Page 2 of Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run
You can pretend it’s the future if you want to.
I don’t give a rat’s furry behind what you need to believe.
You can say this kind of stuff doesn’t exist yet, or that it’s really close, like tomorrow, but not today.
No such thing as the kind of shit I’m writing, you can say, if that makes you feel better. Heh heh heh. G’head.
There’s all this insidious shit with the govt and electronic invasion. And my two friends are apparently at the heart of this mess. Real revolutionary material: One’s confused and one’s a ditz. They act like damn porpoises on some kind of perpetual cyberwave. Cuz they’re moony for each other.
But they’ve always been serious about one thing in particular: gender!
What’s a man, what’s a woman, why do you have to be one or the other?
Why do we care? That sort of serious. Both of them, so it’s inevitable that they met, I guess.
They refuse to submit to regular pronouns. It’s some kind of thing with them.
People get really pissed when those two refuse to answer what gender they are. Or even gay, straight, or whatever! Talk about doubling your chances if you swing both ways—I guess they swing every which way they can.
But this is where I always get confused.
Who does what to who and in what body seems kinda important—doesn’t it?
Then Scratch goes into hir “what is gender anyway?” rap.
(“Hir” is how they reject gender pronouns altogether.) And I start sputtering, cuz “what’s gender?
” is a stupid question, but it’s not as simple as I think.
What kind of fool would ask you what gender is?
Gender is the only thing we know, goddammit.
But Winc says it’s the only thing we’re told from birth on out.
We don’t really know gender; no one even explores or questions it.
Ze says (“ze” is another anti-pronoun) that gender gets assigned when you’re born, but we never choose, not like we choose our clothes, jobs, cars, or lovers.
Especially in this country, where you think you can choose anything, except the one thing that determines how you’ll be treated the rest of your life you don’t choose, so fuck your gender anyway. Can’t argue with that one.
Things are coming down, and I have a feeling the media is gonna have their usual field day with those two, so I’m making sure there is a true record. And I’m backing up everything.
Me? I’m not really important, but Winc would kill me if ze heard me saying that.
I live with my dad in a little apartment in a big city, and I’m not a nerd, but I’m not the school president either.
Scratch says it’s normal that I feel this whole life is a huge mass of water pulling down into a drain and I’m trying like hell not to go with it.
It’s pulling me to be a boy, which is mostly okay, but there’s parts of me, well…
I just don’t tick all the boxes all the time.
And then there’s being pulled to be a grown-up, pulled to be socially adjusted, pulled to all this stuff I don’t have a clue about.
And apparently I have to choose. Naw. I don’t want to be any one thing, but I don’t have an alternative.
Scratch sez I will be something, that I’ll have to choose.
Winc sez I won’t have to choose, that I don’t have to make up my mind ever and that even if I choose, I can change my mind and choose again later.
Sometimes that’s a comfort, sometimes it just makes me more confused.
I like to think that somebody will find this journal, and it’ll be all poignant like Anne Frank’s Diary.
The first time Scratch and Winc met on America Online (AOL), they were hot for each other.
Still are! They wouldn’t tell each other what they are, I mean what sex they are, or anything else for that matter, like how old or what color.
It’s a game now with them. I’m not sure anything could make them reveal themselves.
It drives me crazy, but they seem to like it.
They used to trip out on whether they might be falling for someone of the “wrong” gender, but once they got over that, they got a little compulsive if you ask me, about making sure they didn’t find out.
Like taping a football game and not wanting anyone to tell you the final score.
They made up the “ze” and “hir” thing—well, they ripped it off like they rip off so much other stuff, so I use it to write about them, to protect their identities. Or nonidentities. Oh man, I’m confused again.
THE EYES ARE HERE TO HELP YOU
Oh, that reminds me. Can you believe that pop-up arrived just as I was writing in my own journal? Yep. I was online, and this online service promises “complete privacy,” but as you can see… the Eyes found me. The Eyes are a new thing, well, a new term for an old concept.
See, we’re all connected via computers. You can send email or chat messages, very cool.
For a long time, it was all chaos and everyone was connected, hopping on- and offline as they pleased, but then the govt got wind of it, and the ad agencies, too, and they said, “Unregulated? No way!” So they started doing little things to make sure everything is “monitored.” (Censored.
Protected. Told you it was an old concept.)
So the Eyes are like online beat cops. You can say anything as long as it’s not subversive. ::rolls eyes:: So if they catch you at anything (whatever that is), then the Eye notes that, “for everyone’s own good.”
