Never Make Yourself into a Character
Rating: PG-13
Word/C & Warnings: 930; gender dysphoria, self hate.
Summary/ Read More:
All U.S. currency is designed so that the opposite faces are positioned to be 180° apart, or upside down, from each other. The world is full of things like this, seemingly plain objects that are truly two opposites sharing the same body; heads and tails, yin and yang, hot and cold,
(Man Woman Prince Princess Girl Boy)
and Alice and Alex.
Everything they do is one extreme or another, with no sign of a happy medium. They only see in black or white, with no varying shades of grey, or any other colors for that matter; they live going only in cardinal directions, north, south, east, and west, with none of the ordinal northeast or southwest bullshit for a distraction.
Flip the coin to decide who makes the play, which goes for the day. Heads and Alice begins to apply her makeup and finds some heels to match her purse after tripping on Alex’s pants and nearly breaking her lovely face. She would have to talk to him about that later on that day, perhaps at dinner.
Alice is a creature of sunshine, and a true social butterfly. On sunny days, one can find her fluttering by,
(flutter by, flutter by, pretty little butterfly, but why not flutter by me?)
all smiles and bounces and good will, solely to brighten the day of another and maybe make a friend or six. As the head of the coin, she has the heart and the thoughts, the ability to sympathize and fix whatever is troubling anyone. However dapper that may seem, she is still multifaceted, and for every up there is a down.
(in out behind ahead near far here there sink swim)
With her brains, she likes to think she’s perfect as she bounces around, hiding behind layers of makeup and neon hair dye. In her heels and skirts, she’s a princess, a queen, on top of the world, and she likes to believe no one wants her taken down. She’s openly confident yet inwardly a disaster, crying behind the barrier of her fingers in the cage she makes of her room when she arrives home each night. She goes day by day with a fake smile to match her fake nails and hair, a costume, to match as she ad-libs,
“Nothing to worry about. Tout va s’arranger. Everything will work out,”
when she forgets what she needs to say. In reality, she is nothing but an actress; the head of the coin is no more than a doll herself, so real yet so fake.
Flip the coin to decide who makes the play, which goes for the day. Tails, and Alex binds down his ladylike chest and scrubs off the makeup Alice put on him yesterday. He would have to talk to her about that later on in the morning, possibly at a lunch date.
While Alice is living it up in the UV, Alex prefers to remain indoors. He only comes out at night, not much of a talker, he is.
(why so silent, good monsieur?)
When he comes out in the day, it’s during the rain, when there aren’t many other people about; minimal contact is a must for the tail end of the coin. He’s kind, merely introverted, with a smile that could kill and laughter that sounds like music. He is the legs, the driving force that truly gets them moving. He is rather simple in comparison to her, but his differences are no less drastic. With the legs, he tends to move in his own direction, careless of the wants of anyone else. He’s also prone to running away when his flight or fight response kicks in, though he never gets very far with half of his lungs on the other side of the coin. He always has the gut feeling that he’ll never be good enough for anything or anyone,
(they can see her in you they can see her in you they can see her in you THEY CAN SEE HER IN YOU)
and there are constant chills down his spine that feel like someone is watching him. In his cargo shorts and jersey for a sports team he knows nothing about, he is but a pauper, a guttersnipe, worming about on the ground underfoot, and he’s paranoid that everyone wants nothing more than to stomp on him and hear him squish beneath their toes. As opposed
(past present open close ornate simple quiet loud)
to all of the fallacies which compose Alice, everything on Alex’s outsides matches his insides. Therefore, on days when he’s paper thin, which are nine out of ten, one can tell he doesn’t feel like putting up much of a fight. On the flip side, when he’s passionate about something, he develops an outline, he solidifies, and soon there’s an actual person standing there before you. He doesn’t lie, he says everything how it is and doesn’t believe in sugar coating anything, and if it shouldn’t be said completely he won’t say any of it. He goes day by day, moving props on and off, changing scenery and lights, sometimes even composing music, all the while muttering to himself,
“One day will be your day to shine. Je me trouverai. You just gotta give it time,”
when her script calls for it. In actuality, he is nothing but a stagehand; the tail end of the coin is no more than an illusion, so fake yet so real.
Everything she has known, he’s hoping is a lie. She was the one born, hopefully he’ll be the one to die.