Can Dreams Come True?… Part 1
I flick my smoke out the window my first since graduating high school three years ago and I drain what’s left of my Pepsi before getting out of my car.
Yes my car it’s one of the things that I made sure of before coming here and doing this. I got my own car. It’s a piece of crap older Saturn but it’s mine. Mine being the Very key word here. I likely could’ve had dad’s old car but with my folks there were always strings. A prime example is my brother and sister. Jordan my sister got the car and its title and the insurance are still in dad’s name.
My brother Jack, dad’s on with him in almost everything from his bank accounts to his lease.
And that’s why my apartment is mine, everything I have including all my student loan debt it‘s all mine. I knew long before I graduated that this was where I’d be going in life, who I had to be because not being me. It was killing me inside so I knew as soon as I was going to be legal I was going to be Josie.
And knowing my dad at the very least if he had the leverage on me like he’s got on them then he’d be doing his outmost to run my life. Maybe even more than ever if he got wind of what I had been planning sort of since I was sixteen.
I love my folks but dad’s one of those guys that still thinks that we’re still under his “Guidance” even when we all live out from under his roof. Don’t get me wrong he can be a good guy but he’s also. “The dad.” And he’s “In charge of the family.”
So why am I terrified?
Because I’m expecting to be kicked out of the family today.
Why?
Today’s the day I tell them I’m going to transition. I’m going to stop being Joseph and that I’m going to start being Josie. And in a family where you don’t have issues me doing this is…well I don’t know? I don’t even know how my family feels about gay people.
Let alone what I’m going to do… Actually I’m already doing or trying to do, trying to transition but it’s a hard thing to do.
I stare at my house or rather my parent’s house and shiver. It’s cold but that’s not why. I’m expecting…I’m not exactly expecting a warm response when they see my dressed in my actual clothes.
They already have kind of written me off as the problem child of the family and I’ll admit I’ve been a mess. But they have no idea about Josie, They have no idea I flunked out of college two years ago when I just couldn’t do Joe anymore. To them I’m Joey, the family fuck up…even with all they don’t know about me I’m touted still as the family example of what not to do.
No they don’t know that either…they only really talk to me over the phone except for the holidays and I dress as a guy then and stop shaving just to get the look and use my guy voice on the phone or when I see them on holidays.
My family’s one of those suck it up families, we don’t talk about…anything families and we don’t apologize families…we just ignore people or events until enough time goes by and then everything’s okay again. No one’s mentally sick or gay or stuff like that. If you’re sick it better be an actual disease…otherwise shut up and keep it to yourself.
I know that it sounds like they might be people that I’d be better off without but I do for the damndest of logic still love them…and part of me still has a little sliver of hope that they might not loose their shit so I still keep contact with them.
And I have these dreams where they get it… and nightmares when they don’t.
They have no idea how hard it’s been…and honestly I don’t think that they’ll get it…or want to.
Not one bit about this is easy since as early as when I hit puberty and everything just went side ways for me it’s been hell.
I knew I think sort of when I was little maybe but that wasn’t that bad, no I hit puberty and my voice started and everything else and it all looked normal on the outside and the more it happened the more something inside of me screamed silently No!
Which led to depression…and not just feeling like shit but the real deal with hormones that my brain should have never been on driving me inexorably out of my tree and fucking with my brain chemistry until something just snapped or burned out or something.
No proof but that’s my opinion…they say trans people have their brains wired to their real gender…well I think when you are like me and you hit puberty there some of us that literally short out.
So Depression…which I’ve lived with and nearly died with more times than I can count honestly and then there…everything else that goes with it…with being transgendered.
Secrecy it’s not something you can tell your friends or family or anyone easily.
That adds to not only am I living a lie but I’m a liar too.
That adds to the depression’s mountain of bull shit.
Being physically male…I’m not one of those story girls that was a slight and slender guy that becomes a pretty girl. I’m five eight and I’m a size ten to a twelve in women’s clothes, I used to work at UPS when I was still in college in the warehouse and I’m solid…too solid for my liking at all even after the amount of hormones I’ve been on which all leads to looking at myself time after time in the mirror and hating what’s there…loving and need ing the changes but just hating the stuff that’s not changed. My one blessing in a really crappy beard growth that is in patches and peach fuzzy. Being a blonde and all its light but it’s still there and I hate it with a passion.
So while it’s getting better its still been there ever since my brain screamed no and that’s being wrong and looking wrong and having it never go away…it drags on you like a weight.
More for the depression mountain of bullshit.
Which affects grades once you hit that depressive downward spiral.
Fuck you hit that and nothing really matters because there is no light, there’s no end of the tunnel and you can’t you just can’t find strength.
Okay you know how when you’re feeling level and you have to get your butt moving to do something and you need a few minutes and stuff to gather the will power to say get off the couch and take out the trash or something.
Well that ability when you’re in spiral it’s broken…your life car lost a gear. So if you can manage to go forward at all you literally have to find a new way to do that.
And inside your head you know that that’s all fucked up and that adds to the pile of shit in your head.
And try to hold a job like that.
So then you get on meds for depression if you’re lucky and can afford them or your insurance will.
But that still leaves your GID and there’s another punch in the head because to get help you pretty much got to start coming out. Then some insurance companies won’t cover hormones and blockers and if they get a hint of your GID being related to your depression they can cut your coverage.
Some companies do that and some will even contact your employers if the coverage is through them and bang you’re outed and then out of a job.
I had that happen once already.
Gotta love laws that let them fire you for pretty much any reason… “At Will”.
And yeah even if your state laws are good about gay and trans and other issues they usually find a way.
And there is lawyers and the ACLU and stuff but just try dealing with all of that stuff with depression.
So then you’re trying to find a job, and when they start asking questions they…the look they give you when you try to explain things to them.
So you do anything that you can, you find shitty jobs and try to live in stealth mode which just hurts more and more and then you hit where you have to choose.
Rent versus food.
Lights versus phone.
Psyche meds versus transitioning meds.
Gas…lol! If I didn’t live so far from them I’d be tempted to have taken the city bus and walked here.
………………………………..Dammit I light another smoke which I should not be doing since I had quit until this but…but right now this is a bad habit that’s keeping me in check because I chose my transition meds and I’m functioning on half of a Silexa.
And my stomach’s in knots
I get out of the car and pace, and pace…smoke and pace. I’m sure I look like a crazy woman.
Well clinically…
Okay that made me snort.
I don’t really giggle and I am one of those girls that will think something that will make me laugh…for no apparent reason.
After a couple of cars pass I screw up what little courage I’ve got and head down the sidewalk to the house.
Breathe Josie breathe.
Everyone’s home but then again its Sunday dinner. I haven’t been to one in a long time. It wasn’t really an option while I’ve been going through transition. I’m still not but I’m just tired of hiding who I am.
I go up and knock on the door and fidget with my keys and my purse and Mom opens the door. “Yes, can I help you?”
C’mon…c’mon voice work…work right too…
“Hi mom.” I do manage to get it out in my real voice.
She blinks and looks at me a few times. “I’m…I think you have the wrong house miss.”
“No mom I don’t.”
She takes another look and her eyes get wide, huge and she drops her oven mitts. “Joey…?”
“Uhm…Josie actually mom…”
“J..Josie…..”
“Yeah, can…can I come in?”
She blinks like I prodded her and she picks up the over mitt and nods. “I think…I think that’d be best…I…I think I need a cup of coffee…”
I head in shakily and Dad’s in the lazy-boy with a beer while Jack’s sitting on the couch almost crouched like a fighter. He very into the game. Jack played football in school and it was like every time he watched it on TV he was the coach and the benched ace that would’ve won every play.
He stopped a moment to check me out and it really felt odd. And gross…not just the brother and sister thing but he’d be the last…no…not even if he was the last human on earth.
I don’t hate Jack, but if he wasn’t family there’d be no way we’d ever cross paths.
I follow mom into the kitchen and Jordan’s there texting on her phone and Kelly is peeling carrots. Kelly is Jack’s girlfriend for like the last five years. Yep…no ring. Just shacked up. More proof of Jack being Jack.
Mom heads for the teapot and she’s shaking as she’s filling it.
“Mom…?” I ask…sort of really scared now.
Jordan drops her phone. “Holy fuck.”
Mom reacts on autopilot. “Jordan!”
Kelly’s staring at me wide eyed but she gets out. “Joe?” at least.
“Josie now.”
“What!” Jordan screams/shrieks.
“I…My…My name it’s Josie.”
“I heard you the first time, just I mean like what the fucking hell Joey.”
“Josie.”
She looks at me like I’m pulling some stupid joke and stares and glares at me really hard and she’s doing that sort of chewing on her inner cheek thing she does when she’s thinking.
Mom…she still staring at me, then at my chest. “Jesus….what will we tell people?”
“That you have a transgendered daughter?” I offer.
My sister barks out laughing. “Oh yeah that’ll go over well lets tell every one that we have a pervert in the family.”
“I’m not a pervert.”
“You’re dressed in women’s clothes.”
“That’s because I am a woman.”
“Oh no you’re fucking not!” She yelled it at me getting kind of red in the face too.
“What in Sam-Hill’s going on in here you’re yelling over the game.” My dad just walked into the kitchen with his empties looking for some more beer.
Jordan points a finger at me. “Joey’s home only he’s calling himself Josie now.”
Dad looks at me and goes to the fridge and gets himself another couple of beers and looks at me again. “What’s all this about?”
“I’m a girl.”
“Not the last time I heard.”
“Well…I am.”
“You weren’t born one.”
“Well I am whether I was born one or not.”
Jordan huffs. “Pervert.”
Dad looks at me and cracks the top of the first beer can. “I don’t want another daughter.”
………………………..
He just sort of turns off the fact I’m right there and he walks past me back out to the TV room and there’s this whole dull pain lump forming in the center of my chest.
I had no reason to hope but some stupid reason I had.
Jordan slaps me hard across the face and yells at me. “Are you satisfied!? Are you satisfied you…” she just ends it with a scream and heads out to the TV room after Dad yelling. “What do you mean you don’t want another daughter! What’s wrong with the first one!?”
Mom leaves the kitchen after her and I can hear them fighting my brother exclaiming “What? Joey’s a what?”
I’m right in the middle of a nice full flown panic attack when Jack storms in and he looks at me and he starts to laugh…and laugh… “Oh my shit you are a little pansy.”
“Jack…” Fuck…fuck it’s hard to breathe.
“Those titties real?”
“Jack…fuck…”
“Lemme see…”
I try and turn but I feel sick and I feel slow and like I said it’s really hard to breathe. It doesn’t take much for him to rip at my clothes and then he cops a feel.
Hell no he doesn’t cop a feel he grabs a handful of breast and he squeezes. It hurts like hell and that’s enough that it trips me off.
Yeah…like a little bomb.
I’ve been hurting enough and I’m screwed up enough that there’s this really deep, deep well of Josie not being a nice person. And added into my depression…well there’s anger.
See…when you’re like me and you’re messed up and going through depression there’s this thin little barrier between my anger and the rest of well people. It hits the worst off my meds because it’s like I have zero tolerance for anything in the world.
No seriously it’s like nearly everything sets me off when I’m like that and it’s this level of anger that takes you through things like what’s the effing point, nothing I do is ever right, nothing good ever happens and the of course me losing it enough that I have to, and I mean have to prove to myself in this twisted way that all the shit in my life is well deserved.
That’s me off the rails and off my meds.
And Jack…grabbing me bruisingly hard just tripped my super angry bitch switch. And my having to ration my meds to where I’ve been underdosing for likely way too long really isn’t helping.
See the way some people say that meds make them feel numb…well to me that’s this sort of extra layer to my thin little wall that lets me shrug off the little shit that would set me off without them.
Like it adds a little layer of don-giv-a-fuck.
But little things not getting grabbed and bruised or assaulted by my own effing brother so…flip goes the switch and then goes the whole pot of coffee that mom had just made in the perk to his face.
Yeah he screamed and he managed to roll under the table when I threw the empty pot and him and I leave…I leave and I run out the back door from the kitchen stumbling over things that are in the backyard that I’m not familiar with and I’m running and sobbing all the way to my car.
It takes me three times to get the engine to turn over and I’m sobbing and crying at it because after the second turn over my brain was screaming about me flooding the thing and being stuck out here now was like the absolute worst thing that could’ve happened.
Strike that I think everything that just happened was the worst thing that ever happened.
I pull out of there as fast as I dare and my eyes are teary and my visions wet and blurry and once I’m out of my old neighborhood I slow down to an emotional driving crawl.
Effing Jack, Effing Jack, Effing Jack…
Dad…just…just looked at me like I was nothing…nothing…why the hell should I be surprised right I mean he wrote me off as the example of what not to do so much…pissed because I wouldn’t let him dictate how I was going to live…
“My roof, my rules…” I growl out mimicking him and the way he’s been all of my life.
I’m not one of those Daddy’s little girl girls and I don’t want what he’s never given me…I mean it’s not like I’d even know what to do with a functional family. But I do wish that I didn’t have to spend my childhood being made pretty much to feel like I was always not doing things right.
He was that dad…y’know the ones who aren’t abusive…he didn’t hit or scream or call me names but there was just this effing feeling always coming off of him that no one around him could do anything “right enough” to please him.
We never got praised…we were lucky to get a “good” or a sort of “Well you didn’t fuck it up.” look and that was about it. You were far more often asked why you didn’t do something this way or that way and grades…”I suppose the higher grades were taken.”
And mom…mom was his enabler…it never mattered what he said…or how he acted or how hurt we were if it came down to a fight with us or him she always chose him over us.
No wonder we’re all screwed up…
I stop and pull into a gas station and sit and breathe and breathe and shake and shiver as the panic attack sets in all over again as the bruises are hurting now more and more because of Jack sexually assaulting me…I’m already flashing back and that just makes me bawl.
Jack’s an asshole; he’s always been an asshole it’s his way of coping and getting attention but why!? Why in the fuck did he have to do that? Say that? Go that effing far!?
I bawl until it gets to a breaking point and I scream and thrash at my steering wheel until I fall over into the passenger seat crying.
I think someone knocked on my window but I was too out of it really and they might have tried the doors too but even when I’m driving I lock the doors…its Grand Rapids…now Detroit but I know people that’ve been robbed for stopping their car and being female. I’ve no desire to be car jacked or something.
Yes, depressed, transgendered and kind of paranoid.
I’m not sure how long I’m lying there but as soon as my freak out wears off I’ve lit a smoke and I’m still laying there across both seats and staring at the floor of the passenger side of my car thinking I really need to clean this.
Then there’s someone tapping at my window.
I blink and look up and there’s a cop there looking in at me his flashlight shining in. I sit up and I wipe at my eyes. There’s that hard crusty crap there and the goop that is with it and there’s make-up on my fingers now I frown knowing I must look like hell.
Yeah…I don’t normally…I barely wear the stuff anyway and I wore it today to sort of reinforce the fact that I’m Josie and well with the crying and stuff I really look like crap.
I get a tissue and wipe my fingers and then power down my window a little.
“Yes officer?” My throat is scratchy and the smoking likely didn’t help.
“We had a couple of calls about you here in the parking lot ma’am people were worried.”
He’s giving me this look like something is bothering him.
“Can I see your driver’s license and proof of registration and insurance?”
I sigh and look for my purse and then dig everything out between my purse and my glove box and pass them to him. I really want to ask why but really you don’t get to do that with cops. You do and they get pissed off that you’re giving them a…
Oh great his stance just shifted…yeah, oh yeah if you’re like me you can see it sometimes people go from relaxed and their normal way of standing to something completely different when they see my original drivers license and they go all aggressive.
I start to look through my purse and he stops and glares at me. “Slowly buddy…”
I look at him and I could so scream right now but that might get me anything from shot or beat to arrested or I want to cry…and I’m thankfully that tired of the bullshit it comes out as a shaky sigh.
“I’m getting my other papers….sir…”
He is looking at me like I’m…like he stepped in something and asks. “What other papers?”
I pass him my copies…yes just copies of my carry papers and the paperwork for my official name change and stuff for the DMV.
He’s looking at them with all the scrutiny that a bigot usually bothers to muster.
“So why does your ID still say Joseph but your insurance says Josie?”
Sigh…can’t you frigging read? I’m biting my tongue and it’s really hard.
“Because I’m still waiting on my new ID’s to come in the mail, the paperwork is all right there.”
“Yeah…” He’s looking them over again. He’s looking at me again…I can almost smell the dislike he has for me on him. “Listen…Josie…you start your car and get wherever you’re going to.” He shoves all my stuff back in through my window and he’s frowning.
“Yes officer.” I’m biting my tongue again and I just put my stuff on the seat and fasten my seatbelt and try and start the car. I’m really hoping it’ll start since he’s still here and he’s headed to his car but he’s still watching me at the same time and for sure if the car doesn’t start he’ll have me towed or something.
There is no shortage of people just waiting for an excuse to be an asshole to people…and triple that if you’re transgendered like me.
Thankfully it starts but it’s sounding pretty bad. I really need to take it to a garage or something before it dies on me. But that’s another bunch of bills that I can’t afford.
I pull out of the garage parking lot and the cop actually follows me to the next four way of lights. He turns off another direction after that but it’s still…it’s still the last thing I really need after the day that I had.
Fuck…
I hope Kelly’s alright I think that she was still there in the kitchen when things exploded between me and Jack. I really do since she’s right now the only one in the house I think I can stand.
I head home which is both good and bad…I live in Baxter and it’s not the greatest of areas to live in sometimes. Actually it’s kind of a shithole but beggar can’t be choosers right?
It’s not that bad, I have a car so I’m okay that way and I live in a duplex so even the immediate neighborhood isn’t as bad as some of it can get. But it’s an older house built like back in the eighties and it does need a lot of work and my landlord…well I’m just one of a long list of people he don’t care about so it’s just kind of put up and shut up with a lot of the stuff and if something breaks fix it yourself with no getting paid back or wait for his guys to eventually make their way over to fix whatever.
