My Creative Writing teacher wanted us to write a series of vignettes describing an occupation. Mine doesn't really do that...it deviated pretty quickly, too. Tell me what you think.

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Hajimeru; beginning

Early in the morning, he sneaks into Mommy’s room. Mommy and Daddy don’t share a room anymore, but that’s good, because that means Daddy won’t wake up and find out what he’s doing.

He slides Mommy’s closet open ever so quietly and finds a dress he knows she hasn’t worn in ages and won’t miss. It’s dark purple, a color that doesn’t look good on Mommy, with short sleeves and a pleated skirt that goes down to Mommy’s knees. He sneaks back out of the room. In his own room, he lies it on the bed and admires it.

Shukudai; homework

Boys don’t become nurses; girls don’t become doctors. Boys aren’t schoolteachers, or waitresses, or maids, or anything he wants to be when he grows up.

He doesn’t really care. He slides on the dress he stole from his mother and takes apart his sister’s dolls. Then he makes them all better.

Koukousei; high school student

His father is pretty sure he beat every ounce of P-A-N-S-Y out of his son. Now the boy is a running back, a second baseman, a goalie. His father doesn’t know about the cheerleading outfit his daughter gave his son.

Daigaku; college

He goes to ASU and plays for the Sun Devils every season. He’s planning on staying in college for eight years, maybe twelve, whatever will give him a secondary medical degree.

Then comes the draft, and he goes to Viet Nam, and he comes back in shambles.

Yoru; night

Women fill his days. He got a purple heart when his left leg was crippled, and women can’t wait to see the medal, to ooh and aah over it. They don’t want to see his leg. It’s an ugly, twisted mass of deformed bone and scar tissue.

It does not sadden him to have a limp. He cries as he crawls into his lady’s nightgown at bedtime, because now he can never get away with wearing a short skirt like the one he took from his mother so many years ago.

Kangaenai; not thinking

He limps through the rest of college. He doesn’t party, do drugs or drink. As valedictorian, his speech is short. It merely informs a confused audience of his inability to think of something to say. There is nothing left to say, not really.

Kekkonsuru; marry

He’s been out of college for six years when he meets her. Taking a break from his shift at the hospital, he sees her trying to light her cigarette. He offers her a match, and they get to talking. This woman was here with a friend who suffered from a mild concussion; her name is Kara, and she’s only staying long enough to make sure her friend is okay, and he’s glad. He takes her home that night.

She thinks his skirts are a fetish, and she’s very accommodating. She lets him wear them while they have sex. Three months after they met, he asks her to marry him. She turns him down coldly and stops calling.

Kodomonotoki; childhood

He gets a call from his sister telling him their father is dying. She tells him to stay home, but he has to see his father one last time.

But when he arrives at the hospice, sees his father’s face made weary by age and medicine, he knows he’s made a horrible mistake. He remembers every fist that man ever raised, every time the words faggot or fairy reigned in the frightened silence of the house. He remembers how, every time his father found one of his skirts, it would be burned.

He limps from the room crying. His mother and sister exchange glances as the heart monitor lets out its flatline tone.

Kami; god

He turns his back on god at sixty-seven. With the growing public outrage about gay rights, his preacher has begun a series of sermons about sodomy and its direct connection to hell.

He’s not gay, he knows. He just likes to deviate from social norms, even sixty-seven.

Hataraku; work

He’ll retire when his hair goes a pure, snowy white. It’s still black as pitch.

Shindeiru; dying

He’s found one morning slumped over the desk of the nurse’s station.

They bury him in the finest tuxedo they could find.