The idea behind these were that they would be pieces of my life. Slightly fictionalized. Some written in first person, some written in third person. Then I ran into a problem... how can I make a Title Page to gather them into a loosely-related collection, when I can only assign one rating? Some are very much adult-only. Some are quite good for stories to share with transkids -- or even kids in general. This was a problem. Then I noticed something else.
Warning to all who peek at this page:
Titles with more than one word, are not General Audiences due to content or emotionally
-- a title that DOES have only one word, is safe for everyone to read.
Grandma was a bigot. She hated me.
So.
Much.
I knew I was a girl from being little. The first time I was caught in a dress, I was staying over at my cousin's house because we were best friends as well as cousins. She knew I was a girl. We were both tomboys, but when we were in her room on nights I was over there, we'd play dress-up. I was in her "best" (read: frilly, lacy, uber-femme) dress with bows in my hair and wearing her mary janes... and her brother (he's the one from the How To End A Nightmare story) walked in. We didn't think anything was wrong and couldn't figure out why he was so quick to say he wouldn't tell -- but I'd owe him. I was 4. When I was 8 was the next time I was caught being me, and after Mom yelled at me for being "sick" for 10 minutes, she just went for a walk. Grandma beat the crap out of me after Mom was out of the house and sent me to bed. That was when I realized I needed to hide who I was, but I wasn't very good at it and even resented it. A year or so later is when the events of { Treehouse } occurred.
My relatives were always on my case about, "Reading too much," and, "Spending all that time writing in a notebook," as if it were a despicable and horrible thing that I liked to read and write. Another oft-repeated one was that I needed to, "Go outside and do something that's actually fun for a change," and they'd take whatever I was reading or writing away from me (sitting quietly in the corner and not being disruptive) and make me go outside... where cousins and neighborhood kids would at the very least make fun of me and usually ended up with me being, "clumsy," again.
Did I mention that my mother's side of the family is huge? This was not the type of family where you rarely see people outside of parents and siblings. Let's see... My grandmother's generation (granduncles and grandaunts) plus their children (my mother's cousins), and the children of them (my 3rd cousins), plus my mother's siblings and their children (my aunts, uncles, cousins), plus the NEXT generation spawned (my 2nd and even more 3rd cousins)... and we were all within a circle about 150 miles in radius. So the big Thanksgiving get together at times could have hundreds of people there. Every family in the Ozarks is big, it seems. An only child is an anomaly.
Things got worse as I got older, I remember being caught wearing one of the bras that my cousin had given me when I was 11 by my Aunt's second husband (who, by the way, was 3 months older than her eldest child -- yes, these are the people who point fingers at me and say that I'm the deviant), who immediately told my mother. Why was he peeking in the bathroom at me when he thought I was trying to bathe, anyway? My mother forcefully ripped it off of me, threw me out the front door into the snow and screamed at the top of her lungs that she wasn't going to raise, "... a fucking faggot!"
It hurts to be rejected by your own mother, and especially for reasons that don't fit. I was no longer allowed to lock the bathroom door when I was using it, not even if I was just using the toilet.
I was never caught again.
Grandma made me bind my breasts when they started to develop. I wasn't allowed to even contemplate that I was a girl. I had a few friends that knew and helped me be me from time to time. Eventually there was a group of about 7 of us, and they would sneak me to the Mall (an hour away) so I could be me. I'd be dressed like any of the other girls and they decided that my name was Hannah. No one thought it would be a good idea to tell any parents that Hannah was anything different than the others.
My mother remarried when I was 14, and that man is my Dad. It was during their Newlywed year that { Football } happened. He and she were both alcoholics but quit cold turkey when Mom got pregnant with my brother. He calmed her down. He didn't like that I was a bit of a sissy either, but dealt with it and made her realize she needed to be more okay with who I am... and though he didn't understand my being a reader and writer, he knew I was smarter than anyone he'd ever met and respected that. He had issues with me, but was more of a Dad to me than my actual father ever was.
After the incident from { How To End A Nightmare } I tried to come out to Mom and Dad. They ... were okay... but just denied it. Nevermind I had breasts and hips, and was always thought of as a girl by most people. And I still wasn't allowed to be me. They made me get a buzz haircut. Still had to bind my (then B-Cup) breasts for school even though Grandma no longer lived with us.
