As I close the creative side of my latest project out, it gives me joy to share this with you. The following is the opener of She’s The Man ripped straight from the Be A Man Universe. She’s The Man differs greatly from its predecessor in tone and pace. I can’t wait until I can get this in your hands, but for right now, take a glance at the hardest story to write: She’s The Man.
Looking in the mirror had always been my favorite pastime. When I woke up in the morning, I stared at myself, looking back at the plain jane girl in the mirror for at least three minutes. Partly to wake myself up, but the sole reason I needed to do that was because I was me. I know that makes no sense, but I am me and this is my story. A spattering of freckles across my nose that were slightly darker than my skin, I noticed every one of them. The chubbiness in the cheeks came from either my Mom’s side of the family with the fat faces or my love of peanut butter cups. The hair! Oh my, the hair. Since I turned nine, I had it coming from here and there. At my age, the amount of hair on my head was an understatement considering I had it growing on my legs, arms, armpits, and undercarriage. My identical twin even pointed out the stray hairs leaking out of my nose from time to time. It remained tough for me to be me with my flaws.
The mirror also told my story. It was me looking back at me. I didn’t look in the mirror to see Brielle, my identical twin. Brielle and I were identical in DNA alone. Other than our faces, our looks grew distinct. However, our fat faces still told the same story: identical twins. The mirror every morning greeted me without fail. Every day, I grew closer to womanhood. Stephen, my older brother, would often yell at me to get out of the bathroom so he could brush his teeth while I stared at Rachelle Amanda Arlene in the bathroom’s mirror. I didn’t care. He would repeatedly leave piss on the back of the toilet and the toilet seat up knowing he and I shared the same bathroom, but that was my brother. I had to remain cordial to him. He was just lucky enough that he didn’t have to share a bathroom with all five of his sisters, or there would be trouble.
My life continued being a complex web of everything. My parents were great but had to split their time raising six children. I would have loved to call myself a Daddy’s girl, but my father had too many. He and I would mostly bond over sports and him talking about work. My father taught me everything I knew about basketball and baseball, and for that, I loved him so much. My mother was my rock. Out of all my siblings, Brielle and I looked the most like her. A high school dropout, my mother had always been beautiful. At the ripe old age of thirty-four, she remained the most exquisite woman we all knew. That was until unless she had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She and I bonded on life as women.
Ever since coming to her as a nine-year-old frantic about my first menstrual cycle, my mother took me under her wing. Teaching me how to be a lady, how to talk, and how to smile were all topics in Amanda Arlene’s school of charm. At least once per month, she would invade my personal space and ask me about acquiring a boyfriend. At fourteen, I didn’t need a boyfriend. I needed to perfect my jump shot so I might beat my older sister, Stephanie, in one-on-one basketball and maintain my perfect grade point average.
However, life with my parents wasn’t all bad. Food on the table, clean clothes on our backs, and lots of yelling and cussing at the dinner table was the norm for us. My Mom’s goal was to teach all of her girls how to get married, and my father’s goal was to teach us all how to be a man. That’s where life got complicated for me. I could never be a man, but perhaps I would learn to act like one. At the end of it all, I had to look at myself in the mirror and be happy with those results.
As fate would have it, life does not end when people hate you. It’s tough saying this as a teenager when everything around you seems so unreal and unfair. As a freshman in high school, everyone constantly compared me to my older brother and sister in almost every way. It was tough as I played sports alongside my older sister and identical twin sister, as I needed to find my identity. When I came home every day, I needed to grow into being my own person to appease my family. Thank goodness, my two younger sisters do not think of me as just a twin or someone that doesn’t have a voice. Cynthia and Lisa treat me like an individual. Mostly, my twin treats me like an individual. Being referred to as the name “twin” gets me angry, and it was time for a change.
Be A Man Universe 