What The Hell

I was ordered to move into my sister’s room that very afternoon and I made it my business to make sure everything stayed the way it was when she was there until I was ready to move or throw anything away. Not that I felt like leaving it as a shrine to her. No, it was just she had great taste and had left a lot of her old clothes for me, including something she called “the suit”; which was a skirt, with a long dress shirt and a tie.

I wore it on the first day of ninth grade at the high school. The dress code had a bit more room but I decided to come in at second gear instead barreling into the the building, even though April did make a great point to just go all the way; flash my hands at any naysayer and then point them out so she could kick their ass.

But no kicking of the asses occurred that day. It was close as Anthony walked past me, turned for a moment but then looked away. I could see a flashing of braces in his mouth. My brother and his friends kept their distance. John had long since moved. Granted, I never got a chance to tell him off—as I knew he never would apologize— or have the police called on him as they would no doubt would place the fault on me and recommend I needed jail time, or some form of electro-shock therapy. I was content with being with my mind and if no one else ever acknowledged my existence then everything would be okay.

Things did come to a head in fourth period: the first day of P. There were three coaches in charge of the class: two male and one female and all three of them were okay with me until they called roll and my name was announced.

The entire class stopped breathing for a moment and then broke down into light murmurs. I had suspicions they were putting me down: thinking of any synonym a teenager could come up with. These were people who, for the most part, knew me for maybe, say, three years and in Anthony’s case, for almost a decade.

The coaches took me into a room to “discuss” what was going to happen.
They had the standard response and I declined it.
They asked me for my student ID; which I didn’t have.
They asked about my name; yes, it was masculine sounding name but, so was “Bambi” in some anthropomorphic world of talking deer.

I was asked once again to comply and to change my clothes.
I declined and was subsequently sent to the office in figurative chains.

They called my parents.

And then, all Hell broke loose for the Prattville School District, my parents and, even more so, for me.
I sat in the office for about an hour as students and teachers walked in and out. Each of them would stop and look just a second too long at me. There were a few times where I rolled out my middle finger to some of them and the others received a death stare that would make Marilyn Manson say, “damn, chill out, girl”.

The coaches and the principal raised their voices a bit and two of them had a few choice words about me that they repeated many times that I stopped counting and instead wondered if I could sue.
Of course, I’d have to sue my parents first.
“He’s always been dressing like some queer! My Dad yelled; more at me than at the principal. I raised a finger in the air and closed my eyes.
“Do you know what we’ve had to put up with all of these years?”
I raised a second finger up.
“He can’t attend this school dressed like that. We have a code of conduct.”
That code of conduct obviously didn’t cover issues with people flicking the back of my head or slamming my books to the ground. Oh no, it only mattered about how I expressed myself, even if I left everyone else alone.
“There will be consequences when we get home,” Dad stated with a growl in his voice.
Three fingers flashed up.

The consequences were as follows:
Everything my sister had “willed” to me, was removed from the room. I couldn’t hide anything.
I tried to but I was thrown out of the room, at least until I slammed my body against the door and came crashing in and onto the floor.

The posters on the wall were in trash bags long with all of her (my) clothes. I looked up to see my dad slide his hand across the dresser; causing a hairbrush, a picture frame and my rainbow pendant to fall to the floor.

The hairbrush snapped.
The picture frame shattered.
The pendant exploded.

And I lost my mind as I went up and hit my father in his face with all of my might!