TRIXIE'S DIARY - April 17, 1989

 

 

“Maybe…you weren’t really supposed to be my little boy after all. At least I can...die knowing I had a good, special daughter…for what that’s worth. Stay happy. Be careful.”

That’s what Mom whispered in her final hours. Something to that effect. Maybe a little less eloquent and coherent due to the heavy morphine dosage, perhaps a little less Afterschool Special than the way I’ve worded it, but that’s how I prefer to remember her last words. She hated the way my life was heading, never showed even a little support, then had a sudden slight change of heart right before she died. Could have been a worse eulogy.

She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Metastasized to the liver. Unresectable.

I’m using a lot of fifty-cent words now, Miss Diary. Got myself a thesaurus. Deal with it.

 

Vibrant pink cheeks became skeletal voids
Once thick ropes of maize hair shed and
Collected in greyed mats in the corners of sterile hospital pillows
Soon to be property of the Reaper

 

Just some sucky poetry I’ve been working on, Miss Diary. God, I feel like I’m trying too hard to be Poe or something. Death is morbid, breathing life even more so.

Mom was buried one week before my “sweet sixteen.” Yeah, I’m being sarcastic, Diary. Haven’t you figured that out yet? It was a lovely funeral, as they cliché say. Black clouds and white stargazer lilies. A stainless steel coffin that I know Hank/Dad/Asshole can’t afford, offering decent rest and comfort, as well as rust resistance. An easel displaying an enlarged black-and-white photo of Mom in her prime, circa 1965, when she was just a high school cheerleader named Judith, a mile-wide smile gleaming on her face, bouncing on a tattered trampoline. Hank forced me to show up in boy mode “out of respect for the rest of the family.” I’ve pretty much convinced myself this was the final official public appearance of Thomas, whereabouts now unknown.

It’s been almost a couple of months now since Mom was lost to the sick, and Hank’s writing entire dictionaries that give new definition to abuse. I don’t even know how I can manage to scrawl these words down right now—or ever—but I guess I can try. I have no one else I can tell. No one besides you will believe me, Miss Diary. Mom had enough clout within the confines of the house to keep him in league with the human race on rare occasions, but that power died with her.

Hank has never been a Norman Rockwell father by anyone’s stretch of the imagination—bottles of the cheapest malt liquor forever at his bedside like guardian angels, a ribbed muscle shirt stained with Rorschach blots of chorizo grease, the education level of a trained chimp, a blue-collar job at the Sweet and Sourdough Factory, which he claims is the direct source of his disdain for immigrants. Or, as Hank so eloquently refers to them, “wetbacks and sand niggers.” Really? Who the fuck talks like that? Oh, yeah. My dear old dad. Real classy. Now, as my sole guardian, he’s got nothing holding him back from doing his damnedest to try and force me back into Thomas mode.

On any given night, if I’m returning from a few hours of perfect escapism, he’ll usually snarl some obscenities in an alcoholic haze. He never was much good with people. Here’s a few choice examples:

“Well, lookie here. The fruit fairy has arrived and delivered me a dainty little homo son underneath my pillow.”

or

“Goddamn queer disappointment. Get out of my house before I kick your dick to kingdom come. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

or

“Quit your baby-ass cryin’. Wash that clown paint off of your face, you fucking fudge-packing freak before I introduce you to my five closest friends.”

Ladies, gentlemen and those somewhere in between: my father, Hardass Hank the Wordsmith Wizard. Who am I kidding, Miss Diary? You’re the only one who’s ever going to see these words.

Tonight there’s a plum shiner painting my eye for the offense of being caught in the wrong clothes again. All lines of deviancy crossed, the laws of parenting lost. Various atrocities performed, accompanied by the unspoken caveat that no one will believe the words of a “faggot in a dress” anyway.

And when this happens, I lose all ability to defend myself. All righteous power flushes right down the toilet. I shut down.

“You want to be a girl so bad?” he asks. “Well, c’mere. Let me show you how to behave like one, you little slut.”

The sound of a belt buckle clicking, a zipper’s teeth unlinking, a monster moaning.

I don’t think I should write about this anymore, Diary. I don’t think I—.

Fuck.

No.

The specifics are best left forgotten. Let the darkest reaches of the mind fill in the blanks. Then multiply that exponentially.

Life is hell, amphetamines are swell.