My other half of the house neighbor is okay he’s an older black guy close to his sixties and he just kind of keeps to himself and he’s only known me as Josie though he never calls me that it’s always just “Miss.”
Good neighbors are the ones that don’t get in your business.
And after the day that I’ve had.
I get my papers and put some of them away and lock the car and then lock my doors while inside and I go right upstairs and I’m headed into the bathroom dropping my purse on the floor and everything else and I run myself a bath…while I’m doing that I wash my face clean and get undressed.
I’m working pretty much on autopilot right now and pop another one of my meds and actually chew it….
Just…
When the water’s deep enough in the tub I crawl into it and…and I roll onto my side for awhile and just shake…shake and cry and just.
Yeah well anyone who’s been here, just gets it.
I go from one side to the other then to my back where I can just sink and slide under the water. It’s pretty much gone cold by now but I really don’t care…I’m there past pruning and right up until I start to shiver then I get out and get dressed. Panties then one of my old t-shirts and some sweats and old but comfy wool socks on my feet.
I use the bathroom and I head to bed.
Yes it’s really early and I don’t care, I just set the alarm for work tomorrow and I crawl into bed and I ache inside and out and shake just plain out of tears right now and pull my pillows around me and hang onto to them and go through that hell I have when I try to sleep and nothing shuts off, it just keeps playing and getting caught up on all the shitty parts of the day and my life and being alone and just so effing broken.
Everytime really…the meds help when I’m on full doses and stuff but usually it’s me riding out this hell until I’m literally too exhausted to stay awake and then sleep takes over.
I love sleep.
When I can it just sort of takes things away.
Which is why I never have sleeping pills in my place. It’d be far, far too tempting to abuse them or to just take them and drift away on the really bad days.
And that scared the crap out of me.
Depression sometimes…most of the times comes with two main suicide things one is the want it to stop and drift away…then there’s that anger…like I said there this I’m broken and I hate you, I hate everything feeling there where you’re set off by everything you can’t cope at all with it either it’s just…it’s when you take everything the wrong way and suicide and hurting yourself comes in these urges of I’ll show you…or just this selfly aimed psychotic why not.
I have both.
Yay me at least I’m good at something.
………………………………………… I really hate that damned alarm clock. It’s loud and it’s annoying and worst thing is that it’s that signal that I have to wake up and go out there to the real world.
I drag myself out of bed and the change from the warmth and comfort is actually achy. It’s not cold here yet but yeah I’m enough of a girl I like being warm. I make coffee and I start getting ready for work. Water microwave, instant coffee and there’s messages on my machine…it’s full…screw that I don’t need to listen to them this morning. I need to be functional and I can just imagine what’s on there. I actually force myself not to listen to them…I know that they’ll be…but it’s a fight with my OCD depressive addiction. Oh yeah…we look for things that might set us off sometimes, that can’t leave well enough alone…I look at the machine twice then I’m out the door and headed to work.
No, no breakfast…with everything that happened…I’d still likely puke if I ate. And…honestly I couldn’t be bothered…it just seemed like too much effort.
I get the car started on the first go and I drive to where I work at Fed. Ex. No thankfully I’m not in the call center or driving deliveries but I’m on the line where stuff gets sorted and scanned. Not a glamorous job but I’ve got my own little space on the line wedged between a bunch of machines sort of and people pretty much leave me alone. I was lucky my time with UPS gave me enough experience and a decent reference to actually have a job. And they’ve been pretty good at leaving me be.
Alone can be your friend sometimes.
Usually the case for me because of all the stuff I’ve got going on in my life and in my head I’ve known for awhile that most of the time I’m not fit to be in the company of most human beings.
No, it’s true…I’m not quite right and I know it only I’m also not the kind of person to be able to put up with peoples bullshit. I don’t have a good social set of skills…it’s too tiring so much of the time to be the standard of fake civil most people come to expect these days.
Not a big deal here where I’m working now, most of my co-workers back here on the line are either black or hispanic or some other nationality. I’m like on out of like maybe twelve white people back here between two shifts and that’s not racist it’s just the way it is…well it might be racist by the company but regardless they leave me alone.
It’s boring and mindless scan and sort which sounds bad but it lets me just do what I need to do and the rest of my brain can crawl off to its corner and lick it’s wounds.
First break is coffee and smokes…I know it’s a shitty habit but yeah…Lunch I walk down the street to Elmira’s it’s a bakery and I get a couple of rolls with butter since their hot and some more coffee. I eat as I’m walking back tearing off bits of roll. I saw a travel show on some place in South America and they had this fresh bread with butter and just coffee as like one of the thing to do as a native for breakfast. For some reason it stuck with me and seems kind of my thing…like coffee and a croissant only not as high end.
If I encountered something high end I’d likely fall off and break something. (Attempted joke.)
I finish off my shift and I drive home stopping only to get a whole seven dollars and forty cents worth of gas and the guy that pressed the buttons gave me this look like loser for that and I frown back at him.
So what I’m broke, too bad.
And I mean that literally broke unless I sell something.
Not blood…I’m not good with blood and besides with me as I am they’d likely not take it.
And just…and I swear just because I was thinking of blood…there’s an ambulance in front of my house and they’re carting out my neighbor…with a sheet over him.
I swear if it wasn’t for bad luck.
Yeah….
I head into my place feeling well still life-kicked and my messages are still there on the machine and I sigh and press the button might as well get this over with right? I kick off my boots and sit on the stairs and listen.
“Mr. Masters this is Ronald Murray from 1rst American Savings and loans I would like you to contact us in regards to your student loans. You can contact me at….”
Yay…fuck…
“Joseph it’s your mother we need to talk call me back.”
“Joey its Jordan what the fuck, stop fucking around and get your head out of your ass and act normal for fuck sakes.”
“Joey…answer your phone!” Jordan again.
“Joey…Jack got burned pretty bad from that coffee are you fucking psycho!?”
“Josie…? It’s Kelly, just…you better steer clear for awhile Jack’s really pissed off and everything’s really angry and bad right now.”
That one was quiet like she was talking softly…likely without the others knowing.
“Joey…you little asshole…I was just joking…but no you had to freak out and…just…just stay the fuck gone fag…I see you and the fact the we’re BROTHERS won’t keep me from kicking your pansy faggot ass.”
Yeah that was Jack.
Autodialer…hangs up once it knows it’s a machine.
Phone-spam.
Phone-spam.
The rest is garbage.
Mom called me Joseph.
Dad…no word from him.
Jordan’s pissed off.
Jack want’s to pound me.
And I owe money…like that’s something new.
I don’t get paid, I get funds I work for to pretty much triage my life enough to stay alive.
That being said I erase all the messages and I force myself upstairs through the inside hurt that just makes everything ache right now and I strip out of most of my clothes and let the fall where they may and just crawl into bed again and pull the covers up and shut the world out for a few hours.
Not that my dreams are much better sometimes but occasionally…occasionally I’m not me in them.
I’m Josie, I’m the in my head need to be Josie. The one that’s marginally pretty, not in debt to her eyeballs living in a shitty place and…no I get to be a normal girl living a normal life and just.
Then of course I wake up and the dream falls apart and I’m the actual me and there are times when I’m just too tired from feeling this way that it’s too much work to be heartbroken over being this way.
I get out of bed and I hear people next door and take a peek out of my front window to see the super and his truck there and they’re cleaning out stuff from the neighbors place. He see’s me and knocks on my window. I go and open the door.
“Yes Emil?”
“Jus so y’know there’s family coming in to clean the place out from like someplace in Canada so if ya see the car like don’t freak out ‘kay?”
“Yeah ‘kay.”
I close the door. I hear him calling me stuff in Portuguese. He knows what I am…he say’s tranny in close enough to English to know he’s calling me shit. He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him. He’s…he’s shifty and I don’t trust him. I don’t think he’s violent or anything but you never know but he just comes across as that guy who comes in to fix something and lifts stuff when you’re not looking…or will steal your underwear to jerk off into at home.
Well maybe not mine.
Family huh? I didn’t know he had anyone left and a Canadian?
Actually I’ve never actually met a Canadian before for all that we’re not that far away. Oh I’ve seen like tourists and stuff but I’ve never actually gotten to know one. Oh well as long as he leaves me alone I’ll leave him alone.
Alone is good sometimes.
I head to the kitchen and I make some supper. Canned tomato soup and grilled cheese…with just cheese slices on my George Foreman Grill. It’s actually good this way. I like grilled cheese, it’s easy and one of the few things that I can eat fairly regularly and the whole thing fits my budget and food stamps.
I eat a lot of soup, and I kind of don’t mind that since it’s sort of helping me get to where I want to be weight wise. But I’m also a fussy or rather finicky eater too…it’s more a nerves thing really and my own mental issues. I like food…I do but I if I can prefer good food.
I eat so much soup because I just…I can’t really go the boxed mac and cheese thing often or ramen noodles…I try to get healthy choice soups with less junky stuff in them but I still have to go with what I can afford. I’m a borderline vegetarian too because I can’t afford a whole lot of meat for groceries and I just can’t go with processed stuff all the time so I try for chicken because it’s cheap usually, and ground beef…but lean and even then I’m…yeah eggs though I like eggs, eggs I can afford and stuff so often eggs are my friend.
So it’s grilled cheese and tomato soup and laying on my couch watching my laptop on Hulu or sometimes Netflix because I can afford internet or cable and I really…really hate what passes for television sometimes and at least this way I get to at least pick and choose what I want to watch.
Emil makes noise for another hour and I watch another hour more before going to take another bath and head off to bed. I wonder just how much he ended up stealing?
……………………………… The next three days are pretty much shower rinse and repeat. It’s Friday night and I’m pulling in from work and after getting paid and having paid my student loan payments and the adjoining late payment fee’s and my rent portion and my utilities enough down so they’re not going to turn off my lights or my phone I have just enough to get my meds this time and my hormones and a few things from the grocery store and hope that what’s left will keep me in gas and bus rides the next two weeks.
There’s a Pontiac Parisienne parked in my neighbors side of the parking lot with a u-haul trailer on it’s hitch there and it’s a nicely taken care of car really like from the eighties. It’s not tricked out to be like some street racing car but just rebuilt to look like it came off the line not that long ago.
There are Canadian plates on both the car and the trailer and from Nova Scotia? Apparently it’s Canada’s ocean playground.
I think that’s out there on the east coast.
I can hear music playing from next door and I think it’s that blues singer Nina Simone though it does sound like its being played off of vinyl.
There is this smell coming from the place too and they have the front door left open and propped with a milk crate of old shoes.
I should’ve just minded my own business and went inside my place but I did sort of walk into the doorway…well out on the step of the doorway and looked inside.
There’s a guy there and he’s wearing one of the old guy’s shirts just loosely over a white t-shirt and he’s wearing old faded, like really work faded and not the trendoid version of faded jeans on and he’s barefoot.
Blonde with thick shoulder length hair and glasses about six foot and muscled yet still on the edge of skinny and he’s dancing sort of with the music but all by himself.
And I’m not sure about this since I’m still working on me and my gender but he’s cute?
I’m not sure how to handle that thought.
He looks over and he see’s me and he smiles. “Good afternoon.”
“Uh yeah…good afternoon.”
“I’m Ryan and you are?”
“Josie…..uhm…what are you doing here?”
“Moving in.”
“Huh?”
“This is my Great Uncles place and he passed away a few days ago and he left everything to me.”
“Uhm…” I’m not even sure how to ask this. “You’re white.”
He laughs. “That’s the third time I got that today. Yes I’m white, well mostly white my family is actually a whole bunch of mutts really and his half sister was my maternal grandmother and she was half black.”
“Oh…I mean…I’m sorry it’s just I was kind of expecting.”
He nods. “I know like I said I’ve gotten this three times today.”
“So…moving in?”
“Yeah, I mean it’s pre-furnished and it’s away from home.”
“You have a work Visa already?”
“I don’t need one I’m a dual citizen.”
“Oh…that’s handy.”
“Is right now, my dad’s an American and he left pretty much saying he wasn’t ever coming back.”
“Why?” Dammit, this isn’t any of my business.
He gestures me inside……I bite my lip…alone…alone is good…I don’t need this.
And some how my misgivings in my head are betrayed by my feet and I find myself in the kitchen.
Oh my god it smells really good in here right now. I don’t even know what I’m smelling but I’m almost drooling.
He’s got two mason jars out and he’s pouring what looks like iced tea into them and passes me one. Homemade iced tea strong and black with lots of lemon and just enough sugar to balance it out, decent iced tea and not sweet tea, I’m not a fan of sweet tea but this I can drink.
“Thank you…” My face feels hot. And part of my brain want’s to rabbit out of here and to hide in my side of the place.
He takes a drink and stirs something that might be baked beans in a slow cooker on the counter. “Dad’s from Boston and he really had a hard time after the gulf war and it never really sat well with the family and we have relatives in Halifax so he ended up moving there and stayed.”
“So why the tension between him and his family?” Given my own issues I’m morbidly curious.
“He quit, he came back after his tour was done and he quit. They’re a pretty gung-ho bunch from what I’ve seen at a few reunions I’ve gone to and apparently quitting when there (He air quotes) nothing wrong with you just wasn’t done in his family.”
“Oh…that, that I can get…”
He’s looking at me and while I pass…I also sort of…if you look it wouldn’t take too much to see I’m not standard issue female.
He knows too I can see the realization in his eyes. And there he…he blinks and his expression goes back to what it was…?
He nods. “There are unreasonable people everywhere.”
“Unreasonable?”
“Hey in my opinion if it’s not my life and it’s not in my bed it’s not my place to judge.”
“Oh…”
He nodding and tasting stuff from the slow cooker on a spoon. “People usually judge themselves way too much and too hard anyway. I have no right to really add to the shit that someone’s going through.”
“That’s….”
He grins at me and…there’s just this little warm feeling or something from it. “Yeah…”
Okay…he actually oddly reminds me of one of those hippies or like one of those surfer types.
“Do you surf?” Dammit edit mouth edit.
“Nope, there’s sort of sometimes waves home you could but its way too expensive.”
“Oh…” Hippy then…though like thirty some odd years removed.
“I snowboard though.”
I snerk…that that little laugh snort.
“Isn’t that a different kind of surfer…like dude.” Oh…is my mouth going to get me in trouble.
He smiles and dammit it’s a nice smile. I’m not sure just how nice? It’s been so long that I was in this kind of situation and that was pre-transition and it had been a girl. I’ve really not faced this yet.
Yes I have been avoiding it.
“No, well actually I don’t know I’ve really just snowboarded with friends growing up at home with an old snowmobile to pull us back up the hills. I’ve like only been to the local ski hill about seven or eight times.”
“Oh, well I’ve never even been skiing before.”
“I can’t ski, never really got the knack for it.”
He’s moving to the stove and he’s checking things in a pot and I smell greens. I’m not sure what kind but cooking greens has a particular smell.
“You’re making a lot.”
“Oh Charlie here had a bunch of stuff to use up and I hate throwing stuff out that’s perfectly good.”
“Me too actually.”
“Want to stay for supper?”
“Uhm…”
“You have a date?”
“No!” I blush. “I…I mean I don’t really date.”
He nods and there’s an understanding look in his eyes? “Me either, I’m not exactly most girls idea of a date.”
……?
I look him over again and okay he’s not a big guy by any means but he’s…okay he’s actually sort of a pretty boy like actually pretty and I almost missed it with the way he’s dressed but he’s still good looking enough that he’d appeal to someone…and he just said he likes girls in a round about way? Maybe they are all into the big burly beastmen up there in Canada or something?
“Just…just let me get cleaned up? I’ve been handling packages all day.”
He looks at me and my brain catches up with my mouth. “Deliveries dammit!” I blush hard enough he could use my face as another cooking surface. I leave and he’s laughing a bit at the whole thing.
“Josie!?” He shouts as I’m on the porch.
“Yes!?” I call back.
“Do you drink?”
“Not usually!”
“Is Iced tea or lemonade okay?”
“Either’s fine!”
I head inside and actually ran up the stairs and then back down and lock my door then run back upstairs and get undressed and into the shower. I’m shaking by the time I’m soaping up my puff and almost panicking.
I’ve been pretty much alone ever since I started transitioning and dealing with depression hasn’t exactly put me in the mental state to deal with dating either. But, he seems actually nice…like kind of normally nice and he knows…I know he knows just from his expression and I don’t think it’s a big deal to him…and that’s so really rare y’know.
I scrub a bit harder and now suddenly I’m shaving my legs. I’m…I trying to. I really, really suck at this and since I’m broke I don’t have any of the evil burny stuff that’s way easier. I’m biting my lip as I nick myself twice.
Who the hell invented these flat handled razors?
I even wash my hair and then I get out and get dried and use some Chapstick on my nicks it works and I try for some lotion I’m getting down on that too and get into some underwear and blow drying my hair while agonizing over what to wear.
It’s not a date but I’m not showing up in sweats, but I’m scared a dress would be too much? It’s also taking too long with the though of Ryan cooking and things being close to being done and me holding things up adds to my frazzle.
Tights…black tights are good, a skirt one of my comfy denim ones and a halter top and a loose blouse over that.
Look in the mirror and bite my lip, make up…no make up…I do a little modest brush of mascara and a really light blending brush over of some foundation. I’m eating so I’m not doing lipstick.
One more check… okay…I don’t look like a complete mess.
Oh crap am I really doing this?
I slip on my ballet flats and go back downstairs and get my purse and my keys and slip out and lock my place back up. Yes I’m paranoid but I’m also in a bad area of town.
I stare at the fact that Ryan still has his door completely propped open still and the smells are drifting out along with the music and I see a few of the neighbors out on their porches being nosey.
I hate that and I knock on his door.
“C’mon in!” He calls out, doesn’t even ask who it is.
I’m frowning and I call out. “It’s Josie!”
