(aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2122 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad
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I was reading the Guardian when Danni came dashing past and out of the door. I was caught completely by surprise, so I didn’t know whether to run after her or what. As I sat there somewhat stunned, Cindy went dashing off presumably after Danni. I waited to see if anyone else rushed out and if so, I’d check there’d been a fire alarm I didn’t hear.
Stephanie was the next to enter the room, “You haven’t got a cuppa handy, have you?” She looked, ‘fair wabbit’–exhausted for those wi’ nae Scots. I told her so and she looked at me and said, “Rabbit? What the hell has a rabbit got to do with anything?”
I made a discreet withdrawal and organised some tea. After she’d had a cuppa and a slice of cake, Mrs Cuddy makes the most exquisite almond slice, Stephanie looked at me but before she could say anything, I interrupted. “So what happened with Danni?”
“I thought you were calling her Danielle?”
“Danni spelt the girl’s way.”
“Oh, all right, a very confused young man.”
“Man, not woman?”
She looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, “He’s a very complex case, basically he’d like to be both.”
“Both? You mean boy and girl?”
“Yes. As a boy he finds himself attracted to girls and as a girl she finds herself attracted to boys.”
“Right,” I said probably meaning anything but.
“He/she is a fascinating case.”
“Quite.” Well what else could I say.
“Absolutely fascinating. Core identity, is, I’m pretty sure, male. However, there’s a strong element of the female there too.”
“But this only seems to have happened since the assault.”
“Yes, it seems that was the awakening experience, he felt like a girl when he was penetrated–and part of him liked it.”
“What?” I gasped, although it was something I’d suspected.
“Not as much as Pia, who seems to have subsumed a male identity into a female one, thought the castration element is in itself worrying, perhaps an even more complex case.”
“More complex than Danni?”
“Oh yes, Danni is straightforward compartmentalisation.”
“That sounds like an oxymoron to me.”
“Yes very funny, when in girl mode she completely shuts off the male identity, yet is aware of her life in full, so as Danielle, she can remember what Dan the boy has done, and the same the other way round.”
“And that is straightforward?”
“Yes–at the moment it is.”
“So it could change?”
“Probably will in time.”
“Oh boy. I thought one of my children was going to stay in boy mode.”
“Oh dear, don’t tell me you’re transphobic?” Stephanie smirked.
“It isn’t funny, Steph. I hoped that just one of my male born children wanted to stay that way. Instead I now have someone I’m not sure how to cope with, and if I can’t what chance the others?”
“What’s the problem–you dealt with the others transitioning and yourself–where’s the problem?”
“The others knew what they were, although Billie took a while to decide–but that was okay–now I have one who could be switching back and fore.”
“Yes, so?”
“That’s going to be difficult.”
“For you or Danni?”
“I suspect both.”
“What if he just liked to cross dress?”
“What about it?”
“Would you cope with that?”
“I’d have to.”
“Knowing you, you’d be out buying him dresses.”
“So?”
“What’s the difference?”
“What you mean with this compartmentalisation?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I mean if he’s going to be dressing as a girl in his late teens or after to attract boys, he’s going to become increasingly male as the hormones kick in–hairy chest and all that.”
“So, he could get it waxed or shaved.”
“I know, but he’s going to become frustrated, the others have all had hormone therapy to become more female and he’d be flat chested and hairy with a deep voice and five o’clock shadow.”
“Same as loads of male cross dressers.”
“I suppose.”
“You’re not sure about cross dressers, are you?”
I shrugged, it wasn’t something I’d thought about once I’d realised it wasn’t the clothes that attracted me, they just enabled me to project what was going on inside. In most cross dressers, I didn’t think that was the case–but to me, they were a completely different species.
“Why because you think their motives are different and thus questionable?”
“I don’t know. I think questionable is the wrong word, because I don’t understand them doesn’t mean they aren’t as legitimate as me–well of course they are, I’m confused, Stephanie.”
“So I see.”
“I mean, as soon as I realised there were girls and boys, I’ve thought of myself as a girl. In other words as female. It was never about the clothes–though at times I can quite enjoy being all girly, and for my own sake as well as to excite Simon.”
“Nothing wrong with that, girl, we all do it.”
“I know, but to imagine feeling like that and then to enjoy being a boy or man and being macho or whatever and enjoying it, and wanting to bed girls. I’m sorry, it doesn’t compute for me, though I appreciate we’re all different.”
“I didn’t think you’d struggle this much, Cathy.”
“Neither did I. What you said doesn’t really surprise me–I’ve known he wasn’t transsexual all along.”
“How did you know that?”
“I don’t know, some form of deep recognition of others. I don’t know how it works.”
“Super-sensitivity, you’re scanning others for it all the time without recognising you’re doing it because it’s become second nature to you. You pick up on the slightest inference or gesture by another transgender woman that proves she’s not a cisgendered woman. Then quite possibly you’re comparing her to yourself, and if she doesn’t pick up on you, you’re superior.”
“Oh come off it, Steph, I’m well aware how fortunate I’ve been.”
“You’re almost imperceptible as anything but a normal female, quite remarkable.”
“Thank you I think.”
“What I find interesting is that you’re reacting like a cisgendered female.”
“What d’you mean?”
“You’re reacting like someone with no experience of gender different children.”
“But I have–and I thought dealt with it quite well. I’ve also had no problem with David having gone the other way, it’s being both boy and girl that confuses me.”
“Is that because it reminds you of your own childhood, a time you’d rather forget?”
“I don’t know, I’m just unsettled and confused–I need some time to get my head round it–that’s all.”
“You sure?”
“No, I’m not sure of anything any more.” For some unknown reason I was fighting back the tears. “I need some air,” I said and rose leaving Stephanie drinking her tea. Outside, the weather was clearing a little and I walked around the upper gallery looking down at the forest, watching the leaves moving in the light wind. I wasn’t thinking, I was trying not to think, just let what I’d learned sink into my head.
