---

 
Guilt was something I didn’t think was healthy, but which nevertheless seemed to have wormed its way into me. Part of my guilt was due to failure to conform.

Growing up in Nebraska, everyone tried desperately to conform. Well, apart from the goths and metal heads, but in their own ways they were even more conformist.

In my grade school years I worried about not respecting God enough. By the time I was a teenager and knew more about Japanese history and culture, I worried about respecting God too much. My parents, whatever their roots, grew up with a strong work ethic. Dad was the quintessential Jewish American trying to assimilate in whitebread middle-America, never wanting to appear Jewish, or different, despite his faith, but still undeniably out of place in a city where the vast majority of people looked like the ones you saw in Chevrolet commercials. He was cursed not only with a face that came straight from a caricature from early publications of Dickens, but with two children who seemed like they came from another continent entirely – the children of Hirohito. We never saw anything but love – after all, he certainly loved Mom – but as I got into my teens I became aware of his sense of estrangement from the environment we lived in. If it hadn’t been for his job, working in middle management for a division of General Mills, I’m sure we might have moved somewhere more cosmopolitan like New York or LA, but Nebraska was where his job was, and whatever else he was, my father was a man that shunned change. Stability and reliability were the keys to his life.

Mom’s big thing was self-respect. She disapproved of credit cards, designer logos on clothes, dyed hair on anyone under 40, tattoos, and plastic surgery. She and Susan fought bitterly during Susan’s early teens, when Susan bleached her hair (like most Asian hair before new dyes were invented some years later, it turned out kind of orange), but even Susan understood that, however much they might disagree, and however old fashioned she might have been, Mom conformed exactly to the old-skool definition of honor.

All of us Jones's knew that. You could make a mistake; that was okay. It was how you dealt with the mistake that was the measure of you. When I was kid she read me Hans Christian Anderson, A.A. Milne, Kenneth Grahame and Charles Schulz, and I always knew who the good guys and the bad guys were, but just from the way she read certain phrases I also knew who the smart guys were and who the fools were. The Shmucks, as her mother in law would have called the fools, though Mom, being a convert to Judaism rather than someone brought up with it, would never have used that term. She thought Yiddish was like swearing. Honor, making the right choices, not swearing: these were the things my Mom lived by.

As I came up the drive and opened the door of the rental car I knew they’d be the things I’d be measured by. Stability, and honor.

The money would be inconsequential.

I felt guilty even before the front door opened.

Dad opened the door. His eyes registered surprise, but reflexively he drew me to himself and hugged me. “Good to see you, Alex,“ he said, hugging me tighter than I remembered him ever doing. “It’s been a long time.”

“It’s good to see you too, Dad.” Suddenly I felt overwhelmed with emotion. I hung onto him for a few moments longer than I had ever done before, afraid that if we parted I would start crying. The physical affection surprised me. Dad and I had never displayed much emotion in front of one another before.

We parted, and he ushered me into the hall. I took my coat and hat off and hung them before turning around to face him again. Both of us caught one another sizing each other up, and eventually we both smiled, tentatively.

“Big year, huh?” Dad said.

“Very.” I said. “I’m glad to be here.”

The thing that caught me by surprise, again, was not how gentle he was being with me: it was how much older he looked. It had only been two years since I’d seen him last, but his hair was so silver now, almost white. And his face was so thin. My father was old, suddenly. How did I let this happen? Why wasn’t I around more?

“Your mother is going to want to have a word with you later.”

“I know that, Dad.”

“Well, come inside and fortify yourself with some food before we get to that. Your mother has been cooking for two days.”

Susan and Grandma Rousselot were already there, talking to one another, and Susan was blocking the door to the kitchen so I couldn’t see Mom at first.

Mom was straightening up from the oven when I came in. I saw a brief flash in her eyes as she first saw me, but then she smiled and we came together and hugged one another. Again, I was overcome with emotion.

I turned to hug my Grandma. During the hug, my defenses broke. I started crying, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Grandma led me to the kitchen table and sat me down, and stood behind me running one hand through my hair as she left the other reassuringly on my shoulder.

It took me a good five minutes to stop crying.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re apologizing for,” Grandma said.

Whatever misgivings my parents might have had about me, both of them were clearly happy to have their children back under their roof again. Mom was super animated over lunch. We talked about a hundred different subjects, from the neighbors (“still insane” my father said, of the ones next door to our North), to our extended family (“your mother’s side of the family has always been a bit whacky” said Dad) to politics (“I think Hillary Clinton has a screw loose,” said Dad), to science (“this genetic engineering thing will end in tears,” Dad said). Then Dad and Tom took to discussing sport, and Mom and Susan and I began to reminisce about kids we knew from High School and their families.

 

~o~O~o~
 

Susan and I were cleaning up in the kitchen. The radio on top of the refrigerator was on, playing hits and memories, which turned out, in this case, to be the Beatles Ticket to Ride, and Susan and I both sang along as she put food that could be saved into containers, and I loaded plates into the dishwasher. “She's got a ticket to ride, She's got a ticket to r-i-i-ide.“ We both became aware of Mom standing in the doorway to the dining room, watching us, and we stopped singing. “Snap,” she said, smiling.

