CHAPTER 29
“And what exactly are we planning? “
She almost whispered, “It’s me that’s been doing the planning”
“Aye, well it’s ‘us’ now, OK?”
Another long sigh. “Just a couple for the Danish trip, that was what I thought, yeah? Just witnesses. I thought, well, Karen and Terry, but that means James, and, well, I sort of thought, John?”
I could see her logic with John and James, but why Karen and Terry? I asked her, and she just looked me straight in the eye and smiled, more gently than I had ever seen her do before.
“Who was it you first came out to, Jill? Who was it who took your hand, made it work?”
I kissed her again. “That bit was you, love”
The smile quickly became her more usual grin. “Yeah, but I got a better job that day, so can’t be me. Now…planning. We get this done, and then we have a shindig, yeah? We show off, let the world know”
“How many were you planning on inviting, woman?”
The grin again. “Dunno yet! Let’s get back to the others before they get all the good stuff, yeah? Bollocks, but this is complicated”
“What is?”
“Trying to work out what you do with two brides. Do we have a best man? Girls? Who does the giving away?”
“That’s obvious, my stepfather for me!”
“Yeah, but I ain’t got nobody left…shit, yeah, of course. John Wilkins, he’s the one”
Her eyes were wide, as I assume mine were. The idea was so unexpected, yet somehow so absolutely right. After how he had come through for me, he deserved a place not just in the pews but at the heart of things. I started to laugh as realisation pushed through the delight that had filled me.
“Larinda, love, just, no: don’t tell him yet, please? If you do, he’ll only obsess, like, buy every book he can find and fret over what to wear. Oh, shite, speaking of which… do you see me in the white kit, or you, or what?”
She looked at me hard. “You want that, don’t you? I should have realised. I get it wrong every now and then, lover. I get so used to you as you are I forget what you went through to get here, what you never had. You had dreams, yeah?”
I took her arm and started to walk her back to the others.
“Dreams were all I had, pet. Dreams and prayers, like. I think everyone like me must have that sort of thing in your life, hoping…you wake up one morning and it was all a bad dream. I had the same desires, wants, as every other little girl had…”
I tailed off, looking round me at the racks of clothes, the shoe displays.
“Love, just doing this, today, this is so far beyond what I actually expected I could ever do”
I drew a slow breath. “No, I bloody well knew that I would never be able to do this. That was what was killing me. Never to be free, never to be allowed… I was just like any other girl, aye, watched the wedding, wanted to wear the dress, but all the other little ones got to be bridesmaids at least and me, I got nowt. They went in matching dresses and I got shorts, jacket and tie”
Another breath, and I realised I was angry. Bloody hormones; I felt like a comedy teenager, but in my case the shout of ‘it’s not FAIR’ would have been absolutely true. Another thought fought free from behind my rage.
“One thing, love, I should stress, aye? Wearing the dress, being the centre, oh aye, but never a man in the dream, never a one”
She grinned again. “So no morning suit for me, then?”
I laughed. “Matching or complementary? You haven’t got the shape for a suit, anyway”
“Neither have you, any more”
Cheeky cow; she gave my left tit a squeeze as she said that, but as it actually belonged to her, along with all the rest of me, and everything I owned, how could I complain?
We rejoined the rest, the men returned at last from their libations, and I raised a hand for silence.
“Friends, family… we have a little announcement. Shouldn’t be a surprise, really…”
Alec grinned. “Where and when?”
I saw Von start, and almost automatically reach out for Ian’s hand.
“Well, my beloved here has made enquiries, and we have two dates, sort of, and two venues. The first is the legal bit, where we marry as women, two women, in Denmark. Don’t get your hopes up; that one will be a fly in, fly out, and not a do of any kind. Just getting the words on paper, like.
“The second, though, that’s in April. We have a friendly vicar courtesy of Steph–the tall redhead, Ian. No, the SANE tall redhead”
Rachel sniffed, head cocked.
“Larinda, remind me: why is he so amenable?”
