What a Drag

What a Drag
By Stephen Clark

I walked into my first class of the day, Biology. I tossed the pink Burberry scarf I had been saving up for for months over my shoulder and looked around the room for a minute, my mind adrift from reality at that early an hour in the day. I spotted my friend Andy at the long black rectangular lab table at the opposite side of the room that we were both assigned to at the beginning of the year. He gave me a wave and I waved back, my eyes half-closed, still longing to be in my warm bed at home. Our teacher, Mr. Beckinger, some old school, grey-haired prick, sat at his desk dressed in his usual white dress shirt and tie. It looked like he wore his tie just tight enough to prevent cutting off the circulation to his neck. He raised the coffee mug which he drank out of every morning religiously, and took a small sip, setting it back down on the hard cold lab table at the front of the room.
“Hey Matt, what’s up?” Andy said to me, nodding his head and looking at me like I was a walking corpse, which I felt like anyway.
“Nothin’, tired as hell.” I began wobbling in front of the desk, still too tired to stand still in one place, and quickly took a seat next to him.
“Beckinger’s on a fucking bitch fit again” Andy said, pointing to Mr. Beckinger who was still sipping from his mug, pretending to go over some papers before the rest of the students shuffled into class.
“Big surprise” I said letting my head fall down on the desk and closed my eyes.
“Better not let him see you sleeping, he’ll chew your Goddamn head off.”
“Fuck it.” I mumbled through my arms which were folded to support my head on the desk.
The rest of the students began to walk in and take there seats as Mr. Beckinger got up from his seat at the desk and stood firmly in front of the class, arms crossed with a hard look on his face. “Ok class, we’re going to start off today with some worksheets. Do it, turn it in, then start on the next one.” He didn’t do much teaching, just handed us worksheets and told us to do them and be quiet.
Andy got up from his seat to get the worksheets from the front of the room and returned with two of them for both of us to do, even though he must have known that I wasn’t going to do them.
“Here,” he shoved a worksheet under my arms. “At least pretend to do it so he won’t come over here and raise hell.” He looked nervous, glancing at Beckinger who was tightening his tie and going over papers.
I glanced down at the paper he given me and closed my eyes. “I’m going to sleep, wake me up when class is over.”
“Whatever.” Andy gave a resigning sigh and went to work on his paper.
I went into a deep sleep on the cold hard surface of the table, drooling and dreaming, or rather nightmaring about my father. In a drunken rage he had screamed at me about not wanting a gay son, swinging his beer bottle around, pointing at me, calling me things like “Disgusting pervert” and “Fag”. Unfortunately all this was complete reality, not a dream. All these terrible things he said to me, for wearing tight girl’s jeans and my scarf that never left my neck, save for the shower and sleeping, and even then sometimes it still stayed on in bed with me. I was used to hearing those kinds of names at school from my classmates and asshole preps in the hallway, but it was different when it came from him, it was scary. I hated the prick, and there was absolutely no reason to be surprised by his behavior, considering he acted like ever since I came out to him, but it was just mind-blowing in a way. The pool of drool flowing from my mouth collected in a small, neat little puddle on the desk. Andy bumped my arm with his elbow and I woke up from my diseasing dream to see Mr. Beckinger walking down the row of desks leading up to ours. I wiped the drool from my face and stared at him, glancing harshly at student’s papers as they worked, his constantly criticizing and critical eyes cast down, all of us working like the little ant workers that we were, except me. I sat calmly and quietly as the desk, my elbows on the table, hands pressed against my face. Andy urged me to work on my paper, or at least look like I was working, but I refused. “I don’t care what that prick says to me” I looked at Andy with squinted eyes.
“Ok, man, but it’s your funeral.” He quickly lowered his head back down to his paper and began scribbling furiously on the paper in front of him. Mr. Beckinger grew closer to our desk, only a few feet away, pointing out a mistake a student was making on their paper, shaking his head in disapproving disgust. I in turn shook my head, wondering how the man that was our teacher could be such an amazing a-hole, much like my father. Maybe that’s why I hated him so much, because he always pushed me and everyone else around like he was some kind of fucking God or something. I hated them both with a passion.
“I looked over and saw Andy up from his paper, over my shoulder and right next to me where Mr. Beckinger stood with his arms folded and that harsh look glaring directly at me.
“Oh, God” I heard him mumble under his breath as he went back to work.
“And why aren’t we working on our paper, hm?” His heavy gaze never left my eyes.
“I don’t feel like doing it.” I rolled my eyes and stared directly ahead at nothing in particular. That pissed him off even more.
“Well, why the hell not? Too busy being a faerie?”
“Excuse me?” I looked up at him, unmistakably directing my focus, my field of vision beaming directly into his.
“What a queer” he rolled his eyes and shook his head, walking away.
I stood up from my desk, violently pushing my chair back. “Just let it go” I thought I heard Andy saw from the desk.
“What the hell did you call me?” I stood there, looking at him, my voice filled with intensity and purpose.
He turned around to look at me and shot me a mean look. “Sit down, young man. Right now.”
“Or what?” I kept that same eternal flame burning bright in my eyes, in my mind, and in my heart, just to let him know what he can do with all his homophobic name-calling bullshit.
“Sit down!” He yelled at me and watched the other kids in the class, all their eyes fixed between us, shifting from both opponents, like in a boxing match.
The reality of my situation and school and all the proper bullshit I had to abide my came pouring in as Andy forced me to sit by grabbing hold of my shirt and tugging me down. For a few more minutes our eyes followed each other, teacher and student, a showdown with eyes alone. I was determined to win.

