Images-57

Chapter 57

*Before…

We are all talking and having a good time and eating from a bag of cotton candy dad got somewhere all the way to the water park.

I really, really needed this…I look at Dad who got to claim stuff he lost with me and Taylor who is still being daddy and he’s getting cotton candy little blue hand prints on his face from Giselle and that makes me fall in love with him just a little bit more and even Ingrid who’s recording it because it’s going everywhere but into his mouth.

*And Now…

I’m having this serious spousal and mommy melt.

I mean there’s just this feeling that’s kind of filling me up inside that’s got to be one of the most amazing and fulfilling things that I’ve ever felt.

I’m married to this great guy that loves me and that knows all of the stuff about me that I don’t share with anyone…my trans stuff, the things that go on in my head, hopes and fears and he loves me regardless.

And he loves my daughter…and okay I might not have given birth to her I am still so damned lucky to have her and that’s more important to me than the fact the biology has ended up playing it’s screwy twist that I had to go through so much stuff and jump through so many hoops in order for me to be the person that I’m getting to be.

And then there’s my Dad here who is so being that guy that he is and so making up for all of our lost and stolen time from each other and he’s so really, really into being Grampy.

And Angie and Hunter Dad’s version of stepping up into a new family for him after who knows how long.

I’ve never really heard much of him dating and stuff from him or Angie so I’m actually going to assume that Natalie left some pretty deep scars and stuff.

She left them with me too.

And then there’s Ingrid…My best friend or used to be my best friend the girl that started me on my path so to speak with transition and the mother of my child…it was less than cool or alright what she did but I’m more than willing to say that I’m letting it go because she well…she wasn’t remotely in a good headspace back then.

Wow…back then, it seems so long ago when it’s barely been three years…junior high…and looking at senior.

I should have been looking at graduating this year and a football scholarship and things like that…being trapped in a landscape that I didn’t understand and in a body that I wasn’t connected to.

I actually do the arms behind me thing as we’re walking and yes I’m sort of chesting and it feels kind of neat to do that and stuff…point is it feels, it fells right…it just feels.

And my old days, my old days as Jaime.

Honestly there’s a lot of it that’s faded.

Like an old black and white photo left out in the sun and stuff. He wasn’t really me and I never really made connections to my feelings to being me at all until I started being me even when I didn’t get all of that.

I mean it’s not forgotten but it’s just…it’s just there and those memories for the most part aren’t a big part of my present self.

So yeah happy like you couldn’t believe and it feels good.

I actually look over at Hunter and as we’re walking to the water park area I start to skip a little. That’s actually fun…and that’s such another one in the eye of people that don’t think that we aren’t girls even when we never get to be them like others do.

No one taught me how to skip, or to jump rope or the way that I write or houseclean it wasn’t something I imitated it’s something that I learned and when I let myself learn it a whole lot of it came as natural as breathing.

The big key for us is actually letting ourselves…there is so much that we shut away even from ourselves that we’ve learned because we are girls no matter what and we watch and we listen and stuff too.

There is really so much less the whole raised as a guy when you’re really not. It’s camouflage and it’s fear and it’s bad situations and missed opportunities but regardless of all of that we’re still girls and we’re still women.

And I’m smiling as Hunter joins me in skipping part of the way through the promenade part until we get to the water park and we have to wait in line to get in but and the guys catch up with us then.

It’s so funny though that I have never been here. It’s one of those things where you live in the city but there’s so much stuff that’s right there in your back yard that you don’t go see or do because it’s always later.

I look at Hunter. “That was fun this is going to be great.”

She nods. “Yeah I’ve never like been here before.”

“Me either and I was just thinking about that. Are you just going to like tan and stuff or like go in the water?”

“Oh I’m going in the water, there’s no sense in having a cool bathing suit and not getting in the water because well that’s what they’re made for.”

“I know right, I have some friends at school and like all this summer it was like tanning and stuff even the ones with like pools and stuff.”

“We’ll definitely have to do the waterslides too.”

