STEALTH: The Dark Side of Transsexual

by Aimee Norin

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 by Aimee Norin. All rights reserved. Thank you for downloading this eBook. This novel is the property of Aimee Norin, yet it is FREE and you are welcome to share it with friends and students. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed among individuals, in classrooms, and for other non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Quotes or brief passages may be used commercially per fair use. For larger concerns, please email Aimee Norin at aimeenorin@gmail.com

This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons living or dead is coincidental, including but not limited to the protagonist, other transpersons, family and friends, the Knapp Assistance Foundation, news media channels and networks, organizations and clubs, et cetera.

This novel is for mature understanding. Language, sex, and violence, sometimes herein, are not recommended for minors.

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Stealth: The Dark Side of Transsexual

By

Aimee Norin

Begin Reading

Preface

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

About the Author

Contact the Author

Other Novels by Aimee Norin

For Kay Knapps among us.

Speaking out

Would conflict

With the need.

“People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”

Soren Kierkegaard

Journal

February 1836

PREFACE

Stealth: The Dark Side of Transsexual is not about any person in particular. I set the novel in places with which I am familiar, so I could write the story, and so it would purposefully not reflect on anyone’s life situation. My effort is to protect the privacy of stealth transsexuals who have confided in me over the years.

Many stealth transsexuals have experienced similar issues in life: psychic pain from feeling so horribly wrong, abuse or rejection from family or friends for being so different, bending rules to obtain S.R.S. at a young age, falling in love and living with someone whose associates can be cruel, and not knowing how to navigate situations, making life more difficult by mishandling things.

Stealth: TDST is not about things working out well after transition. There are many stories of trans people who lead happy, fulfilling lives, but this novel is a story of someone with continuing difficulty. At the time of this novel, she is in crisis with several life issues coming to the fore at the same time. Living stealth and under siege, she fears a great many things. Usually the one others come to for advice, she must forge her own new ground with little help. She is scared and lost, not knowing which way to go.

Many people view living stealth romantically as an ideal or as more successful than it may be, I feel, a view that misses issues which can be very difficult for stealth trans to endure. While living stealth may be crutial to a person’s need to be herself, while she may feel closer to her goal, while it may be all she wants—I’ve transitioned, it’s done, now just live—there are a few major issues that can be created or perpetuated by being steath.

For one, if living under the radar without trans as a topic for herself in life, when someone wrongs her, she cannot defend or stand up for herself if an issue could lead to her revelation. This adds a level of pain in her life that stacks on top of everything else, making her life harder to bear. And in addition, if a cruel person sees she does not stand up for herself, she may be seen as an easy victim for more. Over decades, this can become significant.

For another, she can’t connect with herself on a topic she conceals, nor can she connect with others very well because of it, even if that topic is not on the table, because it is such a major part of her life. People are born with a gender, and being mis-assigned at birth because of external features is a very major thing—internally excrutiating because of the mind/body incongruence, compounded by a million other things in life that result. If she’s stealth, she may have very few places to discuss it. She may not want to, either, at first. But as the decades roll by, she may find it pressing—to not be able to share a major part of her life, childhood traumata, or her need to be recognized as a survivor.

And for another, there can be the problem of getting the message, such as through childhood abuse—which is all too common with trans people—that she is deeply not okay because of her transness. Living stealth, she prevents herself from getting kinder, positive messages from other people about her transness as she moves through life. And let their be no mistake, conveying a message to trans girls and trans boys that they must not be themselves is serious emotional abuse, no less paiful or damaging than physical abuse, beatings, molestation, or rape. Being stealth, not allowing the topic for discussion through her life, she may prevent herself from re-learning that she is, in fact, a very good person to her core, including her transness, wonderful, even beautiful. She may think she is okay in her head. Others may compliment her. She may be successful in a lot of things. But missing other people convey that positive message to her directly in life, about her transness, makes it extremely difficult to moderate an underlying, persistent, internalized message that can remain through life: I am not okay; I am disgusting; I should be humiliated to be myself.

Sometimes what happens, when someone has been stealth for a few decades, she begins to resolve some of her feelings, sees how society is loosening up a little, and she may long to simply be able to be “true” with others about her major life issues, only to be stopped by her intense, underlying feeling that she would also be revealing to others how horrible she is. This happens to some in stealth, and the perpetuating internal conflict can be painful.

My message to stealth trans who, after years, are beginning to feel this conflict, who want to be open with so many important things in life yet who fear their own feelings or the reactions of others:

That internal feeling is not knowledge; it is child abuse.

That certainty inside, based on a thousand things that have convinced you your transness is no good—your parent beating you over it, ridicule, disapproval, kids at school who teased, being beaten by someone—is not the truth. It is ignorance or prejudice. Your feeling is real, but it is not true that you are bad, negative, disgusting, someone who should be shunned. It is not true that you are unworthy, ugly or shameful. It is not true that you should be humiliated to be yourself.

A lot of people I find living stealth over the long-term have these issues, deep inside where they don’t talk about them: difficulty or inability to connect well with others; inability to stand up for themselves when wronged; happy with some aspects of life yet with the persistent belief they are deeply not okay in this area, a left-over feeling from before.

In all of this, I am not trying to dissuade someone from being stealth if that is her preference. I am trying to speak up for those who do not feel they can speak up for themselves, to share understanding and, hopefully, gain compassion.

This novel is the story of one such stealth transsexual, revealing what she has suffered and of her growth into a new era in her life. It is an exposé of kinds of things rarely shared but which are experienced by some. As well, this novel is fiction; the exposé aspect is in the storyline, not in any revelation of real life persons or institutions.

“Stealth,” as used in this novel, is not meant to describe someone who is undetectable in transition—unreadable—but, instead, is meant to describe someone who lives below the radar, whose effort is to blend in, who is extremely private about transition, and who will work to regain that privacy if exposed. The term began to be used in trans communities in the 1980s and was further popularized in the 1990s with the use of the F-117 Nighthawk “Stealth Fighter” and the B-2 Spirit “Stealth Bomber” in the Gulf War. Trans’ use for “stealth” follows the same principles as the airplanes. No aircraft is completely unreadable by radar. All can be read if they get too close to a radar or if they fly in a manner that exposes a readable element of the aircraft to that radar, and if they are exposed, steps are taken to attempt to regain stealth.

There are some issues Regina Isler faces in Sliders that are relevant for Kay Knapp as well, such as examples in Sliders, through the three SECTIONS, of years- or decades-long gender swings post-transition, and, in Chapter 1, of a plastic surgeon enabling denial and selling his procedures, etc. Such things, where relevant for Kay, are usually mentioned in Stealth, yet Kay’s story is her own, and in Stealth, other issues are presented in focus.

MEDICAL: Chapter 2, with a little from Chapter 1, gives some reasons why the mecical system reinforces Kay’s distrust of physicians, as a stealth transsexual, and shows a few reasons why she misrepresents herself to them.

LEGAL: Chapters 11 and 16 contrast one set of lawyers with another on issues of assault and marriage. Chapter 16, particularly, is an example of her own lawyer distorting information to Kay, trying to take advantage of her for money.

It may seem that too many things happen to Kay in this novel, good and bad. Certainly, this many things, or these kinds of things, are not generally heard-of. But events shared herein do span decades and are actually few compared to day-to-day and year-to-year events that can occur in a stealth transsexual’s life who is “under siege,” such as Kay. The focus of the novel’s incidents are kinds of things that can happen over decades. Though they are events inspired and fictionalized from the lives of multiple real stealth transsexuals, Kay is not a protagonist who has several times a usual number of events in her life. It is common for many things to collect in any single person’s life of this nature.

It should be noted this is a novel, fiction, and does not give legal or medical advice. Characters represented are flawed human beings, growing through important personal and social issues, both of which evolve over time. Sometimes they are pleased with decisions; sometimes they make mistakes and do things they later regret; sometimes they learn to rephrase—in short, they learn from life. It is a novel. Please always seek qualified professionals for medical or legal advice.

As is usual with me, acronyms can be pronounced by how they’re written, herein. If an acronym’s letters are written together, without periods, then I’m sharing it as a word. Example: “DOMA” is pronounced “DOH-ma.” If an acronym has periods in it, then I’m sharing it spoken as a string of letters, such as “G.R.S.,” pronounced “gee-ar-ess.”

Aimee Norin

CHAPTER

1

The Palos Verdes peninsula angled into the San Pedro Channel, south of Los Angeles, about twenty miles from Catalina Island at its closest point. Long, early morning shadows of buildings and cliffs stretched over the ocean to end mid-channel.

Waters were cool in the Channel, flowing in a large current southeast from Alaska along the coast of the western United States, which in turn cooled a soft breeze that drifted eastward over the current and up the western cliffs of the peninsula, through palm trees and into Keiko Knapp’s front window—the little one, beside the large picture window in her study.

The air was as fresh as the scene before her, but Kay could barely smell it. She watched a sailboat, four miles out, emerge westward from a building’s shadow into the morning sun.

She felt sick to her stomach.

God give me life!

Kay sat her morning coffee-cup-of-tea on her desk, without sipping it.

She closed her eyes for a second and took a breath. She tried to imagine home, health, and happiness, but it did little to calm her nerves.

Me, on Miramar, with marines—by myself, without Wayne.

Fears ran through her, painful scenarios she could be made to face with them. She had to go to Marine Corp Air Station Miramar for a two-day visit, down by San Diego—the site of the movie “Top Gun,” back in 1986, a naval air station at the time, and the site of the Navy’s real TOPGUN air base, back in the day. It was early October, and Miramar was having their annual air show over the weekend. Kay had gotten herself invited for the Friday private show because of her husband’s company’s work with them on various projects over the years, including the F-35 Lightning, more recently.

She checked her watch.

I need to leave in thirty minutes. I have one stop to make along the way.

Will they know about me there? And if they do, are they hosting me so they can stare?

“God!” Her stomach hurt. She took a sip of tea in the hope it would help and rubbed her tummy with her fingers.

Kay feared change, any more, and groups were the worst. When something in a group changed, it could act as a catalyst, and other people in the group tended to change, as well. In this case, her husband passed away two-and-a-half years ago, so instead of being with him, instead of him being the center of attention, her on his arm, she was alone, and any suspicion would spotlight her. She hadn’t been back since.

She rubbed her tummy some more.

They’re the United States Marines!

They’ve got to be the worst!

But I have to go!

She searched for resolve, and the answer presented itself again. It was clear. She needed Wayne’s memory—there, on Miramar, in the Officers’ Club—more than she feared the marines. She had to go.

The house was chilly. She hadn’t turned the heat on—

And here I am with the window open.

She rubbed her arms with her hands, got up to go to the kitchen for something to eat—maybe something warm—but on opening the cabinet she felt sick and turned back to her desk, plopping into her office chair.

She held her still-warm coffee-cup-of tea.

No food!

Stare out the window, she told herself.

Calm down.

Shadows were slowly creeping east across the ocean toward Marina Del Rey, Venice, and Los Angeles to her north. Even the Pacific Palisades were visible beyond Santa Monica. It was a clear outside. Everything in Kay’s view had that faded-but-warm look of a still autumn day. The cliffs below her, down to the sea, were a rich brown and green. The sea breeze brought that soft, salty air into her soul.

Life.

She closed her eyes.

Every day is new. The channel is new. The air is new. I am okay—

She opened her eyes.

Baloney!

She didn’t believe anything was new.

She pressed on her tummy a little. There was nothing to be done about it, the feeling in her gut. It had been there most of her life. Only it was worse since her denial faded several years ago, and worse still since Wayne passed, since she had begun to face life’s increasing pressures without him.

Tears began to fall over her still face.

She felt so tired.

I don’t have the energy to keep this up—

She was sad, chronically, any more, no longer trying to connect with people. It wasn’t the downer belief that she was no good, in itself. Other than the state of her physical sex, her feelings about herself were not low, in general. Her sadness was resignation in acceptance that she was, indeed, different enough that most people treated her like something worthy of curiosity, at best, and gossip, abuse, or worse—

Never mind that! She swore to herself. Just “worse.”

Not that!

Kay shook that thought out of her head.

I won’t go there!

Another tear formed.

So what should I do? She asked the cosmos.

Should I dismiss things and live in a fake-happy world? Pretend?

Or should I learn from my experience at some point?

She used her shirtsleeve to wipe tears off her face.

So the view out her front window was, in fact, not new, she affirmed for herself; it was recycled. The current flowed clockwise around the northern Pacific to the U.S., to Japan and back, and the air was only fresh because it had been cleansed by rain over that same ocean.

Though it was beautiful.

Nothing wrong with being recycled.

Thank you, God, for my blessings.

She turned on her computer, an old Windows 7 unit. She’d had a stalker for thirty years; she didn’t trust cloud-based systems. That’s all she’d need: someone, stalker or whomever—for hate, fun, or profit—hack a company’s systems, connect her to Wayne or the Foundation, and blast it on the internet or accuse her of something.

Kay was very private.

Lay low.

When the computer came up, Kay started Firefox and checked her email. She was in the mood to talk with Lourdes in Missouri, another stealth transsexual. Lourdes used to be wracked by fear in Los Angeles, until some guy in Missouri set her straight. And now she married him?

Missouri?

She could use a few good words from Lourdes.

Get it together, Kay.

Wish, hope— Ah!

There was nothing from Lourdes that morning.

The first email was from Liz, instead.

Liz had cut Kay off, the only local “friend” Kay had left, gone like the others. And the thing was, Kay had predicted it and walked right into it. When Liz mentioned that her family was coming to visit from Florida, who had never visited Liz before, Kay feared that Liz’ family would add new variables, that someone there may read Kay, tell Liz, and then Liz would no longer be able to pretend she didn’t know.

Game over.

The loss of a “friendship.”

I should have avoided Liz the whole time they were here.

Then maybe Liz wasn’t a real friend.

How low, Kay felt, that it mattered, anyway.

Kay had known rejections her all her life, since she was a child, and she’d always struggled to find a way to try to keep a friend, looking for any feeble way to reach out to them when they distanced.

She knew from experience she couldn’t tell the friend, outright, about her own sexuality, because that would (1) invite a period of curiosity and disclosure, followed closely by (2) their distancing and Kay’s humiliation, at the least. That had happened every time, even when she got their prior agreement that it wouldn’t. And after decades of trying new things, she’d settled on trying to maximize her chances of the friend returning by barely touching the real truth of the matter, just enough to inspire thought, while at the same time suggesting discretion and offering something face-saving to help them come back, if they ever chose to. In essence, to help a light bulb go on in their head, yet still allow them to pretend they don’t know.

That didn’t work, either, but Kay felt it had a better chance than nothing.

Stealth is such a pain!

But maybe Liz would come back?

Some day?

She shook her head. She truly didn’t think so.

Habitually, she turned things over in her mind, trying to figure them out.

Is it really my sexuality, that wigs Liz out?

Could it be my heritage, instead?

Of Japanese descent on her father’s side, Kay was as American as anyone else, born and raised in California. She was cute, of average height, longish straight, dark brown hair just below the shoulders.

No, she thought. Liz never minded the Japanese part of me. I don’t think it’s that.

Resigned to do her best, Kay clicked the icon to send an email.

Don’t let on what you suspect.

Be cool, inviting, forgiving without saying.

Don’t STATE anything outright she may give to friends!

Offer her a way to save face.

To: Liz

Cc/Bcc:

Subject: How are you doing?

Hello Liz,

I wanted to ask you if everything is allright, because I haven’t heard from you since that last dinner we shared with your family, before they went back to Florida. I haven’t seen you since. I’ve called twice and emailed three times. You were very brief with me on the phone, and you haven’t returned my emails.

So are you okay, hon?

Kay

Kay pressed “Send” and looked at the screen. It said it sent, and didn’t indicate a problem.

She took the next email. It was from a gal, Chun. This one was trouble. Her email was short:

Kay: We’re friends. It was a good lunch.

Chun

Kay had found Chun at a local university, thirty-some years ago. A Chinese-American, OB/GYN, M.D., Ph.D., she was a young researcher who ran a fertility clinic. Kay had gone to her to ask if there were any way she could become pregnant, sometime. Chun got all her good secrets, studied her, and concluded that it would be possible—saying something about an omental ectopic pregnancy—but that no human subjects committee would approve of it.

Chun seemed like a very good person, quick of wit, congenial. Over time, one thing led to another, and Chun was invited into Kay’s circle. Chun, who was sworn to protect Kay’s medically-acquired information, had appeared trustworthy.

Joi, the rest of the golf group, and Chun had gotten along well, but then, one day, early this century, Kay noticed a shift in the way Joi regarded her.

Immediately, Kay knew what it was—or suspected.

Joi disappeared.

Other ladies quit calling.

It seemed Chun had talked.

Kay asked Chun, who denied then later admitted the disclosure. The women, in general, in the golf group, had not been shunning Kay, yet Chun’s gossip and Joi’s changed attitude appeared to be a catalyst for change in the group.

Kay was humiliated and quit golfing with them, or anything else with them.

Then Joi re-emerged later, swearing no one knew anything at all, asking Kay to come back, and Kay had been trying to avoid that mine field ever since, a problem because those ladies knew other people Kay knew.

Chun began to disappear and would discontinue contact for long stretches of time, only to reappear for some reason, reassert friendship as if nothing had happened—even ask Kay for more personal information. “I’m totally confidential, now. You can trust me.”

And I would fall for it every time.

Not all my fault; Chun lies to me, tells me she’s a better friend than she is, and keeps things from me...

But I should know better. Other people’s secrecy, nondisclosure, distance? That person is hiding from me. So why do they want me to share?

Stay away from her!

Don’t piss her off. She’ll gossip even more.

Distance casually.

To: Chun

Cc/Bcc:

Subject:

I’m catching up on some things. I’ll let you know.

Kay

Kay clicked “Send” and wondered if she made a mistake.

So is Chun a good person, though not good for me, who is manipulating me? Or is she actually a friend who just doesn’t get it yet?

Disclose more so she’ll learn?

Disclose less, because she’s not going to get it, and she may gossip with what he learns.

Kay was astonished with herself.

I’LL NEVER LEARN!

The next email was from yet another board member of the yacht club Wayne and Kay had been in for years—the one with Liz. Like the others, this board member was wondering why Kay had quit the club.

Because I’m tired of being snubbed, is the truth of it.

Kay had already told them a few times that she was gone, and for bland, benign reasoning.

She thought about Liz’ involvement. She nodded to herself. She did not blame Liz for their actions, in particular, though. Liz was not a catalyst for their change, because they were already shunning Kay for years, without Liz’ help.

And now they’re bugging me when I try to leave?

Why won’t you people leave me alone!

She hastily clicked the “Reply” field.

To: Lucie

Cc/Bcc: <boardmembers>

Subject: Leave me alone

I’ve quit the club. I moved on. Why won’t you leave me alone?

Because they want me to say they didn’t do anything.

I left the club because I’ve moved on. I’ve never connected with the people there. Proof: I have a nice house on the cliffs, here. I had a good husband, good marriage. I became your historian, tried to get involved. We have both enjoyed cruising to the islands with you.

But none of you ever came over, not once, not when I invited you, not even when we had meetings at a member’s home.

Either you’re not warm, or you’re not warm to me—and, no, don’t start emailing me to ask what I mean! Just leave me alone. Please.

I’m quite hurt by this. I have been for years. Please leave me alone and stop emailing me.

Kay

Kay clicked “Send” before she had time to think about it, and then wished she hadn’t. She was too tired for more fighting. She should have just said—nothing. She’d quit the club via email, and that was sufficient. She overreacted. She should have let it go! Ignored them! They’d have stopped sooner or later. She may have caused more trouble for herself and given them a reason to think she’s a nut.

“I’m tired of not being able to defend myself!”

Goddamnit!

She caught herself.

Hush!

Her hand went to her mouth and she looked around her house.

Don’t say things like that out loud!

She looked habitually in the corners and along the ceiling line for signs of a bug. She’d swept the house as well as she could for them, after the break-in, bought scanners, inspected light sockets … but she didn’t hire a professional sweeper this time, because of the way they took her for a ride the last time.

She knew they’d been in her house.

I was not good enough to marry Wayne, in their eyes, an embarrassment to the company.

Chun has no idea how people really react.

Kay got up to pace her office, turning tight circles before she caught herself.

She looked out the large picture window again for sustenance. She tried to calm herself.

Mischief, abuse, intrusions, burglary, assaults—

Nobody knows about that!

And now Wayne’s gone—

Tears came again. She went to the kitchen to splash some water on her face and returned to her desk in the study.

Thank you, God, for our home.

She wiped her face with her sleeve, yet cried even more.

She went back to the kitchen for a towel.

I could sell everything! Move!

But where would I go?

There were three more emails from other stealth transsexuals Kay sort-of corresponded with at times, but there was nothing from Lourdes.

I need to go.

She closed the browser on her computer in disgust, shut the computer off, and pushed the button to close the drapes over the picture window of her study.

She turned to go upstairs to their bedroom to pack.

The house she walked through was nicely, if sparsely, furnished, but it was all closed. The curtains or blinds were closed in every room, even out to the private back yard.

Kay was careful to always walk around her home dressed because her stalker would love to have a nude photo of her to put up on the internet somewhere. She always dressed in the dark or in the walk-in closet. She never made important phone calls from within the house, in case they were listening. She avoided Wayne’s business associates when ever possible. She tried to avoid anything in life that could put a spotlight on her. She was careful.

I’m not allowed to embarrass them!

This wasn’t paranoia; this was life with a motivated stalker, with people who wanted to prove Wayne made a mistake, marrying a “pervert.” They seemed motivated to hurt Kay back, the way her mere presence had hurt their reputations in life.

A private investigator who worked with her latest attorney had told her that, with this kind of intrusion that had happened at least twice they could confirm, that was motivated by hate, Kay could never know if the home was bugged or not, because one way a bug could work was to record things and then at some periodic interval—maybe once every few days or so, in the middle of the night—send a burst transmission to convey data. This kind of device would be hard to detect and impossible to find. A scanner wouldn’t do it.

And it was illegal to buy a jammer.

Kay was disgusted.

People sometimes think transsexuals are accepted more if they “pass” better, but Kay did not believe that to be the case. It’s true, Kay felt, in some kind of general sense, but it depends as much on where someone integrates, and how deeply so. Her own life story was a testament. Stealth transsexuals tend to “woodwork,” to blend in more, fly below the radar, as it were. With that may come a greater social integration in some ways, but it may also bring a strong pushback from conservative-minded people convinced her very nature was offensive, who resent the intrusion.

She had wondered if threats from the stalker would decline in coming years, now that Wayne had died, but the lawyer told her not to expect that, because the motivation appeared to be hate and revenge, rather than gain.

Or was the lawyer trying to keep me on the line as a revenue stream?

People lie to me.

She put her overnight bag on a table in the bedroom and checked its contents: simple, enough for two days away. Nothing nice: She didn’t wear dresses any more. That was when she was newer, back in the 1970s, early ‘80s when she was more ultrafem. During the 1980s, and 1990s, she wore jeans, for the most part—a little more butch than she had been before. And since then, she didn’t seem to lean either direction. Her gender expression, while distinctly “woman,” had settled between her two prior swings in transition. Kay felt her gender expression growing up was held artificially to one side, and that years-long swings were to be expected.

She packed one extra pair of jeans and two shirts, other essentials.

I must have been down right ugly—like for maybe twenty years straight, there, in the middle, she thought. How could Wayne have loved me?

Because— Because that was him. He loved me for who I am. He did not despise me for what I am. He was secure in his own heart. He did not worry about what other people thought.

Remarkable.

He was Wayne.

I miss him!

Kay felt shame in covering her face again with her hands—a failure—but the truth was that her heart was breaking.

“Wayne! I need you!” she said out loud.

She walked into the master bathroom and dried her face with a towel.

Her mascara was a wreck. She wiped most of it off.

She rubbed her stomach, again. She hadn’t eaten breakfast. She felt like she hadn’t eaten in a week, and maybe she hadn’t.

Who cares?

She cried the whole time she checked her camera feed system, carefully setting the alarm—always making sure the code she used alternated, so oils on the finger wouldn’t indicate which were specific keys used—

God, please help me.

I can’t go on like this.

She went out into the car, putting her bag in the trunk of the five-year-old Jaguar XF.

CHAPTER

2

“Keiko Knapp?” the doctor asked of her when he entered the examination room. “Kay with a ‘K’?”

Kay was sitting uncomfortably on the examination table, as always. She was never comfortable, any more, with doctors.

Seem calm.

“You’ve known me for six years, Jeff,” she said to him.

“Habit,” Dr. Jeff said. “I go into a room, I check to make sure it’s the right one. God forbid I’d get it wrong when I have to urinate.”

Kay smiled in spite of herself.

“Ah, good.” Dr. Jeff acted like he made a medical note. “Patient smile reflex, operative.” He looked at her critically. “Your blood pressure is a little high.”

Because I worry about electronic medical records. I want to know what’s in there. I want to know if they call me “transgender” in physician notes—I am not transgender!—or if they’ve used the D.S.M.—Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—code for gender dysphoria. Archaic American Psychiatric Association vote themselves a paycheck with it, for billing. None of them seem to understand transsexualism.

Why isn’t there a sex-orientation dysphoria category?

“I think it’s the doctor’s office.”

Change the subject.

“Is my knee all healed?” Kay asked.

Dr. Jeff sat his laptop on a table and turned it so she could see. “All fixed up. Your surgeon did a fine job.”

“Medial meniscal tear,” Kay said.

“It was right there,” Dr. Jeff showed her on the screen.

My medical records are bouncing through airwaves into computers.

Could Orin’s doctors, a harassing executive at Wayne’s former company, if as unethical as off-duty police or private investigators Orin has hired in the past, pull up my medical records and get my information for him, give him my secrets, the law be damned?

I’ve never been able to find out how to learn who all has accessed my record! If his doctors looked, I’d never know!

“About right here,” Dr. Jeff said, pointing to Kay’s knee on his laptop screen. “Let me see?”

Kay pulled her pants leg up over her right knee to show Dr. Jeff the tiny scars from her arthroscopy, eight weeks ago.

“So you need to take it easy with gymnastics or mountain climbing, or whatever you did to it.” He looked at her with concern.

“Walking in the back yard,” she said.

“That’s all?”

Kay nodded. “I remember hurting it. That’s all I did.”

“What did the surgeon say?”

“You don’t know?”

What’s not in my records?

“Electronic Medical Records? E.M.R.?” Kay asked. “You doctors have access to a secret data base that I’m not allowed to see, even though it’s about me.”

“You asked, and we gave you copies of your medical records.”

Evasive.

“I got them, from you, here. At least what looks like most of them. But why can’t I see them for myself on the computer?”

“I don’t make the rules,” Dr. Jeff said.

“Copout.”

“Very true.”

“And you remember that one doc I told you about from a year-and-a-half ago? The new one to me who came into the exam room and immediately on entry said, ‘I know about you, and I don’t like you,’ who then refused to treat me? That’s real, Jeff. That happened.”

And there have been other problems I haven’t shared.

Dr. Jeff looked concerned. “I remember.”

“What did that bad doctor know about me from that record? ‘Cause I didn’t know him, and I didn’t get my copies when I asked for them.”

And what about other doctors or hospitals in the future? What did that bad doc put into my record?

Don’t ask. Jeff won’t see a basis for prying.

“That guy is the only one of the eight of you I polled who refused to give me even partial copies.”

“He can’t do that,” Dr. Jeff said. “There are laws. HIPAA, for one.”

“Do you really think I’m naïve enough to believe laws stop personal issues? I know there are laws. I called the Medial Board, and they said the same thing. What that doctor did was avoid sending me any copies, by claiming he already did it.”

Don’t tell him what all you’re thinking. Stop it! Make nice!

Dr. Jeff appeared to think. “Ask the Medical Board to get them for you? File a complaint?”

No!

“I guess I could,” Kay pretended, pleasantly, with a smile.

If I file a complaint with the Medical Board, they will help me get the copies, but (1) I doubt he’d supply all of them anyway, and (2) would he give his copies to them to give to me, on purpose to embarrass me? I’m private! And if I file a complaint against him, he may add false information into my file as pre-self-defense. It has happened elsewhere.

Why do I worry about him—

Oh. Chun. And other doctors over the years, Kay had to admit to herself.

Goddamn unethical doctors and inaccessible records!

“Just ask him again, and see what he does? What doctor was it?” Dr. Jeff asked.

Kay thought rapidly.

How could you not know? Do you guys lie about how extensive your E.M.R. is?

“Now, it’s information. If I name him, it’s gossip. I don’t like to spread people’s business, Jeff,” Kay said.

Maybe Jeff’s a nice man who doesn’t gossip?

Or maybe he’s a “nice” man who would gossip, if it’s about me.

“So how are you doing otherwise?” Dr. Jeff asked.

“Fine.”

“Bullshit. I’m learning,” he said.

“That is a positive, Jeff.”

Act comfortable with him.

She gave him a high five.

“Like with my knee, I am careful with every step I take,” Kay said to him. “All my life. Or I try to be. I have to be. I make mistakes, but it’s a practiced habit. I try to make sure I don’t hurt myself, or allow myself to be hurt. If I am careful, I do more or less okay. I seem strong, but I can be easily hurt. I’m very thankful for every day.”

“That’s not very detailed metaphor.”

“I used to trust doctors a lot more, when our conversations were private. The ‘80s to now? It’s like day compared to night.” she risked saying, always looking for some doctor with whom maybe she could be honest, again.

Jeff seems good, overall, so far, but—

Give him something.

“My arms are long,” she let them fall for him, then raised her shoulders up and back, slightly. Her arms appeared to lengthen an inch, then shorten an inch.

His eyes widened.

“There’s a little detent there,” she said. “Maintaining just a little tension in those muscles, puts my shoulders there and my arms appear an inch shorter. But still, I can’t find blouses easily.”

“You hold ‘em there all the time?” Dr. Jeff was amazed.

Kay nodded. “Yes.” She looked sad. “All the time. Why do you think I wear these long-sleeved shirts, untucked, all the time?”

“Because you like them?”

“God no. To hide my arms and butt. It’s because I’d rather look a little sloppy than display my huge arms and narrow behind which are,” she paused, “not features people like me would care to have. They’re less passable than they were when I was younger, too.”

He’s doing okay with this, so far. Squeeze in a little more:

“Someone like me: You can’t interpret me well, with what you generalize from other people. There are unusual specifics, here.”

Dr. Jeff nodded. “And your butt gets flatter as you age?”

“That part, you can.”

Dr. Jeff nodded to himself. “Sometimes putting on weight helps make it bigger—”

“That’s more for natal females. For me, my weight carries higher on my abdomen and body, making my figure worse if I gain weight. So I must not.”

I know he knows. Be sweetness and light in this doctor’s office.

“Which I am not in denial about, but which I consider private, thank you for your discretion.”

“So are you unhappy about your gender expression, the way it is?” Dr. Jeff asked.

D.S.M. assessment question! Dysphoria!

Is he going to be nice? Or just act nice and cause me trouble?

If he’s assessing me about this without saying so, then I doubt he can be trusted.

Her response flashed through her mind in a feeling that would be impossible to explain to him, especially given the medical industry’s pitiful understanding. The truth was, the feeling inside her about her physical sex was extreme disgust: I’m not biologically female, which I need to be. I’m a sometimes-adequate simulation at best, a poor one at worst, I’m no longer in denial, and I couldn’t be more disgusted as trans. Because trans is not the other sex. But he’s assessing me for the D.S.M. with that question, which I wouldn’t want other nameless, issue-laden doctors to see—let alone my stalker, and don’t tell me the law says the stalker can’t get his doctor to look at my records for him—

Misdirect: he’ll think I’m stating an accepted delusion, as if I disregard the biological sex I can’t attain, but what I’m really doing is stating I’m female legally—as per some law—or socially—how we agree together what is female.

“I,” Kay put her hand on her heart sincerely, “am female,”

Jesus, what I have to do—

and mix it with part of the truth—

“And I’m so thankful to God,” she held up her hands in a halleluiah pose briefly, sardonically. “Jesus Christ, how in the hell do any of you ever live like a man— No, I’m glad some of you do!” Cheeky smile. “No. I’m thankful to be me; I want to be female. I’d do it all again in a heart beat.”

Thoughts ran through Kay’s head in a flash:

There: I implied I’m happy with my transition and that I think I made a switch to being actually female, and that I’m happily my goal.

Not pissed off; not unhappy.

Why do doctors want us to think we’re actually female? Is it to fit me into a binary world and believe their treatment was successful?

What about the spectrum they tout! Spectrum! “Male” and “female” are binary terms—but don’t you DARE give me an “Mx” or an “It,” or I swear—

Sometimes doctors enable denial of the trans state we’ve actually become.

Sometimes doctors want us to say clearly that we ARE trans—so what about the binary recognition we demand?

We have to guess the mind-set of whom we’re talking to, or we’re seen as nuts, wrong or prejudiced.

We’re trans because we crossed over—to another place on a spectrum with binary terms where terms are—

Kay stopped.

We are all so six shades of totally fucked up on all this! I don’t know what’s right any more!

Dr. Jeff smiled.

He’s happy.

So with him, denial is what he wants? We can be in denial about what we really are? Or pretend it?

But—what about me?—disgust with being an inadequate simulation of my goal is NOT okay?

DON’T TELL HIM ANY OF THIS!

That is why doctors don’t understand transsexuals: We lie to them. The goddamn A.P.A. set it up, and E.M.R. fuels it.

We lie to avoid records sharing of information is irrelevant or that should be private, at least most of the time—sexuality, genderality—and, no, doctors cannot not be trusted just because they’re doctors, and, no, the law doesn’t stop stalkers from getting unethical doctors to look at and share private information, or stop doctors from being prejudiced like anybody else, and yes, hackers can get into medical databases, like other internet-based systems.

We lie to avoid creating unwanted or false information in the record—like D.S.M. mental codes or inappropriate trans labels.

There is so much argument over those.

Why does the fact that I’m trans have to be so important in their records? Why can’t I only mention it when there is a medical reason for it? What: If I have a car wreck, are they going to say they need to know I’m transsexual to fix my broken leg? If I have a disease, is my transition so urgently needed and so vital to my treatment that it has to be in my records my whole life beforehand? I can’t tell them at the time if it’s relevant? In some rare urgent moment I might be unconscious, unable to share that I’m trans?

Why isn’t my transition ancient history as a medical non issue?

Goddamn E.M.R.!

Goddamn A.P.A.!

CHAPTER

3

Kay drove south on the 5 freeway toward Miramar, her heart pounded as she reviewed her doctor’s office visit.

Maybe I didn’t do too badly that time?

She did sometimes talk to herself out loud, as it helped her see how they sounded, but she didn’t do so in the Jag, much, because it was a fairly modern car, possibly connected to the internet, and she didn’t want whoever-it-was to hear her say anything embarrassing—not illegal, just embarrassing. Or maybe it was just connected via Bluetooth?

Transsexual: Stay away from that topic! Damn! Why do I keep bringing that up?

Her internal devil’s advocate told her why: Because you need to talk about it, and you have no one.

Traveling easy in the number two lane past Camp Pendleton, she held her right hand against her heart. Easy, girl. Easy. You didn’t do it all right, but better than some you’ve been in.

She rubbed her chest. She didn’t always distrust people. She loved people. She wanted to connect with them— It had been her life! Being close to people had been torn from her, daily, over decades.

I can’t do this forever. I’m so tired.

She drifted in the number two lane, southbound, on her way to Miramar.

Her phone rang in the car, and she answered it, without bluetoothing through the car. She never linked devices; maybe that would cut out some information sharing. She wasn’t sure what systems were a source of information.

All this has to be a byproduct of being hounded for so many years.

She put her little phone on speaker and sat it on her chest, above her breasts. Someone could hear if they were listening through the car, but—

“Hello?”

“Keiko, how are you doing?”

It was Daryl Alvord, Chief Investment Officer of the Knapp Assistance Foundation.

Wayne had started the Foundation in 2001 to provide charitable gifts to various institutions relating to business, especially when they promote civil rights and equality, in areas of education, housing, medical care, and even, sometimes, surgical assistance. The Foundation made annual gifts to such secular businesses or organizations as legal aid, free clinics, hospitals, social relief agencies, low-income housing, food and water organizations—all well funded by Wayne’s company. Beyond a few toys he loved, he had no desire for personal wealth. Gifts to religious organizations were excluded for the reason that Wayne thought it susceptible to personal issues by future Boards.

Kay loved the Foundation as her husband’s legacy and for its gifts to humane enterprises. Wayne was genuine in his philanthropic efforts, and with him, Kay had helped set the Foundation’s parameters. Wayne set it up to function in perpetuity, and she was supposed to be on the Board for life.

The Foundation had been headquartered in Los Angeles, but after Wayne’s passing, everything changed. Against the Foundation’s rules, Kay had been removed last year as a director, and Orin, then President of Wayne’s company, had been appointed the new Chairman and C.E.O., who moved the Foundation to Provo, Utah. In addition, the nature of the gifts had changed to include, significantly, select religious organizations.

Yes, people will break the law to do what they want.

Orin and other of Wayne’s closer associates were excluded, supposedly unable to be officers, for reasons of distrust—which explained why all that happened.

Kay knew she could fight but fumed, instead. She had tried ad infinitum to figure out how adverse publicity could affect her, in her life, but she couldn’t put the pieces together. There were far too many variables.

Unlike Orin, Daryl had always treated Kay very well as Wayne’s wife.

“Daryl. I’m fine. How are you?”

“Fine. I’m glad to hear it. Um, Kay—” Daryl trailed off.

Alarm bells!

Something in his tone was different.

“What are you doing?” Daryl asked.

“I’m driving on the freeway, at the moment.”

Don’t say I’ll be gone for a couple days. He works for Orin.

“What’s the matter?”

Daryl paused a few seconds. “Kay— You’re driving?”

“Yes.”

“Pull over a sec. Find a place. We need to talk.”

Oh, no!

Kay had feared this—if this is it—since 2001 when the Foundation was formed.

Do they know? What do they know? What do they think they know? Are they going to group me with transgenders—people who don’t want to change their sex?

Kay took an exit and sat in a parking lot of a gas station, her heart beating so hard she thought she’d pass out, and her hands shaking so hard she could barely hold her phone. She switched it from speaker to normal.

What should I say? What if he—

She forced herself to sound calm.

“I’m parked, now Daryl. What is it?”

She closed her eyes and tried to slow her heart.

“Kay,” Daryl said. “Kay, I— We— We have learned some information—“

Oh Jesus dear God! Not the Foundation!

Kay hung her head in defeat. Tears began streaming down her cheeks in rivers.

On top of everything else!

She clenched her hands so hard her nails cut her palms.

She dropped her phone and picked it up, but it had hung up.

“Uh!” She wiped her eyes with her sleeves and tried to call him back, but her hands were wet and she dropped her phone again.

It rang again on its own.

“Yes!” She got it working.

“Kay?” It was Daryl calling back.

“The call dropped, I guess.” She tried to sound as calm as possible. “What’s up, Daryl?”

“Kay—” He paused again, then seemed to take a different approach. “One of our interns—is transgender.”

FUCK! Oh, God! One of them. They did it to me?

“She said she read you. Do you know who I mean?

“No.”

Daryl paused.

“Well, she has a Facebook page—”

She put me on FACEBOOK! Oh, Jesus no!

Kay’s tears flowed down her cheeks, unreserved. Her mouth opened in shame and horror. Wayne! was all her mind could think.

She held her head with her free hand, but she carefully held the phone in her other. She needed information.

“So?” She said quietly.

“Kay, we did some checking, and we confirmed it.”

Kay began to zone into the fog. It had to be distance, yet her voiced did not betray her. “Confirmed what?”

“Kay—” Daryl’s tone was compassionate. “Kay, I love you, and I love Wayne. The Foundation’s a jewel in everyone’s crown, and we’re proud of it and you both.

Not true!

Not them!

“But Kay,” Daryl paused for a second. “They’re talking about how to get in front of it for P.R. purposes. I know you and Orin don’t get along, and there’s no telling—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Kay, I’m afraid they’re going to hit you and the whole thing hard.”

Jesus!

“This is between us, okay? Kay?”

“Yes!”

“Kay I’m guessing they’ll say something to the press that will—that won’t be outright condemning, but that will paint you all as defective, nonetheless. They always wanted to hide your connection to Wayne’s money, because that’s all they care about, but now that it’s out, they want to crush you.”

Kay almost got the car door open before she threw up. It was a dry heave, because she hadn’t eaten.

“Aaaaaaaaa-eeeeeeeeee-aaa!” Her moan and her cry were instinctive, beyond conscious control.

Hanging out the car door, she heaved again.

CHAPTER

4

Hiroshi faced his family around the table after evening dinner. Ichiro, the oldest son, age eight, had been teasing Jiro, his second-oldest son, age five. And Jiro, to everyone’s shame, was beginning to cry.

“Ichiro!” Hiroshi snapped, though his scowl was to Jiro. “Leave ‘her’ alone!”

Shirley, Jiro’s mom, squirmed in her seat.

Ichiro sat back in his chair with a grin.

“Your brother is a sissy,” Hiroshi said to Ichiro. “No okama!” he bellowed, using a Japanese word for an effeminate gay person—a pejorative, as the family used it. A cut. “How did that happen in this family?”

Hiroshi turned his scowl to his American wife, Shirley. “Give ‘her’ some time out.”

In the morning, after Hiroshi had left for the day, Shirley unlocked the living room closet and dragged Jiro to the dining room table. She sat in a dining room chair and looked at his poopie pants.

“Look what you’ve done! You’ve shamed yourself!”

Five-year-old Jiro’s forearms were held vertically in front of his face, so he could hardly see his mother. His face was stained with tears. He smelled. He had nothing to say, his only thought, “No!”

His mother’s tone did nothing to help.

Shirley nearly lifted him off the floor by his forearms in anger before releasing one of his arms, swinging wide.

“No, Mommy!” Jiro screamed.

Shirley hit the boy, hard, the impact knocking his head to the side. “Stop acting like a girl all the time!”

“Mommy!” was all Jiro could say.

“Yeah, stop it, Jiro!” his brother yelled from behind his mother. “You’re slime! Okama! Okama!”

Shirley yelled at her oldest son. “Get out of here!”

Shirley addressed Jiro again. Her face was stern, if her voice uncertain. “Stop acting like a girl!” She turned on Ichiro again. “Get out of here!”

Shirley said it with such force that Ichiro complied.

Ichiro left the room with one last dig: “Okama.”

Jiro tried to stop squirming, but the tears wouldn’t stop, his cry an exhausted sob.

Shirley looked conflicted but tightened her grip on Jiro’s forearms and brought Jiro close to her face. Her voice was quiet yet sinister, demanding, begging him to hear. “Don’t you realize you could get us kicked out of this family? That would be all your fault if you did—where would we go?” She looked around to see that no one was listening. “Your brother? Think about us!”

The ten-year-old boy melted down in the Episcopal sanctuary, his tears streaking his face.

No one cares! Jiro screamed inside to a self-centered god.

How could you do this to me!

What kind of god do you call yourself!

Jiro fell to the floor in front of the altar. His hands clung to the railing for support, as if his body would fall the rest of the way without it.

Last night in the closet, yet again, had to be the last.

No closets! Mommy!

His left shoulder hurt for reasons of its own. A lightning bolt shot from his left shoulder down his arm.

“Eeeeee-iiiiii!” he cried in pain and anger, letting go of the railing to hold his left shoulder. He probably slept a little on it in the closet. He knew from experience that, somehow, if he put his left hand on the floor and pressed just a little, that it felt somewhat better.

“Goddamn you fucking asshole!” Jiro screamed out loud to the statue of Jesus over him. “What are you doing? How could you do this to me! What the hell you doing? Don’t you give a shit what other people feel!?”

The boy collapsed into a heap, holding his left arm with his right hand, sobbing, as if his life were over.

“Never again!” he cried between sobs, his breath coming in short gasps.

“Son?” a man’s voice asked.

Jiro jerked his head up to stare Jesus in the face.

The man beside him to his left moved into view a little better, and Jiro jumped, crawling away to the right.

“Get away!” he threatened the man, as if he expected trouble. He began wiping his tears frantically. “I’m alright. Leave me alone. I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s alright.” The man’s voice was kind. There was something in it that said it was non-threatening.

But Jiro’s shame was overpowering. “I’ll leave. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not whatever this is.” He started to rise.

“It’s okay,” the kind man said.

But Jiro continued to walk away.

“Sit over here,” the man said, indicating a couple of chairs in front of a row of pews. “It’s okay. They’re good chairs, and I happen to know the priest approves.”

The man sat down in one of them.

“Why?” Jiro asked.

The man smiled. “They’re for sitting. And no one else is here.”

“Will people come in?” Jiro asked, trying to get his crying under control.

The man shook his head. “Not at this hour.”

“How do you know the priest would approve?” Jiro asked.

“Because he’s me.”

“You’re the priest?”

The priest nodded. “My name’s John.” He smiled. “Not the one in the Bible. John McKay. One of the joys of my office is to help people, when I can, and I’d like to help you. If you’ll let me.”

Jiro started to cry again.

Don’t trust him.

Reverend John leaned forward to look at the boy who was trying desperately to get his emotions under control. “You’ve come to the right place. With God, we can do anything. What’s the matter?”

“It was God who did this to me!” Jiro spat like fire to the man.

