Chapter Fifteen
Jackie
Let me tell you about Jackie. My other roommate. The quiet one. The Pokemon loving gamer girl. She’s a tall
girl, which she hates about herself. She
likes to think of herself as petite. She’s
30, a brunette, with a pale complexion, and an open, kind, friendly smile. She was
born and raised in San Diego, and is without a doubt, a California girl.
She was raised in an oppressive evangelical Christian
family with a narcissistic mother.
Autistic and isolated in her full-on cult-style existence, the poor kid
never had a chance. But then came going
away to college, and coping mechanisms, and failing out of college, discovering
that she had Dissociative Identity Disorder, and gender self-discovery, coming
out, transition, banishment from the family, and failed relationships. She met Jill on Twitter, and despite her
being old enough to be Jackie’s mother, the rest, as they say, was
history. Jill took Jackie with her on
her mission to found New Themyscira, the trans asylum colony, in the South of
France.
Look, I don’t know how woke or whatever you may or may
not be. That’s not my concern, but I
need you to understand the situation in the United States of America for trans
people at the time, and it’s fair to say that shit did not look to be going
well for them. Rights were being
removed. They were being challenged legally
and assaulted in public places. Jill
wanted to build someplace that trans and nonbinary people could be safe. The idea was to start with a big house in the
ancient French village called Villemagne L’Argentiere and raise money and
expand. Her vision was that, in a 100
years, the whole village would be mostly trans people. Jackie bought the whole deal. They went to France, and Jill got the flu, then
pneumonia, then withdraws from her meds.
The team that was supposed to meet them there, all shit the bed and
bailed on the deal when the chips were down.
Jill had shit go down with her remaining funds, and that was that. Jill
had to sell the house in France to settle her debts, and after three months of
living in the idyllic French mountain river valley village with ancient Roman
walls, and they were back in the States, destitute, and soon to be homeless.
Certain forces (i.e. family members) that did not care
for Jill’s Trans Separatism had caused some legal trouble, and there was talk
that she would soon be going to prison.
Jill gave Jackie some money and sent her to live with some Twitter
friends that had invited her. And so it
was that Jackie ended up in Albany, doing transcriptions and cam work for a
living. It wasn’t much later that Jill
joined her up there, after the legal clouds had receded and prison no longer
looked likely. Jill got her job at the
auto parts place, they got their own apartment, and that’s pretty much where
they were when I met them, crashed at their place, and become their friend,
despite me being a supervillain.
Jackie is the best.
She has an optimism that inspires me.
(c) Copyright 2019 Diana Hignutt
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