Struggles of Self
The life of Richard Bromely
The Second Book of a Trilogy
by Sherry Ann Bryson
Author’s Note:
Struggles is the second book of a trilogy. The title speaks for itself. It tells the story of a child beginning in the 1950’s at age eight and concludes in the mid- 1990’s when the child has become a successful adult, married with three children but focuses on the struggles of gender and identity. The story is meant to provide some insight of the dynamics of being different in an earlier generation.
Choices, the first book of the trilogy is also the story of a child growing up in the 1950’s and is told as if it were written by an older woman, a mother, reflecting back on raising a daughter. Miriam, the fictional author, writes the book in an effort to bring an improbable tale to life and to record it so it will not be lost. The story Miriam tells is, of course, fiction. It did not happen, and perhaps it could not have happened. Still it is not entirely improbable, given the power of a mother’s love, and the recorded history of the work that a very few in the medical profession were doing in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The reader will be the ultimate judge of probability.
The Third book of the trilogy is Paths which brings the main character from each of the other two books in the series together as adults. The reader may read either Struggles or Choices first but it is suggested that Paths be reserved until both have been completed, and thusly Paths will be posted last.
The writer attaches the usual caveats. Of course, this is a work of fiction, so any similarities of the people or happenings contained herein with real events, or actual persons, living or not, is just coincidence and, well, inconceivable with the exception of two real medical professionals incorporated as characters, each with a professional public record. The author has penned not inconceivable fictional conversations with these men. Perhaps, some will claim this statement is the real fiction but as of this writing it is doubtful anyone reading what follows and making such claims would see themselves, or the author for that matter.
Part 1
Unavoidable Roads
Chapter 1
Young Girl, Get Out of My Life
It scared the girl, the first time it happened. Little Richie had been wearing dresses secretly since he could remember, probably since he started the first grade when his mother started working in the family store, the general store that was part hardware (lumber, nails etc.) and part software (clothes for the average family). As the children’s used clothes piled up, they were carted to Gramma’s attic to be saved for the baby girl Richie’s mom hoped to have. A fourth child, two girls and two boys would be perfect, but no baby girl came and the dresses hung in the attic waiting. There were so many of Mary’s dresses for the boy to choose from, neatly displayed in the huge attic of the big house on the hill; displayed almost as if customers would soon be browsing, by size and function, but there was only one customer. There were dresses for church, and dresses for the first dance; dresses for all ages from little girl dresses to the latest for young teen girls and play dresses. To the little boy they were all play dresses.
By the time Rich was 11 years old his trips to Gramma’s attic were routine, usually happening at least weekly. It started when Rich, or Richie in earlier years, was being watched by Gramma while his mom worked at the store, after school or on Saturdays. In the attic he was a girl, like Mary the older sister, and as a girl, she spent much time wearing her sister’s dresses, twirling in front of the big mirror and just sitting reading, mostly Nancy Drew or something similar, but sometimes books about boys. She loved Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. When she was eight she and a friend, a girl named Vickie, played dress up together and Richie often thought about her after she moved away. He missed her, actually she missed Vickie. Richie really wanted to have a friend; a friend who was also a girl. In the attic she even began calling herself ‘Vickie’ after her friend who had moved away.
Being children of the business, Rich and his brother and sister had a lot of clothes and were always the best dressed children in town. Their mother would send the boys out to play in sweet outfits but only one boy would return with their clothes in tack. Gary would be covered with dirt and grime with something torn, ripped or stained. Richie would look almost as he did when she pushed him out the door. Mary, the oldest, was almost five years older than Richie and while he played with his brother he seemed attached to Mary, following her around. As a toddler Mary couldn’t keep Richie out of her room.
Richard Bromely was born into a very nice and respected family in Johnstown Pennsylvania. Rich’s great grandfather came to Johnstown before the Civil War and was a merchant starting a successful general store, which grew into other businesses which, coupled with some investments into property around town, created a very comfortable life for Rich’s father, Winston Bromely, an only child. They lived in a large Victorian house on a relatively safe high spot just west of the center of town, out of the path of floods.
Now, in 1956, Richie would be twelve in a few months and things were changing; changes he didn’t understand and didn’t welcome. So the first time he felt the strange sensation between his legs he didn’t know what it was and it scared him. It was a lazy summer afternoon and it was hot in the attic. He had opened a window on each side of the attic and a hint of a warm breeze blew through but barely changed the temperature. He stripped off his boy shirt, pants and underwear and found the girl things he kept hidden. She pulled on the panties, but decided not to put on the ruffled socks, or the slip. It was just too hot. She pulled the summer dress over her head and buttoned the back. She sat down in the old overstuffed chair and started to read.
It happened while she was lost in the story. When the story turned to a girl dreaming about boys and being kissed, Vickie (not Richie) felt a tingling sensation run down her spine and a warmth between her legs. Without realizing she lifted her dress and touched herself. Something was happening. She was larger, no longer just a tiny little thing, and it felt different, it felt good. Vickie had not felt this before and she didn’t know what to do. She continued to touch herself, now inside her panties while she continued to read. There was some connection between the words on the page, about what the fictional girl in the story was feeling and wanting, and what Vickie was feeling. The chapter she was reading ended but without the fictional girl being kissed, and Vickie became aware of what she was doing, doing to herself.
Vickie jumped up and quickly took off the dress and the panties. Soon Richie was dressed and outside playing in the yard, trying not to think about his first erection, in a dress and panties, reading about a girl wanting to be kissed by a boy.
It was several weeks before Richie returned to his grandmother’s attic, and then it was to retrieve a few items he wanted to keep, to hide in his own room, in his own house. Richie Bromely never again put on one of his sister’s dresses stored in that attic; at least not the dresses for little girls, those meant for girls before things start changing. Those dresses were for young girls and they didn’t fit well anymore. That and the first sexual awareness that happened that hot summer afternoon forced Rich to consider the changes that were taking place; the slight growth of pubic hair, the ever so subtle deepening of his voice and of course, the sexual arousal that happened, mostly without any conscious prompting. Richie didn’t welcome those changes. Richie didn’t want to become like the other boys, like his brother. It just didn’t feel right for him. Richie Bromely wanted to stay just the way he was, being able to go off to the attic by herself and lose herself in a book while wearing a dress meant for a nine year old girl.
Part 1
Unavoidable Roads
Chapter 2
Confusion
The 48 year old man sat trying to remember his childhood. He was talking and his therapist was listening. She, the therapist, had probed, pushed really, for the man to recall his earliest memories, almost as if a failure to remember would cloud her diagnosis. It seemed critical to his psychological well-being. The man wanted to remember everything, but couldn't. What he did remember, however, was vivid. The therapist was specifically interested if he remembered anything when he was five, or four or even three. He did.
The therapist had explained that there were no absolutes in mental health, especially in making a diagnosis dealing with people who had identity issues. Often piecing together the early years, the formative ones, was critical to understanding what was driving current behavior as well as the anxiety, the depression, the hopelessness, the thoughts of suicide. The therapist was absolutely positive the man had identity issues, specifically gender identity issues. She had seen him dressed as a female, appropriately and somewhat convincingly, at one of the support meetings she went to occasionally. But she knew there were variations to gender identity problems and that there could be manifestations of other very troubling issues; alcoholism, abuse, sexual issues, fetishes, and even psychosis.
In just a couple of sessions the therapist knew the man was deeply conflicted and troubled, but she wasn’t sure about a definitive diagnosis. Was he a progressive fetishist cross-dresser, or did he suffer from a life-long and deep seated gender dysphoria? In short, was the man a transsexual, or more accurately under DSM IV 302.85 was he suffering with Gender Identity Disorder?
Not only would it help her make a firm diagnosis, but exploring the man’s childhood would be therapeutic. So the therapist asked the man to think about his childhood, before he started school. Did he remember anything specific about wanting to be a girl, or feeling like he was one? Did he, as a little boy, feel confused?
The man’s memory of those early years was hazy but he clearly did not remember feeling confused. He didn’t remember it that way. What he did recall was not really clear; childhood memories are hardly ever clear. He couldn’t remember a specific event, just fuzzy moments, little patches like playing dolls with his older sister. He didn’t remember any abuse or being forced to dress as a girl because that didn’t happen. The man told the therapist that as best he could remember he actually thought he was a girl before he started school. As a four and five year old he was not confused about that.
The man didn’t remember, couldn’t remember, that as a child he didn’t understand the difference between little boys and little girls. That isn’t that unusual, most very young children don’t. What was different for the boy was that he was certain he was a girl and therefore when he got older he would be like his older sister, not like his rough and tumble older brother. Where he lived with his parents and maternal grandparents there were no other little boys or girls to play with, just his brother and sister. He didn’t know why he didn’t have dresses to wear but knew that would change when he started school. He wondered why other little girls at church wore dresses and he didn’t. He even asked his mother about not having a dress to wear, but the man talking to the therapist didn’t remember asking his mother about that, and he didn’t remember that she laughed, gave him a hug and brushed it off. “Don’t ask your father that.” She advised the little boy. The hug and the answer were reassuring as if the boy's question was appropriate. The boy’s mother gave him hope. No, there wasn’t confusion.
When the boy started school it was disappointment and fear that took over the boy’s life. He didn’t understand why his father took him to have his hair cut the week before school started. He watched as the blond curls fell to the floor of the barber shop and he didn’t recognize the face in the mirror when he heard the barber tell his father what a fine looking boy he had. Still he did not lose hope, waiting for the next week for his mother to surprise him with a dress for school. Instead she hung pants and a shirt next to his bed the night before the first day of school. He didn’t cry or resist as his mother helped him get dressed that first morning. He didn’t protest. He didn’t say anything, didn’t talk at breakfast. He even gave his mom a kiss as he left holding hands with his older sister walking down the long path to the bus stop. The man didn’t recall any of that.
The man did remember not getting on the school bus. He remembered hiding while his brother and sister got on the bus, and going back to the house telling his mother he missed the bus. The man remembered his mom and dad driving him to school. The boy refused to get out of the car but was eventually coaxed out and into the school, lovingly coaxed, not threatened.
The man remembered, vividly, how school seemed to be fun with boys and girls his own age doing things with paste and crayons. The man remembered how all the girls wore dresses, and had long hair. He remembered the class being told to line up for recess, girls on one side, boys on the other. He clearly remembered the pain, both physical and emotional, when the teacher grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the girls’ line, telling him he was not funny amid the laughter of the class, especially the boys.
Of course the man could not remember what the boy felt after that first day of school. He wished he could remember more but he couldn’t. If he did he would remember that the boy realized that there would be no dress for him; the boy knew he wasn’t like the other children; and he knew he couldn’t talk about it, knew he had to be careful because he somehow understood that he couldn’t explain how he felt or let anyone know because they would just be so confused.
Part 1
Unavoidable Roads
Chapter 3
You Better Run, Girl
It was almost exactly a year before Rich, the pre-teen boy, ventured to wear a dress again. He had mostly put that behind him. He was twelve now, almost thirteen and he was a boy becoming a man, sort of. He was tall, thin and not muscular, with smoky gray/blue eyes, sandy hair and long girlish eyelashes. Once when he was seven his mother had to rush him to the hospital when he fell and opened a long gash in his forehead. With a bandage covering most of his hair, he overheard a nurse ask his mother how old her daughter was. The nurse obviously saw the slight build and thin bones of the boy and thought he had to be a girl. Richie liked to remember that day.
But now he was a boy and played basketball well, and he had friends who were also boys soon to be men; other boys who mostly accepted him in the group but still teased him for not being strong or tough. At 12 Richie was no longer Richie, the boy, but Rich the kid who was sometimes remote and distant but not reclusive. Rich’s life didn’t revolve around all things boy and he didn’t spend all his time playing ball, or roaming the streets. Rich liked to spend an afternoon reading while listening to KDKA.
So when he heard his mom ask if he wanted to go shopping in Pittsburg with her and his sister Mary, he declined. He was old enough to stay home by himself; Gary, his older brother was with his father, working at the general store. He wasn’t really thinking about what he would do when he heard his mom and Mary say they were leaving but when he heard the car leave the driveway, he felt something pull at him, an unconscious urge to just see what Mary wears. It was part curiosity, part necessity. For a year Rich had stayed away from most things girl. He had thought about it. He wanted to go back to the attic but told himself it was not right but was dangerous, if not sinful. He told himself he had to resist and mostly he had, giving in only to regularly wearing panties to bed in the safety and dark of his room.
Now, he was standing in front of the dresser mirror in his older sister’s room. She was almost 18 and leaving for college in a month; he was not even thirteen. He opened the top drawer of the dresser; scarves, hankies, various accessories. He opened the next drawer; panties neatly folded and arranged; various colors and different materials, cotton to silky nylon. He touched them, careful not to disturb the arrangement. The next drawer he opened were all bras and slips, with the slips on one side and the bras on the other. Each bra was folded cups together in a neat row making it seem there was only one cup for each. The bras were almost exclusively white except for an off white strapless one, a black strapless one and one very lacy pink one. Rich touched the bras one by one being careful not to disturb them as they lay quietly waiting their turn to perform their magic. Rich marveled at how they were made; how they were so cone shaped ending in a soft rounded point.
Rich was losing control. He wanted to take a bra out, examine it closer, but he was scared. His heart was racing; he felt warm all over, hot really. He quickly closed both drawers and saw his reflection again in the mirror. He knew what he saw was incompatible with where he was and what he was doing. He knew he shouldn’t be there; he should leave, go read a book. But he couldn’t move. As he stared in the mirror, seeing the boy, the young developing boy/man with short hair and the beginning of an Adam’s apple he unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. He reopened the drawer with the bras and took the first one in the row being careful not to disturb the one behind it. He unfolded it and put his arms through the straps and tried to hook it behind him, finally successfully hooking just one of the three hooks. He adjusted the bra and again looked at himself in the mirror.
A boy stared back at him; a skinny boy with short hair and fuzz on his face; a boy with the slightest bit of fuzzy hair peeking out between the empty cups of the bra he was wearing. He hated what he saw. He hated the way he looked; hated the short hair; hated the fuzzy hair on his chest; hated that the cups were so empty. He hated that he was still wearing pants.
Rich quickly unbuttoned his pants and let them fall and pulled off his briefs. He was no longer in control of what he was doing. He opened the drawer with the panties and like with the bra took the first one being careful not to disturb the others. He wanted the pink lacy one but it was folded between two others and he needed to be ever so careful. At least the top one was nylon and had some lace on the sides. Rich started to step into the panties but was again betrayed by the mirror; a mirror watching every detail about Rich and what he was doing.
The mirror saw the boy in a bra. The mirror saw a boy with the full, but relatively small, compliment of boy parts. The mirror saw the soft mound of fine pubic hair especially arranged for a boy. When Rich saw what the mirror saw he felt ashamed and angry; ashamed of the way he looked and angry that he was becoming more like a man every day. Rich hesitated. He couldn’t put panties over what he had between his legs, even though he had done so many times before. This time the mirror was watching. This time he was wearing a bra. All those times in his grandmother’s attic were different. He was Vickie then; Vickie the little girl where it really didn’t matter if what she had between her legs wasn’t exactly anatomically correct.
Clutching the panties Rich raced into his parents’ bathroom and found his father’s razor. He ran the tap water until it was warm and made a lather with the soap between his legs. He carefully shaved off all of the thin silky pubic hair leaving a completely smooth mound; just the way it had been when he dressed in his grandmother’s attic. He dried himself off and only then pulled on the panties, desperately trying to push his penis out of sight so that the panties showed no boy bulges. The panties were too large and fit too loosely on his skinny hips so the penis flopped loosely inside the panties. As he walked back to his sister’s bedroom he was afraid that what happed in the attic the previous summer would happen again; that there would be an erection, but there wasn’t and Rich, feeling more like a teenage Vickie, was relieved.
Vickie found Mary’s clothes hamper and fished out two pair of her panties waiting for wash. She balled them up and stuffed one into each cup, giving some life to the sad bra. She then turned to Mary’s closet and found a perfect dress. It was plain with short sleeves, buttoned front and mid-calf length. She pulled the dress on and buttoned it up. It was pretty loose, a little tight in the arms and much shorter than how it looked on her sister. Vickie turned back to the mirror and smiled. The mirror seemed to like what she saw.
Vickie twirled around pleased with herself. She pranced first away from the mirror then watched herself walk back to it. She opened the drawer with the scarves and took out one, putting it over the short hair on her head and tying it under her chin. The scarf framed her face and made it appear girl like, giving the illusion of a girl with hair under the scarf. Vickie then opened the bottom drawer and found several garter belts, and stockings. She took one of the garter belts and lifted her dress pulling the belt around her and hooking it in the front. She felt the garters bounce against her legs as she adjusted the belt with the hooks in the back. She rolled one stocking and pulled it over her left foot and up to the thigh, just like she had seen her mother do many times. She hooked the stocking pushing the tab under the top seam and through the key, first in the front and then in the back. She did the same for the right leg. Now she stood in front of the mirror lifting up her dress to see how she looked; to see if she looked the way Mary did, or her mother. Mostly she felt she did, with the exception of the bulge.
Vickie found a pair of Mary’s shoes, pumps with some height to the heels. They fit almost perfectly and she awkwardly walked from Mary’s room to her own and back. She had the house to herself so this teen girl carefully but awkwardly descended the long staircase leading to the living room, and went to the kitchen, fixed some lunch. She cleaned up all of the dishes left by her family that morning and then sat in the big chair in the living room with her legs folded under her, just the way she had seen girls do, and read her book. This book wasn’t about girls, however, didn’t have any part where girls dream about being kissed by boys, or for that matter, nothing about boys thinking about girls. It was a story about war, about battles lost and won; about life and death. It was a story about strong courageous men, probably none who ever wore a dress.
Vickie read for hours, losing herself in the book. She forgot about Rich, or that she was not genetically a Vickie, or even that she was developing not as a girl but as a boy. For that afternoon in early August 1957, this 12 year old boy was again a girl, just like the one who frequented the attic so many times before things started changing. At four o’clock Vickie knew she had at least an hour to conceal what she had done. She picked up the shoes she had kicked off while reading and headed up stairs. She stood in front of the mirror again, this time feeling sad. She looked at the image and tried to talk to the person staring back at her.
“Why can’t this be me?” She asked but the image did not answer. Vickie turned and sat down on Mary’s bed feeling tears well up in her eyes and begin to roll on to her cheek. She untied the scarf, unbuttoned the dress and pulled it off. She stood up trying not to look at the mirror. She unhooked the stockings and rolled them off her legs, unhooked the bra and stepped out of the panties. As Rich reached for his briefs he glanced in the mirror again hating what he saw. Now he was angry; angry that he had let himself do this; angry that he had given in to what he was sure a terrible thing; angry that he was the way he was, and not like those men in the book he was reading; strong, tough masculine men who knew they were men and liked it, even if they got killed.
Part 1
Unavoidable Roads
Chapter 4
Girl Friends
Rich Bromely again vowed to stay away from panties, bras and dresses. In fact, he just didn’t think about it, except sometimes late at night alone in his bed wearing his panties. Rich threw himself into being a boy. With his two best friends he tried out for little league baseball but while his friends made the team he was cut, walking home half ejected and half elated. He probably just wasn’t strong enough and while he heard a coach say that another boy ‘threw like a girl’, he didn’t hear that said about him but wondered if that was what the coach thought about him.
While Rich’s friends were practicing and playing baseball that spring of 1958, Rich was mostly by himself reading and building model cars. He did have one other friend, Barbara Hundley. They were in the same 8th grade class and she lived a few doors down from Rich in the same block. They often walked home from school together. It wasn’t a girl-boy thing. They were just friends and Barb, as Rich called her, was a little like Rich. She had other friends, girls, but like Rich, she didn’t make the cut for junior cheerleading just as Rich didn’t make the cut for little league. They laughed about it and they confided their peer group insecurities to each other. Rich never mentioned his girl feelings to Barb, of course, but Barb was open about what she was going through as a developing girl. It almost embarrassed Rich but he loved the closeness and accepted the information as a gift.
“I got my friend last night.” Barb would say to Rich out of the blue.
Rich didn’t know what she meant the first time but Barb explained in some detail about how it felt and how self-conscious she was when it happened, especially the first time. She told Rich how she had to wear this belt with hooks to hold the ‘Kotex’ in place. Rich tried to imagine how that worked and felt. But no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t relate.
“Can you tell?” She always asked expecting Rich to examine her and what she wore. “No.” He would always respond but then add something like, “Not if you’re standing still.” They both would laugh. Rich felt like Barb was his best friend and while he wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself, he wanted to be her best friend, as a girl.
That’s why he was so surprised when she kissed him. Richard Bromely at thirteen had never kissed a girl, or been kissed. He knew girls had breasts, and that they didn’t have a penis or testicles, but he had no real idea what they did have. He had heard other boys, especially Gary, his brother, talk about what girls were like, how they were different, but he couldn’t visualize it. Rich hated the way those boys talked about girls, the awful words they used, how they only seemed interested in sex. He knew they were just bragging, or emulating older guys but he felt he was not supposed to be hearing such talk.
He had not seen pictures of girls or what they looked like, and they rightfully didn’t teach it in school. That would be wrong. He had never inadvertently seen his older sister undressed; she was too careful for that to happen, or his mother either, although he had often seen her in her underwear as she got dressed. As a boy before he started school, when Mary and Gary had left for the bus, she often brought little Richie into her room and he watched her get dressed but he never saw her completely naked, at least he didn’t remember if he had.
Rich and Barb walked home from school in late April the spring he was cut from baseball and Barb asked Rich to come in her house. That wasn’t unusual. They sometimes spent time at each other’s home after school. But this was different. Barb’s mom wasn’t home, no one was.
“Come up to my room. I want to show you something.” Barb commanded. Rich followed her up the stairs looking forward to seeing where his friend slept, where she spent her time, where she got dressed.
Barb went to her closet and pulled out a dress. It was beautiful and new with the tag still dangling from one side.
“Do you like it?” She asked. “It’s for the dance.” She continued not waiting for Rich to respond. “My mom didn’t want to get it since no one asked me to go yet but I’m going even if I’m not asked. I’m hoping Buzz will come through.” Buzz was the boy Barb constantly talked to Rich about. Barb clearly had a crush on Buzz, he was tall and was the best pitcher on the baseball team, the team Rich was cut from.
“I love it.” Rich said trying not to sound too enthusiastic. “You would need a crinoline with it, wouldn’t you?”
“Yep. Got one hanging right here.” She answered pointing to the spot next to where the dress had been hanging. Then she got a serious look on her face.
“Rich, we’re friends right?”
“The best.” Rich answered quickly.
“And you’re a boy, right?” She continued.
“O.K. what’s going on, Barb? You’re up to something.” He quickly answered trying not to give away what he wanted to say. Rich wanted to say yes, he was a boy but didn’t always feel like one. But it was too complicated to explain, even if he could find the words, too complicated to share even with his best friend.
Barb smiled. “Well.” She started drawing out the l’s. “If Buzz asks me to the dance and I’m wearing this dress and he tries to kiss me, I won’t know what to do.” Barb explained. “Rich, I need practice and I just thought that since you’re a boy and we are such good friends, and you’ve probable kissed a hundred girls that we could practice.” She added.
“You want me to kiss you?”
“Yes, but I have to put the dress on, with the crinoline. I need to practice standing in the dress with the crinoline when he leans over to kiss me. I need to know what to do.”
“Barb, I can’t help you.” Rich protested.
“Why not?”
“Well, you’re not wearing the dress and well, I haven’t kissed anyone, yet.” Rich confessed. Rich wanted to take Barb up on the offer. He was hoping she would persist. He wildly wanted to make a deal that yes, first he would pretend to be Buzz, but only if they could then reverse roles and she would be Buzz and he could pretend to be her, wearing the dress of course.
“I’ll put the dress on and mom won’t be home for a couple of hours. We have time to practice. Come on Rich, you’re the only one who can help me and we’re so close. It won’t mean anything.” She wasn’t trying to offend her friend; she was just stating the way things were. While she was coaxing Rich for the kiss Barb had unbuttoned her blouse and unzipped the zipper on her skirt. Rich could now see the bra Barb was wearing. Rich turned away as Barb unbuttoned the skirt and let it fall to the floor. She showed no signs of being modest in front of Rich the boy; she acted like Rich was a friend of the same gender.
“Whoa. What are you doing?” Rich protested. “Barbara Hundley you shouldn’t be doing this. O.K. I’ll kiss you but I’ll wait outside your room while you put the dress on.” Rich really wanted to stay but he just couldn’t take advantage of his friend.
“No stay, Rich.” She commanded. “It’s no big deal. We are friends and we don’t have to have any secrets. I’ve thought about this. I think it’s important we can be close without any hang ups. Don’t be mad but I don’t think of you like a boy. You’re my friend, not a boyfriend.”
“Barb, that’s great. I can understand and I even like it but …” He stammered. “But I’m afraid I might, well, uh have a reaction.”
“Oh.” Barb said turning toward Rich in just her bra and panties. “I hadn’t thought about that. Can’t you just ignore it? It wouldn’t happen with me, would it? I mean we’re not like that.”
“No, we’re not like that and that’s the point. I don’t want it to happen with you. And sometimes it doesn’t matter; it just happens. I like it that we are friends, that we can talk, that you tell me about your ‘friend’, that you want to show me your dress. But you’re standing there in your bra and panties, and uh well, I’ve never, uh…” Rich couldn’t say another word. They stood there just looking at each other. Rich finally broke the silence. “I love that you feel comfortable with me like that but I want to feel just as comfortable. I don’t want anything to happen.” Rich stopped trying to think about how to explain himself to his friend, this half naked fourteen year old girl. He thought about how some his friends talked about girls; thought about the ugly words they used; thought about Gary calling one girl a cock-teaser. Rich knew that wasn’t what Barb was doing. He knew she was sincere and loved Rich, as her best friend, without thought to gender or to sex.
Barb tried to understand the message. “Oh, Rich. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to….” She didn’t finish her statement but instead took a step toward Rich. They were not close enough to touch but closer than either had ever been with one of them nearly naked. Rich studied Barb, first looking into her girlish eyes and fine skin. He examined the bra she was wearing and the small but real breasts filling each cup. He let his eyes drop to her legs and he focused on how the panties fit snugly against her between her legs, with the smooth outline of a mound before the crease, he saw the outline of her dark pubic hair through the white panties just above the crease.
Barb waited for Rich to return his gaze to her eyes enjoying his clear admiration. “Rich, I’ve upset you. I’m sorry.” She stepped to him and hugged him. She tried to feel if there was an erection but didn’t think there was. “We’ve never really talked about you. I mean you and girls. I’ve been so insensitive. We don’t have to do this. I’ll get dressed and you can talk to me while I do. Tell me about how you feel about girls. Do you have a crush on someone? Stupid me, I’ve never asked.”