“Okay, good foods just getting ready.”
I step inside and it’s…it’s bugging me that much I move the milk crate of shoes and close he front door and lock it.
Yeah it occurs to me I locked myself in but I feel safer with Ryan already than some of the people that might have a problem with me. I’m not exactly sure how stealth I’ve ended up being really.
And I’m sure Emil has outed me for sure.
I walk into the kitchen and I’m hit by the smells as he’s set the table, old dishes the old guys stuff? Nice old school china and Corningware. There’s baked beans with crumbled chunks of crispy bacon on the top and greens that are juicy looking and at the same time not soggy looking either and they smell like collards and turnip? And he’s setting down a cast iron frying pan down on a wicker placemat with cornbread in it. And there’s a casserole dish with pork chops in them just a couple of them but those kind of thick cut ones.
Wow…
“Wow you can really cook.”
He smiles. “We all can in my family, my folks worked and my grandmother watched us when we were little and showed us all how to make some stuff rather than feed us too much store bought stuff and having us all doing stuff kept us from being underfoot.”
“Sounds really old fashioned to me.”
“Kind of actually pretty rural so about the same thing, everyone have wood heat and farmed a little bit where I grew up it was half the jobs when you were a kid.”
“Well if this is how you turned out then great.”
“Oh no, I went to a couple of bigger cities and fell in love with fast food and all the stuff we never had growing up until I go older and realized that it really was garbage.”
“I’ve kind of always been a town kid, first Ann Arbor, then here.”
He nods and pours some lemonade from this old glass decanter like pitcher you know the one with the little yellow plastic top and the lemons as decorations on the side of it.
“This was all his?”
“Nope, mine I score some really nice stuff my grandmother used to have at a few yard sales.”
“This stuff’s pretty collectable down here I think.”
“It is home too in some places but where I grew up all the little old ladies are dying off and a lot of their kids and grand kids don’t really care about this kind of thing.”
“You do? Why?”
He smiled and shrugged. “I like nice things.”
“You don’t get crap from your family about it being girly?......sorry I didn’t mean that it’s…it’s just around here a guy that’s into that is seen as…”
“Gay? Camp?”
“I..uhm…yeah…” Dammit, dammit this, this is why I shouldn’t be let out around people.
“Those are just labels and I’m not much into those my family has figured out if they don’t respect me for being me then I don’t really have a use for them.”
“So that’s why you’re here?”
“No, like I said before. He named me as his next of kin with dad being persona non grata. I’m moving here because I need a change. This (He gestures around.) is a change.”
“Ryan this is a shitty place to live, it’s a bad neighborhood not a change.” I smile and he starts to pass things I go for the corn bread first and it’s still hot and it’s thick and there’s that warm almost corn-meets-cake-meets-sunshine kind of smell coming off of it once it’s cut and out of the pan.
“No worse than Uniacke Park or Cole Harbor back home just bigger, actually size aside it reminds me of Springhill.”
“Sorry I’ve never heard of those places.”
“The first two are neighborhoods like this in the Halifax-Dartmouth area down home.”
“Sorry still a blank. I don’t know that much aboot Canada.”
He snerks which is cute actually. “You ever seen the Trailer Park Boys?”
“Unfortunately.”
“That’s filmed in Halifax it’s the capitol of Nova Scotia.”
“Oh…so is that accurate?”
“In some of those areas…yeah about eighty percent yeah but that’s just one crowd in those places but yeah I went to school with guys just like them.”
“Really?”
“Really it’s one of the reasons I left home right out of high school.”
“No college?”
“Not until a couple of years later when I found out that I was getting really sick of one shitty job after another. Then I went to community college in Halifax and then again about five years after that when I moved closer to home.”
“Oh what did you take?”
“Culinary the first time.” He’s smiling.
“I knew you were a cook.”
“Yes and just a cook chef’s school’s something else entirely. I just wanted better jobs that unloading delivery trucks. Not that what you do is bad Josie but I’ve been there.”
I nod. “I’m at a scanning and sorting station not on the docks and that’s a hellishly hard job especially loading since you’re on the clock.”
He nods. “I did mostly grocery deliveries but it’s still not fun spending eight hours lugging potatoes and onions and things over and over and over.”
“So then what was your second thing you studied for?” I’m interested because its job courses but he’s still kind of educated y’know.
“Cosmetology.” He says getting himself some greens.
“That’s…”
“I like girls just fine but it’s also a decent job too if you’re smart about it. Guys need cuts and there’s a whole lot of guys that pay really well for the services and there’s no barbering courses home.”
Actually as far as I know there’s really none here like outside of the military it’s not really a thing that’s that common.
“Okay, a lot of money in it?”
“I lived in Fredericton for awhile and worked in a place downtown that was old school enough that you could read the paper and get a pint poured while you wait and I was charging thirty five dollars then for a hot shave and fifteen for a cut, twenty five for a shampoo and a style.”
I goggle at that. “Holy crap!...oh…sorry, were you busy?”
“Right downtown with all the lawyers and the banks and the provincial legislature it was really popular and very often put on expense cards there was really good tips too.”
“That’s…that could work around here.”
“It’s my back up plan, I’ve already got some job interviews lined up, well auditions.”
“Auditions?”
“I’m a club singer right now.”
“Okay…” I honestly don’t mean anything by that it just seems so…flaky…oh crap, crap, crap…that just sounded like some comment that my dad would say. “Sorry…there’s my dad slipping out.”
“Hey that’s okay that was my family’s reaction too the first time I was doing it.”
“The first time?”
“Yeah, remember me saying that if they wouldn’t respect me then I wasn’t going to have anything to do with them?”
I nod having taken a mouthful of the best baked beans I’ve ever had and I’m stuck rolling my eyes in my first foodgasm in a long time.
“Well I moved to Halifax and became a singer and it didn’t go over so well.”
“I know that feeling; my family is just so thrilled with my transition.”
“Sorry, they should be happy that you’re brave enough to be yourself.”
That’s really nice to say and I’m glad he doesn’t have a problem with it but it also says that yes he knew. I find myself letting out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
I smile a little just because of the food and the kindness. “Thanks Ryan it means a lot just knowing that someone doesn’t have a problem with me trying to be who I am.”
He nods and unlike me he stops eating to talk. Another blush for me, he even uses the napkin. “I learned a long time ago not to judge someone else, it took me awhile but I did.”
“Oh?” Okay that sounds interesting?
“I went to school with a few people that were gay and lesbian and even a transgendered girl and I was the typical little insecure teenaged prick and I met some of them years later and after a lot of life teaching me how to bake my own humble pie over and over I found they were some of the nicest people I had ever treated like shit. Except for the trans-girl.”
“Why what did she end up like?”
“She didn’t. She never made it past seventeen. She had been harassed that bad that she ran away from town to go out west and transition and she got into the wrong crowd and stuff. She tried to come home after that and she had changed a lot to being herself but the bullying didn’t stop. She ended up taking and overdose.”
“Oh…oh shit Ryan…uhm…were you one of the bullies…?” I’m asking too deep of stuff, I just wish my mouth would actually come with a working brain-mouth filter.
“No not the second time when she came home but I didn’t do anything to help her or to stop them.”
“Peer pressure is scary Ryan; it’s entirely why I never had the guts to transition before I got out of the house and away from my high school.”
“It’s still not an excuse, not really. It was a lesson I learned but it cost way too much Josie.”
I nod. “Ryan some people never even bother to try and learn the lessons in life. Trust me it sucks but it’s not a total waste if you turned out like this.”
He actually blushes…oh my god…I’ve never made anyone blush before.
“Thanks Josie.”
Y’know it feels really good to have someone call me by my real name. I smile a little again.
I try and shift the subject a bit to something less heavy for two people really just meeting even though the level of un-bullshit is refreshing.
“Okay, so what did you do to these beans I’ve never hand then like this before?”
He smiles that nice smile of his again which I’m kind of getting used to and maybe…liking a bit more that I’m getting to see it so much. Even having someone smile around me and me being included in what’s going on is really nice.
“It’s a pretty basic recipe really soak the beans and everything and slow cook them. I do fry the bacon and use the bacon fat to brown off the onions I put into them first instead of just tossing in the onion raw. Some brown sugar and some molasses a little bit of mustard my grandmother used the dry stuff but I like just the whole grain stuff from the store.”
He takes a drink of lemonade. “The other thing that I do is I add a pound of pitted dates to it.”
“Dates? I never heard of that.”
“I got that off of this old fellow at the barber shop apparently it’s an old Acadian trick. You can cut some of the sugar in the recipe and there is just this texture that melds with the beans and that flavor too.”
I’m eating more and you can sort of taste them there once you know they are there but it’s so good and there’s this caramel sort of buttery note that you get in there somewhere add the crispy bacon on the top and it’s got all the fat and salt that they need.
“Okay that really neat and I have to say it’s really nice to eat a home cooked meal for a change.”
“Tired of your own cooking?”
“Sort of…yeah.” Not that I usually have a whole lot to cook or that the fact I’m usually depressed enough that it’s semi-nausea from just feeling bad to not having enough meds or hormones or just barely feeling like eating…sometimes just getting motivated enough to eat on bad days is draining.
“I get that way unless I have someone to cook for, or eat with. If it’s just me it’s almost what’s the point sometimes.”
I nod and have another forkful of the greens. “These are good too; you cook like you’ve been into the south.”
“I watch cooking shows but also like where my Great Uncles side of the family and stuff comes from is the south and they lived part time up home way back when.”
“Really?”
“Yeah the coal mines back home way back used to be owned by a lot of companies from down south like when segregation was going on and they used to send them up on the train to places like Springhill and Minto and Cape Breton to work the mines since it was dangerous and they hadn’t had all the machines and stuff they have now. A lot of the black families in those places are from those guys settling down.”
“Okay…cool you know a lot of history about back home.”
“My family it’s actually a pretty big thing, my grandmother had pictures on her walls from back then and she remembered all of that and of course when all the relatives used to come and visit they’d tell stories. It all kind of stuck.”
“Well take it from me that fact that you still know all of that stuff’s kind of nice and the fact that you cook like this is agreeing with me for sure.”
“I can’t take all the credit especially for the greens I couldn’t have cooked them if he didn’t have them in his deep freezer.”
“Still very good.”
“I grew up eating them and hating them and now they’re something I love.”
I eat some cornbread which is again really good and while I’m nowhere near the cook that Ryan is I can tell that this is made right. To me made right is cornbread without sugar added to the recipe. Like everything else though he’s got his own twist on it.
“I’d have no idea really how to cook like this.”
“I could teach you.”
“No…that’s just…” I’m blushing a bit. “We just met…okay it’s just hard sometimes…”
Dammit my mouth I mean really….my blushing cranks up again and Ryan just nods and gives me this kind and gentle look.
“Hey Josie…its okay I was just kind of being selfish anyways.”
“Being selfish?”
“Yeah, I’m new here and I don’t really know that many people yet and I hate eating alone and stuff so I figured we could maybe cook…eat together and stuff.”
Okay he might be sort of bullshitting with this to spare me my feelings and make me feel better but it’s someone actually giving a shit about my feelings and trying to make me feel better.
I didn’t know how good something like that felt before.
And I think that there’s some truth to it also, I mean there’s just something in his eyes that I’m not used to seeing and I can’t even really tell you what it is besides nice…? I mean I know that there’s more to it than that, and I know there’s more to him moving here than just that but even with all of those things he’s still.
Ryan’s just nice.
And dammit this is likely the very best date, not a date talk with someone as the real me that I have ever had and I don’t want to wreck it.
“Can I think about it?” Wow my voice suddenly sounds kind of small.
“Sure…” His voice is soft and gentle and soothing…he’s really different than a lot of other people.
Okay to be fair I’m a frigging hermit-girl but still.
He gets up and head to the stove. “Coffee?”
“Yes please.” I get up and I’m getting the dishes as a girl and like a girl with a guy just…that whole stereotype but not stereotype…that very girl scene is actually playing out and it’s actually kind of nice in this oh-whoa way as I realize it.
He makes coffee in this old screw together stove top perk pot and he goes to the hall and he changes the record to another one and this music starts to play and I’m now expert on the blues but it’s Billie Holiday.
And we’re there doing the dishes together as the coffee perks and the smell starts to fill the plans and I’m in this pretty old school kitchen with a guy and it’s all so kind of like some crazy dream.
*End of part 1 and fade out to… “One for my baby…and one for the road.”
Can Dreams Come True?...Part 2
I helped Ryan do the dishes and we had coffee together and just sort of relaxed a little. It was starting to sort of get to that whole awkward stage where you sort of have no idea what to say or what to do next and it was making me fidgety.
“Thanks for staying and eating with me Josie.”
“Oh…aren’t I the one that should be thanking you?”
“Then we’re even then?”
“Hardly but this was really nice and unexpected Ryan.”
“Good, really nice I’ll take.”
“I should go…I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Ryan we just met…I mean it…okay.” I do, I really do I am not easy to get along with.
He looks at me and there’s that gentle look again, not a smile but just…that kind of look from one of those people that’s kind of like having your body pillow. “Okay Josie.”
He takes my empty coffee cup and I fight my urge to wash it and not leave him with dirty dishes even if it’s a coffee cup and he walks me out from his door the whole six feet or so across our porch to my door.
“Josie?’
“Uhm…yes?”
“I had a really good time. Thanks for keeping me company this evening.”
“Okay…” Of course this, this is when my mouth doesn’t want to work. I unlock my door and slip inside. “Uhm…night Ryan.”
“G’nite Josie.”
I go inside and close my doors and I lock them and I lean against my door and I just try to breathe and I feel all shaky and just…I actually don’t know.
Just breathe Josie, just breathe.
And of course the light’s flashing on the damned answering machine again.
I know what’s there and after all the good that happened tonight and just the sinking feeling from looking at that damned light makes me want to cry.
I resist the urge to run upstairs and be sick and it takes some more breathing and a few shaky moments but I get over to the machine and I erase all of the messages.
No, not tonight, not even looking at them.
Instead I go up to bed and fall into it and curl up and have my little war inside of myself over why did I ever think that I could have a few minutes to breathe, just a little bit of happy.
And just how nice Ryan was and tonight was for me.
And that maybe just maybe that I am real, that someone see’s the real me as somebody.
And back and forth and back and forth and crying in my sleep because…because I’m a goddamned mess.
Is it really that hard for me to accept that someone might actually just like me for being me?
So yeah not much sleep and waking up at the sound of I think Ryan’s car pulling out in the morning. It’s an eight cylinder so it’s louder than I’m used to hearing. It’s early and I get up and stumble to my bathroom and I look ghastly…yeah that little bit of make up has me looking like Mimi from The Drew Carrie Show.
“Oh Ick.” My face feels almost…no it feels gross.
I get the faucet going with hot water and I grab a clean face cloth and let it get wet and really hot and then I get out my jar of cold cream to start de-gunking myself.
I know I’ll be so lucky as to have a pimple or something from this combined with my hormones and everything. It’s good me getting to be me really but there are parts of the whole second time round puberty bit that I could do without.
Maybe…maybe I could ask Ryan for some help? I mean I know he did mostly like barbering stuff but he went to school for this stuff so he’s bound to know more about it than me.
“Oh…mmmm…”
I love the feeling of a fresh hot washcloth on my face. I just sit there and lean on my counter and hold it to my face and just let the hot washcloth do its thing as I breathe through it.
Twice, then I take my meds and my hormones and then use the toilet and shower again and I’m just about to get ready for work when I realize I’m off today.
I look in the mirror. “Just…shoot me…just…” I brush my teeth and my mood’s kind of dragged down some more. I’m off…that should be a good thing unless you’re me and you can’t turn your brain off.
It’s going to be one of those take an extra Silexa kind of days.
And I do.
Actually on my doctors orders. There are some days when the balance of things is that just wrong or off you sometimes need some help and while I have them here I’ve been on them long enough to take one when I need one.
I sometimes really hate being off because I can’t turn my brain off and there’s also the whole thing of sometimes I just don’t feel like doing anything. It’s sort of felt like one of those days so I took an extra pill.
I walk and pace around the house for forty minutes before I get dressed and head to my kitchen and I make myself a pot of tea. Coffee’s okay but I drink enough of that at work or during my work week that I’m semi sick of it and I end up taking the pot. It’s one of those ceramic ones that you pour the hot water into to make tea instead of the tea pot on the stove. I have both but I want to take my tea with me into the living room and I look at my video games and decide on what I want to play I end up putting in Phantom Hourglass and trying to beat it finally.
Yes I play and like videogames. I have several different kinds of systems and I enjoy them a lot because they let me go someplace else. I wasn’t actually allowed much in the way of these things back home since dad pretty much considered them a wasted of time.
It sucked but most of my games are still sort of new to me and like most of my books I get them at flea markets and swap meets and stuff. Game re-sale stores are assholes and will buy a used game from people for sweet FA and they’ll re-sell it at a way too high price calling it a classic game.
Pot of tea, game set, drapes closed and I start playing from my last save point and it really helps me shut my brain down to play and enjoy, puzzle things out and work my controller.
Sometimes though I kind of wish that Link was a girl character.
I’m not sure why but that’s where I go with most fictional characters. I mean I’m a girl…so most of the stuff I read is with the main character being a girl. So I’ve kind of had this thing that if there’s a really cool character that’s in a book or a game or something else I sort of do this morph on them in my head.
Though when they do make a version sometimes like in comics…not that I’m a huge fan or a collector but they’re sort of an escape too…oh yeah when the do make a female version it usually ends up sucking kind of hard.
And yes these are some of the things that I think about. It’s kind of insulting sometimes when people just sort of expect you to grow up. I mean yeah I’m almost thirty and stuff but I don’t have a relationship, I don’t really have friends, some of the ones I did have left when I started to transition in college and others parted company when my depression came to be an issue with either them sick of me or me just not being able to be around them.
