MtF. Bison

In my dreams, I can fly.

No matter what else changes, the dream-rules stay consistent. When I curl my legs, gravity loses its hold on me. I can bob up and down in the air with micro-adjustments, like changing the flame and ballasts of a hot air balloon. I can pitch forward and swim through the air.

If there is a deeper meaning to these dreams, I cannot find it. I remember nothing but the effortless movement through space. There is no pain. In my dreams, I am free from my body.

But my body always finds me, sooner or later.

My bare back peels away from the asphalt. I can feel pebbles of it stuck in my hide. I feel pain.

My right arm. Swollen, leaden with agony that promises it will leave me be if I don’t tempt it and stay still. I hesitate, then clench my right fist anyway. It feels worse. Stabbing, twisting, it pulls a growl from my clenched teeth.

It is nighttime. I am awake in a Metro City alleyway and my arm hurts. The world shrinks down to ruined, misfiring nerves from my fingertips to the root of my arm, up the side of my neck, and around my face. One eye twitches. I force my arm to obey my commands. The pain does not relent, but my breathing calms to a low whimper. I hate the sound of it.

I hear something else. Someone else’s voice.

“-right? Hey, can you hear me?”

A woman’s voice, speaking in English. She steps into the alley, closer to me. She wears a pastel blue cardigan, off the shoulder, over a white mini-dress. A cigarette fumes in one hand, held carefully away from me. An ordinary woman, except for a violent shock of long, magenta hair, and black, spiked boots that stop just short of her knees.

She hunkers down to my level, setting down a satchel the same color as her hair.

“Are you all right?”

She is dangerous. I see strength in her forearms, shoulders, legs. The woman is deliberately relaxed, to give herself the space to coil and strike when she chooses. She is a fighter, like me.

I recoil to give myself space. There is none. A concrete wall is at my back. Very well. I will defend myself in necessary-

“Are you all right?” she repeats. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” I say, answering one of her questions. The word comes out in a low, hollow rasp.

“What do you need right now?” I don’t like her tone. I don’t like the brisk, assessing look she gives me.

“I don’t need anything from you,” I say. “I-”

I am not wearing clothes.

It is nighttime in Metro City. My arm hurts. I am in an alley with no clothes. I do not remember how I got here.

“Are you hungry?”

“No.” My empty stomach betrays me with a loud gurgle. I ignore it. The woman does not.

“I’ll be back,” she says, rising smoothly to her feet.

“Hmph,” I say. She hurries away, trailing a ribbon of cigarette smoke behind her. I hope she leaves me alone. But I am hungry. The physical hunger does not bother me. It is just another sensation to ignore, like the pain. There is something else.

Some other kind of hunger. I can’t put a name to it. The feeling eats me, and it keeps me alive. I think it has kept me alive. I draw my knees to my chest and consider that thought. How did I end up here?

What was I doing before… this?

I can’t remember. My arm hurts. My arm hurts. I’m hungry. Something is wrong. The feeling is intolerable, and it makes everything worse. I don’t know what to do. I need to think.

It is so hard to think. I push ideas through a gelatinized churn of impulses and emotions. I’m hungry. I’m angry. Something is wrong. I don’t know why I woke up in this alley, in this city. What is the last thing I remember?

My eye twitches. My arm hurts. I need to do something, but I don’t know what.

“Hey.”

The woman interrupts my slow, spiraling thoughts. It infuriates me that she could get so close without attracting my attention. She is dangerous. I’m losing focus. Absolutely intolerable.

She sits in front of me, setting a paper bag between us. Out of it comes a cup of crispy finger food.

“What are those?” I say.

“French fries,” she says, smiling. “You’ve seriously never had one? They’ll change your life.”

I try one. My mouth fills with heat and salt and greasy starch.

“Garbage,” I say. My hand reaches for another.

The woman’s smile turns into a triumphant smirk. Before I dwell on how that makes me feel, she reaches into the bag and produces a soft drink with a straw. It is sweet and cold. I feel knots untie themselves behind my eyes.

