Covered Bridges.

Chapter 1

There’s times looking back that I knew I was different but really I hadn’t a clue at the time how different.

I pull my rental car into the parking lot of my old home. This is where I grew up. The driveway’s still dirt and is just this big half circle that goes from the edge of the lawn to the road. The grass is starting to reclaim it now. My House and my grandparent’s houses aren’t here anymore…Well it’s been a long time.

There isn’t really a trace of them either we never had a basement just a frost wall that the houses sat on and Albert the guy that used to be the next door neighbour had bought the land from us when my Dad had passed away. He had recovered from getting that celulitis? Stuff in his right leg. It’s that flesh eating disease and he’d been in the hospital so sick for like a year. I was thirteen then and really didn’t get how sick that was…three weeks after he got home he died…a blood clot had come loose and just like that he was gone.

I was just a teenager then and Mom couldn’t handle everything with the houses and the property and we had to move. Albert really ripped us off though. Fifty acres of wood land and another hundred hectares of field and farm and two houses. Seventy thousand was all we got off of that. The money that could have been taken off it in lumber and the fields were just prime for being made into blueberry fields. Well I guess Albert made all that money.

The houses were crap I’ll say that much. Small things just one story with three bedrooms and those were small like college dorm room small. We didn’t even have doors we had these plastic slider doors that were made to look like wood grain. I had to share a room with my older brother for most of my youth until he moved out. Ten by twelve living room and a small kitchen with an heater block stove called a wood chief in the living room and an Enterprise cooking/kitchen wood stove and gravity fed running water…all cold water.

It really was a poor way to grow up in a lot of ways but I really didn’t know different until I became older.

Still looking back at it all there’s some homesickness. A lot of it really grandfather garage is gone just the poured cement floor is still there. I liked my grandfather even though he drove me nuts. There was no such thing as a day off with him. He’d been long retired when I came along and it was always something to do here. Wood heat, working in the garden and not that little hobby things people in cities have I’m talking a real garden up on the first little slope of field in back of our houses the rows were two hundred feet and it fed two households back then.

Odd so much really that I hated being trapped into the farm work and it’s all wistful memories. I walk through a bit more but there’s not much to see, it’s all gone and the garden field and the hayfield are all in blueberries now.

I see Tracy’s house still there across the road from here it’s for sale so I walk over. There’s no one there but I’m in the middle of rural Nova Scotia so it’s not like anyone will accuse me of robbing the place. Besides I know too much about the places around here to be a random stranger.

No I’m just being nostalgic. Heck until I was ten I lived here as much as home. Tracy was my best friend. Well out here all our other friends from school live a few miles away so we had only each other to play with.

It’s not like that there was no cross dressing games.

Tracy and I were little kids together and looking back that might have been weird since we didn’t play boys games but then again Trace had this great forceful personality that dragged you into things.

But she was still a girly girl.

Lydie her grandmother’s garden’s still here and it’s all scrubs and flowers and stuff that was just majikal as a child. I remember Tracy making “Perfume” by making a tea from flowers we’d pick together and I never really though that much about it as a girly thing, It was Tracy and there was just something…

Looking back it’s that restful girl serenity she’d have every once in awhile even as a kid. I can still remember her in a dress closing her eyes on the swings out back and just being. It was like she could just soak in being a girl and being free.

I stole that y’know. I love just being in a nice spot and wearing a dress and swinging on a swing and letting the wind from it move the dress and my hair and it’s like my troubles get taken away from me.

I sort of wanted to be Tracy I think those times and memories of us together as kids are so unspoiled in my head and she had always just seemed so at peace inside.

Or she was as a kid, she moved away to Ontario when we were ten and I was left without my best friend.

It didn’t take long for puberty to find me and stuff and trouble too.

I take one last look at the place and smell some of the flowers and get back into my Camry and drive away.

The next place on my little farewell tour of home was just a mile away down the road and over the hill there was a hard left turn and it took you over the bridge into the Junction proper. I was a junction kid; poor working classed white trash in a way. We really didn’t get thet whole white trash stuff back then. No the Junction was this big square of roads; they didn’t even have street signs there. On either end of the square was why there was even a Junction to begin with.

The lumber mill and the CN train yards. Most of the families here worked one or the other. But these had sorta been my childhood friends too the kids here. It’s where I learned how to swim with them in the river, play baseball and full contact ice hockey in the winter from the CN guys. It’s where I learned to set a snare because we used to sell rabbits for money in the winter, we jigged smelts off the bridge and fished there and after seven at night there wasn’t any traffic so the bridge became the hang out.

These were rough kids if not good kids given how much people drank and stuff back then with those families. You fought and swore and acted tough with these kids to get ahead. And now…me without Tracy as my moral compass something in me hurt that I had no clue about and I acted out trying to make it better.

Oh and buy the time I was in my early teen years I had grown and slapped on the weight thanks to that clean your plate lifestyle of a country kid and a lot of emotional eating. I got big as I hit my puberty and my growth spurts, fat too.

Oh being a poor fat kid in junior high was just lots of fun. See here junior high collects all the kids from all the small little schools around home just like high schools and that included the kids from the nicer areas and money and even just from town.

These kids never got that you had to do chores or things like heat didn’t happen. They didn’t get that to take a bath or do laundry you had to heat the water every time. They had the clothes and the food. I only ever seen store bought sliced bread when dad would get paid and that’s last the weekend. Hand me down clothes or cheap knock offs.

And they loved to point that out to us have nots. It wasn’t really over the top but it was still mean and cruel and well it was being bullied. It only got worse when you’d do something good. Do well and score points or whatever in gym and the jocks and stuff would be all mean about it. It’s so great when stuff jiggles and moves when you’re getting changed in gym, after gym.

Shower afterwards, like that naked no fucking way. Which led to hygiene jokes always funny and finding soap in your locker and all sorts of other hilarity. The girls too were actually the worst. Popularity was life in school and if you were a social leper like me than you know what I mean.

What really hurt that every one in awhile you’d get sort of stuck with one of those people whether it was a guy or a girl and they’s actually stop and treat you like a human being. Or well until other people were around and then it was like I never existed.

And then there were the few times I trusted someone enough to let them in and get to know me and that became the perfect ammo. We had a couple of place home that would’ve been that welcoming beckoning blackness. How many times I never would have made it to as long thirteen standing there like I am now sitting on the edge of the train trussle.

No, I’m not going to jump just sitting in my old darkness like it’s a friend smoking a joint.

Yes a joint, not often but yeah.

It’s how I spend the day actually and just driving around old hangouts, places I used to drink and smoke up and looking at the homes of old friends here in The Junction.

I can’t help but to stop into Thompson’s store a store that used to be a house and used to be the store for the mill guys and the CN boys and all of us. I walk in and it like the last twenty four years just never happened. Hardwood floors that aren’t that click stuff weathered and worn with no varnish left on them, the old coolers, the old fashioned coke machine and…

“You’re still selling glass bottles?” I ask the kid texting on his phone. He ignored me except to check me out. I felt the feel of his eyes running me over. Face to face he’s locked onto my breasts. “Uhm hello?” I arm motion his gaze up from my chest. I like guy’s fine but not boys. He still takes his time looking away from my boobs to my face and the little so-and-so is actually trying to figure out if I meet his teen ideals of good enough.

“Yeah, the old guy who runs the place he takes off once a month to the island to get them.” FYI in the Maritimes the island is generally referring to Prince Edward Island, the Anne of green gables place and where they don’t allow plastic pop bottles or cans. You can’t even get canned beer in the stores there. There’s a provincial ban on the stuff so they still bottle in glass. It saved the bottling plants from being taken out of the province.

Even the major brands like Coke. I buy three of them and shell out nearly twelve bucks for the privilege. And they the 355ml tall bottles. I almost bought a case or two and put then on my card to take with me but that might be a hassle on the train to B.C.

He goes back to either ignoring me or treating me like a piece of meat in equal measure. There’s time’s I’m love to be a mom and then there’s times like these. And you know the worst part about feeling this way? I’m a teacher.

I open one though and get in the car and head off for town. I want to get a room at the Mallard Motel if it’s still called that and just spend some time walking around town or driving before leaving. I shouldn’t be worried home’s one of those right beside the Trans-Canada Highway little towns just about fifteen hundred people total and if you’re trying to find it and pull into town off the highway don’t blink because you’ll miss it.

It’s exactly the same. The Mallard is right at the edge of town beside Salt Lake Lions Park, the local rotary club and sharing the parking lot with The Mallard is The Big B. It’s a sort of grill place, just one bench while you wait and I’ve no idea what the B stands for I always assumed burgers.

They added a dining room to it. Well seating at least. It almost ruins it.

I park and go into the “office” for The Mallard and see…Chris…Chris Thompson behind the desk looking like he’s looked better. He was one of the guys who thought he was special and was on the basketball team in school. He’s one of the guys with the bachelors of gym class and couldn’t find a job teaching or coaching. A bit of grey in his hair, some beer gut and lazy fat on him too and he looks up from the laptop he’s on and folds down the screen cutting off the faint sounds of porn.

And yay he’s looking me over like I’m his lunch. “Can I help you Miss?”

“Porter Haley, Porter.”

“Any relation to the Porters here in town?”

“Cousins.”

“Oh, I don’t recognise the name.”

“That’s okay, no biggie Chris.”

“You know my name?”

“I recognise you.”

“Oh cool.” He seems to puff himself up to the way he used to be in school.

“You don’t seem to have changed much.”

“Naw I’m still y’know cool.”

“No…I don’t really know that, back when I was around you were kind of a mean, petty, jerk who was more into being part of the popular crowd than treating people decently.”

“Hey!”

“No Hey, I remember the stuff you and Keith and Trevor and all your other buddies use to do to people and say about people Chris.”

“But...”

“I think I’ll get a room somewhere else. This place smells like assholes.”

I walk out and he follows. “You can’t fucking just walk in here and talk to me like that! You just mad that I didn’t fuck you back then! Fucking whore!”

He get’s close and I spin on him. “Go the fuck away Chris, before you’re wearing jalapeno body spray.”

I don’t have a can of pepper spray but he doesn’t know that. He gets all flustered and storms into the office. “fuckin bitch she don’t know me nothin but a fuckin dyke more than likely…” he’s cut himself off by going inside and slamming the door shut. I get in my car and he’s peeking out the blinds and I give him the finger.

I drive out pretty fast, I’d have liked to burnt rubber but that’s hard to do in a front wheel drive Camry. It still felt good though. Chris was a jackass, one of those people who peaked in high school and never got anywhere in university because when he got there like a lot of the asses like him who thought the were something he found out that uhm yeah…he wasn’t.

I drive down to the Millstone lodge about six blocks away and pull into parking lot out back. It’s an old three story B&B some stone work and stuff and it’s still got the wooden board siding still that canary yellow and I go in. They used to rent movies here when I was a kid out of their office. At the risk of dating myself I watched “Quest for Fire” from here on laser disc…and you could rent VHS and Beta-max.

It’s still nice though and I’ve always wondered what in was like to stay here. It’s a bit expensive but not too bad for a B&B and the girl at the front desk I don’t recognize but then she was likely born after I left here.

I take my few bags to my room and take out my things and computer and head to the bathroom. “Oh…this is a nice surprise. There’s a shower but also an old claw foot tub. I turn the water on to get hot and get my bathroom kit and pour some honey lemon scented bubble bath into the water.

It feels nice to get undressed. Rub the girls back to life. Some thing that’s so erotic…ffft…I’ve been in that bra all day and it just feels good to get them out into the air and rub the bra pressure out. The same goes for my little dangly friend once free from his confines.

Yes I’m one of those…no, I haven’t had the finale done yet. Long story and I’m not sure I want to risk it not coming out right. But yes, sometimes I’ve really wanted and wondered. The bath is pure bliss and I get nice and comfy and soak. I wash my hair and put it up with the towel and slip into a big white men’s t-shirt a 3XL and really comfy cotton panties. I like to be comfy when I sleep.

I turn on my laptop and re-read the job offer then go online and start looking at real estate in Bridgeview British Columbia.

Covered Bridges-2

Chapter 2

Oh I hate a comfortable bed and the one here at the Millstone Lodge was really comfortable with the memory foam stuff and comforters and really good cotton sheets and I longed for just a bit enjoying the feel of the sheets on my skin.

Then I force myself up and get dressed into my workout clothes and this being home and me not used to North American Chill any more I take a hoody and leave a note staying gone jogging.

I jog; I really try to keep in shape but its force of habit for me now. I was a fat kid and teen and even as a young adult I had weight issues until I got to Brazil. Home’s not that big and I start by running down Duke Street and checking out the homes of a few old friends

I take the turn and head down Willow and go past Dr. Davies old place and smile, it was one of the few places in town that I’d have loved to have as a home for myself. Even now it’s still the same. A red hewn brick brownstone three story hose with a wrap around deck painted white. Big yard in the front and a circular driveway and a proper English garden in the back. He was English and had come over after the war. Sorry if I offend any one who’s a vet but THE war, here in the Maritimes always means WW2.

Right across the street is Wesley’s house. He was another guy like Chris and worse, rich and a jock both. The thing was he was a spoiled little jerk too and a rat. If someone didn’t take his crap and handed him his butt he ran and told. By the look of the place though his family doesn’t live there anymore. Not with the corvette in the yard with Mubai-1 on the plates.

I go down the street past the curling club and there’s the new arena. I guess that really bad winter a few years back totaled the roof on the old one. It looks nice, I like the blue metal siding on it better that that yellow split pea colored stuff they had and there’s a couple of signs up actually advertising the fact that it’s the arena/rink for once and the logo signs of all the hockey teams and stuff are here. Huh…there’s a figure skating club here now. I wonder which old bastard had to die off to give the girls in town a fair shake.

I shouldn’t harp on that too much we always had a great girl’s soccer and basketball team here. Then there the fair grounds and that brings another smile to my face. County fair more or less we used to call it The Exhibition or just The Ex and I used to work it as a teenager. Carneys really didn’t give a shit about how different you were. I made good cash here at the ends of a few summers. Lost my guy virginity here too.

Both times.

First guy I ever was with was a guy canned Miguel, he was from the states, Minnesota I think; and he was in his thirties and he was very cute and he was gay. I was drunk enough that my horny and don’t give a shit factor was stronger that my fear of being gay.

I liked it, and that had me convinced that I was gay, a fag and it kind of kick started me into my weight loss. No one wants to sleep with a three hundred plus pound fairy. I started that winter and that was hard as hell with my Mom being a feed you person and x-mas and stuff but I took Ice skating back up and cross country skiing and shoved a lot of driveways. Decent money too, most people didn’t have snowblowers and not every Tom, Dick, or Harry had a tractor to run a ploughing service then.

After graduation I moved to Truro and went to teachers college. Nothing like college to put you through weight loss. I bought a bike and rode that or walked and I dropped a shitton of weight. But not the stuff came out that I wanted. I had mobs and a fat ass and my mother’s hips and frustrated after awhile I went back and forth with the binge eating and stuff until I was with a guy… Mason who didn’t mind my extra chunks and he noticed how into my moobs I could be and that’s when I found out that I’m Intersexed.

I literally had my mom’s and sisters hips and breasts but they were just sort of developed because on well my guy stuff but that was kind of it aside from the whole female hormone levels that I did have was a big factor in my life long fight with my fat. I didn’t have any of the reproductive system at all.

