"Yesterday, I was pretty sure I was a boy. Heck, this morning….” I trailed off.

Part 3 - Hollywood

Chapter 17 - Clubbing

“So, your mom doesn’t know you’re experimenting with going out in public as a girl?” Rory asked.

“No.” I winced.

“And she’s not expecting you home until later?”

“No, I’m usually out till eleven on Thursday, game night. I don’t have a curfew since graduation.”

“And your gamer buddies don’t know where you are?”

“No.” We were in Rory’s truck, heading south on Vermont from my neighborhood in Los Feliz.

“But your mom came home earlier than you expected and she’s there now?”

“Yes,” I said. “She was supposed to be going to a movie with friends in Westwood. I didn’t expect her home before ten. Maybe they went to an early show and skipped getting dinner.”

“Girl,” he said, “are you in a fix or do you just think you’re in a fix?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

He sighed. “We’ve got choices. I can take you home and you can face your mom, with or without me to back you up. I can take you to your gaming group….okay no.” I was shaking my head on that one. “We could go to my place and just hang out till you think your mom has gone to bed.” I frowned.

“Lou says you’re a criminal and not to trust you,” I pointed out.

He laughed. “Good ol’ Lou, a character witness when you need one. Okay, I understand where you’re coming from. So, we could go somewhere else and wait or do something else, cause I take it, you don’t want to face your mom tonight?”

I shook my head. I felt my lip tremble. I didn’t want to cry. I’d have to fix my makeup. Which I realized I hadn’t done after eating. I pulled down the vanity mirror and took a look. My lipstick was gone but everything else looked fine.

Rory was laughing at me. “You are such a girl,” he said. “Oh, crisis,” he went on in a high voice, ‘oh, time to see how I look!’”

“Shut up,” I said. I debated whether I could apply lipstick in a moving vehicle. We turned west on Santa Monica. I got a lipstick out of my purse, the copper red that almost matched my hair. “Where are we going?”

“You’re not giving me a clue, darling,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m just driving.”

He watched with quick glances as I applied the color in three movements, keeping it on my lips and not my cheek. I pulled a tissue out of the pocket pack included in my kit, blotted and re-applied.

Rory smiled. “You’re already a pro,” he said. “Sure you haven’t been doing this for years?”

“Yes. Just starting out. Not even sure this is where I’m going to be going. Yesterday, I was pretty sure I was a boy. Heck, this morning….” I trailed off thinking about Marjorie.

“Be a waste of natural talent if you don’t. Have you seen anyone about this? Anyone professional?”

“Psychologist.” Meaning Marjorie but she wasn’t really a counselor. “Medical doctor. Have an appointment for in the morning with him again.” I startled, remembering that I would need Mom along or at least her signature on a permission slip. I sighed. A few hours ago I had been sure I would not go, now it looked like the best thing to do.

“Is there some place we could go, a public place?” I asked him. “I need to think.”

“Okay, Babe,” he said.

This time of night on a Thursday, Santa Monica Boulevard was busy but not mad busy. We cruised westward, passing south of Hollywood, north of Melrose and into West Hollywood. We cruised right into the sunset as the golden ball finally dropped below the horizon.

But when Sunset broke off, we stayed on Santa Monica until Rory pulled into the parking lot of what looked like an old church, except a neon sign advertised it as Sanandrea.

“What’s—Is this that gay bar for kids?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s a kiddie bar, no alcohol, and it’s gay friendly, trans, too. Dancing, food, people to meet.”

“We don’t need food, I don’t dance….” I trailed off.

“And you hate people right now, huh?” He grinned at me.

I looked at him. “Am I trans?”

“You tell me.” He got out and went around the truck cab to my side and helped me out. “We can take a look and if it is a problem, we can leave.” And then for the first time, he kissed me.

On the forehead. The difference in our heights was so much, he’d need to bend pretty low to kiss me elsewhere, even if I got on tiptoe. But other than my father when I was small, had I ever been kissed by a male? It sent shivers down my spine. Like, but not like getting kissed by Marjorie — and some of those had been pretty passionate and right on the lips.

We were miles closer to the ocean now and the onshore flow was positively chilly. Even though summer officially started last week, we still had springtime weather in LA. It’s always like this, this time of year, and it always surprises the tourists. I shivered and Rory put his arm around me.

“C’mon short stuff, let’s get inside before you start chattering,” he said pushing me along.

“I’m not short,” I complained. Well, not for a girl, I’m not.

“Okay,” said Rory. “You’re diminutive.”

