The Aristocrats
A woman submits an essay to a publishing site.
“What kind of essay do you have for us?” asks the editor.
“Well, it’s a true story,” she says, “a family story.”
“Let’s see it”, says the editor.
It was somewhere between April and June of 2007 the last time I saw my mother. I awoke from the depths of the acid trip in a swirling rainbow, with Larry David’s cock in my throat at the center of the spiral.
“Sorry, Lar,” said Kari, “she’s waking up now, you gotta stop.”
I tried to run off the bed, but was still rope bound.
“That’s alright,” said Larry, “I love what you’ve done with her!”
“M”- I tried to yell.
“M? Mmm?” mocked Kari. “Well, she’s not good for much else!”
Larry zipped up his pants and shook her hand. “See you next time!”
“Ma”-
“Shut the fuck up, Anya! Love you, Lar! Have a save flight.”
“Ma”-
“For the thousandth time, I’m not your mother.”
Kari pointed out the window at a squat, heavy-set woman with dark hair in colorful, flowing tapestries, and Shia, in a maroon polo and puka shell necklace, smiling and shaking hands with old men in dark suits, getting into a black SUV at the Aspen lodge that was host to our family reunion.
“That’s your mother. Shayna. She doesn’t give a shit about you.”
“Sh- Sh- Hel” I tried to call out for my twin brother, have him take me away from that hell, before the reality would inevitably fade back into what my LSD-split mind would write off as a nightmare.
“Sh-sh- Honey, he’s never gonna help you.”
Kari took the ropes off me and locked the door. I tried again to move, but was fully paralyzed.
“Just go to sleep. You got homework to do tonight.”
At school the next day, I ate my Pop Tarts alone in the hallway, paying no mind to the always-confusing smirks, and greets of “How was your weekend, Ren Stevens?”
The first time I took LSD without my family, I was visiting a close friend in Portland, OR, from Denver, where I chose to stay after high school to party in the punk scene. I took one tab. It kicked in as Allen played a Big Black vinyl.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I dunno. Stabby.”
“Um- what do you mean?”
“I dunno”, I said nonchalantly. “I just kinda feel like murdering my family.”
The second time I took LSD without my family, I was with two crust punks and a hippie Native girl in a filthy trailer out on East Colfax. She dealt for a living, and had a vial of liquid. After three hits, agitated, and frustrated I wasn’t seeing colors, I took a rusty tattoo gun, and started scribbling over the Star of David and “l’chaim” on my right forearm. Seven more hits sent me into the void. I awoke shaking and screaming at my friends,
“I know what you did to me! I know what you did to me! Stay the fuck away from me! Where’s my brother? WHERE IS MY BROTHER?”
After an hour of this, one of the punks said, “We found his phone number! He’s on his way!”
I squealed and spun in impossible joy.
“You found his phone number?” I cried. “It’s a miracle!”
By the time Daniel came to pick me up in the green Mitsubishi we purchased to get us up the bumpy dirt road to the isolated cabin near the Sangre de Cristos, I was far removed enough from the trip that I’d forgotten all about Shia.
“Jesus, Anya”, he said. “You’re fucking retarded.”
The third time I took LSD without my family, I was again in a trailer, this time with my friend KV, a punk frontman who partied at C Squat and encouraged me to leave Denver for New York City - a decision guided in no small part by my crush on him. He played Yeezus - my first time hearing the record. I only had half a dose, and it felt like heaven, but when we got close, I couldn’t let myself have sex with him.
“So… am I the first man you’ve been into?” I asked.
“Well…” He brushed his fingers over the scars from my double mastectomy. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Is it weird for you?”
“I dunno. It’s really more about the person than their gender. And I like you.”
“I guess it’s weird for me, if like, you aren’t actually bi or gay. Cuz like, I am a man, you know?”
“Right, right,” he said, “I know. But I like you.”
The fourth time I took LSD without my family, I was watching Clueless in a Jersey City apartment. Jared, my Facebook friend who got me started working on sets as a background actor and production assistant, was a conspiracy theorist. I had always held people like that in a low regard, and stuck up my nose at the idea that our world was governed by anything other than what we were told. But Jared had some evidence of some lies; he watched his mother die of an opioid overdose, but the cause of death listed on her certificate was Covid-19.
