Page 19 of Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run

TOOBE ENTRY

FUNNY OF THE DAY

My writing is as clear as mud, but mud settles and clear streams run on and disappear…

—Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America

(It was Scratch who turned me on to Gertrude Stein.)

I don’t see how monks wrote down everything in history without freaking out over their scrolls and spilling ink all over the place. No wonder history is all screwed up. This was in the paper today; if I were a monk writing this out, there’d be this big blot of ink messing up the screen:

“V ADERS ” I DENTIFIED BY N ET P OLICE

by Thomas Fulton

An unnamed official close to the president has indicated that the Federal Bureau of Census and Statistics is rapidly closing in on two Registration evaders, known as Vaders. Longtime abusers of the Internet, the suspects are known as “Scratch” and “Winc.” Their real names were not released.

The anonymous source said that the two Vaders first came to FBCS attention because they are not Registered. In addition, Scratch and Winc are only two of many aliases used by the pair.

“Of course, that in itself is not a crime,” said LaBouchere, who refused to confirm or deny that these two have been targeted, “but any extraordinary number of screen names held by a single individual is what sends our antennae up. If we discover that none of the aliases are Registered, we know we have a criminal profile.”

Again, the undersecretary refused to admit that the aforementioned Scratch and Winc fall into that category, but this reporter can read the writing on the cyber-walls. Can you, Scratch and Winc?

Jesus fucking Christ! What is the crime? Hundreds of people must fit that profile. Why those two? I’m Registered, but I use lots of different personas too. I got into this stuff for more freedom, not less!

END TOOBE ENTRY

NARRATIVE ENTRY, JABBATHEHUT

Budge has been staring into the screen for the past five hours. His fingers dance across the keyboard. He’s found a room entitled, “Don’t Send Me Private Messages,” so he can practice how to “surf” the internet. And an unwanted guest has shown up.

Private Message to Ms. Budge

GoodGuy: I just want to get to know you, that’s all. I won’t hurt you, really.

Ms. Budge: Dammit, I am *not* a woman, knock it off, will you?

GoodGuy: I’m not like all the rest of the guys you meet online, honest.

Ms. Budge: ::evenly:: And what if I told you I was a cop. A *male* cop, and you could be arrested for… *harassment*.

GoodGuy: ROTFL! That’s a good one, baby. Even if you were a cop, how do you think you’d make it *stick*? Speaking of stick… ::chuckle::

Ms. Budge: Look, I have work to do, so piss off.

GoodGuy: Stupid bitch! You’re probably a dyke!

GoodGuy has left the room.

Private Message to Ms. Budge

RamStud: What are you wearing?

Ms. Budge: Can’t you read? The name of this room is DON’T SEND ME PRIVATE MESSAGES!

RamStud: Oh bite me!

The good lieutenant was beginning to see why people escape to chat rooms.

Private Message to Ms. Budge

SubRobert: Hello! I hear you’re a police officer. Will you put me in handcuffs, please? I’ve been a very naughty boy.

Ms. Budge: If you heard I was a cop, you heard I was a man. Buzz off, faggot.

SubRobert: ::shivering:: Yes ma’am, Thank you for the insult, ma’am.

Ms. Budge: LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

SubRobert: Can I sniff your panties?

Ms. Budge: No.

SubRobert: I’ll pay for the postage.

Ms. Budge: No.

SubRobert: Really. I’m being real.

Ms. Budge: No!

SubRobert: Yes ma’am, so sorry ma’am, goodbye ma’am

::leaving in tears::

::tears are real::

SubRobert has left the room.

Budge scratches at an itch halfway down his back where he can’t reach.

“Poor guy,” he says out loud to no one, mousing over to his desktop and selecting two files: Scratch.doc and Winc.doc

Clickety-clack-clickety-clack, and he drops both files into a folder named “Perps.”

END JABBA NARRATIVE ENTRY

To: Editor, They/Them magazine

From: D.I. Drew

Subject: Folk heroes

Hi Asa,

It’s scary, disorienting, infuriating, and to my cynical eye, utterly predictable that what Scratch and Winc (and Toobe) feared came to pass.

Remember from the well-worn history of this part of the story that the Bureau was issuing warrants for any names they could match to unregistered users.

Tracking them down in real life and imposing fines and jail time.

And I found in a fast and furious archive between Lt.

Budge and his boss that he was getting annoyed at this waste of resources but was beginning to question what the crime actually was. Nonconformity?

Of course it was impossible to match online users with real people. Lt. Budge closed in on our two lovebirds, and it was the moment he called them “perps” that Scratch and Winc became folk heroes. They were, as usual, oblivious!

