Choir Boy (26 page)

The phone rang at noon. They let the answering machine pick up. “Hey, Berry. Gray Redman. I’ve been doing some heartstorming, that’s like brainstorming only you use your heart, and I think I have some ideas. Buzz me.”

Judy wanted Berry to call Gray Redman back, but Berry felt too weary. He promised to call later. “Sounds like you have everything figured out anyway.”

Another message a while later: “Hey, why aren’t you at school, fairy? I was looking forward to showing everybody your jugs.” Berry recognized Randy’s voice. The background noise sounded raucous enough for the school cafeteria at lunchtime. Either Randy had coaxed the payphone to accept coins, or one of the Swans had lent a cell phone. Berry deleted that message too.

“So many calls,” Judy said. For lunch they were eating couscous with leftover salami and salad mixed in. “You obviously have a lot of people who care about you, Berry. How come you’re playing Garbo?”

Berry didn’t get the reference. “Whatever they’re all expecting from me, they’re all going to be disappointed.” “You’re being really ungrateful. More couscous? Well, your loss. It’s really good this way. A lot of kids your age starve for attention.”

“I’d kill to be left alone.”
I already did,
Berry thought. “Getting left alone is easy. Getting people to stop leaving you alone once they start is hard.”

Berry put his hands over his ears, like he did when he wanted to block all other singers and hear only how his voice sounded inside the echo chamber of his head. The danger of pressing against the bones that meet your eardrums is that you distort the sound of your own voice with skull harmonics. You drive yourself sharp that way.

Hours passed. Application forms seemed written by the same people who devised the Book of Common Prayer. Judy had given Berry index cards containing stock phrases for him to sprinkle into his short essay answers, and even into the little blanks on the forms themselves.

“I don’t really have an interest in multiculturalism that comes out of my choral background,” Berry told Judy.

“Compared to most dirt dumplings your age, you’re a positive cultural studies guru. You don’t watch TV, you read books. Besides, don’t drag the old Berry into this. We’re talking about the new Berry, who only just arrived.” Berry was surprised to hear Rat and Mr. Allen had both agreed to write recommendations.

“And what does ‘gender gifted’ mean?” Berry asked. “Search me.” Judy flayed the Internet seeking information for Berry. “Ah,” she said while Berry was on his fifteenth form. “This Lambda Youth organization has a transgender support group. It’s the perfect thing for you, Berry. They’ll be people your own age, who can identify with what you’re going through.” The group planned a meeting that evening at six.

Judy drove Berry in circles for fifteen minutes before spotting the Lambda Youth center, which hid under a big awning that said “The Art Sanctuary.” The staircase to the awning’s right, below street level, led to a big metal door with a tiny sign bearing a midget triangle and the letters “LY” in even smaller print. Berry hopped out of the car, waved at his mom, and ran down the staircase. He rang the bell and waited five minutes before a shaved-headed man with a pierced septum and tattoos opened the door and said, “Yeah.”

“Name’s Berry. I’m here to be supported as a young gender queer person.”

The skinhead shrugged and led Berry to a clammy room with posters of Nelson Mandela and Brandon Teena. Motley people slouched in folding chairs clustered in a circle. Berry grabbed one of the still-folded chairs by the wall while he checked out the roomful of grown-ups. Everybody there looked way older than Berry. And then he saw Maura out of the corner of his eye. Berry sighed and pulled his chair into the circle across from Maura.

“Welcome to the Young Gendernauts. I’m Zulu NoGender and I’m the facilitator here. We were just doing personal introductions and affirmations.” The speaker looked kind of like Whoopi Goldberg, only with more tattoos and piledriver hands.

“Oh.” Berry slumped forward, head to knees.

“My name is Bakka,” someone to Berry’s left said. “I’m a male-born female. I go to Holy Mystery Technical Institute. My personal affirmation is that I’m a quail.” Berry looked up. Bakka was easily six feet tall, with athletic shoulders and hairy arms. She wore huge numbers of bangles on her wrists and a diva’s ransom in makeup.

Most of the Young Gendernauts looked like men to Berry. He didn’t understand who they were trying to fool. Some of them even wore men’s clothes and had beards, for God’s sake. Maura was one of the few pretty ones there— nobody else was as glamorous as most of the girls at the Booby Hatch.

Soon the introduction chain reached Berry. “Hey. Berry. Think I’m in the wrong place. Looking for the Transgender Youth Group.” Various people assured Berry he was there now. “But you’re all old,” he said. Maura gave him a javelin stare.