Honestly as curious as I am the thought of PMS scared the shit out of me. I did talk to the doctor and finding out I was a small B at the time I had debated getting everything chopped off. I decided not to and actually it made a lot of sense why I had always felt and identified with the world the way that I did. So I decided and went on hormones and started to see someone else was inside of me hidden by graduation.

No, not the Valedictorian, not even that popular even then I was the fag who became the tranny freak or was becoming the tranny freak. Fed up with everything I took an ESL (English Second Language.) job teaching in Brazil in Rio.

And that’s where a lot of the weight came off, doing anything in forty degree plus Celsius weather will have you dumping weight and then it happened. I was exploring my options as sort of a transperson after my second year working and I was…low end pretty? Compare to the brazillian girls I was a dog though and kind of feeling it too.

Then…then I met Enrique.

He was a handler of porn stars and drag queens and he ran an escort service for T-girls, well he had a stable for T-girls. I liked Enrique, he was a bastard and he was a criminal and a lot of other things but he was really blunt about things too. He’d pay me really good money, I’d live in a all T-girl building like a dorm, he’d pay for my surgery and in return I’d work for him for ten years or a hundred thousand US whichever came first.

Honestly I’d like to say that I said no but I was so sick and tired of being the ugly duckling and I’d been in Rio long enough that it’s not seen like it was home and there were people that preferred she-males over GG’s every time.

I was so tired of getting the shitty end of the stick. So I said yes. The surgery was painful, face, nose, lips, not the throat our voices are part of the allure as well as the Adam’s apple. It was done by really professional guys to my doctors were actually German or Swiss or something like that. The place was clean and everything too.

The breast implant after surgery hurts…really hurts. It’s like the sick ow of getting smacked in the balls but added to that is that feeling that tight ripping skin or like that pain when you break a bone and things get swelled tight and it hurts. That’s the pain.

I did it all too, movies, dates, just out and out sex. I was a total slutty whore my first year because I was pretty, I thought I was fucking beautiful and I was still a twenty something and young enough to get swept up and drunk on it all.

But I calmed down. I became more relaxed and I loved it where I was at the time and everything. No drugs, Enrique was a stickler for that and he didn’t really like his girls smoking either and we even had a gym and a swimming pool and a walled courtyard. We never dated me we never wanted to and we still made money.

Any tips or gifts were ours, we got paid on the movies and we got paid for being to the pleasure rooms. These were places where us girls could get paid if we wanted when we hooked up together. It was semi often; there was always a flurry of interest in fresh meat as it were and stuff. But the pleasure rooms were internet hooked up for people to pay and watch.

It wasn’t all good.

There were those that hated us and I have acid scars on my back where some crazy GG bitch tossed battery acid on us because she lost a boyfriend to one of us.

I’m been beaten up five times by men who hated what I was, three times by women and was stabbed with a steak knife by one of those. I’ve been raped twice…both of them were tourists and….

I stop and hang onto the foot wide railing of the bridge that goes over too the other side of town and rest my forehead on the cool steel. It helps with the flashbacks I have from the rapes.

I’ll spare you those details of that time right now; I’m just not ready to talk about it. And I hang on pretty hard there to the railing to hold myself up and fighting through not just the memories that can just swallow you up without warning but that hard hit afterwards that I get of…alone.

There’s no one here to hold me, to comfort me to love me and tell me it’s alright. That’s a hole in me most of the time but after an attack it becomes a chasm.

It’s so tempting to jump off the bridge into the river but I know this river it’s full of stuff the idiots just tossed off it for fun. Yeah I’m not that high up and it’s a good six or seven feet deep here but I’d rather not get myself all cut to shit.

I push myself to standing and run harder down the street into the south end of town. It’s all you can really call it just about eight streets mostly dead end and kind of set out like a number sign.

There’s a frowny moment when I pass an empty lot where Jerry Chapman had his Irving gas station, it’s gone. I was hoping to get gas here. He was a friend of Dad’s and one of those guys where if you ran out of gas he’d run it out to you. He’d give you gas of credit if you were dirt broke until payday and the same with repairs. He wasn’t really an educated guy but he knew engines and he knew people. Y’know one of those guys who kept all us poor kids and families from getting any poorer.

Knowing Irving they likely shut him down for having a soul.

Just past that I hang a hard left across the street and up the first part of the squared part of that number sign layout. It’s a street with a steep hill and fairly long and just what I need. I power up the hill pushing myself and making things in my muscles protest at me and making me sweat and pant until I get ontop of the hill and then it flattens out. I slow the pace till I can do run breathing but don’t really slow down. I’m hitting that sweat soaked bit of the run where it stops getting hard after a few more minutes like your body starts to say okay…we’re running. That’s the zone and it’s where I can feel myself burning calories.

I go out to the Esso station where the town gets most of its furnace oil from and go past it and smell the smells of the farms. I’m almost to the far corner and the town limits and there about five farms out here that are still busy by the look of them.

I’ve missed the country.

Rio was nice and I did go on quite a few nice trips to places for the movies and a couple of vacations with the other girls and got to see some really cool stuff. Like Montu Pichu, some of the temples but mostly I was in the cities and stuff. The same with Japan. I lived over there after Enrique let me out of my contract. I didn’t do any of the stuff in Rio in Osaka, nope I went back to teaching over there.

How did I get out from under with Enrique?

I actually didn’t I did my ten years and he let me go and with all the money I had made on my own and some extra for actually teaching the girls English at the house while I was there. No threats or bullshit he was a nice guy the entire time I knew him and it was just after ten years I was close to thirty. And he let me go to have room for another girl an younger girl to take my spot.

He’ll always be a friend. My bosses in Japan weren’t bad but they were bosses and they were very professional.

In Brazil we had group holidays Easter and Christmas, and whatever else the girls had going on. We were a mix about half brazillian girls and about half from other parts of the world.

Just thinking about the place makes me smile and that and the endorphins from the running are chasing the funk and crap out of my system. I finish that part and I figure I’ve done about seven miles and if I go right down Water Street the Main It’ll be about nine miles by the time I get back to the Lodge.

It’s still a nice part of the jog, about half past eight and people are starting to pull into places where the work and the school buses are going. I see some faces I know or think I know. I turn the heads of all the guys well except Erik Mosher who’s opening Steadman’s department store. He’s a few years older than me and so swishy boy fairy gay that if he really was a pixie then his pixie dust would be not just glowing but sparkly and pink. (Grins)

I wave to him anyway and he waves back, he’s a really friendly person and honestly he saves a lot of closeted gays around here by being beyond the stereotype.

I get back to the Inn and head inside and the girl from last night is in the open kitchen and we wave to each other and I head upstairs to take a shower. There is a separate shower stall and I strip and slip in and lather up.

Honestly I love showers and being all soapy and slick and after a run it’s the best. I soap my breasts up getting turned on in the process. I have real breasts they’ve just had a surgical boost and still I’ve gotten to where I like who I am. I get that turned On I stroke off in the shower and relieved…sorta I climb out of the shower and start reach for some towels.

“Oh…!”

The girl’s there with a breakfast in bed tray, I’m naked and she’s staring at me. At my crotch, at my breasts back and forth then all of me.

“Uhm, excuse me but did you get a good look miss?” I pull the towel around myself.

“S…sorry.. I knocked but you never answered.” She’s nervous, freaked…no…her nipples are poking out of her pink t-shirt. I…hmmm…she cute, sixteen to eighteen it’s a weekday and she’s not in school so…I walk over set the tray on the coffee table and pour a coffee.

I take a drink and she’s still staring. I walk right up to her. “I’m Haley.”

“Julie…”

“So Julie you liked what you see?”

“I uhm, ah…”

“Yes?” She nods her head and I step to and kiss her. Her eyes go huge but she doesn’t fight it, I’d stop if she did instead she slowly kisses back scared, shy, I slip my hand into her jeans and rub her panties. She’s soaking them fast and she whines and humps my hand.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck Haley…”

I slide my hand up just under the panties and rub her drenched pussy. “Oh fu, oh fu, oh fu…!”

My towel falls and there’s only a second or two before she’s on my breasts suckling like a starved animal and feeling them with shaking hands.

“Easy Julie, easy…they’re not going away, slowly enjoy it…ugn…uh…I am…”

She slows down but is still a little crazed. “You’re my first…girl…Haley.”

“And you’ve always wanted to?”

“God fuck yes, but…”

“Hey, I get it….I’m from here, not exactly LGBT friendly not even nearby…people talk shit, and they won’t stop until you either move away or find a spot on the overpass.”

“Yeah…I mean I’m not Lez, Lez I don’t want to shove my face into every cunt there is around…but…”

“Julie, I know a lot of lesbians, some are great friends, ex lovers, and most of them are just normal people…nice girls like you….oh mmmm…you’re good at this…”

I lead her over to the bed. Sudden, strange, odd? Not really about sixty percent of those who find out about me are like Julie and turned on by it, about twenty percent are unfazed or don’t say anything and the rest usually are freaked out or pissed.

Am I being a slut?

Maybe?

I haven’t been with anyone in a long time and Julie is young and sweet and real. I said I did movies right? Lots of fake there, the really rare time there’s a connection but mostly it’s work. Really little connection.

I peel her out of her jeans and she’s doing her shirt and oh she has the sweet B cups of youth and I suckle on them myself then kiss her, I show her about kissing girl to girl and moving so our breasts touch and caress each other then I slide down her body…lean her back on my bed and I sink my face into her groin.

I’m her first girl, I’ve been with a lot of nice girls…I’m more into a guy if I ever really found one that’s more into me that some fetish or toy. But I like the softer side of girl on girl lovemaking. I go slowly and try to make this worthy of a girls first time.

I kiss her mound, and drag my lips over her labia…she got that just out of youth little girl fuzz going on…it’s cute. I move my lips up and down her slit and they flex and pulse and she leaks moisture and on the next move up I run the tip just in the seam of her lips and she cries out with a loud “Oh!” I just use my lips again back down and Inhale her deeply, loudly and kiss her pussy. She whimpers and I move my head and kiss and lip touch and drag along her inner thighs. My hands run in light fingertip touches, and sexy nail drags even more lightly over her legs…Julie is whimpering and writhing on the bed.

Women, TG, GG, Intersexed like me…foreplay is lovemaking…get us going, take the time, pay the attention make us feel like we’re sexy but make us feel that we’re treasured and slutty at the same time.

When I finally open her lips there’s a flow of wetness running out of her, I lick it up. “Oh Julie, Oh thank you…such a juicy, sweet, pretty pussy, thank you…you’re so fucking sexy…Oh…Mmmm…” the last part is the Oh…into her sex as I delve into her, the Mmmm is inside of her as I make love to her with my mouth.

I use my hands too, her legs over my shoulders and my forearms resting in her thighs I use my fingers to pull her open a little but more to massage the sides of her mound… just gently…It’s something I do like running the pads of my thumbs over her labia while I’m exploring her with my mouth. I lip the inside edges of her vagina and use my lips over her engorged clitty that barely parted lips moving around in a circle frenching her. I lick in tiny flicks and push the tip of my tongue along those hidden little glands there on the sides of her clitty.

It takes maybe five minutes before she’s screaming and crying and swearing, she’s really loud and bucking, it’s a good thing my arms are there holding her down and I here her screaming… “Haley!, oh my god Haley, Haley….., Oh!, fuck it hurts, it’s feels, what…what are you…doing to me it hurts gooooood!!!”

She arches and claws at the bed and screams. I’m reward by here having a female ejaculation as she hits this violent orgasm.

She falls back panting and I drink from her and suckle her until I notice she’s crying.

“Julie? Are you okay?”

“No……What was that?”

“Oh honey, you’ve never felt that before?”

“No…..” (Sobby whine.)

“You came baby, you just came that’s all…honey, the boys you’ve been with never made you feel that?”

“No…..” (Really sobs.) “There was that before what you did happen a couple of times but by that time it was over… (Sniffle.)

“Has a boy ever gone down on you?”

“No…no one has but you…”

“Hey it’s normal, different things get us there….so…”

“So….?”

“Should I keep going?”

“Oh god, fuck Haley please….?”

I’m a bit pissed, the guys in this town don’t seem to have changed. There’s desperation in her voice for more. I sink back down and I keep going, I do everything that I’ve learned from stuff from conversations to actual sex and even that whole…stupid cliché of the sore jaw…(Grr) bullshit, you feel that do what I did…I let my head to rest on her pubic bone and use my hands and thumbs and finger to please her moving to kiss her in different places, real kissing to as I bring her to several orgasms in a row.

My last act of oral love is giving her head.

You can just if you’re really interested, really wanting to please her you push into her face deep and slip a index finger inside or both and I use both and stroke her clitty with your finger pads and get her so hard then use you fingers to sorta push her clitty up jus a bit the I wrap my lips around her clitty just getting past the little hood and I use my lips…just like on a ring pop or a sucker of a guys tip and it’s the soft lips over and over stroking her off with soft satiny lips and the occasional time to stop, purse my lips around her and bob my head, jerking her off sort of…it’s the pulling feeling and motion not a yanking and I add in a frenching swirl with my tongue…rubbing those glands at the base until she squirts again harder and harder three, four, five little juicy squirts as she wails so much her voice cracks.

I make my way up and kiss with her and hold her and caress with her as she sobs against me. I had this happen only twice before, a girl never having had a real orgasm before…some girls need different things to find release, some need oral, some anal all sorts of things…Me If you squeeze my breasts as I’m getting off I get off a lot stronger.

Anyway, I sort of get the reaction. Here she’s likely been sexually active from anywhere from fourteen to sixteen hopefully not younger but she’s never been given what she needs to really get what all the other girls are raving about…for years. And some girls don’t come by knowing how to get themselves off either.

No, it’s true and even for guys…there’s no instruction book about getting yourself off. Guys have it easier that’s true for the most part but there’s a good self cum and there’s just getting off.

Honestly one thing I’ve got down is sex can be just as complicated and individual as gender stuff.

We make love some more, I let her take top another first for her and she get’s herself off and she’s a lot more confident getting me off and making love to my breasts and me and I’m only good for that one orgasm of mine since I had taken matters into my own hands. She get’s my off in other ways as she uses my travel buddy on me and she’s gentle but there’s a light in there though that she liked that bit of control.

It became well past noon by the time we were done and ate her cold pancakes and bacon and fed each other and played syrup games. I was packed and we passionately kissed goodbye trading cellphone numbers, e-mail and stuff and she walked me to my car. I hold her hands and look her in the eyes.

“Julie, listen to me okay?”

“Okay…”

“If you decide to get out of here someday, and explore this side of you I want you to be picky. There’s a lot of jerky girls and women out there looking for the fast hook up if you’re headed that way with your life. Be..Picky, Five dates no matter how horny you both get you’re worth it. Clubbing…it’s fun but it’s not a date. Tell them that, you’re worth finding someone who really wants to be with you. Be open minded too, there’s some really great people out there that get overlooked.”

“God Haley, I could so go with you…”

“No, I’m still not sure where my life’s going, but we’ll still be close, we’ll stay in touch.”

“Good, thank you Haley, thank you.”

We hug and I drive away watching the young woman there hugging herself but in that good way…thing. Not the young girl I had met signing in last night.

