Dream of Roger Rabbit and crossdresser/transsexual analogies

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

     Context:

          At Holly's talking Sci-Fi heroines
          Reading a monologue for Molly Millions of Neuromancer
          Playing Vase and Vase's younger cover-self


We've been waiting in the café for it to show up. Me and a few other humans. I embody the Scruffy Bastard, the P.I. with my trench and my hair and my posture, my attitude. I jam my fedora on and head outside.

           Much like the Trickster I saw in a dream five years ago.

Los Angeles,
      sepia and dusty. Caught between an imagined Film Noir past and a sprawling complex future.

"Get in the Limo [Amy's boy name]," they say.

It's like a wide stretch limo. Glistening black. Takes up the whole lane. But inside there are rows and rows of seats - it's basically a passenger van.

Through an open window, I can see that back seat is full of muppets and dancing Warner Brothers insects. There's space near the driver. I get in and hunker down in the footrest area. This car is huge. The driver isn't even in this row. There's an extra three-seat row ahead of me.

I squeeze back onto the red cushion seats. I look over the racoons talking to each-other and the Mickey clone in the back. I know we're headed in the direction of Toontown. I watch the freeways glide past. I am reserved. Shut in.

We pull into a rive through and everyone places an order. Veggie Burger. $8.51 with tax. High quality, sizable, hot.

"America - food's so cheap and big here." I mumble as I pull it out, trying not to get grease on my hat in my lap. Then I'll pass the greasy paper bag to my right. Over the raccoons with their crawfish and their fries. To a woman with auburn hair.

           Like a Jessica Rabbit if she was drawn like someone you might pass on the street without noticing.


I saw her in the cafe earlier. Small, white, red dress. Crow's feet. She's a Toon. But high-fid. Like from Paperman or some 2D Pixar.

Her movements, here posture - they're off. Natural. Very natural.

That person is wearing a toonsuit.

I negotiate past the raccoons and give her the bag close up. I introduce. Dapper-like. Offer her her greasepacket with a bit of flirt. Her name's Amanda.


 

"How much does one of those run? I've been looking."

Amanda looks. She knows I'm not being a creep. Toonsuits take a lot of that.

"Not cheap." She tilts her head in confidence. "$8.95. To start."

What? Burger's fucking eight and a half.

"Indestructable?" I ask.

She thinks about that. Cannonballs. Anvils. Dynamite. "Pretty much. You still age and die though."



"I'm looking for something long-term. You know where you can hook me up?"

She appraises. She knows I'm in on the sisterhood. We do this for-each-other. She agrees.



Turns out, the car is headed that way; last stop before Toontown. And I want to get out. That tinny chorus of singing crickets bothers my ears.

Get out. Stretch. The car sails off without us. Postindustrial neighbourhood. Lots of toon-spectrum services, but not doing so good economically. Shuttered windows. I guess it's all the CGI 3-D, putting them out of business.

Looks like a costume liquidation front. Racks and racks of every garb imaginable. They're not illegal. Not by law. But it's not done. Serious social consequences. Unhoused. Unemployed. You're cut off from Humans and Toons.

"Here are some options." She has rows and rows. Ducks. Badgers. I want humans. One of Amanda's friends is there. Similar sketch, similar attire. Also small.

"What about long-term? Aren't you afraid that thing will come off?" I ask.

Uncomfortable, she paws at the flap that conceals the zipper at her neck.

"It won't."

But it worries her. We're enough on the same wavelength - she passes me a printout. A profile of some kind.

"I feel like shit when I'm human. A flesh-human. Unattractive. Hated. People avoid me."

She's looking down. I look at the profile. Male-assigned. Shut-in. Thyroid problem. Internet Crossdresser. Yeah, I get it.

"Well, I'm looking for something permanent-"

And there's a gap between us.

               As there often is between crossdressers and transsexuals.


"King bear will punish you if she catches you-"

King bear runs Toontown. Permanent work confers immortality. Of a sort. So if it's imprisonment, that would suck.


"-We're talking dip." she concludes with gravitas.
 

Dip? That's just death. Now, as a Toon, you might not have a soul outside of your body - like a faerie, so when you're dead, you're probably dead - but humans probably don't either. Theologians differ.

"I'll take my chances. Look. I feel cut off from the archetypes here."

All those characters and none of them speak to me. With me.


She can get me the suit, but that's just the first stage. The binding of it; the erasing of the human body inside. That will be done elsewhere. It's painful, risky, relatively expensive, and a one-way trip.

Amanda's friend wants no part of this. She walks off.

"So..." she says, offering a bunch of toonsuits.

They're full, so the nerves work, and it would be nice to fix my clit. But I don't want this. It's nice, but there are some assumptions built into these. About what it means to be a woman in this society. Normative. And these suits, these indestructable suits. You can't change yourself once yo're in them. You are stuck with that dress, that hair. You can't weld in that.

"What's over there?" I gesture.

A reappropriated three-story parking garage with people on-top... fighting?

She looks at me like I've lost my mind.

But she'll help.





Upstairs now. One said garage. Yes. This. Something less cartoony. More badass. Not WB or disney even.

"You know these aren't indestructable."

Yeah, I know. Not kids cartoons. Death's a reality with real story consequences.

As the price, they're going to make you fight for it. And then they shove me off the roof.

On the way down, Amanda tosses me some green and blond outfit. I look at it, and cast it aside. I am not looking for this twiggy Sailor Moon shit or some Fire and Ice or Heavy Traffic with her tits hanging out.


Amanda may really be the wrong person to help me with this.


I'm supposed to be in-role at this point. But I'm still me. And some half-animated linebacker is charging at me. And I'm still human: fragile and kind of shit in a one-on-one. I duck away, round a pillar, up a ramp. Boxes and boxes of potential people

Fuck. Don't they have an Akima or a Kusanagi or a Samus? The race thing might be a bit hard to sxplain inthe first two, and I don't like how Samus is drawn later, but I'm drawing a fucking blank here on "adult women in cartoons who are practically dressed and capable in exactly these circumstances." I need an archetype. One of them might have to do.

This guy is on me. Gaining points. Apparently I can lose OR die OR both.

The people who run this fucked up place? They want a fight?

   I don't know how to duel, how to scrap. I don't play-fight-fair.

      But I can fuck someone up.

He comes around the corner and I plow into him. Back down the incline, his feet wheeling with me, trying to keep upright. And accelarting into a concrete pillar, my head under his sternum. His diaphram spasming. One hand on his throat and another ready for his face.
   Get this asshole to back off long enough and I can find a suit.

But I see numbers.

    Points. Mad points. Victory is on it's way.



I am breathing heavily, trying to pin his arms. The trench is gone. The shaggy blond hair is gone. The scruffy bastard archetype. The Private Investigator is gone. Short black and cut-it-yourself purple hair, tear-streaked eyeshadow, cargo pants, a few wrinkles and some blood on my mouth. It's not action-hero sociopathic violence finesse but gym-prepped muscles, adrenaline and some trades-learned leverages that pick this guy up and slam him into the pillar again. A growl from my glottis. Spittle mixed with blood. He turns away, cowed.

I don't know what you call this person.
       She is no genteel knight. I adhere to no chivalric norms here.

       Here's an archetype.


Breathing heavily. Present. The people who runs this, they like that.


          This. This is me.
               No suit. Flesh and blood.

The breathing, that presence. It breaks the dream open. And I'm awake.