Self-Organizing Man

Going Out on a Limb - A Bit of My Fiction

July 20, 2005 – 9:02 am

After receiving another grammatically incorrect rejection form letter, I decided to take the plunge and post some of my fiction here.  I have decided to do this act periodically.  Current publishing model promotes notions of scarcity:

• "we will only publish works that have never been published anywhere in the history of the world"; or
• "we do not accept simultaneous submissions, but it takes us at least six months to tell you if we accept you, and another eighteen months to publish it, if we do."

In an effort to push out against my own fear and entrenched notions of what is the right way to get published, I offer up a short, short.

Now, I want your feedback.  Critique away, both good and bad.  I don’t care if you are FtM, transsexual, asexual, bisexual or not, if you read, then you are qualified to comment. 

Oh, and I’m looking for meaty comments.  "That’s interesting" does not help me.

So please, my dear readers, bring your intelligence and thoughtfulness to my fiction.  Please, please!

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     Today Donatello Jackson slides the barrel into his mouth.  His teeth clatter.  A sweat droplet rolls down his index finger as he triggers himself off.

     The coroner and police find him at his 63^rd and Monroe apartment, slouching over a battered kitchen table, bits of brain and teeth dotting the dingy beige wall.

     This is a woman, the coroner ascertains.

     On hormones from the looks of it.

     The sergeant looks at the coroner over his bifocals. This happens more than you think.

     The hormones or suicide?

     Both. The sergeant sighs.

     A patrol officer locates a phone number on the blood spattered table and determines it is disconnected.  Another number – in the victim’s cell phone - rings through to voicemail.  Please contact the Chicago Police Department.

     She calls, finally.

     Can you come to the station?

     My ride has gone out of town, she says.  So you’ll just have to tell me on the phone.

     They regret to inform her by phone.  We prefer to share these things in person. 

     Their words squeeze her heart and choke her breath. 

     Keening on her kitchen floor, a weight sits on her chest, smothering her breath.  Tears and mucous cling to her eyelids, nose, and chin and lips.  Clutching at her phone she can only think to speed dial.  She cannot remember who that sequence belongs to.

     Hello?

     He’s dead.  She wails.  He’s dead.

     Who?

     Donnie…Donatello, she screams into the phone.

     I’m coming over.

     Her arms drop, leaded with grief.  The phone flies out of her hand onto the floor, sliding across the red and white patterned tile floor.  Donatello’s gift to her, for her 30^th birthday.

     Seeing his newly emerging muscles move beneath his white t-shirt, smelling him as he worked up the old glue and shit colored tile, she had become aroused.  Her panties were soaked by the time he began spreading glue and laying down the new tile.

     White for love, he told her.

     Red for passion.  His voice cracked.

     Grabbing his shoulders, she pulled him towards her, wrapping her lean, muscular legs around his back. You better fuck me right now, she whispered in his ear. 

     What about your infection? 

     She had contracted a chronic bladder infection since he had begun hormones nine months earlier.  Horny from the testosterone, he was inside her sometimes three or four times a day.

     Now! She repeated.

     So, despite her later complaints about how much it burned, he fucked her with as much love as he knew how on her red and white birthday gift.

     Her hand caresses the floor, cool beneath her long fingers.  In the corner she spies something and crawls to it.  One of Donatello’s hairs shines bright in the sunlight streaming through the shade.  Dabbing once, then twice at the hair, pressing it into her palm, she curls into a fetal position, and weeps hard, trying to shut out the slits of light creeping through the space between the floor and her arm.