“Don’t mind Berry,” Maura said. “She’s awfully young. She doesn’t think about what she says to hurt people. Dearie, everyone in this room is twenty-five and under.”

“Oh. Sorry. Anyway, I’m a ... I don’t know what. I’m a kid. Oh, and my personal affirmation is that I killed a man yesterday.” It felt good to say it aloud for the first time.

“That’s nice,” Zulu said. Then she opened the discussion to “free topic.” It turned out the guys with beards weren’t men doing a weak job of looking like women, but women working to be men. Pretty much everyone felt oppressed, and talked about hegemony and landlords. Their parents didn’t talk to them. Their families and friends didn’t understand. People threw them out of their homes and they couldn’t get jobs because of discrimination. Half a dozen people there were some kind of homeless. In fact, Berry recognized one from Hungry Souls.

“So, Berry, tell us about you,” Zulu said.

“Um . . . Well, did I mention I killed someone? Speaking of which, how long does it usually take the police to arrest someone when they’ve committed murder, because I w
^T
as kind of expecting the cops to bust in at any moment and save me from having to write ‘learning is my wings’ for the tenth time on an application form today. Somebody obviously wanted to punish me in advance before they carted me off to maximum security to be an extra in the next Dr. Dre video, speaking of which, Dr. Dre is really weak, there I said it, and speaking of which, music is my life and my life is over even if I hadn’t taken a life, and I don’t know why I’m here.” Twenty gender outcasts transferred their oppression to Berry with their stares. Only Maura looked concerned.

“Berry,” Zulu said. “I understand you’re nervous about being here, and we’re all older than you.”

“Dr. Dre is not weak,” Bakka interrupted.

“But let’s back up. You’re on hormones, right?”

Berry nodded.

“How does your family feel about this?”

“Dad’s disturbed. Mom couldn’t be happier, now that she’s over the shock. She’s paying attention to me for the first time since the birth thing. She’s really hyped on the ‘I have a daughter now’ trip.”

Several people gasped. “So let me get this squared away,” Bakka said. “You have a supportive moms who doesn’t push you onto the streets. You’ve managed to start hormones young. And you’re upset
why,
exactly?” Maura gave Berry a look that said,
I told you.

“So have you transitioned?” one of the other beardless men asked. “Or are you planning on transitioning soon?” “That’s where the wine becomes actual blood, right? I’m Episcopalian. I’m pretty sure we don’t believe in that. I always thought it was way gross, even before I spilled it on Canon Moosehead’s crotch.”

“That stain is
not
coming out, by the way,” Maura volunteered. “He’s very upset, poor baby.”

“Shut up, Maura,” said the other girl, whose name was either Sophie or Sojourner. “Transitioning is when you start living full-time as your new sex.”

“Oh,” Berry said. “I’ll probably do that next week, if I’m still walking around.”

The other gendernauts decided to ignore Berry’s weird non-answers and go back to their own problems. Sophie/Sojourner had lost her job just as she was saving up for her operation, so she had to spend her savings on rent, and her parents persecuted her every way they knew. Another woman traded sex for a couch to sleep on. Berry felt more depressed than ever listening to these stories.

Finally, the group broke up. Everybody shunned Berry except Maura.

“Hey. So you sure you want your pals here to see you talking to me? I don’t think they like me,” Berry said.

“You’re fine. They offend easy here. So, you want to get a milkshake?”

“My mom’s picking me up.”

They walked out into the dark hallway. “So what was that stuff about killing someone? You on the lam?” Maura asked.

Berry started to answer, then he spotted something. At first he thought he must be wrong, like the time he thought he’d seen Mr. Allen in the supermarket but it was an old lady. But then he looked again, and it really was.

Through the window on the door across the hall, Berry sighted Wilson fidgeting in another folding chair. “What’s he doing here?”

Maura leaned into the door and chuckled. “No idea. Could be anything. Maybe it’s a bestiality encounter group. I could imagine Wilson with a hamster, they’re on the same wavelength.”

“Shush,” Berry said. Wilson saw the two people outside the door and tried to cover his face too late. The leaflet he used to cover his face said
Young? Gay? OK!
on the cover. “Just a guess, but I think it’s a gay group.”

“Oh. So much for Wilson’s dark secret. Big fucking deal. Everyone’s a homo nowadays,” Maura said.

