baby birds archive

During one of our now-regular gaming sessions, Jace asks me if I’ve told Sheridan yet in the middle of me healing him. Spitefully, I let his character go before it’s fully healed and think about shooting it myself for good measure.

No, I haven’t, I say real casual. Trying to get used to it by myself, first.

Okay, he says easily. You should tell her, though. She knows you’re hiding something from her. And turns back to the screen, all calm.

Does she? I think about it. I have been acting different lately. Probably a strange mixture of erratic, relieved, and related. Dressing different. But I doubt she knows exactly what’s going on. Maybe just that something is.

I find myself resentful that Jace has noticed something about Sheridan before I have. Even though Jace is my friend now, I find myself calculating our push-pull on Sheridan, assigning numerical values, and getting angry when I’m losing. 

I tried to message Mark directly. Honest to God, I did.

I take his email off of the post and open a draft, but it sits there for two days with nary a word. I got nothing. What do I say?

Finally, I start typing. Hi. I’m Ava. A couple of months ago, glue started leaking from my nipples. My life had been spiralling downward, albeit very slowly and subtly, and upon the start of the leaking it started spiralling even faster and harder. I’ve gone through a couple cycles, in terms of the fluids: coffee, gasoline, apple juice. I am still leaking apple juice. I also recently figured out I might be transgender. Can we talk?

I stare at the screen, horrified. Then I click send.

Graduation’s in two weeks. It’s been two weeks, also, since the disastrous ball.

Sheridan avoids me, I swear it, until I knock at her bedroom door and she says, voice droll as anything, took you long enough. So maybe it wasn’t her that’s been avoidant.

How’d you know it was me?, I ask, and she says Jace doesn’t barge in, stupid. He texts.

Silence. Then I ask: Do we have to talk about it?

She nods. Sighs. Then says, not right now. I bought you these stickers. For your little collages. I think you should have to paint my nails for them, you always do them better, anyway.

I could cry, but I don’t. I accept the exchange. Her nail polish bottles sit in orderly rows on her vanity. I pick a toxic green, and a princess-y pink, and I put myself to work.

I’m on my phone one day when I see it. I’d taken to being on forums for transgender people, reading all about selves and experiences and thinking, I’m this, right? This is me? This is what I am, right? I know no one can tell me what I am. I have to figure that out for myself. But the forum helps, a little.

Anyways, I’m scrolling through pages and pages of new binders and old wounds when I see a post titled: I’VE BEEN LACTATING KETCHUP. I’M SERIOUS.

My heart stops in my chest.

It goes on: IT’S NOT BLOOD. IT TASTES LIKE HEINZ. MY NAME IS MARK AND I’M EIGHTEEN. I’M TRANS. I’M NOT PREGNANT—I’M A VIRGIN. I’M SERIOUS. I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME. IT STARTED A MONTH AGO AND HASN’T STOPPED. THE DRIPS ARE REALLY VISCOUS AND RED. IT’S GETTING HARDER TO HIDE. I TRIED TO POST THIS ON REDDIT AND THE MODS WOULDN’T EVEN LET IT THROUGH, BUT I SWEAR I’M NOT JOKING. PLEASE, CAN ANYONE HELP? HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED TO ANYONE?

The comments:

BAIT USED TO BE BELIEVABLE.

IS THIS FETISH CONTENT?

LOL, YOU TASTED IT?

WOULD YOU SEND PICS?

PICS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

FUCKING KETCHUP? BE FOR REAL.

And after pages and pages: MINE WAS STRAWBERRY SYRUP. DM ME.

I lay it all out like I’m a detective, string all over the place. I tell Jace when I was five… and when I was thirteen… and when I was whatever until I’m sure he believes me. He says, glibly, okay. I ask, just like that? and he says I mean, yeah.

We talk it through. My childhood. Or, I talk about it and he nods. He says, you know, I thought you were just into me. Shit, I’m kinda glad you aren’t. And I say, without thinking, it’s not you I’m into.

