Page 28 of Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run

Scratch winced before starting again. “All right… now I’m looking at you, studying your face for clues of manness. If we were walking down the street, what would people think of you?”

“You mean what would they think of you?” Winc said, real quick. “Isn’t that what you’re really concerned about?”

There was one of those terrible pauses that kept filling up the car with already-breathed air.

“Look,” Winc went on, “I don’t have answers—”

“I know that, goddammit!” Scratch interrupted. “I know you’re the person I fell in love with online, and nothing has changed since last week!”

“Fell in love with?” I knew Winc would never let that one pass, and ze didn’t.

Scratch was sputtering. “Okay! Yes! I fell in love with a… with a… ze!”

We all kinda laughed a little, even Winc. Felt like there was more air in the car again. I just had to pipe up from the backseat: “You get used to it, after a while.”

“Oh, easy for you to say, little dude,” Scratch said, but I could tell ze wasn’t really mad. “Winc, I have one more question. Why are you presenting yourself as a woman if you’re saying that’s not who you are?”

Winc and I looked at each other and then down at our clothes. Winc fingered hir necktie, still trying not to smile. I held up my fishnets.

“You know what I mean! Why are you—”

“But that’s just it, Scratch,” Winc said quietly. “Today I look like a man… tomorrow I may look like a girl cheerleader.”

Scratch and I laughed a little again.

But Winc went on. “It’s because I’ve had the chance to do all that with you—online—changing from one thing to another to another to another… that’s given me the courage to do it in real life.”

Winc looked at Scratch in this really funny way, hir mouth all crooked and hir eyes kind of lit up, and ze said real quietly, “I like it, Scratch. I like girl. It feels right. It’s fun. I just like walking through the world that way.”

Which made Scratch sputter again. “The point is, the point is… the point is that what I’m facing here is a monster of my own creation!”

Winc stopped smiling then. “Oh thanks, that feels real good,” ze said.

“No, I mean I’m always mouthing off about how useless gender is and how we’d all be better off without it and now I’m sitting next to someone whose gender is ‘optional,’ for lack of a better word. Freaks me the fuck out!”

Winc got that look back on hir face. “You’re awfully cute when you freak out,” ze said. “Did you know that?”

“I’m serious! What are you? And yeah what does my attraction to you make me? If I thought I had to worry about that before…”

Winc kept smiling, and I kept watching Winc. If ze wasn’t worried, I wasn’t.

Scratch was still sputtering. “This is just what I dreamed of. And I hate it! Now if I become a genderless person, too, then we can be a nice happy couple, but the fact is I’m not.

I’m a woman; I was raised to be a woman.

I’ve made myself into a whole different kind of woman than I used to be.

You were raised to be a man, and then you became a woman, and now you’re saying you’re not either.

Then of course the question is, what’s a woman? ”

“And what’s a man?” Winc shot back, just like I knew ze would.

“I don’t know!”

Winc looked out the window, away from Scratch, and said, “Right.” A few miles went by in silence. “It seems to me that your consternation is about how you’re going to behave now, with me.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s not just behaving for other people, it’s behaving in a physical space with you.”

“But wouldn’t that be a problem for anybody after they meet in person? I mean, how do you feel about Toobe now that you’ve met him?”

Scratch shrugged. “He’s a guy. I mean, a person with a gender. I can relate to him.” Ze swore under hir breath. “I can’t believe I said that.”

There was a long silence. Then Winc went on in that calm voice, “Yes, but Toobe is also very physical right now, which is different than email Toobe or chat room Toobe. You have to take that in: maybe he has an annoying habit that you never had to deal with online.”

I added helpfully, “Yeah, I’m generally annoying in real life.”

Scratch craned hir head around to look at me. “Yeah, Toobe. Now that I think of it, it’s weird that you’re so… near. You both are right in my face. Not like I’m a hermit or something, but all the sensory input from new people, in person, makes me a little crazy.”

At which point ze pulled the car off to the side of the road, got out, and walked around on the busy street. We sat inside, me fidgeting and Winc being very still. Finally Winc called out the window.

“Darlin’, remember we’re on the lam, here.”

So Scratch ambled back to the car and started talking like there hadn’t been any break.

She pulled out into the traffic. “Men invade other people’s territory like splashing into still water and scattering all the creatures into oblivion.

Then they look around and see the environment’s changed and they say, what happened?

