Somehow, I always get trapped in these outfits of yesteryears. Linen pantaloons and open-necked silk shirts; tire-souled sandals and green camo khakis. I could be anywhere from three to sixteen years old and my skin is colored of the land I hail from. 17th century, 18th century, 1960s, the distant future of another dimension. I just always get trapped in an age, in an era, in a land. I get trapped in this sex. I’m always a boy, and I, I mean me, the real me, is a girl. And I can’t get back. It’s like I was dreaming so deeply, so long, and I finally woke up. But I can’t stop waking up. And waking up. And waking up. And waking up.
I can’t fall back asleep to find me…to be back inside me.
But these boys are so close to me, so close to being me. They’ve got something hidden away for me. Or from me. I can’t go back to me-the updated version- until I understand me everywhere and everywho else I’ve been and will be, and that there’s no difference between me all. If I am to get back to my familiar self, I need to start somewhere. A place, a solid memory of a real childhood. But this is easier said, easier written, than it is to find and be inside of. If nothing feels more real of these places than in my dreams, then I will use my dreams as the means to my end. Besides, if I can’t seem to escape them, I may as well make myself at home.
If there is to be a place to begin, I choose Brushy Hill Rd. House #94, the Gransky residence, where we find my friend Ashley and her mom who takes care of me when my mom and dad are absent.
The road beneath my scooter wheels is compact dirt. Rocks kicked up, dry, chalky mud-coated old rocks fly into my batman sneakers. I don’t care, I push with my right foot off the dusty packed dirt, over and over.
“This thing is so wobbly!” I cry out to the road so that maybe it will hear and be more forgiving in its uncertain surface. I can’t see anyone else when I look back. Did Ashley leave me outside to go get lunch or play duck hunt in her brother Seth’s room? I start to turn back to the road ahead, but the clumsy rubber of the scooter wheels catches on the rocks and we all skid out into the brush off the road-side. Had we time to assess the situation, I’m sure one of us, with our quick young reflexes, would risk all manner of bodily dishevelment and use our elbow, palm, knee, velcroed sneaker heel, to avoid reeling off the brush-covered cliff-edge into a sudden void spread out indefinitely before us. In the millisecond before skipping like a smooth stone over water into the oblivion below, something catches our attention. This cliff-edge is not dirt-packed like the road. It in fact gives a bit under our boyish weight and bows with a splintering sound as we’re pitched over, and the hollow thud of ply-wood beneath us startles our bones, as we have landed upon exactly such a surface: a rough, plywood platform.
Although these details have become clear in the second or three it all took to happen, a shift has occurred in the substance of the air and between our ears and behind our eyes. There is another long second of this shift, we’re held aloft in a thick black blankness before getting that familiar sensation of being tipped forward fast and we snap “awake” to keep from falling into a familiar, dreamy nothingness. Coming to, the wood beneath our body assures us some kind of physical reality, a point to start from.
As far as I can tell, this abysmal darkness below is infinitely deep. The platforms, as there are many in addition to mine, go on forever all around, above and below me. This is so familiar in a bad way. This is one step closer to my mind’s eye, where the worst things hide. But we’ve got solid surroundings, however unsteady they prove to be, so let’s take a look. I test the waters and sit up so I can lean forward on my hands and knees, four legs have always been better than two.