“You will!? I mean it won’t be like too little kid for you?”

Taylor comes up and he slips his arms around my waist and hugs me and pulls me to him which is really all sorts of yay and he says to Hunter. “That’s what we’re here for…heck I’ve never been here either.”

We get inside and Angie’s waving us over she and Iggy had slipped away from the play area and games place to head over here early and Angie has gotten us a table sort of set up and our own little cabana thing for us to use and she picked up some other stuff I see on the way here like juice and water and stuff and the towels are out and it’s actually pretty warm here…there’s lights that are pretty warm and stuff it’s all really cool and I smile and hug her and hug Ingrid who’s drinking an Orange Julius which is good as it might put some energy into her and there’s another one for the list of stuff that’s like not hurting her stomach with the meds.

Dad and Taylor go and get changed first and it’s the first time I’ve seen Dad like in beach clothes and yeah he’s got older guy build but it’s actually pretty decent and he’s definitely spent time outside because he has a tan and stuff even if it’s like an old tan and he has some scars too.

I’m like no expert but they look like some surgery ones here and there because they’re sort of straight and then there ones that are like that but with like really nasty sort of rough and pitted stuff and those I think he got from being in combat.

I mean it’s one thing knowing all of that and then there’s really seeing battle scarred evidence of that.

It gets me right in the choked up stuff but it’s that and the way that Angie is looking at him. I mean it’s sort of me still sort of that little girl when it comes to him and the whole fact that he’s been alone for a while…and I mean in the way that anyone else just didn’t work out for one reason or another and now he’s with someone that’s really into him.

It makes that little girl in me pretty happy.

And then Taylor comes out of the changing cabana and he’s…yummy. He’s tall but not too tall but sort of just right for me to feel like a girl with him and he’s buff…not like super buff with like the whole gym rat thing but that young man muscle that’s there from working…he lifts weights with loading and moving out stock around and he’s busy all the time so he really doesn’t have the paunch instead a flat stomach…just a hint of abs’ there and a broad chest and shoulders and arms....I have such a thing for arms and like forearms and stuff it’s…a guy’s arm with the bone and the muscles and the other stuff like I love how tough and rough Tay’s hands are from all the work and the heat and stuff…those little scratchy rough bits send signals to my brain that are all shivery and female and then there’s all that power.

Yes power…I might not want or ever wanted that for me as me but to have big strong arms hold me…tough, rough strong hands touch me with their own gentleness and caring…it’s emotionally powerful for me.

And in bed…being guided, and touched and handled even but still gently is a thrill and there are times when I’m on top and we’re making love than he holds me up…I mean it…we’ll be making love and he will hold me up as I’m leaning over him and moving and he’ll do things…lovely things to my breasts…but he’ll hold my body weight up…and there’s sometimes during that when I’ll hang onto his arms and they’re so strong and solid and I can feel that power there humming through them from him holding me like I’m ever so light and pretty…and there’s a thrill that takes me sometimes right to my happy moment…it doesn’t cause it but of lord…it certainly doesn’t hurt the process.

All that and him in flip flops and these black basketball style trunks that all the guys wear these days but his have flames coming up a little like from the leg hems and on his butt…and he does have a nice butt too…there’s a decal for The Maverick on there.

Add in his scars here and there from his life and stuff and the few tattoos he has from the same and that smile.

I can’t help but to walk over and lean into him and kiss him and he kisses me back and we kind of do that until we get coughed at. We break the kiss and my skin is doing that touch me tingle and my nipples are hard and it’s not from the temperature.

I want more, I could likely maybe do more but at the same time I really don’t need more. And not needing more is actually kind of awesome in its own way.

Angie looks at me and says. “Why don’t we go and get changed.”

I nod and given him one more kiss with a little push from my chest and a little lip bite and then I get my bags and Hunter and I and Angie and even Ingrid head together into the cabana to get changed.

I strip down and I’m a little less nervous than I would have been awhile ago and I’m getting looks from Ingrid and it’s some at the crotch and the rest at the rest of me and she’s really scoping out my breasts.

