Caution: Some readers may find some of the content below objectionable.
Hung from the upper sill of broad, open
windows, a row of prodigiously faceted prisms gloriously refracted
sunbeams one crisp early spring evening. The dining room of a
restored nineteenth century craftsman bungalow flaunted the host of
prolific rainbows cast by forty-eight sided quasi-spherical polygons
that cascaded over every surface. A gentle breeze slowly rotated the
shimmering celebration. Color invaded every cranny and corner
harbored by the man- made objects and geometry of the room. An
imaginative child would immediately have seen that the human world
had been invaded by beings of pure light, and had been summarily
overrun and conquered. So intent upon each other were the two people
seated at the table that neither of them noticed, even as the hues
and tones dancing over their faces gleefully mocked human intensity,
as beings of pure light so enjoy doing.
First glance revealed the two people
seated at the table were a man and a woman. The house belonged to
the man, Dr. Lionel Heflin, Professor Emeritus of Romantic Studies at
Alpine State University, at the edge of the nation's deepest mountain
range, in the heart of the continent. Seated across from him was a
young lady who had been invited under the unseemliest of pretenses,
and who yet thrived on the occasion even more for it. For the time
being the young lady must must remain anonymous, like a silhouette on
the stage before the theater lights come on. As important and unique
as she may be at any other time, men in the audience only took an
interest in the curves of her shadow; that was what sparked
imagination and whetted appetites. Unlike an aloof and inanimate
stage silhouette, in Dr. Heflin's dining room her vivacious presence
commanded unconditional and unadulterated attention from the myriad
of twirling rainbows, and her beauty demanded at least a marginal
physical description.
Carefully curled light brown locks and
a high starched collar of an anachronistic and conservative
housekeeper's dress in the Victorian style hid almost all of Heflin's
guest above the shoulders. The student was a very attractive
nineteen year old woman, and she had nothing to hide. The professor
asked her to dress that way, a request she welcomed, and carried out
bursting at the seems with giddiness and excitement. Any discussion
of her beyond that would spoil the fun.
As for her host, Lionel Heflin, much
could be said without anything of real meatiness and substance every
finding its way into the discussion. He achieved great stature at
Alpine State at the age of 41, and in so doing made history as the
youngest educator in the state's history to become Professor
Emeritus. Completely devoid of the ravaging effects of old age,
Lionel's features remained handsome and Patrician, as they had been
for the entirety of his adult life. No reason existed for a man of
46, who had lived well and comfortably since birth, to bear such
blemishes as wrinkles and liver spots, nor paleness nor sunken eyes,
and he did not. In the glint of his eyes, however, there lurked a
wariness and a weariness that could not possibly have anything to do
with his chosen career.
Beyond conjecture concerning the
occasional dark circles under the doctor's eyes, Dr. Heflin's
appearance was quite the opposite of most professors with tenure and
sterling academic credentials of the sort that usually earned a seat
at the Regents' table. Lionel Heflin literally glowed with youthful
vigor, almost always rosy and slightly tanned from being in the sun.
He looked much younger than his actual age, but his exterior
appearance cloaked the experiential age of his persona. The depths
and heights of the lecturer's life would have been startling were
they revealed.
The good doctor delved deeply into the
lore of taboo pleasure and occult sexual practices from an early age.
Were his inner self ever to see the light of day it would be a
startling contrast to the suave, well dressed man that put everyone
he came in contact with well at ease. The doting old wives of the
members of the Board of Regents, with all their bubbling talk of
Episcopalian and Catholic fundraisers, of Anglican and Presbyterian
charity events, and so on and so forth, would positively swoon, to
the accompaniment of great theatrics and hysterics, were they to find
out The Lionel Heflin spent more than two decades working his way up
through the ranks of the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn.
University President Calvin Archibald Tuttle would no doubt have his
personal assistant dial the campus police on his cell phone
immediately upon discovering Dr. Lionel Heflin had written a three
volume treatise on the subject of dominance and submission,
especially with reference to desire and denial, meant to usher in an
era of guiltless erotic exploration. But enough of the digression.
Before any dinner involving a professor
and an attractive young lady, before any wild speculation about their
private lives, before any other curiosity and innuendo, there had
been an incident on the campus of Alpine State University. As far as
incidents go it barely made the radar, and did not register at all on
the seismograph. The incident involved a young phenom attending
school there, partially under the good doctor's tutelage.
In an office down the hall from the
College of Arts and Sciences, Julian Spencer scheduled a meeting with
Dr. Lionel Heflin. He did so for two very important reasons. The
first and most pressing reason he needed a private consultation with
the professor involved his grade in the man's class. On the morning
of April 16, 2012, Lionel Heflin returned to Julian Spencer his
halfway point examination, as Heflin called it; nobody else called
their mid-semester tests “halfway point examinations.” On the
front page there was a red “D+” so large it could have been seen
from outer space, or so Julian thought humorlessly.
Julian never worried about grades. He
tested in the top one quarter of one percentile nationally in
scholastic aptitude. He graduated from high school shortly before
his sixteenth birthday. It had not been an easy feat in a school
full of conservative “3-R” schoolmarms, with a principal who
“would rather be fishing,” according to a prominently displayed
bumper sticker on the man's car He mastered so many first year
university subjects before enrollment that he only needed five
semesters to graduate, before he ever began. For all that, the
ongoing nature of the learning process persists in perpetuity. A
lifetime worth of trophies would not assuage the pain of failure to
graduate due to a lackluster performance in his studies so close to
the finish line for his bachelor's degree.
The course summary, prepared by a
technical writer, loosely defined technical writing as precise,
brief, goal oriented descriptive summaries of tools, methods,
processes and objects. The invisible nature of the author in such
manuals and treatises was one of the key points of the trade. Writing
with no flair at all, with absolute, succinct objectivity, had long
been troublesome for Spencer simply because he found it so boring.
The language of technical writing proffered no challenge at all.
Julian had difficulty accepting the
underlying hierarchical authoritarianism of the world, the one that
relegated talented writers to joyless careers writing the most
lifeless pieces imaginable. He loved learning for the pure
intellectualism of it; he loved writing for the beauty of it,
although it was not his strongest subject. He detested the market
economy that made scullery maids of gifted cooks and doomed artists
touched by the hand of God to making campaign posters in sign shops.
The more a subject merged with authoritarianism the more he rebelled
against it. He also had no patience with those who blindly accepted
the power structure of the world, conformed and did as they were
told. In the past he had condescendingly called people who thrived
on technical writings “the brain-washed and reprogrammed automatons
of the language world”
He needed seventy-eight percent or
higher in graduate level technical writing in order to receive his
baccalaureate. Raw genius with mathematics and computer languages
was not enough to satisfy the requirements for a computer science
degree. Cursing, stomping his feet and generally throwing a tantrum
would not change that mandate. Dreading the inevitable encounter
with a course outside of his comfort zone, Julian put the class off
until his last semester.
Julian Spencer neither hailed from a
long line of renowned scholars, nor a family in which he was the
first child to attend college. The ancestral background he brought
to the table would have been stamped “Average,” if such a stamp
existed, and if there had ever been any need to state the glaringly
obvious. Everything about his life but his own educational
achievements reeked of mediocrity. Beginning at a very early age
Julian became determined to change that, so that he could
categorically condemn any attempt to minimize his passion for
erudition.