Why I found it so difficult eluded me, though I knew partly it was the loss of my son that distressed me. I didn’t need any further daughters, I had plenty, I wanted a son for my husband to bond with. I was well aware that had I been a normal female, able to conceive and bear children, I could have presented him with girls and he’d have coped, but to have lost what I thought was a regular boy, my son–that somehow has got through my defences, and for now I feel bereft.
Comments
Hmmmm... is Cathy feeling a little bit
of what her father felt.. (minus the nastiness and violence)
Change is difficult to deal with and there are some things that you just don't expect to change.
I don't like the message that either of these boys enjoyed in any way being raped.
Wot the Hell?
I'm thinking I'd feel just like Cathy. By the way, what is cisgendered? I suppose by inference it means, "normal girl"? I would be quite hard to convince that Danny was a girl or cross dresser, and be waiting for him to come to his senses.
Of course, I have no room to cast stones. I think that given the choice, I'd have lived as a woman all my life. Then of course there is the matter of the mysterious operation when I was tiny, and all the other assorted bullshit. Strange now, the mannerisms and such lend credence to my presentation, when before it nearly got me beat up as an adult, and did get me abused as a child.
In searching the internet, some sources say that as many as 20% of males cross dress. This pisses me off because if a woman chose to do the same thing, it would be normal! I cross dressed the way women do from around 1978 on, I think; going to JC Penny to buy womens cotton service shirts and khaki pants, and women's cotton jockeys, and tank tops. Later, I found penny loafers fit really well, and finally it was cotton socks. I don't think that anyone ever rumbled me.
People just need to fucking well get over it and let men dress the way they want to just like women do now. Of course running up a pole in a skirt suit would be just as hard for a man as it would a woman. :)
I had to keep my hair short because my then wife would raise hell if my hair got longer than my ears. No, no John Denver look for me. She is a fucking red neck, even still.
Poor Danny. I'd mourn for him.
Sorry for the swearing, which I am not going to edit out. I'm feeling quarrelsome just now.
Gwendolyn
Intergendered.
Heloo-oo!
Intergendered, wanting to be both or actually being both, which is it? Well that's a question I only recently stopped asking myself, mainly because it's become easier to cross over whenever I want or need to. Gender mobility, gender fluidity, these are painfully easy for me to grasp. Strangely, my sexuality is becoming seemingly more fluid as my gender identities find greater freedom. This is something I never, never anticipated because for decades since my late teens, I was fixed clearly in the 'Prefer Girls to Boys' sector but even that datum marker seems to be shifting now. Even the terms heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual don't seem to cover it; 'Flexi-sexual' seems to be the term that endears itself to my perspective.
Thus, I can understand Danni's dilemma and subsequent confusions. Neither gender nor sexuality is Binary ,nor are they stable, that's the nettle Cathy is going to have to grasp.
I can see where trying to understand it must be difficult for heterosexual individuals who usually have 'Binary' appreciations of gender and sexuality.
Damned interesting chapter Ang. You've obviously touched upon issues directly of concern to me. I'll follow your constructs with avid interest.
Bevs.
Really lovin' this story.
xx
Excellent installment
more wonderful entertainment
Goddess Bless you
Love Desiree
Non-transsexual transgender
I have to admit that I'm puzzled about the various classes of transgender other than transsexuals.
Transsexuals are relatively easy to understand: They feel themselves the other gender and are willing to do whatever it takes to be taken and accepted as their desired gender. I've shelled out over $20K (maybe closer than 25 or 30 after all the expenses for the trip to Thailand for surgery are added in) for my own transition, spent hundreds of painful hours on the electrologist's couch (at least my insurance paid on my councling and hormones) and lost a few relationships and damaged a few more by transitioning, I don't regret those sacrifices one little bit. Not one.
It's the folk who go back and forth, or transition but don't want surgery that puzzle me. Never mind those who seem to be bound and determined to be neither or both.
I hope Angharad gets into Danny/Danni's feelings, 'casuse he/she fuddles me as much as Cathy.
Cross-dressers
In the absence of information I thought I was a CD because the clothes turned me on. What was confusing,though, was the fact that I was jealous as hell of other women. Add to that my various abortive attempts to be what other people wanted and you had a very mixed up kid.
Maybe Danny's suffering something similar?
S.
All of the above
Keep in mind we all have our own journey and whether you accept the other person's reality or not, keep in mind it is their reality and deal with them as a person first.
Cathy has to learn that she cannot have it all her way. Just like her rigid compartmentalization of her staunch disbelief of all things supernatural and belief in all things humanistic she will not be able to truly grow. This strict compartmentalization is stifling her growth of acceptance of herself and now others (Danni.) Until she can free herself from her own prison she will never find serenity.
Kim
I "get"....
I get part of what Cathy's going through... A young friend of my is "poly gendered" (That is, she/he is male and female and neither at different times.). The difficulty isn't so much in accepting it intellectually, but in knowing how to react. Visual clues are not always there, so each day you meet him/her, you need to ask what to call her/him. (Yes, he/she uses different names/pronouns when in each mode - and they don't even sound similar... (Well the male and neither both start with the same letter, but that's as close as it gets).
It's not THAT hard to get used to recalling a change... I've done that several times over the years with cousins/friends who dropped the "diminutive" form of their names when they decided they were grown up, and with a few Trans friends. But, when it changes, occasionally daily, it's difficult to keep it straight.
I know it's not easy for the kid figuring out who they are - when it's not what those around think... But, it's not easy on those around them either... Even if they love them and want to do what's best/helpful...
They've a long road ahead. I do wonder how things will go.
Thanks,
Annette