Part 10 of 11

Chapter 15
When we got home late, the other girls took one look at us and asked why we both looked like we'd gotten laid but hadn't been in the bedroom yet. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get used to girls asking questions like that, I was brought up to think girls didn't do stuff like that.

I figured the easiest way to explain was to unbutton my blouse, so that's what I did. Of course Jenny and Wendy have to cop a feel of my new breasts and they're both giggling like little kids. I even took one out and let them feel it, we're close enough that I didn't mind doing that.

So we had to explain all about the breast cancer stuff and I asked Wendy if she had had a mammogram yet. Turns out she hadn't, so I encouraged her to get it done, I don't want any of my best friends to get cancer. Suddenly I realize I haven't asked Patty about a mammogram yet, and she has to admit she hasn't had one either. I knew that Jenny had because she told me about getting her tits squashed.

So Jenny and I sort of encourage Patty and Wendy to call the women's clinic and take care of business. (I should explain that mammography in 1977 was a very new thing, there were many who wanted to be sure every woman got checked to prevent breast cancer. It took many more years to figure out that it didn't help women below their forties.)

Then I open my mouth and say "At least I don't have to worry about that because my breasts are fake."

"Not really, Liza," says Jenny. "Men can get breast cancer, too, but it's rare. You guys are lucky because you have almost no breast tissue so all you have to worry about is the early symptoms like discharge from your nipples or the skin on your chest doing odd stuff."

Just what I wanted to hear!
 

I hated to wait while the college processed my forms, but eventually I found out I was accepted and qualified for some scholarship money. Pretty ironic that one of them was because I was the first girl in my family to go to college. There was also an offer of twenty hours a week of a job at the school, which suited me just fine! I hated to have to tell Charlie and Maude I was going to quit when school started, but they both said that getting an education was more important than waiting on tables.

Things were slow at the salon one morning, so we were just talking about whatever when Ingrid tells me I'm due for a waxing. I try to put her off, but the girls tell me that it's summer and I need to be hairless in order to go swimming. The girls don't know that I'm not going to be wearing a swimming suit this summer because my top is fake and my bottom is kind of obvious. Unless I use the gaff, that is, like I was doing today. I had been trying it out over the last week or so and Mrs Upshaw had been right, it wasn't all that comfortable but after a while it was OK. I did like being able to wear things without worrying my package would give me away.

So before I know it I'm on Ingrid's table and she's spreading the wax. At least this time I knew what was coming, but that only helps so much. I had finally found out what that Brazilian wax job meant and no way was I going to let her do that to me. I managed not to cry when she did the backside, but when I rolled over she looks at my crotch and says "What did you do with it, Liza? You didn't cut it off or anything?"

"You really think Patty would let me cut it off, Ingrid?"

"Seems a little unlikely, but I've given up trying to figure out why people will do some things."

"You and me both! Have you noticed anything different about my breasts lately?"

"Liza, I'm a girl, I don't try to peek at other women's breasts."

"Not even to compare to yourself?"

"Answer my question or I'll be tempted to cut it off myself."

"You're hard, Ingrid."

"And you're not, for which I thank the goddess of Love."

"I don't think Patty would agree with you."

Ingrid makes this exasperated noise and just reaches out an pulls down my panties, which shows her the gaff."

"What the hell is that?" she asks.

So I explain about the gaff and what it does.

"God, and men say we women will do anything for beauty."

"Hey, these days I'm included on the women's side."

"You must be, usually when I do a Brazilian on a man he stands up and salutes - at least until I pull the ripcord. That tends to deflate a guy in a hurry. Hell, I've even gotten a reaction from some gay guys."

"You don't say."

"And no, I do not do anything for the guy except maybe throw a towel over him if he's big enough. I'm a professional, not a whore."

"I never even thought of you doing anything like that."

"Let's get this over with, OK. I've got paying customers in half an hour."

I have to tell you, even with the gaff I reacted when Ingrid started rubbing the lotion on my crotch. I'm not all girl yet.
 

I was finding out that there's a whole lot more to getting married than showing up at the church and saying 'I do' at the right time. If there ever was a wedding to be held under exceptional circumstances, it was ours.

Start with the engagement ring. Rings. We had just spent every penny we had on my new falsies - we couldn't afford one ring, let alone two. Next, when filling out the financial aid forms so I could go to school we found out if I got married the cheapskates wouldn't give me enough money to make it all work.

Doesn't matter I'm the same person, they scrimp on the cash. The lady at the school tells me the government does the same thing to old folks on Social Security. As if they start eating less and the landlord gives them a break on the rent when they get married. Our landlord sure isn't going to be giving us any breaks on the rent even if he knew Patty and I were getting married.

