The 2008 Blake Review Part One

He was a boy; she was a post-op MTF transsexual. Can it be any more obvious? I know that (that) “it” is ambiguous, but it’s been a long, hard weekend. There have been sleepless nights, pillow fights, sexually confusing initiation rites, and—most of all—Christmas lights.

It all started in rural West Virginia just over fifteen years ago. He was a coal miner's son, squeezed out of the sooty loins of a child bride in a thatched hut on Christmas day, her howls mingling with those of stray coyotes in the hills above. In fact, he had a younger sister who was raised by coyotes for the first eight years of her life. Although she remained feral at heart, she eventually learned the social ways of the human world and found success as a high school ultimate discus player.

He, on the other hand, was born without the gift of athletic prowess. His father refused to come to terms with this, berating the child for his inability to develop bulging lats and glutes by age eight. He was no Richard Sandrak: he could barely complete four pull-ups, and lost in the first round of the second grade arm wrestling tournament to a primordial dwarf with carpal tunnel.

This embarrassment was too much for his father, who turned to the bottle, spiraling downward until, one fateful night, he drank sixteen purple hooters and got arrested for having sex with a picnic table four times in one hour, then smeared his feces all over the back of the police car that carried him off. The local publicity was too much for his poor wife, who whisked the kids away to start a new life in the great state of Minnesota.

She found a job as a sales assistant at the Fantasy Gifts in the Town and Country shopping center in Bloomington, where she met her second future ex-husband, Raymond Cox, who wooed her with erotic gifts: crotchless pantsuits, cashmere thongs, flavored body oils, and more. After a shotgun wedding at the Anoka Knights of Columbus hall, the Coxes moved into a sprawling home in Indian Hills and created a beautiful life for Slim and his still slightly feral sister, Precious.

Five years have passed. Now, Precious is a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence, and Slim is a junior at Edina High School. This is the story of the holiday season experiences of the Cox family in 2008. I hope you enjoy it.

*ACT I*

SCENE I

We begin in the living room of the Cox house, where Raymond’s wife and son are waiting for him to bring Precious back from the airport.

WIFE: It’ll be real cozy with us all here. My mama always said the home and the hearth are like the human womb in the holiday time. Some people may dream of sugar plums, but the sweetest thoughts in my noggin are shaped like cute li’l fetuses.

SLIM: That is so fucking gay. What the fuck is wrong with you, bitch?

WIFE (laughing): I know I’m a bit esoteric, idiosyncratic . . . some have even deigned to refer to me as “wacky.” But that’s what happens when you take a girl from the bucolic outskirts of Yakima, Washington, make her run away from home to escape her stepmother’s crippling dextromethorphan hydrobromide addiction, then set her up with a hard-drinking miner with a taste for light bondage, especially when there’s a full moon or a neap tide.

SLIM: Gross me out! That is some sick shit. Seriously, I’m so glad I haven’t eaten for three days, because I would have just projectile vomited all over your tits.

WIFE: It wouldn’t be the first time, sweetie.

Just then, the doorbell rings. Wife leaps in the air and squeals with delight as Slim lackadaisically throws the door open. Precious and Raymond enter along with a burst of cold air. Precious is wearing pastel pink tights, white fur boots, a vinyl miniskirt, and a sweater with a picture of St. Josephine Bakhita’s stern yet benevolent face on it.

WIFE: My sweet, semi-feral daughter! I’m so glad to see you. My cup runneth over.

SLIM: That’s what she said.

Wife embraces a detached-looking Precious, who growls softly.

SLIM: I was expecting you to look much more lesbo.

PRECIOUS: God, fashion sexual preference identity locationality is so jejune, even the neo-essentialists ask for their goulash, hold the FSPIL.

RAYMOND: Those lesbians sure do like their harnesses, though. They come in and ask for the leather harnesses. I guess the economy hasn’t been too bad for them because they really like to splurge on my high-quality leather harnesses.

SLIM: Subarus must have good gas mileage.

WIFE: I’m going to go check on my baked Alaska. Slim, why don’t you help your sister with her luggage.

SLIM: Is it heavy?

PRECIOUS: It is no heavier than the pendulous testicles of a particularly large steed.

SLIM: You would know!

