untitled
Inspired by Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. le Guin
Warning: At times, extremely offensive.
He woke up to the sound of silence, the rat-tat-tat of guns still echoing in his brain, and it was that moment of confusion-the disconnect between what is and what ought to be-that brought him out of his nap.
His first thought was, damn, what did Robby put in the liquor this time? Followed by, the last time I felt this bad after a drink, he’d cut the vodka with rubbing alcohol. Right after that, he called himself an asshole for desecrating the name of the dead, had a moment of disorientation, and remembered that, oh yeah, Robby had died, right next to him, head blown to bits by enemy fire that wasn’t even targeted-random pieces of shrapnel flying everywhere, and Robby was just unlucky. Which explained the heaviness of his limbs-he must’ve been sent to the medics, must’ve caught some firepower next to Robby. Lucky for him, he survived.
Lucky for him.
Blindly, his hand reached out for the call button, and he must’ve pressed something, because just a moment later (after the monitors started beeping like mad), a hassled black man appeared at his bedside.
I didn’t know they let coloreds in hospitals now. Must be a nurse. Anything for the war effort, right?
“Excuse me? Can I get a doctor?”
“I am the doctor,” said the black man. “I am Dr. Lowell. Pleased to finally make your acquaintance, Mr. Meade.”
“Well. Nice to meet you too. How long have I been out?”
“About thirty-one years. Now I’d like to run some…”
*****************
“Mr. Meade?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, Mr. Meade. You blacked out earlier. As I was saying, I’d like to run some diagnostic tests, just to make sure you’ve regained all your facilities. Your immediate family has been notified about your awakening, and will be here shortly. Now, if I could just get your name?”
“Jonathan Sebastian Meade. Thirty-one years?” A black doctor?
“Yes Mr. Meade. And how old were you before you entered your coma?”
“Thirty-three. Who’s the president?” God I don’t think I’d be surprised if there was a black president as well.
“Our current president is President Gerald Ford, Mr. Meade. If you can just do some quick arithmetic for me, I just want to make sure you haven’t lost any of your right brain function. How old are you now?”
“Sixty-four. Goddamn I’m sixty-four? No wonder I feel so weak.” And who the fuck is Ford? I hope he’s not black. And fancy this, a black man asking me to do math, like he’s all educated. I guess he has been educated.
“You’ve aged wonderfully, Mr. Meade. And what year is it now?”
“Nineteen seventy-six. Damn. Sixty-four?”
“Yes, Mr. Meade. Can you tell me what your last memory before the coma is of?”
“Robby Wilkinson getting his head blown off next to me. Sixty-four? Goddamn!” Goddamn!
“That is correct,” the black doctor said, a note of exasperation finally creeping into his voice. “Well it seems like you are not suffering from memory loss or impaired thinking. We’ll have to do some physical exams a bit later, but for now, do you have any questions? Your family should be here shortly,” the doctor said, snapping his clipboard smartly.
“Yeah, the war ended, right?” Shit, don’t tell me the Japs are all over the place too?
“That is correct, Mr. Meade. The Second World War ended on August 15th, 1945. You were injured only a few months before the end of the war.”
*****************
“Now just remember, no physical exertion, your heart’s still having some irregularities, but other than that, you’re free to go, Mr. Meade.”
*****************
“And this is my wife, Carol, and my daughter, Sabrina-say hello, Sabrina-she’s your niece, you know, and…aha! You’ll be staying in this room, we cleaned it up for you as much as we could…it’s just the guest bedroom, but we haven’t had guests for so long, you understand.” Ricky stood, hands twisting, eyes darting around, lingering on the floral wallpaper and the pink bedsheets, and Jonathan realized that nothing had really changed-not his brother’s nervous habits, not his parents’ flair for the extravagant, and not this, the pastels of motherhood. Only the daughter was a little strange, hair cut shorter than a boy’s, he had thought it was a son at first glance, but then his gaze was drawn down, and that is definitely a girl, and is that scalp peeking through her hair, and that can’t be her natural hair color, not with a black-haired father and a brunette mother, unless she had cheated but they don’t allow for that kind of stuff in this household.
Jonathan nodded.
“Great! Well, just…settle in, I guess. Let me or Carol know if you need anything,” Ricky said, and started his retreat, edging past Jonathan, pulling his wife and daughter with him as he made his way down the rickety stairs.
*****************
“Hallooooo, I’m looking for Sab,” said the purple, spiked hair, and it took Jonathan a moment to focus on the face beneath it-instinctively, his eyes dart down and, ah, this one is a girl too.
He grunts and jerks his thumb towards the backyard, and watches the swaying hips as she struts away, and ah, there are the heels, and then, wonder how old she is, and what’s a pretty girl like her doing with her hair all spiked and half shaved and purple, of all colors?
