Punkzilla (13 page)

Lewis leaned toward me all concerned and said “What happened to your eye anyway?” and I told him how I got jumped by those punks in Idaho and he made a concerned face and asked if they took my money and I said they got most of it and how I had to hitch a ride and got dropped off at the motel. It sucked having to tell that whole story AGAIN. Then he asked me if I had a place to stay and I said I didn’t and he said I was more than welcome to stay with him and how he had two twin beds that were pushed together but that it would be no trouble for him to pull them apart.

P I looked hard at Lewis. I had to because I’m at the point now where I don’t trust anyone. I felt pretty sorry for him with his skinny arms and his oily face and his weird voice. He seemed really lonely but not in some perverted Alan Skymer way. At Washington House there was this old gay man who Branson called Sweet Larry and he would always try and get one of us to go up to his room with him by offering us free long-distance use on his phone and microwave dinners. Sweet Larry was fifty-something and had dyed hair and wore yellow aviator sunglasses and the same blue tank top every day. Sometimes he would point a finger gun at you and shoot it at you like he was hunting. He did it to Branson all the time but Branson would say “Yeah you wish Sweet Larry.” One time this kid named Diesel agreed to go up in his room because he thought he could steal Sweet Larry’s Tivo. Sweet Larry gave him a turkey sandwich and some French wine and Diesel wound up falling asleep on his sofa and when he woke up Sweet Larry was standing over him and jerking off and whimpering. When I looked hard at Lewis I had a gut feeling he wasn’t like that. Even though he looked a little weird he seemed like a decent person.

I said “You aren’t some pervert are you?” and he looked me square in the face and said “I promise you I’m no pervert.”

His room was more like an apartment than a motel room with a mini-refrigerator and a microwave oven and this little stove-top thing and pictures on the walls and plants on the air-conditioner thing and a pretty nice sound system.

Over his bed was a poster of that actress Scarlett Johansson. Do you know her P? She was in The Prestige if you ever saw that weird-ass movie. Anyway Lewis had a big poster of her above his bed so my theory about him being gay was definitely up in the air. If he was really gay he would have had a poster of Usher or Johnny Depp or some pretty dude with big eyelashes.

After Lewis pulled the beds apart he put new sheets on the one I was going to sleep in and then he asked me if I was hungry and I said I was starving so he cooked two Swanson Salisbury steak dinners in the microwave and gave me a can of cream soda.

Before he started to eat he took this little machine out of a black bag and pricked his finger and squeezed some blood on a tab thing and inserted the tab thing in the machine. Then he pulled out what looked like a big white pen and stuck himself in the side with it like right through his shirt and pressed this button thing at the top of the pen.

I asked him if he was a junkie and he told me he was a diabetic and that he was shooting insulin into his side and that the machine thing was a device called a glucometer that measured the sugar in his blood so he would know how much insulin he would need. When we started eating I asked him how many times a day he had to shoot that stuff into his side and he said four or five and I asked him if it hurt and he said you get used to it like anything else. I was impressed because he didn’t even wince when he stuck himself P. I can’t stand needles. Just the thought of them makes me feel tense. Lewis was way tougher than he looked.

P the microwave dinner was the best thing I ever tasted. I think it was probably because it was the first thing I’d eaten since Dale or Dave or Dan bought me those waffles and my taste buds were mad amped for some flavor. Lewis could’ve served me some dog food and I would have probably loved it.

After I was almost finished Lewis said he had two more microwave dinners and that I could have another one so I nodded and he nuked one. He was turning out to be really cool.

While eating the second microwave dinner I asked him why he lived in the motel and he said it was where he felt comfortable and then I asked him if he had family somewhere and he said his mom lived in Topeka Kansas and that his dad was “roaming around somewhere out there” and that they didn’t speak. And then I asked him if he had any kids and he said he didn’t and that the motel was a “transitional place” and I was like “From what to what?” and then he put his fork down and took a deep breath and blew it out all serious and said that he barely knew me and that I might want to run out of his room screaming but that it wouldn’t be the first time it freaked someone out and he pointed to the door and told me if I needed to leave that it wasn’t locked but to be careful with the screen door on the other side of the regular door because it tended to get stuck. I thought he was going to tell me he had just gotten out of prison for murder or rape or armed robbery or something.