I make one stop before leaving town and that’s at Gordon’s Greenhouses where I buy a whole bunch of plants and flowers and bushes and drive out past The Junction stopping at River Phillip Cemetery. I have an older cousin buried here. I dig and plant a small three foot high red maple sapling there for him and pile some wood chip mulch around it so it’s noticed and not mowed over. The next two are my Mom’s twin sister June’s first two girls who died from smoke inhalation like ten years before I was born. I plant a small rosebush over each of them. I might not ever be back here and it’s actually the first time I’ve ever been here.

But Mom went here just to pay her respects every decoration day. They were seven, so I bury them each a Barbie doll and I don’t care… (Sniffle) There’s no one going to visit them but me really so I deface their graves… I sit and put these girly plastic stickers on the bases of the headstones with stars and moons and unicorns and stuff like that.

Dammit, I’m crying because…just because and I get in the car and load my Jan Arden and Luba, and Sarah McLaughlin from my I-pod to the car stereo. I listen to the sad sweet tunes and sing along as I drive my mood taking me into Collingwood and up the Windam hill road into the Town of Springhill.

My Mom was from here and a lot of my relatives too All my grandparents are here and great Aunts and Uncles and I drive around here a bit just seeing stuff that changed. I spent a huge amount of time here as a kid here in town. I stop at the Liquor Store and get some rum and some whiskey, Home Hardware for a few things and the grocery store too. I wanted some fried chicken from The Hilltop restaurant, one of the best take outs in town but it’s long gone too. (Sigh.)

I’ll eat later.

I head to the graveyard here in Springhill. I know I’m being morbid and stuff but this is where my family is buried. I actually love it here. I know weird right but it’s old, full of trees and bushes and flowers. The place has this history from all those claimed by the Springhill Coal mines, WW1, WW2 and just life. Something like this grounds me, speaks to my soul and makes me cry.

I stop the car in front of their double stone graves it’s one of those big headstones with the interlocking hearts on it. The tears pour out as I take the stuff out and I smile. “Hi Momma, Hi Daddy…” I talk to them, what that’s private but My Daddy’s been dead a long time and he’s never met Haley, Mom only knew me over the phone and she was…Mom…she just rolled with it. She never knew about my sex job, and she told me several times I was a better daughter than my older sister.

Fucking right I am. My older sister basically couldn’t stand growing up as poor as we did and the dumb cunt…I’m allowed she’s my sister…well she married this guy, who was a carpenter thinking she’d be in the money, but he turned out to be a drunk that couldn’t hold down a job if his life depended on it. She left our family literally when she married into his. She hated us for being poor, she hated us for the life she walked into and never left.

She doesn’t know that I changed, doesn’t know I exist and I wasn’t hard to find. My e-mail and my phone number never changed except in name and she has never ever written, phoned or even sent me a card…. I did nothing to her except be the youngest…Mum and Dad had more when I came along, she was so jealous…of me and of everyone. I’ll never get why.

She has a fraternal twin, and he’s somewhere in the States having fled from the law over drug charges and was one of those guys that got into the wrong crowds to be cool and accepted. I guess it runs in the family really, we all did that to different degrees. He’s likely stuck down there with his record and not being an American citizen he’s likely keeping his head down really low since 911 happened.

Sigh, sorry lots of baggage and being here brings this out more.

I dig and plant around their graves. A blue spruce sapling behind the grave stone and a small bush cedar on each side of the base. I bury a box there too, some of the family photos I have with me us as kids, their wedding… (Sniff) a few maple hard candies for mom and a bag of dulse for dad.

My Maternal Grandparents are next and I have a shot of rum or two with my mom’s mum and light a smoke for her setting it on the headstone and one for him too. I’ve a quart of rum for her and a six pack for him and I have a smoke with them, they each burn through two and I have a beer with Grampy Ben. He was a drunk but still sort of a good enough guy…soldier, miner then a garbage man, back when the garbage man drove a five ton truck instead of the garbage trucks we all know. I bury with them the rest of the smokes, a pipe and a pouch of pipe tobacco and a bag of Werther’s original candies.

Yes I’m doing this differently but down in Brazil it’s not that uncommon to share with the dead like that. I loved the idea and a lot of other cultures did the same thing. My dad’s parents are next. I don’t talk that long with them but I plant lilac for Grams and a bag with some flour, sugar, salt and yeast for her because she loved to bake and Gramps some licorice pipes and kiss the tombstone.

My Great Uncle Charlie was last of the gifts and he was Paternal side great uncle, the man who lived alone all his life and was one of the best men in the world. He was one of the last blacksmiths and ferriers around here anymore. He did apprentice some guy while I was gone. I share a bottle of Teacher’s highland cream and a pipe and some tobacco for it.

I see a few other distant relatives there and talk a little bit and stop at my great Aunt Vie’s. I barely knew here much we only saw her like three times a year and I’m sure she was a lesbian, spinster they said. All I know she lived with my Aunt Rose and Rose wasn’t blood. Vie was the girliest woman I knew as a kid a 1940’s lipstick.

I reach into my purse and take out two tubes of lipstick and bury them in the plot. “They’re the latest thing honey right out of Japan, you’ll be the talk of the clouds.”

I get in my car and drive down the hill and stop at the Lamp Cabin tavern and have a steak with chips and fried onions ketchup and steak sauce and a Labatt’s blue beer with pepper and tomato juice. It’s the one place in town left from my child hood and the place and meal I had my first beer with my dad at ten years old…yeah okay it was mostly tomato juice but still.

I leave a twenty as a tip and smile at the flirty stares but leave and drive two hours and get a room at near the CN (Canadian National) train station. I’m taking the train out to B.C, but making it my always wanted all across Canada trip.

I’m tired but after the flashback, Julie, the graveyards and everything I’m spent and drained but I’m also really feeling the quiet now that I’ve stopped for the night. I’m lonely, I want to feel something with roots, something unique….something mine, someone for me.

I grab the extra pillow and hug it to myself and cry myself to sleep.

Covered Bridges-3.

Chapter 3

The good thing about being a woman is crying. I lived a lot of my life before becoming me holding everything back because when you were that kid that was me in school and you cried everything was ten times worse.

Last night sucked.

I was hurting and alone and bawled myself to sleep and feel better for doing it, for getting the shit out of my system. And it took me a lot of years to get to where I can cry without feeling guilty about it.

I’m staying here at the Best Western and while I’m a jogger and stuff I don’t know Moncton that well anymore to go jogging. It’s nice though that most places like this have exercise places now.

Yeah I’m sort of big on this, but the way my early life went I’m not really that into just letting things go back to before I became Haley. Besides it gets to be routine, and the endorphins for me are really as much a thing I need in the morning as a cup of coffee.

I hit the exercise room as soon as it’s open and with a big bottle of water, my hormones, and my vitamins and a granola bar. Never take vitamins on an empty stomach, it’ll go right through you and just be expensive pee.

Sorry I know…Eeew.

I do fifteen minutes on the elliptical, then crunches for another fifteen then I run on the treadmill for a half an hour. I have a thing with treadmills I like them as much as running outside. On a treadmill it’s just you and the machine and my mp-3 player. My thing, no traffic. There’s nothing like motorists…I rarely drive, I just…it’s not good for you, or the planet and put people behind that much power and metal they become dumb-asses.

Strike that, homicidal dumb-asses.

I’ll bike, if it’s that far. I biked most places in Osaka or took the trains.

Anyway…I listen to some good clubbing music the thump, thump, thump get’s my body moving and get running flat out, the great thing about running to this beat is getting your feet to hit with the base thumping sounds. Yeah there’s some tunes that are too fast but trust me you can find something you’ll like and something that’ll push you online.

I get a good serious sweat going on and hit the sauna they have, for a few minutes drinking my water to keep hydrated but sweating in the dry heat. I like these things and steam rooms too. I kill my water and take a quick dip into the hotel pool and do a few laps before going to my room to shower and change. I feel good, and I’m hungry enough to really enjoy my coffee and bagel. I end up turfing the bagel…yuck. I’m ruined by my times in South America. Better coffee for one and two a fourth rated bagel from a department store doesn’t add up to fresh bread less than and hour old being cut open and toasted just ever so lightly on a grill and butter. It’s how a lot of them especially them no matter the country start the day.

I get my things and board the train.

The train is alright, not great it’s alright. I mean compared to some places I’ve been its clean and spacious and I have a private cabin. But compared to some of the other places I’ve been and the prices I’m paying. I’m not all that happy. The bed’s sort of a built in cot thing and the blankets aren’t the greatest either and the menu’s iffy.

That being said I do make my way to the lounge car and while I’m not drinking I get a table, well it’s sort of a booth and one with a decent window seat and my camera and laptop and I spent most of the day just watching the scenery go by and taking the odd picture or two of things that I think are just neat or pretty.

New Brunswick goes by pretty fast really and it’s a pity really because there’s a few places that I’d love to have gone to. Fundy National Park for one. The highest tides in the world and there’s these eroded out island pillars called the flower pots that are supposed to be really cool to see. There’s some other places that my dad used to take us on the odd trip out of Nova Scotia that I’d like to see and a few places I’d like to go back to just because I had been there once or twice myself.

But really there’s so much that I’d just rather see with someone.

It’s about an hour from Moncton to Fredericton and a stop there and even with a few other stops it’s only about five hours before we’re crossing into the Quebec border. I don’t even really bother eating supper I’ll be getting in at Quebec City around eight PM so I’ll get something then.

I could have stopped in at Montreal but I don’t know. But really as much as there’s a lot of really great things to do and to see in Montreal I’m thinking that I might save that for a vacation sometime…I know there so much to do there but at the same time there’s only so much time that I’ll be able to spend on seeing the things that I want to see and… I love Quebec City, I came here when I was thirteen on a class trip with the French immersion class and the place stayed with me. Especially the old city.

Old Quebec sits at the foot of these bluffs where the CN old school flagship hotel the Chá¢teaux Frontenauqe (Yeah, likely spelled wrong.) sits beside the board walk amongst this whole bistro, art quarter and honestly it’s as close to old world Europe as you’ll ever get in the western hemisphere.

Old narrow and charming cobble stone streets, shoppes with the signs hanging out made from wooden plaques. There is a charm to the place that captured me right off the bat. There are these amazing places in Cordoba, and Rio and Buenos Ares and the other major cities down in South America that still have that old world Spanish feel to them but this is just different than that.

Okay so it’s pretty obvious that I’m actually in the city right?

Yeah I’ve got a room at the Sebastian it’s just outside of old Quebec and it’s a nice older sort of hotel but the kind of hotel where they were a lot closer to being a bed and breakfast. Brick built and five stories with that exterior stone trim that looks like the fancy French moulding. It’s like I said old school hotel with just stairs and no elevator and these really big nice rooms with the four poster bed and all the trimmings.

I’m staying in the city for awhile just so I can oak in the place. I never really got over the spark of the place since my class trip and I’m more than old enough to enjoy it now.

It’s about ten at night and that’s okay by me. The place is practically on European time with those people out for the late suppers and going to the bistro-bars they have here and there’s stores and shops still open. Not all of them but enough that things are still interesting to just waltz through the streets.

Yeah waltz that just mellow sway and just letting myself enjoy the moments. The breeze coming in off the St. Laurence and the feeling of having my hair down loose and the gentle swish of my dress. I’m having one of those just right in my own self moments where all the changes and everything I’ve been through makes sense.

I’m even enjoying the stares that I’m getting from the men, the flirty smiles and the manners as they open doors for me or just giving me the right of way when we are in the street. There’s some mild flirting but hey…they’re French and it really does come with the territory like the Latin men down in South America. It might not ever come to anything but it’s like it’s just custom, even a way of talking.

I really do enjoy it.

Okay I might get a bit more than some women with the blonde hair and all my curves. I have really nice breasts if I do say so myself and a really nice bottom and my legs are great too. I went through a lot to be me and to pass and I do a lot to keep myself looking this way…yeah I spent too much time plus sized in the first part of my life that I really try to never go back there.

I guess I’ve woman enough to be okay with me being that vain.

I’m out until about midnight just getting an idea of the places that I want to actually go and see later on I do stop in for a really late meal but it’s at a sort of tapis styled bistro that has a girl singing Nina Simone songs in French and I enjoy the stop with several glasses of the house wine and nibble on the odds and ends they are serving up. I’m like any girl really and I really like things that go well with a crunch like toasted baguette with garlic butter done on the grill and being able to spread the ree-ette? Meat spread kind of really rough pate kind of stuff. And I enjoyed the shot glasses they were serving of these different kinds of soups. The roasted potato soup with rosemary was really hitting the spot.

I get a cab home to my hotel and settle into a hot bath before brushing my teeth and falling to sleep in the really nice bed.

I could so get used to this but could never afford it. This is going on my credit cards and is very likely going to be the big major trip that I’ll be taking for a few years at least.

……………………………………….Morning came with my wake up call from the front desk and me trying to muddle through sleep-french. I head down to their gym on the first floor and go through my run on the treadmill getting my run in before hitting their universal/weight machine. I like to jog but it’s not a good idea to just go jogging in an unfamiliar place.

I enjoy a hot shower and have a really decent breakfast with fresh croissants and a really good coffee and I get changed into some nice clothes just some comfortable flats and a nice pair of jeans with a nice scoop necked tee under a denim shirt and take my camera and my shoulder bag and head back out into the city.

I get a cab and I head out to the first stop that I’ve thought about seeing ever since I’d been planning the trip and looking things up to make my time really worth it. So today it’s the Musee National des Beaux-Arts de Quebec…I know it’s a mouthful but this is a really great place it’s basically the provincial gallery of fine arts and I kill the day there.

I have a good time just walking around, enjoying the grounds but the art too. Art in Quebec has always had this sort of romantic appeal, there’s an edge to it that is steeped in politics and social drams and then there’s just the stuff that’s innovative or just beautiful.

The place is huge really with music and film and so much in the twenty some thousand works that are here. Really if I wanted to do it justice I’d come back here a few more times to really see all the stuff they have. But there’s a lot more things to see that I’d like to get in besides I’m going to be spending some time in Ontario too seeing some of the things that I really have wanted to see while I’m going across the country. I guess it’s a bit of a pick and choose kind of thing. Beside’s I’ve taken tonnes of pictures and even some video too.

It’s close to four by the time I get back to my hotel and my room and just in time for a nice hot bubble bath and a nap before I head back out into the Old City. I start off doing my usual just walking around after leaving my cab and it’s a bit of people watching and window shopping I buy some of the trinkety things that the people are selling or making on the bluff boardwalk to have as souvenirs to take with me. I treat myself to another nice coffee from a man with a cart that roasts and grinds the beans right there and he’s even got all the things to make me a latte.

God I know that’s so gauche of me to be drinking a latte after being all that time down in south America but I like them from time to time and this French vanilla is so good because I seen him put a chunk of vanilla bean right into the coffee roaster. I sip at it as I take the classed in escalator platform thingy down from the boardwalk into the Old City Proper.

Okay it’s something I recommend too. It’s like a platform but with a bus seat bench on either side of it and you can sit or stand but in either case it’s a five minute slow ride down the bluff but it’s the view. You’re descending into the Old city and you get to really see the old restored buildings and the roofs that are all redone to fit the style of the building as it used to be way back when and its early evening so add in the lights and even the river out in the distance.

I can’t help but feel just good about the whole day so far and I’m right in this nice sort of happy Zen place. It gets even better when I get out and at the entrance there’s a few locals playing some romantic or well that kind of Paris styled music that you hear in scenes from the movies. I toss some change and a couple of fives in the instrument cases and make my way through the crowds of locals and tourists like myself and start window shopping. Even slipping into several of the shoppes and places that I’ve been wanting to see from last night.