“Wait.” Rich heard himself say. “Put the dress on. I want to see it. I’m o.k. And I’ll be Buzz. It might be fun. And I’ll tell you about girls.”
“Rich, why are you so sweet? Here hold the dress for me while I get the bra I have to wear with it and the crinoline.” Rich watched in disbelief as Barb opened a drawer in her dresser and took out a strapless bra. She turned away from him as she unhooked the bra she was wearing and pulled the strapless one on hooking it behind her. She then put on the crinoline and reached out for the dress. Rich helped her pull it over her head and then pull it up over her little A cup strapless bra. She turned around so Rich could zip it up. When she finished she looked in the mirror and seemingly satisfied turned back to Rich.
“Now kiss me.” She demanded looking up into the face of her taller friend. He did, several times. In different ways, open mouth, closed mouth. He even tried to push his tongue into her mouth but that didn’t work. They kissed without touching and they kissed with their arms around each other.
“Well?” He finally asked.
“Well.” She responded with a wide smile. “You can kiss. Did you feel anything?” She asked.
“Sure. But I still just want you as a friend. I do think I liked it, though.” He stated without thinking. “I do like girls.” He added defensively.
“I certainly hope so.” Barb exclaimed. “Do you think Buzz will like the dress? What if he doesn’t take me to the dance? What if he doesn’t kiss me?” Barb was obviously obsessing about Buzz.
“Buzz will take you to the dance and he will kiss you.” He assured her. “And if he doesn’t I will.”
“Unzip me, please.” Barb asked as she turned her back. “You can’t keep kissing me and still be my best friend.” She reasoned. “Now tell me about that girl you like.” Barb was again standing in her bra and panties. She unhooked the strapless bra and reached for the one she wore before, holding the cups of the strapless one over her breasts with her other hand.
“I don’t know. There isn’t one really. There are a couple girls I like but I’m just not ready for that. The whole boy-girl thing just doesn’t make sense sometimes. I mean I like girls, and it was fun to kiss you but.. I just don’t know.” Rich was rambling while studying how Barb was so at ease in front of him.
“Rich, you’re a boy. Boys don’t think about it like girls do. My mom told me that. She said boys are oblivious, whatever that means.” Barb briefly let go of the strapless bra while she put her arms into the straps of the other one. Rich could not avoid seeing her, seeing her small and firm breasts, see her developed nipples. The deep longing he had occasionally felt about girls almost overwhelmed him. He couldn’t explain it but he wanted to trade places with his friend; he wanted to be her. In an instant they were gone, covered again. Barb pulled on the blouse and buttoned it.
“I think it means boys are different than girls and they don’t understand each other.” Rich postulated. “We’re close friends now but someday, you and I won’t be this close. I wish we could but I’m afraid…” He didn’t know what he was going to say. Barb was now dressed again and they headed down to the living room.
Rich Bromely and Barbara Hundley remained friends throughout high school. They were never as close, physically, as they were that afternoon in Barb’s room. They kissed often but only platonically. Barb frequently consulted Rich about what to wear and modeled things for him, but he never saw her in just bra and panties again, and he never saw her breasts again. But he would never forget how wonderful it was to be that close. He would always remember that for a few brief moments in the spring of 1958 he felt like he was, in a small way, a girl who had a friend who also happened to be a girl, a real one.
Barb Hundley did go to the dance with Buzz, and he did kiss her. He also tried to feel her up, about which she vented profusely to Rich. Barb and Rich agreed that boys were ‘oblivious’ and they laughed about it. Barb wasn’t laughing when she told Rich she was pregnant in their senior year. But she did let Rich feel the baby kick, before she had to go visit her aunt in Cleveland. Barb and Buzz married, a couple years after the baby was born and given up for adoption. Rich’s and Barb’s friendship died.
Chapter 5
Riding in Cars with (Older) Boys
A gallon of gas didn’t take you very far in a 1954 Buick; maybe only about 12 miles. But for the six boys twelve miles was plenty and they managed to pull together 64 cents, enough for two gallons of gas.
The older boys sat in front. Gary, Rich’s older brother, was driving of course; it was Winn Bromely’s car. The two Lambert brothers, John and Jim, just a year apart, sat next to Gary, trying to distract him, playing with the radio, honking the horn.
Richie was in back with Buzz of all people, the boy Rich’s best friend Barb had a crush on, and Skeeter, a weird kid who, when no one was looking, liked to expose his uncircumcised penis, pull the skin out like wings with both hands and yell “Batman”. When everyone turned to see the spectacle all they would see was Skeeter tucking his so very long penis back into his pants. Occasionally though, Skeeter could be enticed to show ‘Batman’ and all the boys would marvel at it and say things like “What a wingspan it has”, and like the boys they were, laugh like hell.
Rich didn’t talk to Buzz about Barb and Buzz said little about the dance, or the kiss, or that he tried to feel her up. But Barb had told Rich all about it. She loved the kiss but wasn’t so sure about his wandering hand. Rich was hurt though when Gary asked Buzz about Barb shortly after the dance.
“Buzz,” Gary called. “Did you get any?” Rich overheard his brother and wanted to punch him. For Rich punching his brother was out of the question.
“None of your damn business.” Buzz said to Rich’s delight but then added. “Got enough.” That was just what Gary wanted; an opening.
“Did you get inside her panties?” Gary continued. Rich desperately wanted to tell both of these crass boys that he, the younger brother, had been with his friend Barb while she changed into and back out of the dress she wore to the dance with Buzz. He wanted to tell them that she changed her bra right in front of him and that he had seen her breasts and could see through her panties. But he couldn’t, not without a beating or worse. They wouldn’t believe him anyway and they wouldn’t understand the bond Rich and Barb shared.
“No, but I will. She’s got the hots for me. Just give me some time.” Buzz assured the older boy. For the rest of the summer Rich could only think about Barb and if that is really what she wanted. Did she really have the ‘hots’ for Buzz and would she let him touch her? Rich had not thought about it like that before. His feelings about girls, feeling like he wanted to be one, or was one, focused only on being a girl, what they wore, how they acted, the hair, the makeup. It never fully occurred to Rich that part of being a girl was being attracted to boys, to want boys to do things, sexual things. Sex wasn’t something Rich really thought about, as a boy or as a girl.
That fall of 1958 Rich sat in the back seat and thought about Barb. He didn’t want to be with these boys; he wanted to be with his friend. Gary had just turned sixteen that summer and Rich would be 14 in a few weeks.
Rich sat quietly between Buzz and Skeeter, who were also quiet.
“What are you shits doing back there?” Gary barked. “Playing with each other?” He added. The Lambert boys laughed profusely and peered back. “Yep, looks like a contest to me, like a backseat circle jerk.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Buzz demanded. “You can’t have a circle in the back seat of a car.” He continued trying to be logical.
Rich hated nothing more than the vulgar banter Gary and his friends constantly displayed. He tried not to do it himself but often failed, not because he liked it, but to fit in. To get along and not be teased, he had to pretend he liked it.
“Only jerks in this car are in the front seat.” Rich retorted.
“Wish we could get laid tonight.” The oldest Lambert boy ventured. “I saw some girls walking to the movies earlier. Maybe we could pick them up.” John tried.
“Dumb shit.” Gary pronounced. “Do you really think six girls would get in this car? And if they did, what the fuck would you do?”
“I donno”. John admitted.
“Besides the movie’s been out for an hour. They’re home by now.” Gary paused. “I’ve got a better idea.” He continued.
“I’m not jerking off in front of you again.” Jim joked.
“Admit it, asshole. It was fun.” Gary responded.
“You just liked it cause you won. So what’s your big fucking idea anyway?” John chimed in.
“Well, my idea is band practice.” Gary teased.
“What the fuck? Band practice?” The Lamberts said in unison.
“Yep, band practice just let out and who do you think will be walking home, out Sixth Street, in the dark by himself?”
The boys in the backseat listened to their older mentors go back and forth but said nothing.
“You mean Phillip? Phillip Drexel? Gary, you fucking prick, he’s a fucking homo!” John Lambert exclaimed.
“Yes, he is, Einstein. He’s a homo, not a fucking one but a sucking one, if you catch my drift.” Gary retorted proud of how he turned fucking to sucking. “Hey Buzz.” Gary called to the back seat. “Don’t you think a good blow job would be better than jerking off in bed tonight thinking about Barb’s pussy?”
Buzz didn’t answer. Yes, he had masturbated thinking about Barb, but Buzz was otherwise virgin. He couldn’t relate to what Gary had proposed. Neither could Skeeter nor especially Rich. All three of the backseat boys had heard about guys who liked to give oral sex to boys. They had heard the jokes about homos and blow jobs and getting ‘on your knees’, but was Gary serious?
Gary turned off Jefferson Avenue and up Sixth Street. After two blocks he spotted a lone figure walking toward Morton Avenue.
“There he is.” Gary announced. Phillip Drexel was wearing slacks and a short sleeve shirt. He carried a case of some kind, probably holding the flute he played in the band. Philip was older, a senior and everyone knew Phillip had a problem; a problem that no one ever talked about.
“Gary don’t.” Rich spoke up.
“Keep your mouth closed little brother or I’ll close it.”
Gary pulled the Buick up next to the curb just in front of the target and rolled down his window.
“Hey Phillip. Where you going?” Gary asked.
“Who’s there?” The boy with the flute case and horned rimmed glasses asked. “Why is that you Gary Bromely? I going home.” He said as he approached the car.
“Need a ride?” Gary quickly asked.
“Now Gary, you know I live in the next block. Why would you want to give me a ride?” He asked suspiciously. “Who’s in there with you? Oh, you’ve got a car full.” He noted.
“Phil, we wouldn’t go straight to your house. We could take a detour.”
The Drexel boy seemed to enjoy the banter and played along. “Oh, I don’t know. A detour? Whatever do you mean? There are so many of you. If it was just you Gary, I would love that, or maybe you and that cute Buzz in the back seat. But all six.”
“What’s a couple more, Phillip? You know you want to.” Gary pushed.
“Well, I guess it could be fun.” Phillip gave in and opened the car door. Gary jumped out to let Phillip pile in the back seat with Rich, Buzz and Skeeter. Soon they were headed toward the south side where they could park without being noticed. Phillip talked to the younger boys trying to ease their obvious tension. He told Buzz how cute he was. He told Skeeter he had heard stories about him, an obvious reference to “Batman”. But he said little to Rich, the youngest of the six boys.
Rich sat quietly wondering what was going to happen. He wanted to tell Gary to stop the car that he would walk home, but he knew he would not live it down if he did. He wanted to opt out somehow; he knew he didn’t want his first sexual experience with another person to be with a boy, to be oral sex. But Rich was not in control; he had no power over what was going on.
Gary pulled the car onto a secluded dark and empty lot. All the boys piled out except Phillip. Gary got into the back seat with him and the other boys stood around in the faint half-moon light. Skeeter lit a cigarette and nervously puffed.
“Got another one?” John asked.
“You don’t smoke.” Skeeter responded.
“Do now.” John answered taking one from Skeeter and waiting for a light.
“You o.k. Rich?” Jim asked the youngest boy who was almost shaking.
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” He lied. “It’s just that I, uh, I’ve never…”
John interrupted Rich before he could finish.
“Me either. I don’t think any of us have. Except maybe that crazy brother of yours.” John intentionally avoided describing what Gary and Phillip were doing in the back seat of Gary’s father’s 54 Buick, or more accurately what Phillip was doing to Gary.
“Yeh, what the fuck do you think is taking them so long? Maybe they’re doing each other.” Jim chimed in laughing. They heard the car door open and Gary emerged.
“John, you go next. God he’s good.” Gary exclaimed with a satisfied smile. Soon John disappeared into the back seat of the dark car. A few minutes later he emerged and Jim went to the car. Then Skeeter, who came out with a big smile on his face saying something about how Phillip was impressed with how big he was. Then Buzz took his turn and Rich stood waiting with the four older boys.
“Well, little brother. You ready to lose your cherry?” Gary asked. “Had your chance last year with Norma, don’t fuck it up this time.” Rich didn’t want any part of what was going on but he couldn’t tell Gary that. He just shook his head, affirmatively.
“You’re going to love it.” Gary reassured him. Rich felt he needed to pee and he found some bushes and unzipped his pants. He fumbled for his penis which seemed embarrassingly small, almost as if it were hiding. He finally managed to pull it out far enough to pee. He returned to the group who were all smoking now.
“What's taking Buzz so long? Gary asked impatiently.
“Phil has a crush on Buzz.” Jim noted. “Did you hear what he said? He really likes Gary and Buzz. I think he wants to take you or Buzz to the prom.” Jim added playfully pushing Gary.
“Yeh, Gary, which one of you will wear the dress?” John teased.
“Sure as hell won’t be me.” Gary quickly answered. “Only homos and sissies wear dresses, right little brother.” Gary stated emphatically looking directly at Rich, as if he knew about the attic. Rich had heard the reference to sissies before, many times, but this was the first time he felt the reference was directed toward him and he felt he might be sick. The sissy reference was almost always coupled with weakness, of course but invariably there was that connection to girls and dresses. Not to mention the connotation generically that boys and men were smarter and better than girls and women. Rich didn’t think of it like that. He was strong enough and played a pretty good game of basketball. He did most of the yard work for his dad, unlike Gary, and he got good enough grades. The dress thing, the girl thing, what he did in his grandmother’s attic, wearing his sister’s dresses, in Rich’s immature mind, was just something he felt and liked. It didn’t really mean he was a sissy, and he certainly wasn’t a homo.
Rich heard the car door open and saw the dark silhouette of Buzz emerge. Unlike the other boys who returned smiling from their turn with Phillip, Buzz did not have the triumphant look; he was not smiling but instead looked nervous.
“Your turn needle dick.” Gary told his brother. “Make it quick, I gotta get the car back.”
Rich quickly approached the car and opened the door, pulled the driver’s seat forward and slid into the back seat with Phillip.
“Oh, it’s little Richie. I’ve been waiting for you. You are so cute. I hope I’m your first.” It was so dark in the back of the Buick that Rich could barely make out Phillip’s smile. Rich could tell a lot had gone on. The older boy looked somewhat disheveled. Even in the dark Rich noticed that Phillip’s pants were unbuckled and pulled down. Phillip’s white briefs caught the dim moonlight and Rich panicked. Was there a mutual expectation?
Phillip must have felt Rich’s fear and pulled up his pants and zipped his fly.
“It’s o.k. Richie. Just relax. I’m going to take care of you and you don’t have to do anything.” Phillip said as if one of the other boys had. Rich wondered if the way Phillip was when Rich got into the car, with his pants unzipped and pulled down, coupled with the look on Buzz’s face meant that Buzz may have done to Phillip what Phillip was starting to do to Rich. He thought about his friend Barb and how she had such a crush on Buzz. Rich vowed never to tell her about this night and what Buzz might have done with Phillip.
Rich felt Phillip unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants. The older boy tugged on the pants and the briefs quickly pulling them down to Rich’s knees.
“Oh, how sweet.” Phillip said as he fondled Rich’s penis. Rich was terrified. He didn’t want to be there, in the backseat with an older boy touching him. He tried to think of something else. He thought about his friend Barb and how she must have felt when Buzz tried to feel inside her panties and she stopped him. He thought what it must be like for girls wearing a dress with boys trying to reach under the skirt and feel between their legs, feel inside the panties. He remembered how she described it, how she felt so conflicted. She said she just loved how he kissed her and how warm and sweet it made her feel. She told Rich how she really wanted to let Buzz do what he wanted but knew it was wrong, that she would have to wait. Rich wondered if that is the way he should be feeling, but he wasn’t. Rich wasn’t wearing panties or a dress and this boy wasn’t interested in what would normally be in those panties. No, Rich wasn’t conflicted about what Phillip was doing, now taking Rich’s little half erect penis into his mouth. It didn’t make Rich feel warm or sweet and Rich couldn’t think about a dress or any of his girl feelings.
Rich’s first sexual experience with another person was a mixture of pain and pleasure. Most, but not all, of the pain was emotional. Something about what he was feeling hurt, physically, but there was also that raw sexual excitement that ended quickly.
“Umm.” Phillip murmured as he released Rich’s penis and wiped it with his handkerchief. “I love little sweet boys like you. I hope I made your first time special.” He said proud of his expertise.
Rich said nothing and was glad it was over. He didn’t want to talk. He pulled up his pants, pushed the car seat forward and opened the door. He zipped his pants and called for the others, letting them know he was done.
“Shotgun.” He yelled getting into the front seat. The boys piled back into the car with Buzz sitting in the middle with Rich in the front and the Lambert boys and Skeeter in the back. It was so quiet on the ride back to Morton Avenue where Phillip lived. No one said anything until Skeeter, sitting next to Phillip, called out “Batman” and all seven boys, including Rich, erupted in laughter.
Chapter 6
It’s a Man’s World
“What’s going on with you?” Lia Bromely asked her son the morning after the six boys picked up Phillip Drexel and went for a ride.
“Your brother was late getting the car home last night and I don’t like it that you were with him and the Lambert boys.” Lia had a special affection for her youngest child, her beautiful little boy as she continued to call him even if he was almost fourteen. She felt so close to him maybe because he was her ‘baby’, her last child, but there was something more she just couldn’t explain and didn’t try to. She just enjoyed their closeness and loved how affectionate he was, how sweet he was, unlike the rough and tumble Gary.
“Did something happen?” She instinctively asked knowing that Gary had a knack for doing things he shouldn’t.
“No mom.” Rich answered quickly. “We just rode around. It was so boring.” He lied trying to avoid talking to his mom.
“Then what’s wrong? You’re just not yourself this morning.” She paused waiting for an answer but none came. “Gary seems pretty happy this morning. Did those boys tease you again?” She prodded.
Lia was not stupid. She knew her Richie was not just the youngest in the group of boys that always hung around her older son, but she was keenly tuned in to how this boy was different, with his delicate features and long eyelashes. He also had what she considered a ‘delicate personality’. Lia had also found things, things that scared her, bothered her but that she chose not to bring up to the boy. A mother sees things and worries, and must make a conscious choice when to confront, and when to ignore. Amelia Bromely, the 39 year old mother of three, chose not to talk about the panties and bra she found hidden in the bottom of Richie’s dresser. She chose not to talk to him about wearing Mary’s dresses in the attic of her mother-in-law. She knew about the attic for years, since her son was seven or eight. She was elated when he seemed to stop going there. It had been almost two years and Lia felt her silence had paid off. Richie’s little girl phase seemed to have passed. She was right not to say anything.
Lia Bromely’s choice to ignore what her third child was doing was not just calculated as the best for him, she felt it was best for her. There were times she wanted to talk to him, ask him what he was feeling, but she really didn’t want to know why her Richie was going to Gramma’s attic and wearing Mary’s dresses. She saw him and his behavior as a blessing to some degree. Rich wasn’t like his older brother; she thanked God for that, and he wasn’t a Mary, a girl who challenged her mother on everything. No, Lia saw Richie as a more perfect child from a gender perspective, neither an unruly and problematic boy nor a moody and hostile girl. The mother in Lia told her to talk to him and tell him he should not be doing what he was doing; the woman in her said let him be, let him experience whatever it was that pulled him toward a girl’s world. He would be a much better man for it, she reasoned.
And that is what scared Lia the most. Not that he was doing things that would make life hard for him but that she believed she may have caused it. She had heard stories about boys who were sissies; read the reports where the professionals thought that the mother often influenced such behavior. No she didn’t see little Richie as a sissy, not like a couple of the other boys in town, but he was different and she knew he was doing things that would clearly be in the sissy category, wearing dresses most prominent among them. After all, her own father said it about the Drexel boy. “Tilly probably put him in dresses when he was just a tike.” He said of Phillip’s mom. “Bet she buys panties for him now.” He added.
Lia never put little Richie in dresses. God knows she had enough of the dress thing with Mary who always insisted on wearing a dress her mom did not pick out to wear that day. And she never encouraged any sissy behavior. Richie did that on his own, but who would believe her if the boy in the dress in the attic was caught by someone other than her. Fortunately that had stopped.
Lia worried that her own issues with men, strong ones and weak ones, coupled with Rich’s gentle and sweet personality, led her to assign a confused gender to her son. Lia and Winn got married the week after they both graduated from Pitt in 1939 and Mary was born within the year. Lia, an English major, wanted a career. She wanted to teach, at the college level, and write. But she quickly found herself with two young kids and a husband off to the South Pacific in the Navy. There would be no career and as her father told her, “your job is to stay home and have babies. You have to help replenish the boys we’re losing.” It was part of the war effort, as he saw it, like rationing gas and saving tin foil.
When Rich was born she told her father she was doing just that, but told herself she would be damned if this little boy would be like her father, or like men in general. Now she wondered if somehow she had encouraged him when at three she found him in a dress. She didn’t instigate it but she didn’t stop it either.
“Mom, they always tease me. I’m used to it. It’s no big deal.” Rich protested.
“Well, you should just stay away from them. You have other friends.” Lia counseled.
“No I don’t.” Rich responded quickly.
“Well, there’s Bobby and Buzz. I know Buzz is a year older but you’ve always got along.”
“Mom, I don’t want to talk about it.” Rich not only didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to remember. After they had dropped Phillip and the other boys off Gary told Richie how fantastic the experience was. He bragged about planning it and pulling it off. He told Richie that now he, Richie, was now a man. For Richie’s part he said nothing on the ride home. It was all he could do not to cry.
“You don’t have to talk about it, sweetie.”
Lia sat down next to her son who had barely taken a bite of his breakfast and looked into his eyes. She kissed his forehead. She could see that something was different with him. A mother knows when their child is hurting and she just knew her Richie was hurting. Lia waited hoping her son would say something, hoping he would open up.
“It’s not a girl is it? You’re too young to be upset over a girl.” Lia didn’t know what was bothering Richie but she hoped to trigger some response.
“Mom, nothing’s wrong. And I don’t want to talk about girls.” He said clearly agitated.
“O.K. but if you do I’m the person you can talk to.” She offered. As she started to stand the boy grabbed her and hugged her, hugged her so tight. Now she was sure something was going on. She hoped her son had not started wearing dresses again. She had accepted it for all those years when he was just a boy, it was innocent and harmless then, but as a developing teen boy, that would be something that would be serious, something she would have to deal with. Lia didn’t know if other boys did what her son had done as a child, probably some did. But she did know that if her teenage Richie was doing that he would not survive with his friends; he wouldn’t fit it and he wouldn’t like girls. That thought was not acceptable to Amelia Bromely.
For his part telling his mother about what Gary did, and what happed was not acceptable to Rich. He did want to talk to his mom about other things and he almost did. He wanted to ask her what it was like being a girl. He wanted to tell her he felt different and that he didn’t understand it. He wanted to just hold on to her and cry. Most of all he wanted to ask her about Gary and other boys. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t like them and that he didn’t want to be a man if that is the way they were. He wanted to tell her he wanted to be like his friend Barb but he just couldn’t. Not now, not ever.
Rich Bromely knew he couldn’t cry in front of his mother. He knew he had to do his crying alone, like he did the night before.
The crying the previous night didn’t start until the thirteen year old boy was in bed, wearing the panties, with the covers tightly pulled around him. He tried not to think about what happened, tried to put it out of his mind and the only way he could do that was think about girls, about how maybe there was a reason he felt like he did. He wasn’t like the other boys. What happened wasn’t fun. And well, if Gary liked it so much, it just proved that Richie wasn’t like Gary. Gary was a boy; a rough stupid crazy boy who did things he shouldn’t. Gary liked to fight. Gary had lots of friends who seemed to follow him. Gary was mean to girls and said terrible things about them. Richie wasn’t anything like his older brother.
Rich’s crying had almost stopped late into the night thinking about Gary and what he did, what he was like and how different the two Bromely boys were. He could see being different than his brother was a good thing and he felt better. But then when he thought about Vickie, the girl he sometimes pretended to be, and how she was who this thirteen year old really was, or should have been, Rich finally cried himself to sleep.
Chapter 7
Bike Riding
The ride in his father’s 1954 Buick with the five older boys and Phillip Drexel that summer evening in 1958 actually wasn’t the first sexual adventure orchestrated by Rich’s older brother, nor the last. One day in the middle of the previous summer, when Rich was not yet thirteen and Gary, at fifteen, was not yet driving, the brothers set out on their bikes along with John Lambert.
“Hold up Gary, where in the fuck are you going.” John yelled. Gary was about a half block in the front and Rich was struggling to keep up to even John. Gary slowed and waited for Rich and John.
“You’re not going down past the jail, are you?” John asked. “We did that, remember. The sheriff almost locked you up for fucking with the inmates.” John reminded his friend.
“Naw, were going to see Norma. Rich knows Norma. She’s in his class. Seventh grade, right Rich?” Gary announced but Rich said nothing.
Norma Caulfield was much older than Rich, probably sixteen but had been held back in school a couple of times. That’s why they were both in the seventh grade. She was the heavy set oldest of 12 children. Rich remembered how his grandmother always remarked on how poor that family was as they passed their house every Sunday on the way to church. She once asked her husband, who was driving, why they kept having so many children, when they obviously couldn’t afford them. Rich’s grandfather was a man of few words but they usually came out with a flare. “Don’t know what causes them.” Was all he said.
Norma’s parents were dirt poor and they lived in a run down two story shack a block from the jail and across the street from an ice cream store. Living close to the jail was convenient for Mr. Caulfield who spent at least half his time there sobering up.
Norma herself wore the extreme poverty almost proudly, never reacting to the teasing and taunting. From seeing her daily in school Rich knew she had but two dresses, both made from feed sacks, and that she rarely bathed. He also knew from what the other boys said that Norma Caulfield didn’t have underwear, something Rich refused to verify for himself, even when the older girl would pull the hem of her feed sack dress above her knees in class and let her legs separate enough that most of the boys had a detailed lesson of the female anatomy.
“Are you shittin me? John blurted out. “That pig. What do you want to see her for?”
Rich also was wondering but not because of how John had characterized her. He just had no need to see his classmate especially when his older brother was involved.
“Have you ever heard me call her a pig, John?” Gary admonished his friend. “You don’t want to piss off someone you might want a favor from.” Gary continued.
“Favor, what favor?” John asked playing into Gary’s intrigue.
“Word has it she puts out, dumbshit. All it’s going to take is fifty cents for Norma and some ice cream for her little brothers and sisters. Got any money, John?” Gary asked.