My few friends that were, "In the know," consistently made offers of letting me move in with them, their parents wouldn't mind, and such... but I couldn't do that. I had (have?) a zero self-image. I wasn't worth helping. I was alternately the favourite target of everyone in school (I was even bullied by kids younger than me), and asked (forced) to help with schoolwork. I made my friends promise to not acknowledge me at school, to treat me the same as everyone else so that they wouldn't be dragged down by association. None of them liked it and all refused to do it at first, but they complied when they realized that even smiling at me or saying something nice to me at school brought shunning and retribution from the populace. Have I mentioned this was the very deep rural Ozarks of Southwest Missouri? An aunt had some accidental puppies -- half Chow, half White German Shepherd. I begged Dad and got to have the runt (the one she couldn't sell). I named him { Random } -- I miss him still.
My senior year, they pulled off getting me away from town and letting me be me for Spring Break. Mom and Dad agreed to let me go with my friends and I met them at the school. Of course they weren't to know that it was all really girls... I didn't LIE to them... nicknames can be misleading. We were away to a cabin at Lake of the Ozarks -- 5 hours away -- owned by the parents of one of the girls and I was allowed to be me, Hannah, the whole week. Friday night I changed in the van while they kept lookout, through stopping an hour outside of our hometown for me to switch back on Sunday night 9 days later. We went to the outlet mall, tried on formal dresses for Prom (our Prom was late in the year), and were pretty much... girly girls for the week. I found out later, they all did it for me. None of them had been denied any of these things growing up, but knew I had been and that it was important to me to be allowed to be me. I found out later that the entire group had canceled plans arranged by one set of parents who had offered to let the seven of them use a beachhouse in Florida for the week. They gave that up because of what they wanted for me, "... every girl deserves to have at least one happy memory of high school other than being the smartest kid in the class."
It was an amazing week. I felt accepted. I felt loved. I found out that I was a size 6 but with a corset could squeeze into a size 4. It took them hours to convince me I wouldn't wake up in the shed back home and it wasn't all a dream. We got home Sunday night, and my mother marched me out to the backyard after I got home. She wanted to know where I was, REALLY. She'd looked through my yearbook and realized what had happened due to who signed it and the nicknames attached... and why was I gone with seven GIRLS for a week? I wasn't a gigolo, was I? None of them were pregnant, were they? Then she noticed that my fingernails had bits of polish on them (I didn't do a good enough job removing it). So I again told her my truth and she was actually... kind of accepting. She made the assumption that I was "just" a crossdresser like she'd recently seen on Oprah.
I went in and went to bed.
I woke up at 4am, and made my way to the creek with my trusty straight razor that I used for cutting. I meant to do more than just cutting that night. One of my friends was sitting on the huge old tree we all used. It stuck out from the bank at a right angle and hung over the creek, so was a nice sort of bench where our feet dangled about 8 feet above the water. She had been crying about issues at her home, and I talked to her and comforted her. I didn't realize I hadn't done anything with the straight razor until I got home and in bed. I count that as my second attempt at suicide. A few months later, in July, news came that Grandma was on her deathbed in Oklahoma. She had moved there (only about 150 miles away) when she moved out from with us, so she could have her nieces and nephews there take care of her. The first part of that night... I wrote about in { Memory Excerpts - Diary Incognita, Existing Vilified And Loathed } and I have yet to write about the second part... hopefully, I'll do that soon.
There is much more to my story, but this is all I have for now... after all, this was about me growing up, and I've come to the point in the story where I am nineteen and about to leave home in a couple of months.
The first of (hopefully) many. This will be infrequently updated -- randomly, even. There will not be numbered parts as I don't intend to go in any sort of order. So, when there are enough to add to a "Book Outline" I'll put them in there in vaguely an order that makes sense to me and explain it then.
There was a blog on TopShelf today that pointed at a heartfelt article/eulogy. It made me think again of something that is often at least on the periphery of my mind.
My grandmother's last words to me.
I actually think about this a lot more often than I let on to family, friends, roommates -- even casual acquaintances.
It's not for the reasons you may think, either. Well, let's just get this out in the open, then...
