I Am J

193 Pages·2011·0.95 MB·English

by  Beam Cris

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For Lo,
mon coeur
In fond memory of
Bella Martinez
1980–2004
CHAPTER
ONE
J could smell the hostility, the pretense, the utter fakeness of it all before they
even climbed the last set of stairs. He was going to this party for Melissa, though
she knew he’d hate it, though she’d have friends to talk to and J would stand
there in the corner like a plastic tree, sucking at a beer, steaming in his too-many
shirts and humiliation. The stairs were already sticky with spilled drinks, and
reggaeton thumped through the door.
“Come on, J, you have to go with me. Daniel’s gonna be there,” Melissa had
whined to him earlier that day at school. They were sharing a Diet Coke in the
school’s emergency stairwell. The place was littered with cigarette butts and
graffiti; every few days, some student dismantled the alarm, looking to sneak off
and smoke. Daniel was Melissa’s latest crush, a quiet guy who played chess with
the old men in Washington Square Park and who always had a Strand book bag
over one shoulder. J thought he was pretentious.
“I hate parties,” J had said. “And I hate everyone at this school.”
“You’re so dramatic,” Melissa had answered, tapping the brim of J’s cap. She
leaned her head on J’s shoulder. “What happened now?”
“Got called a dyke again.” It had happened a thousand times before. Dyke,
aggressive, AG, butch. Whatever the names, none of them fit. He’d considered
the possibility briefly, when he first realized he was in love with Melissa a few
years back, but he’d never felt like a lesbian.
“Oh, sweetie,” Melissa said, lifting her head from J’s shoulder and trying to
meet his eye. She sounded exactly like Karyn, her mom.
J shrugged off her concern even as he longed for it. He stared straight ahead,
steeled his jaw.
“I know you’re not one,” Melissa said. “I know you just have your own style,
like me. Screw this school. And…” Melissa paused. She pulled at a binder clip
holding back a strand of curly hair. “Even if you were gay, it wouldn’t be the
biggest deal. It’s not like a tragedy or anything.”
J jiggled his knee. “I’m not, though.”
J jiggled his knee. “I’m not, though.”
“Okay, dude. I didn’t say you were.”
Melissa had recently taken to calling J “dude,” which J loved. In J’s mind, if
not in anyone else’s, he was a he. He couldn’t go so far as to actually think of
himself as male anymore; he had let that dream go at puberty. Now he tried not
to think about gender at all, except when the world outside his brain barged in
and forced him to. Which happened about every other minute. Still, saying she
felt like something close to blasphemy. In J’s head, he was nothing; in J’s head,
he was just a head, floating, trying to forget he had body parts he hated.
“J—” Melissa started. “Come to the party tonight. I want to be with you.”
Melissa smelled like amber, cinnamon, and cigarettes. J inhaled, but quietly,
so Melissa wouldn’t notice. He leaned his head back against her wild hair and
gave a tiny nod.
Melissa jiggled open the door to the party, knocking aside some sophomores
who had been leaning there. Pot smoke obscured his vision, but J could tell this
was a nice place. There was a dining room, separate from the kitchen, with
African masks on the wall. Three girls J recognized from math class were sitting
on the table, legs swinging, all vying for the attention of a senior boy, who was
twirling a drumstick and tapping it alternately on each of their knees. Another
couple was making out in the foyer, with the boy’s oversize jacket wrapped
around the girl so people couldn’t tell he had his hand up her shirt. J averted his
eyes as Melissa took him by the hand. “Let’s get a drink,” she said.
The kitchen counter was a pool of spilled soda and Cisco; next to this were
giant bottles of gin labeled in a language J didn’t recognize. “They’re out of
mixers,” somebody said, walking away. “You’ll have to drink it straight.”
Melissa filled two red plastic cups (one already had lipstick on its rim) with
warm gin and took a sip. J swallowed a long gulp and tried not to shudder as it
burned his throat. He held the cup by his side and followed Melissa toward
Daniel, who was smoking a joint and reading in the corner.