Now it all made sense to Rich. That’s why Gary asked him for a couple of bucks before they left the house. Gary knew Rich had money from his paper route. Gary knew it was not in the bank yet and Rich would give in. So Gary had the two dollars Rich gave him, Rich had a dollar and John had seventy five cents. Together they had more than enough.
They pulled into the alley next to the Caulfield’s house and into the back yard. Norma was sitting on the back porch with what seemed like twenty children of varying ages. It was really only eight ranging from two to 12. Rich recognized Norma’s 14 year old sister Rachel who was a year ahead of both her older sister and Rich in school. She was slender and actually rather cute. If only she had some nice clothes and a bath, she would almost be like other girls her age, sweet and developing.
“Why Gary Bromely, what you doin here?” Norma asked clearly delighted. Norma knew what Gary was there for. She was accustomed to visits from boys. Gary wasn’t bashful.
“Got a dollar in my pocket for all three of us.” Gary proposed.
“Don’t think so, Gary. Seventy five cents each for you and John. I’ll take little Richie for nothing.”
Little Richie? Rich felt embarrassed. First of all he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen but he knew it was sex. He had heard stories and descriptions but as to how it really worked, he was clueless. Second, he was positive from his daily dose of Norma at school he definitely didn’t want to be very close to her. Norma’s lack of hygiene didn’t seem to bother Gary.
“And you give Rachel some money to take the kids over for a cone.” She added.
Gary looked at John and then Rich. John was already pulling the nickels and dimes from his pocket. Rich lowered his head and tried not to look at Gary.
“You got a deal.” John handed over his seventy five cents to Gary who counted out a dollar fifty into Norma’s chubby hand. Gary then gave Rachel a dollar who rounded up all the kids and headed for the alley and then toward the ice cream store across the street. Gary, John and Rich followed Norma into the house through the kitchen. Norma stopped and turned toward the boys.
“Who’s first? Come on Gary. You two wait here.” Gary and Norma disappeared through a curtain dividing the kitchen from a living area. The curtain didn’t close completely and Rich and John could see what was happening just a few feet away. The boys watched as Norma laid down on her back on the couch and lifted her dress. Gary unbuckled his pants and slid them and his briefs to his knees. Soon Gary was laying on top of Norma, ass in the air, furiously pumping. In an instant he stopped, falling limply on top of the girl who pushed him off onto the floor. Gary picked himself up, pulled up his pants and was quickly back in the kitchen with John and Rich.
“Sloppy seconds.” He teased John pushing him through the curtain. Rich watched as John repeated what Gary had done. Rich turned to see if Gary was watching but it was not Gary next to him but Rachel, the girl almost Rich’s age. Gary was out on the porch watching the kids down the ice cream cones.
“Ever see it done before?” Rachel asked Rich. Rich just shook his head that he hadn’t.
“Then I guess this’ll be your first time.” Rachel prodded.
“I ain’t doing that.” Rich told her using the appropriate slang.
“Why not? Scared?” Rachel pushed.
“No, I just, uh, I just don’t want to.” He explained.
“You just think you’re too good for us, don’t you?” Rachel grabbed Rich’s hand and pushed it under her dress and between her legs. Rachel wasn’t wearing panties either. Maybe poor girls never wore panties, maybe panties were a luxury enjoyed by girls like Mary and Barb and Vickie. Rich wondered if he should go get the panties he wore in bed at night and donate them to Rachel. He almost laughed at the irony. Vickie, the girl in Rich, had more pairs of panties than Rachel and Norma combined.
“You can have this for fifty cents. I’m not cherry but I ain’t no cow either.” The fourteen year old offered with an obvious reference to her large older sister lying on her back in the next room, legs spread.
Rich only touched her for an instant and certainly didn’t explore. He quickly pulled his hand away.
“Don’t do that. I got nothin against you but I’m not like that.” He insisted.
“You’re a boy aren’t you?” She reasoned. “You will soon nuf. Might as well be me.” She coaxed.
There it is was again. Someone was stating the obvious to everyone except Rich. After briefly touching what was between Rachel’s legs Rich was acutely aware he was a boy, but for the first time consciously wished he was like her. That wish struck him to the core and he had a feeling he could not understand, a guttural, ephemeral one; one that would return to him constantly, almost daily, for the next 30 years. Rich, the thirteen year old boy from a respected and upper middle class family, fleetingly wanted to trade places with a pathetic lower class fourteen year old girl. He couldn’t control the feeling so he could not consider the merits, or complete lack of merit, of living the life Rachel lived. She was at least a girl; he wasn't.
Rachel shrugged just as John came bounding through the curtain, zipping his fly.
“O.K. Rich. She’s all yours.” He said as he held the curtain open. Rachel gave Rich a little push with a sly smile.
Rich took one step toward Norma still lying on her back with her dress up and legs apart. He refused to look at her nakedness and turned back into the kitchen and out the door. Gary was already sitting on his bike and when he saw Richie and John he assumed they both had had their way with Normal.
“Hi ho Silver.” He yelled triumphantly speeding off down the alley and out into the street. John followed and caught up with Gary and both boys rode their bikes as if they had just conquered the world. Rich trailed behind looking back to see Rachel laughing at him, and then ahead to see his brother proudly gloating over losing his virginity with a six bit whore.
Struggles
by
Sherry Ann
Chapter 8
Resistance
“I need some help today.” Lia Bromely said to her fourteen year old son for the third time.
“Okay already. I heard you.” Rich responded. Rich wasn’t really being evasive or insolent with his mother but he was reading a book and just wasn’t paying attention. It was spring and Rich was either playing basketball with Buzz and Skeeter or he was reading. What he wasn’t doing was wearing his sister’s clothes or even thinking about it. Rich Bromely had decided that what he did as a boy in his grandmother’s attic, or even the time he wore one of Mary’s dresses most of the day, was trouble and he just knew he needed to stay away from trouble.
Rich also worried that somehow there was some connection between the desire to indulge himself with girls’ things and what happened with Phil Drexel. That possible connection terrified him; a deep subconscious terror that the strong girl thing he felt just might lead to things with boys he did not want to think about. So Richie made it a priority to stay away from boys as best he could, especially Gary, and especially at night, and to stay away from Mary’s room. Rich was just glad that he was able to resist and it seemed to be working. He was not what anyone would describe as happy. But his life was wonderfully uneventful; school was good and he had been talking to a girl. Rich had a friend; not dating of course but they talked in school and they even held hands once. He liked that and he felt something warm and exciting when it happened one day after school. And it had the added benefit of bringing him closer to all things girl without being compromised.
“Rich, are you listening?” Lia continued. Without waiting for an answer Lia added, “I need you to put the book down and listen. I’m going to the store and by the time I get back I want all of the boxes I packed for the church bazaar brought up to the porch from the basement.”
“I heard you.” Rich told his mother still holding the book.
“Put the book down. If those boxes aren’t up when I get home I’m not going to be happy.” Rich marked his place and closed the book. Satisfied, Lia picked up her keys and purse and headed out the back door to the car in the driveway and Rich headed for the basement. If he finished carrying up the boxes quickly, he reasoned, he could read for a while before his mother got back.
There were five boxes stacked three and two. Lia had spent the whole week sorting clothes that spring, throwing out what was unwearable and washing the rest so they could be donated. Rich started taking the boxes up the steep stairs one by one. They were heavy and bulky. On the fourth trip Rich missed the top step and nearly fell as he watched as the box he was carrying tumble back down the steps spilling its contents at the bottom.
He raced back down, righted the box and started to repack the box. Shirts and pants, some were his and some had been Gary’s. Lia had marked the box “boys – early teen”. Rich finished repacking the box and was able to put it on the porch with the other three. As he was setting it down he noticed one of the boxes he had put on the porch was marked “girls – 13 to 15”. He looked at the other two; one also marked “boys – early teen” and the other “girls – 16 to 17”.
Without thinking Rich took the box marked ‘girls – 13 to 15’ and carried it up the stairs to his room. He opened the box and started to carefully lay out its contents on his bed making sure to put each item in order. There were several skirts, three blouses, a strapless bra, a winter jacket and four dresses.
Rich was no longer in control of what he was doing, just like when he dressed up that day his mother and sister were shopping. He quickly undressed and fished the panties and bra he kept hidden in his bottom dresser drawer under the baseball uniform he never wore, or had any reason to. The panties and bra he had pilfered shortly after the day of dress up almost two years prior. He put on the panties and bra stuffing socks in the cups of the bra. He then stepped into the summer dress he remembered Mary wearing so well when she was about his age (to church one Sunday to her mom’s consternation). It was sleeveless, with a not too full flared skirt, belted and had a V neck (too revealing the mother of the then fourteen year old girl made clear). The material was a soft silky rayon, light brown with white poke dots. Rich buttoned the dress and was startled at how well it fit, snug around the stuffed bra, just right at the waist and falling perfectly just below his knees. He quickly ran to the bathroom mirror to see how it looked. To Rich he could almost see Vickie in the mirror but what overwhelmed him was what he could not see. He could not see the long hair he wished he had; could not see any curve at the hips (the dress just hung so straight) and there was no real contour to that area of the V where breasts should be. The dress did not look the same as when Mary wore it.
Rich knew he had no time. Still wearing the dress he quickly packed the box with the things he had removed and closed it up. He carried it downstairs and back to the door leading out to the porch. He dared not go outside. He was back in his room sitting on his bed with his legs folded under him when he heard the car in the driveway just below his room. Panicked he unbuttoned the dress, stepped out of it and hung it on a hook in the back of his closet. He was able to unhook the bra and shove it back in his dresser but didn’t have time to take off the panties. He jumped back into his boy’s shirt and pants when his mother called to him.
“Rich Bromely, what are you doing?”
“Just brushing my teeth mom.” He answered quickly running into the bathroom and turning on the water.
“I asked you to help.” The mother yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Rich you only brought up four boxes. Get down here and bring up the other one.”
“Coming mother.” Rich responded.
The fourteen year old boy made his mother happy the rest of the day, loading the car with the boxes for the bazaar, going with her to the church and doing all of the unloading. He knew what he had done was wrong, stealing a dress meant for the less fortunate; Rachel should have it, not him. He knew he had failed to resist the temptation that could bring him so much pain. But it felt so right.
Rich watched as his mother helped the other women unpack the boxes, hang up what they could for display. He looked to see if his mother noticed the missing dress and when she didn’t, Rich was happy again, happy that he finally had his first dress and happy that he was still wearing the panties.
Struggles
by
Sherry Ann
Chapter 9
Brotherly Love
“Heard you took Lydia to the movies.” Gary said as he came into Rich’s room without knocking. “Hope you got a feel.” He added crassly. Lydia was the first ‘date’ Rich ever had but it was hardly romantic. Instead, they talked easily, Rich just happy to be close to a girl and hear all about her life. For her part Lydia felt at ease with the sweet boy but was almost disappointed that he didn’t seem interested in kissing or more.
It was in the middle of summer and fourteen year old Rich had been trying to avoid his brother. Rich wanted to avoid all the craziness and to do that meant he had to stay away from Gary. For the last two years it was one stupid crazy thing after another when he was with Gary. In addition to the sex with Norma and Phillip there was the bloody fight with Mike in front of the Elks club, and the time Gary took out all the shot from a 12 gage shell, loaded the shotgun he had cut off, aimed it at an unsuspecting Fred Blair (a boy his age he hated) and pulled the trigger. Fred thought he had been shot dead when the wadding hit him in the chest. And there was the drinking and driving; fast driving. Gary like to take risks and seeing if the Buick would do 120 mph with Rich in the passenger seat late one night was something Gary bragged about.
Rich didn’t want Gary in his room and he sure as hell didn’t want to talk about taking Lydia to the movies. It wasn’t a date and nothing happened. They didn’t kiss but they did hold hands. Why did everything between a boy and a girl have to be sexual with Gary? The girls Rich knew weren’t like that; Rich wasn’t like that. He hated how Gary and his friends always reduced every encounter with a girl to sex.
Rich thought it was a little strange for Gary to be in his room. Gary mostly ignored Rich except when he wanted something, usually a loan that rarely was repaid. Rich knew something was up when Gary closed the door. Rich grew up with Gary being the older and dominate brother. Gary had the ideas, Rich followed directions. As little boys playing in the yard or in the garage, Gary would choose the game, or decide what to build. Rich would agree and be the helper. When they were older, Gary sometimes bullied Rich and occasionally physically took his anger and frustrations out on him. Other times Gary was gentle and sweet to his younger sibling, teaching and protecting. Gary took on two boys who roughed Rich up and called him a girl. But Rich didn’t have a good feeling about what Gary wanted this time.
“I’ll take that as you didn’t get any. That’s tough. Girls are so damned pissy. They play so hard to get, don’t they.” Gary began.
“Guess so.” Rich said trying to limit the discussion.
“They’re afraid to lose their cherry, afraid they’re gonna get knocked up.”
“I donno Gary.” Rich felt he had to answer. “Maybe they just want some romance. Does everything have to be about getting laid?” Rich boldly stated trying to use Gary’s language.
“Damn straight. That romance shit is something invented by Hallmark.” Gary countered. “I don’t give a fuck about romance and I have no intention playing that game.”
Rich just looked at his brother. He could see the determined confidence Gary usually had but he also saw an anger. Rich wanted to end the conversation; wanted to tell Gary to leave but he could never do that. Gary was in control, as usual. Rich waited for Gary to say something. He did.
“Remember that night with Phillip Drexel?” Gary asked to Rich’s horror. In the instant Rich took to consider how to respond he re-lived that awful night almost exactly a year ago. He remembered the pain and he remembered crying himself to sleep.
Rich again didn’t answer but shook his head that he did remember.
“That was one damned good blow job, wasn’t it?” Gary noted. Rich felt like he was going to be sick but sat frozen on his bed. Gary sat down next to him and continued, now with a softer tone.
“You liked it, didn’t you Rich. I know you were pretty young but shit, what a way to lose your cherry.” Gary tried to be convincing. “Trust me, it’s much better than having to fuck some whore.” He added with authority.
Rich considered just telling Gary where to get off; ask him how he would know anything about sex with a real girl if all he’s ever had were blow jobs and sex with Norma. But Rich knew better than to piss off his brother at a time like this.
“It was ok.” Rich managed.
“Ok? God Rich, you just don’t know. You’ll learn. There is simply nothing like a blow job.” Gary advised. “And I can prove it to you.”
Prove it. What could that mean? Rich didn’t want Gary to prove anything.
“Rich.” Gary continued. “We’re close, right. And you trust me. I’ve always watched out for you. I’ll make you a deal.”
Rich stared at Gary and could tell how serious and determined he was. Rich let his gaze shift and he thought about how he always seemed to be compromised, how being Gary’s little brother seemed to put him into situations he hated.
“What?” Rich whispered.
“We agree blow jobs are pretty sweet. I’ll suck you off if you’ll do me.”
There it was. He said it as if it made sense. It sounded as if Gary was just being pragmatic; blow jobs are wonderful, Phillip isn’t here now, we can do each other. Somehow Rich was not surprised that this is where Gary was going but he wasn’t ready for it. He didn’t have an answer, not the one he wanted to give. Of course he wanted to say ‘no’ in the strongest way. He wanted to stand up to his older brother and tell him that was sick. He couldn’t, he was frozen in fear, caught between having to do something awful, something wrong and yes, he knew, something sinful, or not doing it and suffering the consequences. Gary certainly wouldn’t try this with Brenda, with a sister. Rich had a choice to make that if he were Vickie, Gary’s younger sister, instead of his brother, he would not have to make. It was a choice between evil on the one hand or suffering the physical beating and emotional abuse that would surely result if he said no, on the other.
Rich Bromely, the 14 year old was literally speechless, and powerless. He said nothing. Gary reached over and unbuttoned Rich’s pants and unzipped his fly.
“Look Rich. It’ll be fun. You’ll like it. I’ll go first, o.k., if it’ll make you feel better.” Gary said almost angelically.
Rich again said nothing but shook his head that he agreed. At that point he felt he had no choice. He would do it. One time but he would never let Gary into his room, or pants, again and he would stay as far away from him as he could.
Rich felt Gary pull his pants and briefs off and push him back onto his bed. He closed his eyes and cried, not openly or with tears, but silently. He felt his brother take his penis in his mouth, felt him run his tongue around it. Something told Rich that his brother, the strong macho boy who liked to fight and drive fast and brag about everything, had done this before, many times.
Rich tried to think about other things, pleasant things. He thought about the dress he now had hanging in the back of his closet. He didn’t want to come, didn’t want to give Gary the satisfaction. He wished he could just go limp, not be able to keep it up. What was the term he heard? ‘Impotent’, yes if only he could be impotent. He thought about how girls didn’t have that problem but knew that sometimes that didn’t protect them from a stronger, more determined man.
Rich did come and he knew that meant he would have to now do to his brother what Gary and done to him. Gary sat up and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief.
“I could tell you liked it. Told you it could be fun.” Gary declared. He stood up and undid his pants and pulled them off with his briefs. He then laid down next to Rich and took Rich’s hand, placing it on his erect penis.
“Ok brother. Let’s see you match it.” Making it sound like a contest. Rich had never touched anyone else’s private parts before, if Rachel, Norma’s 14 year old sister didn’t count. Rich stared down at Gary’s fully erect penis. He was relieved that it wasn’t very big, barely the size of Rich. He briefly considered asking Gary if he could renegotiate the deal; ask him to hold off while Rich retrieved his bra and panties as well as the dress and put them on. Wouldn’t that make it easier? It would still be wrong but at least Rich would feel more right.
Rich couldn’t reveal his secret to his older dominating brother. It would give him too much leverage. He had to do this quickly and never let it happen again. Rich could probably do this, he first thought. It would be over quickly, was his second. His third thought was panic. There Rich was, holding his brother’s erect penis just inches from his mouth. All he had to do was lean down and do it. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t put a penis in his mouth, not Gary’s, not anyone’s.
“I can’t Gary. I’m sorry.” He cried jumping up and running out of the room and into the bathroom. He locked the door behind him. A few seconds later he heard Gary in the hall outside the bathroom.
“You fucking chicken shit.” Gary called through the door. “You’ll pay for this, you fucking weasel.”
“At least I’m not a cocksucker.” Rich mouthed so Gary could not hear.
To Rich’s surprise there were no repercussions, at least no immediate physical ones. The relationship from then on, for years really, was different. There would always be a barrier between Gary and Rich. Like the other things that Rich endured with his brother, the incest that day was completely repressed, buried like locust larvae for years or decades, forgotten as just another harmless thing that happens between brothers.
(Note: The author humbly appreciates those who may be following the story of Rich Bromely and his struggles in the 1950’s and later. I am taking a brief hiatus of posting a chapter each day while traveling and intend to use the time to edit and proof the next few chapters. Thanks to all for the kudos. Posting the next chapter of Struggles should resume at the very end of May. Criticism and comments are welcomed.)
Struggles
by
Sherry Ann
Chapter 10
Riding in Cars with Men
Rich couldn’t focus. Everything was spinning. The headlights of the oncoming cars were blurry streaks of light to him and he couldn’t tell where he was. He had no memory of what had happened to him. He knew he was riding in a car and that it was cold and dark. He felt nauseous. The intermittent lights from the passing streetlights showed wet spots on the front of his pants. He must have dozed off, or more accurately, passed out. He didn’t look over at the man driving and tried not to let him know he was awake.
The El Camino came to a stop and Rich realized he was a block from his house. The man reached under the seat and pulled out a handgun. He nudged Rich with the gun.
“Richie.” He called. “Wake the fuck up.”
Rich stirred but still did not look over at the man.
“Look at this.” He commanded again pushing the pistol at Rich. “You know what this is for?” He asked not intending to let Rich answer.
“It’s for niggers and boys like you who talk too much.” He said answering his own question. “So keep your fucking mouth shut, if you know what’s good for you. Don’t tell nobody, you hear.” The man then reached beyond Rich and opened the passenger door. It flung open and Rich almost tumbled onto the sidewalk. He struggled to stand and then staggered toward his house. He heard the engine of the El Camino first roar then fade as it sped out of sight. There were no lights on in the house except for in his mother’s bedroom. That didn’t mean she was awake; she often fell asleep reading. His father, Winn, was never awake this late.
Rich made his way in the dark to the back porch and tried the door. Locked. Lia often just locked the door thinking her boys were home. She wasn’t a bad mother; just forgetful sometimes now that they were older and she did not have to worry. She thought it was good for them to have some space, especially Rich. She was glad he was going out instead of staying home.
Rich tried to shinny up the post of the porch, like he had done before, so he could slip in the unlatched window above, but he didn’t have the strength. It also hurt to wrap his legs around the post. Something did happen, he knew but couldn’t remember what. Rich finally tried the basement door and found it unlocked. He slipped in quietly, gently falling over some clothes in front of the washer. He crept upstairs and into his room. He took his shirt off, then his pants. He was starting to feel pain, sharp pain between his legs, in the back, literally in his ass. Rich took off his briefs and flipped on a light. He felt sick, so sick that he raced to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. Clutching his briefs he looked down and saw blood trickle down the back of his leg. What happened after he got into the car with that man came rushing back to him.
* * * *
It was so cold earlier that Friday night in March 1960 that 15 year old Richie Bromely just considered staying home. His brother was out somewhere and his sister was away at school. He considered just staying in his room, perhaps being Vickie for the evening. He had not done that for a while and maybe this was a good opportunity. Rich and his new friend Bob made plans to shoot some pool but at the last minute Bob was asked to spend the evening with his girlfriend. Her father had relented some and as long as they were not left alone, they were allowed to spend time together.
Rich’s mom suggested he call Buzz and see what he was doing. Buzz always had something going on and maybe Rich could join in, Lia reasoned aloud to her second son. The last thing Rich wanted to do at this point was spend another boring evening with Buzz, Eric and Skeeter, playing cards and talking about their girlfriends and to which proverbial base they had safely reached. Rich Bromely hadn’t even been up to bat when it came to girls, even though he had been with Barb in her bedroom helping her put on her dress and kissing her. That was not the same.
Rich lied to his mother and told her he had called Buzz and was going over to his house to play cards. Lia kissed his forehead as he left, happy that her son, the one she worried she had made a sissy, had become such a normal sweet teen boy.
Rich Bromely at 15 had become a typical small town teen boy. Gone was the shadow of his brother that he lived under, mostly; gone were the sexual surprises instigated by Gary, the ones that terrified him, traumatized him. Rich had put those out of his mind, didn’t think about them. Gone were the feelings he had as a boy that somehow he was, or should have been, a girl. Actually, those weren’t really gone; they were there but Rich just refused to acknowledge them. He thought about them and liked thinking about them. He just couldn’t indulge in them the way he did when he was seven or eight or even eleven and twelve. No, at fifteen Rich couldn’t reconcile those feelings and what he had become; a developed boy, with hair on his chest, wet dreams and boy impulses; impulses he hated but sometimes gave into. At eight the physical differences between a girl and boy were not so stark; now at fifteen they were black and white, or more accurately curve and no curve. So he ignored the female tug as best he could, like an addict on the wagon.
Rich also managed to steer clear of his brother. It wasn’t that hard, especially after Rich turned 15 and had more freedom to go out and hang with friends. Gary now had a girlfriend, but still had all of the crazy friends from before. Rich and Gary’s paths rarely crossed now. Rich also no longer played basketball with Buzz and Skeeter and now hung out with a kid from the other side of town and started smoking. Barb Hundley was still his friend but she and Buzz were going steady and she rarely had time for Rich. That was a relief for Rich. Because of what had happened with Phillip Drexel and Buzz, it was just too complicated to be close to Barb, especially with Buzz deeply in her life.
His new friend, Bob Moore, was the son of a mechanic and his mother tended bar in the evenings. Rich and Bob would play pool at the bar and grab a burger and fries there together late at night. Rich would stay out late with Bob and sneak in without his mother knowing it. Of course, his mother often didn’t know he was out in the first place because Rich was sneaking both ways.
For some reason Rich and Bob connected. Bob was serious and cerebral. He also didn’t talk about girls in that awful and negative way Gary and his friends did. Bob was in love with a sweet girl but her father wouldn’t let them be alone together. Bob would lament about his love and Rich enjoyed having someone who was open and sincere with him. With Bob, Rich didn’t have to worry about sex with boys, and Bob helped Rich feel like a normal boy for once. With Bob as a friend Rich felt safe and separated from Gary and for the first time in Rich’s young life he connected to someone of his own gender, not that he didn’t think about his friend Barb or still indulge himself in thoughts of not being a boy. But Bob didn’t seem to carry all the baggage that bothered Rich about being male, especially the incongruity of boys talking about sex with girls, but having sex with other boys. That was the only perspective Rich had until he met Bob.
But Bob was not out this night and Rich just decided to go uptown. Rich pulled up the collar of his jacket and walked the four blocks to the center of town, to the corner where all the boys, the ones without a license or a car, hung out. Fourteen and fifteen year old boys mostly would stand on the corner and wait for some older boy to drive by showing off their car, or their father’s. Sometimes the older boy behind the wheel would stop and one or two of the younger ones would pile in and they would drive down to the highway and through the Elby’s located at the edge of town.
This night Rich had the corner all to himself when he reached it. That was unusual for a Friday night but it was already rather late and a lot of kids were probably still at the basketball game. Rich decided to wait a while to see who would drive by.
A couple of cars rolled by and honked their horns, and Gus, one of the town’s police officers, or coppers as the boys called them, drove by and gave Rich a quick glance. Rich was about to leave and just go home when he spotted the El Camino from three blocks away. It was distinctive and Rich knew right away who it was.
Wesley Ewing was not a good looking guy. His nose was too big for his face and was made more prominent by the narrow cheekbones and elongated head. His eyes were set too close together and looked menacing even when he smiled. He was tall with a medium build and constantly hunched his shoulders. Wes could always be seen on most nights cruising up and down the main drag, or through Elby’s. Occasionally there would be a boy or two riding with him.
Wes Ewing wasn’t sixteen, or eighteen or even 20, like the other guys that liked to cruise through town. Wes Ewing was 26; a man still acting like a teen, or that’s what everyone said. The story was that Wes lived with a woman but liked to show off his El Camino and be around the guys still in high school. He worked in the local auto parts store and outfitted his El Camino with fancy hubcaps, and blue lights in the grill. Even though he was much older, he was popular with, and looked up to by, most of the boys Rich knew.
Rich watched as the El Camino approached and slowed for the stop light. Rich tried not to look but had to when the driver rolled down the window.
“Where is everybody?” The driver asked Rich.
Rich strolled over to the curb and saw the distinctive outline of the man driving. He knew it was Wes Ewing. Rich had seen him many times and often saw him at the parts store when Gary was looking for parts to fix up the old truck, but he had never talked to him. Rich was never the one who was offered a ride like Buzz or Skeeter.
