I'm so tired
I must get up for air
But I can't find it
What's up or what's down out here
I'm caught in your undertow

The Beck home…Raritan, New Jersey, late October…In Candace Beck’s bedroom...

C’mon, Joey? Please?” Candace half-smiled as she punched her brother’s shoulder. Joey winced even though the pain was in the coercion rather than any ache.

“We need more boys at the party.” Candace pleaded almost heal-heartedly. Joey shook his head, no, but his resistance was flagging; to use an old expression. Had he given it more thought, he might have worried. But he wasn’t at all thinking about which boys in the neighborhood would be at the party. He was only concerned about which girls would attend. Joey continued shaking his head from side to side.

“Everybody is dressing up, bro!” She said.

“It’s the dressing part,” Cee!”

“Because?????”

“I don’t want to dress up in your clothes!” Joey let his gaze wander to his sister’s closet.”

“It’s not like you have to wear Mommy’s Wedding Gown or dress up like a cheerleader. And all the other guys are gonna come dressed like girls. And all the girls are gonna dress like guys. Including Lisa.”

She stressed the girl’s name, almost in a song-song voice, causing Joey to wince once again. It was embarrassing enough that the Swap theme included dressing just like his sister… all the stuff he had to wear. Even being expected to act like a girl. But in front of his since-middle-school crush?

“You know you really, really want to.” Candace touched his arm. He pulled away, hoping to be convincing enough to wangle out of the whole thing.

“Just ease up a bit. Act like a boy in a dress and you’ll be okay.”

“But…that’s just it, Cee! I don’t know if I can act just like a boy if…. And if Lisa figures me out, I’ll just die.” Joey hadn’t meant to, but he could not have sounded more like a girl if he tried

“If things get too much, pull out your phone and pretend you got a text. Like you have to go to Aldi’s to help close or something. Just fake it!”

“I…Once I get all….I don’t know if I can fake anything. And if Lisa figures me out before I get to talk with her….” His voice trailed off as he stared out the window.

“Then tell her tomorrow. By Wednesday she’ll have gotten used to it.”

“That’s just it, Cee. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to tell her. Either way, I’m fucked. She’ll either hate me when I tell her or hate me when she sees me. And I already hate myself!” Joey wasn’t at all a crybaby as he had once or twice been called. Nevertheless, tears began to fall.

But this was more than just a dilemma. To come out on his own or to be yanked kicking and screaming from the wardrobe? He had joked once that he was so far back in the closet that he kept running into Lucy and Tumnus the Faun. A silly example to mask a real dread.

“I can just say you won’t be coming, but…” Candace sighed heavily; her older-by-twenty-seven-minutes twin bravado was replaced by honest-to-goodness concern.

“But what, Cee?”

“I already told her about you. Suh…sorry.”

“WHAT???? She knows about Joy?” Joey rarely if ever used his other name. Their mom Connie knew, but with her, it seemed more of a Laissez-faire style of parenting, or so it felt to Joey; that idea of “I don’t care” attitude that Joey took as indifference instead of tacit support.

So as far as Joey knew, along with Connie, that left just him and Candace…until now. Like a teen girl on the Disney Channel, he threw himself on his sister’s bed and began to sob.

“It’s gonna be okay, Joey. I promise.” Candace couldn’t promise anything, but she did have her brother…her sister’s best interest at heart. Her sister?

“I … I think it will be okay. “ She stood over the bed and rubbed Joey…Joy’s back.

“I can’t, Cee…I just can’t.” The there-all-along sister just kept sobbing.

“I can’t…I hate myself…”

“I know, Joy…I know…”

A few days later….after school…

Joey was folding laundry when the doorbell rang.

“Joey? Hun? Could you get that? I’m just finishing a report for work,“ Marie called from the office. Joey laid the skirt he was holding on the dining room table.

“Just a second,” he called out at the repeat of the doorbell. Opening the door he came face-to-face with a fairly tall boy in a Raritan HS Sweatshirt.

“Hi, is this Candace Beck’s house?” The boy smiled. Joey became immediately protective of Candace.

“Yes! What do you want?” The boy smiled, and his voice went up an octave as he replied,

“Joey? It’s me…. Alma,” the “boy,” said almost playfully. Lisa’s best friend.

“What?” Joey exclaimed. The girl swatted his arm.

“I couldn’t wait to see your sister and you, so I figured why not?” Alma might have added a playful expletive, but Marie had just walked into the living room.

“Hi, Alma,” Connie said.

“Hi. Momma Connie,” Alma said to her ‘other ‘ Mom.

“You look just like your brother Carlos. I bet he’ll look just like you.”

“Moh-om,” Joey pleaded. It would seem there was an ever-broadening conspiracy. He looked away and found himself staring at the table where he had just laid his sister’s skirt.

“Your sister already told me you won’t be going to the party, so don’t worry….”

“What?” Joey stared at his Mom.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

“Yeah, bro,” Candace called from the kitchen with a bit of an emphasis on the word bro. leaving Joey to cringe.

“Cee tells me that Lisa is gonna be there,” Alma said with a low laugh.

“Thing is, I bet she’ll want to meet Joy,” Connie said as Candace walked up and put her arm around Joey.

“Fu…hell, Mom? Is there anybody who doesn’t know about me?” Joey resisted the huge urge to cry.

“Well, Uh…Apart from Mrs. B here and Cee and me? Everybody…. Except Lisa.” Alma laughed. Joey, for his part, resisted the urge to resist crying and ran from the room; his sobs were almost melodramatic but for the real fear in his heart that his life was over.

And truth be told? His life was coming to an end, in a manner of speaking; since Joy’s life was just beginning…

The story will reveal much more of the Beck family history. Roots that trace back to the 1600s in Norway; revealing just why things are different for them today. Very different.

Undertow
Words and Music by the performer
Ane Brun