I’m struggling to be myself and struggling to fight off my depression and usually failing and there were some of my friends all hooked up and together being successful because they have each others back and I’m doing it alone…always alone and then they’re all lovey dovey.
And it hurt me.
It’s not their fault and their lives aren’t perfect but it’s hard…it’s really hard to be alone and happy and adjusted and…just all that bullshit when you just can’t.
And they’re there trying to include you but they’re together and happy and it hurts.
It’s shitty and petty and jealous of me…but it hurts and that’s why I stopped hanging around them…and after a few years….they stopped asking.
I save my game when I run out of tea and then it’s time for a potty break and then the decision of having a smoke or not. I had quit but then the whole thing with my family had sent my nerves through the roof and I broke down and bought a pack.
I have a few left in the pack and I’m at that cross roads of quitting again or buying a new pack.
I take the smokes out and feed them to the garbage disposal. “I quit, I really don’t need another thing in my life that I can’t afford.”
I’m right full of nerved up facing that down anxiety and yeah just things like that can set stuff off in someone who’s as messed up as me so I start to clean my place up. That’s a good thing because sometimes when I get hit it takes every scrap of my strength to just function from day to day actually getting stuff done in a major deal for me then so when I hit these times when I need to do something or I’ll start thinking too much…it’s a good thing.
I like lemon so I actually use a sponge mop on the walls and hard to reach spots that’s mostly sunlight soap and hot water and some lemon scented Mr. Clean and do the walls and the ceiling…I’m a bit ODC and I get into one of these serious cleaning fits I have to literally start from top to bottom. I open the windows too and air the place out and get the trash and stuff I don’t need…and de-clutter while I’m at it and save the floors for last since they have the most traffic on them and I go back to my couch with a book I’ve been trying to finish and another pot of tea and bask in the relative glow of actually feeling accomplished for as long as it lasts.
I hear the sound of Ryan’s big engine pulling in and I resist getting up and going over. He was being nice and his life isn’t my business.
But dammit…
I hear him going back and forth from the car to the house and it’s several trips and as much as I hate being nosey there’s that…I really am a girl and we’re curious people right? Aren’t we supposed to be?
I get up and I go to close my windows and I see he’s boxes of things and some bags from the grocery and hardware stores and some other things too?
I can’t help myself and I close the window and I open the front door and step outside. “Need a hand?”
“Sure.” He’s heading to the car and he’s taking some wood like lumber from the trunk. It looks like it was sticking out aways from the size of it and there are a couple of 4X4 inch posts that he’s carrying around back.
I think I was still giving him the confused look when he comes back around. He laughs and holds a bag from the hardware store up. “I know I should’ve asked since we share yard space but it’ll save money.”
I look inside and it’s the wire and fittings for a clothesline I think. “Clothesline?”
He nods. “I’ll brace together those two posts and sink it in there and we’ll have it to use instead of the dryer.”
“I’ve never lived in a place with a clothesline before.”
“Really?”
“Yeah really, I’m a city kid and even out in the suburbs they’re really pretty rare.”
“Well I thought it’d be a good idea I love sheets fresh from outside.”
“Ryan its Grand Rapids it’s not that fresh.”
“If we fix up the yard some then it’ll be better.”
“What about Emil?”
“The Super? I talked to the landlord and he said as long as he didn’t have to pay he didn’t care. Emil’s not coming around anymore for the yard work.”
“Really? Who’s going to do that now?” Yes I already know the answer I just wanted to know what he was going to say.
Ryan actually looks around. “He wasn’t actually doing the work to begin with so at least this way he’s just not here being creepy.”
“If only I didn’t need him to fix stuff sometimes either…and yeah he is kind of a little creep isn’t he?”
Ryan’s getting some of the other things and nodding. “I got the same vibe from him too and he was only too eager to blab to me about you.”
I bite my lip and look down and little hurt and angry, I knew he’d outed me. I look at Ryan. He’s set the stuff on the steps and he’s closing up his car and has one of those non motor push mowers another thing that I’ve never seen before. Well I’ve seen them but never really up close or in a place I was living at.
“Those actually work?”
“Oh yeah they work really great as long as you keep them sharp and oiled fairly regular like and they’re really great.”
I start giving him and hand and I look over at him. “You have a washing machine don’t you?”
“Charlie had both and they’re kind of dated but they’re not used tons either. And you’re more than welcome to use it.”
“I don’t want to…how’d you know I didn’t?”
“You asked me instead of offering.”
“How do you know that’d I’d offer?”
He looks at me and gives me this smile and that sort of look like before. “You’d have offered Josie, you’re the kind of girl that would.”
I blush and bit my lip and it’s really nice that he thinks that but I’m not even sure that I would offer if I had one to offer to use.
“I…I’m not even sure that…you know Ryan I might not be a nice person…you barely know me.”
“Mmmm…like an asshole would be helping me with all of this?”
Okay well…he might just have me there.
And…and I actually laughed a little.
“Eat supper with me again?”
“You don’t have to feed me.’
“No I don’t but I hate eating alone plus there’s leftovers to use up.”
“Okay, okay so how’d the interview go?”
“Audition and it went really well actually…well it’s gotten me a spot in their weekend shows and I can try to work my way into more from there so it’s a start.”
“Cool, where at?”
“Rumors.”
“Never heard of it but that’s not going to pay the bills right?”
“Nope, but I’m going to set up shop here too.”
“Shop like the barber thing?”
“Yep, but for now I’ve got a chair I’m using at a place here in town just down the way call Murray’s.”
“That’s a black barber shop.” I’m looking at him. “How’d you get a job there?”
“Charlie went there and I stopped in and talked and me being white’s not a big deal.”
“Uhm…it’s not…kinda news to me.”
I really don’t mean to come across as a racist but this is a very heavy black part of the city and there are a lot of people that are black that kind of see white people in a less that tolerable light sometimes and while it might not be violent it’s not that friendly sometimes. Not that speaking as a white person that we haven’t earned it.
Ryan looks at me funny. “I’m not really getting that vibe there actually I spent the last three hours there cutting and shaving.”
“They let you near their neck with a blade?” I’m a little shocked.
“Josie…seriously…you be mannerly to people and they’ll treat you entirely differently.”
“I am mannerly.”
He’s giving me this look.
I’m getting embarrassed. “Sorry…”
“You went to school here right?”
“Not here but in the city yeah.”
“So you know any of the black kids you went to school with?”
“Uhm….” God I’m really trying to think… “No…”
“You live around any black families?”
“No, not really….” I’m getting a little horrified at myself. “Oh crap I am being racist aren’t I?”
“A little I don’t think you are but it’s more like you’ve got stereotype programming, like most folks who learn about you and transitioning some of them might not have anything actually against you it’s just not part of their life to change pro-nouns. You’ve sort of got the same thing.”
I nod. “Okay so most of the stuff that I think about black people’s wrong?’
“Yes and no, there’s always going to be people that are going to strive to show off the worst of any stereotype. Sometimes it’s actually to see how others will react to it.”
“Huh?”
“You pass a bunch of rough looking characters and you act scared because of how they look they might act like asshats just because you actually pre-judged them. Or they’ll do those things to like I said to see how you’ll react.”
“Oh…so you?”
“Oh heck Josie I just try and treat people no matter what with the benefit of the doubt first and then I’ll adjust that once they show me if that needs to change or not.”
“I’m going to so have to work on that.”
“Good, I had to learn that myself too remember. And working on it is a long way to making things better way too many people are very secure in their Pete Seger’s”
“Pete Seger’s?”
“Little boxes?”
“Uhm I’m not following.”
I set down the last of the stuff he bought and it’s mostly hardware stuff though a lot of the tools are from the cheap dollar outlet store like the screwdrivers and stuff I’d buy them there too if I ever thought about them. Honestly I did take shop in high school but I hated it and they didn’t teach us a whole lot either. I don’t know the difference between screwdriver set’s other than the brands names. Or why there’s a big difference between a five dollar hammer and a forty dollar hammer other than the brands. I’m not in the trades for that so really…Actually I have a small hammer for pictures and a multi-bit screw driver and that’s it.
Ryan’s taken out an acoustic guitar from a case he had in the hall closet and takes the guitar out. And he starts to play this song called little boxes.
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same…
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And there's doctors and lawyers
And business executives…
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family…
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
I’m smiling because one I’ve never heard this song before and at the same time this really, really says stuff to me about how I kind of feel sometimes about life. He has this really good voice too and it’s light and soft and almost that kind of voice that you hear on some Brit guy singers.
I’m sort of smiling again looking at him and he set’s the guitar aside. “It’s pretty old and kind of a hippy song form way back but it’s been played a lot more since Weeds came out.”
“I don’t know what that is either.”
“It’s a TV show.”
“Oh…don’t really watch a lot of TV.”
“I don’t either but I kind of do too when I can afford stuff mostly now though I look at TV online and then go to that site for the network and watch things there or just get a feel for what’s on.”
“Oh…nope to that too. I just…usually I’m too busy or tired for that.”
He looks at me and nods. “So you’re not totally against TV then?”
“No…just like I said, busy or tired.” Actually it’s usually tired and I can’t stand to watch a lot of stuff and the stuff I do feel like watching well…like I said it takes a lot of energy sometimes just to get through my day on the outside world.
“So…”
“So…?”
“So it’s Saturday night…well evening.”
“I don’t really like Saturday night live anymore.”
“No…it has started to suck but I was thinking that you might want to watch The Doctor with me.”
I’m blinking a few times. “You watch The Doctor?”
“Bow ties are cool.” And oh my god if he didn’t do an impression to go with it and I…I can’t help it. I’ve suddenly got my hands over my mouth and I’m giggling.
And it’s such a shock that I’m crying right after it and shaking. Yeah someone treating me like this is sort of freaky.
Ryan comes over and slips his arm around my shoulder and he leads me into the kitchen. “C’mon Pond let’s get you fixed up and supper started.”
(Sniffle.) “No fish fingers and custard okay…and can I be Rose?” (Sniffle.)
“You can be Rose or Amelia or even Clara if you want.” He’s still doing the accent and it’s not bad actually.
(Sniffle.) “Who’s Clara?”
“Well we’d better start watching to get caught up then.”
(Sniffle.) “…. Okay.”
Ryan makes us leftovers from the food from last night. It’s corn bread little finger sandwiches with some of the beans and some hot fresh fried bacon on them too and a little squirt of BBQ sauce and he gets two bowls with baby carrots and another with chunks of celery and we carry it all into his living room which shares the wall with mine and he sets up his TV and his DVR and we end up sitting on his floor our back against the couch and the coffee table pulled close like two really lazy people and he starts up the shows.
I’ve never done this before in my life.
Ryan…he just shows up and he’s my friend? And yet he’s like a whirlwind…I almost think I should keep looking for a blue box.
Can Dreams Come True?... Part 3
It was really an unexpected night for me. Ryan is friendly and kind and he likes Dr. Who. I’m not saying that’s a huge thing for me but really I don’t go to Con’s or stuff like that so people that kind of know about stuff like that are extremely rare to me outside of the internet.
Just leftovers and some more than healthy snacks and a friend that has no problem geeking out over things was really nice.
More than nice actually since it felt for the first time in awhile I was in a place where I could actually breathe. And it’s sort of strange too that I’m spending time with a guy that knows the deal with me and he’s good with it and he’s not some perv or tranny chaser.
You would not believe the things that some people are into when they’re “Good” with you being transgendered.
It’s been so sort of off putting sometimes that it’s been just another reason of why I’m a semi-hermit.
But as relaxed and as fun as things are it has me thinking….stupid brain it just never really stops thinking. Right past the end of the shows and Ryan makes us a night cap and I was thinking booze when he mentioned it but it pleasantly turned out to be Ovaltine…And he bought it apparently it wasn’t in the old guys groceries either.
Anyway he walked me to my doors as we were drinking our drinks and I had the whole issue of my sexuality dancing in my head after watching him take the dishes away during a commercial and Ryan had a nice butt?
I think.
?
Yeah…? Indeed.
I’ve been trying to fight my depression and trying to be me and transition that my sexuality has been way back on the back burner for me and then I noticed him sort of that way and all it had to do was get my way too messed up brain to ask one thing.
What if?
So once inside I shut my door and went to take a shower with that playing through my head. What if? And where I’m transitioning to become the woman that I’ve always felt that I was trapped here under all the bullshit and under all this…fake layers of Joseph…where do I sit?
Am I straight and like men?
That’s a really, really scary thought because I was kind of raised in a house where gay was not really okay. Oh they said that gay was okay but there’s a difference between gay being okay for someone else or your own family.
And being a woman it’s not gay to like guys.
But when you’re wresting with transition?
And raised in a sort of anti-gay house and in an anti gay school and neighborhood?
I’m almost scared to be able to feel that it’s alright to like guys…uhm…men.
But my brain just keeps spinning its wheels in the muck-sludge I have for grey matter as I try to look at before. I mean if I liked guys then shouldn’t I have felt something for some of the guys that I went to school with?
Or a girl I mean to me that’s alright too.
I was in there a bit extra long and I likely killed the hot water tank for both if our places really well but I honestly I can’t think of either that I ever even sort of had a crush on.
The closest I really get are bits?
Yeah bits.
That girls grace and the way she swayed or the way she dressed beyond wanting to look and be like them so bad it hurt. Or this guys eyes or that one had a nice smile but really I wasn’t into either.
Most of the guys I didn’t like because I knew what I was or what I thought I was and coming out in high school would have had me beat. Actually since I avoided the bulk or people and stuff most of them that I sort of did know were those popular kid assholes that I really didn’t want to give the time of day to.
And the same with the girls.
Like the guys the shy and likely decent girls were just as sort of not the ones that I really knew either. Wallflower types like me didn’t tend to congregate in groups and like the guys that everyone in school knew the girls were not nice people really.
I sort of detested them when I wasn’t jealous of them.
I was the rangy and mangy looking Emo kid that went through school in the paramilitary clothes a lot the one that read books in the library but still wasn’t part of anyone’s crowd because either they thought that I was crazy or weird.
Most went with crazy, because of the few fights I had been in back in high school. I was sort of the butt of getting picked on and jokes then, not all the time since I don’t know I gave off something that made people avoid me or something but going into high school meant going to another school and there were a few assholes that pushed me.
And with a full on dose of that fuck it I don’t care about anything depression starting and all the pent up stuff from being transgendered the total of three fights I had been in had cemented me as crazy.
All of that just…
Well it didn’t lend well to me personal development or in finding some kind of self identity.
It’s why my sexuality is a blank still sort of.
College being the pressure cooker it was had just been enough to drive me to my first breakdown and eventually getting diagnosed both for my depression and my transgendered issues.
Ah well by now it’s no secret that I’m screwed up.
I try a bath…a nice one for a change with those little scented candles and some bubbles and stuff and some of my meditation CD’s you know the rainfall sounds and stuff with decent instrumental stuff in the back ground you can get them really cheap at like dollar stores all over the place.
I sink into the tub and it sort of does the drifty semi float reminding me a little more of it being there. And that’s just…wrong. And well sort of wrong for me isn’t wrong for other people but to me it’s not painful wrong and hurt my soul wrong it’s like something wrong on this deep level that is almost like an OCD level of wrong.
Oh yes that can be bad too…add that constant wrong with a depressive bout and that’s when you get people cutting parts off and other insane stuff. I’d been there too more than likely if it wasn’t for the knowledge that I need it to repair myself to where my sex matches my gender.
That and I’m a big friggin chicken and I’m not a fan of stuff like that. I can get why people do it but I just couldn’t do that to myself. It’s why I can’t jump to end it or step out in front of something or cut myself.
The bath is nice especially when it’s a treating myself bath which is something I usually never get to do and I can feel stuff slowly unwinding in my body and despite my outtie doing the float I am cheered by the small sort of floaty just yeah, just right feeling that I’m getting from my girls.
They’re not big and they might never been after this long but they are a decent mid range B-cup a little perky even but that’s because I have tg-boobs where they’re much younger and way less worn out that the rest of me.
But there’s enough there that I’m enjoying the semi-buoyant sensations. And that makes up for things and it also sort of gives me the idea to close my eyes and just let things go and I reach down and lightly cup myself.
Hot water and suds and that slick and smooth slippery feeling that lends so well to breast play. I won’t get into the details but I’m still pretty sensitive and the feelings are just so amazing as I work myself slowly to the point of yummy pleasure and then into fantasy land.
I don’t go here that often to be really familiar with it but enough that I can find my way. I let my imagination play with my inner wants and my thoughts drift to the few porn movies that I watched before and the fact that I so wanted to be the woman in them when I did see them…so into guys right?
The thoughts are so very strong and they’re tempting…there is the idea on being wanted so badly like that way that men want women, desire them deeply. I could so get used to feeling like that. Being wanted sexually like that is really a very strong fantasy too.
But there’s also the lesbian thing too and my breast play takes me there too because there’s that slow detailed love making the way she’d know my body and how to make me purr and maybe she’d be more forgiving with me and transitioning…maybe she’d be bi and she’d like it?
I’m going back and forth with both encounters running through my head until I’m lost and swirling in the ideas of both and the sensations that I’m getting from my breasts just tips me over that edge and leaves me shocked and panting in a good way…and very glad I kept a separate face cloth handy for when…y’know.
I really don’t want that stuff in my bath water.
And it’s sort of time for me to get out of the tub anyways and head off to try and go to bed.
Getting dried off is a pain as always there’s really no way that you can’t deal with “The Dangler.” Sometimes it’s really bad having it there and other times it’s just…yick…and other times it’s just a shut it out of my head and just deal with it kind of thing.
Tonight after what just happened it’s just sort of there and sorta yick. I didn’t really use my hands in getting there which honestly bothers me a whole lot less than if I had used my hands to do it. I just, with my hands it just feels wrong….like that OCD thing in my brain my hands and fingers should be doing something else.
