Argonaut

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly…” Kay Sapling began reading to her son.

Peter Brooks had given Jason the book as a gift at his seventh birthday party. Now, cuddled up in bed, the real gift began from mother to child. A gift that flowed like a river of milk sustaining everyone who brought the fluid to their lips.

Jason had always struggled to pay attention in school. This story grabbed his attention and wouldn’t let go. The characters looked like his own relatives, even as they lived in a faraway country across the sea full of castles and magic. Jason wanted to go there and attend school and learn all those arcane secrets from those dusty tomes. Kay made it through chapter five without stopping on the first try.

After that Jason was never without a book in his hand, though his mother still read Harry Potter to him. His ambition to learn to read had been fueled with exciting stories of fantastic beasts, and wizard’s duels. This was a short drive to King Arthur’s Court, wandering Odysseus, and Bilbo Baggins. Jason wanted to be at the center of every adventure, and books were his vessel on this river of language.

Though it was Kay’s duty to provide the bedtime story, it was Ernie recommending books, and giving them as gifts. Ernie had been Kay’s boyfriend ever since Jason could remember. A mustachioed doctor with thick curly hair was Ernest Buckley.

It was Ernie that bought Jason’s first copy of The Hobbit. It was Ernie who told Jason that smart people read books, and dumb people watched TV. And it was Ernie that wielded knowledge with the power of authority. The man was a doctor after all.

“He’s the smartest man I know, besides my daddy,” Kay had told Jason on several occasions.

“You are smart the same way they are smart,” was the conclusion.

Poor little Nancy resented the attention that Jason was receiving. She wasn’t old enough to sit still for a novel, even Harry Potter, and she was left out of the fun for another year or so. The little sister was amenable to pretending to be characters from the book. Jason set the terms for play as the older sibling.

One day, Jason and Nancy were playing Hogwarts in the woods behind their house on Mount Sequoyah. They were using sticks for wands. A game of hide and seek meets tag made the rules for their wizard’s duel. Harry Potter was now cemented into the public mind. Now, there were films and video games about Harry. Nancy had long outgrown her resentment and had begun the process of her sorting. Jason and Nancy were both proud Gryffindor’s, as if there was any other house. They fritted and fratted from one tree to another, casting spells, and throwing hexes.

“Wingardian Leviosa, now I’ve picked you up and I’ll drop you on your head!” Jason shouted, setting the terms for the play.

“Expelliarmus, I’ve knocked your wand out of your hand,” Nancy retorted.

“No you didn’t!” Jason yelled.

“Did too!”

“Well, I pick it up then,” Jason threw his wand a pitiful distance and picked it up, “and I use it to turn you into a puppy!”

“You can’t do that!” Nancy screamed.

“Can too!”

“No you can’t, you didn’t say the spell!” Nancy concluded.

“Don’t be boring!” Jason scoffed.

“I’m not boring!” Nancy’s voice trembled from the insult. Kay told anyone who would listen about how easy it was to hurt Nancy’s feelings.

“Look, I didn’t mean it sis, it’s just good for game,” Jason knew he had pushed it.

“Ok, well if I’m a puppy, then I’m going to turn you into a girl!” A mocking tone in Nancy’s voice arose.

“I didn’t agree to that!” Jason hollered.

“Too late, I did it, you have to wear skirts!” Nancy giggled.

“But I turned you into a puppy!”

“And the puppy turned you into a girl!” Nancy stuck her tongue out.

That night Jason played Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the family computer. This was the first video game in the series that let the player be Harry, Ron, or Hermione. The character selection was cooperative, all three characters under the control of the player. Jason played as Hermione whenever the game would let him. The way she walked was different from the way Harry and Ron walked. Her hair bouncing along with the swaying of her hips, and the rustling of her skirts.

Jason always felt a pang of guilt at how much he enjoyed the video games. Dudley Dursley was characterized as a bully and a lout precisely because of his dependence on computer games in the first novel. Ernie always said video games were for idiots.

