by Shinigami
I was having great fun with the cheerleaders. “Look at my pom poms, not my breasts! Yaaaaay breasts! I mean pom poms! Watch me kick and show my panties! Yaaaaaaay PANTIES!” You can tell a number of things from this. First, I had (and have) an odd sense of humor. Second, I was perhaps not as sexually mature as other boys my age.
Louisiana is a magical place. I learned that the hard way.
I moved here when I was ten from New York. Not the city, one of suburbs more toward Albany, but who gives a fuck? Had a different accent, my parents had more money than most other people’s parents did. My father was an architect and Katrina gave him some work. Point is most of the people living in my district weren’t doing so hot, and from their perspective, I was a stuck up prick. As far as I was concerned, they were greedy little assholes, most of them. So stereotypes persisted.
Actually I pretty much was a stuck up prick. Maybe I still am, well, except for the prick part, but we’re getting to that. Basically I tend to dislike stupid people. This is a real problem for me. A lot of people are stupid and just can’t help it. Mentally challenged folks, young children, senile old people, politicians… they all give me the creeps. It’s not like I have any reason to think I’m any better , I’ve done plenty stupid things, it just weirds me out when someone says something or does something inane. I don’t understand it. But what pisses me off about some people is how they can be so proud of their stupidity.
Like pep rallies.
This is relevant, I assure you. I was twelve, so I had been going to school in Imaginaire, Louisiana for about two years. There were one or two kids I found tolerable, who found me tolerable too, and since I was, well… lonely I guess is the only way to put it, on account of being a stuck up prick, I hung out with them every chance I got. There was Mike Thatcher, who was I guess my best friend by virtue of me having classes with him and hence spending more time with him: taller than me, blond hair in bowl cut and wearing glasses, yet still weirdly athletic. Big track nerd. Liked to run. And there was Bobby Singh. He was Indian. He spoke three other languages that I had never heard of as well as English, which he spoke without any accent I could discern. He was outgoing and liked people, which kind of clashed with my general aesthetic, but the three languages thing and his grades kind of impressed me, and really even the outgoing part was something I wanted to be able to pull off. Also I liked how he confused some people by not really being black.
The year of my first pep Rally, my first year in Junior high, there was all this lead up. “The pep Rally is coming!” teachers would enthuse, “Get ready for that Pep Rally, we’re really going to raise the roof!” I should note that the expression “raise the roof” had already by this time entered the leaky oubliette of old slang terms that are no longer cool. I have to admit I was getting excited. By the way everyone was going on about it, it was going to be like Christmas or something. So I’d ask what it was all about. Mike said “It’s a school get together to get students interested in sports.”
“You mean, like track and field?” I asked, because I was marginally interested in that, what with Mike being involved. I even tried running with him a little, but I have absolutely no stamina and had to slow down about a quarter down the track.
Mike frowned. “No, mostly football and basketball.”
I blinked. Running I could understand. You never knew when you might need to run toward or away something. I kind of wanted to get better at that myself, aside from being lazy. Moving a piece of leather from one side of a room or field to the other and then doing it again repeatedly seemed completely useless to me at the time. Now that I’ve been exposed to it more I can sort of see the draw. There’s a lot of skill involved, even an artistry that you can respect if you get into it. But to me at the time the whole idea was mind numbingly stupid. “Why does everyone care so much?”
Bobby slapped me on the shoulder, “It’s fun, man. People around here don’t have much to do.”
“How come this is the first I’ve heard about it? Why don’t they have pep rallies all the time?”
Mike actually scowled. “They want people to go to the football games. It gets the school money.” Football. Not track or anything else.
“No pep rallies for chess, or math competitions either then?” Bobby, I knew competed in both of those. I did too, but he actually did well in them. By Bobby’s and Mike’s silence, I knew there weren’t. “So, basically this whole thing amounts to a giant advertisement for stuff none of us care about?”
“Yeah. Pretty much,” Mike said.
“I’m not going.”
“You gotta go,” Bobby said. “It’s required.”
As it turned out, I didn’t have to go. When the time came every one was led out of the classrooms and when I stayed in my seat defiantly reading a Terry Pratchett novel the teacher said that if I didn’t want to go to the pep rally I could go to the library. Only the way she said LIBRARY it was like it was the most loathsome thing in the world. I loved the library. Despite it not being very good I could spend hours there reading whatever caught my attention. But the teacher was saying it like it would be some kind of punishment. Like being sent to your room. You’re all like, “fine that’s cool with me. I’ve got my TV, books, and computer over there. In fact I was planning on going there anyway.” Only it isn’t cool. Somehow being forced to do it spoils it. The teacher was effectively being like the psychologist in A Clockwork Orange, trying to make me hate the thing I loved through aversion therapy. It’s really screwed up if you think of it. The teacher, at my SCHOOL, which was supposed to be all about learning, was threatening to send me to the LIBRARY if I didn’t attend some stupid advertisement campaign for a sports team.
You’d think this would be a major issue. But what do schools do with their funding? Buy a bunch of computers that no one is allowed to touch.
Long story short, I caved. I followed the rest of the children to the pep rally like the gullible little lamb I was. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, I rationalized, there must be something good about it if so many people want to go.
It’s a terrible exaggeration, but I can’t help but think that the feeling must have been very similar to what the kool-aid drinkers felt when they were getting on the plane to Jonestown. Of course I didn’t know about Jonestown until I saw a documentary on the internet about it a couple of years later. At the time my thoughts were more along the lines of “This is dumb. Why am I doing this?”
Luckily, Bobby and Mike were equally enslaved to the hive mind, and sitting with them I was able to enjoy myself by MST3King the whole event. For those that may be unaware of what that means, I basically mocked everyone involved, putting words in their mouth and making rude sound effects. Absolutely hilarious for me and my friends. For anyone actually interested in what’s going on, it’s maybe a bit annoying.
Maybe.
I was having great fun with the cheerleaders. “Look at my pom poms, not my breasts! Yaaaaay breasts! I mean pom poms! Watch me kick and show my panties! Yaaaaaaay PANTIES!” You can tell a number of things from this. First, I had (and have) an odd sense of humor. Second, I was perhaps not as sexually mature as other boys my age.
Still Bobby and Mike laughed, so I felt encouraged. This was a little dangerous. You know that kid who does something crazy and silly and someone else(usually female) rolls her eyes and says “Stop, you’ll only encourage him?” I’m that kid. I don’t need any psychotropic chemicals to set me off, just a few people who laugh at my jokes. Next thing I know, I’m doing weird dances, putting people down, mouthing off about politics and religion and generally being a dumbass. “That’s really freaky actually,” Bobby said, still smiling. “You really sound like a girl when you do that.”
Now this is another embarrassing fact. I was actually proud of this. I practiced doing all sorts of voices, starting with the Monty Python characters and going into Christopher Walken and Bill Clinton. I had whole scenes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC television series memorized as well as several scenes from Mystery Men. A year or so previous I had encountered a sizable roadblock in my pursuit of the perfect recreation of the scenes. I couldn’t do female voices. But I worked at it whenever I was alone, recording myself with a tape recorder, altering things a little and then trying again, until I got it down. It took me awhile, my voice had changed and I couldn’t quite change it back so I had to sort of work around it. I found singing along with Alanis Morrisette or Sheryl Crow to be helpful, the way they would sort of sing, sort of just talk sometimes really gave me something to emulate. And then I had to stop when I accidently answered the phone in my Alanis voice and the person on the other line called me “Miss.”
That scared me and for a month or so I didn’t try to do any female voices. Except of course the skits with female parts in them kept coming into my head whenever I’d be alone in the bathroom and I’d have go to a Monty Python skit to avoid doing what I was thinking about. Even Monty Python gets a little old sometimes. I was beginning to think maybe I had a problem. But now suddenly my work was paying off. Someone actually said I sounded like a girl!
Yeah, I’m weird.
Maybe if I wasn’t already buzzed up with attention I would have kept going, maybe I would have remembered that sounding like a girl is only a good thing if no one knows you can do it. Instead I kept going. “Oh, Bobby, you’re so sexy, you just bring it out in me.”
“Stop it, man, you’re freaking me out,” but Bobby was laughing, so I kept going.
“Do you like this outfit?” I said straightening my back and using my hands to indicate my jeans and sweatshirt. “I chose it especially for you. Touch it, Bobby! I want your hands all over me!” And suddenly I was at that uncomfortable moment where you realize you’ve taken a joke too far.
But then a voice from behind me shouted, “Shut up, bitch. Flirt with your boyfriend later.”
It was a black girl, wearing short shorts and a tank top. She was pretty, but darker than even most other folks of African descent. Which I guess is a bit unhelpful since everyone is of African descent, but yeah she was like an inverse albino. And she was being rather rude.
I couldn’t stop myself. “Oh I’m not a bitch, honey.” I said in my black woman impersonation, “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.”
Understand that from my perspective, not being aware of transsexuals and the subtle distinctions between them and homosexuals and transvestites, I thought I was essentially saying that I was a heterosexual man, only making it sound like I wasn’t. I found this funny, but there were only a few other people who seemed to get it. Most people assumed I was saying that I was gay, and I had to explain to them how funny I was being. Realizing the potential for further confusion, I shifted to my deep gravelly-voiced Texan impersonation and said. “Come over here an’ I’ll letcha see mah trouser snake.”
“I’ll come over there, all right,” the girl said getting up. She looked very tall from my seated position on the bleacher in front of her. I was just thinking that maybe I should get up myself when she grasped my shirt with both hands, picked me up and threw me down the bleachers. This had the over all effect of calling a great deal of attention toward me and the girl, and also causing me a great deal of pain. It felt worse that it was; I just sprained my wrist, cushioned as I was by the heads of my fellow students. Thankfully none of them suffered any neck injuries. And I managed not to cry, which would have been really bad PR, especially following the whole, “beaten by a girl” stigma. Personally I didn’t see what the difference was between being beaten up by a girl or a boy, but I knew getting beaten up by a girl was supposed to be worse. Odd, because you also weren’t supposed to hit girls, giving girls the overall advantage in a fight. But I didn’t make the rules.
The administration of the school, in a nod toward fairness, gave Shaquonda LaRue, my assailant, detention, while I only got a demerit. It didn’t seem that fair to Shaquonda though. I can sort of see where she was coming from thinking back on it. Something like “I get detention while that stuck up white faggot is let off with a demerit? He was being racist too, and making fun of the pep rally.”
Shaquonda, as I later learned, was a member of the women’s basketball team, which more or less put her in the pro pep rally camp.
I had to withstand a great deal of ridicule when I returned to the public sphere after my brief time in the principal’s office. My father, being a big fan of the Evil Dead movies, and having Jurisdiction over the male baby names, christened me Bruce Ashley Patterson. I usually went by “Ash” because that’s what my Dad called me. Mom had the unfortunate tendency to call me Ashley, but I didn’t realize this was odd until a helpful peer informed me that Ashley was supposed to be a girl’s name. Well actually it was more like a sneering, belligerent peer. I didn’t really care for Bruce though. Sounded like somebody who would like football or weight-lifting. Don’t know where I got that impression, what with all the great Bruces out there, Bruce Banner, Bruce Wayne, and my namesake Bruce Campbell, but that was kind of in my head and as I may have mentioned I was a stuck up prick.
It really didn’t come up very often usually. I wasn’t a paragon of masculinity, but I didn’t usually look like a girl either and people just get used to it being a guy’s name. The starting quarterback for the football team was named Leslie afterall.
Oh did it come back to me now though. My two compatriots weren’t the only ones who saw my performance, and getting beaten up by a girl calls ones masculinity into serious question. In between period some guys, probably closet homosexuals, were calling me Ashley and asking me out on dates in exaggerated tones, then snickering to each other like crows at a slaughter. Well I guess crows don’t snicker. I was kind of thinking of the movie Dumbo with that one I think.
Moving on.
Patience is not one of my virtues. The third time this propositioning happened, something in me broke. I just gave up trying to be stoic about the whole thing. I used a girl voice that had a lot of Alanis in it, only snootier and said, “I’d never date a jerk like you.”
This scared the crap out of them. They skittered away like scarab beetles from an open sarcophagus. It was great. I had a new way to torture stupid people. Of course I knew on some level it would bite me in the ass later, but I didn’t care just then.
Spanish class was my favorite class that semester. It gave me an excuse to use a foreign accent in public. We were doing my favorite thing that day, reading exercises. There would be a story in Spanish and everyone in class would take turns reading paragraphs. My paragraph had, joy of joys, a piece of dialogue from the “heroine” of the story, Carmen, who was trying to find her hat, only she couldn’t remember where it was.
[Entonces, Carmen tiene una idea: _ ¡tal vez mi sombrero es en la biblioteca!_
_ ¿En la biblioteca?_ Raul le pide, _ ¿Está¡s segura?_
_Creo que si,_ repueste Carmen, _ ¡voy a buscar por mi sombrero en la biblioteca!_]
I went all telenovela on their asses. Raul was a real smoky Antonio Banderas, and Carmen was a saucy latina. Several people laughed at my portrayal. If I could have, I would have read the whole thing. Spanish was one of the few things I could consistently get A’s in.
And so I went home in an inordinately good mood, while in detention Shaquonda steamed on medium heat in a broth of bad news.
“Are you okay?” A girl’s voice asked.
I looked around, realized firstly that I had collapsed on a tiled floor, secondly that it was the floor of the women’s restroom.
The more pressing issue, though, was how I was going to be able to pee. I covered my face with my hand. I was just in a bathroom, my mother’s voice in the back of my head told me, why didn’t I go then?
~~~~~~~~~~
I left Rebecca and merged into hallway traffic. I probably could have handled that better. Principal’s daughter, I just saved her life, she could help me out some time in the future, maybe later when I grow a libido I’ll start to find her attractive and I can get her to go out with me…but no, pretty much killed those possibilities with the trouser snake line.
Except what with my penis now taking on some rather disturbing herpetological attributes, that growing a libido thing might not ever happen. That was pretty serious wasn’t it? Not being able to sire children? Didn’t really upset me as much as it should have though, because, well I didn’t have a libido. Girls usually made me uncomfortable, but that was mostly because I thought I should feel something and I didn’t. Every now and then I thought I might be gay, but when I tried to find a guy attractive I just felt uncomfortable again because I was still just waiting for something to happen.
The more pressing issue, though, was how I was going to be able to pee. I covered my face with my hand. I was just in a bathroom, my mother’s voice in the back of my head told me, why didn’t I go then? I had been walking toward the nurses office after stopping by a locker cul de sac to retrieve my socks, which had drifted to my belly region anyway, and roll my cargos back down. I was now approaching another set of bathrooms. This time there was a sizable line coming out of the girl’s restroom though, so thanking the flying spaghetti monster for giving me a penis, even if it was recently transmogrified into a snake, I entered the boy’s restroom and tried my luck there.
“This is the men’s room, “ a helpful classmate of mine jeered when I entered, “girls aren’t allowed.” He and another kid were wetting paper towels and slinging them onto the wall. There were three other kids in the room.
I weighed my options for a moment, then went with “Shut the fuck up,” and entered the one unoccupied stall.
I heard snickering and something ending in “…probably has to squat.” But I just let it go. Once again I took down my pants and examined myself. At first I didn’t see anything, which was disconcerting, I had to actually pull on the snake to get it out of the crevice I put it in. It was rather lethargic now. Tired I guess. It was also a bit longer than I remembered. I tried to point its mouth toward the bowl of the toilet, but it didn’t like that and it started fighting me. It felt weird. I couldn’t feel the parts that had turned into a snake, but I could feel the weight of it and the force of its muscles against my crotch.
Then I felt something else weird. One of its movements made the skin around my balls tighten in an odd way. My balls moved up then, into my pelvis somewhere. That happened to me once before when I went swimming before it was really warm enough. This was different, though, because, well it involved my penis being turned into a snake. Also when they traveled to parts unknown the snake seemed to get a little longer. It was a dark green now, with red eyes. Kind of pretty as snakes go, though of course I would have preferred it if it wasn’t attached to me. I felt underneath it while I held its neck with my other hand. There seemed to be a loose pocket underneath and when I put my finger into it I peed a little. Onto my finger.
Oh shit. Was I a girl now? I checked further down, but there was no other aperture other than my anus. Not really a girl then. But lacking the requisite parts to truly be a member in the men’s club for men. Unless you counted the snake, which I didn’t. I had to go, so I sat down on the toilet. I did have to sit down after all.
The snake slithered across my thigh as I sat, exploring its environs. It flicked its tongue a couple times. I looked at the snake, and the snake seemed to look back at me. I got the impression that, were it up to the snake it would rather not be where it was either. We kept looking at each other as the tinkling noises started and then stopped. I think we came to an understanding.
Details at this point aren’t really necessary, except that after I was done, the snake went immediately back between my legs, like it was happy there. I wondered briefly whether it was a male or a female snake. Then I wondered if it appreciated its nose being so close to my asshole. I decided not to wonder so much. I pulled up my pants and got out of there.
I actually felt pretty comfortable. I was used to it having had to deal with it for 13 years and some change, but I usually had to make constant adjustments because my penis would get into some awkward position. But the snake wasn’t part of me, really, and it stayed in place for the most part. It was kind of nice.
The whole not being exactly male thing wasn’t so bad either really. As long as I didn’t have a libido it didn’t really matter what I was, and now that there was no chance of having sex anyway, it made me feel a bit more free. But I was probably in shock or something, I figured. I should still see some one about it.
Except I couldn’t imagine Nurse Garibaldi, sweetheart though she may be in her no-nonsense, body of a lunch lady kind of way, being able to deal with this situation. I gave even odds she would think it was some sort of prank and dismiss me without even checking it out.
Thing was, it WAS some sort of prank, wasn’t it? Just not my prank. That voodoo doll in my locker with snake attached to its crotch, that was probably how this happened. Shaquonda was the one who probably did it to me.
Great, except I had no idea where Shaquonda was. She was probably in school, because of the doll, but she could have had a friend leave it. But I didn’t know Shaquonda from evil. So I was going the right way anyway. The principal’s office was right next to the Nurse’s office. I’d just have to find away to get her schedule.
~~~~~~~~
Movies always make things like this look easy. There’s usually a ginormous book prominently displayed somewhere and all the intrepid hero or heroine has to do is sneeze while ripping out a page. Or there’s a computer sitting patiently on a desk all by its lonesome and the password is the name of the administrator’s cat, which she has a picture of next to the coffemug where she keeps the keys to the filing cabinet.
In real life though, you’ve got to deal with people, because in real life, you aren’t a master lockpicker or computer hacker, and if its not normal work hours, you’re sitting at home watching Star Trek reruns. Or whatever.
The person I had to deal with was Agnes Pritchard. She was a brittle bird of a woman who seemed to like things neat and proper. She had a picture of her family, another of just her grandkids and a picture of her cat, which she kept, oddly enough, next to a coffeemug full of keys. The coffemug had that story about Jesus and the footprints on it. I always wonder what size shoe Jesus would wear after reading that.
I first tried pretending like what I was asking for was perfectly normal. Sometimes that works. “Mrs. Pritchard?”
“May I help you with something?”
“Yes, could you find out what class Shaquonda LaRue is in next period for me please?”
