Page 30 of Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run

NARRATIVE ENTRY, JABBATHEHUT

Lieutenant Wallace Budge crumples up the empty popcorn bag in his lap. “Tell me again,” he says very patiently, the kind of patience that makes an underling nervous, “exactly what you saw. Just one more time for me, please.”

The uniform in front of him takes a deep breath. “We hadn’t gotten your memo yet, sir, so all we had to go on was a young white male, adolescent, or some threesome including a young, white…” His voice trails off.

“Yes, I understand. Go on,” says Budge, oh-so-courteously.

“So we go to Nathan’s, like we’d been advised.”

Budge is on him like a hawk. “Nathan’s? Why Nathan’s?”

“Umm… we were hungry, sir, and our dispatcher said they had the best damn hot dogs. And they do. I’ve never tasted such good—”

“Uh-huh,” Budge interrupts. “So you’re at Nathan’s. And did you see a threesome fitting the description they’ve got at the gate?”

“What? The guy, his daughter, and his wife?”

“Yes, those would be the ones.”

“Yeah! But sir, you said they were criminals, and that the minor would be a young boy! We were going pretty fast, looking at all these people. There was a very suspicious-looking threesome, let me tell you!” The cop rocks back on his heels a bit.

“Is that right? And why were they suspicious?”

“Well, one was young, and the other two were older, and the young one was white, the other two were Black, and they had sweatshirts on.”

“I see. Thank you, Officer, that’s fine.”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, we just didn’t—”

“Right, I understand,” says Budge, the last drops of patience dripping out of him like hot oil from an overheated engine.

He heads to the gate, where a nervous security guard directs him to a security cam monitor.

Endless bad footage of black-and-white figures dances on the snowy screen.

He scans forward as Budge watches. And watches.

And then sees them: the Scratch and Winc and Toobe family.

One’s playing the father, one the mother, and sure enough, there’s Toobe buried under a young girl’s guise. Looks uncomfortable as hell.

“Did you stop these three?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I did, sir.” He starts to look pleased, then checks himself. He did let them go, after all.

Budge can’t believe his own good behavior. He simply looks up, eyes encouraging. “And?”

“Well, they looked normal enough, and they were in kind of a hurry.”

Budge swivels his head around like an old dog. “A… hurry?”

“Well, yeah. The young one was having her first time, you know? Her monthly. The mother says they have to get her to the bathroom. Kind of embarrassing. I didn’t know if there was gonna be some kind of… accident or something.”

Budge smiles for the first time that day, but it’s not a happy smile; in fact, it resembles something more like a grimace.

“I can see why you might not have pursued that line of questioning,” is all he says.

“Yessir.”

Budge crumples up the nearest thing to him. It’s a paper ashtray full of butts.

“Aw shit.”

END JABBA NARRATIVE ENTRY

GWYNYTH DIARY ENTRY: AS SEEN ON TV

Three bedraggled outlaws are now draped over various of my overstuffed furniture, their eyes glued to the television. We are watching instant replay coverage of the hunt in the park.

Fortunately, our outlaws sped off in that car, losing any tails that might have been chasing. Chasing tails! Hah! As far as I can tell, they just drove in a great big circle because now they’re back with me.

My worst fears were confirmed when I saw a huge net of uniformed police converging on the amusement park, not thirty feet from my own home.

Perhaps I was rash to carve my lair out of the warehouse space beneath the roller coaster.

No, they’ve not found any of my doorways…

they won’t find us here. Especially since the cops think they drove off into the sunset.

In any case, the pigs at last fled the scene, leaving behind them the jackals of the press.

There they were, their prey clearly my young charge, whose photograph they persistently flash every chance they get.

Just when I’d despaired the whole ruse was up, the three of them came bursting through my door, looking for all the world like some sitcom from Hades. Cats scattered everywhere.

Why no one picked them up is beyond me. Their disguises had slipped considerably, and they were flushed with the chase.

They were laughing and crying and hugging me, though two of them had not met me before.

None of them have commented on my beard.

Perhaps they realize that, at this point, they’ve no room to cast stones.

END GWYNYTH DIARY ENTRY

TOOBE ENTRY

Awesome! All clear! Gwynyth says we can stay here ’til the heat dies down. Winc even called my dad to let him know I’m okay. Whoops, good idea, I forgot about that. He was relieved I was with Winc; he trusts hir completely.