“Hey,” Melissa said, and Daniel looked up, putting a finger in his place. His
straight brown hair and pale skin made him look like a zombie. “What’re you
reading?”
“Proust,” Daniel answered. “But I’m getting sick of all the madeleines.”
“That’s cool.” Melissa giggled and turned her foot inward a bit.
J hated how Melissa acted around her crushes—overly sweet and dumb. He’s
a fake, J tried to psychically transmit to Melissa. Can’t you see that? A total ass.
“If you don’t like girls named Madeleine,” Melissa said, giggling, “maybe
“If you don’t like girls named Madeleine,” Melissa said, giggling, “maybe
you should put down your book. You know J, right?”
Daniel glanced mildly at J and said, “I don’t think so.” J widened his stance
and grimaced. They had met several times before—sitting next to each other on
the same ramshackle stage at a school awards ceremony for high math scores,
and through Melissa in the hallway. Daniel turned his attention back to Melissa.
“Have you read Proust?”
Dios mío, J said in his head, just the way his mother would. God. He put on
his toughest scowl, but he felt, in his mouth, that it looked more like a pucker.
“I don’t read at parties,” Melissa said, smiling flirtily. “I socialize.” And then,
as though she owned the apartment, she added, “Can I get you a drink?”
J marveled at Melissa’s social skills as Melissa and Daniel pushed their way
back into the kitchen. He sat on the arm of a couch and drank some more gin.
This apartment was nice; the old dark thoughts of pocketing a few valuables
rushed through J’s mind. He shook his head to get rid of the thought. Bad, he
thought. And, Who are you fooling? You’re no gangster. He looked at his
shoelaces, which Melissa had played with just the night before.
She had toyed with them, those very laces, in her apartment, right after their
squabble about the cutting. Most nights, after school, J went to Melissa’s
apartment. Melissa lived on the Lower East Side, in a studio apartment with her
mother. It was even smaller than J’s family’s place, and much messier—with
books and dance tights strewn about, two cats nuzzling against the worn
furniture. Melissa and her mom were close; Karyn was in school herself,
studying psychology in college, and she was full of ideas. She read the tarot
cards of anyone who came through her door, and loved to stay up late drinking
wine out of miniature jelly jars. Karyn was black and had been with a white
man, Melissa’s dad, who had been little more than a hit-and-run, and this too
was fascinating to J. His own parents were so conventional, hanging out in the
building, talking with the neighbors, making dinner, watching TV. They’d
stopped talking about whose sons back in PR were growing up, getting
handsome, might make a good match for J, but still. J knew that aside from
college, his parents’ slowly slipping dreams for him involved a white dress and a
three-tiered cake.
Yesterday, like most days, they got to Melissa’s place and just hung out. J
went online, and Melissa changed into dance clothes to stretch. He’d looked over
at Melissa, who was flexing her biceps in a sports bra in front of the mirror.
Melissa was a dancer and a cutter; like J, she was obsessed with her body, but
unlike J, she admitted it. She wore her drapey sleeves long to cover the pine
needle–length lines on her arms, nicked out every few nights with a razor she
kept in her purse. She studied these cuts closely, monitoring their progress,
scanning for infection, and she examined her musculature, too, wanting her legs
to be both strong and lean, so she could jump higher, her shoulders perfectly
broadened for lifting. Melissa’s dream was to join a company like the one Pina
Bausch had founded—athletic, urban, and strange. Whenever she could, she
stretched, pushing an elbow up and down her back like a cricket, bending in half
and curling her forearms around her knees.
Melissa was smart, and J loved her for that. Melissa didn’t mind J’s long
silences, the way he couldn’t muster a witty comeback, didn’t seem to have a
political bone in his body. Melissa said she liked J’s photographs—she was the
only one he showed them to—though Melissa spent most of the time talking
about Melissa. Melissa’s curly wild hair, always tied up with pieces of yarn, or
multicolored rubber bands, or even paper clips, matched her personality.
