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Sonny hated paperwork. First, he hated how absolutely boring it was. It was like being in 12th grade calculus all over again. Sit there and write stuff down without really thinking about what the hell the words and numbers meant. He had to do something to keep focused, but Benson didn’t like it when he listened to music at his desk, and Rollins would eventually throw a pencil at him and tell him to stop bouncing his leg or tapping his fingers. Undercover, in an interrogation room or the courthouse, he had no problem keeping still. The stakes were higher. But paperwork? He didn’t stand a chance.
That was the main reason, and he tried to convince himself it was the only one, too. But it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. He hated that he had to fill out forms by hand in the 21st century even though they would all be typed into a computer eventually anyway. He didn’t like people to see his handwriting. It was far too feminine, flowery, bubbly, over-all girly. He tried to force himself to write differently but his hand just wouldn’t cooperate. It was his handwriting and he had to live with it. And yeah, okay, he knew it was a dumb thing to be so insecure about. It was stupid that handwriting could even be masculine or feminine, all of it was bullshit and things like that shouldn’t be gendered and he’d taken gender 101 in college, he’d read Judith Butler alright, he knew it was all performative. But his handwriting was girly and his masculinity was fragile.
Fin slapped some more paperwork on his desk. Great.
“Man, how’d you get your handwriting so neat?”
“Shut up,” Sonny snapped. He was turning red. He wondered if the officer at the front desk could hear, if now he was laughing because ‘oh that’s whose been writing those forms? Coulda sworn it was middle school girl.’
“Chill out, Carisi, take a compliment.”
Fin left, and Sonny put his pen down, rubbed a hand against the barely there stubble on his jaw.
Sonny liked beer. He didn’t at first, but he figured it was an acquired taste, or at the very least he could make it an acquired taste. It just seemed that he had to like it; everybody drank it and he wasn’t about to be left out. What else was there to drink anyway? No one ordered wine at a club, and he really had to be careful with how many shots he took. One or two (depending on if it was vodka or tequila) was all it took for him to try and climb onto a table for God knows what reason and fall onto the floor. So he drank beer like everybody else and pretended he totally had preferences between types and brands even though they all basically tasted the same to him.
Sometimes he wished he liked those fruity drinks that come with umbrellas or cherries. His sisters like them, get drunk fast on Long Island ice teas. But they’re too syrupy sweet, way too expensive. Too obvious. Okay, yeah, it’s totally stupid that guys can’t really order them. Masculinity is a prison, Sonny gets that. But he’d never been one to be the first to try and rock the boat. Guys could, but guys didn’t, and that was all the incentive Sonny needed to steer clear of them.
Sonny tipped the last of his beer back. “Anyone want another round?” he asked the squad as he got up to go to the bar. There was a chorus of orders, and Barba stood up to help him carry them all back.
They got their drinks first; Sonny got another beer, the bottle sweating in his hand. Barba got a sidecar. It was bright orange in a martini glass, a slice of fruit wedged decoratively on the rim.
“What is that?” Sonny asked.
“Cognac and orange liqueur. It’s good, you should try one.”
Sonny started sweating too. “Isn’t that, you know…” he made a vague hand gesture.
Barba raised an eyebrow. “Seriously Carisi? Is this drink too gay for you?”
“No! I wasn’t gonna say that. It’s just. I mean it looks kinda girly, don’t you think?”
The bartender finished the last of their order, arranged on a tray for them. Barba took it carefully, but not before sliding some extra money across the polished wood counter and saying, “Get him something pink. Add a little umbrella to it.”
He clapped Sonny on the shoulder and left, leaving Sonny to try to convince the bartender not to bring him a new drink. He got a strawberry daiquiri anyway. It tasted good, but on his third sip, he caught a woman glancing at him. He smiled, and she turned back to her friends and giggled.
He pushed the drink away quickly.
Sonny loved kids. And kids loved Sonny. His sisters called him a witch whenever he got one of the babies in the family to stop crying in ten seconds flat. He’d just laugh and tell them to bounce at the knees and “Don’t forget to smile! Babies love it, makes ‘em happy.” He let his older nieces clamber all over him, pull him all over the back yard to play pretend, he did special voices when they read or played with dolls. They always got a kick out of it. He was the world’s best uncle and had the mug to prove it. Except it was sort of a lie.
Everyone had to draw a line somewhere and for Sonny, he drew it at playing dress up. The girls always wanted to stuff him in a hat, wrap a feathered boa around him, and paint his nails. He wouldn’t let them put clips and bows in his hair, would let them put their make up on him. He couldn’t stand the thought of any of it, making his skin itch and burn. Even if he never saw himself in the mirror, he’d know what it looked like, how glittery eyeshadow and too much blush would make the line of his jaw dissolve, the boa hiding his Adam’s apple, eyes looking wide and innocent. He couldn’t let his sisters see him like that. He couldn’t let anyone see him like that, but them especially. Family always has the worse insults. They know everything about you, know just what to say. Even if they weren’t trying to be mean.
“She’s got you wrapped around her little finger,” Amanda said as he went into the 50th round of peekaboo with Jesse.
“Yeah,” he agreed with a laugh. He picked Jesse up and held her above his head, bouncing a little to make her giggle. “But I don’t mind.”
“You say that now. Wait til she has you all dressed up for a tea party.”
Sonny lowered Jesse back into his lap, focused on whatever primetime reality show Amanda had put on. “I’m not that good an uncle.”
“Aw, c’mon, you’ll love it.”
“No,” Sonny said. He let Jesse hold onto his finger, tug his hand around. He felt hot, like a crowd of people had their eyes on him, even if it were just Amanda. She was looking at him. Picturing what he’d look like in a floppy hat, a dress, make up, long hair –
“Sonny. Seriously? Why are you so upset?”
“I’m not. I just don’t do dress up. Not even with my nieces.” He wanted to leave. He wanted to get out, go home where no one could see him, look at him, start to wonder.
“It’s not that big a deal. It’s not gonna make your dick fall off.”
Sonny laughed bitterly. He couldn’t tell what was happening on tv, couldn’t get his brain to work. It was frozen, stuck in the moment between spilling his guts and reminding himself how bad an idea that was.
Amanda elbowed him. “I bet you’d make a pretty girl.”
“Yeah that’s what my ma used to say.” He couldn’t lifted his eyes to look at Amanda. She always said, “You’re such a pretty girl, my little princess,” as if she didn’t have three other daughters who were also called her little princess. And when he told her, she said, “But you’re such a pretty girl.” He’d chopped all his hair off a year ago, threw away all the dresses and skirts in the back of his closet, the ones he wore to weddings, the ones he wore to try to convince himself he could like it. It was just a phase he was going through, she said, from watching too much X-Files (Sonny could never figure out exactly how that correlated).
“Sonny?”
He was crying. Not hard, just tears filling up and spilling down. And wasn’t that a kicker. “I don’t really tell people,” he said. “But, uh, I’m trans. So.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. And now, I just, you know, it always feels like people are looking at me, cause they used to, before I passed. And I’m afraid if I do anything like that, like something feminine or whatever, that’s what people will think. That I’m really a girl, I was just faking or confused, cause a real man wouldn’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t think that.”
“I know that. Can’t shake the feeling though.”
“Hey. How many nieces you got?”
“Uh, four. Plus Jesse.”
“Yeah, and I know they love you, and if you played girly games with them, they’d only love you more. They’d be having fun. And they wouldn’t think anything about it. And strangers wouldn’t know any different than you’re a guy who’s like, the best uncle ever because he does stuff like that with them.”
Sonny nodded. He knew all that. It was hard telling his self-esteem though.
“Nobody who knows you would ever think you’re not a real man, Sonny.”
Jesse grabbed hold of one of Sonny’s fingers and started gnawing at it.
“Sonny, honestly, if you hadn’t told me, I never woulda known. Actually, I always thought you were one of those annoying frat boy types who wouldn’t do anything girly without saying ‘no homo.’”
Sonny gave a small groan of embarrassment. “I guess I was overcompensating.” He smiled at Amanda, then down at Jesse, who reached out to try and tug on his hair. It was nice to tell someone. He’d worked hard to make sure no one at NYPD would ever find out. Applying to the academy had nearly given him a heart attack. “Thanks, Amanda.”
“It’s no problem. You ever need anything, I’m here. We all are; squad’s a family.”
“Yeah. Hey, there is one thing maybe you could do. I’ve always kinda wanted to do it but never had the nerve.”
The tv shone bright as the previews for next week’s drama rolled out. Amanda toward Sonny expectantly. She always was a sucker for a cliffhanger.
Sonny hated paperwork. And he hated when perps resisted arrest because that made even more paperwork, never mind the scrapes on his knees from having to tackle the guy on the sidewalk. He was going to be stuck at his desk for another hour.
“You did good today, Carisi,” Benson said. “Barba said our guy’s lawyer’s going to take the deal.”
Sonny leaned back in his chair, twirling his pen. “That’s great, Lieutenant. Thanks.”
“Yeah, we should go out and celebrate,” Fin said from his desk. “Round of beer on me.”
“I’d like that,” Sonny said.
“Sounds good,” Benson agreed. She put a hand on Sonny’s shoulder. “And by the way, Carisi, I like your nails.”
Sonny held his hands out to admire the light green polish. “Yeah, Rollins said it was called ‘Passport to Happiness.’ She did a good job putting it on, too.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Amanda said. “You can paint your own nails from now on.” She leaned forward to fake-whisper, “I had to redo do it twice cause he wouldn’t stop touching stuff and smudging it. I told him to sit still.”
Sonny laughed, tossed his pen at Amanda. He loved his family.