“Did what?”

Jiro melted down again.

It was twenty minutes before he finally told the priest the problem.

The priest studied Jiro, did a professional job of not acting surprised. “You know? I think I might know someone who can help.”

Jiro’s mouth slowly sagged open as he looked at the priest. “Someone—”

The priest nodded. “Yes. I think so.”

“How?” Jiro asked.

“It’s 1966,” said the Priest. “’The sixties.’ The sexual revolution.” His smile was gentle and friendly. “Word gets around, and I know someone with some experience in this area.”

“Who!” Jiro was demanding.

“It’s in the rolodex in my office, by the phone. Right over there.” The priest got up. “Lets go have a look.”

Jiro watched Rev. John lead the way but was reluctant to follow. “Aren’t you mad at me for cussing God?”

John’s smile was relaxed. “No,” he said. “No, I’m afraid I’ve been there a little, myself, once or twice. I think most of us have. And you don’t cure anger with anger.”

“Won’t God be mad at me for it?”

The priest laughed. “More than any of us, God has the big picture.”

June, 1974.

Jiro tabled his emotions, shouldered his disgust, and worked for eight years to earn his parents’ trust to visit his grandmother in Japan on his own. At the age of eighteen, if his father thought he was mature enough—and even if he didn’t—the plan was for Jiro to fly to Tokyo and take a taxi to her house in a demonstration he could handle himself.

His older brother had done it three years before, and now it was Jiro’s turn.

That’s what they expected.

Jiro had just graduated high school; he was, supposedly, an adult in his father’s eyes—expected to perform better than Richard Nixon. The Watergate Scandal had raged for two years in their home. Somehow the embarrassment it caused the family always made it back to Jiro—without any connection—but overall, Jiro was thankful for the Scandal, because it helped divert attention away from him.

When someone was worried—why wasn’t Jiro dating? or why wasn’t he on the football team?—Jiro could bring up the Watergate Scandal and redirect anger where it may do some good.

Jiro hoped Nixon could keep at it just a little longer. Some escalation there might be helpful.

He wished his parents loved him.

But could they love him, really, if they didn’t know him? How could they love someone when they said, “Whatever you do, be what we want. Don’t be yourself.” Is it even possible?

Jiro looked around their new house, the one they’d moved into a year and a half ago. He thought about his family. As unhappy as he’d been, they were the only people he really knew. He had no good friends in school. His father was harsh and remote. His mother was stern to the point of being abusive. His older brother was self-centered and sometimes mean to him.

But they were family.

How could he leave them?

I may not have to, he counseled himself

You’ll have to, his inner devil’s advocate said, wisely.

Jiro was in shock at the thought.

Where would he go? What would he do?

He thought about his plans and—

His plans were desperate, but, he confirmed in another round through an old, now familiar decision-making process, this was the only way. Any other way would leave him in terror. He had to make this move and then try to make amends, if they’d have him.

There is no other way.

Standing in the kitchen, he confirmed it over and over again.

With the information he got eight years prior from Reverend John, and from his contacts, this, Jiro knew, was the only way.

He’d started hormones two months ago, and had worked desperately to keep it a secret from his family.

Jiro moves his biceps nearer his chest and felt his small breasts growing there.

Thank you God!

For the rest?

It is today.

It has to be today.

It felt like a one-way street, leaving the family.

I’m scared, he admitted to himself.

That’s from now looking forward, his devil’s advocate said inside him. But what about from the future looking back? Would you be scared then?

Jiro thought again. It could be tragic, but the opportunity exists, and he felt he had to take it.

I will not be scared about this.

With weak knees, he went to his bedroom and quickly packed a bag with a very few essentials, got his documents previously pared.

With practiced skill, he broke into his father’s wall safe and cleaned it out. It held his father’s “slush” fund, used in his restaurant business enterprises—meaning bribe money? Probably. There may have been twenty-three thousand dollars in it. He carefully split it up and put it into various pockets and a specially prepared money belt he’d fashioned to go around his waist.

Determined, without delay, he left the house and drove his junker first car to the Los Angeles airport.

The flight to Tokyo was uneventful, just as he’d experienced before. He got off the plane with the other passengers, to find his grandmother was not there, as planned. Good. Then he didn’t have to lose her.

He did not call his parents to say he got there, but he did call his grandmother to say he would be a little late. “I need to make a little detour to Todai, the University of Tokyo, okay? I want to check it out. I’ll call when I get done there.”

His grandmother was worried about the delay—which meant his parents hadn’t discovered the missing money yet—but she acquiesced.

The college misdirection.

Then he turned and walked straight to a ticket counter for another flight.

“Onegai shimasu,” Jiro said in Japanese, trying to appear slightly older than his bare eighteen.

The lady at the ticket counter smiled at him and said back slowly in highly accented English. “Hello. How may I help you?”

Don’t mess this up! Be calm!

“Hi.” Jiro smiled at her. “You can tell I’m American?”

“Yes. And your English is so good to mine,” the lady said back with a smile.

“You speak English so much better than I speak Japanese,” Jiro said to her, trying to win her over, which didn’t seem difficult.

“How may I help you?”

“Next plane to Bangkok? Cheap ticket, please. After I visit my grandmother, I’ll need all I have left for college.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eight hours later, Jiro was in Thailand.

The shopping spree was swift: two cheap, pull-over dresses, cut just snug enough to display a hint of her breasts, one pair of shoes, underthings, one hand bag, elemental cosmetics—enough to survive on a budget. She looked adequate yet poor, which she hoped to use to prevent any mugging or theft, and to help her not be taken advantage of by the doctor’s office, if they had a sliding scale.

When you’re on your own, with no support, there is no room for mistakes.

Though her family would not tolerate any feminine expression, she was able to grow her hair out this last year with the hippie movement, “like a lot of boys”—which her father hated, but thank you Richard M. Nixon—and she pleased her father in other ways by making good grades, doing (almost) everything her brother said, and by faking as much masculinity as she could.

All that was behind her now, a necessary deception to get her here.

Next stop, a local branch of a large, international bank. Deposit the money so it wouldn’t get stolen.

She had been assured by another girl who had come here before that this process should work, maximum effectiveness, with the fewest revelations to the bank, both to minimize humiliation and questions: (1) Bangkok wasn’t as uptight about this as her parents. Traveling for medical procedures was an industry and money was the reason. (2) Once she connected with a surgeon’s office, she’d have corroboration. (3) Pick a non-Japanese teller who won’t know if “Jiro,” which means “second son,” is a male or female name. (4) Set up the account with the name “Jiro Keiko Matsuoka,” as Keiko is a girl’s name. (5) Be friendly and humorous with the teller so she will remember you if you need to go back to her. (6) Have current passport photo with feminine hair styling so it matches. (7) It’s 1974, so security is not much of a problem. They’ll rely a lot on the signature and passport—which will say “Jiro” and “M,” but she’ll have papers from the surgeon if needed. (8) Her signature will match. And (9) Jiro really is her official name, anyway. So far.

She had memorized her new name for months, and her signature as Keiko had stabilized. She even became accustomed to her nickname, “Kay.” Disliking her “given” name, sounded natal, to her; that and preferring her nickname felt like a touch of both familiarity and common misdirection. “Kay” was also common in the U.S.

Dragging the name “Jiro” along with her hurt. Realizing she may have to disclose her surgery and transition would hurt, if she had to, to retrieve her money.

Accept a little pain to prevent a lot—

No, she thought: Accept a lot of pain to prevent a hell of a lot more.

I’m on my own.

I am Kay.

I am just Kay.

I am Kay.

She hid Jiro’s paper California Driver’s license under the inner sole of her left shoe, in the toe box section, careful to only pull up the insole of the toe box section, so the heel area stayed glued down. Her passport she carried in her money belt, that now only held a few thousand dollars, which she hoped to use to secure her procedure.

She happened to see her reflection in a store window, and what she saw back—astounded her. Never had she dressed as a woman nor made any effort until now, and—

She reached out to touch the glass.

My hair— She reached up with her left hand and brushed it back, let it fall in a more feminine manner than ever before.

My God, she thought. I—

For the first time in her life, even without applying cosmetics, her reflection showed herself, and emotions began to well inside her.

An angry shopkeeper shouted at her in a language she did not understand, but it sounded like, “You can’t by it by looking at it, sister! Tourists!”

She smiled at the man and turned to walk down the sidewalk toward a nearby hotel, where she thought she might find a cab.

Keep your mind on mission, she counseled herself. It’s not over ‘till it’s over.

“Taxi?” she called to a cab in front of the hotel.

Focus. Don‘t let anything go wrong.

The hospital was fairly new. The doctor’s office, within, was even more modern.

Could this be my sanctuary?

Thank you, Rev. John.

Happy tears began to fall down her cheeks.

The doctor was Swiss. “Keiko Matsuoka? How are you doing.”

Sitting on the examination table, on seeing the doctor, Keiko couldn’t hold it in and began to cry openly. She reached out to hug the doctor, her tears answering the question.

The doctor patted her on the back. “I know,” he said with a successful smile. “Girls either come in here either crying or so happy they shine. Either way, we get the job done.”

“Doctor!” Keiko clung to him, trying to control her sobs enough to talk.

“Now, that’s a good girl—”

Girl!

“Cry all you want. But I do need to talk to you. You’re young. Are you sure this is what you want? Because it won’t come back.”

“Thank God!”

“And you’re only eighteen.”

“That’s majoral,” she said.

“Yes, but I’m just checking, because eighteen is still very young.”

“It’s been my firm knowledge my whole life, and our firm decision for a long time. We were just waiting, so my parents would be sure.”

She reached into her purse for a photocopy of her driver’s license, displaying a P.O. Box, and two letters of support, one from each of her parents—totally forged, of course, phony names and with the same P.O. Box address.

Kay had learned that sometimes surgeons were very interested in doing a procedure, for the money if nothing else, and the best approach in her case was to give them information they could use to support that goal, if they chose to.

The doctor accepted the papers, nodded and smiled at them. “Good. Driver’s license, parents—”

“Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve needed it!” she answered. “And my parents finally agreed. I’ve been living a as a girl at home for two years. They’ve been treating me as a girl, teaching me—re-teaching me in life how to be their daughter—and they’ve been afraid that would leak out, so it’s time.”

“Ah! Good, good. We like to have some support. And you’re a dish! At eighteen, you’ll make a fine transition.”

Keiko nodded.

“This is ‘sex reassignment surgery,’ you know,” the doctor said. “This,” he pointed at Keiko’s groin, “will be gone, you’ll be female, and you’ll grow into a girl with the hormones.”

Keiko’s tears answered for her.

“And you haven’t had many hormones, yet. Why not more?”

Mix the truth— “I had a doctor for a while, but he moved.” —with necessary lies— “We couldn’t find another doctor who would be discrete. My father is very private. And we felt it would cause trouble if I was discovered and had to go to the public school.”

“So what about your schooling?”

“Home schooling.”

“God, it’s the ‘70s.” The doctor shook his head in disgust. “Repressive society causes such problems.”

Keiko’s heart stopped.

“But you’re here, now, so we can get it moving.”

She relaxed.

“Can you help me with the hormones, too?” Her need was sincere.

“Oh, we can do better than that.”

Keiko was at the same time thrilled, hoping it would work, and praying nothing would go wrong.

“I’m so glad you could take me. I was prepared to wait, however long it took. It’s hard to make an appointment from Los Angeles. How soon can I get in? I’m looking forward to college in the fall, if I can be recovered by then. Dad will help me—”

Don’t be so eager. He may charge more.

“What major?”

“English Literature,” Keiko said with practiced confidence, mentioning a topic she did, truly, enjoy.

“Ah, yes. U.C.L.A., Maybe?”

“Yes, I’m accepted there.” She was not, but she was trying to please the doctor.

She hoped she was supporting his agenda.

“How much will it cost?” Jiro asked, genuinely concerned.

She was given the figure and was astonished at how low it was, compared to her expectations. She had all of it on her.

She beamed. “Yes! Now? When? How soon?”

The doctor laughed and stuck his head out the exam room door. “Gretchen? We got a live one—”

There was some conversation Keiko couldn’t make out, then, “Can you come in here?”

Nurse Gretchen walked into the room and began to putter around. “Okay,” she said to Keiko, dress off.”

Keiko looked embarrassed to the doctor.

“I have to see what I’m working with,” the doctor explained.

With great effort, Keiko slipped her dress over her head and removed her bra and panties, got on the table.

The doctor poked and prodded her abdomen a little, checked her genitalia, felt her breasts—

“Get her started with a ‘silk’ shot,” the doctor told the nurse. Then to Keiko. “You’re sure? I give you this shot, and it’ll speed up your development. This stuff doesn’t mess around. It’s enough hormones for Queen Kong. You’re not the only one to come here needing them.”

“Please!” Keiko begged.

“Good girl,” the doctor said. “Gret?”

Gretchen came over to Keiko. “Roll over, please,” she said.

Keiko did, and the shot went into her rear end.

“You can dress now,” the doctor said.

Keiko got up and did so.

“Schedule?” the doctor said to Gretchen.

“We have next Tuesday,” she said. “If we put her in as number two.”

“Eleven o’clock?” the doctor asked.

“You’ve been running a little long. Better make it twelve,” Gretchen said.

“Twelve Tuesday good for you?” the doctor asked Keiko.

Four days away!

“God yes!” Keiko forgot to sound calm, and her exuberance was clear.

The doctor laughed again.

“Listen,” he said. “You’ve already begun the process here. Your breasts may hurt a little, as I don’t mess around. That was good stuff. You’re behind. But nothing’s wrong; it’s because they’re growing. Just leave them alone, and don’t sleep on your stomach. Shouldn’t sleep on your stomach, anyway, ‘cause it’s bad for your face. Sleep on your back and stay younger longer, both here,” he pointed at her breasts, “and here,” he said, pointing to her face. “Okay?”

“Yes. Thank you, Doctor!”

“And good girls keep their arms on top of the blankets,” Gretchen shared in mock confidence, chuckling. “But I wouldn’t know what that is, myself!” She walked out of the room.

“We’ll give you another shot after the surgery to go on, and we’ll fill you a prescription to take with you that should last you for the first six months. That’s more than usual, for folks in the U.S., but it may take you time to get settled with a new doctor there. Now, go out there with Gretchen. Pay her, and set up the appointment. Okay?”

Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were the longest four days of Keiko’s life. The waiting was minute by minute, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She took a room at a nice hotel. She wanted to save money, but being unfamiliar with the country, she wanted to make sure she didn’t get mugged or anything.

She stayed in the hotel, so she wouldn’t get lost. She stayed around hotel staff, to make sure she was safe. She stayed in public areas so there would never be any hint of an impropriety on her part.

Exist!

Just get there safely.

She met no other patients waiting to see the doctor; it was just her—but then, she was just at a hotel, chosen by her.

Hour by hour, minute by minute.

Until Tuesday came around.

She followed all the pre-op instructions and arrived at the hospital at eight o’clock in the morning, checked in.

“You’re early,” the Filipino clerk said at registration.

“I know, but I didn’t have anything else to do.”

“His girls are usually early,” said the clerk.

Keiko entered a prep room near surgery. As told, she disrobed, put all her things on a tray, dressed in a hospital gown, hospital shoes, and put her hair into a net.

She completely disregarded the shit between her legs—

She was so filled with need.

God, please let him get here! Please don’t let anything go wrong? Please help me? I need you so much!

She waited.

A nurse came and asked her to get onto a gurney.

She did. They rolled her into a bay and gave her an I.V. and something to “relax” her, which put her in a daisy world of beautiful feelings—which was completely unnecessary, as she was already there.

She waited some more.

A minute ran into an hour, until finally someone came to get her.

She could see everything around her, but she didn’t seem to have the ability to say anything.

Thank you God! God! Thank you God! was all she could think.

Two nurses rolled her down a hall and through two double doors into what she recognized as her operating room. The doctor wasn’t there, but staff readied her, doing a dozen things she could not identify.

Love went out from her to them, and a nurse noticed something in her face.

The nurse nodded.

“She’s got the look,” the nurse said. “Some of them do that.”

Another nurse looked at Keiko.

Keiko tried to smile.

“Yup. She’s doing it. I can tell,” the nurse said.

“You just sit tight, honey. The doctor is here, scrubbing up, and we’ll start soon.”

Jesus! God!

A thousand images floated through Keiko’s mind of the horror of trying to live as a boy when she was really a girl, with that— It was a feeling in her heart which she could never describe, the putrid, extreme, hateful, disgust she’d always felt for her male genitalia. The times she had had to shower, to go to the bathroom, to act like a boy, to pretend she didn’t want to be a girl, to hold herself back from even so much as kissing her grandfather back home—a million things a girl needs to do to develop and become well adjusted, Keiko had been denied, but now …

The door to the operating room opened, and the doctor came in.

There was more talk, and the doctor came over to her.

As was his habit, he looked once more into the patient’s eyes, and nodded. “Okay, Keiko. You just lay there and be beautiful.” He made a motion to an anesthetic tech who put a mask over Keiko’s face, which Keiko accepted gladly. “In a few seconds, you’ll be alright.”

CHAPTER

5

Kay sat back up in the car seat and closed the door. She’d had nothing to eat for a long time, so her heaves were largely dry. She wiped her face with a tissue from a box of Kleenex and tried to think.

“Kay?” Daryl was asking into the phone. “Are you alright?”

Kay’s mouth tasted sick. Her stomach felt like a bomb had gone off in it, and her mind was scrambling.

What should I say?

She was fifty-nine years old.

What had life prepared her for?

She considered hanging up and running away. Where could she go? She could leave. Not go to Miramar, not go home— No, go home but pack and arrange to sell everything—

Her home?

Where she lived with Wayne—

No!

Facebook? There’s a lot on there that’s junk.

“Daryl, what are you saying?” she thought to ask.

“Um, Kay. We know you’re transgender—”

Use the blatant truth!

“Whoa, Daryl. What!?”

“We checked it out, and we know you’re transgender.”

“Whoa there, Daryl. I am not transgender! Not by any means.”

The line was quiet for a second. Kay heard some clicks on a keyboard. “Yeah you are—”

“No I’m not.”

“We’ve got—”

“I don’t care what you’ve got. I’m not one of them. I’ve got issues, but that’s not my issue.”

It’s them messing with my life again!

“Then what is your issue?”

“My business is private, Daryl. You’re over-reaching.”

Could the brakes stop him?

“Then what am I reaching for? We verified the information.”

Can someone get info out of me by claiming to have the wrong info?

“No you didn’t. You don’t know the terms you’re using.”

Too much information.

“Then what terms am I supposed to use?” Daryl asked.

A flat denial.

“Daryl. You’re off base. No matter what you have, or think you have, that is not what I am. I’d like to check with my attorney and get back to you later.”

Standard reply.

“Well, hurry up, because we’ve got to get in front of this one way or another, either with you or without you.”

“Maybe middle of next week,” she said.

“Monday.”

“No, middle. Tomorrow’s Friday, then the weekend, and I can’t get my lawyer to move that fast.”

“We’ll see,” he said. “But Kay—”

Kay’s mind was still scrambling.

How would Wayne want her to go with this? She thought. Wayne? She asked him in the cosmos, and there was a reply—but it must have been another spirit talking.

Hell no!

“What?”

“I get that you and Wayne have been private—understandable looking at times past. And we don’t want to intrude on your privacy. But we didn’t put this out there. She did.

“How long have you been thinking this about me, Daryl?”

That asked without confirming.

She held her breath.

“Uh, well, I think since always, Kay. Probably they didn’t want to admit it.”

Always? Since the Foundation in 2001?

Need information.

“If you thought that, why didn’t you ever say anything? You’re Mormon.”

“And Wayne was Mormon,” Daryl said. “The Foundation was a good idea, Kay. And we always liked you both. Frankly, we needed the money.”

Kay felt light-headed, yet her heart was slowing enough to help her think.

No shame? Other than the fact of what I am.

“Does everyone there feel that way? Don’t lie to me.” She’d known Daryl fourteen years and she always felt she could talk with him.

“Some.”

Some don’t! Which ones? What have they been saying? Ask him— No, don’t ask him. You’ll seem overly interested.

“What is the name of the Facebook page?”

There was a pause.

“I have a right to see it,” Kay said flatly.

He told her.

Kay made a mental note. She would not forget. And she would speak to her lawyer about this.

Invasion of privacy?

“And Daryl, that social phenomenon you’re speaking of? I’m not in that. I’ll get back to you next week.

“We have to make a statement, soon, Kay. If we don’t, it could hurt us. We’d like you to be in on it. It would go a whole lot better for everyone.”

CHAPTER

6

In the week that followed Kay’s S.R.S., lying in her hospital bed, Kay began to let herself believe she was safe.

The pain shots they gave her kept her dazed for the first three days. She slept a lot, cried some, laughed with her roommate, Becky, who had had surgery hours before Kay had, but overall, her mind was not her own until about day four, when she got out from under most of the drugs.

“Becky!” she cried to the gal in the next bed.

Becky rolled over with a big grin on her face.

Kay was holding her sheets up to look yet again, and there was nothing there. The look on her face was wonderment.

Becky laughed. “Keiko!”

Kay looked at her.

“Becky!” Kay said again.

“You’re waking up, Keiko! You’ve mostly been having a sleep since Tuesday,” Becky said with her flat New Zealand vowels.

“What?”

“We’ve already been through this three times before!” Becky laughed as if the humor was obvious. “Yes! That thing is history! Probably rat food in the bottom of a rubbish bin somewhere, rotting. Lets have a look.” Becky got out of her bed, slowly, rolling up onto her leg from the side, then standing.

Kay’s eyes widened at her walking.

Becky took two more steps, hunched over, to get beside Kay’s bed.

Kay held the sheet higher.

“Looks like he gave it a fair crack of the whip,” Becky said. “Fucker’s all gone. That’s a pussy down there, now, love. ‘You’re a groovy chick, now, girl,’” Becky chuckled, impersonating an American. Then she acted like she had a sudden realization. “Crikey! What are you going to do with that?” She bent over and laughed in Kay’s face, and Kay began to laugh with her.

“Becky—” Kay’s voice trailed. Her thoughts caught in her throat. Her face distorted, tears welled in her eyes and poured down her cheeks. Kay dropped the sheet and cried.

Becky didn’t speak. She leaned over to hold Kay, rocking slowly back and forth.

A nurse came in. “Oh,” she said smiling. “Yeah, they do that.” She turned and left.

Images from Kay’s life filled her mind. Over and over, she remembered how she’d felt since she was a little— Her whole life. How she was so wrong in herself, and how no one else cared. How she was treated. The frightening way her body had begun to change as she entered adolescence.

Tears began to roll down Becky’s face, as well. “I know,” she said, over and over. “I know.”

Reverend John! Misty! Carla? Kay thought of the people who had helped her, in their near-secret underground, so her parents wouldn’t find out.

Kay hugged Becky’s neck as if it was the first time she had ever hugged anyone. Keiko hadn’t been allowed to exist.

She had to tell!

“Becky! Is there a phone anywhere?”

Becky stood back up, beside Kay’s bed. “Like that one there?” she asked, pointing to it on the end table by the bed.

The call did not go well. Kay called her parents in Los Angeles to share her joy, but all she got back was more horror. She’d stolen. No, it wouldn’t be reported to the police because they had abused her as a child, but they felt violated. She shared it was a medical expense, and that she’d tried to tell them years ago, but it did no good.

Her mother cried.

Her father disowned her.

She did not talk with her older brother, but she knew the message was clear: Never come back.

She called her grandmother in Tokyo, who hung up the phone on her.

She was cut off, she knew, but the joy in her heart wouldn’t subside. She had spent too many years at their hands, and the life they offered was death to begin with. This way, she lives. Just without them.

That hurt, but she knew from too many years of fighting it, that she couldn’t live without being herself.

She was Keiko Matsuoka, a girl of eighteen—young woman, she told herself. That was a shift; she’d thought of herself as a girl, all her childhood.

Discharge from the hospital was per usual. She thought it was on day seven, or so. She and Becky shared a room in a halfway decent hotel for a few days, until Becky left to go home.

Kay allowed herself more time to recover and gather her thoughts. She got one more shot from the doctor each week, which was helping to rapidly feminize her. Her breasts were still small but growing. Her skin was softer than velvet—impossible for anyone who has not been there to believe.

After a month, mid July, she took all her money out of the bank and retraced her steps back to Los Angeles.

Her car was gone. It had been towed, but after a time, she tracked it down.

Meeting her family was out, surely—

She carefully applied her cosmetics and wore her most flattering dress, a conservative, half-sleeve mini-dress, form-fitting above, belted, and pleated below, falling just above her knees.

When she stepped into the family’s flagship restaurant, heads turned in pleasant admiration.

Her mother was the maître d’. “Hello. Table for one?” she asked.

Kay looked at her. She felt a little light-headed, scared to the bone, but she had to make the step. “Mom? I’m Kay.”

The smile on Shirley’s face dropped into shock. She stared at Kay, admiring, then her head turned on a swivel, looking to see who else was watching. Some people were, so she grabbed Kay’s arm and lead her back outside the restaurant onto the sidewalk.

“Jiro! You’re in a dress?!”

“Mom, I’m a girl. Really.”

“How can you do that? Your father—” Shirley’s head turned to look around.

“Mom, this is me. I’ve been trying to tell you for years.”

“You shouldn’t be wearing that dress! How dare you come here to our place of business and embarrass us like this?”

“You mean the guy who seemed to like me? What’s the embarrassment?”

“Boys don’t wear dresses!”

“I’m a girl, mom. All of me!” Kay subtly indicated her groin area and breasts.

Shirley stared at Kay’s breasts, then her groin. “Did it hurt?”

“Yes! But they give you pain killers—”

Shirley took Kay farther away, down the sidewalk to a bench where they sat. “If your father sees you—”

“He’ll have to sometime.”

“You don’t know how bad he can be. You stay away from him, you hear me?”

Kay looked confused but accepted it. “Okay.”

Shirley looked at Kay, even peeked down the top of her dress. Her eyes widened. She pulled the top of Kay’s dress out with a finger for a better look.

Kay looked around to make sure no none noticed. She squirmed away from her mother’s reach.

“You actually have breasts?”

“Yes. All of it.” Kay indicated her groin again.

“They can do that?”

“Yes. Why do you think I went to Bangkok?”

“Really? You also have a va—”

“Vagina. Yes, Mom.”

“How can they do that? What did they do?”

“It’s a gift from God, in my opinion,” Kay said. “However strange it may seem to you, I’ve been a girl my whole life, and I had to do it. I had no choice. I couldn’t pretend any longer.”

“But you can’t have children?”

Kay shook her head, sadly. “No. Never. I’m just female for life and sex. I couldn’t switch back if I wanted to.”

Good for her mom to hear, and for Kay, it was true.

Shirley touched Kay’s arm. “Kay?”

“Yes.”

Shirley touched Kay’s face. “You put your makeup on well,” she said. She touched Kay’s hair. “Why is your hair softer?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just longer.”

“It is.”

“Do you always wear cosmetics?”

“No. Usually just mascara. But I was coming here, and I wanted to make a good impression.”

“If you hadn’t told me who you are, I wouldn’t have known you,” Shirley said honestly. “No way.” She shook her head in wonder. “How could you be a girl?”

“I couldn’t stop it from coming out.”

“How are you going to college?” Shirley asked.

“I’ll figure it out.” Kay paused. “Mom, why do you stay with Dad?”

Shirley looked uncomfortable at the question. “He’s my husband.”

“Only because you let him be. I don’t think you’re happy. You never have been. But you’re there. Why?”

Shirley looked around as if to see who was watching. “Stay out of that, Jiro.”

“I’m Keiko, Mom. Kay, please. There never was a Jiro—only a picture you wanted me to live up to.” She looked at her mom. “You know that.”

“Whatever you are, I think we’re done here.”

“What’s going on with you and Dad? He— I know he’s my dad, and he’s your husband, but honestly, he has never been warm to you—treats you like shit, if you ask me—and he’s been cruel to me. You’ve been cruel to me, too, but he was behind it.”

“You have no idea what’s going on,” Shirley said to Kay. “He’s—”

“He’s an ass, and you know it. Some people pick mean men to be with—” When it hit her. “Why did I never hear about your older brother? What’s up with him?”

Shirley got up off the bench and walked three paces away before turning back to Kay. “You stay out of it! You don’t know anything! You take your—this—back to where ever you’re hiding these days and leave us alone, before someone sees you!”

Kay reeled. She’d always known her parents weren’t warm, but this brought it to a head.

“Did he molest you?” Kay asked.

Shirley looked like she was going to explode and attacked Kay on the bench, attempting to scratch her and pull her hair.

Kay fought back, when someone got between them.

“Ichiro!” Kay said to her brother, jumping away from them all to gather herself.

“Jesusgoddamnchrist,” Ichiro said, looking Kay up one side and down the other. “What a faggot you turned out to be, Okama! You faggot transvestite homo suck-dick— You wearing panties under there, Jiro? You get your rocks off with this?” He indicated Kay’s attire.

Kay was in shock. She said nothing because it didn’t occur to her.

How could anyone be so ignorant?

“Come in here. Dad saw you go in there, and he wants to talk to you.” Ichiro grabbed her arm and began walking toward the restaurant.

Kay struggled to get free. “Let me go, Ich!”

People around saw the commotion and began to interfered, but Ichiro warned them back.

“It’s okay,” Kay told them. “He’s my brother, and he’s an ass, too.”

Ichiro lead Kay through the restaurant to the back room. “Stay out here, Mom!” Ichiro told Shirley.

In the back room, there was no father. Only Ichiro and Kay.

He turned on her, slamming her by the face against the shelves, grinding her head into gallon cans of tomato sauce.

Kay struggled, but it was ineffective. Ichiro had always been larger, stronger.

“What the fuck do you call yourself, now, faggot!”

Kay wasn’t concerned with his question. His hand had moved to her neck. She was struggling to breathe.

Ichiro reached under her dress to grope her genitalia. “Jesus Christ, your dick is gone. What the fuck?” He let go her neck to look under her dress. “Fucking pervert! You’re a pervert to the max! You fucking girl! You want to be a sissy Mary faggot who gets fucked in that? Dream on, Okama. You got to wear those panties?! This is so far fucked out, I’m—!”

He pushed her back into the shelves again, and this time followed it up with a hard punch to her stomach.

Kay exhaled involuntarily. He knocked all the wind out of her. Her mouth gaped. She sagged to the floor.

“You’re a sick-o mental patient, Jiro!” he said to her.

Kay rolled on the floor trying to regain her breath, holding her stomach with both hands.

Ichiro kicked at her twice, bruising her ribs and arm.

Kay slammed back against the base of the shelves.

When he tried to kick her again, she grabbed his foot and tried to throw it to the side but he kicked her with it anyway.

Ichiro knelt beside her. “You see how it is? Faggot? This is your new life!”

Kay rolled on the floor, crying, holding her stomach.

“You’re not in this family. You— You’re so sick! You should be ashamed of yourself. Listen,” he leaned closer. She didn’t seem to hear, so he grabbed her head and turned it toward him.

“Fucking lipstick! Girl shit! Jesus, do you kiss men? Do you suck their dicks?” he used his sleeve to wipe her lipstick off as well as one gruff swipe could manage. “Listen to me, sissy fucking faggot. Listen!”

Kay let her head be pointed at his horrid face.

“You are mentally ill. Sick to the core. You need therapy. I can’t believe how you’ve mutilated yourself—you cut your shit off, man! You’ve always been an embarrassment to this family, and you’re always going to be an embarrassment to us. You stole from all of us, took food out of our mouths. You’re shameful! Everyone around you can see it! You think you cut your shit off and wear a dress and you get to be girlie girl, and we’re all going to stand around and pretend with you? You fucking faggot.”

Kay felt weak. She drifted.

“Listen to me!” Ichiro said, looking around. “No one is here but you and me. I could fuck you in your soft little fake pussy, right now, and no one would know. You hear me? But they told me to come in here and set you straight—notice Dad’s not here? He’s always here! But not now. Because I’m doing his dirty work. Why do you think Mom took you out? You getting this!? Dad told me to let you know that if you ever come around again, I’ll kill you. You got this?”

Kay felt light-headed. She felt violated, so sick she thought she’d throw up. Her brother’s face was six inches over hers, his face red, little balls of spit coming out of his mouth and landing on her face.

“I said you hear me!?”

Kay’s answer was to cry harder.

“We are going to tell people you’re dead. Dead! You got that. Dead. Gone and buried on some accident while you were in Japan. All they know is you were normal before you left. The rest of it we’ve covered up.

“You ever come around here again or bother us, and I’ll kill you myself for sure, after I rape your sorry ass in the vagina you sick fuck gave yourself on the perv trip of yours. You disappear from our lives, you hear me?”

Kay tried to turn her head away from his face.

“You hear me!?” he demanded even more strongly.

“Ichiro—”

Ichiro lifted her head with his hands and slammed it back onto the concrete floor to get her attention. “I said you hear me!”

“Yes!” Kay answered.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I’ll disappear or you’ll kill me.”

Ichiro stood over her, gasping for breath from his effort more than his actions.

“You hate me,” Kay said weakly through her tears. “All of you hate me.”

CHAPTER

7

Kay drove to Miramar, in shock, stunned, yet determined to see their old haunt, probably for the last time. Her life felt taken away. Wayne had died. She had no friends, no real friends. There had been so much shit …

She was so alone.

She remembered how she felt after her family had rejected her, forty-one years ago. After Ichiro had beaten her, she had walked aimlessly, her hair mussed, her dress torn over her right shoulder, her right shoulder, ribs, head and heart hurting.

“Hey! Get the hell out of the street, hippie!” someone yelled as they drove by.

Los Angeles had seemed so cold, and impossibly huge.

Over the next few years, Kay struggled to survive. Life wasn’t about having fun or being thrilled with achieving something; life was about coping with loneliness and impersonating someone older, a string of jobs that seemed to fade away. She took classes at U.C. Irvine for distraction, to just be in college, an environment that wasn’t against her, to be around other people in a way that felt a little structured, but which also allowed her to be herself.

At the time, Kay felt the only reason she made it through was because of her youthful vigor, her ability to greet each day with determination. Heartache hadn’t built up enough by then to crush her. Things happened? Why? Because they happened. A pattern hadn’t made it self so obvious that she had yet noticed it, and there were no guides. Christine Jorgensen had been wonderful—very helpful—but Kay had only met her once. When Canary Conn came out in—what was it, 1976?—Kay had tried to find her in Hollywood, but Kay wasn’t from there and the few contacts she had seemed to track Canary after the fact. She’d hear that Canary had been here, had been there. And Kay was too young to spend time in bars, other than the occasional, brief tour.

Making her way to Miramar, Kay tried to focus on her driving, a little. She noticed she was driving a little more slowly and engaged the cruise control, set it on the speed limit. She was in no hurry.

Her stomach felt like a claw was grabbing it, squeezing. It was empty and she was scared, weak. She needed to eat, but she couldn’t. She needed to think about her current life’s issues, but they were too painful.

Denial had both hurt her and helped her through those college years, she remembered.

She’d had trouble with part-time jobs, over and over. She was smart, she could type like a whiz, she could sell popcorn at the movies, but no matter what job she got, something would happen in a month or two that would cause some co-worker to dump on her, some supervisor to pull her aside and tell her that the position has been canceled, or worse, say that someone had accused her of something she hadn’t done, and dismiss her.

One time, a co-worker caught her in the break room by herself and made an unwanted advance toward her. Kay tried to scream and protect herself, but he clamped his hand over her mouth, getting his face so close she could smell his rotten breath. “People like you are ruining this world!”

Kay left crying and never went back. Her supervisor saw her, but did nothing.

She lost two cheap apartments during that period. She had no security to put up, any more, and her finances were strained to the point where she was staying in cheap hotels, but they were more expensive, overall, until at one time she spent the last of her money on dumpy old Chevy with a large back seat, so she would have somewhere to sleep at night. Her old contact, Carla, a drag queen who had helped her with S.R.S. planning, let her stay at her apartment for a week, but Carla’s landlord wouldn’t allow it longer.

Kay had gotten “gastritis” several times during that period, a weak diarrhea, boating, intestinal swelling, she guessed, that felt like her insides were splitting. She’d try to relax and let it go away. That helped. She’d take an antacid, which helped sometimes. But one time, it was very bad, and she drove herself to the hospital, where they put her on a gurney for six hours, ignored her while she groaned. Finally the pain got so bad she screamed and rolled sideways off the gurney, hitting her head on the floor. Only then did they treat her. She’d woken up later in a bay, hands shaking from exhaustion, being told to sip a horrid, green cocktail of something to help her stomach.

Tears crept down her cheeks as she remembered.

She felt a pain in her stomach.

I’m in a nice car, she told herself.

It’s okay, now.

Slow my heart.

Why had all that happened? At the time, back in 1974-1978, she had fought to survive, argued with and screamed at society for not caring, blown her stack at more than a few people in society for her treatment—only a few of which were actually innocent—but it had never dawned on her what was happening. She knew they were being mean. She knew, for example, at that hospital trip for gastritis, that she was being ignored. She knew several jobs went away because of false accusations, of people hating her for no good reason, but her denial kept her from actually seeing the big picture.

On the transsexual end, denial, and youthful energy, gave her the daily optimism to survive; but it also kept her from seeing what she was doing that made it worse: subtleties in her dress, her appearance, and behavior, that not only helped people “read” her as transsexual—which they didn’t like for its own sake—but also influenced them to respond negatively to it. Issues around that, she would only realize decades later.

If she had been able to see through the denial about how people felt about her— Would she have been able to face each day? Or would she have been able to make each day better, so she didn’t have so many problems?

All she did was survive, in those early years: a dreamy, fairy boat, Disneyland, honeymoon of happiness mingled with “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Graduating from U.C.I. with a B.A. in English, Kay looked for work.

Familiar with Asian cultures and needing to get away, she decided to become a stewardess. “Flight Attendant” was a name that was increasingly being used, because it was gender-neutral and easier for airlines to use regarding both sexes, but Kay actually preferred the sexed term. She was healthy, had a college degree—not nursing, which was preferred, but her appearance was Asian, and she could speak passable Japanese, a big plus. She applied at Braniff and was not hired, but she was accepted at Pan Am.

In training, she was hyper-aware of how everyone may take her, and to calm fears of those who wavered, realizing people talk, a week into training she faked menstruation by coating a pad with a solution she made to resemble something natural, leaving it in the waste can by the toilet for her roommate to find.

She felt a subtle, growing tension subside, after that.

After a brief stint on 727s, domestically, she found herself on 747s to Tokyo.

The pay was adequate, and after one year, she’d saved enough to have a tummy tuck done. Her stomach pooched out enough to bother her. Habitually private, she didn’t want anyone else to learn about it, so when she went in to have it done, she lied about who she was. When she recovered, she found her stomach was tighter, though not exactly even right to left, and her scar was uneven, even jagged, over her pubic hair, with “dog ears” at the ends over each hip.

Kay sat at home alone, in her apartment in San Francisco, retching into a trash can from nausea—her regurgitation stopping mid-effort from the pain.

A few months later, she went to another plastic surgeon to have the dog ears removed, and that surgeon told her that, probably, the surgeon she went to for the tummy tuck hadn’t actually done the surgery. It was too sloppy. “Likely, it was a student or trainee” who actually did it. “They gotta learn sometime.”

There had never been any incident at Pan Am., though one time she did feel some pressure from one supervisor, and Kay sought Joanna Clark at the A.C.L.U. Transsexual Rights Committee. Joanna’s help was invaluable, and Kay always wished she could have known Joanna better, or done something to repay her, but Joanna’s life called her away into service as a Nun, helping people with AIDS. Such a good person.

After Kay’s maneuvering, she got along with Pan Am rather well. She thoroughly enjoyed being part of the flight crew, traveling to places—she even dated a couple of the pilots—but after four years, she began to sense something “off” among some of the people she worked with.

They’re sensing me too much.

So she left the company and took a job as an assistant editor for a magazine in Los Angeles.

M.C.A.S. Miramar approached through her windshield. Kay was cleared on base by a young marine in a sharp uniform, and she drove over familiar streets to the C.B.Q., the Consolidated Bachelor Quarters check in, Building 4312, off Anderson, across the street from the Officer’s Club.

The sight of these things gnawed at her. He could see Wayne superimposed on every scene. This was—not the first date they ever had, but it was where he first kissed her, where they first made love.

They have to do a security check on me, to let me on base, she was sure.

The Facebook page? That was recent, and she had been approved for this visit on base a month ago.

But their security people would update them?

Her devil’s advocate was never her friend, but she was in there, and sometimes she did make some sense: They probably already knew.

Yuk!

Someone behind the military security scenes has been checking her out for decades. They’ve probably had a file on her forever, ever since Wayne first—

She drove in front of the Officer’s Club on Anderson, on her right, with the C.B.Q. on her left. She pulled into the O. Club parking lot and sat.

Is it safe?

She looked around. No one.

She felt weak.

Fear!

She opened the car door and stepped out— The grasses! She inhaled slowly. The sage brush in the area, the broad, mowed lawns smelled— She smelled it again.

Wayne!

A deep memory filled her. She could feel him—it—reach out to embrace her, but it was air, pollens, and she couldn’t—

She looked at the steel railings leading up to the front doors of the Officer’s Club, the front windows, glass doors, under the building’s three, oval-shaped roof protrusions which extended over the porch. There was a large red, white and blue sign stretched across the upper glass panels that read, “Welcome Air Show Fans.” That weekend was their annual, or almost-annual, airshow at Miramar.

It was Thursday afternoon, and the area was deserted. But over the weekend, there would be tens of thousands at the flight line a mile south, and hundreds in the Officer’s Club in the evenings. It was old hat to her—

She’d come to Miramar with Wayne once or twice a year for the last thirty-three years, and it looked as if nothing had changed from the beginning.

This was the first time she’d been back since he died, though, two years ago.

She walked up to the front, and with her stomach cringing. She tried the door.

It was locked. The sign said it would open at 1500, 3:00 p.m.

She checked her watch. It was 1:25.

She could feel Wayne’s presence there. She touched the door again, but had to resign herself to returning at three.

She went to the C.B.Q. check-in across the street, entering from the Anderson Ave. side. It was run rather like a hotel, and check-in was routine, except there were no credit cards. Her stay was comped by the base.

Kay carefully scanned everything for any sign of trouble, any sign of suspicion on their part, anyone who might not like her, or take undue interest in her, but all seemed normal.

Thank God. Maybe they don’t know yet?

What will I do when they do know?

Remember? They may have already known for years, you idiot!

Act calm!

“Your room number is here,” the Corporal circled a number on her papers and gave them to Kay with the key card folder, “right across the street, there.” The Corporal smiled.

Kay didn’t have to look. She knew the building. “Thank you.”

She left her car in the parking lot on the southwest side of Bldg. 4312—which was the B.O.Q., Officer’s Quarters, when Miramar was a Navy base, and walked across the street to Bldg. 4325, which was the B.E.Q. when the base was Navy, the Enlisted Quarters.

She walked on the soft—cork?—flooring of the sidewalk under the awning of 4312 and crossed the narrow street to 4325 with the smell of the grasses and the sight of the huge lawns drawing at her soul.

A cry started but stifled itself. She couldn’t! Not in front of these people.

Bldg. 4325 was a notch lower on the luxury end of things than 4312, but it was clean and well maintained, and she was very thankful they’d consented to having her. She’d requested it to be near Wayne again, and Major Matt, who had coordinated her stay, seemed to sense that.

“You’re welcome any time, Mrs. Knapp,” he had said on the phone.

She turned left inside the entrance and walked north, seemingly a half-mile to her room. It was a long building.

Inside, she found a room she could have lived in with Wayne, as his wife, deliriously happy, for the rest of her life, if they were so lucky. A very small living room with simple furnishings, a small foyer with tiny fridge, coffee maker, a small bedroom with closet, and a bathroom, all looking like they had been built in the ‘50s.

This was not the same room they’d had on that first night, but it was in the same building, and it was very much like it.

She briefly imagined what it would have been like to be a Navy wife, there, or Marine, mixing with the other wives while he went to the flight line to work; greeting him when he came home; kissing his neck; making love—

She put her one bag on the little table and looked at the bed.

Get out!

In two seconds, she was out the door, walking south on the linoleum floor through the long hallway, shaking her head, struggling with her feelings.

Tears came and froze.

Leave this place!

No, goddamnit!

She wiped her eyes and headed out the entrance, angling southwest on foot across the lawns of the C.B.Q. toward Anderson Avenue, again.

Denny’s is there.

Eat something!

There was a chow hall on the south side of the building that was just to her south, but she wasn’t allowed to eat there as she was a civilian. A lot of military people at Denny’s, anyway, since it had been built in 2009 or so, because it was beside the golf course and it was so bloody nice. It was a ten minute walk, and she wanted to soak up and memorize every square inch of the place on the way from the cracked sidewalk beside Elrod Ave., to the trees, and even imagining what it would be like to have Wayne there with her again goddamnit!

Her face distorted and she couldn’t stop it. Her hands flew to her face to wipe her tears away.

“Goddamnit!” she said out lout, struggling to stop her feelings—or to not show them.

DON’T DRAW ATTENTION! she screamed at herself inside.

She turned her head around and looked. Everywhere. Right, left, behind—nothing. No one.

