I Am J

by Cris Beam

“Have you read much Walt Whitman?” Chanelle asked.

  “Um, I read some at my old school, but it was a while ago. Do you like him?”

  “He’s okay. I’m a poet. My favorite is Gerard Manley Hopkins. And Sylvia Plath. And Rita Dove. And others, too.”

  “Oh,” J said. He suddenly felt stupid. “I don’t know that much about poetry.”

  “Are you an artist?”

  “Not really,” J said. Why was this beautiful girl talking to him? Why did everybody think he was an artist? She really was pretty. “I take pictures, though.”

  “Cool. Do you want to get coffee after school?”

  Blue. He hadn’t seen her in four days. “I can’t,” J said. “But maybe tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” Chanelle said. “Tell me your name again?”

  “J.”

  “I’m Chanelle,” she said, extending her hand. When they shook, she seemed to hold on just a moment longer than was necessary. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  J met Blue at the Starbucks, like old times. She hadn’t responded to his text message earlier, but he found her at the café, sitting with Madison by the window.

  “Hey,” J said, knocking on the table.

  “Speak of the devil,” Madison said. Blue didn’t look at him.

  “Wassup?” He tried to sound casual, but his voice came out cautious instead.

  “We were just talking about the ways of men,” Madison answered, sounding mean, stirring her coffee with a stick. Blue still hadn’t looked up.

  “Okay. Maybe I should go.”

  At this, Blue looked at him. Her face was a little red, her eyes puffy. Had she been crying? She was wearing the necklace.

  “No, I’ll go,” Madison said, scooting back her chair and standing up to leave. “You can have my seat, Mister J.”

  Oh, shit, J thought. What’s this Mister crap? J picked at his cuticles, his heart racing. He didn’t take off his coat. Finally, Blue spoke.

  “J, what’s going on?”

  “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing,” Blue whined. Her face was twisted into a sad scowl.

  She looks like a spoiled brat, J thought. I better get outta here. He stared out the window; it was getting dark earlier and earlier each day.

  “Why aren’t you talking to me?” Blue’s voice was small.

  “What am I doing right now?”

  Blue opened her eyes wide. “J, you’re acting so different.”

  What am I, on trial? Suddenly J was angry. He gives this girl a necklace, manages to give her his time and attention when his whole life is falling apart, and she says he’s acting different? You don’t know the half of it, J wanted to say. While you’ve been painting your pretty pictures and getting snacks from your mommy, I’ve been sleeping in four different places. My mom doesn’t want me at home because my dad might hate us both, and you’re the one who’s crying? Sitting with Blue and her petty whimpers made the full weight of what had happened with Carolina hit him like a full-body punch. Would he ever be able to go home again? How long could he really sleep on Melissa’s floor?

  “J,” Blue prodded. “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing.”

  Blue’s eyes filled with tears. She reached out for his hand, and he snatched it back. Why could everybody cry but him? His mother, Melissa, Blue—everybody was always bawling around him.

  Blue reached around behind her neck and started to unclasp the necklace. “Here, I’ll give you this back,” she said. She was really crying now.

  “What?” J said. She doesn’t even want my present?

  “It seems like you don’t want me to have it,” Blue said. She kept the necklace on and touched it carefully. “My mom said it was too expensive to keep, but she’s from Poland.”

  J’s pride was hurt. “You don’t want it?”

  “J, it’s the most beautiful present I’ve ever gotten in my life.” Blue stared intently at her coffee and then looked up. “I was shocked when you gave it to me. But then you didn’t call me for four days. That was Saturday. Today is Wednesday. What am I supposed to think?”

  “I’ve been busy.” What do you want me to say? I’ve been living in a shelter, then busy getting picked up by the cops? I had to deal with a new school full of freaks? Oh, and by the way, Blue, I’m a freak, too. I’m not what you think I am.

  “Busy with what? J, you don’t even go to school. My mom said I shouldn’t accept the necklace because I don’t know you well enough. I don’t even know where you live.”