July, 1994
My grandmother was not a well woman. She was 69 years of age. She suffered from a multitude of chronic conditions, including [but not limited to:] Diabetes, Heart Disease, Presenile Dementia, Arthritis, ... Various and Sundry OTHER "old person" disabilities. She grew up in the Dustbowl. Rural Oklahoma of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s. This is part of what shaped her mind and attitudes. When she married a young and handsome Navy Ensign in the late 1930s (at age 15), Reform was coming. Why, simply everyone knew she was going to do well. They quickly began to build their family. He was badly wounded in the Pacific Theater of World War II, leading to complications that ultimately led to his death in the early 1950s. She had one child by another man in that time. My mother in 1953. So, out of 18 children upon his death, 17 were his in every way -- but my mother didn't find out until reading my grandmother's diary after her death in 1994 that her "stepfather" was really her father, instead of just her youngest two siblings' father. My favorite uncle was born only two years after my mother, a year after my grandmother remarried. My favorite aunt, however, was born late in my grandmother's childbearing years after a long hiatus, in 1966 -- a mere 9 years before my entry into the family. Some said it was a miracle a woman in her 40s could even have a child in that day and age.
The scene I am about to lay out for you needs this information to be accurate. She had been under the influence of all of these for the majority of my life to that point. Certainly all the amount of my life I remembered to that point. She did NOT like my natural father (in retrospect, I really can't blame her), but not because she saw him for the ass that he was. No... she didn't like him due to his ethnicity. Grandpa Eugene's wound in WWII had developed in her a surprisingly nasty bigotry toward anyone Asian in descent -- especially the Japanese.
I am a quarter Japanese.
Back to the present. Well. The present of the story. July, 1994.
She had been going, "downhill fast," according to the doctors. There weren't a WHOLE lot of us there late that night. Most of her visitors having gone home once visiting hours had ended. There were about 10 or so of her children, including my mother, and various spouses, a few nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews and grandchildren (including me -- the one everyone knew was the grandchild she despised most, and NOT including my younger sister, her obvious FAVORITE grandchild). I was eighteen years old, less than a month from nineteen. I'd say there were maybe 25 people in that waiting room, and all of them were there for my grandmother. Some were crying. Most just looked tired.
Now, mind you, my mother didn't know about most of the bad stuff that happened to me throughout my childhood due to me not telling and all the relatives in the know covering for my grandmother (among others).
It was about an hour after visiting hours were over when the nurse started us going in to talk with her one to one for, "one last time," each.
I wasn't first. I actually didn't expect to be asked for at all, truthfully.
My mother was the last of her children to go in to see her. When the nurse called for me, I was genuinely surprised. I can't say that I was going all tear-y at the prospect of her death, but neither was I hoping for her death. I mean, she was my grandmother.
I stood and dusted myself off from the floor (there weren't enough chairs and everyone in the family had become so accustomed to my role as THE second-class citizen, that I just accepted that I was the one on the floor).
I nodded to the nurse and pointed at the restroom, and she nodded in return.
I went into the Men's Room (ugh), and checked my binding -- no need to antagonize her, this may be my only chance to see her again...
I made sure my chest was flat and then went and peed in a stall. I washed my hands and dried them. I turned and looked in the mirror.
Yep. I wasn't looking too good myself. We'd been at the hospital for about 30 hours at that point and I think I had maybe one meal in that time. And that was McDonald's.
I nodded to the haggard girl in the mirror that was trying so hard to live up to her family's expectations that she be a man and "do right" by the family. So much that she was even majoring in a subject in college that was disinteresting because they all expected it. She was the first on either side of the family to go to college, but her father's side hadn't mattered for nearly a decade, due to her father. She shook her head. Don't think about that now. The woman in the other room was the Matriarch of the family on this side of the Pond. She deserves at least the respect of that, right? If the family wants me to be an Engineer, that is what I'll be. I'm doing horrible enough things by becoming a woman instead of the man they want me to be.
I pushed away from the mirror and stared for a moment more into the mirror.
A soft knock came on the door and I stepped toward it, opened it and out into the hall. With another nod to the nurse, I followed her back into the Intensive Care room that housed the shuddering bulk of my maternal grandmother.
She stopped awkwardly at the door and gestured me to enter. I murmured a thank you of some kind and then pushed through the swinging door.
She lay there calm and peaceful, the lines of her face drawn smooth from lying on her back except the ones etched across her brow from the obvious pain. The smell was that mixture of sweat, old person, medicine and sterility of which hospitals always reek. The fluorescent bulbs in the fixture overhead flickering briefly and the hissing and gentle knocking of the machines that were connected to the most frightening person in my life mingled with the soft and rasping breaths she was taking. Punctuated by the quiet beeping that always sounds way louder than it actually is.
I stood there a moment, then circled around and sat in the chair by the bed and took her hand.
I had sat like that for maybe five minutes when she regained consciousness.
"Hrrmm?"
"It's okay, Grandma, I'm here. Do you need a drink?"
"Urrmt."