He grabs a forest green L.L. Bean duffle with the monogram “BWO” and heads upstairs with Precious, who is hauling a trunk plastered with shirtless pictures of “Beautiful Soul”-era Jesse McCartney.

SCENE II

Slim is reclined on a fainting coach in Precious’s bedroom to recover from the exertion of toting her duffle bag upstairs. She is mixing highballs with a vintage stainless cocktail set straight out of “Mad Men.”

PRECIOUS: The whole campus has become a knitting orgy. The frenzied social is merely a woolen happening. People are measuring others’ genitalia to make custom cock socks. I’m not sure if it’s refreshingly unselfconscious or sexually overwhelming. I suppose we have reached an impasse.

SLIM: Dude, that cock sock fad would be pretty cool if it came here.

Precious hands him a cocktail.

SLIM: What is this, Captain coke or some shit?

PRECIOUS: Lord no. It is a virgin brandy stinger.

SLIM: Is that supposed to mean something?

PRECIOUS: What sass! As if the concept of “meaning” can be invoked so casually. It must be right cozy living under the veil of structuralist assumptions. I envy you, really.

SLIM: Bitch, you crazy. But this drank is pretty baller.

PRECIOUS: Yes, few teenage boys can resist the allure of the virgin stinger. In fact, I once knew a lovely coyote called “The Virgin Stinger.” He had the most attractive pouty lips.

She growls suggestively.

SLIM: So, what’s college like? Is everybody constantly fucked up and fucking? My friend Will’s brother who goes to Madison said it was like that.

PRECIOUS: I don’t know what those ignoramus rubes in cheesetown are doing with their time, but Sarah Lawrence is quite civilized. Yes, my roommate was left overnight tied to an Ikea swiveling desk chair, but they made sure she could move her hands enough to smoke clove cigarettes. And anyway, the whole incident was about experiencing the transgression of boundaries, flirting with the erotic kernel of submission.

SLIM: Damn, that makes high school sound pretty lame. The closest thing to that was when that deaf girl got caught giving her deaf boyfriend a blowjob in the language stairwell.

PRECIOUS: Ah, yes. How ironical that was.

WIFE (calling from downstairs): Supper’s ready, children!

Slim and Precious both quickly finish their cocktails and head out.

SLIM: By the way, are you still friends with that one hot bitch, the one with the pink Geo Tracker?

PRECIOUS: You mean Hope?

SLIM: Yeah. I hope I can get inside her pants before New Year’s Day.

PRECIOUS: Actually, she goes by the name of “Boobs Carlisle” now. She’s a stripper at the Vu.

SLIM: Hot damn! We are so headed there tonight. Be still, my beating left testicle.

SCENE III

Precious, Slim, and Slim’s aggressively pubescent friend, Enrico (who goes by the name “Chunky,” which was earned after he was caught doing something at least minimally unsavory with Jif) pull into the Third Street municipal ramp in downtown Minneapolis.

CHUNKY: So, the guy shoves this empty glass jar up his ass, and of course all the guys watching were like, “Whatever.” Like, of course he’s going to shove it up his ass. But then the jar broke and all this blood and shit went everywhere and I started screaming like a bitch and ran to the bathroom because I thought I was gonna throw up but I didn’t so I decided as long as I was already in the bathroom I should probably just beat off.

SLIM: I’m so sick of those videos that start with some guy shoving shit up his ass. That shit is so 2007. The internet needs to have a New Year’s resolution to can it with the objects up ass shit.

CHUNKY: That “sounds” good to me!

Slim high-fives Chunky as they both laugh uproariously. Precious rolls her eyes and delivers a growl of subtle irritation.

They park the car and emerge.

PRECIOUS: It’s colder than Oprah Winfrey’s crotch out here! Bronxville might not be Tahiti but this is just horrific. Why would anyone live here by choice?

SLIM (pointing at Sex World): That’s one reason.

CHUNKY: My brother told me they have free popcorn outside the jack-off booths!

SLIM: Popcorn: America’s healthy snack, now with three hundred percent more protein.

CHUNKY: That is just sick, bro.

