Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 16:05:04 -0700 (PDT) From: Steven Saunders Subject: Boxy Grove 4 Boo, that's what they call me. Yes ma'am. My name is LaQuay Thompson. I haven't always been LaQuay Thompson, but...I have always been Boo. See, let me explain. I was born Andrew Williams Jr., son of Andrew Williams Sr. and Shirley Dickens Williams. Andrew Williams was cool and all, but I didn't stick with it. See, Andrew Williams just didn't fit a bitch. At the age of 10, I looked so much like a girl that people kept thinking I was a lesbian. It was the first time that my father called me Princess Boo. Till this day, he still does. At the age of 12, I started to have sex with the older boys in high school who wanted to find out if my head was really better then all the girls they dated. At the age of 15, I started to dress like a girl. I didn't associate with much of anyone besides a few of the fags around the way. My father and mother divorced over me. My mother didn't like me doing it, but my father supported everything. She left, taking her other kids with her so they wouldn't become spoiled like me. At the age of 16, I began my formation. I started moning. Moning is what the girls say when they start taking hormones. I started to become a female. At 17, I graduated from high school, defying everything that people like me usually became which was average prostitute. Not that anything is wrong with a prostitute, but it just didn't fit a bitch either. Now at 18, I got my first titties. I had gotten a job since I was 16 to raise money to get these titties that were right in front of me. Two years for some titties. It takes these prostitutes two months to make as much money as I made in two years. It's fine though...I got them...their mine. I've had them for several months now, going on a year. I was turning 19 really soon and damn it, I was excited. "Princess...you still in that bathroom?" "Damn daddy, hold up..." "Princess...hurry up out that bathroom." I looked in the mirror. I looked cute. I don't know what Dorian Michael was up to. I really had no idea. I was so excited to find out though. Dorian was my heart...he really was. I knew it would be something special now that my birthday was coming up. "Ok, Daddy...here I come." I walk out of the bathroom and walk right into my father. My father is the same man that he had always been. He smiles at me and I know he is happy with what he sees. I am still classy. I might have gotten my breasts a little too big for his tastes, but I kept them covered. I had on a tight little blouse that showed my cleavage but I had a jacket over it. "You going out with...that boy?" He asked me. "Yeah, daddy, he's taking me somewhere special tonight," I tell him. "You know how I feel about that boy." "Dorian is a good person daddy," I tell him, leaning over and gently hugging him, "He is a real good person." "Be careful." "Alright daddy...see you tomorrow." Besides Dorian, he was the only positive force in my life. It has always just been me and him for the longest time. When my mother left, we were forced to move into the Grove because he had a disability where he was unable to move his right arm and find a decent job. Daddy struggled though, he provided for the two of us. Dorian coming into my life in the way that he had seems to have complicated it for him. It has taken things off balance for him. I know it has. Dorian met Daddy once and it was a mess. Dorian didn't know it was my dad. He thought it was some old guy trying to talk to me (I had a lot of those). He got real defensive and by the time I told him who it was, he had already burned enough bridges. I walk into the halls and see a whole bunch of girls staring as I walk past. They know who the fuck I am. All these bitches know who the fuck I am. Baby Doll Boo. I looked like the black Barbie and they all knew it. "Hey Boo," Misha says as I walk past her braiding her sister's hair outside apartment 12. I pat my hair down as I walk past her, completely ignoring her notion. I want her to notice that my hair is down to my fucking back. I'm completely black but my hair is down to my back while hers is barely passing her ears as she adds tracks and tracks of weave into it. You mad bitch? "Stuck up bitch," I hear her telling her sister as I walk past. "You know I am," I say. They say some other things which I ignore. No point in arguing with these bitches, it won't get me anywhere. They have nothing to lose. No good looks to lose...nothing of the sort. I had an attitude for days and it comes with being who I was. If someone didn't carry themselves in a certain way, the Grove apartments would destroy you. I was known for my attitude. I was the local pretty ass bitch. The girls didn't like me because their guys wanted me. The guys didn't like me because I didn't want them. "Hey baby," Dorian says to me as I walk in the car. Dorian is looking sexy today. He is still as hood as ever. He is dark as milk chocolate and as tall as a tower. He used to play basketball and has these large manly hands. His braids are in straight, perfect columns. He has muscles for days. He pulls up looking fly as all hell. Dorian isn't the flyest guy on the block, I'll have to admit that, but his heart is everything. He's been trying to rap for the longest time and hasn't gotten signed yet. What is so sexy to me is his drive...he'll continue to do it no matter what. He had a drive when it came to me too. He wanted to do anything to get with me...anything. "Hey," I tell him, hoping in the car. He leans over and kisses me. It is a long kiss. He tongue enters my mouth and all of a sudden I feel like he has all the answers to the world's problems between his two lips. Dorian doesn't know I was born a man. We never had sex...well not all the way. I gave him head once or twice but that was only when he really, really needed it. I told him I wanted to wait till I was married. He