What Comes Next…

We all wonder that when we finally take those first forays out of the closet. When we finally do the do or die part of transition and have nothing left to loose and take that one big step. That one huge step.

I did…I did tonight with me actually getting past my old life and my old relationship and the carnage that it wreaked on my soul and after what felt like a lifetime I finally screwed up every little bit of courage that I had and I went out of a date.

Janey met Jamie.

Hi I’m Janey.

And Jaimie is this extraordinary woman that was able to look beyond all of the flak and the bullshit between sexuality and gender and the stuff that people seem to almost need to make hard. Too hard really.

She’s like one of those new style pin-up girl like you used to see with the old school dress and haircut and then she’s got these really great tattoos and I have none I’ve never really liked them enough for me and I think it’s because tattoos are so personal and I wasn’t seeing myself as a real person for so long.

But on her they work, on her they work along with those boots.

Punk and not? I loved punk but I was never personally brave enough for it instead I dropped myself into the guy heavy prove yourself by being into it heavy metal. Though in my private spaces inside I was into so much more than I allowed myself to be.

And she’s into me.

And we’ve walked and we’ve talked and we ate.

I love the fact that she admitted to these human little things like the fact she can wreck a twelve inch pizza. It made me feel so less self-conscious of eating with her.

For some of us there’s an extra helping of guilt in trying so hard to slim down. It’s not just the fact that there’s fat girls out there and that society shits on people for that it’s this really deep hard sell inside of us from usually like puberty that we grew too much, that we were turned into these big hulking things that we never wanted so there’s this really heavy drive to slim down….to loose mass and bulk and we feel a lot of shame because of that.

There’s nothing like having so much dysphoria over that that you’re bawling and then clue into the size of your hands and how that is like that too and just having that hit you.

Jamie made sure like actually went out of her way to try and not let that be a thing.

And I’m pretty sure that might have been just more romantic than the dinner.

We shared the check and the tip together and it was hard to not rush to pay for everything and she looked at me when I took my purse out.

“I asked you Janey. You don’t have to you know that right?”

“I’ve never not paid before though…ever. I don’t know how to do this.”

She smiled. “I don’t know either and that’s the great part. It’s different and it should be different for every couple. How about we split it really wide and leave a good tip.”

I nodded. “The food was really good; it was a real treat being here.”

She beams at that and it’s so strange too seeing that look on her face because it was that sort of I did right by my date look and to me that’s always been a guy thing.
It’s a look that looks good on her.

We got our things and we stopped to use the ladies room and that was another experience for me. Not so much that I was in the ladies room but it was being in there with a date.

It strangely sort of crossed this in my head line, I mean there’s secrets you don’t want people to know about you that’s well…it’s bathroom stuff.

It had been a long, long time since I had peed that quietly and even with the doors shut I could feel my face really red.

And it was kind of oddly charming the way she smiled at me as we washed out hands.

And putting on make-up.

It’s something she definitely did a lot and it’s something that I’m getting better at doing but this, this was different. It was her watching me and me watching her and then it was her doing this really slow application with her looking at me so directly in the mirror in such a way that left me dry mouthed and feeling very stunned by it…no awed but like softly awed.

It was a flirting thing between girls that I had never experienced before.

It was really great.

Then we both left and we walked together in a different route that we took to go to dinner and we did some window shopping and talked about some of the things that we seen in the stores.

It felt good to talk about things that I liked, that I wanted even if they’d never fit me and to do it with a real live person made such a difference.

And to not feel ashamed for it was pretty great.

And to talk about things that she liked and that was okay for me to like even if they were all sorts of “guy coded.”

I looked at her as we hit the park and took a different path. “This was really nice.”

Jamie nodded. “It was it’s been a while since I’ve been on a good date.”

I blushed. “This was a good date?”

“It has been an excellent date. Janey you’re sweet and a lot of fun once you get past being nervous.”

I laughed a little bit. “I’m still nervous actually.”

“I know, so am I.”

“You are?”

“Yes, I like you and sometimes I like someone really fast.”

“Okay…?”

She smiled at me. “The lesbian community around here is all kinds of small really. And with hat it’s kind of actually lonely sometimes because you have some people that are friends and then there’s people that hooked up and you know both of them and that makes it from awkward to off limits. And when you meet someone you like and I hate the cliché but you kind of really get to the point of wanting to really go with it and that’s more often than not a bad idea.”

I smiled a little. “The U-Haul thing.”

She nodded. “Pretty much. But I’m at the point in my life where I’d rather be alone than be in that whole hook up thing. But meeting someone and especially someone as nice as you are well it’s getting rarer and rarer.”

“Well there’s not a big trans community around here so I can definitely get that.”

She turned around and she walked backwards. “No silly it’s not a trans thing. It’s that actually meeting a girl, a woman that I like, who I think is pretty and cool is getting rarer and rarer.”

