now resides in Hawaii with his wife where he pursues writing, photography, and snorkeling. He also has an interest in pirates, wenches, and cabin boys. He received his BA in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and took master’s degree courses in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Emery is no stranger to the world of sexual orientation and gender variance. He has a gay son and a transsexual wife. He himself transitioned from female to male in 2002. His life has been full of change.
KISSING SCARS
JO RAMSEY
ON A way too hot September day, Alyssa Eagen wore a long-sleeved cardigan and jeans.
Bandages peeked out of the cardigan sleeves. I was pretty sure she didn’t want anyone to see them.
She and I had the same lunch period, the only time I would see her during school since she was a junior and I was a sophomore. We didn’t share any classes. I’d noticed her the year before, but I doubted she’d ever noticed the girl with the color-changing hair who dressed all in black with occasional bursts of navy blue or brown.
Yeah. That was me. I colored my hair random colors no natural hair would ever be, though unless the heat outside was more than I could stand, people didn’t usually see it because I wore hoodies and kept the hoods up. Screw the school rules that said we couldn’t wear hats or hoods. My modification plan said otherwise.
I wasn’t wearing a hoodie today, though. Even I didn’t want to sweat in the classrooms and hallways, and I was feeling brave. My neon pink hair, newly cut into something too short to be a pixie and too long to be a crew cut, had already earned me a ton of weird looks.
People believed I dyed my hair and had my ears and face multipierced to attract attention. They were wrong. I did it to hide my real self, because that girl didn’t dare let anyone see her. That girl desperately wanted to be home under the covers, staying safe because her bed was the only safe place in the world. The colors and piercings gave me a mask to hide behind so no one would see how damaged and scarred that girl was.
I’d been that girl for almost five years. Since I was eleven. After all the therapy and hospital stays and stuff, most days were good days now. I went outside. I coped at school or walking around town or the mall with my friends.
But I couldn’t do it without the costume and the name I’d chosen for myself. Alexandra Williams was in a coma under her pink-flowered comforter somewhere and had been for five years. Xan Janus was alive and well, with pink hair and black clothes that mostly hid the scars. My mother hoped someday Alexandra would come back to life, but I didn’t see it ever happening. Xan was healing, growing stronger, facing the world even if I needed my mask to do it. Alexandra would never be able to handle anything again.
Today I wore a black miniskirt over black leggings, with a black way-too-huge concert T-shirt from the 1980s that I’d scored at a thrift shop. The shirt only covered my arms to the elbows. The tons of rubber bracelets I’d collected covered the worst scars, on my wrists, but a few were visible in the gaps between the bracelets and sleeves.
Those scars were the reason I noticed Alyssa’s bandages. Some people might have assumed she’d been hurt accidentally. I knew better. The way she shrank into her cardigan and the total absence of the long blonde hair half the girls at school had been jealous of told the story.
Something had happened to her over the summer. Or maybe before. Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t seen her around after April vacation. Since I’d only been a freshman then, I hadn’t really thought much of it. Alyssa and I didn’t run in the same circles, so it wasn’t surprising that our paths hadn’t crossed. But I’d seen her in the hall plenty of times before April break. She’d always been one of the bubbly popular girls who drove me nuts, but she was so pretty I hadn’t minded the bubbles.
She’d never talked to me, but I’d spent plenty of time watching her until she wasn’t around. Now I wondered if she’d even come back for the
last two months of school before summer break.
She was there now, but she wasn’t bubbly anymore. Or popular, apparently. She sat alone at the table in the farthest corner from the cafeteria doors. People glanced at her and turned away fast. No one spoke to her.
So I decided I should.
When I walked over to her table, Alyssa looked up at me as if I was nuts. And then her eyes went wide.
I didn’t think my appearance was that scary.
“Hi.” I pulled out a chair and sat down, leaving an empty spot between us so she wouldn’t feel crowded. If I’d guessed right, she needed plenty of space, and I wasn’t going to be the one to cross a line. “How’s it going?”