“Simples, Rach. He marries Annie’s cousin in December. Keeps it all in the family; remember what Kirsty said about how many of them got wed there? Same bloke”
“So you two….full fairytale schtick?”
I thought back to our conversation, about the dreams and prayers of a lost little girl.
“Rach, pet, this is already a fairytale, aye? Proper wedding, like, just puts the icing on it”
Another sniff. “Bloody meringue, more like! Bethy, you know what this means?"
The teenager squealed. “Hen night yay! Er…Daddy dearest…?”
“Oh, I suppose you can go on your aunty’s hen night”
Bethany was suddenly serious. “No, Dad, that wasn’t what I wanted to ask. Just, thinking a bit, and it’s not been, like, fair, yeah? I mean, there’s someone else in the family…”
Von caught her idea first. “You really love your sister, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do, and she’s, like, never had any real fun cause of Mum, and, well, if she could just, like, BE there, be a normal girl, all friends and stuff, yeah? Please, Dad? Please?”
Ian kept silent for almost a quarter of a minute as Bethany pleaded with her eyes. He nodded, just once, and there was a tremor to his cheek.
“Bethany, pet. You have just made me very, very proud of you. I can’t…I can’t say much more than that, aye? Look, no promises, but I’ll talk to the home, like, and see what they say. Jill…”
He was almost out of control, I realised. What Ellen had done to his elder daughter over the years had hurt, clearly, and there was the younger girl effectively depriving herself of a teenager’s dream debauch, all for the love of her sister. Von stepped in.
“Always possible my baby could be home, innit? He could drive the girls… oh hell, one advantage of having a gay son, see, is you can trust him taking drunk girls home!”
That broke the mood nicely. Ian was back to himself at that.
“Well, I would be there to drive as well, like, just to make sure my daughters get home”
Von pouted. Ye gods, this was definitely once more the woman I had first met.
“What about me, then? Don’t you drive me home?”
Ian chuckled. “You trust me to drive you home?”
“Don’t trust you at all, but you can still drive me home!”
It was a good job none of us were drinking.
Once more I lay with the love of my life in the darkness of our bedroom, the house now empty apart from us and our thoughts. Karen and Terry had been touched, almost beyond words in her case, and John…I am sure he was crying down the telephone.
Little girls dream, even when everyone tells them they aren’t little girls and never will be. I had dreamt, and prayed, to everything from Jesus to random stars, and the answer lay next to me, breathing softly in her sleep.
In the morning, I would book the flights.
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Comments
Lucky are they ...
that fulfill their dreams be they ever so fanciful, be it ever so late.
Such as Jill may be one who fulfills her dreams and that is a good thing. A good thing to be counted against the bad things.
Beautiful chapter Steph.
XZXX
Bev.
Thank you
It should be clear there is a LOT of back story to this. I need to know where my characters are coming from before I can take them somewhere else. I never was a little girl, even though that was exactly what I was. I learned stealth and lies, and that is not a good habit to get into. I do remember seeing my friend's eyes almost cross the first time I said to him "When I was a little girl"...
I don't care if I wore blue* for so many years. A girl I am, a girl I was.
*I actually like blue...today's skirt is blue.
retconned memories
I think we retcon our memories without necessarily trying to. I remember, a few years ago, being shocked to realize I had no experiential memory of being male. I was watching on TV as some guy who'd been in the wilderness for weeks was scratching at his beard, and thinking "Wouldn't that thing itch all the time?" I know I had a beard for years—it was part of my denial, since I couldn't be a woman if I had a beard, right? But I had no memory of what it felt like or of being in that situation. When I recall pre-transition events, I'm me as a woman or girl in them. This isn't something I set out to do, it just sort of backfilled on its own. So, "when I was a little girl" isn't so much a deliberate rewrite of the past, as an accurate reflection of how I relate to those memories now. I had wondered if this was something peculiar to transsexual histories, or me, and then I ran across this account on one of the bike blogs I read that suggests it applies to biking and languages, too. Brains are way funnier than we credit them, sometime.
I envy you your 'singularity'.
