Cherished [Gender Exchange Remix] 

by Sajbrfem

This boy I hang out with sometimes wears shiny red polish, which draws attention to his ragged nails and sunless skin. Silver bikie rings squat on his stumpy fingers.

His eye-makeup is always uneven. This is not a fashion statement; he does not flaunt a retro-blue-frosted left eye and a goth-inspired-charcoaled right. It is only that he is easily distracted and so will forget to apply a second coat of mascara on one eye or blend the liner on the other. From a distance it looks fine, but up close the imbalance is off-putting.

His hair is the colour of dried blood. It smells of chemicals and is stiff to the touch. In a photo taken on his sixteenth birthday it is waist length, shiny and brown. I asked him why he changed it but he only laughed.

When he dances or argues he grows a perspiration moustache. During sex, sweat coats his forehead even if the rest of him remains dry and cool.

A tan would disguise the steel-blue veins radiating from his areolae, but he is not the type to sunbathe topless nor is he a man familiar with salon treatments. He leaves his disposable razors in my soap dish and his tweezers on the basin.

I think his gums are unhealthy, because one time he borrowed my toothbrush and left behind a smear of pinkish toothpaste at the base of the bristles.

I suggested he buy some new jeans after I overheard a mutual friend make an unflattering comment about the size of his arse, but his new jeans were even tighter. The angry lines they leave on his belly make me think of childbirth.

And yet when he checks his reflection in my bathroom mirror, he smiles like he has caught sight of a beloved friend.

like she has caught sight of herself again.

The Gender Exchange Remix by Sajbrfem is licensed under a CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licence. It is a derivative work of Emily Maguire’s CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licensed story. The original is available at http://www.remixmylit.com/storiesremixes/emilymaguire/. For details on how you can reuse the original and this remix see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/.