Since shortly before his fourteenth
birthday Spencer's greatest role model had been Dr. Lionel Heflin,
who earned a PhD in education at the age of twenty-three. Julian was
enthralled by the doctor's dizzying climb to historical status among
the faculty of Alpine State, but that original snippet of information
about the PhD had been but the catalyst that piqued the teenager's
curiosity. It was just a footnote clinging to a tiny foothold on a
cliff face footpath in mountains of other thoughts and information
gathered since that moment. Julian Spencer worshiped Lionel Heflin
from afar. Had his parents known the extent of his infatuation the
course of history might have been drastically altered, but they had
no idea.
After two years at Alpine State
University Julian could finally no longer avoid technical writing. A
broad smile brightened Julian's features, a hint that perhaps he knew
more than he let on about the class, in fact had always known. Dr.
Lionel Heflin taught the technical writing course Julian needed to
graduate.
If all Spencer's metaphorical
references to rapid scholastic advancement over the years had been
dragged into the light and studied under a microscope, then the
examiner may well have felt like the victim of a farce. Some of the
young man's drive had been a genuine desire to do his mind justice.
A larger part of the rhetoric merely cloaked Julian's more personal
drive.
Though Spencer's grade in technical
writing six weeks before the end of the semester and graduation
looked very worrisome on the surface, the young man felt no pressure
whatsoever. The obscurity of the truth neared an end as the youthful
adult's flickering synapses became like flashes of lightning in a
thunderhead, plans and ideas the sound of leviathan rumbling in the
distance. His grade and graduation were to him mere mundane
trivialities which had already sewn anxiousness and undue extra
effort for months and years, months and years too many. A vastly
more important affair charged the air around him with tingling
electricity, and it had nothing to do with books. The excitement was
not altogether new to him, but it was new enough that he craved more
of it, to the umpteenth power
On the morning of
his appointment with Heflin, the student posed a silent question as
to whether his subconscious mind flubbed the examination in order to
have a reason to meet privately with the professor. Julian sighed
and decided not to play such games anymore; he put off all airs and
confronted reality head-on. Julian discarded feigned
naiveté.
He consciously and
intentionally turned in an effort not worthy of a hunchback raised by
pigs in a faraway land where two legs were “baahed.” How was he
to know such hunchbacks happened to be quite deft at penning
treatises on industrial
He
had not enjoyed the prolonged dishonesty
of his
spurious efforts to convey ineptitude. He didn't like playing dumb,
especially when it came to such a simple task as writing about
tangible objects and processes. He made a mental note to later scold
the few people that comprised his private life for believing it
possible he could fail to even get a satisfactory grade. His
relatives should know him better. He would not be able to tell them
anything about it immediately, but he looked forward to the time when
he could.
His brow furrowed momentarily thinking
about what his “peers” thought of him throughout his grade school
years, how they treated him like dirt, how in their eyes there was
nothing more loathsome than the quiet, fat, insecure teacher's pet.
That was only because those kids had not known the whole truth of the
matter. He had no social circle. Two friends from childhood who had
long since moved away had been his only social contacts. Prone to
deep melancholies, his parents and grandparents often sought to
succor him out of that dreadful state of hopeless depression. In a
very real way Julian Spencer was a social outcast from the very
beginning.
Even after Julian lost weight and word
spread that he was “off the charts intelligent,” even after a few
doors opened to social networking and he found himself invited to
extracurricular functions only open to honors students, Julian did
not change. The possibility of making new friends did not appeal to
him. He had been the same person the entire time. None of the
people who suddenly deigned to open their arms to embrace him ever
considered doing so before he was officially sanctioned by the
administration.
His social standing did change
slightly. He went from a ridiculed, pushed around and unwanted
loner, to a loner other students were willing to awkwardly accept
because the mass mentality had shifted in that direction. The more
ignorant, testosterone addled males switched from sadistically
reminding him of his weaknesses and shortcomings, to passive
aggressively sabotaging his life at every possible opportunity out of
jealousy. Julian wasn't positive, but he thought the jocks were more
aggressive and hostile after they became jealous than when they
tortured him for the pleasure of it. Even if Julian had known how to
become happy and integrated and highly social he would not have. He
wanted no part of the sickening social environment he had become
familiar with. He was substantially different from the average
person. He did not lie to himself to make things seem better.
Julian thought about those things in
the blink of an eye. He did that effortlessly since he had been over
it all in his mind thousands of times. Julian focused instead on
something he found intriguing, his meeting with Heflin. He kept his
motivations so secret he rarely even thought about the subject. When
he did it was like a piece of desert he saved from dinner, because it
was the best part/
The second reason Spencer wanted the
meeting was really the only reason. He very much loved the man, or
at least was in love with his idea
of the man. It was a
deadly serious condition, though anyone who thought they knew Julian
Spencer would immediately have considered the revelation a practical
joke. Julian was not delusional, and he was not imbalanced. He knew
the doctor did not even know him, much less have feelings for him.
He knew that the odds against making a connection with the professor
were astronomical. But he felt he needed to take the chance, or he
would forever regret it and feel like a coward for having done
nothing.
As it has been mentioned, Julian
Spencer never fit in with his fellow students; not even once. He
remembered with great alacrity his sense of relief when pulled out of
normal classes and given a cubicle in the library, a “fortress of
solitude,” as part of his advancement from the fourth grade to the
sixth. Julian had already been much younger than most students in
his grade; so the alienation he felt had nothing to do with age
difference. Other students respected him for the first tine in his
life during the two years he spent in high school, but he could not
escape the shadow of his own insecurity. The reasons for that were
deeper than his weight or his grades or his shyness
Sexual thoughts involving men began to
reoccur in Julian's dreams and prepubescent fantasies around the age
of twelve; that is to say, the idea of a man making love to him.
The thoughts did not begin because of something in real life. He
knew very little about it. Warnings about strangers from his parents
and grandparents, and condemnation of homosexuality in church,
constituted all his sources of information on the subject. The
thoughts he found most burdensome came from somewhere inside of him
He calmed his own fears and reassured himself with his true objective
standpoint, that he would never in a million years act upon such
inclinations.
When he reached puberty his feminine
outlook on sexuality became a part of his conscious autoeroticism,
but he also found himself aroused by such thoughts time and again
through no conscious decision on his part. He felt dirty and
embarrassed when he became aroused without attempting to, but nothing
compared to the shame he felt when he sought to be aroused in that
fashion intentionally. He had no fantasies involving women. He had
no sexual desires involving women. All of his desires and fantasies
revolved around his own femininity. The fantasies only varied in the
depth to which he diminished his own ego in favor of the model female
psyche he created, which through a lack of knowledge and experience
lacked many similarities to the female psyche in reality. That being
said, theere was no variance that included heterosexuality.
He bottled up the fantasies deep inside
himself. Everything about his thoughts and urges frightened him, but
they wouldn't go away. His mother took him to churches from one
religious denomination to another, his father always to Catholic
church. All of them said the same thing: What he wanted was wrong.
Of course nothing the church had to say on the subject was ever said
directly to him. He spoke not a word of it his entire life,
and so was never able to get any sort of counseling or guidance on
the subject.
Sometimes Julian cried late at night.
He lamented his own perceived abnormality in terms which painted him
as the victim of some failed experiment God began and forgot about.
His mantra contained nothing insightful about his condition nor any
method to alleviate his emotional turmoil, but he clung tight to it
nevertheless.
