Stomach Butterflies |
Issue 11
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I don’t like butterflies. People might think I do because I love other insects. Most, other insects. I can’t stand centipedes. They’re gross, venomous, and spiteful ugly creatures. But centipedes don’t look like butterflies, you say.
Thanks, I can see. Butterfly wings might be beautiful from far away, but up close they’re scaly, and you quickly realize the wing-to-body ratio is way off. Not to mention the time it takes to go from caterpillar to butterfly being brutally short. Going from a slithering, content blob to a large walking, flying thing? How does the caterpillar know to do these things after being stationary for so long, and how is it that butterflies can calmly walk around with something so huge on its back? The butterfly’s ability to sit or walk at all is a mystery to me. Humans aren’t even supposed to like weirdly-proportioned things; they signal danger. I’ve heard that’s why people don’t like spiders. I love spiders, though, and other weirdly proportioned things like giraffes and sloths, so why are butterflies any different? Well anyone who grew up in the early 2000s with parents that let them watch Spongebob (mine didn’t, but I got around it) probably remembers the episode Wormy, where Spongebob and Patrick babysit Sandy’s worm, a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly overnight. Spongebob and Patrick, being of underwater descent, didn’t know what a butterfly was and thought this new creature ate their beloved Wormy, sparking this episode’s 11-minute panic. A core memory all Spongebob fans have of this episode, though, is where they cut to an up-close shot of a real butterfly, set to terrifying music. To this day there are people that cite this episode as the start of their lepidopterophobia, or fear of butterflies. I’m not scared of butterflies, though, I just don’t like them. I was also told I swallowed a butterfly as a kid. Oh that’s the reason you don’t like butterflies, then. Not so fast, Sherlock. I distinctly remember not liking butterflies even before one gut-punched me. We were at the butterfly sanctuary for my sister and I, because girls are supposed to like butterflies, and we were both girls then. She’s two weeks and two days older, which in a poor household means her birthday is my birthday, and her likes are my likes. The story I was told was that one minute everything was fine, and then suddenly I was pulling on my mom’s arm crying because I had just swallowed a butterfly and thought I was going to die. But I had a knack for swallowing things at that age, like whole eggs and teeth in my sleep, so why did this affect me the way they claim? It wasn’t my only time swallowing bugs either, as I would often eat spoiled food, once eating dried maggot-infested ramen. Oddly enough I don’t hate maggots or ramen, just butterflies. I don’t think it affected the way I view butterflies entirely, but it did affect the language I used surrounding them. Butterflies in my stomach didn’t feel like falling in love, but whenever I caught a stomach bug? Uncanny. It’s as if the corpse of the butterfly had clung to the walls of my stomach all these years and decided right then was the time for vengeance. Whenever I threw up I swore I could see leg bits scrambling in the acid. But I can’t even blame this dislike on the ugliness of butterflies, though I do think they’re ugly. My persistent and vocal ick towards butterflies seems like something I have to have in my roster of traits that make me more of a unique person, or more masculine. How could you not like butterflies? They’re so beautiful and helpful to the environment. Well, so are wasps but you don’t like those do you? Maybe, like with Wormy, I thought the social obsession with female puberty would swallow up how I was used to living- plain, fat, hungry. I wanted to remain a caterpillar, to eat for the sake of eating and never become anything else, except maybe an older, wrinklier caterpillar. Now everyone wanted to look at my body, to touch it and have some say over what I really was. To pin over their nightstand, naked and still, so that I could never fly from their ugly gaze. I didn’t know I was trans then, I only knew a flat chest made clothes feel more mine and my body less theirs, so after years of liking what my sister liked my parents had nothing to say for my confessions of transness that weren’t tinged with confusion and disdain. When I came out to my father I just blurted it out. He had driven from New York to Connecticut to show up for his rare one day visit, an achievement he was proud of. After all, he’s not court-mandated to see me, so I should consider myself lucky to see him at all. I broke the news while we were halfway to the mall to buy a replacement for his broken sunglasses. I sported a blonde mullet I chopped up myself, which though I hated, would take me another year before buzzing off. Like my mother, he didn’t ask many questions. “So, you like women now?” My father asks. “I’ve always liked women.” My bisexuality had never been hidden, but any chance I had to have that conversation left the minute I got a boyfriend. He asks me to get his pipe from underneath my side of the dashboard, and as I pass it I see an expression I’ve never seen on his face before. It looks like disgust, and maybe a little bit of sadness, which catches me off guard. I expected these feelings, but the fact that I can see it on him is unusual. His responses have always been calculated, from his tone to his posture, and for the first time they don’t match. “You know I’m always here to support you, right?” He lights the bowl of weed he fumbles out of a ziploc bag and deeply inhales smoke. “You’ll always be my daughter.” Exhale. I stare ahead at the traffic in front of us, not knowing what to label the feeling in my stomach. I knew what his old Cuban mind would think, so I wasn’t really here to argue the logistics of what I would or wouldn’t be to him. Instead I force myself to sit with the uncomfortable silence, imagining the possibility that I reached an unseen part of him, and that this was a genuine attempt to comfort me. We spend the rest of the ride in silence before he finally parks, stepping out of the car to finish smoking and leaving me alone with my thoughts. I watch him pace back and forth besides the driver’s seat for a couple of minutes, and the next time I look he’s leaning his back against the window. When he opens my door he's brand new, his face plastered with his usual expression of confidence, of knowing what to do. He now extends his hand to offer the pipe, full almost completely with ashes. While we’re at the mall he attempts to make small talk, but my mind buzzes with impatience, looking for the next excuse to talk about my identity. He never asks about it again that day, but I notice he grips my hand tighter, the way he would to show he was secretly angry in public. I don’t remember how long it was after this visit that my father called to ask me if I was considering top surgery. He didn’t wait for an answer, though, and instead recounted how his sister, a doctor, told him how dangerous the surgery is (it isn’t). “You told her I’m trans?” It wasn’t meant to be an accusatory question, though I was upset to be outed by a man who commanded no parental authority in my life. I was used to my mother who pretended my queerness, or any queerness for that matter, just didn’t exist. My father then told me of all the other people he outed me to without permission, including a tio who apparently “always knew”. Translated and paraphrased, this prophetic tio said- I knew since she was young that she was trans. I remember when she was 6 I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she said a butterfly. When I asked her why she said it’s because their bodies change into something better, and she didn’t like the body she was currently in. This could be a cute story to hear when you consider how little one remembers about their self-perception as a kid, but my first response was amused disbelief. Shut up I did not say that at 6 years old. Maybe I liked to pee standing up and wear my uncles’ hats backward, but I was not reciting poetic longings for a squarer body at the age of 6. Not to any conscious degree at least. I don’t really believe the story. Partially because I don’t remember who this tio is and partially because my father’s tone sounded smug, like he knew something that I didn’t, and I’ll be damned if he knew about my transness before I did. But let’s imagine for the sake of doing so that this story is true, that at 6 years old I loved butterflies so much that I tapped into some innate part of my identity, that I modeled my life after it and even wanted to be it as an adult. Now imagine that same 6-year-old two years later, so excited to see some butterflies that she runs into the sanctuary, opens her mouth real wide to squeal, and realizes she’s a caterpillar. |
MICK MUERTE is a Latine, Taíno, trans-masc currently studying Creative Writing as a senior in undergrad. While he enjoys writing poems, his main passion for writing is through Creative Non-Fiction, where he often explores how his intersectionality as trans, indigenous, and low-income affect his relationships with those around him.
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