And I was so blushing.

And she smiled and took my hands by my fingers. “See.”

I could just only nod and smile but it was one of those happy nods and smiles.

It was almost a shame when we got back to our cars.

There was this just sort of good-sad wistfulness about the date coming to an end.

Then Jamie was looking at me. “Can I see you again Janey?”

I was really shocked into blinking.

“Aaaah…Yes!”

She laughed. “Well that sounded encouraging.”

I was blushing and blushing really hard when Jamie stepped up and kissed me.

The world as I had ever known it stopped.

I have been kissed before and it was the other me or it was Gwen pretending that she was okay with me when she really wasn’t.

Jamie kissed me, she kissed Janey.

Feather light at first and then just a little pressure as she kissed me deeper and then there was this so silken sexy subtle slide from the wetness of each of our mouths on our lips and making this path of least resistance as lipstick met with lipstick and girl kissed girl.

My toes curled, my nipples hardened and even my breathing changed.

Breathless actually.

And it wasn’t long or passionate like a serious make-out kiss but it was what it was.

It was my first kiss and Jamie smiled as she got in her car and drove off waving to me and I sort of waved back without knowing that I was waving back and I was blushing really, really hard and I could feel a smile on my face that had rarely ever been there before.

Hadn’t actually been there before I started transition.

I had never happy danced before in my life either.

I had never driven in my little beat up old car with pop romance tunes on the radio and me crying and wrecking my make-up as I sang along.

One of the few times that I cried myself to sleep happy too.

Jamie left me and Email That I found the next morning in the way of an after date phone call used to be.

And I sent one back and it sort of went back and forth like that us typing and us talking and trying to get our schedules to match for a week and getting deeper and deeper involved as we talked and sometimes PMing each other when we should have been doing other things.

We got hooked up into each other’s Facebook.

And there was this whole thing online of me meeting those that were on here FB a lot and the few and far flung friends that were on mine.

That’s a big thing these days. We spend a lot of time online and on social media because we usually end up finding like-minded individuals and communities that we don’t really get to have IRL especially if you’re like me and a sort of a social shut in.

Some people aren’t into social media and yeah there’s a lot of problems with it too but for me it was meeting people that are very, very important to me. That have saved me from myself or from my really dark places at one point or another.

And her people are the same for her.

It’s actually exciting and nerve wracking as hell because in a way it’s like meeting family for each of us.

And a week and I’m missing our date, I’m replaying it in my head and I’m still over the moon at still us talking to each other when we can online.

I’ve been trying to work up the courage to ask her out, to have another date.

I wasn’t expecting her to show up about ten o’clock on a Wednesday night.

I heard a car pull in and I was working away at some city tax stuff for one of the folks that has stuck with me and heard her car pulling in.

Well I heard a car pulling in and I went to the windows and carefully took a look since well I wasn’t expecting anyone and while my neighborhood isn’t exactly bad it’s still bad enough and when you’re out well sometimes…sometimes you have to be careful.

I’m relieved and puzzled when I see it’s Jamie and she’s getting out of her car and she has a plastic grocery bag with her and a pizza box I met her at the door.

She looked at me and she smiles and it’s sort of this awkward shy smile for her which is weird for her to be the shy one.

“Hi…” She even sounded nervous, a little off?

“Hi, this is a surprise.”

She bit her lip. “Sorry, it’s just been a really bad day, a really long day and…and I just couldn’t hack being alone.”

I opened my door and took her grocery bag from her. “Bad days are something I know a lot about.”

She did the shaky breath thing.

I slipped my arm behind her and pulled her in to lean on me.

She actually did lean on me and slowly just slips her arms around my waist.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“It was a bad day…I had not one but two bigots that were paid jobs try to rip me off by insulting my work because they think that somehow the quality of my work gets reflected at being a girl and being gay.”

“Wow, that sounds bad.”

“And I had a set of sprayers blow on me because the girl I hired that used it last didn’t clean it and them and when it came loose it blew out all over the shop and one of the vehicles and it had just been painted too…and that, that happened right on the tail of having one of those sexist assholes trying to rip me off.”

“Ouch, okay I’m really glad that you’re here then.”

She looked up at me. “You are?”

I nodded and I was blushing some too. “I think about you a lot and our last date was really a big thing for me.”

“I had a good time too. I think about you a lot too Janey.”

Okay that made me blink in surprise and blush some more.

“See, you keep making me feel good, okay like I’m not the me that I gotta live with in my head Jamie. I want to return the favor.”

(Sniffle.) “And here I wanted to sort of cheer myself up by surprising you and seeing you all happy.”

“You showed up with a surprise pizza and wine and you. I’m really happy right now I’m even happier that when this all came down on you today you thought of me.”

“Really?”

“Really, I’ve never had a girl be that open with me, I’ve never had anyone be this open with me and just want to like be with me to like be with me Jamie.”