But this is what he said P he said “I had top surgery a few months ago” and I was totally confused I was like “What’s top surgery?” and he said he’d had his breasts removed and had had some reconstructive work done to help form his new chest and I said “You mean you had titties?” and he said yes he did but that he preferred to call them breasts.

P as you can see this was turning out to be one of the weirdest conversations I’ve ever had. I said “So you were like BORN with boobs?” and he said that he was born a woman and I said “So you’re like a drag queen?” and he said “Not even remotely” and that he was someone who came into the world a woman and is transitioning to becoming a man. He said a drag queen is a man who likes to dress up in women’s clothes and a drag KING is a woman who likes to dress up in MEN’S clothes and wear fake mustaches and put cowboy boots on and perform a lot of karaoke. I said “So you’re not a drag ANYTHING?” and he said “There isn’t a cell of drag to be found where Lewis Williams is concerned.”

P I had to stop eating because I was so stunned.

Then I asked him when he decided he wanted to be a man and he said he made the decision after he got back from Iraq meaning the war meaning the first one back in the early nineties. He said back then he was known as Private First Class Louise Mills. This was a seriously crazy mind fuck P. I had met a lot of freaky people in Portland but no one like this. Then I asked him if he killed anyone in the war and he said no that he trained for it but mostly did administrative work in an office far away from the action.

What was weird P and I mean REALLY FUCKING WEIRD was that even though Lewis just told me he used to be a woman and had his titties removed I really believed he was a man. And the more I talked to him the more it seemed that way.

I asked him when he had the top surgery and he said three years ago and then I asked him if it was expensive and he said it was and he wouldn’t tell me the amount and he talked about how hard it is to find a doctor who will even do it and how insurance companies won’t cover the operation and how it totally wiped him out financially and how he put his life’s savings toward it and even had to sell his car and that’s why he lives in a cheap motel.

Then I was like “Do your parents know?” and he said his mom knew and that she was doing the best she could with it and how he was raised Roman Catholic like us P and how the church isn’t too supportive of “gender transitional people.” He said he and his mom talk a few times a month and that she’s really trying. Then I asked him about his dad and he said that they haven’t spoken in over fifteen years and it made me think of you and the Major and how that’s what’s happening to me and the Major too and how maybe that’s what happens to all dads and sons except for maybe E and the Major.

We were quiet for a minute and you could hear some of those truckers Erin was talking about walking around outside and playing radios. Then Lewis said how he really wanted to start taking T but how his blood was already too messed up from the diabetes and how he couldn’t quit smoking to save his life which was the worst thing a type A diabetic could do. I asked him what T was and he said it was testosterone as in the male hormone. I said “You take it so you can like grow a dick or something?” and he said T won’t grow you a dick but it does other things like changes your body in subtler ways like you start to get facial hair and your voice gets deeper and you get more aggressive.

Then I asked him if he wanted a dick and he said that it would be the ultimate goal and that there was an operation but that you could only afford it if you won “the flipping lottery” and he really said flipping instead of fucking and that reminded me of something Mom would do like when she wants to say shit but she says sugar foot instead.

Lewis took out his pack of Marlboros and gave me one and lit us and we both smoked. I have to admit I was eyeing his Salisbury steak dinner P because he hadn’t finished it and I was still starving even after eating two of them but instead of asking for the steak I asked him why he wanted to be a man and he said “Because that’s how I see myself. That’s how I’ve always felt on the inside.” Then I asked him if he thought I looked like a girl and he said that I have “softer features than your average bear” but that I definitely ACTED like a boy.

Man that was a relief to hear P. I mean Lewis probably has like superpowers when it comes to figuring these things out right? It was definitely a relief.

