Page 93 of One Week in Paris
“Sort of,” he tells me. “The thing about Jeremy is that he didn’t like who he was. He wanted to be someone else. He wasn’t like me… he was small. He took after our mom. I take after my dad… well, physically, anyway.”
“I know that feeling,” I tell him. “I wanted to be someone else too when I was in high school. I wanted to be one of those skinny perky little cheerleaders. I wanted to be skinny like my sister.”
He shakes his head. “It was more than that with Jeremy. He was born in the wrong body. He wanted to be a girl.”
“Oh…” I’m speechless. “He was transgender?”
“I guess… ever since he was a kid, he wanted to wear Jessica’s dresses, wear her hair ribbons. Mom thought it was just a phase, but he never did grow out of it. At first, he’d dress up in secret, and he’d get in trouble big time, especially with our dad.”
“Oh…” Here, I’d always thought the Cohens were a perfectLeave it to Beaverfamily.
“Mom was pretty good about it, but dad was awful. He’d call him a little queer. He’d slap him, and tell him to act like a man. He told him once that he was ashamed of him, and he wished he’d only had the one boy… me.”
“Harsh…”
“I think that’s why Dad spent so much time with me,” Oscar goes on. “The boxing, watching sports, all very manly things, you know. It was almost like he was thinking ‘this one’s not broken. I think I’ll play with him, and pretend the other one doesn’t exist’”.
“You feel guilty?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“It wasn’t your fault—”
“And then there were the kids at school. One in particular… Kevin Ryan. What a dick. They were on his case every day, and that’s even before he started dressing like a girl at school.”
“Fucking bullies,” I say.
“Jeremy started wearing his hair long and makeup when he was thirteen. That’s when the teasing really started. My dad said he was asking for it. My mom, on the other hand, decided to help him.”
“Jeremy made the decision to officially become a woman when he was older. They were starting with hormone blockers, and later on would be surgeries, including one to make his voice higher. He knew all about that stuff. He’d tell us all about it when dad wasn’t around.”
I’m at a loss for words, riveted by this story, riveted by this part of Oscar I never knew.
“He asked us to start calling him Jenny. We all agreed, save for dad, of course. Some nice kids at school also did, and of course the bullies did too, but not in a good way.”
“What did they do to him?” I don’t want to ask, but curiosity always gets the best of me.
“The usual… it started with ribbing, stealing his lunch, bullying him into corners, calling him a fag. But then, Kevin Ryan stuck a banana down his throat, so hard, Jeremy had to go to the hospital. I wasn’t there when it happened, but everyone knew the story. Apparently, Kevin said, ‘You like dick, you fucking fag. You like it in your mouth too, I bet.’”
“God.” His story makes me sick.
“But Jeremy was pig-headed. He wanted to prove that he didn’t care. He started to wear dresses, and things only escalated. He asked the school if he could use the girls’ washroom instead of the boys’, for safety reasons, but they wouldn’t let him. The boys would always jump him in there. He was always in the emergency room with a cut, a broken nose once, and a concussion. Mom started looking at other schools for him.”
“Did she find another school?”
“She did, but by this time, it was too late. Jeremy got beat up within an inch of his life. He was in the hospital for a week, and two days later, he killed himself.”
I keep listening, and a painful lump grows in my throat. It’s all I can do not to cry.
“We’d all gone out for dinner, and we’d insisted that he come along. When he told us he’d rather stay home, my dad said, ‘Suit yourself. It’s probably better off this way. We don’t want to confuse the waitresses again.’”
“I thought your dad was a nice guy.”
“Not always… When we got back home, we found him in Mom’s car, car running, with the garage doors closed. He’d rigged a hose from the exhaust pipe, right into the car.”
I bring a hand to my mouth, and my throat burns as I struggle to rein in my tears. “Fuck.”
I turn to him, and take his hand in mine. His eyes are brimming, and there’s so much hurt in him, it absolutely breaks me. I cry, despite struggling not to. And when he sees me cry, he breaks apart too. I hold him in my arms as he sobs on my shoulder. I’ve never seen Oscar cry before, and it hurts so much. If I didn’t already know I loved him, I’d know for sure now. Someone else’s pain can only affect you this much if you truly care for them, if you truly love them. “I’m so sorry, Oscar. It wasn’t your fault. There’s nothing you could have done.”