Then there's the minor inconvenience that Patty and Liza can't be married legally, which means that Vito and Patty have to do the marrying. The good side to this is that what Vito does doesn't affect Liza's financial aid, but the bad side is as far as the law is concerned Patty will be committing adultery if she's sleeping with Liza.

Why were we going through all of this torturous planning? Patty and I really wanted to be married. Legally married, no matter what name was on the marriage license. It didn't really matter who knew we were married as long as we knew we were married. Married 'till death do us part.

So, this is where the long-term planning comes in. What we figured to do is have Vito and Patty get married, then Vito disappears and nobody knows what happened to him. Patty stays with her roommates once Vito takes a powder and we all wait seven years for Vito to be declared legally dead and the statute of limitations to expire. Nobody is going to say word one about there only being three bedrooms and four people in the apartment, right?

Maybe by then the gay guys that have been agitating to change the laws will have made some progress. Maybe me being Liza won't still be a crime because of the clothes I'm wearing. You never know. Ah, the optimism of youth!

Then there's the problem of just who would perform the ceremony. With Vito being a wanted man asking a judge to do it wasn't going to be advisable. That left a priest or a minister or somebody religious, but even if I took off my bra and wore Vito's old suit I would still look like a girl in a suit these days.

Once again it was Jenny who had the answer. I really have to say that even though our first meeting was pretty awful, Jenny has become a fast friend. Being a legal secretary, she knew all kinds of odd facts about the law and how to bend it without breaking it.

I remember seeing on TV that the captain of a ship in international waters can perform marriages. Being as Buffalo is a few hundred miles from the nearest ocean that might seem to be irrelevant, but Buffalo is only a few miles from Canada. So the Niagara River (which technically isn't a river but a straight) is considered International Waters.

Jenny told us about a case they handled where the guy wanted a divorce, but didn't want to pay alimony, tried to argue that he was never legally married because they got married on a cruise on the Niagara River. It was a nice try, but it turns out that sea captains can't marry people. The couple were married by the first mate, who was legally an officiant, so the marriage was legal and he was going to have to pay alimony if he wanted to run off with his secretary.

Sometimes it isn't what you know but who you know, and Jenny is worth knowing. You can ask Uncle Vinny if you don't believe me. He knew a cop that could make evidence disappear for the right price. Vinny beat the rap, even though a year later he ended up in the slammer because he didn't know the place had these new security cameras and he takes a good, clear photo.

Even after we learned all this stuff, getting married on a riverboat was just so romantic we wanted to do it that way. Besides, a couple of tickets for the boat ride was a lot cheaper than renting a hall and all that stuff.
 

So we have the makings of a plan. Patty and I came over to have dinner with Momma and Pops and I borrowed some of Vito's old school clothes as well as his birth certificate. By this time it actually felt like Vito was a separate person, I was really and truly Liza.

When we got home I tried the clothes on and they weren't convincing at all, even if I wasn't wearing a bra. After being a girl for so long I unconsciously moved like a girl and talked like a girl and even thought like a girl no matter what clothes I was wearing.The haircut and nail polish were a dead giveaway, too.

Wendy and Patty say I'm sexy as hell wearing a man's shirt. Either one of them wearing a men's shirt (and nothing else!) is enough to remind me I still have male equipment and it is completely functional. I guess the Ghost Of Vito Past is still with me at times.

Which is how we came to be on a train to Niagara Falls one morning with me wearing Vito's clothes with unpainted nails, big, clunky shiny-toed black shoes on my feet, a ten gallon hat to hide my hair and feeling practically naked without my bra.

We had our birth certificates and ID (Vito's, not Liza's) with us when we entered city hall and applied for our marriage license. The clerk gave me some really close looks, but after the usual bureaucratic wait we left the place with the papers in hand.

Jenny had dug through the paperwork and found the name of the boat that that errant husband got married on, so we stopped at their offices and asked about what it would take to have the captain or whoever marry us. Even though I looked like a swish they liked our money. They tried to sell us a charter, but no way did we have that kind of money.

Eventually we made arrangements for the captain (he had become a notary public just for this kind of thing) to quietly marry us in his cabin on one of the regular cruises.

Once the arrangements were made we found a place with individual bathrooms and I gratefully shucked Vito's clothes and put on my own clothes from the big bag that Patty was carrying. Double-knits are your friend under such circumstances!

We left the big bag in a locker at the train station and we spent the rest of the day seeing Niagara Falls. Can you do the honeymoon before the wedding? Funny how I've lived my entire life maybe twenty-five miles from the one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world and I've only been there a couple of times.

