On the nights when he allowed himself to think about it,
he liked to think that he had stumbled into Blue Crow by a twist of fate.
He could picture himself, alone, frightened eyes darting to every corner,
anticipating the next ISSP cop out on his beat, staggering into the town
at night, slinking into the Rester House Bar and ordering a drink, a Scotch,
maybe. Some drink male fashion magazines claimed was feminine, something
completely different from what the burly man with the mismatched eyes was
cradling at the corner. What was that, whiskey? No, boy, a drink too dangerous
for you. He smiled, a crooked grin that hid itself well under the red lights
of the bar.
"What is this place?" he asked. The bartender didn't answer,
but the wail of a lone saxophone picked up from the stage, and he could
read the sign now: The Rester House. A jazz club. A clam tailor built to
cushion his body.
"But it didn't happen like that, did it?" Julius asked.
"No," Gren replied, pouring them both a drink. Steam rose
from the glasses he had set out, warming his fingers and his throat as
he took a sip. Across from him, Julius crossed his legs, waiting.
Julius was free that night. He had called his boss and
claimed to have caught the flu from a customer. It pained him to miss a
night of work, he groaned from Gren's phone, but he couldn't bare the thought
of making anybody sick. Besides, he looked terrible after every cough and
sneeze, red nose, snot all over his chin, not at all pleasant, darling.
He sat on Gren's crouch with his legs folded beneath a long, cream coloured
dressing gown. His long, wavy blond hair had been pulled into hot pink
curlers. His chin was dotted with three days worth of stubble, but he claimed
that none of his customers minded a lady with stubble. He had never even
bothered to get himself a pair of implants.
"This guy from down at 54th Street got himself two pairs
of implants," he told Gren. "The crazy thing claims that's what business
men from Mars like. Can you imagine that?"
Gren shook his head. His drink tasted like cooling steam.
He poured himself another glass and settled back into his seat, gazing
at the circles of light forming around Julius's glass. They bounced off
the transvestite's cream coloured nails and formed rainbows over the bottle
of heated bourbon they were sharing.
"So," Julius said. "What did happen?"
Gren shrugged. "I stepped out of the bus."
It was 14:45 on a Wednesday, although he forgot that detail
three days later, before he bought a cheap holograph calendar at Tjcizch's
Hardware Store. The sun had come out that day at 12 pm, only to disappear
behind the clouds a few minutes later. A battered radio roped to the front
of the bus chirped out that warmer weather had settled in that week. 5
degrees Fahrenheit. A blanket of thick grey cumuli lay over the horizon,
crawling forward slowly to blanket the entire town. Blue Crow. A direction
post too grainy to read stood a few paces away from where the bus had left
him. He squinted up at it, hoping to make some words out. Three crows peered
down at him, necks glistening in the cold afternoon still. They cawed in
harmony, their eyes rolling in their sockets, waiting for Gren to step
away from the post.
He trudged towards a highway slowly, his boots crunching
over the snow that lay packed at each corner of the street. No cars sped
by, no hover crafts, no pedestrians. Columns of smoke rose from uncovered
manholes, obscuring the groups of people that huddled around them. Gas
masks looked out at Gren, his face reflected in thick, Plexiglas goggles.
They had gone out of style in Jupiter ten years ago. Research conducted
in Venus claimed Jupiter's green beta rays caused eye cancer when filtered
through Plexiglas. Green beta rays bounced off the moon of Callisto, scattering
away towards nothing. Gren stepped closer to a group of eight goggle people
and smiled at what he thought to be an old lady, but a bass rumble ordered
him to just keep away from his spot. Gren scurried away, slipping once.
Laughter followed him down the alley.
"And then you found me, darling," Julius said.
"Well, no. I found Alana first."
