To Feel Like Her
“I’m shocked you ever made friends with Christmas again,” Liko said. “If it were me, I’d hear ‘Jingle Bells’ and go into convulsions.”
“The brains of traumatized children do really weird shit,” Dane said. “I’ve read oh so many books about it.”
“So what was going on with your sister?”
“I wouldn’t find out for another twelve years, but she was pregnant. The nurse at her boarding school ratted her out to Ivelaw, who collected her in the chopper and brought her home.”
“But your mother told her to run.”
Dane nodded. “This part is a little white knight-ish, but it also affirms that good people are in the world. My father’s chopper pilot usually dropped him and took off again, but Maisie was on this ride, getting berated and smacked around.
The pilot had a bad feeling in his gut when he landed the bird.
He watched my father and Maisie go across the lawn to the house, saw Ivelaw hit her again and grab her by the hair, and the guy just couldn’t take off right away.
He sat tight, watching the house, biting his nails.
Five, ten, however many minutes later, Maisie came running outside, saw he was still there and went screaming toward the helipad.
He didn’t even hesitate. Just threw her in and they were outta there. ”
“But you were left behind.”
“Right.” Dane drew in a long breath. “So I was told… I’m going to be starting a lot of things with I was told.”
“All right,” Liko said.
“I was told my mother stabbed my father, and she went to jail. I was told what I remembered of that day in the kitchen was all wrong. I got it mixed up. Helen was crazy. She’d tried to kill Maisie and kill my father. He stopped her from killing me and now she was in jail.”
“But none of that was true?”
“One part,” Dane said. “Helen did stab my father, but with my kiddie plastic knife. I ran at him with the butcher blade.”
“Oh shit,” Liko said. “Where?”
“Kind of…here. Lower side back. Just missed his kidney. Which is bananas because I was all of four, and he was wearing his winter overcoat. But I was full of adrenaline, I got a running start, and it was a really good knife. I nailed him.” Dane sighed, rubbing his face.
“I also put a poetic nail in my coffin. I gave him everything he needed to manipulate me for the next decade.”
“So he confirmed it was you?”
Dane nodded. “He said to protect me, Helen told police she did it, and they put her in jail. My father was the only one who knew the truth, and all he had to do was pick up the phone and tell. They’d come and put me in jail, too.
They’d put me away for being crazy. I’d get sicker than I already was.
And I’d die. I was living in that beautiful house in Malba utterly by the grace of Ivelaw Strong.
I could see Riker’s Island from our dock.
On clear days I could see it from the living room windows.
All my father had to do was point in its direction and I understood the message. One phone call and you’ll be there.”
“Christ, and I thought Bootsy pointing toward the naughty corner was the height of cruelty.”
Dane smiled. “It sounds asinine when you’re an adult, but I was a kid. You believe what you’re conditioned to believe.”
“And he was your father.”
“He was also a monster. Did you ever end up Googling him?”
“You told me not to on a full stomach. Since coming here, I’ve rarely been hungry. Plus my new philosophy on life dictates that I avoid things that’ll spoil my appetite.”
“So, despite his esteemed legal pedigree, my father didn’t practice very long. He took over as CEO of Suffolk Health Solutions, a little start-up on Long Island that had twelve employees and no revenue. He transformed it into a Fortune 500 company called Paumanok Health Services.”
Liko looked up and to the side, brow furrowed. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Probably two reasons. First, a lot of their mental health facilities have been in the news for questionable practices. Second, PHS was the center of one of the biggest Medicaid fraud lawsuits in history, also for providing substandard mental health services.”
Liko rubbed his temples. “Oh my God, this is gonna suck.”
“Yeah. You can read up on the litigation when you’re fasting for your next colonoscopy.
Suffice it to say, thousands of people suffered so PHS could profit.
So my father could have his mansion in Malba and commute to work by private chopper.
But the main takeaway for this part of the story is my father was an insurance mobster.
He knew how to disappear people within the legal system and the healthcare system. Sometimes a combination of both.”
“Would you mind fast-forwarding to the part where he’s in jail?”
“He’s not in jail, but how do you feel about the word ruined?”
