3. Yapping
YAPPING
The speckles on the large waxy green leaf were the exact color of milky tea his grandmother liked to make. Oscar would know, given he’d spent the last fifteen minutes studying their exact shape while he rambled on and on about his mother.
“I sound like a walking cliché,” he said, huffing as he ran a hand through his overgrown fluff of brown hair. It had grown thicker and wavier since he’d started T.
“Why do you think so?” Christina crossed her legs, her black wide-leg pants swishing against her corded armchair.
She pushed her large black plastic-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose, her blonde bob brushing the edge of her chin, an encouraging smile on her round, pretty face. “Why are you a walking cliché?”
“Isn’t it very Freudian to cut off your boobs to spite your mother?” Oscar met her eyes briefly, waiting for her lips to quirk. He shouldn’t be this proud of being able to make his therapist crack up, but at least it confirmed he was great at self-deprecation and deflective humor, if nothing else.
“I’m sure Freud would have something to say about it,” Christina replied.
She adjusted the shoulders of her pale pink silk top and reached for her mug of tea, taking a sip. At the beginning, Oscar had asked how it didn’t get cold throughout their session. He’d learned about mug warmers that day. It had been a fun discovery, but an investment he had yet to make.
“Except…” Christina said, “haven’t you spoken about your deep desire for this surgery since the first time we met?”
“I guess.” Oscar shrugged. His gaze landed on the green waxy plant again, this time sliding down the brown ribbed stalks.
They made him think of the wafers Grandma liked to buy.
“The thing is, they made me feel terrible, and I couldn’t look in the mirror sometimes.
Or even down at myself. Anyway…you remember. ”
“It’s okay if you need to revisit.” Christina waved an arm, encouraging him to continue.
“I know, deep down, I’ve wanted this surgery…
needed it…as much as I needed to get on hormones and change my name.
It just sucks that every time I observe any measure of progress, any minor change, I immediately think about her and what she’d have to say.
I thought I’d be over it by now.” Oscar leaned over to the table and took a sip of water.
“Over what?” Christina asked.
“Over her.” Oscar tugged on the edge of his finger. “Over my mom.”
“Oscar, healing is not linear, and there’s still a lot of unpacking you have to do about your mother.
Your feelings are more complex than just anger and disappointment, and there are issues which are still unresolved.
” Christina stopped there. Oscar supposed she knew she didn’t need to remind him about all the scars his father’s death had left him with and all the hard days that had come after.
“I know.” Oscar drew in a breath. “But, yeah, to answer your original question, I feel fine. I’m happy it’s happened, and it feels like the worst is over.”
When Oscar walked out of Christina’s office with instructions to focus on the family members who had actually been there for him, his pockets were much lighter, but his heart was not.
Despite spending a good fifty minutes talking about the complex feelings surrounding his surgery, Oscar was still preoccupied.
He should have told Christina about the familiar creeping thoughts that had taken root after Aaron had stopped texting the previous night.
Lucas had told him to calm down and wait before jumping to any conclusions, but Oscar wasn’t very good at the first and quite a natural when it came to the second. His phone hadn’t vibrated once since he’d woken up, not even a good morning message from Lina.
He pulled it out of his pocket, a little confused and very irritated to find no notifications, not even a lousy cheer for all the steps he’d racked up walking to the clinic.
He was about to start grinding his teeth and railing at his fate when his eyes snagged on the little crescent moon sitting next to the battery.
Nice one, Spike.
Oscar bit down on his tongue as he turned off Night Mode, embarrassment flooding him as all the notifications that had been suppressed glided up his screen as though to demonstrate his hastiness and how quick he was to anger. Something he’d inherited from his mother, he supposed.
Lina’s message buried itself under the steps mascot, but it wasn’t this that caught his eye. It was the essay that awaited from CowBoy0705, long enough that the message cut itself off with ellipses.
Oscar stopped walking, leaning against the brick wall of the post office, his heart racing as he clicked on the message.
CowBoy0705: I feel awful. I’m so sorry about yesterday.
I know I was supposed to text you every hour for as long as you worked, but in the late afternoon I had an important errand and I don’t have data, so I couldn’t text you.
