EQUALITY


For a long time I wanted to be a boy. Then, I imagined, my dad would
make bombs with me in the backyard and my uncles would give me the
secret $20 handshake. My want for balls had nothing to do with not
wanting to be a fetus incubator or a distaste for menses. It wasn't an
anti-vagina stance. I just wanted to be given the chance to hang equal
time with those who dreamed wet.



I was always trying to impress my male friends. I wasn't content with
just being the girlfriend or the girlfriends friend or the funny
girlfriends friend or the shoulder to cry on when the girlfriend
became the ex girlfriend.



I found my own sex organ and the way it made male friends and
relatives react to me too limiting. There were boundaries on girlhood
and rules for behavior. Even if I didn't abide by these rules, my male
friends and family seemed to honor these limitations in our
interactions.



I dreamed of a pair of honorary testes and the inclusion upgrade that
I imagined would come along with them.



The penis perks, if you will.



To reach this end, I would do sort of desperate things to prove myself
worthy of proximity to the package set.



The first sort of desperate thing I can remember doing in my quest to
impress was eating a luger out of my friend Jason's hand. I don't
remember the set up, or how the offer came about, but I remember
clearly my intent.



 If I do this, I'm bad ass. Raunchy. I may not skateboard and bang my
body up on asphalt for kicks, but slobbing this gob will give me
definite boy appeal.



My body got tight like someone about to do a tequila shot as I slurped
down Jason's spit in one fell swallow.



He was speechless.



I can't believe you just did that!



Within twenty four hours, I went from funny friend to gross girl.



Dream deferred.



As a chick, respect is never a given whatever the act or means of achieving it.



Instead of high fives, I got hesitant questions.



Did you really eat Jason's luger?



Yes.



NASTY! Followed by the sound of skateboard wheels rolling away. Some
boys offered me their lugars for a taste. I closed down shop after
Jason's. My goal wasn't to be a spit dumpster, it was to be a bro with
a vag who ate lug.



My next attempt at garnering male acceptance only succeeded in sulling
my name even further.



We used to hang out outside a movie theater on Main Street. Behind the
movie theater was a trail that led to a cemetery across the street
from the Middle School. Both summers of 7th and 8th grade this area
was where my friends and I spent our hot, summer nights. One such,
while walking the thorny trail to the cemetery, I made the off hand
remark to my companions that I had to pee. The dudes in our group
remarked that they also had to drain their main veins, with someone
making a sarcastic remark to the end that my pee pose (a normal female
squat) made me inferior and vulnerable to animals or military in the
wild.



"Yeah? Well fuck you! I could make it in 'Nam! No doubt! I can pee
fucking standing up!"



It was dark and I had a long shirt on, so my show of standing pee
prowess involved no flash of girl badge. The stream between my legs
wasn't waste but a flowing, honorary penis. I was proud. I had proved
myself safe from the gooks and the bears. Child's motherfucking play.
I could probably do piss standing tricks if I put my mind to it.



Word quickly spread of my feat. Robbed of my moment in the sun, I was
dubbed, for the evening at least, as sauteed in pee sauce. Someone in
the pee watching peanut gallery claimed that the piss had streamed
down my legs while I was standing and I had elected not to clean it
off.





In the Hole song "Softer, Softest," Pee Girl gets the belt. I may not
of gotten the actual leather and buckle variety, but my act of
affirmative action pissing was reduced a a Josie Grossie accident of
bad hygiene. Later in the same song, Courtney Love sings "Your milk
has a dick," which could be interpreted as a statement of male
invasion of a solely female act. All my actions in the hope of
becoming an honorary bro were a sort of view askewed reverse of this
idea- if the act was gross, upfront or potentially physically
damaging, I viewed it as male and was going for it.



My last attempt at gaining access to the inner sanctums of the local
boy's club left the most physical evidence.



Smelling my desperation, the throbbing sickle brigade elected to even
out the scent with the odor of my own burning flesh.



We were at my friend Amber's house with a group of homeless punk
rockers who had elected to spend their summer living off the spoils of
our home-fullness. They would sleep in our closets and eat our
macaroni and cheese in an even trade that allowed us close proximity
to the real punk rock thing. I desperately wanted to prove to them
that the only silver spoon in my mouth wasn't a spoon at all but a
sterling silver fork that I wasn't even going to put into my mouth but
instead was was going to burn into my leg.



Like I'd been watching our male friends do to each other for the last hour.



There they were, sitting out on Amber's back porch, smoking cigarettes
and heating up her parent's silverware. Arrow, the designated burn-
brander, would then take the now super hot eating utensil and ram it
into a willing boy calve. The newly mutilated would then do a strange
pain dance till the now forever marred flesh patch cooled to a more
manageable state of neuron agony.



I watched from Amber's couch as they smoked success cigarettes after
each mutilation well done.



I wanted one.



Very much like what I imagine must go through a Latin King or Queens
head when getting the telltale teardrop tattoo, I wanted something,
some irrefutable evidence that I was one amongst my male peers. That I
was a punk, that I could take the pain, that my flesh, too, was like
paper**.



Arrow had a fork burn, Ben had one, Dan had one too. They also all had
penises. I wanted to be the Angie Dickinson of our punk rock Rat Pack
and I wanted the proof to show the world.



When I went out to the porch to claim my stake, Arrow tried to
dissuade me. He stressed how badly it would hurt and the probable
severity of the scar. Sensing my adamance, the three boys caucused in
private for a moment, then returned, all agreeing that I had earned my
silverware stamp. I was to be granted rank through brand.



The three of them assumed positions. One held me around my waist.
Another held my leg. Arrow wielded the molten hot fork.



As with baby labor, the brain imprints no live recording of pain for
play back. You can't go back and recreate it, you can only recall that
in those moments, it was really fucking bad or what you thought about
doing to allieviate it. You don't recall the actual feeling of pain
itself, what you recall is the reaction it inspired.



 It was a bad burn. Arrow told me later, as the pus and exposed
necrotic tissue attempted to coagulate, that he regretted deliberately
heating and holding the fork much longer for my burn then he had for
the others. There was some talk about going to the hospital. What
would I say to the hospital staff? I fell onto a hot fork? For all my
calves' festering cellular leakage, you could make out clearly the
outline of pronged silverware.



Amber wrapped my leg in gauze which quickly grew wet with yellowish
white fluid. My wound was starting to smell. The summer heat didn't
help. It hurt to walk.



I was in, but I was invalid.



My wound had a gentle-ing affect on the men in my group, which wasn't
exactly my aim. I was striving for equality but was garnering
sympathy.They felt bad about going so overboard with my burn. None of
their burns spit pus and none of their burns needed bandages.



Then someone came up with a great idea. We still had the nighttime to
get through and needed money for booze to do it properly.



So we went downtown and bummed money with my wound.



Bros before burn units.



**quote G.G Allin




Fiona Helmsley was inspired by Richard Kern films and some of the men she has known during her years of drug use. She's clean and sober now but tends to tap into her drug years frequently in her writing. She lives in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
fionahelmsley@yahoo.com.
http://www.myspace.com/fionahelmsley