6

JELLO CANNOT IMAGINE what a real childhood would be like. The glimpses she has had are so stunning, so sumptuous, so utterly desirous, she dares not engage them for fear of dying of unrequited longing. But sometimes she cannot help herself. Because these memories ground her. They remind her what it was like to be awestruck, to be giddy, to be joyously giddy with the world’s promise.

There dwells within her a certain fragrant weather, a certain bright knowledge, a safe place where she can, at odd moments, be devout—worshipful in other words—of the mysterious process of living among others. When such a moment seizes her, she needs to share it; she needs to talk about it. And now, at thirty-five, she fears that if she does not talk about all of it with someone she can trust, it will turn to dust; she’ll never be able to access it again.

A brass watch belonging to her father, her fascination as a little boy with watches, with small machines of all kinds. Before she became Jello, he was a mechanic. He liked to roll under cars and smell their hot, greasy underbellies. Because he was clever. Because he liked the way it felt to be close to the ground. Because when you are on the ground, flat on your back, there is no place to fall. Because when he showered down after work and dressed in pressed jeans and a clean shirt, he felt good. He spent hours wandering the mall, days even, hunting down the right shirt.

One day it wasn’t a shirt he bought, but a dress. The salesgirl liked him; maybe she was teasing him, or maybe she had a hunch. Or it was simply the fact of his beauty and she was curious; she wondered what this beautiful boy would look like in a beautiful dress.

The changing room was hospitable. Large enough for the two of them. It was an ark infinite with possibilities. In an instant they both vanished within its mirrors.

She undressed him. She showed him how a woman undresses a man. She fondled his nipples and she wouldn’t let him kiss her. She said: Just let me play! She was droll, spunky, radiant. He was down to his briefs. She cupped his erection in her hand and said: You have to behave yourself because you are about to become a lady! When he laughed she hushed him with a kiss. He was riveted to the spot. The dress spilled over his body. After, he’d think about how they had found this little nest for themselves.

Because he was in a dress he felt he could be soft. He whispered: Now am I your lover or your sister? When she burst out laughing she was fired on the spot. The two of them were banished from Foley’s. The months they spent together were the happiest of his life. They became bandits, stealing dresses for themselves, shoes, perfume, makeup. He would flirt with the salesgirls as she, in the midst of superabundance, would uncover and lift the rarity.

Understand that they were not ruled by greed, but by the need to be transformed. And of course, the need to risk the freedom they had just claimed for themselves. Nevertheless, they were overturning the chaos that had from the start been an infliction. They transformed his tiny apartment into a clandestine backstage dressing room. They bought an outsized vanity from the 1950s, its mirror intact, and filled the drawers with makeup. They experimented with wigs. They might have gone on this way forever except that he fell in love with a man. For a few days they wept in one another’s arms. Then it was over, and David Swancourt was on his own.

Jello changes her colors often. She shimmers. She does not want to be recognized, seized upon, locked up, and shut down. Her colors are lime, lemon, strawberry, blueberry, black cherry. She does not want to be harmed. She wants to flicker like the Aurora Borealis. She wants to be harmed. She wants to bleed like a severed aorta. She wants to be safe. She wants to be safe. She never wants to bleed again.

She goes to him because he is known to like trannies. He’s seen scoping out the Crucible. He’s intrigued more than he realizes. He once talked a he/she out of a sex change. He said: The knife is just another way to flee pleasure.

Ever since the rape she feels as though a grenade is about to go off in her head. She’s badly boxed in. And what she recognizes about the doctor at once is that he is himself boxed in. Maybe she forgets why she is there. She decides to unbox him. He will be her jack-in-the-box. She will find the mechanism that will release him.