My name is David, and I am a woman.

It was early the next morning, and I was looking at myself in the mirror. The person in the reflection was me, and at the same time it wasn't. That's not right. No, the image was me unleashed.

The smile that lit up my image's face was reflected in my own. Somewhere inside I realized that this is who I was meant to be. If it was only me and my image who ever knew it, that would be enough. My smile became warmer and inviting. For the first time, I think I truly saw what others had gotten glimpses of in the past.

That night in the club, that defining moment, James had seen it and thought it meant I wanted to have sex. No, not that I wanted to have sex, but that I wanted to have sex with him.

It's funny how people can be so right, and yet completely wrong at the same time. Standing there looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I thought about that kiss he'd given me at the end of the night. I knew that it wasn't James I was in love with, but the idea of being wanted so completely by another human being. I knew enough about James to realize that I didn't like him as a person.

Romance novels aside, I knew that a real and lasting relationship required understanding and acceptance of who the other person was. Sure, hating a person can lead to great makeout sessions and even greater sex, or so I've read, but at the end of the night, when dawn comes in through the window, you have to like the person in bed with you, and more than that, you have to like who you are with them.

I still wanted passion, and sparks, and a kiss that would curl my toes and make me weak in the knees. I just wanted it with someone I could respect.

I sat down to do my business and then got in the shower, my mind refusing to get sucked into the mundane nature of my task at hand.

Love.

What is it anyway? Is it just chemicals like some doctors would have us believe? Was it expectation built up by all the trashy romance novels we read as little girls? I snorted at myself before I took my inner monologue to task. Even if other people thought me a boy, I knew that I'd never been one of them. So, when I was a teen, reading the novels that made my heart beat faster and made me want someone to sweep me off my feet, I'd never been looking for the titillation. I wanted the love that masqueraded all too often as cheap sex.

And I wanted my very own Mr. Darcey.

No, he's not part of the tawdry romance set, but that's even more of a reason to root for him. You like Lizzy because she is you, but you root for Mr. Darcey because he's the protagonist, even more than the narrator.

I was in a very happy, and feminine, place when I got out of the shower. I quickly set my hair to its pixie best, made sure my earrings looked good, and went out of my bathroom wearing a smile…and my robe.

I stopped, stunned, with what I saw.

"What are you doing?"

I was on the verge of tears. They had no right, no right at all, to take the coverings off my paintings. They would see my shame and laugh. No one got to see my paintings, and I liked it that way. They couldn't see my soul poured onto canvas.

"Are you in every one of your paintings?"

I swept in and pulled the grey velvet coverings back over my pieces.

"Get out." I said in a barely controlled whisper.

"But they're good," Angie said at the same time that Collette breathed, "Why would you want to hide these?"

I was still furious, still wanting to claw and hit and bite, and maybe hiss and spit a little, but I was also shocked so completely that I became a statue. I was frozen. My mind failed to engage.

They liked my…paintings?

"Nobody likes my paintings." I said, quietly. A tear welled in my eye, and I blinked, trying to make it go away.

They guided me to my couch and sat with me while I tried, unsuccessfully, not to cry.

While Angie held me, Collette took out each piece, one by one, and arranged them so that they could all be seen. I slowly began to calm as I looked carefully at my images again. Trying to see what they saw in them.

The words of the people I'd shown them to in the past just kept pushing to the forefront.

There's too much blurring in the foreground. Are we supposed to feel half blind, or just farsighted?

What's with the elf? I like the landscape except for her. Also, I don't get the girl sitting by the rock on the lake. Is this supposed to be the girl from Brave?

I like how you depicted the moon, but the shadow seems a little cheesy.

Why is there a Knight on a warhorse riding down 5th boulevard?

Why…

How…

What…

It all boiled down to one thing, they didn't get what I was doing, and, according to them, no one ever would.

"I love your makeup in that image. How did you get the effect just right of looking through her? She's seeing through her reflection in a window, right?"

"I mixed a bit of both colors together, the one for the main scene, and the one for the reflection. I did the reflection after finishing the main scene."