She lets me eat and drink. I barely feel in control. It feels like someone else’s body clinging to life-

It feels like-

It feels like.

My arm hurts.

“Hey,” the woman says, again. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”

I shake my head.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“Do you want to be here?”

At last, firmer ground. “No. What is your angle?” I speak around a mouthful of fries.

“Angle?” She wrinkles her nose. “You look messed up. This is a bad place to have no one.”

“Metro City.” I know where I am, but I don’t know how I arrived. Curious. “You don’t seem afraid.”

The woman barks out a nasty laugh. “You aren’t as special as you think, hon. This city hates weakness. A lot of people fall through the cracks. You either find someone to help you, or you get found.”

“And so you found me.” What use does she have for me? Does she think she can buy leverage with cheap food?

“I’m not making you do anything,” she says, showing me her palms. “But realistically, here are your choices. You can stay here, and I’ll leave you be. You could go to a shelter. Maybe you get help there, maybe you get put in the system. Bored cops find you, you get put in the system. Or the Mad Gears or the Crows find you and put you to work.”

“You make the alley sound like the best outcome.” My voice sounds so hoarse. I take another drink. The woman looks like she is debating something with herself. She blows out a raspberry.

“You could… come with me.”

“Why?” I say, sharply. She responds with a crooked smile.

“Cause I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t at least try to help a stranger I found naked in the gutter. I’d hope someone would do the same for me.”

“You sound like a fool.” I reach for the fries. There aren’t any more. The lines of her sardonic smile deepen.

“I do all right,” she says. “Here’s my angle, then. One night. I’ll patch you up and get you something to wear. Everyone deserves that, at least. Whatever you do after that is your business.”

“Hrm.” What would be the worst outcome? There is nothing this woman could take from me. If she plans to use me, or attack me… I have plainly survived worse.

“Very well,” I say. She brightens visibly.

“Yay! Are you good to walk? Your feet look pretty cut up.”

Do they? I’ll have to take her word for it. “I will manage.” I rise to my feet. I’m taller than her, but not by much. She removes her cardigan.

“I’m not cold.”

“I’m covering you up, dumbass,” she says, wrapping it around my waist. “We’ll look for something that fits…”

She trails off. She peers up at my face.

“Can you see? Are your eyes okay?”

I feel my brows knit. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

She shakes her head. “Whatever. My apartment is just a few blocks from here, so it’s not a long walk.” She steps back and extends a hand.

“You can call me Poison,” she says. “What’s your name?”

I open my mouth. I-

My arm hurts. My eye spasms.

“I can’t remember.”

I see pity in her eyes. It disgusts me, but vertigo overwhelms my contempt. I don’t know my own name. I don’t know how I got here. Who am I? What have I lost?

I need time to find the answers. If nothing else, Poison will give me another night to find out.

Her apartment looks small and sparse to me. Brick walls, radiator pipes. A divan in front of a television, neoprene mat and kettlebells. A table with an ashtray and a single chair. It doesn’t look like Poison spends a lot of time here. She herds me past a kitchenette into a bathroom.

“Clean up,” she says, patting my good arm. “I’ll look for something you can wear.” She vanishes into her bedroom. I hear traffic and sirens outside.

I scratch my chin and think under the shower. I see a forest of bottled soaps and conditioners. I don’t know the difference between any of them, so I pick one and work it into my hair. The hot water is a blessing. It is easy to imagine the water falling through me, warming and softening something deeper than skin.

I can’t allow it. Getting used to this feeling now will only hurt me later. Poison promised me one night. Rest is a waste of time. I need to plan. One night will not be enough to turn around my fortunes, but it would be foolish not to use the opportunity in front of me.

I try to think about my past. One week ago. One month ago, five years ago? Nothing. I know Metro City, at least the idea of it. I know I am in America. I cannot say why, but it doesn’t feel like home. I suspect I have been to other places. Other countries? I must have had the means to travel.

I growl. This is fruitless. I can find nothing that gives me a useful framework to understand who I am. I have to start with what is within my grasp. First, survival. Then, knowledge of self.