Actually getting there by fantasy and my girls is definitely is a good thing in my books and it’s more than enough for me to go to bed on a good note. And despite the dangler I fall asleep feeling nicely feminine because of that.
I guess I don’t really know my sexuality for certain though and I might actually be bisexual? At this point in my life though I am honestly thinking that I wouldn’t care so much about the sex or even the gender of an S.O.
It would just be honestly nice to have someone there that had my back and cared about me enough to be able to weather me and my issues.
It’s a sort of a nice thought to go to bed dreaming of.
…………………………..I wake up fairly late in the morning for me and I think I dreamed but I can’t remember the details but that’s a whole lot better than the times where I have the bad dreams and stuff.
The first thing that hits me besides the bathroom needs is the smell of fresh cut grass and I can sort of hear music playing outside?
I get up and rub at my eyes and my face and walk to my bedroom window to see Ryan outside with a rake having already mowed. He’s in a zip front hoody that says NBCC?...and army greens for pants and sandal and he’s listening to what I think is Bruce Springsteen.
I look over to my clock.
Sunday and it’s eight twenty something. “It’s way too early to be that productive.”
I head to the bathroom and I do the “need to’s” then get dressed in my Sunday clothes a pair of my comfy track pants and a tank top and I head downstairs to make myself a coffee and sort of walk to my back door where he’s at in the yard and he’s got it all spiffy and cleaned up and he’s even leaning over with a set of shears and he’s clipping away at all the stuff you can get with a mower even one of those oldie push ones.
Yep he has a nice butt.
And the back yard looks awesome, I mean it’s nothing fancy but the little prick of a super he just mowed, and not too often so there’s lots of tall weeds and up against the fence and Ryan has all of those nicely cleaned up and away now and it looks good.
I open the door and take my coffee and sit on the back steps and sip and watch him until he straightens up and sees me and he smiles.
That’s kinda nice.
“Good morning.” He says smiling and way too cheerful.
“Mmm…it’s morning.”
“Oh…first cup of coffee?”
“Yeah, sorry I’m not civil until I at least get this into me.”
He laughs. “Yeah sometimes me too.”
“Really? You seem all chipper and stuff…are you one of them…” I say semi accusingly.
“One of what?”
“Morning people.”
He grins at me which is sort of infectious enough to make me want to smile. “I am even if I don’t want to be. I’d love to sleep in but when it’s morning I usually sit there and think about all the stuff that I need to do and then once that’s in my head I might as well get up and get things started.”
“No rest for the weary?’
“Oh yeah I rest and stuff it’s just force of habit that I like to get everything done rather than just let it wait.”
“So the exact opposite of myself then.”
Ryan looks at me and raises and eyebrow. “Oh?’
“Home…as in here and not at work I’m kind of a procrastinator.”
He’s looking at me like he kind of knows it’s more than that…with me it’s that whole trying to function when you’re depressed that’s that hard part. But it’s not a look of pity or the oh you’re lazy thing it’s just a look.
I so don’t know how to read him.
I look things over and he’s got the tools out too. “So, what are you going to do next?’
“I was thinking of putting up the clothesline and then laundry.”
“Uhm…want any help?”
“Sure.”
“You want a coffee while I’m having mine?’
“Sure.” He’s smiling again.
“You want to come in?”
“Okay.”
It’s, it’s not that I just don’t know how to read him it’s that he’s so easy going and stuff.
Adaptable in a way that I’m kind of sure might not apply to me. I hold the door open for him to come in and he takes his sandals off and walks inside in his bare feet. Oddly it tweaks this agreeable part of my brain.
I put the water on for coffee and I debate making something to eat or not. I’m not a breakfast person, never was not even in high school. It took me morning break to feel like I could eat usually. Even now being older it’s me kind of a thing for me just coffee or water until like at least around ten in the morning or so.
But…
I look at him and he is pretty cute or/and possibly I’m projecting this because he’s nice to me and stuff but he’s good looking too. He’s sort of pretty in that actually…blonde and baby faced yet sort of intense he reminds me a little of Link from Zelda.
I’m kind of a gamer girl and…
“I like Link.”…………..
………………………… oh did I just say that out loud?
Shit, shit, shit…I start turning red.
“Link like in Zelda…Link?”
I nod getting redder. “You uhm…you uhm sorta look like him.”
“I do? Okay that’s kind of cool no one’s ever said anything like that to me before…that’s kind of awesome actually.”
I reach over to him as the kettle is whistling and I pull his hood up for his hoody. “Yeah…that’s very cool….” I blush a little and go get the kettle and grab the instant coffee. “You want some breakfast?’
“Okay I can hobbit it.”
“Hobbit it?”
“Y’know second breakfast.”
“No…?” Honestly, I don’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about.
He has this stunned and amazed look on his face then he’s pulling some accent that sounds lightly Irish or something.
“Breakfast, Second Breakfast, Ellevensees? Afternoon tea?”
I shake my head.
“You’ve never seen the Lord of the Rings movies?!”
I duck my head blushing a little. “I’ve been meaning to.”
“Okay…second breakfast then we get the clothesline up and while the washing is getting done we watch them all on my blue ray.”
“Uhm okay…” I didn’t have plans besides just screwing around and playing videogames and stuff anyway or reading. I haven’t had that many meals here since meeting Ryan so there’s like five minutes of dishes but then there’s my laundry.
I sort of look at him. “Could I use your machines too then?”
“Sure, a movie and laundry party then I’ll even order pizza if you like.”
My stomach wakes up at the thought of pizza since it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to afford it. I look at him and he actually seems excited at the thought of hanging out with me and watching movies together and doing laundry.
With me.
And you know? This is the best offer that I’ve had in a long, long time…maybe ever.
Can Dreams Come True?... Part 4
Ryan is a complete geek and he’s likely seen these movies over and over and he’s still as excited as I am. I’m not ashamed to admit it that as soon as I saw the shire and Bag-End and Frodo and Bilbo they had me.
I read these as a kid and I played D&D a little as a teen and I’d seen the old cartoon version of both the Hobbit and Fellowship.
I enjoyed these so much more than I ever thought I’d actually enjoy a movie in a long, long time.
He looked online for pizza and ordered from Rose’s. I’ve never eaten there but it’s kind of one of the price artsy places. Part of me wasn’t cool with his ordering from there but he was reading the reviews and this place had wood fired pizzas.
It’s kinda weird that he’s from god knows where Canada and he knows more about stuff on a pizza than I do. Double mushroom, hamburger, pancetta instead of bacon, red onions and pepperanchinos? And kalamata olives? It sounded like he was ordering half the topping from the salad bar and that he got in a twelve and he order two nines with a cheese pizza since apparently that’s a must have and another with sausage and double pepperoni.
I don’t much care for pepperoni in any way except on pizza and he asked for the pepperoni to be tossed ontop of the cheese once the sausage was cooked.
We didn’t even bother with the thought of dessert and he had soda there for us to drink and the pizza was really good…fanciest I’ve ever had. Not the best, the best I ever had was a white pizza I made once.
God that was a long time ago…I was in classes then.
Even then I cheated and I bought a jar of the Alfredo sauce I used on it.
This was good, this was amazing really and I’m a little embarrassed at how much we eat. Okay the two nines are gone really quickly and the cheese pizza went first and it was really good.
Ryan was nodding as he was inhaling his second slice; they cut the nines into four pieces.
“Good?” I asked.
“Oh yeah very nummy.”
“Nummy?”
“I use whatever slang I’m comfortable with.”
“Okay…” I’m still sort of smiling though it might be a sugar high from the sauce and the bread. Oh it’s so nice to have not just real food again but good food.
“The best way to tell that a pizza place is any good is to try their cheese pizza. If they can’t make at least a decent cheese pizza then they’re not going to make anything else any better.”
“Huh…okay that actually makes sense.”
“I don’t make sense usually?”
I bit my lip. “Well I barely know you but you’ve got me baffled a whole lot.”
“Baffled?” He looked at me and tilted his head.
“You’re too nice…” Okay I said it and I was cringing on the inside at the thought that I just messed things up this fast and lost a friend…
“Oh that well I’m Canadian…sorry eh, I don’t think I can do anything aboot it.” He has this sort of accent…and I can’t place it but it’s this sort of Canadian thing…I think but he surprised me too because I’m laughing at him doing that.
………………………………..and the rest of the night was like that and I had so much a good time that I was kind of hoping it’s last longer than it did but once we finished the whole marathon he had to get ready for his gig and go to work.
Which brings me to being home now and actually not feeling too bad about things at the moment. I pigged out and watched movies all day and most of the night and I went home and did my laundry up and had some spare pizza from this to take to work tomorrow and set stuff out and actually went back and played some more Zelda until I hear his car pull back into the yard.
I didn’t really even think about it.
That I was staying up and sort of waiting for Ryan to come home and I pause my game and I get up and go to the window and…
And I just catch the sway of woman in a dress and long wavy and curly red hair going into his place.
Oh……
Well…..
I mean he’s a nice decent young guy.
And I’m a basketcase that should have realized that I kind of like him.
Of course too late and too dense and too scared of my life right.
Yeah of course right just.
Oh just fuck my life.
And yes as good as everything was today I ended up crying myself to sleep.
Even though we barely know each other.
Even if we are just friends….i mean we haven’t even gotten that far have we?
I just wanted someone…something for myself.
I’m being a damned idiot but I cry a lot harder than I should have.
……………………..Morning comes too early with too little sleep and too many tears leaving me with that feeling it sandpapery eyes and a sandpapery heart too.
Rubbed raw inside and I get up and stumble-function through my bathroom routine and take my hormones and my meds and a screaming hot shower and brush my teeth and head into work.
I almost didn’t take my meds.
I was so in that place where feeling like shit was still happening to me because it’s well my life and my life gives me a little glimmer of something nice before slapping me in the face and kicking me down the hole again.
You know what I feel like?
“It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again.”
That.
That’s my effing hole.
I pull into the gas station and get ten bucks to be put on the pump I’m using and the little asshole gives me this look like that all? This is why they have the glass there not because of all the hold ups it’s because they hire these nasty snarky little shits that make you just want to slap the shit out of them.
Or it could be that he’s safe behind the glass and therefore most people can’t touch him so he’s being a little asshole.
I’d make a comment about how this isn’t a Kevin Smith movie but he’s way too young to have any idea who I’d be talking about or know what “Clerks” is.
I get my gas and I head to work.
I really, really want to smoke right now.
……………………………….Work really, really sucked it was just one of those days that I was upset and angry enough that every little screw up had me scowling and most of them I was making and I didn’t bring the leftover pizza or lunch and I didn’t really have money for lunch so I sat in the break room sipping instant coffee I made with the microwave and just being angry.
And hurt.
It went by far too long too; it was one of those shifts where everything just drags on and on. I get home and I sped a good bit of the way while I was at it…well I get home and I see some stuff planted by the fence and there’s a garbage box there at the end of the driveway instead of the shitty old garbage cans and it looks like Ryan had done some more stuff to clean up while I was at work.
His car isn’t there and I go inside my place and kick off my shoes and see the damned light flashing on my machine again.
“Hey Josie you’ve got mail…great bring it on I can’t wait to see how this tops everything off.”
The first couple of calls are just garbage people selling life insurance and stuff and a few of my creditors since the student loan people are worse that most sex stalkers and just as persistent.
Then…
“Joseph it’s your mother we really need to talk honey you need to talk to people, someone okay you need help. I know things have been hard and that you’re not in school anymore which I don’t get because you were such a good student…call me honey please you…we’ll get you help…just…you don’t need to…to mutilate yourself.”
Mutilate…oh fucking nice mom I wonder what fucked up LGBT website you found that on.
I supposed the called the school…found out that I flunked out.
Then there’s….
“Joey…Josie…Jesus man what the hell…coffee!? Hot fucking coffee? Okay I don’t get it and the girlfriend’s right no matter whatever crazy shit’s in your head and you doing this…which I don’t think is right or sane…well I guess u shouldn’t have grabbed your boobs. Okay…I’m sorry are you happy? Call Mom she’s worried hell we all are. We’re good okay? We’re even no bad feelings. Call us.”
I’m yelling at the machine.
“Good!?...we’re good how the hell do you think we’re good? I’m wrong? This is wrong!? How fucking dare you…you fucking asshole…You…Aargh!”
I pace and pace throw my couch cushions and pace back and scream at the answering machine. “Fuck you! Fuck all of you! You have no, no fucking idea what it’s like!”
I hit the delete button and pace and talk to myself and rant…not really anything worth repeating just a lot about me mutilating myself and getting sexually assaulted and gee that yeah maybe that could be something that you shouldn’t do to people.
And that nothing from Dad of course not even a mention and nothing from my sister who honestly is likely making this all about her because she was spawned from the dimension of self fucking absorbia.
I’m well into a tirade when I get dizzy and that’s when I get the headache or realize I have a head ache and that’s when things get all grey and stuff and I hit the floor really hard.
Oh no not enough to knock my silly ass out no but enough that it hurt and I’m crying and laughing because literally life just knocked my butt down again.
I’m hugging myself when there’s a knock on my door.
“Josie? I heard a crash are you okay?”
Ryan.
“Leave me alone okay…just…I’m fucking fine!” (Sniffle-sob.)
“You don’t sound fine.”
“Mind your own damned business.”
“Open the door.”
“No!”
“Please.”
“…………..”
“Please.”
I… I don’t want to…I don’t want to know him or trust him because…because he’s seeing someone else?
But what if they’re just friends?
I don’t even know…I don’t even have the right to know.
I try to get up and I feel like rubber…oh so not good.
“I…I can’t.”
CRACK!!!
Ryan breaks down my door…well busts in with his shoulder.
So much for me feeling secure now.
Then I see this really genuine worried look on his face and I can’t help it I start to bawl.
It get’s full on psycho-ugly cry when he kneels down and wraps his arms around me.
“God I’m so fucked up…”
Can Dreams Come True?…Part 5
I feel like shit.
No really its semi nausea mixed with this spiking of a headache. I hate headaches, I don’t get them a lot but when I do it just really sucks. They’re not migraines thankfully but close to or one of those minor ones.
And right there in my face when I open my eyes is that red hair.
Oh just shoot me.
“Ow…” I put my hand to my head.
“Oh you’re awake.” The voice is femme but guy femme like mine but a bit deeper. I’m lucky when it comes to my voice I guess.
She’s turned around and y’know for a crazy thought I thought she was Ryan but nope, different face. A really different, really pretty face and to go with the white tee shirt and the big boobs and this black vest and a fedora hat just sort of like Stevie Nicks wore back in the day.
“Yeah…where’s Ryan?”
She blinks at me a few times. “He’s in the kitchen. Making you something to eat.”
“Oh…ugh…my mouth tastes like…” It’s citrusy.
“That’d be Tang.”
“Tang?”
“You know Tang the orange drink?”
“Yeah why?”
“Because you passed out from low blood sugar.”
I did? “I did?”
“Yes, you did when was the last time you ate?’
“Is today the same day he busted in?”
“Yes…”
“Then last night.”
“Why?”
“I was upset…I get like that…”
“Oh…?”
“Depression.” I say it curtly and I sit up. It’s not her business…even if she’s… “So who are you?”
“Stephanie Prince, I work with Ryan.” She’s giving me this look.
“What?”
“I was here the other night for coffee.”
“Okay.”
“Coffee.”
“Okay (forceful.)…whatever.”
“Yeah okay…whatever.” Oh she did the bitchy thing too.
This could go bad really quick, I mean she’s like me and I can tell that right off from the get go only I think I pass better. (Rawrr…hiss.)
“Ryan she’s awake!” She hollers to him.
He come’s into the living room and he looks at me kind of frowny. “You okay?”
“I’m fine it was just a really shitty day.”
“What happened?”
I look at her and she looks at me and she gets up. “I gotta go love I need to make supper for the wife and kids.”
My mental brakes do a squeal in my head. Wait what?
“You’re married?”
“Happily, three kids.”
“But you’re….?”
“I’m lucky I have a wife that gets me and she’s my best friend. Laters you two.”
“Uhm…yeah…” I’m surprised that even came out sounding interpretable with my foot shoved in my mouth to my knee.
She grabs her purse and she sways out on four inch heels and okay maybe she’s not that bad looking, she certainly has a lot down that I’ll never get down. I’ve never been in more than a two inch heel and I’m pretty sure that I’ll never sway like that.
Oh god…
I get this whole mental cartoon of me trying to do just that and there’s the first sway and then the second and I over balance myself and…tim…ber…
I can’t stop giggling.
“Josie?”
(Snerk.) I slap my hands up over my nose and mouth. “Sorry…I was just trying to picture myself walking like that and….tim…ber…”
Ryan smiles, okay that’s good right?
Do I make people smile?
“So….?” He asks again.
(Sigh.)…. “It was just a bad day Ry…I should have know it was going to hit…it usually does and I just didn’t feel like eating and then I was going to and I got home and there was stuff on my machine and…” I stop and I shrug.
Yes I’m NOT telling him that Stephanie had me upset and for just some thing stupid and childish as wanting him to myself. I mean I feel bad enough he’s this involved with me and I’m that damaged that the thought of him having friends other than me messes me up?
I’d rather chew glass than tell him that.
Okay maybe, maybe I might like him a little it’s just…it’s too soon for anything like that if ever.
Ryan sits down beside me and he pulls me into a hug.
A real hug.
God it’s been so long… (Sniffle.)
And…
Boobs?
What?
I hug a little more…yes those are boobs, they’re smallish and he’s…well since we’ve met he’s always worn long sleeves and stuff.
Jesus…he’s all baby faced too…
Is he like me, but…but he acts like a guy?
Is he MtF?
Should I even ask?
No, no, no no…not my business. He says his name was Ryan and he’s only been decent to me and he’s always called me Josie.
I’m not saying a damned thing.
I bite my lip and I just try to breathe and enjoy the hug for what it is a hug.