They stock the pond with more creatures, but only ones like themselves, and the rest of the population disappears and then the pond dies and they wonder why. ”

“I love how you stretch your metaphors, hon,” said Winc. “Always have. And I agree. I hate that about men too.”

“Then why can’t you just be a better man! Stretch the borders like I did! Why do you have to come over to this side of the fence and plow into this water?”

Winc finally looked over at Scratch. “That hurts. I’m really trying to stay with you on this, but it doesn’t include your hurting my feelings just because you’re angry. You’re talking to me as if I’m one of the bad guys, and the fact is—”

But I interrupted, cuz something finally dawned on me: “Nobody is.”

Winc answered, “Well, dear, there are bad guys out there. There really are.”

Winc turned back to Scratch. “I don’t know about all men, all I know about is myself.” Ze looked very flustered.

Scratch sat there while Winc composed hirself.

Winc spoke carefully. “I never was happy or felt like myself when I was stuck in ‘man.’ It wasn’t that I was running wildly into becoming ‘woman,’ when I look back at it. I was running wildly away from man. At the time, there just wasn’t any other place to run to.”

Scratch’s face got all soft, and I could tell ze wanted to say something, but Winc said, “Please. You’re asking if I could just be a better man.

I guess, in a way, that’s what I’ve done.

This is it. This is what a better man looks like to me.

And the only way for me to be a better man was to scrape off all the man stuff—the stuff we both cringe at—and become woman.

Then when I found out that didn’t work either, I’ve had to scrape off all the woman stuff and be… whatever the hell is left.”

Scratch covered hir head with hir hands, like ze was trying to crawl into a cave. Ze was steering with hir knees, which made me a little nervous.

“Wait a minute,” Scratch said, hands back on the wheel. “Can we go back to this ‘better man’ stuff? I mean, why couldn’t you change? Leave behind ‘prick’ or ‘jerk’ or ‘arrogant asshole.’ Pick a different option.”

Scratch looked around for the words again. “What about ‘sensitive guy,’ ‘great father,’ ‘loving husband.’ You know, those kinds of guys.”

“Scratch, I’m well aware of the options in that category.”

“So maybe you could make yourself over without… without ripping off women! Men can be great; it’s when they take from other people that they get so obnoxious!”

“Like time and power and physical space, uh-huh….” Winc was nodding hir head.

“Right!” Scratch shouted. “Women have redefined ‘woman.’ You can bet they got some shit for it too. Why can’t men do that?”

Winc sighed and nodded. “They should. Don’t you think I’ve been racking my brain about that? All my life? Here’s all I know. Can you hear this for a minute?”

“Of course.” Scratch turned to Winc, and hir voice was all quiet. “I don’t like feeling this way.”

“That’s a lot of why I love you,” Winc said simply. “And of course I love all of you.” Winc’s eyes were still sad. “Let me try this,” ze went on. “Maybe ‘better man’ was just too hard for me to define. Maybe the only solution was to join the other category, the one that’s got some hope.”

Scratch looked calmer than ze had for a while. “You mean abandon the category of man altogether? Like maybe it isn’t a category worth saving, the way it’s defined now?”

“Yes, maybe that’s it.”

“Because it’s such a fucked-up category and doesn’t even work that well for men themselves?” Scratch looked like a kid in my classroom.

“Exactly, dear,” Winc said. “I enjoy femme, Scratch. I enjoy just being in your butch company. I enjoy lots of things when you’re being lots of things.”

Scratch’s expression was this weird combination of wild-eyed and calm at the same time. “That’s really incredible,” ze said slowly, staring at the dashboard. I watched to make sure ze looked up at the road again. Ze did. Finally.

“That’s subversive!” Scratch said, and started muttering. “That really blows my mind, and I think I’m freaking out again.”

Winc shrugged. “I can’t imagine trying to work from inside ‘male’ again. I can’t imagine what it would take. I don’t think I could do it.”

But Scratch’s eyes were all lit up. “I always say when men get in my space that they’re invading. But maybe they really want to be women. Well, maybe not women, but not men either. Maybe we’re all not-women and not-men! Traction again!”

Winc smiled for the first time in a while, but ze still looked kind of distant. “So you’re saying there should be only one category or no categories at all?”

Scratch nodded.

“Yeah,” Winc said. “That’s a good one.”

Right then, the car started to sputter and cough. Out of gas. Unbelievable. Then something really funny happened… Scratch and Winc said to each other, at the exact same time:

“I can’t believe you let the gas run out. Just like a guy!”

They looked at each other and cracked up, then said, “Simulpost!”