Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
Bumming your fat knobs and insert your helmet naked and unashamed

Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
Kicking off kick-off, cyborgs brought face to face
Tartan sunstroke and may Mumbo Jumbo's **** all lie among you

Nine, eleven, seven, thirteen, six, quinquereme, *******, *******, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, unsocial person, erectoffensive!
This is Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
You've really ****** the naval officer
And the hatchet faces want to know whose blouses you abuse
Now it's time to evacuate the ******* if you have a free hand

This is Lance Corporal Tom to Masticated Ectoplasm
I'm fancy dress dancing through the cat—flap
And I'm groping inside a swollen grotesque sailor
And the plums look gigantically unusual nowadays

Ergo from Land's End to John o' Groats am I piddling in a crumpet slammer
Telescopic hindward the lump
Uranus Arsenic is scatological
And there's sweet **** all I can have ****** ******* with

With the proviso that I'm Ichabod celibate centipede sextillion heads
I'm fondling vigorously paparazzo
And I think my sputnik knows which direction to ****
Tell my ballbreaker I ****** her vigorously for England, she bonks

Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
Your menstrual cycle's kaput, there's oojakapivvygizmo spleen
Can you smell me, Lance Corporal Tom?
Can you get to the bottom of me, Lance Corporal Tom?
Can you delve into me, Lance Corporal Tom?
Can you...

From Land's End to John o' Groats am I vibrating ring my crumpet criminal lunatic asylum
Telescopic hindward the groupie
Uranus Arsenic is scatological
And there's sweet **** all I can have ****** ******* with

These words they cannot be rewritten to bright beat the minds of pop culture fiends
Against the steel wall of the infinite Hollywood signs, dripping blood,
Until the creative mind is bled dry.

Then working the street corners to pay the corporate copies far too much for a strip tease by a fat transvestite, night after night;
But we never realize there is no end,
No end to the ***** **** being shoved down our throats —
Though we think there will be a ***** at the end;
Except there's just ***** hair stuck in our teeth,
And along the way we've forgotten what it is like to have an empty mouth,
Without **** coming out of our mouth and *******,
Such that now it feels right.

Look up at the man in a suite holding the camera,
Like the attention you get from the broken world. 

One man ***-***** another then gets ***-****** himself;
Then bumped further in by a third,
Till the world is united by **** and *******.

no, i don't need an outlet: talk to the public,
they tell you you're
either a well guised political machine,
a psychiatrist,
           or an oddity: come October time
propheteering rather than profiteering;
your choice, not mine:
   i look at poetry like
a plumber might look at a toilet:
go in and get the francophone out!
    so pardoning the French
is lost, as casual phrasing goes, woop,
  away away Superman included.

oh right, you might think i'm spelling
something Evangelical,
sure, i hope you do or d.p. as in
do please,
           what with the cool of Wall St.
sprechen d.l. (down low);
i had a few scribbled notes,
yes, Yanky, my laptop broke down
and i'm reduced to pen & paper
         like handcock & *******,
easy does the ****** of loser vill
           (can we drop the e
for the sake of autocorrect being right
when the big words matter? thanks) -
Platonism is plainly Thespian,
             Platonic thought is a Thespian
"espionage", get used to it,
you haven't matured into Aristotelian
         autism: you still want to act,
to puppeteer that shadows of people
without ever *being the people,
don't take it as if it's supposed to be unlikely:
there's a boss around every corner:
whether you get paid or don't, which is fun,
because you state an authority but
still only play the cameo.
      reminiscent guise literature
of rewatching that t.v. phenomenon
that's billions -
             oh sure, t.v. these days overshadows
cinema, cinema is worth jack-****,
it's poverty is intrinsic in forming ideas
or reversed "Latin" grammar  idea-fermentation,
i said English loves to hyphenate
two kindred words,
    like that ego theory
             with the Germanic self-theorising,
self-enabling, self-interest, self-haemorrhaging
  gusto of the capital -
    what a way to finish, i as a prefix
toward robotic modula.