I must have looked puzzled, but Susan got it, and put her hand on my shoulder. “Yeah,” she said to Mom, “It’s pretty uncanny, isn’t it? At first I was kind of aggravated … I mean, apart from just being mad at Alex for even thinking of doing it … but, you know, it’s kind of cool.”

“I know you’re talking about me, but what are you talking about?” I said to both of them.

“You both look so alike, now,” Mom said quietly.

“Uh, yeah,” I said guiltily.

Susan seemed to take that as a cue. “I’m just going to check on Tom and Dad.”

When she was gone Mom came into the room, closer to me. I stood against the kitchen bench. There was no escaping this. I had come to Lincoln knowing my parents would be shocked, and knowing there would be consequences, and I had been lucky, so far, that nobody had actually yelled at me. I recognized Susan’s “kind of cool” remark as a gesture of support, which meant she knew “the talk” was coming. So I steeled myself for some harsh words. I deserved them.

“Alex. Why?” was all Mom said.

There wasn’t an easy way to explain that. I didn’t understand the reason myself. I could tell her about Arun and blackjack and Henry and Louisiana and face recognition software and Dr. Morgan’s attempts to refine my features, but on the airplane on the way to Nebraska I had run this scene, and variations on it, through my head again and again and nothing I could say could really explain it. And yet I knew that Mom was going to want some answers.

When I failed to answer, she started to come up with her own explanations. “Are you gay? Is that it?”

“No, Mom. Yes. I don’t know. How do you define gay?”

She didn’t really have an answer for that one, and it stopped her for a few moments.

“Do you want to have a sex change?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

“You look like you have already had one.”

“That was a mistake, Mom.”

“That’s some mistake.”

We were both silent a few moments. I couldn’t meet her eyes. I felt like I was seven years old again, the time Ellen Lindstrom and I were caught shoplifting chocolate bars from the Hy-Vee and Mom reacted not with anger but with such a profound sense of disappointment that it was ten times heavier for me to bear than anger. Anger I could have deflected, because it’s a transitory emotion. But disappointment lingers. It can last for years.

When I was seven and had shoplifted I had felt like I had dug myself into a huge hole of disappointment and it would take years to get back out. But now I figured I was standing on the bottom of a canyon as we stood there in that kitchen.

“Susan told me about the gambling.”

“Susan told you?” I was shocked. Susan hadn’t ratted me out to Mom and Dad since I was nine. It was probably a measure of how much I had upset her, too, that she’d betrayed my secret. So much for the gesture of support. “What did she tell you?”

“That you were involved in some kind of criminal gambling operation. I don’t have to tell you, it has given your father and I a lot of sleepless nights. And then to learn that you’re turning into a woman.”

She began to cry. I began to cry.

“I’m not a criminal, Mom. I would never do anything illegal.”

“Do you need money?”

“Of course not! Mom, I have lots of money.”

“Illegal money.”

“No, legal money. Perfectly legal money. I haven’t broken any law.”

“So, why? Why did you do this to yourself?”

“Because I’m an idiot?”

“I’m not going to disagree with you, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

“I’m not going to disagree with me, either, Mom.” I gathered myself together. We looked at one another, both of us in tears. Eventually I realized there was no easy way to begin to make her understand, so I stood up and walked over to the bench to put some coffee on.

“If you’ve got time, I can tell you the whole story. It’s not a good story. I’m an idiot. I know.”

“Make three cups. I’m going to get your father. He deserves to hear this, too.”

“Okay, Mom.” I started to make the coffee, knowing it would be the most difficult conversation I would ever have. Or so I thought, at that time.

 

~o~O~o~
 

Considering what a fuckup I was, Mom and Dad took the story pretty well. As we sat around the kitchen table I didn’t try to defend myself, since I didn’t really understand, myself, how I’d let myself make such a mess of my life, and I was upfront with them about the fact that it was a mess. Because of that, I think, they took it better than they might have, and Mom’s first response, after I finished telling her what an idiot I was, was to try to console me.

“There are worse things in life, Alex. I’m not condoning any of what you’ve done. How could I?”

“I know, Mom.”

“But there are worse things. You could have been killed by those men that hurt your friend Henry … You could have been breaking the law. As it is, I think you’ve been very foolish, but there must be a way out of this, now. Ben?”

Throughout it all Dad was his usual stolid self. Now, prodded by my Mom, he nodded. “You know we love you, Alex. I’m not going to pretend to even understand anything you’ve said. I still don’t quite know how you first let yourself go back to that Casino dressed as a girl.”

I started to say something about feeling more comfortable in myself, now, but thought better of it. There were things that children can’t ever explain to their parents, and feelings like mine, then, are among those things.

“Surely there is a surgeon who can reverse what’s been done?” Dad said.

I thought back to the discussion Alice and I had had in Susan’s apartment. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I certainly didn’t want to bring the subject of female-to-male transsexualism up for discussion. I just shook my head, and then stared at the table.

My father reached across and took my hand. I was wound so tight I flinched when he touched me. He rubbed my hand reassuringly, then reached over and tilted my chin up so I was looking directly at him.