By the time I got back home, my battery was dead and my brain was fried.
I got into the shower and plugged my phone in, but I dozed off while I was waiting for it to charge enough to light up.
I only woke up in the morning. I’m really, really sorry. I want to make it up to you!
Another message sat just below it, an hour or so later, during his session with Christina.
CowBoy0705: I’ve come up with a way to apologize. May I? *pleads*
Oscar couldn’t help the smile curling his lips. For a moment longer, he stood with his back against the wall, eyes grazing the messages that had been waiting for him. Lucas had been right, then.
Spikey: It better be good.
The bouncing dots appeared almost instantly, and Oscar suddenly felt bad.
Who was he to make Aaron feel like he needed to apologize for having a life outside their conversations?
They barely even knew each other, and Aaron didn’t really owe him anything.
Before Aaron could send anything else, Oscar quickly typed out a teasing emoji with its tongue hanging out.
The dots stopped bouncing.
What came instead was a picture. When it loaded, it was another knitted thing, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. Oscar’s eyes snagged on the shape of Aaron’s fingers, the way they curled to cup the small round trans-flag-coded thing.
CowBoy0705: Trans cap for Luigi :D
Something clicked in Oscar’s chest that reminded him of Papa, lighting a flame that simmered in his core. He smiled down at his phone, at Aaron’s username, at the trans cap he’d knit just to make it up to him for not texting.
Spikey: The Court finds you innocent of all charges.
Oscar pushed himself off the wall and walked, eyes on the black screen, on the conversation that was once again a living thing.
He’d meant to drink in the sights of his town, having confined himself to his home for everything except his doctor’s appointments.
It hadn’t even been completely necessary after a while, but Oscar liked being home.
He liked sitting on his couch playing video games and eating cookies and gummy bears.
The deep scent of warm coffee and cinnamon drew his attention to the shopfront that colored so many of his best memories from before life without Papa.
Oscar studied the large wooden sign, the golden lettering refreshed from a time before Oscar.
It was a quaint coffee house, like most things in Oscar’s town—small and old and family-run.
Before the bouncing dots could transform into a text message, Oscar took a picture of the window, capturing the brown leather-seat booths and shiny square tables, the ghost of a waitress passing through in the middle of his snap.
Some other time. Oscar needed to get some groceries now that he was out. He’d said he’d make more cookies, and he craved the smell of Papa’s cooking in his apartment, drowning out the stench of his mother’s influence, clinging to him like a stain since his appointment with Christina.
Oscar hated supermarkets. He always had. As a child, Papa would buy his good behavior by letting him sit in the cart. As he’d grown older, Papa would let him push. And when they got to the chocolate aisle, Papa would let him go nuts and get whatever he wanted.
As a man, Oscar cringed at the memory of how many shinily-wrapped bars he’d throw in, the clear bags of gummies, the large, bright sharing bags of potato chips.
Papa had never complained, but Oscar remembered him rubbing his forehead as the bill came up at the register.
He’d make Oscar organize the bags while he paid, rifling through his wallet.
Oscar had never quite done the addition.
Now he knew his father would have been looking for coupons.
Now he understood why his father’s shampoo was always so runny, topped off with water, why Papa always baked his favorite cookies and never had any ready-packed snacks to tear open for himself.
Oscar never went into supermarkets anymore, not if he could help it.
Once every few months, when the spice jars got a little too empty and the stocked bags of flour and sugar and supermarket-brand kilo pasta ran out, he’d go on a cost-saving shopping trip to fill his cupboards for many weeks to come.
But today was not that day.
“Hey, Paul,” Oscar said, waving at the cashier as he picked up a blue plastic basket.
“Oz! Been a while. You good, kid?” Paulie turned the page, snapping his newspaper open. His frameless glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, two-day-old white stubble dotting his chin.
“Had my surgery,” Oscar replied, offering the old man a smile.
He’d always liked Paulie, ever since Papa would bring him and Lina in so he could get the newspaper and the magazines his mother liked.
Paulie would give each of them a candy. Lina liked strawberry.
Oscar liked the lemon ones. He hated how chewy the strawberry candies were and how they got stuck in his teeth.