She wiped her fingers under her eyes in an upward motion to dry her tears without ruining her mascara any more than it already was and knew from experience it was probably partially successful.

There was a marine on the corner at Anderson and Elrod, probably waiting for cars to thicken at some point relating to the airshow, but there was no traffic yet, and he had nothing to do.

“Good afternoon, Ma’am,” he said to her.

She looked at him closely for any sign— “Hi,” she said with a simple smile, crossing Anderson and walking on the sidewalk, there, the long block south to Denny’s.

He didn’t seem to have been concerned.

The golf course appeared on her right, and she stepped west a few feet to get into the parking lot, walking into the world’s best Denny’s where she sat in a booth she’d shared with Wayne, sometimes, next to the patio windows, overlooking the golf course, and—tried to eat for the first time in a long time.

But she couldn’t stomach much food.

All the server could get in her was some soup and some green tea.

At three, sharp, she walked through the doors of the Officer’s Club—and everything was sooooo much the same: models of military airplanes hung overhead in the foyer, white ceilings with dark beams, Squadron insignias on the walls, the ladies room—three sinks and four stalls, green coloring. She turned left and walked into the bar room of the Club. The beams were crisscrossed on the white ceiling in there. The bar was to the left, brown wood on the lower front, carpet across the room, tables …

She walked up to the bartender and got a glass of red wine which she carried out to the patio to the west side of the room. The patio was usually the center of things. There were large, round tables with chairs at them and large umbrellas near them for shade, and to the west side of that was the pool. Huge. Surrounded by concrete patio, grass, and trees.

This was where they set the movie “Top Gun” back in 1986. Before the Tailhook Scandal of 1991, the Officer’s Club was bedlam, during their annual airshow, with pretty young women getting in dressed to the nines trying to land a flyboy, and pilots, all wearing their flight suits, would raise hell and let off steam. A band would play hot 50s music, people were yelling and partying. She and Wayne had seen everything: tortilla fights, where someone on one side of the patio would Frisbee a tortilla to someone on the other side, and then like Mutually Assured Destruction, a dozen would fly back. Drunk and during the band’s impression of the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” one pilot got down on the concrete and another pilot jumped onto his back to surf him.

One time, Kay saw four pilots carry a fifth, one on each limb, over to the pool and throw him in. But they missed! His legs hit the concrete sides on the way in, but drunk, they didn’t notice and walked away. The pilot in the water was hanging on the side of the pool, alone.

Kay had walked over to him and asked, “Are you okay?”

The young man looked up at her as if wondering if someone spoke.

“Are you okay?” Kay asked again, more demanding, trying to force an answer.

“Yeah,” he slurred.

Kay smiled. She’d laughed about that with Wayne off and on through the evening. They were venting! Letting off steam! Watch “Top Gun”; anyone could see why. We were pushing them to the limit, asking them to risk their lives. They needed the outlet, at least in innocent fun ways.

Yet after Tailhook, both she and Wayne noticed, everyone stood around the Officer’s Club like they were at a mortuary, like “appropriate” statues in a museum, only neither of them thought that was appropriate, considering what they were doing there.

Kay walked to the pool’s edge and raised her glass to Wayne, taking a sip. A tear fell down her cheek as her head slowly turned right to look across the grass—there, she saw, to the wall beyond…

CHAPTER

8

Kay was on all fours on the deck of her beat-up, Catalina 25 sailboat, in the middle of a long row of slips. The air smelled beautifully of—what—decomposing sea life, a little pollution, and fresh air cleansed by seven thousand miles of Pacific ocean. Dresses from her ultra-fem phase were largely gone; she wore jeans and a T-shirt, sneakers. There was work to do. There was corrosion around the base of the mast, and she was scraping at it with a wire brush. Her hair was a wreck, half under a ruined ball cap that said “Marina Del Rey” on it. Her arms were dirty, and her butt was in the air.

She felt a slight thump and turned to look.

A yellow cat had jumped onto her boat and was walking across the top decking to greet her.

“Well, hello!” she said, stopping to scratch the little thing behind the ears.

“He likes you,” a man on the dock said.

She looked at him. A skinny nerd who used his cat to meet women?

“He’s charming,” she said, moving her scratch to include the area under his chin.

The cat purred comfortably, rolling over to show her his belly.

“He’s a ham,” the man said.

“That’s true.”

The man stood on the dock, not inviting himself onto her boat. “What year is it?” he asked.

She didn’t want to encourage him, so she offered a curt, “1981.”

He smiled, even chuckled a little. “I mean the boat.”

“Are you trying to pick me up?”

Men can be such assholes.

He smiled and looked at her.

“If you’re looking to dip your wick,” Kay said, “go fuck yourself.”

She started to turn back to her work, but he laughed at her.

“1978,” she said. “Not old, but it’s been neglected. It needs a lot of help. I don’t know what happened here.”

He nodded and looked at her. “How long have you owned it?”

What’s it to you!

“The former owner may have had something tied there,” he said, “and it chafed.”

She sat beside the mast and pulled the cat onto her lap for more.

“Maybe a dinghy,” he said. “Or Christmas lights.”

“Christmas lights?” It was October.

“Yeah.” He indicated with his hand. Could he come aboard?

She nodded.

“Sometimes people dress them up for Christmas.”

“I never even noticed that,” she said. “I must not have been here.”

“You’ve been busy, flying to Japan?”

Alarm!

The look on her face said so, if not her words. “Why would you say that?”

“May I?”

She nodded, cautiously.

He stepped onto and then sat on the seat in her boat’s cockpit. “I used to fly to Tokyo once in a while, sometimes once a month, and I saw you twice on the plane. I recognized you last week, here in the marina, but I didn’t know if I should say hello.”

She looked at him, wondered who he was. He didn’t seem to scare her. In fact, he seemed interested in her, in what she might say, but he also seemed like he didn’t want to pry.

“I don’t remember you,” she said. “Remind me?”

“I always flew first class. Both times I saw you, I was on the right side of the cabin—I don’t know what seat. I tried to pick you up,” he confessed.

She tried to remember, but nothing came to mind.

“How?”

“On the 2nd flight, I told you my name.”

“That was a pick-up?”

He smiled and looked at the cat, humbly.

“Was I nice?” she asked.

“Oh, very.”

“Did I serve you well?”

He nodded. “Um, hm.”

“Was I rude?”

“Oh, no! But you didn’t seem to pay me any attention, really, other than as the nice stewardess.”

“Well.” She smiled at him. She liked the term, and he seemed nice, too.

“And I can see you found a more glamorous position, scrubbing your boat.”

“Oh, yes. This is so cool.” She mocked herself.

He chuckled at her. “I know. But it’s nice to have a boat in the harbor.”

“What did you do in Japan?” she asked.

“I, uh, have a little company, and at the time I was doing some consulting for a company there.”

The cat walked back to him for a nudge and then went below in her boat to explore.

“He won’t go in there, will he?” She meant excrement.

He chuckled. “I don’t think so. Hasn’t in mine.”

“Which one is yours?”

“Uh, it’s that one on the end, there.”

Her eyes bugged out. “That racer?”

“Not really,” he said. It just looks that way. It’s really more of a cruiser, with a little performance.”

“Baloney,” she said.

His smile was broad. He looked at her and then down at his own feet.

She thought to go back to her scraping, but she got an odd feeling from the guy. His eyes seemed intelligent, as if they were searching for things, yet not probing or wandering, knowing things in his life would be okay when the time was right. He had an air of confidence that was born of a life where things worked because he knew what to do to make them work, rather than his ability to win them in battle.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

I don’t have one.

“Kay.”

What was that?

Kay!

“Yours?”

“Wayne Knapp,” he said to her, softly. “Would you like some help?”

I bet you would like that, she heard herself think.

“No thanks. I can handle it.”

“It’s just, it’s a nice day, and that’s what we do out here: enjoy the day. I’m not doing anything.”

“I know guys,” she said. “You’re looking for someone to grease your pole or shack up with, and I’m not here for that.”

His smile indicated he was unconcerned with her response, undaunted, perhaps even amused. “Uh, I’m just enjoying a nice day, and I like your spirit.”

He sat on her settee and checked the tension on the boat’s lifelines, the thin cables that run two feet above the gunwale around the rim of the boat. “She feels pretty good.”

“Things she needs are superficial. She’s sound underneath.

“How’d you get her?”

“The former owner had her slipped here, but he didn’t pay his bill. Finally the marina possessed it and sold it to me.”

He nodded.

“Have you ever sailed it to Catalina?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m new to sailing, and I hear the waters can get a little choppy out in the middle.”

“They can. There’s a current that comes down from the north, and then there’s the tides. But it’s no problem. This boat will do it, if you get some basics.”

“You know about sailing?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I had a Catalina 27, once. But I sold it to get that one.” He pointed to his new boat.

“Strike it rich?” she asked.

He actually seemed displeased with the question, as if that was the wrong one to ask, but he didn’t get up to leave. “Uh, it’s just a boat.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of men treat me—”

He nodded, as if understanding without suggesting.

“You want to go out?” He asked her.

“No,” she said flatly.

“I mean out there.” He pointed to the ocean. “I’ll give you some pointers.”

“That’s what I’m guessing you want,” she said.

He smiled at her again. “I mean sailing.”

Out on the ocean with a strange guy I don’t know?

“No thanks,” she said.

His head dropped a little, and he nodded some. His smile faded.

“Look down there, in the tool box, and find yourself another wire brush.”

He brightened.

“There’s a smaller one that’ll get closer to the base,” she said.

He moved to do so. When he did, his cat ran out and curled up on the warm, fiberglass settee in the cockpit.

She could hear him rummaging through her toolbox below.

“Do you have any corrosion blocker?” he asked. “Or something to treat it?”

“Not yet.”

“We could get some over at the Chandlery, and have lunch. I haven’t eaten yet.” He stuck his head up out of the companionway.

She thought about it. There were restaurants on Admiralty Way, and they were in public. They could walk there—

“What about your cat?”

“I’ll feed him in the boat, and he’ll go to sleep. He sleeps sixteen hours a day.”

Over the next several months, through the rest of 1981 and into 1982, her whole life turned into Wayne.

He was never pushy, always kind and gentle. On the one hand, he always seemed to know the right thing to do in a given situation, yet on the other he also seemed unconcerned with what people thought about it—which was— No, she guessed. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t care, but that he simply knew he was doing the right thing.

A lunch turned into boat cleaning, turned into feeding his cat, turned into spending more time on his boat than hers.

Below deck of his boat, when she was scooching to get around him, he stopped her with his arm, softly on hers, and kissed her on the cheek.

She jerked away and looked at him over her shoulder. “Stop that!” she said.

“Stop what?”

Men use me, then they disappear!

“I’m not interested,” she said, going out on deck.

“You don’t seem uninterested,” he called after her.

“I’m practicing to be a lesbian.”

“I don’t think you’re lesbian.”

“I’ll practice until I get it right!”

He laughed.

But he didn’t listen, and neither did she, to be honest. He would come around, over to her boat or over to her office, ask her somewhere, and, like someone who wouldn’t learn, she’d go.

Star Wars. “The Empire Strikes Back.” Throughout the film, Wayne sat comfortably with her, beginning to hold her hand when they learned that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. She brought her hands up to her face, and because his hand was in hers, his hand touched her face.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark.” They stood in line for two hours waiting to enter what was then Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, loading themselves with popcorn and chocolate, Diet Coke. She laughed hardest when Karen Allen said she was Harrison Ford’s partner, and he laughed the hardest when Indie pulled out his revolver to shoot the swordsman.

Kay couldn’t help but lean on him during the film. It seemed so natural. And his hand found its way between her knees, to rest comfortably on the inside of her thigh, as if it had always been meant to be there.

It had been hard to watch the movie, after that.

Disneyland. Wayne stood with her by Snow White’s grotto, east of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, before the wishing well. Snow White’s statue stood over a fountain beside it, with the Seven Dwarfs.

Wayne dug into his pocket for a penny. “What do you think we should wish for,” he asked Kay.

To fall in love and live happily ever after.

Kiss me, please!

“I’m not sure,” she answered.

“You must have some wish,” he said.

I do!

She squeezed his hand. “I think we’re not supposed to tell.”

“But if it’s from both of us, we both have to know what we’re wishing for, for it to work.”

She turned to stand in front of him, looked into his eyes, then down to his lips.

Can’t you see?

“What do you think we should wish for?” she asked him.

“I think the well already knows,” he said.

She leaned closer to him. “Will you please—”

He pressed the penny to her lips and tossed it into the well. It entered the water with a plop.

Kay grabbed his other hand in surprise.

He held her hand and looked over at Snow White, then down to Kay. “I think it worked. I think we may get our wish.”

“What wish?” she asked him.

He took her hand and led her in a slow stroll up the path toward the area in front of the Castle. Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Waltz had begun to play. He took her right hand in his left, put his left hand around her back, and drew her in close, beginning to waltz with her.

She put her left hand on his shoulder and raised her cheek to touch his, moving with him in the dreamy three-step rhythm.

How could this be?

“I pray this will last for ever and ever.”

People stood around them with smiles on their faces to watch, as he turned her ‘round and ‘round…

The two of them walked hand in hand through the harbor on a spring evening. The sun was setting, but it couldn’t be seen for a fog as thick as night covered the coast.

“Would you look at that?” she asked.

A seagull flew by them in the fog.

He always seemed to smile at her. “Who says seagulls don’t fly in the fog?”

“People don’t know, because the seagulls are kind of hidden.”

He looked at her gently and squeezed her hand a little.

Nights were especially romantic. At his house, she would cook him dinners and they would lay for hours in front of his fireplace, talking forever about anything.

How did that happen?

But subjects kept coming up. It didn’t matter what they talked about. They just needed to share.

Thanksgiving, his two boys were visiting him from Salt Lake, along with his ex, her new husband from Provo, Orin with his family, and he invited Kay to his house to share with them.

Though Wayne’s house in Venice wasn’t the one he’d lived in with his family, his ex wife, Audia, acted like she owned it, and him as well.

“No, Kay— Is that your name? Kay? You go sit down—”

“I know where everything is, Audia. I am the principal cook in this kitchen. Normally.”

Audia looked in astonishment to Wayne, who ignored her.

Kay was unaware Audia was reading her, unaware of how they were really interacting, because she was young. She wasn’t thinking about that.

Kay could hear Orin in the kitchen talking with Audia. “Is that what she goes by? Not Keiko?”

“Don’t ask me,” Audia said.

From the dining room, Kay saw Orin look at her critically.

What’s wrong with these people?

Ex-wife syndrome?

“Daddy’s—” The boys began to talk, but they were silenced by Oakham Seegmiller, Audia’s husband, followed by a sideways glance at Kay.

Kay went over and sat beside Wayne, whispered, “They don’t like me.”

Wayne looked at his plate, a little sadly, and patted her knee.

Sometimes he took her to church—a Ward, he’d called it.

She was frightened, expected to be rejected—and, in fact, she believed she was. She was not Mormon, didn’t want to be, and she was certain everyone there knew it.

“They don’t like me here,” she whispered to him in the pew.

A man two rows up and six feet to the right glanced at her in a manner she felt was disapproving.

Mason smiled. “They expect women to wear dresses here, but nothing so hot.”

“What’s wrong with this one?”

He smiled again, this time looking her in the eye. “It’s hot.”

She got goose pimples at the way he said it.

It seemed important to him, so she went with him, every other week or so. She noticed they were Christian, but there was no cross she could see. There were, however, three clocks in the sanctuary, or “sacrament” room, she guessed they called it, and they were punctual. “Maybe so they can start their basketball game on time?” she whispered to him.

He smiled at her on that one, too. “The Culture Hall,” he said.

“Basketball court.”

He touched her hand lovingly. “They don’t usually play any basketball in there.”

“Why do they follow me when I go to the ladies’ room? They stand outside and wait.” she whispered back to him.

He didn’t respond, as everyone began to sing “For All the Saints” out of the hymnal. He sang. She sat with an open hymnal in her hand.

He knew she didn’t like it, but he wanted her to come, anyway.

They walked down Venice Beach, one evening, and she asked him. “Why do you go to church?”

He seemed to know the answer inside him—she sensed it—though he didn’t say.

“Are you hoping I’ll join?”

“No. It’s not your thing.”

“Then I don’t get it. I mean,” he didn’t seem upset, so she continued, “Like last time there was this guy from Stake there, who seemed all too-super-nice?”

He nodded.

Kay continued. “But he spoke first, and the way he was saying, “…I know the Book of Mormon is True,” and “I know Joseph Smith was right?” You see what the other people said when they got up to share?”

His smile dropped. She could see he knew what she meant, but that somehow she was missing where he was coming from.

“It sounded like he was telling them what to say, requiring it of them. Are they supposed to say that?”

He walked on with her, not commenting.

“Do you believe in God?” she asked him.

He nodded.

“What do you think she is?” She couldn’t help the little dig, and he smiled at her for making it.

“Something bigger.”

“But you worship him?”

His nod was weak, but it seemed meant to suggest that the real answer was a little different from something simple like she expected.

He moved his hand up her arm to kiss her, but she withdrew just enough to stop him. The question was in his eyes, though not on his lips.

She asked herself that same thing.

Why did I stop?

Because— “I expect you to hurt me,” she said. “People do.”

He nodded again, in his customary way. She knew he understood. She didn’t connect it with his awareness of her sexuality, but she knew he understood about her being hurt.

“What about your family?” he asked. “Do you think you will ever work things out with them?”

They think I’m sick.

“I—” She wondered how she should answer him this time. He had asked before. “I told you I haven’t seen them for a long time.”

“Yes.”

“Truth is, I— I left them when I was eighteen, and I haven’t been back.”

The look on his face was sadness for her, as if he knew there had to be a good reason.

She wanted to hug him so much.

“I don’t think there is anything I can do, there. And, for what it’s worth, my brother threatened to kill me if I ever tried.”

His look to her was sharp, and he didn’t raise the subject again.

She felt his hand on her arm, and she moved it to her left hand, caressing it with her other right, catching herself massaging the hair on his wrist.

They sat on a bench, together, simply sharing each other’s company.

“I have to go away, again, for a few days,” he said.

Oh! “How long?”

“I think two days,” he said. “Down to N.A.S. Miramar, by San Diego.”

She lowered her head. “A Navy air base?”

“Yes.”

She slid her hand over his forearm and leaned on his shoulder.

“Would you like to come with me?”

“Really? To a military base?”

He shrugged. “Yes.”

“They will let me?”

“I already asked them, and I can bring you.”

She looked at him, in silhouette against a light in the harbor. She could smell his cologne.

In 2015, in the O. Club at Miramar, a scared and defeated Kay looked at the grass area beside the pool, by the wall. It was that wall—

In 1982, ten months after meeting Wayne, she’d agreed to come to Miramar with him.

She felt the energy of the base.

He walked with her through the Officers’ Club, his hand on the small of her back, guiding, obviously comfortable with her.

People noticed, while they continued whatever they were doing. Men were in flight suits with officers’ insignias. Everyone was dressed so well.

She smiled back at them as casually as he could.

She felt the electricity of his hand touching her back. She knew he could feel her pantyhose beneath what she hoped was a flattering, short dress, when his hand strayed a little south, but she let him do it and tingled at the thought.

She stopped to look at him in there, in the bar area, and leaned in to him a little—but he guided her on.

Is he ever going to make a move on me?

She walked with him out onto the patio under the night sky. A band played popular rock and pop tunes loud enough for Odin to hear. The flyboys were having a great time. There was a lot of yelling and goofing off, drinking. Most of the world’s very best Navy pilots and some of their teams were letting off steam, enjoying life.

Beautiful women were snuggling up to them.

A lieutenant commander stepped in front of them.

“Wayne! Good to see you again!” He turned to Kay. “Who do we have here? This the girl you told me about?”

“Hi Bob. Yes, this is Keiko Matsuoka, my date.”

“This is the place for hotties, isn’t it?”

“Sure is!” Wayne said. “Bob, here, is so fit,” Wayne explained to Kay. Bob was tall and extremely fit. “I’ve known him for—what—three weeks now, and—”

“Three years,” Bob corrected.”

“—and never have I believed he is a simple projects liaison.”

“Sally calls me her ‘great big black Michelangelo’s David,’ but she’s stuck on me, what can I say? Though I do think,” Bob leaned in to mock privacy, “she’s talking about my—golf clubs.” He looked at them both as if he’d told a good joke.

Kay laughed at him.

“Golf clubs!” Wayne laughed at him.

“Oh, wait. I have to go find Captain Hall. He wants to talk to you this evening about the project.”

Kay noticed Wayne usually referred to his work as ‘projects.’

“That’s usual,” Wayne said to Kay.

“How special is she?” Bob asked. “No, sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” He turned to Kay. “Wayne is the smartest hunk of junk in the galaxy,” paraphrasing Lando Calrissian from “The Empire Strikes Back.” “He doesn’t do anything lightly. Will you join us for dinner?”

“Uh,” Kay looked at Wayne who nodded. “Sure.”

“Great, then. It’ll be that table, there.” Bob pointed. “Now I got to go.”

The lieutenant commander headed off toward the ballroom and disappeared.

Wayne put his hand on Kay’s back and ushered her through the party, saying hello to people now and then, acting like he was protecting her from an honest ravaging from one guy, leading her past the airshow-standard line of burgers, beans, and potato salad into the pool area.

No one was back there. As surprising as it may sound, all the partying was in the patio near the bar and the food.

“Wayne,” she said, turning to him a little as they walked.

“Hum?”

“Why have you been dating me this last year?”

Wayne moved his hand up to her shoulder.

Casually, they moved onto the grass, enough behind the wall there to cut out some of the noise from the party.

“You mean— Oh,” he said. “I think I see.”

With him, it didn’t feel like a risk: “You know my history, don’t you,” she said.

“Some of it, I guess.”

She could see him looking into her eyes with both a sincerity and a yearning. For nearly a year, he had respected her distance, even when she wasn’t sure she wanted distance.

“Most men—most people—run from me. I’m more often than not the butt of jokes behind my back, than someone men would want to date. But here I am.” She spread her arms to include the Navy base. “You’ve got me here, introducing me to your friends. You had me over with your family last Thanksgiving.”

“Kay, I think you’re more than you think you are, and I could see that in you from the first times I saw you on the plane.”

“And cleaning the mast,” she said. “Oh, that’s it. You want me to clean your mast—”

He smiled with her joke. “No, actually. The first time I saw you there, you were making lovie noses all over someone’s dog. It was by the Hatteras cabin cruiser? You seemed to want to love the dog—”

“I remember her.”

“—but the owner didn’t seem to want to let you, as if you had rabies or something.”

Kay did, painfully, remember.

“And—aside from being pretty—”

“Which I am not.”

“—which you are, I got the sense you were hurt because he wouldn’t let you love his dog. You slinked back to your boat and sat in the cockpit.”

She looked at him and then turned her eyes away, afraid to cry in front of him. “Not so very attractive.”

“No, no,” he said, turning her face back to him. “Very attractive.”

Her face showed her question.

“’Who is this person who can take that from people and still maintain her dignity’? I wondered. But I’ve never been very good at approaching girls. I’m the nerd with a slide rule in my pocket protector. So how was I going to approach you—”

“You used your cat!”

He smiled. “You liked the dog.”

“You have kids, Wayne. Two.”

“Yes, and an ex to literally go with them. And she has someone she prefers, she says, because he’s a better Mormon.”

“And you’ve had other dates in your life?”

“Ah, true,” he conceded. “It happens.”

“You afraid of girls?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. I’m not afraid of people in general. I’ve just cared more, historically, for my studies and my work and never socialized much. It used to bother me. It bothers all people, in one way or another, how to fall in love.”

She noticed the way he was looking at her, and she began to blush.

Change the subject!

“So you stuck with your studies and got two master’s degrees: one in Chemical Engineering, and one in Electrical Engineering.”

“Good girl,” he said.

He touched her face with his hand and lifted a lock of hair behind her left ear.

She tried to withdraw, but he touched her arm, and she began to find it difficult to move.

“So who is this person?” He asked, “Because I wondered. Because life is that way, harsh at times, with people. So who handles it well? That’s what was attractive about you, at first.”

For the first time since she’d known him, he leaned down to kiss her on the lips.

It felt to Kay as if an electric discharge blew through her mind, erasing everything in its path. She felt his lips, and though her eyes closed by their own will, she could see his essence, his face, and— She felt his tongue play against her lips.

Her response was immediate. A hot need burned through her middle and down to her groin. Her breath caught then came in shallow gasps. She reached up to touch the back of his head, ran her fingers through his short hair, and guided his mouth deeper into hers—

Until she put both hands on his chest and pushed him away.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I know what you want,” she said.

“Yes, that’s part of what I want.”

“But I’m not here for that!”

Someone from the party drifted out onto the patio with his friend, saw them, and went back in.

Wayne touched her left cheek with his fingers, and she felt it again in her groin. Her breath quickened.

“Why haven’t you dated anyone else since we met?” he asked.

She looked at his lips, at his jawline and the way his whiskers had grown—

“Why have we spent nearly every day together since?” he asked as well.

“Is that why you came back here with me?” she asked.

He looked at her, standing before him.

She noticed his pants—

Why am I looking at his pants!

Kay’s eyes grew with her breath, yet she pushed him away.

The look on her face was fear.

“Kay, I’ve known you a year now. I’ve seen you with my family, my parents, friends. I’ve taken you to dinners, the Ward, the wedding of a friend. We’ve gone boating on both our boats. We’ve seen ‘Raiders of the Lost Arc’ together, twice, and ‘Empire Strikes Back’ three times. I’ve seen you through mechanics who wouldn’t work on your boat, and a hassle at work with a bigoted boss.

“But you have to know: The reason I love you is because of who you are. It has nothing to do with anything else. My fear, this last year has been that you would not love me.”

“You love me?”

In spite of herself, she began to melt. Her needs were strong, and the truth is “I do love—”

What?

He backed her to the wall, further into the shadow of the building and leaned into her, kissing her again softly on her lips, pressing his tongue against hers, his groin against hers.

A need grew through her of a nature she had never known. She’d been with men before, but never with anyone she loved.

Wayne!

She couldn’t catch her breath. She moved her lips over his whiskers. She caressed his head with one hand and his back with another, and he leaned into her, pressing against her groin. His left hand moved to her right breast and pinched her nipple.

It welled in her fast, before she could stop it. She hugged him tightly. Her back arched a little. He kissed her neck, and she gasped—“Uh!”—rubbing against him below, rocking her hips back and forth.

“You came?” he asked.

She looked at him and kissed him again.

“Hey? You hoo?” Lt. Commander Bob called from the side.

Wayne pulled away.

“No!” She pulled him back.

Bob laughed a little. “Wayne! What you doing over there? As if I didn’t know. Captain Hall is here. He’s asking for you, we have the table. You trying to get her pregnant? Lets have some dinner?”

She looked like she couldn’t wait.

The commander smiled.

“Walk in front of me to the table?” he whispered to her. She reached up to him for a kiss, but he turned her, and she led the way.

“Kay?” Bob asked. “You all spaced?”

She led with Wayne behind her, toward the commander.

“You’ve got her so blown,” Bob said to Wayne. “Kiss the girls and make ‘em beg.”

Kay held his hand behind her back and felt the whiskers—the hair—on the backs of his hands—again!

She turned around to feel his wrist hair with both hands.

He turned her back around.

The commander laughed. “Eeeee-God. And my Sally’s off on a trip to her mother’s.”

“You sit here,” the commander said.

The three of them sat.

“Bob?” Wayne asked.

“That’s right, ‘Bob.’” Bob laughed. “You know me, Wayne. Friends! You and me? You were at my wedding, for Christ’s sakes.”

Kay was looking at Wayne’s jawline, at the short little whiskers that grew there, how they faded into smooth skin at his neck.

“She’s flushed.” Captain Hall said. “Anyone can see that.”

“He’s got her going by the pool,” Commander Bob said.

The men chuckled at her embarrassment.

“You want some dinner?” Bob asked Wayne. “You, Kay?”

“Not yet,” Wayne said with a smile to Kay.

“I’ll get it. You want something?” The commander asked Kay, but she didn’t hear him.

All she could do was think about the room.

Wayne and his friends talked about business.

Kay tried to settle herself down, but she kept noticing the hair on his forearms, for some reason, until finally Wayne made their good-evenings and led her out of there.

At a brisk walk, they went back to his room in the B.E.Q., and just inside the door, the passion was back. They looked at each other, longingly.

He leaned in to kiss her. Her recoil was subtle, a habit.

He reached up to touch her, and she felt herself distance, ever so slightly.

“Kay?”

I need him!

She forced herself to touch his face. “Please love me,” she said to him softly, “before I die.” She took his left hand and put it on her right breast, then she put her left hand on his pants, drawing his head slowly down to hers for a kiss.

She kissed him and rubbed her hips against his hips, and his pants grew again.

He tried to undo his pants, but she scrambled to do so for him, unbuckling them and taking him full in her mouth.

He groaned and rocked with her but took himself out to undress her.

She tried to unzip herself down the back, but she couldn’t—because there were buttons there instead. She pulled at them—

“Let me do it,” he said.

She turned, and he got them undone enough to pull her dress over hear head, dropping it to the floor.

In her bra and pantyhose, she pulled at his sport jacket—

“Lets do our own!” he said.

He undressed himself, while she kicked off her shoes and took off her pantyhose and bra.

Naked before each other, breathing hard, she reached out to hold his penis, but he pressed her against the door and began to rub his wrist against her clitoris.

“Is this what you’ve been thinking?” he asked, smiling. “I noticed.”

She moaned and reached for him, to kiss him, to hold his penis.

He grinned even more and worked his wrist into her groin.

She grabbed his forearm and held it against herself, before he turned her toward the bed.

Quickly, she turned down the blankets, and they slipped between the sheets.

His face was on her breasts, his tongue over her nipples. His face then slid slowly down her tummy to her groin and he licked at her clitoris.

She groaned loudly and pressed his head hard against her—until she dragged his head back up to hers so she could feel his lips.

He was hard and heavy against her thigh, then on her groin, then on her tummy. She reached to pull on it until he rolled onto her and spread her legs with his knees.

Her mind blanked, as it usually did during good sex, but this time, she was lost in him It wasn’t just sex.

Wayne!

She felt the soft head of his penis against her labia, and felt him press between them, sliding deeper within. She felt his arms wrap around her as he moved in and out. She turned her ear to his mouth—

She gasped, “Way—”

His cheek was beside hers. His breath was in her ear. His hair was in her hands. His weight was on top of her. His chest rubbed against her breasts. His tummy hair caressed her tummy. Her legs were wide, and he was between them. He filled her with his penis, and then with a violent thrust, he gripped her back and held her still, forcing himself deeper, until he filled her with his semen.

She felt him throb over and over, inside her, held between his stomach and his penis, together in life, together in love.

“Wayne!” she said, moving her hips up against him, rounding his groin, rubbing harder.

She felt some of his semen leak out down her ass to the bed, yet she rounded her groin against his.

He reached down with his right hand and massaged her clitoris.

She bit his ear.

He rubbed his wrist into her clit until she arced and felt herself, wave after wave, coming all around him.

Her mind was with him on an ocean in a fog. There was only him, inside her, on top of her.

Just him.

It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever known, the most complete she had ever felt, could ever feel, in her life.

She was herself, for the first time. It felt right. This was what she was. This was who she was. This was life, where all else was nothing.

He pressed harder against her groin to keep himself inside her.

She let her legs widen even more and rocked her hips up to his to keep him in.

She just wanted to revel in the moment, feel his face against hers, his penis inside her, his weight on her.

Kay sat in the chair by the pool of the Offices’ Club and looked at her left hand, there to see that engagement ring and the simple gold band beside it.

A man approached her from the right. It was Major Matt, a Marine. He saw her crying, and he remained quiet.

“It was thirty-three years ago, this weekend,” she said. “We first came here.”

Major Matt sat in a chair near her.

The late warm, late afternoon sun was no comfort.

CHAPTER

9

They walked into the operations building, at the flight line near the control tower, Kay holding onto his left arm, with a raw warmth in her middle and a smile as broad as the ocean.

The glass door closed behind them.

“Wayne, there you are. Great!”

“Hello Bob,” Wayne said. “What’s this?” He pointed to the silver oak leaves on Bob’s collar. “Weren’t you a Lieutenant Commander last night? Gold oak leaves?”

Bob smiled and nodded. “My promotion came through.” He raised his hands in question. “I don’t know. Maybe they know something I don’t.”

“Congratulations.”

Wayne shook Bob’s hand.

Kay continued to loop her right arm through Wayne’s left.

“Captain Hall’s around here somewhere— There he is,” Bob said.

A Navy captain rounded the corner with a woman beside him.

“Wayne.” The captain greeted Wayne with a smile and an outstretched right hand.

“Hello Everett,” Wayne said, greeting the both of them. “Shara.”

“Good to see you!” the captain said.

“And who is this?” Shara asked Wayne.

“This,” Wayne said with a broad smile, is my girl, Keiko Matsuoka. She goes by Kay.”

“Kay!” Shara said, excited. “Well, Everett told me about you last night.” She spoke to everyone, “Look at her, in love!” She turned back to Kay. “Welcome to the family, I guess it is?” She leaned in to give Kay a big hug.

“Thank you,” Kay said.

Shara started talking a mile a minute. “We have got to become good friends.”

Kay looked at Wayne.

Shara continued. “How long have you known Wayne? Because he’s one party-hardy guy! Throws the biggest parties this base ever saw!”

Kay looked at Wayne, who indicated Shara was joking.

“How long have you known this guy!? Because I’ve never met you, and I thought we knew all his girls—all two of them. He had his wife, then only one girlfriend since then, but it’s been quite a while—”

“I think she’s going to get you two married,” Captain Hall said to Everett.

Wayne chuckled with the men.

Kay looked uncomfortable.

Bob pointed at Wayne with awareness and leaned into his ear a little. “Did you get her pregnant last night— You dog!”

Bob looked to Everett for confirmation.

The glint in the captain’s eye made it seem like he had the same question.

“So you two are dating?” Shara pressed, a flurry of questions. “That has got to be something. Where do you two go? What do you do? Have you met his family? Where did you two meeeeeeet?”

Kay looked at Wayne, who seemed to indicate what she said was her business.

Indicating Shara with a smile, Wayne said to Kay, “I don’t think you’ll slow her down unless you tell her about it.”

“No, that won’t work, either,” Captain Hall said. “I’ve tried.”

Bob nodded vigorously.

Shara didn’t wait for permission. She took Kay away a couple feet, “… so the boys can talk. So tell me! What’s going on?”

Kay tried to, when she could get a word in.

The captain got Wayne’s attention. “I’d have been an admiral by now, if—” He shook his head. “Never mind. If they’re going to be busy, maybe I can steal you away in a little for one tiny look-see? Small idea I had—”

Wayne’s head was slightly bowed, looking at a glowing-yet-fearful Kay with the energetic Shara, but he answered Elliott. “Yes, sure. Where?”

“Over in the ‘big hangar’.” the captain indicated.

“Sure—” Wayne’s eyes drifted back to Kay. “She doesn’t know where she is.”

Shara heard him. “She’s right here with me, fool!” Shara turned to Kay. “Where do you think we are?”

“The Price Club?” Kay answered, feeding Shara.

“See!” Shara confirmed. “Firm grasp on reality—I mean, she got to Wayne, here! What’s to worry! You kids go on and play,” she said to the men. “I’m gonna take her out there and find us a coke or something—” Shara began leading Kay out the doors of the Operations Building toward the flight line.

The private Friday airshow was building. Some little airplane was already doin’ ditties in the sky with a stream of smoke behind him, lookin’ like his engine was broken.

Kay looked back at Wayne but he seemed comfortable with it—

NO!

She couldn’t tell! He seemed comfortable with most things!

“—No! An ice cream? A donut? You’re too skinny! You don’t want one? Maybe you’ll have some water and a little bit of wheat germ?”

Outside, Shara’s questions became more forceful. “So tell me! Where did you meet? How did you meet him? I am all about relationships!”

“I, uh— I was working on my sailboat, and he—”

“You sail!”

Kay wasn’t sure what to do with this woman. How could she keep her at bay? She was the captain’s wife. What did that mean to Wayne? If she shut her down, would it hurt Wayne?

“I, yes, a little, and his cat came over and introduced himself—”

“Better than Everett. All I got from him was a ‘Howdy’ at a road bar by N.A.S. Pensacola, and that was that!” She laughed at herself. “So your name is Kay-ko—”

“Keiko,” Kay said.

“That Japanese?”

“Yes. On my father’s side.”

Don’t give much information! She might track him down.

“Did he immigrate? Where do your parents live? Where are you from? Have you ever actually been to Japan …”

After a while, Wayne walked up to a struggling Kay and took her by the waist. “My turn,” he said to Shara as if it were a game.

“Uh!” Kay turned and hugged him.

“Thank you,” Kay said into his ear.

Wayne asked of Shara, “Mind if I—”

“No. Sure!” Shara said. “You take care of her, now! I know we’re going to be great friends!”

Kay was nervous.

Wayne kissed her briefly on the lips, which solved most of it.

“See you all later at the O. Club, okay, Shara?” Wayne smiled at her and began walking with Kay in the other direction, taking her behind a World War II B-25 display stand.

A different plane took to the sky, a twin, doing much the same as the first one.

People milled about, more all the time, as the day built toward the official, private air show that afternoon, which would include the Blue Angels U.S. Navy Flight Exhibition Team.

Kay hugged him fiercely. “Please don’t leave me alone with her,” she begged.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her, simply. He seemed to care for her concerns.

“She was really prying.”

He nodded.

She hugged him again, and he held her, until someone rounded the corner of the display and teased them.

Wayne smiled at the spectator and kissed her playfully on the mouth.

She squirmed to get out of his embrace, which made it funny for all.

She began to walk away from him.

“Where you going?” he called after her.

“This is my girl,” he told the spectator, then telling everyone. “This is my girl!”

“Yea!” a few of them called back.

She let him catch her and snuggled into him as they walked through rows of aircraft and vendor booths. “And you’re my man.”

The thought felt strange to her.

He noticed.

“I haven’t really had a ‘man’ before.”

“Yes you have.”

People were getting thicker, gathering for the building airshow. Some ate ice cream cones, snow cones, burgers. Some walked along with umbrellas as parasols. There was a lot of laughing and playing.

“I mean, not really. Not one who mattered.”

“Well, that’s the difference! ‘Girls’ don’t matter much to us guys.”

She laid her head on his shoulder for a second. “Yes, I do. You know when I could tell?”

He offered to buy her a bottle of water at a vendor, and she accepted. They each took a sip of it.

“When my cat walked up to you?”

“No.”

“When you noticed that you were turned on to me?”

“No. When?”

“When you introduced me to your family. A guy does that, and it’s serious. It’s in the book.”

“The one from Walmart.”

“No. I bought mine from Niemen Marcus.”

“So did I,” he said, squeezing her hand.

“Look,” she stopped near a large helicopter with blades fore and aft. “I’m in love with you—”

“And I’m in love with you, too.”

“—and I can’t help it! I love you, and I need you to be in my life. That part’s easy for me, but I don’t understand how you can be in love with me.”

He kissed her again.

She responded, then pulled away, looking around at other people—none of whom seemed to care much.

“The hard part is, why— How can you love me? I mean,” she leaned into him as if to say something, then changed her mind.

He held her against him and kissed the hair on the side of her head.

This time, she did not pull away but brought her hands up to hold his back.

He kissed the side of her head again.

He stood her away from him just enough to see her face.

She was tearing as if to cry.

“It’s okay! I’ve been in the loop since I first saw you pet that guy’s dog.”

She looked at him, fearful, then looked around at everyone else.

Don’t talk about it!

It will spotlight it, and that will change everything! I’ve seen it happen a hundred times.

“I can see you need to talk, so lets get it out in the open,” he said. “How old were you at the time?”

Another couple walked by them, holding hands. They smiled at Kay and him.

He put his arm around her and strolled comfortably in the warm morning sun.

Kay looked like she might die, but a glance at him told her she could rely on his wisdom. “Eighteen.”

His eyebrows went up. “Young. How did you arrange that? There was probably a lot involved—”

She put her arm around him as well. “Can you hold me once more?”

He stopped to hug then kiss her, moving his hands over her back.

Kay was reminded of their love-making—twice last night and once this morning.

And he already knew!?

They continued strolling through the crowd.

“I knew my whole life. My earliest memories were with it, maybe age 3? I never talk about it. My family—were hard.”

Pain crept across Wayne’s face, then anger.

“I was hated, beaten, locked in a closet all night I can’t count how many times—” She told him the whole story. “—and so I left.”

“In Los Angeles, alone, at eighteen,” he asked, “with that history, new to yourself, with people who would rather spit on you than look at you?”

“Sometimes,” she said, confirming.

“And you—” He stopped walking and shook his head. Sorrow filled his face.

“So that’s me—”

He shook his head. “No. I know you think you’re some transsexual who will get shunned because it really is a hated thing, but that’s your family talking.”

“And most people out in the world agree.” Her look was certain.

He nodded. “Okay, yes, I think it is. But that’s not the truth of this whole thing.”

“So how can you love me?” she asked.

“You’re doubting me?”

“No.”

“You doubt I love you?”

“I don’t know! But the shit hasn’t hit the fan, yet, and it will and when it does, you’ll be sorry you’ve dated me—branded yourself as a transsexual-lover, one notch worse than a homosexual, as most people see it, because it’s just kinky!”

“You live with this!”

“Every day. And you’ll live with it also, if you— You’ve already told all these people you love me.”

“And my kids, and ex-wife. Orin is the meanest. And my parents, and the people who work for me. So who’s left to know?”

“Wait ‘till it builds up.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know, but it will. I’ve lived this my whole life. You haven’t!”

“No, no. I know you have, but— Yeah, trouble could happen, but we’ll just have to deal with it.

“I mean, what if I’d fallen in love with you, and you were black, for example. There are still a lot of places in the world where that’s considered sick.”

“Not as much as this.”

“Okay, but what if you were black— What if it were W.W.-II, and you’re Japanese.”

“I am half-Japanese.”

“Yes. And you know, there were a lot of intermarriages? And it was the war. People hated that! But what do you do? If you fall in love, you deal with it. Together! It’s socially formational, but it’s just the life you’ve fallen into. And me, I’ve fallen in love with you.”

“Really, though? I— You know I believe you, but I don’t trust it. You know why.”

Wayne smiled and reached into his pocket, pulling out a small box. He opened it in front of her, getting down on one knee in front of her, before God and everyone.

The pose was classic, and no less than a hundred people around them noticed. All stopped what they were doing to watch. Charming smiles were on their faces, some whispered to each other.

Kay was stunned and charmed, yet looked around them, expecting humiliation.

None came.

“Kay,”

Kay looked back to him.

“Kay, I’ve wanted you since I first met you. You’re the one I want to have children with—”

She leaned down to him and whispered. “I can’t have children!”

“Then you’re the one I want to practice with! When I think of life, I think of you. When I need someone to comfort me, it has to be you. When I need someone to love—it is you. Kay: Will you marry me?”

Kay hesitated, looking at him, then looking around.

“Go for it!” someone yelled.

“Arnie! Why couldn’t you be romantic like that?”

“Kay!”

Kay looked at him some more.

“This concrete is hurting my knee.”

Kay looked at everyone again, back to him, and she began to cry.

He smiled.

Tears flowed down her cheeks. Her hands began to shake.

Wayne took her left hand in his left, slowly lifted the diamond ring out of the box and slid it on her ring finger.

Kay’s mouth was open as she fell to her knees and hugged Wayne tightly around his neck, crying into his hair, whispering over and over in his ear through the pain in her heart, “Wayne! My god, yes!”

CHAPTER

10

Kay wiped her eyes and looked at Major Matt sitting across from her on the patio of the Officers’ Club.

Why is he here?

“I’m sorry,” she said, faking a weak smile.

“No, no, that’s okay,” he said. “Maybe I’m intruding. It’s just the first time you’ve been back since he passed, and I didn’t know if you’d like someone to be here. And then once I got here, I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

Did his security officer tell him the news yet?

Why do they keep secrets from me, about me? It drives me crazy!

She knew that in the modern age, people in security could check someone out in seconds. What she didn’t know was if the people who did would tell front-line personnel, like Matt. “Should I leave?”

Yes!

“No.”

She shook her head. “Of course not. But if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to visit the ladies’ room.”

They each made their smiles, and Kay got up to walk away from the pool, through the patio with the tables. People were beginning to collect for dinner.

Are they staring?

She looked at their eyes carefully, even if it appeared casual.

Nothing.

Nothing she could notice.

She walked through the patio area, through the bar within, turning left to walk through the foyer, turning right into the ladies’ room: large, earth-toned tiles on the floor, four green stalls, three sinks on a green-ish counter. She checked. They were all clean, but she chose the third.

Two other ladies entered, and she could hear them chatting.

“Could you see that she’s here? I never thought I’d see it myself. After all she’s done.”

No, please!

“And he’s pawing all over her—”

Oh, thank god.

She didn’t listen to the rest of what they had to say.

Washing was easy. Automatic faucets. Soap was by each sink in black plastic canisters on the mirrored wall behind. She took some paper towels to dry her hands and walked out, hearing one of the ladies remark, “That bathroom in the movie ‘Top Gun’? From the eighties? Maybe they’ve remodeled.”