Alana stood at the corner of 45th and 7th, looking for
all the world as if Gren had stepped on his feet. He made a pretty enough
woman, but his shoulders were too wide. They stretched out beneath a pink
satin Audrey Hepburn dress, Alana's face cracking under peach concealer
and rose mascara. He winked widely at Gren and motioned for him to come
closer. "You look cold, my poor boy." Gren looked like a tourist. He held
a black case in one hand, a backpack slung over the right shoulder, blue
eyes darting every which way, taking in the city and Alana and the shop
windows in one blink. He obviously couldn't read Russian. He frowned at
the signs and looked thoroughly lost. Probably desperate to find a hotel.
Probably laden with cash.
"Do you know where I might find a hotel?" Gren asked.
Alana smiled, drawing closer, placing one gloved hand
over Gren's chest, slipping beneath his coat "I might," he purred, trailing
his fingers upward like little, high heeled feet. He reached Gren's neckline
and drew back, his face twisting into a grotesque mask of surprise. "What
the fuck? You're a woman?!"
Gren sighed and turned to leave. One hand rose to draw
his coat closed. Alana was following him, his voice a hoarse, urgent whisper.
"Hey, listen, girlie, you'd better the hell get outta here. This ain't
no place for you." Gren didn't answer. He turned into the nearest corner,
hoping the transvestite would leave him alone. Alana followed, his voice
rising now that they were no longer out in the open streets. "I'm not kidding
you, honey. Last girl that stepped into Blue Crow wound up under ten feet
of ice in the river." Gren stopped. Alana stood a few feet away, obviously
a young man in a dress. His chest rose and fell from the strain of surprise
and an urgency Gren couldn't understand. He appeared younger than he had
seemed at first. Eighteen. A very young twenty, perhaps.
"What do you mean?" Gren asked.
Alana heaved a sigh, crossing his hands over his chest.
"You a tourist?" When Gren shook his head no, Alana continued. "Listen,
honey, there're no girls in Blue Crow. I don't think there's a girl in
the whole damn moon of Callisto. They don't want 'em."
In spite of himself, Gren grinned. "So this is a male
gay colony or something?"
Alana sniffed. "Hardly. It's a fucking den of wanted bounty.
They stream in from every corner of the galaxy and grow roots here. Nobody
comes to Callisto. Not tourists, not decent folks, not ISSP, and especially
not girls."
"How chivalrous of the place. Guess I'm lucky I ran into
a decent young man willing to give me the warning."
Gren set his case on the ground and sat on it, his chin
between his hands. His right shoulder hurt from carrying his backpack.
He had a portable pressure cooker in there, along with foil wrapped sandwiches,
a pre-cooked duck breast, cole slaw he was certain had turned fifty miles
ago, and four pairs of chopsticks. He had wrapped the cooker in his shirts
and lined the bottom with two pants and an extra pair of shoes. A photo
album rode in the front pockets, along with a calculator he had never removed
from high school and three sets of batteries. A bowie knife, a Swiss knife,
an extra can opener, a pack of mints, a wad of court plaster, string. He
looked like an earthquake refugee with a mafia trench coat lined with licorines.
He sighed and looked up at Alana.
"Listen, if you take me back to your place for tonight,
I promise I'll leave tomorrow."
Alana uncrossed his arms and shook his head. "Sorry, honey,
but I can't chance it." He saw the stranger lower her head, her gloveless
fingers running over her knuckles. The poor girl did look very alone and
pitiful. Her backpack bulged with the tell-tale signs of hasty, impractical
packing. Probably a runaway, a bounty misled into coming to Blue Crow.
Whoever had misled her had probably gotten some money out of her in order
to sneak her into Callisto. Alana ran a hand through his shoulder length
brown hair.
"All right, look, sweetheart, I know a place you can stay,
OK?"
"And that's when I came in?" Julius said. "Alana never
told me, that silly little girl."
Gren smiled and re-filled his friend's glass. "I didn't
even know Alana's name by then. He was paranoid as hell."