Then I asked him a totally crazy question P but it just came out and I was genuinely curious about it like in a totally scientific way and this is what I said I was like “When you were a woman did you slay lots of men?” and he said “Slay?” and I said “Fuck” and he was cool about it. He said he was with some men but that he found that he actually preferred women. I said “So you’re like a lesbian” and he said “At the time I guess I was technically a lesbian yes.”

I asked him if he had a girlfriend and he said that he did for a while but that she left him after his top surgery and how it took him by surprise but that it happens. He said her name was Anne and that she lived in Canada with another woman.

I said “So she really must have missed your titties” which was a rude thing to say P I realize it now. Lewis even got mad and said “please call them breasts” and I said “Breasts. Sorry.”

Then Lewis told me about when he and Anne spoke about him becoming a man and how she was so supportive and how they had made all sorts of plans for the future like they were even talking about getting married with a traditional wedding in a church with a priest and a big white cake and everything but how the grossness of the top surgery really freaked her out. He said the early recovery is mad brutal and how his flesh was inflamed for a long time and how he had to fight off an infection. Then one day he came home and she was gone.

I asked him if he thought she would come back and he said no and that he’s moving on and that that’s life. Then I pointed to that actress in the poster that Scarlett Johansson skeezer and I went “You like her?” and this is what Lewis said P I shit you not he said “If I had a dick I would fuck her six ways to Sunday” and then we both started laughing like crazy. Lewis sort of honked when he laughed like he was part duck or something. I had never heard a laugh like that.

He finished his cigarette before me and put it out in an ashtray. I asked him if he had a job and he said how he was living off his veteran’s pension and how the top surgery set him back a bit with the healing process and losing Anne. Then I asked him what he wanted to do and he said that he had a degree in history and that he wanted to get back into teaching. It turns out that when he was a woman he used to teach high school after he got back from Iraq. He was Ms. Mills and he taught history at some Catholic school in Illinois.

Then I said “How old are you anyway?” because I was really curious. I couldn’t figure it out at all. He said “You go right for the jugular don’t you? I’m thirty-six.”

Then I told him how you were twenty-seven and he asked about you and I told him your name and how you were a playwright and what your plays are about like about how fucked up the government is and how George Bush is a clown and how you had that one play about the leader of England called Blair Which Project? and how you used a bunch of spray paint in it and spray painted like forty-some boxes of Nabisco shredded wheat. He asked where you lived and I told him how you were in Memphis and how we’re from Cincinnati.

And then I told him what’s going on P. I told him about Buckner and Portland and being on the run and then I told him about how I was trying to get to you because of how you’re dying of cancer. When I heard myself say it out loud things got really fucked up and I like started punching myself like in my face and in my neck and I was suddenly crying like crazy in that way that makes it really hard to breathe it was almost like I was drowning but Lewis wrapped me up pretty quick and man he was stronger than I thought. He wrapped his arms around me and just sort of brought me to the ground and held me and I was panting and my head was throbbing and I thought I was going to throw up in my mouth and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. He just held me like that for a minute and then he said “Is your brother with your family?” and after like ten breaths I told him how you were with your boyfriend and I told him about Jorge and about you two being gay lovers I hope that’s cool P. I know how some people like to keep their relationships on the down low but I figured Lewis was cool. We were still on the floor and we both wound up sitting there sort of Indian-style like we were about to play duck-duck-goose or something. And then I told him about Mom and the Major and about E and about how I ran away from Buckner and we smoked like four more cigarettes and he put this band on called Wolf Parade that I had never heard before but I liked them a lot and then a few minutes later more of those truckers I was telling you about started coming over from that parking lot and there was a knock on the door and Lewis answered it and this guy who wasn’t a trucker came in and Lewis scored some weed that came in this little plastic terrarium and then the guy left and we wound up getting really stoned like it was maybe the best weed I’ve ever smoked in my life. Man I really think you would love this guy P. I mean I realize he might not be totally a GUY yet like in a medical way but you would definitely like him.