“Telling your parents you are gay.”
Is it bad I love that joke?
I’d take a left from the driveway, head down Spinnaker. Pumping my legs, parallel to the park, alone with the raspy caw caw caws, backup courtesy of seagulls, the crows serenaded me. The tinkling bells from the docked, swaying boats, performed as chimes.
I’d pass the Explosion Memorial on the right, the anchor always there, always waiting. I’d turn on Anchor Drive, passing the town houses on the left and rounding the block back to Spinnaker. I enjoyed the speed, the fantasies, outdoor private play. A spy escaping the enemy. A boy racing to his true love. Olympics for the gold.
Spinnaker Drive begins flat and steady, then curves and begins its decline. Thrilling enough without being too fearsome, I loved zooming down the hill. One day I lost my footing, or perhaps a rock caught in my wheels, small enough not to see but big enough to send me flying. I didn’t manage to turn, or stop, and I ran into the curb full-throttle. My feet went in opposite directions as I hit the ground. Stretching, tearing, the hurt unparalleled. Pain radiating out from my groin. When I opened my mouth, guttural sounds I’d never heard before flooded out, ripping through my body. Cavernous, animalistic, from somewhere beneath the vocal cords.
I went into shock, the body a loyal protector. I attempted to rise but couldn’t. It was a quiet neighborhood and no one was out. A searing pain shot through my legs as I tried to stand, and I sunk back down. I crawled toward the house, slowly making my way, my bare knees digging into the concrete.
I reached the house and made my way up the driveway to the door. The only person home was Linda. Fear swirled in my belly—I didn’t want to need her in this moment.
I struggled out of my Rollerblades. I was silent now, frigid, my body blank. I snailed my way upstairs, not wanting to be seen or heard. Reaching the second floor, I took a tight turn to head to the third. Linda was in the kitchen, preparing food. I didn’t say a word, neither did she. When I made it to my room and closed the door, I realized my pants were wet, my crotch utterly drenched. I lowered my pants to see my underwear beet red, the cotton sodden with blood. Panicking, my hands shook as I carefully removed them, brushstrokes from my bloodstained panties leaving evidence on my thighs. The white undies now a dark velvet.
My breaths were short, just managing to accomplish the in and out. I went to the bathroom and wiped myself. I left the crimson drawers and went down to the kitchen.
“Linda?”
A pause.
“Yeah?” she said with that tone, her constant aggravation with me.
My mind had left my body, my mouth on autopilot. “I fell Rollerblading and there is blood in my underwear.” I kept it simple.
She shrugged. My throat froze, afraid to be admonished, unable to force out more words. As if hypnotized, I went back upstairs. But staring at the evidence, I knew this wasn’t insignificant. I returned with the underwear to show her. She stood in the kitchen between the island and the oven. I held them up with both hands. I can still see her face when she saw them, her eyes big and wide, an uncontrollable reaction to the grotesque quality of a kid’s underwear soaked in blood.
She snapped into gear, reaching for the phone to call my father, who was thankfully already on his way home. We piled into the car and headed to a nearby clinic. I sat in the back seat and watched as they exchanged panicked whispers, with an intermittent look back at me, then back to the road.
A doctor with long brown hair greeted me kindly, moving quickly but maintaining a sense of calm. I had slipped into a dream, hovering, disassociated, feeling faint. Alone with the doctor, I lay on the examination table, the top of my body covered, the bottom bare. Her gloved hands moved as she spoke to me, talking me through what was next while I looked up at the lights on the ceiling, then back to her, slightly blurred, my eyes adjusting. She started to stick her finger inside my vagina, it made me clench my jaw and tense, halting my breath. She explained what had happened in detail, but all I remember is the words “torn something,” and the cold realization that that something was inside of me. Luckily, the tear was just small enough that it could be repaired with a dissolvable adhesive tape to avoid stitches. She finished up, and I was returned to Dennis and Linda in a daze.
Years after, I was concerned that something was wrong with my vagina, conceivably due to this incident. The thought originally came at sixteen while I was dating a lovely boy named Kenneth. We met in grade ten at Queen Elizabeth High School in Halifax.
Kenneth played the guitar and was in a band. They’d play at the Pavilion, a music venue on the commons that had all-ages shows, mostly punk concerts. Moshing, a pit overflowing with pubescent pheromones. His house was a fifteen-minute or so walk from school. He’d practice with his band in the basement, his brother, Skyler, on drums. I found it far too loud but acted like I didn’t, secretly desperate to be cool.
Kenneth was sweet, sensitive, and cute. A unique face, with prominent cheekbones and electric eyes, his hair dark brown and floppy. I was at his place mostly. His mom, whom I really liked, wasn’t often home, and if she was, she didn’t care what we were doing. She was warm and spoke to each of us like we were actual human beings rather than just teenagers. It was so easy for adults to forget the fullness of our experience.
We’d fool around upstairs. I didn’t really like it, but I didn’t mind it either. The kissing, meh. The dry humping, all right. I would pretend to cum, not that Kenneth wasn’t or wouldn’t be fantastic in bed, I am certain he would be a selfless and generous lover. When we tried to have sex, his dick just would not go in. That whole “wet” thing wasn’t happening. We’d try and then stop, try and then stop, try and then stop, and then we stopped trying. I was lucky it was with someone as lovely as him, it could have ended a different way.
I had this idea that something had happened to my vagina during the Rollerblade incident, causing my body to refuse entry. Everyone was talking about “doing it” and “hooking up” and “virginity” and “cum,” and I didn’t get it. Was everyone also pretending?
I avoided sex with guys and suppressed my real, unrequited crushes. My brain could not comprehend that I simply wasn’t interested, that I just didn’t want to go through with it, which would be a completely appropriate feeling and response.
When I walked into a gynecologist’s office for the first time and recapped the situation, the doctor thought it best to give me my first examination and Pap smear. A med student in residence flanked her, shadowing and observing the process. Legs up, spread wide, the cold metal speculum stretched me open, separating the inside of my vagina. The feeling sent sparks through me, up my pelvis, into my gut, fear mixed with exhilaration. Not pain, just a new discomfort for an unaccustomed body. She dug around in there, the newfangled sensation causing me to fidget. Squirm then stiff, squirm then stiff.
She assured me there was nothing wrong with my vagina. All clear. The response was frustrating at the time—now I had nothing to blame. I sat up and covered my vagina, thinking, Perhaps if I have sex enough I’ll convince myself I enjoy it?
As my inaugural gynecologist visit was coming to a close, the med student looked at me.
“I really liked you in Hard Candy,” she said.
I squeezed a smile through a cringe, said thank you and goodbye, and left.
12
ROLLER DERBY
When I went to my first Oscars in 2008 for Juno, I could feel how close I was. Not to winning the award, but to the end of the months-long process of campaigning for it. All the parties to attend, the interviews where I smiled, altered my body language and voice, playing along with the role that had been chosen for me. I wanted it to be over, and not just this chapter, but acting altogether.
After awards season concluded, I was supposed to make a film in England. It was based on a famous book, and I was attached as the main character, a sought-after role. Every time the project came up, my agents excitedly spoke of the opportunity, sharing updates and new casting ideas. I would imagine myself in a woman’s costume from the mid-nineteenth century. The dress, the shoes, the hair, flashed before my eyes. It was too much after having put on the mask for awards season. I understood that if I were to do it, I would want to kill myself.