Chapter 16 - A Birthday Surprise

My twelfth birthday party was quite a departure from those in the past. Previous parties were just a bunch of guys getting together to hang out and stuff themselves with ice cream and cake. This year the topic of sex had become apparent.

Not that kind of sex! C'mon, we were only twelve years old, but we had all begun to notice the difference between boys and girls. Especially me.

Well duh!

My transition to being a girl at school was relatively trouble free. The whole boy/girl thing just didn't matter too much to me up until then, but now that I was spending most of my time with girls and talking about the things girls talk about, I was starting to realize that it was something significant. Having a party with friends from both worlds brought that into sharp focus.

Things were a bit awkward at the start, but Mom wasn't going to let that keep on. She had several party games ready that forced us to do things together. As a soon-to-be teenager I was somewhat embarrassed by Mom taking over, but we did have a good time.

Somewhere along the line I noticed that Craig was sticking awfully close to Aileen.

Craig was as far ahead of the puberty line as I was behind it. I was starting to realize that he was interested in Aileen that way! Aileen was showing signs of being just as interested in return. The funny thing was, I was starting to notice Janine in that same way, but it took Craig dancing around Aileen to make me realize it.

Now that was one helluva birthday surprise.

Speaking of Janine, I was glad we lived in a ranch house, otherwise Janine and her wheelchair could have been quite a problem. The patio sliding doors were wide enough to let her in the place. While our place was far from designed to be accessible, she could navigate pretty easily. Until, that is, when she had to use the bathroom. The door to the bathroom was just too small to pass her chair. The other problem was there were no grab bars to let her get onto the toilet by herself.

The party had been going strong for a while and we had all been guzzling juice and soda and gorfing ice cream when what went in had to come out. Janine took me aside and asked me if I could help her into the bathroom. If you remember, we met when we were both in need of a bathroom, so I was glad to help.

That is until I realized that, in the present case, help included helping her skin out of her panties before I settled her on the toilet. Physically, not much of a problem because she weighed much less than I did, but mentally!

Mentally - oh boy! Even though I was pretty sure I wanted to be a girl I had started to notice girls. Maybe I wasn't as far behind in the puberty sweepstakes as everybody thought and those testosterone blockers were still pretty new.

Dammit, I got an erection!

Not much of one, granted, but I sure noticed it. Fortunately she didn't, but I started to understand all those birds-and-bees talks a lot more clearly. Suffice it to say we had to get pretty damned intimate to let her use the toilet.

As I carried her back out to her chair she gave me a kiss. On the lips. Oh boy! Without doubt the best birthday present I had gotten that day. As I lowered her down into her chair, my head spinning, I realized just how strong Janine was. Since she used her arms to move herself around, she was damned strong. I had been afraid I might lose my grip on her body because my head was spinning, but there was no worry about that. She had me in a hug that wouldn't quit. In fact, she wasn't ready to let go and seat herself, so I kissed her back.

Eventually we had to let go. Not sure just what had happened, we just grinned at each other like fools.

"I liked that…" I said rather in a daze.

"Me too. We have to do it again some time."

"How about right…"

Rats! Someone else was heading for the bathroom. Neither of us were ready to be quite so public about what had just happened, so I took hold of the handles of her chair to guide her back to the party.

No matter what happened after that, it was the most memorable birthday I had ever had.

 

What's with the 'thousand yard stare,' kiddo?"

"Huh? Oh, hi Dad."

"Did Mom goof up and slip you some of the Zombie Juice instead of the punch at the party?"

"No. Not that. It's just…"

"Don't tell me - let me guess! Either the Doc screwed up on your hormones or you're in love."

"Daaaaad!"

"Must be love, hormones wouldn't act that fast unless they were natural."

"Jeez Dad!"

"We all go through it, kiddo. Dare I ask who?

"Uh… Janine?"

"Interesting… I won't ask what happened…"

"She kissed me, Dad."

