The Merry Misogynist

the eleven billionth time at the celestial error between his legs, hoping that overnight it might have made up its mind. This way or that? One or the other?
    His mother had made that call early on in his life. She’d thought the little dresses and pink ribbons from the missionary’s sewing box might prod her son⁄daughter off the fence .
    “ But she’s getting so tall,” dumb Father had said. “The face isn’t a girl’s at all .”
    Mother ignored him. She persevered. She even coached her only child in the arts of womanhood .
    A mockery at school .
    Every single waking day a nightmarish humiliation .
    Swimming through rocks .
    The word ‘Miss’ was on his national identity card so this gawky, hairy-chinned female, still in his mother’s pink ribbons, waded uncomfortably through life to the age of fourteen. And then, all at once, the strings snapped .
    There was a war on. Neighbours were shocked but not particularly surprised to find the husband and wife hacked to death in their own home with a machete. The odd daughter was missing, presumed violated and dead. And Phan’s life began. It was an awful, violent period in Laos, but his country wasn’t unused to such brutality. There were unnecessary deaths and, in the confusion, identities became vacant. Phan began his metamorphosis, stepping out of one skin and into the next and the next, becoming more confident with each shedding. He tried on other men’s lives as if he were trying on shirts at the market. He was a patriot fleeing the Royalists, a deserter escaping from the Reds, a pacifist seeking refuge from aggression. With each stage he deliberately became more of a man in his own mind. And to complete the transition – to prove that he had been meant to be male all along – he decided to take a wife .
    He knew how to talk to girls. He’d been one. He’d heard them gossip and understood what they expected. He was in Luang Nam Tha in the north, living the life of a man whose papers he’d taken: a man who lay wounded on a battlefield. After learning a little about his family and history Phan had finished him off with a bayonet. In the skin of this man, Phan had met a girl. She was beautiful and innocent and so in love with him he could sense the warmth emanate from her body when they were close. He felt something for her too, although he wasn’t sure what to call it. He believed, somewhere in his confusing emotional spin drier of a soul that this was the solution to the puzzle. Everything would find its true place once he became a husband .
    The ceremony had been simple: sweet, and low-key with only her close friends and relations. He’d charmed them all. They loved him. They’d set aside a room for the newly married couple behind the family house. It was a simple thatched building. As sound travelled unimpaired through bamboo the parents had arranged to be discreetly absent .
    Phan had planned it in his head. It was to be a slow, romantic night. As they held each other in the lamplight he would explain his circumstances. She might be a little surprised, but she would hear him out. After a moment of thought she would tell him that she loved him for himself – that everything else was unimportant .
    But the drink had turned her mind. As soon as they were alone, she tore at his clothing like some wild beast. He held her off, tried to engage her in conversation, but she seemed unnaturally obsessed with his body. “Very well,” he thought, “let her see me. That might work just as well.” But first she touched him between the legs, then she sat back to look, and her mouth fell open. She ceased her attack and fell backwards against the wall of the building. The posts and beams shuddered. It was the mocking expression on her face, not the subsequent laughter that left a scar branded on his soul and closed down his heart. It was a look of disgust – one that he would see in the eyes of every woman he met from that day forward .
    He’d strangled her to death that night there in her parents’ back room. He’d driven his medical supply truck a hundred kilometres south to the outskirts of Nam Tha, parked beside the highway, and carried her body into the undergrowth. It was all over. But as he headed into the town in search of a new battlefront and a new identity, thoughts of his untouched bride flooded his mind. She was his. In the eyes of the Lord Buddha and the Royalist government, she belonged to him. She’d sworn her devotion. He had