This month we offer my still blistered hand caught, red-handed.
Next month we
reach
Submission guidelines can be found here.
Gone Boob
The Barbie my mother gave me for Christmas is sitting on my lap. Her blue eyes stare up at me. She has one arm sticking straight up over her head as though she is waving down a taxi.
I hold onto Barbie’s long hair with one hand, and with the other, I try to cut it off. The box she came in said she was a Malibu Barbie. I don’t know what Malibu is, and when I ask my mother, she says she thinks it is a beach in California, but she isn’t sure.
Barbie has a skinny neck and blue eye shadow; her eyebrows are so small you almost can’t see them. And she is always smiling.
I try to cut her hair with my pocket knife. Pieces fall on my corduroys, the ones with a hole in the knee. It isn’t easy. Her head is hard to hold still. The knife is dull.
I look at her boobs, two perfectly round mounds on her chest. No nipples. The plastic is too hard for my little knife, so I go to the kitchen and take one of my mother’s serrated carving knives.
I have to push hard to make a cut. Eventually, I get part way through. I work harder than I want to. A blister forms on my finger.
Finally, one of Barbie’s boobs splinters off. It flies across the room, leaving a small hole in her chest. I peer inside. I can’t see anything. I am too tired to remove her other boob.
My mother finds Barbie after dinner when she tucks me into bed. She sees the missing hair and her gone boob and says, “What is the meaning of this, young lady?”
Me and my still blistered hand are caught, red-handed. She looks at me like I have prepared an explanation. I don’t have one. She sits on the side of my bed and sets the Barbie on the nightstand, her hand still raised above her head as though she is waving at me.
“Why did you cut up your Barbie?”
I shrug my shoulders. She shakes her head. I look away. She looks over at the doll again. “I can’t afford to buy you a new one.”
“I don’t want a new one.”
She kisses me on the forehead, and I go to sleep.
The next day when my father comes home I am playing hockey in the backyard by myself. He hands me a plastic bag. Inside the bag is a Ken doll and a GI Joe. I pull them both out of the bag and smile — like I’m a Barbie.
I play with them for the rest of the day.
###
I recall this while lying on the operating table. I am a thirty-three-year-old transman. The doctor pulls down his mask and says. “We are going to perform a double mastectomy on you today.” It sounds to me like the thought just recently occurred to him.
On the tray next to me are several instruments, none of which are serrated that I can see. I laugh. The doctor asks me what is funny, but I can’t tell him because when I look at the ceiling, the world goes dark.
E. A. Zimmerman is an author and an artist with an MA in Philosophy. He lives somewhere in the increasingly trans-unfriendly USA, in a house he built with his own hands. He is a short-distance runner and a long-distance reader. His work has appeared in numerous places, including a forthcoming piece in Nunum’s Done in a 100 Anthology. He won first place in Reedsy Prompt contest #230, In A Flash. He is working on his first novel.
This month we offer my still blistered hand caught, red-handed.
Next month we
reach
Submission guidelines can be found here.
Gone Boob
The Barbie my mother gave me for Christmas is sitting on my lap. Her blue eyes stare up at me. She has one arm sticking straight up over her head as though she is waving down a taxi.
I hold onto Barbie’s long hair with one hand, and with the other, I try to cut it off. The box she came in said she was a Malibu Barbie. I don’t know what Malibu is, and when I ask my mother, she says she thinks it is a beach in California, but she isn’t sure.
Barbie has a skinny neck and blue eye shadow; her eyebrows are so small you almost can’t see them. And she is always smiling.
I try to cut her hair with my pocket knife. Pieces fall on my corduroys, the ones with a hole in the knee. It isn’t easy. Her head is hard to hold still. The knife is dull.
I look at her boobs, two perfectly round mounds on her chest. No nipples. The plastic is too hard for my little knife, so I go to the kitchen and take one of my mother’s serrated carving knives.
I have to push hard to make a cut. Eventually, I get part way through. I work harder than I want to. A blister forms on my finger.
Finally, one of Barbie’s boobs splinters off. It flies across the room, leaving a small hole in her chest. I peer inside. I can’t see anything. I am too tired to remove her other boob.
My mother finds Barbie after dinner when she tucks me into bed. She sees the missing hair and her gone boob and says, “What is the meaning of this, young lady?”
Me and my still blistered hand are caught, red-handed. She looks at me like I have prepared an explanation. I don’t have one. She sits on the side of my bed and sets the Barbie on the nightstand, her hand still raised above her head as though she is waving at me.
“Why did you cut up your Barbie?”
I shrug my shoulders. She shakes her head. I look away. She looks over at the doll again. “I can’t afford to buy you a new one.”
“I don’t want a new one.”
She kisses me on the forehead, and I go to sleep.
The next day when my father comes home I am playing hockey in the backyard by myself. He hands me a plastic bag. Inside the bag is a Ken doll and a GI Joe. I pull them both out of the bag and smile — like I’m a Barbie.
I play with them for the rest of the day.
###
I recall this while lying on the operating table. I am a thirty-three-year-old transman. The doctor pulls down his mask and says. “We are going to perform a double mastectomy on you today.” It sounds to me like the thought just recently occurred to him.
On the tray next to me are several instruments, none of which are serrated that I can see. I laugh. The doctor asks me what is funny, but I can’t tell him because when I look at the ceiling, the world goes dark.
E. A. Zimmerman is an author and an artist with an MA in Philosophy. He lives somewhere in the increasingly trans-unfriendly USA, in a house he built with his own hands. He is a short-distance runner and a long-distance reader. His work has appeared in numerous places, including a forthcoming piece in Nunum’s Done in a 100 Anthology. He won first place in Reedsy Prompt contest #230, In A Flash. He is working on his first novel.
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