I lifted the small cup of iced water with a bendy-straw to her lips and she sucked maybe three drops from it. The effort very nearly made her lose consciousness again. I sat the drink back on the table-on-wheels that every hospital room has handy.
I reached around her gingerly and lay my head against her chest.
"Y'know, Grandma, despite being afraid of you all this time, I'm more afraid FOR you now."
There was no answer, save her labored breathing.
"I, uh, I know you've always been kind of hard on me, but I always figured it was because you wanted me to get out and succeed."
Her eyes were focused and sharp, she was perfectly in her right mind as she listened to my unrehearsed soliloquy.
A few errant tears squeezed from my eyes as I breathed deeply and steeled myself to continue.
"I know, Grandma."
Her face didn't change, but I could tell there was a question there now.
"I know you loved me, just like you loved any of your grandchildren."
There was an urgency on her face as she feebly gestured me close.
I leaned in, but she gestured again, and I leaned a bit further, not wanting to crush her.
She mustered her strength and reached up to grasp my shoulder and pull me right down to her. My ear to her mouth.
Then... she spoke.
I will never, as long as I live forget not only those last few words she directed solely at me, but the impact they have had on me every moment of every day since then.
What she said rocked me in my socks.
Struck me to the very core of my being.
Believe it or not, for the first time in my life, I found myself speechless.
I don't think they were her very last words, as I think there were still a couple of people to go in and speak with her that night before the ominous early-morning announcement by the doctor in the waiting room to the assembled crowd that she was gone.
Of course, that part of the story is for another time.
This is about those eight words that were meant totally and completely just for me.
Amazing how much eight little words changed my outlook so entirely.
Well, one of the words was a contraction... should that be counted as one and a half?
Another was slang, so maybe only half a word in its own right, so the total still falls to eight.
Some of the greatest things in history have been said in very few words.
But these words, well, I don't think they would qualify as among the greatest in history...
"You'll never be my grandchild, you filthy Jap."
Without fail, as long as the weather held out, the boys would go out to the field and play flag football for P.E. I, of course, had to go with them despite my internal protests. Oh, I did well enough and if my team won, I'd whoop and holler like the rest as we went back inside to grab our books and head home. If my team lost, I'd grumble and shuffle back to the lockers to grab books and head home.
I never showered there. I couldn't bear it. That's why I took P.E. seventh period.
I realized early on that I had no clue what was going on. What was a 'down' and why did I want one first? I would run back and forth up and down the field, sort of blending into the tromping group of 20 to 30 boys. There were far too many to have organized teams and the coach was always the quarterback. Why is it called that anyway? I learned the first day not to call him the 'thrower' and to try to remember that.
Then one day it happened. Despite my attempts at becoming invisible, the ball was coming straight for me and I knew that I had to catch it. I mean, I could have 'fumbled' (see? I learned that one!) the ball, but that just went against my grain. I am a juggler... I do not let flying objects hit the ground.
So, it hit me in the chest as my arms tightened around it.
"Run!" shouted my teammates.
"Run!" shouted the coach.
"Run!" shouted my own voice in my head.
"Run!" shouted everyone.
And I stood there.
I panicked.
My shame was now known, or so I thought.
Oh no! They'll know I'm a girl now! They'll... They'll... wait... why is that bad?
So one of the other team ripped the flags from my hips.
"Why didn't you run?" he asked.
"Why didn't you run?" asked my teammates.
"Why didn't you run?" asked the coach.
"Why didn't you run?" asked everyone.
I took a breath and admitted... "I... I didn't know which way to go..."
That's when the taunting started.
Oh, yeah... this is why that's bad.
They didn't know I was a girl at all.
No, in fact, they thought of me as less than a girl... I was a boy that didn't know how to play football.
When I made it back to the locker room, my books were in the shower, and it was running.
I sighed and fished them out. I could dry them at home.
I grabbed my bag and headed toward home.
The three I normally walked home with had a girl scout meeting -- where I wasn't allowed to go -- so I was walking home by myself that day.
I think I was about two blocks from school when the first rock hit me.
I didn't cry.
I wouldn't let them have the satisfaction.
Fists. Shoes. Knees. Elbows. Bookbags, backpacks, duffels, even a brick.
When they got bored, I lie there aching, bleeding... just... sorting my thoughts.
I stood up and dusted myself off and stumbled the block more to the library. I went in the back door and straight to the bathroom so the librarians wouldn't ask what happened. I think it took over half an hour to clean up the blood and dirt. I rearranged my ripped clothes and even ripped them a bit more in strategic places so that my excuse would work.
