tuesday ≈ male or female
Memory is a peculiar thing, when you're six years old and your grandmother pulls a comb through your hair, calls you a good girl. It feels new, in a way you don't yet have the understanding to articulate, but it's yours, so you take it. You're six years old, and you are a good girl.
At thirteen, you have homework to do, and chores, and after school jobs that you still have to talk your way into more often than not. You don't have time any more to sit and let your grandmother comb your hair (you put it in a scrunchie and grab an apple as you're going past), but at least, she says, you're not out getting into trouble with boys. Boys, you say, would be lucky to get into trouble with you - but they start to notice and you don't feel like noticing them back. (You notice Imogen in gym class, who is bright eyed and laughs more than she doesn't.)
At sixteen, you join the debate team and the drama club and Imogen is still your best friend, even if her boyfriend is a jerk and you think she's getting bored of listening to ideas that are just too big for teenagers in suburbia. It's 1990, you tell her, hasn't she even heard of the sexual revolution? She tells you to put your bra back on. You tell your priest at confession what you said about her knees. Imogen isn't your best friend any more.
Eighteen is meant to be some kind of coming of age; you spend it in the emergency room after collapsing at a charity matinee performance, which ends up sounding more exciting on your IMDb trivia page than it is to live through, head between your knees and sobbing out harsh words in Latin. Your parents didn't even know you speak Latin. You didn't know you speak Latin. When they let you go home, you scrub off what's left of the make up (your face doesn't look right any more) and pull your hair back with a battered scrunchie, staring into the bathroom mirror.
You are eighteen years old. You're not even ready to call yourself a lesbian. You're sure as hell not ready to call yourself an eighty-one year old man. You wash your face again and put a little lipstick on before you go downstairs, poking your tongue out at your reflection. You're just stressed, it's okay. College applications are a lot of pressure. Everybody gets weird. Maybe you need to get more sleep after all.
The priest is no help. You can't talk to your parents, and you're definitely not taking this one to your grandmother. Imogen is ready to call you a dyke even if you're not, and she's not picking up her phone, anyway. So you buy some books about the Eastern Roman Empire with your assigned texts, out of your own pocket, and resolve to handle this like you handle everything else: yourself.
You are thirty-five, now. Your name is Lysandra Diakos, and you are Justinian the Great. You are exactly who, what, where, and when you're meant to be.
This is how it starts (again).