Tomorrow’s the big Speechathon so tonight I helped Regina with her this-is-what-I’m-all-about speech. She mainly needed me to proofread—you know, make sure no sentences were colliding and no commas were hiding. Her speech was pretty tight, but she had some trouble wrapping it up. She wanted to end with a slogan, but coming up with a bacon one was hard as hell.
Clutching her dog-eared speech as she paced the living room, Regina said, “What about ‘Don’t Vote For Nina, Don’t Vote For Tina, Vote For Regina’?”
Pacing right along with her, I kind of winced and shook my head. “Who the hell are Nina and Tina? They ain’t runnin’. I don’t even think there’s anybody at our school named Nina and Tina.”
My sister said, “Yeah. Damn.” She punched her paper. “See, the problem is Regina doesn’t rhyme with shit!”
Watching us from the couch, Narmeen piped up with, “Maybe you could do something with your last name.”
Regina and I gave each other a why-didn’t-we-think-of-that glance and quickly started mentally Word Searching for things that rhyme with Gates.
My sister said, “What about ‘So Put Down Your Plates And Vote For Gates’?”
I shrugged and said, “I’m feelin’ it, but not all the way.”
Regina turned to Narmeen. “What do you think?”
Narmeen gave us the Thumbs Down.
Regina asked her, “What’s wrong with it?”
Narmeen said, “Makes it sound like everybody’s a greedy pig that wants to do nothing but eat.”
My sister gave a defeated groan.
I said, “Wait, how about ‘Lower The Crime Rates And Vote For Gates’?”
Regina grimaced and said, “Crime rates? It’s a school, not Chicago.”
I told her, “I bet our girl likes it.” We both turned to Narmeen. I said, “Narmeen, what do you think? ‘Lower The Crime Rates And Vote For Gates’?”
Narmeen gave me the Thumbs Down.
“Damn,” I said. Then I told my sister, “You know something? Forget the rhyming. Let’s just go back to your first name. Maybe we can do something nice without a rhyme.”
Regina and I paced while Narmeen skeptically watched.
My sister said, “What about ‘Open Your Eyes And—”
“You can’t use that,” I interrupted.
“Why not?” she shot back.
I said, “Smith is blind, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” Regina said.
We both continued pacing and thinking.
Then I stopped and snapped my fingers. “I got it!! How about: ‘Join The Regina Regime’?”
My sister stopped pacing. I could see her eyes slowly draining out the doubt. “Join The Regina Regime . . . Join The Regina Regime,” she repeated. She looked at me and said, “You know, the more I think about it, the more I like it . . . Join The Regina Regime . . .”
I said, “Let’s check with our girl.”
My sister and I both turned to Narmeen.
Regina told her, “You know how I roll: Keep It Real Or Keep It Killed . . . ‘Join The Regina Regime.’ What do you think?”
After a moment, Narmeen gave my sister a salute.
Armed with Narmeen’s yes bless, Regina and I cheered and did a Triple F.
“Now I got a slogan!” Regina said as she quickly scribbled the words along the bottom of her paper.
Then my sister recited her entire speech for Narmeen and me. When she was done, I gave her a couple of notes—mainly about saying certain words more clearly and taking some pauses in a few spots—but other than that, her delivery was tight and quite right. I think she’s a natural-born speaker.
After Narmeen left, Regina whooshed off to her room to practice her speech some more and I plunked down on the couch to try to do homework. But, as usual, Sallie rented most of my mind time. I wondered whether she knew I was one of the people who ruined her sister’s posters. When I was hanging with her earlier she didn’t look like she knew, but some girls are so good at hiding what they know that a shovel isn’t enough to dig it out; sometimes you need a damn drill to hit that shit. And I’m still trying to figure out if Sallie is one of those girls.
“. . . What do you think?”
My sister’s voice shook me out of my thoughts.
I looked up at her. She was holding up a light green blouse and a royal-blue one.
“Which one should I wear tomorrow?” she asked me.
I pointed at the blue one. “That’s what’s up. It pops more.” I pointed at the green one. “With that one, they’ll fall asleep.” I pointed again at the blue one. “But with that one, ain’t nobody fallin’ asleep.”
My sister nodded. “Yeah, I was kinda thinkin’ that too. Thanks, bro!”
She smiled at me and whooshed back into her room.
It’s been nice seeing my sister smile more than once a week. Her campaign is only two days old but already she seems more happy and, I don’t know, more connected to life than she’s been in the last two years. She was especially cheerful tonight after scoring a major hit with her turn knight black today jam because it made Leona take down all her knight to day posters, and Sallie told me she won’t be putting any more of them up.