I exited the bathroom and as I walked past the desk, one of the ladies called out and said I had a book in that I'd requested. I stopped and while I was signing my name, she took in my appearance.
"What happened to you?"
"Fell down the hill behind the bleachers."
"Again? You are the clumsiest boy in town... you should be more careful! Look where you're going."
"I know," I mumbled, and putting my book in my nearly ruined backpack, I tossed a, "thanks," at her and was out the front door with the little shop-bell ringing on my way.
I was almost home when I heard the talking.
"Here he comes. Pansy little shit doesn't know what football is, my brother says."
"Let's show him what it is, eh guys?"
"I dunno, he's just a middle schooler..."
"What's he gonna do, tattle on us? C'mon, it's his word against three of us. Dogpile!"
I heard the snap of my frames and just went numb. I lay there until they all got up and were tired of jeering at me, and wandered off. Then I just waited more.
I picked up the two halves of my glasses, and pocketed the earpiece that had snapped off.
By the time I made it home, my friends had long since gotten home from Girl Scouts and I saw a note that one had called when I sat at the table to do my homework, and could see my younger sister in the living room watching TV.
As soon as I came in the back door, she knew. She knew as soon as she saw me, everything that had happened. I held a finger to my lips to shush her, but then SHE came in.
"About time! You know your mother doesn't buy food and cook it just to throw out when you're not here for dinner."
"Yes, Grandma."
"And you broke your glasses again! Do you think this family is made of money?"
"No, Grandma."
My sister was diligently paying attention only to the television. I dropped my bag next to her and the still soggy books tumbled out through the ripped side of the backpack.
"You just can't take care of anything, can you, moron?"
"No, Grandma."
"Don't you sass me, you little... what did you do to your clothes? Your books, your clothes, your backpack, and the wasted food! Grab 'em!"
"But Grandma..."
"No backtalk!"
I grimaced and bent over and grabbed my ankles. Three swats for the books. Three swats for the clothes. Three swats for dinner. Three swats for the backpack. Three swats for backtalk. Three swats for sass. Three swats for being late and making her worry. SIX swats for the glasses.
I stood up. She glared at me as I looked back just as numbly as the rest of my life had become.
"Why can't you be more like your sister?"
I don't know. Oh, I wanted to, so much!
The floodgates burst. Slowly at first, just a trickle of tears.
"Oh, GAWD! I didn't mean it literally you sissy! Get out of my face!"
With a kick, she sent me into the living room, where my younger sister was smirking at me. Tears flowing freely now, I looked back into the living room at the relief it wasn't her on my sister's face. I sniffled and sobbed and wandered into the room I shared with my sister, at least until she wanted to change.
Her bed was on one side of the room and the pallet of blankets that served as my bed was on the floor on the other side.
I lay down and screamed into my pillow as I let it all out, finally, and slept until I had to leave the room so my sister could play her radio. I went to shower then, and after, I went outside and fell asleep against my favorite tree. I fetched up inside sometime around midnight.
Seriously, folks. Pay fucking attention to the warning tags. This is not a happy shiny story. This is the shit that really happened that led to me having something bottled up inside that I had to write... the stuff that almost drove away Sk8r Grrls fans when I wrote something similar -- a bit of what happened to me -- for Annie in Episode 15. If you just clicked here thinking it couldn't possibly be that bad, here's some disappointing news. It fucking IS that bad. If you ignored the warnings because you didn't see them, this is your warning. If you want to read on, it's at your own damn risk. Complaints about how bad this is will result in my being very... not happy... with you. Last chance to go the fuck away and read something else.
I have always given the benefit of the doubt to my family, family friends, even neighbors and more recently, classmates, roommates, and folks I work with.
"Well," I says to myself, "they just don't know any better. They were raised that way, it's not their fault. They don't mean to be hurtful. It's not like they're trying to attack me or anything."
Bullshit. What the fuck have I been thinking?
My entire life has been a series of my putting up with them, making excuses as to why I 'deserve' to be reviled and hated by people I love. When I was 10 years old -- IN FOURTH GRADE! -- I was molested the first time by a cousin years older than me. That's right, a grown man came to me and told me to be still. I tried to tell him to stop, to make him go away. He told me that grandma told him that I needed to be punished and sissy boys were punished by showing them what it was like to be a girl.
That was believable. Yes, grandma was that evil. But... I found out years later that this was not so. Well, I figured it out before I found out for certain. Joseph did this, raising him to using grandma's evil by proxy. He was an evil unto himself.