I step out of the shower and towel off. I turn to the bathroom sink and stare in the mirror-

A scarecrow looks back at me.

Eyes like boiled eggs, the barest suggestion of an iris. Strands of filthy, white hair. Ashen, mottled skin and stubble over a too-large jaw and a sneering skull of a face. My body is top-heavy, brutish. My right arm is the color of blood and bruises, shot through with scars that branch like lightning.

I am hideous. I don’t know this thing that is in front of me. I hate it.

The fingers of my ruined hand curl into a fist. The scarecrow scowl deepens. I-

A pair of pants hits me in the head.

“No!” Poison shouts. “Bad!” I turn to her, incredulous. Her eyebrows and nose are scrunched as she scolds me.

“We do not break furniture in my home.” Her voice softens. “You’re not the only person here who doesn’t like mirrors. Try these on and see if they fit.” She reaches down to pull her cardigan from my waist. Once again, I am completely nude.

“These too.” She puts something else in my good hand. Pink, cotton panties. The letters CK on the elastic waistband.

“What,” I say.

Poison gives me an apologetic smile. “I didn’t think it would be your first choice, but I don’t have a lot of masc stuff. No one will see them.”

She doesn’t let me out of her sight. Perhaps she wants assurances I won’t lash out. She has already extended a great deal of trust to me. This is only fair. I should thank her.

“Hmph,” is what I say instead. I pull on the undergarments and try the pants. They are black, some kind of textured elastane sportswear. They are too short and preposterously tight on my frame. But they fit.

“Not a bad start,” Poison says, apparently satisfied. She leads me into her bedroom. Poison has a small bed with black, satin sheets. Framed posters cover the walls, depicting athletic men and women in tights. They look like wrestlers. Many appear to be autographed. Acrylic photo stands cover the top of a dresser. More people I do not recognize. Poison is in some of these photos, along with another woman whose hair is dyed radioactive orange.

A bullwhip coils around a mounted peg on the wall.

We quickly discover she has almost no tops that would work with my frame. I cannot see myself in the pastel softness that drowns most of her wardrobe.

Most. A number of spiked collars, bracelets, studded belts and chains wink at me from the depths of Poison’s closet, nestled against brightly colored sportswear. I see elbow pads, knee guards. A regiment of tall boots keeps watch over a flock of trainers and pumps. Does she like to present herself as a more obvious threat?

She produces a pair of worn leather boots and long socks she insists will protect me from chafing.

“Your calves are bigger than mine, but it looks like we both wear children’s coffins.” Poison gives me a crooked smile. “We both have big feet,” she clarifies a moment later.

I pull these on. The socks cover the parts of my shins left exposed by the leggings. The boots are clearly old and broken in, but they fit. Poison reaches into the closet and withdraws a black, peaked cap. She reaches up and places it on my head, and considers.

“Nah,” she decides, removing it a second later to set it on her bed. Why do I feel disappointed?

Poison tries to complete an outfit for me, but it seems we have reached the limits of her wardrobe. She apologizes and offers me a selection of what she calls “laundry-day shirts.” This turns out to be a series of baggy, shapeless tees printed with insipid brand logos. 

I pick the best of my available options. The royal purple color of the shirt feels correct to me. I try to ignore the text of the shirt, which reads, “MENOPAUSE: THE MUSICAL, 2018 LAS VEGAS.”

Poison takes a step back to size me up.

“It’ll keep body and soul together.” She pulls me back to the living room. I take one last look into Poison’s bedroom. My gaze happens to settle on the peaked cap.

“You have amnesia,” Poison says between bites of lo mein, “but I would bet my life you’re a fighter.”

I sit on her divan. The softness of it threatens to overwhelm me. I refuse the temptation to lie down. Poison sits cross-legged on a foam bolster, eating from a takeout box in her lap. I do the same.

“Why?” I ask. I hear the emphasis she gives to the word fighter.

“Nobody has a body like that without training and money,” she says.

“This body is ruined,” I say.

“Never said you were a good fighter.” She grins at me.