“Hey those really aren’t implants.”

“No, I told you they’re mine and they’re home grown.”

Iggy’s still a little stoned so there’s a snort and then a. “Pfft Homegrown.”

Okay that was kind of funny.

Hunter’s staring at me too and she’s getting herself into her gaff which I’ve never had and with just my one bit don’t need now but yeah she’s staring at my chest and there’s this sigh. “….lucky.”

I grin at her. “I know it’s like the one good thing I’ve even gotten from my bio-mom.”

Hunter tilts her head and she’s looking at me again. “What your boobs?”

“It’s in the genes, Dad’s family the women are kind of on the smaller side of things and Natalie well she’s both like French and Dutch and all the old pictures of that side of our family that I can remember the women were all busty and blonde.”

She’s looking at her top and mine and she sighs again and then she looks over at Angie and she sighs again which makes Angie do the hands on her hips thing with a. “Hey!”

Okay that gets us snorting and laughing a little and then there’s Ingrid getting changed and wow…out of her clothes and away from her blankets she’s thin…still too thin…and her color’s…I mean she was pale before but this now she’s just.

Off…you can see that she’s sick.

I bite my lip and just think for a minute and pray a little to myself…please, please I need to do this right.

I do a bit of a hard swallow and I look at Iggy and she looks at me and she rolls her eyes and does the devil horns at me. Y’know the whole rock thing and stuff.

She never really was into the whole faith and god stuff even back in school.

She does look at herself in the mirror there and she frowns. “Screw this.” And she gets a t-shirt that she brought with her in her bag and she slips it on over her two piece and sighs. “Still look like shit but just not as bad.”

“You don’t look like shit.” I tell her and she just looks like me.

“Uhm…yeah sure.” She voicing heavy on the sarcasm and I hug here and she squirms.

“Jenna…ick jeeze.”

“It’s a hug.”

“Screw hugs I’m allergic to feelings.”

I smile at her and look her in the eyes until she reddens and we both go outside together. I’m taking a breath to go out and do that too because this is me in a bathing suit in a highly public place…not even a gym is like this kind of public.

Ingrid looks at me. “You look fine.”

“I’m still nervous, I’ll always be nervous.”

“Of what? You look great.”

“No hips, and my shoulders aren’t exactly slim like they should be and then there’s the scars.”

“Everyone has scars, and stretch marks and blemishes Jenna no one is damned perfect and you don’t have to be.”

I look at her and I sigh. “I know, I know but it’s not how it works.”

“How what works?”

“Gender dysphoria…sometimes it’s just still there in your head that it’s never going to be right or enough and it hurts because you just want to be normal and no matter how well you look in that whole normal scale it just comes back and rails at you.”

She stops and she looks at me, I can tell that she’s never really thought about this or really knows that much about being trans. We kind of lock eyes again and I can’t help the shimmer there because this is one of those sort of on the edge of trigger moments.

And she hugs me this time and it’s that same kind of hug that she gave me way back when we really were friends and stuff and I’d have some of these sort of moments before we even…before I even really knew what they were.

“C’mon Jenna Let’s go and actually have some fun with our daughter before my buzz wears off and my meds wipe me out. I didn’t haul my butt out of the couch and into this get up for nothing okay.”

I give her a hard squeeze and take a deep breath and nod and wipe at my eyes. (Sniff.) “Yeah, I really want to do this.”

I go with her and Hunter and Angie’s joining us with Giselle after she got her into her little one piece and we start with the wading pools with the other little kids and she scream-squeals and she’s waddle running into the water and splashing and slapping the water with that bouncy thing she does with that. “Yeeee-he-he-he!”

I’m smiling and laughing because she’s such an amazing little spaz and she is having that Omigod freak-out where she’s just blown away by the coolness of being in a pool and is hitting brain overload.

And there is no way that that can’t make you smile and have that blow all the bad stuff away.

I look at Iggy and I hug her around the shoulder.

“Thanks, thanks for her and making me a mom.”