“At the game, I guess.” Rich answered from the few feet that separated the boy from the man in the car. The light turned but Wes kept his foot on the brake. “Saw two or three car loads leave earlier. They’ll be back soon.” Rich continued.
“I’m heading down the river. Need a beer.” Ewing declared. Nothing else was said for the longest time. The light turned red again. Rich didn’t know what this man was trying to say. Was he just making conversation, telling the young boy that he needed a drink, or was it a question, was he asking Rich if he wanted to go get a beer?
“You comin’ or not?” The man finally asked as he revved the engine. Rich ran around the El Camino and jumped in. The man again revved the engine and popped the clutch just as the light turned green again. The tires squealed and the El Camino roared down the street, turned right and made its way over to the road that followed the river south. Soon they were out of town with the headlights piercing the dark cold night. Rich sat quietly watching the speedometer.
“What’s your ugly brother up to?” Wes finally asked.
“Don’t know. Guess he’s out with Marie.” Rich answered referring to Gary’s girlfriend.
“You drink beer?” The twenty six year old asked the fifteen year old.
“Sure, with Gary a couple of times.” Rich bragged.
“There’s a dive about a mile ahead. They don’t give a shit how old you are.” The man bragged as he picked up speed and then downshifted before a turn. Rich heard the sound of the tires as the El Camino turned off the road and into the gravel parking lot of a little bar called “Marty’s”. It was just a rectangular cinder block building with a couple of windows and an “Iron City” neon sign in one.
Wesley Ewing parked the El Camino and got out. Rich opened his door wondering what he had got himself into. Wesley put his arm around Rich, “Don’t say nothin in here. Just let me do the talkin.” He advised. “They won’t say nothin if you keep your mouth shut. They like my money.”
Marty’s was one big room with some tables and a bar at one end with several stools. There was one pinball machine and a juke box. It was dimly lit, of course, and heavy with smoke. Several men were drinking at tables; there were no women. There wasn’t any hard liquor on the shelf behind the man behind the bar; just glasses and various bar related items. The man behind the bar had a cigarette in his mouth and was talking to an old guy in overalls. Wes sat on a stool at the bar and Rich climbed up on one beside him. The man behind the bar looked over and seeing Rich smiled at Wesley. He came over and stood in front of the man and the boy.
“What’ll it be, Wes, the usual?” He asked still grinning. “Been cruising again I see.” He added glancing at Rich.
“Yeh, make it two Iron City.” He ordered throwing a five on the bar. The man behind the bar didn’t hesitate and opened the cooler in front of him and produced two long neck bottles. He popped the caps with an opener. Rich started to feel at ease. He had drank beer before, several times, but never openly in a bar, with men, other men, he thought. Rich felt older as he put the bottle to his lips and felt the cool liquid rush into his mouth. It tasted so good, almost thrilling. Fuck the baseball shit, he thought. Fuck Buzz and his petty crap about how far he had been with Barb, his sweet friend. Rich Bromely was in a bar, drinking beer with men, real men.
“Haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks.” The bar man noted. “Where’s the older boy who was with you the last time?” He continued again looking closely at Rich’s boyish face.
“You ask too many fuckin questions, Marty.” Wes barked. Rich wasn’t really listening and had almost finished his beer.
“Don’t know, you ugly shit. The older you get the younger the boys are you bring in here.” The man behind the bar said in almost a whisper, then laughed so loud the rest of the men in the bar turned to look.
“You don’t seem to mind my money, asshole. So shut the fuck up and get us two more.” Rich downed the rest of his first beer and took hold of the next. He took a sip and felt the first effects of the first. The room wasn’t spinning but he definitely felt light headed and he had to piss. He got off the stool and looked around. It felt like everyone was looking at him.
“It’s in the back, behind the curtain.” The man behind the bar directed. Rich walked to the back of the bar trying to stay straight. He found the curtain and pulled it pack revealing a toilet, with no seat. He unzipped his pants and tried to find his penis which seemed to be hiding somewhere. He managed to free it and pull it out between the zippers. He peed trying to be careful not to pee on the floor but missed. It was clear he wasn’t the first, judging from the heavy smell of urine and the wet floor. He finished, zipped up and made his way back to the bar. ‘Hello Walls’ was playing on the jukebox and he tried to sing along.
“Hello window’. He sang a little too loudly as the men standing at the bar laughed. Wes was talking to another man sitting on the stool between Wes and Rich. He climbed back on the stool and took another large gulp of beer.
“Damn good beer, right Rich.” Wes declared. “You ready?” He asked pointing to the bottle in Rich’s hand. “Drink up.”
“Almost.” Rich answered now clearly seeing things move in front of him. He tipped the bottle up and drained it.
“One more Marty.” Wes called. Rich reached for the freshly opened bottle the man behind the bar put in front of him and missed. The bottle tumbled forward but the man behind the bar caught it. Rich laughed, almost giggled, at his clumsiness. He then took the bottle again and this time raised it and drank almost half in one gulp. He set the bottle down and got off the stool stumbling. Rich Bromely was clearly drunk and had no idea what he was doing, or going to do. He started for the door.
“Hey, where you going?” Wes called getting off his stool and following the boy. Wes reached in his pocket and threw another two dollars on the bar. He reached Rich at the door.
“I need to go home. Need to lay down.” Rich managed. Wes put his arm under Rich and helped him through the door and out into the cold night air. Rich felt the fresh air fill his lungs and he felt better.
“Let’s get you into the car. You can rest for a while.” Wes opened the car door and helped Rich in. Soon the engine roared and Rich could hear the sound of tires spinning and throwing gravel as the El Camino turned right going further down the river and not back toward town. Rich was dazed and had no idea which direction the El Camino was going. Soon he felt the car come to a stop and the engine shut off.
Rich Bromely did not know where he was and he really didn’t care too much. His head was spinning and he just wanted to lay there. It was quiet, peaceful. He was warm and drunk. He felt Wes reach over and shake him gently.
“Rich, you o.k. buddy?” Wes asked. “Time for a little fun Rich.”
Rich didn’t really hear the words, and certainly didn’t know what they meant. He felt Wes unbuckle his pants and unzip them. Rich didn’t understand what Wes was doing and he didn’t care. Rich couldn’t reason, or resist. Soon Wes had pulled Rich’s pants and briefs completely off. Wes pulled a small blanket from behind the seat and put it over Rich’s legs.
That’s nice, Rich thought as Wes turned the boy away from the driver. Rich felt the man’s hand touch him, feel him but Rich did not respond, could not respond. Then he felt the man next to him, next to his back. The man also had taken his pants off and was naked against Rich.
Now Rich was more aware. Now he could understand what was happening; now he was suddenly almost sober. Rich felt the man’s penis push between his legs from the back, first through the space between his legs and then protruding up from Rich’s crotch almost as if it was Rich’s own penis. It was wet and slippery. In the dim light Rich could see the very large body part exactly where his own little thing would be if it had the courage to emerge. It didn’t and later, much later, Rich laughed at the irony of the image of Rich, the boy who struggled with feelings of being girl-like, looking in that instant like a very well endowed, and very erect boy-man. It took many years for Rich to see any irony, or humor in what was happening.
“Feel that Richie?” The man asked softly. “Touch it. I know you want to. You’re such a sweet boy.” He said and then added, “But you can be my girl tonight.”
Then the penis disappeared. It was gone and Rich tried to focus on his own penis. It was there but still lifeless. Soon Rich knew the large long penis was not gone. He felt it push up and into him. Rich tried to scream but couldn’t. He gasped instead, feeling the sharp pain as the man’s penis went in and back out, again and again. Rich had seen how big it was, and how long. Now he felt all of it, he was sure. Rich tried to hold his legs closed but the man was strong.
“Come on, Richie.” The man demanded as he pushed harder. “When I’m done you can fuck me. Told you it would be fun, girl.” Rich heard the word and briefly thought of Barb.
For Rich this wasn’t fun, it was terrifying. Rich tried to continue to resist but the man slapped him in the back of the head. Rich relaxed instinctively and felt less pain when he did. Soon the man was going faster and harder and Rich felt nauseous. Finally the man fell back and Rich felt the warm liquid on his thigh. That’s when Rich passed out.
Fifteen year old Richie Bromely did not remember how he got his briefs and pants back on, and he didn’t remember most of the ride home. He didn’t remember much of anything about his ride with Wes Ewing that night, not until almost forty years later when he sat in his therapist’s office, wearing a dress, exploring what could possibly cause a man to want to become a woman.
(Rich deals with his past and meets someone not unlike himself.)
Struggles
by
Sherry Ann
Chapter 11
Silence
Rich never said anything to his mother about being raped, not in the days after it happened, nor the weeks; not ever. Lia knew something had happened, or at least she suspected. He wasn’t the same, even more moody than before. Lia’s youngest son had evolved from the happy boy of twelve to a silent and moody fifteen year old. She had seen this in him before but this time it was different, more pronounced, almost permanent. She just didn’t know what to do about it.
She considered confronting him, finding a perfect moment when it was just the two of them and asking him what was wrong. That didn’t work the last time and he became closed and angry. She was afraid of embarrassing him and driving a further wedge between them. No, she thought, she needed to just be sweet, loving and caring, in hopes he would come to her.
Lia Bromely, the mother, was almost certain she knew what was bothering her son and if she was right, her mother’s intuition told her that it was best to leave it alone. Lia knew about her son’s forays into a girl’s world, knew about his fantasies. She had known he was like that since he was a child. She knew about the dresses in Gramma’s attic and even knew about the dress he had pilfered from the box that was going to the church bazaar a couple of years ago; the one he hid in his closet.
What convinced her that she knew what was going on now was that the dress in the back of Rich’s closet disappeared at about the same time his mood changed so much. She guessed her son was growing up, becoming a man and realizing he had to put the silly girl stuff behind him. Lia the mother knew that it was probably hard for him to give up something he obviously enjoyed so much but growing up is always hard. What was it from Corinthians, she asked and then looked it up. “When I became a man, I put away childish things” she read. That is what was happening with her son, she was sure, and she knew he would be a better man, and later, a better husband and father because of it. As much as it broke her heart she decided she needed to let him get through this on his own.
As a mother of two sons, Lia considered questioning Gary, the older brother but then dismissed the thought. Rich and Gary no longer had a close relationship like they did when they were younger. Gary had turned into an aggressive, cocky and self-assured boy. He was a handful for her and for Winn, the father. He did pretty much what he wanted to when he wanted to do it and as parent they always feared that he would be brought home by the police or worse. Rich was the opposite, of course, so Lia didn’t consider the frigid almost hostile relationship her 17 year old and fifteen year old had as troubling. It was probably for the best but she knew any mention of Rich to Gary would probably not be in Rich’s best interest.
Naturally rape wasn’t a word Rich could associate with what was done to him by the older man. In fact, he didn’t even think about it, at least not consciously. He stopped talking like he did before. Rich Bromely withdrew mostly, to his room at first and then, after he had healed, physically healed, he turned 16 and got his driver’s license and a job. And for the rest of high school his junior and senior year, Rich worked at the country club, helping the grounds crew in the summer and as a bus boy for the restaurant in the winter. He didn’t date and he stayed away from friends and especially street corners. After all, there wasn’t anyone he could really talk to because there was nobody like he was. That is until he met Sam.
Rich didn’t know anything about Sam Rangel when he met her at the first assembly of their senior year at Johnstown High in 1963. Yes, Sam was a girl but Rich didn’t really notice that when she introduced herself.
“Hi, I’m Sam.” She said in a rather gravelly voice. “I guess you know everyone.”
“Yeh, you’re new, right.” Rich answered glancing over at the teen with short hair wearing a checkered shirt and pants and loafers. “Hope you play football, our team sucks.” Rich added making small talk while looking back to the center of the gym where the principal was about to speak.
Sam laughed deeply and smiled. “Uh, no. Don’t play football. Wish I could. Do you?” Sam looked over at Rich and waited for him to see her, notice her.
Rich barley heard what Sam said. He was thinking about other things; and watching Barb and Buzz who were sitting several rows in front of him. He missed the closeness he used to have with Barb but he was also admiring the skirt and blouse she was wearing. Rich tried not to think about how he would love to be wearing the skirt and blouse. Thoughts like those seemed to somehow lead to awful things. He had discarded the dress he took from the box for the church bazaar and the bra and panties lay untouched in his bottom drawer.
“What? No, I don’t play football.” He finally answered and then looked over and saw Sam, saw that she was not a boy as he had first presumed. Rich blushed and stammered. “Oh, sorry. Of course you don’t play football. I, uh, I…”
“You thought I was a boy, didn’t you.” Sam said proudly. “Well, I’m not exactly a boy but I’ve dreamed of playing football.” She paused waiting to see Rich’s reaction. “Seriously, I could make the team.”
Rich didn’t know what to make of Sam. He just couldn’t process what he was seeing. Now that he took a close look he knew he was face to face with a girl but he didn’t know any girls who looked like this, dressed like Sam dressed; the short hair, no makeup, and yes, she was definitely wearing a boy’s shirt. Rich doubted she was wearing a bra, or needed one. Sam was short and stocky; not necessary short for a girl. She had dark hair and a dark complexion. Rich agreed ‘she could make the team’.
Samantha Rangel grew up near Philadelphia and had always been a tomboy. Her parents fought if for many years forcing her to wear dresses to school. Samantha would protest and resist but her mom would prevail sending her little girl off in the morning in a cute dress and her long hair in pony tails. What Mrs. Rangel often got back in the afternoon was a completely different person; dress torn or muddy, no ponytails and sometimes a scrape, or bruise. Mr. and Mrs. Rangel were summoned many times for a conference with the principal or school counselor. They were invariably told of Samantha’s escapades, playing touch football with the boys, fighting. Each time they promised to do their best to make Samantha conform to her gender but over the years they were the ones who had to conform. They presumed their only daughter would grow out of the “boy” phase as they understood it; 'tomboys' were tolerated if not accepted and most, if not all, grew up to be beautiful wives and mothers. Sam didn't grow out of it. Samantha, at age eleven, finally cut her own hair, from shoulder length to a shaggy two inches. From then on she was Sam. The Rangel’s didn’t waste any more money on dresses, except for one Sam would reluctantly wear to please the grandparents, once in a while, and while the school continued to protest to Sam’s parents that she needed to wear “clothing appropriate for girls” they tacitly accepted the girl who always came to school in pants and shirt. What really bothered Mrs. Rangel was that when her teenage daughter got her first period she never asked her mom about it. She just dealt with it on her own somehow.
Now Sam was in a new school for her senior year and she didn’t like it. At her school in Philadelphia she had a couple of friends and well, everyone else was used to her. Nobody dared tease her; she knew how to fight and wasn’t afraid to take anyone on, even the boys. She threatened to run away and begged to stay in Philadelphia for her senior year but it wasn’t like her parents didn’t love her. Mr. and Mrs. Rangel accepted that Sam was different, they didn’t encourage it but after so many years they just knew Sam was Sam; fun, outgoing and a force. To them Sam was more like a son than a daughter. They wouldn’t let her stay in Philadelphia because they were afraid that without them Sam would come under influences that they could not control, and that would consume her. So Sam came with her parents and moved to the little Pennsylvania town because her father was transferred there to run the local state highway maintenance facility. He knew how to fix roads and plow snow, how to manage such operations. He promised to teach his daughter how to drive one of the snowplows.
Rich finally realized he was sitting next to a very different person and that he had not introduced himself.
“Oh, I’m Rich. Rich Bromely. I’ve lived here all my life. Where are you from?” He asked.
Sam told him her story often being a little blunt about being different from the other girls. Sam didn’t actually tell Rich she felt like a boy, or wanted to be one. She really didn’t have to. Everything she said had a boy’s point of reference. Rich found himself intrigued by this person who was so confident being different. To Rich it just seemed so easy for Sam. She could be so boy-like and no one would dare challenge her. Sure he knew the whole town would talk, he knew Sam would be the focus of gossip for weeks on end, perhaps their whole senior year, but he was sure she wouldn’t be confronted. He almost laughed when he thought about how he would be received if the situation was reversed; if he wore a skirt and blouse to the first assembly his senior year. If he survived just getting to school without being beat up he would be expelled. But here was Sam, a girl, wearing boy’s clothes and looking like the right tackle of the team that went 1 and 7 the year before.
When she finished all Rich could say was “Friends. I could use one and I pretty sure you will too.” They shook hands like two guys and agreed to be friends. Rich offered to show Sam around town.
“Hey, the first game is Friday and it’s an away game. I’ve got the car. Want to go?” He asked.
“Neat.” She answered. Sam looked over at her new friend and smiled broadly. Rich saw in that smile just a hint of girlness but he felt something that was missing in his life, something he had not felt for a very long time. Rich Bromely felt like he had a real friend, a friend he might be able to talk to, to confide in; a friend who was, Rich happily thought, also a boy.
* * * *
Rich parked his father’s ’59 Buick Invicta in front of the house on Highland Avenue where Sam lived. He had hoped that she would be waiting for him; he didn’t want to have to knock on the door, but when she didn’t come out he climbed the three steps to the porch and knocked. A middle aged woman wearing a dress opened the door.
“You must be Rich. Come in. Sam’s upstairs and will be down in a minute.” She said noticeably not using a pronoun. She invited Rich to sit and he almost felt like he was picking up a date. Rich was relieved. Sam’s mom seemed so nice, so normal. Rich almost expected Sam’s mom would be like her, more masculine than feminine, perhaps wearing a shirt and pants like Sam was when they met. Maybe Sam switched, he thought, sometimes being more like a girl than a boy. Would she sashay down the stairs in a skirt and top, he wondered.
“You’re a good driver, aren’t you Rich.” Mrs. Rangel asked. “I’m worried about these mountain roads. Just be careful.” She pleaded.
“I will.” Rich promised sensing that the woman wanted to say more.
“Sam needs a friend here. She’s, uh, different.” Mrs. Rangel looked toward the stairs to make sure Sam wasn’t coming yet. “We’ve given up. We just let her be Sam. She’s not a bad kid actually but I refuse to think there is something wrong with her. She is just, well, just not very girly.” She said with a hopeful look that said she wanted the teen boy to understand the complication of growing up.
“Well, Mrs. Rangel.” Rich began, thinking about what to say. “I could use a friend too. Don’t worry. It won’t be easy in this little town but we can look out for each other.”
Mrs. Rangel just gave Rich a funny look not sure what the boy meant as Sam came trampling down the stairs two at a time. She was wearing a white shirt that was too large for her with the top button undone and the sleeves rolled up. She had a man’s tee shirt underneath. She was wearing jeans and cowboy boots. Her hair was different, brushed back with some kind of gel into a duck-tail. There was a clear scent of her father’s cologne.
“You’re a brave young man.” Mrs. Rangel whispered to Rich before Sam made it to the bottom of the stairs. Rich couldn’t say anything as the two flew out the door giving assurance to Sam’s mom that they would be careful and home by 11:30.
The two seventeen year olds drove out of town toward Legonier where Johnstown HS was playing their opening game of the 1963 season.
“You’re mom’s cool.” Rich told Sam.
“Yeh. She gave up trying to make me be frilly a long time ago.” Sam explained. “I’m just the way I am. You don’t seem to have a problem with it.” She said almost as a question.
“Never knew anyone like you. You didn’t pick the most popular boy to be a friend. I don’t have many friends.”
“So you settled for me?” Sam asked playfully.
“I didn’t mean it like that. But I was thinking its kinda neat not having some jerk guy as a friend, and I can’t seem to be friends with girls.”
“Jerk guy?” Sam wondered why her new friend, a boy, would think of other boys that way. “I think I know what you mean.” She answered half-heartedly. “But I’d love to have some guy friends, I mean real guys.” She said not meaning to insult her new friend. She recovered quickly. “Jocks, I meant guys who are jocks. You told me you weren’t into sports.”
“I like to play basketball but no, I hate jocks.” Rich said blushing at the possible two meanings of the word. “I don’t hate the guys who wear them.” He added.
They drove for a couple of miles without talking. Rich changed the radio station. “I don’t have one, by the way.” Rich said without looking at his new friend.
“Neither do I.” Sam replied quickly taking a breath before adding “But it’s a thought.” She laughed.
“What? A jock strap? But you, uh.”
“No I don’t actually need one but I wouldn’t mind…..” Sam stopped. “You already think I’m weird.”
“No. Really. I just never met someone like you. Different yes, weird, uh, oh, maybe a little.” Rich reached over and gave Sam a friendly push on the arm, chuckling but then became serious.
“What if I tell you I’m a little weird too?” He said without thinking.
“You don’t have to make something up just to make me feel better.” Sam said.
Rich pulled the Buick off the road and put it in park. He looked over at Sam and wondered if he should tell her about the way he felt and how there was nothing he could do about it. In an instant he felt both angry and jealous. He was angry that the thing he had given up had resurfaced without any prompting on his own. He had thrown away the dress and he no longer slept in the panties. He had a job. He worked and went to school and stayed away from everything that could go wrong. It wasn’t enough and here he was confronted with it again.
Most of all, however, he was jealous. It seemed so easy for Sam. She was so open and so self-assured. She didn’t seem to care what people thought and well, yes, Rich knew there was a double standard, even if he couldn’t explain it. Samantha, a girl, could wear boys’ clothes, in school or anywhere, with little or no difficulty. Where was the outrage? Where were the authorities, the doctors, the shrinks, the clergy? Why wasn’t she removed from her parents and placed in a home that would raise her like a girl, instead of a boy?
Rich knew instinctively as a boy, nearly a man, that if he wore anything even remotely girly to school, or anywhere public, the result would be swift, painful, devastating and permanent. His life would be over.
“Well?” Rich heard Sam say. “What’s going on with you? Do I bother you?”
Rich didn’t answer right away.
“Why did you pull over? What did you want to tell me? Are you…” Rich didn’t let Sam finish.
“It’s not that.” He almost yelled. “It’s just that, well, uh, you’re a girl right?” He finally asked trying to recover.
“Yeh. Sort of.” Sam answered.
“But you’re trying to make people think you a boy, right?” Rich postulated.
“Well, Einstein, now that it’s out in the open. To tell the truth, I am a boy. I mean, that’s just how I’ve always felt and nothing can change that.” She continued. “So what’s your point?”
Rich wanted desperately to tell Sam but couldn’t. He just didn’t know how and couldn’t find the words. He put the Invicta in low and hit the gas enjoying the squeal of the tires on the asphalt as he roared back onto the highway.
“Just trying to understand.” He yelled over the noise.
Rich and Sam were friends for the rest of the year but were not close. They stayed in touch when Rich went off to college until he went into the Army. Rich Bromely loved and admired Sam so much but he couldn’t risk the temptation of being near someone who made being different seem so easy.
Interlude: Rich Bromely, the young man from a small Pennsylvania town was abruptly introduced to the world, a man’s world, in 1966 when he lost his student classification that deferred him from the draft just as the Vietnamese War was heating up. Rich graduated from Johnstown High School, attended a small community college for two years and met a girl named Brandi. Rich and Brandi met through a mutual friend and attended separate schools, she in upstate New York. They only saw each other occasionally but they both felt the other was the one they wanted to be with for the rest of their lives. They became engaged shortly before Rich enlisted for four years in a special program, a program that would likely keep him out of Viet Nam.
Struggles
By
Sherry Ann
Chapter 12
A Weekend in San Francisco (Part one of Two)
The World War II barracks on the hillside in Monterey stood out in their complete uniform exactness. They were perfectly alike in every detail except for the sign next to the door of each showing a unique letter and number. Private Richard Bromely lived and studied in the one marked “B4" and the joke for those who lived and studied there was ‘what comes after B4’. Inside, each of the two floors were divided into cubicles, open in the front, shared by two students; those fortunate enough to be at the Defense Language Institute during a very hot war in Viet Nam, studying Russian or one of many other languages. Yes, a ‘survival’ course in Vietnamese was taught but far too many graduates of that course did not survive.
On the lower floor of the look-alike barracks were the showers and the latrine, completely open toilets and urinals, and open showers. There was no privacy in the Army.
Engaged to be married, and aware of the consequences of not making it through the ten month Russian course (a quick transfer to Fort Ord and a ticket to the jungles of Southeast Asia) Rich worked and studied hard, making at least average and passing grades. There was little time for fun, except for forays into town, a movie on Cannery Row, or an occasional visit to the theater in Carmel V alley.
By the time he enlisted in the Army Rich Bromely had severely repressed his childhood feelings of being different, of feeling like he should have been a girl. He was a repression expert, also repressing rape, incest and serial oral sex as a young teen boy. At age 23 however, he was living the reality of being a single man in early 1968, trying to survive and stay alive, trying to stay away from the bullets. What choice did he have; as a male he was a prime target for fighting some nebulous war; as a man there was no acceptable outlet for the feelings he had and didn’t understand. He was lucky enough to pass the language test which would allow him to stay away from the fighting.
More fortunately, he had met a wonderful girl, and they fell in love, from afar mostly since they were now living 3,000 miles apart, she in college in New York and he in Monterey. But through letters, occasional visits and expensive long-distance phone calls, they hit it off. There was something special about their forced separation; of course there was physical attraction and some petting when together, but mostly there was an emotional connection, a love of the other. She loved his humor and gentleness; there was something different about him that other guys did not have. He was enthralled with the beauty of her soul and her body, naturally, and in awe of her femininity. A few months before Rich left for basic training they became engaged. Yes, they faced more separation, more struggles but they had a future.
So he suppressed the feelings, as best he could. He confided to his fiancée, mostly in letters about wanting, or needing, to wear female things but he inaccurately couched it in terms of comfort and yes, sexual arousal. His inability to explain it to himself spilled over to very inarticulate ramblings on the subject in letters. He wasn’t really lying about the sex; to him, at that time, he believed it. He had no other explanation and really didn’t want one. She accepted his explanation happy that the man she loved had a soft side; she could live with that, she reasoned.
Even if Rich could have possibly understood or acknowledged what constantly bothered him, what could he do about it in the midst of the life he had in open barracks with 40 other men and no privacy? So he tried not to think about it, usually succeeding, but when he did think about it, it was in the context of looking forward to sharing a life with a woman. A life with a woman, sharing intimacy and hopefully a little cross dressing would provide much comfort, if not a complete cure he reasoned.
But repression also failed at times, and he gave in to the feelings, the devilish urges. Soon after he first arrived in Monterey he was invited to Salinas to dinner with old friends of his parents who had a daughter about his age. When he asked to use the bathroom he found himself behind the locked door going through the dirty clothes hamper and stealing a pair of the daughter’s panties, hiding them in his own underwear. He hated what he did but he loved having the silky panties to wear at night with other men sleeping close by; he would conceal them in his bed until lights were out just as he had done as a boy of eight or nine. He was so scared someone would notice the pink lacy panties when he washed and dried them along with his male white briefs and tee shirts. But he was careful and no one noticed.
