My cousin is three, maybe four,when my mother is pregnant and she asks him what she should name the baby. The answer is obvious. Cinderella if they’re a girl, Monster Truck if they’re a boy.
I am neither, of course. But at three, maybe four, gender is as vague a concept as planets. You don’t explain dwarf planets to three, maybe four year olds. Or gas giants. Or planetoids.
Monster Truck is not a planetoid. Monster Truck is Mars. He is two-mooned with ice at the poles, fourth from the Sun. Monster Truck goes swimming in his shorts instead of being made to sit, fully clothed, on the beach. He has never cooked because his grandmother doesn’t make him help in the kitchen.
Can you imagine Monster Truck? What do you think he thinks about sports? Do you think he views them as an activity or just a social exercise? How enthusiastic is he about the Super Bowl? What about people, movies, the great outdoors? I think Monster Truck has never had a good haircut. Haircuts, yes, but not good ones. Not spectacular ones. They never suit his face. He’s never looked in the mirror with the haircut, teary eyed, him. He’s always been him in the mirror. Planetoids are just asteroids. It’s just a fancy name for them. My mother never considered naming me Monster Truck. I was born Cinderella, and Cinderella claws at her face and picks at it. She hates cooking. She fantasizes about cutting off her hair and legs and thinks often of the word peel. She has no ice at her poles, no moons, let alone two of them. Only craters. She is a pestilence in the back of my mind, Monster Truck’s brakes, but I don’t hate her. I know her too well. We rot together in the belt between planets.