Chapter Four:

I Don’t Meet Mayim Bialik

Now I learned what alone really meant.  Trapped in a girl’s body with no one to turn to, a stranger in the Komori house, a stranger to myself.  To really stick an ice pick in my heart, Emily started dating Toby again, and I learned that the only kind of pain as luscious as having an ulcer on your tongue you could flick against your teeth was the hurt I derived from stealing “Playboy” and other glossy sex magazines from convenience stores.  Most of the stores put the porno behind the cash register where you couldn’t get at it, but I found the ones that did and looted them at will.

It wasn’t that difficult.  If I had on a dress, I found I was really adept at putting the magazines behind my back, hiking up my skirt and slipping them down into the waistband of my panties.  If I had on pants, they went down the front.  Then I could slip sideways out the door, duck around the corner of the store, pull the magazines out and run like hell in case anyone followed.

Sometimes I’d even be laughing or maybe crying as I ran, but I couldn’t tell the difference.

I’d usually just stick them under my dress or shirt when I got back to the Komoris’ house and walk to my room quickly with my arms folded across my stomach, hopefully hiding my contraband.  Then I’d lock myself in my room and sit cross-legged on the floor and flip to the centerfold and just stare.

Why did I even want these magazines?  When I was around this age as a boy, the answer was pretty simple.  Naked woman, any naked women, made me excited and I’d jack it like millions of other kids my age.  As I got older, I also developed a kind of ironic detachment from the imagery versus the reality, plus a vague unease about objectification I really never examined because—you know-- it sure felt good to jack it looking at hot chicks.  But now, under these circumstances?  I really didn’t have clue.

Because mostly the women in them made me feel a new kind of strangeness, kind of uncomfortable.  After all, we were the same general species or family now, sisters or cousins or something.  Well, we had the same junk; after that we diverged wildly.  I’m not even sure what it was they were saying to me or about me.  What comment on womanhood does a surgically-altered sex object who’s about twenty percent post-consumer recyclable plastics make to a thin, vaguely genderless person with a skinny little kid-girl body?  I was hardly more likely to look or be like any of them than I had been when I’d worn a guy’s flesh.  Huh, I thought, maybe even less likely now.  And I didn’t even want to look or be like them. 

The magazine women, the centerfolds or whatever, were usually blonde, obviously enhanced and heavily airbrushed. This one posed falling out of her clothes in a garage, that one pretended to masturbate in a fake French villa. I never tried to match their poses or figure out what was the big deal about it by touching myself down there, but staring at these seemingly impossible bodies made me feel a wimpy kind of warmth inside that might have been all I had left of a libido or the first inklings of the one I’d have when my new body passed through puberty.  I wondered sometimes if I’d still like women, or would I be into men.  Or both.  Or neither.  Eventually, I'd get the urge to pee and shove the magazines under my bed.

The twelve-year-old pervo. Or perva.

I also bought cigarettes out of vending machines and smoked while I gazed at the world through eyes like black slits.  I’d rarely smoked when I was alive but I decided it didn’t matter much if I did now that I was dead.  And I kind of liked the way it made me feel.  Nauseated.

But the end of summer wasn’t all theft, the joys of light literature and addicting myself to nicotine.  Now that I officially no longer gave a shit about myself or anything else, I started skating again.  I found I couldn’t keep way any longer; the call was too strong.  It was so mighty, in fact, it completely overrode all other considerations at the park, like Patrick’s crush or sexual desires or whatever it was little skating deviants had in their brains, hearts or nether regions for girls.  My illicit activies brought me little joy, but I skated with fierceness now.

It was exhilarating.  Already an invulnerable thief, I decided I wasn't a girl, I wasn't a guy, that I was something new, something both and bad-ass and dangerous (in a humiliatingly cute and tiny way). I felt full of this wired energy, a runaway robot shaking itself apart, shooting out sparks, streaming acrid white smoke, catching the dry leaves on fire.  On the vert, I gave my new philosophy its fullest expression.  If I'd been reckless on the vert before, now I was downright suicidal.  Damn those stupid consequences to hell!  My airs became larger, I kept going higher and higher.  And when you do that, you have to fall back to earth sometime. Gravity demands it.