Alana rang Julius's doorbell with a quick dart left and
right, hustling Gren before him into the tiny, ill kept apartment without
a word. Posters for classic Earth movies lined the egg blue walls: An
American in Paris, Some Like it Hot, Priscilla Queen of the
Desert, Amadeus. White furniture lined the walls, dotted with
frilly pillows and hot pink dust covers. The effect reminded Gren of an
easter egg, a Pueblo blanket made by a child, maybe. Julius stood in the
centre of the room, his hands placed on his hips as he scowled at Alana
from beneath thick blue mascara.
"And the meaning of this is? Look, Ala, darling, if I
want a customer, I'll step out into the street. No need to hustle the poor
boy in here like that."
Alana shrugged. He looked at Gren, seeming to size him
up, before he turned to Julius. "I can't explain this, Julius. You'll just
have to trust me and hear this... this person out. OK?" With that, he stepped
out, a ivory wind chime hung from the doorknob jingling to itself. His
heels clattered loudly down the stairs, making it clear that he was running
all the way down, distancing himself from death under ten feet of ice in
the river.
Julius drew out one dramatic sigh and fixed his gaze on
the boy standing before him. "OK. So what's the deal? Not gay but curious?
Think you're gay but your friends kicked you out? Too shy for Alana? What?"
Gren clutched his case with both hands and motioned toward
one white couch. "C-can I?" he murmured. Julius waved one wide, melodramatic
hand and Gren dropped into the chair with a sigh. He unhooked his backpack
and lay it on the ground beside his case. Standing, he removed his coat.
Julius spluttered.
"Now hang on there, kid! That's too quick! Don't you want
to--"
"There are no girls in Blue Crow," Gren said, folding
his coat over his backpack. "Correct?" He watched as Julius shook his head
no, his eyes not fully comprehending. Gren unhooked the first three buttons
of his shirt and stepped forward. Julius was blushing, the same grotesque
surprise from Alana's face making its way into his features. Gren stood
close to him and held the shirt away from his chest. Julius's eyes lowered
once, quickly, before they drew away and his hand rose to cover his mouth.
"You're a... a girl...?"
Gren smiled, a tiny tug at each side of his mouth. He
took Julius's hand and tugged him forward. The older man's eyes widened,
his hand struggling to free itself. Gren released Julius's hand and ran
one hand through his hair. "Um, listen, could I... Well, ah, could I use
your bathroom for a minute? I swear on my mother's name I won't try anything
funny."
Julius considered it for a minute, his arms folding under
his stomach. He looked from Gren to the front door to the bathroom down
the hall. He didn't keep his guns anywhere the girl could get at them,
and he had mapped out his house with fire escapes clearly marked out in
his head. If she tried anything in the bathroom, he could be out in a few
seconds and banging on the neighbour's door. The tall, body building Portuguese.
Julius nodded. "Sure." He watched as the girl walked down the hall, the
bathroom door closing with a click.
Julius sat on his couch. It was foolish to be so frightened
of a foreign girl., but his hands shook. With trembling fingers, he lit
a cigarette. He had destroyed all of the evidence that tied him to that
robbery four years ago. Had the ISSP found out something? Sent her to nail
him? Julius inhaled quickly. But why a girl? She'd be a clean pick in Blue
Crow. Maybe she had been sent to seduce him? The ISSP records probably
had no clue Julius was gay. There wasn't a single official form that asked
you to toggle sexual orientation. He was sure of it. He wouldn't have toggled
homosexual anyway. But still... He inhaled faster, sharp puffs of smoke
rising into his eyes.
The girl's voice came from the bathroom. She was incredibly
good at faking a man's voice. Julius stayed where he was and called out
"Yeah?" The girl wanted him to come to the door of the bathroom. Julius
took one last, quick drag of his cigarette and extinguished it. He edged
quickly towards his bedroom and ran his hand beneath his mattress. He came
down the hall with a tiny red gun clutched in his hands. He placed one
hand against the doorknob and released the safety.
