KarMel Scholarship 2006
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Karen’s Favorite “Manifiestation” By
Vanessa Wirth - IN |
Desciption of Submission: “A budding transgender discovers a deeper self
at an early hour in the morning.“ - Vanessa
Biography: Vanessa is attending
Why Karen and Melody Liked
It: Karen liked the words
of the story and drawing together. The story brought
the picture to life. The detail of the pictures was very beautiful as well.
Did you enjoy reading this
stroy? Then feel free to send a message to Vanessa at: vwirth@bgnet.bgsu.edu
Girls can
wear jeans.
Girls can
grow their hair out and they can cut it short. Wear short skirts and baggy
pants, high heels and combat boots, evening gowns and business suits. Thongs, boxers, and boy-shorts. It's okay to be a boy; for
girls, it's like a promotion.
Just so
long as they're not seriously considering switching gender roles.
For all
that the sexual revolution did, terms are still one or the other. Men and women
may have equal rights, but they are still men, and women, with social norms and
expectations. Words still divide them; he or she, blue
or pink. The bathrooms are still designated pants, or skirts. People base their
actions towards another person based on two things: their apparent gender, and
how they conform to the stereotypes of said gender. And when their apparent
gender really isn't so apparent, it makes for wonderful gossip.
Ryan
Thackary came home smelling like summer in late July and spicy masculinity. It
clung to his plain t-shirt and his hair unpleasantly until a vigorous shower,
in which his skin was scrubbed pink and the roots of his short dark hair were
refreshingly tender. As he wrapped a towel around his hips, the bathroom mirror
and its florescent glare were only accorded a passing glance - he knew all the
blemishes that white light would violently retort back at him, how the
clandestine beauty of his eyes would be blanketed by dark bags and overcast by
a bushy brow line.
The
peculiar vanity mirror in his room, watching him as he dressed, wasn't any more
good-natured. Ryan had always known the vanity was in the mirror, the
way it portrayed his reflection. It would started pleasantly with a more appeal
eggshell complexion beneath the golden overhead light that rippled idly with
the whirl of the fan. It nit-picked at the details - how his
lips were chapped and raw at the corners, how his hair was ratty, how his
eyebrows nearly connected above the bridge of a hooked nose. His lashes
may be flattering to those English-green irises, but there was a ring beneath
his eyes for each one of his sixteen years. He looked like a bushy raccoon,
half-starved and undernourished with those thin cheeks and weak lips. And while
it mocked him, he could only distantly ponder its very existence, sitting
beside the dresser as if ordinary boys kept vanity mirrors in their rooms.
Not that
Ryan was ordinary. Well, he knew he was, in the most mundane and forgettable
sort of way. He did feel out of place,
however, and he did leave that mirror at his dresser's side. Not out of his own
vanity, but because he often meditated on his own reflection. He was quite sure
that this was the way everyone else perceived him: all blemishes and
big-browed. It was strange to him - that uncomfortable-in-your-own-skin sort of
strange - and agonizingly frustrating. It was as if he had been designated a
label in kindergarten, when everyone - friends, peers, teachers, even parents -
began their ever-fickle labeling process that would follow a child into their
adult life and beyond. It was a branding, and you were expected to live up to
it every. day. of the rest of
your life. And if you didn't? Well, that was all the
incentive the brutish boy of the playground ever needed to rub your pretty face
in the dirt.
At sixteen,
he was a bit taller than the other boys. Too lanky to be much of a threat, but
with a slouch and scruffy hair and uncommitted eyes, Ryan could hide away in
loose-fitting clothes and be categoriesed with the sort of students who avoids
their own label with marijuana. A substance he wouldn't touch, but would accept
the cultural reaction to - both the condescending attitude of his peers and the
suspicious prejudice of his teachers - because he was usually left alone. Ryan
knew it wasn't the real him that was reflected out to people, or that
the mirrors reflected back at him, but it was something people could
understand.
He never
let his parents have time to worry about drug use, however. They were more
concerned with the subtle, legal, unthreatening things, like the way he grew
out his nails or the whimsical collection of preteen-colored make-up on his
dresser. It wasn't something Ryan really cared making the effort to hide. Nor
was it something his parents really cared to talk about, and bewildered
by his shamelessness, he was relinquished to indulge in his own guilty
pleasure.
In those
hours after the day had ended, when Ryan would find himself waiting for sleep
like a runaway at an unfrequented bus station, he would sit before that vain
mirror. He experimented, learned how to change that reflection that never
suited him, manipulating it. Not really making it the way he knew it should,
but the slightest bit better, and not just in the means of cleaner skin and
mollified eyebrows. With these colors he could paint that thin awkwardness of
his face to look less brittle, perhaps even pretty. He even felt that he looked
younger, jaw shaved and smooth, not that it ever grew much hair in the first
place.
It was on a
night like this that he met her. At a very uneventful three-in-the-morning,
while wearily picking after a loose hair on a shadow blush. He glanced up at
his musing, and found an intriguing angle, or maybe an out-of place shadow...
or someone else entirely.
Someone
he'd never seen before.
Ryan didn't
glance over his shoulder - something sinking in him told him he'd find nothing
but a lonely room behind him. It was what was before him that mattered anyway,
and he leaned in closer. Her face was thin - cheekbones smoothing down into a
delicate chin adorned with lovely que-sera-sera lips. Hair long and
wavy, the warm light color of a mature beauty found in mysterious women sitting
aloof in ritzy restaurants. She watched Ryan back through soft, familiar eyes
and curling lashes, framed perfectly with subtle gold and sculpted brows that
flowed down into the contours of a charming nose. She smiled at him and he
could only stare. She was breathtaking, a vision that stirred a recognition
somewhere above his diaphragm. She could do everything; she had the world
unraveled at her feet - out of view but likely put on the pedestals of classic
heels. To her, looking like a woman wasn't degrading; her beauty was a gift, a
power, a thing to be idolized and appreciated. Ryan opened his mouth, wanting
to speak with her, but found his voice had failed. He'd found something – someone.
Someone remarkable, yet Ryan had no idea how to approach her. He couldn't
speak, and when he reached up, his zealous fingertips found only the surface of
the mirror.
Her fingers
were reaching up to him, however, each matching slender tip baring the crescent
of a long, lacquered nail. Ryan still wanted to know more.
She smiled
again, almost sadly; there is sadness in beauty. Lovingly, like a sister and a
nurturer, she leaned forward to give Ryan a reassuring kiss. But all Ryan felt
was smooth, flat glass - as cold as reality.
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Did you enjoy reading this
stroy? Then feel free to send a message to Vanessa at: vwirth@bgnet.bgsu.edu