Persona

 
Being raised in a brothel for your first twelve years
must be the ultimate head fuck
plenty of psychotic material there you'd suppose
but on the surface C seemed so normal.
Too normal maybe, despite all those aunties
fussing through his early life
and very quickly he had learned to hide
most of the hurting memories under the bed
where his child's brain had reasoned they belonged.
 
He learned to shut out the sordidness and the seediness,
the violence and drunkenness, pimps patrolling
like sharks beyond all those shabby red velvet curtains.
Fingers jammed tightly in his ears, head buried deep
beneath the rough patchwork comforter grimy with stains
that was how he always fell asleep.
 
But there was never a shortage of bedtime storytellers
all willing to cluck and coo
so in a convoluted way the misfortune of his upbringing
had offered its compensations
and it made him expert at marshaling his defenses against life.
Nothing could invade its way under his skin.
 
Nothing that is, until the day he finally came clean about himself:
that he preferred to dress as a woman.
It had begun furtively in his early teens, hurried experimentation
with hastily snatched underwear from the laundry pile.
The smoothness of anything satin or silk against his skin gradually drove him to
longer more elaborate and complex pleasuring behind his locked bedroom door
which C always kept tightly shut, both bolts drawn firmly home.
 
The elaborate trappings of his obsession cost a small fortune
and each brown unmarked package's arrival through the mail
meant he must work even longer hours at the menial job he hated in the mall.
But the gleam of satisfaction in C's eyes was worth every dime spent
for when he paraded his female persona before that polished full length mirror
with its silver frame, it made any sacrifice worthwhile.
 
And one day he was sure that the masterpiece
he was slowly and steadily creating would be unveiled for all to see,
it would be as elegant and as fresh as any young debutante on her first date.
One day he would walk out through that door to the plaudits of his adoring world.
C had always known this, in every single cell of his mismatched body,
he was utterly sure,
even though his next birthday will be his fifty third.