“As your mother said, there are worse things in life. You have your health, you have your brain, and a fine brain it is, and you have your family. You look like my daughter, it’s true …”

I was looking at the table again. Mom had her hand on Dad’s, on mine.

“If you had been in a car accident and disfigured, we would have a different kind of sorrow,” he continued. “This is strange. It’s strange because you brought it on yourself. I’m not going to pretend I’m at all happy about it. But we will get through this.”

There was a protracted silence while all of us tried to work out what to say next. I failed to think of anything that made sense, so it was Mom that spoke next. “Alex,” she said, more gently than before. “You have to help us understand what it is you want to do, but whatever you want, we will be here for you.”

I broke down, in tears. They were good to me. They were still angry, but I wasn’t going to lose them. It was reassuring, but if anything it increased my sense of guilt. The floodgates opened, and I cried, and cried, until I was heaving great wracking sobs. I couldn’t control myself. At some point – I was losing track of things – my father came around to my side of the table. He scooped me up, somewhat awkwardly, and carried me in his arms, like he had done when I was young, into the living room and laid me on the couch. When I could cry no more I fell asleep there, exhausted.

“I would have carried you upstairs to your room,” he told me later, “but I’m an old man now, and you may be small like your mother, but you’re not a child. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”

 

~o~O~o~
 

Despite the exhaustion of talking things through with Mom and Dad, I didn’t sleep well that night. I woke around two a.m. after a bad dream, one I hadn’t had since I was a kid. In it, I was lying on the road outside the house, and there were people standing along the road, and they were waiting for a train to come along, and run me over. The dream had never made any sense to me at all, not least because the train never ever arrived, and there were no railway tracks running down the middle of the road anywhere in Lincoln, but also because I could never figure out what in heck could ever have triggered it. It made no sense. It had been at least 18 years since the last time I'd had it, but as a kid I’d had the nightmare many times.

In the wake of the nightmare I understood some things more clearly. (Over the years I've come to believe that the psychic trauma that goes with waking from a nightmare can result in clearer thinking, but it’s not a path to enlightenment I can recommend). I understood that I could have a life, an authentic life like my parents, but it was going to be a life spent as a woman. The universe was telling me something. It had been telling me that one thing my entire life.

I realized that the background noise in my head, the one that had been bothering me, was just the universe talking to me. If almost everyone mistook me for a woman, and there was now nothing at all I could ever do about it, then I would be a woman. Because it turned out, it felt better. It felt more authentic. It wasn't only that, as my father had said, there were worse things in life. It was that for the first time the background buzz of discomfort seemed to have gone away.

I got up and shuffled off to the bathroom. As usual I was wearing only a big, oversize t-shirt, in this case an old Huskers shirt that came down almost to my knees. The neckline was so stretched out it almost fell off one shoulder. I had been aware, in the past months, that Pete got a little distracted when he saw me wearing it, but I hadn’t really given much thought to why, until I almost literally bumped into Mom on the landing outside the bathroom as I exited.

“You couldn’t sleep either?” she said.

“I just had to use the bathroom. But no, couldn’t sleep. Bad dream.”

Even in my somewhat befuddled state I became aware that she was looking at my chest. My nipples were fully erect in the cold night air, and were proudly announcing to my mother that her son had breasts. Not very large ones, to be sure, actually just little bumps, but not artificial ones either. Embarrassed, I put my hands up to cover them, and then she laughed.

“What are you laughing at?” I said crossly.

“You have so much to learn, Alex. So much.”

She bent to hug me. I was aware, for the first time, how much frailer she was becoming. She was only fifty, but she’d lost a little of her spring since the last time I had visited. I hugged her back.

“Will a cup of tea keep you awake or help you get back to sleep?” She asked me.

“No idea,” I said. “But I’d like a chance to talk some more, if it’s okay.”

I went and got a robe, and then Mom led the way downstairs, and we quietly made tea and sat at the kitchen table together.

We sat and talked in a way we hadn’t done since I was in my early teens. By high school I’d entered that moody depressed phase that I kept up right until I went to college (maybe longer). But when I was a kid we would sit together and discuss all sorts of things. Up until that point, she was pretty much my closest confidante, and purveyor of wisdom in response to a million stupid questions from me.

I sensed that I was going to get another lecture from her, but she was surprisingly supportive. She reminisced about my behavior as a child, and the way that I had behaved “not like the other boys.“ When I apologized, she shushed me, and told me that she and Dad had actually been proud of me for that. “We never had to teach you not to bully people, or not to break things, or to keep yourself clean.“

“God, Mom, you make me seem like a total goody-goody.“

She smiled. “No, you were too contrary for that. You never did take advice. Always had to figure things out for yourself.“

“Touché.“

“It’s okay, I can never stop offering advice anyway. You need to work on your self-respect more.“

“Another of my many failures,“ I joked.

“Stop it. Alex, everything will be fine. There's only one thing I really want you to promise me off the back of this misadventure.“

“What is it? You name it.“

“You think you could call your poor old mother from time to time? I noticed you have a cellphone. You don’t think you could use it more often?“

“Of course,“ I said. “Of course. I’ll call you all the time.“

“Once a week will be fine. And any other time you're feeling down.“

She made me feel guilty again. Mom might have had to convert to Judaism to marry Dad, but she had the Jewish mother thing down, solid.