respected it. He seemed to love me even more for it. He said that he had never run across a girl like that. I did want to wait till marriage, but that wasn't the only reason. I still had the dick between my legs. It had gotten smaller from taking hormones and different blockers, but it was still there. I needed it gone...completely. "You miss me." "You know I do...I've been thinking about you...I've been wanting to be with you. You know I've been trying to call you but my phone has been doing shows this past week and Daddy..." "When am I going to get to meet your infamous Dad? You always talk about him," he says. "You know what happened last time..." "I mean, officially meet him. I know he doesn't remember that old thing." I giggle and cross my legs, putting my hands over them so that I can remain as feminine as possible. That is the idea when you weren't born a girl, but you are a girl now. You have to stay feminine at all times. Sometimes it doesn't come natural. "You almost killed him last time." "Hey...I didn't almost kill him," he said, turning to look at me with this sexy stare, "You're over exaggerating." I can't help but to laugh again, "Dorian, baby, I'm sorry, but you had him pressed up against the wall. He had trouble breathing. This is an old man with high blood pressure." He gets quiet, "My bad baby...I'm sorry." I know he is. That is the thing. Dorian really didn't mean to do it. He is real protective of me in a good way. I was the prettiest girl in the Grove by far and not just by looks. I was one of the few bitches to finish high school and actually have plans to go to school afterward. I mean, it was beauty school...but I still wanted to do something with my life, you know? That is a lot more than can be said for those other bitches. "Hey, its ok," I say and realize that we have been driving for quite a while now, "Where we going?" "You'll see...it' a surprise." Dorian takes me to this restaurant. It's real fancy. I'm not dressed the part. I mean, I made an attempt to dress nice, but these people were dressed like they were going for job interviews. Everything was all nice and neat in the restaurant. When I saw the menu, I realized that this was way out of our budget. The cheapest thing on the menu was a salad that was damn near 25 dollars. How the hell is a salad that expensive? I ordered that, but Dorian wasn't cool with it. He pulled away the menu and said in this manly voice, "I'm going to order for my woman." I could have melted into him just then as though he was made of fire. He was SUCH a man! He ordered a steak for me. He always opened doors for me and pulled out my chair. Today, he was doing even more though. He was cutting my meat and feeding it to me. I felt like some kind of princess. There was something so different. Every other night, we would talk endlessly. Today, he wasn't talking at all. It wasn't that his mind was somewhere else. It was like his mind was TOO much on me. That was when it happened. Time stopped. He walked around the table and bent down on one knee. My mouth dropped open. I had food still in there. I was ALWAYS on my P's ad Q's when it came to maintaining my femininity. I was raised in the hood, but my father raised me to be a lady in hopes that one day I would get out the ghetto. I couldn't help it now. I was slapping the table as I saw the man of his dreams falling to his knee in the way he was. Tears were falling down eyes. "Oh my God!" "Baby...listen..." he said, as he put his hand in his pocket. "Oh...oh my God...Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Dear God!" All the class that I had known had gone out the window. I was holding onto my chest with one hand trying to cup my heart as though I had inherited my father's high blood pressure. I whipped my tears with my finger. I didn't care about my eye-liner. "Boo, you know I love you," he explained. He pulled out the box! "Oh...boy, I love you too. Boy, you are my everything...boy...boy! BOY!" I slapped the table so hard that I spilled the wine. I didn't even care as the little bit that was left in the glass splashed onto the steak. My left hand hung loosely, purposely. I was too shy to stretch it out and give it to him. He scooped it up though and I watched as he slipped the ring on my finger. "LaQuay Thompson, will you marry me?" I ended the story again, "That was how it happened." "Boo, let me see the ring again," Rita asked. I told the story to Rita and Anita a million times. Rita and Anita were my only two friends. I didn't fuck with these other jealous bitches around here. I definitely didn't fuck with any of the faggots. That is how most transgendered woman get "clocked". That's how people start wondering. A fag hag is one thing, but if you pay attention enough you can see that the girl isn't a fag hag...maybe, she's too pretty...she's too perfect...maybe she's really a guy. Anita and Rita have been close to me since I moved to the Grove. They were identical twins. They had real class that you couldn't learn from episodes of Sex and the City. They had been rich once. Their father was a wealthy stock broker. That was until he lost everything because of his gambling addiction. His wife, being the dumb bitch she was, drove him to suicide. She didn't have anything to her name. She didn't even have a damn education. She had been a normal, craftless trophy wife. She moved to the grove with her kids and till then Anita and Rita have been my closest friends. They weren't as pretty as me, not nearly, but they were pretty enough and had such classiness. Yet, even though we were so close, even they didn't know my deepest secret. "Bitch...you know what I heard?" Rita asked. Rita was the girl who had all the information around the Grove. She was the talker. Anita was doing my hair as she always did when Rita would come sit with us in the kitchen and talk. "Is it about my man?" It was always about my man. Dorian was the guy that all