I Am J

by Cris Beam

  Marcia fluffed up some pillows and lay back on J’s bed. She was wearing tight jeans and an angora sweater, cut low. “Sit down,” she said, patting the space beside her.

  “I’m okay,” J said. Who was this woman? This was his room.

  “Suit yourself. I need a rest.” Marcia closed her eyes. J thought she had fallen asleep, when she propped up on her elbows and asked, “Where are you from?”

  “Here,” J said. “I mean, Washington Heights.”

  “So you run away?”

  “No. I’m moving,” J said, thinking fast. “I’m looking for an apartment.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Marcia purred. “Aren’t we all.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “Here? In the hotel?” Marcia asked. She laughed, a throaty, low chuckle, almost mean. “No, I just work here on the weekends. It’s close to clients. I live in Jersey. I was about to leave for work now, but it’s so nasty outside, I thought I’d stop by to say hello first.”

  “Hello,” J said.

  Marcia laughed again. “You’re sweet. How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “You look about twelve. Really, how old are you?”

  “Eighteen.” J was offended.

  “Okay, well, I’m twenty-one,” Marcia said, though she looked about forty. “Now that we’re through lying to each other, how ’bout I tell you some truth?”

  J sat down at the tiny table by the window. He’d never met anyone like Marcia before. Sure, there were plenty of bold and sassy women in his neighborhood at home, but he was pretty sure Marcia used to be a man. Was that the right way to say it? He was pretty sure Marcia was transgender.

  “When you came in here this morning, you looked just like a scared little kitten,” Marcia said, gazing at the ceiling. “I’ve seen plenty of kids like you.”

  “You have?” J asked. “Like what?”

  “Like gay, and traveling down to the Village like it’s a foreign country, trying to find their people, and then getting all mixed up in the scene, and losing their money, losing their parents, losing their way.”

  “I’m not gay,” J said.

  Marcia sat straight up and looked at him. “What are you?”

  J coughed. This would be the first time he said the word, out loud, to anyone. “I’m transgender.”

  Marcia smiled. “Oh, honey, we’re all transgender.”

  “We are?”

  “Baby, there’s a whole mess of us. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And the very beautiful, like me.”

  J laughed. Marcia was all right.

  “Just don’t waste your money on a hotel like this one. It’s not a good scene,” Marcia said. And then, “Do you really have the money to get your own apartment?”

  J looked down. “No.”

  “Do you have kin?”

  “Sort of,” J said. “I mean, they don’t understand.”

  “They might,” Marcia said. “Just give ’em time. My mother didn’t understand for the longest, and then, right around five years ago, she had some sort of visitation. She said an angel spoke to her, but I think it was the booze. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She decided she loved me, as her daughter, and now we have dinner almost every Sunday. All I’m saying is, don’t give up on family.”

  “I’m not,” J said. “I just ran away this morning.”

  “That’s good. And where are you staying tomorrow?”

  “Here?”

  Marcia’s eyes blazed. “I just told you, this hotel’s no place for a kid. There’s addicts all over the place, and the scene’s no good. You’re young. You can stay somewhere free, get your head together. There’s Covenant House—I stayed there when I was young—and I think the center maybe has a place for gay and lesbian kids.”

  “I don’t want to stay with gay kids.”

  “Your homophobia’s real tired,” Marcia said, exasperated. “We all gotta get along.”

  “I’m sorry,” J said, embarrassed. He didn’t want to make Marcia mad. “Why are you trying to help me?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcia said, getting up. “I ask myself that every day. ‘Marcia, why you gotta be so nice to everybody?’ Lord knows, people haven’t been nice to me. Maybe I’m looking for some karma; maybe my mama raised me right.”

  Marcia looked at herself in the mirror and smacked her lips together. She walked over to J and kissed him on the forehead. “But, honey, I won’t be nice if I get up tomorrow and find you’re still checked into this hotel. Get yourself a free bed. Stay there for a while.”

