Third Gender (A Poem)

Third Gender

 1 I remember when I turned my last skirt into a tableclothbecause I only wanted to be one gender nowand it was not girl. I remember when everything changed–I turned the tablecloth back into a skirt. 2 The red purse was the last presentmy mother ever gave me. I hid itunder the bedand then I got soberand she went into a coma. It was easierto look like a girl when I went back to Virginia.The neighbors liked me with long hair.The purse was actually prettyand had good pockets. I carried itto the hospital every day. 3 When I was 17 I wrote a short storyabout castrating cucumbersafter cars of drunk men threw packsof playing cards at me, queen of heartsace of spades, they swerveddirectly at me         2 AM             screamedat my tits. When I cutall my hair off 2 days laterI felt hideous and proudproperly gay and partly invisibleno one screaming now but my mom. 4 They called me Sinead O’Connorthey called me G.I. Janethey called me crazy and called me sirwhen I shaved my head in a foreign country.Small children asked if I was a boy or girlthe men shouted out shop windowsto ask where my hair was. FinallyI gave up and told them I sold itto buy my plane ticket home.They stopped asking why I wasn’t married.They stopped asking me anything at all. 5 We had gone to my mother’s favorite restaurantdrunk enough wine to be pleasant.We were supposed to be celebrating something.When we got home she burst into tearsall over the kitchen counter. All she was thinkingat dinner that night was she hopedeveryone thought I’d had chemotherapyand that’s why I had no hair. 6 He told me I’d always had a lot of third gender energybefore I knew what that meant. He thoughtit was a compliment. I thoughtI was an alien. I don’t rememberanother word he said. I remember going homeputting on a black dressand trying to be beautiful. 7 Now my lover tells me I am handsome and she tells meI am pretty. SometimesI open my ribs for her.I bought a black tuxedo veston eBay. It has one rhinestone button.I will wear it. She will wear a short skirtand a flower in her hair. She calls meher ex-boyfriend and she calls me a zebrashe squeals when she discoversmy underwear is covered in hearts. [divide style="3"]Jacks McNamara is a queer writer, artist, activist, educator, performer, and somatic healing practitioner living in Oakland, CA. Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project, a radical mental health support network and media project by and for people living with the dangerous gifts that our society commonly labels as "mental illness," and the subject of the poetic documentary film Crooked Beauty. In 2012 Jacks was selected as a Lambda literary fellow, and their first book of poetry, Inbetweenland was released by Deviant Type Press in 2013.This post appears as part of June's series, "Sex, Gender, Power": a systemic take on the Third Precept of Buddhist ethics.  BPF's year-long curriculum, The System Stinks, brings spiritual activists together to explore the Five Precepts on a collective, social level.