Tongue Inhibited

Reading saved my life, my sanity, my future. Of course I didn’t know that then.  As a kid, I only knew books as havens, deep connections I didn’t have to respond to. Twain didn’t expect anything of me; Renault didn’t care that I couldn’t hold up my end of a conversation. Neither ever reminded me, “This is the best time of your life!”

Crazy antics with fast friends. Sleepovers every weekend. Fridays and Saturdays at the Community Center running around, playing games all afternoon and dancing until closing with kids from all over town. Birthday parties, holiday parties, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs! Whoa! Who even had time to get their homework done, much less read through piles of books?!

Uh, that would be me. While my counterparts grew relationships and memories, I grew a backbone of sorts and wore “different” like a badge of non-disgrace. Did the invitation deficiency send me weeping to my room, teeth gnashing at being slighted yet again? Nay, nay! I welcomed every omission as a welcome excuse to snuggle down with a novel and Diamond, Streisand, or Sandler and Young on my little record player—plus, of course, the obligatory Beatles-Monkees-Beach Boys and so on and so forth and all that froth. ♪ Books and music, books and music ♫, go together like…

No need to talk to them or even sing along, although I sometimes did if the door was closed. Maybe I couldn’t “hang out” or “shoot the shit” with live persons, but I could laugh with Thurber and commiserate with Potok. They never snickered when I missed every ping-pong shot, or giggled and pointed when I ran out of steam thirty-two bars into a dance tune. I needn’t worry they would burst out laughing when I ran not, balanced not, colded not on the make-shift rink next to the community pool or the (mostly) frozen-over lagoon. Would H. Tarr sneer if I asked for extra whipped cream because the warming-house hot chocolate tasted like brown water? Of course not. He’d sympathize and tell me it was probably time to go home.

The radiator kept my room warm in the cold, the backyard bushes kept it smelling of lilacs in the warm, and the books—neatly shelved or piled for library return—kept it a safe place to be alone. Books were my true friends—especially those no one else read or remembered. So while my classmates gave oral reports on the latest Chicago Times bestseller, I introduced my midwestern-sheltered fellows to The Peaceable Kingdom’s Mormon polygamy and the misunderstood outlier in Gypsy Secret. I’d sit down to scattered applause, and it felt good.

That’s right: as long as I didn’t have to audition or compete with anyone in any way, I could talk—not to people, but in front of them. I hadn’t yet come into my full snark or comedy, but I could speak my piece and savor the surprised expressions and grudging respect of doing/being different. So I took it.

And I liked it.

Different was good. Different was… powerful! Well, no, maybe not powerful, but… but… potent! Okay, so not potent— but at least it had gotten to be non-mockable. For the most part. Because different could also be dangerous, especially since my operating system still defaulted to isolated/introverted. Whenever the ludicrous notion that I might possibly be “passable” or even maybe “part of” poked its nose out of my shell, my dumb-as-fuck always kicked it back in. Hell hath no idiocy like a psyche challenged. But as is true of all life, those indiscretions stuck only in consciousness, no one else’s. My classmates were all too involved in their own pre- and active puberty changes—not to mention the opposite gender’s recognition thereof— to cast a thought in my direction. Adolescence being what we all hate it to be, I gave them similar consideration.

Especially since my British heritage rapidly outpaced their mostly Eastern Europe growth patterns.

I was the second tallest non-boy in my grade. My monthly friend moved in two full years before its due date and settled into damning regularity from the get-go, irrevocably drowning all hopes of a delayed penis appearance. My chest leapt straight from no-breasts to thrusting out of a B cup. If I had an angel on my shoulder, as The Cascades sang, it had one crappy sense of humor; there I was, more uncomfortable in my own skin than ever before, unable to stop my chassis from taking on Aphrodite curves and having to deal with all the boys I wanted to be like wanting to like what I be.