“You’re Xan, right?” Her forehead wrinkled, and she tilted her head to one side. “Nice hair.”
“Thanks. Yours too.” I relaxed a little. At least she wasn’t screaming at me to get away from her.
I did like her hair. It was still her normal blonde, but was now shorter than mine except for one long chunk of bangs hanging over her left eye. She had three piercings in each ear. Not as many as I had counting the rest of my face, but more than I remembered her having the year before.
She was even prettier than she’d been with long hair, in my opinion, except for the fear in her expression.
“So how was your summer?” Whatever had changed her might have happened over the summer, but the more I thought about it, the more I believed it had been back in the spring. So I figured asking about summer break would be safe enough. I doubted she would open up and tell me anything important, but at least it was a conversation starter.
She shrugged and poked at the fries on her cardboard tray. “It’s over. I survived.”
“Yeah.” So much for starting a conversation. I couldn’t come up with anything else to say.
I looked over my shoulder at the rest of the cafeteria. Alyssa’s old friends were at their usual table in the center of the room, and some of them stared at us like something they would see in a zoo. I narrowed my eyes, and the gawkers became really interested in their meals and each other.
That was good. Whatever had happened to Alyssa, she didn’t need judgment and stares.
“How was yours?” she asked.
“I spent some time up in New Hampshire with my grandparents,” I said. “I had fun there. Other than that, I hung out at the mall and even went to the beach a couple of times.”
She gave me a faint smile. “The beach? Did you wear a black bathing suit?”
“Ha ha.” I bristled a little. Here I was trying to be her friend, and she was making fun of me.
Except the way her face fell when I gave my fake laugh made me think maybe she hadn’t been making fun after all. Maybe she’d meant her question as a friendly joke, and I’d wrecked it.
I didn’t want her to feel bad, so I scrambled through my brain for a way to fix the conversation.
“It was dark blue,” I said. “Two-piece tank and boy shorts. And if you tell anyone about it, I’ll deny it.”
She made a little sound that might have been a chuckle. “Other people must have seen you in it at the beach.”
“Yeah, and I swore them all to secrecy too.” I smiled. “Look, I’m taking a risk here, but if you ever want to talk, I’m around. It looks like your pack exiled you.”
“My choice,” she said quietly. “I don’t have anything in common with them anymore. Thanks.”
I took a second to catch on that she was thanking me for saying she could talk to me, because I was busy trying to figure out why she’d rejected her entire clique. “You’re welcome,” I said.
We sat there without speaking, because I ran out of things to say, and she didn’t seem particularly into the idea of chatting. I understood. Sometimes words covered up too much, and sometimes people didn’t listen.
I wanted to listen to her, though. She was hurting. I felt it just sitting beside her. When someone hurt, they usually hid it from others, but I knew what the pain was like. And I hated seeing Alyssa sitting in a corner alone because of something she didn’t believe she should share.
I decided to take a chance. Talking might be easier with no one else around, and in school, there would always be other people around. And I didn’t exactly have anything to lose. “Maybe you can come over sometime.”
She did a double take, and her eyes went wide again. “To your house?”
“No, to my blimp that hovers over the harbor. Haven’t you seen it?” I bit my lip. Sarcasm was a reflex, but she didn’t deserve it. “Sorry. Automatic answer. Yeah, to my house. We could put streaks in your bangs or something. Jazz them up a little.”
“Um, yeah.” She touched her hair. “I kind of like your pink.”
“It’s the color of the month. Next week I’m thinking about going orange for Halloween.”
She smiled. “That would look cute, I bet.”
“We’ll see.” I hesitated. I didn’t want to be pushy with her, but I had the feeling if I didn’t nail her down to something, she would never actually take me up on my offer. She needed someone to talk to, and I wanted to be that person.
If I was reading the signs right, she and I had more in common now than short hair.
“How about this afternoon?” I asked.
