The Slow Fix by Coyote Ivan;

Author:Coyote, Ivan; [Coyote, Ivan E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC029000, FIC018000
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2008-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

The Future of Francis

The first time I wrote about my little friend Francis, the little boy who liked to wear dresses, he was three years old. The middle son of one of my most beloved friends, he was the fearless fairy child who provided me with living, pirouetting proof that gender outlaws are just born like that, even in cabins in the bush with no running water or satellite television. He confirmed my theory that some of us come out of the factory without a box or with parts that don’t match the directions that tell our parents how we are supposed to be assembled. Watching Francis grow up taught me that what makes him and me different was not bred into us by the absence of a father figure or a domineering mother, or being exposed to too many show tunes or power tools at an impressionable stage in our development. We are not hormonal accidents, evolutional mistakes, or created by a God who would later disown us. Most of us learn at a very early age to keep our secret to ourselves, to try to squeeze into clothes that feel like they belong on someone else’s body, and hope that the mean kids at school don’t look at us long enough to find something they feel they need to pound out of us. But Francis had a mother who let him wear what he wanted, and Francis had evidence that he was not alone, because Francis had me.

He is eleven now, and I got to hang out with him and his brothers last January, up in Dawson City. He doesn’t wear dresses anymore, and I didn’t see much of his younger self in the gangly boy body he is growing into. He is a tough guy now, too cool to hug me when his friends are around, full of wisecracks and small-town street smarts. He can ride a unicycle, juggle, and do head spins. He listens to hip-hop and is not afraid to get in a fist fight. He calls other kids faggot, just like his friends do, but only when his mother can’t hear him.

I can’t help but wonder if the politics of public school have pushed him to conform, or if he has just outgrown his cross-dressing phase and become as butch a son as any father could hope for. I try to imagine what it would be like for him to be the only boy in a dress on a playground full of kids whose parents are trappers and hunters. To be labelled queer in a town of 1,700 people and more than its fair share of souls who survived residential schools, families with four generations of inherited memories of same-sex touches that left scars and shame and secrets. I don’t blame him for hiding his difference here, for fighting to fit in.

I walk past his school one day on my way to buy groceries, and watch him kick a frozen soccer ball around in the snow with his buddies.

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