"You OK in there, dear?" he called. He heard the girl
chuckle, a deep bass rumble. With one twist of the doorknob, Julius kicked
in the door, red gun aimed squarely at the girl's face. She looked back
at him with a strange, lopsided grin. Naked. Leaning against the sink as
Julius's gun began to rattle in his grip. She stepped forward, blushing
slightly, and placed one hand over Julius's gun arm. Julius stared down
at the floor and spluttered to himself.
"You're a... a... You're a... Oh my god. You're a... a..."
Gren sighed, offering Julius a grin and a shrug. "I'm
a man. I'm a woman. I'm both. I'm neither." He smiled as Julius slumped
against the toilet seat, his eyes wide and growing wider as he took in
Gren's naked body.
"I can't believe I acted like such an arse," Julius said
from his place on Gren's couch, gulping down his fourth glass of bourbon.
Gren swished the last dregs of alcohol left in the bottle
around and emptied it in one swig. "I shouldn't have been so cocky. But
you can appreciate how hard it is to say something like I've got these
two nice breasts here and a somewhat decent penis down there and I'm OK
with this. People freak out. It happens. No big deal."
Julius looked at his empty glass in the hopes that it
would miraculously re-fill itself. "I still acted like an arse."
The first few days were almost catatonic. Gren sat in
Julius's white couch and waited for the transvestite to trudge home from
work and his personal inquiries into securing Gren a full-fledged Callisto
ID. Paperwork was a joke. The immigration's clerk, like Julius and most
of Callisto's inhabitants, had a bounty on his head, but Gren would still
need an ID to work his way through commuter trains and the occasional hover-carrier.
"I play the saxophone," the younger man said, opening his case to reveal
the polished and lovingly nestled instrument. So he would need an ID to
secure a job as a sax player as well. No club owner worth his salt ever
bothered to check them, but the occasional, dillusional ISSP officer that
passed through the town made them necessary in a pinch. Something about
the intergalactic census and archaic Jupiter regulations that applied to
both Callisto and Ganymede.
As he waited, Gren straightened out Julius's apartment.
He burst the fiber-glass tube on Julius's vacuum cleaner while attempting
to clean up a yoghurt spill, but he soon felt confident enough to use all
of the appliances in the house without causing a disaster. He recognized
half of the appliences as out-dated Jupiter and Mars models, and simply
ignored anything built whithin the last year. While the entertainment console
played jazz, he vacuumed, dusted, straightened, re-wired, and ironed most
of Julius's possessions, keeping himself busy as the hours passed. He spent
the rest of the day watching TV. Big Shot came on each day at 16:30,
its hosts, Punch and Judy, rushing across the screen as they fed the galaxy's
mad dash for bounty information. Once, Julius's face flashed on the screen,
unrecognizable without make-up and short, dark hair. Gren lit a cigarette
and decided that, if Julius ever asked, he'd neglect to mention the transvestite
was only worth 7,800 uron.
Julius returned with Gren's ID papers on a Thursday evening,
gushing about how handsome the young man at the counter was. Red hair,
green eyes, slim as a dancer, 5'9". "All you need to do now, darling,"
Julius told Gren, "is get yourself dolled up and over to a digital booth."
Gren scanned through the document's English and Spanish
translations from Russian. His full name, Grencia Mars Elijah Guo Eckener,
was the only information he recognized. "You told them I was twenty?"
Julius shrugged elegant red shoulders. "If you're picky,
you can have it changed tomorrow. You look twenty, my boy, and, personally,
I wouldn't pass up on getting that on my records. You don't have to worry
about the drinking age here, if that's your problem. Bartenders don't care."
"No, it's not that. I just think it's a higher compliment
to be twenty seven and look twenty than look twenty while actually being
twenty. Right...?"
"I think that's one too many twenties, dear. You'll be
forty by the end of the day if you go on like that."