“I’ll accept it on a trial basis. Continue. You are now five and living alone with a master manipulator mobster.”
“When I started elementary school, my father made me start covering up my blue eye.”
“Why the blue one?”
“It’s easier to cover blue with brown than brown with blue.”
“Right.”
“He said the blue eye was weaker and couldn’t tolerate strong light, so the lens was necessary.
And the lens was brown because two different eyes wasn’t normal.
I’d be teased. Bullied. He was only looking out for my best interests.
Wasn’t I grateful? Say thank you to your father.
If not for him, you’d be in jail with your crazy mother. Getting the picture?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Who was taking care of you all this time? I mean the day to day taking care. Meals. Bath time. Bed time. New shoes.”
“A string of nannies. We always had a cook and housekeeper. My father didn’t allow me into the kitchen after Helen was gone but I remember women taking care of me. And one of their jobs was putting that contact lens in my eye every day.”
He was still a long time, a tiny muscle twitching in his jaw as he thought.
“My father did a lot of things to make sure I stayed a boy,” he said.
“Especially if he caught me in Maisie’s room.
” He looked up. “Maisie’s bedroom was a huge part of my childhood.
It was kept exactly as she left it. The door was shut but never locked.
I always wondered why. If my father just forgot, didn’t think of it.
But that wasn’t like him. I think he kept it unlocked as a temptation to me.
Which it was. Maisie’s bedroom was my haven.
Her clothes. Her shoes. Her makeup. Her…
things. Girl things. I’d go in there and dress up.
Lie on her bed in her clothes. Read her books.
Look through her old magazines. It was a huge risk but I couldn’t not go in there.
It was the one bright place in my life and I needed it like oxygen.
Needed it to the point where it was worth the beating.
And the beatings were bad. My father was a USAW weightlifting champion at the University of Michigan.
He gave up the sport. He kept his belt.”
“Fuck.” Liko dragged his hair back from his forehead. “I’m… I’m nothing. I have no words.”
“Basil ever hit you?”
“No. Once I mouthed off to Mum and he backhanded my arm. One good pop and the sting lasted a long time because of the shock factor. Otherwise it was the naughty corner when I was little. Lost privileges when I was older.”
“And you raised Kyle the same way.”
“Ugh, I hit him once,” Liko groaned. “He was fucking around on my laptop and erased a whole manuscript. I was on a deadline, the author was a real bitch, I was under a ton of stress and I lost my shit. I whacked his ass and instantly regretted it. Apologized for days. He was laughing after a while, like Dad, cool it. I screwed up, I deserved a smack.”
“I’m a man, I can take it,” Dane added, then shook his head hard.
“Sorry, I’m projecting my shit. My father would beat me if he saw me acting like a girl, and beat me harder if I cried about it.
Crying was forbidden. Sometimes I thought he’d rather I walk down the street in lingerie than cry in public. Anyway. It was bad.”
“He understated,” Liko said. “Did anyone know this abuse was going on?”
“No. Because if I told...” Dane made a dramatic pointing gesture.
“He just motioned to the windows and Rikers Island. He had a hold on me both physical and mental. But he was such a manipulative… I hate to use the word genius. Sociopath is more accurate. He knew just when to give a smidgen of praise. A scrap of approval. A little pearl cast before the swine and I would fall on it, gobble it down, want more. Believe the problem was me, not him.”
“And all this time, you’re still being told you have cancer? Nothing about being intersex?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s…” Liko shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not doubting you, but how the fuck is it even possible? How do you lie to a child about their health for so long, and for what purpose? I can’t get my head around it.”
“Of course not,” Dane said. “Because you have a Basil and Bootsy. Not an Ivelaw.”
Liko blew out his breath. “This is bad.”
“It got worse around sixth grade when I wasn’t displaying signs of puberty.
No body hair, no facial hair, my voice wasn’t changing and, my father’s biggest concern, I wasn’t growing.
He had a thing about height. Height was power.
All Strong men are tall and strong. No son of his was going to be a weakling.
“So he got a doctor to put me on growth hormones. They worked, but not as much as my father wanted. Five foot six was the tallest I’d ever be.