So while the Regina situation had me elated, the Sallie situation had me deflated, if you can feel me on that. I felt like I’d been operating on Sneak Mode all day. I no longer felt like a resident of Real City, and once you leave that particular town, you’re more lost than Jack Frost in July.
I knew what I had to do. So I picked up the phone and did it.
“Hey, U,” Sallie said when she picked up.
“Hey, Sallie,” I said. “Are you home?”
She said, “No, I’m at Dandee’s. What’s up?”
I said, “Tell her I’ll give her ten bucks if she admits it’s ‘veil.’”
Laughing, Sallie said, “Okay, hold on.” I could hear her telling her friend what I said. Then Sallie got back on the phone and said, between giggles, “She said to give you the Finger. I can text you a picture of her giving it to you, if you want.”
“No, I’m good.” Now that the Stalling portion of the program was over, I switched to Showtime. “So listen, I just wanted to tell you . . . last night, my sister asked me to be her campaign manager, and I agreed.”
There was a pause at the other end, then Sallie said, “Oh, okay.”
I was about to ask “Are you cool with that?” but her permission wasn’t my mission. I just wanted her to know. So I said, “I just wanted you to hear it from me and not somebody else.”
Sallie said, “Of course. Thank you . . . How’s it going so far?”
I said, “A little too early to tell, but I’ll keep you posted.”
“Yeah, same here,” she said.
Now there was silence at both ends. I was silent because I thought maybe she had more to say, but now that I think about it, she was probably silent because she was thinking the same way.
When the silence started getting muscles, I said, “Well, I better get back to this homework.”
She said, “Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said.
After hanging up, I felt better, and my concentration reported for duty again, at least enough for me to finish all my homework.
On nights when my homework load is light and the shit on my mind is heavy, I head over to my girl Marilyn’s place, just down the street.
It’s too bad Life doesn’t give us two legs, two arms, two feet, and one instruction manual called When Your Best Friend Goes from He to She (Or She to He). Having a trans best friend wasn’t exactly a beach walk at first. I think I would’ve seen my best friend as a girl more quickly if Marilyn had gone more full throttle with her He to She change, but she really didn’t. All she did was put on lipstick, color her nails, and wear eyeliner. There was no voice change. And even though her hair changed from straight to curly, she kept it just as short as it had been in the pre-Marilyn days. And she continued wearing the same clothes worn pre-Marilyn: sweatshirts, jeans, plaid shirts, and shit like that. Where the hell were the dresses, skirts, long hair?? When I confessed all that to Marilyn I could tell she was kind of offended (and I don’t blame her; it was an asshole thing to say), but she kept the Cool on and sat my ass down and patiently explained to me that her identity isn’t an Outside thing but an Inside thing. She said it wasn’t about breasts and dresses; it was about her heart and mind, and she said she’s always felt and thought like a girl. “I could put on a suit of armor and have a sword in one hand and a shield in the other,” she explained, “and I’ll still feel like a girl inside. It doesn’t matter what you put on. It’s all about what’s been put in.” We talked for a long time that day and I was glad we had the conversation because when it was over my eyes were more Open about her situation than they’d been before.
And even with my new knowledge I had some trouble accepting—really accepting—that Marilyn is still the same person I flew kites and had water-gun fights and talked about girls with; gender was the only thing different, at least for me. My uninformed ass had me thinking that our whole relationship had to change and that we’d have to start talking about mascara, crocheting, and Lifetime movies—shit I know nothing about. But Marilyn still wanted to play violent videogames and talk about girls. And she kept all the pre-Marilyn posters of bikini-clad women on her wall and was still thirsty for the same girls she’d always been thirsty for. I’d always thought that boy-to-girl trans people were sexually attracted to boys and that girl-to-boy trans people were sexually attracted to girls, but that’s not always the way it works. The first few months were kind of hard. When I’d visit with her in her room the conversation would wander to a girl I was attracted to and just as I was about to go into specifics I’d stop, remembering that I was now talking to a girl and not a boy. And Marilyn would always say, “Bro, what’s the matter with you? It’s me. Gimme the deets.” And I’d eventually give all the details, and the more I did it, the less strange it got, and pretty soon it was like I was talking to my old friend again. Because I was.