“Hey buddy what’re you doing?” Ernie said as he entered the computer room.

“Oh, you know,” Jason swallowed unexpected embarrassment at being caught playing as the girl.

“What do I know?” asked Ernie.

“Oh, you know, Potter,” Jason shrugged.

“This is a computer game?” Ernie exclaimed, “holy smokes, I thought it was a movie, it looks so good.”

“Games have looked like this since the 90s Ernie,” Jason argued.

“Well, when I was 20 there was Pong, how old are you?” Ernie fired back.

“What’s Pong?”

“It’s tennis with two lines and a ball that go beep,” Ernie concluded, “that’s what video games used to be, and people were as obsessed with it back then, as they are now.”

A chorus of cicadas cued the fading twinkling of the stars upon the stage of life. The orange moon shined on the cozy college town of Fayetteville, Arkansas, once upon a warm autumn’s night full of chance and opportunity. The climb was steep up the driveway to the two-story house on Jimmie Ave. Strapping young Jason Sapling lost a shoe on the way up. Getting on the brown leather loafer in the dark proved a hassle. Jason tiptoed on his sock up to the door to join his parents.

“Throw a shoe cowboy?” Paula asked her stepson.

Paula was wearing a leopard print top under a black cardigan. Jason gazed jealously at his stepmom’s skinny jeans and high boots. Finely sculpted marathon legs enshrouded in an inviting sea of denim that beached with a glorious wave round as the moon. Paula always described her figure as somewhat masculine, on account of her A cup, but Jason didn’t get it. Not that Jason was busy picturing his dad’s love life, Paula was just sexy, regardless of the dynamics.

The family at the house on Jimmie was not sexy. The chubby Italians were too warm and welcoming for the forbidden allure of the erotic. Jason slipped his loafer on at the staircase that greeted the entrance of the house before accepting the invitation for names and hugs. Besides his mother, father, and stepmother there were four or five other adults in the living room shaking hands and offering an embrace.

“I hope you don’t mind but this is a hugging house,” said Mr. Mangione before going in.

Mr. and Mrs. Mangione were the chubby Italians who owned the house. Robyn was an ER doctor, while Chuck was a stay-at-home dad. Chuck had attended St. Benedict’s in the 80s. Joe Spivey knew Chuck at St. Benedicts and had run into Jason with his dad at the Razorback’s game. Scott Breed was the enrollment advisor at St. Benedicts.

Jason’s best friend Sam Mangione had spent the fall semester at St. Benedicts. Sam had begged Jason to put in the application from the practice field of Ramay Junior High. Running into Joe Spivey at the football game and hearing how his boy, John Rex, was playing starting quarterback had convinced Jason’s father, Oliver.

Oliver Sapling was a walk on for the Arkansas Razorbacks in college, and young Jason wanted nothing less than to be just like his father.

After all the “how do you dos?” and “fine, thank yous” the group huddled around the living room television and watched a DVD. A fairly typical mother, complete with bob and gold jewelry, discussed with long and windings roads among the white oaks of the Ozarks.

“All of a sudden we passed a hill, and there it was, a majestic castle in the setting Sun,” the woman’s enthusiastic grin came through the speakers.

The television showed a picture of St. Benedict’s Academy for Boys outlined in crimson Helium. Jason had seen pictures of the place several times. The swelling piano struck him as manipulative, and he resented being forced to care for the beauty of monastic craftsmanship. The football field taught Jason that the only beauty was ruined beauty, and the best things in life were crushing an opponent. Not that this lesson could ever be formulated inside Jason’s teenaged mind. In fact, this aggression was suppressed by, “I will be just like my dad,” and Jason supplied his own soundtrack from the underdog sports movies he watched. A hypocritical arena where sentimentalities competed against each other to the death for the right to memory, that was the mind of Jason Sapling. Along with every other child whose parents tucked them into bed at night with, “God bless my gifted child.”

