Blaschko’s Lines
Blaschko’s Lines
Memorial Day weekend came and a truck arrived to fill the pool.
It was blistering hot and muggy, and Liko couldn’t suit up and dive in fast enough.
Dane was slower to come downstairs, putting on and taking off a sunshirt four times while auditioning excuses.
I’m fanatical about sun exposure, he could say, or, I have new ink and I don’t want the sun on it.
“This is so fucking stupid,” he muttered, taking it off.
He’s a decent, gracious guy, Diane said. Most likely he’ll notice the scars and mind his own beeswax. And if he asks, treat it like you used to treat Saskia’s questions: Answer only what’s asked.
“You’re right,” Dane said, tossing the shirt on the bed.
Fuck it.
“Fuck everything. I’m forty-six years old, what do I care what he thinks?”
And you’re fucking gorgeous, remember? Hey, if he’s rude or makes fun, you’ll know he’s not worth your time. Don’t worry about it.
Dane went down to the pool shirtless, worrying anyway.
“Goddamn, this is the life,” Liko said, drifting on one of the floats. His hair was all slicked back over a pair of Wayfarers, and he looked dynamite. Dane felt things stirring below the belt and quickly dove in.
“Wow, nice ink,” Liko said as Dane surfaced in the shallow end. “Holy shit, let me see.”
He paddled closer as Dane turned slowly around.
He had the same wisteria blossoms as Nomi, but only on the right side of his body.
The vines started a little below his elbow and twined up over his shoulder.
One braid headed across his chest and stopped at his sternum.
The other continued onto his back, coiling close to the midline of his spine but never crossing.
On his shoulder blade, a circular patch made a break in the flowers, and here was tattooed the triskele of the Three Hares.
“We all had our hares right here,” Dane said, patting it. “And Nomi and I had the wisteria.”
Dane’s artist had started to bring the vines down onto his side, but then Nomi died, and so did Dane’s enthusiasm. The vine continued under the waistband of his suit and over his hip, and one unfinished blossom dripped onto his quadricep muscle, but that was nothing Liko could see right now.
“What’s on the back of your neck?”
Dane floated backward toward him, chin dropped. “Their fingerprints.”
“And the ink on your other shoulder—what’s it mean?”
“This? It’s not a tattoo.”
The skin on the left side of Dane’s torso was distinctly darker.
As if he’d lain on his right side under a sun lamp and forgot to turn over.
An even darker pigmentation gathered in patches and streaks, creating an arcing whorl across half of Dane’s upper back.
A coppery wave that ended in a coiled tip under his arm.
“It’s just a birthmark,” he said. “Actually it’s called a Blaschko’s line.”
Liko gave a low chuckle. “Jesus, Strong, even your birthmarks are cool. I mean look at that thing. Perfect spirals.”
“A kilo-koil,” Dane said, grinning.
“A kilo-koil birthmark would look like a mangled Slinky. Your blah-de-blah line probably has the golden ratio. You’re like a natural work of art here. Go fuck yourself.”
Dane laughed. “Shut up.”
“Seriously, could you give us average guys a chance?”
“You have ink?”
“Nah. I have a dozen ideas, but I’m too chicken to execute.
It’s a cowardly twist on the creativity-imagination thing.
” He’d bumped into the side of the pool and pushed off with his feet, swanning past Dane with hands behind his head.
“Was tattooing just one side of your body a deliberate design choice?”
“Yeah.”
“Do your eyes being different colors tie into that choice?”
“Yes.”
Liko looked over the rims of his shades. “If I prove trustworthy, will you tell me about it someday?”
“Maybe.” Dane planted hands on the deck and hoisted himself out, streaming water. His back to the pool, he plucked a towel from the big basket and started drying off, feeling Liko’s eyes on him.
“I have another one here,” he said, hitching up the left leg of his suit and showing how a second Blaschko’s line rippled down his hamstring and wrapped around his calf.
“On the same side,” Liko said. “What causes them?”
“Lots of things. But in my case, it’s from tetragametic chimerism.”
“Say again?”
“Tetragametic chimerism. I have two different sets of DNA. One male, one female.”
He turned around and casually touched the front of his suit. “I present male. Out of my pants, I look the same as you.”
Liko shook his head vigorously. “No, you don’t.”
Dane smiled. “Well, true, because like Hitler, I only have one ball.”
“Hm?” Liko sat up a little too quick and fell off the float. He came up tangled with the armrest, spitting a stream out the side of his mouth and laughing. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I think you heard me. Want a beer?”
“I would love a beer.”
Towel around his neck, Dane went inside and opened two local brews.