Later, as he walks through the kitchen, done with his morning paper, Jonathan happens to glance out and sees-of all things!-the two girls, necking, right out in the open and is her shirt off? Well someone’s not wearing a bra, and he remembers seeing women burning their bras in the news, trash cans red and alive with the flickers and his angry, errant thought-I didn’t even get to see any tits. There’s a haze hanging around them and he rubs his eyes before spotting the blunt next to them, and belatedly smells the sweet, cloying evidence of weed. He has a vague thought that Ricky probably wouldn’t approve, but Ricky’s at work and he doesn’t want to stir up any trouble, so he stands there at the window and palms himself with their lazy movements and wonders, hey, have any of them had a real man? Bet that’ll fuck the lesbianism right outta them. He remembers to push his pants down right before he spills, so that he can catch the mess, rinses the dishtowel he uses, and continues with his morning routine, wandering around the house before finally settling himself in front of the couch. There’s a moment of twisted pleasure at the thought of Carol touching the towel later, but his mind stops wandering eventually, caught up in the festivities of some president who was shot-it was the anniversary and apparently, according to the news anchor, “The nation is in mourning”-goddamn who celebrates some dead guy’s death anniversary? He’s just a president, and a shit one too, apparently he’s the reason why there are black doctors in white men’s hospitals now.
*****************
“Halloooo,” says purple hair again, and he grunts and points. She looks almost like a boy, he thinks, Sabrina’s not doing badly by her, for a dyke. Purple hair heads in, and a few minutes later, Jonathan follows, pausing by the kitchen sink-just my routine-and, aha, there they are again, and if he lingers, well nobody’s going to tell. He’s in the last stages, eyes half closed, when there’s a flash of purple, brilliant green eyes meet his, and he comes, I never noticed the color of her eyes. Plush lips spread into a smile, even as she moves his niece-his niece!-with her clever fingers, showing him her cunt, spread out, fingers pumping, covered in a thin film, shining in the dim morning light. He backs away from the window, notices the mess he made, can’t make himself go back, runs to the couch-nothing happened.
*****************
“I covered for you, you know,” says purple hair.
He doesn’t respond.
“After you ran away. I cleaned up your jizz, made sure nobody would know what happened.”
He hears the smacking of the gum, and feels the urge to slap it out of her mouth.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Sab. Besides, she hates you. Says you’re a. What’s the word. A misogynist,” a pause, for dramatic effect. The last, whispered: “A woman-hater.”
He doesn’t move a muscle.
“I don’t think you’re a woman-hater,” purple hair says, going back to smacking her gum. “I think you’re a man-hater. I think you hate the man parts of me, because it confuses you. But the woman parts? I see how you look at me. There’s no woman-hating going on there at all.”
He has to move, only because he was feeling stiff from sitting still for so long.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” purple hair says. Another one of those dramatic pauses. “I’d totally do you. I’d have to be high, and you too, but you know, you’re not bad looking. Thank the troops, am I right or am I right?” purple hair says, and laughs raucously. “Think about it, sugar,” she says, dropping a kiss on his cheek.
He resists the urge to wipe the mark away. There isn’t a mark, he reminds himself. Women these days don’t wear makeup. They don’t believe in it. Except he can’t shake the feeling of being marked, somehow, and when he sits down at dinner, and Carol asks him if he wants seconds, he hide his cheek, grunts a no.
*****************
“Just breathe it in. Hold it. There you go, that’s right. Just like a cigarette.”
Purple hair again, and he’s already half delirious, trying to convince himself that this is right, this is okay. He was marked already anyways.
“One more. Another one. Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen.”
The edges of his vision are turning hazy, and he wonders off-handedly what, exactly, is in the weed. It isn’t like anything he’s smoked before.
“It’s a custom Indian mix,” purple hair tells him, and he wonders when having crayon box hair meant mind reading. Purple hair laughs, and pats his cheek. “This blend is for acceptance. So you can accept all of me for who I am. I asked the shaman specifically. I’m not sure he’s really a shaman, that head thing looked pretty bogus, but it seems to be working, so I’m good.”
He wonders if the weed will help him make sense of what’s happening. “Maybe,” says purple hair, and he wonders if he should, maybe, probably, worship purple hair. “That’s okay too, sugar,” purple hair says, and laughs. “You can start right now,” purple hair says, and starts removing clothes, and he looks away, scared.
“It’s okay,” purple hair says, soothing, baring more of its body. He sees breasts, the puffy pink of her vulva, but also, superimposed over it, a boy’s body, a small dick, the flat planes of a male chest.
“Do I look pretty?” purple hair asks, and he reaches out.
“Yes, just like that. Accept me. Accept all of me. All the parts, girl parts and boy parts. Do you remember in kindergarten, when they told you about girl parts and boy parts? It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. We’re all the same, really. We’re all the same girl fetuses, turned by hormones into mutations of what we used to be. Accept me.”
Purple hair reaches for him too, tugs him down on top of her and spreads her legs.
“There you go. And now, accept yourself. All of you. All the boy parts, and all the girl parts,” and Jonathan feels like there’s a second body, like he’s floating above it all and seeing it, the flashing of his own body, his paunch and hairy legs turned into womanly curves, and back again, and he blinks and shakes his head and somewhere in the middle slips into the girl except he can’t remember who’s the girl and who’s the boy only the ecstasy matters and when he finally collapses on top of her. He. Her. Them. Purple hair pets him gently, coaxing him down from his high, except everything’s turning black and something’s happening, his left arm hurts and distantly, he hears now just remember, no physical exertion, your heart’s still having some irregularities.