“So soon?” She picked up a fry but didn’t put it in her mouth. “I mean, yeah, I want to hang out. I guess it would be good to be somewhere besides my house after school. But you don’t have plans or anything today?”
“Nope.” I was supposed to go to the mall, but I could take a day off from the usual wandering in a group, going into stores where we almost never bought anything. “If you don’t want to, it’s cool. Some other time. But I don’t have anything to do today, and don’t take this wrong, but you look like you can use a friend.”
“I don’t take it wrong.” She gave me a faint smile. “Yeah, I guess so. I have to check with my parents to make sure it’s okay. Meet me in the lobby at the end of the day, and I’ll let you know.”
“Sounds good.” For all I knew, she would bail on me. The lobby was usually so packed it was hard to find anyone, even if you watched for them, plus the building had other exits. But I had to believe she would actually meet me, even if it was only to tell me she wouldn’t come over.
Lunch ended, and Alyssa gave me a little smile again and got up without a word to throw away her tray. I felt kind of awkward sitting there watching her leave, but I understood.
The two classes I had after lunch didn’t register in my brain. Most of my classes usually didn’t. For a while, I hadn’t believed I would live to graduate, so I’d developed the habit of tuning everything out. I’d begged my mother to homeschool me after I’d changed from Alexandra to Xan, but Mom and my therapist had decided I needed to be around other people. So I went to school most days and sat in classes unless I had a panic attack, and I pretended to learn stuff.
My modification plan allowed me to walk out of class when I felt an attack coming on. Sometimes I just walked out because I felt like it. The plan also allowed me to make up classwork at home, so most of the time, if I was even in class, I simply sat there. Thanks to the plan, I still had passing grades in everything.
At the end of the day, I was totally ready to leave. I headed to the lobby and kind of wished I’d told Alyssa to meet me somewhere else. It was way more crowded than I’d expected, and the only place to stand without risking touching anyone else was in the corner between the window and the state flag.
I stood there for a few minutes, taking slow, even breaths so I wouldn’t freak out. I’d had a good week. It was Thursday, and I hadn’t had a single panic attack. I didn’t want to break the streak. If I made it to the following day, it would be the first time I’d managed a full week of school. Even if I didn’t care much about school, I liked beating goals and setting new records. It gave me one little thing to be proud of.
By the time the flow of students out the door slowed to a trickle, I’d decided Alyssa wasn’t going to show.
Which pissed me off. I’d been there for fifteen minutes doing the deep breathing thing, and she hadn’t even bothered to meet me the way she’d promised.
Then I saw her trudging down the corridor past the office. Her shoulders were even more slumped than they’d been in the cafeteria, and she looked like she was trying to bury herself in her sweater.
“What happened?” I asked when she was close enough to hear me.
“Why do you think anything happened?” She hitched her backpack up on her shoulders and hugged herself. “Someone said something stupid about the bandages, that’s all. I was with the nurse just now. Sorry it took me so long.”
“No problem.” I knew the nurse’s office way too well. She had a little room with a cot where I hung out during my freak-outs. Having a private space to calm down was part of my modification plan too. “Are you all right now? Still want to come over?”
“I don’t know if I’m all right, but I don’t want to go home.” She stared at her brown sneakers. “No one’s there, and I’d rather not be home alone.”
“Then you can come to my house, if your parents said it was okay.”
“They did.” She glanced up and twisted her mouth. “They were happy I’d found someone to spend time with.”
“So am I.” I picked up my shoulder bag from the floor where I’d dropped it and gestured at the door. “Come on.”
I only lived a few blocks from school. The town was so small, pretty much everyone walked to the high school anyway, except the kids who had cars or whose parents drove them. But with the hot sun beating down, I was glad we didn’t have to walk too far.
No one was home at my house either. My mother worked and my older sister was in college, so she stayed on campus during the week. She’d moved to the dorms partly because of me, even though she denied it. Alexandra had been one of my sister’s best friends, even though my sister was three years older. She didn’t know how to handle Xan.