Jason thought St. Benedict’s looked like Hogwarts.

Jason’s mom, Kay, whole heartedly agreed. Kay had raised Jason on those books. Jason had learned to read because he wanted to play Quidditch, and fight duels.

The advisor, Mr. Breed, invited Jason to the new kid sleep over program on a November weekend. It would obviously be in his best friend Sam’s dormitory.

Jason hugged his dad and Paula goodbye before he got into his mom’s car. The plan was set for his visiting weekend. The possibility of his attendance at St. Benedict’s Academy for boys certainly seemed on the table. That night Jason stole some of his mom’s underwear and makeup. The pink panties swelled his pink pecker before he utterly creamed his bedding in dreams of the gentle and the soft.

The only thing good about that bleak afternoon was that it was Friday. Jason was surprised to see his mom’s Honda Pilot in the Ramay parking lot. He was sure it was his dad’s weekend. Jason’s mother, Kay, was wearing gray sweats with a matching hoodie. She looked exhausted.

It had become a family ritual that Kay would take her son for chicken nuggets at the Burger King. Jason always hated his school’s cafeteria food, no matter the school or cafeteria. He religiously ate PB&J for his school lunch, and his mom took him to Burger King after school to break the fast with chicken nuggets.

Jason had a bellyful of nuggets, fries, and Dr. Pepper when it was all unsettled by a question from his mother.

“Why do you have my underwear in your bedroom?”

Jason was silent.

His silence was almost involuntary, for he was truly at a loss. The horror at being cornered for things he wasn’t sure of himself was overwhelming. His stomach start to hurt. Jason had just retroactively learned that the practice he engaged in at nights was called masturbation when some kids at school used the unfamiliar term “jacking off.”

“I don’t know mom,” was all he could say.

Kay stared at her son. Her look was contemplative and sad.

The suburban decay of small college town life floated by one McDonald’s at a time. The car sailed down College Blvd. on a listless course to nowhere.

“Does it turn you on? Do you know what that means?” Kay asked.

“Yeah…” Jason squeaked through mouse tight lips.

“Are you gay?” Kay’s voice broke with the question.

“No! Mom it’s not like that!” Jason played defense.

“Is it because I let you have my Victoria Secret catalogues?” There were tears in Kay’s eyes.

“Mom, I swear, I’m just pretending,” Jason went back to his favorite hobby. He was always in costume as one character or another. Sometimes Spider-Man, at other times Harry Potter, recently it had been Indiana Jones.

Ever since Jason’s budding sexuality had started to blossom into mattress stains the pretending had become distinctly feminine. Jason had fantasies of sexual metamorphosis fueled from reading Ovid, and Homer. He dreamed and prayed God would turn him into a woman or an animal or anything other than what he was. How could he explain any of this to the woman who raised him? Thinking of her in association with his bizarre bedroom tastes was revolting. Better to remain silent.

“You have to promise me something,” Kay looked her son in the eye.

The silence felt like hours to Jason before he realized he needed to reply to end the awkwardness.

“Yeah…”

“Please don’t tell your dad,” Kay sniffed.

“Oh…” Jason embraced the silence like an old friend.

“You know he loves you, but he wouldn’t understand this,” Kay continued after a swallow, “and I don’t expect the other boys at St. Benedicts would either.”

The look on Jason’s face said everything about crossdressing at St. Benedict’s.

“He loves you, but this would scare him enough that he would try to take you away from me,” Kay concluded.

“You really think dad would do that?” Jason didn’t want to think of his dad as capable of something like that.

“Yeah…” it was Kay’s turn to be silent.

“Did you get your Spanish homework done?” Oliver asked his son over dinner.

“What Spanish homework?” Jason’s eyes went kitty cat dish round.

“The Spanish homework you left at your mom’s today,” Oliver’s paternal senses were alarmed.

“Oh yeah, I got that,” Jason had almost forgotten the cover story that his mom had given him for their little chat. It was technically Oliver’s weekend, so that Kay picking Jason up from school was odd.