It’s just right.

You know one of those evenings that just sit right with you and soothes nerves you didn’t know were hurting.

I end up at this nice little café out on the patio that has this nice wrought iron fence around it still covered by runner beans making it kind of garden in the city cozy and I’m reading a new book that I’ve been wanting to get for awhile now and enjoying a glass of the house white while waiting for my dinner to arrive. I’m trying duck for the first time and I’m hoping it’s good. I see, sort of notice the candle in the jar on my table flicker with movement and there this handsome in this kind of rangy way man standing there in a white t-shirt that shows off some decent muscles and this brown hoody that has these old odd dried stains of paint on it and he’s got just a bit of scruff from a day or two without shaving. Nice jeans and nice shoes if a bit old and in need of some TLC. Long hair but in that he just lets it do what it wants from getting out of the shower, it’s a medium shade of brown and about shoulder length all in all a nice look with those sweet deep chocolate eyes of his.

Oh and glasses, real glasses gold frames not those dark frames that these “hipster” geek faux geek types are sporting now. Five years ago it was the metrosexual Ryan Seacrest clones now the guys trying to be it with the girls is the hipster.

“Can I help you?” I ask in English hoping not to be too off putting.

“I was wondering if I could join you. I noticed you there reading and you really stand out in the crowd.”

“I stand out in what way?” I’m waiting for the flattery or some comment on my looks and he pulls out one of my chairs with a questioning look and I nod, so he sits.

“I noticed you reading. These days all I ever see now is either someone with their face in some digital device or on their phones, or texting or tweeting or ignoring life with the help of their earphones. It actually does stand out when someone isn’t swept up in the tech trend.”

“Well I was sort of shutting out the world a bit.” I hold up my book.

“That’s another plus, it’s a real book not some downloaded copy, and it’s a hardcover too.”

“I have all those toys, but there’s still nothing like the weight and feel and the smell even of a real book in your hands. That and I like to hold it up in front of my so I can peer over the edge of it all flirty and seductive and such.”

He laughs. “Even better. So, can I join you?”

“I’ll be eating soon, that’s not a pretty sight.”

“I need to eat too, and I’ll buy the wine.”

Okay, he’s kind of cute and really easy to talk to. I smile at him. “Sure but I’m not making any promises for after dinner?”

“That’s all right the meal will give me time to figure out how to ask you out during dessert.”

I get that he just did. I smile and I can’t help but to laugh.” I extend my hand. “I’m Haley.”

“Nice to meet you Haley, I’m John.” He takes my hand and he just pulls it gently to his lips not slow but gentle, like he’s used to doing this. Hey, it’s Quebec and even the guys that aren’t french are good at being french.

He really does have these sexy eyes too.

Covered Bridges-4.

Chapter 4

I let John kiss my hand because he’s doing it right and when a guy does it right and not too over the top or sloppy it’s just one of those things that’s kinda nice and kinda timeless.

I smile and take my hand back and set my book away into my bag. “I’d prefer something red John I ordered the duck.”

He waves over one of the waiters in an ease that shows he’s a regular and a decent tipper. “The duck’s done really well here.” He orders us a bottle of Shiraz which while not really a french wine it’s one I really like and fairly common down in South America. It’s got a spicy undertone that works well to cut rich foods like duck.

“Good I’m really going to enjoy this then.”

“Been awhile?”

“Been awhile for this kind of meal, I’ve spent awhile in Japan teaching ESL courses and while they do great things with duck there it’s not the same. And well good wine like this over there is always really expensive.”

“I thought it was the Chinese that did stuff with duck.”

“They do but so does every country, Japan does some great things with theirs.”

“I’ve only had sushi a few times so all I really know is that and buckwheat noodles.”

“They do a nice one that’s a standing rotisserie with this glaze of soy and palm sugar and miso that is really incredible.”

“Sounds good, I take it you missed home?”

“Don’t really have a home John. I’m hoping to find one.”

“That sounds sad.”

“It is if I let it get to me like that or it’s just that I haven’t had the right time and place meet up with me yet. I’m kind of hoping that this’ll be my last of my wandering ways.”

“So you moved here?”

“No I’m back in Canada early I have a job waiting for me in B.C. but that doesn’t start until the middle of next summer.”

“So what you’re?”

“Sight seeing and taking in things as I travel across the country. I’m not going to rush it just really take time to see the stuff I’ve always wanted to see and some of the stuff that I discover along the way. I figure I’ll get there and I’ll settle into my place over the winter and kind of know the town by the time I start working.”

“So how are you traveling.?”

“I’m taking the train.”

“How is it?”

“The maritime route trains need a lot of work, the passenger trains should go back to being the works of art they were.”

“Works of art?”

“I’ve always thought there was a certain romance to a train but like going by plane now it’s all been so watered down here in North America.”

“You sound pretty contemptuous about that.”

“I am, I’ll admit the good old days really were the good old days but back then there where a few values that I really miss.”

“Like?”

“Dressing up, the atmosphere. When you took the train back then you had cabins if you paid for that, nice cots or even a bed in the really nice ones. Men wore suits and ladies could wear a nice dress and a hat and the dining car was a dining room…now…at least this far I’ve been reminded too much of the bus.”

He looks at me and smiles. “You are talking like a girl after my own heart.”

“Really?”

“Really, you give me HBO or Turner classic movies and I’ll take that classics a whole lot more that the new stuff.”

“Oh why.”

“The way they talked back then, it was a lot more plot and dialog but also the women there in a lot of those movies were just so…”

“So…?” I raise my eyebrow and take a sip of my wine once the waiter had poured our glasses.

John points at me. “Exactly, you’re one of them.”

“One of them?”

“One of those women that’s not afraid to be a woman but at the same time she shows off that wit and the brain in her head and can just turn heads with just the way that she can smile, or look at you or turn a phrase.”

I smile and there’s this part of me that knows he’s not bullshitting me even if it has that sort of thing about it because he’s too excited about it. Like this is one of his favorite arguments even. It really shows off the artist in him. That spark of wild, sweet I don’t see the world like everyone else but here look let me show you thing.

I love artists.

“That has to be one of the best things anyone has ever said to me John, I’ve always admired women from that genre. But a lot of people wouldn’t hold me anywhere near them though.”

“Oh? Honestly Haley I don’t get why not you just sort of have all of that going on in spades.”

“Adult film.”

He actually rolls his eyes. “I know lots of people get all bent out of shape about porn but they’re just people like the rest of us and honestly it takes a lot of guts to do something like that.”

“She-male porn.”

I take a sip of my wine again and to his credit he doesn’t freak out and get violent or go off screaming into the night. Actually he takes it sort of like I was expecting he might. That artist interest in the interesting fused together in that french like way of calm les affairs thing that they have about everything. He’s so picked up on the french attitude of living.

The French, the French are cats.

“You pass really remarkably.”

“Thank you, I work hard at keeping myself looking as good as I can without being all OCD about it.”

The food arrives and I have fried breast of duck with a white peppercorn jus and bits of foi floating in it with garlic roasted potatoes and long skinny baby carrots and french greenbeans. John has something similar only I think I see beets and smell parsnip with his. We quietly eat and he refills our wines and then after the first sip of that he looks at me.

“So, how would you like to come with me to several nice places for a few different tastes of desert and some more wine and a little dancing?”

“Even knowing what you know?”

“Because I know what I know.”

“Oh…”

“Haley, not only are you brave enough to have made the choice to be who you really are inside you’re that kind of woman that so many guys really wishes that she’s cross his path and show him just why that fantasy of being with a charming, intelligent, brave and very beautiful woman is really like.”

“The of course it’s a yes. But you left me a little worried.”

“Worried?”

“You said all of those wonderful things it’s like I’m scared that I just might not live up to the hype.”

“But only a little worried?”

“Well I am the kind of lady that actually likes a challenge.”

I finish my wine and he pays leaving a very good tip and over what he just figured in his head the check would be for the meal. He helps me into my light jacket and he escorts me through the seating and them offers me his arm and I get close enough to smell that heady scent of a man and soap and a touch of sweat but that’s all cut with the scent of paint lingering and Old spice aftershave.

Corny ads and stuff aside, my grandfather and my father both used that. The shaving soap in the cup they made and the aftershave and that’s a very metal triggering scent for me and it just added to everything tonight and I can’t help but get the tingles that I get when I’m really attracted to someone.

I’m still not sure what’s going to happen and the night’s pretty young yet and I’m really looking forward to tonight more than anything in a long time.

It’s been awhile since any man has made me feel this special.

Covered Bridges-5.

Chapter 5

It’s just really more than nice to actually get the full nine yards with a guy that’s with you even knowing the full deal and he’s no pervert but just being a decent guy that’s seen enough of the world to be open.

John opens the gate of the fence the bistro uses and does that ladies first thing and his hand sort of slides in behind me to guide me trough in that old way. I love the flirty touch of his fingers there just at the small of my back and just almost grazing my bottom and I love it because it’s old school manners.

See I like that, I eat that stuff up because that stuff is social foreplay. It’s sensuality based and not sexuality based and you can be ugly as sin, not pass except for as a dump truck but to have someone treat you like a lady, use those manners, speak nicely to you like that and there’s this empowering feeling that can take your heart right out of the darkness.

I know more than a few girls that’d just feel really special if some guy was great enough to open a door for her, smile a bit and nod as she goes passed offering up a miss or a ma’am.

It’s a nice way and feeling to start the evening.

I love this part of the city and there’s these little places that are open and are like these standing room only bistros but also very much like a tapis type of place. Only they have much more sweet bites and nice wines a bit of cheese and John buys the drinks, usually just half a glass of wine and a bite of something in most places because we’re spacing it out but we’re busy too. He knows a lot of people here and there’s a lot of talking and laughing and talking about art…here everyone knows art, artists are like people that are actors in LA or NYC here and the thing is too they’re educated they read, real books and know food and are just very…nice…elitist knows everything about everything but still nice I have a great time and we talk, trade stories and they’re much more interested in me living in South America than Japan.

Why?

Dancing, the French love to dance, they adore ballroom and that fancy artistic contemporary stuff ad while there’s all that club stuff…if you’re in any major French city, not just French Canadian ones they love their salsa dancing.

I love salsa, cha-cha, meringue, tango…I might be she-male but on the dance floor, in my heart I love to dance. Before, when I was in in high school that stuff was pretty much denied to me from just the bullshit and the teasing and everything.

When I finally started really living as me. I started to love dancing. I got my start too in the best way I think and that’s in a yard party with music playing or being played and just with a drink or a beer and dancing with the girls and guys that lived or worked with us and a few friendly neighbors.

I dance with him a lot at these intimate little places and I shake it I move what I have and I love every second of it.

John is a very good date, a very good dancer and he’s funny and charming and strange in the nice ways.

I actually like strange in my men sometimes. I like people to be interesting, I like that me just being my and open about it is actually just fine.

I like the fact he’ll feed me something while we dance.

We go from one little place to another and sometimes we’re part of a crowd and that’s fine too because there’s nothing like being with a group of locals to get their takes on the town and the places and stuff.

There’s just something so…great about a night where I’m talking about places I’ve been and what I should see while I’m here and that big debate while we’re having Mexican hot chocolate and eating crá¨me brule out of these tin tray ramekins at twenty after two in the morning while we are waiting for a cab to go to this guy’s flat where there’s a small party going on. I’m buzzed and I’ve had a good amount of wine but it’s just the right amount of wine…I’m in Quebec…is there really such a thing as too much wine.

As long as you know how to pace yourself? Hell no, bring on the pinot!

I haven’t cab piled since teachers college. And John gets into the front seat and we take a cab out of the old city to this outside of the city yet still close to the river run down fixed up art house neighborhood.

And I get introduced to Alexi who owns this nice loft and get the double kisses and the place is actually quite full with all sorts of people. I’m actually good with being in a place full of strangers. Going to live in both South America and then Japan has made me pretty adaptable and I’m not really alone as John’s with me and he does stay close.

He’s really well liked too as he’s apparently the American that had fallen in love with this city and “La Belle Provance.”

After hearing that for about the third time I slip my arms around him when the dancing shifts to soft dancing music.

“So how many times have you actually used that line so that it’s actually become part of the way people describe you.?”

“A few hundred times at least. Well there’s that one and then there’s…” He sighs and pulls me close and holds me like I’m holding him up partways and he gets this wistful dreamer look. “I couldn’t help but to fall in love with life here…Hemmingway had Paris and I have belle Quebec.”

He smiles at me and I laugh. “Okay…smooth John, that’s smooth I like that.”

We just smile at each other and there’s just this easy lightness going on between us. Then he leans in and he kisses me. Nice kiss…he’s really good at it and I like everything about it even that rangey scruff he’s got going on. I’m not really into boys, young guys, or the players.

But as a woman…I really like men, real men that are nice, comfortable in being themselves and are past the games and the bullshit. John’s a serious flirt but he’s not a player.

And even beyond the great time we’re having, he’s easy to be with, we have things in common and yes it’s so damned girly cliché but…

He makes me smile, he makes me laugh.

And any guy that does that and makes you feel good about yourself is sexy as hell.

We dance together but in a slower style but I keep to using the salsa stuff only getting into this slow bumping and grinding way of moving and pressing into John as we dance. There’s this chemistry working here for us and I won’t deny there’s this part of me that is getting really hot and bothered and turned on as I bump and grind against him and then it gets smoking when my back is to him and my butt is sliding over his crotch and I can feel John hard as hell but we both keep going…I raise my arms up behind me to run my fingers through he hair on the sides of his head and he touches me as we’re dancing.

Hips first…I love that I’m not a GG so while my hips are nice for a t-girl and they pass if a bit narrow there’s something so sexy when his big warm hands hold them and almost help move me as I dance.

Then up to my waist and down again…to my hips a few times and he takes cloth with it so my hemline gets pulled up to in this naughty flirty showing more of me to the world and stuff…we’re not any raunchier than half the couples dancing here but it just feels so sexy doing that…girls…if you get a guy that’ll dance like that…wear stockings…something really sexy because it’s just something that pushes all the right I’m sexy, pretty, he likes me buttons.

He goes up further but traces my abs with just the fingertips of his hands before setting his palms on my tummy and I feel the heat of them…

Then but of course he does go to my breasts…I love my breasts, they are big and awesome and I wanted big breasts ever since I knew that I wanted breasts and they are a huge part of my sexual identity and sensuality and John cups them from behind like a man.

Boys while they can be fun they have little idea what they’re doing. John cups me and takes the weight of the world in his hands…yeah…for me it’s like that…his warm big hands holding my breasts like some precious art piece but taking the weight of them in his palms and they don’t suddenly have gravity pulling them down and the pressure’s off the bra and my back and yet it’s sexy and he is doing as much with his thumbs as most boys do ever with their mouths…sexy, hot, intense it leads to my nipples getting so hard they hurt and a few thumb circles through the cloth and the bra and a slow drag of the thumb pad over the nipple nub and my breasts are aching, my insides are aching for more for filling and…oh…he slips his hands over my breasts and nipples just to hold them heat of his hand there and into me.

Human body heat on sex primed and ready breasts in both so….soothing and divine but also making it worse in the best of ways.

I wasn’t sure if he could top this but he does by leaning into my ear and softly saying. “Lean you head back and kiss me Haley.”