“May I ask what this is in regards to?”
I fought the urge to answer “yes you may.” Or better yet, “no , you may not.” “I…um wanted to apologize for something that happened yesterday, but I don’t know how to get in touch with her.”
“I’m sorry, but you need to be a family member or have some sort of permission from her in order for me to give you that information.”
“Do you have her cell phone number?”
“I can’t give you that either, you understand.”
“No, I mean couldn’t you text something to her for me?”
“Text?” Agnes frowned.
“Or email, or give her a call? Anything?”
I could see Agnes was trying to find a good reason why should couldn’t do that. “I could call her by intercom,” she came out with.
“No, I don’t want the whole school knowing about it!”
“I’m sorry, young man, but I cannot just arrange secret meetings for you with girls you like.”
“I don’t like her! I just want to ask her something! Look I’ll write something down, and give it to you. I don’t even have to be in the room. You call her or whatever, get her answer and let me know. Okay?”
She thought about it, frowned and nodded, handing me a stack of post-it notes and a pen.
I wrote, “How do I lift the snake curse?” and then B. Ash Patterson at the bottom.
Agnes examined the note with the lower part of her bifocals, turned, and keyed the microphone on her desk. “Attention. Shaquonda LaRue, Ash Patterson is in the office and would like to know how to lift the snake curse. Shaquonda LaRue, Ash Patterson is in the office and would like to know how to lift the snake curse.” Agnes smiled, “she should be here any minute now, Ash.”
I had to wait for the wishes to see Agnes in pain to subside. Apparently I wasn’t clear enough about not wanting the call to go out on the intercom. It was cryptic enough though, that it shouldn’t cause any problems. “Thanks,” I said finally.
“You’re welcome. So what did she get you with? Snakes in the bed? Toilet snakes? “
My turn to be stupid. “Wha?”
“Oh don’t be surprised. Everyone thinks they’re the first to be cursed. It happens all the time around here. Big Hoodoo country. I used to get spiders in my coffee all the time before I found God.”
“Wha?”
“It can be hard for a young person to believe. I understand. I was young once too. You’ll find your way eventually.”
“Um…couldn’t I just apologize or something?”
“No, honey, that never works. A curse has to run its course or you have to believe in something stronger.”
“So why did you call her over here if you know it won’t help?”
“She should know better than to go around cursing people like that. God hates witches almost as much as He hates the gays.”
“It’s not that little!” I protested.
Garibaldi shrugged. “I saw one on a nature show. It was a lot bigger. Have you tried killing it?”
“I didn’t think that was a good idea, seeing as it used to be my penis. I’d rather not kill my penis. ”
~~~~~~~~~~
Agnes had called Shaquonda to the office, but I had some other things to do there so I didn’t see a good reason stick around her immediate vicinity. She kinda creeped me out.
I stopped by the nurse’s office just in case she had something helpful to say.
“Nurse Garibaldi ?” I ventured. The lady was sitting at her desk watching a telenovela on a small black and white tv. A brunette was talking to a blond, who was wearing a wedding dress. The blond was looking expectantly.
“Necesitas que saber algo antes que casarse a Manuel,” The brunette said, circling around menacingly. “á‰l y yo tuvimos un bébé.” The camera focused in on the brunette’s angry face. “Y él lo matá³! “
“Ooh that’s cold,” I said.
Nurse Garibaldi nodded. “I knew something was off about that creep.” She seemed to
realize I was there then. “Can I help you with something?”
“Ah, yes. I’m, uh, Ashley Patterson. Rebecca talked with you about me on the phone?”
“The girl with the period?” Garibaldi looked confused.
“Yes, well there was some confusion. What’s really going on is…well…what do you know about curses?”
“I was set to become Miss Louisiana.” Garibaldi said sourly. “Now look at me. Yes, I know a few things about curses.”
Whoever cursed Garibaldi had to have done a number on her. She looked like she had orc ancestry or something. I kept this to myself though. “Hmm…yes, well this girl cursed me and-”
“Who is she? I’ll wring her evil little neck!”
I held my hands up. “I don’t want to resort to violence or anything, at least, not yet. I just want to know if there’s anything I should do about it, you know, medically.”
“I suppose, you could try taking hormones, but I don’t think that will work.”
“Hormones? How would hormones help?” Just then the bell for next period rang. I misjudged the time I guess.
“It depends on how strong the curse is. It could be that it already did its work. If that’s the case than we can fix some of it. Can’t do anything about the voice and some of the bone structure might be off but you’re young, it isn’t that terrible.”
I blinked. “Um I’m not getting something here. Could you elaborate?”
“We may not be able to turn you back into a girl, but we can get pretty close.”
“Oh! No, I’m a guy, or at least I was. Not sure where I fall now.”
“I’m so sorry! It’s just your name is Ashley and Rebecca said…So what was the curse then?”
“My penis was turned into a snake.”
“Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before.” She stood up. “May I see?”
I looked to the door. Garibaldi walked over to it and locked it. “No one’s going to come in. You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to, but if I’m going to help, I need to see.”
She seemed a little over eager, which made me hesitant, but she was a nurse and if I was going to get answers there was only one way to go. I took down my pants.
“I thought you said you weren’t a girl.”
I grimaced and pulled on the snake. At first it resisted and then it tried to coil around my hand, though it wasn’t quite long enough. Feeling the muscles as it pulled against my hand and crotch felt…weird. “I was hoping you could tell me if this was poisonous or not.”
Garibaldi’s eyes were wide. “I don’t think so. It looks like a green python, though just a little one.”
“It’s not that little!” I protested.
Garibaldi shrugged. “I saw one on a nature show. It was a lot bigger. Have you tried killing it?”
“I didn’t think that was a good idea, seeing as it used to be my penis. I’d rather not kill my penis. Besides this only happened like fifteen minutes ago.” It felt a lot longer though.
“If you could lay down? I need to see how much has changed.” Garibaldi indicated a hospital bed with paper on it. I did as she asked. The snake tightened around my hand, but I kept holding it.
“Hmmm.” Garibaldi said, and then she prodded the area above my crotch. “I assume you had testicles before this?”
I nodded. I swallowed, “Yes.”
“You don’t now. I thought maybe they might have just ascended, but I can’t feel them. No sign of a vaginal opening, but that may come later.”
“You think I’m turning into a girl?”
Garibaldi grimaced, “I don’t know what is going to happen. I’ve seen sex changing curses before, but what this looks like to me is someone very powerful who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Curses come purely out of the imagination, but reality always tries to assert itself, tries to iron out contradictions. If you play your cards right, you might even be able to go back to how you were, but, Ashley, I should warn you, curses usually only go one way. ”
I got up and let go of the snake, which quickly went back between my legs, then I pulled up my pants.
“How come I’ve never heard of this before now?”
Garibaldi shrugged. “Reality asserts itself. Being ugly is completely normal, so people just assumed I was born that way. Eventually my childhood pictures started changing. People just say I don’t remember it right. The only people that believe me now are people who’ve been cursed. Same thing could happen to you. If you were born without sexual organs, it would be strange, but not impossible. And there would be nothing wrong with you having a pet snake. You have to be careful around people who don’t believe in magic, they can be very convincing, and if you start believing them, it’s all over.”
“What am I going to tell my parents?”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t tell them anything. “
Well, that seemed to be a valid tactic.
“Ashley, one other thing, the people who are the most susceptible to curses are also the ones who are the most able to give them to people. Be careful. Accidental curses are more common than you might think.”
I nodded. “Could I get a pass? I’m late for my next class.”
“Sure.” Garibaldi said and she retrieved a pad of passes and a pen. I tried not to think of the many uses such a pad might have as she wrote down my name. She handed the pass to me and unlocked the door for me. I said thanks and was about to leave, but I paused. I normally try to be honest as much as possible. I won’t directly insult someone, but if they ask my opinion I give it to them straight, even if it’s not what they want to hear, and I don’t generally give compliments where they aren’t deserved. Still I felt like lying just this one time. “Nurse, Garibaldi?”
“Yes?”
“I think you’re beautiful.”
“Thank you, dear,” she smiled, “and please, call me Karen.” And damned if she didn’t look prettier just then.
~~~~~~~~~~
I checked briefly, but Shaquonda had obviously not turned up. I didn’t really blame her. Especially if she had met Agnes.
I had no idea where Shaquonda was, I was already late for second period and my backpack was still in History class, unless one of my helpful fellow classmates had purloined it. The whole snake curse thing was apparently not fatal, albeit potentially life changing. That made it important but not urgent. Getting my backpack was significantly less important, but more urgent, and getting to math class was decidedly not very important, but very urgent. So…what should I do? My time management skills were abandoning me!
I didn’t want to have to disturb a class while retrieving my backpack. Teachers tended to have sticks up their asses about that, so it would be probably better to wait for the next period break. And if I went to math class I would probably need my math book, which was in my locker. And in my locker was the voodoo doll which had caused all the problems in the first place, and I might be able to learn something from it. So to my locker I went.
The voodoo doll was still there. I had to wonder: how had Shaquonda put it there? Did she spy on me while I was opening the combination lock? That would mean she would have to be in a nearby locker, but then which one? Or maybe she could pick it somehow? But she would still have to know which locker was mine. What kind of connections did she have?
The lockers were each four feet tall, one row stacked on another. Mine was a bottom locker, which meant there were five people who could possibly see the combination I put in. I did try to keep it hidden, but admittedly most of the time I opened my locker I was more concerned about getting it open than making sure other people couldn’t open it.
I wasn’t exactly chummy with my locker neighbors. I didn’t even know who owned the locker to the left of mine. We all had home room together, that was how the lockers were assigned. And I was pretty sure it was done alphabetically by last name, so all the lockers around mine were probably owned by kids with last names that started with letters close to P in the alphabet. If I were a police detective and could bring people in for questioning all that would be a great help .
