Page 26 of Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run

PERSONAL LOG, JABBATHEHUT

I have procured a number of hysterical accounts of The Great Coney Island Rescue. This is the one I concluded as the most accurate—but at this point, who knows.

Scene: Coney Island

A tall man in a checkered sport coat, sporting a mustache and wearing unbearably cheap shoes stands with a young girl. She looks as pouty as most young girls in the presence of their parents. Soon they are joined by a plain, worn-looking woman.

END JABBA PERSONAL LOG

WINC JOURNAL ENTRY

I gotta say, Toobe looked adorable. I’ve only seen him in skateboard gear. But there he was, tottering on heels…

So sweet; then he asked me, “How did you know it was me?”

“Oh, I just knew,” I said, smiling. I didn’t want him to worry or be embarrassed so I made sure to add, “You look great. And you look like the kid I’ve loved forever. Most importantly, the cops won’t know it’s you at all.”

Then I saw Scratch. Clearly a female, but looked odd somehow. Awkward, the gait not quite right, the clothes seeming to fit funny. I could see hir tottering on hir shoes, even though they were one-inch heels at most, and quite sensible. Charming.

I wanted us all to hug, but as usual Scratch was aware of what was happening around us, while I was only aware of the rush of emotion in knowing we were safe—at least for the moment—the three of us.

In the riptide of that emotion, I realized crazily, “This is my family,” and wanted to join hands with the two of them and swing round and round right there on the boardwalk.

I laughed out loud, and Scratch was laughing too.

“Look at us,” ze said. “The people I care about most in the world are right here, in real time! I didn’t expect we’d look like this!”

That’s exactly what I was thinking. It was like a simulpost, when we both would type the same thing online? Only there was no delay, and I was standing there, completely willing to stay like that forever. My Scratch!

Toobe was grinning, as if he believed that as long as we were literally surrounding him, he was safe. Scratch’s eyes kept darting around, and sure enough, it did look like a number of dark-suited men were prowling, although none of them had looked our way, yet.

“We gotta go,” Scratch said, jolting me out of the reverie.

“We’re just a family at Coney Island, and now we’re going to the car, okay?” ze added.

I felt this thump inside: We were nowhere near out of danger yet and could be surrounded by the Bad Guys at any minute. I couldn’t begin to sort out whether ze looked like what I had imagined, but the feeling was the same; ze was making plans and I believed in hir and it was going to be all right.

Ze was having so much trouble in those low, low heels!

But I didn’t laugh. I just put out my arm and ze had no choice but to hold on to it for balance, and I’m pretty sure ze was grateful.

I took slow, measured steps that were just long enough for both hir and Toobe.

Nevertheless, ze grumbled with every lurch.

Toobe was laughing quietly. I’m sure he felt awkward as hell in the rather outré fishnets Gwynyth had supplied him, but (thank goodness for modern fashion) I’m sure he appreciated heavy combat boots and a backward baseball cap along with his skirt.

He really did make a very pretty grrl. A little too much makeup, but Gwynyth was pretty smart with the application, all things considered.

We were walking out the main gate when damn, damn, damn… we were stopped by one of those men in the dark suits!

I remember turning to Scratch to figure out what to do. But instead of Scratch, this sweet woman was looking up into my face with all the warmth and confidence a… a man could wish for. I took a deep breath and so help me I responded in kind: I went into being Dad.

“Yes, officer?” I said. “Anything I can do for you?”

The “little woman” held on to my arm, and Toobe had no trouble at all looking like a very uncomfortable teenage girl.

The officer didn’t do a double take. He didn’t stare at us like any of us might be the “wrong” gender, and believe me I know what that stare looks like.

He simply explained that he was sorry to bother us, but this was about—he lowered his voice so as not to offend my darling wife and child—the porn industry.

They were to question any suspicious-looking threesomes.

My brain was screaming, Threesomes? They know?

But I got quite grave with him, nodding a silent signal of thanks for not speaking too loudly.

My knees were shaking inside my baggy trousers.

Apologetically he said he needed to check my ID. I figured that was it—we were caught—but at that moment, I saw Scratch pinch Toobe’s arm. Hard! And Toobe lets out a long “Owwwwww!”

Scratch, smooth as silk, glided up to the guard and in this hushed voice, said, “Officer, I’m so sorry, but my daughter is having her first… well, you know… her first little visitor.”

