Something has broken deep inside me. I cry on the inside, laying in their arms, while I try to process what has happened. Something has happened inside my head and it’s devastating.

Sometimes a hooker would cry after sex. I tried to get offended, but the truth was, I never really cared that much. Not even enough to look down on them for it.

Now the emotional tole of the last two days, hell the last three months, is hitting me more deeply than I thought I could feel. These damn lesbians have mind-fucked me.

When I was very young I was convinced that I had been born a girl, and my parents has somehow attached a fake penis to me and were trying to pass me off as a boy.

I don’t know where that feeling went.

It certainly didn’t come up in school, where I found that the best kind of relationship was one based on money in the open, instead of hiding behind quid pro quo. I had never felt wrong about having a penis… I think.

And as I lay here in the arms of a swinging lesbian alien, and her wife, I realize that I have to get up. I don’t know why, but staying doesn’t seem like an option. It’s never been an option.

Ci makes a cooing noise when I disentangle myself from the two of them, and makes a halfhearted play for my fingertips. And then she rolls over into Lia’s arms and falls back asleep.

I gather my clothes in the near dark, zipping up the boots in a moment of deep confusion. Sneaking out is something I’m used to. Being the sneaker is not.

Hard is set up so that the front door to Lia’s apartment is in a recess next to the door of the bar. People can visit when the saloon is closed. I’m sure that’s nice. I pause with my hand on the simple wooden door. I don’t lock it as I wander out onto the promenade.

I was happy the way I was.

I was not happy the way I was.

Eleven was not a nice man. Certainly not a kind man. Definitely not the kind of man who would get invited into someone’s home for dinner. But was Eleven all of those things because he’d been born that way? Was Eleven a jerk, simply because he was a guy.

I don’t know the answer to that.

But I wasn’t born a guy this time around. What am I now?

I walk to the edge of the catwalk. The center of the z-level is not a plant. Why grow things the people can’t eat? The Logans have instead decorated with a sort of light tree thing. Old incandescent bulbs are stung in a chandelier shape.

I look out at the chains of lights, then sit down on the edge and swing my feet out. My tiny feet, in women’s boots.

I know, as I do it, that my hips are different, as I sit on them. My femurs are twisted in more than when I was a man, and my knees are out a tad more. I know that the way I do something, as simple as swinging my feet, is completely different as a woman than it is as a man.

I fucked a pair of strangers, and I had a more meaningful sexual experience than I’ve ever had before. I was wanted. For my looks, or because I was a woman, or because they’re not picky. Or maybe because somewhere along the way I became a different person.

As I wonder just what I am now, I come to terms with something. I’m not sure who I am right now, or who I might be in the future, but it can’t be Eleven anymore.

I become 11.

#

I come back to the door of the bar, not sure if it was locked behind me. It turns out that leaving wasn’t an option. Not for 11.

When I put my hand on the door knob it opens before I can turn it. Ci is there, naked and unashamed. And she hugs me.

I’m not sure why this hug is so meaningful, but I feel tears in my eyes as she breaks the embrace to kiss me tenderly. Then she pops her head back and leads me up the stairs.