Blond hair curled in little wisps around a small child's cherubic face, bright blue eyes considering. "When I grow up," she announced catching the attention of her much older sisters, "I'll be a daddy!"
Judgement rained down in the form of a reply. Smug smirk affixed to the taller brunette's seventeen year old face. "Little girls grow up to be mommies. Little boys become daddies. You're a little girl."
Blue eyes blinked. But that just wasn't true, she mused in her child's mind. She wasn't really a girl at all. Without fully understanding the why of it, resentment for all things "girl" curled her tiny fists into balls that mirrored the knots in her chest.
Several years later, the senior prom loomed with a fiery excitement on the young teen's horizon. She had the boyfriend, she had the tickets, what she needed was the tux. Yes, the tux. Because a dress was just... it just wasn't right. It didn't fit--and not in the physical sense. It was the fact that girls wear dresses. No, a dress would no more fit her than the tight slip of her female body that chafed at her entirely masculine psyche. It must be a tux. But in the grand scheme of things, this was not to be. Not yet. Her father roared exsasperation. Teenage girls don't wear men's clothing, what was she thinking? This was taking breakout fashion too far. It would not be tolerated. It was not to be.
So the smallish blond bought a dress and the lesson was reinforced. Stuff it down. No one else will ever understand. Walk this life as something you will never be. Wear the facade and pretend.
This story has a happy ending. I refuse to believe otherwise. For forty years I have known the truth that those around me jest and tease about. I am not the woman people see. I am the man that waits, baited breathe, coiled tension wrapped around his spirit. Waiting for the day he can broach freedom. Waiting for the day that his reality will burst forth exploding into the world with gleeful, wild abandon.
I am he.
I am Wreckless.