“I never chose to be the person I am.
If I had been able to choose I would be the opposite of this. But I
am the person I am, and that type of person has been nearly
universally condemned by Christianity. For virtually two thousand
years Christian thinkers, students, parishioners, priests, church
leaders and mass congregations, people with a sexual or gender based
difference from the mainstream have been reviled, harangued and
judged despicable. Yet we too are the children of God, created by
God and entitled to the same quality of life as all the rest of God's
children.”
Julian was an intelligent little boy,
but he was still a little boy. Of course he reserved a special place
in his own imaginary hell for anyone who dared to refer to him in
such terms. Even if his defense mechanism was something he stumbled
across in a role playing game, at least he had a defense mechanism.
For a long time Julian prayed that he
would grow out of the such thoughts and desires. He hoped beyond
hope that one day he would wake up and suddenly girls would be the
only thing he wanted. He had reached and passed puberty by the time
he started praying to wake up heterosexual. Something inside of him
told him he was far too rational to believe such a thing would
miraculously take place. His vocabulary at the age of thirteen could
not produce the words he needed to classify and categorize all the
thoughts he had on the subject, but his intellect provided him with
more than enough focused awareness to know that he had been born
differently than most boys. He did not like it, but it was the
truth.
As it to top off all the guilt and
discomfort he felt about himself with a cherry, and then stuff the
whole sticky sundae in a paper bag and wrap it up with a bow, he
happened to like girls, a lot. Most girls just did not appeal to
him, he felt no attraction to them, most of them. That meant
he could not point to his own highly self-analyzed feelings on the
subject and say, “You just dislike them because you're afraid of
them, because they're different.'' He identified with them.
One part of his growing self awareness
he found particularly unnerving was the feminine angle from which he
had to describe his secret desires. He felt he had been born a girl
inside a boy's body. Te describe that condition meant thinking like
a woman. All of his indoctrination told him that was wrong. It was
as if he had been crippled since birth, but nobody knew, and part of
the disability was being unable to tell anyone of the condition
without making it worse.
Julian thought about this problem a
lot. He did not want to go to hell, the existence of which had been
hammered into the core of his being. Unfortunately very few members
of any church thought about the effect “fear of God” rhetoric
would have on an innocent young person. Those who did not fit the
mold painstakingly created over the centuries of a “good” son or
daughter did not receive any consideration at all. Anyone with even
a minimal capacity for analytical thought could see the
self-contradiction in dogma. Babies and children are innocents and
to be cherished as close to holiness, except for those who weren't
normal; they were condemned to an eternity in a lake of fire.
Religion never held much comfort for those outside the boundaries of
accepted norms
By the summer of 2007 Julian had yet to
find anything about women sexually arousing. Then one day his father
“accidentally” left a Playboy on a coffee table one day. Julian
found it in short order; he was a “clean freak,” constantly
straightening, organizing and cleaning should he find something out
of place or dirty. After reassuring himself he was the only person
in the house he sat down to take a look at what all the fuss was
about,
Julian became so aroused he nearly
hyperventilated. Every fiber of his being felt like it had been
supercharged with electricity. No part of him did not want to be in
the image touching the “playmate.”. Later on he labeled that
event and it's circumstances as part of the growing proof that his
very existence was part of a cosmic joke that amused God from time to
time. Julian had changed his outlook drastically. He suddenly
found himself a fully functional and capable male lesbian. The
humorousness of the idea lasted for less than a second, because by
and large it was true.
Other difficulties and abnormalities
presented themselves to Julian as he slowly but surely aged into an
adult. Although his penis did protrude from his body when he was
excited, all his reproductive organs withdrew up into his body almost
entirely when he was flaccid. No other boy he ever encountered had
such a trait.
The characteristic made Julian feel so
much like part of a circus sideshow that he made the mistake of
mentioning it to his mother. She took him to see the doctor. Until
the day he died that experience remained one of the most embarrassing
of his life.
Julian fidgeted nervously in the
waiting room at the doctor's office. He conjectured about what
reason his mother had given for his visit. Very now and then he
looked up and noticed the receptionist glancing at them. He thought
he may have caught a smirk at least once, and he was convinced the
head nurse winked at him, the sort of wink nobody would ever want to
get. Once the doctor literally took a look at him the episode became
even worse.
The moment the doctor laid a finger on
him he became erect. As if that wasn't bad enough, the doctor asked
him if he was any bigger when he became erect, evidently not
realizing that he was fully erect at the time the question was asked.
Julian wasn't certain what the visit was supposed to accomplish,
because the only thing that happened was that he got felt up.
In much later years, when he was nearly
over the hill, Julian would keep a bottle of Scotch handy in case
that memory ever attempted to surface. He would pour a small amount
in a glass. After that he would hand the glass to whoever was
closest and drink what was left in the bottle.
Julian had other characteristics which
adhered to that trend, the trend in which he was the world's most
humiliated human being. In later years, after he was over the hill,
he lumped all of those traits into one package, called The Julian
Curse. When his voice changed it did not become more masculine. It
changed pitch, but it became more lilting and falsetto sounding.
Before his voice changed he was just another boy with a child's
pitch. After his voice changed he was the only boy in the school
whose voice did not become more manly.
Instead of growing deeper his voice was
highly reminiscent of a contralto drag queen performer. At least he
did not have to make an effort to sound like a deep voiced female.
He understood it took a lot of practice for some people to be able to
do that. The first thought he ever had on the subject was, “Aren't
I the lucky one.”
Throughout elementary school, before he
was taken out of normal classes and placed with students called
“gifted,” other students bullied Spencer every day, or at least
every day when his parents shoved him out the door into the world.
Boys ran up to him on the playground and kicked him and ran away,
They shoved him to the ground. They put things in his hair whenever
the found a reason to walk past his chair. At lunch they would
distract him and then ruin his food and his milk, with gobs of salt
or barbecue sauce or kechup. They spit on him, teased him and did
everything in their power to make him miserable, and they were quite
successful in their endeavors.
The girls were not much better than the
boys. The nicest of the girls did not say anything nice, they just
didn't say anything mean. Mean girls ridiculed him for being fat.
Julian talked little or not at all. The cliques of fad fashion
wearing, popular girls called him “Quiet Weirdo,” or just
“Weirdo”. Being silent was a cardinal sin in their little world.
One could not gossip if one were silent, and gossip consistently
ranked as the most popular hobby/occupation among popular girls all
grown up.
Julian took it all in nearly total
silence. Even after he became an adult he never stood up for
himself. He never fought back, and he considered his passive nature
an absence of masculinity. He never grew angry. He never had a
pivotal moment in which he suddenly felt the power of his ancestors
take hold of his being and unleash all the bottled up testosterone
and rage to forever free him from being bullied. He hated his own
person over that tidbit. There was no man inside him waiting to be
unleashed. There was no turning point at which he became a man, as
society defined a man. He was just quiet, gentle and passive, far
beyond the point of no return.
Blissfully Julian never had to find out
what sort of abuse he would have suffered at the hands of his
classmates in normal high school. The accelerated learning program
evacuated him from the midst of the laughing hyenas normal students
demonstrated a striking resemblance to. Twenty four months after
beginning his preparatory education Julian finished it and moved on
to college.