Something that depressed the hell out of me was the way a lot of our mutual peeps jumped ship the minute Marilyn came out last year. Our posse used to be bigger: besides the current crew of Marilyn, me, Rahkeem, and Cecil, there used to be Omar, Teddy K, Luis, and Lamont, but after Marilyn became Marilyn, they became Gone. It was really depressing when they started warning me with shit like, “Yo, you better watch out—any minute now he’s gonna start puttin’ the moves on you.” When I told them she liked girls (not that it would’ve mattered to me if she liked boys) they still weren’t interested in jumping back on the ship. Teddy K told me, “So wait a minute. He becomes a girl but still wants to fuck girls? If you wanna fuck girls, why not just stay a boy? I don’t even know what we’re dealin’ with here anymore. I mean, is he a straight boy or a gay girl, or a gay boy pretendin’ to be a gay girl?” I said, “How about—she’s our friend.” He said, “Yo, she’s your friend now. Shit, my life is confusin’ enough; I ain’t tryin’ to add more cups. I’m outta here like Vladimir, bro. Peace.” And off he walked.
Even though the remaining crew members—Cecil and Rahkeem—chose to stay on the ship, you can tell they want to keep at least five feet between them and Marilyn at all times. They don’t seem to be as comfortable talking to her like they used to be. And one time when Marilyn invited them over to her place to play the new Black Ops game they both looked at each other and gave her some weak-ass excuse that even a deaf newborn in Nigeria would’ve known was bullshit. The look on Marilyn’s face damn near broke the hell out of my heart.
As Marilyn and I played GTA V tonight—as usual, she sat in her “money chair” (its backer is shaped like a dollar sign, her favorite symbol) while I sat in a regular chair—she said, “So I hear that Narmeen girl is workin’ on your sister’s campaign. Damn, I love me some Indian girls. When are you gonna hook me up with her?”
I said, “When she stops liking guys, so it might be a while.”
She said, “That’s just like you to bust my buzz. Don’t you think she’s fine as hell?”
I shrugged and said, “I guess she’s pretty. But those dead eyes of hers shut down the party. She always looks like she’s thinkin’ to herself, ‘Damn, I should’ve chopped those bodies into forty pieces instead of twenty this morning.’”
Marilyn laughed. “Oh shit. That’s cold-blooded. But you know something? I wouldn’t even mind that. I bet serial-killer pussy is the best.”
Laughing, I said, “I know you didn’t just say that.”
She said, “Yo, think about it—you already know she’s passionate. And second of all, if she can aim an Uzi, you know she can tame a floozy.” She pointed at herself.
I chuckled and said, “Only you would say some sick shit like that.”
She said, “So what’s the latest and greatest with Sallie The White Girl?”
I said, “Why do you always say that? Why can’t she just be Sallie? ‘Sallie The White Girl’ makes it sound like she should have a Registered Trademark after her name.”
Firing at a passing car’s windshield, Marilyn said, “I still can’t believe you went Vanilla. White girls are boring as fuck.”
“Not this one,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you how funny she is?”
Firing at another windshield, Marilyn said, “I can’t believe your sister asked you to be campaign manager, knowin’ you’re smashin’ Leona’s little sis.”
I said, “Well . . . uh . . . I kinda . . . haven’t told Regina yet.”
Marilyn dropped her controller and turned around in her chair to gape at me. “Black man, is you serious?? Your sister doesn’t know you’re smashin’ a white girl??”
I said, “I’m not smashin’ her. I already told you we haven’t got to that point yet. We’re taking things slow . . . And I guess I haven’t told Regina yet ’cause . . . Well, you know how she is about the whole interracial thing. I mean, even back when I was dating an Asian girl, she gave me some shit about it. But not as much shit as I know she’ll give me about Sallie. So I guess I’ve just been tryin’ to put off that drama for as long as I can.”
Marilyn said, “Well, if you keep puttin’ off that Drama it’s gonna turn into Horror when you finally tell her and her head starts spinnin’ around. Then it’ll turn into Sci-Fi when she knocks you all the way up to Mars. Then that shit’ll turn into a Musical when we’re all standin’ at your grave, humming ‘Taps’ in your memory. Dude, it’s time to spill. You gotta ’fess up and tell her, UG. The goddamn Speechathon is tomorrow!”
“I know, I know,” I said. “I was actually gonna tell her tonight, but I didn’t want to blow her flow and get her all distracted. Her mind needs to be focused and free of locusts for that speech tomorrow. But I’ll tell her after the speech, real talk. I’ll tell her.”
Marilyn nodded and said, “That’s what’s up.”
After a while I said to my friend, “But check it out: I guess another reason I haven’t told her yet is, she might not want me to be her campaign manager anymore. And I really wanna help her with this campaign.”
Marilyn looked at me and said, “You mean to tell me, if it’s between Sallie The White Girl and some stupid-ass school election, you’re pickin’ the school election?? Bullshit. Everybody knows: when it’s Politics versus Pussy, Pussy always wins. The End.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who said that—Lincoln?”
“I’m pretty sure it was Jefferson,” she said.