Squirrel Cage (8 page)

It is a very hard thing to look back on your life and admit your most serious faults.
They are signs of weakness.
It is an admission of guilt.
It is embarrassing. It is reliving the years of hiding the deep dark secret.
But it is an integral part of my story.
And while I will not delve into the detail which could consume volumes, I do want to share these things.
I’ll think of this as a final confession, a way to help clear my conscience.

We were at the local drug store.
Mom was a stay at home mother, wife, and homemaker.
When she went out during the day, my brother and I were in tow.
I was 5 years old.
While she was checking out with the items she had selected, I stood facing the “stand of last resistance” filled with candy bars and gum.
I casually picked up a package of Life Savers and put it in my pocket.
And we went home.
I was thrilled that I had a pack of Life Savers.
I didn’t even have to beg.

So, I wandered around the house eating my Life Savers.
I was feeling fairly smug.
And then mother blocked my path.

“What have you got in your hands?” she asked sternly.

“I dunno.”

“Where did you get those?” she demanded.

“I dunno.”

“Did you get them at the store?” she demanded.

“I dunno.”

“Well did you pay for them?
I know full well that I didn’t pay for them” she said.

“I dunno”.

I was in trouble, real trouble.
And I felt terrible.
“Why did I take the Life Savers?” I asked myself.

“Why did you take those Life Savers from the store?” she demanded.
“I dunno
,
” was my response.

She grabbed me by the hand and
shook
the Life Savers from my grasp.
She went into her bedroom to collect her purse and keys.
She returned and
wrangled
my wrist, dragging me through the door and to the car.
She opened the car door and pushed me in.
“We are going back to the store and you are going to explain to the man there why you took those Life Savers.

Do you understand?” she asked sternly.

“I dunno.”

Why did she continue to ask?
Didn’t she realize that she was going to get the same answer, whatever she asked?
“I dunno” was a great answer!

Sure enough, she pulled me by the arm right into the drug store and to the cashier who had helped her only one hour earlier.
“I’m very sorry she said to the fellow but may I have a moment of your time?” she asked him.

“Yes ma
’a
m,” he responded
,
“what can I do for you?”
“My son has something to tell you,” she said straining.
And then she stared at me, expecting a response.

“What do you have to say?” she demanded.

“I dunno,” I replied.

“You tell this young man or you will deal with your father,” she said sternly.

I knew that dad was going to deal with me whatever happened.
But
finally I relinquished and said,
“I took the Life Savers.
I’m sorry”.

“You had better be sorry young man,” stated my mother.
She apologized profusely to the cashier, paid him the price for the candy, and pulled me out the door throwing the remaining Life Savers in the trash as we left.

I learned something very important that day.
Stealing was very very bad.
I should never steal.
But if I were to ever steal in the future, I should not get caught.
This train of thought was very logical to me at the time.
I was not devious.
For the most part I was a well behaved child.
But I knew that I would steal again.
I knew what I would steal.
And I knew that I could never get caught. I’d planned a heist for some time.

What does stealing have to do with this story you ask?
More than you can imagine.
I knew that I wanted to be a girl and I knew that the only way I could be a girl was to get girl clothes.
I didn’t have any.
I remember that I had dressed up in my mother’s things twice and both times I had been caught.
I reasoned that if I had my own clothes, I wouldn’t have to put them back and I wouldn’t get caught.

Mom, you don’t remember that you caught me with your things?
I’m sure you don’t.
You were very kind to me both times.
The first time you told me that boys don’t wear girl clothes when I was only three years old.
That’s when I learned the difference between boys and girls.
Girls got to wear dresses and have long hair.
At age four, the second time, you found me under my bed wearing your nylons.
You playfully said that I must be playing house and that I was pretending to be the mommy.
You told me that boys should play the daddy.
That’s when I learned that boys would become daddies.

Dad didn't help much with a story he used to tell within our family.
He used to tell people "My wife used to be a Mann before I married her." My mother's maiden name was Mann.
Everyone who knew the family thought this was great fun.
I thought he meant what I had heard.
It only served to confuse the issues I was already having with my own gender identity.
If mommy could become a girl, then why couldn’t I?

I didn’t want to be a boy.
I wanted to be a girl.
And that would be the deep dark secret holding its place in the back of my mind for the next 20 years.
“
I want to be a girl.
”
I would secretly pray and ask for it. I would go to sleep wishing it.
I would wake up regretting that God did not change me. I would think about it all day long.

It was a lousy television commercial running
non-stop
through my mind every minute of every hour of every day… the “
Squirrel
” complete with a spinning wheel in its cage as I came to think of it. Squirrel was a devious muse pushing dangerous thoughts, craving knowledge, and pulling me into the pit. I learned to think of two things at once and sometimes three.
I learned to read and watch TV at the same time as well as minding the
Squirrel
running and turning its cage.

