A Chick with a Dick

By Geoffrey Gaskill.

She wasn’t the most striking person I’d ever seen. It proved you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. She was new to the class and when she walked in she had a certain swagger, a je-ne-sais-pas quality I’d rarely seen in students before.

There were titters when she opened the door and walked in. ‘Christ,’ I heard someone mutter. ‘What’s that?’

She handed me a form. It was a paper noting that she was assigned to my class. I looked at her. ‘Gemma?’ I said. She nodded. I made a note in the roll. ‘Last name?’

‘I don’t have one.’

I looked up. ‘Hm? You must have a name on your enrolment.’

‘I do. But I don’t … won’t … answer to it. As far as I’m concerned I have one name. Gemma. When I get old enough I’m going to make it official by deed poll.’

I could feel the eyes of the rest of the class checking her out. The assessment wasn’t favourable. Rather than make an issue of it I decided to check it out later. ‘Sit down … Gemma,’ I said.

In the whole scheme of things Gemma seemed to be little more than a minor blip on the radar. She was a nondescript, plumpy-sort of girl with strong features, pasty-faced with a head of hair that looked like she cut it herself. She was an independent, mature-age student that meant she was two or three years older than the rest. She’d been given some exemptions from school rules but in class I insisted on certain formalities. I asked her to remove the knitted beanie she always wore. To cover her tonsorial shortcomings, I assumed. It looked like a tea cosy. It did not complement her army great coat.

‘Why?’

‘Because I want to set a basic dress standard in here.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I think it adds a certain professionalism to the class.’

She thought for a moment then nodded. ‘OK.’

The rest of the class thought she was a ‘dag’ if they were being kind. A ‘freak’ if they weren’t. She didn’t seem to care what anyone thought or said. She sat by herself. Outside she tended to wander the fences till it was time to come back in.

I asked her once why she didn’t go home when her lessons were finished. One of her perquisites was she was required to attend only for classes.

She shrugged. ‘Nowhere else to go,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a car and I have to watch my budget with the trains.’

She courted neither popularity nor friendships. ‘If they come …’ she shrugged when, in my ignorance, I’d asked if there was anything I could do to ease her into the place, anyone I could introduce her to.

She was happy to chat.  I found her likeable though I couldn’t say why. There was something of the gamin about her. She could have been anybody or nobody. What she would turn out to be was something else.

What became clear was that she was bright and well-read. She let slip she’d fallen out with her parents and family some time before and now didn’t know where they were – or want to. She lived with someone she called Dick but didn’t elaborate on who he was or what he did.

She surprised me with the causes she took on. The environment, the status of women were just the start. ‘Marriage is just legalised prostitution,’ she declared. I remember the day she decided the language needed reform. No word with man in it was henceforward to be used by her. Ever.

‘Gemma,’ I said, ‘that’s a lot of words. Besides, you can’t just spell them the way you want to. Or make them up.’

‘Why not?’

‘Tradition.’

‘It’s stupid.’

‘Some traditions are, but words change with time and usage. The man in woman is …’

‘Sexual imperialism!’

‘No, it’s not.  Woman and women are old English words.’ I pointed to an essay she’d written. ‘Wymym means nothing …’

‘It does to me.’

‘Language assumes a commonality in spelling and meaning that’s a product of years of history. Change is evolutionary. Otherwise we don’t talk with others. We talk to ourselves.’

She furrowed her brows and chewed her lip, looking for objections. In the end she said, ‘I’ll think about it. I’m not giving in. I’m just thinking about it.’

‘Fair enough.’

Till the next time, I thought.

That came when the virus hit and schools were closed down. Students sent their essays in by email. Maybe it was this that emboldened her.

I have always had a love affair with my penis, was the opening sentence of one of her essays.

I stopped and reread the sentence again.

No. I hadn’t misread it.

I’d always encouraged the students to write an arresting opening sentence. ‘That way,’ I said, ‘the reader may want to read on. All good – and honest – writers do.’

What I didn’t expect was this level of honesty. Or was Gemma being provocative – again?

The trouble with setting essays was the purgatory in reading them. I’d wade through everything from stories about superheroes discovering their powers, tales of unrequited love to the phallic symbolism of horses and ponies. Now and then the odd diamond popped up among the dross. But the virus made getting even banal work extra taxing. Patience threatened to desert me.

At least in isolation a lot of trees had a temporary stay of execution. I imagined Gemma was pleased. She had a thing for helpless creatures – and trees destroyed for ‘stupid stories’ was a crime against humanity. Or so she said one day when the issue came up in class.

Then came that sentence. If nothing else, she’d made me, as the reader, sit up and take notice. Or had Gemma taken my injunction about ‘good and honest writers’ to heart?

I paused. Or maybe this was going to be the extraordinary story I had been longing to read.

‘I guess that makes me a chick with a dick doesn’t it?’ she added. ‘One day soon we’ll have to go our separate ways. If I’m honest I have to confess, on that day I’ll miss the little bloke.’

Was she ‘having a laff’, as they say?

Line after line, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph it poured out like a confession. If what she was telling me was true she was both blessing and cursing me with a terrible secret.

My mind flipped back a number of years to the day I’d met a woman who’d undergone gender realignment. She’d had a small carpet-cleaning business. Somehow her secret got out and the hate phone calls began. When I met her I found her a pleasant, if suspicious, woman. I can’t say I blamed her though I never understood why she put up with all that shit? Why didn’t she leave?

Because that would mean the bullies and thugs would win. She was brave when she stayed and faced them down. I don’t know what became of her. I hoped she had beaten the odds.

Now here was Gemma. Her isolation, her reluctance to be part of things was explainable. Understandable? How could I understand? Her strong features floating before my eyes now seemed to take on a distinct and mannish appearance. Or were my own unconscious prejudices bubbling to the surface?

When the dangers of the virus had passed, she didn’t return. I emailed her. With her confessional battering at the walls of my concern, I wanted to inquire as to her well-being but didn’t know how to do it without appearing to be … well, creepy was a word that came to mind. These days a simple, unguarded or ill-judged question could land me in all sorts of strife. It was sad, but true.

Time passed and all I got to my enquiry was silence. Another ship had passed in the night.

Till.

One day, a year or two later, someone said a visitor was waiting to see me at the office reception.

I did not recognise the elegant-looking woman who rose as I approached. ‘Can I help you?’ I asked. She just stared at me, her face a blank canvas.  Perhaps she hadn’t heard. ‘Can I help you?’ I repeated, a little louder.

When she smiled it was like sun came out from behind a cloud. ‘You don’t remember me do you?’ she asked as she drew out a beanie from her bag and slipped it over her hair.

‘Gemma!’

‘I’ve got my divorce. I just thought you’d like to know.’

‘Divorce?’

‘From Dick. So I’m no longer that chick with a Dick. I’m my own woman. I just came round to say thanks.’

‘For what?’

‘For lending an ear. For not judging me. It helped.’

What could I say? ‘You’re welcome.’

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Geoff spent thirty something years of his working life telling children how to write.

At retirement he decided to practise what he preached. Much of this output sits in his top drawer at varying stages of ‘completion’.

Otherwise he is an actor and director in the local theatre scene. After all, actors and directors are storytellers too.