Blaschko’s Lines #2
“The leather jacket effect,” Liko said. “I put on a leather jacket and aviators and I’m untouchable. It’s all I wanted to wear to Kyle’s funeral.”
“It’s armor, exactly.”
“So something made you need a lot more armor when I came back to the farm the second day.”
“Honestly, man, I don’t know what the hell I was doing. I don’t dress up as Diane for other people. Like ever. But when you were coming back… I don’t know, it wasn’t for armor. More like a dare or prank. It was weird.”
“But you do dress up as her sometimes?”
“Only for myself.” Dane reached for his phone and scrolled his photos. He found the ones he took in his bathroom, wearing Nomi’s camisole top and the Dusk Tiara. “Sure you want to see this?”
“Yes,” Liko said. Softly. Seriously.
Dane gave him the phone. Drew a long breath in and out as Liko looked at it. Looked up at Dane. Down at the phone. Up. Down.
“Two questions,” he finally said. “One: do you prefer me to say this is beautiful, she is beautiful, or you are beautiful?”
“Any of those. And thank you.” Feeling a sudden, shy need for a little more distance, Dane got up and dropped into the pool.
“Two,” Liko said, “am I to understand while I was watching videos of ingrown toenail repair, this was going on?”
Dane crossed arms on the float and pushed off the bottom. “Diane likes you. Or maybe, more accurately, she doesn’t fear you.”
“Huh.” Liko studied the picture another moment, then put the phone down.
“Diane is of the world but not in the world. In fact, instead of saying I absorbed her in the womb, I prefer to give her agency and say she decided, of her own volition, to hide inside me. Where she’s always been.”
“Always?”
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel her with me.
My inner monologue is in her voice. A female voice.
I remember being four, five years old, sitting in front of the mirror and turning my head side to side so only one eye was showing.
” Dane turned his right cheek toward Liko.
“Saying this is my boy side.” He swiveled his head the other way.
“And this is my girl side. Always in my mind, I had Boy-me and Girl-me, and a sort of over-arching Me-me. An us that was neither-nor. It was both. Still is both. Her and I. We. Which is me.”
“Does all this circle back to your father being a monster?”
“Yes,” Dane said. “But since this conversation is going a lot better than I expected, let’s not ruin it by talking about him.”
“Better?” Liko’s brow wrinkled. “What, did you think I’d be weird about it?”
“I really didn’t know what to think. I don’t know you all that well, and I haven’t told my story to someone new in a really long time.”
Dane left the float and hitched up to sit on the deck. Liko stretched long to hand him his beer.
“Thanks. Talk about being of the world but not in it, I came to this place when I was twenty and never left. I met my soulmates, found my life’s work, had a child, built a life in this…
Let’s face it, in this bubble. When Nomi died and Ethan left, I thought about opening my heart to someone new and was like, Christ, I’ve never been out there in my life.
I mean, I never dated. Never played the field. I flirt like a moron and—”
“Excuse me,” Liko said. “Your flirting is top notch.”
“How would you know?”
Liko opened his mouth, then closed it. “I walked into that.”
“I flirt like a moron but my smartass game is pretty good.”
“Hey, back in March when I told you why I was named Henry and called Liko, you said It’s halfway between likable and lucky. And I thought, Damn, he’s flirting with me.”
“It’s not that I don’t flirt at all,” Dane laughed. “I just do it weird.”
“I think your game is better than you think it is.”
They were quiet a while, finishing their beers.
“For real though,” Dane finally said. “It was easier telling you than I expected. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. You’re interesting as fuck.
I’m sorry the story has a really unpleasant underbelly, and I have a vile hunch when I hear it, the idea of you staying in a safe, rural bubble for twenty-whatever years will make perfect sense.
But hey, if it doesn’t make sense, so what—it’s still your story. Can I ask a rude question about it?”
“As many as you want.”
“Did you have top surgery?”
Dane touched his scars. “You saw these.”
“I did.”
Keep it simple, Diane said.
“So the ovary on my left side was attached to a fallopian tube and a little scrap of a uterus. None of them worked, but they made their presence known. I’d always been small for my age, and when I hit puberty, my voice didn’t change and I wasn’t growing facial hair.
” Dane held up a leg and turned a forearm over in the sun.
“Or any hair, really. Turns out in the normal fistfight between testosterone and estrogen, estrogen was winning, and when I was thirteen, I started growing breasts.”
Liko’s mouth opened a little but he said nothing. Just pushed the shades up on his head and stared.
“Now you look a little horrified,” Dane said carefully. “What are you thinking?”
“Knowing how mean kids can be, I’m thinking middle and high school must’ve been a fucking nightmare. I kind of feel sick wondering what it was like.”
Diane was pulsing behind Dane’s left eye. Counseling, Keep it simple, keep it simple, keep it simple.
“What you have to understand,” he said, “is that I didn’t hear the words intersex or chimerism until I left my father’s house.
When it came to anything about my health or my body, I was either kept in the dark or lied to.
Mostly lied to. In fact, until I was seventeen, I believed I had a rare form of chronic cancer.
I believed a lot of things my father told me, and he kept me far away from any truth-tellers. ”
“Like your mother and your sister,” Liko said.
“Maisie is twelve years older than me. By the time I started to create memories, she was at boarding school and away for long stretches of time. This is so cliché but to me, she was a princess. She lived far away, busy with important princess things, and every now and then she’d make a state visit and I would just adore her. ”
Keep it simple, Diane warned.
“Anyway,” Dane said cheerfully, “suffice it to say my father’s house wasn’t the best environment to be gender non-conforming and I had no idea what it even meant. Fast-forward to when I got out of there and was living with Maisie, and I finally got proper care and honest information.”
“Your head must’ve exploded.”
“Everything exploded. After a shit-ton of therapy, I learned I identify non-binary and have a very real, very significant female aspect, but I prefer to present male.”
“That’s when you had top surgery?”
“Yes,” Dane said, lying. “And started testosterone therapy.”
“And you’re okay now? I mean…”
“Healthwise? I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”
“How does the testosterone therapy work?”
“I’m on a twelve-week cycle. I started one in May. If you’re still here in August, you’ll get to see me take a shot in the ass.”
“Now you’re flirting with me,” Liko said, getting up.
“Trying.”