Gravity, my friend.  Gravity brought me sliding down the curved side of the vert on my face, on my shoulder, on my knees.  Gravity dumped me off the side of the vert onto the asphalt one time when I lost my balance while I was screaming my head off at some slight by Patrick, real or imaginary.

Patrick and the other guys and girls at the skate park were actually scared of me.  I showed up every day, climbed to the top of the vert, stuck a cigarette in my mouth and waited my turn, barely saying a word.  When and if I did, it was usually something biting and mean.  I made people cry.  They still called me Ayumi, but now it was usually in the context of a quick, "Here comes that crazy Ayumi bitch" and they'd scatter before me like the gulls had at the beach and stand as far away from me as possible.  The new Ayumi lived in an unhappy world all her own, with gravity frequently her only companion.

And boom, just like that, gravity really nailed me.  Just when you think you’ve hit bottom, gravity, like a true bosom pal with your best interests in mind, shows you there’s a whole lower level and it’s covered with rusty nails and broken glass.  Gravity tosses you there and rubs your face all over, slicing you deeply.  Causing tetanus of the soul.  I got caught stealing.  Busted.  Imagine the surprise on that fat cashier's face when she stopped me going out the door and made me come back in, only to reveal my booty-- a men's magazine.

"What would a little girl be doing with smut like this?" she asked. She barely had any teeth.

"I like chicks," I said casually, with a harsh edge that sounded strange in my little girl voice; Emily could've pulled it off better, though, with her deeper pitch. I pulled out my cigarettes and slipped one into my mouth. I immediately thought of Winona Ryder in "Heathers," right before Christian Slater blew up. Yeah.

The cashier took my cigarettes away from me and my lighter. In a really unfair trade, what she gave me back was a long lecture about Jesus and sin and Hell.

“Don’t they believe in Jesus in your country?”  she asked.  “Don’t they pray?”

“First off, I’m as American as you.  And second, the only thing I’m praying for is for the police to come and throw me in jail before I have to listen to anymore of your bullshit,” I told her mildly, with my eyebrows raised.

She looked angry for a moment, then shook her head.  “You are just about the rudest little girl it has ever been my sorry luck to meet.  I feel sorry for your parents.”

“They’re dead.  I live with my aunt.”

She sputtered a little.  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.  It explains a lot, but I am truly sorry to hear that.  I’m gonna pray for you, I honestly am.”

“Yeah, well…”

Just then two cops came in and I started to get nervous.  They acted officiously and efficiently, asking direct questions with little or no trace of warmth, took down my name and Mrs. Komori’s phone number and address.  Everyone talked, and the cops took notes.  I hoped the cashier wouldn’t notice the slight quaver in my voice as I explained my point of view, which was I was guilty as could be and I had no excuse.  I stared at my feet as the cops escorted me to the car (they didn’t cuff me), and I overheard a couple of racist comments from other people in the store. I wanted to punch everyone in the face. I was so full of anger and self-loathing. My skin crawled, my clothes disgusted me.

So this is how it ends, I thought at the police station while another cop, this time a sergeant with white chevrons on his blue-gray sleeve, looked me over.  I was sitting in a thinly-padded metal chair beside his desk and other cops were busy typing or running their mouths all around us.  It was a lot like any office, only kind of dirty and everyone had a gun except me.  I was slouched down, trying not to meet the sergeant’s gaze, looking down at my knees, which were shaking a little.  I pressed them together to try to stop the trembling.

“Need to use the little ladies’ room?” the sergeant asked.

“No.”

“Wanna tell me what you thought you were doing?”

“No.”

“You realize stealing is wrong, right?”

“No.  Uh… yes?  Yes.”

“Uh huh.  You think stealing is cool, huh?”

“No.  Uh… yes?”

“Well, I guess you’re learning otherwise now, huh?  Not too happy, huh?”

“Not very.”

“Okay, kid.  Don’t you think your parents are going to be pretty disappointed?”

“Mrs. Komori will, yeah.”

“Tell me your full name.”

“My full name?”  I thought about it for a second.  Again with the names.  I had at least two I could give him.  Then I told him in the squeakiest voice possible, my throat very raw, “My name is Amy Komori.”