They found a digital booth three blocks from Julius's
apartment, squatting between a sea of crumpled newspapers and discount
fliers. Gren squeezed into the cramped space and made sure to follow Julius's
instructions. Look dour, look mean. Don't look too friendly, or they'll
figure you're not a bounty and pick on you. To prove his point, he showed
Gren his own ID, an almost identical picture to the one that had flashed
on Big Shot, a dour faced man with a stubble and close cropped black
hair. Gren bit into the insides of his mouth and fixed the peep hole with
eyes that looked forward to one day having the body they belonged to sleep
in its own bed, not Julius's tiny, hardbacked couches.
"That's one beaten looking face, dear," Julius said. "People'll
wonder if you did in the whole Red Dragon mafia." He passed back the ID
with a cock of his head. "What did you do, anyway?"
Gren pocketed the ID and turned to leave. "Nothing."
The question never came up again, brushed beneath Gren's
move to an apartment four blocks from the Rester House. It was an old building,
dotted with sagging, cement balconies popular about sixty years ago on
Earth. "Before the lunar accident," Julius said, casting a slow glance
around Gren's new room. It was tiny, with dirty white walls and wood flooring.
He tapped a board with his heel and heard a nail tinkle down. He had no
idea how Gren could stand to move into the place. The paint was peeling
from the walls, cockroaches skittered across the floor, and the shower
drain had a thick layer of rust around it, a green, murky film growing
within the toilet. Gren took one look at the cracks, the paint, the rust,
the fungi, and one brown, shivering cockroach perched on the livingroom
wall and turned to Julius with a wide, contagious smile.
"I'm home."
"And you sure made it your home," Julius said as he stretched
out on Gren's couch. "I would'ave had a fit if I'd had to move into this
place at that time. I still can't believe you trust that shower."
Gren pulled his legs into an Indian fold. "It took me
three weeks to clean the whole place. Throw in an extra week of furniture
buying, and there you have it." He opened his arms wide to gesture at his
cramped, dimly lit livingroom, not quite sure himself that it was the same
place he had moved into two years ago. Wooden bookshelves lined the walls,
receeding into dimly lit corners Gren had filled with an old bar piano
Rester House had thrown away, an antique telephone table, two couches,
bargain lamps, and his collection of personal photographs, which spread
across the east wall. He bathed everything in the uneven light of an orange
tinted lamp, surrounding himself in a neverending twilight. Cold, comfortable,
small, lonely. He burrowed into it and allowed his roots to take hold.
Two years lay heavy over every piece of furniture, his scent mingling into
the upholstery and the towels and the throw rug. His self had pushed against
the walls and made itself part of them. Gren couldn't remember what the
room had really looked like before he had moved in anymore.
"You have no taste," Julius said, looking at the photograph
wall.
Different pictures had been taped up carelessly, spiralling
up and to the sides in a collage of smiling faces, better times, and clear,
blue skies. Gren gazed at a grainy picture taken in the Titan moon. Himself
in uniform, smiling at the camera, smiling at Sid, who had surprised him
with an impromptu cheese, standing next to a soldier with wavy white hair.
His gaze slid off the picture and came to rest on the couch before him,
seeing through Julius and his cream coloured dressing gown, seeing a slim,
blond woman with muted blue eyes.
"It was Vicious," she said.
"I was framed," he said. "I was sent to jail before I
even knew what had happened. What was I, a spy?" He smiled bitterly, craddling
a shot of whisky. "A spy. I kept asking the guard at my cell block
if I could call my parents, but he said I was a traitor to my country,
and dead to the world."
Gren closed his eyes. He had been dead. Lying on the cell
floor, craddling a syringe close to his veins as voices rose and fell around
him. Let me out! You wannapiece'a me, arsehole?! Shut the fuck up you
bloody bastards! He closed his eyes and listened to them, waiting for
the moment when the drug would take hold and they'd become music. A Music
box tinkling across his nerves. Blood pounding through his veins. Images
twisting into rainbows. Little blue soldiers filing up and down the red
desert sand. Vicious and him. In line. Vicious up front, Gren following.