“Fine,” I said. Which was an obscure role-playing-game joke no one who wasn’t a geek was going to get. (Diminutive and Fine are the two smallest sizes of creature in one famous game—fine being nearly microscopic.) Had Rory made a gamer-geek joke? By accident?

At the door to the place stood a pair of bouncers, neither of which was quite as big as Rory but impressive nevertheless. “No one over thirty inside,” said one of the bouncers, looking us over. “You two are okay.”

Inside, a large space was divided into a restaurant and a dance floor with a stage at one end visible from both. Young people of all descriptions, and I mean all descriptions, occupied the tables and booths in the restaurant half, and a number were dancing in the other half. It wasn’t as crowded as I expected it to be but the volume of noise was tremendous.

Up on stage, a tall girl lip-synced to one of the latest dance tunes, played at aircraft-engine-level through speakers as big as those little French cars. I wasn’t up on recent music, so I didn’t recognize the tune or even the voice, but that might have been because it was so loud. A dozen huge screens showed people dancing, some probably from the music video of the song.

“I—,” I began but shook my head. Standing on tiptoe, I pulled on Rory head to get it down to a level where I could be heard. “Too loud! Let’s get out of here.”

He nodded and we made our way toward the exit, separate from the entrance and with its own bouncer. This was a woman, probably a transwoman from her size and muscles. She smiled pleasantly at us and mouthed some sort of goodbye.

I pointed at my ears, which were actually beginning to hurt, and she nodded, pointing out that she was wearing earplugs.

Back at the truck, Rory opened the passenger door, picked me up and just put me in the seat. Then he gave me a quick peck on the lips, closed the door and ran around to his side. I did some thinking. I hadn’t had that melty feeling again that I’d gotten when he first spoke to me back in Fatburger.

Still the lip smack had started something I felt like I wanted to explore. But did I dare trust Rory to—to respect me if I called a halt? That I wasn’t all-girl didn’t seem to bother him at all and when I had objected to things he had been willing to back off. But damn, he was just as pushy as Marjorie.

I sighed.

He climbed in and began to buckle up so I did, too. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s drive down to the ocean, we’re almost half the way there already. By the time we get there, maybe park a bit, and get back, your mom will almost certainly be asleep.”

“Uh—.” I thought about it. “Okay.” Mom had to work in the morning, she wouldn’t stay up too late.

So we did that. We had to stop for gas but we made it down to the Santa Monica pier in a bit more than half an hour. On the way, we talked. I asked a lot of questions about playing baseball in the CSL.

“It’s not like playing in the minors. It’s a developmental league. We don’t get paid except a per diem for expenses and a tiny amount the NCAA lets us get without losing our amateur status. Kind of like the campus jobs some guys in other sports get,” he explained.

“Are you going to make it into the big leagues?” I asked him.

“Well, I got to think so or why do all this, but really, who knows? It’s a crapshoot. About six hundred new guys a year get to play in the majors, some of them only for a couple of weeks and there are tens of thousands trying for those spots. Half go to players who were there last year, so the odds are even worse than they look.”

He liked to talk about baseball so it was easy to keep him on the subject. It didn’t matter what he said. I just enjoyed watching him, looking at him. I loosened the seat belt so I could turn half sideways and not have to keep cricking my neck to see him.

He had muscles in places I didn’t even have places. Like his neck, how could anyone have such a muscular neck? I felt of my own, I didn’t seem to have any muscles there at all, just enough to keep my head from falling onto my chest. His must be close to twice as big around.

He had that haystack of blond hair on his head, too. His coaches were always after him to cut it, but he said, “Chicks dig the hair? Am I right?”

I giggled in agreement.

He had furry arms, too. Lots of blondness like a cloud or a halo. I wanted to drag my fingers through that. I had no hair there at all and didn’t want any of that on me. But on him, it was almost irresistible. A week ago, even yesterday, the thought would not have occurred to me.

He found an open lot above the beach where we could park and see the ocean. We sat there for some time. Eventually our talk ran down and we got quiet. I was looking at him almost as much as the sea which was throwing up some big waves that crashed on the beach and glowed in the darkness all on their own.

He startled me by suddenly getting out of the truck. The wind that came in the open door for a moment made me shiver but he closed it, ran around the truck, opened the door on my side, and released my seatbelt.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He used the seat controls to push it all the way back in its track. Then he scooped me up, climbed in, sat down with me in his lap and closed the door.

“Isn’t this better?” he asked.

I didn’t have time to answer before he was kissing me.