The School Board relished holding his
case up as a fine example of their prowess in readying students for
the future. Julian viewed it as an abysmal failure. All their
expertise and intercession gained him only an eighteen month head
start on college, and at no point during his grade school career had
any teacher stood up for him when he was being bullied.
One time he worked up enough nerve to
ask one of the teachers he did not dislike why bullies were allowed
to run rough shod over the rules, when quiet studious children were
severely punished if they acted out. The teacher answered, “We're
preparing you for the real world, and the real world is not fair.”
That teacher was no longer one of the ones Julian did not dislike
after that day.
Julian wasn't thinking about any of
those things when he marched to Heflin's office to schedule an
emergency meeting with the professor. The secretary, Ms.
Cartwright, asked for his name, and brightened when he told her. She
knew who he was.
“Julian, I just want to tell you how
impressive everyone thinks you are. It's a shame there isn't some
sort of process to publicly reward students of your caliber. I have
a daughter, and she has been positively inspired by your
achievements. I think if more children --” Julian hated that
word. “ – knew how far they could go outside the normal
boundaries of classical classroom learning, our schools would be
filled with young maestros and junior doctors.”
Julian rather doubted it. He was
reaching for the appointment book to initial it when he noticed Ms.
Cartwright was taking a picture out of her purse. “Oh God, please,
no,” he thought to himself as she handed it to him.
As he expected, it was a picture of the
secretary's daughter, “Little Miss Cartwright.” Julian laughed to
himself at the thought, but then stopped. He really liked the young
lady's hair. He was still working out the angle of cuts the stylist
used to effectuate the classy but carefree presentation when the
secretary reached for the picture. He resisted the impulse to tell
the secretary her daughter's hair was a masterpiece.
“What do you think? Is she adorable?
I mean, listen to me. I sound like I'm trying to fix you up, but
I'm just curious what you think.”
“Her beauty is.. haunting. And
highly memorable,” Julian responded. He hadn't the slightest
notion what she looked like. He hadn't looked at the girl's face at
all.
In a subsequent visit to that office
Ms. Cartwright mentioned her daughter. Julian could not put a face
to the reference, and eventually he would ask if he could see the
picture again. When finally he saw it a second time he understood
why he slighted Ms. Cartwright and the photograph. The young lady
was one hundred percent stunning, and while that made him feel
insecure it was only part of the story.
“Okay, Spence. Do you mind if I call
you Spence?” the secretary did not give him time to respond before
unleashing a torrent of words, “Dr. Heflin is busy most of the
week, but I worked you in tomorrow at 3 p.m. Is that good for you?”
Julian cleared his throat, but again
did not have time to speak. The phone rang and he lost Ms.
Cartwright's attention. He was almost out the door when she clasped
her hand over the receiver and said, “Don't forget, honey. Don't
miss the appointment. It will be next to impossible to get you in
the same room with Dr. Heflin some other time this week, unless you
don't mind sitting around and waiting for hours. Also --” Spencer
closed the door on her last statement. He would never know what it
was.
Julian walked home from the campus the
same way every day. He descended down stairs cut into a titanic
sheet of granite continental crust, one gargantuan uninterrupted
stone face. It had been forced nearly vertical from its original
position flat beneath the sediment of an ancient ocean millions of
years ago. The stairs intimidated almost everyone who set foot on
them.
Nobody in recent memory died taking the
shortcut from the university high on mountain ridges to the town
hundreds of feet below, but it had happened more than one time.
Residents spoke out against closing the stairs every time it did,
“Nobody forced them to take the stairs.” To be fair to those who
defended the stairs, there was a plethora of warning signs. Warning:
Steep angle! Cuidado! Alto! Ice in winter! Wet after rain!
Julian felt like his life should have
come with signs. “Caution! Nonconformity increases risk of random
conversations! Eating can make you an outcast! Passivity leads to
victimization! Secretaries have pictures of their families!” He
laughed as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “At least you can
find yourself funny, Quiet Weirdo,” he thought as he slapped his
stomach hard.
Julian more often than not hated
himself too much to understand other people saw greatness in him. He
was almost always preoccupied, too busy thinking to perpend the
weight of his own intellect. The region he grew up in was known for
an abysmal high school dropout rate. The median income of the white
households was above the national average, but here were a lot of
immigrant families. The opportunities for work and betterment were
certainly more common than south of the border, but much of the
immigrant populace still struggled to survive. Many of their kids
left school to help their families by working.
Looking at standardized test scores,
completion of the secondary school curriculum, the percentage of
students who went on to college, and other numbers related to
education in that area, Julian's record stood out like a beacon.
Across the board administrators saw the potential to use his case,
and others similar to his, as leverage to better the district,
secure more funding, rethink the curriculum and streamline the
existing approach to education in order to help those that needed it
most.
When educators and people in
educational administration at every level, referred to him as a great
student, they were not being the least bit facetious. They might
have known that their praise only further alienated Julian, if they
had looked into it more carefully, but nobody did. Everything that
made Julian feel different only added to the gulf of separation
between he and other kids his age; social isolation persisted
impervious to qualifying factors.
As another example of Julian Spencer's
inability to revel in personal accomplishments, he gave himself a
present for his sixteenth birthday. He vowed to lose all his excess
weight and never be fat again. He lost eighty-five pounds. He
reached normal weight a mere two days before his sixteenth birthday
on June 8, 2009, after being obese for the duration of his years in
grade school.
Instead of taking pride in the
monumental deed that is losing eighty-five pounds, he unearthed a
hitherto unknown and horrifying fact. Losing a lot of weight leaves
behind a bit of stretched skin around and below the belly button .
He did not congratulate himself about becoming a lean, handsome man.
He obsessed over the unsightly folds of flesh where once was fat.
As was often the case Julian became
self-conscious about the emphasis he placed on his physical
appearance. In his mind it was highly effeminate to be overly
concerned about what one looked like to other people. He found
himself worrying about his hair, a lot, about whether his outfit
matched or clashed, or whether he could get it to clash just the
right amount for it to be perfect. And then he hated himself,
because the masculine myth was that men should be concerned only
about what women wear, not what they wear themselves.
Generally Julian Spencer was neither
self-pitying nor prone to irrational depressions. Granted, every now
and then he might be described as both, because nobody knew the truth
behind his feelings. He was unable to enjoy life as the male he was,
nor did he have any way to enjoy life as a female, which he also was,
as plain as the milky way on a clear night. There was no living soul
he could talk to as he progressed through his torturous teenage years
and into college.
As the intensity of his internal
conflict grew, so did the outward manifestations of its existence.
His parents were at wit's end for an explanation of his increasingly
withdrawn personality and unhappy demeanor, concerned about his well
being. When Julian's internal conflict in relation to his gender
crisis converged with unrelated (if that was possible) problems of
self acceptance, his thoughts turned to suicide. In the throes of
profound despair Julian did open up once and speak, to his father,
but only about his suicidal thoughts.
John Spencer did not press Julian for
the reason he wanted to kill himself when it became clear his son did
not want to talk about it. Rather than asking any questions he
instead talked about some of the more difficult times in his life.
He repeatedly emphasized the impermanent nature of all things,
especially troubles and difficulties.
“Son, if I had given up when the
national government branded me as sympathetic to enemies of the
state, then I would never have met your mother. That would have been
okay, but it would have meant not having you around, and you're the
greatest joy of my life.”