"You make it sound so simple," Collette said with a little bit of awe.

"It is simple, I'll show you."

I sat the two of them on the couch, and spent the next hour or so painting. I sketched them in quickly, so they wouldn't have to sit there watching the back of my easel. Then I went to town on the paints. The room around them came together without much thought. I'd seen it day in and day out for the last two years. Then I blocked in their rough outlines, adding more detail as I went. I looked into their faces as I went, to make sure I got the shapes and colors right.

Then I added the gnome standing on Angie's shoulder, playing with her hair. He was a traditional gnome, with the red pointy had and the blue jacket. His white beard was accidentally tucked into his left boot.

After I finished him, I sat there staring at Collette, wondering what she would need to fit the fantasy image. I smiled, and went a lot more subtle here. I added some faint, almost subliminal, lines to her face. I widened her pupils just slightly vertically with a bit of a point there.

"What did you do to my face? I look so…predatory…and yet myself at the same time. It's a bit scary."

"I made you a cat."

"Oh my god, you did. Look, Angie, I'm a cat."

"All I got was a gnome on my shoulder."

"I'll let you two fight over who keeps it."

I went into the bathroom and cleaned out my brushes. I looked at my face and smiled. That was my first real painting without me in it. I guess that is because I was on this side of the canvas.

I had an almost surreal Through the Looking Glass moment. Only I was always Alice. I'd just trapped my soul away in another realm.

"We've decided you keep the painting. That gives us an excuse to visit more often."

We hugged a bit, Angie kissed me on the cheek, and we said our goodbyes. Apparently it was already past noon, and the two were more than ready to make their way back out into the world. For a moment, I wondered if there might be something going on between the two, but I quickly dismissed it. Even if there were, it wasn't my place to speculate. They hadn't tried anything with me during the time we'd been together, and I would have just politely declined if they had. It had worked with my gay roomie in college after all.

<3  <3  <3
I was still in my white terrycloth bathrobe, nursing yet another cup of steaming tea in a mug that would have been happier with coffee strong and black, when the door rang. Wondering who it could be, I pulled the robe about me and tied the belt, hoping that I was fully covered.

"Who is it?" I asked sweetly with visions of granny running through my head. No, not my grandmother. I mean the famous one, you know, get's eaten by a wolf, red riding hood and a handsome woodsman save her?

And not the one from…you know what? Never mind. You've had enough of my daydreams and thoughts, for a little while at least.

With no response forthcoming, assuring me it wasn't the police here to wrongly arrest me for a murder I didn't commit, I looked through the peep hole.

The person there shocked me to thoroughly that I forgot how I was dressed or much of anything else.

"Gary…" I began as soon as the door was open.

"Good, you're here. Sorry for popping bye unannounced, but as you aren't answering your phone, and it's urgent, I thought I'd come over…what are these?"

I was too shocked to blush, and too angry and his not even noticing me to care. Wait, that's not right. Sure, I like Gary, and he's a good guy, but I wasn't sure I was ready for an oh so clichéd office romance, even if I wasn't the cliché demoiselle.

"Those are mine, and I'll thank you to get back to the matter at hand." I was imperious. I was the empress of my castle, and he couldn't…

"They're very good."

That knocked me completely onto the back foot, and I did blush. "Thanks," I said, brushing a non-existent lock of hair behind my ear. "So, you wanted to see me?" There was entirely too much invitation in that question, and I regretted it, but it seemed to do the trick, since for the first time since entering my apartment Gary noticed what I was wearing. The way he was looking at me made my blush hotter and I put a hand up to hold the front of the robe closed, even though I had no cleavage worth showing off…yet.

"Oh, sorry for barging in. I need you dressed and ready to go five minutes ago."

"Go where?"

He looked at me for a moment like I'd lost my mind, and then he remembered the chain of events that brought him here, a chain that I was as yet clueless to.

"Start getting ready, and I'll tell you all about it."

I snorted at this, seeing his preconceptions war with his eyes. "So, I'll go put on a little black cocktail dress and you'll watch me?"