the girls wanted but none of the girls had. He didn't stay in the grove but he moved his weight in drugs here. He was a real hustler. He worked so hard for every dime that he had. Every girl in the Grove wanted him. "Well Mona told me that Janette still talks to him." Janette...all the drama starts with her. She was the legendary B.I.T.C.H of the Grove. Her father was Mr. Mann, who was the landlord of the building. That meant she didn't have to pay for her apartment. She was the local bombshell, until I came along. By then she had let every boy use her and lose her. Dorian, unfortunately, happened to be one of those guys. She had a son by him. Her son was Dorian Jr. It was Dorian's only kid but it wasn't hers. She had two more just like Jr. She wanted all her baby's daddies back, but she wanted Dorian back most of all...probably because Dorian was the only one who wouldn't give her any dick when she wanted it. Anita stopped doing my hair, "Now nobody wants to hear no bullshit about this bitch Janette. I'm tired of hearing about that gold digging nappy haired girl." "Her hair is nappy...as hell," Rita laughed. She ran her comb through her hair. They both always kept their hair perfect. It was always long and nice. I grabbed at the comb and snatched it away. Maybe it was because of the fact that I was engaged now. I didn't want to put up with Janette's bullshit anymore. I got her attention and asked, "What do you mean she told Mona she was talking to him?" "We can call her and find out," Rita said. I could tell Anita was rolling her eyes when she said, "You don't even need to be worried about it. You know how these girls here are. They just want to push your buttons. They want you to fall to their level." I I shrugged, "Maybe I want to be on her level this time. Maybe that is the only way she'll leave us the hell alone." "Maybe...you need to beat her ass," Rita urged on. "You are too good for that girl. She wants to fuck up your face," Anita pointed out, "So she can feel better. Ignore that girl, Dorian isn't looking her way. Right?" I got silent. "Right?" Rita asked. "I don't know." I had no idea how he felt about her. Dorian adored Jr. It was to the point that he would do things for the lady because Jr. was involved. He would drive out there in the middle of the night because Jr. was supposedly sick. He would give so much money trying to support Jr. when Janette wasn't even paying any rent. I knew how trifling Janette was. I didn't know how strong Dorian was when it came to resisting a woman. I always just trusted him. How do I know I haven't been foolish this entire time? Anita tossed the phone to Rita, "Call that bitch Mona." Rita put the phone on speaker and dialed Mona. I didn't like Mona. She was always pregnant which would explain why her and Janette were good friends. Mona didn't live in the Grove. She just came around because she had all her baby daddies here. Rita pushed close to us to make sure we could hear before she said anything. I exchanged looks with Anita. This bitch Mona was acting like I didn't exist or something. Everyone knew Dorian was my man. This bitch thinks it would be hot if he got back with Janette? I didn't get it. There was a gasp on the phone. It was almost like how the noise that little kids made in kindergarten when they found out something they shouldn't have known. Anita and Rita were cracking up by now. They had to mute the phone because they were laughing so loud. It was a little funny how shocked Mona was. Her entire theory had just been thrown in the trash. I was just sitting there though. I was so angry just that my relationship was still being challenged after all this time. The voice on the phone was a different voice. I heard Mona saying shit in the background, something like "You better check them bitches!" Anita heard it too...I could tell by how her eye slanted at the phone. This person wasn't Mona though. The voice had a deep rasp to it. It was a smoker's voice. It was Janette's angry ass voice. I grabbed the phone away from Rita before she could finish her sentence. I put my hand up to calm her down and let her know I would handle it. It wasn't her battle. It was mine. Rita was mad though. She had gotten up from her chair and was pacing the room. She was a classy girl, but she had learned what was necessary to survive in the ghetto. I picked up the phone...in a very calm manner. Anita was right, I was going to try my hardest not to lower myself to this girl's level. <--You dumb bitch, I told your ass last time about lying about people. You aint shit bitch, but a motherfucking piece of ass for him. He know who the mother of his child is. He always comes back after he's done with you bitches.> What she said burned. She knew it did. It felt like even though I had the belief that she was lying...it was so clear she was lying...there is a small ounce of, what if it could be true? It was so hard to keep my cool with a woman like Janette. Damn...Dorian didn't call me last night. He had said he was playing cards and setting up for this party. Why would he lie about that and end up going out to meet this bitch. "Tell the bitch to come bring it on, nappy headed bitch!" Rita started going off, pacing the kitchen and slapping her hands on her thigh so hard that it sounded like she was bruising herself. "Rita stop," I say, trying to cover the phone. It doesn't work. It's clear by her response that she heard Rita. Rita somehow heard that and walked back in the room just to say, "Girl please. I came for a party and needed my spare key." I signaled again for Anita to take Rita out the room and finally this time she did. It got quiet for a minute as Rita got taken out of the room. I didn't know why Janette got quiet. It was almost like all her ranting had tired her out for a second. I grabbed the phone in trying to really be the bigger woman about this now that Rita was out of the room. That could be arranged.