Assigned Chainmail at Birth: From Shining Armor to Mermaid Scales
Blackwarren Books is all about visibility and representation as part of our core beliefs - members of the queer community deserve to be seen and to have the ability to represent themselves while living their truth. Those are the kinds of stories we want to publish. Today, Blackwarren Editorial Assistant Skye Sisk shares a very personal story of her own about her childhood.
Long before I’d heard of concepts like “transgender,” “dysphoria,” or “social transition,” I made a different kind of transition: from knight to mermaid.
For hours every day, in the backyard after elementary school, my twin and I played a game we called “Icy and Jake.” My sister, who really preferred climbing the monkey bars to playing pretend, would play Princess Icy, a disinterested princess regent who only sometimes remembered she had ice-based magical powers, and I would play Jake, her valiant protector, her knight guardian sworn to an elaborate code of virtuous conduct that grew in my mind as I adopted the role. As a knight you must allow her to go down the slide first, as many times as she wants. I didn’t know how to be her brother, but I could figure out how to be her knight.
In the summer, we would visit my grandmother and her inground swimming pool, and when I would ask if it was time to play Icy and Jake, my sister would say she wanted to play mermaids instead. My parents insisted it was only fair; we spent so much time doing what I wanted to do, it was only right that we would spend some time playing the game she wanted to play. As a knight you must fill whatever role she asks. At first it was an indulgence for us both: she got to swim around the pool and make us all watch her dive and “transform” into a mermaid, and I got to play pretend, even if it was as a silly mermaid instead of a cool knight. Both personas existed in my head: I was myself masquerading as Jake masquerading as Aqua, a boy pretending to be a knight pretending to be a mermaid. Roles upon roles upon roles.
The Mermaid Life
One summer I made a shocking realization. I liked playing mermaids, almost – gasp – as much as I liked playing Icy and Jake. What began as a silly concession to my sister’s whims, a dumb game for girls, was fun. I liked feeling graceful and charming and feminine, and more than that, there was just as much depth in the world of mermaids as there was in the world of knights and princesses. We still went on fantastic adventures, deep underwater to Atlantis (forever unreachable at the bottom of my grandmother’s 10ft swimming pool) and in haunted lakes and swamps (an unseasonably foggy North Carolina summer). When we came back home in the fall, I wanted to continue the story: what if the treasure hunters we were racing to the cavern of Quartz Cove wanted Princess Icy’s treasure next? What if Jake had actually been half-mermaid this whole time? My sister was more interested in our neighbor’s trampoline. As a knight you must understand: she will sometimes treat you like her brother instead. Don’t let yourself forget what you really are.
When middle school started, I felt closer to drowning than I ever did in my grandmother’s pool. My sister wanted to branch out and make new friends, and it was weird if I tried to reach out to her friends. I was supposed to make friends with boys like me, except the more I tried, the more I realized there weren’t any boys like me. I didn’t know how to play pretend as a boy, and they couldn’t understand me when I tried.
I started bringing books to read during lunch, during recess, during the bus ride home. Paolini, Pierce, Riordan, Rowling. I ran out of YA fantasy and turned to the thicker books in my school library. Burroughs, Butcher, Jordan, Sanderson.
On My Honor, I Will Do My Best - To Be Myself
Things weren’t any better in Boy Scouts, shockingly. Every Monday night, in between merit badge workshops and team-building activities, the boys would gather in the field behind the Presbyterian church and run around; sometimes there would be an organized game like football or Frisbee, but more often it was freeform, just running around chasing other boys and grappling each other until they all got tired, collapsing into a sweaty pile and laughing.
I started hiding in the bathroom during these games. I tried to play along, once; no one would explain the rules, so I just tried to copy the others, but the boys thought it was weird when I tackled someone: I held him down too long, used too much of my arms, didn’t laugh enough afterwards, took it too seriously. Unchivalrous conduct for a knight in a foreign land, breaking commandments even the commonfolk know by heart.
Still, I stuck with Scouting. The Scout Oath was almost a code of chivalry, and it felt like the right way to approach manhood. If I didn’t know how to act as a boy, at least I could act as a Scout, and that was close enough when everyone else was playing their part as well.
One Dark and Stormy Night
One night, it stormed so hard we were told to stay inside, shelter in the church’s fellowship hall and wait it out. After the first hour, the boys were growing antsy, so someone pulled down the projector screen and put on Iron Man. One of the boys pulled out a rumpled paperback, one of the Magic: the Gathering novels that’re now out of print. The only thing I knew about this kid was that he had a common first name, so we called him by his last name instead. He was friendly with the boys I didn’t get along with, so I didn’t ask him about it, not until the next time he snuck a book into a meeting, this time a copy of one of R.A. Salvatore’s Legacy of the Drow books, with a stalking panther and a beautiful sword-swinging elf emblazoned on the cover. He told me about the first book in the series, lighting up when I asked questions, and he recounted the deep historical lore of the dark elves in the Underdark society, how the hero of the story turns his back on the way he was raised and fights for a better life unrestricted by petty rules and family grievances. I was entranced. Here was someone who spoke my language.
We started hanging out every week at the Scouting meetings. He would tell me about the current book he was reading, and I would listen, awestruck, asking questions: Why did the villain kill the hero’s mom? I thought the armor was blessed, how did the spear break it? How do you think time travel works? Who would win in a fight, Ajani or Drizzt?
One week, he confided in me: he got a different kind of book, still fantasy, but with a nearly-naked woman on the cover, bound in chains and helpless. He started telling me the plot, but there was something sneaky in his eyes. He lowered his voice to talk about the way the barbarians humiliated the princess they’d kidnapped, and I felt transfixed in a different kind of way: for the first time, here was a fantasy I wanted no part of, made me uncomfortable just to hear about, and he was relishing it. I tried to change the subject: Remember last week’s book? What color dragon would you have as a partner? Are dwarves or elves cooler? He laughed and set the book down, went to play tag with the boys.
On our monthly camp outings, we would sneak off together to play pretend. We’d find sticks in the woods and be wizards, or ninjas, or, yes, knights, and when I said my knight’s name was Jake he laughed and made me choose a “more fantasy” name, like Sir Ellowyn, or Davadar the Bold. I kept my true name close to my chest, a magical secret. Around the smoldering campfire after sundown, we’d play our own two-man version of Werewolf, making up names for the villagers and telling one another increasingly complicated dramas, only for the other one to chime in with, “And then a werewolf runs in and eats everyone!” He seemed to love that part, describing in lurid detail the gory ways the villagers died.
Would There Be Mermaids?
On a boating trip, we shared a canoe. We lagged behind the others as he told me about a fantasy city that lived in his mind, one he planned on writing about someday. I played my part, asking questions to fill in the gaps: Who rules the northern continent? What’s the music like? Are there mermaids in this world?
Why would there be mermaids? he asked. Do you want there to be mermaids?
I nodded. Mermaids can be cool. We could even pretend to be mermaids sometime. It would be fun, maybe, to be a mermaid with him.
He didn’t say that would be weird. He didn’t say it was gross, or wrong. He didn’t say he feels it too, the pull of the tide, the scales beneath the skin, the wrongness in the mirror.
He said, I could see you as a mermaid.
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