Rich really didn’t believe things like that just happened, without some reason or context. As had happened before, and would so often happen in the future, Rich was routinely presented with some reminder, some connection to what he considered the dark side, the temptation that would pull him into the deep, dark murky water where he would drown. What happened in San Francisco in January 1968 was more than just a reminder, so much more than the average trigger, like the panties he stole out of the clothes hamper.
Rich wasn’t planning to get laid that weekend, not consciously. Maybe in the back of his mind he had that hope; he was a young man after all with all the barely controllable urges that went with surging testosterone. Yes, he was acutely aware he was engaged and yes, he intended to keep his commitment of premarital celibacy. It was a matter of honor and trust. With his fiancé he had an unbelievable opportunity, a life with an educated beautiful woman from a very respected Christian family. Rich felt God had given him a gift, as well as a way to beat the temptation.
Rich just needed to get away, leave all the studying, the immersion in Russian behind. He had just passed a major exam and he was nearly assured of completing the course. So he set out for the city by the bay on a Friday in January 1968 taking the two p.m. bus. He checked into the YMCA, took a shower and headed out into the city, a little overwhelmed and a lot lost. After wandering for a few blocks, he was approached by a young woman wearing a tight skirt, revealing blouse and high heels.
“Hey, soldier.” The woman called to the skinny young man with the standard military buzz cut.
Without thinking Rich stopped and looked at the pretty, if not beautiful, woman, with hair half way down her back. He stood there just a couple feet away, smelling the heavy perfume and losing control of his ability to think.
“Where you from? Fort Ord? Presidio?” She immediately asked.
“Uh, Monterey.” Rich answered while he sized her up finally realizing she was not just a friendly woman but a prostitute.
“A Merry, uh.” She said smiling showing she knew the common nickname given to DLI students, Monterey Merry. Derogatory yes, but mostly inaccurate. Rich felt the term had more to do with those at DLI with him being perceived as soft and afraid to fight, rather than being homosexual.
“Been studying too much? Do you need some love, honey?”
Rich stared at the woman’s breasts squeezed up into tight cleavage bulging out of the top she was wearing and showing the outer edges of each areola. The woman edged closer and let her breasts brush against Rich’s bare arm and, at the same time, gently feeling between his legs, checking the status of his emerging erection.
“Oh, you need some love, baby. Let’s get a cab and I’ll take you to my place. Ten, twenty, thirty. OK!”
Rich had never had intercourse before, if you didn’t count the only other time he was with a prostitute at age 16 on a foray to South Wheeling one weekend. And to him that experience didn’t really count because he came all over the woman, who wasn’t much older than he was and was very pregnant, before he even got inside her. At 22 he was naïve and inexperienced never getting close to coitus with his fiancé or anyone else. Now standing so close to so much woman he was fully aroused and without resistance.
“Ten, twenty, thirty?” He repeated as a question.
“You know. Ten dollars for a blow job, twenty for straight sex and thirty for round the world. Get a cab, you know you want to.”
Rich had thirty dollars on him, probably a little more. He didn’t want to spend it all on this but he had lost his ability to say no. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her against him looking down at the ever enticing breasts. He wanted to touch them, and he did, briefly without objection from the prostitute.
“Sure, I’ll get that cab. What’s your name?”
“Trista. And you pay before, not after.”
Rich stood on the curb and put his hand up, looking for a cab. The third one stopped and he opened the door and slid in. Trista followed him but as she started to get into the cab the driver hit the gas and sped away with the cab door still open. Shocked Rich looked back to see a very angry and cursing whore. The driver stopped and told Rich to close the door. He did as the cab started moving again.
“Do you have any idea what you are doing? Do you know how dangerous that is? Most of these girls carry knives and they’ll rob you or stab you, or both. And if you don’t get stabbed or robbed, you’ll be in the infirmary next week getting penicillin. You want to meet a nice clean girl. I’ll take you to a bar where you’ll have a chance and you’ll be safe. In this town, stay away for the street girls. It ain’t worth it.” The driver spitted out almost as one sentence.
The cabby drove numerous blocks and stopped in front of a nice lounge near the wharf. Rich paid and gave a dollar tip. The cabby told Rich there should be lots of nice single women there and sped off.
Inside Rich found a small table and ordered a beer. He looked around, very nicely dressed women his age and men too. The men had longish hair and the women had longer hair. No woman was alone and the groups where there might be an available woman were not exactly inviting. Besides these men and women looked classy, well dressed, young and were obviously successful. All were probably college grads and professionals. None worried about the jungles of Viet Nam. Rich felt out of place and after his second beer when no opportunity came up, he left hailing a cab back to the YMCA.
He found his little room and closed the door behind him without turning on the light. He opened his bag and took out the pair of pink panties he had stolen. He completely undressed and pulled the panties on. He stared at himself in the dim light in the mirror, a stick-like figure of 130 pounds at six feet, wearing only panties, too large for his skinny hips. His dog tags hung in the clump of chest hair between his nipples and his limp little penis protruded against the silky panties.
Rich took off his dog tags, got into bed and pulled the sheets over him. He thought of Trista, the prostitute, and visualized her breasts with the peaking areoles. He remembered the smell of her perfume and pushed his hand under the band of the panties and felt his penis. He focused on Trista’s breasts again hoping for the same reaction as when they were pushed against his arm. There was no response from his limp little member. He turned on his side and cried, literally sobbing, calling to himself out loud; 'you sick perverted shit’.
* * *
Rich woke just as it was getting light with an erection. The dream, he asked himself, what was the dream? He touched himself through the panties and felt the excitement he yearned for before he fell asleep. The dream came back to him; a variation of a dream he had many times as long as he could remember. In these dreams Rich was always somewhere public, school, a store, on a bus, and was always only partially dressed but always wearing either panties, a bra, a slip, sometimes just one and other times two or all three. Once in a while he was wearing a dress but that was rare. The strange surreal thing about his recurring dream was that no one thought what Rich was wearing was unusual, strange or wrong. Rich was embarrassed but no one else was. In the dream Rich was aware he should be more fully clothed but it was just the way it was. In these dreams Rich had no definitive gender; wearing a bra and panties he was not male, but he was not complete either, not a complete girl.
In the dream Rich awoke to that Saturday morning in San Francisco, Rich was wearing panties and a bra and he was trying to teach Trista, the whore, Russian, but she just wanted to show him her breasts. That’s when he woke up with the erection. Now holding himself fully in his hand through the panties Rich quickly spilled a large amount of creamy ejaculate into the silky material. He cursed at himself again; he hated sex like this. Rich quickly took the panties off and washed them in the sink. Hopefully they would dry by evening.
Rich spent the morning seeing San Francisco but came back to his room and slept through the late afternoon and into the early evening. He quickly took a shower, shaved and put on clean civies, slacks and a long sleeve shirt. Again he had no inkling where he was going but he knew to stay away from street girls and not to waste time in upscale lounges. He needed to find something in between the two.
Rich grabbed a sandwich at a nearby diner, and strolled out and down the block from the YMCA. The street was crowded and he took in all the wonderful bustle of a busy city on a Saturday night. He checked out a couple of bars but they mostly had old guys, or tough looking couples. He walked on and finally noticed a busy bar where there were girls coming and going. Rich was intrigued. He saw four women get out of a cab and go into the bar, all dressed a little sassy, short skirts, cute tops, bouncy hair. He went in.
The place was packed. There were a few men but the women far outnumbered the guys. Rich weaved his way to the bar, pushed his way between two attractive but tall women and ordered a beer. After he took a gulp of the beer one of the women next to him spoke to him.
“Welcome, soldier. You’ve not been here before, right? First time in San Fran?” The girl wearing a mini-dress asked.
“Yes.” Rich answered. “I’m up from Monterey. This is a nice place.” Rich answered happy that someone finally talked to him. Things were looking up, he thought.
“Sweetie, this is the place. Who told you about it?” The mini-skirted girl continued.
“Nobody. I just saw all the girls and well, what could be better.” He proudly confessed.
The girl nudged her friend and they both giggled.
“Can I buy you a drink? Want to go somewhere more private.” Rich asked courageously.
The girl hesitated and looked a little surprised. “Go with him.” He heard her friend urge.
Then the two girls whispered to themselves and giggled again. The girl in the mini-dress started to answer when someone tapped Rich on the shoulder. He turned around to see a short rather chubby girl with very short hair wearing a tee shirt, no bra and jeans. She pointed to a table in the back corner of the bar.
“See that woman at the table. She wants to talk to you.” The chubby girl announced looking up at Rich. Rich turned to see a relatively large woman with ringlets of hair resting on her shoulders sitting at a table by herself in the far back corner of the bar. She was wearing a long flowing gown in a bright print with no waist that hung almost to the floor. Her face was round and if not striking, she was truly cute wearing a modest amount of makeup, much less than the thin tall mini-skirted woman at the bar.
The woman at the table was looking at Rich and motioned for him to join her. He picked up his beer and headed for the table telling the mini-skirt, “I’ll be right back.”
Rich followed the chubby girl and sat down at the table. For a few seconds the tall skinny Russian language student in the Army and the short plumpish but attractive woman in the gown just looked at each other, both trying to find some clue to their identities. The woman spoke first.
“You have no idea where you are, do you?” She challenged.
Rich was caught off guard. Of course he knew where he was; in a bar with seemingly nice and available women; women who obviously weren’t hookers, women who probably just wanted what he wanted, some fun and yes, probably innocent sex.
“Uh, in a bar where guys can meet women.” He answered naively.
“I’m Frannie. This is my place, sort of. First time in Frisco, right?” She continued avoiding his answer to her basic question.
“Yes. Rich, Rich Bromely.” He said regretting gaving his real name.
“Where you from?” The woman continued.
“Pennsylvania. Johnstown, it’s a small town in the middle of the state.” He offered.
“I know. Floods, lots of floods. I’m from godforsaken West Virginia, near Huntington.”
Rich took a swig of his beer and looked back at the bar. The girl in the mini-skirt looked at him and smiled. He was about to excuse himself and go back to the bar when Frannie broke his infatuation with the long legs at the bar.
“She not a girl, you know. She’s a guy.” She paused watching Rich’s reaction. “You really didn’t know did you? You poor sweet naïve thing. Rita here and I are the only real women in here.” She said laughing a little at the look on Rich’s face while putting her hand on the shoulder of the chubby girl with the short hair sitting next to her. Frannie continued her explanation to the speechless Rich.
“They’re all in drag. They’re almost all gay guys who like to be submissive in sex. They want either straight men or dominate gay men. They fooled you, right?”
Rich surveyed the room and still couldn’t believe it. Was he really that stupid, he thought? And what’s this term ‘gay’? He couldn’t remember hearing that before, queer yes, but gay? He looked over at the girl in the mini-skirt who had talked to him at the bar. She smiled at him again and giggled, but this time it seemed she was laughing at him. Now he could see it, at least a little; she was tall with thin legs and really no hips; she wore lots of makeup, too much, now that he thought about it; her shoulders and arms, masculine, yes, the arms straight without the angle most girls have at the elbow, and the breasts, now that he could look at them impartially, no, they didn’t look right.
Rich looked back at Frannie who gazed at him warmly, proud that she had saved another unsuspecting stray in her drag bar. Something else then entered Rich’s consciousness; it was the recurring reminder of his flaw, his weakness, the one seemed to follow him; the one he tried so hard to put behind him. Now, there it was again, literally staring him in the face. Was he like these cross-dressing ‘gay’ men? Was that the message he was being sent? He immediately rejected that idea. He never ever dressed up and thought about being with a man, especially not when he was a little boy dressing in his sister’s panties, crinoline, dress and Mary Jane’s wishing so badly to just be a girl. Boys were never part of the fantasy, not like that, and neither was sex. Again he was brought back from his thoughts by Frannie.
“Are you ok honey? Listen, I can tell you’re shocked. Hey, it’s natural. And you’re safe with me. Just relax. Talk to me. You’ll not have a better experience than here even if you don’t get it off.” Frannie said bluntly.
Rich finally found his voice. He did feel comfortable with Frannie, obviously not a guy in drag but a woman with a mothering air about her.
“Stupid me. No, I didn’t know. They’re good. I’ve never ….” He started but Frannie finished his sentence.
“You never seen guys dressed like women, who passed.” She said using another term Rich was unfamiliar with. ‘Passed’ what did that mean, he thought?
“But to me they don’t really pass. Anyone in this town can tell they’re just drag queens. Oh, there are a couple of girls, I call them sisters, the ones who really want to be girls who pass. Rich, I’ll tell you about me if you’ll tell me about you. Something brought you in here; it didn’t just happen and I want to hear about it.”
Rich froze. Was she referring to his flaw, his secret? How could she tell? How could she know? He really didn’t want to open that box up, the one so firmly packed and sealed.
“I’ll go first. You ready for this? I was born a boy.” She announced proudly watching for Rich’s reaction. “But I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t a boy. I was a girl and after getting caught more than once by my fucking father in a dress and getting the shit kicked out of me, I ran away from home. I first went to Los Angeles, barely 18 and got arrested for asking some undercover cop if he wanted a blow job. I had to do something to live. A friend finally brought me here and I got a job, first as a guy then two years ago, I went full-time.”
Rich had trouble processing all that Frannie told him. She’s not a woman after all, was his first reaction, but she sure did look, sound and act like one. Most frightening was her conviction, the one about always knowing she wasn’t a boy or supposed to be one; that was the same feeling Rich had all those years as a child and as a teen; that was the feeling Rich had successfully packed in a box, and firmly sealed, forever.
Frannie paused again. “Now you.” She commanded expecting Rich to reveal what led him into her world of men dressed as women. Rich didn’t want to tell anything. His secret was packed away and needed to stay that way. Talking about it now threatened everything, his impending marriage, her future and even his life. Besides he now had so many questions about this person who did not at all resemble the other ‘women’ in the bar. He found it hard to believe she was ever a man; nothing about her was male-like.
“I don’t know. There’s not much to tell.” He resisted but Frannie pushed.
“Never wore a dress Rich, not even panties.” She teased and seeing Rich blush added. “You have! I can tell.” Frannie put her arm around him and kissed him on the cheek. “See, honey, your secret is safe here. You don’t have to hide it. Tell me. I want to hear all about it. Bet you have a sister, right?”
Private Richard Bromely felt his resistance crumble and that locked box swung open.
“Yep.” He confessed almost with relief and nearly giggling like a girl. “Her name is Mary. And yes, I used to wear her dresses, and panties.” He admitted finding it impossible to resist the lure of Frannie. “I would get all dressed up and pretend. But I was just a kid. I haven’t…, I mean I don’t do that now.”
Frannie was now smiling ear to ear, happy that she had unlocked the past.
“How could you? Of course you don’t. But would you if you had the chance?” She posed but didn’t wait for Rich to respond.
“Don’t answer ‘cause I know. Rich will you be honest with me?” Frannie was now being more serious. “And this is important.” Frannie now took Rich’s hand and looked into his eyes. Even in the dim light there was a connection. “Do you like men or women?”
The question hung between them for what seemed minutes. Before he could answer she put her finger up to his lips. “These girls in here. They’re gay guys. They don’t want to be women. They love being men who have sex with other men. The drag is just a charade.” Frannie turned and took Rich’s hand. “You’re not like that, are you honey? You’re not gay, I can tell. You’re not a gay man. But you do like to dress, don’t you? You’re more like me. Am I right?”
Frannie sat back as if she was positive of her premise. Rich was stunned. He was sure that he was neither. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t queer and that he wasn’t like her but before he could form the words Frannie continued but switched back talking about herself.
“I’m not one of them, either. I was born a boy, yes, but I’m really a woman and I’ve dreamed all my life of becoming as complete as I can. I’ve been taking hormones, female hormones for over three years now. I’ve had tons of electrolysis. I tried to cut my nuts off and convinced a gay doctor to finish it. I’m seeing a wonderful doctor who believes me, believes I’m a woman, or should have been.” Frannie stopped talking again as if she was turning the page in her notes. Rich was in shock, trying to understand what Frannie was saying, trying to record the conversation in his mind so he could replay it later. Maybe he was in one of his crazy dreams again.
Frannie took a tissue out of her purse and blew her nose. She was quite emotional as she continued.
“This doctor, Dr. Benjamin, he just wrote a book about it, about me and others like me. It’s called ‘The Transsexual Phenomenon”. I’m in the book, not by name but my story is, partly. Nobody else would help. Dr. Benjamin started me on the hormones and well, look at the result.” She stood up, pushing her chest out revealing rather large breasts, real breasts, encased in a pointy bra pushing against her gown. “And I’m saving for surgery.”
Rich nodded as if he could grasp the story Frannie was telling him. “Surgery?” He asked jumping to the most shocking part. Rich had led a sheltered life, partly self-imposed by his deep secret. He would deny he ever searched for an answer before this moment, that he ever went looking for anything related to cross dressing. He was afraid of it. He was especially afraid of the bizarre, the weird, the crazy. He wasn’t ignorant however. He knew about Christine Jorgensen, the young U.S. soldier who was somehow surgically turned into a woman 15 years ago. For Rich, though, such things were in a different universe, at least until now.
“Yep, in another year, maybe. I’m going to Morocco. There’s a great surgeon in Casablanca who has done amazing things. Thanks to him there are some very beautiful women in Paris who were born boys.” She said excitedly. “But enough of that. We’re being too serious. Want to see a great show?”
Without waiting for an answer, Frannie was up pulling on Rich’s arm. When he stood she locked arms with him and together they strode proudly out through the still crowded bar of men dressed as women.
“Bye, bye girls” she called as the men in drag parted as if for a true queen, not a drag one. “My date and I are going to Finocchio’s.”
(Army Private Richard Bromely risks his security clearance after a chance meeting with a transsexual in January 1968. Will it change his life?)
Struggles
by
Sherry Ann
Chapter 12
A Weekend in San Francisco - Part Two of Two
Out on the street Rich no longer felt alone in the big city with Frannie on his arm. They hailed a cab with Rich getting in first. Before Frannie closed the cab door the driver recognized her.
"Where to, Frannie? Finocchio’s?” Frannie nudged Rich and told him to give the cabby a couple of bucks and off they went. On the drive up Market Street turning left onto Kenny and heading toward Broadway, Frannie sat close to Rich holding his hand. He liked this; it was comfortable, sweet. He looked closely at her, admiring the ringlets of her shoulder length hair, real hair and feeling her softness. He didn’t feel this was strange, or weird. He was with a woman; at least that is what it felt like to him. Frannie talked about Finocchio’s and how she tried it once, tried being on stage in drag; did it for a year or so.
“But that was before I started hormones.” She explained. Once I started changing, it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t one of them anymore; it wasn’t drag anymore. I just wanted to live as a woman, not pretend to be one on stage.” Rich squeezed her hand as if he understood. He didn’t but he was enjoying hearing about a world he never knew existed and wondering what was in store at Finocchio’s. He felt like he had broken into the side of San Francisco most visitors never knew or saw.
The cab pulled up to a large well-lit club with a marquee, “Finocchio’s” in lights. A man in a bright jacket and tight pants opened the door.
“Frannie!” He exclaimed. “Always great to see you, sweetie. You look fabulous.” He added as he hugged her and kissed her on each cheek. He turned to Rich and gave him a hug.
“This your date, Frannie? Found a cute one.” He told her as he looked at Rich who felt as uncomfortable as he could be. The man turned to Rich. “If Frannie doesn’t treat you right, I’ll be here waiting.”
“Enough Mark.” Frannie admonished the man. “This is Richard and he’s a very special friend so stay away from him.” Laughing to show it was all in jest.
“Is it ok if I call you Richard? It sounds so regal.” Frannie asked Rich as she took his arm and breezed through the door held open by the man who greeted them.
Inside they were again greeted by a young man wearing a suit with a white shirt and a bow tie. He had make-up on including eye shadow, mascara, blush and lipstick. Again Frannie was greeted with grace and familiarity.
“Frannie, welcome. I have a table for you. Up front as usual?” The man in the make-up took Frannie’s arm and guided her toward an empty table near the stage. The room was large with high ceilings and chandeliers. It was packed, mostly with men but also with many women, real women Rich was sure. Almost everyone was very well dressed, the real women in dressy dresses or well-tailored suits; the men almost all wore jackets, many with ties. Some though wore outlandish clothes, almost costumes. With his military haircut, basic shirt and pants Rich was not only underdressed he was a distinct minority.
Rich and Frannie ordered a drink and while they waited for the show to start they chatted often being interrupted by someone stopping to talk with Frannie.
"So Richard, what's your name?" Frannie asked as they waited for the first performer. Rich didn't understand.
"What? It's Rich, uh Richard!"
"No silly. Your fem name? What name did you give to the girl inside?"
Rich hadn't thought about things like that in a couple of years. ‘Girl inside?’ he didn’t think of it like that now. What with school, getting engaged, and the army, he had put all that behind him, mostly; all that crazy pretend girl stuff was in the past, locked tight in that box, except for the occasional indulgence, like the panties back in his room at the Y. But as a boy, and a teen, he had a name he used when he put on his sister' dresses.
"Uh, I don't..., I ..." he stuttered grappling with a way to avoid answering.
"Come on Richard. Out with it. Let me guess. Um, I know. Richelle, its Richelle." she guessed proudly, giggling.
"No, no. Gee Frannie you have a way of getting things out.” He said still trying to avoid answering.
“It’s my job.” Frannie answered while giving him a kiss on the cheek and pushing her breasts against his arm.
“Ok, it's Vickie, Victoria." he admitted blushing.
"Victoria. I love it. King Richard and Queen Victoria; Queen Victoria is like one of us. That’s funny but so regal, so proper. Why Victoria?" She asked getting serious again.
“Oh God. It was so long ago." he started trying to remember why he began calling himself Vickie. It certainly wasn’t after the famous Queen of England.
Rich just didn't just come up with 'Vickie', he stole it. When he was eight and nine his only playmate, almost, was a girl a year older named Vickie. Rich spent a lot of time at his grandmother’s, at Gramma’s, while his mom helped in the store in town. Vickie, Rich's childhood friend, lived with her parents and baby brother in a little cottage behind Gramma’s rather large house, and her mother often worked cleaning and doing laundry at the big house, at Gramma’s. As a girl, Vickie could do anything Richie could, but of course, always did it in a dress; running, climbing trees, jumping rope, shooting marbles, having a tea party, or playing dolls. With few other kids the same age in the neighborhood, Richie and Vickie were inseparable for two summers until Vickie's father got a job at a steel mill in Pittsburgh and they moved.
"There was this girl I played with when I was, oh, probably eight. Her name was Vickie. She was great, so fun. She did everything I did, but always in a dress. I was so jealous and I think she knew it. Once we were playing and she said, and I remember this perfectly, 'I wish you were a girl. I don't have any girls to play with'. She got this look on her face and she told me to follow her into her room. Her mom was over at my Gramma's so it was just the two of us." Rich explained to Frannie who sat transfixed by the story.
The memory came back to Rich clearly and fully now; it was a wonderful and sweet thought. Vickie, the playmate, had lots of dresses in her little closet and she held up two against Richie, finally settling on a pink one with some lace. She ordered her friend, the boy, to take off his shirt, pants, and boy underpants, turning her back and covering her eyes. The boy was scared and resisted; the girl, the one little Richie always thought he was, wanted to wear the dress. Vickie, the real girl, must have realized she had missed something so she opened her dresser drawer, the one with the panties and slips, the one representing the basic difference between little boys and little girls, and took a pair of her best panties from her dresser handed them to the boy before turning her back.
"Put these on and then the dress." She told him. He did but the dress got stuck and he struggled. Vickie turned and helped him with the sleeves and buttoned it up in the back. She guided him to the mirror and showed him how cute they looked together; two little girls, two friends. The scared little boy was not in the reflection in the mirror. Rich still remembered what he saw; a happy girl inexplicably at peace.
For the rest of the afternoon the two girls, eight and nine, innocently played; mostly with dolls, as he remembered. They lost track of time until Vickie heard her mother come in the house and call to her. Both panicked and Vickie quickly unbuttoned the dress Rich was wearing but there was no time for little Richie to change the underwear. While he jumped back into his pants and shirt, Vickie hung up the dress and threw little Richie’s underpants in her drawer with all of the panties, closing it just as her mom came dramatically through the door.
Rich didn’t remember if Vickie’s mom suspected anything or said anything about what the two friends were doing behind the closed door all afternoon. All he remembers is he wore Vickie’s panties home and hid them. She never asked for them back and she never offered to return his boy’s underpants. He kept those panties until they became too small for even his skinny frame, often wearing them when he wore his sister’s dresses. The two little friends, the two girls, Richie and Vickie, never had a chance to play in their dresses together again.
“So I guess I just started calling myself Vickie sometime after my friend moved away.” Rich told Frannie finishing his story about his adventure into a girl’s world when he was little just as the lights dimmed and music began for the show.
Rich wondered why Frannie didn’t say anything and just hugged him so warmly and so lovingly until he saw the tear on her cute feminine cheek.
* * *
The car ride back to Frannie’s seemed longer than the one to Finocchio’s. A fog had rolled in and Rich was disoriented, not sure which direction the cab was headed. He assumed it was back toward the club where they met, near where Frannie had a small flat.
Frannie again sat close to Rich holding his hand, resting her head on his shoulder. They talked some mostly about likes and dislikes, favorites this or that, childhood memories, the good ones. Rich was still marveling at the show, female impersonators they were called. He found it hard to believe men could do that; make themselves look so completely like a woman, usually a known movie star or performer; the makeup, the gowns, the accentuated female figure, and amazingly the completely hidden male parts. They were a perfect caricature, so real but at the same time so outlandish. Rich wondered what was so alluring, so appealing about men pretending to be women; was it a statement about what our culture thought about the differences between men and women? Was it elevating women or devaluing them, mocking them? Was it a parody of life? Naïve Rich Bromely didn’t understand it.
The cab stopped in the middle of the block on the street adjacent to the club where Rich met Frannie. Frannie’s eyes were closed and Rich nudged her.
“Oh, we’re here.” Frannie paid the cabby and helped Rich out of the car, putting her arm around his waist.
“I live up there.” She said pointing to a window on the second floor above a book store.
“Do you want to come up?” She asked leaning against him.
Frannie guided Rich through a door next to the store, down a dark hallway and up a flight of stairs. At the top she unlocked the door to the left and pushed it open.
“Excuse the mess but its home.” She said as she pulled Rich into a small apartment. She didn’t turn on a light but Rich could see that there was really just one large room with a small area to the right serving as the kitchen and living area combined, and a bedroom, really just a sleeping area partitioned by a curtain hanging from the ceiling. There was a small separate bathroom.