(Sniffle.) “Stephanie said you were in the kitchen…are you trying to feed me again?’
“Guilty as charged, you feel like eating with me.”
I (Sniffle.) and nod like a five year old girl. “Yes please, alone isn’t good right now…”
“Okay…” I Eeep a little as he picks me up in his arms and he sets me in the big comfy chair he has that I watched LOTR with him in and he smiles and gets me the couch blanket to cuddle into and covers me with it and he heads into the kitchen.
I watch trying to tell from the bum.
I can’t tell, it’s a nice bum but there’s…well he kind of moves neutrally…like me.
But…he’s really strong if he started out as a girl….Oh wow…oh wow…my nipples are so hard right now.
WTF?
He comes in a few minutes later with this bowl of chicken stew on a tray and it’s home made and stuff with lots of veggies and one of those almost light gravy kinds of broth and he’s got a saucer with these rounds of what I thought were tortillas or pitas but are three rounds of pie crust that are dusted with like chicken seasoning or something.
“Looks good…” I smile at him but I’m staring just trying to figure it out and he’s handsome and he’s kind of pretty too.
No Josie mind your business.
“It’s chicken pot pie stew.”
“Cool.”
He shrugs and sets down a glass of milk. “I ripped it off of TV actually from Diner’s Drive-in’s and Dives.”
“Oh I like that show too.”
“I’ll be right back.” He smiles and heads off to get his own.
I’m crumbling the pie crust into chunks and pushing them under the broth like crackers and I’m trying really to figure out what to do if anything.
And…and I’m still kind of turned on by the thoughts too…
Can Dreams Come True?... Part 6
You know how hard it is to actually take your own advice?
Josie mind your business.
But…but Ryan might be…like me.
Or something else.
I felt boobs there and there really is no way to say that I was feeling something there that I wasn’t because well boobs are boobs. I have my own and even though he conceals them they’re there and who would wear falsies only to hide them?
And for some reason that thought of Ryan being something like an FtM is kind of?
I’m so getting these yay tingles right now and it’s sort of freaking me out.
I’m a transwoman and I want the whole thing if I can ever get to a place in my life where that’s feasible but if I like girls that are really boys just how does that work? How could it work?
And no I’m not talking about the sexual mechanics I mean c’mon I’m not that much not in synch with what goes on it’s just. I’m not too sure that I heard of this before other than some story or something on Facebook.
And that might as well be in the tabloids really Facebook had very little semblance to real life or at least it does in my experience.
And no…me being transgendered does not make me a walking wiki of all things Trans or LGBT.
Oh I feel all over the place.
But…
And this is kind of a really big deal and that’s the fact that it has been forever since really I’ve been attracted to someone outside of the nebulous fantasies in my bed.
And I’m kind of shot back to being a teenager again sitting here aroused and not exactly in a place socially that I can just be around anyone with this situation. And I’m embarrassed too. And It’s not just my aching nipples but a part of me that when it works usually makes me want to cry.
I look up and Ryan’s coming back in and he’s got his own bowl of this chicken pot pie soup and he smiles at me.
“The soup okay?”
“God yes it’s really good.”
“Well that could be starvation talking. You shouldn’t go without eating all day and working even if you family are being utter shits to you.”
“I can’t eat when I’m upset.” I hunch sort of defensively.
“Okay but when you are upset like that you should come get me.”
“Ryan, I can’t do that I barely know you…” My voice kind of trails that bit off because it just sounds kind of insulting really or it does to me.
“You can Josie, there’s this custom my people have called not being a shit. It’s where a person actually steps away from being all self absorbed to actually consider someone else’s feelings.”
(Sniffle.) “Darned Canadians.”
“Damned Skippy.”
He has this smile that’s.
It’s happy and fun and big and for me. It’s like that smile and the eyes and just everything about him’s not just kind of soothing but he actually and freakily makes me feel better.
I’m biting my lip and sort of ducking my head a bit. “I like Skippy peanut butter.”
“Me too.”
“Ryan?”
“Hmmm…” He says? Around a mouthful of food. Okay he eats like a guy. Then again I’ve always found the whole girl dainty eater thing a myth or a put on. We just use napkins and try not to wear our food.
And yep…as soon as the thought comes through…splooch on my shirt. A good sized piece of gravy covered crust.
I’m blushing and he pulls some Kleenex from the box on the coffee table and passes them to me. I’m trying to clean it without making it worse and blushing too and I sort of use the distraction.
“Why me?”
“We’re neighbors.”
“That really doesn’t mean much these days Ryan.”
“Well it still does to me, neighbors should be friends.”
“I…I’m not good with making friends…I’m…I’m all kinds of messed up.”
“You’re not the only one there Josie. The word’s a messed up place.”
“It takes a lot for people to take me Ryan, like long term.”
“That’s true with everyone Josie, it’s why people break up and stuff.”
(Sniffle.) “Well with me it’s chronic…people leave me Ryan.”
I hear him take a deep breath like a lot of people have done before when I’m getting on a nerve. He gets up. “Here, that’ll set a grease stain let me wash it.”
“I’m…I’m just in my bra under this.”
“Well it’s a good thing that I’m wearing a spare then.” I look up to see him pulling off his outer shirt and I was right he’s got breasts.
“Ryan?”
“Yes, they’re real.”
“Uhm I was going to ask…are you?”
“Cross matching you?”
“Uhm…yeah.”
“Sort of, I’m messed up too.”
“Like?”
“I’m a biological girl even though I’ve been a guy all my life.”
“So you’re trans like me?”
“No…I don’t have the GID thing I’m kind of good with how I’m put together I’m just not a girl.”
“Oh…” I’m not sure I get it totally but standing there the way that they present and body language…it says guy…well not guy actually it says Ryan to me.
And for lack of a better response than just ‘oh’ I reach out and take the offered shirt. I’m looking a it and it’s baggy enough to fit me too it’s just…how’d they take me asking?
“Uhm…can you turn around?”
There’s a smile there that is…I think It’s definitely growing on me.
He turn’s but says. “I’ll set this to soak okay?”
“Uhm…yeah.”
I watch him go and I know now and I can see it too but at the same time not? Like watching him walk away it’s not swishy, no wiggle really, no sway well not like you couldn’t actually see on anyone guy or girl and if I ignored the bra outline, they still sort of frame like a guy…slender but no crazy slender and he’s got some very nice shoulders.
I wonder if he works them out?
I wonder if his body is strong.
Blink…oh…my if she’s a guy and I’m attracted to him am I straight or a lesbian or something else?
I actually snap out of it enough to put the shirt on which was the whole point of him stepping away to fix my shirt.
Okay it smells nice….a little men’s cologne or aftershave mixed in with body scent and there’s this strong scent too like chocolate and cinnamon? It’s so odd and really good too.
And Ryan comes back while I’m smelling his shirt.
I blush. “Sorry it’s just it smells so…what do you use?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Oh…well this…it suits you.”
“Thanks.” He smiles and goes back to his bowl. “You want to stick around?”
“Around?”
“Mmm…y’know stay for awhile.”
“Ryan I don’t want to be…”
“You’re not.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, you’ve got laundry?”
“Some.”
“We can bring it over and hand out and do laundry, watch a little TV or something?”
“Uhm…okay.”
“Cool, more?”
“Yes please. I still say you’re going to spoil me.”
“Good sometimes we need that.”
“Being spoiled?”
He takes my bowl with his and leans down and kisses me on the cheek.
“Just someone to actually care Josie.”
(Sniffle.) “Okay…”
I could’ve asked why again, I could’ve just distrusted myself and all of this happening to me.
But I’m tired, I’m tired and just…I just want someone to care.
Maybe even carry me a little while.
Can Dreams Come True?…Part 7
I’m still trying to figure things out.
How he is, how that must feel.
I sort of get it but.
He’s a girl that’s never been a girl but she…he’s not transgendered?
Okay one thing’s pretty clear and that Ryan seems way, way more together than me.
It’s actually kind of nice in that way.
I lean back in the chair I’m in and sort of hug myself and think and I’m still doing that when he comes back and he looks at me.
“Josie? You okay?”
“Yeah…usually no but I mean I guess…I’m surprised though.”
“That I’m…?”
“Yeah, I’m trying to get my head around it.”
“Sorry.”
He’s sitting on the couch and now that I can see him without the baggy shirt yeah he has boobs. But he’s still a he.
“No, you don’t have to be sorry but…you say you’re not trans and that you’re female but you’re a guy…I don’t get how that works?”
He smiles a little. “It’s like this…I was born a girl and I went through all the motions all through highschool to fit in and be this sort of kind of alpha female. I was doing that so I would fit in with the other girls except it wasn’t remotely who I was inside.”
“That kind of fits being trans.”
“I know but I don’t feel the need to change my body.”
“So you’re a butch lesbian?”
“No…not that either. I ended up trying being a lesbian and that was after I had a complete asshole like breakdown when one of my so called…well that’s what I thought then…Kate was one of my super girlie friends, she was just as deep into denial as I was apparently and after her first year in university she comes back and she had come out of the closet as a lesbian. That wigged me out so much that I had a total bitch fit over it and wigged out over it and actually went all bigot and anti-gay and stuff.”
“You?”
“I was in a lot of denial and after a year of it I ended up losing a lot of friends over it and I took off and moved away to Montreal to go to university there. That’s where I stayed with my sort of cousin.”
“Sort of cousin?”
“Toni was his grand niece.” Ryan gestures around the apartment. “She was always at our place whenever her family came down home so I took her up on her offer.”
“Okay and you changed your mind when?”
“There was a car accident in my second year. Toni and I were hit by a drunk driver and there was snow and slush and we were pushed into traffic and she was killed.”
I swallow and I…should I get up and hug him?
“I was in the hospital and there was all this stuff going on and that’s when Toni was actually Anthony and she was trans…I had never really ever put it together not even living together.”
“You never seen each other naked?”
“Actually no. That and losing her pushed me right over the edge into a nervous breakdown. I’d been such a hateful bigot around her because of who I really am I snapped.”
“How bad?”
“Suicide watch for a couple of weeks then a lot of therapy until I got to admit to being really me.”
“So how’d you deal?”
“I had been moved home and my parents weren’t exactly thrilled with me especially mu mother and my sisters when I purged my life of the lies and stuff.”
“Purged like dressing and stuff?”
“Actually a lot like your end of things. Women’s clothes that I actually hated and never felt comfortable in and the make up and all of that stuff and I even cut off all of my hair.”
“So your folks thought you were gay…I mean lesbian?”
“Yeah and it didn’t go over well so I moved out and I went to Halifax and met up and apologized with Kate and I’ve been trying to find myself since then.”
“So can I ask?’
“Ask what?” …… Ryan grins at me. “Sure.”
“So what are you into…like as a partner?”
“People, I’m really not into labels…and I mean that I’ve done the lesbian thing and I’m too much a guy and I’ve tried being the trans-man and that hasn’t worked either because with the gay guys that I was with as a trans-guy I was too female for them still.
“Still?”
“Oh apparently I’m too straight man to be campy-gay and I’m still too much of a girl because I like feminine things.”
“Huh?”
“I like feminine things I just don’t like them for me.”
I’m sort of lost and I can get though why this might be a problem for Ryan and someone that he was with in that whole gay man kind of thing.
“Huh?”
“Okay say we’re out and I see a really nice outfit in the store and it’s sexy and girl and stuff I will fan-girl over it but I would want to see it on you because I would never feel comfortable in it.”
“Oh wow that’s just….”
“That’s just exactly why me and labels don’t mix.”
I look at him and I relax.
“Okay…I think that I can deal.”
“Good because I was really hoping that we were still friends after this coming out.”
I am honestly shocked enough that I have some tears come.
“Josie?”
(Sniffle.) “Still friends?” I’m kind of in shock and it comes out like this questioning whine.
Ryan gets up and he comes over and he actually steps over the arm of the chair and he slips down behind me with a very guyesque thump and then his arms are wrapped around me.
“Yes still friends.”
“But…but…I didn’t know we were friends to start with…” I know I’m whining.
He hugs me a little tighter. “Yeah we’re friends.”
“But…but…” But I’m not worth it it’s the very first thought in my head because I had friends…I had them before I started to transition and before I hit that wall…and…I’m to hard to be around.
I’m not worth the pain I bring.
It’s Ryan squeezing me even tighter and rocking us a little from side to side that sort of brings me out of it and my face is wet and I’ve been crying…actually sobbing because my chest sort of hurts in that way it does when you cry too hard or have like a coughing fit.
He didn’t even say anything he is just hanging onto to me so hard and so strong that it kind of feels like somehow he just kept me from flying apart at the seams.
It’s another ten minutes of sniffling and breathing before I can move enough to look over my shoulder at him and he looks me in the eyes and there’s no fake smile, there’s no judging there is just this calm kind light there because he gets it.
He’s fallen apart and been broken.
I have never had someone look at me without judging or blame and hug me and hold me through it in my life before.
I move enough to sit sideways in his arms and let my head fall on his chest.
(Sniffle.) “Can we not do the wash right now and just sit here for awhile.”
“Absolutely.”
(Sniffle.) “Thanks Ryan.”
“You want to lay down on the couch with me?”
“Can we?”
“Yeah, I actually recommend it.”
I get to move and he moves with me and he waddles me over to the TV and stuff and he puts in a DVD and then he kills the lights and we settle together on the couch and it’s so strange he gets comfy and then pulls me close and I get comfy and I can actually feel my left butt cheek sort of resting in the valley of his pubic mound and his breast sort of in my back but it’s…
He still feels like a guy, he still act’s and sort of just moves….carries himself like that and holds me like one.
If my heart wasn’t feeling so messed up than I might just be aroused…more than I am…which yeah that means I am a little.
We just lie there together and he turns on one of those fireplace log burning DVD’s.
Being held and no judging and someone that gets it and is still talking to me….
It feels like.
It feels like I’ve been tossed off my boat that was my life and that finally someone has their hand out and holding onto mine and keeping the waves from swamping me and keeping the undertow from dragging me down.
I can breathe.
Can Dreams Come True?…Part 8
*Before…
Ryan…
He still feels like a guy, he still act’s and sort of just moves….carries himself like that and holds me like one.
If my heart wasn’t feeling so messed up than I might just be aroused…more than I am…which yeah that means I am a little.
We just lie there together and he turns on one of those fireplace log burning DVD’s.
Being held and no judging and someone that gets it and is still talking to me….
It feels like.
It feels like I’ve been tossed off my boat that was my life and that finally someone has their hand out and holding onto mine and keeping the waves from swamping me and keeping the undertow from dragging me down.
And I can breathe.
*And Now…
I fell asleep and I think that something uncoiled inside me with Ryan; it’s like knowing she’s?
He’s kind of Trans is like just something else that I don’t have that’ll hurt me. I don’t really get what he said or even sure he gets it but a non-surgery Trans guy’s the closest thing I can come too.
But being held and cared for even this much is.
It’s more than I’ve expected out of my life.
He’s really asleep and I slip off the couch really careful and quietly. I sit there on the floor on my knees and just watch him a few minutes. I know you present the gender you’re trying to be but even in the sports bra I’m reading guy.
Genetic sex aside Ryan is actually kind of handsome.
I stared and got really, really close to kissing him.
You know when someone finally is good to you and you just get kind of caught up in that swell of feelings.
I sit really close to his face and I so want to…but I can’t.
I’m so screwed up and even my good days seem like they ride on a tippy edge.
We still don’t really know each other.
I wouldn’t want to saddle anyone with someone as screwed up and off as me.
There’s nothing like chickening out to start up your day.
I slip out and go home, heading to the bathroom for a long bath after doing my other stuff and I head into my bedroom.
I get myself some paper and start writing…
“Ryan…My main flaw is I focus on everything and nothing at the same time. Sometimes I seem like a bad friend or like I don't care because I'm constantly being swept by the tides of my mind and rarely making it to shore. I try to be more extroverted but it is always shortly lived and I am then consumed by introversion. If we are friends, I'm sure you've taken notice to how withdrawn I am. I think I'm trying to work on it but I'm not sure... Either way it's a quality I hate most about myself and I just wanted to share my awareness of it and ask as a friend of mine to bear with me as I try find my strengths again.
Just be patient with me.”
Sigh…shit just sigh.
But I need to do this, I do because I need room and if I start to trust or lean on Ryan who knows what will happen the next time I fall apart.
I look around until I find an envelope and I have to recycle one from a card I had before.
Why don’t I ever have these things in the house?
And of course the way that my brain works I had to look to see if I had any stamps even though I’m not mailing anything. I had two and I have no idea if they’d make proper postage.
They’re for the regular mail and not work we do things differently there.
I get the letter or note or whatever in the envelope and I just can’t bring myself to take it to his door while he’s awake.
I know, I’m a chicken.
Okay now what I don’t work today and it’s a long way until tomorrow with my brain.
I could clean.
I should clean.
I just…no dammit, dammit, dammit.
Okay getting mad for me sometimes works to get me passed the what’s the points and I get my things from the kitchen closet and I use boiling hot water and a lot of Mr. Clean and I scrub the floors in my house. I use the hot water because it steams off and dries faster but It’s likely not that good for my floors not that I have anything fancy in here just a lot of oilcloth flooring that looks like tiles.
The bathroom is next and that I really give a good scrubbing and cleaning. Especially my tub. I take baths now and I really don’t want to be the meat in a slow cooker of various molds and mildews…yuck.
I know I’m paranoid about it but it’s just.
There’s laundry too.
And…and Ryan has a washer and a dryer and he’s offered but do I really want to do this? But he’ll be hurt and pissed off that I didn’t take him up on his offer and went to a laundromat instead.
Dammit…so much for my mood being where I can get stuff done.
I don’t know what to do and my stomach hurts from that and…
If I just didn’t know him and was just left alone then I wouldn’t be feeling like this. I hate feeling like this but I feel like this all the time.
Just. “Aaargh fuck!”