“And Alex?“

“Yes, mom?“

“You need to learn a few things about modesty, and being a woman.“

“Say what?“

“You need to make sure you cross your legs when you sit like that.“

Mom could still embarrass me, too. Do parents get better at that as you get older? Mine did.

 

~o~O~o~
 

Nostalgia is a terrible thing. Susan and I decided we had to take a look at the old neighborhood, which of course also meant our old school. Tom tagged along with the two of us, I guess partly out of curiosity about Susan’s past and partly to escape my Dad, who had exhausted his anecdotes about life at General Mills and was on to politics again. In Susan’s case our tour didn’t bring back terrible memories, but it did for me. We stood by the school fence a while, then entered the grounds and walked around the buildings. There was the doorway where Bob Gatenby had knocked one of my teeth out. My gum ached even thinking about it now. There was the science block, where Johnny Domke had blown the windows out one day in a disastrous prank and given three kids permanent hearing loss. And there were the bleachers where Kelly Gatzemeyer and Anne Sorenson had mocked me so cruelly, setting the stage for three years of torment.

Susan had a different set of memories, of boys she’d had crushes on and others she’d disappointed (I bet Tom thought that was fascinating), and of the successful attempt she and some friends made to stage a takeover of the student council.

We reminisced briefly about some of the more horrible teachers we’d had, and turned to head back to the car. As we walked back out onto the street we were hailed by a voice from a passing car. Neither of us heard what was said, but the car slowed, did a U-Turn and came back. I thought it looked familiar, but couldn’t place it. We were standing beside Mom’s Honda by that point, and the driver of the car pulled up directly behind. As he got out I realized it was John Ostermeyer.

“Susan?” he said, to both of us.

“Hi. John, right?” Susan said.

“Yeah, hi.” He seemed confused looking at two Susans, but he continued talking to her. “How are you? Are you just back home for Thanksgiving?”

“Yes. You?”

“Same. Uh …” He was clearly waiting for Susan to introduce me and Tom. “Um … I didn’t know you had a sister. I thought there was just you and Alex.”

“Hi John,” I said quietly.

He stood perplexed for a few moments. His face moved in a few odd directions before eventually settling in an uncertain grin.

“Alex?”

“Yes. How are you?”

“I’m good. I’m good. Wow, this is, um, a surprise.”

“You think?”

He laughed. “Well, maybe not a complete surprise. I mean … Well, yeah, it’s a surprise. I wasn’t expecting this when I noticed Susan coming out of the gate there.”

“Oh, by the way,” I said pointedly, “this is Tom O'Donnell, Susan’s boyfriend.”

John and Tom said their hellos, but it was pretty perfunctory. John was clearly fascinated by me.

“So, um, is it still Alex? Your name, I mean.”

“Yes. Alexandra. But, you know, wow … Alex. What are you doing here?”

“Same as you, I suspect. Visiting old haunts. I haven’t been back home for a few years. Say, you guys want to go grab a coffee or something?” He looked at his watch. “We could grab a drink if you want.”

Susan begged off, but I was oddly compelled. It felt a little like I was cheating on Pete, but then he and I weren’t a couple. Were we? No. No way. And it was just a drink with an old friend. John promised to drop me back home after we’d had a drink, and I got into his Dad’s old Ford station wagon. I remembered it from the time we’d borrowed it to go camping, and countless aimless cruising around Lincoln when John had his license and I didn't. We drove to a Starbucks outside a mall that hadn’t existed the last time I lived in Lincoln, and did the Starbucks shuffle to get our coffees. While we were in the car, and in the line, I was aware of John trying to check me out. From another guy it would have seemed skeezy, but I had fond memories of John and could hardly blame him in the circumstances.

“So, what you doin’?” I asked, when we found a table.

“PhD at Berkeley,” he said.

“In?”

“Oh, Astronomy. Same old.”

“Aren’t you a little, um, young to be in a PhD program already? How’s it going?”

“It’s a good school, I have a good advisor, I did a lot of summer schools, they like my work. Enough with the me, I got to say, Alexandra, what about you? Seems like some big changes.”

I blushed. Nobody had ever called me Alexandra except a guy at a Hertz office when I was using my ‘Alexandra Jones’ drivers license, and that one time Pete was ribbing me about my driver's license.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Did you always know this?” Like, that time when we …” I knew what he was alluding to.

“Uh … no.”

“Well, you look … fantastic. Really. Congratulations.”

I thought congratulations was kind of an odd thing to say, but it was nice of him all the same. John had always been a nice guy. When nobody else would defend me, he had been the one to pick me up and dust me off and reassure me. While the rest of the school was taunting me about being a fag, he’d put his own reputation at risk by going out of his way to be seen with me. People didn’t call him ‘gay’ for doing it, but it didn’t help his social standing. He wasn’t a demonstrative guy, but like Pete, he had a solid core. He stood for things he believed in, and if you didn’t like those things, then the hell with you. The two of us became inseparable: when he took three days off to go to the funeral of his grandmother in New York I refused to go to school at all.

