McFarlane Bonnie - Youre Better Than Me : a Memoir

Ask anyone, Im weird. But not like weird, weird. Its harder to categorize than that. My weirdness is more unsettling because it can go under the radar for a long time before it snaps to the surface. You could be talking to me for an hour, maybe longer, and perhaps even enjoyably so, before the realization wafts up on you like a cool draft that suddenly becomes difficult to ignore: youre talking to a fucking lunatic.

Im not sure how it happened. I cant for the life of me imagine why I turned out so odd. I mean, Im Canadian. I come from a nice farming family. My parents are still married to each other. I saw them fight only once and they had the decency to go into the garage to hurl insults at each other so my sisters and I wouldnt be scarred for life. Eager for any kind of drama, I followed them out to witness the fireworks, which turned out to be a real disappointment. I only remember my father saying to my mother, Youre just like your sister! My mother was crushed by the comment. Take it back! she whispered. These short outbursts were followed by long pauses where they stared at each other or their feet. I left during one of these endless lulls. Borrrring.

My mom didnt do drugs when she was pregnant. I grew up eating organic vegetables and I have three older sisters who turned out just fine. So why do I have six of the seven characteristics of being a serial killer and, worse, grow up to be a professional stand-up comedian?

Here are the seven signs of serial killers found on Wikipedia, the most factual Web site on the information superhighway. Can you guess which one I dont have?

White Male

Antisocial

Abused: Mentally, Physically, or Sexually

The MacDonald Triad: Fire Fascination, Bed-Wetting, Killing Animals

Above Average Intelligence

Violence

Fetishism

1. WHITE MALE

Its true, I am white, but contrary to some of the rumors floating around, I am also a woman, born and bred. This is, apparently, the only part of the serial killer configuration that keeps me from wanting to see the life drain from the eyes of strangers. However, and Im not sure this is relevant, when I was three or four years old, I started identifying as a boy and wouldnt wear a shirt around the house or during swim lessons. We swam in a huge body of water that bore the same name as the closest town, Cold Lake. The lake was not creatively named, by the way, and I suspect it might originally have been named Motherfucking Cold Lake. Still, we swam in it all the time and after the hypothermia set in, it was a pretty fun afternoon. The dude who gave me lessons was just a boy, maybe fifteen, and my topless heroin chic androgyny was not his cup of tea. He unloaded me as fast as he could, telling my parents I was a swimming prodigy of sorts, advanced for my age and could be moved into the older kids group, where I very promptly nearly drowned.

But this near-death experience didnt stop the cross-dressing. I wanted to be like my dad. I wanted the attention he got from my mom and my sisters and me. One of us would look out the window and see him walking toward the house from the barn after a long day of baling hay and milking cows. Places! Places everyone! Wed buzz around, getting coffee started and popping a few fresh rolls onto a chipped plate. Hed sit down at the kitchen table and theyd pull off his boots and Id comb his hair. Oh, Bonnie, youve got the touch, hed say. He wanted me to be a hairdresser. Those were his big plans for me. I knew I could never do it because I have an intense aversion to small talk. Plus, I knew I could be anything I wanted to be in life if I were a man, so I refused to wear dresses, drank unsweetened iced tea out of a pickle jar, and answered the phone Yello! just like my dad. My parents didnt fret over my gender-bending and my mother even cut my hair short, but I think she did that so she had two fewer braids to tie every morning. In those days, you didnt spend a lot of time stressing about the weird stages your kids went through. Im glad, because if I grew up in this decade, my parents wouldve changed my name to Benji and started saving for a sex change operation. Personally, I dont think women should get sex changes until all their good ladies years are used up. As Chaz Bono taught us, you can go from being a fat old woman to a well-fed young man in the blink of an inverted vagina. Unfortunately, what Chaz Bono failed to realize was that getting an actual medical procedure is excessive. Many women have late-in-life sex changes using only the cruelty of time and their own natural hormonal shortages. One only needs to take a stroll through the Milwaukee airport to see how popular this method is.