Solo Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
Roy had one testicle and Lana had one breast – they
were both victims of cruel and unusual fate. They were both fighters and
survivors and somewhat masochistic. Non-sexually masochistic of course. Theirs
was more the enjoyment that came from transforming suffering into something
positive. They took a great amount of pride in their pain suffered and their
survival of the trials and tribulations that life had handed them. They used
that pain to focus themselves and keep themselves going.
Neither of them was particularly happy with life, nor
were they particularly friendly as people. They hadn’t known each when they
were two and complete. They had only met as survivors. They had only met once
they were one. They got along well as acquaintances as long as they both just
lowered their expectations and didn’t rely on the other for very much.
They had been in therapy and ended up in a survivors
group together. Roy didn’t really like listening to men talk about the tragedy
and Lana never got along well with other women, especially when emotions were
on the line. They somehow found solace in the coed group. Somehow the
cross-gender commiserating did the trick.
Roy hadn’t cried during therapy, but he could weep
when listening to a woman talk about the loss of her feminine identity. For the
first time he realized he wasn’t sure what exactly it meant to be a man or a
woman. He had identified himself for so long by clichés and stereotypes. He
wasn’t that macho, but he certainly thought of himself as a masculine man. He
liked sports. He liked sex. He always thought men and women were very
different.
But here he was without one of the very things that
made him a man. If he lost the physical reality, he wondered if he lost
something else too. Was he less of a man? But he still liked the same things,
thought the same way. But if a woman thought the way he did and liked the
things he did, without the physical evidence of his masculinity, was he somehow
now closer to her than to other men?
He had never thought about these things before.
Hearing the woman cry over her loss of femininity made him confront many
similar fears. He wondered if he had always paid far too much attention to the
breasts of the women that he met. He realized how much of a typical idiot he
probably was.
Lana didn’t worry about her missing breast. She
accepted it. She found some Amazonian pride in it. She considered herself a
warrior woman – a veteran of the worst war possible. When other women in the
group talked about plastic surgery and nipple tattoos, she scoffed. She wasn’t
going to change a thing. She wasn’t ashamed or afraid to live a lopsided life.
This was her new version of herself and she wasn’t afraid to embrace it.
Lana did however fully endorse the idea of Roy getting
a fake testicle. She said that a breast, even solo, was beautiful, whereas
testicles were ugly enough together, but alone just looked downright terrible.
She also said that men were babies and couldn’t handle not looking like a man.
Roy didn’t disagree on principle, but he was in no rush to undergo surgery of
any kind.
Roy and Lana became decent enough acquaintances and
grew rather fond of their group therapy sessions. Both had been happy being
alone, but had found a new comfort being amongst other people.
Roy missed Lana to no end after she was gone. More so
than he could put into words. It was terribly painful, terribly unfair. Roy
stopped going to group and he stopped going to therapy. He never did get the
fake testicle. Without her it would have just seemed too fake and poor
consolation prize. Once a year he did throw a private dinner in her honor. He
went and had a fancy meal by himself and ordered the most expensive things he
could think of. He sat and ate and thought of her. They were both flying solo
again, but he hoped that somehow someday their paths might cross.
No comments:
Post a Comment