Gwynyth says I can be online again; I just have to use all her tools. When we got to her house, it was like some bizarre family gathering. Only I liked all of them.

And Gwynyth’s going to teach me a lot more about her “craft,” as she calls it. She’s a phone phreak too.

We were on TV! Cops swarming all over the place.

Then the guy talked to the press, the guy I saw in that photograph that time he caught me online.

Must have been an old one, cuz he looked grayer now, and his face was like some action hero, all craggy and pockmarked.

Both Scratch and Winc said at the same time, “Kinda sexy.”

They looked at each other in surprise for a second. Then they cracked up.

Then their fight started again.

First, Winc pointed out that Scratch’s theories about everybody just being human weren’t working since ze obviously couldn’t handle Winc.

Then Scratch saw that Winc was getting dressed back in women’s clothes and said, “I thought you were going to be neutral, a no-gender creature.”

I was beginning to feel less scared and more tired of it all. They sounded like little brats! Gwynyth told me it was a good sign when that happened, but I didn’t get it.

“They’re running out of steam, child,” was all she’d say.

END TOOBE ENTRY

GWYNYTH DIARY ENTRY

To: Jabbathehut

From: Gwynyth

Subj: Three Blind Mice

Toobe calls them The Mighty Morphin’ Ninja Turtle Rangers. I call them “The Three Stooges.” Whatever they are, they are safe from any immediate danger. Thank you for your caution as to my privacy, but I am quite delighted at present.

Still I’m concerned that the Police State has added “Kidnapping” and “Corruption of a Minor” to the growing list of non-charges for the other two. It’s all over the media and the Net. They must go their separate ways. They had no *overt* objections to spending time away from each other.

Poor children! I’m sorely tempted to intervene with a lovers’ spell, but I’ve lived this long without resorting to one of those, as well you know.

Will write more as it surfaces.

—Gwyn

P.S. I won’t be charging you for any of this. I haven’t had this much fun since the day we hacked our way into Fort Monmouth and left all those pictures!

P.P.S. Have rerouted my phone lines to appear as located in Six Flags Amusement Park in California. That should keep the hounds at bay. Monterey Bay. Hahaha! See what I did there?

END GWYNYTH DIARY ENTRY

TOOBE ENTRY

Gwynyth’s got this cool beard! More than I can grow. I noticed Winc looking at it a lot. We haven’t had a chance to talk in private yet; it’s been too crazy.

Everybody was bouncing around, reacting to all the stuff we’d just been through.

Gwynyth shed some light on Jabba’s ways, how she “never deals in possibilities,” only sure things.

I told Scratch and Winc I needed them to be with me.

It helped to see my friends. That even seemed to make them feel better.

Scratch and Winc are going back home, but Gwynyth’s giving them cool bypasses to avoid detection: all leading back to amusement parks around the country, and there are hundreds of them!

I made the mistake of asking Gwynyth why amusement parks, and she got out this album with postcards and photos of every single fun park in it, and lots of close-ups of the roller coasters.

A whole album full. It took a couple of hours, but her stories made it fun.

As they were getting ready to leave, Scratch was calmer again. “Okay, just tell me,” ze said to Winc. “If you’re big on not being a woman or a man, why do you wear women’s clothing?”

“I’ve answered that question every way I can! What do you want me to do, break out singing ‘I Enjoy Being a Girl’? Look, Scratch, just how far do you think I’d get if I let my beard grow and walked around in a dress?”

Gwynyth snorted at that one, but she didn’t say anything. Winc must’ve heard her, cuz ze went all red but kept talking. I never knew Winc had to shave!

“Or maybe you’d rather I wore men’s clothes and a mustache but you could see my breasts?”

Scratch looked like one of those surreal pictures where light shines down on somebody from out of the sky.

“Oh, man,” ze said. “You speak truth, my friend.”

Then Scratch shared what it was like to walk around on the street in anywhere but a big city. Scratch was dressed as hir normal self I guess, with jeans and a T-shirt and boots.

“They’d kill me,” Scratch said, nodding. “And they’d kill you.”

END TOOBE ENTRY

To: T. Sparrow

From: Drew

Subject: Read this…

Hi Dad,

Talk me down? Here’s an excerpt from Toobe’s journal (above)—that cool little kid I was telling you about.

That was about a conversation from 30 years ago about the dangers of being gender nonconforming in public.

Makes me so sad and so fucking mad. Even 5 years ago I would have said things are better now, but they’re worse. They’re worse.

Yer kid Drew