(i write pending, but ensure the enso,
            or Swahili wasabi sting of
green horseradish,
       same so, i live dangerously, or pretty
much on the sly,
           if i tell the taxpayers
  they're getting their money's worth
i'll bound to see a third runway at Heathrow:
got my nose in an Alsatians' buttocks mind you).

so...

i was going to end with it, but i'm afraid i must
begin with it, page entitled

a. a rebellion from the top?
    or right, it only comes from the bottom,
the guillotine and all,
  but never the despotic cupcake for an Antoinette,
right? wrong!
                coming from a worker's background,
i'd been happy doing the ******* roofs of
the Tate Gallery among other examples,
but i was educated as a chemist,
  and, i was told, you need toothpaste, or
am i wrong in that assumption?
     picture it thus:
a son of a roofer is real smart,
      goes to Edinburgh, gets his money's worth
in terms of tuition, over 30 hours year three
of his chemistry degree, when things were still
decent, ~£1,250 a year (one thousand two hundred
and fifty pounds): with words like that
you might sketch Dante and Donatello and
the Italian Renaissance in terms of clapping the ****
away at the gesture...
     but no, it was like that, study chemistry
and you get your money's worth in terms of tuition,
so how the **** did i descend from the "high" tier
of the sciences into the murk of poetry
and humanism?
       history of science and David Hume:
black swans to mind, also.
                          but the other kid in question
was a son of a doctor / radiologist,
and this talk of rebellion from the top?
he couldn't stomach a shifting hierarchy,
he couldn't stomach social progress,
     had i or hadn't i invested my pleasure
time in reading philosophy is no one's business,
had i made a professional wage from it,
sure, but i wasn't intending to do so:
      what's your favourite colour sort of
question and whether truant of the zeitgeist:
the ******* guillotine, mate!
            i just can't perpetuate this loaf of wording,
but it's necessary:
    of jealousy so corrosive, of jealousy so lined
with lice, only then a god is spawned -
           the person in question?
a skiving belittling camel jockey -
and that's me being polite...
       you can almost become auto-suggestive
of needing to cite: what Abel did next when
the roaring Milton God subsided and
     wanked a crucifix that later became 2000 years of
history: or in the making.

i can be a pompous and bombastic parrot
          that cites Polly this, Polly that,
but i can speak to a scaffolder and laugh: with him,
and not, at him...
                 because i know my bombastic mr. fantastic
behaviour about spending aeons in a library
   rather than sniffing bullseyes and ****
        is made to be the fo' sho' lingua rapper tinder
of something or other that doesn't require me
to foolishly date...
                         **** it, cheaper at the brothel.

...........................

                        oh­ i'm just getting started, hence
the title with (penting) in it: no, not really mr. tough-guy,
just a **** break and a smoke and all that's
necessary in terms of transparency, begging to
be revealed in all forms of literary composition...
  
let's just say: a new interpretation of the paragraph,
     for me reading books, a paragraph means Sunday,
1905... because of the constipation and what-not,
   a comma makes me feel like i need a pause to
hiccup or sneeze,
       a full-dot is never a full-dot unless it's a full-dot
and then it's a definite article of end, rather than
the intermediate an end: let's start over, once again;
       but when have you actually experienced
a Macgyver of what's otherwise a "work in progress"?
answer? never!
               you never have: you had to become
censored by publishers and editors for everything to
look the end-product squeaky-clean!
                   unless published posthumously...
and then... you might already be dead:
you never got to see a work in progress...
   and believe me, i have 8 pages worth of notes to
encode into something that's not
that fable about a boy waking up Barbarossa
from slumber and upon seeing crows
shouting: messerschmitt! messerschmitt! messerschmitt!
well, a diet of hanzel und gretyl will do that
to you, you get a fetish like Shpielberg and direct
the Indiana Jones franchise...
                       funny little me, "phony" Englishman
speaking a piquant variation of Essex banter,
8 years in Poland and of memories i speak of the fondest
in my life, and 22 years in this rotting *******...
                    i feel less organic, more inorganic,
i.e. metallic,
       it's like my insides were hollowed out
and i was faking that i am actually being -
   weird sensation, ask any displaced individual when
they have the organism of a Slavic, but a soul
of a German... feels, ******* weird...
                        i mean, Nietzsche and that complement
that the Poles are the French in the ethnic category?
what are the English in the Slav category then?
                          most likely Ukrainian.
i dare you to find a philosopher with a similar dilemma,
i dare you: in light of how this whole
gaining of fame works, not one wrote about
being displaced... well... unless you're talking about
Moses -

                (haven't even started, i need a drink).