Frannie closed and locked the door turning toward Rich. She put her arms up around his neck and kissed him, gently on the lips whispering in his ear.
“In here you’re not Richard. Here you can be Victoria. Here you don’t have to hide.”
Rich did feel safe, almost like when he was with his friend Vickie when he was eight. But those feelings were also threatening and he was scared, not of Frannie but of himself, of that girl inside Frannie talked about. Frannie kissed him again and he relaxed, pulled her close and held her tighter. He buried his face in her hair and felt her softness against him. Frannie guided him to the bed and pushed him down.
“Wait here.” She commanded. She went to the small closet next to the bathroom and returned with a nightgown and sat down next to Rich still sitting on the bed. She unbuttoned his shirt and helped him take it off, unbuckled his belt and pants, and stood up pulling him to a standing position next to her. Rich felt his pants fall to his ankles. Frannie put the nightgown over his head and helped him fit his arms through the sleeves. Before she let the silky material fall around him she grabbed the band of his men’s cotton briefs and squatting, pulled them off. Rich felt her hair brush his half erect penis and thought she might touch him but instead she stood up and let the gown flow over him down to his ankles.
She stood up again putting her arms around his neck and whispering in his ear.
"Does that feel good, Victoria?"
As he answered with a soft 'yes' she pushed him back onto the bed.
"Wait. I'll be right back." She told him as she stepped away from the bed and unzipped her dress. In the dim light, softly seeping in from the city around them, Rich watched as she pulled her arms from the loose dress and let it fall to the floor. Rich could see the silhouette of a woman, not a girl, standing in bra, panties, garter and stockings. It was not something he had watched before, not in person; a woman preparing for bed, for bed with him. Frannie unhooked her stockings from the garter, sat on a chair next to a small dressing table and unrolled each from her legs. She then stood and unhooked her bra, removed it and hung it on the back of the chair.
"Still awake, Victoria?" she asked aware he was watching her every move.
"You're beautiful, Frannie." He confessed. Frannie wasn’t gorgeous but showed no resemblance to the boy she once was.
Frannie's parents were both Polish immigrants but came to this country as children during the war, the first big one. While not beautiful she was cute enough but suffered from her inherited large frame. Except for her breasts she had no real figure. That didn't matter to Rich; she was otherwise female, soft smooth hairless skin. She stood up and unhooked the garter and let it drop; opened a drawer in the small dresser and took out a nightgown, silky, lacy in a pale green. She pulled the gown over her head, let it fall and went into the bathroom sat and peed. She brushed her teeth.
"You need to use the potty, sweetie? I have a new toothbrush if you want to use it."
Rich rolled out of bed and met Frannie coming back to the bed. She stopped and put her arms around him holding him close. Rich felt her soft body through their nightgowns; under the nightgown she was naked except for the tight panties. Rich felt nothing that said she was anything but woman. They parted and in the bathroom he found the toilet seat down. He raised the seat and tried to pull up his nightgown to pee but could not easily hold the gown up and hold his penis to guide the stream at the same time. He gave up, lowered the seat, pulled his nightgown up and sat down. He felt the nightgown cover his legs while he pushed his penis down so he could pee, like a woman. He wondered what it would be like never to have to pee standing at a urinal again. He concluded that it would be inconvenient at times but the thought was otherwise appealing. He finished, stood up enjoying the feel of the nightgown falling back around his legs. He brushed his teeth and washed his hands.
Frannie was waiting for him as he laid down beside her. She pulled him to her and kissed him.
“I'm so glad I found you tonight Victoria. You're very special. You know I don't just pick up any ol' G.I. I haven't done this for so long. I don't do tricks anymore." She explained guiding his hand to her breasts.
Rich was lost to the moment. This 23 year old man, not much more than a boy really, had never been in bed with a girl before, or even a woman, not for sex or for love. He loved feeling her, touching her. They kissed as he played with her breasts, feeling her nipples harden through the nightgown. Rich forgot about everything he had already experienced that night, the cross-dressing gay guys in the bar, the female impersonators. He even forgot what Frannie had told him; about being born a boy, about hormones and even about looking forward to surgery so she could become a complete woman.
Rich now felt Frannie’s hand between his legs, through his nightgown. He was now ready, so ready and so lost in the moment. Rich tried to put his hand between Frannie’s legs but she stopped him.
“Slow down, Victoria.” Frannie ordered as she pulled his hand away. She pulled his nightgown up exposing his erection and shifted herself down until he felt her breath on him. Soon he felt himself in her mouth but when he was about to come, she stopped and came back to him, back to where they were face to face again. She kissed him fully, pushing her tongue into his open mouth.
“You are special Victoria. Tonight’s for you, sweetie.” She then moved back down and took him again into her mouth, this time so very gently and softly. He was lost and let himself go, feeling sex like he never had before. Frannie held him in her long after he came, keeping him warm, making it last, making him safe. She was still there long after he had lost his erection. Rich finally pulled on her, trying to get her to come back to him. He wanted to hold her; he wanted to give her what she gave him. In this moment Rich had lost any inhibition he had about giving oral sex to a man; to Rich Frannie wasn’t a man and Rich just wanted to make love to this wonderful sweet soft woman. It didn’t matter if what she had between her legs was a penis or a vagina; he just wanted to touch it, kiss it, taste it.
Frannie stopped her gentle sucking and returned to face Rich. He again tried to touch her, grabbling hold of the band of her tight confining panties, trying to pull them down. He was above her now pulling on the panties, hoping to release whatever was beneath them. Again she stopped him.
“No Victoria. I can’t let you do that. You don’t like men like I do and I have vowed not to have sex until after, after the surgery. I want a man to come inside me, not the other way around.”
Rich stopped pulling on her panties. He was not just surprised but also disappointed. He wanted to see her there, wanted to make her feel as good as she did him.
“Please Victoria.” Frannie pleaded. “Just lay on top of me. Let me feel your weight. Let me imagine what it will be like, after the operation.” She begged.
Rich repositioned himself, like he would if having sex with a girl, not that he had missionary sex with a girl before; he had not. He lay down on top of her and felt her breasts. Frannie held him tightly but then moved her hips as if they were really having sex like a man and a woman.
“Fuck me, Richard. Fuck me hard.” She commanded switching to the male name. He did. Rich pretended he was penetrating her, pretended he was moving in and out of her. As he did, he became erect again.
“Oh Richard, I feel that. Oh I love that.” She almost yelled. Rich wondered if Frannie really was sexually aroused. How could she be in that confined state? Soon she was making noises as if her passion was increasing and finally she let out a squeal like she had climaxed. Rich stopped his faux fuck and laid quietly on top of her. She kissed him gently.
“You are so wonderful, Victoria. I’m sorry I called you Richard, but, uh, well, I got a little carried away.” She said smiling. “That hasn’t happened before. Vickie, I had an orgasm.” She kissed him again. “You’re different, wonderfully different. You make me feel so, so, God, I don't know, so real.”
“To me Frannie, you are real.” He said but then teased. “I was just starting to enjoy the Victoria thing and then you want me to do you like a Richard.” He tickled her. They wrestled and tickled and played and laughed until they finally just quietly held each other, locked like two young lovers, and drifted asleep.
Rich woke up in the still dark feeling the sweet wet warmth of Frannie’s mouth again engulfing his penis. It was wonderful but strange. Strange because he was not erect. He was soft and feeling something so different; the beautiful feeling of excitement but without the hard demanding need to ejaculate. Maybe it was because he had been asleep, or was just so relaxed. Whatever it was it was a whole new and phenomenal experience. He tried not to think about it, tried to think about all that had happened in a few short hours. Then he thought about his secret, the one that was now at least partially exposed. Was he different like Frannie claimed, he wondered? Was there really a girl inside? What was Frannie going through and was it real, or was she just crazy, destined to a life of casual relationships and ultimate disappointment?
For Rich there was another more critical consideration. Was what happened to him in the last few hours just a coincidence, something that just happed, or was there some energy behind it, either Rich’s own secluded desire to seek out his other self, or something in the universe that placed him with this, what did she call herself, transsexual. Was what happened this night based on some religious energy like his grandmother preached so often, good versus evil? Was Frannie the epitome of the devil, sent to lure Rich into sin?
Frannie was still latched onto him as his thoughts turned back to how on some level he too wanted to let the girl inside him live. He returned to that day with Vickie, his childhood friend, playing dolls in their dresses. He thought of Barb Hundley, the teen friend who tried on the dress in front of him. Then he thought about actually being a woman, not having a penis but having a vagina instead. What would that be like? The more he thought about that the more he felt the sweet warmth of Frannie still gently holding him in her mouth, now almost making no overt movement around him. And then it happened; still not erect, but not completely soft either, he felt a soft long exceptional climax. He didn’t even know if he ejaculated; Frannie gave no hint continuing to take him through a long slow ride that left him tingly as he fell back into a joyful sleep.
Rich didn’t know how long Frannie stayed with him that night. He remembers waking again, and she was still there bringing him to a soft climax a second time, half awake, half asleep.
Rich awoke, finally, to bright daylight streaming through the window and the smell of coffee and toast.
“What time is it?” He called after realizing where he was and that he slept with Frannie, slept so sweetly.
“It’s time to get up girl.” Frannie answered. Rich liked being called girl but it surprised him. It was a giant shift that troubled him; no it didn’t just trouble him it terrified him. In the dark of night Rich could contemplate the other gender; it was safe. But now in daylight, wearing a night gown with another person in the room. He pulled the sheet up over him, almost embarrassed.
“Want some coffee and toast?” She asked sounding just a little like a housewife.
Rich looked at this person he spent the night in bed with and wondered who she really was. He knew some things about her; where she was from, her age, and that she was born a boy, but what made her so certain when she actually was a boy, a teenager, that she was really a girl, or should have been? Rich understood it to some degree but what he couldn’t comprehend was what compelled the teenage boy to just leave his family, run away from everything that was safe, leave the reality of being born a boy and go headlong into the crazy, somewhat insane and obviously dangerous world of homosexuals and that new term, transsexuals. Couldn’t she just be what she was supposed to be and find some way to indulge it privately?
Frannie didn’t tell Rich, or Victoria as she called him now, the whole story. She wanted to but there wasn’t time. She hoped they would have more time later that day, or maybe ‘Victoria’ would come back for another weekend. A girl has to have hope. Frannie wanted to talk about what she went through, as a little boy who insisted on wearing a dress even before he started school, but was severely punished by her father, spanked sometimes until his bare bottom almost bled. Frannie wanted to tell how the spanking, and later as a teen, the beatings he endured from his father, did not change how he felt inside.
* * *
Frank Koloski grew up in a small town on the Ohio River just north of Huntington West Virginia. He was born just a few months after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. His father immediately joined the Navy leaving a pregnant wife and was gone for most of the first four years of the little boy’s life.
Shortly after his father came home in late 1945 from the war he caught his son for the first time, but not the last, in his older sister’s dress, and the punishment began. Frank’s father blamed his wife for indulging his only son while he was gone and vowed to fix it. Fixing little Frankie would turn out to be an uphill battle for the determined father. It didn’t help that his wife was a hairdresser and took her little boy to work every day during the war while the father fought his way through the pacific, and after until the boy started school. Little Frankie had more love and attention than most babies and toddlers do; his world as an infant and boy was a total emersion in the inner sanctum everything womanly; hair, makeup, perfume and dresses, those wonderful dresses of the 1940’s, with the garters and seamed stockings. Frank’s father was convinced his son was indoctrinated with so much female mumbo-jumbo that by the time the little boy was five he was literally brainwashed and needed reprogrammed, much like he himself needed to readjust to a normal life from the horrors of war. It would take time, he acknowledged but he had to save his boy, and while he hated to get rough, hated spanking the kid, it was necessary, much like it was necessary to shoot Japs.
After Frankie began school, with both parents working, he walked the two blocks after school to the beauty shop and hung out where his mom worked until closing. He had lots of help with his homework, from older ladies in dark matronly high neck dresses and younger wives, homemakers, mothers, in their house dresses often more than a little revealing. It was just women together after all, and Frankie, the little boy in grade school, learned a lot about what women wore and how they wore it, and he also became familiar with the female anatomy unlike any other boy his age. And then there were the girls, not the ones his age so much, but the teen age girls. Frankie’s mom was the one hairdresser who knew what the teen girls liked. She developed a special bond with them, giving advice, not just about hair but about what to wear on a date, or to the dance. Frankie’s mom started doing makeup and even took a correspondence course. So all the teen girls came to her, for hair and makeup, especially on prom night, and often for a wedding.
Frankie the boy watched, listened and learned in that shop, and then he went home and closed himself in his room and practiced. He built up quite a collection of things, confiscating a dress or two of his sister’s his mom had boxed to send to the church; stealing a pair of his sister’s panties; finding a bra and girdle with garters in the trash, and, as a good little helper at his mother’s shop, taking the leftover discarded makeup, lipstick, eye pencil, foundation, blush and mascara from the bag he was asked to take and throw away. Invariably his father would catch him, sometimes with makeup on, sometimes with a dress too. And invariably Frankie would get a beating, some worse than others. His father would search for all Frankie had hidden, and what he found was demonstratively destroyed while Frankie had to watch, usually bruised and bleeding from the recent beating. But Frankie was good at hiding what he had acquired, often right where his father would least expect, in the closet his mom and dad shared. It was risky but the father never found most of what Frankie had.
* * *
Rich got up and took the few steps to the kitchen and stood behind Frannie, putting his arms around her and clutching her breasts, as if to see if she was real. He kissed her on the back of the neck, released his hold and went into the bathroom. He pulled up the nightgown, sat and peed like he did the night before, this time without attempting to stand first. He brushed his teeth and washed his hands and face, staring at himself in the mirror wearing a nightgown. He liked the way it felt but thought the image in the mirror looked stupid, silly even. He wanted to take it off, wanted to put his clothes back on. Not since that day over fourteen years before had he worn anything female in front of another person and he felt strange. He returned to the kitchen and sat at the little table instinctively crossing his legs and fixing the night gown over them. He watched Frannie butter the toast.
“Can you stay today?” Frannie asked without turning around. “It would be fun. I don’t have anything you could wear, nothing that would look good. I have a friend who has a shop. She sells a mixture of trendy new things and basics. She even has some things on consignment.” Frannie now turned to face man she thought she might be falling in love with. “Let me go get you something, a bra, a dress. I want to see how cute you could be, teach you some things, let you feel that girl again.”
Rich didn’t answer at first. That was so appealing. Why not, he asked himself? He knew the last bus south didn’t leave until seven in the evening. More than anything he wanted to have a few more hours with Frannie, as Victoria. But daylight was so different than darkness and a bra and dress so much more complicating than just a night gown. Finally he answered, feeling the pull of his weakness.
“Sounds fun. Sure I’ll stay but have to get my stuff from the Y.”
“Victoria?” Frannie then said with her back turned again.
“You’re different, you know.” She continued, phrasing it as a given. Rich did know he was different but always, up until this weekend, different in a very negative way; different as in sick, or weird or yes, perverted. Now he was fighting the exhilarating wonderful and affirming feelings that were so counter to what he had thought of himself before.
“Not really.” He protested. “I’m just a guy who likes feeling good now and then, who likes to pretend.” He argued. “And besides I’m engaged.”
“I know.” Frannie acknowledged.
“And I love her.” He confessed to the still incomplete woman who made love to him all night. Frannie was used to being the plaything, the quick sex release, the whore. But hearing that from Rich, from her Victoria, hurt her. She more than liked this one.
“I’m sure.” She managed trying to hide her emotion as she poured the coffee and handed Rich a plate with two slices of toast. “And you’re going to get married, finish school, have two kids and sell insurance for forty years.” She said forcing a laugh. “And you’ll have a cute little house in the suburbs with a white picket fence; a perfect little family in a perfect little house.” Rich laughed too at how absurd Frannie made his future seem.
“But.” She continued. “You will always have that girl inside you wanting to get out. I know that, I see that. I just hope that doesn’t ruin the happy ending but …” she hesitated searching for the right way to put what she was thinking. “But if you stayed here, you could be that girl, you could be Victoria. I could show you how it’s done, and protect you. The Army wouldn’t be looking for a girl. Here they would never find Richard.” Frannie knew how completely unreal that possibility was but had to say it. She felt she at least had to let him know it was an option, even if it was wildly risky and remote. She had to tempt him, had to challenge him.
Rich stood up and faced the window looking out on the city. He had never been on his own; it was either living at home, with his parents, or in the Army, with all of the rigid rules and managed life. He couldn’t survive even if he wanted to, he reasoned, and he really didn’t want to. The city would swallow him and trying to be a girl, something he couldn’t fathom, that was just crazy, ludicrous. He turned back to Frannie.
“I admit I love this, love the girl stuff. But I’m not like that, like you, am I? Maybe I have whatever it is you have but not like that, not that bad. I don’t want to have…..” Rich stopped before he said what he hadn’t considered.
“Have what?” She asked quickly allowing just a hint of a pause before continuing. “Your dick cut off?” Frannie paused watching the shock wash over Rich’s face. "Victoria they don’t cut it off, not like you think. They save all the good part, the skin and nerves and make a vagina with it. I would be surprised if you’ve never thought about looking like a girl down there, if you never wondered what it would be like not to have a penis and testicles.” Frannie declared with confidence.
Rich didn’t want to tell Frannie that he had thought that; he had but that was before puberty, before the confusion set in. He didn’t want to tell her he thought about it again in bed with her just a few hours before when he climaxed beautifully without a full erection and probably without ejaculating. Rich was Rich, the man who was going to be married to a very beautiful woman. Rich couldn’t consider, couldn’t think about having something different between his legs. He needed what was there, needed it in order to travel the path that was before him; his penis and testicles were essential to his future, to who he was.
“I haven’t dwelled on it.” He admitted and then continued. “Frannie, I’ve never felt anything like I did with you last night.” He said still thinking about the flaccid climax and trying to change the subject. “It was, well, I can’t explain it. Wearing this, touching you, and what you did. It was so wonderful.” He told her looking into her eyes.
“But?” Frannie questioned.
“God, Frannie. But nothing. I’m this close to being shipped to Viet Nam and I’m wearing a nightgown and can’t wait to get dressed up. I have to be careful. I need a security clearance and if they knew I was here, like this, with you, I would be in Nam in a week.”
“I know, I know. I can’t imagine being in the Army. Let’s not think about that. I just want to make you happy today. Get dressed and go get your things. I’ll go shopping. Meet you back here, 11:30.”
Frannie left Rich alone in her apartment. She did go shopping. She found a skirt that was just so cute. It would be perfect for a tall thin Victoria, a size 8 would probably by right for his skinny hips. And she found a great blouse, a loose pull over in a silky print. Frannie was sure Vickie would just love wearing it with the padded bra she bought for her. She also knew where to get a perfect panty girdle for Vickie. Frannie would show Vickie how to hide his penis.
As she was almost back to her apartment she thought she saw Rich turning the corner and disappearing in the block ahead of her. She worried. He should have been back from the Y by now, not just going. Her heart fell and she was so scared he would not be there when she got home.
Frannie climbed the stairs, unlocked the door to her flat and called out.
“Victoria. Are you here? I have a surprise for you.” There was no answer. Just a note on the bed.
Dear Frannie,
I know this will hurt you but I could not come back, not because of you, or who you are but because I fear myself, fear how weak I am. What you opened up for me scares me, temps me. I have too much at stake and too much to lose.
Whatever happens to me I will always think of you, your sweetness and you courage. To me you will always be the first woman who loved me so completely and so tenderly. If I do end up in Nam I will think of you; if I do get married, I will be happy but I will think of you. And if I do let the girl inside out, even just a little from time to time, I will think of you and remember how you accepted Victoria.
And who knows, maybe I won’t get married and when I’m out of the Army come back here, find you and be the girl you think I could be. It’s a thought.
Stay sweet. I so wish I could be that first man to make love to you after your operation. That would make being a guy worth it.
Your,
Queen Victoria
* * *
The bus ride back to Monterey seemed much longer than the one he took to San Francisco on Friday. Rich tried to sleep but couldn’t get Frannie out of his mind. For Rich the bus ride was like a trip back from the ludicrous, the absurd and the dark. Rich was certain he did the right thing; leaving without telling Frannie, getting the hell out of there. Staying, even just for a few more hours was risky; he had to finish Monterey, get married and have a life. Any thought of living a life like the one Frannie was living was not just silly and insane; it was impossible. Rich felt so relieved to be getting away from it. He almost laughed out loud thinking of himself living like Frannie lived, trying to be a girl. How could anyone do that; live a completely different life? Well Frannie could, he knew but what kind of life did she have?
He did allow himself, however, to think about what this chance meeting with Frannie meant. He kept asking if it was just chance or was he somehow attracted to that club because of his own past feelings, attracted like a moth to a candle. Was there some force, a greater unknown power, larger than his own small inclinations, that guided him to Frannie and the cross-dressing underground of San Francisco. Rich finally decided on the time worn explanation that it was just simple happenstance coupled with the pull of sin and evil. Given his situation, he could still not reject the theory that he had long ago accepted; his proclivity for cross-dressing and his early desires to be a girl were just wrong and dangerous, and had to be resisted at all costs.
By the time Rich got off the bus in Monterey and was walking up the hill to the barracks, to B4, he was smiling, elated that he had flirted with his ultimate weakness, had prevailed and had a hell of a time doing it.
(Private Richard Bromely hasn’t escaped the issue that has always tormented him as much as he thought. Still at DLIWC, the Army language school in Monterey, he looks forward to graduation, getting married and being away from all the demons. Dodging his problem is harder than he thought.)
Struggles
by
Sherry Ann
Chapter 13
Carmel Valley
Rich Bromely was not unlike the other 40 men living in B4, or B5 or B3. None of them were soldiers, or wanted to be. The one trait they all shared was an aversion to being shot at in a controversial war. They weren't necessarily cowards or unpatriotic, nor were they hard core draft dodgers; that would mean giving up the privileged life they were entitled to; making a sacrifice for principle. Almost to a man the young men at DLIWC were serving their country in a manner suited to their needs, suited to the life they expected, a life of education, success and privilege. Those expectations did not include giving up their life in Viet Nam. There just weren't many boys off the farm, or out of the projects, at Monterey.
Rich's friends at DLI were from good families, many from rich prominent ones and they enlisted in the Army because they couldn't avoid the draft or couldn't secure a slot in a Reserve unit or the National Guard. One of Rich's closest friends was Bill Irons, or Iron Will as he was called in English. In Russian he was given the name Zheleznaya (железная), the feminine construct adjective for 'iron' in Russian. Rich never understood why a guy would be given the feminine ending and never asked. Zheleznaya did have soft features and wonderful skin, which on his face at least rarely saw a razor, or needed to. Zheleznaya was from Connecticut and drove the little MG roadster his father gave him when he was admitted to Harvard in 1966 around Monterrey, Big Sur and Carmel with a flare. William Irons never explained fully why he couldn't avoid the draft as a member of the Harvard elite. All he would say when asked is that there was a ‘severe indiscretion' always using the Russian words ‘тяжелые нескромность’ instead of the English common translation.
On Saturday two weeks after Rich’s crazy weekend in San Francisco Zheleznaya suggested they head out to the Valley, Carmel Valley, and take in a film at the little theater operated as a service for locals, a mix of writers, artists and farmers. Young men from DLI often made the trek several miles into the Valley; to get away from studying. This night five Russian students took two cars to the theater. Rich rode with Zheleznaya in the two seater and they indulged in their usual banter with a mix of Russian and English.
"So how was the trip to San Francisco? (Как была поездка в Сан-Франциско?)” Zheleznaya asked in perfect Russian.
“Good (хорошо).” Rich answered without hesitating clearly understanding the question.
“Did you find any girls? (Найти любой девушки?)” Zheleznaya continued but then teased. “You do like girls, don’t you? (Вы любите девочек, не так ли?”)
‘Yes, of course (Конечно да).” Rich paused forming his further response in Russian in his head. “And no I didn’t find any girls. I was approached by a prostitute but a cabby put an end to that (И нет, я не нашел ни девушки. Ко мне подошел проституткой, но извозчик положить конец этому).”
“Did you have sex with her? Did you have intercourse? (Было ли у вас секс с ней. Знаете ли вы заниматься сексом.”)
“нет!” Rich answered emphatically.
"Didn't' get laid?" Zheleznaya baited his friend in English. "In San Fran? Are you for real?"
“Of course not. (Конечно, нет)." Rich protested in Russian. "I didn't go (Я не пошел)…” Rich switched to English “… to get laid."
"Just sightseeing?" Zheleznaya asked suspiciously. "You were awful happy when you came back Sunday."
Rich blushed and turned to look out the passenger side window. He didn't say anything. Now both slipped completely into English.
"You did. You got laid, didn't you? You dog."
"It wasn't like that and I'm not talking."
"You didn't do anything stupid, did you?"
"No and I'm still not talking.” Rich not only didn't want to talk; he didn't want to think about it or remember. He knew he could never tell anyone about Frannie and the guys dressed as women, and he especially couldn’t tell anyone he was with a guy becoming a woman and that he had sex with her. Just mentioning it was risky for his future, for his sanity, for his identity. This was the first time in his life his secret had escaped out of that box and now he had to make sure it was put back permanently. Rich knew he had to tell his friend something; had to make up a story.
Rich trusted the confident and brilliant friend. He felt in his heart he could tell Zheleznaya anything. They shared a disdain for the status quo and equally distrusted the establishment, especially the Army. Rich knew Zheleznaya carried his own secret, the one about the indiscretion. Rich was tempted to open up to the more worldly and wise companion but Rich’s secret and his intimacy with Frannie was beyond what he could share with another man, with anyone really.
“You can tell me.” Zheleznaya protested. “You know I wouldn’t say anything. You didn’t smoke weed, did you, like Brennen does? You know where that will get you?” Rich just listened trying to avoid making up a story. Zheleznaya continued, refusing to let Rich off the hook.
“Listen, I’ve been there. I did something stupid and that’s why I’m here.” He admitted.
Rich felt he could not get out of answering. “O.k. I’ll tell you about my weekend if you’ll tell me about your indiscretion.”
“That’s not fair. I can’t tell you about it. I signed an agreement. I’ll tell as much as I can, and you tell me what you want to. Agreed?” Will proposed.
Rich nodded and Will began. “I was with a girl in Cambridge. She went to Smith College. You would know who her father was if I said the name. Anyway we were drinking and something happened. I can’t say what but, well, she died. It wasn’t my fault but given the circumstances and who her father was, I was kicked out of Harvard and given a choice by a judge of either doing a year in jail or joining the Army. If I joined they would wipe my record clean. So here I am. That’s all I can tell you.”