Berry tried to see the rest of the room. Like the young trannies, most of the people looked ancient compared to him. There were probably a dozen gay youngsters in there, under a big flow chart showing the relationship between self esteem and self improvement. Wilson finally uncovered his face and sank into his chair.

“Can I gloat? Please tell me I can gloat,” Maura said. “Mister Pm so normal and perfect that Pm going to bang some chick at Harvard and spawn two baby brain surgeons ...” “Shush,” Berry said. He saw something else. A big waxed mustache in rapid motion at the fringe of his view. “I think it’s that Bishop guy you introduced me to.” He ran out front and didn’t see a Toyota Corolla waiting. He ran back in.

“Hey, Maura. Do me the biggest favor on Earth? I don’t want to miss my mom in case she’s circling the block. Can you go out and wait for her? I really need to talk to Wilson.” “Doesn’t your mom still hate me?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself? Please?”

Maura went. Berry kept vigil by the doorway to the Bishop’s gathering. He kept away from the door. He heard a shout outside and almost went to look. The door opened and guys Maura’s age wandered out in twos or threes. Probably going to a bar. Any youth group whose members could drink booze without fake ID was a sham in Berry’s book. Still no Wilson. Berry finally barged into the room, where Bishop Bacchus and Wilson sat with one empty chair between them. Bishop Bacchus had his chair turned around so the back was against his crotch.

“Labels are for sticker guns,” the Bishop was in the middle of saying. “Those price gun doodads are the funnest part of retail, speaking from rich personal experience. But you don’t have to label yourself until you’re ready.”

“Hey, Wilson.” Berry said. “So I hear you told Marc and Randy I was a fag. ”

“Awkwardness,” Bishop Bacchus said. “Major on the spotness. Friend finds you at strange table eating wild fruit grown under the Earth.”

“Underground fruit is called roots. Like a carrot,” Berry said. “Hey, Bishop.”

“Oh, we’ve met? Here I go by Pete the Facilitator, or P-Fac for short.” The Bishop looked younger in a tank top and jeans, both of them slashed and tattered.

“Got it. So what are you,” Berry asked Wilson. “L, G, B, T, or some other letter?”

“Hey yo, label-free zone,” P-Fac said. “You seem all wound up, kid. Must be hormones.”

“Hormones,” said Berry, “are the least of my worries. But I like the label-free thing.”

“So you’re happy,” Wilson said. “Now I’m a weirdo too. At least I still sing.”

“Sort of,” Berry snorted. “I heard you guys yesterday. Cracks.”

“You know that thing where a calm surface hides a horrified chaos lurking beneath? That’s the choir right now. We’ve been nuts. Teddy’s basically a man. You’re gone. Randy, Marc, and I are unreliable. I don’t know if we’re going to do that recording session or not.”

“If we don’t do that recording, it’ll be all my fault.” “Hell yeah, it will,” Wilson said.

“Hey, judgment,” P-Fac said.

Berry couldn’t stay mad at Wilson. For one thing, he needed to hear more about the choir. “I think my mom’s waiting. You should eat with us.”

Wilson considered. “I’d have to call home.”

When they got outside, Maura was sparring with Marco. The Corolla was parked nearby. Marco wore his blue parka and Hawaiian turtleneck. His moustache crinkled with rage.

“Hey Berry,” Maura yelled. “You didn’t tell me your mom was transgender as well. I was just congratulating her on passing so well.”

“That’s not my mom. It’s my dad.”

“I thought Maura left already,” Wilson groaned.

“Just get in the car,” Berry said. He opened the rear door, shoved a box of Steely Dan cassettes on the floor, and turned back to where his dad and Maura argued without making sense.

“I just don’t hold with all this and neither does my son,” Marco shouted.

“All what? Anyway, you have no son.”

“No,
you
have no son.” Marco jabbed at Maura with a finger.

“Huh?”

“Dad can we get going?” Berry tugged at the parka sleeve. “Just a moment, son. My boy’s a normal kid. I see myself in him. I’m not even worried about him going to lairs of confusion like this. It’ll just help him realize faster that he doesn’t fit in.”

“Newsflash, Magnum P.I. Your son has a shelf you could balance a bowl of nachos on.”

“Thanks for the mental image, Maura. See you later, okay?” Berry opened the passenger side front door and clicked the safety belt home.

Marco jumped in the front side and started the car without wearing his seatbelt. “Finally. Let’s move.” He pulled the car out of its illegal spot and sped down the street, running a light two shades shy of red.