baby birds archive

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! 

I start taping cloth over my chest. Old t-shirts folded into rectangles to soak up the discharge, replaced every four or five hours. Handwashed in the bathroom sink, dried wherever. I start religiously locking my door behind me, coming in or out. Possibly my mother is hurt by the sudden lack of trust, if she’s even noticed, but all that matters less than her thinking her beloved daughter’s a fucking junkie or something.

I’m unhappy. Quite possibly I’ve been unhappy all this time.

On lighter notes, the gasoline doesn’t seem to hurt me. On my skin for hours as it is, it should be burning me, I think. I should be bad, or worse. But I’m fine. Just lightheaded. I keep seeing flashes of yellow and blue and green behind me; and nothing there when I turn! As ever. Maybe the gasoline isn’t hurting my skin, but addling my mental state. Or something.

Have I been unhappy? This whole time?

My chest hurts all the time now. Every drip from my cracked raw nipples hurts, dull but constant, until it builds up to a scream I can’t let out.

I’ve completely ceased making art. Or doing anything. Best I can do is lay on my back in my bed—any position other than what a corpse would have hurts beyond belief—and think. In circles. Never getting to the meat of the thought. An island of repression and distraction and looking away, instinctually. As if the light would hurt, if I did turn around and see it standing still, waiting for me. But I can’t stop turning, and it can’t stop darting away.

I’m talking nonsense. I’m tired all the time.

Today, Sheridan sat really still on her bed, twisting her dress in her hands, and asked me to come to the upcoming Graduation Ball. She said Jace is still new, or something like that, that there’ve been developments recently and she wants me there and I heard all of that fall from her lips and somehow didn’t do anything stupid, like pass out from gasoline-induced lightheadedness.

I thought she and Jace were okay, right now, at least, so it took me by surprise. I’m nothing if not supportive, and as much of a doormat as ever, so I said yes almost immediately.

I didn’t want to go. I know that’s what everyone says to seem cooler than they are, but I genuinely didn’t. No one asked me out. I didn’t have anyone I’d want to go with. Until now, I guess.

The dress code is formal. The theme is something like Mermaid Gala. I guess I have to get a dress. I think of squeezing my leaking fucking gasoline tits in a poofy monstrosity and get nauseous again.

I almost expect it when the fluid changes again; the coffee getting bitterer and darker by the day until eventually, raising the cup to my lips to test, my tongue touches the discharge and immediately wills the body to eject it.

The smell is unmistakable. I’m leaking fucking gasoline.

I tried to find the LiveJournal forum. I can’t. My search history, as always, is deranged: livejournal fuck planes sex aircraft gasoline nipple discharge. What kind of person, I wonder, does my browser think I am? And a more pressing question: is there anyone else like me in the world?

This iteration is most inconvenient of all. The fumes alone. I’m lightheaded almost immediately. I’m glad it seems to drip sparingly because how the fuck do I explain this to anyone? It was fine when I smelled like glue and coffee but now I smell like I siphon car gas tanks. For fun. I don’t even own a car. I can’t even drive.

Today, I cried for the first time since this all began. Just heaved. I heard my mother at the door, footsteps, scrape of her hand on the doorknob, hesitation and a scuffle; and then footsteps away. Kept crying. I’ve never felt more alone.

Modest Mouse was playing.

I keep having the dream. Two streams. Radioactive green. Haze and fog and light in fractures. I’m beginning to think it’s a sign. Like I’m in the beginning of a superhero movie and I’m about to find out I’ve inadvertently irradiated myself, and random bodies of water are also there, for some reason. Maybe set dressing, maybe symbolism. Gasoline-Man.

The coffee discharge is getting more bitter. I can almost swear it.

It’s, like, a darker roast, maybe? I don’t know anything about coffee. It tastes wrong. Occasionally, it even tastes like it’s gone off. High and sour.

I don’t drink it so much anymore, except to test. I keep forgetting to note the results down, but it seems pretty consistent. Bitter. Acidic. Not curdled, thankfully. Can oat milk curdle? There’s less and less milk every day, though, so it won’t be a concern for much longer.

I’ve been trying not to think about it, but my brain can’t help but fill in blanks. When I accidentally hear snippets of dialogue out-of-context, my brain goes crazy trying to figure out the scene, the setting, the things at stake; the same itch is happening now. That’s my explanation for why I suddenly finagle Sheridan into a cafe.

She gets the same thing she always does. A flat white with oat milk. I get a matcha with strawberries and an espresso shot. When she asks for a sip, teasing me about my horrid concoctions, I taste hers, too. It’s perfect. Steaming.

So I have nothing. My brain threw out white noise. I’m at zero.

Except worse than zero, because now a theory has been formed. Metabolized. And now I’m thinking of Sheridan in shuttered frames, trying desperately to Not.

This could mean nothing. I’m convinced it does.