"Sounds promising. Nice romantic start if you're lucky."

"Romantic? Jeez Dad, I was helping her use the toilet."

"I suppose I should ask your sister if any of her romance novels start out like that."

"Daaaaad!"

"Hey! We could start a whole new genre - transgender paraplegic toileting romance. Dirty love on wheels!"

"Daaaaad!"

"First real kiss, I assume?"

"Uh, yeah..."

"Enjoy it?"

"Uh, yeah…"

"Kiss her back?"

"Yeah!"

"Finally! Some enthusiasm. 'Course, such things are downright confusing at your age."

"You got that right!"

"So take some advice from your dear old Dad: take it slow, spend some time together and it's probably a good idea not to make out at school."

"Daaaaad!"

 

Chapter 17 - The Secret Garden

In what seemed no time at all, rehearsals for The Secret Garden started. But before I get into that, I have to take a little side trip and talk about some of the really stupid names that some parents hang on their children. Grandpa tells me that he almost named Mom 'Cellar Door' because it is so euphonious. I hope he's putting me on, but with Grandpa you never can tell… And then there was Mom's story of a kid named Bambi in her first grade class. Cute name for a girl, but this kid was a black boy. I couldn't think of a better way to guarantee the guy will have to fight his way through life.

I tell you this because Colin was played by a new kid in town, Dylan Thomas. No, I was not sharing the bill with a dead Welsh poet, but his father was a big fan of the original Dylan Thomas' poetry. Since chance dictated he possessed the surname 'Thomas,' he named his firstborn son for his favorite poet.

And no, I hadn't read any of the famous Dylan's poetry at the time, I just knew the name. It's a good thing I have literary parents or I wouldn't have had a clue that coincidence had once again struck my young life.

His mother, some kind of high muckity-muck with a tech firm, had been transferred here last fall and Dylan, with his father's approval, decided to try out for the part. Must have been a good idea since he got the part, but nobody really knew him. His family lived on the other side of town, so he didn't go to school with anyone I knew but he turned out to be a pretty nice guy.

We were introduced at our first read-through. He looked a little bit intimidated, being the new kid and all. So intimidated, in fact, that I just gave him a hug and welcomed him to our group. I guess you can figure out that by this time I was so into being a girl that I never thought hugging a boy was anything strange. I felt his body relax after a second when he realized we were going to be nice to him.

"You look too darn healthy to be and invalid, Dylan. You're going to need a lot of makeup at first."

"Nah, I just have to get on the wrong side of my sister and I'll look like I'm at death's door."

"And when do I get to meet her? I may need some tips to cope with my own brother."

"No way! She's too scary to let that sort of thing get out! Boy's code of honor, and all that.

Heh-heh-heh. If he only knew!

"I didn't know boys had a code of honor."

"Of course we do, but I’m sworn to secrecy to keep it away from any girls.”

“Ooohhh! A challenge! Hey Kate! I'm gonna need some help to worm the deep, dark secrets out of Dylan."

"It'll cost ya, squirt. What deep, dark secrets is she trying to worm out of you, anyway?"

"Hey! I'm not falling for that one! This charming young lady is trying to get me to break the Boy's Code of Honor."

"Huh! As if any boy had a Code of Honor."

"I just said that, Kate."

"I guess you're not as dumb as you look. Do we play twenty questions or do we just go right to the dungeon and start torturing him?"

"Can it wait until we read through the script? I wouldn't want to blow my lines because I was whimpering in abject fear."

"I suppose… but you're going to have to be a lot more wishy-washy if you want to be a convincing Colin. The things they did to that poor kid were really awful!" growled Kate.

"Yeah! Just wait until you meet my friend Janine, she's gonna be your disability coach."

"Disability coach? What the heck is that?"

"She's a paraplegic and in a wheelchair. She's gonna help you be convincing once Colin gets his act together. She'll also give you an earful of all the crap they did wrong back in the olden days."

