“No way,” I had said, voice hitching with a nervous laugh.
Chants had echoed back at me. “You have to! You have to!”
So I did.
There was a tap on the door. Aunt Anne Marie poked her head in. I’d never felt so relieved. “Everything going okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Dima said. “Was asking Aleks about a convention next weekend. I didn’t know he cosplayed.”
I closed my eyes. If they were shut, I didn’t need to see him hold the costume. Then I could consider his words. He’d gotten the name and pronoun right the first go. And to say that to my aunt’s face, knowing what she was like . . .
“Does that mean you and Alexis will be making new costumes?”
My eyes shot open. Dima was no longer holding the costume. It must have disappeared back in my closet. And my aunt was there, some sort of eagerness on her face. No trace of the wariness she’d shown toward Dima just a few minutes ago.
“If we go, do you think there’d be time to make something?” Dima asked her. “I’ve got work and I need to help out Deacon Jameson.”
“Maybe I could help.” She was so timid, I thought I must have misheard her.
“That’d be awesome.” Dima’s face lit up, and so did my aunt’s.
Could a person flip that quickly? Wasn’t it only last week that she believed costumes were demonic?
Maybe she was so desperately lonely that any sort of friendliness won her over. It wasn’t like she had much company here. The other priests didn’t have wives for her to hang out with. And parishioners probably weren’t too keen on gossiping or sharing secrets with her, in case it all got back to Uncle Bryan. She hadn’t mentioned any friends, any hobbies or activities outside attending church. Maybe she was happy just to be included in something.
Dima looked at me. “Well? Are you in? I was thinking this one. It’s only a half hour drive.” He handed me his phone, and I looked at the page he’d pulled up. It was the homepage for a convention I’d never heard of.
Think. I needed to think. This con that Dima had suggested was something very local. Small. Relatively dinky. Maybe a college event.
That wasn’t the sort of place any of my friends, I mean former friends, would know about. They wouldn’t go. Especially not when a big con was happening the exact same weekend.
He would be at Ureshii-con, not here.
“Okay,” I said. Just once. It’ll be okay.
15 Alexis
Mom and Dad took me to my first convention when I was fourteen. Apparently Mom used to go to them when she was in her early twenties, but they weren’t on the same scale. Like small sci-fi ones, I think.
For my first convention, I was nervous about the idea of cosplaying, but my parents encouraged me. They said we’d do it all together, one of the rare times when Dad was home for a few months, us three versus the world. I was the Grim Reaper from What You Sow, an anime revolving around the relationship between a young, nameless girl and the reaper who was to take her to the unknown. My costume took about a month to make. I had enormous retractable wings on my back that I’d made with a pulley system, and I created low stilts for height. The inside of my hood was lined with luminescent bulbs and el wire that I could operate with a handheld remote control.
I thought Mom and Dad would dress up as other characters from the show since they saw my process and periodically helped out with tools. But no. I was mistaken. Rather than do a serious cosplay, Mom and Dad decided they’d go as Bruce Wayne’s dead parents. They thought it was hilarious to photobomb every Batman photoshoot by shouting, “Bruuuuuuuuce!” and diving on the floor, pretending to be dead while I loomed above them. Honestly it was pretty funny and most of the Batmans would crack up.
I wasn’t as good a stitcher back then, but I was good enough to get the attention of a small group of people, some with rainbow bands around their wrists. And they approached us cautiously, cells and cameras in hand as they asked permission to take our pictures. They lingered after taking the photos and I was clueless until Dad whispered, “They want to talk to you.”
So I talked to them.
They asked me everything. Was I a boy or girl? Bigender? What’s that? You’re a really beautiful boy. That’s a compliment! You want to hang out with us? Let’s friend each other. You’re so cool. And they talked so, so much that I didn’t realize my parents had drifted off until they came back, asking if I wanted to stop by the dealer’s room because they were closing in thirty minutes.
I couldn’t stop laughing and smiling and I was so, so, so happy.
For the first time in my life, I belonged.
I could be anyone. I could pretend.
So for every convention after that, I’d pretended that I was their permanent bishonen—the beautiful boy—and all the girls thought I was cute, so cute. When I was a boy, I mean.
Exploitation.
It was exploitation.
You were viewed as a sexual object.
It’s not right.
Was the voice actually being supportive?
Well, it was wrong. For me, at those moments, people’s reactions felt so right. I liked being viewed as a sexual object. Being seen as a beautiful boy. Not an ugly girl, or someone who was completely incompetent when straddling the gray space of binary gender roles.
You’re allowed to change your mind.
That’s Consent 101.
Idiot.
There. That sounded more like the voice I was used to.
♱♱♱
I’d forgotten the magic of a first convention. By the time Dima and I arrived at the small hotel where the con was happening, I was rolling my eyes at some of the cheaply made costumes. In our Synthetica cosplays—me as Raziel, Dima as Aaron Swatson—we’d easily outshine the people who used hot glue on the seams or bought cheap, premade things from China. But Dima practically leaped out of the car the second he parked. He sprinted across the parking lot before I could stop him, arms waving wildly. “EXCUSE ME! CAN I TAKE MY PICTURE WITH YOU?”
I got out of the car more slowly, checked myself in the mirrors to make sure my costume was fitted, then walked to Dima’s side. These people’s costumes were poorly constructed with broadcloth and cheap linen. I could see where they’d used permanent marker to trace the pattern instead of chalk. The closure was Velcro. And—
“Aren’t they amazing?” Dima asked me excitedly. “They made Bo Brightshine and Dr. Steevius by themselves!”
“Your costumes are so much better,” one girl said shyly.
“Pfft, they don’t count.” My head snapped to Dima. Did he just insult my work after I busted my ass sewing costumes for two instead of one? “Alexis has been at this for so long, it was like hiring a professional. I couldn’t even begin to do something like this.”
So he wasn’t insulting my work. He complimented me, and he complimented someone else.
I looked at the girls, taking in their costumes. They’d improvised with what they had, clearly with limited resources and skills. The attention to detail, however, was spot on. There was love poured into every inch of those costumes. Pride. Like they were the people who truly loved Attack Girl Tokyo more than anyone because they’d done everything they could to be the character, not everything they could to be the best.