Melissa’s hair, Melissa’s clothes, even Melissa’s cutting said, “Look at me.”
“Melis, those cuts look nasty. You should talk to a counselor or some shit, for
real,” J had said, nodding at the fresh scars on the inside of Melissa’s forearm.
“Why do you do that?”
“Shut up,” Melissa answered, pulling on a shirt. “They’re from the cats.”
Melissa plopped on the floor and stretched her upper body out over one leg.
“Why do you wear fourteen million shirts when it’s a hundred degrees outside?”
“I don’t know. It makes me feel better.”
Melissa looked up at J from the floor, checking to see whether she’d stung
him with the shirt comment. When she saw that J was still looking at her, she
playfully untied J’s sneakers. “I read a book about people who cut themselves. It
was called Cuts. Anyway. Supposedly tons of people do it, something about
bringing the pain of your insides to your outside world so you can see it. Or
master it. Or something.”
Melissa’s cuts were close together and scabbed up in little black dots, like
several short strings of beads. J wondered if he’d ever have the courage to let
someone cut into his skin, if a scalpel or a knife could help get the tormenting
thoughts out of him.
Melissa went on. “But people stop. So I’ll stop, too. Probably when I get into
a dance company, and I don’t have so much stress in my life. It’s not like I ever
go deep—so stop worrying.”
“Okay,” J said, but he had already stopped worrying, if that’s what he’d been
doing, already stopped paying attention to the words Melissa was saying.
doing, already stopped paying attention to the words Melissa was saying.
Instead, he was watching Melissa’s fingers twisting and untwisting the laces on
J’s sneakers, as though they were the ears of some animal. She was so gentle
with the laces, so tender and attentive, it made J feel dizzy.
J remembered learning to tie his shoes when he was a kid. He was probably
four. His dad had bought him a pair of Nikes that almost matched the Air Force
1 mid-tops the older kids in the neighborhood wore; J had begged for them at the
store, and Manny had given in. That was back before his dad had gotten so
involved with the union. J worshipped his father then; he remembered copying
the way Manny walked and sat and smoked his endless packs of Marlboros. J
would pick up unlit cigarettes and hide them in his fist, puffing into his curled
thumb, making his dad laugh and laugh.
“These are bunny ears, Jeni. You just have to cross them,” Manny had said,
taking J’s tiny hands in his own. “And then you just make a tunnel for one loop
to go through, and you’re done. Look. Like this.”
“My dad taught me to tie my shoes,” J said to Melissa, trying. There always
was more to say.
“Mmm-hmmm,” she answered. She was still playing with J’s sneakers. She
had undone the laces and restrung them, looping them through the holes in
straight lines instead of X’s. “Your shoes look better like this.”
As she worked, the sides of her palms brushed J’s ankles. He wished he
weren’t wearing socks, wished it were summer.
“My dad used to be so great,” J continued.
“Your dad is great.”
“Yeah, but…” J trailed off.
“At least you have one.” Melissa narrowed her eyes at J again, tugged at the
hem of his pants. She reached up under the cuff, above the socks, and felt his
calf. “You’re hairy.”
J glared at her. Melissa knew better than this, he thought. And still, the pull
of her touch—she felt like landing the perfect photograph in the viewfinder, just
before you pressed the button. That mix of jittery stomach and absolute stillness
—that rare sense that somehow all is right in the world. He loved it. He hated it.
An image of a car crash he’d seen on Cops flashed through his mind.
“M, I gotta go.” J stood up and bolted out the door.
Suddenly, at the party, someone tapped his shoulder. J looked up from his laces.
“Hey, J.” It was Mischa, a kid from the group at school that called
themselves the Alchemists. J sometimes tinkered around on the computers with