“No middle name?”

“Not that I know of, no.”

I was kind of tired of having to say “Amy Komori.”  The cop sergeant made me tell him my address again, too, and asked me a lot of questions about right and wrong in between more practical bits of info about what I was being charged with—some kind of misdemeanor-- and how I’d get a juvie court date for a hearing plus many other things I barely heard.  I nodded my head as if I understood.

While we were doing that, Mrs. Komori showed up at the door and one of the cops who’d arrested or whatever they’d done to me met her there and took her away someplace for what I guessed would be a very interesting talk that would seal my fate.  The bestest, most wonderfullest moment of this special “Blossom” episode-- guest starring me as Blossom’s irresponsible friend who learns her lesson that stealing is a cry for attention but never appears on the show again-- came when the cops decided it was time for the heartwarming, climactic reunion between adopted parent and juvenile delinquent.  While the cop sergeant repeated to Mrs. Komori a lot of the information he’d already told me, I stared at the tile floor and then I was released into my “caregiver’s custody,” he called it.

Driving me home from the police station (now Amy Komori had a police record-- cool!), Mrs. Komori had a long talk with me, the first time she'd spoken to me in days.  She started lamely, just stuff about how she’d had some trouble enrolling me in school because of the late start she’d gotten with the paperwork.

“Apparently, they set the rolls months in advance,” she explained.  “I guess that makes sense.  They need to know who’s in what class and blah blah, whatever.  But I was able to talk to someone at your school and with the administration.  Anyways, you squeaked by and we’re good to go come September.  Which isn’t that far away.”

“Uh…” I said.  Why was she telling me all this at this specific juncture in time?  Didn’t we have a more pressing issue?  Actually, I was more than a little afraid-- “more than” as in “extremely”-- she was dancing around her real topic, namely the kicking of my narrow ass out of her house for good.  I’d be in school and living with a foster family for real. 

She said she knew I was going though something very difficult, something no one had probably ever gone through before. No shit. But I let her talk without any sarcastic comments, because I wasn't feeling so tough at the moment; Patrick and the gang probably would have been embarrassed for me if they’d seen me.  The hammer was about to drop, smashing me flat.

 "I know Emily and you slept together, Martin," she said.  My first thought was to deny it, but I kept my mouth shut instead.  Here it comes, the first bit of recrimination to justify her decision to cut me loose, as if she needed it; I’d done more than enough.  "And I resigned myself to that, because I knew you loved her, and I knew that she'd slept with other boys who probably never loved her as much as you did."

"Yeah, I did," I said softly as I sunk into the seat. For some reason, I wished, really wished I didn't have butterfly-shaped barrettes in my hair.

“I’m telling you this because I want you to know I care very much for you,” she said.  “And I know Emily does, too.”

“I—“

“No, let me finish.  Like I said, I know it's difficult but beyond that, I really can't even begin to fully understand what you're going through.  Sometimes even I can’t believe it, and yet there you are.  Um… not really sure why you thought being more like a girl was what you ended up doing.   Because it was a little... bizarre.  I really, really wish I’d handled that better, too.  I just—Well, whatever.  Water and bridges.  And here we are."

“But—“

“Uh uh.  Please.  Were you really happy doing all that giggly, dress-up stuff?”

“No.  I thought I was at first.  Well, not doing it exactly.  More like because I thought I was finally doing what I was supposed to be… doing.  Obeying the rules or playing the game or something.  Although, yeah, I do really like that one dress.  I don’t really know why.  I just do, I guess.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought,” Mrs. Komori said.  She told me there were all kinds of ways to be a girl, and while choosing a few stereotypical behaviors and playing them up to the nth degree might be one of them, I'd probably be happier finding some other method.  If that was what I truly wanted.

“But I don’t know how to… do anything.”

“Who does?”

“Yeah!  That’s right.  I know it is.  I thought everyone wanted me to be a girl, but that was a disaster.  I just wish I knew who I was supposed to be.”

And then she told me, “You’re so freaked out about figuring out who you’re supposed to be or what stupid people want for you that you’re forgetting just to be.  You know how we learn who we are?  By being.”

