Page 105 of Nearly Roadkill
I felt this thump inside: We were nowhere near out of danger yet and could be surrounded by the Bad Guys at any minute. I couldn’t begin to sort out whether ze looked like what I had imagined, but the feeling was the same; ze was making plans and I believed in hir and it was going to be all right.
Ze was having so much trouble in those low, low heels! But I didn’t laugh. I just put out my arm and ze had no choice but to hold on to it for balance, and I’m pretty sure ze was grateful. I took slow, measured steps that were just long enough for both hir and Toobe. Nevertheless, ze grumbled with every lurch.
Toobe was laughing quietly. I’m sure he felt awkward as hell in the rather outré fishnets Gwynyth had supplied him, but (thank goodness for modernfashion) I’m sure he appreciated heavy combat boots and a backward baseball cap along with his skirt. He really did make a very pretty grrl. A little too much makeup, but Gwynyth was pretty smart with the application, all things considered.
We were walking out the main gate when damn, damn, damn… we were stopped by one of those men in the dark suits!
I remember turning to Scratch to figure out what to do. But instead of Scratch, this sweet woman was looking up into my face with all the warmth and confidence a… a man could wish for. I took a deep breath and so help me I responded in kind: I went into being Dad.
“Yes, officer?” I said. “Anything I can do for you?”
The “little woman” held on to my arm, and Toobe had no trouble at all looking like a very uncomfortable teenage girl.
The officer didn’t do a double take. He didn’t stare at us like any of us might be the “wrong” gender, and believe me I know what that stare looks like. He simply explained that he was sorry to bother us, but this was about—he lowered his voice so as not to offend my darling wife and child—the porn industry. They were to question any suspicious-looking threesomes. My brain was screaming,Threesomes? They know?But I got quite grave with him, nodding a silent signal of thanks for not speaking too loudly. My knees were shaking inside my baggy trousers.
Apologetically he said he needed to check my ID. I figured that was it—we were caught—but at that moment, I saw Scratch pinch Toobe’s arm. Hard! And Toobe lets out a long “Owwwwww!”
Scratch, smooth as silk, glided up to the guard and in this hushed voice, said, “Officer, I’m so sorry, but my daughter is having her first… well, you know… her first little visitor.”
The guy stared at Scratch, uncomprehending. So Scratch lowered hir voice again and said, “It’s her first period, Officer. She’s having her monthly time, and we need to get her to a bathroom. Now.”
Well, the guard went pale, and Toobe went even more pale. I stared at Scratch with a mixture of pure disbelief and admiration, and then turned to the shaken guy with an apologetic look, who glanced at me real fast and waved us on through.
We found Scratch’s car; Toobe dove into the backseat and started peeling off his fishnets immediately, yowling about the shackles of the opposite sex or some such thing, and I said, how do you think I feel, peeled off my mustache, and wiped off the makeup that was concealing the tattoo under my eye. Soon, we were all hysterically laughing, relief and joy and tension spilling out of us. I have never been so thoroughly happy.
W.
END WINC JOURNAL ENTRY
SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
What a trip to see Winc take off that hat and see long hair spill down, and the mustache off, and those wise, wise eyes. Ze’s taller than me and has the longest legs, I think that’s what made hir look almost like a colt, kind of awkward. Then ze did that classic maneuver women do of reaching under hir dress to undo hir bra, but of course it was actually a roll of ace bandages that were keeping hir breasts down, and the juxtaposition of hir in that man’s shirt with breasts all soft underneath them was so sexy. I thought,oh, good, two women, that’s what we are. And started tripping on all that would mean, to me and to hir. But neither one of us knew the half of it.
—S.
END SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
TOOBE ENTRY
Man, what a day. Wow. Meeting each other in real time. So, no surprise, they were just as lovestruck in real life as they’d been online. I guess the drag worked because we made it past the cops and then just sat in the car, stunned. I couldn’t believe we were getting away with it. But instead of screaming away for a high-speed chase, Scratch said, “Okay, what gender are we all really? I mean, in real life?”
Silence in the car.
“Okay, okay,” said Scratch, “I’ll say what I am.”
But ze didn’t say anything, until…
“Why would that be the big question now, anyway?” ze said, more to hirself, looking out the window. “Not ‘am I Jewish’ or ‘where do I live’ or ‘do I like to ride horses’? Why would the biggie be male or female?”
I felt my heart sink. I was sitting with my best friends, and they were about to talk about the gender thing. As usual, my mind just glazed over. “What does it matter?!” I wanted to yell, and I should have. Maybe it would have made a difference.
Plus we were still sitting in the car. Why weren’t we escaping?!
“Okay,” Scratch finally said, all the breath pushing out of hir in a whoosh. “I’m a girl, woman, crone, maiden, chick, bitch, cow, dyke, babe, butch, sweet-pea, white female person. This week I wish I looked more like Wesley Snipes and last week it was Garbo. Sometimes I wish my skin were a different color or that I was a wolf instead of a dumb human.”
Ze kept looking down, but the words kept pouring out.
“I’m not afraid to walk down the street alone because I am all those things inside without thinking about it; then somebody calls my name—or rather, my sex—and I feel like I’m in a borrowed body, the body I was born into, easily recognizable to other people, but not to me. They want to sculpt it and dress it and reduce it and extend it but it just doesn’t work for me.