“I could destroy you,” I say, before I realize what I’m saying. Her smile widens, and now I see a flash of honest pride and greed in her eyes. 

“Gotta buy me dinner first, hon,” she says. I’m not sure what that means, but I feel respect for her. She has dropped the mask of cloying sympathy. I don’t know who I am, but I know that I cannot abide sanctimony.

“I think… you might be right,” I admit. “Something clearly happened to me. But why do you think I was a fighter, and not…” I search for the words. “…A body-builder. Or some other kind of athlete?”

“Because it takes one to know one,” Poison says.

We regard each other in silence. It makes sense on a level beneath language. Below clothes and skin, underneath rational thought, in the gaps between the cells in our bone marrow, I can feel In Poison a shared sense of HUNGER a drive to test herself against all comers. My first instincts were correct. She is a fighter. She is dangerous.

We are dangerous.

I nod to her, and then a noise from Poison’s phone shatters the moment.

“Nya,” it says.

“Hold that thought,” Poison says, her eyes warm. In the time it takes for her to get up and retrieve her phone, it nyas at her again. I watch her text someone, her expression filling with unguarded fondness.

She looks up at me. I see the pity return to her face. It disgusts me.

“My friend Roxy wants to come over,” Poison says. “Is that OK? I can tell her to wait.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say.

Roxy turns out to be the woman with the dyed orange hair from Poison’s bedroom photo. The two women could be mirrors of each other. Roxy wears a beret, a camisole, a choker, short shorts, and a set of boots that look like they may have come from Poison’s closet. Roxy squeezes Poison into a big hug at the door and exchanges a bubbly greeting with my host.

Then Roxy looks at me. Still smiling and easygoing, but she gives me the same appraising stare that I have already felt from Poison over the course of the evening.

“Who’s she?” Roxy says. She looks at me as she says it.

The question is a violent shock. Still seated, I plant my feet with audible thumps.

Roxy furrows her eyebrows. They’re dark, at odds with her nuclear hair.

“Poison doesn’t bring men to her place,” Roxy says, as if that explains anything. “Sooooo….”

I realize I have angled my body away from the two women. If I stand up right now, I would be in a defensive, fighting stance. Why am I treating this like a threat? Why did she say those words? It is obvious to the world that I am a man. It should be absolutely self evident that I am a man. She can see my face, and my shoulders, and the hulking, ogreish shape of me.

I am a man. I don’t know who I am, I have nothing else, but I know, to the roots of my bones that I am a man. Say it. Tell them. Tell them!

“We’re working through some stuff,” Poison says.

“Oh,” Roxy says. “You don’t gotta talk about it.” She gives me the same pitying look I have endured from Poison for most of the night. I bite back a snarl and force my breathing to slow.

They think I’m weak because the evidence in front of them supports that conclusion. I woke up, maimed and naked, in an alleyway. I am wearing clothes I was given, instead of taking them for myself. I am literally clothed in another person’s pity. Or-

I surreptitiously check my waist to make sure my underwear isn’t showing. No, it is not. Good. It’s just pity, then.

I de-escalate my posture by degrees. Roxy shrugs and pushes past my host to grab Poison’s lighter and pack of cigarettes.

“Roxy, you said you quit.”

Roxy ignores the hypocritical reproach in Poison’s voice and extracts a glamour-length cigarette from the pack. “Yeah, but I decided I needed to keep in practice, or someone else will get better than me.”

Poison stares at her friend.

“Better at smoking,” Poison says, her voice flat.

“Yep!” Roxy dutifully cracks open a window, letting in more of Metro City’s nighttime cacophony before lighting up.

“Roxy is like a sister to me,” Poison says to me, by way of explanation. “A very stupid little sister.”

Roxy smiles through her first exhalation. “Nah, big sis loooooves me,” she says. “Especially wh-”

“ROXY please be normal,” Poison says, a note of panic entering her voice. Roxy cackles, and Poison’s ears turn the same color as her hair. I don’t understand the exchange. These women clearly know each other very well.