…….and it was ‘You know how to whistle don’tcha?’ soft male sexy as anything. I can’t help but to lean back and kiss him.

That pretty much clinches it for me…I’m not easy…I really don’t want to come across like that but this has been a night like I haven’t had in a long time…a night that I’ve really only ever had a few times before in my life and I’m not walking out on this time, this chance.

“Take me home John…take me back o my hotel and make love to me…fuck me until the sun comes up.”

“Mmmm…one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Sign out at breakfast and move into my place and spend the rest of the month with me…a few days is way too short to see things here and this deserves more than a one night stand or weekend fling.”

I turn after another kiss and he pulls me to him not missing a beat and there’s than thing I’ve been saying about men. Not males or even mature males…men as a whole get a bad rap from women…this is that real man thing…honest and demanding both…we haven’t been together in bed and he’s saying stay…that he wants me to stay longer.

“Yes…I’d love to see more of everything John…especially you.”

We head out and apologize to Alexi for not staying and he is all happy and does the kissing thing again and gives us a bottle of champagne. Yes real champagne, not sparkling wine.

I love the French… “Go! Both of you, make love, laugh, make ze world a beautiful place! J’ust remember that spark it sparked here nes pas? You shall come back another time yes? Jean you bring her yes?”

John laughs and they hug like old friends. “Certainment mon frere, we’d be honored to come back.”

I put the bottle in my shoulder bag and we head outside to wait for our cab and he covers me with his coat because. “It’s chilly…here let me block that wind.” And he leans…presses me into the brick alcove for the door and we start to passionately kiss and make out until our cab comes.

Covered Bridges-6.

Chapter 6

It doesn’t take long before John and I are in a cab and heading to my hotel. He really is a good kisser and once we’re in the cab and sitting down it’s very much about the cuddling and him kissing me and his hands moving over my body.

I know…

I know I talk about a lot of sex but it’s just something that really is part of me. I was a hooker, escort, porn actress…stripper for a long time and you form certain likes and habits.

But when I was in Japan teaching English I just lived kind of like a monk sexually. The guys that might have been interested looked well…dangerous. And honestly I’m very picky about Japanese men. I’m just not into them except for a few exceptions that I never really ran into. Now I like almost all Asian women…but I never really was with them either.

But literally it’s been years since I’ve been with a guy….and the meal, the tour, the conversation, the drinks and the dancing and now the kissing.

I want to be with this guy a whole lot.

I moan into his neck and his ear as John’s hands do amazing things to my breasts. I’m so hot and aching and getting so horny. I’m so tempted to give him a blowjob in the taxi.

We get to the hotel and it’s like one of those scenes for a movie with the hot couple is steaming things up and they’re all over each other in the halls and everything. John pins me nicely to the doorway kissing me and pressing against me while his hands cup and squeeze my tits just right. Yeah right now my breasts are my tits and what ever other dirty kind of words.

It took me a few times to put that damned card into the thing. What ever was so wrong with keys?

Oh screw it.

We’re inside and we’re headed straight for the bedroom and I use a lot, a lot of will power and break the kiss.

“John…just give me a few…I want to get ready…”

“You look beautiful as is Haley.”

“I want this but just on my terms…please, it’ll be worth the wait.”

“Okay.”

I grab one of my bags and head into the bathroom and I’ll spare you the gruesome details of getting “Ready” except I also do a fast was with a hot washcloth to get rid of the sweat from John working me up and put on some baby powder scented Secret deodorant and then break out my really small bottle of Chanel perfume. It’s expensive but I like the class it has…just a little dabs actually in the small of my back…under my breasts…back of my neck and the bit still on my fingers gets to slightly scent my underarms I use it very sparingly in all the places I put it on because girls can perfume a guy to death. Me I just want the hint of that smell on me. I wash my hands and reapply a sluttier lipstick and do my eyes and then slip into my lingerie.

White stockings with garter and the old styled seams in the back. White lace bra and panties.

I slip on a pair of my silver and gray 3 inch heels and sway to the doorway. “Hey…I don’t suppose…”

I was going to ask him but I don’t know he’s got the bed turned down, the windows open for some air, some music playing from somewhere and there’s candles lit too. But like was saying I’m going to ask him to open that champagne when he interrupts me by popping the cork.

“Oh…you’ve been here how long?”

“Long enough that I’ve really had time to learn what a beautiful woman looks like.”

He pours us both some and we take a few sips; have some champagne kisses and slow dance to the bed. He turns me around so my back’s to the bed and he can lay me down but instead of that he keeps me by the bed while he touches me, feels me and dances the rest of his clothes off until he’s just in well they’d be tidy whities if the weren’t actually black.

Nice package, really nice package and he kisses me as I rub it. He touches slides fingertips over my body in shivery ways and then after breaking and long very hot and passionate kiss I slide down John’s body.

I pull him free and stoke and kiss him to fullness and he has a nice, very nice impressive fullness. Nine inches I’d say…that’s big, that really big actually and just the right thickness not too thick so that’s nice too and I salivate almost as I pull back his foreskin.

I pull a condom from my purse and slide into onto him. I smile at John. “Yes I have Magnums and yes baby we have to use them…until we know each other’s safe.”

“Fine by me Haley I’m just wondering about the guys that you meet if you have those.”

He’s smiling as he says it but I look him in the eyes. “A girl never knows…but John…you’re the first man I’ve been with in a long long time.”

“Oh.” I smile and I open my mouth and I’ll say this I’m a damned good cocksucker, I’ve had huge amounts of practice and I truly love what it feels like. And John’s ‘Oh…ok…oh, oh…Haley…” As I deepthroat him from the very start. I look up at him and do my best cock-smile and flutter my eyelashes at him.

Yeah…

Honestly that’s the key to really having an impact with guys. The deep throat…now don’t get me wrong there are lots of guys that’d just love to be with someone, and there’s lot’s of guys that regular sex is just fine then there are the guys that have had a blowjob, they might be happy with that, really happy because a whole lot of the time a good blow job can be better than pussy. A deep throat experience is the blowjob where they tilt their head back, make noises they’ve never made in sex until then and thump their head on the mattress over and over or against the wall.

I’ve given and received. I much prefer to give them…but that’s me. I knew from the first guy I was with in teachers college I was a confirmed cocksucker. And after I got a blowjob myself that feeling only got more intense. I love everything about it from the feeling to the taste if he’s clean and disease free. The friction and the warmth and to be honest and frank…I love the power.

And there is a lot of power with men when you can do that for them…unless he’s getting that treatment regularly, or is in porn…it’s a big deal. I move my throat; I pump my head back and forth and by the fifth stroke his finders are winding through my hair and his hips are moving.

I love this too…it’s very erotic for me….lot’s of reasons…But it’s the part kink part intimacy…It doesn’t take John long before he slows his strokes, his breathing changes and I feel him start to tense.

Even with a regular Bj cup his balls…and just where the underside of them start massage it with the tips of your fingers and he’ll have a real good cum…it relaxes the valves or something but all I know it works and every guy loves it.

I’m very ball friendly. I honestly think they’re a erogenous zone that women ignore on guys…just a little feel girls, a careful cup let him feel your body heat, caressing in my fave just the finger tips and all you have to do is run your fingers through he soft hairs.

We gotta give back the foreplay sometimes instead of thinking them being with us is all the foreplay guys need. I really hope he’s clean…All I can think of as John cums and cums is that I’d really like to taste him.

I guide him post orgasm to the bed and get him to lie down. I slip on top of him and kiss, and sort of salsa under his touch. I let out a breathy, little gaspy moan as he pulls my bra off and takes my breasts into his hands and his mouth.

I love being me, I love being a girl, being pretty and I love my breasts…And John is no stranger to a breast…he holds them just right cupped and not squeezing tight but squeezing and then moving his hands…light turns that caress and his mouth, is just magic…hot, wet…nuzzling my aureole and they’re sensitive so sensitive that my nipples poke out so hard…and the feeling of really hard sensitive nipples aches in a more delicious needy way than any hard on I’ve ever had. John sucks on them and he nibbles driving the sensitivity up higher and…and…I get pushed over the edge and fill my panties in a gaspy girly squeal as I’m biting the meat of his shoulder.

I can be a really slutty, girly, whore in bed.

I like making those noises…the sounds of the person you’re with can bring things over…the way you do things matter. Then I small tiny voice ask still with my face into John’s shoulder. “I need you inside me John…it’s been too long…take me…teach me…make me live like the woman I need to be.”

Ask nice, be sweet, and make a guy feel important like this. But only the good guys. An ass that thinks that this is his rightful due ain’t worth my time.

John rolls me over and pulls my panties off and uses them to clean me off…more kisses and touches and he skins up and takes his time easing into me…

I cry out…girly cry, gasps… “Hunh…Hunh…aaie…uh…aaie…oh…oooh…Hot..oh so hot…Johnny, Johnny…big…oh…big…” Stare at him, play with my breasts and wrap my stoking legs and heels around him.

It feels good, hurts at first in a great way and the feeling behind the sounds and words are real…but that really breathy, sexy, baby-doll girl stuff really gets to guys…you be that for them and they will change as a lover…be sweet, try so hard.

Yes it’s sort of acting but it’s also letting go and actually embracing your girly little inner whore. It stops being an act if you just let go and let yourself cry, be girly…squeal…love the sex, love the cock.

I’ve come to terms with this side of me. And I’m like this in the bedroom only; I try to be a nice but strong person. I don’t let people walk over me. But in the bedroom…I’m open with my lovers…good to them, open and giving tem my trust.

Trust is huge to me.

Respect is huge to me.

I will give out the care and love and be really, really sweet to you. But I had better get it back. Honestly I’m too old for games.

John is not playing games, not right now and he’s slow and careful and respectful even as hot and horned up as I’ve gotten him.

The breathy upper pitched moan of sweet satisfaction is real enough coming from me. Like I said…when I though I was gay it was a revelation to me and now this is me being made love to and likely more.

I can say with honesty I love cock. I love the feeling of being taken, of him sinking into me and the shared heat inside….the hardness but still flesh…the way I mold to him like we were meant for this.

But it’s not gay sex, as much as I still have junior I’m still having het-sex. When I was with Julie I was having bi-girl on girl sex with junior being the living sex toy. I’m not like a lot of t-girls because I don’t hate junior.

That’s right I don’t. The sex I have with him is good but not as good as this is. But see junior will be transformed someday and I’ll get the operation done so they’re still part of me. And I’ve come to this way of thinking too. Junior is what is guarding my virginity.

Oh yes I know I’m the last thing from being a virgin. But if I can find someone that okay with me being me as I am now and we start having an actual relationship one that is real and not some tranny chaser who only loves me for that then I’ll get the work done.

In short I’m saving my vagina for the guy that I’m going to marry.

And when I find a guy like John. A guy that is a contender, I really dig deep and go all out. Not fake but I do sort of go “This is me, This is who I am.” And some guys can handle that and some guys can’t and I’ve had enough close near touches of happy I know it’s out there and I know I have to keep trying.

And I’m opening up to John…the love making is amazing. It’s been so long that I’ve lost that deep in feeling of being a sensual creature for awhile. It’s coming back to me now…John’s waking up my inner tigress.

Missionary like this legs around him is good…switching to my legs over his shoulders is better…he can feel my legs, the stockings but it opens me more to him and changes the angle and give him something to hold onto for leverage when he really want’s to be powerfully affectionate. That changed angle is so good just right so that he can really strike my little woman inside of me.

Yeah…I call my prostate my little woman because she get’s you off when you’re getting fucked and she’ll still make you cum when Junior’s not able. Add that and to the fact the it’s the part of you that’s directly liked to how Junior get’s stiff…she’s my little girl deep inside that shares her orgasms and gives me wood.

I love getting banged that hard because it makes my breasts bounce and I hold my hands just over them enough that as they bounce my nipples are gliding over my palms driving me deeper into that part of me that is wanton and sexual and I cry out cumming…oh getting there and Cupping them and squeezing them as I do takes in into that hurt a little that I came that hard.

John follows me into his own bliss…he must have taken something to help be cause his recharge rate is that of an eighteen year olds. I fucking love Viagra and it’s off shoots. I know it’s a guy macho thing but it can be wonderful.

Like I get a guy like John who has so much wonderful experience and is a great lover able to last like he’s back in his prime. And it really is a wonderful thing.

Like…him kissing me and making out with me and the foreplay even into round three for him that is still important to me and a man that has the thoughts to take a sip of the champagne and to hold some in his mouth and then take a nipple into his mouth to hold it there while the bubbles play with me and he does these tiny tip flicks with his tongue.

I guess the rest is pretty much just great sex.

Me on top.

Me from behind doing downward facing dog as he really bangs me hard…me screaming into the pillow breast squashed to the mattress and me fisting the sheets.

Me from behind on top…then in his arms and he’s giving me a reach around…more and more until I get to bliss.

I call bliss that time when you cum…but junior doesn’t…can’t he’s literally out of juice and this is something else…he gives me two of those.

If I wasn’t fucked to being boneless I’s have give him a standing ovation.

Sex is so funny.

Usually after sex the guy rolls over and does the sleep thing and the girl wants to talk to have the emotional connection.

The emotional post sex cigarette.

Then there’s when you have really great sex…and she’s limp, wrung out from the intense sex and lovemaking and sweaty, hair soaked or damp and their make-up is ruined and all she can do is roll over and fall into satisfied exhaustion. And the guy this time after that has had such a sexual intimate encounter that now he has the walls blown down he wants to stare at you and touch you and to talk.

I love the irony of that.

He pulls me close and he snuggles I think he said a few things but I was taken to such a high sexually that now that everything’s done my mind and body is in neutral and I’m coasting down that hill into sleep.

…………………………………..I Love the feeling of waking up and you’ve been boned so well that even in the morning you’re still feeling it. It’s not stretched you actually bounce back pretty quick form that. No it’s just the act, the friction, having something inside it’s not the state you’re usually in as a person and your body is telling you that.

It’s that so finely fucked feeling.

It’s been too long.

There’s a note and a carafe of coffee there and some croissants there with a note.

“Gone to get my car I’ll be back to get you soon. Love John.”

I fold the note and save it in my purse.

I get up and slip my panties on and take the room service tray and wheel it to the window where there’s a high backed chaise and I sit and sip coffee bare breasted in front of the window.

The croissants are fresh, likely baked here and two are plain and two have had dark rich chocolate folded into them. There’s jam too and a little pot of butter with rich, rich heavy cream folded into it. Its beurre de la coeurs…butter of the heart and a very Quebec City thing where they have evaporated cream and fold it with butter. It’s their take on clotted cream which they stole here from the English when they were here.

Some of that and strawberry jam that was finished with what tastes like grated or zested lemon peel…

I really, really love this city and I’m still sipping my coffee just enjoying everything at such a relaxed pace I drift into nothing…just spacing out happy and feeling the cool breeze mixing with the sun from my window as I just watch outside, birds and people and traffic.

It’s John sitting on the chair of the vanity with the hotel pad of stationary and the scratchy sound of him sketching away that get’s me back down from at least cloud five.

“You want me to stay here?” I’ve modeled before. South America is filled with artists…I actually like doing that sometimes. I feel a bit sort of cultured? And Trans or not it’s a really great feeling to have some one look at you and see something artistic about you.

And every time it’s different.

