Pride

When Lonny moved on, Avril walked over to the mirror on the far wall just to check that the woman hadn’t been making fun of her. Nope. Still fabulous. Still sparkly with the glitter and hairspray she’d spritzed on before leaving the house.

With the pre-order for the completed Cry Baby Cry going up on Amazon this week, this will be the last sneak preview excerpt for CRY on this blog. I hope you enjoy it and will check back for future notes when I start to birth my next Street Stories novel.

Avril had seen an article once on coffins made with glitter. They came in any color. She would pick all the colors, she thought. Tell them to spray all the damn sparkles on the thing when it was time for her funeral and toast her with champagne as they lowered her into the dirt.

She looked down at her body without shame or hate or disorientation. The penis she had securely tucked beneath her red, white, and blue tutu didn’t mean she was a man any more than yearning for real breasts meant she was a woman. Her body simply was and whether she changed it to reflect who she was inside or not, she would always be Avril McCartney because that was who she chose to be. Who you made love to didn’t define who you were, either. Loving at all, that was what defined you: treating people, treating yourself, with compassion and humor and camaraderie.