This is another true story...

Road Picture

by Storytimer

While I was going thru transition, I had a friend named, well, call her Debbie. Debbie was going through transition, too, and we kind of were a support group for each other. Debbie was short, slender and blonde--blonde to the bone sometimes.

Once, she invited me to go to the beach with her. I thought this was a pretty daring idea but it sounded like fun so I went and bought a bathing suit, a one-piece that could be used to do the necessary gaffing. I didn't look too bad in it, even if my figure wasn't great, it looked convincing with only a little padding up top. The hormones I'd been taking seemed to have done a good job, too, and my long, curly, dark brown hair helped.

I drove over to pick up Debbie and she had managed to get into a bikini with nothing showing. I just stared at her. The bitch was gorgeous. "You look great!" I said.

"Thanks," she said. "Sometimes I ride my bike wearing this."

I boggled. I knew what she would be sitting on if she rode a bike wearing that bikini. "How can you...doesn't it hurt?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, if I sit down on the bike much," she said. "So I have to peddle standing up."

"Well, yeah," I said. I decided it probably made sense if you were blonde enough.

So we headed down to the beach with a picnic basket full of diet cola and submarine sandwiches, three big towels and a boombox full of the Beatles and especially George Harrison, who was Debbie's favorite. She played guitar herself and considered George to be the best guitarist/songwriter who ever lived.

Anyway, we got to the beach and found a nice patch of grass next to the sand to put our towels on and eat our sandwiches while we watched all the weirdoes. Yeah, I know. We were having a great time; some guys were playing beach volleyball right near us and they kept looking over at Debbie and she just smiled and waved at them.

"What are you going to do if one of them comes over and asks for a date?" I asked.

"You think?" she said and batted her blue eyes at a long tall guy in olive-colored surfer jams.

I just shook my head and laughed.

"What time is it?" she asked. "We don't want to get too much sun."

"I dunno," I said. "I don't have a watch." I turned to a guy sitting near us, reading a book, and asked, "Excuse me, do you have the time?"

He was an older guy but nice looking. He looked up from his book and said in what I at first took to be a British accent, "Certainly, your place or mine?"

Well, now I know that is just a really old line but then it was the first time I'd heard it and I didn't know what to say. I just laughed and said, "No, really. Do you know what time it is?"

He grinned and said in what I decided must be an Australian accent, "No, but if you could hum a few bars I might be able to pick up the tune?"

"You're being remarkably silly," I said and laughed.

"No, it's just Mark," he said. I must have looked blonde for a moment because he explained, "My name, it's just Mark; not Re Mark Ably Silly."

I laughed again. Okay, I giggled. I told him my name and Debbie's and asked him where he was from. He pointed down the street. "I've got a flat above one of the shops," he said.

"No, that's where you live, I meant where are you from; I can't quite place that accent."

"Guess?" he said.

"New Zealand?" I guessed.

"Close, but about 8000 miles too far east."

"South Africa?"

He nodded. "But my flat is closer. Sure you wouldn't like to see it; it's got a clock?" He waggled his eyebrows at me and I giggled again.

"A clock?" I asked. Why did I always feel so blonde when I was with Debbie?

"Well, you wanted to know what time it is? We could sit there and watch it...tick, tock...tick, tock. Or, we could think of something else to do." He waggled just one eyebrow this time.

I didn't really have all that much practice flirting with men and I glanced over at Debbie for moral support. She was lying on her side, back to watching the guys play volleyball but something grabbed my attention.

Oscar Meyer had escaped the bikini! There he lay on the grass beside Debbie, like a rhinoceros in a prom gown. Worse, it was clear Debbie had been enjoying watching the guys jump around and pound the white ball.

I moved a bit to be sure I was shielding Mark from the sight and I whispered, "Debbie? You're coming out of your suit!" I swear to God she looked down at her chest! Which was almost all padding, anyway. "Not milk, think meat!" I whispered.

I looked back at Mark, while Debbie whispered, "Oh! Shit! Oh, shit!"

"She's got too much sun," I said. "Blondes," I added.

"Maybe we should take her to my flat and rub suntan oil all over her?" he suggested.

I snorted. Not very ladylike, but the picture in my head was too bizarre for a cute giggle. I tossed one of the towels over Debbie and she stood up, twisting it into a skirt. I could tell from her expression that the tight bikini was now binding like a sunnuffa; it must have felt like a tourniquet.

"I need the ladies room?" Debbie said, looking around.