Kay noticed, the bar was different, too.

As she stood in the bar, her phone rang. It was Sally Handy. She answered it. “Yes?”

“Kay! So did you go? Are you there?”

“Hi, Sally.” Kay wasn’t sure what to make of Sally. She had seemed like a possible friend, but never close. Maybe there was a culture clash? Maybe she just didn’t like Kay? But her husband, Bob, Navy Captain, retired, had become a friend of Wayne’s, so she had always been around.

Otherwise, Kay would rather not—

“Are you at Miramar?”

“Yes,” Kay said, looking around.

“Where?” Sally asked.

“I’m at the O. Club.”

“Really? So are we!”

Kay looked around some more, but she didn’t see them. She walked through the bar, back to the patio. Nothing. She turned right into the “ball room,” where she saw Bob hanging out with a growing crowd near an F-35 simulator that anyone was welcome to fly. It had a cockpit, windshield and large screens ahead and to the left and right, on which were projected scenes to reflect the operations of the simulation. People could see where they were flying.

Sally saw Kay and waved, tapping Bob on the elbow at the same time.

Kay hung up her phone.

The weight in her stomach only grew.

Sally hugged Kay as if they were old friends. Bob hugged Kay as the wife of one of his best friends.

“Where have you been?” Bob asked. “These last two years you’ve been—absent.”

Kay looked like she didn’t want to answer, so he didn’t press any more.

Kay stood there, saying nothing.

“Oh, honey!” Sally hugged Kay gently. “You loved him.”

“I still do.” Kay subtly backed away from Sally.

“Look what we have here, Kay!” Bob was evidently trying to sound upbeat. “I flew this thing! Look at this!”

He pulled the reluctant Kay over to the simulator, in front of a line of people.

“This is she?” the simulator director asked Bob.

“Yes. This is Keiko Knapp. Her husband was Wayne Knapp, of the Knapp Assistance Foundation, who contributed to some of your projects.”

Everyone was looking at her: the engineer who ran the simulator, the instructor standing beside it, the people in line.

Run!

Do they know? If they don’t, they may soon—

I can’t do this!

Kay turned to leave—a widow’s grief would have to do—but Bob dragged her back. “Come on, Kay,” Bob said. “It’ll be fun. You can’t crash—”

“Bob, I—”

“I did it!” Sally said.

“What a mess!” the flight instructor joked. “She broke it; now it’s busted.”

“I did not! It just wasn’t made right for my talents!”

“Push the button and land itself, is what she needs,” someone said from behind.

“It’ll do that,” Sally said. “But I didn’t want to!” She stuck her tongue out at the whole line of waiting pilots, which brought a round of jeers and cat calls.

Sally smiled and made cutsie faces at them.

Discussions were lively: Marines and spectators. It was hard to tell them apart, when a uniform wasn’t worn.

“Bob, I’m not in the mood,” Kay told him flatly.

Bob leaned in to her. “I know you’re not. He was my friend, and I miss him, too. But it’s been two years, and as a friend, I’m telling you you’ve got to snap out of it! Listen to him in spirit and see if he doesn’t agree!”

Kay actually did listen, and she got the feeling Wayne would love it if she got into the simulator, so she wavered.

“See?” Bob told everyone. “She’s going to do it!”

Please don’t make everyone look at me!

Kay wavered the other way, but Bob grabbed her right arm, some Marine grabbed her left, and they ushered her into the cockpit.

“Okay, so hello!” The waiting instructor stood beside the cockpit on the right side to help with members of the public. “What would you like to do in this today?”

Leave.

Kay raised her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“You can shoot down some bogies? You can take off and land at Nellis Air Force Base? You can take off and land from a carrier?”

Kay shrugged her shoulders.

Bob walked around the simulator and stood beside the instructor, whispered into his ear.

The instructor looked at Kay with sympathy.

Kay noticed and her eyes began to water. “Shut up, Bob.”

“No, at $150,000,000 a pop, you don’t have to buy it!” a spectator joked with everyone.

“You can even crash it if you want!” another joked.

“Me? I’d try to land it inverted—I mean, it’s a simulator!”

“It’s okay,” the instructor said. “Lets just enjoy a simple flight, but to make it interesting, lets take off—” he pushed a button on his display “—from a carrier.”

People were happy to hear that.

Bob’s look was encouraging.

Kay wiped her tears and steeled herself to try to make it work. For Wayne.

“Now this on your left,” the instructor said, “is your throttle. Forward is fast, back is slow, and this on your right is the ‘stick,’ so you can go up and down, right and left.” He showed her. “Forward is down, back is up, right is right, left is left. These displays up here on your panel? You don’t need to worry about them, just look on your heads up display.” The instructor pointed to the screen ahead on the wall.

Kay looked.

“You see all these symbols here?”

“Yes,” Kay said. “Way too many.”

“Well, you don’t need to look at them all. We’re just going to fly; we’re not going into battle. Just notice, this large number here on your left is your air speed, and this number here on your right is your altitude. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kay said.

“This symbol,” the instructor said, is where your nose is pointed, but the important one for you is this one here, this little one in the middle that kinda-sorta looks like a little airplane with wings. That’s your velocity vector, and that’s where your plane is going.”

Kay was feeling a little overwhelmed.

“It’s easy,” the instructor said. “You can see where you are, the carrier, the ocean, and where ever that velocity vector is, that’s where you’re going. Just put it where you want it.” He smiled at her. “I’ll help. Ready?”

Kay adjusted herself in her seat, and nodded.

“Okay,” the instructor said. “Here we go. I’ll help.” He pushed a button, and Kay’s F-35 was launched off the carrier.

Kay rolled the airplane like Tom Cruise on take off and crashed it promptly in the ocean.

Everyone laughed.

Bob slapped his head in mock disaster.

Sally was beside herself. “Just like me!”

The instructor chuckled.

“That cost her the hundred and fifty million bucks?” someone asked.

“Yeah,” the instructor teased, “that’s right. It’s busted, boys. Time to go home! Can’t fly it now!”

Kay smiled a little. If her stomach was this bad, what would death matter? “Launch me again,” she said to the instructor.

The instructor pushed a button and set her up on the carrier again, pushed another, and Kay was launched.

This time, Kay flew fine, going nowhere in particular.

The guys around her made humorous comments and joked. “No way would they build it hard to land. They cost too much!”

After a short flight, Kay asked to land it on the carrier.

The instructor pushed a button and she found herself on final approach, the carrier ahead. Her air speed read 140 knots, but it seemed slow from that distance.

“That’s it,” the instructor said. “Just maneuver your joy stick and put your velocity vector right there.” He put a red laser dot from his pen on the back of the carrier, where she should land.

Kay did so.

Comments from the crowd made light of the plane.

Then Kay dove the nose so the velocity vector was on the water before the carrier, and her spectators erupted into playful jeers about her skill.

“Fuck you all,” she said to them, which got a big laugh, even one from Bob.

Kay brought the velocity vector back up and landed the simulator safely on the carrier, tail hook and all.

She got a round of applause.

Kay stood in the seat of the cockpit and addressed them. “Prior to my flying career, I was in the demolition derby!”

It was well received. The crowd laughed and played.

What the hell am I doing?

I don’t want to be the focus of attention!

Turning to embarrassment, she got out of the cockpit and walked away.

She asked the cosmos how she did, and it felt like Wayne answered with a laugh.

It’s not funny, she thought back to him. It really isn’t.

Yes, it is, she almost heard him say.

CHAPTER

11

Reverend John McKay embraced Kay and Wayne, both, on greeting them at his Parrish.

“Kay! Yes! I am so glad to see you again. I’m so glad you called! I haven’t seen you, since, goodness, several years, now. And you’ve grown up so! Look at you!”

Rev. John’s smile was as broad as his shoulders. “And you’ve fallen in love and want to marry?” He turned to Wayne. “She told me about you on the phone. Goodness, it’s good to see you!”

Kay couldn’t stop beaming at both Rev. John and Wayne. Her eyes moved back and forth, thanking God for his compassion.

“So I understand the Mormon church won’t marry you?”

“I, uh,” Wayne paused.

“We might be able—” Kay stopped herself. “Not really, no. I mean, we could fake it there, but then—”

Wayne’s face showed his displeasure at her disclosures, so Kay changed the focus.

“So we talked about it,” Kay said, “and thought it might be best to marry elsewhere. They’ll accept that we’re married, but we can’t seal it at the temple, or something like that, so that the marriage would continue after death. ’Till death do us part’ is good, I think.”

Wayne held her hand.

“Well, that’s the way we do it here,” Rev. John said.

“And,” Kay said, “we could go to Vegas or get a civil, but Wayne would like it to be religious.”

Wayne nodded.

“It’s not Mormon,” Rev. John said, “but yes. I would be pleased to marry you both, and maybe I can make the ceremony a little more interdenominational, as it were? Because I know God lives in her heart, and I feel it’s in yours also,” he said to Wayne.

Kay held her glass of red wine at the Officers’ Club on Miramar. She looked around one of their cherished places and remembered their wedding day, thirty-two years before.

Sally and Bob stood with them as witnesses before Rev. John, in the shade of the gardens of the parish.

Kay wore a white wedding dress, long train, no veil. Though she swore to Wayne she did not deserve white, he insisted it would be good for memories—and God didn’t care one way or another.

Wayne wore a black tuxedo, for the same reason.

Bob wore his Navy Dress Blues uniform, and his wife, Sally, wore an elegant formal gown.

Reverend John was in a black suit, to fit, and his ceremony was respectful and reverent, if reserved. Rev. John prayed, “…I’ve come to know these good people, Father. It’s been my blessing to know Kay since she was a child, and she and Wayne live by your principles on a daily basis. We ask for your blessings on them, with them, so they may remember your gifts when times are hard, that they seek your guidance when lost, and that they also celebrate the joy of your union, every day of their lives. We stand in witness, here today, of the vows these two lovers will share in holy matrimony, with divine blessing of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.”

Everyone opened their eyes.

Rev. John addressed everyone. “Kay and Wayne have prepared their own vows, which they will now share with each other.”

Wayne turned to face Kay, taking both her hands in his, and spoke slowly, deliberately.

Wayne looked into her eyes. “Kay, I love you—”

Kay bent forward in a cry, her face distorting—though she never let go Wayne’s hands.

Sally, crying herself, reached forward with a tissue to dry Kay’s face, or at least wipe the mascara off her cheeks.

Wayne continued. “I love you as I could only love a wife. You are the light of my day, the warmth of my night. You feed my soul, you comfort my heart.”

Sally stole a look at her husband and nodded toward Wayne, as if this was something Bob should hear.

Bob’s look chastised her for distracting.

Rev. John remained focused on the couple before him.

Wayne continued. “I declare before God and all, that I need you. I want you, against all who may decry, all who dare oppose, against any difficulty. So I say, and ask you again: I, Wayne Higbee Knapp, take thee, Keiko Matsuoka—”

Kay stared through tears at Wayne, her eyes locked on his.

She squeezed his hands gently, in hers.

Wayne smiled. “—to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness or in health, whether richer or poorer, in good times and bad, from this day forward as a married couple, never do us part—even after death. Kay, do you take me as your husband?”

Rev. Jim nodded to Kay.

“I do,” she said, squeezing his hands tighter. “Uh,” she said, catching her breath, fearing to look around as she normally would in her insecurities, wishing to stare only into his eyes. “And I, Keiko Matsuoka, take thee, Wayne Higbee Knapp, to be my lawfully—” She began to break up, her cry halting her ability to speak, yet she refused to let go of his hands. “—wedded husband!” She had to stop and cry some more.

Sally wiped her face, again, still crying herself, and as Kay remembered it, even Wayne and Bob began to cry a little.

“Wayne! I’m so sorry!”

I’m so much less than he deserves!

Wayne drew her in for a tight hug and comforted her. “No you don’t! You don’t question yourself in this! Never! You hear me? Please don’t do it,” he comforted her. He held her face up so he could see it and looked into her eyes. “You are beautiful, Keiko. Inside and outside. I thank God for you every day. You make my life whole. You’re not less than I need; you’re exactly who I need.” He touched her chin. “Do you hear me?”

She nodded with as much sincerity as she could muster and allowed Sally to wipe her face again—without letting go of his hands.

“Wayne,” another tear rolled down her face, “I take you to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, beyond death may we never part, through thick and thin, through good times and bad, for richer for poorer. I pray you will love me always, as I know I will love you, so I ask you as well, do you take me as your wife?”

Kay felt light-headed.

She looked at him half expecting him to refrain, but he answered with a smile and a confident, “I do.”

Rev. John smiled at them both. “Wayne, place her wedding ring on her finger.”

Wayne did so, a simple gold band, against the diamond he had put there on Miramar.

“With this ring, I thee wed, Kay,” Wayne said, and the look in his eye said he meant it.

“Keiko, place his wedding ring on his finger.”

Kay did so, also a simple gold band, as both believed a marriage should be as simple as the ring.

“With this ring,” Kay said to him, “I thee wed, Wayne.”

Hurry! I beg you!

“Are you taking notes, Bob?”

Bob’s retort was quick. “Sally!”

Kay laughed at them, and Sally dabbed her face again.

Sally said, “Keep mascara off that dress!”

Rev. John held their hands together and addressed them for the first time as a married couple. “Your love declared, your vows shared, by the authority vested in me by God and the State of California, I pronounce you husband and wife.”

Rev. John smiled as broadly as his face would allow.

Kay hugged Wayne with both arms unable to let go, crying yet again into his neck.

Wayne hugged her back and spoke gently into her ear.

“Yea!” Bob called out.

“Even prettier’n ours, Bob!,” Sally said. “We could do it again!”

“Once is enough,” Bob teased her, slapping her on the ass.

“You can kiss the bride,” Rev. John said to the newly married couple. “Really. Good time, here.”

Wayne smiled at him and peeled his wife’s arms from around his neck, kissing her long and slow on the lips.

Bob put his fingers in his mouth and blew a whistle that threatened to shatter the stained glass windows in the church.

CHAPTER

12

Kay’s life adjusted from a lonely social outsider who worked to be included, into a combination of someone whom people deferred to as Mrs. Wayne Knapp and also, and at the same time, someone who took more hell than others would believe, behind the scenes.

Being Wayne’s wife was the happiest thing in her world. He seemed to be the only person in her life who had ever really understood her. Reverend John was wonderful, too, but Kay got the sense he was being more saintly, than actually understanding.

But Wayne seemed to somehow “get” her. Other than a conversation that was necessary for something, he didn’t bring up subjects about herself that she wouldn’t want to discuss. He seemed to understand, for example, how she needed to be who she was and what she had to go through to get to where she was, but other than as required, in a lawyer’s office, for example, he didn’t raise issues that would embarrass her. He wasn’t uninterested in her life; it’s more that he seemed to already know.

It was her happiness that mattered, and that made him happy.

Over the course of their thirty-year marriage, when he wasn’t out of town on a business trip, they spent nearly every day together, and during those times, she was the happiest she’d ever been. She’d sold her small boat in favor of his Scarab—easy choice, watching his face light up on the Scarab. Flying to Catalina in that thing was something to experience, smashing over wave-tops. She swore to him—joking—that if he was such a genius, why couldn’t he put shock absorbers on the seats? It was a tooth-jarring experience, but one that never failed to get a laugh out of her. He seemed to push it to the limit just to watch her hang on.

And they needed somewhere to eat dinner, didn’t they? So they joined a yacht club at the marina, the first of—more than a few, over the years. Something always seemed to go wrong.

And when they were out somewhere? When they went to March Air Force Base, or Edwards Air Force Base, or El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, when it was open, or Back to Miramar, or others, she was treated like a human being. Even though there was nothing she could do for them. She was no nerd they needed; that was Wayne. She knew they liked her because they liked Wayne, but that’s part of a marriage. Leave it alone and enjoy it. Military wives were nice to her, for the most part. Military personnel were deferential—she had to work at getting them to be more personal, “No, it’s just ‘Kay,” she’d tell them, or she would try to engage them in a conversation about something normal at home, to be less formal, to connect a little bit.

Many of them didn’t want to get very close, she later realized. She did not put those pieces together for over two decades.

The flip-side of that apparent heaven, however, was a growing hell that came with it. Things started happening to her that she’d never experienced before, or never noticed.

Beginning about a year after their marriage, always at a time when Wayne was away on business, with her remaining at home, the electricity to the house would cut off. It happened three times over the space of six months. Kay would call on the phone or go down there in person, and she’d be told that this or that accident must have occurred or they’d claim that she had called them to say they were moving, to turn it off—and she hadn’t.

“Miss,” the clerk at the electric office said.

“Missus,” Kay corrected.

“Missus.” The clerk’s smile was insincere, leaning into Kay. “Missus Knapp,” another fake smile and a glance at a co-worker down the counter, “We know about you.”

“What does that mean!” Kay demanded.

“I’m saying we know you’re moving.”

“I’m not moving!”

“Yes, you are. You called us last week and told us—”

“No I didn’t!”

“Well, I have it right here. It says you are.” The clerk’s smile was unfriendly.

“If it really does? It’s wrong. I want to see a supervisor!”

“I’m sorry. We don’t have one in at the moment.”

“Then who is in charge.”

“I am the highest official in this department at the moment.”

“This is such bullshit!”

“Do I need to call security?”

Magazine subscriptions began showing up in their mailbox that she hadn’t ordered. Once, a police officer showed up on her door with strange questions about ill-defined issues regarding her past.

Right wing bastard!

She was on the phone with Harvey in a blitz and in his office later, hands shaking, trying to figure out what was happening, and when Harvey called the police station to ask about it, he was told they couldn’t comment.

Twice, Kay came home from doing errands of a day with an alarming sense about their home—nothing she could define, but something—

Which clarified itself one day, about three years after their marriage, when she came home to find their home tossed from one end to the other—files overturned and scattered, the bed overturned, curtains torn, chest of drawers emptied, a vibrator of hers and her two dilators (post S.R.S.) stood on end on the dining room table, and pictures of her on the walls smashed by something hard.

And there was a man in the living room writing on a mirrored wall with Kay’s lipstick: “Get out.”

Kay never had the chance to run.

The man ran to her and grabbed her by the arms, threw her up against a wall in front of one of their framed wedding pictures and pinned her there by the throat with a strong hand. He said nothing, just looked at her like a wolf ready to kill. He had a bulge under his left arm, and Kay knew it was a gun.

Kay was scared. Her tears ran, but her survival instinct led her to struggle.

The man slammed her hard against the wall again. Kay’s head smashed into the framed wedding photo, shattering the already broken glass, cutting into her scalp.

Kay nearly blacked out. She held onto the man’s hand at her throat and gasped for air.

Another man she didn’t recognize came out of the bedroom and slowly approached, stood beside her in disgust. “Search her,” was all he said.

The man who held her cracked a thin smile and used his free hand to grope her breasts, arm pits, her hair, and shoved his hand between her legs to grope her groin, feeling her thoroughly.

Kay instinctively fought, but there was nothing she could do.

“She’s wearing jeans,” the man holding her finally said, looking at the other.

Orin exited the bedroom to stand with the two men, carrying Kay’s “sex toys.”

Kay’s eyes widened at seeing them in his hand. She tried to scream both in anger and hatred, but it didn’t come out.

The man holding Kay began to unbuckle Kay’s pants.

“Leave them on her,” Orin. “We’re not animals.”

Orin moved between the two men, clearly the one in charge. “A vibrator?” He looked at her groin. “He’s not good enough for you— Hey, I know you’re a pervert. But what are these?” He held up Kay’s two dilators—used by pre-sexual transsexuals post-operatively in the vagina. Kay did not need them any more, but she hadn’t thrown them away. It would be embarrassing to ever need to find new ones if needed.

Kay couldn’t answer. She could barely breathe.

None of the men spoke any further.

Tears ran down Kay’s red and swollen face.

The gun man pressed Kay’s head deeper into the broken picture on the wall.

Finally, Orin asked, quietly, simply, “Have I made myself clear?”

Kay nodded as well as she could.

I’m disgusting. They hate me.

The man let her drop to the floor, and the three of them walked out, Orin with Kay’s things in his hands.

The front door was left open.

“Wayne!” Kay knelt on the floor and cried—screamed—into the princess phone by the kitchen bar. “Wayne! She— They— Two of them—four!” She stopped to cough and rub her throat.

Wayne’s voice was clear on the phone from Edwards Air Force Base, where he was at the time, about four hours’ drive away. “Kay!? What’s happening?

Kay held the phone and cried, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

“Margaret!” Kay tried to calm herself and talked on the phone while she sat in a dining room chair. That phone had a long cord. Margaret was Kay’s new attorney, as Harvey retired to Florida. Margaret was the one he said was the best to replace him. “There were four of them!”

“What happened, Kay?” Margaret’s voice was worried.

“Two men—one of them had a gun—and Orin, and—they were in here and wrecked the place and ruined everything and he hurt me against the wall—”

“You at home?”

“Yes! That’s where this happened!”

“Where’s Wayne?”

“Up at Edwards—”

“Did you call the police?” Margaret asked.

“No! Didn’t Harvey tell you anything!?”

“I know, but it’s burglary and battery, and we got to draw the line somewhere! Lets put the bastards behind bars!”

“They’ll ruin Wayne and try to invalidate our marriage! No! No police! I just don’t know what to do—”

“Are they gone?” Margaret asked.

“Yes!”

“Are you sure they’re all done?”

Shit!

Kay’s head jerked around looking for any sign. She stood up against the dining room wall, listening for anything.

“I think so.”

“GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! NOW!” Margaret ordered. “I’m coming over there now, and I better find you on the driveway, you hear me?! I’ll be there in six minutes!”

The phone went dead.

Margaret showed up with a large man Kay later learned was a staff private investigator named Buck, and he went through her house searching everything.

“It’s clear,” he said, stoic, inside the front door.

“Can you put some of the house back together?” Margaret asked him.

Buck nodded and proceeded to do so.

Margaret then let Kay come back into her home and tried to fix her up.

Kay was crying off and on.

Margaret took her into the bathroom and cleaned her face. “God! You’ve got bruises on your neck. Let me see those. You can see it’s from a large hand.”

Margaret tried to run a brush through Kay’s hair, only to find Kay wincing at the back of her head. On inspection, “You’ve got a bruise back here, and a cut, but I don’t think it’ll require stitches.”

“Our pictures!” Kay said, weakly.

“We can reframe those,” Margaret said. “It’s you we need to worry about.”

After about an hour, Margaret went back to her office to begin checking into this a little, but Buck stayed with Kay. The look on his face was disgust with the crime.

Wayne was home in three-and-a-half hours, his 1985 Ferrari 308 parked askew in the driveway, and there were tears and yelling in the sharing as one would expect. Wayne was furious, as Kay had never seen him, but Kay begged him not to call the police, either.

Buck had restored basic order in the house, but much of it would have to be done by Kay, herself, later, including their private things in the chest of drawers.

Wayne thanked him heavily when he finally left.

Kay had described the men well enough that Margaret thought she recognized one of the men, and two days later, she reported to Kay that the man who pinned her was a questionable, right wing, off-duty police officer, and the man he seemed to be working for was a questionable private investigator, from Los Angeles. It looked like Orin had hired the P.I. who hired the cop for the “righteous” task of protecting the company.

In the months and years to come, Kay worried when she was in there, every time she came home while Wayne was away.

Their sex life suffered for a long time. It wasn’t Wayne; it was Kay. She couldn’t relax in there. Their home had become—not a place of loving refuge, a cozy place where they could share together, but a fort under siege, with the possibility of bugs installed—like she was actually going to enjoy a romantic dinner with him or have sex with him, with Orin listening?

And Wayne said he didn’t feel he could fire Orin. There were others who agreed with him, and Orin had a large number of shares.

The following year, bad memories remaining, Wayne and Kay sold the house and bought a more expensive yet relatively small home in Palos Verdes Estates, farther south, farther from L.A.

They never visited Audia or Orin again, never allowed them to visit again. His kids—one was seemingly warmish, though distant more often than not, while the other was openly hostile.

Wayne seemed comfortable with it all—

No, Kay thought about that. That’s not it. Wayne didn’t feel comfortable with any of that. He just seemed to accept that their prejudice and choice was the way it was.

CHAPTER

13

On the flightline, Major Matt walked up to Kay at the F-22 on static display on the flight line and stood with her beside a stanchion.

She noticed him but didn’t move.

“Quite a plane,” he said to her.

What is he doing?

Kay nodded calmly. “I flew the simulator last night at the O. Club.”

“Difficult?”

“Don’t they let all Marines have one?”

He smiled at her. “Oh, yeah. I have one at home. I was just wondering if it was difficult for you,” he joked.

“It was easy. My impression is that they want the plane to come home even if the pilot stops by a bar somewhere and gets sauced.”

“If he’s a marine,” Matt Joked, “he might.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

See? Kay asked herself. You have to pretend to be normal to people, without issues—as if your concerns were about common circumstances—no matter what happens, because they don’t know what else you’re dealing with.

Kay turned to stroll a little near other aircraft, mostly helicopters, and he strolled with her.

“Listen, Kay. I knew Wayne, too. We were all surprised at his passing two years ago.”

Kay walked.

Why is he talking about this?

“Who are you, Major?” Kay asked. “I mean, I know who you are, but why have you been hanging around me since I came this time?”

Does he know? Is he here to get me to confirm suspicions?

“I— You seem sad,” he said. “But like maybe for other reasons, as well.”

Is he fishing?

People are curious, but they never handle the information well.

Kay walked on. “You know, Wayne and I always had trouble.”

“You two?”

“Not with each other; from other people.”

“Why in God’s name?”

“Right. There shouldn’t have been.” That weakly confirms positive role. “But some people have their own issues, as well.” That leaves the door open for a disclosure from him to me. Look for a confirmation from him.

“Like what?” he asked.

He’s being noncommittal?

“Well, like one time maybe thirty years ago, a few years after our marriage, people breaking into our home to threaten me.”

His look of surprise seems genuine.

“For what? Being Japanese?”

“Half Japanese.”

Maybe he doesn’t know? If not, good misdirect, even better because he brought it up.

“I’m American,” she said. “Your family is from—”

“Ireland and Germany, mostly.”

“There you are: Germany. Even after WW-II. And me, my dad was from Japan. You ever get any flak because your family is from Germany?”

He shook his head no, then added with a smile. “But I drive a Honda. So what kind of flack have you gotten.”

He’s probing. I’ll give him a little and look for a reaction.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin. But to start with,” she added with a touch of humor, “people bring me into their life for a while, then keep me at arm’s length, and then they disappear. Always.”

Okay: If he knows, I just told him the guts of it, without spelling it out.

“I can’t imagine why.”

It didn’t work. He either doesn’t know, or he’s acting like he doesn’t know.

Kay thought over her life and shook her head as if she didn’t know.

Misdirection.

“It’s happened in every case. Like after that home invasion we had back in the ‘80s. I was very upset, and one of the people I called was a friend of mine from the yacht cub, Irma, who was ‘I’m all bout this!’ supportive of me, asking all kinds of info about it. I shared superficial info about the attack, begging her to help me calm down, I think, but after that—”

Kay looked at an old Sikorsky helicopter.

Major Matt stopped walking to stand near her.

“After that, she disappeared. Typical.”

The attack probably confirmed a suspicion of hers.

“Maybe she wasn’t a friend,” Matt said.

“I never saw her again, so I guess not. And then Wayne and I would go into the yacht club, and people seemed fake-friendly.”

That makes it seem like I’m playing the victim-for-sympathy role with Matt. But it’s me fishing. Does he know something he’s not revealing? About the Facebook page?

But Major Matt said nothing.

“Gossip seemed to travel just as well, back then,” Kay said, “even without Facebook.”

Fishing harder.

Major Matt shook his head in disgust.

“My whole life, one reason or another, has had that theme. I’ve always known there to be gossip, and over the whole world—a stretch, but probably not much of one—there seems to be a cardinal rule about gossip: Whatever you do, believe what other people with almost no info say. Don’t ask the source. Just believe the bullshit.”

He’ll never get a better lead than that.

I need to know what he thinks he knows.

He nodded. “Yeah, I get that. In high school, I was a running back on the football team, but I was a little scrawny. Kids used to call me ‘faggot,’ and it took the longest time to convince them I’m not.”

“You’re gay?” Kay asked.

“No! Mark and I were just friends!” he said, teasing himself.

“Are you sure? Because there’s a rumor—”

“Fuck you,” he said in humor with her.

They continued strolling.

“So what are you sad about?” he asked again.

Why is he fishing?

Maybe he’s just being a nice person?

Or maybe he’s trying to confirm suspicion.

God, why do people have to play games?

“No,” Kay said, on the phone in their, back then, new-to-them house in Palos Verdes. “I haven’t taken out a loan on this house. It’s paid for.”

Some loan company called them to verify some data.

Is this a solicitor or my stalker?

“You have my signature on the application? No you don’t! It couldn’t be mine; I haven’t signed one.”

Is this one of my stalker’s stooges laughing it up listening into this phone call?

“You approve that application, and I’ll have the police up your ass so far you’ll choke on them for the next ten years in prison, you hear me? And that goes for anyone listening in, too!”

In their living room, of the “new house in Rancho Palos Verdes,” as they kept calling it, Wayne showed Kay the letter he received from his ex-wife.

Kay read it. It said how happy she was that he had moved to Rancho Palos Verdes, as she has friends there who have told her they would be more than happy to drop by at times unannounced to say hello. How nice this all was …

“Wayne! Goddamnit! Won’t she ever stop!”

“It’s just a letter.”

“What about all that other shit!”

“We don’t know who is doing other things, or even if she wrote this,” he said, showing her the letter again.

He doubts me! Or is he trying to calm me down?

Kay tried to respond to him, but she was floored, aghast, unable to form her words—

Wayne tried to assert himself. “No, Kay! It’s not that! Relax.”

“Who else is involved!?” Kay demanded, as if he knew. “What is she going to do next?”

“I’m just saying that—yes, it’s annoying, but—”

“Annoying?” Kay said it with exaggerated clarity in case he didn’t understand the word. “You think I’m ‘annoyed’? If it were you who was the target of her—”

“It is me, too,” he said.

“But she’s doing it to me! I’ve been dumped on all my life for this, and it’s still happening!” Kay wandered around the living room looking for understanding, or failing that, possibly escape. “I’ve done everything possible under humanity to be the best I can be. I’ve done everything!” she indicated herself. “I’ve gone to college. I have a clean record. I help people. I keep house well enough. I vote. I married— I think I’m a good wife!”

“Excellent wife,” Wayne squeezed in.

“And it’s not enough to please some people—”

Kay slumped onto the couch.

Wayne walked over to sit by her and held her hand.

“And it’s not enough to please me, either,” she said. “Oh no! Wayne, I didn’t mean you!”

“I know,” he said, patting her on the leg.

It’s me. How can I blame someone else for thinking I’m not good enough to be in this marriage, when I agree with them.

“But what can I do about it? I’m doing the best I can.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I love you, and I need you. I’m so desperate to be your wife I shake. And if someone ever hurt that, I—”

Her words trailed off.

A smile grew on his face.

“What?”

“This is the good part,” he said.

She looked at him, still wondering.

His hand moved to her tummy and began to wander south. “Now we get to have make-up sex, without even having had a fight.”

“And there at Table Two are our new members, Kay and Wayne Knapp. Stand for us, please?”

People began applauding.

They seem friendly so far.

“Mr. and Mrs. Knapp,” the President of the car club said. “Tell us about yourself, and your car.”

Wayne stood and indicated to Kay she could remain sitting.

Thank you!

“Hello everyone. You’re a find group, and it’s a pleasure to join this outstanding car club. Our vet,” he indicated his wife, Kay, “is a 1986 Jaguar XJ-S—”

The room of about sixty-five ooed and awed over it.

“—with a few modifications.” A smile grew on his face while he watched the group salivate. “She shakes a little. Big cam. Her clutch is a jammer—not yours, honey,” he said to his wife.

Kay covered her face in mock embarrassment.

“But she is raring to go at any time of the day or night— Still not you, honey.”

“He’s s a jokester, is he?” The woman sitting next to Kay said to her.

“I bet she is!” someone else said from half way across the room.

“I mean the car!” Wayne said in fun to everyone.

People laughed.

When they died down, Kay raised her voice. “It’s a little too hard, if you ask me— Oh, not you, Wayne.”

The group loved that and whooped loudly.

Jesus, I shouldn’t have said that! Spotlight! Goddamnit!

Why do I do that?

Wayne laughed a little, too, looking to Kay with a “What did you do that for, after I kept you out of the spotlight” written on his face.

Kay looked back at him with “I don’t know” written all over her face.

Stupid I guess. Impulsive.

No, I do need people. I need connection.

But other than Wayne, connection with other people has always been bad, so watch it!

“It drives hard, but I swear it’s a luxurious race car, raring to go like I’ve never seen anywhere else— Again, not my wife. Not that she’s not—”

People laughed at them again. The crowd seemed pumped.

Shit!

They looked at each other again.

This time it was you, she thought to him.

No one is perfect, not even Wayne.

“It is so good to get to know you,” Laura in the seat next to her said. “We are going to be such friends!”

The friendship with Laura lasted the usual six months to a year, depending on how you looked at it, ending clearly at about a year.

And the relationship with the car club became cold and distant at about that one-year mark as well.

Oddly, for no reason she could imagine, she stayed in that car club for nearly twenty years, before leaving. She’d become the distant long-timer. And when she finally left the group, she never told them she left because she detests being shunned. She just failed to pay a membership renewal.

No one contacted her about it.

CHAPTER

14

“I wandered in off the street,” Kay insisted at the Officers’ Club that evening. Major Matt, there, took me in and gave me a room. Hard case for wanderers, I guess.”

“Sure,” a major general said, walking up to the table and sitting himself on the other side of the major. He had a plate with the standard burger, beans and potato salad air show meal. “That’s usual for Marines. We’re a bunch of softies.”

“General,” Major Matt said in greeting.

“Hello Matt,” the general said.

The table began to stand, but the general flagged them back down. “We’re at ease, here,” he said.

Kay looked around, settling on the general. “Good evening, Oscar,” she said to him.

The table returned to its casual conversation, sans a few of the dirtier jokes.

“Good to see you again, Kay,” the general said. “Please accept everyone’s condolences on the passing of your husband.”

Kay nodded to him.

“I think it’s safe to say that everyone loved him. There was something special about him. Not just technical brilliance.”

Kay nodded. “Thank you, Oscar. I’ll tell him when I see him.”

Major Matt’s eyebrows lifted. “You going somewhere?”

“No. I didn’t mean like that,” Kay was genuinely embarrassed at her slip. “I was just doing a Marine’s bad bawdy banter.”

The general laughed. “If I told you half the things we say when civilians aren’t around—”

“No, General! Please!” Colonel Tom Cass said, approaching the table to join them, carrying his own plate of the same food. He sat down on the other side of the table.

A group of six people at the next table got into a lively argument about how much of the movie “Top Gun” was filmed in that same Officers’ Club.

“The bathroom,” one person said to another. Where Tom Cruise goes in there with Kelly McGillis—”

“Tom!” the general said at Kay’s table, as if surprised. “You made it.”

Colonel Cass explained to the others at the table. “He’s been teasing me, trying to get me to go for one of these ladies here.” He indicated several ladies that Kay thought were trying desperately to pick up a fly-boy in a flight-suit. “But I’m safe. I don’t have a flight suit—”

The general finished for him. “I think he’s gay—but I’m not asking.”

Generals don’t talk like that. Is he prompting me?

Colonel Cass guffawed him.

The general continued. “He invites them to church, and they run and hide. That’s why he hasn’t been laid in, what, twenty years?”

Colonel Cass nodded. “It’s a lonely life.”

Such brass is unusual, even here for an airshow.

Kay noticed the colonel’s insignias. “You’re a Chaplain?”

Colonel Cass nodded while he bit into his burger.

“Interdenominational,” the general said. “And he’s been a good friend for the last fifteen years or so? Since I met him. A good egg. But never been laid. I’m glad I’m not a chaplain.”

“He’s the base chaplain,” Major Matt told Kay.

Colonel Cass nodded. “Yeah, he hasn’t been able to get rid of me,” the chaplain said with more familiarity than Kay would have thought.

Sex topic?

This weekend of all weekends?

“Yes I can! See?” The general flung his hands to shoo the pest away, but the chaplain only smiled. “It worked last time.”

“No it didn’t,” Colonel Cass said.

“It’s something these chaplains get into,” the general told Kay.

“Kind of like doctors.” A woman marine Lt. colonel opposite the general, beside the chaplain spoke for the first time. “Jennie Donlon,” she said, half-rising to offer her hand in greeting to Kay across the table.

That was unusual, but Kay shook it—immediately chastising herself for doing so.

Maybe she wanted to feel my hand.

Kay’s phone rang in her pocket. She dug it out to look at it, but she did not recognize the number.

She pressed ignore.

Because of her long-time stalker, she did not have voice mail or texting activated for her phone, so they would have to go away.

The people at the next table argued about “Top Gun.”

“The bathroom’s not the same! Go look for yourself!”

“But it’s right in there? And what about the bar?”

Back at Kay’s table, the chaplain teased the doctor at the informal gathering “That’s right. I have after-life on my hands, and you have after-birth on yours.”

“No,” Colonel Donlon said, returning the favor. “I bring them into this world, and if it weren’t for me, you would be a celibate hermit on a hilltop, with nothing to do.”

“He already is celibate,” the general said.

“I’d keep Oscar company,” Colonel Cass said, jerking his thumb at the general. “Because his soul needs saving something terrible.”

The table next to Kay began singing a song from the movie: “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers.

“You never close your eyes any more

when I kiss your lips …”

The general complained to Kay. “See how little respect I get around here from these dweebs?”

Kay’s eyes flashed at the annoying table next to them then around her own table.

Too informal.

“That’s because you were Navy, when you started, “Colonel Donlon said to him. “And—”

The whole table chimed in vocal unison: “We don’t like the Navy.”

Kay told them, “But the Marines are part of the Navy.”

Undiplomatic. Broke their mood—

Jesus!

Kay’s phone rang again. She still didn’t recognize the number, so, uncharacteristically, she answered it to see who was being so persistent. Solicitors weren’t usually that persistent.

“Hello?” Kay said into it.

“Hello, Kay, sweetie, this is Audia—”

Kay hung up the phone.

Jesus fucking Christ!

Why is she calling me?

She hasn’t called me directly in decades.

She knows about the Facebook page!

“Kay?” Major Matt asked.

Everyone looked at Kay. She was white as a sheet.

Kay hung up the phone immediately and shut if off.

“You alright, Kay?” the general asked.

Kay looked at him, frightened. “Nothing!” Kay’s eyes flashed around the table again, settling on the doctor’s.

What is there?

“It’s all okay, here,” Major Matt told her. “We’re friends.”

Do they know?

Kay shoved the phone back into the pocket of her jeans and tried to pretend to be calm.

The reverend leaned back.

The doctor leaned forward.

The general stared at her.

And the major started to speak.

“Don’t say it!” Kay said. “I need to go!”

She got up to leave, dropping her linen napkin off her lap onto the patio floor.

The people at the next table stopped singing to argue some more.

“Okay. Remember the swimming pool scene when they graduated? That was filmed here, for sure—”

“No it wasn’t!” Kay said to them in front of surprised people at both tables, and two other tables besides. “Nothing in here was in the movie! None of it! Take some goddamn photos and compare it, for Christ’s sakes! It’s as simple as that. I’ve been coming here for thirty years: That bar in there? No way! The entry foyer? The ladies’ room? Not even laid out the same way and the pool in the movie had racing lines painted on the bottom it where this pool never had any and the pool in the movie had different mason work around the edge, different tile, and it’s only half as large as the real one so nothing! It was set here; it wasn’t filmed here! Why you gotta make shit up!?”

Oh, Jesus fuck!

What the hell am I doing?

Her eyes scanned everyone around her. They were all staring at her.

Oh, no! I can never fix this!

It’s one of her sacred places with Wayne. She had no right to be there—Oscar let her in, but after this?

The party quieted. Everyone stared at her standing near the general and the table of people she scolded.

Kay ran from the club in horror.

CHAPTER

15

Miramar!

Kay screamed in her head. She ran out of the front of the Officers’ Club and across Anderson Ave., toward the back of the C.B.Q. “Miramar!” she screamed out loud.

It was our place! Miramar!

She had to leave the place, now. How could she ever come back?

Kay dodged between two parked cars and mis-stepped, her right knee pressing backward. She fell hard on the asphalt, hitting her head on someone’s tire.

“Aaaiiiieeeee!” she screamed, biting off the last part of it.

She lay on the asphalt and held her thigh, not touching her knee, waited for the pain to subside, not even checking it for injury, knowing some of the pain would go away in a minute or so.

My surgery knee!

When the initial pain was over, when it only ached like it was broken, Kay sat up and looked at it. Her leg was straight.

I must have not held it straight!

Think, Kay!

You have no one to help you any more!

She cried as a reaction and from pain.

Wayne, please help me?

She touched her knee with experienced hands. It felt normal, though she knew it would swell a little after this.

Baby it.

She lifted the joint with her hands. Just a little.

It hurt.

Aaaaaaah!

She let it back down.

But I’ve got to get out of here!

She lifted it again, slowly bending it more. She knew from experience that it was probably not damaged. It just hurt for it to bend backward, that way, and this time especially, eight weeks after a knee surgery.

It’ll swell. I know it. But—

She bent it a little more and felt it, both from the inside and the outside.

—I don’t think it’s damaged. I think it’s mostly going to be sore because of the surgery.

Pay attention, Kay!

Focus!

She rubbed it. It didn’t hurt from her hands. It hurt from any bend backward.

She left her right leg straight, bent her left foot under her, and by pulling down on someone’s tire, she was able to leverage herself all the way up.

She tested a little weight on her right leg and it didn’t hurt too much to stand on.

It hurts from being pressed backward, not from being injured.

Maybe I caught it just in time.

She looked around her, and there was no one.

She put a little more weight on it, and took a step, holding onto the front fenders of the parallel cars on either side of her. She removed her hands—and her leg held.

Hurts like fire.

But it may work.

She took a step closer to the front of the cars, and the leg held through the step. She took another, and tried to go all the way to the cars facing.

It held.

When she could, she leaned on a car for support, but to go through the C.B.Q., she had to walk on her own with nothing.

Slow. Steady. Slow. Even.

She felt she had to limp, but she practiced only a small limp, to take pressure off the knee at the latter part of its step.

It’s working, she felt.

If she concentrated, walked slowly, other people would think she was just walking slowly and not know she was hurt.

She entered the back of the C.B.Q. and walked through the end of the lobby out the front door to the east building, where she was billeted.

“Oh!” She pressed her hand against her forehead as she walked as smoothly as she could through the corridors of the old B.E.Q.

I humiliated myself again.

She thought of the places on campus—on the base, where Wayne and she had loved so much: The Officers’ Club, the flight line, the C.B.Q., the golf course, Denny’s after it opened, walking to and from the airshow—

She knew she could never come back.

Why does all this have to happen!?

She knew she wasn’t religious, yet she screamed in her head again: Jesus! Why does all this shit have to happen?

The keycard wasn’t fast enough to get her in to her room before she melted again.

The feel of the room!

It had to be for the last time.

Absorb the door, carpet, the framework around the windows, the smell. Memorize the rooms. Get it in your head—bitch—because you can’t ever come back!

It was instantaneous. Every detail committed to memory.

It wasn’t her first time to embarrass herself out of a place.

And there had been too many embarrassments to tolerate more. They stack up, one atop another!

Her face scrunched up into a cry.

I can’t believe I did it again!

I love you, Wayne!

Please don’t leave me!

Please hear me!

She felt she needed to scream, but she kept it silent so she could leave without any more trouble. Tears ran down her cheeks into her open mouth as she quickly put her things back into her one, small bag.

Before leaving, she took one last look at a room she’d never see again, on a base she could never visit again.

He loved me! In a bed very much like that one. Our first time—

She dropped her face down onto the bed and screamed into it, her tears soaking into its quilt. With all her strength, she hugged it with her arms until she felt it hug her back. Her fingers gripped the spread and wrapped it up to her face.

Get the hell out fast!

She scrambled off the bed without re-hurting her knee, gathered her bag again, and opened the door to leave.

She looked up and down the corridor.

No one.

Her car was “behind” the C.B.Q., behind building 4312, in the parking lot facing the O. Club—the same one where she fell.

Someone might go through there, some do-gooder trying to catch her before she leaves.

So she turned left and exited 4325 through the north door and walked around 4312 toward that parking lot, avoiding lobbies of both buildings.

The grass!

She purposefully smelled the grass for the last time. She memorized the palm trees, the flora, the overhead awning, and the cork-type footing they used for a sidewalk under the awning.

Kay knew she was different in a way that people hated—not all of them, obviously, but plenty. Who would do it? Who would talk about her behind her back? Who would call up and play with her accounts? Who would make up some bullshit to send the police into her life? Who would invade her home? Threaten her husband, even indirectly? Who would hit her up against a wall or kick her when she was down? Who would—?

Never mention that!

Kay’s thought returned to areas she was willing to consider.

There was no telling. No knowing.

Anyone—most—could be cruel. Only a few bothered to guess that she was a normal human being inside, and that she had reasons for acting out as she did.