there was no social tract anyway!
    to be forced into accepting insemination
        when the forward wording was:
       "i'm talking counter-contraceptive
measures" & 'i want you to *** in me'.
                 ditto encapsulating quote
for ambiguity, the otherwise: real life.
       is my ***** worth more than me?
have i not transcended a weak bladder / **** muscles?
       a pseudo-humanity, intrinsic in man
but not not in beast?
                    i call upon a reversal of what's
a staging of ****, or money grubbing -
                with a woman's twist of the Grimm tale:
as she said: i want this man,
              i will impose a moral grounding / battlefield,
judgement on him! entrapment!
and there's me apologising for the "****" / so-called,
in a fully-consenting intimacy:
   well, *****, why don't you? another Beethoven
is waiting? who's the whopper feminist these days?!
               me? you?! hardly you!
   i consented to a full intimacy,
        is ***** a foetus?
tissue would know,
    or a twisted fetish for ****** cream
advertisement in ****, huh?
              sure, my socks smell, but so does
your moral instinct.
                        the difference is that that i get to
say airy, while you get to say fairy.
                         it really takes a man respecting
a woman's freedom: i seriously thought you
were advocating the right to abort
as you might avert ****...
    sure: i'm sorry i inseminated you,
can you please treat it as a tear-jerker experience
of a rom-com that's actually a transvestite-rom
  and needs 50 years to ferment for the earthquakes
and heartaches and cha cha attacks?
              to me it's an apron needing a wash,
to you it a ******* moral dilemma needing
a ******'s rights to not father a child and you
needing your body to unnecessarily incubate it
so you get the Catholic nod... bonkers!
    yes, i impregnated a girl, at university:
i avoided white trash at school, sorry, but it's true,
i liked reading... let me stress that: i liked reading,
      or bold if italics and colon Gemini be antiquity...
she lacked the character judgements,
the 'why he didn't stay' method statement...
she called my friend and study buddy a troll
based on her aesthetic tastes...
          i could have had a family now, and all
the responsibilities, it just didn't fit into
a replica of Cleopatra and Anthony *******
when they honestly didn't have ******* to claim
as their own...
          jeez (replica of the hand-written transcript) -
writing this on pen + paper is like *******
a **** for reach a champagne fizz of ******
for an hour - thank you keyboard and the digital
pixel off blank: ******* is less painful
than writing with that oddity that's handwriting).
there was no social contract anyway!
     it's not like i was married, there's
no unwanted child joke in this: i do find abortion
abhorrent within a social contract, a marriage,
but outside of marriage? are you ******* kidding me?!
you an Irish priest or something?
       there was no social contract,
did i sign a social contract akin to marriage?
      am i in this for the shambles?
of course i didn't get married,
there was no +ring,
                     sure abortion is abhorrent,
but under a social contract,
  without a social contract (marriage)
i,    had,    no,         obligation.
      what, in order to practice a variation of Islam
on a woman's whim?
    *******.
                     plus i had the gross indecency
gay men have with surrogate mother prostitution;
oh wait, it isn't that? my bad.
            i always had a nicety divisiveness for
incubators... a 9 month ****, with dividends...
        really: feminism can **** itself!
because aren't we at a stage of rhetorically counter-validating
what we abhor in certain Asian communities?
oh sure, the patriarchs are gone,
forced marriages are gone too...
          but didn't i just describe a case
of forced marriage, where a western girl is given
all the powers to reign over a young man
as any despot might over a worker
so he can "think" and drink cocktails and
chuckle over his position between cocktails?
      
  i said abortion, yes, i didn't like the girl's aesthetic,
and you know what? that thing you call abortion,
apart from the fact that the foetus has no soul
the baby neither: not until the diaper is off...
to learn to strain the muscles outside the womb:
you really forgot that the implant of soul
or the later disputed notion of god
is only implantable once the memory kicks into
gear...
               only when you start to remember
is the human person born:
   beyond that it's still nature's brutalist lottery...
maybe a Beethoven might have been born,p
but who cares? we already have a Beethoven!
it's avoiding consented ****:
that's feminism and 9 months spared
the continuation of endured affair / "relationship",
i seriously thought that's what women
were campaigning for... obviously it's counter!
   i claim soul outside of a woman's body:
when the ****** thing passes the diaper gym
and learns to automate the bladder and the ****...
then i say: worthy an implant of a soul...
or chauvinistically that's counter and double-****
of 9 months and Bach with his 14 children,
and the Borgia Popes...
          but at least we have the surrogate "mothers"
and that pretty Disney scenario of two gay dads
to fictionalise into watchable Platonic cavemen
when the eyes aren't glued to the 2D.
why do you think such thoughts ferment in
the heterosexual imagining of actuality?
                your utopian counter-clockwise
has already extended into China being the only
provable state of physical activity...
    and the western zoo of mental philosophical
build-up-detachment? your mental health
scenario only suggests you created acid professions...
at least the physical "antiquity" of China
is compensated by a universal shortcoming:
death and mortality...
you created acid-baths: sport and completely mental
professions: YOU'RE SICK!
     honestly!
     people used to enjoy physical professions,
and the essence of such professions?
no immediate competitiveness!
         you replaced physical professions
with sports!
                  and compensated the need for
physical hands-on with the ****** gym!
no wonder you countered-Darwinism while
adapting the need to advertise it
            and made so many young people
mentally ill...
      because your whole mental estrangement
is the sauce or a broth that's currently on the boil!

