Choir Boy by Charlie Anders

Author:Charlie Anders
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-12-26T16:24:40+00:00

13.

The sound of hammer blows woke Berry, a percussion regular as assembly lines. Berry lay on his bed, still wearing his concert clothes from the night before. He pulled off his jacket and shirt, unwound his bandages, and put on a T-shirt. He no longer needed a torso disguise at home.

Judy chopped a cucumber into pieces of almost identical width on a cutting board. “You’re not going to school,” she told Berry. “Dr. Tamarind has a slot free at eleven and we’re going to drive you.” She attacked the cucumber so hard Berry feared for her thumb.

“I just saw Dr. Tamarind yesterday,” Berry said. “Twice, even.” Berry’s voice still felt torn down from explaining himself to his parents half the night, staring through sleepless lids at their grainy shadow selves. The facts had looped and his parents had nodded as he’d talked pills and changes. Then they’d asked the same dumb questions until Berry had given up and slept.

“You’ve got a lot to tell him,” Judy said. The door opened and Marco brought in a paper bag of bagels and cream cheese. Nobody wanted cucumber slices on their bagels except Judy. “Greek salad tonight,” she said. She was bagging work.

Nobody talked on the drive to Dr. Tamarind’s and Berry wondered when would be a good time to bring up the fact that choir rehearsal was tonight and he needed that note. He figured after his session.

Dr. Tamarind hopped like a grasshopper around his office long after Berry sat down. The therapist couldn’t stop clucking. Berry hadn’t seen him this giddy.

“Business is good, huh,” Berry said. “Have Canon Moosehead and Maura been here yet today?” Dr. Tamarind just bounced and chuckled. “Ya know, Canon Moosehead was head-fucked long before someone dosed him. And no, I don’t know who did it.”

“We’re not here to talk about Canon Moosehead,” Dr. Tamarind said. “Lovely concert, by the way.”

“We stomped the motherfucker in the name of the Lord. They gotta re-roof the cathedral.”

“Speaking of mending roofs. Berry, why are you here?” “Question I’ve asked myself since session one.” Berry heard aggro in his own voice. He leaned forward in his seat and counterattacked for the first time in therapy. Suddenly he wanted to pin that grasshopper to a cork board.

“I mean, why are you here today?”

“Today’s no different than other times. Why am I here? So you can study me? So I can try and explain what it’s like to have a gift with an expiration date?” Those were the most words Berry had spoken in therapy. “The reason my parents brought me today is I’ve been solving my problem on my own.”

“Tell me about your solution.”

Berry told. Dr. Tamarind finally sat down and listened, eyes closed, the way he had when Berry had sung in therapy. When Berry finished, Dr. Tamarind stayed like that: asleep or thinking.

Finally, Dr. Tamarind woke up. “You know, Maura may be right about you.” Berry started to argue, but Dr. Tamarind raised a bony hand. “Gender Identity Dysphoria isn’t an exact diagnosis most of the time, even though we pretend it is.

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