American Goth (18 page)

I looked at him with gratitude. Maybe I
was
just different—that could happen, right?

Dave guffawed. “Yeah, it’s on the
inside
, ’cuz that’s where dicks go—in
pussies
.”

Mario smacked his head. “What are you, a faggot or something? You can’t stick a dick in Sam, she’s, you know, like a boy.”

I could feel the blush grow even worse at that and the guys looked away. I didn’t know how to explain it either.

“Hey, at least I don’t have that weird skin thing,” I told Dave as everyone else zipped up and we dropped the subject to discuss whether we wanted to fish from the dock or from a boat the next morning.

Still, confusion, resentment at the unfairness, and the strange sense of shame still roiled through my head, and I went for a walk by myself after dinner, just because I could. I wasn’t going too far, I knew we were supposed to watch out for bears and all of that, but I wanted to get away from everything, from everyone, smell the deep scent of the pine and the moldy leaves, the water off the lake, and the smoke that floated in the cool breeze. I wore my favorite denim jacket under the summer night sky.

“Hey,” Bruce said as he fell into step behind me.

“Hey,” I said back and kept walking.

“You know,” he said after we’d gone about another dozen yards or so, “maybe yours is just stuck inside or something, you know?”

“Huh?”

“Well, my big brother, Johnny, he said his gets bigger when his girlfriend sucks on it—maybe you just need to suck it out or something.”

I stopped so suddenly my sneakers dug into the trail dirt. “You think that would work?”

“Can’t hurt.”

Just as quickly as hope rose, a bright burning that thumped in my chest, it grew cold and fell. “I can’t do that,” I said. “Can’t reach.”

Bruce shrugged. “I could help you, I mean…you’re my friend.”

Yeah. We were friends, good friends. And just like that, with the burning smoke smell from the fire pit, the slight breeze through my hair, and the occasional sound of crickets in the high grass, I got my first blow job.

*

That was the year my father did two new things when we got home: he registered us with the swim club and put me on the team, and I was given my first guitar, with twice weekly lessons with Mr. Dobson at Lane Music, on New Dorp Lane.

It turned out that not only were these two things I was good at, they also effectively curtailed a lot of my neighborhood hanging out—and that’s where I first met Frankie. But still, when I tried out for swim team right before the semester started at the all-girls high school Da insisted I go to, I was miserable; it sounded to me like it would be four years without my friends, four years without the guys to pal around with, four years surrounded by bitchy, nasty, catty girls, with their lies and their meanness and their talk about makeup and boys. Not a brain in the entire bunch. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why, why,
why
my Da was sending me there of all places when there were co-ed schools I could go to as well, and I protested and complained daily until he sat me down at dinner and explained.

“Sam, I know how important your grades are to you, and you want to go to college. You passed an entrance exam to a school famous for its academic program—a ninety-two percent or better scholarship rate!” His eyes shone with genuine enthusiasm. “The girls there? I’ll bet they care as much about that as you do—you’ll make friends, I promise.”

I eyed him doubtfully over the dinner we’d ordered. “I’ll also bet,” he said as he cut into the food on his plate, “you even meet a few girls you like.”

As much as I didn’t believe it, my Da had been right. For the first time ever, I met girls I
could
actually like, girls who cared about academics, girls who cared about sports, and even music, girls who weren’t solely into boys and makeup, and to make it that much easier for me, Frankie was there too, with her beautiful smile. She loved the hair I’d allowed to grow a bit too long, and she made me think maybe, just maybe, this “girl” thing wouldn’t be so bad after all. And because Frankie—Fran, now—liked to run her fingers through my hair, for the first time since I was five, I
really
let it grow.

I still wasn’t thrilled about my body, the twin swellings on my chest that needed to be supported and the accompanying monthly inconveniences, but I learned to ignore all of that as I made friends and devoted my attention to my studies, my instrument, and my sport.

It wasn’t until I realized that Fran and I liked each other (another bit of knowledge imparted to me by my Da with his casual, “That there Fran, she likes you now, huh?” after a swim meet), and then, a few weeks later, the feel of her hands as they caressed me with real enjoyment over my curves that I thought that my body might have some redeeming qualities after all.

But then there was Nina, someone I’d wanted to be strong for, someone I wanted to do things, amazing things,
any
thing, for—and I’d failed, failed in all of it. I wasn’t able to keep her safe, I wasn’t able to keep her alive, and I wasn’t able to bring her back.

I couldn’t help but think that if I’d been a guy maybe I could have made a difference. Of course, the fact that the girl I was obsessed with would probably not have been interested in me at all if I was male made no difference.

Guys had strength, power, absolute ownership—of
everything
. They strode through the world, back straight, legs wide, and stared it unblinkingly in the eye, daring it to strike, ready to strike back with the muscle to back it up.

No one,
no one
, questioned their right to do so, and people got out of the way for those that flexed their muscle, even if it just looked like they might. Guys wanted, guys got, and asked or apologized to no one.

I wanted that—the respect, the
untouchableness
, the sense of invulnerability that guys carried with them all the time. There were times I’d had that sense of strength, of purposeful power, moments where I’d felt strong and untouchable, undefeatable…and in none of those instances was I aware of anything other than my mind and body working at the best possible level. I wasn’t aware in
any
way of being “male” or “female” in thought or deed—but simply of
being
, of being
whole
. On those occasions there were no questions at all, just a steady surety. I’d had it during swim practices and competitions, band rehearsals, sessions with Cort that left my muscles aching while my mind spun, and when Fran and I were alone together.

