You got to ask yourself: Do you want to fuck Judy Garland? Or do you want to become her? I wasn’t prepared for this line of questioning. I was eleven at the time. Or twelve. I think, eleven. My mother’s boyfriend had asked me this. My mother’s boyfriend was an idiot. I had considered him an idiot even before he had asked me this question, which really was directed at me more as an ultimatum, but once he asked me this, his status as an idiot was firmly cemented. Of course, I didn’t tell him this. He was bigger than me. And had tattoos. There was a snarly sneer, or sneery snarl—choose your poison—behind his words when he spoke them. Do you want to fuck Judy Garland? Or become her? I knew which option he wanted me to choose.

I was watching The Wizard of Oz for the umpteenth time when he asked me. I looked at the screen. Dorothy Gale, a.k.a., Judy Garland, had just met the Scarecrow who was locked into his stumble-bumble routine. My mother’s boyfriend also stared at the screen. What did he see? A young pigtailed girl in a blue dress that he was pining to fuck, or had pined to fuck over the course of many years and viewings? I felt as if I were in the company of a serial rapist. And my mother was dating this guy?

Think about what I asked, he spoke clinically, then left the living room to give me the proper time and space to digest his inquiry. I felt as if I had been abducted and then dropped off blindfolded at a crossroads. Which way to go? Do I fuck Judy Garland? Do I become her? There seemed to be only two choices, and whichever one I chose was going to become a central part of my fate, my coming of age. Or, I thought, you could stand at the crossroads, muted and blindfolded, and choose no path at all. Just stay exactly where you are, become as the Scarecrow impaled on a post. That too was a choice, a third one.

I had always marveled at the transition from black-and-white Kansas to color-saturated Oz. It seemed the stuff of miracles. In my estimation and desire Oz was heaven. I’d go there someday. Into that world of cinematic color which existed nowhere else. Oz was heaven. My mother’s boyfriend advocated for the serial raping of Dorothy. A house would fall on him someday. Karma’s a bitch that way.

Years later, I would run into my mother’s now ex-boyfriend at a pet shop. I was there to buy a goldfish for my daughter. I don’t know why he was there. Perhaps to buy a gerbil. It seemed a likely story. Anyway, he was standing on line in front of me. He was older. Grayer. Paunchier. I observed the lion tattoo on his forearm. It had faded some. I didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t want him to see me. I tapped him on the shoulder, to this day I don’t know why, and spoke his name—Frank—which had suddenly come back to me.

He turned around. He immediately recognized me. He said my name, as if it were the title of a video game, then stuck out his hand, which I shook. We talked briefly, casual chit-chat, none if it memorable. What I do remember about that encounter: right before I was leaving, after having paid for the goldfish, I said—You know what, Frank, I married Dorothy. And divorced her. Or she divorced me.

Dorothy, he said with mounting confusion. Who’s Dorothy?

You know … Dorothy, I said, then clumsily exited the shop like a scarecrow who was just learning how to use his legs after a long coma in a field of silent wheat.