John had grown up to be quite the charmer. At school he had been modestly good looking, popular enough with the girls but not part of the A-team sports-obsessed dickheads that ruled the social calendar. But seven years had been good to him. His face had filled out a little and he didn’t talk as fast as he did when we were at school.

“So what about you? What are you doing?” he asked.

I really didn’t want to tell him about Vegas so guiltily I used the standard cover story everyone in our team used, that I worked for a startup that did research on probability models and their application for finance modeling. It wasn’t exactly a lie. But I didn’t want to dwell on it.

I had feared, as we drove to the Starbucks, that I might have made a mistake, that perhaps all John wanted to talk about was my apparent sex change, but instead the two of us talked about his work, and about life in California versus Massachusetts versus Nebraska, and about how we’d both fared at college. At that point I did reveal that I’d had a lot of problems adjusting at Harvard and had had a breakdown, and John was oddly solicitous, even apologetic. We had planned, when we were at school together, to go to college together, too, but even though we’d both applied to the same schools we’d received different offers. I remember the day I showed him the scholarship offer from Harvard. We’d both applied, but somehow, for reasons neither of us understood, they’d made me an offer of a scholarship and not him, even though our grades were almost the same. Stanford had made us both an offer. And Stanford was at least as good a school, probably better for Math and Engineering. I had felt guilty, as though I was letting John down, and I tried to convince Mom and Dad that Stanford was the right place for me, too, but no way were my parents going to let me turn down a scholarship to Harvard, so the deal was done. There was no reason he should feel guilty about it – given the way my parents felt, there was nothing he could have done to keep us together. As it was, though, the disappointment we both felt about being separated had the perverse effect of driving us further apart. Aside from a couple of awkward emails in the first two months neither of us had stayed in touch.

I reflected that if we had gone to college together, I probably wouldn’t have had that melt down. And if I hadn’t had the melt down, I wouldn’t have been in such horrendous debt, and then I mightn’t have considered the offer from Arun, and … No – that was nonsense. I took Arun’s offer because I was in love with Alice, and because I thought it was a challenge.

“So,” I said, anxious to get out of my head, “Any significant partnerships? You’re not married or anything?”

He laughed. “It’s hard to be an astronomer and have a long-term relationship. Too many odd hours. Too much travelling to get telescope time. Also, just too much work. There have been a few girls, but …” He shrugged. “What about you?”

“No, I put too much work in, too. I burned up quite a few friendships that way. I’ve learned, you know. You have to find a balance. There’s been a guy, but um …” I made a hand gesture to indicate things falling apart. I thought about Pete, and the night we’d been together. God, if only I hadn’t fucked that up so badly.

“So you like guys now?”

I shrugged. John had the grace to laugh.

John and I talked, and talked, until the afternoon sun had tinted everything gold.

We finished our coffee, and John acknowledged he hadn’t really finished his tour of the town yet. I admitted all Susan and I had really seen were the houses of her old school friends and the school. So we got back into the old Ford and drove slowly around town, noticing the things that had changed. There was a kind of counter-culture café where the comic book store used to be, and a new mall, and everything looked smaller than we remembered it, but the essence of Lincoln hadn’t changed much. Downtown was still pretty much as it had been a decade earlier. It seemed like a few buildings had been cleaned up in The Haymarket.

It was dark by the time we’d seen most of it. “You have to get back for dinner?” John asked.

“I said I would. What about you?”

“I probably should. Mom’s been pretty sick these past three years, and I don’t get back much. I’d really like to keep talking with you, though. When are you going back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Ah. Rats. Oh well.” He began driving me back to Mom and Dad’s. Funny how I had stopped thinking about their place as ‘home’. Home was in Cambridge, with Pete.

We arrived back at the house. “Hey, Alex,” John said, turning to me. “Would you, uh, would you like to have a drink later tonight, after dinner?”

“Is anywhere open?”

He laughed. “Okay, it’s not Boston or San Francisco, but I’m sure we can find something.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Pick you up at nine?”

I looked at my watch. It was just on six. Pretty much everything in Lincoln closes at eleven pm, except for O’Rourke’s, but I didn’t think I wanted to go to O’Rourke’s. Two hours was enough time for us to catch up, and not long enough for it to get awkward. “Okay. Thanks.”

I was about to get out of the car, when John said “Alex?”

I turned back. “Yes”

“It’s good to see you, it really is. And, um, I’m really glad for you.”

I blushed again. “See you at nine. Don’t be late.”

I got out and went up the steps to the door. John waited until I’d opened the door before driving away.

 

~o~O~o~
 

John showed up promptly at nine, and came to the door. I was upstairs putting a little makeup on, on the principle that nothing could startle my parents any more, and I wanted to look as unambiguously female as I could in front of John. It was freezing outside and I was going to be swaddled in a huge coat, but I’d dressed less casually than I had been earlier that afternoon, in a red v-neck sweater that showed off what little cleavage I had (assisted by a heavily padded bra), a black full skirt and boots, and a silver and black floral-patterned scarf to prevent my new cleavage from getting frostbitten.

My dad answered the door, and seemed delighted to see John. Much backslapping and reminiscing ensued. I could hear my Dad all the way up in my room. It went on for at least five minutes, to the point that I became embarrassed, so I raced down the stairs as carefully as I could in the 3 inch heels on my boots, and attempted to rescue John.

