Fish Tank
Chapter 1
He was young, maybe five or six, it was certainly one of the earliest memory he could recall. In this memory, he looked on into a fish tank with many different types of fish; there were small fish, big fish, colorful fish, dead fish. He was mesmerized as they swam so aimlessly, seemingly without a care, their only troubles being when they'd be fed next.
He was in trouble, again; his father was talking to his teacher in the next room. He had gotten into a fight with Charlie Harrison, a mean boy who carried around a blue blanket and had a permanently stuffy nose. Charlie had gotten the other boys to ban him from playing cops and robbers.
"Cause only boys get to be cops and robbers. You have to play house like the other girls." Charlie had poked him hard in the shoulder and ran off to play. He on the other hand, had played alone with the blocks, stacking them and stacking them, only to knock them down with a toy airplane. Then later, in revenge, he had taken Charlie's prized blue blanket and hid it in his cubby-hole, when Charlie realized it was gone, he had thrown a fit. Charlie immediately accused him of stealing it and yelled.
"You're just mad cause you're not a boy! You're just a stupid girl!" In a fit of rage he had yelled back
"I am a boy!" Then launched himself at Charlie and instigated a full blown fist fight. The teacher had separated them and searched his cubby, finding the signature blue blanket. She had called his father, and now there he was. He scowled as he ran his tongue across his split lip, and looked to Charlie. He was sitting in the corner, his arms crossed, with a bloody nose and black eye. He hated getting into trouble, but he hated when people called him a girl even more. He looked back to the fish.
Only when a tiny voice drifted into his ears did he even realize someone was next to him, admiring the fish as well.
"I wonder which ones are boys and which ones are girls..." She said, never once giving her fish viewing companion a glance. She was the new girl that the teacher had been talking about. He had looked at the clock, it had been a little late to just be getting to school.
He sat there somewhat timid. He shrugged, hoping that was the end of the inquiry, because that question gave him a weird feeling in his stomach. Like a slight pressure, that grew more uncomfortable the longer the girl stood by him. He always had stomach aches; he never really knew what they meant until he was older. At that age they had blamed it on his anxiety, being diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder, explained a lot of things at that age. Why he constantly had stomach aches, why he was always on edge, and how he never really could go to sleep. Now he knew the stomach aches were the physical reaction to his crippling dysphoria that was present even in that young age. The girl had big brown eyes and pig-tails; she tapped on the glass and looked to him.
"Are you a boy or a girl?" It was somewhat of an innocent question. He kind of looked like a girl, with his round face, long lashes, and the long jean dress he was sporting. But everything else about him said otherwise, his posture, his short hair, even the scowl on his face was decidedly masculine. The uncomfortable pressure in his stomach increased tenfold. He knew the answer; he knew what he was supposed to say. But he didn't say it, instead he shrugged again.
"Oh, well I'm a girl. My name's Stacy." She said, looking at him with her big brown eyes. She smiled prettily up at him, and he realized she was expecting his name in return.
"I'm Gracie." He said quietly; his shoulders tensed as he heard the door to the teacher's office open up. He looked at his father's face. His jaw was clenched as well as his hands; he walked to him and grabbed his upper arm.
"Come on Gracie, we're going home." His father's grip on his arm was painful, but he knew better than to say anything. The drive home was quiet; the only sound was his father's loud yet even breathing. When they pulled up into his homes driveway, his father had taken his face in between his large hands and forced him to look him in the eyes. His father drew in a shaky breath and said through clenched teeth.
"Gracie, you are not a boy." He shifted his eyes away from his fathers.
"No Grace, Look at me! You are not a boy! Say it to me!" He father's voice was harsh with anger and embarrassment. The hands on his face gripped tighter. Tears stung his eyes as he shakily responded.
"I'm not a boy." His eyes filled with tears as his father roughly let go of his face. He blocked his teary eyes from his father with his left hand as his right rubbed his upper arm, still throbbing from where his father had roughly grabbed him. He didn't remember how long he had stayed in his father's car, pinching painfully at his leg to keep himself from crying.
Later that night his mother had lectured him about fighting in school, as he listened to his mother his eyes would occasionally stray to his father, who had a blank look on his face. From that day forward he always felt uncomfortable around his father. He was never really around to begin with, and when he was it was to punish him somehow, he was like a stranger. He remembers hearing his mother and father arguing pretty often, and it was always about something different. Only after that day was it about him. He only snippets of the argument, but even then he knew what the words meant.
"She's a tomboy, Paul. What do you expect; she's just in that phase where she's afraid to grow up. To her being a "girl" is like growing up!"