And you learn sometimes things about yourself that you never knew. Or even articulate. There’s a choppy styled portrait of me in my things in storage of me in a sundress at Montu-Pichu its rough on purpose and full if light and color and you can just sort of tell it’s me and I’m holding my hat on my head in the wind and I’m smiling.

I love that picture it was done by a dear friend who was with me on that tour who’s since died of HIV complications but the first time I saw it. And saw it was me? I cried and had no idea why…I just had that reaction to it…and they were good clean tears.

I bite soft chew my lip before taking another coffee sip and looking at John. He’s got that look that artists get…seeing me but not seeing me but at the same time seeing more than me.

“Please.” Is all he says.

Covered Bridges-7.

Chapter 7

John hasn’t showed me the sketches yet that he did of me this morning and we had packed up my things and he had left to rent a car because like a lot of people in places like Montreal, Toronto and yes even Quebec it’s not day to day practical to own and keep a car. It’s like that in a lot of cities actually.

I packed up and John’s a gentleman and he carries my things ad we drive down into the edge of the city that’s fairly close to the old quarter. It’s a loft in an older building, five floors and no lift but whatever the place used to be it has been renovated nicely.

The loft is hardwood floors and not the laminate but the original stuff and built solid but with ages of scuffs and scars and character. The walls are bare brick and the support beams are showing all of them are metal but treated with a kind of Tremclad paint.

The wall closest to the staircase and door is the kitchen and he’s got this fabulous island that’s four feet wide and a dozen feet long and is made up of butcher’s blocks. He’s got a lot of older appliances an old fridge really old where you pull on the door handle to unlock the fridge door. It’s been lovingly restored. He’s this amazing set of bookshelves rescued from something or someplace that are at the end of the kitchen and are a free standing pantry. He has a lot of jars of things that look like preserves and stuff all in the old styled mason jars.

“Wow, okay you cook?”

“Not enough but I do like to support the people that make all these things at the markets I mean if you look at it right a really nice bottle of jam’s pretty artistic.”

“You do everything with art in mind?”

“No but I just like the spirit of it all. I really have a sort of deep kind of dislike for the whole deep corporate soullessness you see around.”

“You sure you’re an American? Isn’t capitalism supposed to run through your blood?”

“Hey I’m all for making money but there are ways to make cash without screwing other people over or raping the planet.”

“Not a bottled water drinker then.”

“No, I have a tap and a built in filter.”

“MacDonald’s?”

“Rarely and usually only when I’m drunk and close to one but we’re in Quebec City the street food here is faster and better than any fast food.”

“Except KFC.”

“Even KFC.”

“I adore KFC how can you not like KFC?”

“It’s not the same up here, you can’t get honey with the chicken and the potatoes are gross, and the coleslaw has carrot in it and there’s buns and not biscuits.”

I grin at him. “I’ve never had KFC in the states I’ve had McDonalds and A&W both were pretty much the same as here.”

“I like A&W more that McCrappolla’s”

“I make a really mean fried chicken.”

“Really, what do you need?”

I look around. “You’ve got most of it here actually.”

“So are you offering?”

I laugh. “Show me where I can unpack and stow the rest of my things and you can go get us some chickens.”

John shows me to the bedroom area a really nice spot off to the corner of the loft with a series of recycled big wooded bookcases like from a library or something that he’s using as shelves for his clothes and his towels and it’s all really kind of a guy thing with one of those cheap tube steel coat racks that have just wire hangers on them and Rubbermaid bins that he keeps his socks and some t-shirts in and other things.

Really sort of nice in a really guy sort of way. I clear some room for my things and carefully fold the things that I have with me and there’s some space on the hangers with John only having a couple of jackets and coats and three suit sized dry cleaning bags.

I get changed too going from the dress and nice under wear to nice but comfortable underwear and yoga pants and…I grab one of John’s football shirts of some team called the Blackhawks…maybe its hockey?

I go barefoot because I’m like that, honestly in any place that I’m comfortable at I’m always going bare foot. I guess you can sort of read into it but honestly I’ve heard it means so many different things from so many different people it’s in the end just me and that’s one of my things.

I head back into the main part of the loft and start to check things out in just the little ways and yeah being a nosy girl in general. John’s place isn’t really dirty and much as it’s dusty and needs some TLC or as some people are prone to saying the place needs a woman’s touch.

Hmmm…not today, I’m so not going to spend time cleaning yet. It’s too early in the relationship for that.

I mean if it’s a relationship.

Okay waay too much of that for right now, this is a…well it is what it is and that’s a very good, very strong maybe.

I head to the kitchen and if I’m making fried chicken then I need to make a few things on the side.

I go through John’s pantry and I get the stuff that I need and I make biscuits I make good biscuits if I have the right stuff and he’s got most of it so I’m making really decent biscuits. One of my favourite tricks is freezing the butter and grating it into the dry stuff. See when the butter melts it’s hot enough to make the steam and that makes them fluffy when the steam escapes.

I get the herbs that I’m going to use in my breading first and their mostly dry stuff so I toast them in the frying pan first. Then I add just a bit of flour only about a table spoon or two to the herbs and the salt. Pepper is key, not the hot stuff but some kind derived from the standard peppercorn. See regular pepper isn’t just spicy it wakes the saliva glands and that makes all the tastes of the food you are eating get more spread through your mouth…more yumminess. It’s something I picked up in Japan.

That and my tempura batter, I use a mutated technique when I make my chicken…It’s gotten rave reviews everywhere that I’ve ever made it.

I make potatoes too. Mashed since he’s just got some Yukon golds which are good for that and they’re also good for fries but I’ve always thought that fried chicken with fries was overkill. I wash them and set them into the steamer. A good potato that’s steamed has more flavor than a boiled potato or it does for me.

It’s not healthier since I add it butter and cream and I add just a bit of salt and just a bit of white pepper and a teaspoon of sugar…just a teaspoon to react with the salt and it really does work. I’m mashing things up when John comes in with these wax paper lined paper bags from a real butcher. So much better than getting things wrapped in plastic and all the wholesale supermarket stuff.

I lived in South America and Japan both with really large populations and neither is as stuck on the mass market pre-packaged stuff than North America. I know there’s a huge amount of it in Japan with like ten to twelve vending machines per person but a lot of their groceries are fresher than ours. Unless you go to a convenience store.

He’s already smelling the air. “Mmm, wow you really can cook.”

“I told you…besides I like busting some stereotypes?”

“Huh? Like?”

“There’s certain places I’ve lived where women don’t really cook.”

“Oh…I suppose it’s getting more common.”

“Yeah it is and I like to eat even if I have to work harder to keep it off.”

“I can think of ways to work it off.”

“Mmm, me too. Food is a pleasure and it’s something that you should enjoy…true it’s really easy to over do it but depriving yourself of the basics doesn’t make you a better person it just makes you cranky.”

“I agree, uhm he included everything I didn’t know what you used so…”

I look in the bags and the chickens are butchered and he included the neck, backs and the gizzard and hearts and the livers. I take the softer stuff and toss it in the food processor he’s got and toss the necks into a pot of chicken stock and some of the spices I’ve got ready and the chicken backs go into the hot oil. I want them browned and it’s a good thing too because that pre-flavors the oil with the renderings from the backs and the browned chicken backs are flavor.

I pull them and I take the skins off of them and share them with John while the rest goes into the stock pot with the buzzed up bits from the food processor a quartered onion skin on. The color from the papery skins will get in the stock, some garlic, carrot and celery and I put the pot on full wack and let it bubble away.

The chicken I roll in the seasoning I made up and I then toss it in some beat up egg white and water then I flash fry it. See this is the secret to my chicken the seasoning gets stuck to the bird and sealed in by the egg white and it’s mostly cooked by the time I take it out and I put in into a bowl and toss some more seasoning to it. See the flour added to the seasoning makes a huge difference here in this part because it gives the tempura batter something to stick too and once the pieces are cooled enough that I can hold them with my fingers I dip and fry them again but with the tempura batter and they come out fully cooked, really moist because the first fry seasoned and sealed everything in and it’s double crispy once from the skin on the first fry and the egg white and then again with the tempura crunchiness.

Two chickens and mashed potatoes and my gravy and he eats nearly a whole chicken himself in pieces and the other fixings aside. I have a leg with thigh on it and a wing and potatoes and gravy.

Y’know I love being my age, there’s a lot of women that’ll say they hate it and all of that stuff but…well lets just say I love not being in my twenties. I’m grown up enough and John’s grown up enough that we clean up and dishwasher the dishes and we both get a coffee and retire to his couch area and have no shame like some twenty somethings about laying down and actually watching some TV together and doing the post supper food coma thing.

***

The next day I get him to walk me around the neighbourhood so I can get a few things and so that I can plot out my running route. It’s just that and me lazing around the loft while he has the music blasting and he paints. He’s doing this series of Quebec and ravens and the city scenes through their POV’s.

I read through some of the books that I got, we have leftovers for brunch…wine and each other for a break around two…until about five thirty and while he paints and I take a long bath we decide to go out for supper.

He plays a lot of rock and roll from the sixties and the seventies and a bit from the other times but John is very much a Stones, Beatles, CCR, Skynnard, Zeppelin kind of guy with smatterings of all that genre…I’m surprised to hear a healthy dose of Metallica and Nirvana and Coldplay too.

Not that I mind, I love this kind of music too. I like mostly everything but country and rap and J-pop and K-pop it’s just really not my thing.

We eat at a nice place in Lower town or Basse-Ville and they’re another café spot with a nice menu. I like all sorts of food but there is just something so nice and normal about a nice simple pan roasted fish. A salad and bread and wine then we head off to this place that he’s been planning on showing me called The Image Mill.

It’s a really nice place to stop and go see this is like part theatre and part museum and gallery all rolled together but made and presented so that it’s as entertaining to the locals as much as it is made for the tourists.

You get to watch this 3-d sort of show projected out onto these huge silos that are lining the waterfront in the area. It’s fascinating and as much as I was kind of like more art? Even as much as I love art this was something else…the silos move and undulate sometimes and the effect is. Transportive… This is a really big undertaking for anyone really and it’s something just amazing about the whole spectacle and there’s even some cabaret going on with the whole thing. The one thing that was iffy was it’s a late show and you’re right down on the water so it’s chilly but John had thought of this and he had me bring my coat which is a good idea in general for Quebec city as the whole city is waterside and you can get a chill fairly quick. Well that and the fact that the city does kind of run itself with things to do pretty late anyways.

We slipped into a few nice bars and had a few drinks and I got to meet some more of the different kind of people that John knows. My french is getting a real workout though and sometimes it’s a bit hard to figure out or follow along in the conversations but I don’t really mind having been through the same thing several times in my life.

Just admit that you can’t really follow along and they’ll either include you or they won’t. More often than not they’ll slow down so you can follow along or switch to English if they know it but some times they won’t.

That happened twice tonight with two of the women that John knew and it’s not like they’re interested in him but they were interested because I was with him and therefore worth competing with me over for that effed up reason women seem to have in some cultures.

I don’t care that they’re flirting with him or not slowing down what they’re saying to him in french, I’m not really into the whole mean girls we hate other women thing. It’s a bit of that female psyche that I’m actually glad that I don’t have.

But I know other women that don’t either so it’s just likely some kind of attention thing. Still we have a good time despite them being that way and we head back to his place and get in the door about twenty passed one and we have a shower together which leads to some lovemaking and a very satisfied comfortable snuggle into the sheets to finish the day.

So far so good…right?

Covered Bridges-8.

Chapter 8

I’d like to say that John was the guy.

That guy that if you’re transgendered and straight you’ve been looking for, the guy that I guess that all girls are looking for and while john’s a really nice guy. Sweet and smart, soulful and artistic and just a really, really decent guy.

He’s not that guy.

He’s a good lover and he’s attentive and demanding both and he’s fun but I don’t know? It could be the fact that why there’s chemistry between us it’s like making supper or even a romantic meal he’s not the guy that takes my breath away.

And I know, I know that that person might actually not even exist out there for me but I’ve made my choices. I’m looking for that person. I want a life.

So all of that and the fact that I have a job waiting for me out on the west coast and still have places here in Canada that I really want to see is why I’m packing my bags.

John’s smiling and that’s sort of killing me really because he’s got this sad sweet smile going on while he’s putting tissue sheets over some of the paintings that he’s done while I was here and some of the ones that he wanted to give me and he’s carefully rolling them up and tubing them for me.

“You know that you could stay Haley.”

“I know that I could john but I couldn’t at the same time. I loved being here and it’s been one of the best times in my life living here with you and being your lover but….”

“But?”

“But this isn’t home. I like the city fine and its amazing and everything but it’s not home.”

“And Bridgeview some town out on the B.C. coast is?”

“I was raised in a small town John I want a small town life.”

“They might not accept you there.”

“I was very forthcoming with who I am when I applied for the job and was accepted.”

He sighed and gave me this long forlorn look. “You really have to go?”

“Yeah, I do it’s just something I have to do.”

With my things packed I let him drive me around one last time and I say a few goodbyes to some of his friends that I did like while I was here and found charming and then it’s to the Fed-Ex office to get all of the things that I don’t want to travel with shipped off to B.C. where I can pick all of it up when I get there.

He drives me to the Via-Rail station, that’s the passenger arm of the C.N. rail company and he see’s me off by sitting with me and we have two cones of soft ice cream while we wait for my train.

I’m still going to go all the way by train but it’s been less than the experience that I thought that’d it be, well at least coming out of the Maritimes it really left a lot to be desired.

We share a long, very long kiss together as my bags are being loaded and we’re attracting looks and smiles. Its Quebec….public displays of affection isn’t offending anyone’s eyes here.

Then I’m sitting at a reasonably nice seat and watching john smiling at me and gently waving goodbye to me and I don’t wave back but hold my hand to the glass like I am and just leave it there.

I’m crying.

Yeah, this was really a lot harder than I thought to leave and move on. John was special and I mean that there are not a lot of guys like that out there in the world and it was so tempting to stay and try it even if in my heart I knew that it wouldn’t be right for me.

Sigh…

There’s a few other passengers looking at me and there’s some concern there which is nice actually and I actually have a nice little spot of tea and some homemade really nice peach jam with these two older ladies Mildred and Harriet.

God bless them, these are those little old Canadian ladies that took their food on the train with them and are the first gals to come over and sit down beside you with a hug for a total stranger. Just because they see you hurting and it’s who they are and before you know it you’re getting a there…there dear that just is as warming as the hot tea they’re pouring you from a thermos.

I cry a bit and talk with them and tell them about starting over and just how much it hurt to find a really decent guy with meeting john but also getting these knowing smiles and knowing looks and just the kindness that you can actually find in this country.

We talk all the way until my stop at Ottawa. I hug them both and get their addresses so I can write them sometime and say that I’ll send the mine as soon as I’m settled down.

I get my travel bags and head through the station to the café they have across the street so I can start to look things up the first thing being a close place to here for renting a car.

I feel better; I think I’ll be here a few days at least really. I’ve never been here before and I’ve always wanted to actually check it out sometime.

It’s the capitol of my country.

No matter what Toronto thinks. (Grins.)

I get a room reserved for me at the Best Western mostly because it’s not that bad for prices and they almost always have a pool and a gym/workout area and I get a cab to the hotel and get things set up for my stay there I’m going for a five day stay and get them to rent me a car. Most good chains of places to stay have a deal with a car rental agency so I get a deal with them and with the hotel plus I use my CAA card which is actually really handy to have too.