It was a few months after I’d given up on acting - I’d gotten too many calls for male semi-nudity, and wasn’t confident I could play a boxer with my hips, or wear a thong Speedo properly with only a vagina between my legs.
“Why didn’t you just go into it after high school, Owen?” He asked.
“I dunno. Growing up, everyone told me to run away and go to Hollywood. I didn’t think I was *that* talented.”
“Right”, he said, “it was about your talent”.
The drug started kicking in as Mr. Horowitz came on screen. “Hi, Daddy!” I joked. “Ha, my dad’s just like that. He looks like that, acts like that…”
“Yeah, I already know a little bit about your father,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
I noticed that my cunt was dripping wet, and my muscles were fully clenching in on themselves.
“I don’t think you’ve only had three acid trips.”
I suddenly remembered experiencing the same sensation as a toddler at Aunt Vivian’s house, on vacation in Mexico, and at the family cabin. I was sweating.
I ran to look in the mirror, and saw a stranger staring back at me in horror. The beard, the muscles, the scars on my chest, did not belong to me. What had I done to myself? What had they done to me? I began sobbing, before the world around me became sparkling black.
The next day, with a ten-strip in hand, I made a plan with my doctors to detransition - how to safely quit testosterone and reintroduce estrogen to my system, a heavy feat following my hysterectomy and ovariectomy, along with a plot to get my breast reconstruction covered by my insurance. They also assigned me to a new therapist.
In the safety of time and distance from the abuse I endured growing up, with the aid of microdoses of the same poison used to stunt me, my memories slowly began to return as I slowly began to return to my body. At first, I was only certain that they regularly dosed me with LSD, and was in denial about all they told me while high.
They took pleasure in bragging about their crimes while I was in my split-mind state, knowing it would be years before I remembered what they told me.
“I know they dosed me, but what if they only told me they raped me?” I’d ask my therapist.
“Honey, there’s no reason they would dose you, brag about raping you, and not rape you.”
In those early days of recovery, functioning in public was an absolute nightmare. Not only was I constantly plagued with flashbacks, but most everyone presumed me to be a male-to-female trans woman. I required extensive vocal training to learn how to speak convincingly after the hormones had caused my voice to lower; I hid my stubble with layers of drag makeup, and wore wigs to hide my receded hairline. I occasionally wore massive silicone bra inserts, that would not stay in place. My wardrobe was acquired for free from strangers online.
In December of 2020, I made a final trip home to Denver to see my father and the woman who claimed to be my mother, still in denial about the memories that had surfaced, hoping to repair our relationship. On that visit, I was dosed with LSD again.
It would be another year before I remembered my twin brother. Occasionally I would recall our father telling me about him, but did not yet remember our meetings as children, or 2007 reunion. The revelation broke me.
How could someone knowingly abandon their twin sister to a life of sex slavery, while they galavanted about as a film star? Why didn’t I remember him sooner?
Some things didn’t add up, namely, our ages. He was six years older than me. Why were we at orgies together growing up, and why did they tell me we were twins?
New memories still seeped through. I recalled family friends coming to the house, and asking “Is Anya still four?”, laughing. I remembered more supervillain monologues by my father and step mother, explaining that they agreed to present him as being two years older to put him to work sooner, and that Kari gave birth to a girl they gave away on the date they would later claim as my own birthday. For four years, they told me I was four years old. By the time I entered school, they simply told me I was tall and gifted.
As obsession bloomed, I continued to convince myself it was
-maybe none of it was real
-maybe I transitioned because I went crazy drinking too much and sticking needles in my arm
-maybe my parents did regularly dose me, but did lie about being pedophiles and keeping me from my twin brother
-maybe my classmates only told me I was older than them and called me Ren Stevens because I was a tall perfectionist
-but these are my memories as they have arisen. These are the memories that shaped my life.
-the beauty of conspiracy is that people refuse to verify it either way, letting us sit in mystery
-the beauty of trauma is that it allows you to heal from it
-the beauty of truth is that, even if nobody believes you, you believe you.
-regardless of if my experience is ever validated or not, I will always despise Larry David.
I’m publishing it. Idgaf. Brokerage, name change, truth. Make your movie. I’m gonna sue you. I already have the Emerson emails.
