Close to Spider Man by Ivan E. Coyote Page B
Authors: Ivan E. Coyote
Tags: FIC029000, FIC018000
Ads: Link
Gailon was going to be the last of it.
But Chris never told me any of this, she just told my mom, and now Gailon sits, too, under his crown of cotton ball hair and watches me eat an egg and toast. He is one-and-a-half and drinks cranberry tea from a mug with the rest of us. The kids picked the cranberries themselves.
Gailon looks like a little old man shrunk right down, like an owl. There is no baby in his face, and my mom says he will be the most special because Chris almost didnât have him, so he is more of a gift that way. But all Chris tells me is that she has been breast-feeding for five years now, and I couldnât see her in the dark last night when we touched, but her hands felt older.
She smells of wood smoke, and I smell of hair products, and everytime I see her the boys are bigger and there is somehow less of her and I meet her sons again, three secrets of her unfolding into their own in a tiny cabin forty miles from anything.
No wonder Chris couldnât wait for me and Frances to meet again. Now that heâs walking and talking, and putting on shows. Now that we can relate as equals, he and I. Sure, heâs only three, but age has never mattered to a true queen, and it takes one to know one.
Say what you will of nature and nurture and the children of both, scientists and sociologists and endocrinologists and psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists and plastic surgeons can all have their theories, but none of them can explain to me this:
How did Frances get to be Frances in all his Francesness? He doesnât watch TV . He listens to CBC . Frances doesnât know that boys donât wear tube tops. No one has told him this. He just has to wear a sweater too, if itâs winter. The magic of this is not lost on me.
He doesnât get it from his father, who doesnât eat anything he doesnât grow, or pick, or preferably shoot, skin, and dress himself with, and his older brother is a five-year-old water-packing, bicepped bushman in his own right, and Gailon is only a year and a half.
All four boys seem well aware that Chris is the only female in the house; she owns the only two breasts, the only one without what they have.
Yet Frances, three years old, triumphs like a crocus in a crack in a cliff; how does a lonesome queen even know he exists in a cabin in a frozen field in the Yukon with apparentlynot another soul around, with an ounce of fashion sense, or even the most minute grasp of the immense and innate drama of it all for miles?
No one but Frances. Until mom drags Uncle Ivan home for a night or two.
This is why I must be there for him, for all those moments, for those drag queen equivalents of baptism, first communion, confirmation, priest, and sainthood, and so on.
The first time he finds the right outfit, the one that really fits, I will hold up the mirror for him and say, âYou go, girl.â If he wants his ears pierced, he can count on me. The first time he gives the captain of the basketball team a secret blowjob, I will be his confessor. The first time someone calls him a faggot, and he slowly comes to realize that they donât think a faggot is a good thing to be at all, the first time he feels that fear, I want to be there. I will tell him of the time he was three and first did the red sock circle dance in the orange tube top ensemble. I will tell him then that he was born a special kind of creature, one that God never meant for everyone to understand, but that I understand. I will tell him that I will always love that little flower of him, that perfect unknowing differentness that blossomed and danced in a frozen field in spite of everything.
Because drag queens always dance in spite of everything. Itâs part of the job description.
How can I look at him and not feel relief? He is living proofthat I was just born this way. I donât remember my version of the red sock circle dance, but ten to one someone told me to close my legs because
But Chris never told me any of this, she just told my mom, and now Gailon sits, too, under his crown of cotton ball hair and watches me eat an egg and toast. He is one-and-a-half and drinks cranberry tea from a mug with the rest of us. The kids picked the cranberries themselves.
Gailon looks like a little old man shrunk right down, like an owl. There is no baby in his face, and my mom says he will be the most special because Chris almost didnât have him, so he is more of a gift that way. But all Chris tells me is that she has been breast-feeding for five years now, and I couldnât see her in the dark last night when we touched, but her hands felt older.
She smells of wood smoke, and I smell of hair products, and everytime I see her the boys are bigger and there is somehow less of her and I meet her sons again, three secrets of her unfolding into their own in a tiny cabin forty miles from anything.
No wonder Chris couldnât wait for me and Frances to meet again. Now that heâs walking and talking, and putting on shows. Now that we can relate as equals, he and I. Sure, heâs only three, but age has never mattered to a true queen, and it takes one to know one.
Say what you will of nature and nurture and the children of both, scientists and sociologists and endocrinologists and psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists and plastic surgeons can all have their theories, but none of them can explain to me this:
How did Frances get to be Frances in all his Francesness? He doesnât watch TV . He listens to CBC . Frances doesnât know that boys donât wear tube tops. No one has told him this. He just has to wear a sweater too, if itâs winter. The magic of this is not lost on me.
He doesnât get it from his father, who doesnât eat anything he doesnât grow, or pick, or preferably shoot, skin, and dress himself with, and his older brother is a five-year-old water-packing, bicepped bushman in his own right, and Gailon is only a year and a half.
All four boys seem well aware that Chris is the only female in the house; she owns the only two breasts, the only one without what they have.
Yet Frances, three years old, triumphs like a crocus in a crack in a cliff; how does a lonesome queen even know he exists in a cabin in a frozen field in the Yukon with apparentlynot another soul around, with an ounce of fashion sense, or even the most minute grasp of the immense and innate drama of it all for miles?
No one but Frances. Until mom drags Uncle Ivan home for a night or two.
This is why I must be there for him, for all those moments, for those drag queen equivalents of baptism, first communion, confirmation, priest, and sainthood, and so on.
The first time he finds the right outfit, the one that really fits, I will hold up the mirror for him and say, âYou go, girl.â If he wants his ears pierced, he can count on me. The first time he gives the captain of the basketball team a secret blowjob, I will be his confessor. The first time someone calls him a faggot, and he slowly comes to realize that they donât think a faggot is a good thing to be at all, the first time he feels that fear, I want to be there. I will tell him of the time he was three and first did the red sock circle dance in the orange tube top ensemble. I will tell him then that he was born a special kind of creature, one that God never meant for everyone to understand, but that I understand. I will tell him that I will always love that little flower of him, that perfect unknowing differentness that blossomed and danced in a frozen field in spite of everything.
Because drag queens always dance in spite of everything. Itâs part of the job description.
How can I look at him and not feel relief? He is living proofthat I was just born this way. I donât remember my version of the red sock circle dance, but ten to one someone told me to close my legs because
Similar Books