But I wasn’t.
So I needed to think some more. Whoever spied on my combination, probably was nosey in general, otherwise they would have needed an extra day to catch my combination before putting in the doll. And they would have to have some connection to Shaquonda. They were friends with her maybe? That meant it probably was a girl doing the spying, or Shaquonda’s boyfriend. Shaquonda was a year ahead me though, didn’t seem likely that she’d have an underclassman boyfriend. So probably a girl. But probably not Shaquonda’s best friend or anything for the same reason. A Shaquonda groupie then. But the only one that left was…
Shavaughn O’Malley, the cheerleader.
Fuck. No way was I getting any information from her. I could envision her conversation with Shaquonda right now:
Shaquonda: …he just kept insulting you cheerleaders, using this girly voice of his.
Shavaughn: That bastard! What we do is important. If we don’t show our underwear and make vaguely sexually provocative poses with our pom poms, no one would come to the games!
‘quonda: I know, I know. And then his friend was all like, hey cut it out, cheerleaders aren’t so bad, and he just kept on going!
Me: That’s not what happened!
‘quonda: to Me Shut up. You weren’t present at this conversation. Continues telling story So then I got fed up and told him to stop, and you know what he told me?
‘vaughn: What?
‘quonda: He told me to take a look at his trouser snake!
‘vaughn: He didn’t!
‘quonda: He did. That’s when I threw him down the bleachers. Bastard got off scot free while I have detention.
‘vaughn: You ought to do something mean to him. Maybe stick something in his locker. His is right next to mine. I even know his combination if you want it.
‘quonda: Why do you know his combination?
‘vaughn: I was beaten as a child?
‘quonda: What does that have to do with anything?
‘vaughn: I think this conversation has lost any semblance of realism.
Shavaughn’s locker was at two o’clock from mine. She would sneer down at me from it while she talked to a girlfriend on her cellphone about what That Slut did at So-and-So’s party. I wanted to meet That Slut. She seemed like an interesting person.
There was something sticking out of her locker. A corner of a bright orange piece of paper, sticking out of the bottom crack. I pulled on it and it revealed itself to be a neon orange index card On the top in silver ink, were the words “Siobhan, tryouts are over, but if you really want to join the team, we practice every day after school. Just come by and if Coach likes you, he might take you on. —Shaq “
I chuckled at first. Shaquonda couldn’t even spell Shavaughn’s name right! Except…I had never seen Shavaughn spell her name. So…shit. But really in what universe was Shavaughn spelled Siobhan? There wasn’t a sh- or a v anywhere in Siobhan. Making up sounds for letters was just mean. And so was a girl calling herself Shaq. The images of Shaquille O’Neil in drag just would not leave my skull.
It took me a minute or two to get over my initial irritation after reading the note. I put it in my pocket, got my pre-calculus book, and headed for the class. The idea of pre-calculus amused me. Like the school administration was saying “Are you sure you want to learn Calculus? I mean you may have thought algebra was hard, but you don’t even know how hard it can get.” I wasn’t really that good at math, but then, from my perspective, I’d rather get a bad grade in a hard course than a good grade in an easy one. Besides, I tended to do the bare minimum I needed to pass a course; so if I took an easier course I would have slacked off and got a bad grade anyway. It wasn’t until I gave Mr. Manley my pass and sat down at my desk (the one that someone had carved “fuck you” into over a swastika) , that I realized that now I knew where Shaquonda would be today.
Also, reminded that I was effectively sitting on a snake that was attached to my crotch, I wondered why I wasn’t more uncomfortable. The snake squirmed a little, just enough for me to know that it had grown and its head was now nestled snugly in my butt cheeks, but it did not seem overly perturbed by this. Good, because I would had a hard time maintaining my exterior of calm if the snake were to bite my ass.
“Where were you?” Bobby whispered at me.
“Long story,” I whispered back. “Tell you later.” How much later and which story I would tell I kept to myself.
“Now that you’re here, Ashley, maybe you could tell us how to find the vertex of a parabola from its quadratic equation.”
“Uh, sure.” He had called me Ashley, which is about my only excuse for answering in my girl voice that I can think of. It caused a great deal of gibbering amid the class. I cleared my throat and continued with my normal male voice. “First you have to put the equation into standard form, you know, Y=a(x-h)^2+k? and then (h,k) is the coordinates of your vertex.”
“Alright, so how would you put the equation on the board into standard form?”
I looked at the equation, and tried to imagine the numbers and variables rearranging themselves into the right positions. But they kept running into each other and complaining. I was able to get y by itself on one side of the equal sign, and I was pretty sure that the a term was one third, but everything else was a hopeless mess. “I, um…”
“Could someone help her out?” Mr. Manley asked.
“Well it’s like you were just saying, Mr. Manley, you have to complete the square…”
I don’t even know who responded or what they said after that. All I was aware of was that Mr. Manley referred to me as a “her”. What could I do about this? It was probably just a slip up. My name’s Ashley, rumors are flying around, things got stuck in his subconscious and he said “her” without realizing it. But what if it was the curse? What if reality was trying to exert itself by making everyone think I was a girl? A girl with a pet snake would be a lot more normal than an androgynous person with a pet snake. So I should correct him right? But there was no real way to do that now, while class was going on. I could talk to him after class, maybe, but …
I was in a daze the rest of class, trying to figure it out. When the bell rang, I decided to go to the bathroom again. The men’s room. No one bothered me this time. I looked at myself in the mirror. I still had my short, spiky brown hair, my dark eyebrows. I still had my adam’s apple, but was it maybe a little less prominent? I checked to see that no one was looking and I lifted my shirt. No breasts or anything like that, but did I seem a little scrawnier? So far nothing that couldn’t be explained by my mind playing tricks. But something was still off. No one had come in yet, so I tried one more thing. I pulled my hood up over my head so that the shadows of the hood would blend with my hair. I blinked. With the appearance of long hair I looked like a girl. Not an attractive girl by any means, and a girl with a distinct Adam’s apple, but while I couldn’t quite figure out what had happened to my facial features, they had somehow taken a turn for the feminine.
I pulled my hood down and did the deep texas voice. Only it came out more like Granny Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies. I cleared my throat and tried again, panicking. This time I was able to do it, but I got into a coughing fit afterward that caused tears to come to my eyes. “This isn’t good.” I said, and it came out in my girl voice, “This isn’t…”I tried again going for deeper, but it didn’t work. “This…fuck.” I looked in the mirror again. My Adam’s apple was gone.
I laughed in spite of myself, but to my horror, it wasn’t my usual laugh. It was higher pitched. A girl’s laugh.
“Ha! I knew it! You ARE a girl.”
I felt something twinge inside me when she said that.
~~~~~~~~~~
I few things I didn’t realize:
First, not many people at school knew me all that well. Aside from Bobby, Mike, and perhaps a few of the teachers, no one at school could point me out in a picture. This was one of the things that made me vulnerable to curses. As far as most people were concerned, I could be a girl just as easily as I could be a boy. I had no history with most of them.
Second, I had made a number of bad moves. Basically pretending to be a girl as I turned down requests for a date, followed by my pretending to be a girl while I went crazy and saying I was on my period, caused the rumor mill to churn out many stories about “this girl Ashley” and not so many about a boy of the same name. Someone might have even said, “I thought that kid was a boy?” and then someone else would say “Boy’s don’t get periods, dumbass,” or something else to that effect.
Finally, while I had recently learned that curses tend to get mitigated by reality attempting to assert itself, I didn’t properly appreciate how reality works. If 100 people thought I was a girl and 5 people thought I was a boy, and I was currently something impossible (a sexless former boy with a snake instead of a penis) reality would pressure me toward the more popular supposition.
After pre-calculus, when the teacher had referred to me as female and I did nothing to correct him, it was enough of a nudge to push me significantly into girl territory.
That is why I was able to watch my Adam’s apple disappear before my eyes as I stared at my reflection in the mirror of the boy’s restroom.
I ran out of there. I rushed as quickly as I could through the clogged artery of the hallways between periods. I needed to get someplace where I could think, someplace where there wouldn’t be anybody to bother me.
The library.
I was thoroughly freaking out on the way over there. I was never claustrophobic before, but just then I felt like if I didn’t get some space I was going to go insane. If I wasn’t insane already.
I got to the library and set about trying to find some obscure corner that had not seen a human presence since the Carter administration.
“Hey, Ashley, what are you doing here?” It was Rebecca, all sunshine and good feelings. She had a book in front of her on the table next to her hot pink backpack.
“I’m... playing hooky.” I whispered.
“In the school library? You’re a real rebel aren’t you?” Rebecca laughed
I laughed in spite of myself, but to my horror, it wasn’t my usual laugh. It was higher pitched. A girl’s laugh.
“Ha! I knew it! You ARE a girl.”
I felt something twinge inside me when she said that. I couldn’t tell if it was something changing or just my nerves. “Aren’t you supposed to be quiet in the library?” I asked, no longer bothering to whisper.
Rebecca looked around and I followed her gaze. There was nobody else in the library. Rebecca shrugged. “I’m in charge of the library this period. I say we can be as loud as we want.”
“You’re a rebel too, then.” I smiled.
Rebecca held out her thin wrists “You’ve found me out, officer, arrest me, if you must.”
I shifted to a male cop voice, “There’s no need for that, little lady, I’ll just let you off with a warning this time.”
“How are you able to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Sound like a guy. I’ve been trying all day, and I can’t even get close.”
That was when I realized that I had done the voice without any problem.
