Going Respectable
A Short Western Story
By Maryanne Peters

My story could have been one of tragedy, but I will never allow it to be told that way. The fact is that I was able to turn all my disadvantages into advantages, and to now be spoiled for choice. How many peo-ple can say that? Moreover, how many can say it nowadays, with a new century looming and the country set to move with great strides?

My first disadvantage was being born small and weak in a frontier town where size and strength mattered. So, I took to learning, and very soon I learned the lesson that it is not the strong who get rich, but the people who hire them. I was sickly, and so primarily in the care of my mother, but I took the op-portunity to acquire all the knowledge that she had. From her I learned the importance of appearance and how to carry oneself. People still fail to appreciate how important that is.

When my mother died I was left to mind the house and to care for my father and brothers as she might have done. Domestic skills I had already learned, but the lesson of serving men was a hard one and forced me to learn about myself. I was never going to be like them. I knew that quite early.

Then came the day that I was raped. That is the word for it, although the word only applies to women. I would prefer not to recount the details, and I have all but deleted them from my memory for my own peace of mind. I can say that it was much more than a disadvantage – more a catastrophe – yet I learned from it. I learned even in pain that in that awful act, I could bring pleasure to men and even take a little for myself.

I saw no shame in prostitution. They say it is the oldest profession in the world. It is a transaction. You have something that they want, and they are prepared to pay well for it. And I have it to give, not just once, but as many times as I can bear it. Men can endure the discomfort of a whole day in the saddle in blazing sun or wind-swept snow for much less than I could make in five minutes on a soft warm bed. Who is the fool?

The thing is that in the frontier towns they expect their whores to be female, or rather you can command more business if you are that. This was where the advantage of my slight frame and pale skin proved a great advantage. Even the violent loss of my testicles to some surprised and enraged cowboy in a distant town was something I could work to my advantage in the long run. I was never going to raise a fami-ly. Instead, I would always maintain a full head of long auburn hair and a feminine softness of my body and fullness of my breast.

And that earlier lesson – “it is not the strong who get rich, but the people who hire them” – came to frui-tion when I arrived in the town of Cheyenne in the summer of 1867. The Federal Government had only just passed the laws that would see the railroad head towards the town with all the wealth that would come with it.

I had persuaded two girls to come with me from Abilene. I had a small sum set aside but we had more to offer than money - we had what was in our drawers. I approached the owner of one of the largest sa-loons with a business proposal and within three years I was running the place, and he was the drunk in the corner, soon to die when his liver gave out.

We made money from the men involved in building and supplying the builders of the Union Pacific Rail-road. I used that money to expand the accommodation and soon my “Station Hotel” became the key rest-over place for the travellers who replaced the builders when the connection opened in 1869. Trade in-creased when the connection went through to Denver Colorado in 1870, and to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad a few years later.

I admit that it was hard to give up the prostitution business. I suppose that I never really did, although my own legs had closed to all but a few private clients when I moved from saloon hostess to hotel owner. The title was so much more respectable, and I found myself searching for a different future.

I suppose that everybody’s outlook changes over time. A youth seeks independence without much con-cern for money, and as he grows older, he discovers the importance of money and then seeks it above all things. Later in life, with wealth and hindsight, a man may look to his legacy, and that may be the fruit of his loins to carry forward his name, or at least his memory, and perhaps a little of whatever material wealth he gives them.

None of that applied to me. My loins would never bear fruit. Nor was I any kind of man whose name would go forward. I had left whatever blood family I had behind. If I was to meet a brother of mine in the street, he would not even recognize me, being as I appeared a woman natural born.

And a woman I was to those I was closest to, even those who knew my secret.

Perhaps it was because of my condition that I think I aged very well. I turned 50 years of age in 1894, but I looked much younger. I suppose that I had always been a little vain, and I did take pains to maintain my skin and my shape, including avoiding foods and using bath salts and creams, often imported from Eu-rope. I could certainly afford such things, and clothes as well.

Some of the wives and mothers of the town might disapprove of me, but I was never out to win their ap-proval. By being judicious in the support of charities championed by the more influential women I was never totally rejected, but it would have been of little concern if I had been. From the earliest of times I had become used to, and desirous of, the attentions of men.

I would sometimes say, only to the most familiar of friends, that having been a man once upon a time, I knew men better than any natural born woman. In truth I think it is because I am not diverted by the cy-cles of women or by their maternal instincts, so I have time to understand the sex that dominates our age.

Because I knew men, plenty of them desired me and I received more than one proposal of marriage. I would ask them (with a smile) – “why would I choose one man when I can have them all?”