For forty-nine years, since she was ten years old, her survival—sometimes literally—had depended on trying to find a balance between her need to be herself and her need to blend in. Usually, that was best achieved by avoiding spotlights, move under society’s radar.

Don’t draw attention!

Don’t’ be what they don’t like.

She walked like a slow Jason Bourne after a crime—a little faster than average, careful to take the pressure off that right knee before the end of each step, which gave her a limp—to put distance between trouble and herself, but, hopefully. As rapidly as possible, she found her car—

“Kay!”

Shit!

Kay turned to see Major Matt Halloway rapidly approaching her from the Officers’ Club.

Kay looked around for a place to run, but she couldn’t run with that knee. Her face was a mess. Her mascara and eyeliner had smeared under her eyes. Her nose was red.

Her face distorted in a cry.

I’m no good at the stone face!

“Matt! Leave me alone!”

“No, Kay—” He stopped in front of her and started to grab her arm.

Kay’s face turned to terror. “NOOO!” she screamed, and tried to hit him in the face with three quick blows.

He easily blocked them and backed away. “I’m sorry! Kay. I didn’t mean—”

She stumbled with her bad leg against her Jag, barely catching herself on the door.

“Get away from me!” she ordered, wiping her face, trying to recover from her humiliation. “I’ve got to leave—”

“I know you want to, but you don’t need to.”

Her tears flowed. She couldn’t stop them. She wiped at her face, smearing mascara on her sleeve.

“Yes I do! Didn’t you see?”

“Yes, but Kay: This is where you belong. We’re friends.”

“People lie to me when they say that! Oscar? You!? All those people. I can’t— I’ve got to— Get out! I’ve got to— Didn’t you see all those people?”

Kay began to struggle with her car door. Her key fob in her pocket should make it work, but she couldn’t get the door open.

“Let me do it,” Matt said.

He stepped up to help with the door, but she turned to fight him off again.

“Don’t bruise me, okay?” he said. “I can’t have the guys know some girl beat me up.”

“I’m fifty-nine! I’m not a ‘girl’!”

“Right. Sorry— That’s not what I meant. Grown woman.” He backed up from her, but in the direction of her car door, leaned against it.

“Everything alright here?” a sergeant asked, approaching with a corporal.

Kay and Matt both turned to look at them.

“Everything’s fine, Sergeant,” Matt said.

“I thought I saw a ruckus,” the sergeant pressed.

Police!? Get him away from here!

“It’s nothing,” Kay said. “My husband died. He’s being nice to me.”

“You alright Ma’am?” the sergeant asked.

“I’m fine. Please—” She shooed them away.

The police looked at them both, carefully, then retreated.

Matt looked at her, searching for understanding. “Kay, I— We understand, that’s all.”

Shit!

Oh, Jesus.

“Understand what?”

“Kay— You know that Wayne’s work was classified. He could never tell you what he actually did?”

“Yes. So?”

“Well, then you know we have always had intelligence on everyone around him, as well.”

I’m going to be sick.

Kay’s humiliation was all over her face. Her face wrinkled into another cry, but the major continued.

“I wanted to tell you that we fully get it. We liked Wayne, also, and you’ve been coming her with him forever, and we like you, too—”

“You’re coming on to me!”

“No I’m not.” he held up his left hand to show her. “I’m married.”

“Since when has that stopped any man?”

“Since he’s me, is when. I’m not that way.”

Kay held her stomach in her hands.

“We know how it must hurt when Wayne died, and we sympathize. You blow up like that at the Club?”

She turned around.

“You think you’re the only one? Hell, Kay: We tone it down for you air show geeks when you all come to base, because at other times, we let it hang out, too! You lost your only love—”

Kay’s cry let go at someone else mentioning it out loud. She buried her face in her hands and screamed not-quite-silently through her fingers.

“And we fight wars. We feel pain, too, and sometimes someone will blast away in there and rip through some guys. What you did is not unusual for us. Hell, it’s like us!”

“You fucking liar!”

“You sound like a colonel, right there.”

“I don’t think I can go back in there.”

“You,” he pointed his finger at her, “are always invited here, and, yes, you’re coming back, because the general ordered me to make it happen. Please. Hell, we were ready to have a beer with you—you tore those tourists up good—hell, we liked it!—but when you walked out, the general got it. We all did. The doctor told the general, the chaplain nodded, and the general told me to get out here with you and make this right, no matter what. Because Wayne meant a lot to us, too, and because you need support, right now.”

They know?

“Why?”

“Because we know about the Facebook page, too. We know that’s landing on you right now. We know you’re transgender.”

“I’m not fucking transgender goddamnit!”

Oh, shit! Too goddamn loud!

“Okay— You’re not— What?”

She leaned in to him so she could be quieter. “There are more things! That’s not what I am! How do you people keep throwing that at me, like, dude: You think all Asians are Chinese because you can’t tell us apart?”

“Well, that’s what they say—”

“They’re imperialistic bastards!” Kay said. “They’re trying to take over other groups!”

“Well, then,” Matt lowered his voice and looked around. No one was watching. “Then what are you?”

So you can go back and tell them I admitted something?

“Get out of my way!” She tried to get around him to open her car door.

Instead, he opened her car door for her. “Wait, please? Let me go with you.”

What on earth for!?

“The general said ‘at all costs.’ I’m yours. You need support. Let me help—”

Kay couldn’t even look at him. She got into her car, closed the door, started it, and drove away, leaving him standing in the parking lot behind her.

CHAPTER

16

When Wayne died, early in 2013, Kay carried out his last wishes. She gave the hospital a portion of his Trust that specified their joint plot in American Fork, Utah.

Kay was at a loss, emotionally, unable to cope with both his death and the possible consequences of his passing at the same time. She shut down. She— Her heart stopped beating for months. She was incapable of making any good decisions about anything, so it was helpful that Wayne had prepared everything, himself, before hand. His funeral was prepaid, instructions laid out, even as to invited parties.

She notified his attorney first, who recommended caution. She did not have one at the time. Keep him informed, he said. He did seem as though he were there to help her, so she agreed.

She understood that Wayne’s attorney would inform beneficiaries of Wayne’s passing, and she understood that the attorney would not give them information about his burial site—and notably, she was told later, they didn’t even ask. There were just questions about when they could get their inheritance.

Who did seem to care were Wayne’s friends from long ago, Sally and Bob Handy.

Other people, like Chun, or Liz or Joi: Not a word.

Mourners sat together, in the faded, white light of winter, in American Fork, in the cold, with snow all around, under a tent Kay had had erected, with Wayne in a steel casket in front of them. A rented preacher—Protestant but not Mormon—spoke to the group standard words people need to hear when someone you love—

Kay’s mind was not on it. Her face was a contradiction in sorrow and fear—fear that one of her stalkers would show up.

God! Please don’t let anyone show up here to attack me again!

She looked at everything as well as she could, to memorize it, and took enough photos to keep her memories fresh.

She would have to grieve later; here, she was on guard.

Kay went forward when told and looked at Wayne in his casket.

This is where he will lie, she knew. With me beside him, when my time comes, so help me God!

The stone had been up for years, since she had bought the plot.

Wayne was clearly dead. Though they had prepared him, his flesh was too still, a little sunken, fixed in place.

It was alarming.

Memories of their love-making flooded through her, of him taking care of her, of thousands of evenings they’d spent together at the marina, watching the sun set, of seagulls flying in the fog, listening to Nat King Cole.

“Unforgettable” was one of their songs, and would always be.

His hands were placed over his chest, and she placed a flower there she had brought from her hotel.

“I love you—” she said, breaking into a cry. She couldn’t even say “Wayne!” because she lost her ability to speak.

Sally came up to put her arm around her while she cried and looked at Wayne lying there, and together they stared at him, she knew not how long.

And when he had to be lowered, Kay stayed to watch it in its entirety, to know, with her own eyes, that he was, indeed, buried there, that no one showed up with lawyers and a demand to have him moved to someplace else, so he couldn’t be laid to rest beside someone such as she.

They lowered him in. They poured gravel over his casket, then dirt …

She looked at his place, where he wanted to be. It was more than a rise than a hill. Great view, easy to walk to, and when it rained, drainage would carry much of the water away.

Kay had signed away most all of her inheritance, in a worthless attempt to prevent problems, yet she was to receive a little.

All beneficiaries were required by the terms of Wayne’s trust to sign a waiver hold harmless, past, present and future, against and to never hurt Wayne’s Trust, him, his legacy Kay, their marriage, etc., so a month after Wayne’s passing, Kay found an attorney near Palos Verdes and went to him for pre-signing advice, as required.

He asked her several questions about the case, her/their history, their premarital, his Trust … She gave him copies of these things, and he said he would need a week to review them.

On returning the week later, he sat with her in the conference room. “By the way,” he said to her. “Wayne’s lawyer, Finch, called me and told me off the record that Orin’s been making calls about you.”

“I knew something like that would happen. What did Finch say?”

“Orin’s lawyer called me, too.”

“How did Orin know you were my lawyer?”

“He said nothing, just called to let me know.”

Is he being evasive?

“What did you release?”

“Nothing at all. I hung up.”

Kay nodded. “Tricky bunch.”

Then Kay’s lawyer stood at the end of the conference room table, spread papers out over it, lowered a boom she never expected—and made her an offer.

“So here are three cases where Immigration wouldn’t let a man immigrate into the U.S. with a transgender wife, and it’s because they didn’t accept the transgender as female. Do you see?”

“I’m not transgender. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not about me.”

“No, it works, see? It’s the Federal government. With the Defense of Marriage Act and that in support, I can show that you were never actually married to Wayne—”

Kay gripped the arms of her chair, rubbed her heart. Her breath came short in alarm. “We were married! Together thirty-two years, married for thirty, by an Episcopalian Priest at church! Those transgender immigration cases have nothing to do with it.”

He doesn’t understand what he’s talking about!

“No. Yes. See? DOMA? Men can’t marry each other—”

“I’m not a man, either!” Kay was on the edge of her seat ready to run, but she had to know what this quack-pot lawyer was doing to her.

“The Federal Government says these women are male.”

“How can I explain the basics to you—you seem to have your own agenda— No, you don’t get it—which is not all your fault—”

Throw him a bone.

“—but I think what you’re talking about, there, is not what’s happening here. Those transgenderists with their modern social movement call everything ‘transgender,’ so that’s what people learn. Apples, oranges, tomatoes, peaches—they’re all fruit, but they’re calling them all ‘apples.’ It causes no end of hell for transsexuals like me, and this is a perfect example of that! They’ve cost me thousands in legal bills—just trying to find out how things fit—and I’m getting sick of it!

“Those three women you’re talking about? I bet they were like most people who use the term ‘transgender’ who change clothes, take hormones, modify gender—keep their male genitalia, claim to be ‘female’ also, but they don’t even try to be, down here.” She indicated her groin for clarity.

“Most people think they’re full of it—and I bet that’s why the case worker was denying the marriage and the immigration. Even though DOMA’s full of shit, I wonder if what he saw was two males, one in a dress and makeup, maybe boobs, and denied that.

“That’s not what I am!” Kay asserted to her lawyer.

The lawyer touched a file on the table. “It’s not what it says here.”

“Because like I said, whoever wrote that, whether he knows it or not, has been schooled in the transgender paradigm. So will people, like you, who read it! Transgender terms are what people know. You think one term means very different things! And transgenders lie about their real desire to be the other sex, because they want the rights afforded the other sex as if they had. So you stand in hypothetical court, a judge reads a paper from a doctor that says gender change, possibly referencing living in the role of a woman, hormones, surgery—which may have been an orchiectomy or breast job or F.F.S.—and the judge asks the transgenderist, ‘Did you change your gender?’ holding up the paper, and the petitioner says, ‘yes,’ thinking mind and social role as ‘I’m a woman, now,’ but the judge is thinking she has a vulva and vagina, now, no penis—and a penis she still has—so the judge grants something to her that she’s asking for.

“How can anybody keep things straight with all that chicanery going on? Which is what the misleading transgender social movement stands on! But that’s what Immigration was probably thinking in those cases—and by the way, for what it’s worth, DOMA doesn’t even apply to me. I’ve actually been female since 1974! DOMA is about gay marriage! What the hell you trying to do?

“Oh, shit,” Kay said, sick, staring at her attorney. “I get it, now.”

You asshole!

“See?” Her attorney asked. “If you were never married, the premarital doesn’t apply, and you can sue his estate for at least half. It could be millions for you! Millions!”

“And millions for you.” Kay was pissed and scared. Who is attempting to invalidate her marriage? Her own lawyer, and just so he could make a buck.

“You want to twist the law, twist my sexuality, get me to claim I’m also not female in open court, that DOMA says I can’t marry a man, so that I was never married to the only person on this planet who ever understood me, who I was ever close to—so I can wring some money from his Trust!

“You slimy goddamn lying son of a fucking bitch! You’re fired!”

Kay stood up to leave.

The lawyer looked defeated.

“And you’re clamped down,” Kay said. “You never share any info at all about me to anyone, you hear me? Or I will barbecue your ass until hell freezes over.”

People had no idea how others respond, behind the scenes, to socially integrative transsexuals.

A week later, Kay sat in the lobby of another law firm. Leeroy Dowd, with a strong southern accent. This time, her lawyer got it. Kay wasn’t here to worm money from Wayne’s Trust. She meant to keep her word, and more so, longer term, she meant to make sure Wayne’s word was kept as well, per his Foundation’s parameters.

The lawyer gave her documentation and stated clearly, in writing, that, DOMA does not apply to her, that, yes, she is/was married to Wayne, that the premarital agreement is valid, and there is no trickery in the Waiver.

Kay was so thankful she cried and hugged him for a week. He seemed so thorough, so honest—a good man, who wasn’t trying to hurt her.

The sorry Federal expression of bigotry, DOMA, was gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court a few months later.

Thank you, Jesus.

A month after Kay had gone to the lawyers for the Waiver, when Kay returned from a trip, she found the personnel door from the garage into the house unlocked, her alarm system defeated, her home had been burglarized, the house rifled, and among it all, her financial files scattered across her office floor.

They couldn’t get financial information from my lawyers, so they broke in to look on their own!

She feared, anew, there could be cameras hidden, recorders, maybe malware on her computer or something to report to them whatever she does on there from email to searches or online banking, like that lady in the European movie, sending a copy of every page she viewed to someone else. She knew she could never find such malware, if it existed, so she completely wiped her computer and re-installed her operating system anew from a disk, then restored with a well-hidden backup pre-break-in, in an effort to clean her hard drive.

Not knowing if there were any bugs or cameras placed, she never talked about anything important in the house, on the phone or otherwise, from that moment forward. She was afraid to go to the bathroom at night for fear someone would be around a corner, afraid to undress in her bedroom or take a shower. She had a better alarm system installed, along with a closed circuit camera system, in the hopes of catching whomever should break in again.

This ongoing, intermittent persecution was enough to make even the strongest person crazy, and she was so jumpy, she probably seemed crazy to a lot of people in her life who had no idea what she was dealing with.

She was living in a fortress, alone, in shock, which probably would have suited her decades-long stalker(s) beautifully.

And she had no one to talk with.

No one.

Therapy?

She doubted it would help. She could spend years with a therapist before the therapist even began to realize the dynamics of transsexual-vs.-transgender living—get past transgender social movement falsities—and that she was telling the truth, that the things she was talking about were not exaggerated, and even then, therapy notes may go wide in E.M.R., Electronic Medical Records, to God-knows whoever else—including an unethical stalker’s doctor—which she, herself, would not even be allowed to see.

Lots of money and a self-righteous stance that you were protecting a descent victim from the manipulations of someone like a transperson, was difficult to fight.

And stealth transsexuals don’t talk, so people don’t know.

Talk to family? Impossible.

Friends? None.

Neighbors? Mine only look for gossip.

Other stealth transsexuals? By definition they were hard to find, and by phenomenon they were not inclined to connect with other transsexuals, or any transperson, for that matter.

Transgenders? She wished she could connect with them, but it never worked for her.

CHAPTER

17

I did it again. I left someone behind!?

Of all the times I wish I had someone to talk with, and one is back there?

Kay saw Matt receding in her rear view mirror, barely illuminated by a street light.

I could turn around— They wouldn’t be embarrassed. They’d be glad. So why not?

Because I’d be embarrassed. I can’t take any more!

I’m going home alone again?

When I could be back there laughing with the gang?

Her body was tense. Her stomach was tight. She needed release! But a cry wouldn’t come.

Kay’s stomach tightened even more as she watched herself drive off base, her limbs on automatic, the car moving. She was unable to stop herself.

Roads turned into freeways, and she was alone in her car.

The knot in her stomach was excruciating. It gripped her insides like a vise, cranking down, harder and harder, until she thought she would die.

Maybe I should die.

She gasped as if she would cry, but it never came—just torture. “My Miramar!?” She screamed in the car. “Wayne!”

She asked the cosmos for him to answer, but there was nothing. It had been two-and-a-half years since he died, and she couldn’t hear him any more.

A cry did grip her face, then, so fierce it threatened to crash the car, so she had to suppress it enough to drive.

Get home. Do something then. Survive. Survive!

It was just after midnight when Kay turned into her driveway. She was past exhaustion, but she couldn’t stop yet.

Audia was disturbed. It had been two years since the break-in after Wayne’s passing. Kay had tried to avoid being a problem, but the outing—

She put the car into the garage, closed it with the remote on the ceiling of the car.

When she unlocked the personnel door into the house, she listened very carefully for the tumblers in the lock, the sound of the lock opening, or any movement inside.

The door was locked. Good. That was correct.

She opened the door quickly and turned on the light switch beside the door jam, which illuminated the area of the foyer and parts of the living room and family room.

She looked and listened.

Nothing.

The house alarm indicated normally, as though it had not been tripped since she left.

She closed the garage door and locked it quickly. She reset the house alarm.

She wasn’t quite so careful if she’d only been out to the grocery store, but in this case, she had been away, in a way others may have known about, which could have invited intrusion.

She reached under the counter of the hallway lavatory, worked the combination, and withdrew her gun, a .38 revolver Wayne had recommended, “so you can tell when it’s loaded.” She wasn’t all that good with guns, but it was easy to shoot. Her phone had been shut off since the O. Club. She turned it back on began, held it in her left hand in case she had to call 911, and began walking around her house with her .38 carried carefully at her side, pointed forward.

That’s the way she’d been trained: Don’t walk into a room, with a bad guy in it, with your gun hand sticking out front, because the bad guy will grab your protruding arm around the door jam and take it from you. What are you going to do then?

She checked gathering rooms, kitchen, breakfast nook, hallways, upstairs, all four bedrooms and three baths, closets …

No one was there.

Maybe no one has been here this time.

Chun would think I’m crazy for all this—

But people who hate me have entered my home when I’m away, and, yes, hate crimes do happen to us.

The only way he could think I’m crazy, if he thought the threat wasn’t real.

She stood in the kitchen, near the island. Her stomach hurt.

I need food.

She looked in the fridge. She saw—a number of things, but she couldn’t eat.

She went around the house turning the lights off, entering the master bedroom finally, closing it and locking it behind her with its deadbolt, and put her .38 in the drawer in her night table.

CHAPTER

18

Kay woke at six o’clock in the morning. Five hours sleep. Her first thought was to listen to the house.

It’s quiet.

She looked at her bedroom door.

It’s still closed. Good sign.

She used the remote to turn on the T.V., selecting a news channel as was her norm.

A photo of her, taken at Wayne’s funeral two years ago, was on the news.

She bolted upright in bed.

The picture cut back to the news anchor.

“… saying Keiko Knapp, the wife of Wayne Higbee Knapp, of the well known, philanthropic, Knapp Assistance Foundation, is transgender.”

Oh shit!

Jesus, God!

And I’m not transgender!

The picture cut to a pundit, Raphael Diaz, evidently in his 40s.

“Mr. Diaz, why is this significant?”

“It’s significant, Sophia, because it’s very Mormon, and they don’t seem to like transgenders too much. And this has been going on under our nose, by a big shot, a man such as Wayne Knapp who primarily worked with the Department of Defense. While other people are fighting for basic rights, Kay Knapp has been far ahead of that since the ‘80s.” He laughed in glee.

The anchor turned in her seat slightly, and the feed changed to a 30’s blond lady.

The anchor introduced her. “Sheila Linus? You’re familiar with this area?”

“Indeed I am, Sophia.”

“You’re transgender?”

“Yes, and I applaud the Foundation for this marvelous inclusion. I bet they did know all along that Keiko was there, and they accepted her anyway. Though I have no proof of that. It’s just the kind of thing that happens.”

The anchor talked with her. “We’ve learned that Keiko is, indeed, transgender, but we haven’t been able to locate her. Do you know who the transgender is who outed Keiko, up at Provo?”

“I don’t know her personally, but I’ve got some leads into her.”

“Isn’t that an invasion of privacy against Kay Knapp? Shouldn’t she be worried about a law suit?” the anchor asked.

Sheila didn’t answer that directly. “We all should be out.”

“Shouldn’t her choice for privacy be as respected as another person’s choice to be out?”

“It’s the 21st Century.”

The feed returned to the anchor. “We have no announcement from the Foundation as of yet, and efforts continue to contact Keiko about it.”

Kay snapped off the T.V.

Her heart was racing. She felt light-headed. Her breath was quick. Her stomach felt like a vacuum pump had collapsed it.

Everybody’s going to see this! People who hurt me! People who want to talk about me—

She laid back down on the bed and sat back up again.

She picked up her phone to learn more about the incident, then shut it off.

I need to call Daryl! He’ll give me some information!

She turned it back on.

And tell them what? And learn what?

She looked around her bedroom for answers, though there were none.

Orin!

Audia: That’s why she called.

My neighbors!

People at the harbor! How can I go there?

TRANSGENDER!

TRANSGENDER?

I AM NOT TRANSGENDER!

Such a dirty word for me!

She got out of bed and walked in her nightie to the bathroom, then back to the bed to sit.

She noticed tears didn’t come. She was dry. But her anxiety has risen.

I can handle this! I’ve got more experience in this, at this point in time, than anyone I’ve ever known! Think!

She ran ideas through her head:

Christine Jorgensen? It was a different time, but she was very experienced at kindly asserting herself and correcting public misimpression—but she had Virginia Prince who actually helped her, without intent, I think, because Virginia actually agreed, at least, that transsexualism was not transgenderism.

Transgenders have a social movement, which is not a phenomenon, that’s supposed to be an umbrella term over various phenomena—including crossdressers, “gender queer,” transsexuals, anything—but they’re also using transgender as their own phenomenon’s term, which is the only name they’ll accept, so as the largest “out” group, they’re using their own term for all groups, trying to roll them together— It can hurt others, but it helps them!

People thinking I’m part of a group who don’t want to actually change sex completely misrepresents me for who I am, what I am, and what I’m about.

That is not what TRANSSXUALISM is about! That’s TRANSGENDER!

And transsexualism is not about being trans at all; It’s about just needing to be the other sex!

Just a simple female!

Her cry hit her then. She wandered about her room in tears.

She heard a car out front.

No one ever comes here any more!

She peeked out her master bedroom window, over her study, to see the driveway below.

Betty Arboghast, president of the yacht club had gotten out of her car in the driveway and closed the door. She was walking toward Kay’s front door.

Shit!

She scrambled to think. She was in her nightie, no shower yet—

What does she want?

She heard the news, and now she wants to talk.

But it’s none of her business!

She thinks she knows why I’ve never fit in, and she wants to apologize for some of her members—

Bullshit! She is just curious, like everyone else will be.

But I am not a freak show!

Christine wasn’t a freak, either. But she braved the media to tell her story.

But if I tell Betty, it will be me confirming her rumors, and she’ll go back to tell the other gossips—

But Betty isn’t really a gossip—

Everybody’s a gossip when it comes to this—

But if I don’t give them some truth, they’ll gossip about the wrong thing!

BUT IT WILL HURT WAYNE’S LEGACY!

NOT sharing the truth will hurt him more!

Wayne! I need you to help me think!

She looked around the cosmos for help, but she heard nothing.

The doorbell rang.

Kay turned to look at her bedroom door, half expecting it to open.

Kay’s phone rang, charging on the nightstand. She didn’t even look at it.

She opened the bedroom window—and the alarm sounded full and loud.

Shit! she thought again.

She used the bedroom panel to shut it off and yelled out the window. “Betty! What do you want?”

Betty backed up a few paces and looked up at Kay through her second story bedroom window. She just looked at Kay in that quiet “mature” way of hers that said Kay already knew. “I want to talk.”

“I’m totally not dressed!”

“Who cares?” Betty was not a fashion hound, normally very down to earth.

“Who is with you?” Kay asked.

“No one.”

“Gimme a sec!” Kay closed the bedroom window.

Kay scrambled, got into a robe, ran her fingers through her hair and tried to look a little presentable.

She locked her revolver in its safe and opened the front door to find Betty barely looking at her.

“Come on in,” Kay said.

Betty did so, without comment. She looked around the house. “I’ve never been in here before.”

“I know.”

“Why is it all shut up? Windows, curtains. Because of the T.V.?”

“Pre-secured. Because of my stalker.”

“You have a stalker?”

“That’s what I call him. Or them.”

Betty’s look seemed to challenge the likelihood of that.

“Are your curtains always closed?”

“No. But now’s a good time.”

Kay led Betty into her living room. “Please excuse me for not being dressed. It’s early. Please tell me why you’ve come. You know I’ve withdrawn from the yacht club.”

“I know, but I want to know why.”

“You mean after twenty years, where everything was supposed to be fine?”

Betty nodded.

She thinks she knows, but no way.

Kay’s phone rang again. It was in the pocket of her robe, but Kay ignored it.

“You’re phone’s ringing,” Betty said.

Kay nodded.

“Betty— What’s going on? I know about the T.V. You know about the T.V. You show up here on my door at seven in the morning when you’ve never been here before. Didn’t you want to know why I left before this morning?”

She wants me to tell her that her members weren’t prejudiced.

And she’s curious. She wants me to open up to her with my secrets.

She’s no friend; I won’t.

But nobody’s my friend, and false information disrespects Wayne. Only the truth can show people what kind of man he was.

Betty looked around.

“Have you had breakfast?” Kay asked.

Betty wagged her head.

“Lets have a bite.”

“No, lets get down to it.”

“Or the inquisition will—” Kay let it trail on purpose.

“You fooled us?”

“I didn’t ‘fool’ anyone.”

“You represent yourself to us as a woman.”

“I am a woman.”

“Did you start out that way?”

“The gall!” Kay was mad, and enough of it showed to set Betty back a bit. “T.V. gossip comes out, people slandering me, and you come over here before breakfast to dig into my business as if you have a right to know? Does ‘privacy’ mean anything to you, or only your privacy!? You want my business? Let me see your credentials!”

Betty looked at Kay as if she was being unreasonable.

“And the you look at me as if I’m being unreasonable!” Kay was disgusted. “Betty, you people—” She stopped to gather her emotions. “Do you know the kind of shit you’ve caused Wayne and me? For years? Do you know the million times your members have looked down their noses at both of us? How they will ‘invite’ us to something—board meeting, Christmas Parade meeting, dinners at the club—and then use us for curiosity on the one hand and snub us with the other? We’re having a cook-in. Chili. And I’m not welcome on anyone’s team, mostly, and when I am, I’m minor. We’re having a sailboat race, and I’m not welcome on anyone’s boat. All the positions are filled—

“It’s not surprising I left your club; it’s surprising I ever stayed with it in the first place.”

“How did they snub you?”

“It isn’t just they, Betty. It’s also you.”

“I never snubbed you!”

“And the worst part of it, is it’s all perfectly deniable. You can say, ‘Oh, we smiled when we saw them. We invited them. They were as welcome as anyone else,’ but being on the other end of that business is totally different.”

“You’re acting like such a victim.”

“I’m acting like a minority who people don’t like.”

“You’re not a minority— Japanese? Really!”

“I’m not talking about that, and you know it!”

“Say it!”

Kay’s jaw dropped. “You’re demanding my private business in my home. Can you see yourself doing that?”

“You let me in!”

“Not for that. You— You’re acting like you have a right, here!”

“We want to know if you deceived us.”

“One: I never deceived anyone. I never claimed to be anything I am not. I don’t do that as a matter of course—”

“Why can’t you say it, Kay?”

“And two: You’re not here to find out if I deceived you.”

Betty started to object, but Kay interrupted her.

“You’re here to get me to tell you that your club hasn’t been prejudiced, but I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I wish I could.”

“After we took you in. After we were nice to you, in spite of—”

“And there you go again,” Kay said, letting the obvious speak for itself.

“Again with what?”

But the obvious can’t override denial.

“You’re doing it right now! Nice to me in spite of what? You’re in denial about it, but you’re still doing it.”

“You’re in denial, Kay, not me.”

“I’m private! I’m not in denial. I’m fully aware of my issues—which are not on the T.V., by the way!”

“Tell me what it is, then,” Betty said.

This track won’t work.

“Thank you for sharing that you don’t think I have a right to privacy. Betty— You’re not a bad person, to most people. I think. Your members are not bad people, either, to most people. But to me? I feel like Wayne and I are an interracial couple. People feel they have to be nice, so it’s lovey-dovey on the surface, but it’s not, beneath that. It’s cold, ousting, distanced, and—cruel, when you get right down to it. You want the truth, that’s the truth.”

Betty tried to talk some more, but Kay cut in again.

It’s my goddamn house!

So far!

“There is something you can do about it,” Kay said. “There’s always something you can do about it. Anything you do or don’t do is something.

“You can go back to your members and tell them that I’m a wacko, and cite gossip on T.V. as a confirming source, and feel good that all your prejudiced ways are in fact humane; or you can stop and think about me for a second: Have I ever been unkind to anyone? Have I gotten drunk and embarrassed the club at a Christmas dinner? Have I even let our boat get dirty? Have I misspelled the club name on an internet blog? Anything? What is the reason for people acting like we’re accepted, but in reality keeping us at arms’ length?

“And if you do think about it, you may begin to sense that the difference in me bugs you. ‘Oh, but she’s actually different, so our distance is justified and it’s, therefore, not prejudice!’ It’s no more significant than if I were black or gay—and hell, you don’t actually discriminate against them! Just me! Or people like me.

“So, what is that 2nd thing you could do? Simple. Think. That thing in me that’s different that you don’t like? It’s something benign! It’s called transsexualism—”

SHIT!

GODDAMNIT I fucking said it!

“Not transgenderism! And all that adds up to, either you all distance me—prejudice—because I’m that, or you distance me because of something in my affect that has resulted from that—which is the same fucking thing, also prejudice!”

“Transsexual?” Betty said.

Kay turned around, walked in a circle, ran her fingers through her hair, and turned back on Betty. “Goddamn you and your self-righteous kind who think my business has to be your business! Fuck all of you who think you have the right to force that out of me! YOU DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW! It’s my business, and it’s none of yours, and no, if I don’t tell you, that’s not deceptive; it’s PRIVATE!”

Betty looked indecisive. She literally looked one way and then another, as if she was going to go one way and then the other.

Betty stared at her, as if the information was new. “So people ‘distanced’ from you because they sensed this—and you knew that, and you never felt you could say.”

“Then I couldn’t be private,” Kay conceded. “It would highlight something other than what I need to be.”

“How is that different from transgender?”

Kay looked exasperated.

“How am I going to know if you don’t tell me? They don’t say!” Betty seemed to indicate the T.V.

“The big secret, Betty, is that transgenders—most of them—don’t want or need to be the other sex. Most of those ladies who use that moniker have and want to have a penis, and most of the men don’t, and that’s just the way it is. They think it helps their social cause if they roll other people into it. Even against their will. Like me. Strength in numbers. But I think that part of their social movement is a lie.”

“So you—”

“Jesus! Betty! Haven’t you figured out I’M PRIVATE yet? Now you’re asking about my genitals? You may not understand, but I’ve already told you what’s there— Yes!” Kay stepped back and ran her fingers through her hair again. “I’ve done everything medical science can do, and it’s not enough in my opinion!”

“So you haven’t done that yet?” Betty actually pointed to Kay’s groin.

“Yes I have! Didn’t you hear what I just said? Can’t you see how you’re violating me?

Half explanations cause confusion!

This is ripping me apart!

“Betty, I am NOT TRANSGENDER. Get it? They are; not me! “

“Post-op transgenders—”

“That means anything from outright lies to any of a hundred different kinds of partial, god-knows-what surgeries, real or imagined, for a label that people use—or maybe you have a public transsexual who wants the spotlight or doesn’t want them to ad-campaign against them—but transsexual is not transgender. They want to be in-between. Transsexual is about being the other actual the other sex, as much as physically possible! Why is that so hard to understand? And why do I need to discuss my labia with people!”

Betty seemed lost in thought.

Kay sat in a chair by closed drapes and tried to catch her breath.

Betty remained standing.

“Betty, Wayne and I have for decades suffered more shit than you can imagine—and I don’t care what you call it, even little shit, any more, from people who smile-but-aren’t-friends? I don’t need that.” She indicated her house. “I’m all alone here, Betty. Trying to stand against people who treat me badly.

“And you joined groups, anyway?”

“Insightful. Thank you.”

Betty’s eyes indicated she was still considering things.

“So now what are you going to do?” Kay asked.

Betty shook her head, and turned toward the door, to leave. “I don’t know.”

“You going to hurt me like several others?”

Betty remained lost in thought. “I don’t know.”

Betty turned at the door to look back at Kay. “So you left the club because people were snubbing you, even while they claimed they were not.”

“Yes.”

“And sometimes they probably dissed you, so they could have a reason for not being friends, if anyone ever asked.”

“I think so, yes.”

Betty thought about it. “I’m sorry,” she said, “on everyone’s behalf.”

“Thank you, Betty. But honestly, those years of life can never be replaced. Decades. My life has been spent in pain, without people I needed.”

Betty looked at Kay, turned and walked out the door back to her car.

CHAPTER

19

Wayne was away in Hong Kong, scheduled for another three weeks, fall of 2003, so Kay made arrangements for some F.F.S.—Facial Feminizing Surgery—hoping she would be mostly recovered by the time he got back. She didn’t need much alteration, she felt, and the surgeon in San Francisco agreed, yet there would still be several procedures involved.

Kay sat with another transperson, also an intended patient, in a recovery house, talking with a patient who was on day four, after her surgery.

“I tried to invent all this,” Kay said, “back in the early ‘90s, but the plastic surgeon said I was crazy. He said ‘Plastic surgeons only do soft tissue.’”

“Where was that?” Tina said, the other intended F.F.S. patient. Networking was natural when in need.

“Los Angeles,” Kay said. She always said just “Los Angeles,” because people seemed to want to know something, yet it was non-specific.

Rey, the patient sitting on the edge of her bed, her face wrapped in gauze like a war victim, spoke slowly, yet precisely. “I think—”

“Is that a smile under all that gauze?” Tina asked. “If you can smile on day four, then I’m encouraged.”

“It’s not that bad,” Rey said, “if you’re motivated. It’s a big deal.”

“You think what?” Kay asked.

“I think,” Rey said, “that maybe you spoke to someone who didn’t know how to do what you wanted, so he made it sound like your question was absurd.”

“Your name is Kay—what?” Tina asked.

“Kay Knapp,” Kay said. She was frightfully concerned none of this followed her back to Wayne, yet her name was not known on the internet. Patient information can get handled loosely, including names, as patients look out for each other, so using her maiden name would not work and would arouse suspicion. Her best approach, she felt, was to use her real name, only misdirect when it came to Wayne, enough to downplay him. “Yours?”

“Tina Ginkowski.” Tina stuck out her hand for a shake and got one.

“Rey Horvath,” Rey said.

“What all did you have done?” Kay asked Rey.

“Oh, uh—a lot. I came in looking like a truck driver at Flo’s, and I want to come out looking, hopefully, a little normal.”

“I want to look like Princess Aurora,” Tina said. “My consultation’s tomorrow, and I’m taking a photo of her with me to show him.”

“You can’t expect that,” Rey said. “But he’s pretty good. He can fix you up. I’m sure you’ll be pretty.”

“Why all the bandages?” Tina asked Rey.

“I think they’re largely for compression—to help tissues not swell as much, which could distort his work, and to help keep the pain down. Literally, they’re snug, and pressing in a little helps prevent swelling.”

“What all did you do?” Kay asked the kindly Rey.

“You know what she had done: everything!”

“I’m here to learn,” Kay said to Tina. Then to Rey, “I’m sorry if my question is intrusive.”

“No, no problem. It’s okay. Everybody here talks about all this. It’s a mill. There is not much privacy about this stuff, around here.” Rey adjusted her position on the edge of the bed. “It’s good to get up. You mind? I want some tea. Either of you want some tea?” Rey got off her bed and walked the short distance to a kitchenette.

Tina looked frightened.

Kay rushed to help. “Let me do it for you—”

“It’s okay. I need to get up. My body didn’t have surgery elsewhere; just my face. It’s unhealthy to lay in bed all day.”

They made tea together, while Tina sat in Rey’s room and looked at some of Rey’s pictures. “This was you before?” Tina said.

“Yes,” Rey called from the kitchenette.

Tina took out her camera and took some photos of Rey’s photos.

“Take that away from her,” Rey told Kay.

Kay rushed to do so, and brought the book back with her to the kitchenette.

“Why not? It’s just for me!” Tina protested.

“That’s my photo album, Tina. I don’t want you to have my old pictures. I brought it to show a friend.”

“I’m a friend!” Tina said.

“I just met you ten minutes ago, and I don’t want you to have my old photos.”

“What do you do?” Kay asked Rey.

“I’m a geologist,” Rey said.

Kay’s eyes widened.

“Rocks?” Tina said.

“Yes.”

Kay could see that Rey was smiling, even though her face was largely covered in gauze.

“You teach?” Kay asked.

“No. I locate and catalog mineral deposits. It takes me out into the world a lot, and I enjoy the outdoors.”

“How nice,” Kay told her genuinely.

“What about you?” Rey asked.

“Oh, I’m nobody. A housewife.”

“I saw the ring,” Rey said.

“A housewife?” Tina jumped on that. “Who to? A housewife? Oh!”

Kay thought her reaction was unworthy of a princess, and Rey’s glance at her seemed to agree.

Put some of this to bed.

“He’s just a guy. I met him at work, a long time ago, and he saw me later, and it grew.”

“Does he know you’re transgender?” Tina asked.

“I’m not transgender.”

“I don’t like that designation, either,” Rey said. “Even though I am one, I guess.”

“You—” Kay didn’t think fast enough to stop her eyes glancing at Rey’s crotch.

“I had an orchie, but that’s all. I want to keep the rest.”

“I know!” Tina said. “Me, too.”

Why?

Kay was always mystified when someone wanted to be womanized, yet keep male-ish genitalia. But that didn’t interfere with her kindness.

Rey offered no more information. “And you?”

Kay nodded.

Rey nodded along with her, poured the hot water into Kay’s cup, and one for Tina, and they came back into Rey’s room.

Kay gave Tina her cup, and they both sat where they had been before, tucking Rey’s photo album under her pillow.

They all sipped.

“Thank you,” Kay said to Rey.

“Yes, thank you,” Tina said as an afterthought, then turned to Kay. “What’s it like having sex without your dick?”

Kay’s breath exploded into her tea. She almost spilled it on the floor. She brought it away from her mouth to lick the rim and wipe it with the fingers of her free hand. She gave Tina a dirty look.

“They scrape out your dick and invert it, right? So you have an inside-out dick for a pussy.”

Kay glanced at Rey, who sat back into her bed, still sitting up to sip tea.

Kay shook her head, no. “That’s— That’s like saying Monet spilled some paint on a canvas, and there it is. Which has nothing to do with what’s really there or how it is to be enjoyed.”

Tina looked bewildered.

Rey nodded.

“Mo-nay?” Tina asked.

Kay nodded. “A painter, impressionist.”

Tina seemed confused.

“’Mo’ to his friends,” Kay teased.

Rey filled in the hole a little. “A French painter, I think it was, couple hundred years ago—hundred and fifty? Very pretty. Soft paintings.”

Tina turned back to Kay. “So? They do use inverted dicks?”

“Tina, what is it you do?” Kay asked to get a better sense of who she was talking with, so she could tailor her comments better for her to understand.

“I fuck men for money.”

“Prostitute?” Rey asked.

“Yes, and why not!? They’ve been fucking us women for centuries.”

“Longer than that,” Rey agreed.

“Okay,” Kay said, “Okay. Lets see.” Both Rey and Tina paid attention to Kay as she tried to explain. “The whole inverted-penis thing? That really mis-explains it.”

“But it’s true?” Tina asked.

“Are you considering it?” Kay asked.

“I could make more money if I did.”

“Not a good reason to do it,” Kay said.

“Why not! It’s my business!” Tina giggled at herself. “I mean, really: business!”

“Because it’s sex, sweetie. It’s—” Kay shook her head and looked at Rey for help. “It’s— People don’t realize how important genitalia are. Having them, using them, having sex, not just having babies, is a big part of who you are. I think it’s very deep in the brain. Daily life— Needing to feel that naturality between your legs, deep in your groin. It’s like in your soul. And having sex?” Kay looked at them both. “Think years after you get it done, after you’ve adjusted, and you find someone to love. That needed, fulfilling sex you need to have isn’t going to happen if you aren’t right for yourself, down there.”

“You saying I have to— No, you saying I shouldn’t have a vagina! Why not?”

“Not you, Tina. I don’t even know you. I’m trying to answer your question what’s it like. It’s— Hard to explain.”

Rey seemed to understand and waited for Kay to collect her thoughts.

Tina was impatient. “Well, you’re not getting off to a very good start. You think you know about this stuff and we don’t, because you have a pussy. Sexist, if you ask me.”

“Settle down, Tina,” Rey said. “You know better than that.”

Tina looked slapped. “Okay! I apologize. Please continue.”

Kay looked to Rey. Rey is who she thought she should talk with, not Tina, but Tina was here, and she didn’t see how to expel her.

“Okay. Physically— I slept through the whole thing, so I have no idea.”

Rey laughed into her tea, and Kay broke up with her.

“Bullshit!” Tina said, angry.

“I’m sorry!” Kay said to her. “No, I’m kidding. Let me work at it a little? Okay. So, yes, part of the skin there is used for a vagina, but—”

“When did you have it done?” Tina asked.

“1974,” Kay answered without thinking.

“1974!?” Tina was beside herself. “You must have been two years old!”

God, why did I say that?

Direct it away!

“No, I was eighteen—”

“Eighteen!” Tina was aghast.

“Eighteen?” Rey looked at Kay more closely.

“I’m sorry! Yes, as soon as I could,

“How long did you want to?” Tina asked.

“All my life, ever since I was a child. But back to the question! Okay?”

“Okay!” Tina said.

“This is hard for me to explain, because people who haven’t had it have no reference.”

“You think you’re better than us!” Tina said.

“Tina! If you don’t shut up, I’m kicking you out of here!” Rey was strict like a grade school teacher with her. “Shut up so I can hear about this, will you?”

“She’s to testy!” Tina sat back in her chair, pouting.

“Now go ahead, Kay. I value what you’re saying. I want to hear about it. Please.”

Kay looked at Tina and cautioned herself, but she resolved to try for Rey.

“Okay. It’s not as simple as saying that the skin of the penis is inverted. I think the general idea is to put tissues back where they would have been if the fetus had not differentiated—which is a good idea but which doesn’t really work all that well, though, beause once they differentiate, they’re not the same any more, but—”

“What?” Tina asked.

“Tina!” Rey warned.

“Legitimate question!” Tina swore.

Kay nodded. “Okay. Human fetuses start out shaped like females—”

“Shut up, Tina!” Rey warned.

“—and then they ‘differentiate’ to the male form if they’re going to be males. But that same stuff, like the head of a penis, is the same stuff as the clitoris in a female, etc. Well, the skin of the shaft of the penis isn’t really the vagina, but the head of the penis can be put back where a clitoris should be, and the skin of the penis can be used for a vagina.”

Rey held up a hand to warn Tina to shut up again, but asked the question herself. “So during intercourse, does it feel like an inverted penis there? Does it feel like you’re having sex with an inverted penis?”

Kay shook her head. “Not at all. There is no sensation like that. I’m not a doctor, but I’m guessing that skin, usually, isn’t felt as what it is, per se; it’s felt with underlying tissues as well, or even instead of if nerves were disrupted enough in the transplanted skin, and by new, smaller nerves that connect those underlying tissues with the skin. Such that,” Kay motioned with her hands to try to share, “if some skin on your right arm were moved to replace some skin on your leg, your leg, there, wouldn’t feel like your arm. It would still feel like your leg.”

“But penis skin—foreskin, in this case—isn’t cut off, it’s just pulled down and inserted?” Rey asked.

“I don’t know. But its nerves are disrupted, and substrate nerves still grow onto it, I believe—or for whatever reason, it simply does not feel like the same tissue that was out there, before. Also, sometimes, the main nerve, there to the head of your penis/your clitoris is cut, so that blows the whole clitoris-arousal thing, pretty much.”

“Was yours?” Tina asked.

Rey gave Tina a dirty look, but agreed with the question.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”

“How could you not know?” Tina asked.

“My clitoris has feeling, but I think there’s been something—diminished. It’s not as sensitive as that tissue was before, and I gather, it’s not as sensitive as it should be.”

“Are you orgasmic?” Rey asked.

I’ve got them way off Wayne for now.

“Can you come?” Tina asked.

Kay nodded.