John actually seemed greatly amused by the whole experience, but didn’t resist when I grabbed him by the hand, waved bye to everyone in the living room, and practically pushed him outside. “Go!” I said. “Go now, or you’re done for!”

He laughed, and then, solicitously, took my hand and led me along the path to his car, the old Ford he’d been driving earlier in the day. “Careful in those heels, Alex. You’d think a Lincoln girl like you would know better than to wear heels like that on pavement in this weather. It’s going to snow tonight for sure.”

“So take me somewhere where there’s no snow.”

We got in the car and he started he engine. “I’m out of touch with the scene here now,” John said as he began driving, “so I wasn’t sure where we should go.”

I laughed. “When were we ever ‘in touch with the scene’?” It was true. Both of us had been underage when we’d left Lincoln, so we had next to no experience in any bars. I remember being with John once in Cliff’s when he’d tried to use a fake ID to buy us both drinks, but the waitress had smiled and put paid to any ambitions we had of being taken for grownups.

But now we were. True to John’s prediction, it began snowing as we were driving, the flakes settling down on the car and melting immediately. I was reminded of another time we’d been driving through the snow, again in the same Ford station wagon, after a party we’d been to in our senior year. Going to the party had been a mistake for me, I had made the fatal error of stepping out onto the back porch to get some air after a particularly depressing conversation with Lisa Hemphill, my ex girlfriend from two years before. She and I had more or less remained friends, in the sense that she was pleasant enough whenever we saw one another alone, but I discovered at the party that it didn’t mean she wanted to be seen talking to me all that much, at least not in front of some of the more popular girls. It wasn’t that she was shunning me that upset me, it was that I had always held a higher opinion of Lisa. She was clever, and funny, and usually kind and generous, but somehow social climbing seemed to have become important to her. I remembered the sting of her brush-off that night.

So that night I had stepped on to the back porch of the house – I couldn’t even remember any more whose house the party had been at – and there was light snow falling. I wasn’t dressed for the cold, since my coat was inside somewhere, but the fresh air sobered me up, and the way the snow was gently falling was pretty, settling on the trees for a few moments before melting. I stood out there for a good fifteen minutes, until the snow had stopped melting and was beginning to turn everything white, and I was freezing. As I was thinking about going back in Bob Gatenby and three other guys came outside, I think to smoke some weed, and they noticed me immediately and started their usual ridicule. As the taunts got worse I decided to just walk away rather than respond, and I tried to get past them to go back inside, but instead two of Bob’s football team friends had stopped me. Then they held me while Bob had held my head back and mimed sticking his dick in my mouth. I was terrified, as he was doing it, that he was going to stop miming and actually try to make me do it, but apparently it was only intended as a joke. Some joke.

Of course nobody else had seen it happen, because nobody else was foolish enough to be outside on the porch in December in Nebraska, but as I came back into the house I went looking for my coat, and John had seen me with tears streaming down my face, and he had taken me aside, into one of the bedrooms off the hallway, and put his arm around me and asked me, gently, what was wrong, and all I had been able to do was cry, great wracking heaving sobs. I was as mortified by the fact that I was crying, and couldn’t stop, as I was by what had happened.

John led me through the crowded hallway out of the party. He drove me home in his Dad’s car, and I remember as we drove then the snow settled on the windscreen and the window sills like it was doing now. It was almost as though we’d rewound those years, and were still in highschool. Except for the way I was dressed. I looked across at John now, and wondered whether he remembered that night the way I did. Possibly not. It had been traumatic for me, but only mildly inconvenient for him. Now here he was, a grown man, slightly bigger, certainly more self-assured, even good looking.

He noticed me looking at him. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“I was wondering what ever happened to Bob Gatenby.”

“Made second string for the Huskers, but he never went on to pro football. Ruined his knee I think. I haven’t seen him, but I heard he’s doing okay. Marie Chaney said he works selling cars somewhere around here. What on earth made you think about him?”

“I don’t know. Coming home does strange things to my brain, I guess.”

John decided we should go to some place called Rogue’s Gallery, which didn’t sound all that promising but then wasn’t likely to be full of frat boys like Main Street. The decor was a little cheesy, and so was the drinks menu, with lots of specialty cocktails, but in its favor it wasn’t crowded, and it wasn’t too noisy, so that we could sit and talk. John was the perfect gentleman and took my coat as we entered, then held my chair for me while I sat down.

I ordered a straight Martini and John got a malt whisky, both of which seemed to disappoint the waitress, who was trying to push some infused vodka onto us instead.

“Sorry to hear about your Mom,” I said in the interval while we were waiting for the drinks to arrive. “Is it serious?”

“Unfortunately yes. Multiple Sclerosis. It’s going to take some time. It’s hardest on Dad.”

“I’m very sorry, John. I like your Mom. She was always really good to me.”

“She likes you, you know. I mentioned to her this evening that I’d seen you again, and she wanted me to bring you over to say hi.”

“Did you …” I waved my hand over my body to reinforce the way I looked.

“No.”

“Good!”

“Why good? I don’t think she’d mind. I think she’d probably react the same way I did.”