Vicious handing him a music box. Birds exploding into lime flavoured confetti
skidding down the interstate and Space Gates only cost 5.00 uron a piece
if your friends agreed to pay. Gren lay on the floor and smiled. He could
hear himself singing, softly, watching TV. Tilda Swinton was in Orlando,
waking up to wash her pearl white face only to discover she had woken up
a woman. Gone to bed a man, stood up a woman. Breasts. Hips. Stomach tingling.
Full blown woman.
Gren placed his hand over his stomach and saw his smile
twist in the mirror set up on his cell. Breasts. He had breasts. He was
Tilda Swinton. He was Virginia Wolf's Orlando. He was laughing, cupping
his round, firm flesh in one hand and digging his nails into the skin around
his penis. Real. His. Breasts and a penis. He sagged down onto the floor
and banged at the bars until a guard walked up to him. "Look," he said,
baring his chest. "Aren't they pretty?" The guard had wings. The guard
was a blue gnome, giggling as Gren began to sing. Then scream and scream
and scream, his voice melting into the alarm system, his feet skidding
over the tile floor. Faster. Faster. The walls could melt at any minute,
and he had to scramble out into the night. Barbed wire bit into his palms
as he climbed the fence. Tiny rottweilers circled below, but he could fly.
If he spread his wings, he could fly, soar above the prison complex and
crash into the ocean. He looked up at the sky and saw a shooting star.
A milky way. A nebula. He spread his wings and took one step forward.
"I escaped in a drug haze," he said, watching as the blond
lady took a sip from her whisky. "I don't know how the hell I managed to
run out of there."
He stumbled, he supposed, and lay in a daze until a shiver
ran through his body and he was clamouring for the drugs and tearing at
his hair. He banged his head against the hard, desert sand and sobbed.
Darkness lay over his eyes, pressing down on him. He had no idea how long
he lay there, if he walked, if he crawled. He couldn't see anything. He
stretched out his hands and saw Vicious in front of him. He wanted to see
Vicious. They threw me in jail, he'd say, and Vicious would understand.
Vicious would help him. He'd wrap his arms around Gren and tell him his
breasts were beautiful and that the nightmare was over and that he loved
him.
"It was Vicious who framed you," the woman said.
Gren took a sip from his drink. "I know."
"Well, at least you wheathered the whole ordeal," Julius
said, pulling him back into the present, pushing the blond, silent Julia
into the darkness. "You have a knack for cleaning houses, you know? It's
a gift, dear."
Gren smiled. "Yeah, I guess it is."
Julius pulled his dressing gown closer about him and stood
up. He cast one glance at the digital clock set beside the TV. "Look at
the time, my boy," he said. "It's almost tomorrow. I'd better scoot on
over to my place, before the boss slinks on over and wonders why I'm not
there." He padded across the floor, his bare feet slapping at the boards,
and bent down to kiss Gren's cheek. His stubble scraped against the younger
man's skin, a trace of cheap, magnolia perfume mingling with the smell
of alcohol.
"See you at the Rester House, darling?"
Gren folded his arms over his stomach, his head resting
against the back of the couch. He felt his roots shiver, once, reaching
towards the past. He held them back with a firm tug, pressing his hands
against the coarse fabric of his shirt. He turned his head towards Julius
and felt a grin stretch out across his lips, lopsided, comfortable.
"Yeah. See you there."
+Written on a whim, on an empty stomach. Just in case
you're not big on reading copyright notices, the film mentioned in this
story, Orlando (the story of a young count who never grows old but inexplicably
changes from a man into a woman, all without much surprise or stress),
was released c. 1993, was directed by Sally Potter, an Australian, and
starred the etherealy beautiful Tilda Swinton. It was based on the novel
by Virginia Wolf (which I've never read). All comments are welcome.+
Space Lion in Winter
By: Team Bonet