“I, uh practiced a lot. With a tape recorder.” That was true enough. I had practiced the cop voice almost as much as I had practiced talking like a girl. That wasn’t so bad. But in the bathroom I couldn’t do the Texan voice. I tried it again, “Ah come from a long line of straight talkers.” It worked! But…it also hurt a great deal more than it used to. I swallowed a few times against the soreness.
“That’s amazing! I could only do that if I had a bad sore throat or something. So are you going to tryouts next week?”
“Tryouts?”
“For the play. You know, Twelfth Night? “
“I didn’t know about it,” I said, flabbergasted. I didn’t even know the junior high had plays.
“There are flyers posted pretty much everywhere,” Rebecca pointed out.
“I didn’t see any of them.”
“What are you, the kangaroo from Horton Hears a Who? Just because you haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
I looked around and, sure enough, there was a flyer next to the door leading out of the library. “Huh, I guess even if you don’t see them or sense them at all, a flyer’s a flyer no matter how small.”
“So you think you’ll try out?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I think.” Because I wasn’t entirely sure if having a snake attached to my crotch was going permit me to do that sort of thing.
“Well, I’m trying out too. I’m trying to read through it now. It’s kind of hard to follow what they’re saying sometimes, but it’s interesting.”
“Cool,” I said simply. I was a bit embarrassed that I’d never much cared for Shakespeare. I’d seen the Kenneth Branaugh version of Hamlet a two or three years before, and I kind of found it a bit boring. Of course three years earlier I had been ten. That might have had something to do with it.
“So, what made you cut your hair like that?” Rebecca asked “You really do look like a boy. Are you a lesbian or something?”
I fought back the urge to say I was a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, because I wasn’t exactly in a man’s body and seeing as Rebecca thought I was a girl, saying I was a lesbian wouldn’t be funny. Not that it was funny to begin with, but anyway. “I, uh, grew up as a boy?” I tried, “So I’m kind of used to it?”
“Huh. You must have a strange family.”
“Not particularly.” I scratched the back of my neck. I decided to go for broke. “What do you know about curses?”
“Which kind of curse? Four-letter words? Menstrual cycles? Jusenkyou?”
“More like the kind caused by voodoo dolls.”
“Oh those don’t work. Just a bunch of hogwash perpetrated by ignorance and the tourism department.”
“Who’s the kangaroo now?” I challenged. “I was cursed. That’s why I’m like this right now.”
“Someone cursed you to have short hair and dress in your brother’s clothes?”
“No! I was a… I am a…” Well here was an interesting conundrum. I wanted to tell Rebecca the truth, but I also wanted my penis back and if she believed I was a guy it might happen, so should I say I was a boy, or that I am a boy? And then there was the issue of my penis having been turned into a snake that would be a little difficult to get across without seeming perverted. Frankly, it was perverted, the whole idea seemed like something some sexually repressed closet transsexual would come up with after reading Lovecraft or watching some screwed up anime. “You know what? Screw it. I’m just a major tomboy okay?”
I felt that twinge again. I remembered what Karen had said:“You have to be careful around people who don’t believe in magic, they can be very convincing, and if you start believing them, it’s all over”. I wasn’t quite believing Rebecca, but it was so much easier to agree with her than to try to correct her. I could almost see believing it. And that was scary.
“That’s fine. I was just curious. Us social pariahs have to stick together, you know.”
I looked at Rebecca’s perfect hair, perfect posture, and sharp clothes, “You’re a pariah?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Principal’s daughter. It works for some people. Not for me. Sometimes I think I should be more of a bitch.”
“Heh. Sometimes I think I should be nicer to people.”
“Maybe we could help each other out, huh?”
“You bet,” I said. I sat next to her. “So that’s the play?” I gesture to the book she was reading. She nodded. “Could I read with you?”
“Sure.” She said. We took turns reading, and I did different voices for each of the characters. It was a lot of fun, and It didn’t feel weird. I didn’t feel any kind of physical attraction to Rebecca, but that was okay. I had an excuse now. I wasn’t a boy.
“I thought the boy scouts were supposed to be better than the girl scouts at that kind of stuff.”
I picked up another piece of Salisbury with my fork. “So did I.”
.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ah, lunchtime.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that who we are is inextricably linked with the company we keep whilst eating lunch. This is especially true in school cafeterias.
I found Bobby Singh easily; he was at the center of a gaggle of girls, seeming to enjoy himself well enough. Mike Thatcher was easy to spot with his being tall and his hair being light blond almost to the point of albinism. There was a spot next to him, but only one spot. This normally wouldn’t have been a problem except I came into the cafeteria with Rebecca, who despite being, if not the most attractive, the most well put together girl in the school, was apparently a social pariah. I could sit beside Mike and abandon my new friend, or I could sit with my new friend, which might make Mike feel snubbed. Furthermore, I did not know the degree to which Rebecca was a pariah. I had a friend or two I could sit with despite being not so popular, maybe she did as well, and maybe I would actually be cramping her style. I could ask her where she was sitting, but then asking that question would imply I wanted to sit with her, which would put undo pressure on her. And while I did want to sit with her, I also kind of wanted to sit next to Mike because I hadn’t been able to talk to him all day, due to my series of adventures.
The whole business reminded me somehow of completing the square in Mr. Manley’s Pre-Calculus class. You had to sort of have an idea of what you wanted before you could rearrange things to fit. Then again in math there was really only one answer while here…
“So where do you want to sit?” Rebecca asked, effectively ending my inner debate.
There was a prime portion of cafeteria real estate recently vacated by a band of Visigoths so I motioned toward it and Rebecca and I sat down . Visigoths were my name for the motorcycle gang Goths, as opposed to the emo Goths, which I called hairflippers, or the Victorian Goths, which I called Gothics. Having three types of goth at my school made for an interesting dynamic. Goth kids weren’t made fun of as much, because there were so many of them. A few of them were in the student council. I heard a rumor that there was even a goth cheerleader, but I couldn’t confirm it because I only sort of knew one of the cheerleaders and none of the Goths, and at any rate it’s difficult to recognize a Goth when they aren’t all gothy.
“So what classes are you taking?” I asked Rebecca as I cut into my Salisbury steak.
“French and Gym,” she responded taking a sip of juice.
“Only two classes?”
“I was homeschooled before now. I don’t need to take math or history until next year. That’s why they put me in charge of the library.” She forked a few string beans and put them in her mouth delicately.
Homeschooling. That explained a few things. I went back to cutting my “steak.” There was a hard bit in it, which wasn’t cutting properly. It wasn’t a bone. I decided to cut around it and leave the petrified bit for posterity. “So what’s that like? I’d think it’d get a little lonely.”
Rebecca shook her head. “Not really. My family’s pretty active in church, and I had girl scouts and ballet.”
I swallowed a piece of meat, and nodded. “I’m in the boy scouts.”
“Boy scouts?”
Whoops. “I…uh…extreme tomboy remember?”
“Sure, but how did you get in? Your parents would have to sign you off, wouldn’t they?”
“They…uh…they were cool with it.” I should have just said I was a boy maybe, but I wasn’t strictly a boy anymore, what with my penis having been replaced with a snake, and my testicles and Adam’s apple having gone missing.
“Huh. I guess that could happen, but you probably won’t be able to stay in. I mean you could pass for a boy now but...” I must have given her a look because she changed the subject. “So what’s it like, boy scouts?”
I shrugged. “We meet every week to talk about the campouts we’re going to go on and knots and so on. Then about once a month we go on campouts.”
“You ever go to Yellowstone?”
“No.”
“Ever go white water rafting?”
“No.”
“Rock climbing?”
“No.”
“Well, what do you do then?”
“We go out to the park near here, the one that’s not a swamp. We pitch tents, try to cook something, wake up and leave, usually wet and bitten up by mosquitos.”
Rebecca looked confused. “Why would you be wet?”
“It usually rains at night and the moisture comes in through the bottom of the tent.”
“Did you forget to dig a trench or something?”
“Trench? You mean a latrine? It wasn’t pee water that was getting through.”
Rebecca made a face. “Ugh. No, I mean you dig a trench around your tent so the water goes into the trench instead of into the tent.”
“Uh…they never taught us that one.”
“I thought the boy scouts were supposed to be better than the girl scouts at that kind of stuff.”
I picked up another piece of Salisbury with my fork. “So did I.”
“Hey! You’re Ashley right?” I looked up and realized I forgot about another type of goth, one I’ve only ever seen girls pull off. The cheerful goth. Otherwise known as gothic Lolita, made famous by Abby on NCIS.I realized this because Abbey’s sister in fashion was talking to me. She had very tall black boots, black and white striped tights, a black frock and sleeves that look like they were made from panty hose, as well as the requisite black lipstick and nail polish. Really, she was a few marks around the eyes and a vow of silence away from being a mime.
I nodded. “That’s my name, yeah.” I realized afterward that maybe I should have used my male voice, but it was too late, and it might not have been that great an idea anyway.
“I’m Rita!” She put her tray down quickly and made to shake my hand. I took her up on the offer hesitantly, because I didn’t know what this was about. Oddly it was a good shake. Usually I feel like my hand’s too big when I shake a girl’s hand. Then I looked at my hand.
Shit.
Rita released my hand and sat down next to Rebecca. I introduced Rebecca to her, since I seemed the polite thing to do.
“Oh, we know each other already,” Rita said, “We go to the same church.”
“I was just telling Ashley about girl scouts,” Rebecca said.
“Yeah, it’s a lot more fun than you’d think. This weekend we’re going out on the swamp boat to look at the alligators.”
“You mean those boats with the big fan in the back?” I’d always wanted to go on one of those.
“Yeah, you want to come?”
“Sure!” I said with out thinking. Whoops. “I mean, if I can.”
“Yeah, we’re going to meet at the church tomorrow morning before we head out. If you show up, you can join us.”