But as time was passing, I wondered if I might be ready to return to my barely remembered domestic life and choose a husband. I had no model to follow. It seemed that I was unique in the world, or at least to my large part of it. But as a human being I sought love, even though that is a word I never used.

The candidates for the job were obvious, and I will list them without naming them.

The local preacher was a person I had confided in. I confessed my sins, and he heard them, even though he was not of the faith that pretends the power to cleanse me. I told him that I had once been a man, and that I still carried an appendage to prove it. I never offered to show it to him, but I sensed that he had a desire to see it.

“You are clearly a woman now,” he said. “It seems to me that having lived a life of sin, your state of grace can best be restored by working alongside me to spread His word. You have abilities and contacts, and I know well that you can be charming. But can you be good?”

“And I have money,” I said. I was not accusing him. I said it with a smile. “Alongside you, you say? In what capacity would that be? We would not want tongues a-wagging, would we.”

“I had a wife once,” he said. “I do miss the physical side. Even the vicars of Christ have carnal needs.”

“You know that I know that only too well,” I said, winking at him.

“We could be married …”, he said, without finishing the sentence.

Then there was the doctor. He had come to town after I had left the saloon business, but I had to consult him on a medical matter.

“I will need to examine your vagina,” he said to me.

“Good luck with that,” was my reply. “By all means try to find it but warm your hands first. I am paying so I might as well enjoy it.”

I remember the moment of his discovery. He said – “How very curious!” Then before I left his office, he asked me whether he might call upon me “with a view to an ongoing friendship of an intimate nature”. I agreed and we had sex that very night and many nights following.

I wondered whether the doctor might have been a person more inclined towards “use of the back door” as they say. I make no judgment on that score, but he did suggest to me that medicine was a noble pro-fession and that if I wanted to build a favorable reputation then as the wife of the local physician, I could acquire all the status I needed.

Then there was the judge. He had been sent by the Governor to dispense justice, and he was a practical man in the manner he did that. When a certain dissatisfied customer of my saloon called upon the judge with the accusation that I was a “deceiver” in claiming to be of the female sex, His Honor agreed to under-take an investigation. I was called in the Courthouse and invited to be examined by the man himself.

“I am no deceiver,” I said with all the righteous indignation I could muster. “That man has never laid a hand on me, and I would never permit it.”

“My purpose, Madam, is to get to the truth,” said His Honor.

So, I said – “Promise me that when you get there, Judge, you’ll fuck me hard.”

He did indeed, get to the bottom of it – my bottom to be exact, and he took full advantage of my offer. He became one of those select few that I spoke about. Like lawyers can be, and he had been one of those, he was gifted with his tongue.

“The dispensing of justice is not profitable, leastways for a honest judge such as I,” he said to me. “You have the wealth, and I have the status. If we got hitched, then I think we could both be very happy.

Then there was my fourth suitor. He was a man of property much like myself. I remember that I wanted a piece of land that he owned behind the hotel when I needed to expand yet again. He knew how badly I wanted it, and he suggested that it could be mine, and at a very fair price, if I spent just one night in his bed. I played up being shocked and dismayed and such, but the truth is that he was a mighty fine-looking man, and I would happily take every inch of him, but I was guessing that he was looking for a woman.

“You are proposing something scurrilous, Sir, but I need that land,” I said. “But unfortunately, my body will disappoint you, for I have a deformity that I am certain will disgust you.”

“I will be the judge of that,” said he. There was no turning this man away. He was enamored, as they say, due in no small part to the fact that I am by habit coquettish and alluring.

So finally, I gave in and came to his bedside as arranged, and in the lamplight, I let my nightgown fall from my shoulders and he saw who and what I was.

I saw shock and then amusement. Plenty of men had seen me in that state, but somehow this time it seemed to mean so much – even more than that plot of land this insistent bastard owned.

“You make a very respectable woman,” he said, pulling the sheets aside to let me into his bed.

“That’s all I want to be, nowadays,” I said.

So now I have a decision to make. Which one? I think I have a favorite.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2023

Author's Note: Here is one from my anthology on Amazon "Riffletown Girls and Other Romances in the Old West" from a seed by Erin (see below). I really enjoy writing in the style of those paperback western novellas, and I am thinking that even a third collection of these stories might be considered?

Erin’s seed: “A boy prostitute in the old west finally saves enough to go respectable as a woman since after years in the role, that's how she's comfortable. The local preacher is his secret client! and also the judge suggests she becomes his wife, and the town thousandaire, and the local ganglord. Which one?”