Just Body Parts
by Avery Monedero, published posthumously
Forward by Monica Monedero
This is a story that was written by Avery Monedero, my trans daughter who took her life the day after Thanksgiving, 2021(https://medium.com/@monica94060/the-avery-series-table-of-contents-a748293ad95d).
She left behind an abundance of writing both hand written and in Google Docs. This story was called, “Book” in her Google Docs. It’s not complete so I added touches here and there to give clarity to the story, however, it’s her work. Most of it was written here in this work of fiction. I added elements from other stories and writings from her journals.
I was surprised by the main character — he seems to be completely opposite of traits I knew to be true about Avery. Since it’s fiction, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, but it did. She hated it when I would make gender stereotype statements like, “…women sometimes do that sort of thing” or “a typical guy thing to do.” So here’s this guy in the story making comparisons about feminine and masculine traits and it appears to be the main part of the story.
I always felt like she wanted us to see people as capable of embodying both masculine and feminine energy — and we all do this to a certain extent. She seemed to be exploring those who exhibited both to a higher degree, and trying to come up with a story around it.
I wish I knew where she was going to take this story! So, spoiler alert — it’s not a solid ending and probably was going someplace weird and might have been a great thriller. I’m publishing it here on Medium just to get more of her work out there because I know she would have done it eventually.
It’s 8 at night and winter here in San Francisco. It’s dark, chilly, but not cold. I am sitting on the stairs that lead up to my apartment and smoking, looking down at the line of tightly packed small cars that line my street. It’s dark in the apartment’s staircase because the light is out. The glow from my cigarette shines bright when I take a drag, but I’m guessing that is all that is visible of my presence.
There’s a girl in the car right in front of me, and I can see her from the overhead light in her car as she applies lipstick using her rear-view mirror. Once she perfects her lipstick application and dabs at it with a tissue, she leans over into the light and I can see her face perfectly — I find this vision mouth watering.
She picks up a black book, writes something then lays it down on the passenger seat.
My mind is wandering. I smoke too much weed. I think. I don’t do it terribly often, but when I do, I go all in, it affects me for days afterwards. My mind just isn’t as sharp and I don’t care as much about the little things in life worth loving.
I need to be sure that I’m always on top of my game, but I don’t want to be complacent. My mind, I need her to be sharp. I call her a her — my mind I mean. I call her a her because it’s a contradiction. Body parts, like everything else, have a spiritually significant gendered presence and I call them by a gender that provides meaning to me.
Most world languages understand this. English is one of the few languages to not characterize nouns as masculine or feminine. We have it wrong, but it makes our language a little more forward which is useful, but there is less of an artistic bend to it. Our language is masculine in that respect. The things in the world that create structure and rules and efficiency, those things that build buildings and conquer civilization; those are the things that are essentially masculine. Feminine things are that which create true freedom, sexuality, and beauty.
Most of the greatest art in the world was inspired by a real woman. This writing for instance, more on that later. Of course most of the world’s good art was created by men, not women. Look at every great painter, filmmaker, writer, songwriter (not a singer, but a songwriter, that is an important distinction) they are all men.
Art needs structure, so when a spirit as free and as open as a woman’s tries her hand at it the order gets in the way. Women poets are always much more free-form than the men. “Respect the craft,” was something an old writing professor would quip at many of the women in our class. Rules are important, and before one can create new ones, they have to know the old.
Back to my body, my mind is a woman because the mind is a machine for processing logic, yet it is also our emotional center. This is a contradiction, and contradictions are inherently feminine, so I call her a woman.
My heart is masculine. Obviously feelings don’t emanate from the heart, that’s a classic romantic image that gets torn up as you grow. He has one job, to manage blood, a quite rigid and precise affair, naturally he is a man.
For my dick, I call her a lady because I think it’s funny. But there is some truth to it when you think about it. It’s the part of the man that has no obsession with order and rules. It functions on its own logic. So in a sense it is feminine.
By the way, my name is Jacob. It’s what I am called. I have a lot of things to think about day to day, so I never have time to waste, but when I do, I enjoy my walks. Late at night I stroll around the streets with my cigarette and try to make connections where I can. The best kind of people are the ones I find at night. People with nothing to lose are invigorating. Sometimes just from seeing someone you sense a connection right off the bat. So many people feel this so often and suppress it. You go to a convenience store and the cashier cracks a joke that is just your sense of humor and now you will never forget them and come back in hopes that one day you end up sitting together listening to King Crimson albums on acid.
I’m very direct with these people and these connections. For me, there is no fear of rejection, if they reject me I just move on, no skin off my back.
