The Year of the Fruit Cake Read online

  Right now I have late periods, missing periods, spotty periods, bloating, and an immense fatigue that overwhelms everything. It brings me back to myself, to have the shift that took two days expanded into a forever-shift. Even the fatigue helps ground me. This is my current body’s notion of matching the internal with the external. I try to tell it: “I’m me. Still me. Always will be me. I’m just not the same gender as I was when I was dropped. The body has been changed, my body, that means you. And you can’t shift genders anymore. Please stop trying. It only brings back sad memories I’m supposed to have suppressed.”

  “Dropped.” We weren’t dropped. Dumped, more like. It’s called “dropped” because the early observers had a thing about France during World War II. Heroes of the Resistance were “dropped”, apparently. They weren’t dumped and lost. They were dropped, and saved the day. Heroes. And we’re definitely heroes. We’re not fighting the Nazis. We’re fighting to remain sane.

  Those that sent us (gender-neutral to a person, I will lay odds, now that I can access more memory, existing placidly in that small part of life where one lacks biases and fixed beliefs and when one often takes on heroes who have no gender concerns or major roles they cannot forsake; our society is shaped by gender duties and only heroes can act as if these are nothing and worthless—and by “heroes”, you know I am referring to something that has no equivalent in common English, like the unshakable identity of the Prime—I am translating conceptually and mathematics allows a large number of coherent ideas nested one within the other. Why is this so difficult to achieve in Engish?), they could have erased our non-Earth memories completely, just as they’ve sublimated so much of our physical selves. It’s not beyond our science. They’ve not tried that last bit. Instead, our non-Earth memories are left just under the surface. Is this because they can’t entirely erase our body memory without erasing us?

  One cannot erase the person who was sent to do a job and still expect the job to be done as planned. One can try, it seems.

  My body memory is raging. Wrong gender, dammit. Long shifts that lead nowhere. Not enough shifts. I feel it all. Every ache. Every symptom. Every problem. My language circles again as I try to escape.

  Shifting is natural. And my body tries so very hard, but it can’t shift. It thinks it’s female. One gender. When really, it’s borderline three genders. That’s why we’re in these particular bodies. A woman of this age in this society is the closest to our own that humans are capable of.

  Mine is trying so very hard to be there for me. It tells me things. I’m so tired that my upper body hurts. I can’t walk or carry things. It hurts to lie down. It hurts to stand up. I live on pain relievers and dream of the day when I have a stable flesh-home again. I dream of my body being what it was, and when I dream I find I can remember. The memory will fade in three days. Right now, I treasure it.

  Changing never used to be like this. Chocolate and doctors were never a part of it. My body decided “Time to procreate” at the same time my inner self yearned for children or to make children or to nurse children. Or it said: “Time to watch”, and I was an observer or judge.

  Other people had other problems. They sought help with bodily functions that didn’t fully work. Not me. Never me. Seven shifts and not a twinge. Other people. Not me. Never me.

  And now I’m stuck in the body, artificially trying to maintain a constant between my seventh and eighth shifts. The most unstable shifts in all the cycles. And my body fights it, even though it’s a human body and shouldn’t know what full shifting is like. My body hates it that I’m caught in between shifts.

  It shows that I’m other. Not even people. My body illustrates the reality, that I can’t physically differentiate between procreator and nurse, between observer and judge. And it hurts and I hurt and I’m cross and happy and hot and cold and… My body is trying very hard. Very hard indeed.

  Notes towards an

  Understanding of the Problem

  “Why don’t we ever talk about politics?” asked Diana.

  There was sunshine outside. A beam caught the flowers Janet had brought them and turned them to gold. Every few minutes Diana’s eyes would flit from her daisy to the window, a trifle hopefully, then flit back to her friends, as if something were wrong and they alone could solve it. Today was possibly not the day for solutions, however, for she didn’t look fully comfortable. Not once in the whole morning tea meet-up did she look as if she belonged there. She was trying, however. Very obviously putting in a valiant attempt at normalcy.

  “I don’t know why you don’t, but me, it’s because I live and breathe them and need a break,” answered Trina.

  “Me, too,” said Janet. “This is Canberra, after all. Capital city of the Unknown Country. Wide and brown and turgid.”

  “For me,” and Antoinette was hesitant, “it’s because it can be a quagmire. Someone could get hurt.”

  “Me, too,” said Leanne. “Everyone expects me to be conservative and when I’m not, the results can be disturbing.”

  “That means all of you live and breathe politicism, but in quite different ways,” said Diana, being logical.

  “Well, yes. But how about you?”

  “Politics is one of the many things I feel unsure of. There’s such a big discrepancy between what one person says and what another does, between newspapers and online media, between television and Hansard, that I simply don’t know where to start.”

  “I generally start with chocolate,” said Janet, with the practised air of someone who gave this explanation far too often but understood its importance to others. “There are simple classifications: white, milk, dark, level of cocoa fat, level of milk, level of sugar. Those can relate to the different parties and their policies. All chocolate. None of them match the world as we know it, but they’re all trying to, in their way.”

  “You keep the personal out?”

  “Not at all. I start with chocolate, but the parallel breaks down within minutes. It lasts just long enough to get my listeners to understand that the parties are all social constructs and manmade, and that policies are decided by groupthink and can change with fashion. It’s an excellent place to start, especially when I hand out chocolate samples to bring points home. Pauline Hanson is peanut M&Ms, which means I get to warn about the problems of nut allergy without having to say anything nasty about the woman herself. I’m not allowed to express opinions when I give these lectures, but I find ways of gently indicating my views.”

  “Remind me to turn up to the Museum when you’re giving one of those lectures,” said Leanne. “Even if I can’t cope with the politics, I can take refuge in the chocolate.”

  “We get everyone coming in—I have to have a way of explaining that won’t hurt anyone and will reach as many people as possible. For some groups, I never get beyond chocolate. I spend the whole hour explaining everything, over and over, using the chocolate to keep things together. For other visitors, the chocolate is all done in five minutes and we move on to the history of our system and how the past sets things up for the future.”

  “How do you handle what’s happening now?” asked Trina. “It’s easy for me—I work with industry groups. I just stick to the line they need.”

  “It’s not so easy,” Janet admitted. “I’ve got a responsibility to my employers and their ultimate employers are government, which means I really can’t talk about how certain groups are subversive and undermining the whole system.”

  “Neither of you are really talking about politics, then,” pointed out Diana. “You’re limiting the discussion to certain aspects of politics.”

  “It’s still politics,” defended Trina.

  “It’s a set of constrained and managed discourses and doesn’t permit you freedom of expression.” Diana was firm. “It’s like closing an equation that’s begun, rather than starting a new one, of your own devising.”

  Trina obj
ected. “I don’t expect freedom of expression when I’m at work. I’m working for someone.”

  “But you don’t talk about politics outside work,” Leanne pointed out.

  “It’s like my situation—Trina doesn’t want to get into trouble.”

  “I guess so.” Trina was worried by this. “I can’t say things in public that could be taken to undermine what my organisation needs.

  “None of us talk freely about politics, then,” said Antoinette.

  “And yet we’re in the capital of the country, and we’re all educated women who have rather more familiarity with politics than many. No wonder we’re in such trouble. We’re building false systems that aren’t nearly complex enough to relate to the reality.”

  “Chocolate systems,” suggested Janet.

  “Tempting and yummy and quite, quite wrong.”

  “There must be someone who believes that things are simple.”

  “And not yummy.”

  “Oh, I believe that they’re not yummy. Give me the actual chocolate anytime,” said Antoinette. “Politics is dangerous for some of us. Actually, physically dangerous.”

  “And depressing,” said Diana.

  “Never forget depressing,” added Leanne.

  “I think we need a change of subject.”

  “And maybe cake, since chocolate is possibly not the best menu choice after that discussion?”

  Yes, this is one of the Great Five Incidents that caused the Irksome Fruitcake.

  No, I can’t see why. Still. Having examined it far too many times. The equations say it must be, and our equations are never wrong.

  Note that chocolate is still there, permeating all things. I can’t let go of it as a factor yet, however much I’d like to.

  The woman’s slow voice...

  was counting again

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

  I want to stop here. I don’t want more of this.

  She died. My precious little one died. Dream marriage, dream child…nightmare death. A nightmare of death. Death as a horror dream.

  I cannot deal with this. I don’t want to remember this year. I don’t know why I count it, every time. I don’t know why I don’t find other memories to put in its place.

  I come back to one moment, time after time after time after time. In that moment I see a toddler asleep and he bends to wake her up and…that’s it. She’s gone. Our little one is no longer.

  I will not think of her name. I will not think of her at all. That calls her back. And she’s gone. There is no moment as bad as this. There cannot be. The memory is so raw that I cannot even feel the emotion. It’s stark, like a picture, like a movie with the sound down. I distance myself from it still. It hurts too much to feel. It hurts too much to remember.

  The Observer’s Notes

  I had over 2 kg of tomatoes and an empty saucepan. There are so many things one can do with a good sauce. This includes splatter-decorating.

  —seen in social media.

  Well, that was a laugh a minute.

  Literally.

  I was laughing sarcastically, deep inside. Every minute, once a minute. For every minute, once a minute was when and how often that middle-aged man slighted me. Put me down. Demeaned me. Respectfully, of course. Always respectfully. He knew I was inferior, that was all. He felt he had to assert himself and affirm his superior position with short, pithy statements that let me know what he knew. Then he upped his game and changed his tone…and told me how to do ordinary things as if I were a juvenile who had applied for additional instruction due to incompetence.

  Condescending twerp. Annoying bastard. Turd.

  I hope I’m here not as the vanguard, but as the full alien takeover. He’ll be first to the wall, along with every other polite, middle-aged gentleman who feels the need to put women down in order to assert their own amazing importance. I hope there’s a wall, and that he gets to see my face as he’s lined up with the others.