PERHAPS SOME
ASSISTANCE HERE?
No thanks, Eye, signing off soon.
EYE READ YOU LOUD AND CLEAR, TOOBE. SLEEP WELL.
EYE HAS LEFT THE LOG.
Fuck that noise. It’s creepy how they know my name without me telling them.
Back to my point: Scratch and Winc met online, which means they had no idea who the other was: tall, short, Black, white, whatever. They claim their “real” identities don’t matter, even if they ever meet in real life. But I say they will matter.
Here’s an early email from Winc, kinda shows what ze’s like. Ze cracks me up but also makes me wanna hug hir.
To: Toobe
From: Winc
Subj: IS THIS WORKING?
HEY DUDE, GOT MY MODEM HOOKED UP AND I MADE IT ONLINE. WOW OH WOW OH WOW THIS IS A WAY COOL WORLD. HOPE I’M SENDING THIS RIGHT AND THAT YOU GET IT.
HUGS TO YOU,
—WINC
So I wrote back:
To: Winc
From: Toobe
Subj: Read you LOUD and Clear
Got your message. Welcome to the Net! One little note: don’t write in ALL CAPS okay? That means you’re shouting when you’re online. And here’s a hug from me to you!
{{{{Winc}}}} means I’m hugging you. The more {{{{{{}}}}}}}, the bigger the hugs.
A lot of people use them but they’re too cutesy.
But I might give you a few sometimes. Or you can put stuff in double colons, like this: ::hugging you:: Anything in a double colon means an action, not what you’re actually saying.
And if you want to emphasize something, just put an asterisk around the word; you may have noticed there’s no *italics*.
Have fun. I’m glad you’re here.
Your pal,
—Toobe
To: Toobe
From: Winc
Subj: Ohmigosh!
::shaking my head in amazement::
I am having so much *fun* here, Tooberoo! Sorry for the all caps, I’d never shout at you!
My mind is boggling at the possibilities of stretching who/what I am in this space.
—Winc
Winc always makes me feel good. Just when I think ze’s a major flake, ze comes through. Ze’s a friend, a real one. Doesn’t treat me like a kid. I’m glad ze doesn’t have to go to an office for work, which would kill hir like it kills most people.
A couple of weeks later, ze sends me this:
To: Toobe
From: Winc
Subj: Ohmigosh!
This is amazing! ‘Drag Queen’ is a mighty popular thing, I discovered. (Did you know this already?) Thank you thank you for introducing me to all this! And you’ve been traveling in this world all this time? You are one wise cookie, don’t you ever forget that, you hear me?
{{{{{{{{Toobe}}}}}}}}}
This online stuff: I can explore different ways of relating with people. I can be brave one night, timid the next. I can saunter or mince, attract or pursue.
Know what I mean, bean?
—Winc
I totally get what ze means, and I have no idea why ze knows I would, but I’m glad. Even if I act like a shit sometimes, ze still keeps talking to me like I understand, and so… I do.
END TOOBE ENTRY
To: Editor, They/Them magazine
From: D.I. Drew
Subject: Journals and privacy
Now onto your first excerpt from Winc’s journal, which I got from… never mind where, I have my sources. I was relieved to learn that anything in Scratch and Winc’s journals were for their eyes only, no Toobe allowed!
This next log by Winc seems to be from about when ze first started to record hir online encounters, conversations, etc. No one dated anything, dammit, so no embedded dates, but I’m guessing this was maybe late 1994?
Cheers,
Drew
WINC JOURNAL ENTRY
The bottom line here seems to be sex, yay! So that’s where I started.
Last night in a chat room I used a couple of different names, right? (Thanks to Toobe for teaching me *that* one.) I went into one room called the Flirt’s Nook, and this guy said, Wanna go private? and I said, Sure (no idea what it meant), so he gives me the name of this room.
So I go there, and he starts *taking off his clothes*!
I mean, online he does. He used that double-colon thing, ::I’m stripping off my shirt:: etc.
It’s amazing! So ::blush:: we have sex right there!
He asks me what I look like, what I’m wearing, and it’s kind of like the phone sex work I do only better, because there’s even *more* to the imagination!
So he has his way with me ::grin:: and then he just *signs off*! Poof, he’s gone. ::wryly:: Guess he came, huh? That’s what guys do on the phone line, too, they come, then they hang up.