The room’s nice and tonight since it’s still the same day that I left Quebec and John I’m just staying in. I end up ordering Chinese delivery from Wonton Mama which is a place I found listed online and they have some Japanese stuff there on the menu. So I order the Pad-Thai with just the tofu, some pork fried rice and a spider roll and a black dragon roll and a green dragon roll.

Yes I’m emotionally eating but it’s better than me slogging my way through s box of brownies and KFC and some ice cream which was a very real impulse for me.

I guess there’s always going to be part of me that’ll be fighting the weight battle and old habits. The take out is pretty pricy but I’m putting it on my credit card so I’ll really end up paying for it down the road instead of breaking the bank now.

I just sort of spend the night in my room after a long hot bath in a big fluffy robe covered in face cream eating take out Asian food and watching “A Walk to Remember.” on Pay per view and crying.

Stuffed emotional and full of rice and noodle carbs I drift off to sleep after burrowing deeply into the blankets like I’m going to hibernate.

I’m it hurts still and I’m really missing him in the empty bed but he’s worth the hurt. The good ones are worth the hurt of a break up. He was one of the good ones.

He just wasn’t “The one.”

God I’m lonely.
That deep down lonely.

Covered Bridges-9.

Before….

I’d like to say that John was the guy.

That guy that if you’re transgendered and straight you’ve been looking for, the guy that I guess that all girls are looking for and while john’s a really nice guy. Sweet and smart, soulful and artistic and just a really, really decent guy.

He’s not that guy.

And now…Chapter 9

A good cry, some comfort food, another good cry and some crappy sobby movies is what it took to bleed the crippling feelings from John and me parting ways.

I long run this morning and a Java-juice along with a coffee had my brain back on running speeds and I’m in the shower singing along to Bob Seger.

“Against the wind…”
  
“We were runnin' against the wind.”
  
“We were young and strong, we were runnin’”
  
“Against the wind.”

I love his stuff it’s that older rock I grew up with, some of my dad’s stuff and it melds pretty well with the songs I like.

There’s another sex/gender advantage. Girls, we don’t catch shit as often for liking the music we do. Me I’m a 60’ through 80’s listener and I like ballads and romantic rock songs.

I towel off lightly and take my time getting myself ready for the day mostly because I’m looking online at some of the things that I want to see while I’m here in Ottawa. I might have gone and did Toronto but I’ve been to Toronto and while it’s is a nicer city that most people give it credit for I’m not sure how many of the sights have changed enough for me to really go there for a short time.

I’ve never been to Ottawa and a lot of people ignore this city sometimes when it comes to the touristy thing. I want to check it out and see some of the cool things that this place has to have and yes I want to see parliament and I want to see the war memorials and the Eternal flame too.

“Hmm…breakfast? Maybe I’ll wait and get brunch instead someplace and find a nice place to eat here in town.”

I get dressed and it’s a nice day but I’m planning on a good amount of walking so I want my sneakers so I go with a sundress that has short sleeves and a nice fit on my waist and my hips and has a pretty low cup bust line to show off my breasts…They are one of my best features beside my butt and I like to show enough of them off to draw the eye.

And because it’s cute and it’ll go with my sneakers I slip on my double thick stocking socks. They’re like thing highs but they look like sports socks and makes my sneakers and the dress a cute combo.

You don’t see these much over here but they’re worn quite a bite over in Japan. They’re more of a teenager and laid back adult kind of thing but I’m also Canadian and blonde so that worked for me pretty well.

I brought a lot of them home with me but only have a few with my in my bags right now. I get a cab hailed and get them to take me to. “Hey I haven’t had breakfast yet can you take me to the best place you know?”

He takes me to this little hole in the wall place in a downtown brick and mortar call Sally’s. I pay him the fare plus the rest of what the balance from the forty bucks was I mean I know when I’m being hauled around it’s just Ottawa cabs are pretty steep with it being eight fifty but hey it’s sort of like that in most major cities these days.

Sally’s is just what the doctor ordered too it’s that old fashioned down town diner in the brick building that you’d wander into after a night out on the town drinking with friends because she was open twenty four seven and it’s got those great big plate glass windows that let you just look out onto the street as the night would go by.

Or in my case the daytime but it’s still really my kind of place. I like sitting in the sun and being able to watch people go by. Lots of decent coffee and not the frou-frou stuff just good coffee and maybe the paper and…

Okay I know exactly what I want as I’m getting the paper and a seat in one of the booths.

The waitress is kinda charming with that twenties youth thing going on and the piercings and a few tattoos but she’s dressed in the uniform all tricked out to look like the nineteen fifties pin up style. And that totally her own deal because the other waitresses are just sporting the uniform.

She’s got this smile on her face that sort of just adds to the sunshine coming in. “What can I get you hon?”

Oh I like that touch thankfully she’s not chewing gum. No it’s not a teacher thing I just find gum’s good now and then but I’m not a fan of the whole bimbo chew. I smile at her and wave off the menu. “I’m on my last big vacation for awhile so…how’s the pie?”

Oops she’s giving me this look like she’s trying to decide if I’m flirting with her or not.

“The pie is fabulous honey, what kind would you like.”

Oh…and she said it suggestively too. While its fun I’m not looking for a girl to be with actually I’m not looking for anyone right now.

Too soon.

“Oh I would imagine it’s absolutely heaven but I think a big slice of apple pie heated up with a bit of ice cream is all I can handle right now.”

She sorta pouts and I sort of give her the blushing smile and move some hair out of my face. She gets this serious but still kind look after a second and nods. “Right hot apple with ice cream scooped or soft serve.”

“Oh…soft serve please.”

“Coffee?”

“Please just with some milk in it.”

“Alright darling coming right up.”

She walks away and there’s still the tiny look back and the very nice swivel of her hips as she goes. I’m pretty sure she knows I’m not looking but she’s more than willing to do it just because.

Just because well it’s fun to flirt especially if the other person is fun enough not to get all offended by some same sex flirting.

I get the paper from an empty booth near mine and I browse through it just sort of checking everything out and kind of spend my time with the actual news and then looking at both the entertainment section and the life and times.

And older man comes over and starts to lean in towards me. I pull out the sports section. “Sports?”

He smiles. “Thank you that’d be lovely Miss?”

“Haley…”

“Nice to meet you Haley I’m Frank.”

“Come here often?”

“Everyday so you are a new face.”

“I’m on vacation sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“I’m moving out to British Columbia for a teaching job and I figured that I’d take my time and try and see the sights along the way.”

“Driving?”

“No…I’m only an iffy driver I’ve lived too long in Japan and in Brazil and the cities was way too crowded for my liking so I became public transportation girl.”

“That’s a lot of back and forth though you must have saved up you airmiles.”

“Did and used them all pretty much going home. No I wanted to take a train trip with all the trimmings before the train becomes a thing of the past.”

He nods and moves only to get his cup of coffee and bring it over. “May I?”

“Certainly I’d love the company and maybe pull on you for some knowledge.”

“Oh?”

“Well you’re local I take it right?”

“All my adult life.”

“Then you know all the good places for me to go see.”

“I do and I know that this is being really forward but I’m retired and if you’d like I could squire you around the city and give you a tour and you wouldn’t have to pay cabs and the like.”

I look him over and he’s a nice looking older man. No not that way but sort of that way just nice. Well dressed even if he’s retired, clean shaven and hair well groomed this was one of those old school gentlemen and I can’t help but notice the wedding ring he has on.

He’s a widower.

I smile and reach out and take his hand in mine. “Deal on two conditions.”

“Okay and those are?”

“You tell me about her as we go and you take me over to your place before we go and I’ll cook you a home cooked meal.”

He smiles. “I…I could do that.”

The girl comes with my pie and I smile at her and she has that sunshine smile on her face again.

I smile back at her and she does the little blushy bit this time and I look at Frank. “Should I ask for a second fork?”

“No, no I’m stuffed from my pancakes but if you don’t mind I’d enjoy watching.”

“Watching…me eat?”

“I know it sounds odd but when you’re used to having someone on the other side of the table you miss it when she’s not there any more. It sounds loopy I know but I miss watching a woman eat. How they eat.”

I sort of get that thinking back to me going to visit all the graves before heading away from home and how all of that felt.

“Not strange at all Frank but I’m not the most mannered of gals y’know.”

“Neither was My Mary just be yourself Haley.”

I eat and really enjoy it too; it’s that applesauce apple pie. Tenderflake crust and the filling is something my Aunt Katie used to make for my dad every Christmas….applesauce and apples coated in cinnamon sugar and all mixed together with a handful of tapioca pearls to firm it all up. It’s good enough by itself especially when I haven’t had a slice of apple pie in about four years. Now have it heated up with some melty vanilla soft serve on it and I’m definitely enjoying myself and everytime I make a goof eating it or a noise from just enjoying it its make Frank look over at me and smile.

We get done and I leave a twenty on the table and Frank offers his arm and we start to go and the waitress smiles and waves a little with her fingers and mouths thank you?

He chuckles as we’re leaving.

“What’s so funny?”

“That’s Robyn and she’s my grand daughter.”

“Oh that’s why she was thanking me?”

“Probably, I come down and visit her here all the time.”

“So the old style look is...”

He laughs. “I have no idea it’s not to look like her grandmother even though she does look like Mary did at that age.”

“Lucky man then.”

“Yes, yes I was and you could be a lucky girl y’know Robyn’s a sweet girl.”

“I noticed believe me I noticed but I just got out of a relationship not too long ago and I’m not exactly looking.”

“Believe me Haley once you’ve had your one you really never look for someone else.”

“I know…I’m looking for that Jack as hard as it might be to find I really want that.”

“Good, and you’re a beautiful and sweet girl don’t settle.”

I see flowers at a news stand. I stop and get some roses. “You deliver?”

The guy looks at me. “Naw not really?”

“Down to Sally’s?”

“Oh…well that I can have arranged.” And yes this guy’s Italian and he’s speaking like that. I have to stop the eye roll…okay I’m just going to let “Vinnie” do his ting. It cost me a side trip to the ATM but its worth it and I sign the note.

“That would have been amazing pie.”

And I kiss the other side of it leaving a lipstick print there and get him to take those to her. She might not have been who I was looking for but she’s definitely flower worthy…well most girls are but I think getting flowers is just nice and getting them at work it just makes your day suck less.

Plus the bragging factor.

Frank leads me to his car this really well maintained old style Crown Victoria and he opens the door for me. He get’s in and I look at him. “So where too first?”

“Well the weather’s still nice so how about we go over and we look at The Canal?”

“Oh…! Oh that’s a great idea that never even really made my list.”

He smiles and we pull out and he’s actually already starting to point out things as we drive and I’ve got my camera out and he’ll even stop so I can shutterbug.

Y’know I love this country…kind old ladies on the train, sweet guys and girls all over and just being able to pick up with a stranger like we’re not all that strange at all.

I think Frank and Ottawa are exactly what my spirit needs right now.

Covered Bridges-10.

I like Frank’s old Crown Vic, back when I was a kid we had a coupe of police officers are neighbors and all the cop cars were the big old Crown Victoria’s. It’s as clean inside as out and the there’s this smell of one of those coconut air fresheners lingering there.

He spends a good deal of time in his car too. I see a small double picture frame of Robyn and Frank and his late wife Mary on the dash. The one concession is a newish stereo in the car with the satellite radio in it.

We drive down to the canal and it’s absolutely pleasant. I love these big old cars they have this feeling when you ride in them like you’re just kind of floating and honestly they’re just nicer.

Frank is a moderate driver too, not too fast but he’s not one of those doddering around types either and with the weather nice it’s a really good day for this and he even has this nice touch of listening to CBC Radio 2.

It really is a nice touch and a channel that I have listened to all over the world. For all that I am and all the places I’ve lived in I have always had a really strong a dear place in my heart for my identity as a Canadian it’s one of the reasons that I’m doing this trip.

I want to see things in my country before settling down in Bridgetown with a house and a teaching job and all of that stuff.

Oh the canal and the area around it is so nice.

Its park like especially since it’s a world heritage site now and Frank and I kill the day just driving from one spot to another and there’s always stuff going on and tourists there and I’m happily taking pictures and videos with my camer

More than once we stop and walk and stretch our legs and I get to see some of them working with some of the pleasure boats and Frank takes me to a few of these really killer spots like for the views and he tells me about the times that he and Mary used to come here for picnics and that sometimes in winter they’d be out there skating with the rest of the people.

The entire day is extremely gratifying actually. Frank will get us a drink here and there and I love a can of that Country Time lemonade and sipping it with a straw just enjoying that and feeling the way the wind moves my dress and my hair and as vain as it sounds I enjoy the looks that I’m getting as well.

Yeah there is part of me that loves being a woman and I love being a head turner too.

Though I really do try to be nice about it.

I smile at people and I make some eye contact too no matter what a person might look like.

Hey I was the over weight fat guy that never fit in and there are lots of people usually women that will for some reason actually avoid looking at people that aren’t so lucky when it comes to stuff like looks.

Mine are mostly manufactured so I really try and not to have the whole ego about looking good.

I have a very good creep-o-meter so I can usually tell the really nasty and creepy people from the regular and socially awkward ones.

Honestly before I became the woman that I was just someone being nice to me and just decent was a highlight of my day.

And there is nothing for a woman to have a guy like Frank with you. Oh there’s nothing sexual going of like that but he is enjoying this as much as me. He opens my doors and helps me in and out of his car and a lot of the time when we’re walking I have my arm in his.

It’s that really old school manners and respect thing and we both have fun doing it though it is really sweet and heart-warming the way he is still so much in love with his Mary.

That…that right there is what I want.

I want someone to fall in love with me forever and if I ever die before them I want to be able to feel their love for me when I’m in heaven.

And if they leave me first I still want to be in love with them the same way.

Sigh…

We do stop at the official canal museum so I can get a few things like posters and some DVD’s and stuff related to it so I can have some at home but I want something for my classroom too.

Yes, definitely yes I want to be that kind of teacher.

And it’s really nice to talk to Frank about that too. He’s got a lot of insight into that and things that I might want to do.

Our last stop is actually at one of the grocery stores.

He smiles at me. “Haley you really don’t have to do this.”

“You offered to take me around this week and I offered up home cooked meals while you were doing that and where I come from a deal is a deal.”

“As long as you aren’t being put out by ding it.”

“Absolutely not I actually like to cook.”

“Well since you are insisting can I invite Robyn over?”

“You can invite whoever you want. I’m sure that you know several people that are missing out on home cooked meals these days.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’m positive; everyone you invite over is someone new that I get to meet y’know.”

He kisses me on the cheek and then get’s out of the car and helps me out too and he even goes and gets me a grocery cart. “I insist on buying though young lady.”

“Fair enough do you want to shop for everything for the week or just for tonight?”

“The week if that’s alright with you then we won’t have to do this every night and we can save some time.”

I smile since I have a plan for all of this anyway that’s been stewing in my head.

“Let’s go I hope you know that I am very good at spending money.”

“I have credit cards; I think that we can manage.”

It’s still fun shopping for groceries and I think he knows my plan since I get flour and yeast and baking powder and lots of things from the baking isle and freezer containers and lots of other stuff.

In my head I’m going through things I know how to make but also recipes that I know that my Grandmother used to make or my Mom or my Dad.

Frank looks at me. “You are going to fatten me up aren’t you?”

I tip toe and kiss his cheek as we’re getting rung up. “You are a nice and warm and a really sweet man and I am going to make sure that you have some home cooking that will last you long after I’m on my way.”