For two years, a little less than monthly that worked. When I had a more important secret to keep, I finally realized that whether grandma told him to or not, it was wrong. I tried to put a stop to it. What secret? That's for me to know. I couldn't let him know. I couldn't let anyone know. Anyway. He came to me, again. Like he had so many times before. I told him that it was wrong, and I wasn't going to let him do it anymore.
"Oh, okay. No more visits like this. I promise."
"That's it? Really? All I had to do is tell you to stop?"
"Yes, really. No more. I'll go and have these visits with [sister's name] instead. You don't have to worry anymo --"
"No."
"Excuse me?"
"No, you will NOT touch my sister."
"How do you propose to stop me, girly boy?"
"I know what you're doing."
"Is it working?"
And it continued that way, with the threat of his changing targets to my little sister that kept me under his sway. Three more years. I was scared to DEATH of going away for the summer to a camp that I had worked hard and earned my way into. Only the top academic students in the state got to go. The top 330 kids currently between 10th and 11th grades in the whole state of Missouri. But how could I go and leave her to that monster?
I knew by then I was nothing more than his private whore. I have no illusions about what I was. I gave him sex, even if I didn't willingly participate, and even if I really just lie there and gave him a warm body to use in his way. I fulfilled his sexual appetite, and in return he paid me with leaving my sister alone. With peace of mind that she wouldn't be touched.
Then he went away, in March, two days before the deadline for accepting the camp invite. He wouldn't be back until late September. I accepted the camp invite and finally told my mother and stepfather about the opportunity and that I was going. I told my sister. I told my few friends. I told my teachers. They were all ecstatic, with the exception of my sister. She never really liked me.
The camp would have been wonderful and life-altering, even without the added benefit of avoiding Joseph.
Ah, but homecoming.
Someone I trusted had decided to tell "the family" about my "perverted proclivities" in my absence. While I had been at Missouri Scholars' Academy, she had informed my entire extended family that I was a filthy pervert, "... that likes to dress up in women's clothes." I had now been abandoned to the hell that was family life. I had protected my sister from Joseph, and put up with the abuses that she had visited on me for her entire life... and she had went one step further joining in with the berating and ... just... Mom was trying to pretend that it didn't exist. I think that's when I began to truly hate my sister. I avoided her until I was out of high school and out off to college. Didn't really speak to her again until I was nearly twenty-six, when I finally had to come home for my mother's sake. She came to retrieve me from another state, as I didn't drive at the time... all seemed well, and I had hoped that she had grown up. There's a lot more story there, but that's for another time.
Anyway, when I got home from MSA and was confronted with the fact that my entire extended family thought I was not only a pervert, but one that was going to HAY-ELL! -- I slipped into another depression, but almost no one noticed. I was always "moody" as far as anyone was concerned, and they wanted nothing to do with me. My few friends... I tried to commit suicide in earnest for the first time in late August that year, just before school started, and was 'rescued' by a girlfriend who knew about me and didn't care, and in fact considered me one of her best friends. She would cry about it when I asked about it. I don't remember it. I haven't heard from her in over a decade. Life went on, such as it was, for the Autumn and Winter.
In the Spring, Joseph came back. He came to me one night in early April.
"Go away."
"We've had this discussion."
"Beat it, bright boy."
"Ooh, such spirit."
"Just go away, asshole."
"Maybe I should visit your sister, little man."
"If you so much as looked cross-eyed at [little sister's name], Grandma would kill you where you stood, and we both know it. As much as she hates me, she loves that little brat."
"This changes nothing, and you need to understand that I'm still in charge."
Something in me changed. I snapped.
I spun around and saw him for the first time. He already had his pants off, fer crying out loud! It just made me angrier.
"You want me, Joe?"
"Sh. Not so loud, you'll wake someone."
"I thought they didn't care, big boy?"
I advanced on him, and he took a step back. I reached out and grabbed him by his testicles. I let all of my adrenaline-fueled strength go into the squeeze I began then. He whimpered, and bit his tongue.
"What's the matter, loverboy? Don't like it when the tables are turned?"
I twisted savagely. He bit back a yelp.
"Stop. Please stop, you're hurting me."
I laughed. I would swear it wasn't me. It was like I had become someone else, someone fueled by the need to hurt this sexual predator in the way that he had hurt me so many times before. This would be the fifty-second time.
"That sounds vaguely familiar to something I said to you a long time ago, doesn't it?"