“Doesn’t it cost money?”
Rebecca put a hand on my shoulder. “Ashley, that’s what the cookies are for.”
This explained much. With boy scouts everything was paid out of pocket with dues. We kind of had a fundraiser but that was for some charity. Don’t remember what it was. I had to sell poppies to people. I think the poppies had something written on them. Something like “We will never forget.” So yeah, the girl scouts get to sell things that people actually want, like cookies, while the boy scouts have to hock frilly little plastic flowers. Something’s wrong with that picture.
I shook my head free of my internal rant and addressed Rita.“No offence, but why are you being so friendly?”
Rita laughed. “I just had to say hello to you at least. I saw you making fun of the cheerleaders, and then Rebecca told me how you saved her in the bathroom.”
“I was just ah…” I didn’t really know how to explain anything so I just let it trail off.
“I swear, when I saw you in the bleachers doing your mock routine I nearly dropped my breasts. I mean pom poms.”
I felt heat rise to my cheeks. Apparently Rita was the mythical Gothic cheerleader. It no longer seemed so strange a concept.
“I still don’t understand why you’re a cheerleader if you hate them so much,” Rebbeca wondered.
“I don’t hate them, I just think they take themselves too seriously. Being a cheerleader is fun. It shouldn’t be serious.” Rita turned to me again. “Siobhan really hates you by the way. If she does anything, don’t let it get to you. I think she secretly despises cheerleading, she just does it because her parents expect her to.”
“Yeah, she really wants to be a basketball player,” I said before I could stop myself.
“How did you know that?”
I bit my lip. “I saw a note Shaquonda left for her.”
Rita nodded. “She and Shaquonda are best friends. Shaquonda’s a bit weird though, if you ask me.”
“That’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” Rebecca pointed out.
Rita laughed. “Fair enough. But having a shrunken head key chain and sacrificing a rabbit before every game is weird on a different level.”
“Poor rabbits,” said Rebecca.
“Poor guy with the shrunken head!” I noted.
“We have a question for you.” It was the redneck Charles Dubois and two other guys who bore more than a passing resemblance to the hyenas in the Lion King, only without the witty repartee.
“Yeah,” one of them said. “we have a question for you.” As if Charles had been particularly clever in calling what the three of them were about to try to do to me a “question”.
“Are you a girl faggot? Or a boy faggot?”
“Yeah, what kind of faggot are you, faggot?”
~~~~~~~~~~
Ch. 7
After lunch I took the opportunity to retrieve my backpack from my first period class. It seemed unmolested as far as I could tell. My cell phone was still in the front pocket, which was good. I had a habit of sticking my cell phone there, because I didn’t always have a pocket for it in my trousers. I used my cell to call home.
“Hello?” my mother answered.
“Hi mom.”
“I think you might have the wrong number…”
Crap. I lowered my voice and tried again. “It’s me, Mom.”
“Ashley? That was strange; it sounded like a girl was talking to me before. What is it, honey?”
“There’s something I want to do after school so could you pick me up a bit later?”
“How much later?”
Hmm. Good question. I did a quick calculation. “Two hours?” That should be safe. If it came to it, I could always do homework to fill the time, but I wasn’t sure when I would be able to talk to Shaquonda. I might need to wait until after her practice.
“Okay, that’s fine. Everything all right?”
“Um…” No, mom, I’ve been de-sexed by a voodoo doll and given a serpent as a replacement penis, and now everyone thinks I’m a girl, and I’m not sure whether I really want to correct them anymore and… “It’s been a long day, Mom. I’ll tell you about it later maybe.”
“Okay. How about we eat in town today?”
“Sounds great, Mom. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
“Bye.” I pressed END.
I was not looking forward to that conversation. With any luck, maybe I could defy the odds and Shaquonda could reverse the curse and everything would be normal by the time Mom picked me up. The shrunken head Shaquonda used as a key chain was probably just a fake. Or maybe Rita was just making things up.
The snake moved a bit. It seemed its head was nudging at my waist band. I didn’t think there was any chance of it pushing through, the cargos I was wearing were, if anything, a size too small. Which meant that soon it would look like I had shat myself. Lovely.
The wrist brace on my left arm was kind of loose, and it was annoying me so I took it off to examine the damage. My left hand looked different. More like a girl’s hand. The wrist was thinner too. I could usually get my middle finger and thumb around my wrist and have my thumb reach about halfway down the fingernail. Now my thumb reached the first knuckle. The curse was not done with me yet it seemed. The good news though, was that my wrist didn’t hurt anymore. I put the brace in my backpack and walked out of the room to my locker.
The next class I had was gym. I didn’t have to go yesterday because of the pep rally, but the game was won and lost the night before and all the hurly burly was done so now everything was back to normal. My own predicament notwithstanding.
It really wasn’t that big a deal, gym. All we did most days was go to the field outside and walk along the track. If you were some one like Mike you ran along the track and timed yourself, but if you were someone like me, you purposely walked in the opposite direction to everyone else and read a book while you did it. Well, okay I usually made some attempt at speed at the beginning, but I have no stamina, as I might have mentioned. When the little fairy lights start to occlude my vision, I figure its time to take the road less traveled. It was a nice day that day and I still had half a Terry Pratchett book to get through. I was actually looking forward to it.
Of course I neglected to take into account my new found infamy.
“Hey.” Someone said. I kept reading. Whoever was talking probably meant somebody else. “Hey lesbo!” Well, now I was really sure they meant someone else. I had to fight to keep my eyes on the page. I wanted to see who they were talking about. But after a few years of kids doing the “Hey, idiot” trick to you, you learn not to react. “Hey, put your fucking book down I’m talking to you.”
Well now I was pretty sure I was being addressed, seeing as I was the only one with a book on the field. So hesitantly, I looked up.
“We have a question for you.” It was the redneck Charles Dubois and two other guys who bore more than a passing resemblance to the hyenas in the Lion King, only without the witty repartee.
“Yeah,” one of them said. “we have a question for you.” As if Charles had been particularly clever in calling what the three of them were about to try to do to me a “question”.
“Are you a girl faggot? Or a boy faggot?”
“Yeah, what kind of faggot are you, faggot?”
This sort of question confused me. Definitely a loaded question, but since at the moment I didn’t know whether I was a girl or a boy physically, did that make me a faggot? And was that a bad thing? I mean a word was only as bad as the thing it entailed, and if faggot simply meant someone of nonstandard sexual orientation, then that was me, as at the time I didn’t really have a sexual orientation. I was so caught up in the intellectual ramifications of the possible answers to Charles’s question that I neglected to pay proper attention to the flanking maneuvers being exercised by his cohorts.
They took me by the arms, my helpful classmates and gently guided me toward the empty refreshment shed on the side of the field. By “gently” I mean I had bruises for a week afterward
“Because if you’re a boy faggot we’ll just beat you up a little, but if you’re a girl faggot…”Here Charles’s cohorts did their hyena laugh, “we might just have other plans.”
There was a psychological study conducted to measure how people pay attention to things. The psychologists would have people look at a video of people playing basketball and have them count how many times the ball was passed throughout the game. Afterwards the participants were asked if they noticed anything strange about the video. Almost none of them mentioned the man in the gorilla suit that had walked right through the middle of the game. They weren’t looking for a man in a gorilla suit, so they didn’t see him.
The gym teacher was on the other end of the field on the bleachers, watching his students walk around in a circle. He wasn’t looking for Charles Dubois to accost anybody, and so he didn’t see it. That’s really the only excuse I can come up with as to why Coach Crown would let things progress as far as they did. Other than the man was irresponsible, an asshole, or both.
Of course what I was thinking at this point was that any minute Coach Crown would break this altercation up, and I didn’t want to be the one engaging in fisticuffs when that happened. I had a history of getting blamed for what other people did, and as far as I was concerned getting a little roughed up was better than getting detention or some other punishment. I had a red belt in Tae Kwon Do at the time, so I wasn’t completely helpless. But one of the things they continually tell you in Tae Kwon Do is that you are never supposed to use it unless you were sparring. And I had a bad habit of following directions.
Even as I was trying to figure out a way to escape that wouldn’t involve actual violence, I felt I was in complete control of the situation. “I’m flattered, but you’re really not my type.” I said, sounding like a girl.
“We don’t give a fuck what your type is.”
“Yeah”
They pushed me behind the refreshment shed out of sight. I was beginning to think that maybe I should do something. If I was born a girl, maybe I would have screamed. If I was more of a guy, maybe I would have tried to fight. But I was still trying to figure out a logical way out of the situation when suddenly I found myself on the ground. Instincts took over at this point. I naturally tried to get up, but of course my arms were pinned by Frick and Frack. “What the fuck are you doing?” I asked stupidly.
Next thing I knew I had a clump of dirt forced into my mouth. They were working on the pipes to the refreshment shed and there were mounds of top soil readily available. Dirt doesn’t taste good. It’s not like the oreo cookie stuff they sell with gummy worms at novelty shops. Dirt is maybe one notch above shit, and I’m only saying that because I’ve never tasted shit. I tried to spit it out, but there was a lot of it. My tongue couldn’t get away from it. I had to breath through my nose and I only had one nostril clear so I was gagging pretty bad.
Charles sat on my legs. He unfastened by belt as I was trying to get enough space in my mouth to yell out something. He unbuttoned my cargos. Unzipped them.
“Guthefuguffme!” I murfled as loud as I could and it would have been a scream at that point I think.
One of my legs got free and I tried kicking, at Charles, but I didn’t have any leverage. He sat on it again. And then he pulled down my pants.