“That’s awful.” Rich said and then quickly added. “That poor girl. I can’t imagine.”
Rich thought about how much he would reveal. He had no intention of revealing his secret.
“I didn’t smoke any weed in San Fran. I went in this bar thinking there were a lot of women and it turned out they were guys dressed as women. I had no idea.” He paused for affect. “I’m such a stupid naïve fuck. Really I didn’t know. I started talking to this one gal, she was more mature than the others. She explained the facts to me and then took me to one of those female impersonator shows. It was a hoot. That’s all…”
“Shit, Ritchie.” Zheleznaya said in English abandoning any pretense of continuing the conversation in Russian. “You didn’t go home with one of them did you? They’re all queers you know. NSA is just fucking paranoid about queers. Commies and queers, either one will get your clearance pulled, and you know what that means.”
Rich sat quietly accepting the lecture. He didn’t feel like answering. He knew how risky his night with Frannie was. Now his good friend was reinforcing what he knew about his secret; Rich Bromely knew that he lived with a serious flaw and that he could never indulge in those feelings again. He also knew that he had to continue the lie.
“No, I didn’t go with her, uh him. He looked so real, but no, I just went to the show then back to the Y. It was interesting but I’m not like that.”
Zheleznaya seemed satisfied. “I mean, I wouldn’t care in a normal world. I knew a couple of queers in school. But this isn’t a normal world and Nam isn’t just any normal war.” He added as he turned left off the main road and up the dirt road to the little theater. The others guys had pulled in ahead of them.
“But you were awfully happy when you got back.” He added suspiciously with a grin.
* * *
Rich had been to the rustic theater in the Valley before. It was really just a large room with a high beam ceiling and wood paneling. There was a screen set up on one side with folding chairs for about 40 people facing the screen. Most were already taken but Rich and his friends found seats just as the movie was starting; a French film called ”Two or Three Things I Know About Her”. It was a French film with subtitles.
When the film was over everyone seemed to feel it was wonderful but Rich struggled to relate to the plot. A few in the audience obviously understood French but Rich had trouble reading the subtitles and keeping up with the action in the film. He felt hearing French while reading English after weeks of learning Russian was just too much. As the guys from DLI mingled with the Valley people trying to sound intelligent and worldly someone tapped him on the shoulder. Rich turned around.
“Hi, I’m Bob, Bob Bowman. I’m glad you guys came tonight. It’s always great to have visitors.” A well-dressed man in his thirties stood staring at Rich smiling. He had sandy short hair and deep blue eyes. He was movie star good looking. Rich introduced himself as did Zheleznaya but using his full English name, Will Irons. Bob told them that he lived a few miles away up on the side of a steep hill. He said he was a writer and was working on a novel about dysfunction in the military. He said he had served in the fifties. They were locked in conversation when one of the guys from DLI from the other car came hurriedly up and interrupted.
“Will, they left without me. Tom and Jack just sped out of here. I told them we might switch cars and I wanted to ride back with you but they didn’t tell Rich. They just left.” Bill was in a panic.
Zheleznaya rolled his eyes. “The MG is a two seater. Tom knows that. I can squeeze you in but it pisses me off.”
“I can drive one of you back to Monterey.” The writer offered. “I don’t mind. Rich, you ok with going with me?” Bob Bowman was looking directly at Rich waiting for a response.
“Sure, thanks, that’s very nice of you.” Rich answered. Zheleznaya looked at Bob and then at Rich. “See you at the barracks. We can go over some vocab. Be careful, my friend (Будьте осторожны, мой друг).” He admonished in Russian.
Bob found his car and unlocked the passenger side door for Rich. On the way back to Monterey Bob quizzed Rich about how he ended up in the Army, where he was from and what he wanted to do in life.
“Getting married this summer, huh? Who’s the lucky girl?” Bob asked after Rich mentioned his fiancée.
“Oh, not sure how lucky she is. I met her in Florida a couple years ago and we’ve been date writing ever since. I see her once or twice a year but there’s nothing like writing letters to each other a couple times a week. I haven’t seen her since Christmas and before that it was last summer. I’ll see her for a couple of days in April and then not until the wedding in July.”
“Doesn’t sound like a typical engagement?” Bob ventured.
“I guess not but with the war it’s probably not unusual. She’s beautiful and more importantly she loves me. I’m pretty fortunate.”
“Maybe she’s the lucky one. You’re pretty good looking and obviously smart. I already know you have a great sense of humor.”
“I appreciate that but I’m not perfect. She finished college last year and has a good job. Me, I had to interrupt college and have my struggles.” Rich wished he had not said that. What he meant was that he didn’t do well in college at first and didn’t have a clear career goal. He certainly wasn’t referring to his personal demon.
“Struggles are what make us all better. As a writer I have many struggles. Some I understand, some I don’t.”
Both men quietly thought about their personal struggles, neither wanting to say too much. Finally Rich naively asked. “What do you do about the struggles you don’t understand?”
“Deep question, my new friend.” Bob proclaimed. “If I had the answer to that one I couldn’t be a writer. Have you read Catcher in the Rye?” Bob asked looking over at the young skinny kid, not much older than the book’s main character Holden Caulfield.
“Yes, a couple of years ago.”
“It’s a writer’s classic. The whole book goes through the struggles of a young man over just two or three days. Beautifully shows how complicated and strange life is for some of us. How we just can’t figure it out, maybe ever.” Bob paused for affect. “No I write to give struggles a voice, to bring them out of the shadows. I don’t write to give answers for the struggles, the things we feel alone with.”
Rich almost felt this stranger, this older man he had just met, knew about what Rich kept hidden in the locked box. How could he know or even guess? He couldn’t and Rich relaxed some. This writer from Carmel Valley was just wise; he was obviously just speaking generically.
“I don’t remember exactly but Holden didn’t find any answer, did he? He just went off the deep end. Is that what struggles do to you? Drive you crazy?” Rich postulated.
“They will if you let them. I think you have to accept the ones you don’t understand.” Bob then quickly added. “Since we are using ‘struggles’ euphemistically, do you feel like telling me what struggle you’re talking about.” Rich was tempted to pose the hypothesis that some struggles, like his struggle to resist the pull to his girl feelings, couldn’t be accepted without destroying him, but he knew he couldn’t.
“I don’t know that I have a specific one.” Rich lied. “I was just talking in general. You know, the Army, Viet Nam, marriage. Sometimes I just don’t think I’m ready for all the challenges coming my way.”
“I’m sure it’s tough and frightening.” Bob admitted shaking his head. “I had my own set of issues when I was your age but I have to admit they now seems petty in comparison.” He added sincerely. “I can understand the Army thing but are you freaked out about getting married?” He pried.
“Mostly no, but a little, I guess.” Rich felt uncomfortable talking about it with someone he didn’t know well.
Bob laughed trying to make Rich feel better. “You do know what to do, don’t you?”
Rich blushed and didn’t answer causing Bob to continue. “Hey, I’m sorry if I hit a sore spot. I shouldn’t have done that; I can tell it’s personal.”
“No, that’s o.k. I don’t have any secrets. It’s just that we’ve been apart most of the time we’ve known each other and we agreed to wait.”
“I admire that. I guess in this day and age it is the exception. Bravo to both of you. Can I ask?” Bob looked at Rich for approval.
“Anything. I might not answer.” Giving himself an out.
“You’ve been with other girls, haven’t you?” Bob ventured boldly.
Rich thought about it for a full minute. He considered just not answering and he thought about lying. He wondered if Bob would think sleeping with Frannie would count as ‘being with’ a girl. Rich finally decided to tell the truth, except for Frannie, after all when Rich was with Frannie she really wasn’t a “girl”, not a complete one.
“Actually, no I haven’t. I guess that would be one of my struggles. I’ve never been very successful with girls, if you catch my drift. Uh, turn left here, through the gate and take a right. My barracks is just down the hill.” Rich directed. “That’s why I feel so fortunate to be engaged to my fiancée.” He finished his thought.
Rich looked directly at Bob as he followed the directions, trying to read his expression. For a moment Rich feared Bob might ask about ever being sexual with boys, or men but he didn’t.
“Oh.” Bob said quietly. Rich motioned for Bob to stop. “I’ll get out here. Home sweet home. Thanks so much for bringing me over this far. You really didn’t have to do that.”
“Not a problem. I enjoyed it. You’re easy to talk to and I always love to hear stories. You might end up as one of my characters.” Bob said reaching over to shake the young man’s hand.
“I hope not.” Rich returned. “It would make a boring book.”
“Not at all. Remember your question about struggles. I can see a theme there. Hey, I’m going up to the Sierras to visit my sister next weekend. Want to come along? We could talk about life and struggles and it would get you out of the barracks for a night.”
“The Sierras?” Rich asked wondering what Bob meant.
“My sister lives in Lone Pine, on the eastern side of the mountains. It’s just spectacular there. I was going to go up sometime on Friday but if you want to go I’ll wait until you’re out of class.”
“Sure. I’m done at three on Fridays.” Rich was excited about having somewhere to go, and someone to go with.
* * * *
Lone Pine was more than spectacular to Rich. He knew the mountains of Pennsylvania but this was so different. More than that the trip took him away from studying and barracks without the dangers of the city. Bob and Rich hiked up into the mountains and took pictures in the snow. They laughed and talked. They stayed with Bob’s sister who lived alone in a small house, almost a cottage. But it was a sweet house with a wood burning stove in the combination kitchen living room as the only heat. There were just two small bedrooms so Bob and Rich had to share a bed.
They drove back late Saturday finally reaching the main highway leading through the Valley and Bob turned right onto a gravel road, not far from the turn for the Valley Theater. He guided his old jeep down a narrow road, across a ravine and then up a steep hill through trees. Near the top of the hill Rich could make out a rustic structure where Bob pulled in and parked the car. It was the end of the road.
“This is it. This is where I live, where I write and where I think. I have electricity but try not to use it. Just wait here and I’ll light a lantern.” Bob said as he opened the door and struck a match. Rich adjusted his eyes to the dim light and surveyed the inside of the cabin. Essentially it was two rooms; one large area for living, a fireplace, and wood burning cooking stove and an area with two comfortable chairs in front of a large bay window facing out over the Valley. There was an area to the left of the bay window with a rustic desk and chair. On the desk was a typewriter and a pile of several dozen sheets of paper neatly stacked.
Bob started a fire and poured each of them a glass or red wine. They sat in front of the fire and talked for some time. After a long silence, Rich drifted off to sleep. Bob nudged him and motioned for him to follow him to the bedroom. Rich undressed and slid into the large soft bed. As he drifted off Bob got into bed from the other side.
Rich didn’t know what time it was when he awakened. He first remembered he was having the dream again; the one where he is just partially dressed in public, wearing some article of female clothing. This time he was wearing a slip and panties. The dreams were never arousing but this time he felt something was touching him, fondling him between his legs. Soon he realized Bob’s hand was inside his male briefs. Bob was gently feeling Rich’s penis and Rich could feel the man’s breath on his neck.
“What are you doing?” Rich said loudly. Rich grabbed Bob’s arm and pushed it back toward him. He jumped out of bed and pulled a blanket around him. Rich grabbed his clothes and made his way out of the bedroom. He sat down in the chair by the bay window and started to get dressed.
Bob came out of the bedroom wearing a robe.
“Rich, I’m sorry. I thought…” He began.
“Thought what? You know I’m engaged. I didn’t know that is what you really wanted.” Rich stopped what he was doing and buried his head in his hands.
“Rich, you’re uh, you’re so special. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to mislead you. I like you, like you a lot. You’re smart and funny and …”
“Stop it.” Rich almost yelled. “I’m not like that.” Rich now was crying, sobbing. Rich didn’t understand why this brought him to tears. He was a man and crying wasn’t something he did in front of anyone else. Bob came over and placed his hand on Rich’s shoulder.
“You’re right. I had no right. You are a beautiful and sweet guy. You’re easy to love, or want to.” Rich was trembling as Bob continued. “I guess I thought you might like me too. You talked about your struggles, about not being with a woman yet and you alluded to being with guys before. I shouldn’t have assumed.”
Rich wiped his eyes and turned toward Bob. Bob moved to the chair across from Rich and they sat looking at each other. Rich didn’t answer immediately; he was too emotional. That and he often didn’t talk when confronted. Finally, he couldn’t hold back what he needed to say.
“Like you? You mean want to be with you? You mean sex, right? Bob, I’m not like that.” He announced again more firmly this time. “I know I talked about struggles and not having sex with a girl yet but I don’t think I’m confused about what I like. I like women not men. I never initiated any of the times I was with a guy and I never did anything to the guy. I just want you to know that. Maybe I like women too much. I do have struggles about that.” Rich stopped for a moment and felt himself starting to cry again. Rich didn’t want to say that, or confess that he liked women because he related to them, felt he was more like them than like men, especially men who liked other men. Bob didn’t say anything but kept focused on Rich, listening and feeling emotional himself.
Rich was relieved Bob didn’t answer. He needed to say more, needed to let it out to someone who wasn’t part of his life, his future.
“What’s wrong with me? Why me? Why did you pick me to give a ride home to last week? Do I come across effeminate? Do you see me as sort of female? How does that work with guys like you?” Rich asked in a stream of questions not waiting for responses; questions that for Rich were not just rhetorical; they were fundamental to his struggle.
For his part Bob knew he had touched more than Rich’s penis; he had touched his soul. Bob felt deep anguish and guilt but he knew he could do nothing but listen, and be sympathetic, and somewhat empathetic. Bob continued to study Rich’s face, looking deep into his eyes in the dim light.
Rich continued, taking a deep breath and thinking about what he wanted to say, how much he would reveal. “It’s not that I don’t like you.” He said now more measured and soft. “We do connect in many ways but not like that. I don’t judge guys like you, Bob. I’ve known many. Had a friend my first year in college. Queer as hell and not shy about it. We did everything together, as friends. We lamented about not having a love life but we always knew he meant with guys and I with girls.” Rich stopped again, thinking.
“I told you I feel that I like women too much. I need to tell you what I meant.” Rich took a breath debating whether to actually speak what he rarely admitted even to himself. There was no debate. Rich couldn’t control what he would say. “Sometimes I feel like I should have been born a girl. I’ve always felt like that and it’s just awful; it hurts so much and I have to fight it so hard. I’ve tried but something always seems to happen and I’m reminded over and over.” Rich felt he was going to start crying again but held back. “So I need to know, Bob, with guys like you, do you see that in me, maybe subconsciously? Do you see me as female and that’s what the attraction is?”
Now Rich was doing the searching, searching Bob’s face, looking into his eyes, his soul. Bob didn’t have an answer. Rich’s question took him by complete surprise. Bob Bowman, the writer, the confident and well adjusted homosexual man in his mid thirties was shaken. Bob had long ago accepted his sexuality, wasn’t afraid of it. He even thought he understood it. He was open to friends and to his sister; he was at peace being estranged from his mother and father, who were estranged from each other, partially over Bob’s sexuality.
Bob Bowman wasn’t a flamboyant queer man. He knew many who were and had trouble relating to them. He had been to San Francisco many times but didn’t really enjoy the overtly gay, the guys in drag, the impersonators. Now Rich was challenging him about gender as a function of being queer, gender as part of what attracts one man to another, or men to women for that matter.
“I’ve never really thought about it, Rich.” He answered immediately and honestly. Rich let Bob think, gave him some time. “I don’t want to say anything that will make it harder for you. I can relate to struggles generally but not to yours.” He paused again. “Do I see you as effeminate? Not really. Maybe gender is subtle, I don’t know. Do I see you as a macho guy? No. You are sweet and funny and insightful and understanding. Yes, that is a little like my mother but like I say, it’s subtle.”
There was another long quiet period. Both men looked out over Carmel Valley as the first light of a new day dimly revealed the hills on the other side. It was so peaceful. “Rich, I didn’t consciously see you as female when we met. Who knows what the subconscious sees or feels? I was attracted to you, yes. Rich with us, with men like me, it’s not all about the sex. It’s the totality of the person. It’s really not that different than heterosexuals, I guess. If there is some female in you, well, then I confess that I am attracted to that too. I would be the last person to deny you that.” Bob took a breath.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Bob offered.
“No.” Rich quickly answered then added. “Yes, but I can’t. There’s just too much and I don’t understand it. I don’t want to be this way. I just want a normal life. That’s what we’ve been planning for. I couldn’t do what Frannie is doing.” Rich inadvertently mentioned the girl he slept with in San Francisco forgetting that he had not revealed that to Bob.
“Frannie?” Bob asked. “Who is Frannie?”
So Rich felt he had to tell Bob about his weekend in San Francisco and about the guys in drag and meeting Frannie. He confessed he spent the night with her but he didn’t admit to the sex, how he felt with Frannie. He told Bob about how he too had worn dresses when he was a boy, and about his dreams. He ended with a supposition.
“I’m not like Frannie am I?”
“I don’t know what to say.” Bob said clearly stunned. Bob tried to imagine Rich in a dress or anything female, and couldn’t see it. Rich was so tall and so thin. Bob felt Rich would probably look like a ten year old girl in a dress, no breasts, no hips; a very tall ten year old girl. Bob didn’t want to think about Rich like that; Bob liked Rich the way he was with his boyish virility.
“I don’t think you are like this Frannie person. She’s very unique I think. Well, you’re not queer, are you?” Bob smiled as he admired the man he could love but never would. “You like women. I don’t know. Who am I to tell you? And I can’t really relate. Are there married guys who like to wear their wives panties? I’m sure there are. But you’re ….” Bob didn’t finish his thought. He really didn’t know what he was going to say. By now the sun was flashing through the Valley as it peeked above the hills to the East. Both sat quietly for another long period.
“Rich.” Bob finally broke the silence almost in a whisper. “I’m probably the last person who should give advice. I’d love to tell you to follow what is pulling at you. I’d love to have you stay with me. I’d help you sort it out.” Bob started shaking his head from side to side; then he laughed. “The best thing for you is to follow the path that will serve you best. You have a chance. Go get married. Finish college. Put the girl thing behind you. Have a good life.” He commanded. Bob stood up and walked back to the bedroom.
“I’ll get dressed and take you back to the Presidio.” Bob said.
Rich didn’t say anything. He thought he had already taken Bob’s advice, thought he had done that when he returned from his weekend in San Francisco. But it came up again without provocation and without any action from Rich. Yes, he knew he had to put the girl thing behind him but now he knew he had to be so much more diligent. As he looked out the passenger side window on the ride back to the Presidio he was consoled by the thought of getting married in just four short months and then being shielded from gay men and tempting transsexuals.
(Now married and working in Washington, DC, Rich Bromely’s demon is under control and he is happy, until he is faced with a stark reminder from an unusual source. How will he respond?)
Struggles
By
Sherry Ann
Chapter 14
Denial
“Take a look at this and tell me what you think.” Lenny said as he slid the thick file across his desk to Rich. Rich opened the file and began reading, flipping past the claim form, the medical release form and reading the various medical reports. He tried not to show emotion, show the surprise and shock he immediately felt.
Richard Bromley rarely worried about that issue that so troubled him when he was young and before he was married. Now, he reasoned, it was completely behind him and with his adorable and sexy wife they could occasionally indulge in some cross gender play. And every so often he could have a little fun dressing up and practicing makeup by himself. Being married worked; the dreams Rich Bromely regularly had as long as he could remember, the ones where he is partially dressed in public in female underwear, nearly stopped after he married Brandi.
Lenny Myers was the old salt in the office as well as the manager. His staff, he called them his ‘kids’, consisted of seven young women and two men. Only three were married, including Rich. Rich hadn’t planned a career with an insurance company but after he graduated from college, he got an immediate job offer and he couldn’t refuse; after all he was now 26 years old, married and trying to start a family. It was a great opportunity with a well-known company with a large government contract providing health benefits for over a million Federal employees and their families. His job, along with the others in his office, was to answer questions from Federal employees and retirees about the health plan (how to file claims, what was covered, explain payments and denials, etc.), and to be the covered employee’s liaison to the claims processing center in another city.
For his part, Lenny played the role of patriarch nicely. He loved to listen to the back and forth between the staff, and was particularly father-like to his ‘girls’ as he called the women. Lenny frequently brought one of the ‘kids’ into his office to discuss nuances of coverage, and/or how to handle a particularly dicey denial; how to explain it to the customer, enrollees as the company called them. Lenny would challenge the ‘kids’ as a way to teach and develop analytical skills, and they all admired Lenny for including them in even the most sensitive issues.
So it was not unusual for Lenny to be asking Rich to review a file and give his take. Lenny sat watching Rich’s face as he continued to read; he waited a few minutes for Rich finish and look up at his mentor.
“Well, is it covered?” He asked the young claims representative.
“I don’t think so.” Rich answered hesitatingly looking for some clue for the right response from Lenny, while wondering why Lenny asked him to review this one. Why not one of the women, he asked silently before answering, “I mean, I would think it would easily be considered cosmetic. Its’ not covered because it’s really cosmetic surgery.” Rich finally announced.
“Ok” Lenny allowed without further comment. “Anything else?” Lenny took a long drag on his cigarette and let the smoke out slowly through his nose not giving away his thoughts in his expression.
Rich really didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to discuss the details, but he knew he had to respond. “Well the surgery doesn’t really treat any medical condition, does it? I would deny the claim as cosmetic, not medically necessary for the treatment of a diagnosed medical condition.”
“Very good, my boy.” Lenny exclaimed. “That’s what we thought and that’s the reason we denied it. It’s completely cosmetic. The surgery doesn’t improve any normal function; in fact, it actually takes away a body function, one that worked very well if you read the complete file.”
Lenny normally strayed away from personal comments or opinion, carefully couching everything he said in contract language. But he couldn’t help letting Rich know how he felt about this particular claim.
“Can you imagine?” He continued. “How in the hell could this surgery help him look any better? Cosmetic my ass.” He declared crudely. “It’s not cosmetic; it’s just wrong.” Lenny took a deep breath realizing he was breaking his own rule of staying unbiased. “But now he has an attorney and they are threatening to sue. Here, read this.” Lenny handed Rich a letter, on heavy vellum paper from an attorney in Atlanta; actually not just from an attorney but from a large, and probably prestigious firm. The attorney that signed the letter was at the top of a long list of partners featured on the left side of the letter. Rich read it slowly.
March 22, 1972
Our firm represents Amanda Colliers in the matter of her claim for payment of medical expenses incurred for sex reassignment including psychotherapy, medical (hormonal) and surgery (genital).
Your company has denied payment of claims for hormone treatment from a licensed endocrinologist and for genital surgery recommended by a team of doctors at a major prestigious medical center. You honored claims for treatment of her mental health condition. The expenses you refuse to pay that our client incurred were reasonable and necessary for the treatment of a diagnosed medical condition and are, therefore, covered under the terms of her enrollment in the health plan through her employment with the Centers for Disease Control, a Federal agency, and administered by your company.
We are attaching letters from her treating psychiatrist, from her endocrinologist, and from the lead surgeon. Prior to her treatment and surgery, in the gender of birth, Miss Colliers became psychologically depressed and nearly dysfunctional. She received a poor performance evaluation and a warning about work absences. She became suicidal. Miss Colliers was, in all other respects, a respected and professional Federal employee in good standing. According to the practitioners caring for her, the hormone treatment and subsequent surgery were necessary to treat her severe psychological stress. She is now free of depression and anxiety and will be resuming her duties as an epidemiologist shortly.
We strongly suggest you reconsider your denial of Miss Colliers claims. Should we not receive a favorable response from you within two weeks from the date of this letter we are prepared to file an action in District Court seeking full payment of said expenses, legal fees, and appropriate damages for pain and suffering.
Sincerely,
J. Gilbert Rollings
Attorney at Law
Rich felt queasy. This was not a subject he wanted to discuss and he was panicking. He couldn’t look at Lenny, afraid that the older man would read his expression, see his fear. Rich stared at the letter not wanting to say anything but knew he had to.
“You’re right. Does this guy really think we should pay to change him into a ….” Rich couldn’t finish that sentence. It wasn’t what he wanted to say. He really wanted to know more; wanted to read the whole file, especially the medical reports. He changed the subject, or at least the thought.
“So what are we going to do with this? We can’t pay it, can we?”
“Looks like we’ll have to, damn it.” Lenny barked. “If we don’t and we lose in court. We’d be giving this, this freak, lots of money to go shopping with.” He concluded allowing a slight smile from his craggy face.
“No, my boy. What Mac wants us to do is some research. He’s up on the hill briefing Members of the Civil Service Committee. And he’s already talked to the Commission. Mac wants us to do some research; gather information we can use to negotiate an exclusion for this.” Lenny leaned back in his chair as if plotting how to keep anyone else from getting such awful surgery paid. “Did you see how much this cost? Over twenty thousand dollars. My house didn’t cost twenty thousand dollars. It wouldn’t take too many of these to hurt us. We’ve got to stop it. Reduce the risk as I always say.”
Rich wasn’t thinking about risk. He was thinking about Miss Colliers. Actually he was thinking about Mr. Colliers. What made the man want to go that far? What made him do it? How could he be so public with this? Rich long felt the tug of wanting to be girlish, the impulse to dress up and pretend. He had been doing it for as long as he could remember when he had the opportunity. But how could anyone take it outside and live that way, and then try to call it normal, try to be normal about it. That was crazy and well, just impossible.
Rich’s thoughts flashed back to the night he spent with Frannie, almost exactly four years before. Frannie was like that but she was different. Frannie knew she was a girl from the beginning. That’s what she said. Frannie didn’t really become a man, or live and work as one, except briefly. This Ms. Colliers obviously grew up a guy, went to college, got married and then, well, then just decided to become a woman. Rich didn’t understand how that worked, could work. Lenny’s voice brought Rich back to what they were talking about.
“Mac wants you to see what you can find out about this. Hell, we’re really in the dark here. First claim the Company has had for this. And there’s no information in Hartford. Mac talked to the Blues and they haven’t had one either. Hope it’s the last. Take a couple of days, the week if necessary. Go to NIH or Johns Hopkins. One of the doctor’s mentions a program at Johns Hopkins. Find out what you can and report back.” Lenny looked seriously at Rich. “Don’t worry about any expenses. Just submit whatever you spend.” He added.
“You want me to research this?” Rich asked not fully grasping the assignment.
“Yes, you. Mac didn’t want to get one of the girls involved. He thought you would be better. Your résumé showed you did some research at AU and well, he didn’t want a woman doing it. He was afraid a female might not have the proper perspective; might be sympathetic or biased. A woman might think this a good thing, some kind of feminist victory. We want someone who can look at this without any bias.” Lenny and Mac likely did want bias; the bias only a man, a heterosexual young active man would feel at the thought of being completely and surgically emasculated. They expected Rich to feel the primordial fear of castration and report accordingly.