Julian did not like the last part. He
never liked it when anyone said anything good about him. He was
filled with self-loathing, and compliments only made him think about
why. Julian had been unable to contain his emotions at the onset of
the conversation, and hearing his father refer to him with such love
set him off again. He wept, “I don't understand why anyone finds
anything good about me. It's not right. I am not right. I should
never have been born.”
The conversation sounds fake. It
sounds contrived, like something actors rehearsed for a play that is
performed five times a day to an almost empty theater. Maybe it
sounded clichė because it has
happened so many times in so many places, but those
words originated in
genuine internal suffering.
Anyone who would mock
such a scene as trite or overdone could not possibly be deep enough
for their opinion to matter.
Father
and son only had that talk one time. The outcome of the
conversation: Julian wound up promising never to commit suicide. He
may not have anyway, but for the rest of his life he had the promise
as a good excuse not to. Another outcome, a hidden one: John Spencer
decided his son must be gay, which was unfortunate, considering
that was right around the time Julian determined he was a lesbian.
It was closer to
heterosexuality in the same way as Mr. Pibb was closer to Coca-Coa
than it was to root beer. Sometimes life made no fucking sense at
all.
It may be difficult for some to
understand how gender dysphoria translated into Julian's unhappiness
on so many other levels. In order for that to be clear one must
first look at the unhappiness surrounding an identity dissociative
complex. Doubts, uncertainties and unhappiness surrounding variant
self-perceptions would not exist without external social pressures.
Regardless of how pressures regarding conformity and the norm are
introduced or perpetuated, whether it be by religion, government,
school or families, on a smaller scale, and even pop culture, without
that external influence on an individual's perceptions of reality,
there would be no predisposition to have positive or negative
associations when certain experiences occurred, and self-perceptions
are an experience
At the base of nearly everything Julian
disliked about himself religion played a prominent role. Had it not
been for religious indoctrination against personal gender expression
that deviated from the accepted norm, he would never have felt there
was something wrong with him in the first place. Having already been
taught, before he ever had any inkling what sexuality was, that
people such as himself were to be shunned, he could not shake the
horror and misery full self-awareness brought along with it.
Fear and hatred inculcated by religion
also prevented open confrontation of the issue. The core principles
of Christianity rejected hatred and sought to lead people out of
ignorance and fear, but often bigoted, hateful men twisted the
original principles to become more powerful, wealthier and even more
attractive to the opposite sex. The messages such men preached
invariably voiced harsh intolerance of anyone involved with same sex
interaction at a romantic level. They provided a faux holiness upon
which violent intolerance could be based. Homophobes scared Julian
more than anything he ever learned in Sunday school. Afraid of what
they saw in themselves they sought to prove their own masculinity
untarnished by lashing out at innocent third parties. The
distinctions between differing reactions to people facing the world
with a predisposition to same sex relationships or with personal
gender challenges may seem unnecessary or repetitive, but something
insignificant to a mature adult may seem colossal to a teenager.
Unable to speak the truth, and at times
unable to admit the truth even to himself, Julian instead transferred
his unhappiness to things that did not frighten him out of his wits.
Self criticism became the only outlet he had to express his gender
related unhappiness. The intimate details of how Julian ultimately
came to terms with his internal conflicts could fill thousands of
pages. This is just the brief tale of a meeting he had with his
technical writing instructor.
The Spencer house, formerly the Sierich
house, occupied the west side of a cul de sac a mere seven hundred
meters from the base of the University Stairs, as they were known. A
local architect, Alfonse Mayu Villanueva designed the home. Julian
loved it with a precocious weightiness. He always thought it unfair
his mother kept the home when she and his father got divorced. He
knew she only demanded it in the settlement because his father loved
it almost as much as he did. She didn't even like it, she just
wanted to make John Spencer suffer.
The Frank Lloyd Wright influenced
design made it one of the more magnetic properties in the town of
Cremlech, which was already known for it's comely residences. It
looked much larger on the outside than it felt on the inside.
Villanueva exploited the right angles of outward facing corners to
maximize the impact of occupied space. He also created the illusion
the structure crowded the property by placing second story reading
nooks atop futuristic flying buttresses extended out from the main
body of the second floor. In short, it looked like a 1950's space
station with blocky wings. Julian's room occupied one half of the
second floor and the flying cubicle on the north side.
Once settled into the safety and
security of the Math Lair, as he called it, Julian pulled up a corner
of the rug covering his floor and used a butter knife to pry up two
short boards near the intersection of the protruding reading nook and
the hardwood flooring of the main room. Beneath the boards was a
hiding place one third of a meter deep, thirty-five centimeters wide
and 40 centimeters long. His father made him aware of its existence
before he and Carol Anne split up, probably hoping he would use it to
hide pornography. That was not exactly what he had done with it.
Julian reached into the cubbyhole and
pulled out a thick composition pad. The front of it sported a hand
drawn “dragon” that looked more like a four year old's
interpretation of the Loch Ness monster, and the title “My Stalker
Memories.” Two years after its creation the sight of it still
forced a giggle out of him. From cover to cover the notebook
contained only hastily scribbled notes and ruminations. There were
no pictures, nor locks of hair, nor anything else creepy; the title
on the cover had been simply ironic. Julian turned to the last page
and wrote: “Tomorrow, April 17, 2012 – appointment with Lionel
at 3 p.m.”
Julian felt more excited and alive than
he had in months. He thumbed through the notes and read at random,
but his eyes glazed over and instead of reading he thought about the
origins of the notebook. During one of his marathon study sessions
to finish the eighth grade he had procrastinated by reading Lionel
Heflin's first graduate thesis, for his Master of Arts in English
Literature. Something about the cadence of the clauses and the
choice of words captured Spencer's attention. He could not quite put
his finger on what it reminded him of. It bothered Julian so much he
made uncovering the original source of the familiar rhythm and
verbiage a high priority. Disappointment came when he figured it out
before the day ended; he had hoped it would take more thought and
research to find the answer. His disappointment did not last long
Having ascertained that he had
encountered a heavily veiled allusion to a sequence from “Leaves of
Grass” within the thesis, Julian could not accept any of the easy
answers for its placement in such an important text. Literature
snobs had been trading thinly veiled insults linked to “Leaves of
Grass” for a hundred years, but it was obvious from the placement
of the clues that it was no insult, nor some sort of quiet
confession of latent scholarly homoerotic fascination. The hidden
nature of the message ruled it out as a similarly themed public
announcement, and he could find no way to link the message to anyone
in the scholarly world. Julian even checked out whether the thesis
contained any cryptography, all to no avail.
Julian studied the thesis from a
variety of angles, and decided to give up, that there really was
nothing hidden in the text at all. That conclusion was both true and
not true. After setting it down he was looking at himself in the
mirror. All the usual feelings of deficiency and inadequacy he had
grown to associate with self inspection flooded over him. In that
moment it hit him. What he perceived in Heflin's thesis was not a
hidden message, it was just the way the man wrote, and it had struck
Julian because of its familiarity. Lionel Heflin felt the same way
about himself as he did. Julian would have bet his life on it.
Julian set out to gather everything
Heflin had ever written that was available for reading. The further
he read the more certain he became. The professor's public face
exuded confidence and self-assuredness, but the undercurrents of his
theorems and postulates suggested a long withstanding unhappiness
with his own person at an early age. That internal struggle had
unintentionally leaked out into his scholastic works, and only
somebody deeply familiar with the slings and barbs of personal
dysphoria could glean its existence betwixt the pedantic formulations
of pure genius.
Julian hoped he had not crossed the
boundary from a simple curious student into the realm of paranoid
delusion, and there really was no way for him to be certain he had
not, except to ask the professor. Doing so became something of an
obsession for him, unhealthy as it may have been. Julian recognized
that, but decided it really was worth it. After all, it was only a
part-time obsession.
Julian placed the notebook back in the
hiding spot, fitted the boards back in place and covered it with the
rug. He only had a few hours to figure out what he would wear to the
appointment; there wouldn't be any time to give it much thought the
next day. Julian didn't lie to himself and pretend there would be
some sort of instant bond between he and the professor. The more he
thought about it, the more every possible scenario he envisioned
ended badly, with indignant outrage or, worse, authoritarian concern
for his own mental state.
Expecting the worst Julian decided to
at least create an image worthy of a disastrous end to the long
charade. He settled on a loose fitting silk batik tunic in earth
tones and whites, and a bright blue dhoti over black, shin length
tights. Birkenstocks would have been the comfortable choice of
footwear, but the ensemble would have looked contrived and
inauthentic with yuppie sandals. Instead he dragged an old pair of
huaraches from the far reaches under his bed. Few people would see
the clash between the Eastern garb and the Mexican footwear, and
though it bugged him somewhat Julian did not have a very wide array
of choices when it came to shoes and sandals.
On top of the small pile of clothing he
placed a necklace an old Indian woman, a practitioner of brujería,
gave his mother and father when he was still a baby, to pass on to
him when he grew old enough to understand such a gift. His father
bestowed upon him the power of the turtle totem on the occasion of
his thirteenth birthday, in a ceremony that Julian found hollow and
embarrassing at the time. After a lot of maturing and just as much
thought, Julian's disdain for the totem necklace changed into deep
appreciation. The turtle had been hand carved from a large lodestone
the bruja said had been found in the foothills of the Sangre De
Cristos mountains. The totem fit his personality so well he simply
could not ignore what it said about the tiny, ancient woman who had
given it to him. It was almost as if she knew his future before she
briefly put it around his neck. Julian did not believe in such
things, but he believed it would look good with what he had decided
to wear.
To accentuate the impression of the
clothing, Julian procured a small medicine dropper bottle from Carol
Anne's bathroom and mixed patchouli, sandalwood, a tiny bit of pine
nut oil and a slight smattering of Chanel No. 5. For the thousandth
time he wished that he had come up with the mixture. It smelled so
good, like something Bedouins from the time of Christ may have found
in a cave full of treasure on the outskirts of the Sahara.
Julian could never claim he came up
with the essential oil formula. An exquisite, elfin faced girl
instructed him in the creation of the fantastic scent. She claimed
to have just moved to Cremlech from the west coast. He thought that
she may have been attracted to him. She was the first girl he ever
really wanted; he woke up humping his pillow with her name on his
lips the first night.
He went to see her the next day and
found her en flagrante with one of the jocks who made his life hell.
He put that memory out of his mind, not wanting to sully the
marvelous odor with bad memories. Julian carefully placed the small
stack of garments on top of his dresser, with the dropper bottle on
tops, and pulled out his books to study until it was time to go to
sleep. Right before he drifted off he pictured her face in his mind
as clearly as if she had been there.
When he awakened with the dawn he
thought about how the previous day had gone by without the slightest
inkling of where his mother might be. Her name was Carol Anne Flores
(her maiden name); what she did with her time was utterly unknown to
the young man. It had been a couple of years since she took any
interest in his life, and he unceasingly attempted to convince
himself that he did not care.. Carol Anne ignored his existence, and
the truth of the matter was that it hurt, a lot.
Julian approached the issue as
reasonably as he could, but over time he blamed himself. He blamed
the fact that he was not a normal boy. His rational ideas about the
estranged nature of his maternal relationship gave way to a more
emotional response. He was not immune to normal human doubts and
fears, if anything he was more prone to them than the average person.
He blamed himself in ways only somebody with similar problems could
understand. He concluded his mother ignored him because he was
deficient as a son, and that made his self loathing exponentially
more acute. For once though he did not dwell on the matter, because
that afternoon he would finally speak with the man that had so
greatly influenced his thinking and his motivations.
The school day went by at a snail's
pace. Normally Julian immersed himself in his classes so thoroughly
he had no perception of the passing time at all. With something to
look forward to everything slowed down, and he marked the passing
seconds anxiously. At the conclusion of his last class, which lately
had been focused on Fourier analysis on the real line and integers
and finite cyclic groups, Julian sprinted to the stairs and threw
himself down the incline at an alarming and heady pace.
Halfway to the bottom he missed a step
with his right foot and pitched forward. He was airborne for almost
fifteen feet. His hands had no grip on the rail, his feet had no
surface upon which to check his forward momentum, and his body tilted
forward so that his face would be the first part of his body to make
contact with the granite when gravity pulled him back down to earth.
A heart stopping burst of adrenaline
cascaded through his veins at lightning speed and his mind braced for
an impact that would surely leave him seriously injured. At the last
moment he hooked his right arm around the end of one flight's railing
and his body whipped back one hundred eighty degrees. His legs
continued out into space, but his upper body halted in mid fall. He
came down hard on his coccyx with all his weight; his dignity almost
hurt worse, almost. Blood pounded in his ears, the capillaries of
his eyes slightly visible, from the stunning realization of how near
death he had been a moment before. He finished the descent down the
stairs more slowly than ever before in his life.
Back at Casa Spencer, Julian showered
and got ready for his appointment with Dr. Heflin. He really did not
have a clue how he planned to change the topic of the meeting from
his technical writing grade to something more personal. He worried
he had been setting himself up for a huge disappointment all along.
It suddenly struck him that he was really and truly insane. Julian
could not understand how it was possible for one human being to have
so many things wrong with their mind, and yet be described as gifted
and brilliant. As he toweled himself dry he weighed the benefits of
running away and never coming back. He could live with other
sideshow performers, travel from town to town and see the world,
perhaps have a charming love affair with the bearded lady, with
another bearded lady.
Running away was not his style though. Julian dressed and made
himself as presentable as possible in what, by that time, he silently
denounced as a circus costume, a circus costume fit for someone who
was by all standards (standards he created at that moment) a circus
freak.
Outside
Dr. Heflin's office with Ms. Cartwright, a good fifteen minutes
early, Julian could not bring
himself to sit down. He was too nervous. That condition seemed to
be catching. Ms. Cartwright made several tiny mistakes as she wrote
a note to someone. Her normally perfect penmanship had been marred
by the gypsy looking boy pacing to and fro a few feet away from her
desk. She opted to break one of her unspoken rules and address the
boy.
“Well,
Julian, you certainly smell good. I could
swear I have smelled that
before. It is awfully
familiar. If
you don't mind me asking, what
is it?”
“It's
a secret blend of essential oils. A... somebody from the west coast
taught me how to make it.” he answered absentmindedly. Something
that had nagged at him a few times since the first time he met Ms.
Cartwright wiggled its way into the forefront of his awareness.
He had to rectify the situation lest he chew off all his fingernails
from letting it bug him.
“Ms.
Cartwright... can I see the picture of your daughter again?” he
asked innocently. The secretary gave a little laugh of relief. For
a brief moment she had worried he was about to ask her out.