Limericks VII - Naughty, *****, Risque, Absurd

There continue to be modern sequels of the famous "Nantucket" limericks, including this ***** one of mine:

There was a lewd ***** from Nantucket
who intended to *** in a bucket;
but being a man
she missed the **** can
and her rattled john fled, crying: "**** it!"
—Variation on a classic limerick by Michael R. Burch

Here's another take on a golden oldie:

There was an old man from Peru
who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He awoke one dark night
from a terrible fright
to discover his dream had come true!
—Variation on a classic limerick by Michael R. Burch

Here are some lewd, crude originals:

There once was a multi-pierced Bull,
who found playing hoops far too dull,
so he dated Madonna
but observed, “I don’t wanna
get married . . . the things she might pull!”
—Michael R. Burch

There once was a forward named Rodman
who said to his best man—“No problem!
When I marry Electra,
if the ring costs extra,
just yank a loop right off my ****, man!”
—Michael R. Burch

A formidable pugilist, Mike,
in a fit of pique called his mom “****.”
She frowned ear to ear,
then said, “You listen here,
I can still whip your ****, you dumb tyke!”
—Michael R. Burch

A cross-dressing dancer, “Dee Lite,”
wore gowns luciferously bright
till he washed them one day
the old-fashioned way ...
in bleach. Now he’s “Sister Off-White.”
—Michael R. Burch

There once was a bubbly bartender,
a transvestite who went on a ******.
“So I cut myself off,”
she cried with a sob,
“There’s the evidence, there in the blender!”
—Michael R. Burch

Our president’s *** life—atrocious.
Asian markets are all hocus-pocus.
Politics—a shell game.
My brief moment of fame—
flashed by before Oprah could notice.
—Michael R. Burch

Bill Clinton's a man we admire;
his opinion polls soar ever higher.
He gets much more flack
for a Big Mac attack
than for his ****** high-wire.
—Michael R. Burch

There is a new term, “Clintonian,”
which means, “Stop your naggin’ and moanin’.
He’s only a man
doing all that he can
to put kneepads in the Smithsonian.!”
—Michael R. Burch

Low-T Hell
by Michael R. Burch

I’m living in low-T hell ...
My get-up has gone: Farewell!
I need to write checks
if I want to have ***,
and my love life depends on a gel!

Grave Offense I

Is Ogden Nash gnashing his teeth,
upside-down in his grave, full of grief
that the term “limerick”
has been plagiarized? Quick—
dial 9-1-1; get the police!
—Michael R. Burch

Grave Offense II

Is Ogden Nash gnashing his teeth,
upside-down in his grave, full of grief
that his wit and his art
share this name I impart
to my “limerick?” Am I a thief?
—Michael R. Burch

Ghostbusters!

Is Ogden Nash gnashing his teeth?
Is his ghost rolling ’round in wild grief
that the Post would make crimes
of his “imperfect” rhymes?
Call Ripley’s—it stretches belief!
—Michael R. Burch

NOTE: The Washington Post in all its great wisdom would ban Ogden Nash’s imperfect rhymes from its limerick contests!

Keywords/Tags: limerick, nonsense, light, humor, humorous, ***, naughty, risque, lewd, *****, ******

I do not own a motorbike,
Never been a member of the Third *****.
I’m not Italian, French or gay,
(No homophobe, just not built that way).
I’m not Tom Jones or a member of Queen,
I’m not going back to the seventies in a time machine.
I’m not a backing dancer for Madonna,
Talc on my legs “I don’t wanna”.
So why do I own a pair of leather trousers?

This was definitely a mistake,
Like breaking wind on a first date,
Swearing at the boss at the crimbo celebration,
Being caught by parents doing a ****** gyration.
Persuaded to buy them, through the mist of lust she had taste,
I found out too late, she was highly religious, chaste.
Good quality, not cheap, never worn,
Could be used in transvestite ****!
Does anyone want a pair of leather trousers?