“What’s wrong?” Oliver’s alarmed paternal feelings were as persistent and anxious as the day he watched Larkin drive in Gladden in the 1991 World Series from the television in the hospital waiting room.

“Nothing dad,” Jason’s lips were sealed.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” it was daddy’s turn to have round eyes.

“Nothing dad!” There was fear in Jason’s voice. The last time Oliver had heard Jason use this tone of voice it was from him having an accident and trying to hide it. A child’s mess that Oliver cleaned with infinite patience.

Jason was hiding nothing, and at the same time was giving nothing away. A swirling twister squirreled his insides as he clung to the truth like a life preserver. There was a painful silence between father and son. The silence of a thought that needed speaking confronting a reality that wouldn’t allow that thought to surface.

“I don’t want to see secret keeping when you go to St. Benedicts…” Oliver started.

“Of course, I tell you everything,” Jason’s heart twisted a little more as he said this.

“I’m going to respect this one, because it’s your mom,” Oliver’s eyes plainly showed his disbelief, “you know I love you, no matter what.”

“Let’s play catch, I gotta practice,” Jason desperately wanted to change the subject.

Thus commenced the sacred ritual of passing the ball in the yard. A ritual that had been at the forefront of play between Jason and Oliver. Jason ran post, flag, and fly routes and Oliver was the quarterback. This had been the lessons, and methods of Jason going out for junior high football. He was determined to be just like his dad. That didn’t stop Jason from borrowing Paula’s lingerie.

“Has anyone seen my pink thong?” Paula asked the family over the TV that night, sending Jason slinking towards his room to drop the evidence down the house’s laundry chute.

That Saturday Jason and Paula spent playing Guitar Hero, and marathon watching seasons of Law and Order. Jason’s sister Nancy was at a friend’s, and Oliver was playing golf. Paula and Jason had the day to themselves. Burger King, popcorn, and ice cream were the order of the day.

In the car on the way from Shake’s Frozen Custard, Paula said to her stepson, “you know, I never thought I wanted kids.”

Jason pondered this between spoonfuls of vanilla.

“I know it’s shallow, I didn’t want to get fat,” Paula giggled.

“Like this isn’t going to make you fat?” Jason motioned with the frozen treat.

“Stupid, I know, but that’s how I felt!” Paula explained over the gentle riffs of Slash’s rocking Sweet Child O Mine,

“When I met you and Nancy with your dad at the Chuck E. Cheese that night, I knew that you and Nancy were going to be my kids.”

“Sweet of you to say that Paula,” Jason had heard this before.

“I don’t mean to say I’m replacing your mom, I hope you don’t feel that way,” she continued.

“We know you don’t mean it that way, Nance and me, why you being so emotional,” Jason teased.

“Oh estrogen,” Paula said in her playful way.

Jason turned green whenever Paula flaunted her feminine wiles in this way. The silence that hung around his neck weighed him down with jealousy. Paula was pretty, and in her own way, had an amazing fashion sense. Jason wanted these things even as his ignorance of them was overwhelming.

“Guns N’ Roses is so badass,” was all Jason could think to say.

“GnR baby, woooooo!” Paula whooped and hollered down Crossover towards Par Court.

Swirling testosterone sea, open your whirlpools with swallowing, and let Jason seek that golden fleece. A sequined number that looks damn hot and dams the fluids of the form’s masthead. Pillage your stepmom’s makeup you piratical argonaut and let loose the arrows of bra straps and thigh highs. All tied with the rigging of sunkissed golden hair that looks like it could two step with Fred Astaire from the sacred altar of Tee Cee Diem.

Jason sings to himself, “I fell pretty, oh so pretty, but I want titties, with hippies, I pray!” But he does not dance, for he does not know the steps. Won’t somebody ask this poor little girl to dance and lead her away. Nay, for she leads herself, which is why Jason stole the fleece anyway.