"Queer"

The room is dark, the window open. Cool night air softly blows the glossy curtains until they billow and wave.

He watches her stealthy shape moving carefully, cautious of every creak in the floor. She goes to the window and there’s a lump in his throat. She starts to climb out and he forces himself to speak.

“Take me with you. Please.”

She stops and looks in the direction of his voice.

“I can’t.”

Hot tears glisten his eyes and he blinks them back, swallows the lump.

“I’m sorry.”

And with that, she climbs out with what few things she has and is gone.

He weeps into a blouse that still wears her scent.

“You're such a delicate boy
In the hysterical realm
Of an emotional landslide
In physical terms”
Cherry Lips – Garbage

“I suck my tongue
In remembrance of you”
Possibly Maybe – Bjork

He remembers his mother watching one of her movies and he absolutely fell in love with her and her style.

That sent him into a panic. He was a boy who liked girls, he was quite sure of that, but he wanted to dress like a girl.

When he was a boy, ten or so, and was home alone, he’d curiously slip on a few of his mother’s dresses, and then hurriedly hang them up, feeling ashamed and not knowing why.

As a teenager he was social with both boys and girls, more partial to girls. He’d flip through their fashion magazines and be in perfect awe of all the glamorous clothes with the beautiful models and then have a pang of jealousy and a sense of disappointed hurt when he realized he couldn’t dress the same.

It wasn’t fair! Women had dresses, skirts, pants, and a whole assortment of things to wear to beautify their being, while men just had suits. No matter how you colored or patterned it, it was still a suit.

He kept those hurts secret though, tried to make himself look as much as a boy as he could, but it was impossible since he looked like a girl. He thought as he progressed through puberty he would eventually grow facial hair that would hide this cherry mouth and make him appear more masculine, but grew too fine a fuzz to be noticed.

The hair on his head, however, grew in thick honey-colored curls that the girls gushed over but, the boys teased and tried to yank it out. He thought about just shearing it all clean off but his sister, Alice, begged him not to because she liked practicing braids with it and decorating it with all kinds of clips and ribbons and barrettes. He liked that too, but he never let it be known. His girlfriends wouldn’t let him get away with it, either.

He especially kept it long because Beatriz would play in it.

After she ran away, he was a wreck. He missed her terribly. It felt like someone had snatched his heart from his ribcage. He took it the worse out of the whole family.

He’d go to the room that had been hers, smell her clothes, take a few articles, and use them to dress his spare pillow and cuddle “her” at night. He grew out of that eventually but the weight on his heart lessened only little.

He wanted to throw the clothes away, he tried, but he couldn’t. An old curiosity came back and impulsively, he began taking off his clothes to try on hers. His figure was svelte, and the clothes bagged slightly, being that he lacked hips and full breasts. Other than that, they fit with no problem. In her skirt and blouse, he saw that he did look like a girl. A gangly girl with a pretty face and large hands and feet but, still he could pass.

He felt giddiness for some reason and brushed one side of his hair over one eye (like his idol, Miss Lake) and put his mouth in a pout. It was eerie how much he looked like a girl but, he didn’t feel like one. He felt more like himself, more alive.

He kept it his little secret. His little decadent secret. And deliciously it still is. Now, he is older, his hair cut tasteful and stylish for a man of his profession. Well, it’s not his profession; it’s his father’s.

He didn’t want to be a lawyer but, he never had any other idea of what he wanted to do and it was already the family business. He was very good at being a lawyer and it paid very well.

He also had a girlfriend, though he didn’t really like her and he could tell she didn’t really like him. Both of them came from prominent families; their relationship being more for show, idealistic imagery. She was too pampered and lived off a trust fund, parasitic social climber. Parties too much, thinks too little. Not too nice, either.

Even more, he didn’t like the way she dressed, did her make-up or hair. She dressed too skimpy in clothes that complemented not at all, her haircut was wrong for her face, and the mask she called make-up resembled the face of an impish girl who just went willy-nilly through her mother’s lipsticks and powders.

Total Frankenskank.

He thought about informing her of her fashion faux-pas but, he imagined he would just laugh annoyingly, and call him a fag. Just like the girls before her.

He didn’t think about her now as he stood before the vanity mirror, the lights bright, in his favorite dress: a red, satin number, meant for cocktails and cock teases. It was the perfect mix of classy and trashy and flattered his willowy shape. He hummed as he applied lipstick, rouge, eyeliner, eyelashes, shadow and a dab of perfume on pulse points. And now, the piece de resistance, a “Veronica Lake” wig, brushed to perfection.

He felt free. He looked like a real woman, not some queen off the street, some confused boy in his mother’s evening frock and face-paint. If he caught himself in a mirror, he’d confuse himself with a portrait of a trophy wife. If he didn’t say a word, he could fool himself.

He was sure his guest for the evening was in for quite the shock.