grl2grl (6 page)

A clump of hair fell into my lap and J.J. went, “Oops.” She sucked air between her teeth. “I got too close. Your brain is
exposed.”

“Funny.”

“It’s oozing out.”

“Apply pressure,” I said.

“It’s green. It looks like kryptonite.”

“Call Superman.”

“It’s glomming up my dog shaver. It’s swelling to twice its size. It’s going to blow. Kaboom!”

“Shut up and shave.”

Another clump of hair dropped into my lap.

Now I’d look completely butch. Because I was — strong, powerful, and defiant.

Don’t mess with me. I’ll take you down.

Sure I will. Big talk.

My thoughts drifted back to yesterday. She’d waited. Taunia. For an answer. Standing there, gazing into my eyes, attempting
to hold my attention. So sweet.

A twinge in my belly, then… nothing. The dead seeping in. Empty. Hard.

“I can’t,” I’d told her. I’d walked away.

“Cam.” She’d caught up and grabbed my belt loop from behind. “Why? Why won’t you go out with me? Don’t you like me?”

I’d crimped my eyes closed. Don’t let her know, I thought. She’d never understand. “No.” Gruff voice. “What made you think
I would?”

She’d released her hold on me and stuttered a breath.

Good. I’d hurt her feelings. That’d teach her. That’d show her who she was dealing with. I’d left her there, demolished.

The power fed me.

Then, not three hours later, she called me. “Hi, Cam. Know who this is?” Her voice was all teasing and sexy.

The girl I just pounded into dog meat?

“We don’t have to go any place public, you know. We could just, like, meet somewhere and talk.”

“Why are you doing this?”

She hesitated. “Doing what?”

I didn’t answer. Why didn’t she get it?

“I told you, I like you. I want to go out with you and get to know you better. I think you’re brave —“

I slammed down the phone. My breathing came in rasps, like an asthma attack. Except I don’t have asthma.

“Who was that?” He hollered from the hole, otherwise known as our family room. Family. You’d have to defile the
name to call us a family. Families cared about one another. They cherished and respected one another. Families provided safety,
security, refuge. I can’t remember one day in my whole entire life that I ever felt safe.

“Cammie, who was it?” He bellowed.

“No one,” I called through the doorway. “Wrong number. They hung up.”

“Come in here,” He said.

No. Please no.

My stomach rots. The space around me shrinks and fades. It shrivels gray.

“Cammie?” His voice sugars. “Honey?”

I go, because I have to. He’s my Lord and Master.

He’s my Father.

“Hey, baby.” He coos it. From behind the greasy recliner, I see His hand reach out to me. I clench my teeth. His fingers spread.
I place my hand inside His. He squeezes, holds on, leads me around to the front of Him. “Hey.” His lips curl up at both ends.
It’s not a smile. More a leer. “Take down your hair,” He says. “You know I like it down.”

The bile rises in my throat, but I choke it back. I’m starting to shake. He lets go of my hand and I remove the elastic band
from my ponytail. He waggles His index finger for me to lean over. Cupping His hand around the back of my head, He kisses
me. On the lips.

The pressure on my head increases. It shifts. Pushing me down. To His lap; to my knees.

I know what’s coming. I shut myself off.

Cold. Hard.

“I had a lousy day,” He tells me. “My boss is a jerk. One of these days…

“… I wish I had the balls to leave. Just up and quit.” He scoots forward. He unzips his pants. “That’d show ’em.”

I fade, fade, fade away.

Last night. Last week. Last year. As long as I can remember, back when I was six, eight, before Mom skipped. He never said,
“Don’t tell.” Or if He did I don’t remember. No, it was “This is what daddies and their little girls do.” It was “Baby, I
love you so much. You please me so much.”

I wanted to please Him. I had to. He was my father. I knew if I told He’d be mad. They’d take Him away, or me. With Mom gone,
I’d have no one at all.

It went on for years. Every night. At first I cried and He’d say, “Shut up. That didn’t hurt. If you want me to hurt you,
I will. Get on your knees.”

Too long, too late. No one could save me now. This is what it is. This is who I am.

Stone. Butch.

Stone cold butch. That’s me. Dead. Inanimate. Object. You could take a sledgehammer to me, crack me down the middle,
and all you’d find inside would be dirt. You wouldn’t want to get your hands dirty. Don’t break me.

I needed to be more butch. That was all. I needed the power.

I tried a couple of times to melt the magma. With Reina, my first girlfriend. It was good in the beginning. As long as I did
her. But when she wanted to reciprocate, I couldn’t. I could not go there. She started getting this need, this mission to
bring me. To share in her ecstasy. She wanted it so bad, to love me, that I learned to fake it to make her happy. And it did
for a while. It satisfied her. But the deceiving made me feel like shit. Lying together afterward, her telling me how happy
it made her that I felt good. Me saying, “I’m glad.”

I finally broke it off with Reina; I told her I was doing someone else. Someone better, who could make me come a hundred times
faster. That hurt her. It hurt her bad enough she’d never want me back.

Mission accomplished. Then there was this girl at the homecoming dance, the party afterward at someone’s house. I was so wasted,
she got as far as taking off my bra. I remember watching her as if I was sitting in a dark theater, mesmerized by a movie.
A movie starring me. The way her tongue played with my nipple, sucking me into her mouth. I watched from the front row, scene
after smoldering scene, flickering across my stone face, my glassy eyes. I felt nothing. Direct
stimulation and I couldn’t feel a thing. Because what I saw in my movie was Him. Doing it to me.