He pauses. Before I can have a heart attack, he says, you kissed the wrong person, then, man. It startles a laugh out of me, so hard that I snort again. He laughs hard, harder than I’d ever seen him. I always make him laugh.

Just like that, being with Jace is easy. He knows all my secrets and he doesn’t seem to think they’re that big a deal.

I hate the discharge.

Apple juice is my favorite fruit juice, but that doesn’t make up for the violation I feel. Now that I’m back to trying to feel affiliated with my body—dressing it up and piloting it, crawling closer towards self-actualization—the discharge becomes more and more horrific, less funny. It’s still a little funny, of course, but it makes me feel like I don’t own the body I’m working to reclaim. If that makes sense.

I keep finding sleazy articles about weird pregnancies, reading through lists with 13 entries (number seven will shock you!) and feeling floaty, like I’m above looking down. Teenage girl lactating, with kind of a belly, constantly nauseous with backaches, constantly crying and screaming and throwing up and scratching its nails down walls. Constantly burying its head in the sand. I’m a virgin! I’m not pregnant! But you know what: as an anomaly, I can never be sure.

I ask Jace to come over.

He’s shocked. Obviously. I don’t usually like to hang out with him period, much less one-on-one. Much less now, after everything. But he went yeah sure :))) and showed up at my door in fifteen. Maybe a bit more somber than usual.

He looks me up and down, my gasoline-stained sweatshirt and muddy green hair, audibly goes yikes. I snort, I let him in. I bring him to my room and keep the door open for once, in case my mom comes home. He sits gingerly on the edge of my bed.

He asks, so, you like Call of Duty? I nod, kind of condescendingly.

He asks, this isn’t a weird seduction thing, right? Because I’m just not into you. I snort a second time.

He asks, what’s all this about? Ava, are you okay?

Instead of answering on instinct, I try to check. I have a slight headache. I have backaches. My chest hurts, but is dry right now. But I’m okay. I can think. I can introspect.

I realize, Jace is a friend. One of my best.

I say it. I don’t try to couch it in a reference. I say to Jace, my best friend’s boyfriend, I think I might be a boy.

And he goes. Oh. Man.

For the first time in forever, my chest stops hurting. It lets up. For a few hours. Then a new drip, less viscous, less hurtful. The color of amber.

Apple juice.

The absurdity could hurt me if I let it, so I don’t let it. I just think. I try to think clearly, but it’s impossible.

So I start cleaning my room. Throwing away stained rags and clothes, yeah, but not just that. Actively tidying for the first time in forever. I turn on a fan and open all the windows. I air everything out.

The sun shines on my room, the room of a fuck-up, the kind of room fuck-ups belong in. Except it looks fine now. So maybe the room of someone better.

And then I can think clearly. So I write it down. Here I am, writing it down.

I might be a boy.

I think it. Solidly. It burns. But not as much as I thought it would.

She’d asked me to do it. She asked me to come.

I feel dirty. I can’t write anymore.

I want to do everything for her. 

I hate it when she doesn’t ask me. I hate it when she does.

I am a fundamentally unserious person.

I’ve been unhappy this whole time.

I could’ve been happy. I could’ve sought happiness, sought anything. But I didn’t.

College looms after this summer. Something else looms darker. Larger. 

I keep throwing up. Lightheaded all the time.

I know what’s wrong. I know what everything points to, what the background is, I know every beat of the plot. So why can’t I say it?

On Day Whatever of my episode, Jace texts me. He asks me to play a first-person shooter with him, of all things.

I text back three question marks because I might as well earn my freak-bitch reputation and he sends back sherry doesn’t play video games :(((, as if I’m not aware. she says you do though :))). 

I do. But I text back I’m busy and curl up to continue practicing my rotting leaking corpse impression. I’m still lightheaded. My back still hurts.

His response: i kno ur not :))) cmon :))).

I realize I abhor him. He’s an idiot. He’s nice. Somehow, these become sins. He spells it sherry.

I also realize: he, against all odds, doesn’t abhor me. And doesn’t that bear thinking about? I did the wrong thing. I ruined everything. All he’s been is… inoffensive. So why am I offended?

