Page 109 of Nearly Roadkill
Which made Scratch sputter again. “The point is, the point is… the point is that what I’m facing here is a monster of my own creation!”
Winc stopped smiling then. “Oh thanks, that feels real good,” ze said.
“No, I mean I’m always mouthing off about how useless gender is and how we’d all be better off without it and now I’m sitting next to someone whose gender is ‘optional,’ for lack of a better word. Freaks me the fuck out!”
Winc got that look back on hir face. “You’re awfully cute when you freak out,” ze said. “Did you know that?”
“I’m serious! What are you? And yeah what does my attraction to you make me? If I thought I had to worry about that before…”
Winc kept smiling, and I kept watching Winc. If ze wasn’t worried, I wasn’t.
Scratch was still sputtering. “This is just what I dreamed of. And I hate it! Now if I become a genderless person, too, then we can be a nice happy couple, but the fact is I’m not. I’m a woman; I was raised to be a woman. I’ve made myself into a whole different kind of woman than I used to be. You were raised to be a man, and then you became a woman, and now you’re saying you’re not either. Then of course the question is, what’s a woman?”
“And what’s a man?” Winc shot back, just like I knew ze would.
“I don’t know!”
Winc looked out the window, away from Scratch, and said, “Right.” A few miles went by in silence. “It seems to me that your consternation is about how you’re going to behave now, with me.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s not just behaving for other people, it’s behaving in a physical space with you.”
“But wouldn’t that be a problem for anybody after they meet in person? I mean, how do you feel about Toobe now that you’ve met him?”
Scratch shrugged. “He’s a guy. I mean, a person with a gender. I can relate to him.” Ze swore under hir breath. “I can’t believe I said that.”
There was a long silence. Then Winc went on in that calm voice, “Yes, but Toobe is also very physical right now, which is different than email Toobe or chat room Toobe. You have to take that in: maybe he has an annoying habit that you never had to deal with online.”
I added helpfully, “Yeah, I’m generally annoying in real life.”
Scratch craned hir head around to look at me. “Yeah, Toobe. Now that I think of it, it’s weird that you’re so… near. You both are right in my face. Not like I’m a hermit or something, but all the sensory input from new people, in person, makes me a little crazy.”
At which point ze pulled the car off to the side of the road, got out, and walked around on the busy street. We sat inside, me fidgeting and Winc being very still. Finally Winc called out the window.
“Darlin’, remember we’re on the lam, here.”
So Scratch ambled back to the car and started talking like there hadn’t been any break. She pulled out into the traffic. “Men invade other people’s territory like splashing into still water and scattering all the creatures into oblivion. Then they look around and see the environment’s changed and they say, what happened? They stock the pond with more creatures, but only ones like themselves, and the rest of the population disappears and then the pond dies and they wonder why.”
“I love how you stretch your metaphors, hon,” said Winc. “Always have. And I agree. I hate that about men too.”
“Then why can’t you just be a better man! Stretch the borders like I did! Why do you have to come over to this side of the fence and plow into this water?”
Winc finally looked over at Scratch. “That hurts. I’m really trying to stay with you on this, but it doesn’t include your hurting my feelings just because you’re angry. You’re talking to me as if I’m one of the bad guys, and the fact is—”
But I interrupted, cuz something finally dawned on me: “Nobody is.”
Winc answered, “Well, dear, there are bad guys out there. There really are.”
Winc turned back to Scratch. “I don’t know about all men, all I know about is myself.” Ze looked very flustered.
Scratch sat there while Winc composed hirself.
Winc spoke carefully. “I never was happy or felt like myself when I was stuck in ‘man.’ It wasn’t that I was running wildly into becoming ‘woman,’ when I look back at it. I was running wildly away from man. At the time, there just wasn’t any other place to run to.”
Scratch’s face got all soft, and I could tell ze wanted to say something, but Winc said, “Please. You’re asking if I could just be a better man. I guess, in a way, that’s what I’ve done. This is it. This is what a better man looks like to me. And the only way for me to be a better man was to scrape off all the man stuff—the stuff we both cringe at—and become woman. Then when I found out that didn’t work either, I’ve had to scrape off all the woman stuff and be… whatever the hell is left.”
Scratch covered hir head with hir hands, like ze was trying to crawl into a cave. Ze was steering with hir knees, which made me a little nervous.
“Wait a minute,” Scratch said, hands back on the wheel. “Can we go back to this ‘better man’ stuff? I mean, why couldn’t you change? Leave behind ‘prick’ or ‘jerk’ or ‘arrogant asshole.’ Pick a different option.”