I stood up too, wrapping another towel around me so maybe Debbie wouldn't look odd. I shook my head at her, mouthing silently, "No stall doors."

She got it and shook her head back. Then she stared at Mark like she had just seen him for the first time.

"Hello there," he said. "I'm Mark, in case you've forgotten."

"I'm Debbie," she said. And then she introduced me! "This is Janice. Janice, Mark..."

Mark laughed. Some time in there he had got up, too. "If you're in need of a more private bathroom, my flat really is just down the street about four blocks."

"I don't think I can make it that far," Debbie almost moaned; she must have really been in pain.

"Yeah, it'll be running down your leg by then," I said. Then clapped my hand over my mouth like I hadn't meant to say that.

Debbie stared at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Oh," said Mark. "You didn't need a clock, you needed a calendar."

"Yeah," I said. "Look, Mark, I'm sorry but we have to go."

He nodded, being what he thought was very understanding. "Let me give you my number, call me when you've got it sorted out and we can meet for some beers or something." He wrote his number on his bookmark and handed it to me and I promised I'd call that evening.

Debbie and I hotfooted it back to the car, Debbie making little whimpering noises sometimes. But when we got into the car she burst into giggles. "You made him think I was having my period!"

We both laughed. "Well, what else could I tell him?" I said.

"How embarrassing!" she complained. "What kind of airhead forgets her period and goes to the beach in a bikini?"

She sounded serious! I laughed so hard, I started having pain from my own gaff.

Debbie squirmed around on the seat and took the bikini bottom off under the towel. "Can't do that in a one piece," she smirked.

"Yeah," I said. "But I didn't need to call the rodeo clowns to put the bull back in the chute!" We both laughed like we were going to die in the morning and it was the funniest thing we'd ever heard.

I drove us back to Debbie's and we were still laughing. We changed clothes and that's when I discovered I had lost Mark's number.

"Were you really going to call him?" she asked.

"Well, I thought I might, you know? He was nice and funny...."

"He just wanted to get in your pants," she said. "And Janice, honey, he may be from Down Under but I bet he knows which way is up."

"He's not Australian, he's South African," I said weakly.

"That's what he'd like you to believe," she said.

"Huh? Why would he lie about that?"

"I dunno? Didn't you believe him?"

"No, I mean, yes, but you said...never mind." She was always doing this to me. Tail-chasing logic. If I tried to explain what she had said to her, she would just get me more mixed up.

"You sure shouldn't go out with the guy if you don't trust him," she added. And while I unraveled that, she proved that she had been reading minds. "He was just down at the beach, chasing tail, and honey, you were wiggling your little butt at him."

"I was not!"

"Were too," she grinned.

"Well, at least I didn't get a hard-on watching the volleyballers and come out of my suit!"

"Management is not responsible for the reactions of unruly staff members," she said haughtily.

That got us started laughing again. Sometimes I knew how Bing must have felt when Bob laid one of his lulus on him. Or was it the other way around? No one could really confuse either of us with the straight man in a comic act, though; we weren't exactly men and we weren't exactly straight.

We did have a lot of laughs together. A few weeks later, I picked Debbie up so we could both go to our endocrinologist in L.A. I'd been on hormones almost a year and Debbie had been taking them for about three months.

We were on the Golden State freeway heading into downtown when Debbie started talking about the hormones and their effects. "How big are you now?" she asked.

"Almost a C," I bragged.

"Well, you started out with A cups," she complained.

I shrugged. I'd had little titties ever since I'd been twelve and they were finally growing, I'd finally get to be a big girl--a bit of payoff for going through the hell of junior high and high school locker rooms. "How about you?" I asked. "Anything yet?"

And right there, while we're doing fifty in the middle lane, she pulled up her blouse to show me! "They're getting all pointy," she said smugly.

I heard a horn blowing and I looked out the window past Debbie. A car that had been right next to us was now two lanes away, swerving wildly and heading back our way. "Debbie! You're going to get us killed, put your shirt back down!"

She did then turned to see what I'd been looking at. A car full of guys with their necks craned paced alongside, the driver flashing a grin every time he glanced at us. "Were they watching?" she asked.

"Yeah!" I said.

"Wow," she said. Then she lifted her blouse again, turning so they could see better!

It sounded like more cars had gotten a view, horns honking and tires squealing. "Debbie! Holy Cow!" I yelped. "I can't believe you did that!"

"I can't either," she giggled. "Why are they so excited, they're just pointy little nubs?"