It was his turn to blush and I laughed at him. A number of the girls I'd dated unsuccessfully in the past said that I had a musical laugh. They meant it as an insult at the time, but I appreciated it now.

"Something business appropriate and conservative please," he said as I disappeared into my room and shut the door.

A very small part of me was disappointed at not being able to shock him with one of the dresses. That would have to wait until another time the bigger part of me said. One of the outfits that we'd picked up was a really nice women's pant-suit in a light grey. It wasn't the charcoal of my previous suit, but I think it matched my coloring better. A pale green shirt, which tone I could tell you, but it doesn't matter for the course of this narrative, with a ruffled collar hid my lack of curves on top.

Actually, it was more that it hinted at something that wasn't there. The gold went with the whole thing. I'd be without makeup, again, but I couldn't worry about that since it was my own damn fault for staying in all day.

While I got dressed, Gary related the following:
While Mr. Henry Bryant, PhD, loved the new building, the rest of his team thought I was rude and that they should go with a different architect. Gary had explained that I was the only one who knew anything about the building that I'd created, and that without me they'd be out of luck with our firm.

The rest of Mr. Bryant's team thought I was rude and wanted an apology for my behavior at the meeting. Gary replied it wasn't going to happen. Mr. Bryant called back fifteen minutes later saying that they'd already gotten the exact type of building design that Ms. Lowell had suggested they would with the rival company.

He begged Gary to consider trying to get me to apologize since he didn't want to be in another 'soulless excuse of a blight on the skyline,' as Mr. Bryant put it, like the one they were currently in, one that had been originally drafted by Hartman, Weis, and Studebaker.

Gary said he'd talk to the board and try to explain, but Mr. Bryant said it was more than that. They were working on trying to prove his incompetence, and using his 'desire to feel young again by making a hot young artists wet for him,' as a reason to put forth a vote for a new chairman of the board. He would still be CEO, but then, without the control of the board he was afraid of that going away soon as well.

"He actually said that?" I said, stepping out as I adjusted my earrings, making sure that the backs were firmly in place. Still just the gold studs, but I liked them for the time being. Even if I didn't have the hair for it, they made me think of myself as a bit of a Buttercup. Well, I thought my face was better looking than Robin Wright, but it doesn't matter one way or the other. It is my story, my perceptions, and I liked my gold stud earrings.

The whole situation had me a little worked up to say the least.

Gary just stood there staring at me.

"What did I say?"

"Nothing, just…nothing. He was, as far as I could tell, quoting something one of them told him directly."

"So, they think me a bit of fluff with weird ideas and my head in the clouds."

"So, they think of you as a girly artiste with weird ideas and her head in the clouds."

"Ooh…" I said glaring off into the distance. "I hope you brought the Bartinelli building and Camelot."

"You mean The Donovan/Sollace building?"

"I can call that pile Camelot if I like."

"Sure you can, but it only re-iterates the whole 'weird ideas' thing. Yes, I bought those as well as Asgard."

"Huh?"

"I thought the renovation to the Oceanic Museum and Research Institute was very Nordic."

"That was the way they wanted it," I began, but at his steady glare I amended, "well, okay, so it was mostly their ideas with a few tweaks here and there."

"That mural was more than a 'tweak here or there.'"

I remembered the mural he was talking about. I'd put a Valkyrie or two over a stormy sea with humpback whales coming up to say hello.

"And seing your work in the other room, I know who painted that mural now. A mental health week my ass."

I blushed bright red at the memory of taking off a week to make sure the mural had been painted perfectly right.

I went to the front room and looked at my paintings sitting there. On a whim, I grabbed one of the larger paintings.

"What's that for?"

"My answer to them demanding an apology for being asses. They can only take my building if a piece of my art hangs in the foyer."

"David…"

"No, Gary. I'm no shrinking violet that they can push around, and I'll not be accused of being some prostitute with an esoteric array of talents."

"They did…."

"They suggested that I would whore myself out for the firm to get them to pick the building, Gary, so yes, they did."