  J locked the door behind Marcia when she left, and looked at the lipstick on his forehead. It looked like a magenta heart. He didn’t wash it off.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  “Bitch, you take the bottom bunk, I need me some privacy!”

  J had taken Marcia’s advice and gone to the shelter for GLBT and “questioning” youth. By morning, nobody had called—not his mother, not Melissa, not even Blue—and J felt more alone than he had in all his seventeen years. Clearly, his parents didn’t care that he had run away, and Melissa didn’t understand the photograph at the construction site, or maybe she did, and she hated him now, too. And he’d spent four dollars at an Internet café downloading it from his camera to e-mail it to her. And now here he was at a shelter, where they’d taken his camera, his iPod, and his phone at the door and shown him to a room with two other girls, one of whom apparently thought J was deaf.

  “You gonna take your shit off that bunk, or do I have to throw it?” the girl yelled, her thick hands on her hips. She was big, her face screwed up in fury.

  J had come into the room only moments before and said hello to the one other person there, a skinny girl reading a hair magazine on the other bunk bed. She hadn’t answered him. J had just put his backpack on the empty top bunk when the angry tank rolled in.

  “Fine,” J said. “Chill.” He grabbed his bag and threw it onto the floor.

  “You tellin’ me to chill?” the big girl yelled, getting right in J’s face. The skinny girl didn’t look up from her magazine.

  “Nah,” J said, knowing that backing down was the kiss of death. “I gotta piss.”

  The big girl miraculously let J brush past, and J quickly locked the bathroom door, grateful the room was empty. What was he doing here? This place was probably more dangerous than the hotel. The kids he’d seen on his “intake interview” were seriously wild-looking, even compared to Melissa, with her wacky outfits. He’d barely listened to the counselor, who told him the rules—in by nine p.m., chores at seven a.m.—as he watched the stream of kids drop their electronics in a plastic bin and sign in with the guard, trying to out-holler each other as they pushed through the door. Now it seemed he’d have to fist-fight someone twice his size to even get some sleep. He’d never hit a girl before.

  One thing the counselor said caught J’s attention: to stay at the shelter, J had to go to school. Tomorrow. This place was worse than his parents: J had to show a signed slip each day proving his attendance.

  But he could pick his school. He could either go back to PS 386 (no way) or show up at a school he’d never heard of—a special high school for queer kids. Apparently, this school had been around for years. The counselor didn’t say any more than that.

  J was scared. It was a feeling he didn’t like having, but there was no getting around it now, locked in a bathroom, with a tank of a teenager about to kick his ass on the other side of the door. When had he run from a fight before? Did becoming a boy mean becoming a pussy?

  But I’ve never had to fight for my bed before, never for my bed, J thought, rocking slightly on the toilet seat. And I don’t even like this place.

  In other places, other times, J always had a home to come back to, always had Carolina and Titi—and, even in his own distant way, Manny. He felt suddenly like a fake. Were these other kids really homeless? Had their parents thrown them out, while he had left of his own accord? Was the Tank so pissed because she had a life worse than J�
��s? He didn’t know.

  I don’t care about her, J thought. I deserve to be here, too. Wherever here is.

  It was his body that had gotten him into all this trouble. And his idiot brain. Thinking he could just leave and get T and show everybody what a man he was. And money, and a house, and a girlfriend would all just magically fall into place. And everybody would love him. What a fool.

  It wasn’t just the Ace bandages that hurt his chest. The pain came from inside, deep and deadly.

  J walked quietly back to the bedroom, where the door was partly closed. He could hear the Tank saying something, but softly now.

  “I know, I know, baby, we’ll get it tomorrow,” she was saying.

  Who was she talking to?

  The Tank laughed. “You know I love you.”

  Was she on the phone? Phones were serious contraband; how had she smuggled it in? J peeked in the door. The Tank was on a cell phone, curled on her side on the top bunk, her face to the wall. J walked in and quietly climbed into bed; the Tank didn’t even notice.