I had to admit, I was surprised how easily John accepted me as female, especially given the length of time he’d known me. Maybe it helped that I wasn’t going by a different name, although in some ways that should have made it harder, should have reminded him of the old me more often.

We talked about his Mom’s illness, and the prospects for treatment, and that segued into a more general discussion about how weird it is to realize suddenly how mortal and frail your own parents are, and I mentioned to John that I’d noticed a bit of frailty in my own Mom.

Then our drinks arrived. John proposed a toast: “To the prodigals.” I drank to that. My parents had certainly welcomed me back despite a multitude of sins.

I noticed John was stealing glances at my cleavage, so I adjusted my scarf, which I’d draped loosely over my shoulders, to cover up a little more. I was enjoying the attention, but I was also self-conscious.

We had another round of drinks, and our conversation moved on to people we’d known from school. I hadn’t kept in touch with anyone, but John had stayed in touch with three of the girls from our year, two of whom were already married and had babies and a third who’d gone to work as an assistant to a rock star. The rock star had been three years ahead of us at school. And he'd stayed in contact with both Carl Choi and Hal Donovan, my friends from elementary school. Carl was also at Berkeley, teaching math, John said he had blossomed well beyond the Asperger's stereotype we had all associated him with at school. John's friend Jim Brauch was still his best friend, even though they lived on opposite sides of the Bay Bridge. I remembered Jim with some fondness. He hadn't been my actual defender, in high school, but he'd occasionally functioned as a kind of surrogate deterrent when John wasn't available.

I took a short break to go to the ladies room. While I was inside I took stock of the evening. I was really enjoying John’s company again, but there was an added dimension to our relationship now. On the one hand it was great to catch up, and it was almost as though the two of us had never parted. The kindness and strength of character he’d had in high school was still very much in evidence that night. But on the other hand something very big had changed between us, and that was me. Not just the way he saw me, but also the way I saw him. I wasn’t sure whether it was the hormones messing with my head, but I had to admit to myself that I had a pleasant little buzz going on whenever he was talking to me, and it wasn’t just two martinis or the fact that it was easy to distract him with a glimpse of the little cleavage I had. I wished I wasn’t headed back to Boston the next day. I liked John. I’d always liked John. Now I wanted him to like me, but in a new way. It wasn’t something I’d had much practice at.

Back at our table John asked whether I’d like a final drink. The bar would be closing in another half hour. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but he promised me he would be sticking to a straight soda, so there was no problem on the driving front, and it was up to me. I decided to let the cocktail waitress have her little moment of glory and sell me one of those infused vodkas she’d been peddling, and for some reason that made her insanely happy and she came back with the drink faster than I’d have thought possible.

“Alex?” John asked, after a brief lull in the conversation. “I promised myself before we came out tonight that I would try not to bring any of this up, because I got the sense earlier that it bugs you. So, um, sorry in advance, I guess. But I have to say how impressed I am with what you’ve done.”

“Impressed?”

“It has to have taken a lot of courage.”

I laughed softly. If only he really knew. “Actually, John, it was more like a series of accidents. I know where I am now, and it’s good, but I didn’t start out with a definite plan.”

He reached across the table and took my hand. “Well, I’m impressed anyway. You look fantastic, you seem happy, everything seems to have worked out for you brilliantly. I remember all the good times we had together when we were at school, but I look at you now and I know that’s you, but I’m also amazed how much it’s not you. Congratulations.”

“Well, congratulations yourself, Mr. PhD.” I changed the subject back to his work. John told me about the research he was doing for his dissertation, which was something to do with Exoplanets and the means for detecting them. The first one had been found in our first year at college, and there were new ones being found every couple of months. John didn’t hold out any hope that he’d be one of the people to find one, but he thought the method he was proposing to use to find them was good original research, and apparently his advisor did, too, because the future was looking bright. It was great to see him so enthused about his work, and he clearly enjoyed the opportunity to explain it to me. I knew enough Physics and math to be able to understand almost all of it, so that probably helped.

Soon enough it was closing time. I wrapped myself back up in my scarf and John helped me with my coat, and we ventured out into the cold. It was still snowing, but there was a bitter wind accompanying the snow and it cut right through us as soon as we stepped out.

John opened the car door for me, and we drove home in relative silence. The snow was heavier, maybe tending to sleet now. As we drove through old neighborhoods I had more flashbacks to my teenage years. It hadn’t all been horrible. John and I had had some good times. Unfortunately most of the memories that were coming back to me that night were of the sadder type.

“I don’t think Vodka’s my drink,” I said to John.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. But I think it makes me a bit maudlin.”

We arrived back at my house. All the lights were out except for the one on the front porch and the one in the entry hall. I asked John if he wanted to come in for a coffee, and he said yes. He turned the car off, and got out and came around to my side in the time it took me to find my purse on the floor of the car and stick my cellphone and a lipstick back in it where they had fallen out. John opened the door for me and offered his hand to help me out of the car. As we were walking from the car to the house I slipped in my heels on some ice that had already formed on the sidewalk, and quick as a flash John had his arm around me to catch my fall.