"Shit…I never thought…"

I put a hand to his face, resting it on his cheek, "No, you didn't and that's just one of the reasons I love you. So, are we going, or what?" Then I turned and went out the door, leaving him to carry the 5x7 painting out the door.

At the time, I'd thrown it out there without thinking about it, and he accepted it the same way. It wasn't until I got into the car and watched him trying to figure out how to get the painting in that I realized what I'd said. I just hope it didn't change everything.

I ran back up to the apartment and grabbed my largest tube and then ran down to him on the street. I pulled out the knife I always carried for just such an occasion and popped all the staples off the back of the frame. After that I carefully rolled the painting, loosely, and slid it into the carrier tube. It was a tight fit, as the canvas was almost five and a half feet when off the frame. The tube was five and a half feet exactly.

We got it in, and then into the car. We'd said nothing more than the necessary to get the canvas taken care of, and as soon as we were on our way the silence lay heavy upon us, or at least heavily upon me.

What in the hell were you thinking, girl. was the gist of my inner monologue for the first couple of minutes.

"Would you like me to put on some music?"

I nodded and smiled weakly, as I castigated myself even more.

He turned on the music, and I realized it was a bad idea the moment the first song played.

Love gained, love lost, love won, love denied, love accepted, unrequited love, sex is love, dancing is love, love, love, love, and more love. Have you ever realized how much of our music is about love?

It's like the human animal has this preoccupation with procreation and the furthering of the species.

Oh, wait, that's right…

We both reached for the off switch at the same time after he tried a number of stations to the same result. I pulled my hand away as if it were burned and he made an apologetic noise or two. I have never been more uncomfortable due to my own mistakes in my life before or after that moment.

"I shouldn't have…" I began before Gary interrupted me.

"Did you mean it?"

"Before that moment, I would have said that I didn't. Sometimes, though, you can say something that you don't realize has more meaning than it does. I meant it, when I began to say it, in an offhand manner. You know, joking between friends? You know when someone says, sarcastically, 'that's what I love about you, how sarcastic you are.'

"But the moment I started speaking, and the way I touched you, I realized that it wasn't just a joke. It was something I meant. I'm sorry if it made you uncomfortable."

"Well, we'll get through this meeting, but I'm moving you to Watson's team on Monday. He's forever trying to poach you anyway."

"Is this because I'm male?"

"Huh? What!? No." he said looking truly shocked.

"It's because you are an attractive, if dense, female coworker, and if you said that sort of thing accidentally once…well…next time might not be an accident." There was a note of…something…that I didn't want to think about in his voice. It wasn't disgust. That I knew to well. It almost seemed like…he wanted me to tell him I love him again.

That was it. There was a note of hope in his voice.

"Let me be clear with you, Gary. I'm not in any way trying to force who I am. I am, and will remain, David."

He looked a bit confused, but I continued, "What I told you yesterday is also true. I am a woman. I'm a heterosexual woman. Not active mind you, but I like men." I said this last looking at him pointedly. I think he got the picture.

"So…"

"I have a long road ahead of me before I really look physically female."

"You look…"

"I mean before I have breasts, and a lot longer before I have a vagina."

He turned bright red, and I let the silence sit for a little while as he continued to drive toward our destination.

"I still have a penis, Gary, not that I've ever used it for anything other than peeing."

"Not even..?" and he made a somewhat crude gesture. I'd opened the door, but I still blushed.

"Not even that." I said, "Never had the urge."

I realized I might be giving him mixed signals, so I tried again, "What I mean to say is…"

"What you mean to say is you're a woman, which means you're complicated. I'd be lucky to understand you if you were talking about a subject I had some knowledge in, like architecture, but when it comes to all this emotional and physical changes and so on, I'm as clueless as the next guy, and glad to be so."

"But…"

"As I said before, you're attractive."

The silence this time was charged, and I listened to everything not being said. At the end of it, the drive, I was so distracted that I didn't even realize we were stopped until my door was opening and Gary was offering me his hand.

"Let's go knock 'em dead."