"For God's sake, stop it!"
I cackled. He was actually trying to invoke his deity's name. What a sanctimonious...
He was trying to pry my fingers off of himself by now, and trickles of blood were squeezing through my clenched fingers.
"What's the matter, don't like it rough anymore?"
I pulled viciously and dug my fingernails (what little there was of them) into him. Then I pushed. I had him like puppet strings.
"I'll bet you didn't expect me to actually fight back, did you?"
*whimper*
"Did you?"
*whimper*
"Answer me, dammit!"
"No. No, I didn't. Let me go!"
I reached with my other hand and threw his pants out the window. And I released him. He turned to leave.
"Freeze, fuckhead."
He froze.
"Sit your ass on the bed. You came here for some relief and a show. You're going to get it. You so much as move an ass cheek, and I scream 'Rape!' as loud as I can and we see what [stepfather's name] does to you. Clear?"
*whimper*
"I said... CLEAR?"
He nodded.
"Answer me, you fucking rapist."
"Clear."
I still have no idea what was fueling me. Why I was doing this. I opened the closet, I pulled out a dress -- one of my secret dresses from the back of the closet that my few friends that knew about me had helped me get. It was my dress, but no one in the house had known that, thinking that one of my friends wanted it left there as an emergency change of clothes (what can I say, people will accept really lame excuses to avoid facing the truth, sometimes). I pulled on the clothes I never had the courage to wear except on Hallowe'en. Even if I'd been a 'normal' girl, I wouldn't have had the guts. Fishnet stockings, high-heeled boots. I even put on makeup while he sat there whimpering and whining about his crushed nutsac. I took my time. I was gonna show him the real me. The me that he had never touched, never had his way with. I did my hair, my nails... I even had on the 'corset' that my friends had bought me for my 14th birthday (it was a waist nipper that you could buy in Wal*Mart). I made sure that Hannah was there in the mirror, and you could see the hurt and anger in her eyes that had built up over years and over the past months since returning home from MSA especially. Then I turned back to him.
"This is what you wanted, right?"
"No..."
"Don't fucking LIE to me you --"
"Okay. Yes. You were always a gay little pansy! You were always so girly and you had a hot ass, and you begged to be fucked. I figured it wouldn't make me gay if I used you like you were a bitch."
He realized what he just said and I turned red. All over. Not from shame... the angriest I had ever been at that time. I stepped over to him again, and he turned white. Apparently, I was scary. I silently bemoaned the fact that I didn't have something truly nasty to forcefeed to him. I loomed over him. He forgot to protect his 'assets' though.
I grabbed him again, and a sharp cry escaped from him. I slapped him, hard, with my free hand. I squeezed and twisted until he was prying at my fingers and blubbering like a baby.
"Am I woman enough for you yet?"
"Uhh... it hurts..."
"I could give two shits. Answer the fucking question, cocksucker."
"You... you look good. Pretty. What the hell do you want me to say, you gay little homo?!"
I twisted as hard as I could and his eyes rolled up in his head. I would almost swear I heard a tearing sound. He squeaked.
"Tell me the goddamn truth."
"Okay!"
I eased up a bit.
"You look like a real girl, except the dick between your-- AUUUGHHHH! Sorry! Sorry! With a skirt on, no one would know. Do you really want to be a girl?"
"I am a girl you fuckwit."
"Okay. You're a girl. Like that tennis player. Whatever. I don't care. I'll leave you alone. Honest. Just... let... go!"
"Get out."
"What?"
"You. Out. Now. You're going to get the fuck out of this house. You're never coming back. You're walking out the damn door as soon as I let you go and you're walking away. And you're never touching anyone again. Girl, boy, woman... man. You're living as a celibate hermit or so help me, I'm coming after your sorry ass."
He stared at me.
"Got me?"
That startled him out of his stare. He nodded. I squeezed.
"Augh! Okay! Gotcha!"
I pulled, lifted him to his feet. Well, I wasn't actually lifting him, he stood to follow the part of himself I held. I backed him across the room, out the door, across the living room, and out the front door. I shut and locked it, then went back to the bedroom and reached out the window. I grabbed him by the hair of the head as he was squatting down to pick up his pants.
"I mean it, assmaster. You touch ANYONE... and I'll know."
"Got it."
"Now. GO THE FUCK AWAY!"
He's great at playing frisbee,
He's wonderful at tag.
He loves just being cuddly,
And quiet's not his bag.