He ruined me. He turned me into stone.

I let Him.

J.J. and I walked to school and she left me at my locker. Taunia appeared at the end of the hall. She waved at me, like, hi.
Here I am if you were looking for me. She was obviously brain-dead. No, she wasn’t. She was smart and nice and sexy. She smiled,
all hopeful. The thing she was hoping for, I could never deliver.

“I don’t give up easily,” she said.

That is your fatal flaw, I thought. I tossed my backpack into the bowels of my locker and yanked the skullcap off my head.

Her eyes expanded. “Oh wow,” she breathed. “You buzzed it. I love that.” Not the reaction I expected. I wanted her to think
I was bad, hostile. Same way I need Him to react — to not want to touch me ever again. To be afraid. Because maybe, maybe
I looked like a guy now. That would repulse Him. I’d look strong. Able to resist.

She reached up to feel my scalp. I don’t know why I let her touch me. I knew I wouldn’t feel. “It’s soft,” Taunia whispered.
Her fingertips pressed lightly and she ran her palm along the side of my head, down the back, caressing my ear. Nothing. No
shiver of pleasure. I had the most compelling urge to
lean into her and let her hold me. Hold me up. Because the crust was crumbling under me and I was disintegrating.

Taunia’s face closed in on mine and she said in this sincere voice, “I loved your film. It really spoke to me. I was so moved,
Cam. All those sad and hungry people at the soup kitchen, they just made me cry.”

My eyes wanted — needed — to fill with water. I wanted the water to spill over and stream down my cheeks and striate my face.
I wanted it to furrow a canyon and dig deep into my heart to carve a safe place for her.

But I couldn’t. Tears were weak. Tears would be letting go; giving in.

“The way you stood up to Mr. Thatcher. Wow.”

Yeah, I thought. Look what it got me.

“Please,” she said. “Go out with me once. If you have a terrible time, we don’t have to do it again. But you won’t. I promise.”
She touched the tip of my ear. Traced the arc of it. She looked into my eyes.

I summoned all the strength I could muster to match her gaze. She was hopeful. It was the expectation in their eyes I could
never resist.

I let out a long breath.

Butch. It didn’t mean bastard.

I’d allow her this dream. The movie she saw with a co-starring role. But she’d predict the ending long before intermission.
Taunia would find me out. Word would spread.

Cammie is cold. She’s a stone cold butch.

W
e had to copy ten reasons off the board why we should practice abstinence.

1. Birth control. The only 100% effective method
.

Duh. Any nine-year-old could’ve figured that one out. Birth control didn’t exactly apply to me.

2. Prevent the spread of STDs and HIV
.

Okay. Sexually transmitted diseases might be a valid concern. HIV? Not likely. The chances were slim, and not because I wasn’t
having sex.

3. Personal responsibility and self-control
.

Give me a break. Who has self-control?

4, 5, 6:
All this moralistic crap about respecting your body and your partner’s; protecting your reputation. I respected my body.
You had to earn a reputation first, didn’t you?

Problem with the abstinence theory was the answer to the question Chad Bennett had asked. He must’ve used up his one brain
cell to formulate an actual intelligent question. “Mrs. Errasco,” he said. “What if we don’t plan on getting married?”

Chad’s clone, Dirk the Jerk, blurted out, “Yeah. What if we’re confirmed bachelors, like me and my homeboy Chad here?”

Mrs. Errasco smirked. “You’ll be playing a lot of solitaire, won’t you?”

Catcalls. Whoops. Dirk whistled. Errasco didn’t answer the question. She stood poised with the blackboard eraser in her hand
and said, “Do you have these down? There are four more reasons.”

I piped up, “Answer the question. Because I’d like to know too.”

Mrs. Errasco glared at me. Everyone did. What else is new? She’d hated me from day one when I’d asked if we were going to
talk about same-sex stuff in here or if I was just wasting my time with so-called “Sex Ed.”

“We’re not supposed to do it until marriage, okay?” I repeated. “But what if we’re not allowed to
get
married? Like me. How long am I supposed to wait?”

Chad muttered, “Until the cows come home. Mooo.”

I spun around and flipped him the bird.

Chad held up his hands defensively.

Errasco ignored us and erased the board.

“I’m serious, Mrs. Errasco. How does this abstinence theory apply to us? Are we never supposed to have sex? Ever?”

She set the eraser in the chalk tray and faced front. The atmosphere in the room shifted. Desks creaked. A pencil broke. Minds?
Did they shake loose? Doubtful.

“Well, Aimee.” Errasco’s eyes lit on me. “I guess that’s between you and your god.”

I stormed out after class. My god? My
god?
What did she know about my god? She probably thought since I was gay, I was godless. Against religion. But I’m not. I have
a god. I go to church. My god isn’t
her
god. My god doesn’t scorn or condemn me. My god is kind and benevolent and accepting. We made a sacred pact. I’d be the best
person I could be and God would save me a place in heaven. My heaven. The real one, where it doesn’t matter who you are or
how you look or how you sacrifice your dignity and self-respect most days just to be true to yourself.