  By morning, the Tank’s threats seemed to have dissipated; she was up and showering before a counselor knocked on the door and told them it was time for chores. School, J thought, with a clench in his stomach. He’d been dreaming of it all night. Rat intestines were served on a lunch tray, someone threw a book at his head, a teacher who looked like Melissa called him Jeni. Nightmares, all of them.

  Mercifully, J was assigned kitchen mopping, so he didn’t have to interact with any of the other shelter kids, and when he passed by the Tank in the room later, she didn’t say a word. Morning didn’t look like her finest hour.

  He got to take his phone and camera when he left, and there were three messages: two from Melissa and one from Blue. Blue’s was sweet: she said she missed him and she hoped to see him at the Starbucks later, but Melissa’s messages were worrisome. She said something had happened at home, and she needed to talk to him today. Could he meet her at the pizza place by her house right after school? Her second message said basically the same thing, but she added that she liked the photo. Please, please be there, she’d said. I really need to see you.

  J wanted to see Blue today—he needed to see her, after all he’d been through, but Melissa sounded pretty bad. What could have happened? He was pretty sure most guys would have skipped the best friend for the girlfriend (he was fairly confident that’s what she was), but for J, old loyalty to Melissa won out. He called Blue to tell her something had come up.

  The “gay school” looked like a rainbow that threw up on itself. Everywhere J turned was another mural of bright colors, and faces, and buildings. Each door and doorframe and exposed pipe was a different color. J had arrived late on purpose, and a woman at the front desk asked if she could help him. J didn’t see any kids. “I’m new.”

  “I know,” the woman said, smiling. “Are you interested in becoming a student?”

  J felt too small in his clothes.

  The receptionist pointed him down a hall, where J met with another woman, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.

  “You’ll like it here,” the woman, whose name was Gabriela, assured him. “Aside from our classes, we have a lot of after-school programming, like transgender rap groups, tutoring, a drama club.”

  “Transgender rap?” J asked. “Like hip-hop?”

  Gabriela laughed. “No. Like a discussion group. We have them for transboys and transgirls. Where you can talk about what’s going on in your life, and coming out, and get information about hormones, and stuff like that.”

  “Oh,” J said. This was school?

  “What grade are you in?” Gabriela asked.

  “I’m a senior.”

  “And how long has it been since you’ve been in school?”

  “Two weeks.”

  Gabriela seemed surprised. “Oh, that’s good. That’s great. We’ll get your transcripts transferred and see what credits you still need. Jim Rodriguez handles that, and the college counseling. You’ll meet him. But for today, there are still English and math. Why don’t you go to those classes, and we’ll sort out where you are when I get the transcripts.”

  It turned out all the seniors took their classes together, no matter what level they were at, and some juniors were in there, too. Gabriela showed J the room, and he opened the door slowly.

  Six kids were huddled over papers at four large tables. Six kids looked up at J when he walked in, then all looked down again. A man in jeans and a T-shirt with a bull’s-eye across the chest, apparently the teacher, walked up to J with his finger over his lips. “Test,” he whispered. “You can sit down.”

  Bull’s-eye handed J a math textbook. J glanced mildly at the cover. It was algebra; at his old school, he was already taking trigonometry. J felt a sheen of sweat form across his forehead. He wiped it off.

  “Mister! Mister!” a girl in cornrows and a sweatshirt was shout-whispering and waving her hand madly in the air. “I don’t get this!” J noticed she had a tattoo on her neck that said TRIX.

  “Shadow,” Bull’s-eye whispered back. “This is a test. I can’t help you. Just do the best you can.”

  “But I can’t read the problem,” Shadow protested, at full volume now.

  Another kid, a boy, groaned and leaned back in his chair.

  “Do the best you can,” the teacher repeated. Shadow stood up, crumpled her test into a ball, and threw it on the floor. She marched out of the room. “Just keep going,” the teacher said, as though nothing had happened.