“What the… OW!” The fangs of my trouser snake bit deep into Charles Dubois’s nose. He instinctively pulled away, and this was the wrong thing for him to do, as the fangs made ragged tears though his nose, leaving it a tattered and bloody mess. His two goons, startled, released my shoulders. The snake reared its head at them and hissed. I couldn’t see them from my vantage point, but they must have run away. I managed to get into a squatting position, the snake still hissing at Charles, who was holding his nose and backing away.
I didn’t feel scared at this point. This is going to sound sick, because it is sick, but at that moment I felt really good. Better than I ever had before in fact. I stood up over Charles, this thrumming sensation running throughout my body. “You get what you give in this world,” I told him. “and you give what you get.” If I had been in my right mind, I wouldn’t have said that. If it weren’t for knowing what I know now I wouldn’t even think the phrase was applicable. I mean if it wasn’t for my having a curse Charles would have done what he did and gotten away with it, and he might have done worse to someone else. If anything the whole experience pointed out how unfair life is. But when I said the words I believed them. And because I believed them, they became true.
A few things which I'll mention now, because they aren't likely to come up again for a long while:
Charlotte Dubois’s nose never recovered, but she’s doing all right now. I see her every now and then at the supermarket. She works as a cashier. It’s like Karen told me. The same people who are the most susceptible to curses are the ones who are the most capable of giving them.
About a year ago Charlotte handed me an article about a man, Arnie Dubois, who died of asphyxiation in his trailor. The medical examiner said that the wounds seemed to have been caused by a large snake, like a python, but while animal control was called in, they couldn’t find any traces of it anywhere. Arnie Dubois was Charlotte’s father I figured, but I didn’t see the connection at first. Then she told me something I didn’t expect, though I guess maybe I should have.
She told me, “thanks.”
Charlotte got what she gave, but then, she gave what she got.
~~~~Ch. 8~~~~~~
Charles, as he would still be Charles for a few months after our altercation, scrambled away, and I was left behind the refreshment shed with a mouth full of dirt taste and snake that I had to somehow coax back into my trousers. I still felt giddy for some reason. I felt like taking the rest of my clothes off and running naked across the field, but I managed to restrain myself. I did take my hoodie off, because I felt uncomfortably hot. I had a black t-shirt on underneath , which made my lack of breasts obvious, but then again the shirt seemed to fit me differently than it did this morning. The neck line was exposing more of my chest then I was used to and the sleeves were an inch or so closer to my elbows. I didn’t have a mirror or anything, but I would guess that if anything, taking off the hoodie made me look more like a girl rather than less. Half the girls my age didn’t have breasts yet anyway.
I guess I should also point out that there were some guys my age who were just as scrawny as I was just then, and didn’t have a curse to blame for it. And the t-shirt kind of hid my burgeoning belly and love handles, the result of a largely sedentary existence while under the influence of male hormones. It wasn’t a pot belly, more of a saucepan belly, but if my t-shirt were tighter, or someone was looking at my stomach for some reason, the lack of breasts coupled with the fat deposits would have put me back in the boy camp. Though I would have still qualified for faggot status.
The snake dove back between my legs. I got my pants back on, found my book, and walked out and back onto the track like nothing happened. I felt like running still though. I stuck my book in to the lower pocket of my cargos and launched into a run. I was always told that I ran like a girl, but I figured, hey, now I have an excuse.
I actually managed to run the whole track Usually about a quarter through I start seeing stars but this time I kept on getting more energy. I was really sweating though, and even with the sweat I felt extremely hot, this was a little odd, it being fall and all. My knee hurt a little from the imbalance of the book in my pocket, but I was still going to try for a second lap when Coach Crown stopped me.
Couch Crown stepped in front of me. “Patterson, come over here for a second.”
“Okay.”
I followed him to his perch on the top of the bleachers, where Charles was sitting with a handkerchief over his nose. As I suspected I was going to get in trouble.
“Did you do this?”
“No.” I lied. It wasn’t really a lie. The snake did it, not me, but it felt like one. If I kept things simple I might get out of it.
“Dubois here seems to think that you did.”
I had a thought. “I was there, but I didn’t do it. There was this snake I found behind the refreshment stand. I showed Charles, but he got too close.” That was a good lie. I almost believed it myself.
“A snake?”
“Yeah. Look at his nose. It’s torn, not broken. He was trying to pull it off.”
“There aren’t any snakes around here.”
“Look, that’s what it was. If you don’t believe me, call a herpetologist or a vet or something.”
“Id her sdake!” Charles said.
Coach Crown frowned his bushy eyebrows at me. “Did you bring a snake to school?”
“No. I just found it. I was showing it to Charles. I didn’t think he’d be such a girl about it.” This was getting fun. I was out of the lying part and now I was doing improv. Calling Charles a girl warmed my heart cockles.
“Okay, Dubois, go over to the nurse’s office. Patterson, I still need to talk with you.”
Charles left for the school and I was alone with Coach Crown. “What kind of game you’re pulling?”
“I’m not pulling any kind of game, sir. I found the snake. It didn’t look like it was hurting anybody.”
“Not about that. Didn’t think that was done by a human anyway.”
“Then what is it?”
“You’re not Ashley Patterson. Or at least you’re not the Bruce Ashley Patterson that’s enrolled in my class.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stop playing stupid. Ashley Patterson is a boy. You’re his twin sister or something. It’s time to stop playing around.”
Oh crap. I had no idea how this was going to affect the curse. Would I go home to find a new twin brother taking my place? No. That would be way too complicated. There would have to be a whole history for that other person. Still, bad things could happen if I wasn’t careful. I used my male voice, which in retrospect I should have been using already, except it wasn’t my normal voice anymore and I had forgotten that. “I’m Bruce Ashley Patterson, sir. I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”
Coach Crown looked confused. He took off his hat and rubbed his bald head. “Are you a boy or a girl?”
Coach Crown seemed local, maybe I could tell him the truth. “You know anything about curses, sir?”
His eyes bulged a little. He backed up into the bleacher behind him causing him to sit down involuntarily. He held his hands up. “Alright. I get it. That makes sense. Please don’t touch me. Last time one you cursed kids touched me I couldn’t win a game the whole season.”
I blinked. I never saw a grown man afraid like that before.
Coach Crown coughed, calming himself. “Okay. So what is this. Standard sex change curse? Nevermind I don’t really want to know. I thought the government had stamped out this crap.” Crown sighed. “The thing is… there is a girl’s change room and a boy’s change room, and when we start on inside sports in a week you’re going to have to go to one or the other, and I’m going to have to be able to stifle any arguments.”
“I’ll just keep going to the boy’s side. It’s no big deal,” I said , “I’m hoping to get cured soon anyway.”
“Nobody gets cured, Patterson. Curses run their course or they’re there forever.”
“Your curse only lasted for a season.” I pointed out.
“But I’ll never get that season back. I almost lost my job. I used to have a full head of hair and I lost it all that year. You’re never the same after you get cursed. Things never go back to the way they were.”
“I gotta try don’t I?”
“I don’t see you trying all that hard, kid.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was kind of enjoying myself.
“ Listen, we have a week. Just talk to your parents about it. Come up with something plausible, like maybe you’ve been taking hormones , or you’ve been a girl the whole time or something, I don’t know. But make it good. Boy’s and girl’s locker rooms may not seem like a big deal to you, but you haven’t been grilled by the PTA about it either.”
Shit. “My parents don’t know about it yet.” I said, slipping back into my girl voice.
“Jesus! How long did you think you could put it off?”
“Hey, this morning everything was normal, when was I supposed to tell them?”
Coach Crown’s jaw actually dropped. “That’s…That’s really fast. Whoever did this to you must be really powerful.”
“Yeah but she doesn’t know what she’s doing. At least that’s what Karen, I mean Nurse Garibaldi told me.”
“Ashley. I like you. You’re a good kid, I think, and I’m sorry you’re going through this. So don’t take it the wrong way when I say I don’t want you anywhere near me. You probably have wild magic shooting all over the place. Probably infected half the school with it. Go away now.”
I swallowed and turned to walk back down the bleachers.
“Wait,” Coach Crown said
I stopped.
“It was Shaquonda who cursed you?”
I turned. “Yeah, I think, but please don't do anything to her. At least not yet.”
“Why not? She ruined your life. She's probably going to ruin someone else’s too. She needs to be stopped.”
“No,” I said, “Not until I talk to her myself. “
Coach Crown was silent for a moment. “Fine. You aren’t being honorable, though. You’re just being stupid. You should talk with Carl Lockley. He’s the janitor, and the school’s hoodoo specialist.”
“Great. Thanks!” I said and for the rest of the period, I sat on the opposite side of the field and tried to read my book. I was a bit distracted by what Coach Crown had said. I would never be a normal boy again? What if he was right? Three people had said essentially the same thing. What was I going to do about it?
And why wasn’t I more upset?
“You were the uh…boy Rebecca found in the girl’s restroom, is that right?”
I blushed a bit, “Yeah. Sorry about that. The men’s restroom was…”
“I got a report that the toilet was overflowing around that time too. Was that you?”
I had forgotten about that, “Well, yeah, but all I did was flush it. Someone had been sick in there.”
“And yesterday you disturbed the pep rally fighting with Miss LaRue.”
“I wasn’t fighting! She pushed me!”
Principal Arnold just gave me a look, and I shut up. “Is there something going on I need to know about?”
~~~~~~~~~
During the break between periods a PA announcement asked that I come to the Principal’s office. Crap, I had forgotten to see him. Mr. Green had probably raised a fuss or something.
Principal Arnold was a very tall man, even sitting down. He looked a bit like a cop in a crime drama from the 70s: curly red hair that matched the hirsute forearms revealed by rolled up shirt sleeves, face squished into a pained expression that seemed to continuously emote that he was getting too old for this shit, I always found myself checking to see if he had a gun. He wasn’t that old, maybe late forties. There wasn’t any gray in his hair yet, he was actually kind of handsome in an older guy kind of way.