“So it feels like coming on yourself, ‘cause your dick is inside you?”

“Tina!” Rey said.

Kay held up her hands for peace between them. “No, it doesn’t feel like that; it’s in the vulval region, within it, and deep inside the area. Yes, I can orgasm, but my guess is it’s not as readily so as natal females.”

“Due to digital stimulation?” Rey asked.

“Partly. But there’s a strong emotional component to it. Without emotions, it’s not going to happen, for me.”

“A lot of women are that way,” Rey said.

“Fuck it! I am not doing this!” Tina was adamant. “Men just want a hole, and I already have a hole—my ass. And I have the best orgasms of any woman, with my dick!”

“Then don’t,” Rey said. “Problem solved.” She turned to Kay. “Tell me what it’s like.”

“You’re considering it,” Kay said to Rey.

Rey nodded.

“Where?” Kay asked.

“Scottsdale.”

Kay nodded. “Let me know when you go, and, if it’s okay, I’ll come visit you while you’re in there.” Kay smiled. “But to finish answering? Here’s the thing: It feels like something is inside me— Surrounding tissues are stimulated at the same time, and it feels like a vagina to me. The sensation is not at all like before. It’s very arousing. When he does me, I could die, or maybe it’s just him.”

“You were a virgin before?” Tina pointed to Kay’s groin.

“Yes, but I touched it. I know what it felt like.”

“So you had it cut off, even when you liked to play with it?” Tina asked.

“That’s not it. I needed needed needed it to be fucking gone and be a girl in every way, vulva, clit, vagina, in my soul, in my heart, in my mind—all. I even wanted to be able to have children if I could—”

“But you can’t,” Tina said.

Kay’s face was sad. “No, I can’t.”

“But then you’d ooze that ucky blood every month. You wanted that?”

“I wanted to be real. Yes. And I still do. But I can’t.”

“So you think you’re not a ‘real female’?” Rey asked.

“Biologically, no. To be real about it.”

Rey wanted to get a better picture of it. “So when you have sex, it feels like you’re female.”

Kay nodded. “Yes, by every reference I have— But more importantly, there’s this— This is the hardest part to try to explain.” She looked at both of them. “This,” she indicated herself, “is more than ‘apparatus.’ It’s— There’s something deep inside me, deep inside the brain, that seems to sense clearly that I am very, truly, deeply female, yet my body differentiated, anyway—became male in the uterus,” she clarified for Tina. “So there’s a part of my mind that seems to ‘know’ or that does truly feel ‘I am a woman and a female,’ where my body is in discord. I call it a ‘congenital birth defect,’ or a ‘mind-body discordance’—not a mental illness, but something in the way the brain is built. A part of my mind feels like it actually seems to know what sex I need, even though the body is not really able.”

“Even now, you’re not totally able to satisfy that?” Rey asked.

“Insightful. True. I’m sure it’s not totally genuine.”

“You had G.R.S., had a pussy installed, and you can’t be satisfied with sex yet?” Tina asked.

“That’s not what I said. I’m being subtle, here. I can have sex. It is femaliform, if you will. And I am really so glowing after. But I think that once tissues differentiate, they’re differentiated, and putting them back to where they would have been as a female is good, but not perfect.”

Kay got a little smile on her face.

“When you get aroused,” Rey said.

Uh, I did it again.

Stay off Wayne’s topic.

“See, that’s part of what I need to share. Think about one of your hot fantasies. Think: You’re there, your lover is there. He comes at you—or she—and you’re very turned on. What is it you want to feel? What is it you want him to do to or with you? Or her? At the moment of orgasm, itself, what kind of coming do you need, deep inside, to satisfy that something deep inside your mind, like I shared?

“If at the moment of orgasm, you need to come by thrusting your penis deeper inside, then you shouldn’t have G.R.S., because, honey, you won’t be able to. It won’t be there.”

Tina wrinkled up her nose.

Rey frowned a little, clearly thinking hard.

“And on the other hand,” Kay continued, “If you need him or her to come to you, spread your legs, and insert or play—so that when you come you need him to go deeper, that your feeling is female there, to be without penis but with vulva and vagina, then maybe we’re talking ‘female.’ And you have to kinda know before you go, because after the G.R.S., there’s no going back. So my thinking is that if you’re not sure, don’t.”

“I heard of one gal who changed back,” Rey said.

“Rare, but yes. But while a person could revert to living like a man again, that penis can’t be restored like it was. Yet. Maybe some day they’ll sample your stem cells and grow you a new one and install it, but we’re not there, yet. And when they can? I’ll try to get someone to sample mine, grow me a real clitoris/vagina, etc., and install that.

“But what I’m trying to share is that—at that moment of deepest desire, at orgasm—if you need that penis to be stimulated to satisfy, and you’ve had it removed, you’ve got a problem you created that won’t go away.

“And on the other hand, if your body seems to truly need that female response, then you can’t get it with any male apparatus there. It has to be female … So the question of what to do kind of answers itself. As I see it. And it’s more than that, also. It’s about how you need to be as a person, there as well.

“I think that if I had it cut off—” Tina said.

“It’s gone, but it’s not ‘cut off.’ Most of the tissue is rearranged.” Kay said.

“What about the stuff inside?” Tina asked.

“Spongiosa,” Rey said.

“Most of that is removed, but it vasocongestates—swells with blood—for an erection. Women vasocongestate, too, when aroused, so an undetectable amount is retained, inside, so the feeling of vasocongestion is there.”

“Like you feel an erection?”

“No.” Kay shook her head. “Just warm arousal.”

“You get a little bit hard?” Tina asked.

Kay shook her head. “No, I’ve felt, and even in deep arousal, there is nothing stiff or hard that I can feel with my fingers. It’s all soft, receptive. No penis at all. Just me, needing him so bad—”

Uh, I did it again. I hope that doesn’t take us to Wayne.

“I think she needs him so bad right now,” Tina said.

Kay blushed a little.

“So tell us about your husband? You were married! I see the wedding ring. You’re a ‘wife’? You have to service him?” Tina was full of questions.

Redirect.

Kay looked shy. “Why is this conversation about me? Rey, why do you think you might want G.R.S.?”

Rey looked as if she was pulling away a little, and shook her head. “I don’t know, Kay. But my guess is that I’d like to keep it, at least for now. Because the truth is, I would lose it, if I did. I’d like to be female down there, but I’m guessing it’s more fantasy than a need to have sex that way. Thing is, I’d like to have sex as a female sometimes, but at other times, I need to insert it. The question is: Would that change, if I didn’t have a penis anymore? Would I develop a desire for vaginal intercourse if that’s what I had that I could have sex with? Would my desire transfer from one to the other?”

“I don’t know,” Kay said. She thought. “But I kind of suspect that, deeper than that, the need to be sexual, however it is in a person, is biological, neurological. Hard-wired in, a part of your deepest primal self that isn’t going to be altered much by learning.

“Mine happens to be female,” Kay said. “I need to be female.”

“And how did you know that at eighteen, even though you were a virgin, with no experience, setting something in place that would be there the rest of your life.” Rey was insightful on the subject, Kay could see.

She’s been thinking about this.

“That’s the thing: I didn’t decide; I just knew. Even if I were never to have sex, I had to be female. It was so clear, that— There was no angst over whether or not it was the right decision. It was so clear that it hurt, miserably, deep inside, that I was nearly crazy trying to survive long enough to have the surgery. I would have died without it. It was no decision; it was a certainty that I couldn’t live without.”

“Then there’s the question,” Rey said, “if working to decide means don’t have it, just because you’re deciding. No pre-knowledge. Can someone have a fulfilling sex life if they approach it as a decision?”

“And the answer is, I don’t know. My guess is that if that’s the case, unhappiness could result either way, at least some of the time.”

“You’re just full of yourself,” Tina said. “You think you’re superior because you’ve had G.R.S., and it’s been a long time. We don’t even know if it’s been since 1974 or not. You might be lying.”

“She’s not lying,” Rey said.

“How do you know?” Tina asked.

“I think she’s being honest with us.”

“Then she could still be wrong, even if she thinks she’s honest.” Tina said.

“True,” Rey said. “But I think she’s right. Why don’t you give what she said some thought, instead of jumping on her. She’s sharing. She’s not two years trans who thinks she knows.”

“And you’re how long?” Tina asked Rey.

Rey looked at the sheets on her bed and sat her tea cup down on the night stand. “I’m six years, and I’m thirty-six. I’ve been growing in that direction for a long time, but never at a rush.” She turned to Kay for input. “So, Kay, is that slow growth in a direction valid? As you see it?”

“You’re still asking about that. You’re gathering data, from which you’ll make a decision later. A scientist,” Kay said.

“Yes. I think so.”

“See, and who am I to say there’s something wrong with that? But I do know that this thing,” she indicated herself, “a so-called ‘stealth transsexual,’ is a real phenomenon, rather distinct, not measured in years or surgeries. And sometimes there are women who are scientists, as well, who do have the need, unshakable, known since birth, that they have to be, have to have it, need it, can’t live without it. That’s what I am, though I’m not a scientist. So can you be happy if you consider pros and cons and wait years to see how it will feel later? I think that’s a wise approach, if that’s the way it feels to you. Who could say it’s wrong to deeply consider things this important? But I do need to share that for people like me, it’s not a decision; it’s an unshakable need. The discordance is torture.”

Kay’s face held a frown.

Rey leaned forward. “You still feel that discordance, don’t you?”

Kay nodded, sadly. “Yes.”

“Oh Christ!” Tina said. “No way! You’re a woman because you say you are, as real as anyone else! Sex is in the brain.”

Kay ignored Tina and spoke to Rey. “I can only simulate. I’m not genuine.”

“Oh! Whacko,” Tina said.

“All I can do is my best,” Kay said to Rey. “But, no, it’s not good enough, in my view. It’s not really real. And yes, it hurts still, inside, every day.”

“But you can live with it,” Rey said.

Kay had begun to tear, but she laughed a little at Rey. “You’d make a good shrink.”

“That’s it! She’s crazy,” Tina said.

“Tina! Out!” Rey said, pointing to the door.

Tina didn’t move, but she did shut up.

“Yes, I can live with it. It’s leagues better than anything before. I’ve done the right thing. This has to be. And I’m so thankful to God for it. Truly.”

Rey held open her arms for a hug and got one.

Kay sat back down.

“But I have a couple more questions, if I may?” Rey asked.

“What?” Kay dried her tears with some tissue on Rey’s night stand.

“One: You’re not large. 5’ 8” or so? Slim. I can tell you were tiny when you were eighteen. Did the surgeon have much to work with? Was it small? How did he have enough there to make a vagina?”

Kay looked embarrassed at the question but tried to answer. “He augmented with some superficial skin from my inner thigh—and no, Tina, sex doesn’t feel like interfemoral fucking. My vagina doesn’t feel like my leg, either. It just feels like a vagina to me, deep inside.”

“How deep?” Tina asked.

“I don’t know. Four or five inches, depending on how you measure it. It works.”

“Do you lubricate?” Rey asked.

“Not much. I need to use a lubricant. Sometimes I leave it in, so I can be spontaneous. If it’s already there from dilating, that’s enough. If it’s dry, I need to add some before sex. Not a lot. Just some.”

Tina’s nose wrinkled at that.

“And the next question,” Rey asked, “is why are you even talking with us about all this? I think that you stealth transsexuals really do not get along with us ‘blended’ people, some of both. You normally consider yourselves separate, very.”

Kay nodded. “It’s true.”

“So why— Oh,” Rey said, apparently in thought. “Because you’re stealth. You need to be ‘normal,’ but in truth you aren’t—that discordance—and you need someone to understand, sometimes. So you come looking for it.”

Kay nodded. “I think that’s exactly right.”

“But you’ve never found it, that understanding, in any of us.” Rey focused on Kay.

“True. Though actually, I’ve never found it in anyone.”

Except my husband.

“What about your husband?”

“Wayne?”

I said his name!

Rey nodded.

“He seems to understand without asking, if I can say that. He just—connects.”

“But you two don’t discuss this?” Rey asked.

Kay shook her head. “It’s not forbidden, but it’s not what our life is made of.”

“It’s what your life is made of,” Rey said.

Kay nodded. “But it’s not what our life is made of.”

“Social/interrelational discordance, secondary to physical/sexual discordance.”

“Yes!”

So part of making your marriage or your life work, is to be ‘stealth’ in your life, in general, yet to seek understanding, even elsewhere, sometimes.”

“Yes!”

“You’re not here to condescend to us—”

“Of course not!”

“You’re here to ask for understanding. You need understanding; you’re human. And it’s part of your ‘stealth transsexual’ phenomenon.”

Kay got out of her chair to sit beside Rey and laid her head on Rey’s shoulder, careful not to touch her head/face. Her tears made a damp spot on Rey’s shoulder. “If you only knew how many times I’ve sought that!”

Rey patted Kay’s arm and invited her by her motions to stay.

“So what procedures are you going to have?” Rey asked. “You already look pretty good to me.”

“Not much, actually,” Kay said.

Rey gave Kay a tissue.

“Scalp rotation forward—my hairline is too high, I’ve always thought. Round some corners on my jaw and chin. A sliding genioplasty, he said. And he’s going to raise my upper lip to more of a female form. Then I’ll come back in a few months for a facelift to finish all that and then have some hair transplants to cover the thin hairline scar at the top of my forehead.

Tina winced at all that.

“I don’t need a nose job. I don’t need a trache shave. I don’t need the forehead moved, but I am going to ask him to soften the brow ridge a little.”

“So basically,” Rey said, “you’re having about half of it done, except the nose, Adam’s apple and forehead, but just a little bit of most of the procedures, not a lot of them.”

Kay nodded, lifting her head off Rey’s shoulder to look at her face, covered in gauze. “It’s Thursday. Will it hurt?”

“I think you’ll likely be two days in the hospital after surgery, and they’ll have you pumped on pain killers. You’ll have a P.C.A.: Patient Controlled Analgesic. You can give yourself a shot of pain killer when you need it, but you won’t need it that much. It looks and feels like a train wreck, but you’re so doped that you sleep through most of it. After maybe three days, most of it goes away, and you spend your time like me. I’m not on any today. Just recovering.”

“And then you’re more beautiful.”

“Well, that’s the plan.” Rey smiled a little.

Tina’s nose was still wrinkled. “I’m having a nose job, jaw, and forehead. What she’s not.”

“You’ll be fine,” Rey said. “You’ll be fine.”

Kay’s surgery took several hours. As she was fond of saying, she “slept through all of it” and woke up in a recovery room, woke again in her own room, drifted in and out of consciousness. She knew she had surgery, but she dealt with it. It was massive, she could tell, and drugged though she was, her greatest concern was her nausea. The drugs made her feel like she needed to throw up all the time, for the first two days. She asked for anti-nausea medication, and the nurse said it was enroute from another hospital. She never got any that she could remember.

After a day or two—she couldn’t tell which—the surgeon came in, examined her, and then without warning pulled two drain tubes out of her face. Kay screamed, mostly in surprise, and the pain went away quickly. Now she just needed to heal.

She was discharged to the recovery home, as Rey had been, and then she saw Rey for the first time.

“I’ve been here all along,” Rey said. “You’ve just forgotten on your pain killers.”

“How did it go?” Kay asked Rey.

“Fine, from all I can tell. The doctor is pleased. Your recovery seems normal.” Rey leaned in to give Kay a very soft kiss on her nose, which hadn’t had any surgery. “The worst is over, sweetie. You’re fine.”

Kay began to cry.

“Now, none of that! Rest!”

Kay squeezed Rey’s hand until she feared she’d break it. “It isn’t that. Life is so hard!”

Rey squeezed Kay’s hand as well, in support.

Rey was one of the very few who seemed to get it. It’s not over with S.R.S.; it continues, always difficult, always with pain, always nagging with some kind of torment. Just more tolerable.

“It’s not just transsexualism,” Kay said to Rey, her tears soaking into her facial gauze. “There’s a lot more than people could guess.”

Over the next few weeks, as Kay recovered and returned home, Kay’s need for privacy asserted itself, and, without intent, clashed with Rey’s need for acceptance. Kay wouldn’t invite Rey to visit at her home, and she was only willing to visit Rey rarely, away from the hospital.

While Rey did seem to understand Kay’s reasons, the net result was Rey felt that Kay’s exclusion of Rey from her life suggested there was something wrong with Rey, with anything trans. Kay shared ad nauseum that she had no dislike for transpeople, per se. It’s that her need to just be female was central to her life. It was the primary characteristic of the stealth transsexual phenomenon, to be and live as truly the other sex, as much as possible. Kay had no control over her need to be just female any more than most people. Frankly, she’d shared, most people could not imagine changing their gender to be blended, and neither could she—the difference being that she carries around her transsexual nature because she started out male. Most men would not want to look womanly, and most women would not want to lose their breasts and grow a beard. Kay distanced from trans in general, because it kept her farther away from an already unreachable goal she was bound, by her neurobiology, to approach.

Rey suggested that “blended” was a pejorative.

Kay asserted that “blended” was physical fact, “…breasts plus penis equals a blend, or both,” and that a failure to recognize that was denial. She wasn’t putting them down; she was just saying her phenomenon is different.

Rey suggested that Kay thought she was better than Rey, because she was all female, and Kay reminded her that she never said that—that, instead, she feels horribly because she is, in fact, also blended: simulated female anatomy (rearranged male tissue), male bone structure … with male chromosomes.

Rey suggested Kay distanced from Rey because Kay distanced from herself, too, that she didn’t like other trans because she didn’t like herself.

Kay agreed she didn’t like the trans part of herself—hated it, in fact. But that she’d never disliked another person because of it.

Whereupon Rey noted several times that—still and nonetheless—being told you can’t come around because you’re trans is a knock and it hurt.

CHAPTER

20

Kay looked at the closed door in front of her and locked it. What would Betty Arboghast do? She began to think of the humiliation of a hundred people in the yacht club, spreading like rabies through a few more hundred in the marina—

The boat! The marina! Other places that she needed to share with Wayne, and now couldn’t.

Her world was closing in on her.

Standing in her living room, she prayed to God in her mind, I can’t take this any more! Please take me. Please! Just stop my heart. I don’t matter to anyone, anyway. Just let me— Wayne? Can you hear me?

Her phone rang in her robe pocket, and she ignored it. She didn’t even take it out to look at it.

She turned to look at her home. The drapes and blinds were closed. There was no one there. It was a dark inside, even though it was daylight outside. She looked at the flooring, imagined the studs in the walls, the roof overhead.

Dwindling finances. She’d signed away most of her inheritance with her premarital agreement, trying to bring peace. She was going to lose her home—

Dumbest goddamn thing I ever did.

But it was the time! It was the eighties!

My home!

I need a home so much!

Wayne?

The world had gone ape for interconnectedness. People were into everyone’s business for fun—total disrespect for anyone’s privacy! Oh, how could you disrespect something that’s not supposed to exist?

She imagined prying eyes on the internet oozing in through the walls of her home to remake its inside as its outside. There should be no difference!

Why would anyone want curtains on their windows?

The world was even merging past “Do you have something to hide?” into an automatic perception that it’s their business, and they have a right to it if they can find it.

The antidote to my embarrassment is your embarrassment?

Everything is public, so are you?

The weight of the world’s intrusion pressed down on her to the point Kay felt her life would be squeezed out of existence. Everywhere she turned, she felt intrusion. In her home, in her car, in her doctor’s office, her medical records, from people in groups she’d been in, and even from people she’d never even met.

She turned away from her dark living room and climbed up the stairs through the world’s intrusive air toward her bedroom—stopping in the stairwell to wonder what she would do there?

Same thing there.

Where can I go?

Where can I live?

What can I do?

Wayne’s gone—

I’m alone.

I can’t be myself—ever—because medical science can’t do it, and now I can’t even be left alone to try to be myself, because the public won’t allow it.

It’s forty years—

I’m going to try to exist!

I’ll live. I’ll try to cherish my life and remember Wayne. I’ll appreciate the beach, watch the ocean swells roll in, breathe in that fresh air. I’ll remember what he cherished to keep a part of him alive. I’ll use my wiles to guard his Foundation as well as I can, if they’ll have me—

No. I will not guard “friends” or neighbors.

I’m embarrassed by most everything outside these walls, and I wonder if I’m even private within them.

So where will I go?

I’m standing here on the stairs, for God’s-sakes!

Where to go?

If I choose to go nowhere, then I’ve chosen to stand in the goddamn stairway!

Anywhere is better!

I can’t go to the marina. After the T.V., they’ll peg me there in a heartbeat.

I could— No, I can’t go to U.C.I. I’m not known there recently, but they’ll see me.

Griffith Park?

Movies?

Get in my car and drive waaaaaay away?

Like they don’t have T.V. in Denver!

Or am I to be like a celebrity clown in a wig and glasses to try to hide? How humiliating that would be to be discovered that way.

A disguise that doesn’t look like a disguise? Just style my hair differently, a little different make-up.

I saw my photo on T.V. I know what not to look like.

“Goddamn fucking transgenderists!”

I’ve tried, and now they’re on me with this—

How can I cope?

Kay flashed through memories when she’d tried to talk with them. It used to be no problem, but it got worse with their social movement.

1972: No problem with transgenderists—that was the term they used, then, a la Virginia Prince. They weren’t an issue in the life of transsexualism. Kay sometimes met them during those times, and there was no conflict. They could see each other at someone’s home or a bar or event, but they didn’t hang out together much, because they were into different things. And transvestites were even more distant from transsexuals. They were dressing for sexual arousal or a kinky night out. No one confused one with another, except those in fantasy—well, fantasy that you’re a woman was a part of it for most.

In a T-bar, people, whatever they were into, were congenial with each other, sharing ideas, greeting, laughing together.

T.V.s had total non-acceptance, socially.

T.G.s had very little acceptance anywhere, bolstered a bit by Virginia who promoted the lifestyle as such.

T.S.s actually had some growing acceptance because of a demonstrated need to actually become the other sex. Employment was easier for this group, marriage was still unusual, but possible. The novelty was tempered in the public eye by attempted conformity.

1982: No problem. Kay sometimes saw them now and then—same. It was not uncommon for transgenderists and transsexuals to speak in universities, even together, pointing out their similarities and differences.

1992: No problem: very much the same, with even more

2002: On a listserv, someone complained, “What are all these ‘non-ops’ saying we aren’t transsexuals? They want to use one ‘umbrella term’ for everyone: Transgender. I’m not transgender. I’m transsexual, and I’m cured. I had the surgery. These crazy people think they’re women while they keep their dick?”

Another: “One umbrella term? Transgenderists are promoting it. Distorting us. How can I explain to my Mom what I am, when someone on T.V. says I’m something different.”

Another: “It’s just an umbrella term for all groups, to make it easier to reference. There is strength in numbers!”

Another: “Slippery slope. They’ll roll them all together and re-state who we are. Then we’re lost! No one will understand us!”

Another: “No, it’s just an umbrella term. Nothing else is changed.”

Another: “We can’t stand up for ourselves if we’re private!”

Another: “But I can’t put a spotlight on myself as transsexual. I’ve prayed to God for one thing since I was born, to be female. That’s all. It’s transsexual to need to not be transsexual …”

2012: The occasional transsexual T.V. star or model or singer comes out and is pressured by the transgender paradigm to label herself as “post-op transgender,” literally saying that transsexuals are a variation among transgenders, forgetting to mention that the term refers to a hundred other things or that if she doesn’t say “post-op transgender,” she’ll face counter-P.R. that will hurt her career.

The name of one of the umbrella’s underlying groups—transgenderist—changed to “transgender,” to distance from Virginia Prince’s then-successful social campaign meaning change gender but keep same sex. The name of one group became the umbrella term is used for all group. The result is achieved: everything is defined as a variation of transgenderism. No matter how different.

And now they’re forcing publicity onto me.

Orin will come here!

GET OUT!

Kay ran up to the master bedroom. She quickly showered and dressed, pulled out the dirty clothes from her bag, from her trip to Miramar, and replaced them with new ones, enough for a week. She made sure her liquids were full—shampoo, mouthwash—and prepared her house, again, for another trip: curtains, window locks, security system, alarm.

CHAPTER

21

The door bell froze Kay half way out the personnel door to the garage.

Her heart was beating so loudly she thought it would give her away.

Should I pretend I’m not home.

That could invite burglars in!

She remembered her house torn up, her throat clutched, her head against the wall.

Should I call the police? Tell them who I am and my history of problems?

That could cause a problem that’s not here.

Should I answer the door?

The alarm system was beeping at her to hurry and make her mind up.

She shut it back off so she’d have time to think.

“Kay?”

A woman’s voice.

Kay stepped timidly toward the front door. “Sally?”

“Kay! Open the door. It’s me.”

Kay slipped the front door open and dragged all two hundred pounds of Sally inside, slamming it shut behind her, locking it quickly.

Sally hugged Kay and looked around. “This place looks a tomb. You’ve already died.”

Kay hugged Sally and cried on her neck.

Sally patted Kay on the back of the head. “There, now. Sally’s here, and it’s going to be alight, so help me, or I’ll wail the tar out of ever last one of ‘em.”

“Oh, Sally! You don’t know what’s happened!”

“Yeah I do,” Sally said, walking around the living room opening drapes. “It all came together when I saw the news.”

Kay’s hands flew to her face in shame.

“No, no,” Sally said, pulling Kay’s hands free.

Kay began walking around after Sally closing the drapes again.

“Kay—” Sally looked at the disheveled Kay and the dark rooms, and she took a breath before continuing. “I can see you’ve fallen apart, but you’ve got to get it together.”

Kay struggled with Sally to close the drapes.

Sally grabbed Kay around the middle and fought the wiggling Kay to hold still. “What’s the matter with you, Kay? You’ve—”

“Close them!”

“Leave ‘em open! You can’t live like this!”

“No,” Kay almost wiggled free and reached for the curtains. “They’ve got to be closed!” she began to cry harder. “Close them!”

“Open!”

“No! We can’t!” Kay reached one of them and pulled so had the curtain tore.

“Why not—” Sally began to say, but was cut off by Kay’s scream.

“Because they’ll break in here again!”

“What?” Sally let her go.

Kay scrambled to drape the curtain back up, covering the window, but it was futile.

“The men! They’ll— I don’t know what they’ll do! My stalker’s been in here, and he’ll come in again if we don’t look out— He might, anyway.”

Sally watched her, obviously reassessing. “It’s good I came. I had a feelin’.”

In a crying fit, Kay shared scattered highlights of her troubles from day one—from her family, her brother, her stalker, intrusions, looks from people, one threat on her life in the mail, assaults, the rape, and how alone she had felt since Wayne died—

“Rape!?”

Oh God! Shit! No!

Kay seemed to withdraw, to hide, even while standing there.

“Kay?” Sally was worried. “Rape?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Yes you did!”

Kay’s face froze in anger, and she held out a hand, palm out, to Sally. “Stop! No. I didn’t say that! Leave it alone!”

“You can’t leave that bottled up! We’ve got to—”

“GET OFF IT, SALLY!” Kay screamed at the top of her lungs, crying as hard as she ever had. She doubled up both her fists and shook them at Sally in a rage. Red-faced, hostile, Kay made her feelings clear: “It never happened, and it was a long time ago! It was one of his goons— You think this fucking shit happens in a vacuum!? They hate me, Sal! I’m shit! He—

Sally took a step toward Kay.

Kay’s face turned to fear. “NO!” In a flurry, she tried to hit Sally several times with ineffective, misdirected blows.

Sally immediately jumped back. “Kay! It’s just me!”

Kay held her hands out for Sally to stop again, but at a slight motion, Kay took a threatening step toward Sally.

Sally backed up another step. “It’s okay, Kay. It’s me. Just me.”

Kay’s arms were tense. She held her fists toward Sally for several seconds before she began to lower them.

“Sally! I’m sorry—”

“I know. It’s okay—”

Sally backed up another step.

Kay cried with a straight face as she talked. “Do you know what it’s like to have a goon right here,” Kay put a hand an inch in front of her own face for distance, “spitting on your face, who says you’re gonna die if you don’t leave, and then who— He forced his hate inside me, and he liked it!” Kay ran both hands through her own hair and turned around.

She sat in a chair and tried to calm her nerves. “He said if I tell, I’m dead. I’m not allowed to exist. Don’t you see? You think this is just people being mean to me, like in the mall? They’re willing to kill me! GODDAMNIT!”

Kay’s face was red and wet. She wiped her face as well as she could with her hands, adjusted her clothes, looked at her curtains— She got up and went to the kitchen for a towel.

“Kay, I’m so sorry,” Sally said.

Kay returned to Sally and forced her emotions into check. “There’s nothing to be done. It’s old news. Just drop it. It didn’t happen. I’m strong. I can deal with this.”

Sally smoldered around the room behind her, obviously sick to her stomach, building up a head of steam. Finally she turned and faced Kay. “Girl— Okay. For now. I get it,” she said. She held out both hands for Kay in a universal stop motion. “I want to tell you.”

“Get what?”

“I get that people out in the world treat you like shit—worse than I ever knew—so you think you’re actually are shit—and there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about this shit, so you’re just—up shit creek without a paddle. But you keep this shit bottled up, and it’ll make you crazy.”

Diversion.

“Why do you get so much?”

Sally indicated herself. “Hello? What you think? My people have been putting up with shit for hundreds of years in this country. What is it you think we don’t know?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot. I just thought of you as a Kathy Bates kind of a person.”

“I know you forgot. Hell, you never really even gave it much thought, I bet. Which, on the one hand is why you’re so great, but on the other hand means I’ve been putting up with shit all my life without telling you, either. Because that’s what minorities do. You cry in your soup, and people actually think worse of you. So you fake it along, try to make it better, somehow.”

“Yeah,” Kay nodded. “Only there are millions of you in America—

“Maybe forty-five million of us in the U.S.,” Sally said. “Maybe fourteen percent.”

“Forty-five million. No one knows for transsexuals. If someone claims they do, they don’t. People go over seas sometimes for surgeries, or have them and move away. There’s fraud in self-representation to various governmental institutions. Data isn’t usually collected as such, that the public know about. My also-uninformed guess is there’s between fifty and a hundred thousand of us, maybe a tenth of that stealth. No one knows. Maybe zero point zero two or three percent of the population. Tiny! We have no support, mostly no one to turn to because we’re secretive—not like transgenders, because they have a lot—and what people do think they know about us is total misrepresentation.”

Sally left the curtains alone and sat them both down on the couch. “Last time I thought I got something actually correct off the T.V. was when I was five, and it was Captain Kangaroo—and guess what? That was bullshit, too. You’ve had a stalker? How long?”

“I don’t know. I guess thirty years. It’s one or two of Wayne’s relatives, I think, and whomever they seem to hire.”

“Jesus, I never knew.”

“We didn’t tell anyone. I don’t want to piss them off—”

“Did you tell Wayne you were raped?”

Kay’s look to Sally was fire. “Nothing to tell.”

“He threaten you not to tell?”

Kay began to boil again.

“I’m off it!” Sally said. “Goddamnit!”

“They could hurt Wayne. They still could.”

“’Out and Proud’ shit ain’t you, huh?”

“Sally!”

“He knew about you?”

“Who?”

“Wayne!”

“Of course! Always! Before I even told him. You can’t keep anything from him.”

“So he knew about the—”

“I don’t think so.”

“But surely it showed in you somehow.”

“Other stalker shit was camouflage.”

Sally acted like she intended to press, but Kay headed her off.

“If you weren’t a friend, I’d kick your ass out.”

“You’d try.”

“You are a friend?”

The look on Sally’s face was disappointment. “Not a very good one. Bob and I have known you two since before your marriage, but I admit I’ve kept my distance. We knew something was different, but we weren’t sure what. I guess I could have been more supportive, but I wasn’t.”

Kay got up. “I don’t tell people about myself. But many people—I never really know—seem to know anyway, from little clues—people have a sense for what is good mating material or not, I think, and it isn’t usually people like me.”

Kay stood up to leave. “But I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been warned never to embarrass the company. And now it’s on T.V.”

“Well, then, lets go. I’m sorry for not being much of a friend, before, but I’m gonna make up for it, now.”

Sally stood and picked up a bag. “This yours?”

“Yeah.”

Kay reset the alarm.

They left Kay’s car in the garage and climbed into Sally’s Cadillac.

“Oh! We can’t take your car.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve got to go to Utah.”

Sally nodded. “That’s just where I’m going.”

“All the way there?”

“For days,” Sally said. “I might move there, before I’m done. I told you, I’m going to try to make up for not being here before.”

Backing out of the driveway, Sally stopped for a second to stare at the front of the house.

“What are you looking at?” Kay asked.

“I was looking for a burning cross in your front yard, or chicken-shit bastards in the bushes with little dicks.”

CHAPTER

22

Sally drove the Cadillac north on I-15 though the eastern Los Angeles area and glanced periodically over at Kay sitting in the passenger seat.

“I got her, Bob. She’s as okay as you might expect,” Sally said into her car’s Bluetooth phone. “We’re going to Provo, Utah.” She hung up.

Kay held her hands over her stomach. The look on her face was uncomfortable.

“Left a message for him. You hungry?” Sally asked.

Kay made a face. “No. I can’t eat.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

Kay shrugged her shoulders.

“I could stop.”

Kay shook her head. “I can’t eat.”

“Bob and I never knew much about the Foundation,” Sally said. “They mentioned it on the news.”

Kay nodded.

“I didn’t even know Wayne was a Mormon.”

Kay said nothing.

“God, what you don’t know about people when you’re a bad friend. Did you convert to being a Mormon also?”

Kay looked to Sally like she was crazy. “I didn’t feel welcome there. I wouldn’t want to join. When I got with Wayne, he kind of switched to Methodist, and what the Mormons did after that, was up to them.”

“He was religious?”

“Not really, but it seemed important for him to go.”

“So why is the Foundation up there in Utah?”

Kay told Sally about it, Orin taking over…

“Where did it happen, Kay?”

Kay knew what Sally was talking about, and she was thankful Sally didn’t say it. “It didn’t happen.”

“Where didn’t it happen?”

“At a former house, long time ago. But I live with periodic intrusions.”

Kay rubbed her tummy more and looked sick.

Sally pulled the car over.

Kay leaned out her door and heaved. Almost nothing came out.

Sally waited patiently, patted Kay on the back. “Some people.”

“We’re stopping for something up at the next exit.”

It was a family-oriented, commercialized “truck-stop” kind of a freeway lounge exit, with a nice restaurant and buffet, gas station, etc.

Kay was weak, barely able to walk.

Sally helped Kay inside, holding her arm. She opened the doors. “You need to go to the bathroom?”

Kay shook her head.

The hostess looked at Kay in concern.

“Booth,” Sally said to the hostess. “Please give us some pumpkin pie as soon as you can?” Then to Kay. “You like pumpkin pie?”

Kay shook her head.

“She likes pumpkin pie. One slice to get us started, and then we’ll order normally. But get us the pie quickly, please.”

In the booth, the pie came with two waters, and Kay stared at the table without apparent recognition.

Sally looked at the menus. The server came. Sally ordered for both of them.

The server looked worried at Kay.

“Binge,” Sally said with a smile. “Big party last night. Gotta get some food in her.”

“Oh, I do get that. Been there, myself.”

The server left.

Kay didn’t even look at her pie.

“You need to eat a little something, Kay. I know you eat because I’ve seen you. So lets consider it— You know how this works?”

Kay didn’t move.

“You don’t eat? You get sicker. You eat? It feels horrible, but after only a few bites, your appetite comes back—and you need the food to survive.”

Sally waited.

No response.

“So survive, gal! No matter what happens, get through this. Be better than they think you are.”

Other than a weak glance at Sally, Kay didn’t respond.

“How’s this: You eat your goddamn pie or I’ll cram it down your throat and see how that embarrassment sits on top of all this!”

With more than a little consideration and effort, Kay picked up her fork and took a tiny piece of pie, no crust.

Sally’s threat seemed to continue, so Kay took another. In time, she had downed half the slice.

Sally nodded in domineering satisfaction.

Their meal came, and they began to eat.

Kay didn’t eat much, but she did have about half of it.

Sally finished all hers and the rest of Kay’s. “No sense lettin’ it go to waste.”

On the way back to the car, a man recognized Kay. “Hey, aren’t you that drag queen on T.V.? The one up in Utah?”

“Get in the car, Betty, while I deal with this prick.”

Kay did, quickly.

Sally turned on the man in her own intimidating way. “That’s my girlfriend, and she don’t like dick, so buzz off!”

In the desert, approaching Baker, half way to Vegas, Kay finally spoke. “Where is Bob?”

“In Annapolis, right now. He’s presenting in a class on minority issues. He was one of the Navy’s earlier black pilots. He’ll be there for a few days. So you back from the dead?”

Kay rubbed her tummy. “A little. My stomach feels like it has a hole in it, like it’s been cramping for a long time.”

“That won’t go away ‘till we get past all this. It’s because you’re going up there to see Orin,” Sally said. “It’s different, but I know what it means to sit with someone whose son was killed in a gang shooting, and you don’t get over that quickly, either.”

“No, I’m sure you don’t.”

“Okay! If you’re alive again, I gotta ask questions.” Sally drove the car at seventy three miles per hour, in a seventy, held on cruise control. “How in hell did you go at eighteen to Thailand for this?”

Odd. Kay felt her stomach relax a little. “I didn’t know how it’d work. I knew flying to Japan, but I couldn’t be sure. I just knew I had to go.”

“So you called up the Asian Teenage Travel Agency and asked for a ticket? The balls of it— Oh, sorry.”

Kay smiled at Sally.

“Chutzpah.”

“Asia was more advanced than the west, in some ways. Or not as bureaucratic.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Only of anything interfering.”

“How did you know so young?”

Always people ask.

Kay took a breath.

“If you were born with a chard of wood sticking out of your stomach, would you need time to decide if you wanted it removed?”

“’Wood,’ dearie, gives the wrong impression.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. And no. I’d know right away.”

“Same here.”

“Good God Almighty,” Sally said. “And I have three kids.”

“What would you do if one of them told you now and then from age four on that he needed to be a girl?”

“I don’t know,” Sally said. “I really don’t.”

“You’d think, ‘We better wait ‘till you grow up and see if it’s real,’ like as if considering marriage or a career choice.”

“Yes, I believe I would. And Bob would have a cow.”

“While the kid screams because that chard is sticking out. It didn’t take much of a plan to go, and it didn’t take courage. It took the ability to suffer pain while I waited until it might work, and the ability to act friendly or calm in execution while I was screaming inside.”

“And you came out normal. How in the world.”

Kay shook her head.

Sally noticed, and the car swerved slightly.

“Not normal.”

“What’s not normal about you now? Other than your past, oppression, your stalker, and your social issues?”

“I’m so tired of being picked on. It’s too much pressure.”

“Yeah,” Sally said. “That’s a minority trying to fit in— Wait: You think I’m going to disappear on you after I’ve had my jollies.”

Kay’s face whitened a little. She didn’t answer.

“I just stick my nose in, get your secrets, then disappear and tell Bob all about it, maybe folks at Miramar, Edwards, a dozen other air bases.”

Kay looked out the window of the car, appeared to watch the desert roll by, while, on the inside, fearing exactly what she said.

Sally drove.

“I don’t know what to say. So why did you get into my car if I might disappear?”

Kay wondered that, herself. “I think I need friends. I’ve never had any, really. And the need to have one sometimes outweighs my experience, my fear.”

Sally seemed to talk to herself. “I’ve known you for thirty-some years, and never any of this. How horrible it must be for you to not be able to share yourself with anyone.”

Kay’s eyes dropped to the car floor.

“Not trust anyone. To expect rejection at all corners. Black folks put up with a lot, but we have lots of people to share with.”

“You’re not ‘African-American’?”

“Honey, you know I’ve never been to Africa, and Charlize Theron was born there, so what are you talking about?”

“I think they mean the race originated there.”

“All humans originated there,” Sally said. “I’m a black American, born and raised here. No one’s gonna take that away from me.”

“So you don’t get along with that whole hyphenated-American social movement thing.”

“You think you’re a hyphenated American?” Sally asked Kay.

Kay shook her head.

“You don’t get along with other transgenders?” Sally asked.

Kay’s look was harsh. “I’m not transgender.”

CHAPTER

23

“In forty years, I’ve never brought anyone to a place like this. I’ve tried a few times, but it was clear. They didn’t want to come.”

Sally stood in the nice T-bar, in Las Vegas, with Kay and looked around. There were transpeople everywhere. It was noisy, dark in some places, lit in others. People were talking. The music was a little loud, but it was smoke-free.

“I hope they don’t recognize me, after my picture was splashed all over the news.”

Sally moved them into a darker area of the club. “Here,” she said, “Your hair is like in the photo, long and straight, central part.” She reached up and finger-combed it into a side part so some of it fell across her face. “Try that,” she said, indicating a mirror on the wall.

Kay looked at it. Part of her hair now fell over part of her face, and the overall effect was different.”

“Thank you,” she said. I didn’t even think of that.”

Sally smiled. “So I’m good for something.” She looked around. “Are these the kinds of places you come to?”

“Sometimes I come to places like this, or a gender conference, or other gathering, hoping to find someone who I can connect with long enough for a little understanding. A long-term friend would be better, but that won’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m private, ‘stealth.’ I need to be lost in ‘female,’ not be trans. They will out me on their end, or if I invite them over, they’ll confirm for everyone in my life that I’m trans, or even transgender. I don’t know how to be private if I’m close to one of them.”

“So you never have found anyone.”

Kay shook her head.

“Can’t you get along with people if they’re a little different?”

“I’ve always appreciated diversity. But— Maybe I can show you a little. First, lets stand here a few minutes.”

Sally obliged, stood with Kay, looked around.

“Notice the people. Look at them.”

Sally did.

“What do you see?”

Sally leaned over to Kay. “Lots of drag queens.”

“Actually, I don’t see any of those at the moment. Usually, that’s a ‘queen’ who is doing a drag show, and they’re not having one here at the moment. No. What I see are,” Kay looked around more, “It’s Saturday night in Vegas— Mostly I think the room is full of crossdressers, people we used to call transvestites.”

“Aren’t they all?” Sally asked.

“I don’t think so. But by crossdresser, I mean someone who, like, lives as a guy but goes out dressed in women’s clothes sometimes. Look for skin that’s a little tougher than women’s’, slightly more angular, less sub-cutaneous fat, not real boobs. That’s because they’re not on hormones, and that’s most of these.”

“Okay,” Sally was trying to see. “How can you tell?”

“Uh, I think, experience. The details are natural for me to see. Kind of like how a gay person can often spot another gay person who is not ‘obvious,’ where straight people may miss it.”

“Wait till Bob gets a load of this. He should have come.”

“See those two over there? Dancing, looking at themselves in the mirror?”

“Yes.”

“Crossdressers do that a lot, to see themselves. It’s a turn on. Keep your wedding ring on, sweetie. You could get laid in here in two minutes, if you wanted.”

“I see that other one over there, doing the same thing.”

“Yes.”

“And those at that table, and that other table …”

“Yes. You’re seeing. You see that one playing pool?”

“In the jeans?”

Kay nodded. “Look at her for a second.”

Sally did. “Has she had the surgery down here?”

“G.R.S.?” Kay shook her head. “No.”

“How can you tell?” Sally looked harder.

“Same way I can usually tell from a block away if someone is Japanese or Chinese. Familiarity. Look at her crotch.”

“No bulge in front.”

“No. But look at where her pants are riding. See how her crotch doesn’t quite conform?”

“I do!”

“That’s because she’s got her package ‘tucked.’ Back between her legs.”

“Oh, she does!”

“And she’s clearly feminized, so I think of her as ‘transgender.’ She’s changed gender, but not sex.”

“What if she’s going to have surgery soon?”

Kay looked like she considered it. “I bet not. She looks comfortable— I don’t think so. I’m betting not. And that model, changing gender but not sex, is the most popular, among people who live trans all the time. It’s much more common than transsexualism.

“Those, I’m not sure about,” Sally mentioned a table by the bar.

Kay looked at them more closely. “I think those are ‘transgenders.’ Look: The light’s a little dim there, but I think there is no beard on them, and the cut of that dress makes it clear there are boobs.”

“Real boobs?”

“Well, probably real and also maybe with a boob job.”

“Yeah. I know men can grow boobs if they take women’s hormones. Sometimes even if they don’t.”

Ladies were passing them, going in any direction.

“That one there,” Kay said, “Looks C.D., that one C.D., that one transgender, that one C.D.—”

“God!” Sally gawked at one. “That one looks so real.”

“I think she’s transgender.”

“Why don’t you think she’s transsexual?”

“It’s hard to know from here, but look at her hair and her butt. Her hair is combed back and over as if to really display male pattern baldness, and she has no butt, but she’s wearing a tight skirt. It’s like she means to appear trans, and if she was transsexual, I doubt she’d do that—unless she really doesn’t get herself. Most transsexuals don’t come to a place like this. Sometimes they do.”

“You’re here.”

“You know why: to try again to connect, and to show you how I’m different. I’m so-called ‘stealth,’ which means extremely private about my sexuality. My need is to actually be female, as futile as that is. Not trans.”

“You are a real female to me,” Sally said.

“I know you’re complimenting me, but you know that’s not biologically true. You have to be careful not to enable denial. Don’t you remember all I’ve shared? People know better, and in truth, you’re biologically female, not me. So my guess is that lady over there is transgender, or if she’s had her surgery down here, she identifies with the transgender paradigm, because she’s here, looking like that on purpose.”