"Sounds like an interesting person."

"Yeah. She's my Bestie these days."

 

Things got awfully busy in my life, what with the show, school and school chorus.

As rehearsals for Secret Garden progressed, Janine took to hanging around even when her two cents weren't needed. She spent a lot of time with Mrs Garabaldi, the wardrobe mistress, and somehow found herself helping to alter costumes, sort things and generally be Mrs G's assistant. She had no desire to be on the stage, but the technical end of production appealed to her.

I got a laugh thinking about the wild-ass basketball player sitting demurely sewing embroidery on frothy costuming. We modern girls have many talents.

Chapter 18 - A Budding Romance

There is a temptation in writing this memoir to adopt the point-of-view of the all-knowing narrator, the mature wise-woman who is looking fondly at this chaotic period of my life to bring order into that chaos. I fear that would be overacting (overwriting?) because there really was no overarching hand of fate guiding my life.

A Shakespearean might say:

What fates impose, that men must needs abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide

Or my grandparents might put it:

The kid just went with the flow

Mom and Dad just said:

Our job is to support you as you make your own choices.

Me? I just did what felt right. I was completely satisfied to live my life as a girl. Now just why I had to find out I was a girl on the cusp of puberty is something I'll never understand, but I am certainly glad it happened before my body started to go down the masculine route.

Doctor Phil was convinced I was the real thing and I started on anti-androgens. Dad was right that my body would get a little confused at first and I got a taste of what genetic girls had to go through with cycling hormones, but it wasn't too bad.

Without testosterone coursing through my body what female hormones I was producing got free reign and I developed about half an A cup in my breasts. Pitiful, I know, but they were a source of pride nonetheless.

The hormones (or their lack) had another effect: I started to notice boys. However, I was noticing Janine far more than any boy. Her hormones must have been on the job as well, because she certainly noticed me. Between school, our budding trio and helping Dylan to be a believable invalid child we spent a lot of time together.

School was a trial for our budding romance. Of course, the rules prohibited PDAs. (Public Display of Affection if you somehow managed to miss such where you went to school) We also had the additional problems of us both being girls. (OK, you know what I mean…) Even if we could have held hands, Janine needed both hands to push her wheelchair. Of course I could have pushed her, but then my hands would have been otherwise occupied. Sometimes you can't win!

Play rehearsals were a bit better, since Janine was acting as a consultant in teaching Colin how to be convincing as the the poor little handicapped boy. Yeah I know, but remember this story was written a long time before disability rights became a popular movement.

Janine can be hell on wheels (literally!) when she gets going on a cause, and she talked the powers-that-be in the Periactus Players into inviting some disability rights groups to set up displays about modern attitudes toward disability at the performances. Just as Janine became Assistant Wardrobe Mistress by hanging out with Mrs G, I became Assistant Disability Rights Advocate by hanging out with Janine.

One of the first things I learned when I got to know Janine was the slogan Being Able-Bodied is a Temporary Condition! Like most people, I had never really thought about being disabled - if your body works like it should then it just doesn't occur to you to question it.

There are always a few who are injured in accidents, they are the ones who suddenly have to think real hard about disability. If you're like most people you feel for them, but they don't really affect your life.

When it really hits home is when you (or most likely your parents) get a bit older. The arthritis starts to bother your joints. Maybe your heart goes out, your hearing starts to weaken, your balance gets iffy. That, my friends, is a disability. Being Able-Bodied is a Temporary Condition!

Being close to Janine brought this to my attention at an unusually young age, but as I write I can see it in my grandparents, and even in Chip and Joanna.

I didn't mean to get off on a sermon, but having some real disabled folks at the performance just might have helped a few people understand a little more about those who have to fight their own body every day to keep going.

 

So back to our budding romance. We were able to hold hands every so often and even found a little time to talk together at rehearsal when neither of us were needed at the moment, but I was still plenty confused. You try being a transgendered pre-teen girl hopelessly in love with a girl in a wheelchair and see just how well your brain works.