PRECIOUS: Before we go in, I want to make sure you guys promise to respect the sex workers. Being a sex worker in the 90’s does not mean you’re happy and free. These bitches have drug problems and most of them probably have the clap and the slightest insult can invoke a violent rage. You don’t want your eyeball torn off by someone’s acrylic bitch nail so keep it polite.

SLIM: How you know so much about whores? Have you been enjoying life south of the border?

CHUNKY: Spending your food money on box lunches?

SLIM: Experimenting with carpet samples?

CHUNKY: Snatch spelunking?

PRECIOUS: Har har har. Your juvenile euphemisms are so witty, I’m stifling a titanic guffaw right now. But actually, I took a class on sex-positive feminism last semester. What an academically bankrupt, essentialist discipline. It almost made me nostalgic for Phyllis Schlafly.

SLIM (to Chunky): Are you sure our fake IDs are going to work?

CHUNKY: Dude, of course. I got them from the same guy in Chinatown who forged a passport for that guy who blew up all those people in Canada last year.

SLIM: It’s just weird that this ID says my name is Michael Cholbi. That sounds really gay and I don’t even fucking know how to pronounce the last name. What’s your name?

CHUNKY: Michael Cera.

SCENE IV

Raymond and Wife sit by a roaring fire enjoying hot buttered rum and gingerbread cookies made with novelty penis and boob cookie cutters from Fantasy Gifts.

RAYMOND: I’m getting worried about that boy of ours. All he does is sit around watching the "World’s Strongest Man" on TV and eating petit fours.

WIFE: You have to understand, honey, that my baby daddy didn’t treat him good. He’s been emasculated so many times. And just look at the contradictory images society projects to teenage boys. They’re supposed to look like Abercrombie models yet walk around in public holding shopping bags with pictures of shirtless Abercrombie models on them.

RAYMOND: That’s why I think he needs to spend some time in a real all-American red-blooded manly man’s place, and I’m not talking about the YMCA locker room. I’m talking about my store. He could earn some pocket money and learn the ropes of the trade.

WIFE: Mixed metaphor aside, are you sure he wouldn’t nearly explode with sexual frustration? He might get all worked up and into a state where the slightest trigger could make him explode. Imagine if that happened in a grocery store, or during square dancing in gym class.

RAYMOND: Insinuating that hours and hours spent among luscious pornographic materials would make a teenage boy sexually frustrated is fundamentally retarded. This is about capitalism, it’s about the economy, and it’s a little bit about leather harnesses, too. But only a bit.

WIFE: I guess we can talk about this with him, but not with that intellectual half-feral feminazi around!

Raymond laughs and nods vigorously.

SCENE V

Precious, Slim, and Chunky share a table at Déjà Vu, sipping Mr. Pibb and watching a stripper wearing a Santa hat and forest green spike heels pole Atlanta-style.

SLIM: You could choke someone to death with those thighs.

CHUNKY: I’ve got something I’d like her to choke!

Boobs Carlisle approaches the table wearing red hot pants with white fur trim and a matching bra.

BOOBS: Precious! Tony said some girl asked for me, but I never thought it would be you.

They embrace warmly.

BOOBS: We could have met somewhere classier.

PRECIOUS: Oh, hooey. I decided to embrace the Xmas spirit and take this little fucker and his friend to see some nice silicon-enhanced tits and heavily waxed bacon strips.

BOOBS: Awww, that’s cute. If either of them wants a lap dance or a table dance or a bed dance, I can suggest some hot bitches.

PRECIOUS: My brother is pretty frail. I think his heart might give out—

SLIM: Fuck you, you half-feral bitch! I get lap dances all the time. I had one the night before you got back.

CHUNKY: Yeah right: you had one right before you woke up in a pool of your own dick juices.

Slim bitch-slaps Chunky, then moans in pain and nurses his hand.

BOOBS: I gotta go get ready for my big number, but if you decide you want some hot one-on-one action, just find Salsa over there.

She points toward a spicy, racially ambiguous woman dressed as a Russian Orthodox nun.

SLIM: I wonder if they touch your unit.

PRECIOUS: Go find out. Just don’t blame me if you die.

SLIM: I’ll show you that I’m a real man right now.

He gets up and walks purposefully toward Salsa.

CHUNKY: USA! USA!

END OF ACT I