“So you all don’t accept each other?”

Kay shook her head. “Not remotely. There is a paradigm they promote—everyone is what they want to be, regardless of reality, and if someone’s not on board with that, they’re seen as unaccepting, maybe rejecting, part of the problem. But I don’t agree with that, because I need not to be female in fantasy; I need to really be.

“See? Look at the fantasies. C.D.s don’t want to change gender,” Kay told Sally. “They change clothes. The fantasy for the evening is they’ve changed gender or sex.

“Transgenders do modify gender to a place on a continuum where they feel more comfortable—maybe breasts added or removed, hormones, softer skin, beard removed—but they don’t want to actually be the other sex because in general they keep their natal genitalia—yet they want to be codified as the other sex. They bitch about binary sex designations, yet they crave them on official documentation.”

“What about ‘post-op transgenders’?” Sally asked. “I’ve heard of them.”

“Well, that implies that people who really do want to be the other sex are part of a group that doesn’t want to be the other sex?

“And besides that,” Kay continued, “the term ‘post-op transgender’ could mean a hundred different transgender folks who had some kind of surgery.

“You guys can’t accept each other because of those small differences?”

“I know,” Kay said.

“And the groups are different. See? Look at them. Notice how people will hug each other, kisses, friendship pats? But then what?”

A transgender hugged two C.D.s a table, made small talk, then went to sit with people at a table of transgenders.

“They separate, going back to their own, separate groups.”

“Exactly. It’s not rejection; it’s just that they’re into different things. Also notice one other thing.”

“What’s that,” Sally asked.

“They’re ignoring us.”

“Maybe they think we’re together?”

“Could. But they do that when I’m in places like this by myself, too. I think it’s because they’re not reading me, but also because they sense that I’m not one of them. They don’t know why I’m in here, even if they think to consider it. But they don’t see me as doing anything like what they’re doing. I’ve been in places like this, repeatedly ignored, unless I connect—and then, if I don’t spout the transgender paradigm as they say it, they’ll get pissed.”

“Can you be friendly like they are?” Sally asked.

Kay nodded. “I can. But it won’t last and will probably lead to rejection.”

“Try again,” Sally said. “For me.”

Kay exhaled, tired. Kay fingered Sally to follow and approached the table of transgenders.

“Hi,” Kay said to them with a smile. “I’m Jean, and this is my friend Dina.”

They were friendly at the table. “Hi,” they said, all around. “I’m Shawna, this is Carrie, and this is May.”

Kay and Sally both smiled at them.

“We’re new here,” Kay said. “Can we sit with you a little bit?”

Looks were a little confused, but they agreed.

Kay and Sally sat with them.

“Dina, here, is a friend, and she’s trying to understand me, so she agreed to come here and get to know people.”

“Oh, great!”

Shawna asked, “Only this is not dyke night.”

“No,” Kay said. “We’re not gay.”

“Then why are you here?” Carrie asked.

“What’s to understand?” May asked.

“Well, Dina is married to a friend of my husband’s, so we’re friends, and I’m transsexual, so—”

“You?” Carrie asked.

Kay nodded.

The three looked at Kay more closely.

“You’re post-op transgender?”

“I prefer the term ‘transsexual,’” Kay said.

May put her hand on Kay’s. “Maybe you’ve been out of it, but we’re calling it ‘post-op transgender.’ Even the actress, recently—Mira Esteban, from Italy? She came out and said so on T.V. last month: post-op transgender.”

The other two looked to Kay for agreement.

“Yes, I saw her. But ‘post-op transgender’ could mean a hundred things. I prefer the term ‘transsexual.’”

“But Mira—” Carrie started to say. “You’re post-op transgender.”

“The term I use is ‘transsexual.’”

“So you think you’re better than us.” Shawna said as a comment.

“No. I’m being friendly, and I’m trying to connect,” Kay asserted.

“We’re calling everything ‘transgender,’” Carrie said, “for a long time now—since this whole century.”

“’Transsexual’ is so outdated,” Shawna agreed. “The sex can’t be changed. And I think you know that.”

“I do,” Kay said. “The difference is that I try—”

How can I explain?

“And we don’t?” Shawna said.

“Well,” Kay said, “not if you keep your—”

“It’s just a little extra tissue,” Carrie said.

“Everybody’s transgender, if you’re not into denial,” May said.

“It’s not denial; it’s what we’re trying to do, who we are. I don’t see why we can’t be friends,” Kay said, “and accept that we have different views on this.”

“She thinks she’s superior,” Carrie said. “I’m not going to put up with this.” She got up to leave, but May called her back.

“Her friend is here,” May said. “Lets try to explain.” May turned to Kay. “You know these arguments.”

Kay nodded. “But I don’t think they have to be—”

“And you know we all ban together for acceptance.”

“I’m not into a social movement, not even for myself. I’m private—”

“Then why— Oh, because you’re prettier than we are. You think you can ‘pass’ as female, and we can’t and you don’t want us around to give you away.”

“That is such a cut,” Shawna said.

“No, I don’t mean to hurt anyone. It’s true that I am very private—”

“You’re ashamed of us.”

“No. My own heart just needs to be female, my whole life—”

“So I grew into it!” Carrie said. “That’s the difference that matters to you?”

“The truth is,” Kay said, “I never gave transgenderism much thought until the social movement tried to roll me into your group.”

“There’s a good reason for us to do it,” Shawna said.

“We didn’t roll you into our group,” May said, who seemed to be their spokesperson.

“Yes, you did—the transgender paradigm, the social movement. Because ‘transgender’ is—is the umbrella term? For fifty years, ‘transgender’ meant changing gender, but not sex: feminizing, yet keeping male genitalia. Right?”

“That’s offensive,” Carrie said.

“But true. That means an umbrella term over various phenomena—”

“We’re all just transgender,” Carrie said.

“I was here when it happened,” Kay said. “When the social movement was born, they swore ‘transgender’ was just an umbrella term for various phenomena—not everyone changing their identity to that one concept—yet ‘transgender’ is also the only term you’ll accept for your group. So, yes, it literally says that all groups are part of your group.”

“Why would that bother you?” May asked.

“Because she’s prejudice against us,” Carrie said.

Kay leaned forward. “Because I DO want to be female.”

“So do I!” Carrie said.

Kay looked at her, savvy. “With a penis? That’s male genitalia.”

Carrie squirmed. “Not when it’s on me.”

“And by leveraging T.V. shows and celebrities to use your term ‘post-op transgender,’ you’re trying to quash the whole concept of transsexualism as it’s own thing, making it sound like a variation of transgenderism.”

Kay was a little tired of pressing this point. It had been going on for a decade. “Isn’t that like you larger group of folks oppressing us? We’re so very few by comparison!”

“The victim card,” Carrie said. “This bitch is such a victim! We’ve got to stand together!”

“Please lets share,” Kay asked, “because if we don’t, how can we grow together?”

“You don’t want to grow together,” May said. “I bet when you’ve had the chance for a transgender friend, you told them they couldn’t come over, or wouldn’t tell them where you live.”

True.

“Where do you live?” Shawna said.

“Los Angeles,” Kay said.

“Where in Los Angeles?” Shawna pressed.

Kay didn’t answer.

“See!”

“You can’t be friends with people you won’t let over,” Carrie said.

“Then privacy couldn’t exist!” Kay asserted.

“You mean rejection wouldn’t exist,” Shawna said.

Kay was doing her best. “You mean that ‘stealth transsexualism’ shouldn’t exist— Privacy is an essential part of it—and I should join your social movement and be public and support you. Doesn’t that disrespect my lifestyle? And why?”

“Because we need each other for acceptance!” Shawna said. “Strength in numbers!”

“But I’m transsexual! Doing different things! Not transgender. That’s not my social movement. Why should I give up my life to support your cause? You’re oppressing us!”

“You’re trans, same as us,” May said.

“I’m a transperson, yes. We’re all— All these people are transpeople. But we’re not all transgender. I’m a ‘transperson.’ Look: I’ll prove to you we’re different.”

“How?” May asked. “Shut up, Shawna. She’s not taking her pants off.”

“A simple description,” Kay said. “Transgenders need to move to a place on a continuum where they can feel more comfortable. Right?”

“Yes.” They did tend to agree with that.

“Okay. So if they do, they are—” Kay waited for them to fill in the blank, but they didn’t. “Then they’re happy. Right?”

May nodded.

“Right. But transsexuals need to actually be, biologically, that other sex. They can’t do that, because, like you said, the sex can’t be changed.” Kay paused briefly then spoke slowly, “So after denial, they’re—”

May’s eyes lit up. “Miserable?”

Kay acknowledged right away. “Exactly! Better, but still miserable with never having reached their original and continuing goal. Rather the opposite of transgenders.

“But you’re female, now.”

“I’m forever thankful for being legally female, but physically? I’m not female now. The best that can be done is a simulation.”

“But I’m female,” Carrie said, “because I’m female up here.” She pointed to her head.

Kay tried more. “Biologically, the sex can’t be changed. But I’m a transperson, a kind who needs to and tries to actually be the other physical sex: transsexual. ‘Transperson’ is an umbrella I can’t disagree with, even if I don’t like it, either. ‘Transgender,’ however, one of the phenomena within, means,” Kay indicated them, “women who want to keep male sexuality. A penis—”

“I’m transgender,” Shawna said, “and that’s right for me.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Carrie demanded.

“Nothing’s wrong with being transgender,” Kay said emphatically. “Live life! Enjoy! It’s just that I’m not.”

They looked confused.

“If you think I’m transgender, then you’re really not seeing what I’m doing,” Kay said.

“You’re the outlier, here,” May said.

“In here, that’s true,” Kay said.

“I’ve never heard any other transsexual describe it this way before,” May said.

“Then you haven’t met one who was willing to share. Or someone shouted her down, because that happens a lot. Oh,” Kay interrupted herself. “You mean you’ve talked with gals with G.R.S., and they didn’t talk like me? I think that’s because a transgender can have G.R.S. and still intend to be somewhere on a continuum, displaying that, also, in other ways. G.R.S. doesn’t make someone transsexual, in my book.”

“What in God’s name does?” Carrie asked.

Kay spoke as if they spoke another language. “Needing to actually, really, truly, totally, be the other real biologic physical sex.”

“You’re just eccentric, an extreme transgender,” May said. “You’ve been under cover too long. And you’re a perfectionist.”

I am so sick of this.

“No,” Kay said, “It’s just being actually female, or not being actually female. An extreme transgender would be someone who really wants to be a woman with a penis, who is very out there with it. Well, like Regina Isler. You’ve heard of her?”

They nodded.

“Big shot,” Carrie said.

“Professor, transgender advocate,” May said.

“I’m more like I think Nuala Hayes was. I think she was transsexual, who was open because she was a celebrity. I’m ‘stealth.’ Private.

“Nuala was transgender,” Shawna said.

Kay shook her head. “I don’t think so, and it’s hard to guess if she would be stealth later, if she quit being a celebrity.”

“Why?” Sally asked.

“Because she was murdered,” Kay said.

May shook her head in disbelief. “So you won’t call yourself post-op transgender, because we have dicks.”

“I don’t,” Shawna said.

“That’s what that is,” Carrie said, pointing to Shawna’s groin.

Shawna stuck her tongue out at Carrie.

May looked disgusted. “That so takes the mind to our genitals. How rude. We want our genitals to be private!”

“So you can imply to people you’ve transitioned there, too. And I never would argue with you, if you’d stop trying to corral me into your group. People can sense these things. They know you don’t really want to be female. And if you say I am part of you, then that says I don’t want to, either.”

“I never claimed I did,” Shawna said. “I like to be in the middle.”

May sat back. “The hormones do transition the penis. It gets a little smaller and softer.”

“But still a penis,” Kay said. “How can you advocate for your lifestyle, if you shade what it is to people?” Kay asked.

“How can you advocate for yours, if you hide?” May asked.

Kay thought. “People can sense, over time, that I am trans. They can sense that you are trans, too. My thing: not being biologically female hurts me, inside, a great deal. It’s a torment, really. And when people talk about it, it’s humiliating. And it’s worse, for me, if they think that I don’t even want to be female, that I’m just saying so.”

May looked at Carrie.

“But it improves your lot, doesn’t it,” Kay said, “if you combine us and people think maybe you do want to be more female than you are.”

Shawna and Carrie looked happy.

May looked angry. “You think we’re engaging in subterfuge?”

“The social movement does,” Kay said. “And many individuals do, too.”

May looked at Sally. “So what do you think about all this?”

Sally sat up.

“What?” May demanded.

“I hear both sides, and I have a few thoughts.”

“What?” May said.

Sally looked to Kay for permission, and forged ahead. “Okay. I’m thinking a few things. One: No one should try to pressure other people into claiming they’re something they believe they’re not.”

Sally looked at the others—

“I can see how this is gonna go,” Carrie said. “She’s her friend, blah, blah, blah.”

“Let her continue,” May said.

Sally continued. “Two: You’re all quite aware of involved things, yet you have distinctly different ways of living and very different ways of looking at things. That last alone is enough to say your groups are different.”

“Overlap!” Carrie said.

Sally shook her head. “Not a good reason for one group. Think art.

Shawna was starting to glass over, but Sally pressed, as Carrie and May were with her. Think impressionism vs. expressionism.”

“What the fuck is that?” Carrie asked.

“Well, Monet was an impressionist, and Chagall was an expressionist. Both beautiful. Both valuable. Both use paint and brush strokes. You paint them on an easel… But they’re both art; they aren’t both impressionist.”

Kay looked at Sally, impressed. “You like Monet? I didn’t know that.”

“Beautiful,” Sally said.

“I know!”

Sally looked at the ladies’ stone faces. “Too abstract? Okay—”

“I get it,” May said.

“Okay, but let me try an easier one: Medicine. You know doctors?”

They all nodded.

“Well, we have O.B./G.Y.N.s, cardiologists, internists, neurologists, oncologists, dermatologists… Why don’t we call all doctors ‘internists’?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” May said.

“Why? There’s a lot of overlap. They take most of the same courses, they all study the human body, they even use many of the same drugs, take the same or similar insurances—but it’s ‘ridiculous’ because they’re specialties.”

Kay got it. “They’re all doctors, not all internists. And we’re all transpeople, not all transgenders.”

“You’re changing transgender from a term for everyone into a term for just meaning changing gender, and not sex.” Carrie said.

Kay shook her head. “No. ‘Transgender’ already meant change gender not sex, for fifty years. Your group changed it, to use it for everything, and that misrepresents others, and you will never get us that way. Certainly not people like me.”

Shawna looked lost.

Carrie looked like she was wondering.

May looked like she’d rather have a cigarette—or a little pissed. “If I may?” She said with a sarcastic smile, holding out her hand for people to stop, as if it would work.

Oh shit, Kay thought.

“Stealth transsexuals are our biggest bane, because if you reject us, then people think we’re really off. You hurt us. And your life is so fake. Because,” May said, “you actually try to fake people into thinking you’re female, and—if you’re into realism, then you know damn good and well I’m right.”

Kay shot back. “I don’t fake people; I just don’t say. It’s private. You all demand the other sex designation on driver’s licenses, and you don’t even want to be the other sex.”

“Gender marker.”

“It’s not a ‘gender’ marker! The ‘M’ and ‘F’ mean ‘Male’ and ‘Female’—physical sex—not ‘Masculine’ and ‘Feminine’—gender. You’re misleading again.”

May pulled out her cell phone. “You try to con people into thinking you’re really female when you’re not, then you say we’re the cons who are lying about our genitals, and the only reason you get away with any of it—even half way—is because you like to operate in the shadows, but that stops here.”

May activated the camera in her cell phone and pointed it at Kay.

Kay bolted from the bar, Sally close behind.

CHAPTER

24

“Did any of that help?” Kay asked.

Sally drove them northeast in her Cadillac through bleak countryside.

Both of them had been largely silent since the club the previous night in Vegas.

“Oh, yeah. But it hurt you, didn’t it.”

Sally’s phone rang, and she took it on the car’s Bluetooth. “It’s Bob. Yes, Bob, good morning.”

“Am I on the car speaker phone?” Bob asked.

“Yes,” Sally said.

“Kay there?” Bob asked.

“Yes,” Kay said.

“Kay! How are you doing? We saw the news feed, so Sally rushed up from San Diego. How are you doing?”

“Like I’ve been crushed,” Kay said. Hearing Bob on the line got Kay to tearing.

“Oh, see that?” Sally said. “Now she’s going to cry again.”

“Go ahead,” Bob said. “You’ve had enough on your plate for long enough.”

“You’re up to speed?” Kay asked.

“Yup. Sally’s telepathic. She thinks it; I know it. Or she calls me.”

Kay was silent.

“Where are you two?”

“I-15 at about Mesquite, Nevada,” Sally said.

“I want to be there,” Bob said, “but I’m in classes this week in Annapolis. It’s why I came here.”

“I know,” Kay said. “It’s no problem.”

What a lie.

“I know better,” Bob said. “Let me guess: Wayne died, and you feel like you can’t even think any more. He was the rational half?”

Kay didn’t respond.

“And you don’t trust your judgment to decide things on your own.”

“I think that’s right, Bob. But further, her life’s been a secret war with society her whole life, and this other group, ‘transgenders,’ is really kicking her ass. They’ve got the public thinking she’s really someone she’s not. We know, because we’ve known her for thirty-some years. We’ve seen her interact with people the whole time, good and bad times, and—she’s different.”

Thank you!

“Well there is something, here, Kay,” Bob said, “that may offer some guidance.”

“What’s that?” Kay asked.

“You feel amputated because you were one with him but he died.”

Yes!

“On the flip side of that,” Bob said, “He’s in your head. Always will be. His thought pattern is part of yours—just not as your own. It’s in there as him. Think what he would do, or think what you would do, and sense whether or not he would like that. That way, you know, if you want his input.”

“I do that, but it’s scary,” Kay said.

“You don’t trust yourself, hon,” Sally said.

Kay shook her head no, in agreement.

“But you need to,” Sally said.

“You think Wayne always made the right choices?” Bob asked. “You think I do? Yes, men do.”

“Men don’t!” Sally said.

Bob laughed.

“Better than I,” Kay said.

“Sometimes,” Bob said. “We just all do the best we can and then go with it the best we can, doing the best we can next time, too.”

Kay felt defeated.

“I don’t know what you’ll do with all this, but whatever it is, I want you to know we’re here with you.”

That’s what people say—

“And it’s not bullshit. You’ve got my wife. If I’m wrong, you can keep her— No, I shouldn’t say that!”

“Bob!” Sally laughed at him on the phone. “I’m not coming back on purpose!”

Kay was silent.

“You alright, Kay?” Bob asked.

“You two are doing each other. I know.”

“Yeah.” Kay could hear Bob’s smile. “But are you doing okay?”

I don’t know.

Lie. To shut him up.

“Yes.”

“She’s lying her ass off to you, Bob.”

“If this weren’t do disastrous, I’d laugh at your frankness, Sally. Kay, Let Sally help. We’re trying to be friends.”

Bob got off the phone, and Sally drove up the bleak freeway.

“It’s like the ‘60s all over again, for you, honey,” Sally said, “As if you are black, facing oppression. And the people oppressing you are—most of society and other minorities as well. But we had millions of people to help, and you’re by yourself. And it was harder than hell for us.”

“But you know how it is,” Kay said.

“Yup. I sure do.”

“I once went in to buy a car,” Kay said. “I had cash—electronic. I’d transfer it in, on the spot, to buy it. But the salesman had an issue with me and walked away. When I went inside and asked for the sales manager—I got him—but he sat with me and explained they couldn’t make a deal with me.”

“Shit,” Sally said.

“I explained I have cash, and I wasn’t haggling. Just sell me a car, and the sales manager explained again, rather angry, that we couldn’t make a deal.”

“So what did you do?”

“I left. What else?”

“I’d have called the owner on the horn and given him what for, that’s what.”

“Yeah, and then also you’d have complained to your family. And maybe you’d have notified an advocacy group.”

“Right.”

“But me? I don’t tell Wayne those kinds—didn’t tell Wayne those kinds of things.”

Sally looked at Kay and shook her head.

“And I’m so rare. When I’ve tried to tell people about things like that, they have a habit of believing that I must have been the one causing the problem—because half the time, they don’t see I’m transsexual, so there’s no reason for the oppression other than whatever lie the man says, and all the time a complaint like mine is so unusual they think it’s me, somehow.

Sally drove up the interstate. “We have trouble, too—a hundred kinds of oppression every day, from people who would never admit it. And we hear on T.V. that society has evolved, that prejudice is dead.”

“But you get underserved sometimes—”

“A lot.”

“You get people directing you to another, far off place of the department store for something, and it was a bogus referral?”

Sally nodded.

“It seems like some people are eager to displease you? Card you in a store when they don’t card others.”

“Of course.”

Kay nodded.

“Killings.” Sally said.

Kay nodded also. “Yes. We get that, too.”

“And we have to pretend we’re happy in society,” Sally said, “with someone new, after we’ve just faced something from someone else.”

“I needed my mother,” Kay said. “I reached out to her I don’t know how many times—none at all for quite a few years, but then after Wayne and I got married, I tried several times to reach out to her, but it didn’t work very well.”

“But your brother—” Sally asked.

Kay shook her head. “That never worked out.”

Sally said nothing.

“You know what that means?”

Sally shook her head.

“It means that, most likely, all those years when Mom was struggling to accept me, he was probably downing me, making it difficult for her.”

“Was Wayne still alive? When was that.”

“Wayne had already passed.”

“So, we see a Kay at, like, the O. Club at Miramar, who is supposed to be well adjusted, and what’s happening with you is his death—you would have blamed anything that anyone might worry about on that, no doubt?”

“That would be enough, for sure.”

Sally continued. “His death, fifty-five years of abuse, a lawyer telling you to pretend you’re transgender so you can break your premarital agreement, a stalker or two, home intrusions, games played with city services, ostracism in society, a burglary, your being cut away from your mom because you’re transsexual, your—basically—inability to even go to her funeral, no friends to speak of, the possible impending loss of your home— Am I missing anything?”

“That’s the highlights.”

“I would have been on C.N.N. with this shit so fast!” Sally said. “We’d have had 60 Minutes breathing down someone’s neck! But you didn’t feel you could tell anyone.”

Kay shook her head. “That’s probably why I’m dumping all over you.”

CHAPTER

25

It was cold in Provo. Kay zipped her jacket against the cold. The weather appeared to be post-cold front: chilly, gusty, clear air, though sometimes under a gray alto cumulus or two.

Kay’s hair blew into her face. She pulled it away with her fingers.

Sally seemed alright as she was.

“This is Wayne’s Foundation?” Sally asked.

Kay nodded.

Orin had picked an ordinary complex, a series of bland buildings in a business center, no different from others in the area. Ornamental trees were planted throughout, deciduous, bare that time of year.

“Which buildings?” Sally asked.

“I think this one, those two over there. I don’t know all, up here.”

“Has it changed?”

“I was only up here once, since they moved here from Los Angeles.”

Kay hesitated.

“You’re going in here to face Orin?”

She remembers what I blabbed.

“I never have. I haven’t even seen Orin’s face in some thirty years. But everything’s in here: the lady who put me on Facebook, Orin, Daryl. Everything. It’s the center of the scandal. You don’t seem to mind the cold.”

Sally shook her head. “No. It’s cold, but not enough to worry about. Got too much insulation.”

“You didn’t bring a coat? Oh,” Kay said. “You came to my house with luggage, but you didn’t know I’d need to go to Utah.”

Sally shook her head no. “I should have. I saw the T.V., and Provo is all over it. Seems like you broke their little mold.”

“You live in a life of three layers: one where you put on a pretty face with other people, one where people think whatever they think and gossip about it behind your back, and one where you don’t know what they’re thinking and have to guess.”

“Kind of like me.”

Kay nodded. “Those are biggies, yes. You want to go to that store over there and see if they have a sweater or jacket?”

They started to wander through the grounds toward the store.

“They prejudiced in here, against you?”

“Or you?” Kay asked. “You’re not going to cause a fight?”

Sally was a little angry. “Never! Just let ‘em try.”

They approached the store.

“I saw how they treated Wayne and me in the Ward, back home.”

Sally glanced at Kay in question.

“The church,” Kay said.

“You mean the one with God in it,” Sally said.

Sally held the door open for Kay, and they walked into the bookstore together.

The cashier noticed them and glanced at a coworker.

Kay was not unknown in the area, by reputation. A hush of recognition went through the store.

Oh, no.

Kay’s head sagged in sadness. She whispered to Sally, “Maybe we should leave.”

“I saw that, sweetie. We’re shopping!”

Sally’s smile was forced, almost too broad. She perused the jackets and found one that would almost do. She flagged down a saleslady and asked her. “How does this look to you?”

“Like you’re ready for a football game,” Kay said, trying to be positive.

“Very nice,” the sales lady said stiffly.

“I’m not from here,” Sally said. “I’m from Florida and California, more recently, so what do I know about people who are cold. Which one should I buy? What are they wearing here?”

The saleslady’s smile was as forced as Sally’s. Her manner was saccharine, complete with sideways glances at Kay. “Well,” she said. “I think it largely depends on the temperature. That one you’re wearing?”

Sally began to take it off.

“It’s for warmer days like maybe earlier in the fall. But as we go into winter, you might want a warmer one.” She showed Sally.

Sally tried on the warmer one.

“What do you think, Kay?”

“I think this week, the temperature favors the one you already had on.”

The saleslady looked more closely at Kay. “You’re Kay Knapp, aren’t you?”

Kay’s face went whiter than it already was. She turned to leave, but Sally grabbed her hand and held it.

“Yes, she is,” Sally said.

The saleslady’s look conveyed deniable displeasure.

The ‘transgender’ on T.V.?

Kay tried to get free of Sally’s hand, but Sally was larger and stronger.

“Kay is glad to meet you, too.” Sally said. “What do you think about this T.V. mess?”

“No opinion,” the saleslady said.

“Really?” Sally pressed.

The saleslady shook her head but the angle of her head and the look of her eyes said her real thoughts were different.

Sally took the jacket off and gave it to the saleslady to deal with. “Thank you for your time.”

Sally led Kay out of the bookstore, past gazing students and staring clerks. “It’s warmer, out here.”

Kay’s heart was racing as she walked away from them.

“Why did you hold my hand? I wanted to leave!”

“You need to face people like that,” Sally said.

Kay walked faster, but Sally kept up.

“What are you going to do for the next forty years?” Sally asked. “Hole up in your tomb and pray people forget about you?”

Kay turned on Sally. “I don’t know, but facing someone down who demeans me like that? You saw that!”

“Oh, yes. Black people been puttin’ up with that kind of shit here for five hundred years—the ‘I-don’t-like-you-but-I’m-gonna-pretend-it’s-not-so’ look. That wasn’t a wow-I-seen-you-on-T.V. look.”

Kay turned toward a group of statues and felt her stomach. “I think I’m going to need a bathroom.”

CHAPTER

26

They found a ladies room in a fast food restaurant, then another in a department store, then another in a sit-down restaurant.

Sally was trying to get some solid food into Kay, so she ordered Kay a steak and baked potato, but Kay was trying to avoid food altogether.

“You let your blood sugar drop,” Sally said, “And you’ll make stupid decisions.”

“I already make stupid decisions.”

Sally ate her own steak heartily and made yummy sounds to Kay. “This is good. You gotta eat!”

Kay picked at her food.

“What was it you said about Wayne?” Sally asked. “That he was a good man?”

Kay nodded.

“And he chose you. Of all these people, he chose you. And you were so great, he took a lot of shit for it, too, I’m sure. From people like this.”

Kay nodded.

I really am hungry, but I can’t eat.

“So you punish yourself for being something he thought was great?” Sally asked.

Kay shook her head. “I’m not trying to punish myself. I just know I’m less than I need to be, less than the wife he deserved. I know a lot of people hate me for what I am, that’s for sure. I am so inadequate! I know it would have been easier for him if I were born female.”

“Aren’t you listening at all? Did you hear me?”

“No—yes! I heard you, but he isn’t me, and I didn’t tell him a lot of shit that went on.”

“You don’t think he took shit he didn’t tell you?”

“I know. Like I said, a minute ago.” Kay picked at a salad. “He didn’t complain to me, ever. And I don’t know all he put up with, but I know some of it.

“The Ward— Wayne and I were so passionate! Sally! I couldn’t tell you if I tried. We’d get together, and it flew. Loving him—was nothing like I could have expected. I’d had boyfriends before—”

“Any girlfriends?” Sally asked.

“What!? Sally! Focus!”

“Hey, we’re talking about everything else.”

“I had one, once. Briefly. I met her when I was a flight attendant. I met her on layover in Japan a couple times, and she came on to me, and I let myself try, but honestly, it was mechanical for me. There was no electricity.

“And I had boyfriends, then, too, sometimes, but to tell you the truth, I’d rather have a sailboat. Until I met Wayne.”

Kay smiled at Sally. “It was funny, the way it worked. I actually pretty much told him to go to hell a few times, and he didn’t listen, as if he knew we were right for each other. And over time, I came to agree.”

Sally ate more of her meal.

Kay began to pick more at hers.

“And then when I finally did want him to touch me, he didn’t! Slow as the seven year itch, that man was. I’m there, walking with him at the Marina or going to the movies, some technical lecture somewhere or even at church—we’d migrated to a Methodist church, because the Mormons are so—uh—but he still wanted me to wear a dress to church—and I’d want him the whole time. We’d be sitting in the car at the beach or maybe Sally’s Alley at March Air Force Base, and I’d nearly beg him to touch me, and he just let me stew—”

“Well, you were a stew—”

Kay threw a piece of lettuce at Sally and sat back in her booth. “Barely nothing. Until that first time at Miramar.”

“Oh, that’s where you did it first time?”

Kay nodded. “In the B.E.Q.”

“With Bob and me, our first time was in his pickup just outside of Pensacola at the beach.” Sally laughed. “But hey, it was hot and we were hot, and—”

“Did it cool you off?”

“Hell no, honey! You kidding? We had to take a shower so bad afterward, but all we had was the ocean, so we jumped in there.”

“With Wayne, it all blew at Miramar. Like maybe he was ready to explode if he didn’t. That’s where we got engaged, also. This ring right here.” She showed him her left hand.

Sally nodded. “I remember seeing it. I could have paid for my car with that.”

“I know! And I was so in love, I couldn’t say no. I had to have him.

“And we had many good years, all sprinkled in-between other hellish years. It’s been hard, but I wouldn’t trade him away for anything. He became—everything!”

Sally nodded.

“You really love him, don’t you,” Sally asked.

Kay nodded. “Still. Always.”

“You respect him.”

Kay nodded.

“You admire his brains and trust his judgment?”

Kay nodded. “If he were here, he’d know what I should do.”

“What would he do?” Sally asked.

Sally, I know already!

“He would ignore this whole situation and go about a pleasant life.”

“Well, we can! We can get in the car and head back. Fuck all of these jerks!” Sally held up both her middle fingers to show Kay. And then do like your friend, Sally, says: Sue the little outing transgender bitch for invasion of privacy—blasting your embarrassing business all over the internet.”

Kay shook her head.

“Bob told you to listen to Wayne.”

“Yes, but what Wayne would do for himself—”

“Is maybe what you could do for yourself.”

“No. What he would do for himself is not what I would do for him. I love him more than my life.

CHAPTER

27

“Wayne!”

Kay ran into the kitchen to find him lying on the floor clutching his chest. “Wayne?” she screamed at him trying to get his attention.

Wayne rolled onto his back and squirmed. His face was scrunched. He was obviously in pain.

Assorted pots and pans were scattered on the floor with him. Kay threw them away from him and put her hands on his chest then his neck to feel. “Talk to me!” she said in her best urgent-but-calm voice. Gallons of adrenaline were flooding her system, but old flight attendant training helped her with a script. “Did you fall? Slip? Are you alright? What do you feel?”

Wayne said nothing. He held his chest and made a face with a groan.

“Maybe a heart attack,” she said.

Kay fished her phone out of her left front pocket and dialed 911.

The paramedics were there very quickly.

Kay ran to open the front door and guide them into the kitchen.

She held his hand in the ambulance. “Wayne. Hold on. You’re okay. We’re in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. You’re okay. I’m here. You’ll be okay.”

“What—?” Wayne tried to speak.

“Quiet him,” the paramedic said to Kay.

“Shhhh!,” Kay said to Wayne. Tears ran down her face. “You’re going to be alright, you hear me! We’re almost there. You’ll be okay …”

In the E.R., Kay signed forms and waited while they tended to him. Her hands were shaking. Her signature was not legible. Her face was wet, and her attention kept turning to the double doors through which they’d rolled him.

Kay sat with him in I.C.U. He was still intubated, hooked up to a dozen wires, with I.V.s inserted into his left arm. She held his right hand and spoke to his sleeping form. “Wayne, this is Kay.”

Tears rolled off her cheeks onto his sheets. “Please hear me. I’m sitting right here beside you. You had a heart attack and a clot to the brain. You’ve had a bad time, but the worst is over. You hear me? You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re in the hospital, and I’m here with you. You’re alive, and you’ll get better. We’ve got the best care in the world. Bob asked about you today, and I told him you had one of Sigourney Weaver’s aliens burst out of your chest, and he said that was an oral sex joke! I don’t get it! What was he talking about?”

Kay squeezed his hand and felt the hair on his wrists. “You feel that, Wayne? This is me. This is Kay. You’ll be alright. I’m here. I’m hiring an attorney to have Bob committed. It turns out he thinks he’s Batman. Sally won’t help because she says she needs guano for the garden. I think they’re both bat shit— So I could use some help, here …”

Kay pushed Wayne in a wheelchair toward the front door of the house. There was a step, so the nurse took the wheelchair, half carrying it up the steps into the house.

“You’ll need to get a ramp here somewhere,” Nurse Juan said.

“We will. I’ll get that installed right away.”

“Well, at least before you try to wheel him out of here. I don’t think you can handle this thing the way I do.”

“I will …”

Their house became a medical ward with medical supplies, sanitizers, equipment, and visiting nurses. Wayne had lost the use of most of the left side of his body, and he was too weak to do much for himself.

Kay had a ramp installed inside the garage, angled against the wall to the base of the step into the house. She had an elevator installed that took them straight up into the closet of the master bedroom. And she had a shipwright from the marina build a six-to-one block and tackle by the bed so she could get him in and out of there as needed by attaching it to a harness around his chest. Wayne’s weight had dropped to about a hundred and thirty, so Kay guessed she was only pulling about twenty-two pounds to lift him into and out of bed.

“It’s a training aid,” Kay said to him. “I could get you in and out of there by myself, if I had to, but I can also use it to just help, while you learn to do it yourself, hold you up if you fall.”

Wayne looked up.

Drywall had been cut away from an area around a joist, over the bed, and the top block had been attached with a D-shackle to a U-bolt through an overhead joist.

“Crude, but very effective,” Kay said. It’ll hold a dozen of you.”

Wayne approved. “Very ingenious,” he said through the side of his mouth.

She kissed him soundly for speaking to her.

“This is nothing,” she said. “I’m going to get him to install a crane on the boat, too. We’ll be able to go boating in the harbor, if we get a nurse to go along with us. I think Juan may do it. He likes you.”

Wayne sat in his wheelchair in the cockpit deck of the boat. Juan sat beside him, and Kay drove the boat at five knots out toward the breakwater. It was a beautiful day.

“This we gotta do,” Kay said. “You ready to throttle it, Wayne?”

“Yup!” Wayne said, big smile on his face.

“Ready Juan?”

“Sure.”

Staying behind the breakwater, where the sea was as smooth as glass, Kay slowly throttled the boat’s two huge engines. The boat surged forward, the twin V-8s roared. Kay hoped the energy would empower Wayne, he loved that so.

She looked back at him, and saw his smile broaden.

Kay slowly strolled through a mall with Wayne in the wheelchair. She had a gait belt strapped loosely around his chest and the back of the wheelchair to hold him up, should he sag.

In church, dress and all, Kay parked his wheelchair beside the pews on the left side, three rows back from the front. It was their new place, since the wheelchair, and it worked because the aisle was wider there.

“Good morning,” people said to each other, hugging as instructed by the preacher.

Kay held them off with a wave of her hand, shaking in distant simulation, and hugging with her smile. She didn’t want any germs on him.

Kay rolled him up the path in Disneyland to Sleeping Beauty’s grotto. Wayne looked at her with tears in his eyes.

“I love you, Wayne,” she said to him.

“I love you, too.” He said back.

She kissed him on his lips and again on his cheeks. “See what I have here?” She pulled out a penny to show him.

He teared some more and nodded.

“This right here is our wish. I know it’s from both of us: For God to be in our soul,” she said to him. “For love to be in our heart. That we be okay, together, for ever and ever.”

She watched him begin to cry.

She put the penny in his right hand. He held it between his thumb and forefinger.

She began to cry, as well.

“You want to throw it in?”

He nodded. Reaching up, he touched it to her lips.

She kissed it.

And he threw it in.

The two of them sat together in her Jag at the beach, looking at Catalina Island in the distance.

“Kay,” Wayne said out the side of his mouth.

“Yes?”

“If I die, will you be alright?”

Kay immediately teared.

“I don’t want you to die, Wayne.”

“I know. But a meteor might strike. So if I do, I need you to be alright.”

“I’ll be alright,” Kay said, holding his hand.

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah, bullshit.”

“It’s you I’m worried about,” Wayne said. “Are you tough enough to be on your own?”

“Probably not,” she said. They were always honest with each other. “But whatever happens, happens. I’ll deal with it. But you’re my focus, now. Not me.”

Wayne nodded. “Stop the shit, Kay.”

“What?”

“I’m too tired. Don’t make me repeat.”

“The truth is, Wayne, I’m scared down to my bones. I’m terrified. I— You’re the only thing in life that means anything to me. You’re everything. Without you, I’d—”

Wayne was quiet with her.

“I love you more than my life.”

She leaned over to kiss him and stroke his hair.

He reached up with his right hand to hold her arm.

“Sexy bitch.” He said.

She laughed in his face.

“But what about you?” His voice trailed.

Kay held his hand in the car that evening, watching the sun set west of Catalina Island, not realizing it would be their last.

He died later that night.

Kay felt him stir in bed and checked. She knew he was gone. In a rush of tears, she got the ambulance there in record time, but there was nothing they could do.

CHAPTER

28

Sally sat across from Kay in a booth over breakfast. She ate without the slightest reservation: half the kitchen.

Kay still couldn’t eat. She played with her phone.

“If H. G. Wells calls, I want to talk with him,” Sally said. “How many you got there?”

“If I won the Lottery, I’d probably only have twenty,” Kay said. “Because after that I’d have gotten a new phone.”

“You still can.”

Kay shook her head. “I’m accustomed to ignoring calls. Someone I know is already identified in here, and their name would show up.”

Sally finished her meal and stared at Kay.

“I can’t move,” Kay said. “I know the choices I need to make, but I can’t. It’s against my whole life and Wayne’s.”

Sally moved what was left of a muffin aside, but continued to stare at Kay.

“What do you want?” Kay asked.

“It’s not my thing, Kay. It’s yours. I’m just here to help.”

Kay had been trying to figure it out. Her mind had gone back and forth on it, over and over.

I could get in the car and go home.

But to what?

My life is already locked down. I could just wait it out. My neighbors already don’t like me. They gossip, but I don’t even now what the gossip is.

What difference does it make what they think?

I’d die.

What would Christine do? She’d handle it outright.

What would Canary do? I don’t know. I would love to have met her.

I could sell everything, change my name, and move away. No one would have to know me.

And what would that say about Wayne? It’d leave him and his legacy painted by everyone from people with a transgender mindset to tranny haters.

I could stand with them—or against them—

But for what? Against what?

Kay could feel herself making a decision.

Crisis walking.

It was her term for letting the legs go where they needed to go, while the soul tuned out.

Her face white, her heart pounding, Kay got up out of the booth and headed out the door.

Sally followed, dutifully. “Where we going?” she asked.

Kay pointed toward one of the Foundation buildings.

Walking across the grounds, Sally asked again. “You know they’re going to be in there. Maybe Orin, himself.”

Kay pointed toward an ornate building a hundred yards away.

“Okay,” Sally said.

Kay led Sally into the building and took the elevator to the second floor, turning into Randolph Smooder’s office—the President of the Foundation, high enough to know things, but not Orin, himself. She was still afraid to face him.

The assistant behind the front desk recognized Kay.

“Is Randolph in?” Kay asked.

“I believe he is. One second, please.” She dialed a number and spoke quietly.

Kay and Sally remained standing.

“Please go on in,” the assistant said.

Kay and Sally walked in to the Walnut lined office to talk with him.

Kay took a seat in the middle of the room, the picture of her collected self.

Sally took a seat next to hers and watched.

“Randolph,” Kay said.

“Kay,” Randolph said.

“So I’m here. What’s going on?” Kay asked, expecting to find out.

“And who is this with you?” Randolph asked.

“A friend,” Kay said, not introducing Sally.

Sally looked to Kay with a question, but Kay didn’t help her just then.

“I like to know who I’m talking with,” Randolph said.

“You’re talking with me,” Kay said. “It needn’t be more difficult than that.”

He looked at them both. “Then she can wait outside.”

“As you wish,” Kay said, fingering Sally to follow her. She got up to leave the office, and Sally appeared to follow suit.

“You can’t expect me to discuss legal matters in front of strangers,” Randolph said.

Kay turned back to him. “What legal matters?”

“You! And this Foundation!”

“You don’t like the money?”

“You know what I mean,” Randolph said.

“No, I don’t.”

“We were drafting a letter to you.” Randolph turned to his intercom. “Shiri, please bring in her letter.”

“It’s not done, sir,” Shiri said.

“Please bring it anyway. What you have.”

The door opened, and Shiri brought in a one-page letter, handing it to Randolph, who scanned it then handed it to Kay.

Kay, then Sally, sat back down, and Kay read the letter. She handed it to Sally when she was done.

“Is she your attorney?” Randolph asked Kay.

“So,” Kay said, “You want me to distance from both my husband and the Foundation, lay low, and you want to bill yourselves to the public as ‘transgender-friendly,’ while at the same time implying—”

“Hoping people will infer,” Randolph said. “Not that we’d imply outright. That would be unkind.”

“Implying that you don’t actually approve of a transgender lifestyle.”

“We can’t help what someone infers,” Randolph said.

Kay nodded. “I see.”

The door opened, and Daryl entered—followed by Audia.

Daryl tried to get between the two women. “We’ve got things to work out.”

Audia refused to take a seat and stood, haughty, gazing down at Kay.

Daryl sat. “Kay, it’s good to see you. I’ve had trouble reaching you.”

“No doubt because I turned my ringer off.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got everyone from her gang to 60 Minutes calling me, is why. I’m wondering what kind of place you people are running here? Is this a throwback to the 1960s? You all have no idea what’s really going on, but you’re certain you don’t like it. You’ve pegged me as something I’m not—”

“The devil speaks through her forked tongue,” Audia said. “She is, and it’s disgusting.”

Kay’s mouth fell open, but she persisted. “—who you think is going to hell and taking you with me, and you’re ready to— How in the hell can you do this to Wayne? He was born and raised here. He gave you millions! If he were here, would you take this approach?”

“Wayne is gone, you don’t run his Foundation,” Audia said.

“Audia!” Daryl said with a smile. “Keep it down to a roar?”

“But if you’re treating me this way because of that, and if you’d treat me differently if he were here, then you’re hypocrites, aren’t you.” She said it as a statement.

“Ladies!” Daryl said.

“The name-calling began with Audia, here, thirty years ago, and with your ethically-challenged intern who caused this current crisis.”

“The way we see it,” Randolph said. “You deceived us, and as far as we know, you deceived Wayne, also.”

“Nonsense,” Kay said.

“Prove you didn’t,” Randolph said.

Actually, I can, but I’m not ready to bring it out.

Kay’s voice was vitriolic. “You’re saying you don’t think he could love someone like me? Like an interracial marriage? Married thirty years, loving for thirty-two. I’m surprised you would take money from someone like him therefore? Hell, Randolph, we’re the reason you got this job in the first place, all the money we rolled in. Do you have a dictionary anywhere?”

“Why?” Randolph asked.

“I want to look up the term ‘prejudice’ and give it to you to read.”

Sally smiled.

“So you’re admitting you’re transgender,” Randolph said triumphantly.

“Keep up, Randolph! No, I’m not.” Kay turned to Daryl. “Don’t they have any intelligence standards here? Not all Native Americans are Navajo.”

Sally leaned into Kay. “I don’t like hyphenations.”

“I didn’t hyphenate it, but what am I gonna do?” Kay let it trail.

Randolph’s face was getting a little red. “Don’t come in here and criticize me!”

“I don’t want to come in here and be criticized, either!” Kay was a little angry. “You embraced both of us, Wayne and me, when we started this Foundation. You were hoping to get money, and you got lots of it. All this time when he’s around, you’re lovey-dovey with me, but now, look what you’re doing?”

“Kay,” Daryl said.

“Have you seen the letter he’s drafting to me?” Kay asked Daryl.

Sally handed it to him.

Daryl didn’t read it. “I know what’s in it. For what it’s worth, I voted against it, but I don’t really have a vote, so it didn’t matter. So I ‘rooted’ against it—”

“Remember whose side you’re on,” Randolph said to him.