  J watched in amazement. For one thing, the class was so small, more like an after-school club than a real math class. And the teacher looked like a model for Abercrombie, all white and clean-cut and muscled, commanding a troop of mismatched teens. These kids looked like the kids he had seen with Manny at the piers. There were two boys who were likely born girls, like J, and these were the kids who were giving J the least attention. One feminine girl had half-smiled at him, at least with her eyes, when J walked in but was now biting her bright pink nails and staring at her test. Two boys, probably gay, had finished their test and were sharing headphones and seat-dancing at the back of the room, silently mouthing the words to some song. J never knew you could have music in class.

  “Okay,” Bull’s-eye said. “Looks like you’re done. Hand them up.”

  When he’d gathered the papers, the teacher looked at J and asked his name.

  “J,” J said softly.

  “I can’t hear you!” one of the dancers shouted from the back.

  “J,” J said again. The sweat was sogging up his binder.

  “Okay, J, welcome. I’m Mike,” the teacher said, shooting a look around the room. “We’re studying integers.”

  “Intersex!”

  “Integers,” Mike said calmly, walking back to take the iPod and headphones from the boys.

  “Oh, I thought you said intersex,” the boy said, pulling a dramatic pout. “I thought you were trying to make the new girl feel comfortable.” The girl with the pink nails giggled.

  Girl! J thought indignantly. If only he were Melissa, if only he could think of something cruel enough to say back. Something that would make the other kids laugh, put that gay boy in his place. What the hell did intersex mean? But instead he scooted down in his chair and stared at the chalkboard, flat and gray as the sky outside. His first hour here, and he was being hassled already. He’d never have any friends at this school. He wasn’t anything like these people.

  You could smell the pizza place by Melissa’s apartment before you saw it; it was famous in the neighborhood for its dollar slices and garlic knots. Was it really only four days ago that he and Melissa had their colossal talk here? It felt as though months had passed: the hotel, the shelter, the new school. The kiss. J slowed his pace; Melissa was from his old life—she didn’t know anything of what he was becoming. She would be full of stories about her mom and Daniel, kids from their old school—J suddenly felt woozy, and he steadied himself against a building. Maybe
he wasn’t ready for Melissa, wasn’t ready to defend the photo he’d sent her of the jackhammer and the shadow. Maybe he couldn’t help her through whatever drama she had going on in her life, now that his own life was so different.

  J felt that his very body was divided in parts. The top third, the third with his face and his brain and his shoulders, was the newer J, the male J, who lived in a shelter and went to a queer school and was going to get on T. Melissa didn’t know this J. The middle third, the one with his heart, that belonged to Blue. Melissa didn’t know this part, either. The lowest part of his body, the part with his legs that could walk to this pizza parlor and into his past, that was the old J, the J who had a mom and a dad and a best friend named Melissa. He didn’t like this feeling of being so divided, and yet his legs, ever devoted, pulled away from the wall and strode toward Melissa, who was shouting his name.

  “J!” Melissa yelled, running up the block. “J! I was worried about you!” She grabbed him into a huge hug.

  J pulled back and narrowed his eyes slightly. “Why were you worried?”

  “That picture!” Melissa said. “It was so violent! I thought maybe you were going to hurt yourself.”

  “Oh,” J said, disappointment registering in the crack of his voice. She didn’t get it, yet again. “I wasn’t.”

  “Thank God,” Melissa said, pulling J into the pizza shop. “Let’s go inside. It’s freezing. And I have so much to tell you.”

  J didn’t want anything to eat, and Melissa was on a diet, so they sat at a small table near the back. Melissa seemed nervous and kept looking down to check her phone.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Huh?” Melissa asked, looking up. “Oh, nothing. I’m just waiting for my mom to call.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Melissa said, looking at her phone again.

  “Well, why did you want to meet me here?” I could be with Blue right now, J thought.

  “Oh, right. Well, things are weird with my mom.”

  “So?” J hated the way everything was a five-alarm fire with Melissa.