What Rich was feeling was terror, and conflict. For all of his life he had strange feelings he knew wasn’t right and he had always been able to keep them in check. He suppressed when necessary and indulged when he could. It was just the way it was. Rich had a problem that he managed and his life was good, his marriage wonderful; after four years in the army he finished college and had a good job in Washington. And he would soon be a father. What could be better? Rich could have everything a man, a good hard working man, deserved, and at the same time manage the deep pull toward the other gender. He certainly didn’t need to know any details about what this man who was now a what, hardly a woman, and he especially didn’t want to know what pushed him to such extremes.
Conveniently Rich had forgotten or suppressed things that had happened in his life that related to this, how his path always seemed to lead without any direction from him to this insidious topic. He had even repressed that weekend with Frannie in San Francisco, the weekend that was both wonderful but contained all the pitfalls that could have ruined the path he was now firmly on.
Rich picked up the file, Miss Colliers’ file, and stood. “I’ll do my best.” He assured his mentor as he turned toward the door.
“Rich.” Lenny called. “Not a word to the others. This isn’t open for discussion in the office. This one isn’t debatable. I’ll tell them you’re working on your training. I’m serious Rich. Don’t tell anyone, especially Janet.”
Rich knew what Lenny meant. Janet and Rich were close and Janet was probably the most sensitive to customers. Janet was also probably more than just a feminist; she was a little anti-male. At least that is how Rich saw it. Janet didn’t date, or show any interest in men. She and her airline hostess roommate did everything together. Yes, Janet would likely be sympathetic to Miss Collier but not just because of her choice of gender.
* * * *
When Rich got home that evening, with the file in his briefcase, he debated how much to tell his wife. It wasn’t that he couldn’t tell her about his assignment; he just worried that she may think that it was his idea; that he volunteered. They had talked about Rich’s feelings; he had written it in letters to her when they were separated both before and after they got married. He told her he had always been drawn to girls and the things that made the genders so different, mostly the clothes they wore. He didn’t tell her how he dressed up as a boy, and he especially didn’t tell her about the weekend in San Francisco. He did tell her that wearing something made him feel good; made him feel at peace with himself. It was the best explanation Rich could muster; it was what he believed and what he knew. He also told her it was a turn-on; that wearing a nightgown or a pair of panties during sex enhanced the mood and moment, even though that wasn’t really true. For Rich there was really no need for any props; Brandi was beautiful and sexy sans clothes of any kind. Still Brandi didn’t seem to object to Rich’s proclivities.
What Rich didn’t admit to his wife, or even to himself, was that wearing nightgowns or panties wasn’t sexual at all. Rich had no trouble being sexual with Brandi without him putting anything of the female gender on and he didn’t fantasize about being a woman during sex. But wearing something female during sex was a wonderful opportunity that he could not resist. Actually lingerie was much more sexually arousing when Brandi was doing the wearing. Rich also didn’t tell his wife that he sometimes dressed up completely when she wasn’t home, and he didn’t process in his mind that those episodes were not sexually arousing. They were affirming.
After dinner when they were washing the dishes together Rich broached the subject, immediately being defensive.
“Why me?” He started, getting Brandi’s attention. He turned and put his arms around her. He loved her and the last thing he wanted was for her to be suspicious of him. Brandi waited for him to continue.
“Lenny picked me for a research project and I just don’t know why he didn’t go with one of the gals or even Tony. All of them have been there longer than I.”
“Lenny likes you. He sees how smart you are. And handsome too.” She teased. “Are you going to tell me about it or should I just guess?”
“There’s this claim that they want me to research. It’s a first, I guess. Some guy in Georgia wants us to pay for a sex change.” Rich had broken off the hug and turned slightly away from his wife hiding his expression.
“What’s to research? You’re not paying for that are you?” Brandi asked more as a statement than a question.
“We might have to. He, uh she, has a really good attorney and the home office feels they would be better off just paying and keeping it quiet. They don’t want the word to get out and get bunch of claims like these before they can put in an exclusion.” He explained. “And they want me to research it so they will have the facts during the next contract negotiation.”
“And you’re wondering why Lenny asked you? What are you saying?” Brandi asked with some suspicion.
“Yes and no. I guess he likes me and thinks I would do a good job. He indicated they didn’t want a woman investigating it. I think they are worried one of them might have some bias and figure I would see it clearly for what it is. I don’t know.” He responded mulling over his own conflicts.
“So what’s the problem? Seems cut and dry.”
“I guess. I can do this but I really don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want to know what makes people like that want to go to that extreme.” Rich said revealing subconscious thoughts. Neither spoke for a minute. Brandi now put her arms around him and looked up into his eyes. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Obviously, they are troubled.” She concluded letting her head rest on his chest. “That and they don’t have someone who loves them like I love you; someone who understands and can make them happy.” They both stood there thinking about what she had said. Rich heard his wife commit to helping him deal with how he felt; even enabling his obsession. Brandi heard herself put her husband on notice; ‘I will love you so deeply and sincerely that you will never want more than me; never want any part of being female beyond the mild role play in the confines of our apartment’.
* * * *
The next morning Rich lay in bed watching Brandi get dressed, thinking things he tried to suppress. Brandi was so comfortable with who she was; each morning getting ready for work, getting dressed, so at ease with what she did each day, applying makeup so dexterously, drying her hair and making it look just right. Rich had, of course, tried to emulate that as best he could but it wasn’t easy, especially the makeup. Now he was thinking about Amanda Colliers; he didn’t even know what name she went by as a man. How did she learn how to do what Brandi did, and was she really good at it; could she make herself believable. Rich wondered what she looked like, how she lived through going public. There were no pictures in the file; he had looked. Rich could relate to giving in to the feelings, at home, usually alone. He just couldn’t imagine telling anyone, or especially trying to go out.
After Brandi left for work Rich showered and started to get dressed. He didn’t know why but he opened the top left drawer of Brandi’s dresser and took a pair of her panties. He put them on and finished getting dressed, in a suit and tie. Rich had not done that before; panties were for use at home.
Before he left home he looked up the address for the National Library of Medicine at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda and dialed their number to find out when they were open. He drove around the Washington Beltway and exited on Connecticut Avenue and then over to Wisconsin and the large standalone building with the sign National Library of Medicine. He parked, went in and found the card catalog.
After at least an hour Rich had found very little. There wasn’t any direct reference to transsexual, the term used by one of Miss Colliers’ doctors; there were numerous references to transvestism, including a books by Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis. He couldn’t remember the name of the doctor Frannie told him about. Rich already knew about cross-dressing, about transvestism. Rich had searched that topic before, on his own, first at the Johnstown Library when he was no more than eleven or twelve. He knew cross-dressing was abnormal and deviate, at least that is what everything he had found told him. He also knew it was inexorably linked to homosexuality and considered by doctors to require treatment. Rich found nothing else and he didn’t need to spend time on that topic; Rich needed something to report back to Lenny.
Rich put the few notes he took in his briefcase and walked out of the Library. He felt he was failing and he felt as if he couldn’t continue. He considered just going into the office and telling Lenny he couldn’t do this, couldn’t handle it. Instead he sat in his car and took the thick file out of his briefcase, Ms. Collier’s file. Rich Bromely sat in his car in the parking lot of the NIH Library and carefully reread the reports in the file. He didn’t read the letters from the lawyers, or the letter from Ms. Collier’s supervisor about how “normal” she was since she returned to work after her “change”. Rich read the letters from the two psychiatrists and two psychologists; he read the report from the endocrinologist detailing the hormones Ms. Collier started taking while still living as a man; and he read the progress notes from the hospital. Finally, Rich turned to the operative report; the detailed narrative of the surgery. He read about what was prepped, what was cut, incised, removed, redirected, sutured and legated. It didn’t really bother him when he read what was inverted, then pushed inside, sutured into place and finally packed so she could heal. The word ‘vagina’ brought a subconscious pang of excitement deep within the young man.
Rich closed the file and started his car. He didn’t know where he was going to go, or what he was going to do. He rejected going in to the office; he couldn’t let Lenny down and he was afraid it would hurt his career and that would hurt Brandi. He considered going to Baltimore, to Johns Hopkins and trying to find something from the doctor there doing some kind of research about sex reassignment, a Dr. Money. Rich laughed at the name. ‘Dr. Money’ he thought, ‘maybe that’s what it’s all about. Dr. Money seeking publicity and money.’
Rich headed north toward Baltimore but without thinking he found himself back at his apartment. It was only noon; what was he doing? He knew he would have to account for his time, make some explanation but he could not control what he was about to do.
Rich locked the apartment door behind him. He took a shower and shaved his face for the second time that day. Rich Bromely looked in the mirror at his naked body, the hair on his chest, his male parts. He slammed his fist against the sink and saw blood gush from his knuckles. He turned in pain and turned on the cold water. He watched the pink mixture of blood and water wash down the side of the basin. Rich Bromely was not in control of what he did next.
After bandaging his hand he went back to the left hand dresser drawer, Brandi’s dresser. He found a bra and a panty girdle, not that Brandi really needed one, but she had it. He struggled getting into the bra and hooking it, it was so tight for his chest even though he had a very slim build. He stuffed each side of the bra with a pair of Brandi’s panties, like he had done as a boy. He put back on the panties he wore earlier and then the panty girdle, trying to push his maleness down and as flat as possible. He went into the closet and selected one of Brandi’s skirts and pulled it on. The skirt fit fairly well over his thin hips. He zipped it up in the back.
He found a loose fitting blouse and put it on and buttoned it. He then unbuttoned and unzipped the skirt so he could tuck in the blouse and then zipped and buttoned the skirt again. Only then did he look in the mirror. He felt good but he wasn’t done, he wasn’t complete. He went back into the bathroom and started to apply makeup, tried to do it like he had watched Brandi do it; foundation, eyeliner, eye shadow and of course mascara. Finally he found an almost empty tube of lipstick and applied a heavy layer to his lips, smacking them together to make for even coverage, like he saw women do many times. He stepped back and again looked at himself. He clearly enjoyed the feeling; something came over him, a feeling he had no words for, a peaceful and calming feeling. He also liked the way he looked in the mirror; mostly he liked the image of himself as female.
Rich Bromely then sat at the dining room table with the file, Ms. Collier’s file. This time he didn’t read the operative report, the bloody and gruesome details of the radical surgery she went through. Rich instead concentrated on the psychiatric notes and reports. He desperately needed to know the background; what was ‘he’ like before deciding to change from man to woman? What was ‘he’ like as a boy? How and when did ‘he’ know he felt this strongly about it? Most importantly for Rich, was this person in anyway like Rich before ‘he’ sought the help of doctors? Did Rich have the same condition and would it progress to the inevitable? Rich Bromely vowed he could not let that happen.
In his wife’s skirt and blouse, Rich laid down on the couch and cried until he drifted off to sleep. That’s when he had the dream again, the recurring one where he is partially dressed in some female garment and out in public. This time he was at work wearing just a bra and panties trying to explain to Lenny and everyone in the office why Ms. Collier should be hired to work with them. Bizarrely all of the women Rich worked with wore the same skirt Rich was wearing when he fell asleep and none were wearing blouses; just the same bra Rich was wearing.
Rich’s was awakened by footsteps outside his apartment door. He had lost track of time. Thinking it could be Brandi, afraid he had been caught, he jumped up and raced to the bedroom and noticed from the time that his wife would not be home yet but that he had less than an hour to conceal what he had been doing. He again caught his image in the mirror and this time what he saw was troubling. His mascara had run from his tears and he thought he looked like a freak.
He quickly got out of the skirt and blouse and hung them up being careful to place them neatly exactly where they hung before. He unhooked the bra and pulled off the panty girdle and put them back in the drawer. He went to the bathroom and standing in front of the mirror in just the panties, he washed the makeup off his face, practically scrubbing his eye lids to remove any trace of eye liner and mascara. He then removed the panties and put them in the clothes hamper to be washed hoping Brandi would not notice. Finally he went back to the bedroom and dressed; dressed like the man he was; suit and tie. This was a ritual that Richard Bromely would repeat many times over the next dozen years or so. Stay home, dress up, read or do housework and then revert and hide.
When Brandi came home Rich was fixing a scotch and soda. They hugged and talked about their day; she about the first graders she taught and he about not finding much at the Library of Medicine.
(In 1972 the insurance company Rich works for has assigned him the task for researching sex reassignment surgery after they received a claim. Will he find anything at Johns Hopkins University?)
Struggles
By
Sherry Ann
Chapter 15
Man and Woman, Boy and Girl
The morning after Rich failed to find any information about sex reassignment at the National Library of Medicine (an assignment from his boss at the insurance company where he worked), he again awoke with the memory of the dream, but this time he could not remember the details, only that it was the same theme; partially dressed in public in bra and panties. The dream, actually a nightmare, was all too frequent now. Rich had hoped the tormenting dreams would go away after he married Brandi, but, of course, they didn't.
Rich again watched Brandi get dressed and apply her makeup. He didn’t just stare but casually observed what she did, and how she did it. Then he showered and finished dressing just as Brandi was leaving. They kissed and she told him he would have better luck this time; he would find something to please his boss. After she left, he started a load of laundry, being sure to include the panties he wore the day before. He returned to Brandi’s top left dresser drawer and found a pair of black lacy ones. Rich quickly changed into them. Soon he was out the door and on his way to Baltimore.
Rich found the main administration building at Johns Hopkins University, parked and made his way to the information desk just inside the entrance.
“Can you direct me to Dr. Money’s office?” Rich asked the older woman in the high necked white blouse, plain straight midcalf skirt and hair in a bun.
“Oh yes.” She answered as she produced a campus map. “Dr. Money is quite well known. He just published a new book.” She volunteered. “Are you a doctor?” She asked Rich who at 28 hardly looked like one.
Rich chuckled. “No I’m investigating an insurance claim. What’s the book about?” He asked making conversation as the woman circled a building on the map.
“I don’t know for sure but it’s something about what makes men and women different, I think.” The matronly woman said almost giggling like a teenager. “Can’t wait for that to be made a movie.” She quipped. “Here is where his office is. You can walk from here.”
“Would the book store have Dr. Money’s book.” Rich wondered aloud.
“Oh yes.” She said as one word like it was a mainstay of her vocabulary. “But the book store is in the other direction, right here.” The woman circled another building on the map.
Rich thanked the woman and walked back out of the building and toward the one circled on the map where the woman indicated Dr. John Money’s office was. He easily found the building and pulled open the door. There it was ‘John Money, PhD., Professor Emeritus, Psychology, Room 301’ prominently displayed on the directory in the lobby. He climbed the two flights of stairs, found room 301 and entered. A young woman was sitting behind a desk with a typewriter and phone. She was obviously a secretary.
“I’m here to see Dr. Money.” Rich announced confidently. He had decided he needed to use this opportunity as best he could. On the drive to Baltimore he thought about how unique this chance was. He knew that Hopkins was just about the only place in the States that did the surgery Ms. Collins had and now he could complete the assignment for Lenny but he could also possibly find out something about himself.
“Do you have an appointment?” The secretary asked.
“No, I don’t but I’m from Indemnity Insurance out of Hartford and just need a few minutes of his time. It’s about a claim.” Rich stated intentionally making it sound like he was from out of town and as if there was an insurance issue that involved Dr. Money. He handed her his business card.
“Oh.” The woman answered. “He is in but has an appointment at 10:30. I don’t know if he can see you now or if you will have to come back.” She added as she picked up the phone and dialed.
Rich listened as the woman explained who he was and what he wanted to the person on the phone.
“I understand. I’ll send him in.” She finished and hung the phone up.
“Dr. Money can give you a few minutes now.” She stood up and escorted Rich through a doorway and into a large office. Two walls of the office were taken with windows and two were lined with bookcases, all filled from floor to ceiling. A large desk was positioned perfectly center to the largest wall with windows behind. The room gave an appearance of confidence and correctness.
As Rich entered the room the man behind the desk did not look up from the papers he was studying until Rich was directly in front of him. Rich was reminded of being in the Army and reporting to some officer. He fought the urge to salute. The man looked to be in his late forties, but had longish hair partially balding in the front and combed over to one side giving an almost comical appearance. His face was free of hair, clean shaven, with almost sad dark eyes. He wore glasses, a turtleneck pullover with a tweed jacket. He was definitely professorial, Rich thought.
After a few moments the man spoke without introduction.
“Sit, sit.” He commanded. Only then did he look up.
“You’re from an insurance company and there’s a claim?” He asked, still not identifying himself.
Rich took Ms. Collier’s file from his briefcase as he answered. “Yes, I’m from Indemnity and we have a claim for sex reassignment surgery. We wanted to learn about why it should be considered medically necessary, or as we at Indemnity like to say, medically reasonable.”
Dr. Money then looked interested. “You have a claim? Not from Hopkins? We’re funded.”
“Right. It’s from a medical center in Atlanta. We just…”
“Atlanta?” He asked but continued before Rich could say anything. "I don’t know anyone doing them in Atlanta.” He then pivoted. “Are you going to pay it? You should really pay for this you know.” He lectured before Rich could finish his sentence.
“We probably will. But I need some information about future claims. We need some guidance. Is there a medical reason it should be covered by health insurance?” Rich asked giving the false impression the company he worked for would actually consider covering sex reassignment surgery.
“Of course there is?” Dr. Money immediately responded. “Why would you not cover it if it is recommended by reputable doctors?” He challenged. “Yes, there are some who view it as experimental, but with proper screening it is necessary.”
Rich felt on the defensive and hesitated. “Well, it is really radical cosmetic surgery that doesn’t treat anything physically wrong with the patient. It is doing surgery to treat a mental condition. My superiors have serious doubts about how reasonable that is, from a medical view; doing surgery just because someone thinks they are different.” Rich didn’t like what he said or how he said it. He thought he had gone too far.
Dr. Money now sat up and pushed the papers he had been reading to the side. Rich felt he was going to get a lesson from a well-known professor from a prestigious university.
“Doubts? Necessity? Reasonable?” He almost barked. “Insurance companies should leave the determination of “necessity” to the professionals.” He began.
“We do.” Rich quickly answered. “That’s why I’m here. We want to understand this so we can, uh well, know what we are doing and separate the legitimate from the uh, crazies. We have to be on firm ground and be able to defend what we don’t pay for, and what we do, for that matter.”
“Of course.” Dr. Money allowed relaxing some. “Crazies, you say. Interesting that you would use that term. You may consider people with gender issues sick, as in mentally ill, completely flawed, but really, these people are just struggling with the way they developed; the way they obtained their gender.”
Dr. Money got up and turned toward the window, then continued. “That probably doesn’t make sense to you.” He turned back and looked straight into Rich’s face. It was a penetrating gaze and Rich felt the imminent doctor was reading his soul, examining his gender.
“In more precise terms, they are individuals who are dealing with malformed or incomplete gender identity. By malformed I mean, for boys mostly, that they were imprinted during a very formative time in their emotional development with a feminine characteristic. And they cannot shake it. For some, they live with it; indulging their proclivities; for others they are compelled beyond their capability to resist to act on it completely, and it is those individuals that should be supported and that you should pay claims for.”
Rich barely heard the last part of what Dr. Money said. Instead he was thinking about that one phrase, ‘obtained their gender’. What did that mean? He had to ask.
“What do you mean ‘obtained their gender’? I thought… well …” he stammered unable to formulate what he was feeling or what he wanted to say.
“Yes, yes. Of course you did. Boys are boys and girls are girls and well, that in a sense is true. But what we have discovered, what I firmly believe, is that we are born gender neutral, mostly. There are those who disagree but I have shown rather definitively that gender is obtained, through socialization mostly, during the early formative life of a baby, the first few months. And by age three, no more, gender is nearly complete and immutable.”
Rich sat transfixed. All the years he had struggled with what was wrong with him; why he was so pulled by girl things and even felt, as a child, like he should have been a girl. He thought of all the times he cried, and now even as a happily married man, how he still could not completely control the feeling. He thought of what he was wearing, the black lacy panties under his men’s suit, while Dr. Money was imparting information that finally made sense to him. He waited for Dr. Money to continue and he did.
“Humans are different than other species. We can show, I have shown, through controlled studies that imprinting of gender occurs during the first few months of life in humans and that imprinting establishes a person’s identity, to varying degrees, as masculine or feminine. Briefly, gender imprinting is the reinforcement of our sex, usually consistent with the sex of our birth. Of course the physiology at birth, either male or female, lays the foundation for the imprinting process. And there are hormonal factors. For most, like you and I, our identity is male because we had male role models to learn from, not to mention female role models to create the sense in our brain of the opposite gender, so we could be, quote unquote, normal men. We also were given gender appropriate toys and dressed in gender appropriate clothes. But for some, again to varying degrees, they are not imprinted in the gender of the physical sex of their birth. Incomplete or even opposite imprinting occurs, perhaps a weak father, or absent one; maybe a dominate feminine mother, or a confident sister. Usually, I think, in these cases, the baby boy, and it’s usually a boy, receives female gender imprinting and is therefore a more feminine male. Sometimes the mother desperately wanted a girl baby and got a boy, and, mostly subconsciously, imprints a feminine gender during those critical first months, or even dresses the little boy baby like a girl thinking it won’t make a difference.”
Rich listened intently, trying to grasp the full meaning, not for his assignment but for himself. He flipped to his note pad and tried to scribble down what Dr. Money was saying. He couldn’t help but think about his mother, did she somehow do some girl imprinting, he wondered. Then a memory of Mary, his older sister popped into his head. If anything imprinted Rich with unshakable girl feelings it was Mary, who desperately wanted a baby sister, not a brother, when Rich was born. He had heard his mother talk about that. Rich felt as if Dr. Money knew him, understood that his older dominate and undeterred sister had to have played a huge part in the feelings he now had that he could not control or shake.
“And in a few cases, like the person you have a claim for, and some in our program, the opposite gender imprinting during those first months of life is so complete, even though they have been living an otherwise normal male life for many years, uh well, that the only treatment, to avoid complete mental incapacitation and suicide, is to make them physically consistent with the primary gender with which they were imprinted.” Dr. Money paused briefly then added defensively. “Psychotherapy doesn’t work on those severely affected so if we can’t change the mind to conform to the body, we change the body to conform to the mind.”
Dr. Money then picked up the papers he was reading when Rich entered the office, put them in a briefcase and turned towards the door.
“It’s all in my new book. Well most of it is. I’m working with a promising case; twin boys, one who had a tragic mishap shortly after birth during circumcision. The penis was lost so the parents, under my guidance, are raising one twin as a girl, carefully reinforcing female imprinting, and the other as a boy. So far, it is going very well but time will tell.” Dr. Money stopped talking, losing himself in the prospects of his theory being validated.
“But I must go. I hope this helped. Read my book. It should convince your company to cover this when recommended.” He turned and was out the door leaving Rich standing in front of the now empty desk. He put Mr. Collier’s file and his notes in his briefcase and exited the office suite, thanking the secretary as he left.
Rich found himself outside sitting on a bench watching all the Johns Hopkins students come and go from classes. He felt so isolated, so removed from everyone around him. He tried to process all that Dr. Money had said. He felt like crying but held back. At first Rich didn’t want to believe that what he heard was an explanation for himself. He had convinced himself, and his wife, that he had some sort of mild fetish. They both could accept that. Having a sexual fetish about wearing some female item, like the panties he was now wearing, meant that he was still a man, perhaps even more so. Dr. Money’s explanation meant, or could mean, that Rich wasn’t totally male, but was partially female, having been imprinted, yes that was the word the doctor used, imprinted to some degree with a female gender.
Rich felt the crushing realization that it was more likely that he was imprinted with some of both and that his sister did it. He couldn’t remember the first two or three years but there was that picture in the album his mother had. Everyone thought it was just cute; Mary having a tea party with her two brothers and a teddy bear. Except that in the picture three year old Rich was wearing a dress. Rich was almost angry. If there was one picture and the Bromely children were playing in the yard and Rich was wearing a dress, then it probably wasn’t an isolated event, and well, if it wasn’t exactly approved by an adult, most likely the mother, she allowed Mary to dress her brother in girls clothes. Someone had to have taken that picture.
There was only the one picture and there were plenty others where Rich was clearly in boy mode. There were no pictures of Rich’s brother Gary ever wearing a dress and well, there was no doubt about the gender Gary, Rich’s older brother, was imprinted with. For Rich imprinting would explain the pull to girl things that he could not shake and the confusion he constantly felt. It would explain what he knew in his heart; that the pull to wanting to wear female clothes, or be like a girl, was not at all sexual. There was no sexual impulse that morning when he slipped on the panties and he felt none now. He did feel good about them though but he couldn’t explain why.
Rich sat there thinking about this and realized Dr. Money was probably right. He was one of those men who felt somewhat female. He allowed that he was probably better for it, a better husband, a better man and yes, he would be a better father. Rich’s mood improved. He vowed to get the book, Dr. Money’s book; and he vowed to explain all this to Brandi, and with the book to back up the explanation, they could manage this problem together. Rich didn’t have to feel he had some deviate weird sick fetish anymore. There was a reasonable explanation; one doctors understood. He told himself he could be ok with it now and even indulge it some without having to link it to sex. And possibly Brandi might be understanding; might actually help him.
Rich got up and followed the map to the university book store. He found Dr. Money’s book, with the brown cover and caricatures of a man, a woman, a boy and a girl on the cover arranged in four squares inside a larger square. While he waited to purchase the book Rich’s thoughts came back to the assignment. How could he present what Dr. Money had told him, and what the book probably explained? It wasn’t exactly what Lenny was looking for and Rich knew he couldn’t put Dr. Money’s argument, that it was acceptable to change the body to match the mind, forward. But it did give him an idea. He would write the report they wanted. He would write not just about the surgery but about the mind. He would tell them that some men, a few, have imperfectly formed gender and that they suffer, to varying degree because of it. But he would stress that the consensus in the medical community is that the procedure was not just experimental but was widely felt to be mutilation even if he himself didn’t see it that way. Rich saw himself as a man with a man’s body but the reverse did not repulse him.
Rich would also tell them, the men who ran the company he worked for, that it would cause Indemnity Insurance more grief, not to mention money, to allow claims for such radical surgery, even for the most troubled. 1972 was an election year and the politics wouldn’t support it. There was also the values question he would note. America was deeply religious and to suggest including benefits for something that would be widely viewed as immoral and sinful could, and likely would, alienate many voters and by extension, their Members of Congress. No, for his career, and his life, Richard Bromely would explain how toxic and awful sex reassignment surgery was and that it should never be included in any reputable health benefits policy.