Tackle thonged
Condensed in shimmering lurex.
Flamboyance bursts from flaming wig,
From feathered lashes and from fuscia lips.

Eyes flash and teeth sparkle
In the huge face.

With Cherokee cheekbones and a Roman nose
A pantomime dame becomes a slinky Cher,
A strutting Turner and a slick Minnelli,
Before settling
Into the loose and comfortable robes of a Boy George
We hope has found peace.
We clap and sing,
'Kama, Kama, Kama, Kama , Kama chameleon,'
As this chameleon
Plays out his life story for our entertainment.
And old ladies cheer
And wish him well.

Little Red Riding Hood walked through the woods
Singing and swinging her bag of baked goods
When out of the brush leapt a wolf with a smile
And some florist’s advice for the innocent child.
So off went the girl, picking bunches of daisies
While Wolf raced ahead with a step none too lazy.

Then at Grandmother’s door he knocked and said
“Let me in dear Grandmother, it’s your little Red."
So with grandmother’s blessing he let himself in
And ate up the oldest of little Red’s kin.  
Then Little Red Riding Hood came through the door
With nary a clue of what was in store.
After noting her “grandmother’s” ears, nose, and teeth
Into Wolf’s gullet she went with a shriek.

As the transvestite wolf began snoring like thunder,
Along came a huntsman, who cut his belly asunder.
Out came Red Riding Hood, Grandmother too
While Wolf, so oblivious, kept sleeping right through.
With a few heavy stones, a needle and thread
Wolf, far too full, finally woke then dropped dead.  

After a party of baked goods and wine,
The huntsman gave Red a great wolf pelt so fine.  
“Thank you, dear huntsman,” said our little Red,  
“But I’d rather skin wolves on my lonesome instead.  
I know things now, of these beasts and their wiles
I’ll give them a lesson, with blood and with style.
Teach me to stalk, to chase and to shoot
The best huntress I’ll be - and the cutest, to boot."

The huntsman, he roared with his big booming laughter.
In a voice that rose straight up to the rafters:
“Why little girl, have you a taste for the hunt?
You’re better off sewing, though I hate to be blunt.”
But little Red pouted, and threatened to cry
So the huntsman gave in, with a shrug and a sigh.

The huntsman- he was a formidable teacher.
Now Red lives in fear of no living creature.
Today, when Red Riding Hood walks through the woods
She carries bags of new, furry goods.  
And when out of the brush leaps a wolf with a smile,
She smiles right back: “You’ve picked the wrong child."

I’ve got a lock and key, what you got? You got a door,
                                      a shrapnel embedded cupboard
      Curiously covered up that there is, do you want go out?
      No I got a boyfriend, but I do have a few contraceptives
Or I could show you my funny parts and we could plateau on the platonic
Abstinence is on par with networking
                           Oh shipwrecks of relationships, your waters never looked safe, your shoreline so rocky,
                      but your sail, if you see what I’m saying. ******* that wind a high-inducing pitch of a stank
                                                                          You took me to the foreign lands and never brought me back,
                                                                          a souvenir got emailed. Which I have just picked up, it’s actually           rather beautiful,
especially if we picked it out together
It is a bullet and that is rather cliché in the expectable in this sense of the world,
but the copper lining is exquisite, insert random bit about consumerism
                                     Then spin a bit around voyeurism, then mention the outcome of the movies,
                                                                                  the moving bits. The back & forth where it all starts
But like I said, you want a contraceptive? Or maybe just a sock? How about a **** addiction?
This really isn’t a discussion we should be having,
                              I don’t like arguing about these things and I’m a transvestite and rather think they don’t apply
                                                See the bit you said was babies and the bit I said was from the bible
Jesus and Black Moses, walking down the street
Preaching for the freaks
Then the bit you said was more like, I don’t know what I’m saying, I mumble and moan
And think about *** and college and loans and the bit that really stuck out was
  
                                   “Babies, they really just freak me out.”

A lot of people think they can write or paint or draw or sing or make movies or what-have-you, but having an artistic temperament doth not make one an artist.