It was fun to comb through literally hundreds of archives to find their love story instead of just focusing on the sting. Here’s a tasty little exchange where they “discovered” butch and femme. Here I am all progressively polyamorous nonbinary etc but this chat gave me the flutters!

Cheers,

Drew

Scratch journal entry

Got a letter from Winc that led to our next adventure.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subj: Wait’ll you see this!

Scratch,

I was prowling the bulletin boards and found this whole section called Lesbian Boards. *Finally* some intelligent conversation! But that’s not the best part. There’s a message board called Butch/Femme. Have you ever heard of this? I swear, it’s the best thing ever! Look at this message:

To: Brknstck

From: Fembot

Subj: Imitating the dominant paradigm

Dear Brknstck,

Oh fiddlesticks! The lesbian construct of butch/femme is no more an imitation of the “dominant paradigm” than girl/girl sex is an imitation of hetsex.

Butches (at least the ones *I* know, and I know quite a few) don’t want to be men, as you intimate in your last posting.

Nor do femmes want to “pass for straight.”

You seem to be a good woman, Brknstck. Dear heart, please hear me when I say I am *not* interested in attracting any men.

I can’t speak for butches, and I can’t speak for all femmes. We all do this dance a bit differently from one another. But what *I* see as the soul of the thing is this.

Courtship.

::slow smile::

Flirtation.

::blowing you a kiss::

Gallantry and graciousness.

When a butch is gallant on my behalf, it just makes my knees go weak. And if I can make a butch’s eyes spin just by wearing a tight dress, you’d better *believe* I’m going to have more than a few choice tight dresses at hand!

Butch/femme is an expression of *equality,* Brknstck.

Look, in heterosexual terms, the man has all the power, and the woman is subordinate and obedient, at least that’s the default setting.

Oh you can dial the strength of it up or down but nobody usually bothers to change it.

Butch/femme is a change. It’s *sharing* of strength.

I call myself a “high femme,” but I know how to change a tire, and more often than not I like to be on top.

::laughing lightly::

I don’t mind that you personally don’t want to take on the roles of either butch or femme, but please don’t censor me or any one of my brave butch or femme sisters.

Can we shake hands on that, in solidarity?

Fembot

Scratch!!! Is that cool, or what?

Can we try butch/femme?

Come on, come play with me!

::wriggling happily::

—Winc

PS Guess which one *I* wanna be? heehee.

PPS How ever did she make that heart???

To: Winc

From: Scratch

Subj: Femme/butch

Femme/butch, huh? (I reversed the names for a little equality.) You get into the weirdest things. Isn’t that kind of tired? I mean, ’50s lesbian thing?

What is it exactly that compels you?

—S.

To: Scratch

From: Winc

Subj: Snarls of all sorts

Tired? You’re asking *me* if butch/femme is tired? ::laughing merrily:: Sounds awfully refreshing to me. In-your-face fuck you to homogeneity.

—W.

To: Winc

From: Scratch

Subj: Butch and femme

Hmm, maybe b/f is another kind of traction?

Now I’ve found a posting from a woman who calls herself a butch. Thank gawd you want to be femme, the butch one made more sense to me. Does this mean that in real life you’re a woman and I’m a man? Sigh.

—S.

To: Scratch

From: Winc

Subj: Femme and butch

Re: you as butch. I’m so glad! Because I don’t understand half the butch posts on that board. Maybe you can explain them to me. Like what’s a “stone butch”? And…

You say, ‘Does this mean that in real life we’re a woman and a man?’

::stepping lightly away from you, moving toward the window where the soft breeze blows the curtains gently into the room, ze begins to dance à la Isadora Duncan, and speaks while dancing::

I’m a woman?

You’re a man?

I *seem* to recall a certain

riot grrl

who had her way with a certain

skateboard dude.

::stopping dead still, looking at you deadpan::

Or had you forgotten our first evening of bliss?

::resuming hir dance::

Are we on, butch?

—W.

To: Winc

From: Scratch

Subj: Are we on

Hmm, well can we at least spin it like Bogie and Bacall?

Stone butch? I think it means “very butch” or it refers to the one who just pleases the other one but never gets off herself. Kind of blows me away, because they say butch lesbians are imitating men, but I don’t think you’d see many men doing that for women. Nice contradictions there, let’s do it.

—S.

To: Scratch

From: Winc

Subj: Bogie and Bacall

I love Bogie and Bacall!

What was the butch post you liked? I am *so* intrigued by this.

—W.

To: Winc

From: Scratch

Subj: B. posts

The post I saw was this: