Cold Read

I remember the day my father sat me down and told me I had been born a woman.  “Son,” he said to me, in that deep, deep Southern accent of his—“Son, the male genitalia is an amazing and sometimes confusing land of parody and despair.”  By the way, I mentioned he was from the South, but did I mention it was South England?  Oh what am I saying?  You would know that just from my voice, wouldn’t you?  I mean, it’s a dead giveaway I’m from the small town of Fitchulanzeaten in Southern England.  You can tell because I talk with a Swedish accent, as do all men from Fitchulanzeaten, but, because I know most of you are American, I’ll try to attempt an American accent while I stand here with my hand on my chest and one foot off the ground and one eyebrow raised.  You know what?  I should probably just relax.  Anyway, back to my father, my god he was funny!  HahahahahahaohmygodwhyamIcryingallofasudden?  Strange how those emotions just sneak up on you like that.  Anyway, so there I am, having lived in Australia with my spinster aunt for years and years, and so, talking like an Australia baby with a lisp, I said “But Daddy, I feel like a boy.”  And he said, in his “sometimes I like to imitate a Russian sort of way”---“It doesn’t matter who you were born, it matters who you become………when your family decides what gender you’re going to be.”  I didn’t know what to do.  At the time, I had been in a homosexual relationship with a young man named Mike Puppi who has the weirdest nipples you’ve ever seen in your life.  Well, it turns out it wasn’t homosexual after all, and as you can imagine, this threw me for a loop, the same way I’m throwing my voice like I learned to do in ventriloquism school.  Oh God, let me stop that.  I know it’s creepy when there’s no doll.  Me not being gay did explain why I was never found of the television show Smash.  Before my father boarded the plane back to Fitchulanzeaten, or as it’s properly pronounced, Ftchzzzet, he gave me a hug and said “No matter what, you’re still my don or my saughter, and nothing can change that—again, because I already have.”  Then he patted me on the shoulder, and boarded what we told him was a plane even though it was really a cardboard box with a little cartoon pilot drawn on it.  We never discussed what he told me again, but in my soul, I used to say to myself, in this funny Peruvian accent I like to do, “Man, I feel like a woman.”