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Authors: Lauren McLaughlin
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remember everything. Every time Ramie touches Jill’s hand. Every time she whispers with hot, moist breath into Jill’s ear. Every secret. Every gesture. I remember it all.
Jill pays obsessive attention to all that Ramie does and says, because she worships Ramie in her silly girl-crush way. But when I wake up alone in this room, I invade Jill’s memories like a Viking horde. I mine their phone conversations, their chats by the lockers, their trips to the mall, their sharing of fitting rooms.
Oh man.
The way she bites her lower lip while she’s studying Italian
Vogue,
her pigeon-toed stance when she thinks no one is looking, her long slim fingers twisting Jill’s hair into a French braid.
Her blue lace bra!
Screw LaTanya. Screw Betsy. Screw Martha. Only one girl will do for me. All five feet ten inches of her. All one hundred and eighteen pounds of willowy lusciousness. Body, mind and soul, Ramie, I’ll take it all. Your cockeyed plan to infiltrate the student government with anarchists, your half-baked scheme to plant a bag of weed in the football captain’s locker, your ambition to change the face of fashion through the unconventional use of plastics. I’m listening, Ramie.
And I’m watching too.
By 2:00 a.m., I’m spent. Drained. The porno mags are stacked neatly on the dresser next to Jill’s Hello Kitty makeup case. I’ve got the Ramie photo in my hand (my
other
hand) and I’m staring at it by the dim light from the imitation Lladró flamenco lamp on the bedside table. I can’t sleep and I can’t wank anymore. It’s day four. I’ll be gone tomorrow. I’ve written Jill a note to request some porn DVDs, but I know they won’t help. Next cycle, I’ll find myself in this same burning dilemma.
We’re supposed to keep our lives separate, Jill and I. That’s the deal. That way, she can be Nancy Normal and I can spend my days watching Elvis DVDs and fighting off boredom with epic bouts of masturbation. She doesn’t interfere with my life, and I don’t interfere with hers.
But now, my reckless brain is concocting rationalizations. Why, it argues, should I be condemned to a life in this room while Jill roams freely? Why should Jill get Ramie all to herself?
I know the answers to these questions. I know why we live the way we live. The world couldn’t handle a cycling hermaphrodite. Hiding my existence from the outside world, cruel as it seems, is an absolute necessity. Anything I do to screw up this arrangement is an incentive for Jill and Mom to try to erase me. Not to mention, I think the success of this arrangement—especially all that Plan B stuff—is what really created me in the first place. It was only after Jill’s deliberate forgetting that my separate personality evolved. I should guard this arrangement with my life!
But my devious brain won’t let it lie.
Jill won’t remember a thing,
it tells me.
You’re nothing but a blackout phase. You can do anything you want and no one will ever know.
For three long years (that’s one hundred and forty-nine days of Jacktime, to be exact), I’ve endured this tiny room, mining Jill’s memories for a modest vicarious existence. I’ve been a good little prisoner. I’ve eaten my peanut butter sandwiches and kept my mouth shut. But now, in the twisted logic of a sleepless night, after the porn has failed to quench my devouring hunger, I’m starting to question all of it.
Why shouldn’t I sneak out that window? Why shouldn’t I climb that tree outside Ramie’s bedroom and watch her sleep?
It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. I’ve thought about it plenty. After Mom and Dad stopped checking up on me in here, I imagined sneaking out and following Ramie, maybe introducing myself to her as a new kid in town. But I never had the stones to go through with it.
Something’s different tonight. I’m not sure what.
Getting out of bed in my T-shirt and boxer briefs, I return the forbidden photo to its hiding place between the mattress
Jill pays obsessive attention to all that Ramie does and says, because she worships Ramie in her silly girl-crush way. But when I wake up alone in this room, I invade Jill’s memories like a Viking horde. I mine their phone conversations, their chats by the lockers, their trips to the mall, their sharing of fitting rooms.
Oh man.
The way she bites her lower lip while she’s studying Italian
Vogue,
her pigeon-toed stance when she thinks no one is looking, her long slim fingers twisting Jill’s hair into a French braid.
Her blue lace bra!
Screw LaTanya. Screw Betsy. Screw Martha. Only one girl will do for me. All five feet ten inches of her. All one hundred and eighteen pounds of willowy lusciousness. Body, mind and soul, Ramie, I’ll take it all. Your cockeyed plan to infiltrate the student government with anarchists, your half-baked scheme to plant a bag of weed in the football captain’s locker, your ambition to change the face of fashion through the unconventional use of plastics. I’m listening, Ramie.
And I’m watching too.
By 2:00 a.m., I’m spent. Drained. The porno mags are stacked neatly on the dresser next to Jill’s Hello Kitty makeup case. I’ve got the Ramie photo in my hand (my
other
hand) and I’m staring at it by the dim light from the imitation Lladró flamenco lamp on the bedside table. I can’t sleep and I can’t wank anymore. It’s day four. I’ll be gone tomorrow. I’ve written Jill a note to request some porn DVDs, but I know they won’t help. Next cycle, I’ll find myself in this same burning dilemma.
We’re supposed to keep our lives separate, Jill and I. That’s the deal. That way, she can be Nancy Normal and I can spend my days watching Elvis DVDs and fighting off boredom with epic bouts of masturbation. She doesn’t interfere with my life, and I don’t interfere with hers.
But now, my reckless brain is concocting rationalizations. Why, it argues, should I be condemned to a life in this room while Jill roams freely? Why should Jill get Ramie all to herself?
I know the answers to these questions. I know why we live the way we live. The world couldn’t handle a cycling hermaphrodite. Hiding my existence from the outside world, cruel as it seems, is an absolute necessity. Anything I do to screw up this arrangement is an incentive for Jill and Mom to try to erase me. Not to mention, I think the success of this arrangement—especially all that Plan B stuff—is what really created me in the first place. It was only after Jill’s deliberate forgetting that my separate personality evolved. I should guard this arrangement with my life!
But my devious brain won’t let it lie.
Jill won’t remember a thing,
it tells me.
You’re nothing but a blackout phase. You can do anything you want and no one will ever know.
For three long years (that’s one hundred and forty-nine days of Jacktime, to be exact), I’ve endured this tiny room, mining Jill’s memories for a modest vicarious existence. I’ve been a good little prisoner. I’ve eaten my peanut butter sandwiches and kept my mouth shut. But now, in the twisted logic of a sleepless night, after the porn has failed to quench my devouring hunger, I’m starting to question all of it.
Why shouldn’t I sneak out that window? Why shouldn’t I climb that tree outside Ramie’s bedroom and watch her sleep?
It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. I’ve thought about it plenty. After Mom and Dad stopped checking up on me in here, I imagined sneaking out and following Ramie, maybe introducing myself to her as a new kid in town. But I never had the stones to go through with it.
Something’s different tonight. I’m not sure what.
Getting out of bed in my T-shirt and boxer briefs, I return the forbidden photo to its hiding place between the mattress
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