I stomp around my place and I get my laundry and I bag it up and I’m just about to take it all to the car when I realize.
I’m poor.
Like barely have money for enough gas to get me where I’m going on payday when it rolls around. I’m using my bus pass the rest of the week to go to work.
And I’m standing on the porch staring at my poor shitbox of a car and I’m mad at it for no good reason but mostly because it doesn’t take magic gas that will let me drive around as needed and I drop my bags of clothes and hug myself because I’m poor.
And it sucks.
And it hurts.
“Hey.”
I jump even though I know it’s Ryan.
“Easy Josie it’s just me.”
I turn and I look at him and he’s in another baggy shirt but it’s a real shirt and the cuffs are sort of rolled up and he’s wearing guy jeans and stuff and he still just looks like a guy except I know so I can tell by looking at how smooth his face is and stuff and his bare feet well he has girl feet even if they’re not like prettified and stuff.
Actually he has a whopping big scar on his right foot.
“What happened to your foot?”
“Axe.”
“What!”
“I was splitting wood when I was younger and I didn’t listen to my grandfather when he told me how to use the axe right and I thought I knew better and of course I wasn’t wearing work boots but sneakers and it glanced off the wood and into my foot.”
“Ow….”
“Yeah but only when I woke up in the hospital.”
I look at him and I have no idea what to say.
“You want to come in and do your wash up?”
“No…”
“No?”
“I will because I’m like broke and my car’s well it’s…”
“Too much too soon?”
“How are you in my head!?” I snap at him and as soon as I do I feel like Ick for doing it and at the same time there’s this perverse effing part of my head that loves it.
~Go Josie; go let them have it, show them just what kind of a freak that you are! ~
“Sorry it’s just I can read it all over you…”
“Well don’t! Just stop it Ryan stop reading me! Stop being nice to me!”
He looks at me and I just get madder and it’s just one of those things about me sometimes that gets through my meds. I mean it’s so damned infuriating that he’s looking at me and he has this perfectly goddamned reasonable expression on his face.
How!?
How can he be like that when he’s every bit as a fucked up mess as I am!?
“Josie…”
“No! Just fucking no Ryan or whatever you’re real name is just stop it!”
There’s this look there that he knows exactly where I went with that and I know it hurt and the evil part of my brain wants to sneer and feel all victorious and regular me wants to through up because.
I know what that hurts like. I know and I should never stoop that effing low to attack someone.
And he takes it like a guy.
I can see him and that look where I hurt him and I watch him swallow that pain and he puts on this odd little kind of smile. “Ryan is my legal name but you want to know what I used to be called?”
I…I…
Oh god, oh god what did I do!?
He looks at me and that odd little smile is there and he says. “Robyn, with a y in it and everything.”
I bolt running for my place.
Ryan catches me.
He catches me and he’s a lot stronger than my brain was thinking and he pulls me into a bear hug from behind.
“Let me go! let me go! Fucking let me go!”
“No, not the way that you get when you’re like this!”
I struggle and I kick and I spit in his face and I go to scream and he covers my mouth with his hand.
I bite.
Hard and he doesn’t scream.
I fight some more and he pulls me into his place and he drags me into the…the…the…the bathroom he has downstairs that I didn’t know was there.
All the way into the shower and he turns on the cold water and pulls me under the spray and I’m freaking out until I just snap and I think the icy cold water had a lot to do with me breaking and stuff.
I cry.
No I don’t cry I bawl, I have a full on tear filled nightmare of a breakdown.
I think during part of it I was blubbering out an apology.
It’s I have no idea how long before I can actually think.
Shivering, we’re both shivering.
Ryan might be a guy but he doesn’t have the body mass of one and we’ve been in the cold water shower for long enough I’m cold. Like cold enough for my teeth to chatter some.
“R..Ryan…why?”
“Why what?”
“Why me? Why even bother with someone like me?”
“Just because.”
(Sniffle sob!) “That’s not a reason!” (Sniffle.) “Dammit.”
“I don’t have a reason Josie. I moved in I’m here, you’re here. You’re hurting and I don’t like seeing that.”
“That’s a girl thing nurturing and stuff y’know.”
“Stop it, that’s a human thing it’s called giving a shit.”
“I’m not worth it.”
“You woman don’t have the right to say who or what I value.” He’s smiling, he’s frakking smiling and I can hear it in his voice.
“I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”
“You’re in trouble you aren’t trouble there’s a difference.”
“I’ve never been good at this…”
“What friendships?”
“Yeah and life.”
“Well then you need practice at both instead of just taking your ball and going home.”
“Balls…I have two of the little fuckers.”
“Me too.”
“What!? I thought you were a girl!”
“No…I’m a guy just a female guy. Besides ovaries are balls.”
(Sniffle laugh.) “Fuck you’re a jackass…”
“Guilty as charged. Told you I’m a guy.”
(Sniffle.) “Yeah…uhm Ryan?”
“Yes?”
“Can we get out of this shower…I’m freezing.”
“Me too, are you calmed down enough?”
“I don’t know…”
“Are you going to do something stupid like hurt yourself?”
I turn to look at him and he lets me and I look in his eyes and he’s looking in mine ant there’s this whole thing of he knows, he knows that I was in that place where there was a chance that I just might. I mean I’m a real coward when it comes to that stuff but still…it was there and he knew it and he stopped it.
He stopped me.
I nod and put my head on his chest right there on his solar plexus.
“Okay…let’s get out of here and warmed up.”
“Okay….and Ryan…”
“Yeah Josie?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I knew you were even as you were saying it…we’re good.”
He gets us out of the shower and I look at him and he’s looking at me and he’s shivering and he looks as close to being like seriously chilled as I’ve seen someone that wasn’t hypothermic.
I…I want…oh gods my want’s started this whole stupid thing!
And that’s when he tucks my soaked hair out of my face with his hands and cups my cheeks and he kisses me!
Can Dreams Come True?…Part 8
*Before…
“Are you going to do something stupid like hurt yourself?”
I turn to look at him and he lets me and I look in his eyes and he’s looking in mine and there’s this whole thing of he knows, he knows that I was in that place where there was a chance that I just might. I mean I’m a real coward when it comes to that stuff but still…it was there and he knew it and he stopped it.
He stopped me.
I nod and put my head on his chest right there on his solar plexus.
“Okay…let’s get out of here and warmed up.”
“Okay….and Ryan…”
“Yeah Josie?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I knew you were even as you were saying it…we’re good.”
He gets us out of the shower and I look at him and he’s looking at me and he’s shivering and he looks as close to being like seriously chilled as I’ve seen someone that wasn’t hypothermic.
I…I want…oh gods my want’s started this whole stupid thing!
And that’s when he tucks my soaked hair out of my face with his hands and cups my cheeks and he kisses me!
*And Now…
It’s completely unexpected.
Ripping my breath away, making my heart race I haven’t been touched and kissed since I started transition, awhile before that actually…it’s been just so lonely.
Deeply hard to handle lonely….not a good mix for depression.
And Ryan’s skins so soft and the shape of his face, the eyes especially wet it sort of reveals things…like there’s a difference in how eyelashes look wet and still yet they’re a he? Yeah he, as much as he looks… looks like a girl they don’t. There’s this inside getting out male energy there, it makes the difference, it comes out with how he just is.
He…he doesn’t kiss like a girl either, I know because that’s about the only kind of kissing that I’ve done and this….this is different.
The way his hands are holding and cradling my face.
The way that his thumbs have slid and pushed my wet hair back and tucked behind my ears.
The strength in the way that he kisses…the one definitely doing the kissing, being strong and gentle but wanting…wanting me?
But no one wants me.
It gets a little too real and more tears start spilling out and I whine moan a little as the rest of me starts feeing things.
Ryan breaks the kiss.
I’m breathing hard and he’s blurry until he wipes the tears from my eyes.
He’s got this sad smile but a sad for me smile?
I duck my head and blush, shake and shiver some and he…he just sort of takes over.
I hate this, need it, hate it, love it.
I’m so sick of being a human train wreck.
He gets some towels and walks me out to the living room and we’re both shivering and he’s shivering worse than me since I’m, well minus his usual clothes I likely have twenty or thirty pounds on him.
Not that I want the weight and the muscle even as much as I’ve lost.
He looks at me though like he doesn’t notice, doesn’t see it.
“I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry I really am and there’s the whole thing too…that we stopped kissing.
Part of me really, really didn’t want to stop kissing.
“It’s okay.”
(Sniffle) “No it’s not.”
“Yeah, it is. I was the other person involved, I kinda ought to know.”
“Ryan…I just…”
He looks at me.
I start to cry again. (Sob-sniffle.) “Dammit I hate crying, why the fuck do I have to cry so much!”
He walks over to me and moves down a little so he can look me in the face. “How bad does it hurt?”
It’s good that he’s taller than me right?
(Angry-sniffle.) “It always hurts! That’s the damned problem!”
“Well knowing what the problem is, is the first step they say.”
Just…He’s so open and earnest and he’s looking at me so expectantly and I don’t know what to and then the says just out of the blue. “Ba-dum-dish…” like the drum comedy thing when it’s a bad pun or joke and they do it anyway or because of that. It’s just sort of…it’s cutely funny in the face of me and my bullshit that he makes me kind of smile.
“You…you’re such a goof.”
“I can do more, dance, juggle, jazz hands.” And of course he’s miming jazz-hands and I can’t help but to smile some more.
It feels strange to smile y’know it does. Like my body has forgotten how to do it and Ryan reaches out and cups my cheek. “See…you’re not crying now.”
(Sniffle.) “No…But.”
“I actually like your butt, what I’ve seen of it.”
“W…what?”
“Uhm…Josie it might come to you as a bit of a shock but people actually like you.”
“But…” I clamp my hand over my mouth. Ryan grins.
“I like you, there’s just something about you that sits right with me in my bones.”
I move my hand. “Your bones?” I feel my well practiced Spock eyebrow rise.
“Yeah, I felt a connection there. I want to be your friend Josie, and the fact that you’re cute has me thought about more.”
“I’m not cute.”
He has this serious smile. “That’s actually not your call.”
Blink, blink…
Do I say it?
Do I open my mouth and actually say it?
Ryan moves into the kitchen and he’s looking around and gets some tea and the kettle and gets it on. He’s looking at me through the door. “Is tea okay?”
“Yes…” (Sniffle.) “Tea would be nice.”
He looks at me again. “Cookie?”
(Sniffle.) “No thank you, I’m trying to avoid sweets.”
“Avoid-avoid or broke avoid?”
(Sniffle-laugh.) “ Both…are you asking because of the laundry thing?”
He looks at me and smile blushes. “I’m that obvious huh?”
“I’d likely do the same thing honestly. But I’d have looked and been worried.”
“Bills?”
“Bills, Rent, Student Loans, Meds, Hormones, Utilities….”
“So definitely not counting food then.”
I gesture at the kitchen as I come into it still wet sniffling. “Pretty much the opposite of this, heck of a diet plan though.”
He smiles. “There’s more than enough at here with the canned stuff and the freezers.”
“You don’t have to feed me.”
“I know but like I said I hate stuff going to waste, and I’m not likely going to go through a lot of it myself.”
“I like your cooking, it’s different than what I grew up on. My family is pretty middle classed and very white.”
He nods. “Home’s different, Springhill had a lot of black people with the coal mines and lots of poor like Irish and the Scottish and things intermingled and that included the food. Most of the stuff though was things from my grandmother who was very much part of that generation and we ate a lot of stuff there.”
“I like you too.” There, there I said it, I got it out.
Ryan turns and looks at me and there’s this shy smile there on their face. “Even though I’m not a “Guy” or because I’m not a “Guy.” He does the air quotes thing and I bite my lip.
“Both, Neither? I barely know who I am or how I feel sexually, it’s been tossed around in my head so much between how things used to be and how things are changing and then there’s the hormones and just it’s…I don’t know…But I liked you before I knew…I still like you after…I…and I…I mean in the really in like with you way.”
“Good…and I’m in like with you too Josie.” He’s making tea and then passes me a cup of it in a real tea cup.
No, no I don’t have proper tea cups.
I don’t have much of anything that girl like or woman like except some of the things in my bedroom and my bathroom.
I take a sip and hold it close to me for the heat and he’s sort of doing the same watching me watching him.
Him but a her… Tall and blonde like I said with a sort of unisex hair cut on the long side but it fits, no piercings and just a damp t-shirt and he has small breasts, perky but they’re nice but at the same time that build. Lots of hard work, muscle and some shoulder and a little hip but tall too like I said close to six foot.
Robyn…Ryan might have been a girl jock in school, they might have done a lot to fit in really. I mean if there’s one thing being in transition teaches you a lot of the time is there’s a lot of social bullshit pressure to conform. I’m not comfortable, not myself as who I was, I can see Ryan the same way here looking at him.
Non-binary they call it these days, not comfortable in the gender that everyone says you should be but not dysphonic enough to get surgery and that’s actually okay. A lot of trans women don’t get bottom surgery for a lot of reasons.
I’m sort of one of them.
I mean my GID has flare days and other times just being Josie is enough…depends a lot on my depression and those kind of days too.
“Josie, you want to go out?”
“Huh?” Blink, blink… “Like…?”
“Out, out of here, go for a drive, see some things…go on a date.”
“A date…with me?”
“Yes please.”
Oh…that, that yes please…Never, no one has ever…it.
Just two words said with real earnest just…I had no idea that two words could actually feel that good…
“Okay…uhm how should I dress?”
“How ever you want.”
“Ryan…” I say it frustrated.
“Josie, I’m asking you out, so how about part of all of that is you dressing and looking the way that you want to….the way that you rally want to, whatever that is.”
“I…that’s so not…”
He nods. “Well maybe us being very not is a good thing?”
I nod. “Give me some time?”
He walks over and kisses my cheek. “I’ll get ready too, I need to dry off and clean the car.”
“Uhm…now?”
He smile blushes. “If that’s okay, I’ve been kind of thinking about this a lot lately.”
“You have?”
“Yeah…Josie, you’re worth thinking about.”
I…
I finish my tea and I set the cup down and I kiss him on the cheek.
“I’ll go get ready then.”
I head to my place still sort of shaky on the inside but a good shaky.
It feels like a good shaky, for whatever that’s worth.
Can Dreams Come True?...Part 10
*Before…
“Josie, you want to go out?”
“Huh?” Blink, blink… “Like…?”
“Out, out of here, go for a drive, see some things…go on a date.”
“A date…with me?”
“Yes please.”
Oh…that, that yes please…Never, no one has ever…it.
Just two words said with real earnest just…I had no idea that two words could actually feel that good…
*And Now...
“Okay…uhm how should I dress?”
“However you want.”
“Ryan…” I say it frustrated.
“Josie, I’m asking you out, so how about part of all of that is you dressing and looking the way that you want to….the way that you really want to, whatever that is.”
“I…that’s so not…”
He nods. “Well maybe us being very not is a good thing?”
I nod. “Give me some time?”
He walks over and kisses my cheek. “I’ll get ready too, I need to dry off and clean the car.”
“Uhm…now?”
He smile blushes. “If that’s okay, I’ve been kind of thinking about this a lot lately.”
“You have?”
“Yeah…Josie, you’re worth thinking about.”
I…
I finish my tea and I set the cup down and I kiss him on the cheek.
“I’ll go get ready then.”
I head to my place still sort of shaky on the inside but a good shaky.
I’m going out.
I’m going out someplace and that’s both thrilling and terrifying.
I don’t get out much, I stay home. One for fear of just how well I pass or don’t and there just seems to be a huge difference between going out someplace socially and going to work.
Work I wear a uniform, it covers, we look pretty much the same and I frankly get lost in the sea of boxes and the other uniforms.
Depressed people get really good at hiding.
It’s so much less scary even though it hurts like hell.
Yeah…even depressed introverts like myself want to get out, it’s not like we don’t know what’s going on with us inside.
We do, oh shit we really do but we just really don’t have the tools to get out there and stay out there.
I’m suddenly between laughing and crying because of the whole stereotype irony-esque realization that hits me.
“I have nothing to wear.”
And that’s kind of sort of true too.
Just about most of my clothes fall into three categories. Work…the bulk of my stuff really because well I work and then I’m home…and that’s category two, my home clothes.
There’s things that a girl, that a woman will wear solely in the privacy of her own home…and trans women are sometimes the worst of the worst in things like that because we have things that we never had the chance or the nerve to wear outside our homes.
And then there’s my stuff for actually going out in and that’s my clothes that lead one to sort of know I’m a woman but not really stuff that says more than that.
In short I was never in the headspace that going out on a date was even possible or affordable so I never really bought date clothes.
Hence I have nothing to wear.
“Dammit Josie you have to wear something.”
And that just left me with the bad joke that’s me naked in my head.
Yeah like I need to focus on that kind of thing really.
I open my drawers and I open my closet and it’s that horrible stereotype of me looking through the things that I have trying to find things that look okay and getting a sort of stomach ache over the small but ever growing pile of things that no longer fit me.
And the fact that a lot of my stuff if just…weird and ugly.
I find some things and I go and I take a shower even though I had the breakdown cold shower with Ryan and everything I’m nervous and nervous means sweat and sweat means me in the shower and then using towels and my hair-drier to literally dry myself off so I’m not damp and then it’s close my eyes and plug my nose and do a spray down of Secret spray on deodorant.
I like the scent once it’s on but spraying it is just kind of semi eew.
Okay…I have panties and then some black leggings and I’m really, really careful getting those on because I’m well me and I’m really prone to tears or ladderings and all of that stuff then it’s a decent bra and yes they match because I’ve always been OCD about that and I have no idea if it’s a trans thing or not but it’s a me thing.
Then it’s a russet rusty colored corduroy skirt and a black scoop necked top with like the sleeve cuffs being lacy and that’s almost as fancy as I can get really and I fight with my hair some trying to do that framing my face but away from my face waves and a little eyeliner pencil and a really little bit of really blended in concealer because I’m not confident in my make-up and less is more but I’m actually going out and it’s just.
