Читать книгу Drowning Naked in Paradise & Other Essays - David Bakish - Страница 10

4

Something I Never Told Anyone Before

In The Wiz, the excellent Broadway musical reworking of the classic film, The Wizard of Oz, there’s a number that piles up negatives in a very effective way of saying “No!” “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” Well, I could say “Don’t nobody never ask me to do nothing that nobody don’t need to know.”

If I’m asked to reveal a deeply buried secret, I’d better lie. If there’s something I don’t want known, there probably is a good reason, so why should I jump into hot water now and get scalded? Torture me, and I’ll make up the most creative lie like I was a friend of E.T. and came with him from another planet but stayed when he returned home.

I could say that in the most recent of several reincarnations, I was Rin Tin Tin, courageous German Shepherd silent film movie star, not likely some human great like Aristotle or Napoleon, nor a villain like Rasputin or Benedict Arnold, but maybe an insignificant street sweeper in Pompeii before Mount Vesuvius demolished the city in 79 AD If I’m in line for still another reincarnation, I’d like to request of the Powers That Be that I’ll be allowed to rest in my grave. My spirit is exhausted from inhabiting so many bodies of men and dogs, plus, who knows, even a turtle or a sheep.

The truth, if you really must have the truth, something I never told anyone before, is that I’m transgender and born in Reykjavik to Icelandic parents who disowned me after settling in Fargo, North Dakota.