The next day I came to class late, not differing from most days, but this time it was intentional, so as to ensure the spectacle I wanted. My footsteps echoed through the empty hallway leading up to the class that I was already seven minutes late for. Stragglers in the hallway looked at me, stood frozen, eyes bulging, looking like they were going to piss their pants at any minute. I gave a self-satisfied smile and cocked my head up, doing my best rooster strut towards the classroom at the end of the hall.
I shoved the door open, allowing the bittersweet scent of perfume I wore to enter the room and hang under everyone’s noses. Immediately my classmates’ heads jerked towards the door and every single on of their mouths dropped, except Andy’s. I hadn’t told him what I was up to, but I suspected he already knew. He knew I was too tired of Mr. Beckinger’s homophobia and all the rest of his tough guy BS to just stand idly by and take it. I stood there in the doorway, hands on my hips, adjusting the strap of my tube top, smacking my lips together to even out the fire engine red lipstick that spread across my lips. As I walked towards my desk, my black heels clicked on the boring tile floor, and every student gazed at me, hypnotized, looking at me from top to bottom, including Mr. Beckinger. I took my seat next to Andy and crossed my legs all lady-like, still smiling, unblinking.
The stunned, gaping-mouthed man at the front of the room that was our teacher finally snapped out of it and signaled for me to approach him at his desk. I obliged and carefully slid the chair I sat in behind me and began walking up to the front of the room, all the eyes of my classmates following every movement I made. He glared at me for a moment in hesitation, as if afraid to say something for fear of what I might say or do in return. Then the words, shaky and fearful, but none the less unmistakably Mr. Beckinger’s, came out of his mouth. “To the principal’s office. Now.” His face remained stern and hardened, but softened when I leaned over his desk, the fake sock-filled bra breasts under my tube top brushing his chest, puckered my lips, and gave him a kiss square on the lips. It was the lips of my father I was kissing, of every asshole jock and prep who called me names in the hallway and pushed me down and degraded me, like the asshole I was kissing then, the lips of a bitter, hate-filled old man, too deluded by his own world values and possibly religious convictions for this to have any impact on him, but none the less, I won. I looked over to Andy who was just shaking his head, frowning, and gave a wide, cheek-to-cheek smile and then a shrug, turning to walk out of the room and out of that hell-hole of a classroom.

I sat there quietly waiting in the principal’s office, adjusting my pink oval sunglasses, shifting my weight from side to side in the cushy maroon-colored seat that faced her large desk, papers scattered all along the top of it. The heel on my shoe clicked the front of the desk as I crossed my legs at the knee. The eyeliner I wore smeared as I batted an eyelash. I took hold of my short black skirt and gave it a tug to push it down a little, then looked at my watch. It was 8:30 in the morning, and I had been waiting for the principal to come in for a half an hour. Finally, she entered, dressed professionally in a smart navy blue business suit, carrying a briefcase and adjusting her black plastic glasses.
“Hello Sheryl.” I looked up at her from my chair, legs still crossed.
“Matthew, I’ve told you, don’t call me that. It’s Mrs. Owens.”
“Sorry, Sh--Mrs. Owens,” I caught myself before finishing. “I just thought that because we have such a history together, the formality of last names would be unnecessary.”
“Well, you thought wrong.” She looked down at me from behind her desk frowning. I was convinced that the reason she never smiled was either because she was on her period 24/7 or because she wore her hair in such a tight bun in the back of her head that it rendered her unable to express any form of happiness or joy.
“Why am I here, Mrs. Owens?” I looked at her with those falsely innocent eyes I loved to annoy the school’s administration with when I did something “wrong”.
“You know, Matt. You can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what?” I wanted to make her squirm.
“Matt, you can’t keep dressing like—”
“A person?” I looked at her straight on, unwavering.
“A woman. You’ve came to school wearing some pretty risqué things, but this is the worst.
“My biology teacher acted like an ass! He called me a queer!”
“I don’t want to hear it, Matt. We have a strict and simple dress-code here at the High School. You either abide by it or you go home and change into something more—”
“Butch?” I cut in again, just asking for the full fury of her wrath.
“More appropriate!”
I sighed and looked away, looked out the window as the students poured into the halls from their various classes through out the building, it was time for second hour to begin.
“Can I go now?”
“If you do this again, Matt, you’re expelled. Don’t test me.”
“You can’t expel me just because I don’t dress like the other guys do!”
“You can’t dress in drag, Mathew!” The words slipped angrily from her mouth, and in an instant I could tell she regretted what she said, not because it was an insensitive or dumb thing to say, but because it wasn’t “professional”.
“Whatever.” I uncrossed my legs and got up from the chair, bursting through her office door.
“Change your clothes, Matt!” She yelled at me from inside her office, and I raised a hand in the air, continuing out of the main office to my next class, hopelessly fighting a never-ending battle of student versus administration. I knew that every battle couldn’t be won, but the small victories in life are what make it worth while. But sometimes, life is such a drag.