"What's your name?" When you're a kid, that's all the icebreaker that you need. Kids don't think in terms of icebreakers, or pickup lines. As children we inherently understand that other people only care about us if we do, and we assume that everyone will like us.
People haven't lied to us yet and told us that we're not worth it.
"Sarah. What's yours?"
"David."
"David's not a girls name."
"That's good, because I'm a boy."
"Oh, that's alright then."
Kids don't care about gender confusion. You tell them something and they assume you know what you're talking about. The less you know about the world, the more sure you can be with anything that you think you do know.
Kids, in some respects, are better people that we are as adults. As a kid, I know I was better than I am now. Sarah was perfect as a kid.
That was the first time that I remember being called a girl. Not the last, of course, but it was the first, and I met Sarah.
I don't even remember what we did that day. I do remember complimenting her on her dress. She complemented me on my skirt. We lived close to each other, so this one time was not solitary. Mama liked how I looked in dresses or skirts. I thought it was normal. Sarah really didn't think anything of it either when we were four years old.
I didn't understand why it happened at the time, but Sarah's dad got really angry when he found out my name was David. He dragged me home and began yelling at my Mama when she admitted that she knew all about how I was dressed.
She then proceeded to rip into him calling him a bunch of names I didn't really understand, nor do I remember them now. Sarah's dad got quiet, apologized, and said that I was welcome over at his house in the future as long as I was 'properly attired.'
Mama dressed me in pants and shorts after that.
"What's up BFF?"
I smiled at Sarah as she bounced into the room. It was our joke. I was her best friend. We'd just finished second grade, and we both looked out for each other. Somehow I was accepted by the girls and not the guys. I didn't really care. I liked them better than the boys, and if they didn't play soccer or anything like that, they did have other games.
"So, how's the leg, Big D?"
Three months before the end of school, I'd fallen off the swings.
That's not true. I'd jumped off the swings, flew twenty feet past the wood chips, and landed on the concrete berm. I'd only done that because Sarah told me that as the boy in there group I couldn't let Janet win. She landed ten feet from the swings. I may have broken my leg, but I now held the school record for jumping. I doubted it would ever be broken, especially since the yard monitors wouldn't let anyone jump off the swings anymore.
"It's fine. Take a look!" I held up my sketch book. Mama had purchased it for me, along with a pack of colored pencils.
"Wow, you're really getting better."
Since I was stuck on the benches during recess and lunch, I spent a lot of time drawing.
"You know what it is?"
"Me?"
"Yep, here, it's for you."
"I couldn't…"
"Yes, you can, BFF."
We smiled at each other. She folded up the paper and pocketed it. That was all that really struck me about that day.
This isn't really a story about Sarah. This is a story about who I was, and where I came from. Sarah was important to that because she was a friend. She was my best friend. BFF? Sure, she was my BFF, at least that's how I felt. You don't have to be a girl to have one, right, especially if your BFF is a girl?
That's what I decided, and that was how I treated her.
"You girls really shouldn't cut through the park after dark."
"Yeah, it's dangerous. Some guy might want to take advantage."
There were chuckles from the darkness.
"Who you calling a girl, Fucktard?" For some reason, at twelve, I thought that swearing made it less likely that they'd take me for a girl. Then I just became the skinny foul-mouthed boy.
"Your girlfriend, apparently."
We kept walking, and they taunted us as we walked. Nothing came of it though and I like to think it might have been my fault. Well, at least I thought I was responsible for it.
Sarah leaned into me and said, "thank you." I just smiled at her and said, "you're welcome."
"Mama, I'm home."
"How are ya, Sweetie."
"I want to exercise more."
"Where did this come from?"
"I'm too small, Mama."
"You'll grow eventually. Puberty will happen sooner than you think."
"Sure, but I want to grow faster…at least stronger."
"How about tennis?"
I smiled at her, thinking that would be great. I had my art, and was getting so much better at it that I was at eight years old. Unfortunately, that left me way behind the other boys in development. Tennis, at least, would allow me to get out there and do something more active.
"You must be David."
I turned expecting someone about my mother's height. The woman I looked at was about a foot taller. I didn't understand terms like Amazon at that time, I simply thought, 'holy shit, she's tall.'
"Yeah, you're Coach Fleur?"
"Call me Beth. Everyone else does."
At thirteen, everyone seems old, but I doubt that she could have been older than nineteen or twenty. Mama had told me that she was going to the local college, so looking back it makes a certain amount of sense to me.
"Ok, Beth."
It was interesting, to say the least. Mama thought that I should wear this skirt thing over shorts, so I did. I'm not sure what Beth thought about it, but I saw her and my Mama arguing about something after my first lesson.
On my third lesson, I figured out that I was wearing a girl's outfit. By this point I had decided that Mama was drunk when she picked it out.
"Mama, this is a girl's tennis outfit."
"And it looks cute on you."
"I don't wanna be cute, Mama. I need to be big and tough if I'm going to be a man like daddy."
She snorted her vodka through her nose and it started bleeding. I got her one of the rag towels with some ice. She applied pressure and then responded to my earlier statement.
"Someday you'll realize that your father would love to look like you do now."
"But Mama…"
"You should really give this a try," she said, gesturing to my entire appearance.
"I'm done giving this a try. I'm going back to my pencils. I want to try a new technique I learned for charcoal anyway."
"What about tennis?"
"Screw tennis, Mama. I'm a boy."
