Spanking New by Clifford Henderson

Bold Strokes Books, 2009

Review by Mayra David

A warning: the cover of the book posits: “Imagine if you could choose your parents…and your sex!” In fact, the author did not imagine any such thing. The narrator, Spanky, is a Floating Soul that has been “dripped” out of The Known into the Land of Forgetting in order to find parents and be born. Only, instead of choosing, Spanky is fated to particular parents, whom he finds easily enough because he has been dripped in their immediate vicinity. Then, at some point or other, he realizes he’s a boy.

Still, I was happy to suspend my disbelief and dive into a story about a boy soul that finds he will be born a girl. Truthfully, I was expecting something to unfold that ultimately did not. A look at the inner struggles of transgendered persons perhaps. Or an imagining of what brings about our sexual orientations. Instead, Henderson goes down a more familiar route: an after-school-special type story about unplanned pregnancy for Spanky’s parents, Rick and Nina.

It is with the unplanned preganancy that the story really starts, as it begs the question: Can we do this alone? Suddenly, this young couple finds itself in need of support, and where support is lacking among blood relations, Henderson does a good job of showing how human nature will then reach out to find it, even from an unlikely source. Slowly, we see Rick’s reserve toward Nina’s gay friends melt. He accepts their help and friendship, and returns it, for his own sake instead of Nina’s.

One big weakness of the book is the narrating voice. Not satisfied with either conventional first-person or omniscient narrators, Henderson tries, unsuccessfully, to merge the two – a first person narrative with an omniscient point of view. Though he is not omnipresent, he is conveniently omniscient anyway. “Whoa Doggies! What did I miss? I scan back in time. …”? And he provides no wisdom from The Known – unless “I need an XX and an XY to get the job done” counts as insight. Less Floating Soul, more Alien Kid among earthlings.

The issue of two XX’s or two XY’s being together is touched upon briefly, when Spanky tries to understand homosexuality and theorizes:

“The Land of Forgetting is about reproduction and getting born. I wonder if it’s possible for a soul to get the wrong body. [...] The Known can’t make mistakes. Can it?”

This should have been the crux of the whole book, but after seamlessly introducing it into the story, Henderson steers clear of it, opting for a conventional narrative about young people who find each other through their struggles. In doing that, she deflects from the philosophical reflection her own characters seems to demand.

These characters seem boringly familiar: The musician son at odds with his insurance salesman father. The daughter who is her father’s ‘pumpkin’ no-matter-what. But then again, there are lessons Henderson wishes to impart here – lessons best received from familiar people. Their thoughts and circumstances are all relatable. Except in one instance: Before Spanky’s parents meet, his mother, the 21 year old actress, is in love with the gay costume designer named Pablo, and refuses to realize he is gay even after he has her dress as a boy and takes her with him to a club called ‘Chaps’. Really, I can only suspend my disbelief so much.

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