My throat was a little tight and it really was moving me a lot because it’s true.

Every single past relationship it’s always been on me.

And I was faking it then too because really I was never that strong.

And now she’s here because she needs me but needs me in a whole different way because she’s not here for anyone but me.

We do this sort of looking at each other kind of quietly and intensely as we made our way to the kitchen and I set the pizza on the table and the bag on the counter and I looked at her. “Let me get things out of the way and some plates? You can look around if you want.”

She smiles. “Plates would be okay, I can eat pizza with plates. I brought some wine if that’s okay?”

“Sure.”

I got plates and wineglasses after putting my things away and Jamie’s looking around the living room and I get some candles out too and light them. I’m a bad one for candles because it’s another thing that was sort of just one of those things that guys weren’t allowed to be into. So when I lit some it’s not like just two on the table it’s like three at least there and I lit two on the kitchen counter and one on the stove top and relit the one I had in the living room on my coffee table and that one’s scented as black cherry.

I just turned off the lights in the kitchen I was using to work with and was taking out the box of wine she’d brought and the white bakery box when she put on my Annie Lennox CD and she took off her shoes and was in her stocking feet and started dancing in the middle of my living room as *No more I love you’s* was playing.

She had her jacket off and she was just in a blue women’s muscle shirt or tank top and her cargo pants and I could see her tattoos looking just pretty and exotic in the candlelight and she was reaching slowly up over her head and she was pulling out hair pins and then shook her hair loose.

I just watched, stared half amazed by her, really just stunned she was even here, even a little jealous of just how much she was just her.

And just how lovely she was and just how soulful she was.

Have you ever ached over wanting to be soulful?

That’s another trans thing they don’t talk about and that’s really how hard it is to express yourself into the emotions that you feel in the way that you really need, want them to come out.

I was really, really more than scared and self-conscious when she came over and took my hands by my fingertips and she pulled me out to my living room floor and she adjusted to where her hands were and she started to dance with me.

I’ve never been led before.

I’ve never danced to Annie Lennox by candlelight before.

It was perfect too, even when we had like out fifth dance and we literally heard her stomach make a noise and we laughed and went to get some pizza.

I reheated it in the oven and she poured the wine for us and it’s the first time I drank “Naked grape” which is what I always thought of as one of those fun wines or kid wines. Gwen hated that stuff kind of stuff, she didn’t like beer in the house, and wine had to be a certain sort of thing too.

With Jamie it’s fun, it’s wine, it’s just wine you drink it because you like it, because you want to have fun and relax.

We decided on watching a movie while we ate.

It was an adventure in pizza for me honestly. I’d never had a pizza with yellow beets bits or artichokes or ribbons of zucchini that were marinated in like Italian dressing. There were hot banana peppers on it too and dice tomatoes and sausage but those I had before.

And even that was still as fun as it was weird.

But that was so what she needed I think.

Her and I just talking and eating and then laughing at the movie and pulling up, curling up with one and other on my rickety old sofa with a blanket pulled up over our legs.

And it was just this beautiful achy sort of hurt when she had to go home at three AM.

Me crying because it hurt so good to just have had this kind of night, this kind of moment between us.

That ended with her kissing me again when I wasn’t expecting her to kiss me.

I was hoping though somewhere in the back of my head.

That ended with her smiling and getting into her car with this sort of happy bashful and beautiful backwards walk.

That ended with a call at quarter after seven and me still curled up on my couch happy hugging myself as a few tears kept slipping out that tonight was something, it wasn’t a date but it was something else and it was great and it was more than just a date.

I looked at my phone and smiled and touched speaker.

“Hey you…” God I think I could actually hear the smile in my voice.

“Morning Janey.” She sounded just…it’s my name carried on a voice that likes to say it...soft and happy sounding.

“I had a good time last night, I needed that.”

“I had a good time too; I liked it so much I still haven’t come down from it yet.”

“Really?” She sounded really happy from that.

I like that sound in her voice.

“Yes really, I loved it and I…I want to see you again.”

“Me too, this weekend, Friday night do you want to go out?”

“I’d love to actually.”

“Good, I want to take you really out. Dinner, dancing, picking you up.”

Oh…

“Jamie you don’t have to that’s…”

“A date?”

I took a breath a deep breath and nodded even if she didn’t see me doing it.

“It’s a date.”

***

And that’s why I’m out right now.

With some money that was hard enough to scrape together and my heart in my throat as I’m getting out of my car as myself at the mall. I’m scared because I’m out and I’m not really what they call easy passing…people see me and they know…even if they don’t know or don’t say anything in my head it’s bad.

But I really, really like her and I really, really like me when I’m with Jamie so I’m popping in a stick of gum and grabbing my purse and I’m heading into the stares and the behind the back whispers.

I’m so damned scared.

Wish me luck.