“Yeah?  What about doing?”

"Doing, being.  What’s the diff?" she told me, smiling.  “And you know what?  You may not like hearing this, but eventually, you might find having a woman’s body, or being a woman isn’t so bad after all.  You might even come to like it.  We can do some amazing things.”

I really wanted her to explain all about those “amazing things” because it definitely would've made me feel happier, but instead she told me how being a woman in the United States was still a difficult proposition at times.  She said she tried not to focus on it too much, but if I was ever interested she could tell me a lot of what she claimed were real horror stories, or just minor incidents that added up over time.  At the same time, she talked up a lot of progress that had been through the efforts of so many incredible women down through the years—and some men, she went out of her way to mention—and that she enjoyed so many more opportunities than her grandmother had, or even her mom.  She said she hoped Emily—“And you, too, depending”—would have an even easier time of it.

“There’s still a long way to go, though.  Life isn’t fair,” she said.

“Is that supposed to be encouraging or discouraging?”

“I’m really not sure.  But it’s up to you.  Be a woman, be a man, be anything at all your heart desires.  Just to throw this out there, there are other paths you might take.  I have no idea what they might be, but they may not involve you being a woman at all.  Emily told me you didn’t want to go to the hospital when this started.  Well, you may want to go to a therapist at some point.”

“I probably could use some kind of therapy.” 

“I’m talking about a-a gender therapist person or something.  Who knows?  For now, just don’t get so hung up on what you think others expect of you.  You just might become something no one’s ever seen before.  And now for my next point, and this one is going to be a little more difficult for you to hear.”

"Shoot."  Here it comes, I thought.  The ol' don't let the door hit your fanny speech.

Mrs. Komori explained all the things she and Emily had done trying to help me, no matter what fool ideas otherwise I’d gotten in what she called my “messed-up little head.”  She let me know in no uncertain terms she considered my responding shitty attitude inappropriate and insulting.  My stomach clenched; I was listening to the perfect lead-in to her final self-justification for fobbing me off on the state.

As a little hail mary ploy, I quickly interrupted:  “I know you’re doing all that work for me and stuff, and I’m so grateful I have a place to stay.  God, I can’t even begin to tell you how grateful I am for all that.  I mean, no matter how stupid I’ve been acting.  I’m so, so sorry.”

Place to stay.  I hoped she realized this was my way of begging for a home without actually getting on my knees.  Although if I'd had my skate pads on, I might have been tempted.

Then she went on to tell me a lot of other things, about how Mr. Komori died, and how painful that was for her, and how Emily just took it quietly, then cried alone at night and became a very different person afterwards. But eventually, even though the pain never went away completely, they got on with their life together.  Everything, Mrs. Komori said, depended on our ability to do that.  Otherwise the sorrow of simply living would overwhelm us all and we’d do stupid things like kill ourselves.  Or simply steal.  Or smoke.

“Y-you know about that?” I asked.

“I do wash your clothes.  Or haven’t you noticed?  You smell like a fire in a tobacco barn.”

“Oh…”  Wow, I knew I had been a complete little bastard around the house.  Or bitch.  But I’d never even considered that during all the silent phase and awkwardness following that massive break with Emily, someone had continued to see not only that I was fed, but that I had clean clothes, as well.  I’d never even for a second thought about why my smelly, sweaty, smoky clothes were vanishing from heaps on the floor and coming back fresh and folded and carefully placed on my made-up bed.  Food was a necessity; laundry, however, was an expression of…

Of…

Then, Mrs. Komori said, "I don’t know if it’s even my place to stop you from doing that.  I guess I’ll figure that out as we go along, too.  I’ll be just being right there alongside you.  But what’s most important is, I want you to know I will be here for you through all of this. I love you.  I see this hurt child and I can’t help it.  I love you whatever or whoever you decide to become."

Love!  It was love!  I was right!  I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at her from the first real happiness I’d felt in months and months. When I met Emily, I loved her so much, I thought I'd die. And I thought I'd die again when I changed into a girl and lost myself and her simultaneously and forever.  But I didn't die.  Thanks to Mrs. Komori, I lived.