“I told you those heels were dangerous” he said, looking down at me. I became aware, held in his arms and looking up at him, of just how much smaller I was than him. He wasn’t as tall as Pete, but I could feel the strength in his arms as he held me. He pulled me up, slightly, but my boots still didn’t have traction. I threw my arms around his neck and almost brought both of us down. I imagine it was like watching a Buster Keaton sketch. I giggled, and he laughed, and then he pulled me tightly to him and our faces were very close together and he bent down and kissed me, gently. I kept my arms around him, and kissed him back. He tasted different than I had imagined. There were hints of the whiskey he’d drunk earlier in the night, but also something masculine and tangy. I liked it. I could feel the light stubble on his face rubbing against my lips, but it didn’t feel unpleasant in the way I had imagined it might.

We separated. “John, I could stand here for a long time doing this, except I think the two of us would freeze to death. Come inside and I’ll warm us up.”

I made coffee, and took it into the living room, where John was looking at the family photographs on the mantel. Oh god, I thought, and I set the coffee down and went over to him. He was holding a photograph of Susan and I from when I was thirteen.

“Please don’t look at that,” I said. I was suddenly self conscious about the way I looked. After the kiss we had just shared, I wanted John to forget I had ever been a boy.

“It’s alright Alex,” he said, putting the photo down and touching his hand to my face. “You don’t have anything to regret any more, do you?”

“I think everyone always has things to regret, John,” I said. I led him over to the couch. I wanted him to kiss me again, but I was also a little scared of it, so I sat slightly apart from him as I poured cream into the coffees.

“Well, I don’t think you have too much. Certainly not now.”

“I think I regret that third drink,” I said, smiling.

He reached over to touch my hand. “I’m sorry, Alex, that I didn’t know about this when you were younger.”

“Don’t be. I didn’t know about this when I was younger, either. And you were always the perfect gentleman, and the perfect friend.”

“So when did you know?”

“For sure? Only a few months ago.”

“This has all happened in only a few months?” He seemed shocked.

“No, no, of course not. It all happened over a couple of years. I just wasn’t really, um, committed until recently. I had a lot of stuff to work out. And this weekend, actually, has really helped. Seeing my folks, seeing you.”

“So … I need to ask a prurient question, Alex.”

“You mean have I had surgery, right?” I said gently.

“Uh … yes.” He was embarrassed.

“Not that kind of surgery. Not yet.”

“Oh.“ He paused for several seconds. “Are you going to?”

I thought about his question. There was vodka in my response, but there was truth, too.

“John, if you’d asked me that this time last year I would have said no. Asking me now, hell yes.” I drank some of my coffee, if only to give myself an excuse to break eye contact. “Damn, please don’t think I’m a slut or anything, but if I’d had the surgery already I’d have figured out some way to get you into that little single bed upstairs by now.

“Wait,” I continued, “God that came out wrong. I mean, sorry, I’m not assuming you would automatically want to sleep with me or anything. Sorry. God, I’m an idiot.”

He touched my face. “You’re anything but an idiot, Alex. You’re beautiful and smart and god knows you’re one of the sexiest women I know. I always knew something like this would happen.”

“Me asking you to go to bed?” I asked, mystified.

“No.” He laughed. “God, Alex, for the smartest woman I know you say the dumbest things sometimes. I meant I knew something like this” – he made a motion to indicate the way I looked – “would happen.”

“You did?” I was befuddled. “I didn’t.”

“Self-awareness was never your strong suit.” He pulled me closer, and kissed me again. This time I think we both tasted of coffee. It was a longer kiss, this time. Longer and deeper and more intense, and I enjoyed it more than any kiss I’d ever had except possibly that time with Pete.

Eventually we separated. “Alex, will you think less of me if I go now?”

“I could never think less of you,” I said. “Wait. God, that’s a terrible thing to say. That’s not what I meant. Never ever give me vodka again, John Ostermeyer.”

He laughed. “I think it makes you funny.”

“Funny like an idiot. Of course I won’t think less of you, John.” I took his hand and stood up. He was still seated on the couch.

“Alex?” he said. “Alexandra Jones?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you live on the wrong coast?”

“What?”

“Will you keep in touch this time?”

“Yes,” I said. “I promise if you promise.”

“I’d like to know what’s going on.”

“I have to warn you, I don’t always know what’s going on.”

“When are you, uh … when you are going to have the surgery … will you tell me?”

“Um. Okay. Can I ask why?”

“I would like to know. You know we were always close, Alex. And I still think you are wonderful. Hopefully I can see you more often.”

“You'll need to come to Boston.”

“Come to San Francisco.”

“Good night, John.”

“Good night, Alexandra.”

I walked him to the door. We kissed again, once more. He did something to me way down in the core of me when he held me. I didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t melting, exactly. It was more of a softness inside me, a feeling that demanded more of his touch, more of his attention, more of his energy.

“Please call me,” I whispered.

“I will. I promise,” he said. Then he was out the door. I watched him walk down the path through the snow, then drive his Dad’s old station wagon away.

It had been a long six years.

I went to bed, more sexually frustrated than I had ever been in my life. But jerking off wasn’t going to help – the hormones had already seen to that. In any case, that wasn’t the sexual release I was looking for. I think I wanted more kisses, more holding. More of something else I didn't yet know anything about.

 

~o~O~o~