I'm still amazed at how accommodating our parents were. A regular shuttle service developed between our house, Janine's house and Aileen's place. Since we were all of a similar size we spent many hours giggling and trading clothes. Poor Aileen was rather out of it, gushing about the cute boys in the magazines while Janine and I were more interested in each other. That's not to say Janine was blind to a cute boy, but I never truly developed that interest as fully as most girls of that age.

I suppose it's a good thing cell phones weren't all that common when this happened or Janine and I would have run up some pretty big bills. As it was, my first romance had to take a back seat to reality.

I kind of felt bad when Aileen and I were in dance lessons since that was something Janine would never be able to share with us, but I was just as happy that Janine didn't try to get me into one of those hi-tech wheelchairs and play basketball with her. She was happy to applaud at our dance recitals and I was happy to jump around and cheer for her basketball team.

Speaking of jumping around and dancing, I suppose this is as good a place as any to talk about the downside of being a transgender girl; in other words having to wear falsies if I wanted to look like a teenage girl. Believe me, I did want to look girl by this time. Actually, I wanted to be a girl. Sure, I was ambivalent at the start, but after being at Ursuline and having all my new friends I found that I was more comfortable as a girl than I ever was as a boy. Maybe that's why I was so successful at being Annie on stage.

Naturally, there were a couple of exceptions. I've mentioned those annoying bra hooks that dug into my back (I eventually solved that problem with front-hook bras, but it took a while before I discovered them. Bras for young girls all seem to hook in the back.)

I shot up, gaining several inches of height over the next few months. My uniform skirts suddenly were far enough above my knees to make Kate seriously annoyed that I could get away with wearing them until my waist required I get new ones. My new stature called for somewhat larger breasts to look balanced, so I graduated to a B cup.

This leads to the other exception - the falsies. My first set were hardly noticeable, they were small and just gave me a little bit of shape up top. When the time came for new, larger endowments I did notice them more often. Like when I was dancing. Irish dance often involves hopping and skipping, and bouncing. Every time I landed those silicon blobs bounced. To make maters worse, the longer I danced the more I sweated, and don't give me any guff about women being too feminine to do anything as gauche as sweating. The darn things were clammy.

After a couple of dancing sessions, I remembered Kate talking about sports bras, so I screwed up my courage and asked her about them. After she got done laughing, she showed me the difference between a regular bra and a sports bra. Bigger straps, heavier elastic, no adjustments, just stretch it into place. Kate was big enough by then to need some real support for athletics, I could see the difference when she put the sports bra on to show me. No bounce in her boobies, as she put it.

So I had to ask Mom about getting a couple of sports bras for me, then I had to wait for her to stop laughing.

"Jeez, Mom. Am I going to have to wait for Dad and Sam to laugh at me before I can get a sports bra?"

"I really had no idea what we were going to unleash when we got you those breast forms. I suppose it wouldn't do to have your breast plop on the floor during the middle of a dance recital."

"Mooommm!"

I suppose we can look sometime this weekend. You don't need it all that quickly."

"Before Janine's game? Cheering is as bad as dancing."

"It never ends… Kate pesters me for makeup, Sam pesters me for video games and now you pester me for lingerie.

 

Secret Garden was a triumph. This time the newspaper critic gave me an interview before the show and, while I was nervous, he was a good interviewer and I think I came off pretty well. I was pleased he completely ignored that I was transgendered and treated me as a young woman discovering her talent.

With much hard work, that talent now included doing dialects. The theatre teacher at Ursuline, while disappointed I didn't have time to be in their program, was able to coach me in sounding like a girl from India and then speaking in a Yorkshire accent. Doing voices was fun and I eventually worked up a range of characters I could draw on at need. Once I had to go out and earn a living, being a voice actor helped to fill the gaps when stage roles were thin on the ground.