"They don't care about that!" I said. "There's a crazy woman on the freeway flashing her tits!"

Now the guys were back after another swerve to the far lanes and a swoop back to pace position. They began to signal that she should do it again. Fearing that she might, I floored it and my little Maverick managed to outrun the overloaded Corolla full of disappointed college guys. We laughed all the way into L.A. and back.

A few weeks later we were making the same trip again when a car pulled alongside us on my side. The passenger motioned that I should roll down the window and I did, thinking he might be going to tell me the car had caught fire or something.

"How about a pizza?" he shouted over the wind and road noise.

"What, now?" I asked, confused.

"Next exit," he said. "We'll buy."

"Wow, pizza?" said Debbie. "I am kinda hungry."

I frowned at her then looked back at the guy half hanging out of the window of a classic Mustang. "We can't," I shouted. "We've got appointments in L.A. Thanks anyway."

"We could eat real fast," Debbie suggested behind me. I ignored her and started rolling up the window. The guys shook their heads and waved at us as they swooped in front of Bluebird, the Maverick, to take their exit to pizza.

Later, after we had seen the doctor, gotten blood tests and hormone shots, we headed back to the car. "Want to stop somewhere and eat before we go home?" I asked.

"We could have had free pizza," Debbie said, "but you turned those guys down."

"I was afraid that they were two of the same ones you flashed your tits at last month," I said, deadpanning.

"You think they were?" she asked, ready to believe it.

"No, I don't think so," I said. "They probably just heard about the crazy blonde in the little blue car, showing her tits to everyone on the freeway."

She laughed, realizing now that I was kidding. "Maybe I'm famous?" she said.

"Probably," I agreed. We went and had salads at a Greek hamburger joint and giggled about the Legend of the Flasher on the Five.

Who knows, she might have been famous among college guys; infamous or notorious, more likely.

Two or three months later, Debbie called me and said, "I want to come pick you up and drive into L.A. this time?"

"Are you sure?" I said. "The last time we took your Bug downtown, we had to have it towed."

"I've got a new car," she said and fifteen minutes later she showed up in a brand new BMW sedan, one of the big ones!

"Where did you get this?" I asked when she had unlocked the passenger door for me to get in.

"My boyfriend loaned it to me, mine's in the paint shop," she beamed at me. She loved Volkswagen Beetles and had owned five of them in the year or so I'd known her. They kept breaking down and she kept getting them fixed and painted and selling them for more than she had spent on them.

"You've got a rich boyfriend now?" I boggled.

"Uh huh," she said. "He's got two more cars and he said I could keep this one till mine is out of the shop. Cool, huh?"

"Really," I said. "What did you have to do to get him to loan you a car like this?"

"Nothing," she said.

"You mean you haven't had sex with him or anything?" I asked.

"Nope," she said. "I told him I don't sleep with married men."

"He's married!" I boggled again. "So he doesn't know that...you're still in transition?"

"No, I haven't told him that."

"What do you do together?"

She shrugged. "We talk." She giggled. "He calls me his 'sport model'."

"That really sounds like he intends to sleep with you," I pointed out. "You may be his sport model but he doesn't realize you're a convertible."

She kept laughing about that line all the way to L.A. and back. A few days later she was back driving her Bug with a new bright yellow paint job she had come over to show off.

"Nice," I said. "What happened to the rich boyfriend's loaner?"

"I had to give the car back," she explained. "His wife saw me driving her Mercedes."

I boggled a bit. "Why were you driving her Mercedes instead of the Beamer he loaned you?"

"Well," she said. "He had to go pick her up at the airport and she asked him where the Beamer was since she hadn't seen it for awhile, so he wanted to go to the airport in it to show it to her, but I still needed a car so he let me drive hers. I was supposed to meet him at the carwash to swap back but I forgot and drove to his house...."

"Stop!" I said. I shook my head. "What kind of moron lets his girlfriend drive his wife's car? And what kind of airhead drives her boyfriend's wife's car to his house?"

She giggled. "I just forgot. He was going to start getting too serious, anyway."

"Debbie," I said, "you haven't finished becoming a woman yet and you're already the other woman."

That was years ago. We still laugh about this stuff when we see each other. We both got married after transition and our spouses know all about us and that's okay with them. We don't see each other every few days anymore, sometimes it's months between. But when we do get together, we remember our journey to a destination we'd been wanting to reach all our lives--we remember when life was a road picture.

And we laugh.