  Bingo! “Blue, I gotta go,” J said. “Keep the necklace.” And he pushed out the door, thankful that the street noise drowned out Blue’s voice, plaintively calling his name.

  J decided to walk back to Melissa’s place, even though it was cold outside. He passed a magazine stand; both the men’s and the women’s magazines boasted scantily clad women. And here I am, singing the muscular urge like Whitman, J thought. And for what? All you do is piss people off.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself, he scolded himself. Sometimes J wished he could just crawl out of his own head or borrow someone else’s for a month or a lifetime. Once, when he was in the car with his mother, he heard a radio program during which the announcer asked people whether they’d rather be invisible or able to fly, given the choice. Practically everyone chose flight, and J was shocked. Of course he’d be invisible. Not only could he spy on people’s conversations and watch how other guys had sex, but he could stop feeling so many things. That was the problem—these feelings. He felt angry and confused, and then lost and embarrassed, and all these emotions tumbled together like the bad murals at school, all the colors running into one another, making him lash out at people, like Blue. Wait, did we just break up? Is Blue not my girlfriend anymore?

  Was she ever his girlfriend? Or did they just make out on a street corner? J didn’t understand girls or relationships at all. And would being invisible mean he wouldn’t have feelings anymore? Somehow, he thought it would. Like, if people couldn’t see him and react to him in all their complicated and terrible ways, then he wouldn’t have anything to feel about. And, of course, he wouldn’t have this body that betrayed him all the time.

  Human beings are a bad prototype, J thought. God made us wrong. But he didn’t believe in God anymore, at least not the God his mother used to talk about when J was little, when she made him say his prayers. “Pray for your cousins, pray for your abuela and Papa and Tía Yola,” she would say each night before bed, and J would try to picture his extended family in Puerto Rico. Back then, J had believed that wishes could make things come true. He would clasp his hands together and imagine a man in the clouds smiling at each person his mother named. And then he’d pray to wake up a boy.

  J was getting closer to Melissa’s apartment. He stopped to lean against a building, smoke a cigarette, get his head together before he went inside. It was fully dark now, and a street lamp cast a yellow glow over the trash can on the corner. People rushed by, talking on cell phones, carrying groceries; a siren wailed from a few blocks away. J took out his camera. He wanted to capture the sense of this street, this moment, and stop thinking of the past and of Blue and her tears. But there was nothing, really, that caught his attention.

  Then he saw it. Someone had taped a flyer to a phone booth, advertising MANDY WILL TEACH YOU GUITAR! The word MANDY was in large block letters, and J covered the last two letters with his fist. MAN, It now said, and J clicked the shutter with his free hand. It was the first time J had ever photographed any part of his body not in shadow. From the angle he was shooting, his fist looked bigger than it really was, strong and defiant next to the word MAN. In the background, you could see a fuzzy outline of the phone booth’s interior; it looked as if the fist were punching through to make a call.

  I’m still visible, J thought. It wasn’t a photo of his whole body, but it was a start. I exist.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  “J, your mom dropped off an envelope for
you,” Melissa called out to him when he came in.

  The informed consent for testosterone! J tried to sound nonchalant. “Okay, where is it?”

  The envelope was big and much too heavy for a single letter. It was filled with the college applications J had left behind, along with a note. You need to fill these out and write your essays, Carolina had written. J’s stomach turned a little at the sight of her handwriting. If he were at home, she would be helping him. Some are due at the end of the month.

  There was no I love you, no word about his father, and no parental approval for testosterone. What was going on uptown? Had Carolina talked to Manny? Had his father disowned him? J shoved the envelope under his sleeping bag.

  “Daniel and I broke up,” Melissa said. She was doing her ballet exercises, using a bookshelf as a barre.

  “That was quick.”

  “No quicker than usual,” Melissa said, kicking out her foot in tiny sweeps. “I hate men.”

  J shot her a look.

  “What?” Melissa said defensively. “You know that.”

