Days and Nights on Old Haven Road-2

Sweet corn.

There’s just that smell to it isn’t there? I grew up actually just inside of Masstown Kansas it’s just a medium sized small town a few thousand but it was one of those towns that growing up was you lived in town but at least one set of grandparents lived out in the country.

And almost everyone had a hobby garden or a decent sized one in their yards. I remember those times like they were yesterday, I mean it wasn’t great times growing up in the whole post sixties era or at least where I grew up. But we all had gardens pretty much and most of the small jobs you’d have where picking or planting things from the farms around town.

But sweet eating corn…even walking through the cornfields you’d get that smell. Especially when you’re picking ears. But that was one of my safe havens out in the cornfield.

Out there under that sea of green stalks I could think as I would pick earning money at my summer job.

I had a lot to think about.

Like why I was so interested in everything that girls did, the way they moved and talked, smelled but not just sex thoughts even though I had plenty of those but…

By the time that I was a teenager I knew something was wrong…there had to be I wanted to be like the girls I went to school with. I wanted to move like that, to dance and dress and have fun like them…I needed to be pretty in the worst way.

But I never did…a few times…in really secret places, in guilt filled times that just about killed me. Then my body started to. Later puberty and stuff becoming a man and all that hard work.

I was a bit of an outcast.

Not really bullied or thought of as gay or queer because I liked girls like other guys did. Only really, really I ached to be with a a girl as a girl. I dated and had girlfriends but I was odd for guys back then. I was the nice guy, strike one. I was good with and didn’t mind kids. I was kind and considerate to the girls I knew.

Those were all sort of strikes against me. I wasn’t Joe average thing blockhead. And it kind of left me with dates but very few follow ups.

I was the friend.

I hated that and after Jenny Tupper had put me into the friend zone because I just wasn’t what she was looking for… “It’s not you Doug, really it’s just us…there’s no Zip there.”

I was head over heels with her and had been saving up for a ring and after that I got really drunk with the money that I had saved. I woke up in my car outside the recruiting office and was still sort of between hung over and drunk and went inside.

They were more than happy than to take me and ship me off to Vietnam.

I’m not talking about the war there.

Beautiful countries over there when it’s not on fire. I actually came to like a lot of the food. And the women…I…I had this one girl. She was a hooker but she had me as a regular. She was older…almost thirty and she got things about me…she shaved me smooth on leave, I wore her underpants, sometimes her robe. She taught me to go down on a girl and that was nothing that I ever knew of with my mid-west innocent upbringing.

It was so much that part of me getting touched…

Lily taught me other things too. Vietnamese, some French…I had no idea they spoke it over there. How to cook like they do and I gave back, money and I shared stuff from my care packages from home. They had corn there but she had never had corn on the cob before with real butter.

In those sic years of hell she kept me sane and…alive.

Yes six years, my second tour was cut short by my getting shot up enough that they sent me home.

I went sort of into hiding for two years after that just staying with family, and the farms before things changed.

My Big brother Dixon pretty much forced me to go to the fall fair where I met Jane.

It’s funny, Dixon didn’t really like Jane even though the whole thing was to get me out of the house and with people. Jane was a bit of a hippy, and she wore bell bottom jeans and a tube top that night and her hair was cut short and she was smart.

But You ever just get hit by love?

Jane smacked me in a way that went passed all my issues. The girl in me fell head over heels with her and swore she’d do anything to be with her. Jane was just…you ever meet that girl that is just so kissable and so sexy when she says something interesting…which was all the time.

She took me right into this place where I finally felt normal. I know, I know and yes the feeling of needing to be the girl me came back but by the time it did we were married, had gone through college together and had a house just outside of Topeka and I was just starting my first years as an English teacher.

I love my wife…My girl side loved her so much she went quiet for as long as she could…In a way I’ve always been that wallflower girl that’s always there close as she can get to that other half of her soul…but never seen.

*So she ties up her dreams in ribbons and bows and puts them in a box that was always meant for the hopes other girls had. She takes the heavy stones from his life she’s been living and sinks that hope chest that’s her under the lake made from her tears.*

I wrote that once…It’s somewhere in the reams of little books of things I’ve written over the years.

And yes like so many I suffered in silence…

It wasn’t hell though, I lived through hell. Jane does love me, and time passed, we had kids. Steven and Sophie and I love being a dad, I reveled in being daddy when they were little because daddy was and is really close to being mommy.

If anything the kids helped my soul survive.

Jane too.

I’m serious, she might not ever know how those close intimate times made me cry happy tears inside, that her pulling my to her and holding me with her breasts against my back meant…she was being loving, getting comfortable.

Those times the girl in me was hugging her knees crying happy tears just for that closeness.

Jane…she’s the one that saved my soul.

……………………………….................... The kids have moved out Steven’s in Tampa and Sophie’s up in Canada studying acting at Stratford. And we’re done…I’m done and both Jane and I are retiring early.

We’ve been looking at places and Jane’s really been on this getting into shape bit. She’s cut her hair short again and has hit the gym and is running again and she’s getting really fit. Actually fitter than she’s ever been and she’s been on HRT too since getting set on pause.