“You really don’t have to do that Haley it’s too much to ask.”

I reach down and take his hand and I rub it and look at him. “I love the love that you and Mary had Frank and the way that you talk about her still so much in love with her it felt like I could feel us with her today and I think that she and I would have gotten along.”

He has this moved look and that good kind where the guy is man enough and old enough to just let those kind of feelings show. His voice is a little hoarse from it and he has this great smile that just says how much he loves her still.

“I think that you and she would have gotten along famously Haley, she would have loved you.”

“Then let me do this for her okay?”

He swallows some tears I think but he hugs me tight and I hug him back and we’re getting looks and the cashier looks at me and she asks quietly. “Any more around where you’re from?”

I smile at her and blush a little. “No…just me actually…”

She’s looking at me the whole time and Frank is too after I said that and it’s sort of touched the happy moment with that sort of happy yet sad at the same time.

I am alone really; I’ve been alone a long time actually.

Yes I want that kind of connection with people that I’m willing to do stuff like this too but honestly though I did mean what I said.

And really part of me really wants to be a nice person, to be a nice girl and have that be part of me.

I don’t know if that’s doing things for the wrong reasons like it’s vanity or stuff but it’s important to me.

We get the things and frank drives me to his house which is this really nice old seventies two story brick house with a really nice bit of property and trees with a brick laid driveway and it’s really nice.

It’s one of those houses that you bought back then to have a big family but if you made enough money it’s the kind of house that was that dream home that you could actually afford to have.

That’s so hard to even dream of these days.

But it is one of mine.

I want love…yes, but I want a home a real home and roots and a job that I can sleep at night about and just that.

Simple and yet so out of reach.

Ah well it’s the dream I’m willing to work for.

Inside the house is lovely and Mary is everywhere here. Not just in pictures but everywhere this is the house that she made into a home and one that she has seen her kids grow up in and her grandchildren play in.

Oh and her kitchen is just lovely.

It’s one of those country sized kitchens and full of cupboards and all these old things…I mean they have the tin flour barrel that you can pull out from under the counter on a swinging arm; she has a larder closet room too.

I count the place settings at his dining room table and send him off to call Robyn and others to come over and that supper will be served a little late tonight around sevenish and I start cooking even before I’m getting everything put away.

Pork chops.

The first thing I do is to find all of the cookware and I get the oven going and the pans all ready and bowls and I mix a little salt with water and sugar and make a brine for the pork chops and whisk in a package of onion soup mix and crumple some sage leaves in and just cover the chops.

Next thing is I whip up cornbread.

Now my cornbread is really easy. Cornmeal and some pastry or cake four and a little salt so it’s not flat and some baking powder and a little baking soda and grated frozen butter. I bought it frozen in the frozen pastry aisle and you will find butter there just for this reason to bake with.

See all those little butter bits melt when baked and when they do that they have water inside of them and that creates steam in what you’re baking creating loft.

The frozen butter is grated and added in with the dry ingredients so the flour coats it and they don’t sink to the bottom of the dish when I add the wet ingredients. My wet ingredients is one large can of corn juice and all and a can of cream styled corn and I blend it smooth in the blender and I mix the two together and I cover the dish with foil and poke some steam holes in it.

I have it at high heat about four fifty to start since I want the heat to activate the steam effect in the butter and the baking powder and the foil will keep the cornbread’s top from burning.

Ten minutes at that screaming hot temperature of yes it’s the old Fahrenheit temperature it’s the way that I learned to bake you go metric with me and I’ll muff it up for sure.

But after ten minutes back the heat down to three hundred and twenty five and let it cook the rest of the way for twenty minutes.

No, there is no sugar in my cornbread the corn and creamed corn is plenty sweet as it is.

Next is biscuits, these are flour biscuits and not a sweet or a cookie so it’s all-purpose self rising flour, baking soda an heaping table spoon of that, sugar…about a two heaped table spoons for eight coffee mugs of flour that you use you just want it there but not. No salt there is enough in the soda if you add more you will make them go flat. Then the grated butter for exactly the same reason as the corn bread and for my liquid I use buttermilk. It adds a lot of character and it reacts to the soda adding loft.

I am very careful to fold the buttermilk in and not to work the dough you do that and they will get tough and you’ll break the butter bits up too much you just want it to combine and make a sticky dough.

I do a trick I learned and tape masking tape and I tape down some waxed paper and use that as mu rolling surface. I just roll out the dough from the bowl with a little flour down to keep them from sticking and when you have it in a rough mat that’s about an inch thick then you’re done.

I use a water glass to cut them out and put the on a baking sheet and into the top oven.

I’m actually fast at that since I scratch cook and bake my whole family did that and so do most people who have or come from big families.

That done I heat the frying pans and start to sear the pork chops and I get a pot and pour all the brining liquid into that and get it boiling and I add my secret weapon for pork gravy pork hock. It’s a hock and there’s just some meat and there’s fat and most importantly there’s skin. I drop it isn and leave it the gelatine that will come out of that will give that secret mouth feel to the gravy I’m going to make.

Green beans I just clip and the same with the carrots they don’t need fussing with other than blanching so the next thing is the mashed potatoes.

I grew up on a farm and peeling potatoes is no hard chore but I make a full pot of them and cut then into chunks that will cook evenly and fast. Again my secret weapon (I have lots of those) with the potatoes. I heat some milk in the microwave and I make instant mashed potatoes…the thing is to make them actually pretty runny and when you do that because of the milk in them they get this still super potatoey creaminess.

Everything is cooking so I do my dad’s desert. I make some pie crust and I use butter…not lard it’s processed to hell and so is shortening if I had real pork grease I’d use that instead…that’s the original lard actually but I don’t so butter.

Next is I peel and core a bunch of apples and I bough granny smiths because they’re tart and once they’re done that I roll then in cinnamon and brown sugar and then I cover the pie crust with it too.

Dad called these apple bombs and the idea is to cut out a round of crust and to set the apple in it and fold the dough around the apple leaving the hole from the core open. It lets the heat inside the apple bomb and it’s sort of like a baked apple and sort of like apple pie only when they’re baked off you can fill that hole with ice cream.

I take the seared off chops off and put them in a baking dish with some foil over them and into the oven I had the cornbread in. The biscuits are done and the apple bombs go into the top oven and I turn the heat down there because they can cook long and slow and it won’t hurt them.

I use a bit of the boiling stock and an egg turner to get all the browned stuff off the pans that I seared the cops with and I pour that into the stock and I wash them and I put them away and start cleaning up.

That’s why the waxed paper is such a good idea too it’s easy to clean up. Oh and you can do that with anything that’ll be messy too though.

I hear people coming in and I make a pot of coffee get milk and sugar and mugs and take it all out to where Frank is and a few ladies and a few gentlemen all sort of his age and smile at them all.

Introductions are made and I do offer to make some tea and there’s two takers both of the ladies who ask if they can join me in the kitchen and we’re just going back inside when Robyn shows up.

“Hi.”

“Hi…oh it smells so good in here.”

“Good, it’ll be another thirty minutes there’s coffee if you want some.”

“Sure…thank you for the flowers they really made my day.”

“You’re welcome.”

She blushes a little. “Actually I’ve never gotten flowers before.”

“Really? Why not?”

“None of the girls that I’ve dated ever got me them before…it was really kind of cool.”

I smile. “You want to join us in the kitchen?’

Oh I almost laugh at the semi panicked look there. “Uhm…I think I’ll stay out here me and cooking don’t mix.”

“You work in a diner.”

“I serve the food I don’t make it, trust me we’re all better off.”

Okay I laugh. “I have to get back inside and finish things off.”

“Okay and Haley?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for doing this. It’s really cool.”

“Well Frank’s a really nice guy and this is a lot more fun than spending the evenings watching cable in my hotel room.”

I slip through the doors and I go back to cooking.

The gravy has been going full boil since I had it on and the stock is reduced right to where I want it for the amount of people I’m serving I drain off the potatoes and add butter and start to mash them and add some of the instant potato soup stopping to taste a little to get the texture where I want them.

I do the beans and carrots in a shallow pan of water and they cook while I set the dining room table with the other ladies. Of course we’re talking about what I made and they love the hock added to it and I admit I learn a few new ideas that Betty came up with for that and with the wicker place mats for the dishes soon there’s piping chops and all the fixings out and I have the apple bombs out and cooling off.

Frank has this big smile on his face as we’re all sitting around his table and everyone looks happy too and I take hands and look at everyone.

“Anyone want to say grace?”

Frank does the job and we all hold hands and I love the way this all feels and then we’re tucking into the supper.

I’ve missed this family dinner feeling, I think that they have too.

Covered Bridges-11.

*Before…

“Okay and Haley?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for doing this. It’s really cool.”
“Well Frank’s a really nice guy and this is a lot more fun than spending the evenings watching cable in my hotel room.”
I slip through the doors and I go back to cooking.
I can feel Robyn watching my sway.
The gravy has been going full boil since I had it on and the stock is reduced right to where I want it for the amount of people I’m serving I drain off the potatoes and add butter and start to mash them and add some of the instant potato soup stopping to taste a little to get the texture where I want them.
I do the beans and carrots in a shallow pan of water and they cook while I set the dining room table with the other ladies. Of course we’re talking about what I made and they love the hock added to it and I admit I learn a few new ideas that Betty came up with for that and with the wicker place mats for the dishes soon there’s piping chops and all the fixings out and I have the apple bombs out and cooling off.
Frank has this big smile on his face as we’re all sitting around his table and everyone looks happy too and I take hands and look at everyone.
“Anyone want to say grace?”
Frank does the job and we all hold hands and I love the way this all feels and then we’re tucking into the supper.
I’ve missed this family dinner feeling, I think that they have too.

*And Now…

It’s a fun meal too; well it is for me because well there’s honestly something that I’ve pulled from my old life and all my relatives about women and cooking.

Well women and feeding people that comes from a lot of times that were actually pretty good times home.

And it’s extremely gratifying seeing them all eating and I do enjoy the comments and compliments but it’s validating for me too.

Frank’s all smiles eating the apple bombs. “These are really good it’s like the best part of a baked apple and a pie with a little bit of apple crisp in the middle.”

“It’s a pretty easy recipe so it’s one of my favorites and even good with some vanilla ice cream.”

“Well whoever you end up with they’re going to be a lucky fella.”

I smile. “Thank you but I’m not even holding out on that Frank. I am looking for love but I’m not going to limit myself.”

He sneaks a look at Robyn who shot a look at me and it was kind of a long and wondering look from her.

We finish and the men go outside to smoke and I make coffee for them to take outside with them and I start to do the dishes.

Robyn comes into the kitchen and she starts to help with putting things away and scraping the dishes as I get the sinks ready.

It’s quiet for a few minutes before she looks at me. “So you’re Bi?’

“Pretty much, I like people more than sexes or genders really.”

“But you like men.”

“I do, I definitely do.”

She’s quiet for a few minutes. “Sometimes people like who can be with other people make me nervous.”

I look at her as I’m putting on rubber gloves to wash the dishes. “Why?”

“I’m a lesbian, so I just date women. It’s just there’s this whole thing with what if she meets a guy?”

“Odds are unless she’s a gold star lesbian that’s only ever been with women you’re going to meet someone that’s been with men.”

Robyn nods. “And that’s okay I mean there’s people that didn’t know, there’s women that thought that being gay wasn’t an option and just went through the motions of being straight. It’s just I’m not sure that if I was dating a Bi woman that she might not find a guy and leave or like even just like do things with is she was like open and dating…I couldn’t handle a girl that recently had sex with a guy and me going down on her.”

“You do know that all sorts of people are crappy and cheat and that when a Bi woman showers or bathes and cleans up that you’re not getting sloppy seconds.”

She shivers. “Yeah but it still squicks me out.”

I sigh and start washing dishes. “Well I’m going to be a pretty big disappointment if you were interested then.”

She starts to dry and she looking at me. “You were with a guy recently I take it?”

“Well actually yes and I was in a pretty much full month long relationship with him and while as good as it was there was just not that missing thing.”

“Thing?”

“Pop, feeling, the breathless oh wow.”

“That might be fictional Haley.”

“I still believe in it, Frank had that with Betty.”

Robyn starts putting plates back after drying each one but she asks. “So with me thinking you’re going to be a disappointment it’s from you being with that guy or is it that you don’t think really that it‘ll be a girl that you fall for.”

I sigh and take a breath. “No it’s more or less I don’t think that you’ll be into the fact that I’m a pre-op trans woman.”

She stops drying a bowl that was used for the beans and she’s staring at me…and staring at me and she’s not just staring at me but she’s scrutinizing me.

I keep washing dishes.

I want to do a lot of things but flipping out or crying or getting upset in a hundred different ways won’t change things.

She even goes to say something twice with false starts and she finally says. “I couldn’t tell.”

“I know, I’ve had work done but I’ve been in transition for a long time to the point of that’s pretty much the one and only final step.”

“And you flirted with me knowing that you’re…well…that you’re trans?”

“I like to flirt and I know some inclusive people.”

“I like women, I’m a lesbian.”

“I’m a woman.”

She looks like she was going to do the typical and yet she keeps her mouth shut.

She works her jaw but she keeps her mouth shut.

Works her jaw again…then she sets down the dishtowel and she says with a pretty clenched jaw. “Thank you for telling me.”

“You’re welcome.”

She leaves after that without helping me finish and she is definitely unhappy with me.

I hate it and I sort of get why because there’s a lot of people that are very much against trans people of any kind and for a lot of reasons too.

Brazil was bad at times with that which is why we had the compound where we lived.

But there’s always some of person and with me it does come from a lot of this really hardcore almost purist part of the gay and lesbian communities where the idea of trans and gay trans folks of dating trans folks even if they’re not the ones dating us just pisses people off.

Like I said I hate it, but I’m no stranger to it and that lets me let what just happened between Robyn and myself go.

She’ll either come around after a while or she won’t.

I’m well past the point of getting involved at proving myself to her or anyone else.

She’s not paying my bills or dating me so there’s no reason for me to get invested in what she thinks of me.

I clean everything up and Frank comes in with his coffee cup and he gets a refill.

“So you told Robyn eh?”

“You knew?”

“Nope not a bit she told me.”

“Sorry.”

“Piffle, you’re a nice woman Haley. I’m too old not to haven’t met folks like you and I’m too old not to have learned that it’s your life. You’re a nice person Haley and that’s all that matters despite what Robyn in thinking.”

I go over and kiss his cheek. “Thank you frank that’s something I love to hear.”

He smiles and kisses my cheek back. “Well she’s angry and that’s because she’s disappointed.”

“I gathered that much.”

“She’s looking to Haley, she’s met a few girls but it’s never really worked out and she’s definitely not met anyone that’s as honest and still old fashioned in good ways like you before…she’s smarting because she got her hopes up.”

“I sort of did too but she’s a beautiful girl, she’s worth flirty with even if to just see it cheer her up and smile.”

He nods. “Well we’re going to start setting up for cards so I can either drive you home now or you can get dealt in.”

“Deal me in, what are we playing?”

“Gin rummy.”

“I haven’t played that since I was a kid.”

I pour myself a coffee and join him and the rest at the table and a few lights get turned off and the radio gets turned on and I love that radio with it being one of those old cabinet ones with the built in turntable.

And if any of the others know they don’t say a thing as we start to play and talk.