One galloped headlong at me without warning just so he could cop a feel of the only protruding boob in the hallway. I shoulda been outraged! I shoulda screamed or smacked him or, or… or done whatever else girl-girls did! We weren’t alone in that locker-lined hall—the boys all wore goofy grins on their mugs and the girls were all, ya know, outraged or screaming or swatting at him. One even tried to comfort me.

But I didn’t get it. What was the big deal? What was so great about my orb, miserably restrained in its multi-armed girdle, to have someone risk the principal’s office just to brush it with their fingers? And what was so horrible about said finger-brushing to provoke such riotous boy v. girl reaction? There’d been no actual contact, what with my “thing” so thoroughly encased. And I couldn’t even feign righteous indignation, since my emotional toolbox somehow didn’t include what I would later discover would have been an extremely useful reaction. No, I just stood there, dumb-as-fuck.

My girlfriends—yes, I had a few by then—all tittered excitedly, “He likes you!” as if that were some great, wonderful trophy I should be thrilled to receive. I had no words to express what it felt like: yet another non-girl/non-boy disconnect. On the one hand, I barely knew who “he” was; learning his name non-helped immensely. On the other hand, my strongest reaction was, “So what?” Was I now supposed to return the gallop and cop a feel of his dick? A) I couldn’t run, and b) I had no interest in groping anyone else’s penis but my own, the non-existence of which I still (secretly) mourned.

Turns out that, having publicly stated his interest and intentions, he was somehow entitled to me returning the affection. Which I felt not.

I didn’t know affection. I didn’t know social intercourse. Conversationally challenged, my tongue was non-tied, but inhibited. I simply had no idea how to talk to people other than those in my head. It had taken years to work myself up to friend-group adjacency. I’d learned to nod and agree in mostly the right places and times. But any one-on-one banter remained both rare and exhausting. What was I supposed to say to the galloping groper? How would I make myself care about whatever he said?

I’d been isolated from natural conversation and interactions, in a type of familial solitary confinement, as it were since toddlerhood. Studies show that real solitary confinement can be damaging to a youth’s brain growth and development, triggering depression, anxiety, obsessive thinking, paranoia, and anger. Throw in some physical conundrums and a few dysphoric body parts, and wow—the perfect recipe for growing a human turtle! I may have looked like a full-grown teenager, tall and curvaceous, but my shell was my shield, and my comfort zone was silent onlooker. What the hell was I doing in a starring role?

Having no idea what to say or do with my admirer, I ignored him, which, looking back, wasn’t very nice. Because I’m not. Nice. I can be kind, I can be generous, I’ve occasionally ventured into loving and helpful, but no one in their right mind would ever tag me “nice.” I suppose I owe the guy an apology for my disregard lo those many decades ago, but if’n he ain’t gotted over it by now, that’s on him. I’ll bet other girls did him worse at some point or another.

Besides—and this, again, is the kicker—I wasn’t girl. Nothing could have possibly established that more clearly than my pre-teenhood (except maybe my full teen-ness and all of life thereafter). I was a clumsy, awkward non-boy. A dysphoric, different, dumb-as-fuck non-girl. I was good to study with, lousy to hang out with. Kinda empathic, not all that empathetic. An interesting person to know… just not someone anyone wanted to be around much.

I ended my middle/junior-high school years at thirteen, standing a head taller than most of the cohort, wearing a hideous shift-type dress thing that couldn’t hide my pushing-sixteen figure, and topped with a beauty-store hairdo I brushed before bed. And that, your honor, is the totality of my graduation recall. Party invitations sent out: none. Invites received: none. Wait… that might not be true; I might have been invited to something by someone, but I don’t need total recollection to know I wouldn’t have gone. I hated parties. Too many fully boy/fully girl people standing around, talking easily, engaging with each other as if it were the most normal thing in the world to do.

Not for me, it weren’t. Besides, Twain was home, in my room, waiting for me. Wasn’t it time to go to bed?