He would’ve prefer those numbers reversed.
And I was still slight and hairless, which offended him.
But things got really bad when I was thirteen. When I started to grow breasts.”
1985
Dane is told he has cancer, which is why he has one testicle and two different-colored eyes, and why the skin on his body is darker on one side than the other. He’s sick. He has to go see Dr. Porto, who will make him better.
Dr. Porto says Dane is a boy and only a boy.
A brown-eyed boy with cancer. Dr. Porto’s hands poke and prod, reaching under Dane’s hospital gown to touch, talking about Dane’s body with words that aren’t so funny anymore.
Not even talking to Dane, but with other doctors who gather in a circle, hemming and hawing and heeding Dr. Porto.
Dane has to take off the gown and let them look and touch and talk.
He’s a child, but something within tells him this isn’t right.
The voice telling is a female voice. It doesn’t have a lot of good words, only a deep, stretched, desperate and indignant feeling that things are being done which aren’t fair.
Things aren’t being asked. Things aren’t being explained.
Reasons are missing here. Something is wrong. This isn’t right.
Dane’s memory rolls into a tight ball. He doesn’t talk about anything.
He does what he’s told. He becomes invisible to himself as his childhood stops imprinting.
He curls into the female voice deep within and asks her not to speak, only to hold him.
And hide him. She’s a good friend and she hides him well.
But then Dane becomes a teenager and new things start happening.
At thirteen, he’s small for his age, and slight. His male classmates are growing facial hair. He isn’t. Their voices are changing. His isn’t. They’re starting to get into girls, even date. Dane…sort of is. Dane likes girls. But when he’s thirteen, he starts to look like one.
His peers are growing mustaches. Dane is growing breasts.
He binds his chest with Ace bandages and learns to arrive early at the gym locker room, then leave late. He doesn’t tell anyone about his breasts, because secretly he likes them. Or rather, they interest him. He wants some time alone with them.
He likes the feel of a breast in his hand when he masturbates. He cups his one lonely ball and thinks about burying his face in a girl’s cleavage (silky soft white and pink) while from behind someone (a boy) holds Dane’s breasts and believes everything Dane says.
He moves forward and back in his body, forward and back in time, part of a three again.
As he moves, the lines between she and he and him and her began to blur in a swishing feeling around his bare knees because he’s wearing a (skirt) in the kitchen with his (Mom-me), in the beautiful time of twinkling Christmas lights and paper snowflakes, the soft cushioned life in the kitchen where Dane is allowed to be himself.
He learns he likes the feel of his own breasts in his hands, but not the way they look in the mirror. He wants to look like the high school guys he and his classmates idolize—fit, tight, muscular athletes who always get the girls.
On the other hand, Dane also crushes hard on fit, tight female athletes who always get the guys.
I want to look like those guys and feel like those girls.
The thought stops him cold. So rarely does he have insights that feel like his own that he takes this one to the mirror, pinches out his brown contact lens, and tells it to his face.
He turns his head to the left and whispers, “I want to look like him.” He turns his head to the right. “And I want to feel like her.”
Locked in his sister’s bedroom, Dane tries on one of her bras. It’s (silky smooth) pink with white lace. His breasts just fill the cups. He steps back from the mirror and turns his head so only his blue eye shows.
This time, he likes how it looks, but not how it feels.
He’s confused.
His thoughts are mushy, his body trying to be two things at once.
I’m not a girl. I like girls, but I don’t want to be a girl.
Yet, his reflection admits, part of his being has always felt…sort-of girl. Secretly kind of girl-ish.
Something new happens when he’s fourteen. Every few weeks he’s wracked with stomach pains—a weird stabbing ache that makes him panic the first time, thinking it’s appendicitis. Except the pain is on his left side.
(My girl side.)
He can’t bind this problem down. Can’t arrive ahead of it or leave before it comes. Dane has so little he can call private. And now it seems his body wants to blab his secrets to everyone.
One month the pain is so bad he faints at school and ends up in the ER. His clothes are taken off and the Ace bandages unwound.
He’s discovered.