“Certainly,
Mr. Spencer. You're not going to start stalking my daughter though,
are you?” She quipped as she pulled her pocketbook from her purse
and located the picture.
She
held the photo out but would not let him grab it at first. She was
just playing with him, but she noticed he took everything very
seriously. Ms. Cartwright
extended the photograph with great earnestness, tickled by his
reactions but not revealing it
“No,
ma'am,” Julian answered as he delicately took the picture from her.
“ It's just that the first time I saw it I was struck by how nice
her hair was, and I was so distracted by it I really didn't get a
chance to look at her face. I felt it was less than gentlemanly to
act as though I saw her,
since I had not gotten an
accurate idea of what she
looked like.”
Julian
looked at the girl in the picture with his deep green and gray eyes.
He did not think he had ever seen a more beautiful girl in his life,
but he had seen her before. It was the girl from the west coast, or
so she claimed, the only girl he ever felt an attraction to, the one
who taught him how to mix up the essential oils. He could not fathom
how he had failed to notice
it was her the first time he saw the photograph. He was truly
speechless, flabbergasted by the coincidence. A tumult of questions
welled up inside him, but he could not ask her mother. Long seconds
went by before he handed the picture back to Ms. Cartwright.
“She
seems... very familiar,” Julian
finally managed to say.
The
young man's reaction caught the always poised Stella Cartwright
quite off guard. She stood there with the picture in her hand at a
loss for something to say, her
mind too busy weighing all the possible scenarios that could be at
the heart of young Julian Spencer's sudden shift in mien. She
continued thinking as she fumbled with her pocketbook to put the
picture away.
The intercom buzzed
and Dr. Lionel Heflin asked, “Ms. Cartwright, could you send in Mr.
Spencer?”
It was
extremely uncharacteristic for the secretary not to respond to her
employer, but at that moment she had a mental image of her daughter,
Elise, entwined with the young Spencer, in her bed, while she carried
out the most trivial of tasks for her obsessive
compulsive boss. Ms.
Cartwright pointed at the office door. Julian took a deep breath and
showed himself into the office, closing the door behind him.
Nothing
could have prepared Julian
for the tableau he encountered upon stepping into Heflin's office.
All four walls were lined
with bookshelves, two rows high, the bottom row being on the floor.
There was a short-legged table in the center of the room, a chabudai,
with zabutons and zafus on
either side. The western wall
boasted a magnificent sumi-e of a kingfisher amid
three bamboo culm and a
delicate minim of stems and leaves. A large double window filled
the eastern wall with a
breathtaking view of Cremlech and the valley far below. A
sultan of the windswept Panjshir Valley would have demanded a man's
weight in gold for the privilege of witnessing
sunrise from that window. The
wall opposite the door, the first thing one saw when entering the
room, housed two wall mounted swords, a katana and
tantō
set; the two swords were
notably anachronistic, a point not lost on Julian, but he hardly
considered it the time to debate the history of Japanese weaponry.
The door to the office sat squarely in the center of the southern
wall, but Heflin had been unable to restrain himself from using the
space on either side of the door to balance the rest of the room and
maintain the harmony of the décor. On one side of the door a rice
paper calligraphy “moon,” and on the other “sun.”
“Julian,
I am glad you could make it,” Dr. Heflin said comfortably,
immediately making Julian feel more at ease.
The
young man's garb fit agreeably with the decor of the room,
notwithstanding the immense geographical difference between the
birthplace of Gaudiya Vaishnava and the majestic mountainous islands
that were once home to the samurai. Heflin wore a plain beige Irish
linen button-up shirt and fatigue green cotton pants. Julian
immediately noticed he was
barefoot, although beige
socks tucked into
Sperry Topsiders were placed
carefully beside the door, a detail not lost on him; he shed his
sandals before entering. He
smelled of sea salt and a cold northern wind; how he achieved that
effect was a consummate
mystery. Dr. Heflin's only
notably ornate accoutrement was the watch on his right wrist, a Rolex
Submariner handed down to him by his father.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,”
the professor gestured to the cushions on the guest side of the
chabudai, the one closest the door. Julian easily folded himself
into cross legged meditational sitting position, back arched, the
soles of both his feet facing upward. The professor did the same.
Julian broke the silence first. It was
unclear, though likely, whether the doctor had refrained from
speaking in order for his student to do so. The nervousness returned
as the young man began reciting the words he had prepared.
“I hope you understand that I flubbed
the exam on purpose. It was the only way I could think of to get
your attention. I --”
“Why did you feel as though you
needed to prepare a statement to me in advance? Because it's obvious
that you did. Do I intimidate you? I try very hard not to be
intimidating, but I can't think of a reason why you would have
rehearsed our meeting other than that.”
“I – no, I don't find you
intimidating. It's just that I really did not want to mess this up.”
“Yes, I knew that you intentionally
turned in an exam that wasn't as advanced as the work you were doing
in the fourth grade. But you must understand, I can't grade you
based on what you are capable of, only on what I have.”
“I realize that, but I so wanted to
meet with you.”
“Julian, you can meet with me any
time. My door is always open. Well, I mean, I have an open door
policy. My students are always welcome to come here and talk to me.”
Heflin smiled at the distinction between literal and figurative.
“I've been a fan of yours since
before I was fourteen years old. I literally can't believe I am
sitting here talking to you. I just didn't think about meeting you
without having some reason. And...” Julian blushed and trailed
off.
“Oh, I see,” Dr. Heflin said with a
sigh and gazed out the window at the immeasurable ocean of blue sky
that looked as if it might swallow Earth at any moment.
Julian felt all his thoughts and ideas
about the two of them slipping away with each passing millisecond.
He couldn't let his dream die wordlessly. He had to find something
to say. He had to find the rationale behind all his years of
moronic admiration. He had to.
“Did you look in the mirror as a
child and see a boy, but on the inside feel you were a girl?”
Julian blurted out, and immediately wanted to die.
Years of pent up despair finally burst
free. Nineteen years of life, and he finally gave voice to the one
thing that he could never bring himself to speak of. He couldn't
believe he had just asked his professor that, but worse, his reaction
made it absolutely obvious that he was the person who actually felt
that. It was too much for him to handle. He didn't move or make a
sound, but the tears in his eyes blinded him. A great sorrow washed
over him, and his whole body shook from the depth of it.
Dr. Heflin snapped back into focus and
studied the features of the brilliant young man seated before him.
His hard gaze softened instantly. The sight of the suffering,
painfully mortal human creature opposite him touched strings in his
heart, loosing tones of sadness and sympathy no ear could hear. All
he saw was a bristling bundle of nerves and apprehension and
insecurity, a sight so raw emotion welled up in him, heedless of all
the walls and stoicism he placed between himself and the cold, cruel
world.
“It has to have been real. I can't
have imagined it. I can't be the only freak like this.” Julian
started weeping, tears running down his cheeks, ragged breath taking
the place of sobs.
Lionel Heflin reached across the
chabudai and placed his hands palm up on the table. He said softly,
“Julian, I want you to give me your hands.”
Julian sniffed and wiped his eyes on
his silk shirt before he complied. Dr. Heflin held his hands in his
and said nothing for a long time. Julian stopped crying and somehow
found the strength to meet the professor's gaze. He saw nothing but
compassion and sharp intelligence in them, but they were so
beautiful. They were blue flecked with gold, and for a moment Julian
felt as though he were lost in them, until Lionel spoke.