I’d be worried about a mid-life crisis if she was a guy. I’d be worried about her seeing someone else but she’s not…just…we’ve been having too much sex lately for that. I’ve been going down on her more lately than in twenty years.

She’s just…it’s like she’s really living life.

I even got worried about her health but other than those things that hit you when you hit our ages we’re both okay. Okay I get put on some different meds not to interfere with my little blue buddies but other than that…

We’re looking to move. She has a cousin who told her about this place in the middle of nowhere south Ohio. She’s actually more and more excited by this than anything since college.

We even went to see this place this old farmstead on this Old Haven Road that just…the place was nice, it needed a ton of work but there was this vibe here especially when one of our neighbors showed up.

There was a knock. “Jane?…Hello…It’s Becky, is that you and Doug?”

We came out to the front of the house and she had these berry filled pie crust turnovers for us. And…and she was like me.

I mean Becky was as pretty as she’d likely ever be without surgery and she mostly passed, okay maybe since I’m me I noticed things more and stuff but the thing that really caught me and made my heart stop was Jane.

She never even blinked and took Becky for the girl she was living as and they fell right into that way two friendly women get.

I had to slip out and walk the yards pretending to look around and trying not to cry and be jealous of her. We even ate over there for supper and that was just torture…even if I was happy for her in a way…she was who she really was and loved by her guy.

………………………………............I got up and I slipped out of the hotel room and sat in the car with the door open having a can of ginger ale from the soda machine they had outside. I hadn’t been in the mood to make love and hadn’t been able to sleep. I just sat there hovering on the edge of tears thinking, trying not to fall apart.

Jane came out in her panties and one of my shirts and at almost sixty she was still able to break my heart.

She took my ginger ale and took a sip.

“Put one of our CD’s in love.”

I put it in and she pulls me up to dance with her both in our underwear, three in the morning bare feet on the pavement.

“Sorry Jane it’s just…I don’t know.”

“I do…”

I look at her and smile while my inside voice sadly says…No, no you don’t.

“It’s nothing honey, just stuff.”

“I know…it’s time.”

“Time…?”

I went to look at my watch and she steps forward and pushes me against our car and kisses me…Jane kisses me like she’s never kissed me in my life…and her hands move to cup my breasts. Well my chest and while I don’t have mobs as the call them I’m not young and buff so…there’s some give that lets her cup them into little mounds like I’ve tried so many times myself and she keeps kissing me and rolls my nipples…and I start to lose it. I start to cry and cry and slide down the car until I’m bawling.

It’s out…it’s out and oh god she knows and she’s still holding me…she sits down right there on the asphalt and in her panties and pulls me into her lap and I cry, the real me cries until it’s dawn and the sun’s coming up and the real early morning people are staring at us as they drive past.

Okay…one nice fellow stops to ask. “Hey are you too alright, did he have a heart attack or something?”

Jane wave him off. “No, no we’re fine, we’re just having a moment.”

He leaves and we sort of tearfully laugh and she gets up helping me to my feet. “Come on Dove lets go back inside.”

“Dove?”

“It’s the name I’ve been calling my wife.”

“Wh..what…?” Big glompy tears fall again.

“Well Douglas just doesn’t suit you does it love?” She tenderly wipes those tears away and kisses the girl I am.

“How?…when…”

“I think I’ve known a long time but I read those books of poetry and those short stories when we cleaned out Sophie’s things.”

“You don’t hate me…”

“Never…I love you…”

“You do…even…”

“You are your soul baby…you love who you love…It took me some time but in the end it never changed how I feel…well maybe love you more.”

“More…?”

“Dove…you set so much aside, gave up so much for me, for the children and It took me awhile to see what transgendered is but it really just made me love you all the more…”

“You do…?”

“Yes…oh sweetest heart yes…it’s also why I wanted to come here.”

“It is?”

“Yes, my cousin was actually badmouthing Becky not knowing I was married to this wonderful girl so when I got the courage I called Becky and talked to her. This is it honey…I want to live here…it’s time.”

“Time?”

“It’s your turn…I want this, I want you to be you and I want to start over here with my beautiful wife.”

“You do?”

“Yes…stay here.”

She sets me on the edge of our hotel bed and went digging through her purse. “Dove, close your eyes?”

I’m not used to any of this and scared as hell I close my eyes and I smell her close to me. “Okay honey, open your eyes.”

I look at her and she’s standing there and she drops in front of me on her knees and open this ring box. She opens it and it’s sized for me but it’s a diamond engagement ring just like hers.

“Dove…you are the other half of me. You are my heart, you are my soul and I’ll lover you forever, I’ll be your for always…please, please baby…be my wife.”

………………….

(Sob!)

(Happy, losing my mind sliding off the bed to face her Sob!)

“Y..Yes…Oh God Jane yes!”

……………………………….....................................I won’t go into the details of our love life only to say we are both very happy.

It’s been a long road but I’m smiling, really smiling all the time now. And feeling the sun on my small breasts as I’m just enjoying the way my dress flutters around me in the garden…it’s priceless. Horns honk as I finish picking another basket of corn. It’s my 3rd birthday as the real me and the neighbors are coming over and we’re having a BBQ and corn boil. I wave as everyone’s gathering and actually just stand there watching everyone hugging myself.

Sometimes…something special, sometimes miracles happen.

Dove.