Hi Steph.
Despite all the hurts and tribulations you have encountered and faced, like all transgendered people, I still envy you your singularity of purpose. It endows you with consistancy.
Intergenderism afflicted me with a childhood ' flip-flop' duality that promoted inconsistancy and from that mental inconsistancy come uncertainty, defensiveness, real fear and consequently, (especially in my childhood,) downright lies. Oh yes, I certainly remember the lies! This because as my feelings changed, I felt forced to retract statements to the doctors (tormentors) and alter my own private feelings about myself when I felt things were going too far and to fast. It left me with a feeling of total helplessness insofar as I seemed to be constantly tossed about on a stormy sea with no certain direction and absolutely no datum point. No rock or anchor to hold on to.
To this day I live in a sort of world of laminations of constantly changing security or perhaps more correctly, insecurity, that leaves me frequently dissatisfied with my material lot. Strangely, that same gender insecurity has seemingly enabled me to adapt and survive a whole host of life situations ranging from threat and danger to sheer ecstacy and bliss. Emotionally, I see myself as a giant, (and hopefully), indestructable elastic band.
Bev.
Ian and Siobhan seem to have
Ian and Siobhan seem to have fallen into long term couple mode very quickly. I know he's a bit impulsive, but they're making plans months out on what is essentially a first date? Good luck to them!
Valley Commando...
I could simply fall back on that one, but, as usual, I will simply say "read on"
I suspect Valley Commando is
I suspect Valley Commando is a term that loses meaning as it crosses the Atlantic. All I conjure up is images of special forces working their way up valley floors, possibly while wearing nothing under their kilts.
As for the "read on" bit, no worries. I'm likely to read anything you post.
Thank you
I explained the term in a couple of stories, but it is a simple idea. Valley Commando is a girl who sets out to trap a soldier into marriage, on the basis that he will not only have a regular job but also a guaranteed house (married quarters). Classically, they hang about in clubs and pubs that are frequented by the army, they screw on a first 'date' and they try to get pregnant as quickly as possible. Think 'Officer and a Gentleman' but without either.
That all sounds brutally sexist, but times have been hard in the Valleys for a long time, It is survival, that's all. Similarly, young girls in another not so well off area see pregnancy, solo, as a way to get accommodation from the council. Prams are referred to as 'Thanet flat keys'. Life can be really shitty sometimes.
'“Dreams were all I had, pet.
'“Dreams were all I had, pet. Dreams and prayers, like. I think everyone like me must have that sort of thing in your life, hoping…you wake up one morning and it was all a bad dream. I had the same desires, wants, as every other little girl had…â€
I tailed off, looking round me at the racks of clothes, the shoe displays.
“Love, just doing this, today, this is so far beyond what I actually expected I could ever doâ€
I drew a slow breath. “No, I bloody well knew that I would never be able to do this. That was what was killing me. Never to be free, never to be allowed… I was just like any other girl, aye, watched the wedding, wanted to wear the dress, but all the other little ones got to be bridesmaids at least and me, I got nowt. They went in matching dresses and I got shorts, jacket and tieâ€
Another breath, and I realised I was angry. Bloody hormones; I felt like a comedy teenager, but in my case the shout of ‘it’s not FAIR’ would have been absolutely true. Another thought fought free from behind my rage.
“One thing, love, I should stress, aye? Wearing the dress, being the centre, oh aye, but never a man in the dream, never a oneâ€'
I dreamt those dreams too. Wont ever come true in my case baring some miracle, but I can live them through this story ...
Thanks, Steff.
Some days I have hope...
...and some days dreams are all I have. Thank you, Steph, for giving your characters life.
Love, Andrea Lena
White Horse, off Carnaby Street
Now that brings back memories. In the 90's a group of friends off the distinctly kinky end of the internet met in the upstairs room once a month and discussed forms of debauchery, hedonism, perversion and rugby scores, that make this whole lot look like vanilla Ice Cream!
Ell and Vons dad would have had an aneurism....
__
Estarriol
I used to be normal, but I found the cure....