He's always game for hide and seek,
Or romping, splashing in the creek.
Spending hours ev'ry day,
To laugh and play and romp.
Always getting her own way,
And greets him wih a 'Glomp!'
The thing at which he is the best,
Is keeping secrets never guessed.
Tells him of her wanted dress,
But he won't tell a one.
All her hopes to him confess,
He listens 'til she's done.
She dreams of how it would be cool,
To wear a skirt -- not pants -- to school.
This is the story of a little girl. She knew she was a girl, but no one seemed to believe her. Well. Her best friend believed her...
Being a girl didn't mean you had to be interested in tea parties and dollies and makeup and dresses. Being a girl was just... being a girl. The best part about being a girl? NOT being a boy. Of course.
So she didn't insist that she was a girl to her family, because they all insisted that she was a boy. She would just smile and nod and go on about her business, ignoring their lack of ability to perceive reality. What can you do but humour those that are unable to think? Poor dears.
When she was only 6 years old, she and her best friend told one of her cousins, just over 2 years older than her. The cousin was able to see the little girl, because she was intelligent and wise and nice enough to listen. So then there were three of them that knew, and they would sometimes play the girly games, even though all three were actually kind of tomboyish.
One night, when all three were sleeping over at the cousin's house, they all played dress-up in the party dresses and church going frocks that the cousin had in the back of her closet and tried not to think about most of the time. The little girl was given a lacy, white dress with a pretty blue sash and matching hair ribbons. It was the most feminine of the dresses, but she happily tried it on anyway. Then, thinking about how silly her family was in their thinking of her she exclaimed, "Look! It has a blue sash! Blue is for boys!"
All three of the girls burst into fits of giggles.
They enjoyed times like this now and then, but the three of them were close friends and swore never to abandon each other. A couple of years later, the cousin and her family had to move away, but they knew she wouldn't be gone forever... so the little girl and her best friend played as before, just with one fewer.
One day, one of the little boys in the neighbourhood talked his granddad into building him the most wonderful of treehouses. It was in 4 different trees, and they were connected by slat and rope bridges. It had gables and paneling and it even had a railing and a porch! It was the greatest treehouse anyone had ever seen! Even the county newspaper showed up to take pictures and sing praises of the wonderfulness of the treehouse.
The little boy and his best friends proudly climbed up the rope ladder and pulled it up after them. Then they stood on the porch and looked at all the children in the neighbourhood, as a king and his advisers surveying the peasants of the land.
They held a long roll of white cotton between them and with a SNAP! they unfurled the banner they had painstakingly drawn the night before.
As it fell open to reveal the cryptic message, the king affixed the little girl (that everyone still insisted was a boy) with a haughty glare and pointed directly at her.
"And this goes for YOU, too!" he proclaimed, as the words became clear, only slightly marred by the rolling:
Every eye in the courtyard was upon her as she failed to react the way they all felt she should. After all, no boy would take such an insult lightly!
She doubled over with laughter.
She laughed so hard her best friend had to pound her on the back until she could breathe again.
The two walked off arm in arm with several of the other girls in the kingdom -- for this neighborhood had truly become such -- and went to see a man about some lumber. The little girl's Gran'fa was a twinkle-eyed Irishman, and he owned the local lumbermill. With but a single pout and a bit of explanation -- including admitting to Gran'fa that she was, indeed, a girl -- they were gifted with all the top quality lumber they wanted, he also gifted his granddaughter all the assistance of all the workers of the mill.
That afternoon, the little girl and her best friend revisited the castle with the flying buttresses and the bridges and the gables... with a tape measure. They were able to get what they came for before the king and his men even understood they were being raided, and then the girls were away. Spirited by their own swift feet and gales of laughter.
By sunset the next day, the castle of the king was overshadowed -- nay... downright put to SHAME -- by the castle of the Two Queens.
The little girl and her best friend unveiled a fortress to end all fortresses, built mostly by the hands of the laborers that toiled in the mill for the little girl's Gran'fa. It stood proudly amongst the leaves, almost organic in the way it twisted about, a spiraling staircase around the trunk of the main tree in such a way that it did the tree no harm.
The Castle of the Two Queens stands today, still... a quarter century later, a full eight inches higher than the King's Castle (which also still stands). It winds about eleven trees and has escape poles, safety chutes, and is all but impenetrable. It has been many colors over the years as it has passed through hands to new Queens, but the one feature that has never changed -- though it has been meticulously replaced with exact copies -- is the flag flying above the main tree, proudly stating: