GRAY, Jenna Kendall

*THESE PICTURES MUST NOT STRETCH THE BOARD

name Jenna Gray
nickname Jen by some. She’s chosen “Jay” as her true title, and privately considers that her name. She dreams of a day when people will refer to her as such, but she’s never told anyone about it.
age 25
gender Genderqueer. Others refer to her as a “she”. She abhors this title and longs, one day, to be referred to as a “ze”. But she has never told anyone this either. She loathes gender-specific labels such as “ma’am, sweetie, honey, babe, etc.” and will often pretend not to hear such references to herself unless they are uttered several times.
grade Adult, attended McDonald County High school and graduated at the top of her class. Completed one semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before dropping out.
hometown Lanagan, Missouri
sexuality Pansexual
personification Jay Gatsby
status Dormant
face claim Gemma Ward

hair color Blonde
eye color Green
build Thin
height 5’ 10”
clothing style Nights in the club she’ll be seen in a long coat, trousers, and heels, or something to that effect. She glitters and gleams at all costs, and is always careful to adhere to the latest fashions and fads. She avoids skirts and dresses at as much as possible, though she wears them grudgingly once or twice a year. By herself, however, she wears very little makeup and relaxes into gender-neutral sweats and t-shirts. She has a large closet full of brand-new, never worn ties, and dreams one day of wearing one to the club.
distinctive traits She loathes bras and camisoles. She binds her breasts whenever she can, but is forced to let them out sometimes when the immense pain becomes too overwhelming. Her legs may be shaved one week and hairy the next, as her feelings never seem to agree on what they should look like.

personality
Those who frequent the New York City club scene know Jenna Gray as the queen of Manhattan night life. There is not a higher-up or lower-down twenty-something in the area that has never heard the name Jenna Gray, probably whispered with a touch of reverence or an undertone of lust. Jenna’s extraordinary beauty is renowned in many circles as well, and every male figure who has caught a glimpse of it has been enamored by it in some regard.

Outwardly Jenna plays to the crowd. She winks and nudges and handles problems at the club with the efficiency and experience of someone who has spent a great deal of time in the corporate world. She can talk her way out of any conversation and manipulate anyone to her wants and needs. She slips from conversation to seduction in a subtle and undetectable transition, and engages even the most reclusive in easy conversation. Those who know her see her as a flirtatious figurine silhouetted among the highest of the high, slipping easily in and out of relationships and conversations with the same expert ease at which she performs every public task in her life. To those who know her, Jenna Gray has the world at her fingertips.

Of course, those who know her are completely wrong.

Jenna Gray stares at herself in the mirror every morning, applying her glittering foundation, blue eyeshadow, eye plumper and plastic two-inch lashes, loathing herself. She longs to seize her flawless skin and wrench it from her body, spilling her true self across the marble floors and cocktails and disco balls and screaming her true ambitions from the rooftops. Because Jenna is not Jenna. Jenna is not the glistening hair, the radiant smile, the sleek confidence with which she appears to handle any obstacles in her fast-lane life. Jenna, to herself, is Jay, Jay Gray, free of all gender, all classification. She despises the box into which she has been shoved, this box which requires her to smile and giggle and tug tight dresses over her body to accentuate the womanly features she wishes she could hide from the world. Jenna is ashamed of every aspect of her femininity: her breasts, her feminine name, her feminine hair and skin and curves and allure.

She glares at herself in the mirror and knows that she is hideous, that she must be hideous, for who would ever accept her if they knew the truth? Who would ever love her? In the persona of Jenna Gray that she wears like a mask but in no way identifies with, she knows that at the very least she can simultaneously blend with the crowd and stand far above it, gaining friends, suitors, and adorers. She thrives on her reputation and simultaneously longs to shred it to pieces, for she knows how wrong it is. Jenna’s interior is a brutal and bloody war between the feminine and the masculine, the success and the comfort, the popularity and the solitude, the Jenna that she is and the Jay she longs to be.

past
Jenna Kendall Gray was born in the decrepit town of Lanagan, Missouri, into a hovel dilapidated by any standards, to overworked parents already weary of caring for a three-year-old daughter. She attended Anderson Elementary, Anderson Middle School, and McDonald County High school, low-income establishments with tiny, crumbling classrooms and very little access to textbooks or supplies. Learning to read much earlier than her peers, a large number of whom were living on the streets or in trailer homes, Jenna soon retreated to fashion magazines, celebrity gossip, and other glamorous publications. She was embarrassed by her hand-me-down clothes, tattered shoes, shabby home, and the general atmosphere of poverty around her town, and as early as age ten she had resolved that one day she would be part of the world that was currently her only escape. One day she would wear the shimmering clothes and step gracefully from the tinted limousines and topless cars. One day she would erase the town of Lanagan from her memory forever, and stroll through the streets of a city where she was powerful, important, admired. One day she would live the glamorous life she read about.

It was around this time that she began to realize that she was different.

All of a sudden her universe was bombarded with a wave girls kissing boys and boys kissing girls. She watched cartoons, and later, reality shows, with her sisters, completely apathetic as they swooned over the attractiveness of the males and “ooh”ed and “awww”ed over the makeout scenes. She felt twinges of discomfort as she walked through the town's pathetic excuse for a mall, trying to avert her eyes from the smitten couples that seemed to be glaring at her from movie posters, t-shirts, and book covers. Her chest expanded, her curved, and she began to feel more and more uncomfortable with herself, like she was consistently wearing a jacket that was much too tight. Her friends at school teased her, encouraging her to find a boy that she liked, that she would always want to be with, but she hadn’t. She didn’t know who or what she wanted to be with. She didn’t know if she wanted to be with a boy, or if she wanted to be with a girl a girl, or if she would ever want to be with either.

Jenna moved through high school and college, achieving above-average grades but feeling awkward and uncomfortable with the heterosexual atmosphere in which she was forcibly immersed. She took a stab at college, but was forced to take a job as a McDonalds worker to pay the tuition. Two weeks into the job and she had had it. She was an adult. These were supposed to be her golden years, the period she'd in which she'd dreamed of living the good life. Where was that dream? She was ashamed of herself, working such a menial job in a menial establishment. Jenna had failed her childhood self, and she could feel the young girl's dreams growing further and further from her grasp with each burger she flipped. She quit the job and dropped out of college, moving to New York City, the place where she knew that success could be found.

Jenna struggled for a few months in a decrepit one-room apartment with no heat and barely a trickle of running water, shivering on a barren mattress, resorting to shoplifting, begging, and a few desperate occasions of prostitution, to pay the rent. She saw a modeling agency calling for pretty girls in a newspaper she was using for a blanket, and on a whim sent in a badly-lit photo taken on a stolen Polaroid camera. Her next few years were spent on the catwalk, smiling and seducing for the cameras, and learning the ways of the wealthy. This was also where she gained her skills in charisma and diplomacy, as well as the ability to feign any emotion upon request, and to transition from charming to flirtatious to seductive in a matter of seconds. Five years later her, face was plastered on billboards across the United States, and every modeling agent in the city jumped at the sound of her name. But finally, at age 23, when Jenna had amassed enough money for a lavish penthouse apartment and a luxurious lifestyle, she turned forever from the cameras. She bought the most upscale and well-known club on the Upper West Side, cementing herself forever in the world of the elite.
present

Jenna wakes up every afternoon at around four or five, in a platform four-poster bed. The touch of a red button on the sideboard prompts the delivery of her only meal of the day, often a seafood medley complete with caviar and cocktails. She bathes in a marble bathtub with salon-priced shampoo and conditioner, and works out in her full-complimentary home gym for an hour in knee-length athletic shorts and a baggy McDonalds t-shirt. She spends the rest of the evening ironing out business-related matters on her Macbook Pro, sometimes emerging into the city to visit potential partners or associates, and finally dons her outfit for the night. The first step is the binding, the pain of which often brings her to tears. After her outfit is set and, her hair carefully styled, and her makeup laboriously applied, she takes the elevator down to the lobby, stepping into her stretch limousine and heading to the club.

Her nights at the club are reckless but painstakingly so. She moves around the club at carefully calculated intervals, monitoring the guests and making absolutely sure that all are enjoying themselves. She hides her conflict, discomfort, and the persona of Jay behind her illustrious mask of Jenna, giggling with the female guests and flirting with the males…but no kisses. No fingers. And no phone numbers. Never phone numbers. She keeps herself carefully away from the raucous behavior that ensues around the early hours of the morning, knowing that a single unintended photograph could forever taint her reputation. And she needs her reputation. It is all that divides the glamorous Jenna Gray from the downtrodden poverty of Lanagan, Missouri. The club closes at four, and after supervising the cleaning and closing procedures and dismissing the staff, Jenna arrives at her apartment around six. It is only then that she can release herself from her bonds and her constricting clothing, wash off her mask of makeup, and collapse into Jay and a restless sleep.
family

Porter Immanuel Gray-Father, 50, Computer technician, was fired from his minimum-wage tech support job at IBM and is now running a largely unsuccessful computer store from the family garage.
Grace Jewel Gray-Mother, 56, a dance teacher in a cheap back-alley ballet school. Jenna has lost all contact with both parents, as they are both very conservative, believing that all women and men should have their place. They always encouraged her to be “ladylike”, which she loathed.
Delia Leah Gray- Sister, 28, lives in Pawnee Kansas and works as a librarian at the Jordaan Memorial Library. Very little contact with Jenna, the two were never very close.
Janet Savannah Gray- Sister, 23, lives in Herkimer, New York, janitor at Herkimer High School. Is about a 6 hour drive from NYC and has stayed with Jenna on various ventures into the city. Jenna and Janet have been close in the past and still go to each other for advice at times, though the distance between them has been draining on their relationship.
likes Gender-Neutral pronouns, the gay rights movement, gender-neutral clothing, open-minded people, alcohol
dislikes Her breasts, gender stereotypes, gender-specific pronouns and language in general, her hair (she’s always wished she could simply chop it off), the general concept of gender distinction, gender-specific clothing (particularly feminine)
other notes Jenna is going to be completely different from any of my other characters. This is kind of a challenge to myself to see if I can write a character that revolves around a theme other than comic relief, as well as to see if I can write a female character who’s not a flawless fairy princess. It’ll also challenge me to create a unique character without overplaying the uniqueness, as I so often do.

book title The Great Gatsby
backstory James Gatz was born into a poor family and was ashamed of his poverty-stricken heritage. He creates the character of Jay Gatsby for himself to become the rich and successful man he’s always dreamed of becoming. He also lusts after Daisy, the love of his life, and goes to great lengths to win her affection, his millions of dollars and lavish estates being a means to that end. Gatsby is widely known for his opulent parties which attract prominent guests from the area.

...roleplayer*
name Monica (Syd to the rest of the roleplaying community)
age 16
gender Female
rp experience Wut du fuck be dis shit
how you found ouac A little bird
rp sample PENISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS