This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

Godzilla lumbered into view. He lurched into one precarious building and another, turning all to ruin, before mounting one of the rubbled piles and facing the camera triumphantly. Around his neck hung a sign in Mr. Tongo’s neat block handwriting. It read: PUBERTY. Godzilla was menacing enough until Mr. Tongo’s face loomed three times larger at his side looking ready to accept his Oscar nomination. “Hi, Mr. Tongo,” Penn and Rosie chorused from somewhere between bemused and wary. “It was me all along!” Mr. Tongo wiggled his plastic Godzilla as if they might need proof. “A monstrous welcome to us all.”

I’m done with the fucking whimsy.

“Me too. Of course me too. If we knew what that was. But unfortunately, that exceeds my skill set. That’s not prognosis. That’s prognostication. We need a seer, not a doctor.” “Then that’s my skill set,” said Penn. “You can see the future?” “It’s the stuff of fairy tales, not hospitals.”

NO FFS YOU NEED A PSYCHIATRIST WHO SPECIALIZES IN GENDER YOU FUCKING CLOWNS

“Then why’d she shave her head?”

Britney Spears shaved her head ffs. It’s not the gender, it’s the public humiliation

Maybe we need to medically intervene so Poppy doesn’t grow a beard. Or maybe the world needs to learn to love a person with a beard who goes by ‘she’ and wears a skirt.” “But that’s not going to happen.” Penn spoke so softly she wouldn’t have heard him if she didn’t already know what he was going to say. “In which case maybe she—and you and I—need to learn to live in a world that refuses to accept a person with a beard who goes by ‘she’ and wears a skirt and be happy anyway. Maybe our response to that world should not necessarily be to drug and operate on our daughter.”

I hate this so much. Everyone is on drugs, lady. Everyone gets medical treatment. Let your daughter be herself. She doesn’t want a fucking beard.

“What about malaria?” she led off. “We took drugs.” “What about typhoid?” “More drugs.” “What about that tropical fever?” “Dengue?” “Yeah, dengue.” “We’ll use DEET.” “Isn’t DEET bad for you?” “Not in small quantities.”

Oh, so drugs are fine then?

The trick was neither to make peace with medical intervention nor to eschew it altogether.

You haven’t even tried medical intervention yet though

She was not screaming in a language Rosie knew, but she understood clear as lagoons anyway the mother’s horror of this worm that had lately come out of her little girl. If they’d spoken the same language, Rosie would have laid her hand on the woman’s shoulder to commiserate: Oh the things that hide secretly in our children, lying in wait, doing untold damage, yearning to be free. Alarming us beyond all measure.

1. Pronouns. Reframe the sentence 2. Self-indulgent af

the patients Roo could keep company and comfort with his modest Rooness,

So Roo is just chill now?? Where did his grumpy teenage basement hermit storyline go?