We got home late and tired but happy. I had just enough energy to call Momma and tell her the date of our wedding and where we were going to get married. She got a good laugh about us being married on a boat.
 

I haven't said anything about Patty's parents so far, mostly because they live in Phoenix Arizona and they haven't been around since Patty and I found each other. They lived in Buffalo until Patty graduated from her cosmetology course, then moved to Phoenix to take care of Patty's grandparents. Patty, being the dutiful daughter, writes to them regularly and they write back, but I've never met them.

She comes by her liberal attitudes honestly, her father is a college professor and her mother a social worker. In 1977, feminism was a hot topic, the courts finally made contraception legal and there were several other landmark decisions about women's rights. College campuses were hotbeds of activity (as I knew very well!) and everybody had an opinion about what women should be and what they should do.

Those opinions were many and varied, shall we say.

Patty had been keeping her parents abreast of her and her roommates' activities in feminizing me, without quite saying how we met or why it was necessary. She also hadn't come right out and said we were lovers, but had dropped a hint or two. Now that we had set a date to get married it was time to spring for a long distance phone call, a letter would be too slow as we were getting married in only two weeks.

Telling her parents she was getting married to the guy she and her roommates had turned into a woman was an awkward conversation, to say the least. I only heard her half of it, but I was very glad it wasn't me trying to explain. In a lot of ways I'm very lucky to be a wanted criminal who needed an excuse to become a woman.

Neither of us really expected it, but suddenly her parents were going to be there for our wedding. Patty had to say over and over that it was going to be very small and very low-key. A woman takes her life in her hands when she tells her mother the extravaganza Mother was planning for her little girl is not going to happen!

Naturally, this conversation attracts Jenny and Wendy, who want to be there when we get married, too. Somehow our quiet little secret wedding is getting out of hand and I'm beginning to have feelings for superman and his secret identity.

Next morning at the salon Patty is looking so smug that the girls know something is going on. For that matter, I'm not exactly exuding doom and gloom. (I think I had better lay off those 'build your vocabulary' things if I'm going to be using words like exude.) So now there's half a dozen more wedding guests.

It gets better. When I go to do my waitress gig it takes Maude about three seconds to ask "So when's the wedding?" I'm convinced she's a mind reader. Trouble is, I hadn't even told her Patty and I were engaged. I sure hadn't told her that I'm a transsexual, a word I learned from Mrs Upshaw. Yeah, my vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds.

It's still quiet, so Charlie comes out and says we should talk.

Oh joy!

"Liza honey," says Maud, "When you first came in here with Patty we wondered a bit about you. You looked pretty good but there was something off. Not that we would say anything - the customer is always the customer even if she's not always right - but we were puzzled. After a couple of weeks we knew you were a good kid, so even if we were wondering it's none of our business.

"You know we get all kinds in here and they talk about anything just like we weren't listening. Well, before Mike the Cop got transferred, he was in here with his cop buddies talking about how the kid that was with the robbers has disappeared without a trace and the cops are hitting a brick wall. Then we know Patty lives in the building next door and suddenly there is a girl that isn't quite a girl and we put it all together.

"Still, it isn't any of our business and we don't go talking to the police about our customers. We watched you and saw how you got better and better at being a girl and it just made sense. When you asked for the job we figured if we were right then being a waitress would be a great way to help you out and if you were just a regular girl that was kind of awkward it would still help.

"Thing is, watching you and Patty there's no doubt that the two of you are in love. This is the wrong part of town for lesbians to hang out without worrying about who is watching them, so it all hangs together, doesn't it?"

"I give up! You two must be Columbo's parents. You should be on TV. But how did you know we're getting married?"

"You're already in love, you're living together, what else could make you grin like that?"

"I'm curious Liza. I can't see Father Kowalski doing the service for two women, besides which it would be illegal."

"In my family, illegal has never been much of a consideration."

"Interesting family you got there."

"You don't know the half of it."

"Somehow I can't see how you would be able to look like a guy no matter how hard you tried. If you put on a suit you'd look like your little sister playing dress-up."

"Exactly what I thought when I tried it. The girls snickered at me."

"So what's the plan?"

"I'm still working on it. We're going to be married by a riverboat captain in Niagara Falls, though. That way we don't have to meet any judges or men of the cloth who might object."

"You romantic devil, you!"

"They say the devil is in the details, maybe they're right. Looks like customers coming, we can talk later."

"Sure. And Liza, we get to make the cake for the reception."

"We can't afford a reception."

"We'll talk. Leave that to us."