The guy stared at Scratch, uncomprehending. So Scratch lowered hir voice again and said, “It’s her first period, Officer. She’s having her monthly time, and we need to get her to a bathroom. Now.”

Well, the guard went pale, and Toobe went even more pale. I stared at Scratch with a mixture of pure disbelief and admiration, and then turned to the shaken guy with an apologetic look, who glanced at me real fast and waved us on through.

We found Scratch’s car; Toobe dove into the backseat and started peeling off his fishnets immediately, yowling about the shackles of the opposite sex or some such thing, and I said, how do you think I feel, peeled off my mustache, and wiped off the makeup that was concealing the tattoo under my eye.

Soon, we were all hysterically laughing, relief and joy and tension spilling out of us. I have never been so thoroughly happy.

W.

END WINC JOURNAL ENTRY

SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY

What a trip to see Winc take off that hat and see long hair spill down, and the mustache off, and those wise, wise eyes.

Ze’s taller than me and has the longest legs, I think that’s what made hir look almost like a colt, kind of awkward.

Then ze did that classic maneuver women do of reaching under hir dress to undo hir bra, but of course it was actually a roll of ace bandages that were keeping hir breasts down, and the juxtaposition of hir in that man’s shirt with breasts all soft underneath them was so sexy.

I thought, oh, good, two women, that’s what we are .

And started tripping on all that would mean, to me and to hir.

But neither one of us knew the half of it.

—S.

END SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY

TOOBE ENTRY

Man, what a day. Wow. Meeting each other in real time.

So, no surprise, they were just as lovestruck in real life as they’d been online.

I guess the drag worked because we made it past the cops and then just sat in the car, stunned.

I couldn’t believe we were getting away with it.

But instead of screaming away for a high-speed chase, Scratch said, “Okay, what gender are we all really? I mean, in real life?”

Silence in the car.

“Okay, okay,” said Scratch, “I’ll say what I am.”

But ze didn’t say anything, until…

“Why would that be the big question now, anyway?” ze said, more to hirself, looking out the window. “Not ‘am I Jewish’ or ‘where do I live’ or ‘do I like to ride horses’? Why would the biggie be male or female?”

I felt my heart sink. I was sitting with my best friends, and they were about to talk about the gender thing. As usual, my mind just glazed over. “What does it matter?!” I wanted to yell, and I should have. Maybe it would have made a difference.

Plus we were still sitting in the car. Why weren’t we escaping?!

“Okay,” Scratch finally said, all the breath pushing out of hir in a whoosh.

“I’m a girl, woman, crone, maiden, chick, bitch, cow, dyke, babe, butch, sweet-pea, white female person.

This week I wish I looked more like Wesley Snipes and last week it was Garbo.

Sometimes I wish my skin were a different color or that I was a wolf instead of a dumb human. ”

Ze kept looking down, but the words kept pouring out.

“I’m not afraid to walk down the street alone because I am all those things inside without thinking about it; then somebody calls my name—or rather, my sex—and I feel like I’m in a borrowed body, the body I was born into, easily recognizable to other people, but not to me.

They want to sculpt it and dress it and reduce it and extend it but it just doesn’t work for me.

“I’m a female,” ze finished in a voice that trailed off. “And now my freedom’s over.” Ze looked over at Winc, who was quiet now.

Scratch added, “I haven’t worn a dress in about twenty-five years. I’m thirty-eight, and in the last few years I’ve grown to love my face and my tits and, for some reason, my feet. I’ve heard ‘ugly chick’ in my head for so long it has no meaning anymore.”

No way Scratch is ugly!

“Finally I started dressing and acting how I felt cuz it’s my fucking life and I wasted a whole lot of time acting like it’s someone else’s.

” Ze paused. “Do you know what happened when I started doing that?” But ze wasn’t really waiting for our answer.

“Nothing. Except,” and Scratch started blushing, “I got a whole lot more dates from women.”

For some reason, I blushed too. We all sat together in silence for a while.

Winc took a deep breath and said, “Okay, since you’re being so honest. Um….”

“Wait!” Scratch asked. “What do you think about all that?”

“Well, maybe I’d like to know—who do you like to sleep with?”

My jaw dropped.

“I like to sleep with my teddy bear and my modem at this point,” Scratch snapped.

“Stop it. For real, just say,” Winc replied.

But Scratch talks in paragraphs, so I knew this would be long. But first ze turned to me.

“Sorry about this, kid. I promise I won’t go into gory details. You okay?”