I put on my headphones and turned up the noise when I heard Mama explaining that I wouldn't be needing Coach Fleur again.
I include this moment in my tale not for who Beth was at this moment in my life, but more for how my mother treated me during it. She does have a place in my later life, but that is a tale for another time.
Heretofore, this story has been a collection of vignettes. As a painter, I find that these scenes are a better representation of much of our past that a continuous monologue. To tell a coherent story, however, we normally need more than a couple of vignettes, especially when it becomes a more complex tale.
The memories I have of my life are fragmented. What I wrote is true to the best of my recollection. What I'll tell beyond this point is not false, but is dramatized. I've taken the liberty to fill in holes in my memory with what is most likely to have happened, or will explain things I didn't know at the time, but found out later.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty.
This is a statement that people take so often for granted that they don't really think why it is so apropos; the present is blurry. I mean it's like were one of those legally blind people who have twenty-two hundred vision with glasses and contacts on. We never know other people's motivations until it is too late. We don't know how everything seems to fall perfectly in place.
In fact, it's lucky that any of us survive to be adults.
This is a story crafted in twenty-twenty that I understood hardly at all as I lived through it.
Sarah was in complete tears when she burst through my door. We still lived next door to each other, and even though next door was next best thing to a mile away with extensive grounds and brick walls separating our properties, we spent a lot of time going back and forth between our two houses.
I think half the time our own mothers assumed we were siblings.
"It's not fair, David."
"What's not fair?"
"Mom says that I can't be in the pageant unless one of my cousins is in it with me. You know Charlotte is ugly and Mary is too shy. They're my only cousins. I really wanted to be in the Miss Florida Outstanding Teen pageant."
"Don't you have to do a city pageant to get into that?"
"Apparently they don't require it, but it is usually something the judges look at if you're going to have a real chance at winning."
"If you're not going to win, why compete at all?"
"So that I did it. I don't want to go through my entire high school career without ever doing anything, do you?"
"We're only fifteen. We still have a lot of high school left in front of us."
"David, you're not really being supportive of your friend."
I hadn't noticed Mama sneaking into the doorway.
"Hay, Mama."
"Hi, Sarah. So, what's this about you needing someone to be with you in the competition?"
"Mom can't be there with me, so she wanted my Aunt to go to the events."
"So, she just needs someone who will be there with you?"
"Yes."
"I could do that."
"You'd do that for me, Mama?"
"Sure…but we'd have to do something with David while we're there."
"He could come with us. He has better fashion sense than I do most of the time."
"True, that he does. Maybe…no it would be silly."
I looked at her, trying not to say something, and the suspense was killing me. "What, Mama?" I said.
"Well, I doubt you'd be able to do it. I mean, why enter a contest unless you could win, right?"
"What are you talking about, Mama?"
Sarah didn't look confused, she looked a bit horrified, "No, Mama. He'd look silly up there."
"David would fit in up there and you know it, Sarah. How often is he mistaken for a girl, even now."
"Up…there…You want me to enter the contest. This is Sarah's thing."
"But it's something the two of you can share. I know how close you two are."
Sarah was close to tears. I thought it was because she thought Mama would only do it if I entered.
"Sarah, do you want me to enter?" I asked her quietly.
"You'd do that? You'd enter with me?"
I sighed, "I'll probably just be kicked out early. But if it means this much to you, I'll do it."
Her mouth opened a bit and Mama beamed at the two of us.
"That's my girls. We have so much to do to help you prepare for this thing, David. So many things."
"Mama, there are a few things I'm just not doing. The first is getting my ears pierced."
"But honey…"
"No buts. I need to be able to go to school and be taken seriously as a boy."
"Fine," she said with a sigh, "what else?"
"That you make sure it's legal for me to be entering. I don't want to ruin this for Sarah because she gets kicked out for me being there against the rules."
Mama sat there for a few minutes, not talking, and then looked at me resignedly.
"Ok, I'll figure it out. Anything else?"
" If this is going to work, then perhaps you should call me Donna."
Comments
This is a great story. I liked how you built it up,
by placing the characters in order of when you met them. There is something to be said about competing as a girl in a pageant. I am waiting impatiently for the next chapter to see how Sarah and Donna get through the pageant and if this is going to have lasting effects on Donna to ever be taken seriously as a boy afterwards. I mean, someone from school is bound to recognize Donna as David. I mean, for drama content, this is what would normally happen in a story like this. But, even at that, though, David should not be physically abused, but only accepted as one of the girls. I really like where this story is going. Thank you for sharing.
"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."
Love & hugs,
Barbara
"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."
So at age four....
felicity had david wearing dresses & skirts, but what was her motivation to do this to him? Was it because of his dad's proclivity for crossdressing or her lesbian tendencies? This is interesting so please do keep going Ms. Tallie! (Hugs) Taarpa
so at this time, her identity is as a boy?
does she sees herself as a boy at this time, or does she think she's supposed to be a boy?
Goodie Liadan
I'm looking forward to the rest of the chapters..
Thankyou.
loL
RITA
Age is an issue of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter!
(Mark Twain)
LoL
Rita
The mother from hell...
David wants to be a boy but his alcoholic mother thwarts him at every turn. It's a prescription for confusion... Does she want him to be more like his father or less?
And speaking of dear old dad, why did she marry him if she didn't, couldn't, love him.
Ole
We are each exactly as God made us. God does not make mistakes!
Gender rights are the new civil rights!