It’s going well, Diane said, perched prettily on the counter.
“I think so, too.”
She moved her legs aside so he could get into the drawer for the bottle opener. I’m proud of you. Just tell a simple story.
He winked at nothing and took the beers outside. Liko had gotten out and was drying off.
“So,” Dane said, flopping onto one of the chaise loungers. “I have two sets of DNA. Draw blood from my arm or leg and it’s XY. Draw it from my midline, or take tissue samples anywhere along the midline, and it’s XX.”
“How does that happen?”
“Usually when two zygotes are present in the womb, and one twin absorbs the other.”
“Oh,” Liko said slowly. “I’ve heard of this. I didn’t know it had a name.”
“Well, fetal absorption, also known as vanishing twin syndrome, is one thing. Chimerism can sometimes be a result.”
“Is it common?”
“Hard to say. People can have chimerism, not present any symptoms, and go a lifetime not knowing. It’s not a disease or a syndrome or a condition.
Sometimes it causes problems with your immune system.
Each set of DNA thinking the other is the enemy.
But most of the time, it’s just a flukey thing that’s discovered incidentally. ”
“So not everyone would have outward signs like different color eyes or the lines?”
“Right. And the reverse is true: not everyone with heterochromia or Blaschko’s lines is a chimera.”
“Were you pulling my leg with the one ball thing?”
“No. Only one testicle descended when I was a baby so—”
“That happened with Kyle,” Liko said. “He had surgery to fix it. Sorry, go on.”
“I think the statistic is one percent of male babies are born undescended. Also not a big deal—a half-hour surgery and they bring it down. You know this. Anyway, when they did the surgery on me, they found the missing jewel wasn’t a testicle at all. It was an ovary.”
Liko pushed his sunglasses up and looked at Dane a long moment.
“Put those back on,” Dane said.
“Why?”
“One, you look good in them. Two, it’s a little easier to talk about this without your purple people-eaters in my face.”
Liko laughed and flipped the shades down. “Better?”
“Thanks. What was I saying?”
“I think you were telling me you’re intersex?”
“Right. Yes. Chimera and intersex. One didn’t necessarily cause the other. Most chimeras aren’t intersex. Most intersex people aren’t chimeras.”
“So you’re, like, one in a million?”
“I don’t know about a million but it’s an interesting perfect storm. I’m a non-binary intersex chimera. How’s that for an identity?”
“It’s like a half double-decaffeinated double half-cap,” Liko said.
“Everything about me just screams: excellent decision making skills.”
“You identify non-binary but you don’t use they/them pronouns.” Liko put up his palms. “Not that you’re required to. If you do, you haven’t corrected me. Either way, all due respect. I’m here to learn.”
“This is where, to this day, it still gets tangled up in my head. I’m literally they/them, and while I appreciate and respect they/them, I don’t…
Sometimes I’ll say my pronouns are he/they, but it never feels quite right.
He/him feels like me. The outward me. I like to present male.
My she/her is an extremely separate, extremely private thing. ”
Liko raised his glasses. “And her name is Diane.”
“Yes.”
Liko put the shades down and drank the rest of his beer. “Another?”
“Sure.”
He went inside, his drying suit loose around his thighs but still clinging damp to his butt.
His arms and shoulders defined with muscle, but blurred with age.
He looked simultaneously hard and soft, and it made Dane remember when Dr. Obrera took him off the testosterone shots so she could get a baseline reading of what his body naturally produced.
How Dane had felt like his muscles were collapsing.
Softening around his bones. Sliding away along with his strength and energy.
Coupled with the massive emotional breakdown and a lifetime of trauma bubbling to the surface, it was like getting sucked into a black hole.
“Hang in there,” Obrera said. “I know it’s hard, I know you feel terrible, but just hang in there a little longer, Dane. We’re going to figure out who you are…”
Dane shuddered off the memory as Liko came out with another round and a bag of pretzels.
“So I had a whole conversation with myself in the kitchen,” he said. “Remembering all my first encounters with you. New Year’s Eve, when you had blue eyes. Ringing your doorbell, when you had brown eyes. Then meeting you as Diane, with blue eyes. How you described her as a life coach.”
“She helps me do brave things.”
Liko pointed a finger. “Okay, that part. When you had both eyes blue on New Year’s Eve, were you being Diane or were you being brave?”
“Brave. Remember Jackie from the May Day party, with the gorgeous curly hair? She blows it out sometimes, and says she’s an entirely different person when her hair is straight. A tougher, more confident person. Straight hair makes her swagger. Blue eyes kind of do the same thing for me.”