Squirrel was real to me. It was a real
Squirrel
that told me things. I talked to the
Squirrel
and it talked to me.

There are a number of crazy things that I’ve done in my life but nothing so blatantly wrong as my stealing.
And there was nothing that made me feel so guilty about my deep dark secret. But the
Squirrel
had to be fed.
Squirrel had an endless appetite.

Squirrel helped me know that I first I had to find a hiding place. Stolen things must be kept hidden. This was very hard for a five year old to sort through.
Where could I hide my new clothes?
Mom would find them anywhere I put them.
But after months of looking and evaluating the risk of discovery, I did find one place that seemed safe enough.
The toy box was seldom moved.
It was filled with toys and was very heavy.
So I took some of the heavier toys out and tried to move it.
It was very hard but I could do it.
This place was good because the floor of the toy box was a few inches off the floor and was surrounded by a piece of trim.

This looked good.
And this, my first secret place would protect me as a girl.

The girl next door, “Lace,” as
I called her, was my age. S
he was very pretty.
She always had nice tanned skin, a pretty smile, and beautiful blonde hair.
I had a fixation for Lace.
I wanted to be her.
I should have been like her.

The
Squirrel
runs in the cage and never stops.
Squirrel can eat as it runs and it never stops.
It doesn’t need to go to the bathroom because this
Squirrel
only does those things when I’m asleep and I’m not dreaming. Run, Run, Run, “Okay, STOP it, STOP it!”
No, you can’t stop the
Squirrel
. “I want to be a girl! I want to be a girl,” I could scream and
Squirrel
would not stop.

Run, run,
Squirrel
.
See
Squirrel
run.
See Jane run. Stop! Rewind!
See Jane run. See
Squirrel
run.
See Jane. See Jane.
See Lace. Be Lace.
“You can’t be Lace.” “Then I can be like Lace.” “No.”
See
Squirrel
run.

Lace wore white socks and I stole a pair.
She took them off while she was outside.
We were running through the sprinklers and she didn’t want them to get wet.
Well, she couldn’t remember where her socks went and she got in trouble from her mother.
I felt terrible.
But I had some socks.
They were the first articles to go in to the hiding place.
Every chance I got, I would pull toys out of the toy box, move the box and collect my treasures and put them on.

The
Squirrel
’s attention followed everything that moved.
It watched every girl in view and observed every article of clothing.
Every opportunity for collecting something new was assimilated, processed, and assessed for risk.

I was looking for boy socks in my boy sock drawer one day.
It was the bottom drawer in the dresser.
I noticed that I could pull it all the way out.
And there was space underneath.
This was a whole lot easier to get to than under the toy box.
Besides
,
my collection of things had grown.
I had many girl cousins in my family and they kept losing things.
… Okay, I stole them.
I had some hair bows, some earrings,
three
pair of ankle socks and some underwear.
I really needed somewhere to hide some real cloths like a dress and this space looked like it might work.

Sometimes the Rusty would come in my dreams and expose my secret to my family.
I had the nightmare frequently. I was a child of only
three
years old when the Rusty
first
came.
The Rusty had power over the
Squirrel
.
And it had magic.
The Rusty looked like a wolf but was rust colored.
The Rusty lived under the access to the foundation in my bedroom closet in our first home.
I feared the closet.
I would make my Mom check
everywhere
in the room to make sure the Rusty was not there.
I knew however that the Rusty would only come at night.
He would only come in my dreams.

When we moved to Ogden (I was 4 years old at the time), the Rusty learned to hide in my hiding places.
When the Rusty would come in my dreams
,
he would chase
Squirrel
away.
I would run with the rest of my family and we would sit on the table to be safe.
The Rusty would look at me.
He would ask “who will you give to me?” and my family always
surrendered me
.
They always picked me. Always. And then the Rusty would put me out on the back step in the cold wearing my girl clothes.
He would put me where everyone could see me, where I was most vulnerable, and the most terrified.

I knew that this new hiding place had to be good for the Rusty.
He had to be kept a secret.
Also,
I had to keep him happy or else I feared he would come in the day and tell everyo
ne about me and my girl clothes… a
nd I would
be caught with stolen things… a
nd everyone would know that I wanted to be a girl.

I did not hear voices, they were my thoughts. They seemed logical.
They did not tell me what to do. But my
Squirrel
and
my
scheming
pushed me to do things that were not normal
… t
hings that were inconceivable
in every new circumstance
.
My childhood dreams and ambitions were very complex. They were an exercise in stealth and cleverness.
I learned to solve puzzles, look at every nuance, and out trick the trickster.