  “Then why do you screw them?”

  “J!” Melissa stopped her kicking and put her hands on her hips. “What’s wrong with you? First you run away, and then you become a dickhead?”

  J mumbled an apology. He couldn’t withstand another fight. “So, why’d you break up?”

  Melissa went back to her barre exercises. “He bored me. He only talked about himself.”

  J flopped back on Melissa’s bed and watched her practice. He knew she’d have fresh razor cuts under the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She was way too calm for a breakup. “You were right; he was pretentious.” Melissa smiled at J and brushed a curl out of her eyes. “I think I need an older man.”

  “How much older?”

  “Forty sounds about right.”

  J laughed. Melissa had her batch of problems, too. She came and joined him on the bed, with a bag of cookies.

  “Want some? Only ten calories each, but they give you diarrhea.”

  “Gross.”

  “J—” Melissa started, then stopped to examine her cookie. “Why’d your mom bring you here? She was so worried about you—she called me four hundred times a day. I thought that once you came back, she’d lock the door and never let you out.”

  “Why didn’t she call me, then?” Saying it aloud made him realize how truly alone he’d felt over the weekend.

  “I think the cops told her not to—they didn’t want you to run farther away. They wanted to use me as bait.” Melissa laughed. “Because I’m such a hot catch.”

  J didn’t say anything.

  “Really, J, why aren’t you at home?”

  “I think my dad’s mad at me.” J picked cat hairs off Melissa’s comforter.

  “ ’Cause you ran away?”

  “Yeah, and—” Was he ready to tell her? J took a giant swallow. “Have you ever heard the word transgender?”

  Melissa looked at him blandly. “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I am.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” J said, astounded. Melissa looked as though he’d just told her his shoe was untied.

  “Give me a minute to process,” Melissa said. She pulled back her sleeve and prodded a fresh cut. When she saw J watching, she quickly covered it again. “I’ve never seen you naked.”

  “What do you mean?” J was startled.

  “I mean, in all our years of friendship, I just realized, I’ve never seen you naked, and you’ve seen me naked hundreds of times.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not really fair. I think you should let me see you naked.”

  “What?” J scooted back against the wall and pulled his knees up in front of his chest. “I’m not taking off my clothes for you!”

  “Why not?” Melissa asked, her voice rising. “Don’t you trust me?”

  J felt like a rat in a cage. The apartment was so small and stuffy, and he was literally backed into a corner. Had his best friend lost her mind? “M, what are you doing?”

  Melissa had jumped off the bed and was removing her dance tights and sweatshirt. J was right; there were fresh cuts on both arms. Then off came the tank top and bra, and she was standing in the middle of the room stark naked, arms outstretched.

  “J, here’s my body, every inch, and yes, I cut, so what?” Melissa was practically shouting now. “You’ve seen it before. If your body’s so different from mine, I want to see it!”

  J hung his head, dropping his forehead into the crook of his elbow. “My body’s not any different from yours,” he said softly. “You don’t understand.”

  The tears, so long in coming, suddenly choked at the back of J’s throat. His body trembled, and he cried softly into his crossed arms. Melissa didn’t understand, his mother didn’t understand, Blue didn’t understand, even he himself didn’t understand. No matter what, no matter how many photographs he took, or T-shirts he piled on, or attitudes he adopted, underneath it all his body would look just like Melissa’s.

  He felt Melissa gently stroking his back. “J, I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you said you were transgender.”

  J sniffed. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and nodded into his forearm.

  “Doesn’t that mean your body is different?”

  “More like my brain,” J said. He felt exhausted.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry before,” Melissa said. She was still stroking his back.

  “Lucky you.”

  “And you’ve seen me cry so much.” Melissa sat back and put her hands in her lap. “It’s almost shocking to see you cry.”

  “Can we stop broadcasting it?”

  “Sorry,” Melissa said. She had put her sweatshirt back on, along with a pair of sweats she’d grabbed from the floor. She maneuvered around so she was sitting behind him, gently pushing him forward on the bed. “Move over,” she said. “I want to spoon.”