Even the great writers of our time have tried and failed and failed some more. Vladimir Nabokov received a harsh rejection letter from Knopf upon submitting ******, which would later go on to sell fifty million copies. Sylvia Plath’s first rejection letter for The Bell Jar read, “There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.” Gertrude Stein received a cruel rejection letter that mocked her style. Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way earned him a sprawling rejection letter regarding the reasons he should simply give up writing all together. Tim Burton’s first illustrated book, The Giant Zlig, got the thumbs down from Walt Disney Productions, and even Jack Kerouac’s perennial On the Road received a particularly blunt rejection letter that simply read, “I don’t dig this one at all.”

So even if you’re an utterly fantastic writer who will be remembered for decades forthcoming, you’ll still most likely receive a large dollop of criticism, rejection, and perhaps even mockery before you get there. Having been through it all these great writers offer some writing tips without pulling punches. After all, if a publishing house is going to tear into your manuscript you might as well be prepared.

1. The first draft of everything is ****. -Ernest Hemingway
2. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ***. -David Ogilvy
3. If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. – Dorothy Parker
4. Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home. -Paul Theroux
5. I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. — Harper Lee
6. You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ― Jack London
7. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. — George Orwell
8. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. ― W. Somerset Maugham
9. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King
10. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. – Neil Gaiman
11. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die. – Anne Enright
12. If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do. – William Zinsser
13. Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. – Kurt Vonnegut
14. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway
15. Write drunk, edit sober. – Ernest Hemingway
16. Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, ****, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly. – Joshua Wolf Shenk
17. Substitute ‘****’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. – Mark Twain
18. Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you. ― Neil Gaiman
19. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. – Oscar Wilde
20. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ― Ray Bradbury
21. Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously. – Lev Grossman
image – christine zenino

“Why can’t you just be a tomboy?”
Witty comebacks always come slow when gender is involved, especially with new questions. Surely not new to anyone else, but new to him, at least. Though, it wouldn’t take much to trigger a response, no matter how aggressive or shocked and sad that response might be. But this one, though. This was new. Having never been asked this before, he had no weapons to combat this, to shoot down the asker with a well-placed glare and a retort that would shut them up right away.
He did try, he really did. You have to give him credit for that.
But then his throat choked up, and he fled. The only thing he managed to choke out was that he was going to go now. That was it. Shut down so quickly. From fearless and untouchable to an anxiety attack shaking its way up his spine and into his hands.

“Why can’t you just be a tomboy?”
And there it is again, he thinks. That one sentence wrapping tighter and tighter around his windpipe.
It was a challenge hurrying down the stairs without falling, because the anxiety had him in such a tight grip that he could hardly breathe.
Then there it was, those dreaded bathrooms.

“Are you a girl or a boy?”
There was not time to spend fifteen minutes or half an hour or all day standing between those two things. With his mind screaming MALE, and his traitorous body screaming FEMALE, he ducked into the women’s restroom and stumbled into the handicap stall.

It started then.
A barrage of everything that he had ever been asked because all that people saw were his body: *******, thick thighs, wide hips, a pear shape with curves in all the right places, and it made him sick.

“Since you haven’t had the surgery yet, aren’t you still technically a woman?”
“Butch?”
“****?”
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
“What are you?”
“This is my friend, he’s a transvestite.”

It’s too much, with the tomboy comment still rattling around in his exhausted brain.
And with each thunk of the back of his head against the tiled bathroom wall, he tried to shake them loose. But they wouldn’t leave. Why wouldn’t they leave? He knows that it isn’t true. None of those people know anything. Their questions are out of mostly out of ignorance, and not malice, but, gods, they all hurt so much.

He talks then, a harsh whisper making its feeble way out on the wave of each choking, silent, sob.
“I tried. I tried so hard. And I’ll tell you why I can’t ‘just be a tomboy’ because, ******, I was a tomboy. And you wanna know what that got me? Six years worth of scars on my arm and shoulder.”

He drags the remains of anxiously bitten-down nails down his arm now, over and over again, leaving angry red trails through the pale lines on even paler skin.
“I’ve know that I wasn’t a girl since I was seven. That’s pretty, funny, isn’t it? The not knowing, it almost killed me. I mean that literally, but sometimes swallowing forty pills speaks louder than words.”

The phantom voice, branded into his eardrums and stamped angry and red on the graymatter of his brain, speaks up again. “Why can’t you just be a tomboy?”

And he knows what the real question is now.
Why can’t you just be a girl?
Why do you have to be transgender?
Why can’t you just be happy as a girl?
Why can’t you just be a tomboy?

Getting up off the ground, scrubbing tear tracks from his cheeks and off his glasses, he presses the back of his throbbing head against the tiled wall, whispering to everybody and nobody, “SHUT UP.”