  I will look at him and laugh at him every minute, once a minute. He will be gagged, so that he can’t explain to me all the things I already know, and I shall explain to him, moment by moment, what’s happening. As if he were a juvenile who had applied for additional instruction due to his own incompetence.

  “Yes, dear, those are indeed aliens. With ray guns. And look, I am one too. An alien with a ray gun. And do you know why that ray gun is pointed at you? Because you told me how to make my own lunch, with my own ingredients that I brought from home. And you told me how to apply for my own job, which I was doing perfectly efficiently until you stopped me at my very own desk in order to instruct me on all the work I’d already finished, which you had not read (for it was not your job). And you treated me like a piece of shit.

  “The sad thing is that pieces of shit can use ray guns. Especially alien pieces of shit. Like me.

  “Oh, don’t worry, they’re not really ray guns. I just like calling them that. There’s no word for them in English, but they make very pretty pictures of people on the wall when we explode them. It’s a kind of art. A memory art. So that no-one will ever forget that you talked over me or down to me every single time we met. That you interrupted my work whenever I had tight deadlines. And that you did it from a position of great benevolence and with a tone of great condescension.

  “Great benevolence should be turned into art, don’t you think? It’s important to my fellow aliens that no life be wasted. Art is important. Far more important than you are.

  “I can see that you’re wondering what kind of alien I am. It’s not relevant to your life. Or to your death. You should have listened to me when I was willing to talk with you. When you silenced me and talked over me and told me how to live every second of my gender-oversimplified human existence.”

  And this would be recorded and broadcast to the whole world. And the whole world would hear me saying: “Be nice to other people, even if you secretly think they’re inferior. For they could be, like me, aliens with ray guns that will turn you into wall art.”

  And then I wouldn’t bother killing him, for there would be others with guns. Qualified executioners. I would simply walk away, and get on with my life, in my own body, treated with the respect I deserve.

  I am a person of note back home. That’s why I’m here. Amazingly gifted in some very useful ways. Which I have successfully translated into the workplace in Australia, thank you very much. I do my job well. Despite interference.

  I would say, to my fellow-aliens: “Thank you for cleaning this mess up for me.” And then I would go back home and continue with my life as if I was having mere time out to deal with a minor medical problem. A pimple, perhaps.

  We’re very compassionate, me and my people, but only up to a point. There are several ways of reaching that point. One is to demean other people.

  That’s why we appear in human skin, for otherwise we would get respect whenever someone sees our fearsome, googly eyes. The light strikes off our fearsome googly eyes in the most remarkable way. It’s impossible not to respect them. Quite obviously it’s not impossible not to respect me.

  Human form gives humans a chance to respect me for who I am, not for my fearsome googly eyes. And yes, I’m explaining the obvious to myself. That’s how angry I am.

  Humans have rules, too. His attitudes are due to this idiot species turning a survival narrative into a rule, I’d guess. All the fiction and all the movies tell about men surviving, despite demonstrating their utter stupidity 95% of the time. “Alpha male behaviour”, it’s called, as if complete lack of gender fluidity were a good thing.

  Only one in forty-three human men are like this. We’ve d
one the study. We know the numbers. Minority dominating and leading whole cultures by favouring troughs of stupidity. Majority consenting tacitly or unwillingly.

  Knowing it and feeling it are two quite different things. Before, I was like a human male, who knew what was possible but thought, “It’s not too bad, really.” Now that I know what living in this body and being seen as slightly inferior means in human terms, my internal fearsome googly eyes want to develop a death-stare. I know I don’t have a death stare in my real body (at least I think I know) but they should have given me one for my human suit. It would be very helpful for days like this. Experiencing statistics personally is an utterly vile thing.

  This is not the anthropologist speaking right now.

  I’ve made a suitably dispassionate report elsewhere. It is safely uplifted. My report did not engage. It did not get angry. It lied.

  I have not reached my touchpoint yet. No ray guns. No art.

  This is my personal report.

  I am deeply offended at being snubbed. At being ignored. At not being included in the conversation when it really was about both of us. Then at being talked down to as if I were…something small.

  I may be studying him, but I am not someone who can be exclud­ed from the conversation or condescended towards. I am not small.

  He wants my job. I don’t want my job. He can find me another one. Then we can both be quits. There is no need for him to finagle and scheme and talk down to me. Simple co-operation would make both of us happier. My paid employment is but a means to an end. It’s easy enough to negotiate a solution and find us a mutually-convenient way out of what is (to be honest) a minor mess.

  Instead of finding mutual solutions, he plays fast, niggling games. If I’d been given the body of a younger woman, and if it had been an attractive body with a pleasant smile and a nippy waistline, he would have condescended like a turnip. Instead, he talked down as if I were a nothing, and acted as if he’d rather I weren’t there. He worked towards my continuing non-existence.