The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2245 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

The two recent additions to the female part of the family were miffed they hadn’t been able to go swimming, but I didn’t think it would help them or the other pool users to soak in a large pool of chlorinated soup. I wasn’t sure how healed they were and in return, I didn’t want them washing any bugs into the water. In the end Danni went to watch the others, and Stella would ensure that was all she did. Sammi, on the other hand stayed at home and decluttered my computer. It was getting slower but after she finished, it went like new again.

She really knows her stuff with computers but I suspect she might be even more naíve than I am, especially when it comes to boys. It might seem strange to some that having lived as boys, male to female transsexuals, are all at sea when it comes to dealing with boys as sexual partners or even friends of the opposite sex. It’s fraught with all sorts of problems.

I left the little ones in the capable hands of Mima assisted by Jacquie, they all seemed to be having fun. I went upstairs to change having splashed soup all down my top when Cate pinched me on the bum while I was eating it. Exiting my bedroom having donned a clean shirt I heard what I thought was Sammi crying. I crept up to her bedroom and sure enough she was lying on the bed sobbing.

I tapped on her door and entered. She sat up with a start, her makeup all a mess and her hair far from the usually tidy arrangement. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“I see, so you just felt like having a bawl?”

“Yeah, something like that,” she sniffed completely missing my pun. Even Trish does some of the time, so a mind as sharp as a razor, doesn’t always pick up the play on words that puns are.

“Care to share it?” I asked plonking myself down alongside her.

“Not really,” was her rejoinder.

Oh, that surprised me. “Not regretting the surgery, are you?”

“What?” she gasped, “No, that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I was disappointed again, I thought moving in with us was the best thing, but then what do I know? “Good, I’m glad–it gets a bit difficult to reverse.”

“Good. No after coming to live here as I felt I was intended to, the surgery has been a great confirmation of who I see myself to be.”

“What–a fanny?”

“Eh?”

“I think you need to rethink what you just said, I think you meant to say how you feel yourself to be, unless you’re gang a’ Scots on us?”

She paused and thought about what I’d said. “Yeah, okay. I’m a woman with a fanny.”

“Yes, and having one doesn’t make you a woman but it’s a damn sight easier if you have one.”

“Yeah,” she smirked.

“Now, what upset you?”

“Nothing.”

“You said that before and I didn’t believe you–nothing has changed–I didn’t come down in the last fall of snow.”

She had to think about that as well. What do they teach these kids in school and university? They’re academically clever but they can’t hold a conversation.

“Okay. I’ve been dumped.”

I looked at her. “Dumped?”

“Yeah, seems like the man I thought was going to make me his wife has found someone who grew their own fanny. So that makes me a boy with tits and gash between my legs.”

She burst into tears and cried on my shoulder. “It doesn’t make you any less a woman, but in my eyes it makes him less a man. If he had any guts he’d have come and told you in person, I take it he didn’t?”

“Sent me a text, the bastard,” she blurted over my shoulder. It seems people don’t do ‘Dear John’ letters now, they send texts. Sometimes I really fear for the future of the human race. We have a generation or more of people whose education is worse than mine was, their general knowledge is appalling, their manners are non-existent, they have no idea of the value of money and they feel they have no hope for the future. Add to this the fact that they can’t be away from each other without constant texting or sending stupid and often pornographic selfies, have no common sense or moral stamina, and you see why I worry.

My generation is failing our children just as the one before did and before that. Philip Larkin was absolutely right, ‘they do fuck you up.’* I try my best to help my kids but I suspect I’m not making a very good job of it.

I held her while she cried. “Perhaps you deserve someone better.”

“There isn’t going to be anyone better, is there. As soon as they find out what I am, they run away as fast as they can.”

“That’s what I thought would happen to me, that I’d eventually correct my body to match my mind and I’d live in a sterile celebration of how unaccepting people were of transwomen or men. I was wrong. Daddy came along and the rest is history. If I can do it, I’m sure a pretty thing like you will be able to with one hand tied behind your back.”

“Ha ha, some chance. I’m a chimera compared to you, you really are a woman, Mummy, and you and Daddy were made for each other.”

“Sweetheart, when I met Simon I was absolutely terrified of him. I knew nothing about him, only that he had a homicidal sister whose driving was lethal, but who was unperturbed by my transitional state.”

“What?”

“You haven’t heard the story of how we met, Stella, Simon and I?”

“I know she knocked you off a bike or something.”

“Oh, it’s a bit more complicated than that...” I related my first encounters with Stella and Simon.

“You landed on top of him?”

“Yes, my heel caught in my skirt and I tripped up and landed on top of him throwing red wine all over him.”

She laughed, “That is so funny, Mummy. You literally fell for each other.”

“Literally perhaps, in relationship terms I wasn’t at all sure about him, plus I hadn’t let slip my little secret. Stella told me to keep quiet about it until it became obvious we were going somewhere together.”

“That makes sense, perhaps I told shithead too early?”

“You might have done, but then it gets progressively harder as the relationship develops and they find out you’re not what you purport to be. It can get messy and even violent then. Loads of transwomen get beaten up or killed every year.”

“Yeah, I know, Mummy, but so do lots of biological women.”

“Well said, now you’re sounding like a woman–not some sort of hybrid you mentioned before.”

“Well that’s what I feel like–I’m a woman. Yeah, I’m a woman, I don’t need some stupid dork to shag me just to prove that. Do I?”

“Sweetheart, welcome to feminism and real womanhood.” We hugged and she thanked me. “Now go and take a good look in the mirror–and laugh.”

She got up peered into the mirror of her dressing table, “Oh my god,” she gasped, then a moment later she laughed before washing it off and reapplying it.

- https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/64716.Philip_Larkin