It takes me a lot longer to find my shoes and to buff them up some so they don’t look all scuffed to heck.
And too long to find my purse, not my day to day purse but my going out I have my shit together purse.
LoL well that’s what I call it not the bag of ladies junk drawer that I usually have with me.
Lipstick or no?
Lip-gloss…yeah okay, I’ll go that far.
Perfume?
Maybe a little just a little nothing I have is like really great anyway it’s mostly Mary-Kay stuff.
Okay…okay…I take a breath and I head downstairs and give the apartment a once over to make sure the back door’s locked and that nothing is on that shouldn’t be on and then another Deep breath and I step out of my door.
And wow it has to be a guy thing or a trans guy thing or even something close to that because Ryan looks great and he still looks like a he.
He’s got his hair out and loose and it’s long but it’s styled like a guy would it’s framing his face nicely and it’s sort of rocker chique and messy but not and he’s wearing nice dress pants and they’re men’s dress pants and he must be using a packer or something that keeps his crotch zone looking right, it’s not like a bulge or anything it just looks like a guy normally would look but the pants are very nice and normal and then he’s wearing an actual non-baggy shirt with no tie and the neck open a bit and I can see then necklace that he wears and stuff and real shoes.
Well okay I like women’s shoes a little but I still kind of sort of buy men’s shoes. Not that my feet are too big it’s just I’m not a person that likes the whole pointed toe shoes and goes gaga over them either. I like heels and I think that they’re pretty as heck but they are hard to walk on.
It’s not even a balance thing it’s a sort of broke thing lots of walking and too any hours on my feet in a warehouse and my feet can’t really do the heel thing for more than a few hours,
And I’m not one of those people that’d buy them and not wear them all the time.
Heck those women that bring heels and another pair of functional shoes to a date or anywhere sort of drive me batty.
I mean really?
And yeah maybe there’s some jealousy stuff too because what kind of life are they or did they get to have when they can just sort of do that stuff.
Anyways…He looks good, hell he definitely passes except for the no facial hair thing.
I’m actually surprised when he looks at me and he smiles and he looks me over in that guy looking at his date sort of facial expression and not a girl checking out my outfit sort of thing.
Yep… *Blush*
He actually comes over and passes me a wrapped rectangular thing and I look at it with a huh look and he smiles.
“Well I didn’t have time to get you flowers so is candy okay?”
“Uhm…”
He smiles some more and yeah I know but he definitely has a nice smile and he’s sort of got these kind of like impish yet friendly dimples.
There’s this little butterflyish thing going on inside my stomach but not in a bad way it’s just that and remembering the kiss, the kissing.
“Do I open it now?”
“If you want to.”
“Can I save it?”
“If you want to Josie, it’s for you. You can do whatever you want with it whenever you want with it.”
“I’m going to save it for work; it’ll be a high point in my usual.”
He nods and he walks me to his car and opens the door for me and Ryan’s car is so not like mine.
It’s not just a classic and a muscle car it’s clean.
It smells nice too like leather and armor-all spray stuff and green apple car freshener.
Wow…okay…this sounds bad, like some goofy trans stereotype but it’s nice, it’s nice when he does the door thing and it’s nice to just be able to sweep the shirt and slip into the car.
He turns the engine over and he’s got the radio tuned to one of the better light rock stations out of Detroit and we drive.
We drive for a while we just drive and it’s nice even doing that because sometimes just going for a drive is nice and it’s something it’s one of those things that I honestly never get to do and he takes us here and there and I point out some of the places that I know which aren’t a whole lot of places but at the same time I want him to kind of get a feel for the city and the area.
“You want to see a movie?”
I look at my watch. “We’d be cutting it close and I don’t know what’s playing.”
“Well that could be fun.”
“I don’t know, I mean what if there’s nothing good playing?”
“Then we see something awful and we make fun of it.”
“Really?”
Ryan laughs. “Yes Really.”
I bite at my lips a little and then mentally curse myself for doing that with lip-gloss on and then I’m kind of glad that I’m not wearing lipstick.
Sometimes I even wonder why I even bother because I really suck at it.
He’s stopping the car outside of the place on Eastport Drive and I blink and look over at him and he’s looking at me. “C’mon it’s huge we’ll find something.”
I…
Dammit woman…just do it! I’m yelling mentally at myself and it’s still scary hard but almost like I can’t help it I end up nodding yes.
Ryan smiles but y’know there’s something else there too, it’s in his eyes that he kind of gets it.
And that’s nice…it helps a lot as he comes around and gets my door and we head to the movie place and we start checking out what’s playing and where to go and there’s a lot of stuff playing and just for fun he takes me to go see “Muppets Most Wanted.”
Out and just for fun with a big thing of popcorn to share and a medium root beer and doing this.
Fun’s been a long time from now.
And when they’re opening almost right away with a musical I’m already smiling.
I missed fun.
Can Dreams Come True?...Part 11
*Before…
Dammit woman…just do it! I’m yelling mentally at myself and it’s still scary hard but almost like I can’t help it and I end up nodding yes.
Ryan smiles but y’know there’s something else there too, it’s in his eyes that he kind of gets it.
And that’s nice…it helps a lot as he comes around and gets my door and we head to the movie place and we start checking out what’s playing and where to go and there’s a lot of stuff playing and just for fun he takes me to go see “Muppets Most Wanted.”
Out and just for fun with a big thing of popcorn to share and a medium root beer and doing this.
Fun’s been a long time from now.
And when they’re opening almost right away with a musical I’m already smiling.
I missed fun.
*And Now…
I honestly have never really been on that many dates and ones that weren’t strange and awkward well like never.
Until now with Ryan.
And it’s kind of strange and it’s kind of wonderful too.
There’s this really big sense of finally with this.
It’s a bad-good movie with all of the typical cheese you’d expect from The Muppets and I laughed right near the first with that whole “bad-guy, it’s French.” Line and it was just still pretty great from there.
Touching hands was great.
Sharing smiles was great.
And when the popcorn was done Ryan slipping his fingers into my hand and us holding hands.
Oh that was really just the best part of the night.
And I know that this is going to sound like really and completely self-absorbed and kind of shitty but there was this whole thing with this being in public.
Then there’s people seeing me with someone and it’s this whole thing of see! See look at me! I’m not alone, I’m with someone and we’re on a date. I kind of want to rub the world’s nose in my date even if it’s like just a little.
And I think that Ryan’s having a good time too.
He’s smiling and we leave and head out into the parking lot and he looks at me. “You want to go for a drive?”
I nod. “Love to actually, I mean there’s not a lot to see here but I’d really like that since I never do it.”
He opens my car door for me and I smile and get in and that’s actually sort of nice even though there’s still the stuff he told me and my mind if still playing with the hows and why’s and all of the sex stuff.
Which I sort of don’t want in my head since it’s kind of rude in a whole lot of ways and it’s kind of messing with the date.
Because a date doesn’t mean sex it means a date.
And it’s been a long time since I’ve just dated.
Like lyrics from “Rocket man.” Long.
Okay…
Okay I might gripe about my town a whole lot and Michigan sometimes too as being a mix of broken, impoverished and over populated but there are times when it’s nice.
And it’s actually nice at nigh especially with Ryan driving and with they’re not from here eyes they’re showing me all of the cool things that are still around.
I work and go home and hide and sleep when I can sleep I don’t notice cool things like just how much neon signs there are here and how some of these signs are just really cool too.
I’ve never in my life driven around looking at them or trying to go and get close to them and take pictures of myself with them but we’re doing that and it’s kind of cool.
Scary and exciting and me.
Me out in the world.
He even tried to get me to go with him into this Hotel that had the Hotel neon in letters up on the roof.
I couldn’t go that far with all of this and stuff. “No…sorry I’m not doing that.” I stood there looking at everything between us and it. We had asked inside the Hotel and the guy at the desk looked at us and he had this look.
That was so just…
We headed outside and Ryan had this look on his face when he sipped on his cherry coke that was all this whole guy look of I’m going to do it.
I was too scared but I took pictures of him doing it….climbing the fence for the alley then up the fire escape and then up to the roof where he peeled off his shirt and it was just him in his sports bras but still him and not a her as he did this sort of crazy kind of slip through the letters to stand in front of them and he yelled.
“I AM IMMORTAL, I HAVE INSIDE ME THE BLOOD OF KINGS!”
“YEAH!!!”
And that’s when the guy from the front desk that was all snobby and stuff came out and he was yelling up at him and I run and hop into Ryan’s car.
The guy’s yelling. “I’m going to call the police!”
Ryan does some crazy slides down those ladders on the fire escape parts and he’s up and over the fence in a flash as he did that run and get partway up and he used his shirt to grab to top of the fence and he threw himself over it.
It was crazy and it was cool as hell and it was actually pretty hot.
Even if he kind of almost fell down the other side and the clerk is trying to catch him and Ryan’s running and dodging past him.
“You little shitbird!”
And Ryan’s like. “You don’t have to be so snooty!’
The guys’s like. “Snooty?”
And Ryan’s like. “Snotty.”
He jumps into the car as I pull up and get him and he yells out at the stuff clerk guy. “And it’s not shitbird it’s Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago!”
I’m gunning it and I chirp the tires as we pull out of there as fast as we can and I’m trying to get us out of there before the cops show up or something and it’s been never that I got to drive a car with this much power and it’s fun and my pulse is hugging in my veins and this was just crazy, just absolutely crazy right?
We drive for a while before I stop the car by this old broken down and empty building lot and I’m panting and Ryan’s panting and I look at him and he seems so happy.
“That was crazy.”
He’s just smiling at me as he says. “What you’ve never done this kind of thing before?”
“No, never I was the good girl and the introvert even before I started to transition. I’ve never done anything like this.”
“So how’s it feel?”
“Thrilling and scary.”
Ryan actually slips over the seats and he’s there all of a sudden and then he’s kissing me.
He doesn’t kiss like a girl.
And it’s amazing too.
I’m getting kissed and it’s over and over kissing and I can feel my heart start pounding faster and faster again and then his hands are on my breasts and I’m aching from the need to be touched.
I don’t get to be touched and I’m scared to be touched because I don’t know who I am yet and there’s so many horror stories about trans encounters and then there’s that voice inside of me that is always telling me no…no Josie you’re not good enough and I can feel it trying even now to tell me that I’m going to screw this up somehow.
My breasts are on fire and my clothes are too hot and they’re too tight and I feel Ryan pulling things off so he can get closer to my skin and I…I…
“Ryan no, no I can’t do this not here not where people might come and see…please.”
He nods as he’s kissing me and his eyes dance some.
I’m getting swallowed by my saying no guilt and that feeling of me screwing this up is becoming so concrete with me right now.
Then he says. “Well we could always go back to that Hotel and get a room.”
And right in the middle of this downward spiral he makes me laugh.
And it hurts my chest inside in this whole strange way to laugh when I’m spiraling because I’ve never had that and tears spill out.
I’m laughing though with the tears and life doesn’t seem like it’s so horrible and this doesn’t seem so bad with me saying no either.
I look at him. “Can we go home?”
He smiles sweetly at me. “Sure, do you know how to get us there?”
I nod and he sits back in the passenger seat and puts on his seatbelt and I start the car up and I drive us home.
It’s a quiet drive and I keep shooting him looks and he’s still pretty Ryan ad like cool and happy about all of this and stuff.
And he’s just typically guy quiet but I’m quiet not because I want to be I just don’t know what to say even if there’s a whole ton of mental rambling going on in my brain.
We get home and I park the big beast of a car and he gets out first and he gets my door and I pass him the keys so he can lock it up and then he takes my hand an he walks me to our step and he looks at me.
“Your place or mine?”
Oh…well my brain was not expecting that.
And I look at him and his hair’s a mess sort of and he’s still there in his sports bra and shirt in hand and I think that I want this, I want to know more and to be with him…I have no idea about the sex and stuff but at the same time I’m not even sure if I’m ready for it.
I swallow. “Your place.”
He smiles and he takes out the keys and he lets me in and it’s familiar so much but it’s not too. The whole situation is sort of casting the place in this whole new light.
Then he’s taking me by the hand and he’s leading me upstairs and it feels so different and like such a good thing and such a scary thing too and it’s so strange in the way that his place is actually like mine and yet it’s so not either.
There’s a lot of the old guys stuff still here and most of that is furniture and it’s that old stuff nice and sort of classic stuff. There’s lots of memorabilia around here too and things that look actually interesting including a whole lot of books and pictures and then there’s a lot of Ryan’s touches here with posters from movies and there’s art here too…like the second bedroom is art and there are paintings and there’s a bench and paints and the painting frame thingy and stretched canvas’s there too and that’s something that I didn’t know about him.
I see people and places from around here and some buildings and there’s one that’s me.
That makes me want to cry because it’s just me in my panties and my one of my baggy tee-shirts and my hair looks a mess but good the way that he did it and I’m at my window in my kitchen and I’m drinking a cup of coffee and that’s it it’s not really like erotic or like too suggestive and at the same time I look happy and peaceful in a way I’m not sure that I’ve ever really felt before and I just sort of stopped and stare at it.
“You painted me.”
He says. “Yeah actually a few times.”
I look at him. “A few times?”
He comes in and he moves a few of the paintings around and then sets them so they’re on the front of the sideways piles that he has leaning on the walls. One’s me in the back yard and I’m dirty and grass stained from doing some of the yard work and I’m in a hat with a sundress and I don’t really own neither one but I kind of want one now. I love that I’m holding dandelions like a bouquet.
Another is me getting groceries out of my car and I’m in my work stuff and I’m…I’m blushing because he made my ass look a whole lot better than it really is.
And then there’s the last one and that me from when I was asleep on his couch in a blanket and semi covered and yeah I’m still wearing clothes and everything but the way that he did my face and my hair it’s so pretty and I’m not sure that I’ve ever really felt that pretty or peaceful.
I turn and I look at Ryan and I step up and I kiss him.
He’s surprised but he returns the kiss and I kiss him over and over and I start to lead him into his other bedroom and I’m still kissing him but I start to take off my clothes as we’re going and I’m just letting them drop and I’m so scared and hot and getting those little thrill bumps and I’m in my bra and panties when we get into his room and I take the bra off and then step out of my panties and let it all just be what it is.
My a thirty plus trans woman that’s pre-op and not in the best of shape in some ways and too bulky in some others and he’s looking at me in just his black boxer briefs now and he took his sports bra on and it’s just…I sort of get it too…I can see them there under the female parts in the body language and the way Ryan stands there so matter of fact like these are my breasts and I have them…while I’m feeling so shy and wanting to sort of cover up like a girl.
Because I am a girl and he’s.
I’m still not sure but he’s actually maybe magical?
I step to him and he steps to me and we’re kissing and we’re touching and then we’re touch other spots and there’s similar physical reactions with the way the nipples swell and get hard and that seems to make me want to melt and it makes Ryan just grin and kiss me all the more.
He touches my breasts and then he’s feeling them and cupping and releasing with gentle but real squeezes and then running his palms over my nipples and dragging them like that so soft but so maddening and I can feel myself getting hard and I bite my lip and cry.
It doesn’t happen much and I’m kind of scared of it and what it means since I really doubt that it means that I’ll ever afford bottom surgery or something like that.
“Sorry…it’s just…”
He strokes it. “It’s perfect I like it Josie its part of you.”
“I… I thought that it’s maybe seem wrong to you or gay…”
“You’re a beautiful woman Josie with a penis and I’m a guy that’s very into you with a vagina. Maybe we just let things be what they’re going to be and we can just be together and just be us and not label anything but being happy.”
(Sniffle.) “Ryan my brain’s not wired that way…I don’t know how to do that.”
He kisses me and he walks me back to his bed and down onto it and we crawl until we’re all the way on and we kiss and he suckles my breasts and he gets more intense and he peels out of his bottoms to reveal a bit of darkish bush and in a world of shaved vagina’s his seems a bit more…bearded?
I want to start laughing a little and he nuzzles me and he kisses my and his hand encircled me down there and he guides me in and he says. “Easy…I’ll be gentle.”
And he is…that’s the strange and wonderful part.
I’m still so not sure about this even as Ryan’s sinking onto me but it’s just how he’s doing it.
Gentle, soft…a little back and forth like easing me in instead of a guy with a penis easing in and it’s like I’m a girl…like I’m still a woman despite all of the other stuff.
Ryan’s treating my dysphoric feelings and that edge like it’s my virginity.
And I’m crying because of the care and then I’m crying as he makes love to me.
And I’m crying because with him I’m finding myself and post op would be great but I can really and totally be me like this and feel right like this even as we’re making love and me being pre-op.
I’m alright.
I’m not broken and I’m not dreaming.
We do it twice because my first time doesn’t last long and the second time it takes a long time to get hard enough to do it but we spend so much time doing so much foreplay and making love in other ways and once I’m semi-hard he slips me in carefully and he massages me with kagel until I’m hard there again.
That time was longer and it was amazing and there was even a time when he pulled me up into his arms and held me and kissed me and pressed to me in that way that you see in the movies…only he’s straddling me and he does these hot and amazing little hip and pelvic thrusts back and forth over me really fast and all grrr like in intensity and I get to that point of sensation where what I have as a part kind of stops to be even in my brain and he gasps and I feel warms flooding around me and then getting gripped so hard by Ryan’s insides over and over and it’s so strange that there’s so much Ryan in that even that it’s him and there’s something that’s so…guy about it.
I’m hanging onto him after he gets off and I got off and I’m panting and I’m shaking and I’m crying too.
We slip back down to the bed and he adjusts his sheets so we’re mostly covered and we slowly kiss in our afterglows and touch each other and slowly but surely settle into sleep.
“Ryan….”
“Mmmm…Hold me close, I…I might freak out at some point okay but just don’t let me go?”
“I’m not going anywhere Josie, I’m not going anywhere.”