“Julian, I know how incredibly hard
the world can be. Life is just an unbelievable bitch. There is
almost nothing about this miserable condition that we have been
thrust into that can be considered fair. I want you to know that you
are far, far from being the only person who looks in the mirror and
does not like what they see . All these people you see that look as
though they have it made, they all have their own problems. Some of
them are blessed enough to know what their problems are, are blessed
with the intelligence to see things as they really are, and others
are just woefully ignorant, of themselves, of life, of the world, of
everything besides what they want to know.
“You are blessed, Julian. You have
one of the most beautiful minds on God's green earth. And there's
nothing wrong with you. Nothing. From now on when you look in the
mirror I want you to remember what I said. There's nothing wrong
with you. Are you with me?”
“Yes,” Julian said tentatively.
“I don't think you're with me. I
want you to focus. Now, when you look in the mirror, I want you to
remember what I said. Let's try this again, when you look in the
mirror, what is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” Julian answered with
more feeling.
“I think you're starting to get it,
but you're still just repeating what I said. What I said was very
important. I told you the truth. You should trust me. I have a
lifetime's more experience than you. I've dedicated my life to
teaching young people. If you can truly learn what I'm trying to
teach you, right now, then I will feel I have made a big difference
in the world, that I have been true to my calling. I can be humbled
and thankful that I was able to do this, but first you must learn
what I am trying to teach you. You are blessed. You have a
beautiful mind, and you're a beautiful person, and there is nothing
wrong with you.
“Let's try this one more time. When
you look in the mirror, what do you see?”
“There's nothing wrong with me.”
“That's close, but you forgot two
very important things. I'm not going to ask you again, because it
may be too much for you to believe since you have just learned
there's absolutely nothing wrong with you, but you are a beautiful
person, and you have a beautiful mind. This is not something I am
making up. Everywhere you go people will think the same thing about
you. It's just baffling to me that you managed to convince yourself
of something else. You are a fantastic human being, incredibly
gifted and exceptionally handsome. Do you believe what I'm telling
you.”
“I believe you.”
“I hope you believe it, because it
may be the most important thing I have ever taught anyone. Do you
believe it? Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“I hope so.”
The two of them released each other's
hands. They sat in silence for a long time, looking out the window.
The sky was a blue so deep it was like they could set sail on it and
ride the waves forever without ever finding land, without ever
needing to find land, without ever needing to turn back. Their
reverie was only broken by an eagle, hovering on the wind within a
stone's throw of the window, gazing directly at both of them.
They turned and looked at each other.
The young man still had sadness in his eyes, but that was to be
expected. Sometimes his life changed with every breath, and the
experience was very humbling. The older man found it in himself to
speak. He was a professor, after all.
“You're going to retake my
examination. You're going to give it the best effort you have ever
given an exam, or I promise that I will fail you, even if you deserve
to pass. I hope you understand.”
“I understand.”
“Now get out of my office,” Dr.
Heflin said gruffly.
Julian unfolded his legs, which had
grown somewhat stiff from being in the same position so long. Upon
standing the only thing he could think to do that wouldn't seem
awkward and out of place was give a half bow, his best impression of
a bow between competing martial artists. It wasn't a bad impression,
but he didn't know to keep his eyes on his opponent at all times, and
so his eyes were downcast. Lionel Heflin noted that, but chose not
to correct him. He reckoned that the first time the boy heard the
right way to do it he would remember forever because of this moment
in his office.
Julian was almost to the door when Dr.
Heflin said one more thing: “When I was a lad I looked in the
mirror and saw a man trapped in a woman's body. I don't expect you
to understand that now. You may never understand it, but I'm telling
you the truth. And it hurt worse than anything else in my life has
ever hurt, except losing my father.”
Julian said, “That I do understand.”
And then he scooted through the door and was gone.
***
Dr. Lionel Heflin sat at the table in
his dining room as hundreds of tiny glowing souls danced on the walls
and the floor and the ceiling. Given a chance to dance once more by
the prisms hanging from the upper sills of the massive windows
looking out at the peaks and ridges of the mountain range, they
danced for all they were worth, like there were no tomorrows and the
world ended when the sun went down. Seated across from him a woman
of extraordinary beauty sipped the tea he had made for them; she
looked at him with predatory eyes. Her name was Elise.
The young lady was wearing a nineteenth
century maid's outfit, with a high collar and long sleeves and a long
skirt. He had demanded she wear it as a joke, something of an inside
joke. He did not laugh or smile about it, but it always tickled him
when he had the opportunity to witness something like it. The fact
that she sat there wearing something so uncomfortable and so
unflattering and feeling so sexy because she had it on struck him as
one of the truly humorous things in life. And it was a reaction
99/100 people would have in the same circumstance.
The professor suddenly felt a deep
compassion for his secretary, as he thought to himself, “To have
raised such a creature as this must have taken eight of her nine
lives.” He almost hated to burst Elise' bubble, but he was worried
if he delayed getting down to business she might launch herself over
the table and attempt to force him into sex, which would not have
taken much doing, but which would have been highly unprofessional.
“Elise, I want you to do something
for me. I spoke to your mother --” at the mention of her mother a
dark and stormy look passed over her face, but it was quickly
dispelled “-- and so I believe you have made the acquaintance of a
young man named Julian Spencer. I do not want to be rude nor crass,
but I need to make myself clear. I want you to take his virginity
and stomp it into the dirt. I have no doubt he will feel like dying
after you are gone, and I am assuming you don't have the good sense
to stay with such a sure bet as he is, since you are still young and
stupid. I don't feel I should have to offer you money to do this
thing. But if it's money you need to make yourself feel as though
you have been compelled to deflower him, then money you shall have.
I don't have much else to offer you, except maybe good
recommendations from a couple of faculty members at Alpine State
University, in case you change your mind about going back to school.
He did not give her time to respond
before he continued, “What I am saying is this. That young man
needs a woman, maybe worse than any other young man in history has
needed one. You know he is not unpleasant to look at. You know he
is not poor, nor dirty, nor unsophisticated. You know he is
brilliant. I can't believe you did not do this already, but since
you didn't I asked you here to urge you to rectify that mistake. Do
this thing and I will be indebted to you, if you feel that you are
owed for the endeavor. But do this, or I promise I will find ways to
maneuver your mother into making your life a living hell.
“Don't even try to look bewildered
and shocked and innocent. I have seen the lady panther behind your
eyes. It's not like I'm asking you to bed a leper. Now, do we have
an understanding?”
“Yes,” Elise answered softly.
“That's good. Now off with you. And
do not disappoint me,” Dr. Heflin said gruffly and with a
down-to-business tone. She turned her upper body, cocking her hips,
arching her back and presenting her best asset as prominently as
possible, then gave a little pout and a tiny snort of indignation and
walked out. It was quite the scene.
After Elise was gone Lionel Heflin sat
looking at the mountains and thinking. After a while he found a few tears running down his cheek, though he made no noise; quite an uncommon occurrence. Sometimes life was just
more than he could bear. Oh, how he wished he could have taken
Julian into his arms and comforted him. He didn't know what the
future had in store for the young man. He dried his eyes and smiled. He never knew what to expect next. What a grand and mysterious show...
- Baton Rouge, Louisiana
May 9, 2013
Repent or Die