Today's writing

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia. That’s my official diagnosis. It's unwieldy, a mouthful. It’s an autosomal recessive disorder, which means I’ve gotten two copies of an abnormal gene. I’m a scratched CD. I’m a videotape that won’t fully rewind. I’m a jumpy recording that skips, hiccuping out of sequence. I’m not properly programmed. I’m a partial, a taste. I am incomplete.

Parents pass it on to their children. I imagine Rooster and Nails meeting at some bargaining table, scrawling their signatures on paperwork, consenting to merge, to create a copy of their combined selves. I picture them finalizing the decision, brisk and businesslike.

Each carried an altered gene. Perhaps they held it like a wedding bouquet: self-conscious and proud. Or maybe they hid it, using the same sort of coping mechanisms I’d later develop and grow to resent. They each placed the gene – that ugly, gnarled thing – face down. Then they walked away.