  J scooted a few inches and let Melissa hold him. He shut his eyes and almost wished the tears would come again, if only to drain the grief from his body. And, besides, Melissa was behind him and couldn’t see. But the tear ducts were sealed again, so he took a deep breath and tried to relax into her warmth. A twitching in his belly made him want to jump up and pee or smoke a cigarette or something, but another part of him wanted to forget everything that had just happened and simply be four arms, four legs, and two bellies, all curled up together, breathing in sync.

  “Melis?” he asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you remember being a baby?”

  “Ummm, I don’t think so.” Melissa tucked her feet around his. “Why?”

  “I just want to go back and start over.”

  Melissa ran her hand over J’s forehead, slowly rubbed his temple.

  J was so tired, but he continued. “I think it would have felt like this, being a baby.”

  “Maybe. If you were a twin.”

  J didn’t say that Melissa seemed more like a mother to him right then, as she pulled the down comforter over them both. He couldn’t say how much he missed his own mother, even though Carolina was more of a “do your homework” type mom than a tucking-in type mom. He was sure that Carolina had held him when he was little, and he wanted to go back. Back before he had anything to explain, before best friends couldn’t understand you, before the stakes were all so high.

  And yet as Melissa continued to rub his head, he remembered that she could, at times like this, give him precisely what he needed. Sometimes, when she didn’t pressure him to talk or when she was especially contrite after one of her crazy outbursts, Melissa was the best sanctuary he knew. Melissa, with her gross bag of cookies and the cuts on her arms and her big dreams of dancing, was just as broken and hopeful as he was, and here they were, marooned in a sea of goose feathers, up against the world.

  “J,” Melissa whispered. “I have to go to rehearsal. But you can sleep in my bed.”

  J didn’t know what Melissa was rehearsing
for, but he watched her throw leg warmers and an iPod and the rest of the cookies into her backpack, fumbling around in the dark. He nodded when she told him Karyn wouldn’t be home ’til late. Once the door clicked shut, J crawled into his own sleeping bag on the floor, shut his eyes tight against the darkness, and fell asleep.

  School was getting easier, in its own way. J had decided to view his classes, and his classmates, as an anthropological study. He would be the neutral, silent monitor sent to observe a strange planet of noisy misfits. He’d watch the mating rituals of Homosexualis homosapianus and report back to the fans in his head with fake Latin and a bad British accent. That was the plan he made with himself as he walked to school, stopping only to gaze at the expensive cameras in an electronics shop window. In the reflection, he thought he saw a person with blue hair across the street, watching him, but when he turned she was gone. It wasn’t Blue, couldn’t be. He was imagining things. He felt bad about their argument in the coffee shop but didn’t know how to make things better. There were just too many things Blue would never understand about him, too wide a gulf to cross with language. When he was buying a pastry at a coffee cart, it happened again, though: he thought he saw a flash of blue whisk around a corner. He knew, from his experience with his own body, that a wish was powerful, but this was weird. Was he wishing Blue would show up in his life, the way he showed up in hers? Maybe that was it. He wanted her back, but he didn’t want to work so hard for everything all the time.

  J forgot about the imaginary Blue sightings as he settled into his life skills class, the most boring one of the day. He tuned out his teacher’s voice and stared instead at the students. “The male of the species performs an unusual mating ritual,” J said to himself, imagining a nature channel filming his classroom. “Ignoring the elder’s attempts to teach him the survival technique of filling out a job application at Wendy’s, the male stands up and swivels his hips. Note the elaborate dress: multicolored bracelets, and pants low on the buttocks that reveal expensive undergarments.

  “Look! The male has caught the attention of a potential mate! The subordinate male stays seated and imitates a female dancer popular with other young Homosexualis homosapianus. Our young males make eye contact, which means the mating ritual will continue with a hand job in the fifth-floor bathroom. Very rare footage indeed.”