People in cities build imaginary walls between themselves and those around them. Just like in the Pink Floyd song, it’s “just another brick in the wall” to keep yourself protected. I’m not worried, I need no protection and no wall. “Would you wanna hang out sometime?” A brief question that is followed by a brief answer. Yes or no. Why would so many people be afraid to ask this question? You will be less lonely.
Less lonely, or maybe I should say less alone, inside my own head. But how do we find a way to do this? By being with other people and trying to understand them and what makes them tick.
Seeing this woman in her car, I needed to approach the situation carefully. Too forward and I might scare her. I understand, a big bald guy with earrings walks up to her on a dark street. Creep alert. No no, I have to be careful. Am I staring? I’m staring. I hope she didn’t notice. Maybe when she gets out of the car I can offer her a cigarette?
She looks stunning. Her makeup is eye-catching, but not invasive. A classic, but intense dark black lipstick. Good choice girl. Her hair is long, thick and dark as it flows down her shoulders into the black, low cut, slit up the side dress. Classy but slutty, she knows the right balance. Girls like her are always the kind I have made an effort to befriend. Intense, almost like a witch. She’s a Goth. Something I wish I was in high school, but never had the courage to commit to.
She exits her car and I meander closer so as to not startle her, still puffing away casually at my cigarette. Not noticing me behind her on the sidewalk, she picks up speed until she is off in the opposite direction of where I stand. Damn. I can’t follow her. That would make the whole creep thing right. I see her off down the block as she disappears into the night.
I take a another deep drag off my cigarette, look around and then look into her car.
Maybe I can piece together enough about her so that I can form a narrative about us that I can drift off to sleep to. In the passenger seat is her little black book and a collection of empty wrappers, pens, crumbs, and an assortment of dirty receipts. A girl who defies the feminine laws of cleanliness. Intriguing.
Her keys. She left them in her car. San Francisco is not exactly famous for how little people break into cars so naturally I am going to have to help before someone else gets to these keys.
Lucky for me, and her, the door did not get locked so I slid right in and grabbed her keys. After locking the doors, I jog off in the direction she left for.
She was gone. My assumption is that someone on this block has a party. And I am not invited? Come on. Their loss.
What to do? I know — I’ll grab that black book, they usually have the owner’s phone number written inside somewhere. I’ll text her, tell her I have her keys, we have a brief but impactful conversation, and then we are able to form a baseline connection. Something to build off of. From there, we can catch a coffee and head to the park. One thing leads to another and bam we are married! Of course it never happens that fast, but from that first meeting we have something to build off of.
Never making that initial connection hurts so much worse than a breakup ever could. When a breakup happens, it means all options have been exhausted, you can’t save the relationship. You can move on knowing you did what you could to make it work, but you need to move on. However, when you never even find the courage to make the first move, you always regret it. The problem is that the first move is harder than the rest. Even if you end up hating the person, at least you have that first date to confirm that things won’t work out.
Uncertainty drives me up the wall, makes me feel anxious and keeps me up at night. I’m uncertain all the time so I don’t get much sleep. I need that confirmation so I can find the courage to make my first move. My hope is that the black book will tell me a story so I open up her passenger side door, take her book under my arm, lock her door and head on up to my apartment.
Earlier I mentioned my writing here as being inspired by a woman. But really, my inspiration was not a real woman. She is the woman who inhabits my body. She lives inside me, but I do think of her as real.
Outwardly, I look like the man you would expect me to be. The one who owns a small construction company. I was taught this trade by my father at a young age. He had me hammering from the time I was 4. He roped me into this by saying we would build tree houses, but we never did.
Once I learned the trade, it came easy to me, and I got lazy about learning anything else. After all, people have paid me well since I was 17 to construct things that seemed complicated to them, but easy for me. So here I am, stuck doing this work that doesn’t fit what I feel on the inside. But isn’t that true for many people? We do what others think we should do not searching inside ourselves for how we really want our lives to play out.
So back to the woman inside me. She’s the one who decided I should name different parts of my body. She’s the one who sees things as either feminine or masculine. She likes to say that when you are a man, you have certain thoughts and behave in certain ways. I have discussions with her in my head about this. I say, if that is true, why do I feel more full of contradictions? She says I’m different. I knew nothing else. I was brought up around mostly men in a man’s world. Even my mother taught to be a man.
And, yet there is always this woman inside me telling me what to do. I know she is me, but again, because of the contradiction of me being a man and feeling like a woman, I treat her as someone else who inhabits my body, but try to find ways to merge the masculine and the feminine aspects.
