check your sugarcoat at the door

From a dog-eared page in my copy of Trace Elements of Random Teaparties by Felicia Luna Lemus:

            “In the 1950s bar days, there was a word most dykes would have hissed my direction in an attempt to describe me. Ki-ki. “That one’s ki-ki, a neither-nor,” they would have said loud enough for me to hear, to try to shame me out of their world. “One night she’s a femme prowling pretty for a butch, next night she’s a tom cruising for a lady. Never know what you’ll get, not when she dresses in the morning, not the way she talks, tells a story, acts. She’s trouble, that one.” I’m tough, I could have taken the sneers, but the thing was, time had come I wasn’t even willing to play the tidy-shift role of ki-ki.

            I’d seen signs at intersections that read ‘Diagonal Crossing Allowed.’ Those signs fascinated me. See, even when diagonal crossing is permitted, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of people walk lines perpendicular to the well-traveled roads. Why? Fuck if I know. What I did know was that my life depended on me crossing the street diagonally, sometimes in a winding circular pattern for that matter.

            I wasn’t a boy, not entirely at least, but at times I wasn’t a girl either. Rob would have accused me of being a traitor for claiming part boy. Rob and her blue rosette teacups, she was always ranting and griping and smoking her cigarettes real mean when she talked about how much it bothered her to see hard-core bulldaggers we knew taking hormones and getting the fat removed from their breasts and then cutting their names in half. As if “Rob” was the name her mamá gave that delicate little flower.

            Regardless, there were times I was at least part boy. A femme boy deep down. Shy sweater fag, my cardigan on hand to comfort me in the cold world. Bookworm queer boy at heart, K told me on more than one occasion. Certain moods and I was the most enviable of drag princesses, eyelashes all a-flutter and my fingers tickling the air with each gesture. Sometimes I was full of flirtatious swagger, but that playful swag could turn fierce snarl for defense if need be. Never, I promised myself one line I wouldn’t cross, never would I be the mean kind of boy that laughed me back inside the store’s red doors when I did no good at hot afternoon sour pissing games. Of course, there were plenty of times I was such a fairy lady that I ceased to be even part boy.

            Yes, Rob would have accused me of bringing the communal growl down for saying I’m part boy. And Stonewall dykes would have wanted me to call my game. What kind of dyke was I anyway? Good question. Simple and complicated all at once, I wasn’t a pigeon to be tucked away neatly into a hole. I didn’t wear a fixed category without feeling pain. I was more, or less, or something different entirely.”

-CJ