In those early stages of his childhood, his mother had held onto the hope that he would grow out of it, while his father had taken his clothing preference and choice of playmates more seriously.
"It's not right Audra! This isn't some silly childhood phase; she's messed up in the head! Tomboys don't have to be medicated for anxiety!"
"How could you say that about your own child? She's an anxious little girl! Besides she's been doing fine without her medication." His father scoffed, and from his room he heard his father go to the fridge. That was another thing he didn't like about his father, the way he drank. He never became violent or disorderly; in fact his father became completely blank. He had nightmares about that blank face his father would have after a few drinks.
"Tomorrow we're taking away anything that might be putting ideas in her head. No more trucks, only Barbies, and no more jeans either, she only wears dresses from now on." He began pinching his leg again, he didn't want to cry. Why should he, anyways? They were just toys, they were just clothes. But deep down he knew that wasn't true. This was truly the worst punishment he could think of. He went to sleep with tears in his eyes, but once again he refused to let them fall.
While his mother was more traditional with her punishments, his father was torturously creative. From that night on he was constantly forced to wear dresses, forced to keep his hair long, and the punishments he was given were things that most girls would kill for. If he talked back to the teacher, a new dress would be added to his wardrobe. If he didn't clean up his room, he was forced to wear nail polish to school the next day. He cut his hair; he was taken to the salon and given extensions. The only friend he had back then was Stacy, the brown eyed girl with pigtails that had inquired about his sex when they first met.
Stacy was nice and constantly changed her name. When he had seen her the next day at school, she had changed her name to Betty, and introduced herself to the class as such. Now that he thought about it, maybe Stacy wasn't her real name to begin with. Her parents were very laid back and liberal, newlyweds with soft smiles and kind eyes. They had just moved to his town to settle down and raise their child in a nice suburb. They let their daughter dress however she wanted, which almost always consisted of polka dotted rain boots and a tutu, and they believed it was healthy to let their daughter "explore herself spiritually" and encouraged her to make friends of all shapes and sizes. So when she saw him playing alone during their recess time, she had approached him out of curiosity, having heard and seen the fight.
"Why do you play alone?" She asked, he shrugged and said.
"Why do you always try to talk to me?" She smiled her pretty smile and sat next to him, she began stacking blocks and humming a small tune.
"Gracie is a girl's name." He tensed.
"Yeah, so." He knocked over his tower of blocks and began to make another one, but this time bigger and taller.
"You don't have to be angry, momma says that names don't define us. So even though Gracie is a girl name, doesn't mean you have to be a girl. You can even change your name if you don't like it. Well, that's what momma says. " His eyes widened as the girl continued to stack blocks. His stomach began to hurt.
"So, why do you play alone?" She asked again, his attention turned back to the blocks.
"The girls always make me play the baby, and the boys said girls can't be cops or robbers." It was the girl's turn for her eyes to widen.
"No! That's not true, my auntie is a cop, and she arrested a robber once that was a girl!" she quickly stood up ready to search for the boys to set them straight.
"No, don't you'll get in trouble if you fight them." He grabbed her hand and tried to pull her back down, but she wrestled it away.
"I won't fight them, I'm just gonna tell them they're wrong, and that you should be able to play!"
"I don't want to play with them anymore, they're mean." He kicked over his tower. It barely even went up to his knees anyways.
"I like playing alone, nobody tells me what to do." He stared at the blocks; they were really his only friends. Always there to calm him down, kept him from punching Charlie Harrison in the face every time he was within arm's reach, every single block was special to him. They didn't yell at him either, or grab him so hard it hurt, or make his mom cry, and they certainly didn't give him nightmares. Stacy looked to the ground and kicked a bit of dirt.
"So if I want to play with you, I just have to be quiet?" She looked up at him with her big eyes and that's when he realized how pretty she was. He blushed and looked down at his jeans. Stacy was his first crush; he remembered how the sick feeling he constantly had in his stomach had turned into butterflies when he was around her.
"No, you don't have to be quiet; you just can't tell me how to do things." She smiled a blush on her own cheeks.
"It's ok, you're better at building than me anyways." They smiled and began building the biggest, tallest block building he had ever attempted.
"So what do you want your name to be?" He stopped and looked at her in confusion.
"I know you don't like Gracie, 'cause you face looks sad every time someone says it." He nodded and thought for a moment. He had an uncle he really liked because he always gave him hand-me down boy clothes when his mom and he would visit, so when he played he wouldn't ruin his dresses. He liked how his uncle's name sounded, and how it sounded when other people said it. People on his mother's side of the family always said he looked more like his uncle than his mom. He smiled and looked to Stacy.
"Adam, I want my name to be Adam."
To be continued…