I checked myself going in, as I nearly always did whenever I realized I found a guy handsome, but no, I wasn’t attracted to him, I just found him attractive. That doesn’t really makes sense, but it’s how I feel about it. There’s nothing sexual about it, I never got an erection or anything before the curse, but when I see a good looking guy I feel almost the same as when I see a pretty girl. Almost the same, although not quite. I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about this and what I figure it comes down to is that with girls I feel like I would like to protect them, while with guys I feel like I would like to be protected by them. One reaction’s not really any stronger than the other and so I remain confused.
“Principal Arnold?” I stood at his open door. I made sure to use my male voice, though maybe I shouldn’t have bothered.
“Yes? Oh, good you’re here. Do you know why I had you come in?” He took a sip from his coffee mug. The mug was plain navy blue. I imagined the coffee was probably black.
I scratched the back of my head “Mr. Green wanted me to see you. I said a cuss word in class.”
Principal Arnold gave me a look like that was completely not why he had called me in there, but he let it leave his face. “Ah, okay…You have anything to say for yourself?”
“Well, I had to go the bathroom pretty bad, and I had some sharp pains right when I was talking to Mr. Green. ”
“You were the uh…boy Rebecca found in the girl’s restroom, is that right?”
I blushed a bit, “Yeah. Sorry about that. The men’s restroom was…”
“I got a report that the toilet was overflowing around that time too. Was that you?”
I had forgotten about that, “Well, yeah, but all I did was flush it. Someone had been sick in there.”
“And yesterday you disturbed the pep rally fighting with Miss LaRue.”
“I wasn’t fighting! She pushed me!”
Principal Arnold just gave me a look, and I shut up. “Is there something going on I need to know about?”
I shrugged.
“Why is Mrs. Pritchard putting messages on the PA about snake curses?”
I tried the truth. Mrs. Pritchard, Karen and Coach Crown seemed to believe in curses, maybe it was something that everyone secretly knew about but didn’t talk about, like how dogs seem to like the taste of human poop and will eat it if given the chance.
I'll give you a moment to clear your mind of that unfortunate analogy...
Okay.
“Well, Shaquonda …kind of…cursed me…I think?”
“What did she do to you?” Principal Arnold’s voice was even.
“Um…it’s kind of personal?” I still wasn’t sure if Principal Arnold believed me about the curse. I didn’t want to go on about my penis turning into a snake until I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to regret it.
“Your name is Ashley Patterson?”
“Yes, sir. Bruce Ashley Patterson. Ashley’s my middle name. I usually go by Ash.”
Principal Arnold nodded. “I have your records in front of me. You’re a good student. A’s and B’s mostly, a few Cs, but you’re taking some difficult classes.”
“Uh yeah?”
“You don’t normally like to make waves, do you?”
“I don’t understand what you mean, sir.” I really didn’t. If anything I kind of wanted to make more waves, if I could somehow do that without interacting with anybody.
“I try to make it a point to know as many of my students as possible. It gets harder every year. Because of Katrina our class size nearly doubled. And the new kids have problems. Some of them have lost everything, others are struggling to keep what they have. We’ve got drug abuse up, one kid got sexually assaulted… it’s a mess. But I still try.”
I was confused. What was he getting at?
“Are you hiding from somebody or something?”
“No,” I said trying to convey as much of my confusion as I could with the word.
“Maybe…witness protection?”
“Huh? Why would I be in witness protection?”
“Okay. Let me lay it out for you. You seem to keep to yourself. You’re not in any sports, you’re not at the top of the honor roll, you’re there, but not high up or anything. I never hear from you. And then you have your altercation with Miss LaRue which apparently started when she accused you of flirting with Bobby Singh.”
“I was just joking!”
“Then you imitated a black woman and invited Miss LaRue to see your ‘trouser snake’”
“Well yeah, but…”
“Now today, only a couple of hours ago, my daughter calls Miss Garibaldi, saying that a girl collapsed in the girls restroom, probably due to anemia due to menstruation.”
“She didn’t say that.”
Principal Arnold held up his hands. “You’re right. Ms. Garibaldi said that you probably didn’t have anemia because you would have known about it. Then she over heard you say that maybe it was anemia after all.”
“Okay, that’s possible I guess,” I said, still wondering where this was all going.
“So like I said, I have your records in front of me. Everything looks good. Your birth certificate says you are male, and as you’re talking to me now I can almost believe that you are a young man. And yet three different people swear they heard a girl, not a boy talking. You say you left Mr. Green’s class because of pains, and you didn’t seem to have any compunctions about going to the women’s restroom. You got upset at Shaquonda when she said you were flirting with a boy and only belatedly did you make any reference to being male.” Principal Arnold took a sip from his coffee. “So what it looks like to me is that the jig is up. I don’t know why you’ve gone through so much trouble pretending you were a boy, but it’s only going to get harder. And I have enough to worry about without all the trouble keeping your secret would cause.“
I was dumbfounded. Principal Arnold was so wrong I didn’t know where to begin. Still, I felt I had to try to set him straight.“Uh, I’m a boy, sir. I can just make my voice sound like a girl’s because I like to do skits and stuff.” I switched to a girl’s voice. “See this is my girl voice. I based it off some female singers I listen to.” I switched back again. “It’s not my real voice.” It was strange how when I said all of this it felt like a lie.
Prinicipal Arnold blinked. “That is amazing. It’s like two people talking. You have a gift, Ashley.” Principal Arnold put my papers into a stack. “Look, I’ll leave things as is for now. There must be a good reason why you and your parents have gone through this much trouble, but I’m sorry, you aren’t fooling anybody. The truth is going to come out eventually.”
I sat there with my mouth open until Mr. Arnold said I could go. I shuffled out of his office. Trying to work out all the ramifications. Would reality change to fit Mr. Arnold's explanation? How could I convince him he was wrong? I could just drop my drawers, right? Surely he would see then. See what, though? A snake wedged in an otherwise female looking crotch? Just thinking about it, it seemed like a mix between a bad prank and a disturbing attempt at blackmail.
I just moved on autopilot for a while, stunned by the whole thing
In Spanish class, Senora Paredes corrected me. She asked me in Spanish why I wasn’t paying attention and I responded, “Lo siento, estoy un poco cansado”
“Un poco cansaDA” Senora Paredes corrected. “Unless you want people to think you’re a boy.”
Several people laughed. I looked around the room and tried to figure out whether they were laughing because of what Senora Paredes said, or because she thought I was a girl. I felt the snake move against the small of my back. I had my hoodie on again, just with the arms rolled up my sleeves. No one noticed the snake. But surely that situation couldn’t last for long.
After class I went to the restroom, the girl’s restroom this time, to see my reflection. I hadn’t changed my hairstyle or my clothes, and yet the person in the mirror was a girl, not a boy. My hair, which as a boy was more or less normal, now made me look like some sort of rocker. On the plus side my gut was almost completely gone, I lost that after my run I guessed, and that might have been why I was feeling so hot, because of an increased metabolism. I still felt like running around a bit. I was feeling very jittery.
I went to a stall and pulled out the snake. It wrapped around my leg, which I was fine with. My leg was a bit thinner than I was used to. I examined myself as I had before. I wasn’t a gynecologist, but as far as I could tell I was now the owner of my very own vagina.
I was a girl.
I was a girl with a snake attached to her crotch. “I’ll be tons of fun at parties” I thought to myself. I thought of Blade Runner: that one scene where the announcer with a voice like Peter Lorre says “Watch her take the pleasures from the serpent.” Of course you never see what she does. I imagined what sorts of dance moves I could do with a snake attached to me as it was and I started feeling a little…giddy.
The snake bit me in the leg.
I let out a small scream. It would have probably been a yell if I were still a boy, but it hurt. I didn’t want the skin to tear like Dubois’s nose; so I pinched the snake’s head carefully and pulled up and out of the wound along the curve of the fangs. I wondered would happen if I killed the snake. Could I kill it? Maybe it was a magical zombie snake that could not be killed. And supposing I did kill it, would it all fall off then, or would I be stuck with a piece of snake hanging off me the rest of my life. Or would it revert back into a penis after it died like a werewolf killed in wolf form turning back into a man?
I needed to talk to Shaquonda, but what if she just got angry. What if she cursed me again? One curse was bad enough. The Janitor, Carl Locley. Coach Crown said he could help. Unfortunately Janitors were a bit like cops. Always easy to find except when you need one.
It wasn’t that big a problem as things go. I just had to go around the school and look. But, I don’t know. It was one more thing. It just pushed me over the edge. Like I had my quota for the day. It all kind of hit me like a bat to the gut. I was completely out of my depth. I might never be a boy again, and I had no idea how to be a girl. On top of that even if I did want to be a girl what was I going to do about the snake? What was I going to tell my parents?
My back against the wall of the bathroom I sank down to the floor and cried. Even as I was doing it I tried to tell myself that now was not the time; I had a mission; I just had to do a few more things. But none of that helped. The tears just kept coming. I wasn’t able to move other than to wipe the moisture from my face. I couldn’t even get up to get a piece of toilet paper to take care of the snot that started to make its way out my nose. It was cry time, and everything else was on lock down.
And then, like a receding storm, the crying jag passed. I got up, blew my nose, and splashed some water on my face. I took a breath and it came out in a shudder, like an aftershock, but still underneath that, I felt better. “You can do this,” I told my reflection. My voice was girl’s voice, and it was still shaky from me crying. I swallowed and I repeated in a stronger, more assured version of the same voice “You can do this.” The spiky-haired girl in the mirror had eyes that were steely with determination.
I believed her. Even though I wasn't entirely sure what "this" was.