I text back Fine, Sure, Whatever and boot up my PC. Because I’m the kind of person who hangs out with Jace now, and vice versa. I guess I owe it to him. Distantly, I wonder if Sheridan put him up to this.

He calls me so we can talk while we play. He swears a lot. Her name doesn’t get spoken, not even once, by either of us. We don’t talk about anything except killing.

Sheridan hasn’t texted me. Radio silence. It’s nothing I don’t deserve. So why is Jace talking to me? 

I don’t bother to collect the gasoline.

What would I use it for? Gas prices are high but not high enough for me to justify fucking milking myself. Besides. I don’t even own a car. I can’t even drive.

I taped for the graduation ball but I don’t even bother with bras now. I let it all hang out. I ruin all my favorite shirts, my hoodies, my sheets. I keep spending long, long days sleeping and leaking and waking up aching for something, I don’t even know what.

The fumes building up. I think of dying, casually. Poisoned. A medical anomaly, tragically found by its mother, suffocated by its own damn self.

I think about becoming a furry or a fetishist, just for fulfillment. I think about downloading Tinder, or Bumble. I think about falling in with unicorn hunters just so I can feel the touch of a woman, the pain of a man. I choose not to think too hard about that last one, or examine it in any way, except in a way I am examining it now, I just can’t walk a straight line to it. I just… can’t ever get to the heart of the problem.

I’m monarch of nothing. Graduation’s in a month and I’m not thinking about it. I should have a college and a course and a life lined up and I’m not thinking about it. Sheridan and I are going off to different colleges and I’m not thinking about it, not talking about it. I’ve not been thinking about anything. I’m a depressing bastard, but maybe Sheridan’s right. Why did I kiss him? Why did I fight? Maybe, even through the depression, the tears, the anger, the righteousness, maybe I’ve never taken anything seriously. Not once this whole time.

I got the window seat in the shuttle home. They still sat next to me. Sheridan got middle, Jace at her other side, like fucking always. I bumped my head on the window trying to catch five minutes of blessed sleep before we pulled up to my stop. My eyes felt like they were melting right out of my head.

Sheridan carefully took her fingers, wrapped a hand around my newborn bruise and push-pulled gently on my hair until I was half in her lap. She coaxed me down like an animal, let me curl up for those blissful five minutes, even though I slunk, I cried, I drank, I barked, I vomited, I leaked, I kissed, I fought, even though I ruined everything, even though she asked me so carefully and gently to come.

The worst of her is always better than the best of me. Haven’t I proven it? Haven’t I been working to prove it this whole time?

Today was our graduation ball. It was hellish.

I taped my fucking chest until I was sure I wouldn’t get gasoline on anything and put on my stupid fucking dress. My mom helped me get it. It matches my hair. Green. Didn’t match anyone else’s. Jace and Sheridan both wore blue, and they were beautiful, beautiful. I slunk behind them, had my photo taken with all this empty space beside me, flowers on my wrist for no reason. Supposed celebration.

I was tired the whole time. Fucking exhausted. Lightheaded. Everyone went apeshit. Fractured lights, diffused colors, drinks and speeches and dances and raves. Sheridan in pieces, half of her lit up and half totally unknowable. I kept slinking. I felt sluggish, and slug-ish. Jace, maybe out of pity, asked me to dance. I barked out a no and kept slinking. He grabbed my hand. I kiss him, and try to sock him, and miss, because he’s an athlete, and I’m drunk, and horrifically, I start to cry. Sheridan sees all of it.

This is what I do now. I ruin balls.

They probably think I’m a freak.

The gasoline is fucking me up. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit in anything. If my life isn’t following a narrative structure, how am I to tell what happens next? How do I make anything make sense?

I’m no longer convinced it’s Sheridan’s fault. This perverse bullshit, I think, has to come from me. Not only does it have to come from me, it has to be deep inside me, like it’s more me than me.

I don’t know. Today my mom tried to talk to me about careers. She said responsibility and challenges and young woman. I don’t know! I don’t fucking know!