Poison clears her throat. “Rox and I were going to watch a movie. We’ll keep the volume down, if you want to sleep.”

I shake my head. “I need to figure out what I’m going to do after tonight.”

“You could be a mover,” Roxy offers from her station by the window. “You look strong. Or you could be a wrestler.”

“A… wrestler?”

“Yeah, like a pro wrestler!” Roxy says. “There are a couple really good indie leagues here in the city. Big sis is actually a part time manager.”

I scowl. “Pitiful. Pro wrestling is fake.”

“It is not fake,” Poison says. It is the first note of hostility I have heard in her voice.

“It is definitionally fake,” I say. “The outcomes are agreed on. It is a deluded pantomime of a real contest.” I barely exist as a person, and even I know this.

“Tell that to Mick Foley’s ear!” Poison shouts at me.

“I have no idea who that is,” I protest.

“No, you know what? New plan.” Poison moves toward her television remote, pointing at me with her free hand. “You’re going to learn tonight.”

“Yay!” Roxy says.

Poison and her friend subject me to at least two hours of pro wrestling clips and full matches. They leave me to the divan, while they share bolsters on the floor. Roxy leans into Poison with a fond smile. Poison does not seem to notice. She stares at the screen with a demagogue’s intensity, hitting pause to offer context or to direct my attention.

We watch Battle Stars 1994. “You can see the referee pick up the ear right there,” she says. “Listen. Listen to that. ‘That’ll give you Excedrin Headache Number 9?’ That. That is why he left the promotion after the contract was up. He tore off his own ear on stage and they refused to sell it.”

We watch King of the Ring 1998, the Hell in a Cell match. She pauses to show a man in black, moments after he chokeslams his opponent through the roof of a cage. Horror is stamped on the man’s face. “It was an accident,” Poison says. “He genuinely thought he just killed him. They almost stopped the match. Everyone talks about it now, but these men’s careers were flatlining before this match. It saved them both.”

We watch Mil Muertes vs. Fenix, 2015. A deathless revenant cuts his opponent’s face, drinks his blood, and spits it into the camera. Asuka vs. Banks. Yoko Harmageddon vs. Black Widow. Kong vs. Toyota. Nakamura vs. Zayn. Zayn vs. Owens, again and again and again. Haggar and Grater, the Knuckle Busters, in their prime.

“Disaster of a mayor, but you have to respect his performance here,” Poison says.

“You really don’t,” Roxy says.

Poison tries to show me that the athleticism, the physical and emotional storytelling, human unpredictability, and the energy of a crowd give pro wrestling an appeal that defies a surface-level dismissal as a “fake” sport. Roxy grins and squeezes Poison’s arm throughout  her passionate oration. I can’t disagree. I don’t feel the same fervor, but the evidence of my own senses shows me that this performance strikes a deep chord. Crowds of thousands would not flock to these events otherwise.

Instead, I see myself in the brutes. What a fine thing it would be to throw someone from the top of a cage. I want to pit myself against someone else, feel them try to break me, and fail. I want to see the realization in their eyes that they are about to lose.

I see myself in the brutes, except… I don’t. I don’t want to be seen the way they are.

I don’t see myself in the women, either. Not Harmageddon, not Kong. Certainly not Mika. But there is something in their performance that rhymes with the HUNGER hollow feeling I have instead of selfhood.

I still don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I want. But I know that I want. If I can survive and follow that desire, maybe I will come to understand what I should be.

“Hey,” Poison says, distracting me from my reverie. “Sun’s coming up. Me and Rox are gonna turn in. You need a blanket?”

Absolutely not. “Yes,” I say, for some reason.

The two women stand, cracking their backs and groaning. Poison retrieves a synthetic fleece blanket for me, and then she and Roxy disappear into the bedroom. I listen to them murmur to each other, then fall asleep.

I don’t have time to sleep. I have wasted an entire night in softness and comfort, when I should have planned my next steps. I am already exhausted and I will be outside again soon, with no resources or shelter. I barely know anything useful about Metro City. There is still time. I need-

Sleep claims me.