At this point in my life, I want to understand this woman more but have no models other than television and books. I want to get inside a woman’s head to understand who she is so I can know who I am.
Maybe this girl’s black book can help.
As I carry the book under my arm up the stairs to my apartment, I find myself hoping it’s more than merely dates and phone numbers. Will it reveal who she is, can I get to know her and understand her? I want her. But I also want to be her. I wish I understood this contradiction.
I turn on the light and lock the door behind me. I study my reflection holding the black book in the full length mirror next to my door. Who is this man staring back at me who has chosen such a masculine image to present to the world? Did I choose it, or was it chosen for me because I have a penis?
I get down on my knees and look under my bed where I keep a large suitcase of my cherished, female possessions. I pull the case and open it to thumb through the soft and silky contents. It’s my women’s clothing, jewelry, shoes and purses. Yes, the man in the mirror owns these clothes and sometimes wears them. In our world, this is sometimes laughable which gives me anxiety. I don’t want to be laughed at and this is when my masculinity takes over — when I am insecure. Maybe it’s a defensive reaction to uncertainty.
When I wear these clothes, I become her/she. She sits by herself and has discussions with phantom girl friends — friends only that is, not in a sexual or romantic way — just sharing ideas that can only be expressed through a feminine mystique. In these conversations we say that a woman would better be able to manage affairs in the world because of our more spiritual and compassionate nature. But there is also a sexual component because she/me is attracted to women, not all women, just some.
The woman who owns the black book is just my type sexually. The darkness of her eyeliner and lipstick, and the slutty, black slit dress. And yet, I also want to be her. This is new for me. I can usually separate the two, but not with her. Maybe it’s because I don’t know her and am making this up as I go along? I don’t know who she is so I open the book to find out.
Aria. Her name is Aria, no last name is given.
My wish was granted. She uses this book as a journal. Her phone number and name are written on the first page with a note that reads, “if found call….”
The writing on the pages are notes about her days and observations about people and things. It appears she doesn’t use this book for addresses and phone numbers which makes sense because most people use phones for that. There are names and phone numbers occasionally written on corners of pages that were probably written quickly when her phone was not available.
But mostly, its words. Her words being used as devices to create pictures of situations. Sometimes it’s poetry, sometimes it’s just writing, but it’s always about her feelings.
I have to admit, I was hoping for a little more sex. But there didn’t seem to be much of that although she touched on it, but didn’t describe it — damn! I was hoping to figure out what turned her on.
As I went on, I realized she did write about sex, but without the physical descriptions. She seemed more interested in how it made her feel and where it was going. When it wasn’t a good sexual interaction, she ended it quickly. When it was, it became a romance novel of writing about the object of her affection constantly and nothing else.
I read though her book all night and forgot about trying to call her before she left wherever she was. When I came to the last part of her writing, I realized she was heading into her latest love interest’s apartment. He lived just around the corner from me — she had written the address a few pages back. She was going in to give him an ultimatum, but she didn’t say anything else.
I grabbed the book and left my apartment to see if her car was still there — it was! I still had her keys and unlocked the door, and placed the book where I found it. Then, I kept the keys and locked her car door and went back to my spot on the stairs and lit a cigarette.
The sun had risen and I sat there and smoked about 3 cigarettes when I saw her round the corner headed toward her car. She was digging through her purse as she headed to the driver side of her car. She hesitated and continued to dig through her purse.
She hadn’t noticed me sitting on the stairs when I called out, “Are these your keys?”
She looked startled and said, “yes, how did you get them?”
“I was walking home this morning and saw them on the ground right in front of the car and guessed whoever owned the car must have dropped them there. I thought I’d wait around to see if anyone showed up and if not, I’d leave a note on the car — but here you are — so here you go.”
She looked at me gratefully. I noticed she looked tired, disheveled and her beautifully applied eyeliner from last night was now stained on her cheeks. Her eyes were red and swollen. She approached me to take the keys and I handed them to her. Her hands were shaking as she took them from me. I could smell alcohol permeating from her body as she stood close.
“Are you ok to drive?” being careful to sound gentle and compassionate, traits I knew were important to her having read this in her journal.
She sighed, “Honestly? I don’t know.” as she gently fell onto the step below where I sat.
“Can I have one of those?” she said pointing to the pack of cigarettes that sat next to me.
I handed her a cigarette and held out my lighter to light it for her. I also knew how important this was to her from reading about it in her journal. I was beginning to see how easy “getting to know her” might actually be because of my intimate knowledge of her deepest thoughts.
She smiled sweetly and thanked me for the cigarette and the light then leaned back on the wall as if she planned to stay awhile.
The End?