Did that make me “that” kind of dyke, as Fran had put it? Did I really want to be a man? The feel of her breasts, full and supple in my hands, the pebbled hardness under my fingertips or my tongue was something I really enjoyed. I even liked just looking at them, the way those curves pushed out her shirt and rounded under a sweater, or just the rise of them above her skin… I loved watching her walk, the perfect sweeping lines that defined her, unmistakably feminine and equally unmistakably strong,
proud
in a way that so, so flattened me with sheer desire until I was almost on the bare edge of insane with the need to make her come. I
loved
doing that. Loved the sexy, hot taste, the warm and wet embrace, the hard push, the slick pace, wherever on me, my mouth, my hands, my cunt, oh my God, she’d get
so
hard,
so
wet, the way her clit would grow and her body open under my hands, only to tighten around me again. And when she touched me—
any
way she touched me—it felt so damn good: the way she stroked my clit with her body, her tongue, her hands. And when she was inside me in any way…oh the
intense
of it…

But that was confusing too, because if I was “that” kind of a dyke, then wouldn’t I not like that? Or maybe…maybe I was straight, because wasn’t that something straight girls were into? The guys I’d pretty much lost contact with since the middle of high school thought so, and God, Fran’s words had so turned me on. And now I was hard, so fucking hard, and I didn’t know if it was because I wanted her touch me like that or because I wanted to fuck her with a dick I didn’t have. Even that troubled me, because “fucking” seemed so disrespectful, as if I didn’t care, as if I was one of the guys I’d hung around with.

Ah hell…what did I know about being gay anyway? I still didn’t like girls—but women, there was a
definite
difference. Women with their fine steel strength flashing over and under an almost delicate softness, intelligence bare and proud, hard muscle or yielding tenderness…I was attracted, turned on,
into
that. I wanted to shield that and in turn be covered by it. It was what drew me to Fran, what I had seen blaze from Nina, what I so admired and respected about Elizabeth. Hannah had that too.

Bruce and I had tried once, just once, to go on a date when we were both freshman, and it had gone terribly, from my not noticing his attempts to hold my hand and the awkward reach of his arm over my shoulder, to both of us trying to flirt with the counter girl at the popcorn stand. There wasn’t even an attempt at a kiss; by the time the movie was over and we’d just relaxed into being buddies again, it wasn’t even a consideration. We’d mutually, mutely, decided to forget it was a date.

I already knew I was different from most girls, and then I’d met Fran and eventually we’d dated, but then we’d drifted because we’d both been into… Dammit, this was all so much simpler when I was back at the apartment, curled up next to Fran after we made love because I didn’t have to
think
about anything at all, I could just
be
, but when I hung out with the band at the pub there seemed to be so many rules about all sorts of things that I just didn’t know.

*

“Earth to Ann,” Hannah said, waving her hand in my face. “So? How far?” she repeated, breaking me from my mental gymnastics.

“I’ve got the new pieces down, I can try putting in a harmony line or two if you’d like,” I told her, deliberately ignoring both the knowing grin she wore and the subtext of her question as I pushed my thoughts down and we walked through the archway into the kitchenette.

She laughed as I poured a cup of coffee from the maker we’d collectively bought, and I raised an unamused eyebrow at her as she passed me the cream.

“I’m so very certain that harmony is
exactly
what Hannah’s after,” Graham said with a wink and the quickest flash of a wicked grin at me. “The question is whether she wants it as one, two, or three part?”

“Let’s settle on getting a lead vocal down, and worry about the numbers after,” Kenny said as he walked in and grabbed a mug for himself.

I heartily agreed and we sat around the little table to discuss which sections of which song were stronger than others and which needed much more work.

Another grueling couple of hours, by which time I wanted to take the guitar from Kenny and demonstrate to him how to breathe over the passage as he played it to find the body rhythm within it (and I finally did, privately, when we took another break), the sun had gone down, and I was, as Hannah put it, knackered. But I still wanted to speak with Graham and since both Elizabeth and Cort had asked me to please, please, stay away from the pub for a few days, until they enacted whatever it was they were thinking of, this was the only opportunity I had.

“Hey, Graham?” I asked as we buttoned our coats and shut the lights.

“Hmm?” He shifted his gig bag with its guitar over his shoulder.

“Join me for a quick bite of something?”

“Sure,” he said, “there’s a great spot not too far from your place, fabulous desserts, even better cappuccino. Want to go there?”

“Sounds good,” I said as I set the last lock—it was my turn to hold the keys, since we rotated the responsibility—and off we went.

“So…what’s on your mind?” he asked as we crossed the sidewalk.

“Not much. Why?”

He turned his grin on me. “I’ve got a
feel
for these sorts of things. Now give—what’s up?”

I gave him a crooked grin of my own. Well, he had been right. “I…I wanted to ask you how you do it.”

“Do what?” He eyed me with friendly curiosity and I fidgeted a bit with the strap of my gig bag.

“The guy thing,” I said finally. “How do you do that?”

His grin grew into a wide smile and he tucked my hand in his arm. “Forget cappuccino, sweetling, I’m going to take you to meet Uncle Billie and Aunt Sheila.”

“Uncle Billie?” I repeated to make sure I’d heard correctly as I let him lead the way.

“Yes, and Aunt Sheila,” he affirmed. “C’mon, you’ll see.”

*

Twenty minutes and one quick Tube ride later we were warmly ensconced in an old railroad-style flat in a part of London I’d never visited before, and seated around an old Formica table in the kitchen.

Graham hurriedly explained as we walked up the stairs that Uncle Billie was a drag king and Aunt Sheila was his wife. The act was “a grand thing,” Graham said, but Billie was a “regular guy,” too: he worked as a lorry driver during the day and did a steady show nighttimes, at a club I hadn’t been to yet. “We’ll go, you and Fran and I, if you’d like, next Thursday,” he offered as he knocked on the door, and I wondered what in the world a drag king was. I was about to find out.