Daryl sat back in his seat.

“Kay,” Randolph said, “we want to hold a press conference. We’ve been hounded about this for days. The press even found my home number, and we’ve got to answer. I’m thinking of the good of the Foundation, and indirectly, Wayne, also. I’m asking you to stand back and let me do it. We can’t expect your cooperation outright—”

“Amazing,” Sally said, shaking her head.

“You want me to cooperate by disappearing,” Kay said.

“We want you to move on and let us handle it. It’s Foundation business. It’s none of your business, any more.”

“It’s my life you’re dissing!” Kay said. “It’s Wayne!”

“And if you don’t, we’re prepared to go as far as it takes.”

CHAPTER

29

Kay walked out of Randolph’s office, with Sally and Daryl close on her heels.

“Kay! Wait!” Daryl pleaded with her. “Lets work something out!”

Kay ignored everyone. Her mind was flooded with issues:

The look on Orin’s face while the man held Kay against the wall and smashed her head against a picture;

A former, crooked lawyer telling her to lie so she could sue;

Orin’s haughty condescension;

Her “assault,” as she called it;

A transgender red-faced in front of her;

Her family’s look;

Her brother hitting her in the back room;

Her home upturned by a burglar;

Her shame at the Ward …

Kay left Daryl behind in her dust.

On the grounds, Kay turned on Sally.

“Give me your phone!” Kay demanded of Sally. She tried to reach into Sally’s pocket to get it herself.

“What are you doing?” Sally stopped her.

“I can do it, myself.” Kay pulled out her own phone and started dialing.

“Who are you calling?” Sally asked.

“My lawyer. It’s the money they like? I’ll sue the hell out of all of them. We’ll make it cost-effective for them!”

Sally grabbed Kay’s phone from her.

“Why waste your money? Wait for it! They haven’t done anything in public yet!”

“I don’t want them to!” Kay struggled “I’ll have her threaten them within an inch of their life if they hurt me over the air. They’re going to dis me on T.V., Sal! You hear that? I don’t even know when! And it’ll be all over every God’s where instantaneously. I’ll have Tom Brokaw or somebody talking my shit! I won’t be able to hide! I won’t be able to go to the mall without somebody goggling all over ‘Oh, there’s the transgender from the T.V.’!”

“You’re putting fingers in a dam that’s already broken,” Sally said. “You can’t hush this up, at this point.”

People around them were taking notice.

Sally grabbed the struggling Kay and drew her close, whispering in her ear. “Lets not discuss this here. You’ll wind up on Youtube again!”

Kay stopped babbling long enough to look around.

Sally pleaded with her. “Your fear is doing what you don’t want to happen! Think!”

“What the hell has happened to the transgender intern?” Kay encroached on Daryl’s private space in his office. “She ruins my life! This ‘Rosetta Cowder’? Who is named that? What’s happening to her!”

Kay leaned on Daryl’s desk.

Daryl sat in his chair and backed away from his desk. “I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing, I think.”

“Nothing! How could this place care so little?”

“Because you’re a freak—”

“Goddamnit!” Kay screamed.

“Jesus,” Sally said beside her. “It’s the goddamned sixties in Alabama here.”

“Not me!” Daryl yelled back at her. “Them! That’s what they think—well, not really, I think—”

“Jesus, Daryl! Get it straight!” Kay was livid, in a panic.

“Oh, God forbid!” Sally was steaming as well.

“I think they— Well, not exactly, they— Sort of, yeah—”

“I’m sort of a fucking—” Kay turned to storm out of Daryl’s office, but Daryl stopped her.

“Yeah— No! I mean, they’re going with that. I think it’s the money, but—”

“But underneath it all, they really do think that,” Kay asked. “It’s been there the whole time, hasn’t it, Daryl?”

Daryl looked uncomfortable.

“Goddamn bunch of snakes,” Sally said. “Joint’s full of big boar, Bubba, bigoted bastards—”

“It’s been going on this whole time?” Kay demanded of Daryl.

Daryl looked even more uncomfortable.

“Not with everybody. Not with me!”

“You assholes.” Kay stood angrily on her own two feet.

An investment broker walked into Daryl’s office.

“Not now,” Daryl told him.

The broker took a look at Kay, seemed to recognize her, and walked out.

“The staff?” Kay asked.

“They’re younger, a newer set, and, no, I don’t think they care. It’s the people who run the place.”

“That all?” Kay asked.

“Well— ”

“There’s talk around the ‘water cooler’?” Kay demanded.

“Yeah. Coffee shop. Cafeteria, the restaurant down the street—”

Kay turned circles and ran her hands through her hair as was her habit under stress.

“Talking about me behind my back—”

“It’s not like that,” Daryl said.

“Oh, sugar plumb,” Sally said to Kay, nodding. “It’s exactly like that.”

“No, it’s just smirks, really, looks. Sometimes a joke—”

“Jesus!” Kay said to Sally, then back to Daryl. “And this has been going on for years behind my back. These grown men and women, otherwise respectable— Jokes like what?”

“Doesn’t matter—”

“Yes it does!”

“Not formal jokes like Jay Leno would tell, more like making fun of you—”

Kay remembered:

Christmas at the Foundation, years ago when it was in Los Angeles, boughs draped over doorways, ribbons around marble pillars, lights on a plush tree in the lobby, and an apparently kind server at their table; dinners; gatherings…

Kay turned to Sally. “I’ve been being humiliated for years, and I didn’t even know it.” She turned to Daryl. “They’ve been stripping me down, looking at me naked, haven’t they.”

“They’d do that to anything in a skirt, anyway,” Sally said.

“But they want to see what I look like naked, don’t they?” Kay asked Daryl. “Not because of what Sally said; but because I’m—”

Daryl regained some footing.

“By the way,” he got up out of his chair to stand on his side of his desk. “What is it you say you are, anyway? I missed that part.”

Kay burst from Daryl’s office and walked down the hall, sticking her head into every office she came across. “Staff! Employees! Come out here. We need to have a talk! Sally! Go down there and get some more!”

Sally smiled with excitement and ran to the other end of the hallway, sticking her head into offices and telling they were having a town meeting “Right now!” in the hallway.

“I’m working!” someone complained.

“Get your ass out here!” Sally barked.

Daryl stood behind Kay and Sally.

“You going to interfere?” Kay demanded of him?

Daryl shook his head. “Not me. I told you not to do this. It’s on you. Officially.”

“Coward,” a clerk in the back said.

Daryl held his hands up as if he were helpless.

Kay turned to the group, about thirty people who worked in the Foundation. “Young group. None of you look older than twenty-five.”

“Twenty-four,” a smart-ass in the back said. “Number-counting nerds, all of us.”

Daryl whispered in Kay’s ear. “We pay them less.”

“You all know me?” Kay asked.

“Sure. Met you couple times,” one of them said.

“Yeah. Kay Knapp.”

“What am I to you all?” she asked.

“Money. You helped found this place, and your husband gives—sorry—your husband’s company gives us money, so we can work.”

“But you all know I don’t control the money.”

“Okay,” the kids said. “But you’re still behind this.”

Kay nodded. “What else am I? Spit it out. Lets get a move on. I’m tired of this chicken-shit behind-my-back stuff.” A couple laughed. “Tell me. What’s going on?”

“That other geek went all Colbert truthy on you,” one said.

“Screenager outed you.”

“Got you crunked hot, looks like.”

A couple of them chuckled.

Sally told the group. “I don’t speak that language. Clarify!”

“Dude, like that other transgender outed her off her cell phone and putt it all over, and now she’s messed up with it.”

Sally nodded.

Kay asked them. “Other than the fact that she was wrong—”

“You ain’t trans?” a student asked.

“I didn’t say that. I said she was wrong. But other than that— No, lets go with it. Lets say she’s right. What do you all think of me? Look at me? What do you think of me?”

“Cool, dude,” one man said.

“She ain’t no dude.”

“Well, she was at one time, I gather.”

“Stop pussy-footing around,” Sally said, getting angry. “You!” She pointed at an intern. “What do you think, and tell me in English, so simple little ole me can understand!”

“I think she’s hot, if you ask me,” he said.

“I think she’s hot, if you ask me,” a female student said.

“So you’d do her?” Another student asked them.

“Yeah, if she were forty years younger. Too old for me. Tits sag.”

Daryl and Sally both laughed a little at that.

Kay gave them a dirty look. “And your balls will hang to your knees, when you’re my age.”

“Hell, I’d do her regardless,” a guy in the back said. “Better ‘n that brainless babe I took out last week.”

“How did you get a date?”

“Doesn’t it matter to you all that I’m trans anything?”

Most of the students looked at her in a little confusion.

One in the back raised his hand. “I think it’s a little freaky.”

Other students scoffed at him.

“Well! We’re telling the truth here, aren’t we? Yeah. I wonder if any guy parts are going to pop out of there or if your boobs are real, because sometimes surgeons make a mistake, and some 200,000 to 400,000 people a year suffer hospital mistakes, and the distribution is not random, skewed toward minorities and lower quality intervention facilities, and she’s a minority—”

“Alvie!” someone said.

Other students threw bits of paper at the guy.

“He does that,” a student on the right said. “Probably why he has no friends.”

“He does Chaos theory for us. A mathematician.”

Kay looked at Daryl.

“Predicting money flows,” Daryl said.

A young man on the right said, “I wonder sometimes if some trans is really just faking the woman thing for kicks, and then he’ll act like a guy again, later, and then, like, I’ve dated a guy.”

Kay nodded. “Thank you. Does it matter that I’ve got 41 years under my belt this way?”

The guy shook his head, no.

“Alright. That’s exactly what I need to know,” Kay said. “Do I bother anyone else? Tell me! I have to know!”

“We’re messing around with you, here, I think,” one guy said in the middle. “Can’t help it. Our cortex isn’t fully formed yet.”

“Yours isn’t fully formed,” a young lady near him said.

The guy continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “So, really? Yeah. It seems Rosetta—the skank—outed you against your will. You’re messed up. Do people care? Yes. I think most people do. Will it mess things up for you? Yeah, I think it will.”

Kay lowered her head.

The genius from the back of the room, Alvie, piped back in. “I think it has already been disruptive to your way of life, and it will continue to be. No way around that. You’re private, into individual connections, hoping for happiness in an unaccepting world.”

Kay nodded.

“But what should she do?” another asked the group. “Bend over and take it? Crawl into a cave somewhere?”

I already live in a cave.

“She got to hit Rosetta back,” a young lady said to the left. “Rosetta blew it, and like it or not, Kay’s got to blow back.”

“Nobody has an island,” another guy said.

“Genius!” someone near him said.

“We’re all in this life, together.”

“But people have a right to privacy—in truth. Privacy’s not dead. It’s just harder to find.”

The honest guy in the center summarized. “Individual acceptance can influence a greater social acceptance. But social acceptance can also influence greater individual acceptance.”

“Circular,” another student said.

“More like a tornado,” Kay said.

“Your life’s got to count for something,” a student said on the right.

“It already does,” Kay said. “A lot of important things. But this is not what my life’s about.”

They sounded that out for her.

“Chaos theory,” Alvie said, in the back. “I mean, like Murphy’s Law. Shit can happen.”

“A lot of people get thrown into a life they didn’t expect.”

“Beethoven.”

“What?”

“A composer who lost his hearing.”

“Marie Curie.”

“Rosa Parks.”

“J. K. Rowling.”

“J. K. Rowling? She wrote Harry Potter! She’s probably a billionaire by now!”

“She was a single mom on welfare!”

“Stephen Hawking.”

It was clear Kay had a reaction to the list, and notably to the last one offered.

The group stopped talking to stare at her.

Never give up, she thought to herself.

But life can be so hard. I just want peace!

Kay could almost hear the reflection of Wayne’s voice in the deepest part of her mind, that peace is through the black hole.

“Oh, dudes. Look what I’m getting.” She held up her phone for all to see. It was a press conference, starting on the steps in front of the main building.” On her phone, Randolph Smooder stood in front of a mike-covered podium, addressing a dozen media personnel.

“Let me see that?” Kay asked.

The girl gave Kay her phone for a second.

Kay looked to Sally.

“I’d bring this army with us,” Sally said.

“Hell yeah,” a guy on the left said.

Kay asked, “Can someone text Rosetta for me?”

“Yeah,” the young lady said who had the conference on her phone. “And she’s there, already.”

“Good. Tell her to stay there,” Kay said. “You all: Please come with me.”

Kay turned around to leave, Sally closely in tow, and everyone else followed.

“Hey, man,” one broker said to Daryl. “She’s Mrs. Knapp, and she said to come, so we got to. Work will have to wait.”

“Me, too,” Daryl told him.

Kay exited the door of their building with thirty people in tow, and walked briskly two buildings away to the steps of the Foundation’s headquarters.

Sally caught up to Kay and whispered in her ear while they walked. “You think you’re gonna fall down?”

Kay nodded. She didn’t want to loose her focus.

“Good! This is so much fun.”

Kay’s look to her was incredulous.

Rounding the corner of the building, Kay and her group could hear the press conference in progress.

Randolph spoke into the group of mikes. “… proud of the work of the Knapp Assistance Foundation over these many years—special thanks to Audia Seegmiller, to my right—” There was some applause from a few people behind Randolph. “—to Orin, who currently heads the Foundation—” There was a little more clapping. “and to the fine men and women of industry who have chipped in to support our causes.”

The press noticed Kay approaching with her throng.

“That’s Kay Knapp, right there!” they said in hushed voices.

Randolph interrupted his presentation for a second, noticing Kay also, before continuing. “So, with this latest information, I want to make it clear that this Foundation does not in any way disrespect the lifestyle of any transgender, whomever she may be. We always embrace them, and everyone, to accept God’s love and guidance in life. However, we do need to clarify that our own view that it is a disrespect to God …”

Kay’s glance to him was too brief for his notice.

“Where’s Rosetta?” Kay asked the young lady with the phone.

“Over there,” she said, pointing.

Ah. I see her.

Rosetta looked at Kay with a dash of fear on her face.

The chill in Kay’s stomach grew into resolve. She indicated with a hand that Rosetta should stay there for her.

The press forgot Randolph and followed Kay’s every move.

But Randolph pressed on. “If someone wants to have a divergent lifestyle, then that’s their business. But the Foundation stands for,” he glanced at Audia, “moral correctness as much as anything else—”

Kay’s throng squeezed through the gathering of reporters on its way to Rosetta.

Kay grabbed Rosetta’s hand and leaned into her ear. “Don’t worry about it, hon. You’re okay. Come with me.”

Kay kept a hold on Rosetta’s hand and turned to walk onto the steps with the other presenters. All thirty of her group joined her, standing behind her.

Sally was at her side on the right; Rosetta beside Kay to the left.

“Kay! Get off this stage!” Audia demanded.

“Security!” Orin shouted.

Security was standing by and began to move—

“Kay Knapp! This is Johani Rockwell, Five O’clock News. Tell us what’s going on?”

“Kay Knapp!” other reporters chimed in. “Kay! Talk to us!”

Randolph looked angry.

Orin about blew his lid.

Audia was livid and ordered security, herself. “Get her off this stage!”

Kay stood her ground. “I’m not leaving, Orin,” she said. “Audia.” She looked at them both sternly. “I’m not afraid of you, any more.”

The look on Orin’s face was alarm.

Audia fumed.

Security halted.

“Let us hear from Kay!” the reporters demanded.

Security walked over to Randolph for a conference.

Kay spoke to the press. “First, we better wait to see if I get arrested for being here.”

The press laughed.

“Kay!” Johani said rather as an instruction. “Get on the mikes! Tell us what’s going on!”

Audia yelled at security. “Get her out of here!”

The reporters murmured.

“Now isn’t the time,” Security Chief Warren said to Randolph. Do you really mean that?” He looked at the press and smiled.

The press crowded around Kay and began asking questions.

Kay assumed a position of interest and walked over to the podium of microphones.

Orin, Randolph, and Audia moved aside.

Kay stood at the podium, holding onto Sally’s and Rosetta’s hand, and she remembered stealth transsexuals she’d known in her life, how well they appeared to integrate with others, but how pitifully they coped in secret: the one who was upper management of a major corporation but who regulated her private life so harshly that she lived in virtual isolation, lonely to the core, in misery; the ones who were married and lived in fear of public discovery; the ones struggling against gossip for real acceptance; the ones living virtually like secret agents with cautions and procedures in a life of maneuvering to avoid unwitting obstacles to privacy, without doing something on their own to accidentally out themselves; and the ones who lived under siege, like herself.

Kay’s words were pleasant, but her manner was stern, even angry. Tears occasionally rolled down her cheeks, though her face never distorted into a cry.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press.” She looked at Sally and Rosetta. “I’m Kay Knapp, Mrs. Wayne Higbee Knapp of the Knapp Assistance Foundation.”

Kay was hit with a hundred questions, but instead of rolling through them, she instead made a statement.

“My husband and I founded it in 2001, and it has operated beyond our expectations. We are well pleased and thankful for that.”

Camera’s rolled, and the press was quiet.”

“I’d like to thank the Foundation for all it’s done, and all it will do, and with that, I’d like to clarify a few things.

“First of all, by it’s articles, I am to always be a member of the board, and,” she looked directly at Orin and Audia, “I will always be, to keep my husband’s word.” Kay turned back to the press. “Some mistakes have been made over the years, and I was removed, but I’m getting back in.”

Kay stared at both Orin and Audia. “There are some officers who will be resigning. I will have their resignations in my hand before the end of the week—no later than Friday at 5:00.”

Kay turned back to the press. “My general operating rule since the founding was to remain in the background as much as I could, to avoid embarrassing the Foundation, and to avoid more pressure that such as has been applied to me in the past, but all that is changed, now, with Rosetta’s outing, as you all know, last week.”

Rosetta squirmed a little.

“Don’t worry about it, Rosetta. You’re not at risk. We’ll work this out, together. Okay?”

Rosetta’s smile was feeble, and she nodded to Kay.

Kay returned to the press. “The speculation in the press is that I am transgender, as if that were a big deal in itself, but I am not transgender, nor am I a part of their social movement.”

Rosetta stared in surprise at Kay.

Kay waited for the press murmurs to stop.

“I am, however, transsexual, what’s known as a ‘stealth transsexual,’ because I prefer privacy on that topic. And it needs to be clarified, because there is so little information out there about us.

“It’s all in how you look at it,” Kay said. “My view is that Asians are all different groups of people. It’d be nice if they would get along, but they don’t always— Another view is that Asians are all variations of the same thing, and they’re going to call them all Chinese—a larger group trying to take over its neighbors.

“That’s what’s happening, here. Transgenderism meant for fifty years to change gender, not sex, and these days, transgenderism has dropped the ‘ism’ suffix and says that all groups are now part of the same thing, even getting some people to believe it—they look the same to others—strength in numbers is the goal for their acceptance campaign. But the truth is most people into transgenderism don’t actually want to change their sex, where as it’s what people like me live by.

“Both our groups are very different from most people and acceptance is a major problem for all of us.

“But being different is not the problem,” Kay said carefully to the press. “It’s the point. Discrimination is the problem.

“How to be? How to exist in a discriminating world? How to find acceptance when others would rather you were hounded out of town on a rail, assaulted, raped, killed, or worse?”

Kay glanced at Orin, turned back to the press. “Which raises the question, ‘What kind of a man is Wayne Higbee Knapp’? So, since this is his Foundation, and this ultimately has to be about him, I’ll tell you.”

I love you, Wayne.

Kay’s emotions began to gather. They were hard for her to suppress.

Another tear rolled down Kay’s face.

“He was the best kind of man in every way. Acceptance, he taught me, is for people who are different—not people who are on common ground, per se, because there will always be people left out of that one—but for people who actually are different.

“I hold out my hand in friendship to transgenders.” She raised her hand, grasping Rosetta’s hand. “I’m asking them to accept me as different, even as we ask you all to accept us as different.

“If people are asking what kind of person am I, there’s your answer—and if you’re asking what kind of person was Wayne, there’s also your answer: He was the best of us, the kind of person I wish we all were. He practiced what I just preached.”

Kay’s cry developed, in his memory, and she put her hands on her face, then wiping tears. “My heart goes out to him, still and always. I love him dearly.

“Going forward, the Knapp Assistance Foundation will adhere to his wishes, and I will stand up and fight for that, and for myself, when ever needed. May God bless us all.”

The employees behind her cheered.

The press tried to ask a hundred questions all at once, but Kay left the podium, people crowding around her.

She still held Sally’s and Rosetta’s hand, moving slowly with them through the crowd.

Rosetta, crying, turned Kay around and hugged her, spoke into Kay’s ear. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. I didn’t know all this.”

Kay hugged her back. “Maybe think next time,” Kay said. “But thank you for that.”

Rosetta smiled and nodded.

Kay smiled back at the insecure twenty-year-old. “Good girl.”

“Kay!” a reporter asked. “Did you have genital surgery?”

Another, “When did you have surgery?”

Kay thought about getting into a round of answers for them, but decided she was not ready. She did answer, “I was eighteen,” but she tried to shy away from their questions.

“You’re old now!”

“How did you arrange that? It was the dark ages!”

Some of the reporters hounded Rosetta also, who jumped in.

“Who is this other person beside you?” a reporter asked.

“A friend,” Kay said.

“Sally—” Sally couldn’t get any statement in.

“Sally who?”

“Sally! What do you think about what Kay said?”

Sally responded to that one. “I’d have told them they’re all assholes,” Sally said.

Several reporters laughed.

“But what do you think?” another reporter asked.

“Me?” Sally smiled at them, while their cameras rolled and their pictures flashed. “I don’t have an opinion.”

Kay laughed at her.

Ignoring the press’ questions, Kay turned toward her group and shouted to them over the noise. “You all are all so great! You’re worth your weight in pizza. You wanna come have some? I’m starving! It’s on me!”

CHAPTER

30

Kay did not have the public relations expertise to know what to do with the growing number of reporters who clamored for her, but she did know how to eat pizza, and, somehow, she felt the wisdom of deferring to “her group,” as she felt about them, the thirty employees who supported her. The result was a booth at the pizza parlor for Sally, Rosetta, Kay, Daryl and a couple of the employees—and all the other tables of the restaurant filled with a mix of employees and reporters alike, provided they kept their seats and didn’t crowd Kay’s booth while they ate.

“Sorry, guys! But you know, I’ve got to have something to eat.”

“Most delicious press conference I ever attended,” one reporter mentioned.

“Saucy mix!”

One reporter in the middle stood and yelled at the top of his lungs, “The Pepperoni Press!”

All cheered.

“So you’re—” Kay tried to learn the names of the guys at her table.

“Milo,” said the dark haired young man on the end, the one who had summarized so well at the Foundation.

“Alvie,” said the nerdy mathematician.

“Paula.”

“Your hair naturally that black?” Sally asked.

“It’s dyed,” Paula said.

“And Uma,” Uma said, next to them. Her long brown hair was in a tight pony tail.

“Thank God it’s a big booth. Glad to have you all here.”

“It’s good to be here,” Milo said. He seemed to be their natural leader.

A server came with glasses of water and took their orders, left.

“Hay Kay!” a reporter at the next table asked. “Sooo? How did you snag Mr. Knapp?”

“I don’t now any ‘Mr. Knapp.’” Kay said.

“Okay, ‘Wayne.’” the reporter corrected.

Kay got a smile on her face, recalling. “I was— He first saw me when I was a flight attendant for Pan Am, back in about 1980—”

“Holy shit!” the reporter said. “You’re a Pan Am flight attendant?”

“Was.”

“Oh, well, hell,” another reporter remarked. “No wonder! Anybody’d want one of those.”

“Classic.”

Kay smiled.

Camera’s flashed.

“Truth is, I didn’t remember him, and when he found me at Marina Del Rey, back home, in about 1981 he came on to me, and I initially told him to go fuck himself— I mean literally.”

General laughter.

“But he didn’t listen to me, and thank God for that. He always seemed to see through me.”

Kay fielded the usual questions about G.R.S., where—

“Thailand?” the reporters asked.

Kay told them, “I’d been traveling to Japan for years, so it wasn’t much of a stretch.”

“So, Rosetta,” Milo asked. “I can’t tell whether or not to date you, because I don’t know—” Milo tried to indicate her genital status, without saying so.

“We don’t like to tell that,” Rosetta said, smiling at him like the cat who got the canary.

“But it matters,” Milo said.

“Why should it?” Rosetta asked.

“Wow,” Uma said.

“Well, sex for me is important, too,” Alvie said.

“That’s all you guys think about,” Paula said.

“It ain’t just guys,” Sally said.

“Mostly.” Paula’s look to Milo was unpleasant.

“I think it’s the way the species is wired,” Alvie said.

Milo agreed. “Probably, overall. Propagation of the species. We’re the ones with the gift!”

“The curse,” Uma said.

“Speak for yourself,” Rosetta said.

“I know what you mean,” Sally told her.

The pizza came, and everyone dug in.

Kay’s hand was shaking when she reached for a slice.

“It’s adrenaline,” Sally said. “Mine are, too.”

“Kay, a reporter called out from the next table. “You say you’re ‘stealth transsexual,’ but, hey: Sometimes people can tell. So how can you say ‘stealth’?”

“I think that term came about in the 1980s or so, certainly by the ‘90s, on the heels of stealth aircraft development,” Kay said. “It doesn’t mean impossible to detect. All stealth aircraft can be detected, in one situation or another, like if they get too close to a radar station or if they show their flat bottom to the radar station.”

There were a few jokes on that. Her own bottom was less than perfect, but she laughed it off as if were nothing.

Distract!

“Stealth means ‘low radar signature,’” she said. “If detected, the pilot takes steps to disappear again, or diminish the likelihood of further detection. That’s ‘stealth.’ It’s living with that issue private.”

“You sound pretty familiar with the planes,” he said.

“I just flew an F-35 simulator at Miramar,” she said with a smile. “I guess it’s on the brain.”

“So, Kay!,” another reporter asked from two tables away. “You’re not transgender?”

CHAPTER

31

Kay sat on set, being interviewed by Johani Rockwell, for the Five O’clock news.

“So it was about 1980, and—most men, even still, wouldn’t want to admit they’d love a transsexual. So how did you snag Wayne?” Johani asked.

“Uh,” Kay said, a small grin on her face. “He was so amazing. I guess the answer is I didn’t snag him. He chased me until he got me, and all I did was give in.”

“Really?” Johani asked.

Kay nodded. “That’s the truth of it.”

“And sex with him?”

Kay looked surprised.

“Surely you knew I’d ask.”

“Uh.” Kay looked, red-faced, at the camera.

“You’re blushing?”

“Why do people find that surprising?” Kay asked.

“So you were into him. So, as a guy, were you gay? Did it ever feel gay to you?”

“Yes, no, no, and no, I guess are your answers? Yes, I was into him. No, I was never a guy. No, I wasn’t gay. And no, I never felt gay.”

“But you were male, so—”

“That’s the thing, Johani: my need to be myself, everywhere, and also my sexual response, is female. Our love-making was conventional.”

“I bet it didn’t feel conventional.”

“Oh,” Kay seemed to get red in the face again. “He blew my mind, Johani. I couldn’t resist him.”

New York. The interviewer was transgender. “So who should be able to do it? Have G.R.S.”

Are the sex aspects of this all they want to hear about?

“A person’s body is her own,” Kay said. “If they’re an adult, if they otherwise have the mental agency to marry, enlist in the military, get killed for their country, enter into contracts, buy real estate, adopt children, have a nose job, have Facial Feminizing Surgery, a tummy tuck, etc., then they should also be able to have G.R.S.—without having to have a letter from or therapy with mental health professionals. I swear to God, this,” Kay indicated herself, “is not a mental illness. That whole concept, to me, is puritanical, prudish, old fashioned, like bloodletting. The A.P.A. votes themselves a paycheck with gender dysphoria. I didn’t have any such letter.”

“But you went to Thailand.”

“Exactly.”

Madelaine Cook of the Six O’clock news in Chicago was just as well—or poorly—informed.

“But what if a person says they really feel it, but they can’t make the change right now because of consideration for their kids, waiting ‘till they’re grown, or because they can’t afford it?”

“Affording it is a problem,” Kay said. “Thank you to those who charge less, but overall, the medical community charges way too much: over-priced surgeries; unnecessary yet required mental health interventions—now surgeons and therapists will both hate me.”

“You’re against therapy?”

“No! I’m in favor of therapy—to help with a thousand things such as abuse as a child, issues of self-acceptance or low self-esteem, family unification, body-image issues, suicidality—whatever. I think it’s a good thing. I just don’t’ think it should be required for G.R.S. That should be a plastic surgery that a person may choose.”

“So you’re saying genitalia is no more important than other plastic surgeries?”

“You got me there. No. I think it is extremely important. But I do believe it should still, nonetheless, be a person’s choice. Society needs to stop being a gate-keeper on this and bleeding us dry for money because of our need. That all makes it harder. I think people need to seek out information, educate themselves about what it means. My own view is that if someone is uncertain or unclear on it, they should not do it or they could make a serious mistake. But I don’t think other people should have to conform to my views. It’s just what I think.”

“What surgeons are the best?” Madelaine asked.

“I don’t know. But it is expensive.”

“You get what you pay for?”

“Sometimes, yes. But also, the U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly on genius, skill, or compassion. So I say don’t be unwilling to include the rest of the world in a search. It’s becoming a worldwide community. A lot of people are influenced by stereotypes of people in other countries, and if so, they’re cheating those other people as well as themselves.

“But on your ‘what if they delay’ question? I think there are different things at work, here. It’s not a difference of degree but of kind. If someone says, ‘I feel it inside, but I’ll do more later’? I get the impression it’s more a life-style choice than a need.”

“Shouldn’t that be respected?” Madelaine asked.

“Yes. A person’s lifestyle choices, where they’re not hurting others, etc., should be respected. And mine should be respected just as much. But mine is different from theirs. A need like mine must be sought. There’s a demanding need inside that hurts—”

Mevil McKay of the Mevil Shastic Blog Online asked, “How could a child know they need to do something so drastic? I mean, you had your dick cut off at eighteen? What if you turn out to want it when you’re thirty? You know, fuckin’ is oooh so hot.” Mevil squirmed in his chair, grasping his genitals with one hand and wincing.

Kay laughed at him. “It’s not like changing your major in college. It’s not even like ‘falling in love’ and marrying, then realizing later you want a divorce.

“Thank God for that,” Mevil said.

“It’s—” Kay tried to think. “I used an example for a friend last week. Imagine you’re a person—a kid, to go with your question. You! You’re five years old. You go to Mommy and you cry, telling her that something hurts.”

“Like, ‘Oh, a dog bit me’!”

Kay laughed. “That’s an obvious one. It doesn’t take therapy to know you want to get rid of the pain. The problem, here, I guess, is that this pain isn’t seen, by others.”

“But what if it was a mental issue that would fade?”

“Again, we’re not talking about love or other choices. We’re talking about yourself as a person. When who you are is so very different from what you are, it’s unavoidable.”

“But you couldn’t have actually read the future. You might have wanted to use it later!”

“That is sooooo far from anything in my head. I couldn’t do that. Clearly, you are not transsexual.”

“No way in hell,” Mevil said. “But do some people have G.R.S. who don’t have the drive like you have? Had?”

Kay nodded. “We’ve all met, if we’ll admit it, people who have done that. I remember one case—true story—of someone in the hospital bed. This person was a man in every way I could tell, though he—I guess I should say ‘she’ out of respect for her wishes—‘she’ had breasts and had just had G.R.S. I talked with her for a while, and what she said was, ‘Now let them try to keep me out of the ladies’ room.’”

“So that’s a transsexual?” Mevil asked.

Kay shook her head. “Not as I see it. Because I don’t think being the other sex was the issue. I think that’s post-op transgenderism.”

“So the surgeon made a mistake cutting his dick off?”

“No. I think it was her choice to do it if she wants to. It’s her responsibility, not the surgeon’s. His mistake would have been if he’d messed up the surgery, which he didn’t as far as I could tell. I looked at it. It was good.

A television interview in Austin: “Then what is ‘post-op transgender’?”

“I do not claim to be post-op transgender, because that term means a lot of different things— There’s a lot of argument about terms in the trans world,” Kay said. “It gets hidden by the larger group, transgenders, but it’s well there. First, post-op transgenderism means you’re a variation of transgenderism, which I am not. Second, what is the ‘operation’ in ‘op’? Where some with G.R.S. call themselves ‘post-op transgender,’ it also leaves the door open to, say, someone who just wanted to be castrated, an orchie—keeping a penis—to legitimately call herself ‘post-op transgender.’ Some people might even say ‘post-op’ referring to breast augmentation of F.F.S. Some people also say they’re post-op when they’re not at all, but are trying to hide their desire to keep cisnatal genitalia.”

“So anything could be ‘post-op transgender’?”

Kay nodded. “It’s a tenet of the transgender paradigm social movement, I think, ‘You are what you say you are,’ blending issues and phenomena, and which leaves no room for denial or rationalization—which all goes to the ‘moving to a place on a spectrum’ philosophy. That’s their thing, not mine.”

A blogger in Atlanta: “I think you’re a bigot, Kay. Prejudiced. You look down your nose at transgenders, and call us ‘transgenderists,’ because you think you’re better. We don’t like the term ‘transgenderist.’”

“The suffix ‘ist’ means ‘the person who,’ so what’s offensive to you about being a person who is transgender? I’ll tell you why: ecause it was popularized to mean change gender and not sex by Virginia Prince, Ph.D. in the last half of the 20th Century—transgenderism vs. transsexualism, get it?—and transgenders like to to fudge revelations of genitalia because it wants acceptance as the other sex, without actually trying to change TO that other sex, rolling people like me into your group for validation.”

“Popycock!” said the interviewer.

“Hidden cock,” Kay said.

“That’s offensive!”

“It’s one of the truths of how we’re different, and if you say I’m one of you, I should be free to say how we’re different. I need to be the other sex; you don’t and want to be on a spectrum. The transgender social movement caused the conflict by pressuring people like me, media, and society into thinking we’re the same group. We’re not and never were. I’m not putting you down at all, and I’m accepting of you. I’m just saying how we’re different, beause you say I’m part of your group. I’m forced to say I’m not part of your group, and why.

“You want me to shut up?” Kay asked her. “Then quit trying to manipulate me, or people like me, into your group. Accept our right to define ourselves, as you wish for yourself. Accept us even though we’re different, just as you want society to accept you even though you’re different.”

“But we need to stand together!”

“My group has its own issues, different from you, and supporting your agenda sweeps our issues under a rug. If we can’t speak out for ourselves, we have to hide, been pushed into a closet. And I’ve been pushed into a closet before, many times. It’s abuse.”

“Stand out and proud with us!”

“’Out and proud,’” Kay said, is not stealth transsexualism, is not transsexualism in general after reality sets in, and disrespects my lifestyle of privacy. ‘Proud’ isn’t what someone feels when they can’t be what they need desperately to actually be. You keep missing that! You’re seeing transsexuals as transgenderists and we’re not.”

“Some transsexuals actually say they are.”

“Most people who claim to be transgender are in a change of gender, not sex. But yes, some do organize it that way. Some like the spotlight you shine on them. And some fear—meaning they’re scared of you—that the transgender social movement will trample them, blacklist them, shout them down if they don’t give in to your way of looking at it—which can be devastating to a career for someone who is a celebrity. You think I’m prejudiced? You sound imperialistic, to me. Even fascist.”

“Fascist!?”

“Yes! You say: ‘You must think like I think.’ You’re using collective pressure to try to force people like me into your way of thinking, and when you can’t by cajoling, you blast me with insults. You won’t accept that I have a different view and after 45 years in this, after decades of dedicated living, after personally knowing people you could only read about in history books, after integrating better than most—better before and without your misguided transgender social movement than during— After all that, you think I still don’t know what I’m talking about, that I don’t see our differences? Why do you assume I’m so unaware of myself?”

“You’re old fashioned! You’re 20th Century.”

Kay shook her head. “I think I see things with experience that you don’t want to see, regardless, because they don’t fit your social agenda—and because you have no compassion for people with a different view.”

Denver, Marlo Questra, “Morning with Marlo”: “Are you autogynephilic?”

Kay shook her head. “Autogynephilia, or a male loving to see himself as female, is huge in crossdressing, and is a big part of it in transgenderism. It even lives with some people who have G.R.S. Few transgenders will admit they have it, though, because the autogynephilic mind-set is held to be shameful in society—something kinky instead of expressing a real, gender identity.”

“But most transsexuals don’t have autogynephilia?”

“I don’t think so. Transsexualism is about needing to actually be the other sex. After what may be a long period of denial—I need to stress that—maybe even decades, when the transsexual has fully adjusted, the transsexual is not so happy, not so elated. For decades, she may be happy with it, thinking she’s changed sex, but the truth eventually dawns. Usually.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s because the need is so strong—?” Kay asked, looking for an answer.

“To actually be the other sex.”

“Right. But biologic sex can’t actually be changed, so the need to be the other sex remains, and the transsexual is—?” Kay waited for another answer.

“Unhappy?”

Kay nodded. “Because she needs to be the other sex, and the transition doesn’t entirely provide that. I don’t think transsexualism is about a love of seeing self as female, for M.T.F.s. I think it’s more of a need. Something in the brain at birth, a congenital birth incongruity, a ‘defect’ in that sense, if you will—

“Who—?” Kay stammered. “How would a two-year-old get this? How—? Why would a three-year-old cry to God to make her a girl? When everything else in life changes, why would this need-to-be-female persist, unchanged except through maturation, with her throughout every waking moment in life? All the way through childhood?

“Because it’s not a decision. And it hurts! She doesn’t need to be intelligent or educated to know she hurts. She doesn’t need to weigh the pros and cons when she knows it hurts. She needs to move on it because— It’s inside her. I swear.

Marlo looked at Kay for a minute. The set was quiet, then, “Kay,” she said. “I respect you. I know you’ve done a lot, gone a long way, and your husband was one of the most remarkable men, and he clearly respected you.” Marlo leaned forward in her chair and regarded Kay closely. “And I don’t actually see the tone of prejudice in you. So what is it?”

Kay had been on the devensive, but felt herself warming to Marlo a little.

Marlo continued, “I’m inclined to think this is a simple belief, and you’re being honest with me?”

Kay nodded.

“There are other transsexuals who feel this way?” Marlo asked.

Kay nodded. “Yes. We’re pressured not to say, but it strongly feels that needing to actually be female is different from needing to be a woman, yet not wanting to actually be female.”

Marlo nodded and thought some more. “Could the spectrum view and the two-sex view—”

“Binary,” Kay interjected.

“—binary,” Marlo said, “Could they both be right if there’s a significant bimodal distributon in the spectrum?”

Kay wasn’t accustomed to a confrontation with this level of intelligence.

“In some ways like colors in a rainbow?” Marlo asked. “Colors are wavelengths, clearly a spectrum, maybe more like a continuum. Yet there are also things we really do recognize as blues, reds, yellows… Just as sex and gender are on spectra, with many intersex and intergender individuals, yet there are also clearly males and females, men and women.”

Kay temporarily forgot she was on camera and found herself thinking about what Marlo was saying.

“Both views have something to them…” Kay thought.

“To be yourself as you are, yet also be in what is clearly a sex/gender spectrum,” Marlo said.

“But the terminology has been so wrong. There have been so many fights over it—”

Marlo asked, “Have you read Janet Mock’s book?”

Charleston: “So the way you express yourself changed through the decades?”

Kay nodded. “Initially, the first several years, I was very ultra fem.”

“You aren’t now?”

Kay shook her head. “Not like I was. During college, and when I began as a stewardess, I was very careful about my makeup and hair. I wore full-face all the time, and I fixed my hair as well as I could. I wore dresses most of the time—it was my overall being. I had to be feminine. It was a reaction, a ‘gender swing,’ someone said to me, later. Held to the masculine side throughout life before, relative to me, I had swung the other way. Then I went through a phase more crude: Jeans, no makeup, even t-shirts.”

“But you married Wayne, and you were boating a lot.”

“True. That was part of it. But I think it was also me.”

“Did you have issues with denial?”

“Yes, but it’s hard to describe. I was fully aware all the time, but the importance of some things never dawned on me, until later. And when it did, it was very hard to live with, but you adjust.”

“How?”

“Well, I think true self-acceptance comes after you begin to see yourself more realistically. Facing life after you’ve realized other people are schachtering you, or putting you down, for what you are. Instead of making up false reasons for it.”

60 Minutes: “So you met Wayne in 1981, and you were married in 1983.”

“Yes,” Kay said.

“It was the early ‘80s. How did your marriage survive that kind of pressure?”

CHAPTER

32

“Thank you for picking me up at the airport, Sally.”

Sally came to a full stop in Kay’s driveway in Rancho Palos Verdes. She put it in park and carefully surveyed the bushes and trees in Kay’s front yard.

“No problem, Kay. I want you to call on me. I feel like your guardian angel, after Utah and some of those interviews with you.”

Kay looked at her yard, as well.

“I don’t see any cowards, or even any curious, hiding anywhere,” Sally said.

“Me neither.”

“You ready to go inside?” Sally asked.

Kay took a shallow breath. “It’s only been about ten days since we left. This is my first return— I wonder if they’ve been in there.” Her fear was palpable.

Sally got out of the car and walked through the front yard. It was extensive. The house was more like a small Italian villa, two-story, with an upper deck, side patio and gardens, pillars, built to look opulent, but not actually very large. The yard, however, was extraordinary. The flora was more reminiscent of a park or the gardens of the San Diego Zoo than a house on a hill, and the view of Catalina and up the coast of Santa Monica was breathtaking.

Kay’s monthly gardening bill had been breaking her as much as the annual taxes on the house. She had felt she could survive if she sold it, but she didn’t want to lose it because it was where she lived with Wayne. Holding onto what was left of him was everything to her.

But it’s all different, now, she thought, getting out of the car to follow Sally. She embraced her house with her heart.

It is so beautiful! I haven’t noticed in so long! This is where I live?

Orin and Audia resigned, as they damn well better had. They had no legal right to be there. I’ve been voted in as the new Chairman and C.E.O. in a special session—I’ve neutered Randolph, and I’m going to get rid of him very soon—and the small salary I’ll draw will make the difference here.

“I may be able to keep the place, now, Sally.”

“I know. Kick their ass and make ‘em pay. It’s clear out here, Kay. Come on.”

Kay walked to her front door—keeping her eyes on Sally as much as anything, feeling Sally would know if something was amiss.

“The whole place feels better to me, now Sal. Better.”

“A little guts will do that or you. Damn, I’m proud of you.”

Kay unlocked the front door and opened it, carefully listening. She cocked her head to one side, but she could hear nothing.

She turned off the alarm and noted it had not been tripped.

“Things look fine from here,” Sally said. “Want the curtains open or closed?”

“Open! Lets air out the place— No wait! What about press’ prying eyes?” Kay had not yet adjusted to being even a temporary public figure. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Not yet. But you’re bright. Want me to stay the night?” Sally asked Kay.

“Oh, you’ve done so much!”

“Shit,” Sally said. “I get so many social points for hanging out with you.”

“I really don’t want to be a curiosity item, Sal!”

“I know. I don’t mean like that. You should know I’m a friend by now.”

“I do—”

“But it’s true. It’s a side-effect of celebrity.”

“I hope it’ll slide away, now,” Kay said. “I—”

“There is a possible benefit to all this.”

“What?”

“Well, even if public memory of you fades, for ever more, now, if someone brings up your name, people will re-remember. Your business is out there, and you won’t need to use privacy as a reason not to stand up for yourself. Now you can put oppressors to shame and stomp them into the ground. That goes for your family as much as anyone else. You hear that!?” Sally yelled to the house. “Any bugs listening? Get this: Kay will slam you hard for any more bullshit!”

Kay pet the two-month-old puppy in her arms and addressed three groups of contractors, all of whom gathered on her driveway at about the same time of the morning. “Electricians—?”

“Yes, one said. What is his name?” He reached out to pet the little thing.

“Wookie,” Kay said with a smile, petting him more. “’Wook,’ for short.”

Wookie snuggled more deeply into Kay’s arms.

“Can I pet him?” another man asked.

“Sure.” Kay let the man approach, and before she knew it, two more joined him.

“You’re a magnet, Wookie. You know that?”

Wookie turned over in Kay’s arms so the man could pet his tummy.

“He’s such a ham!” one said.

“That he is,” Kay said. “You all are re-doing my house, and I’ve got some new carpet guys coming after you’re done—give him something to pee on.”

“You think he’ll be that hard to housetrain?” the first man asked.

“I don’t know. He’s just a puppy. We’ll see how it goes. I may have to pull out all the carpet and put in tile, before all I know. Who wants to put the doggie door in for me?”

“We’ll do it,” an electrician said.

“No, I’ll do it,” a painter said. “Electrician’s don’t know shit about doggie doors.”

“Okay. Whomever. There’s an extra hundred in it for— No, it needs to be the electrician, because he has to move the alarm sensor, after we put it in. Sorry guys.”

“Okay…” There was general humor about all the effort to install the store-bought sliding-glass-door doggie door insert.

Kay adjusted Wookie in her arms, and he stood up on her left breast to lay across her shoulder like a shawl.

Kay held Wookie with her other hand and rested her cheek against his soft back.

“Okay, everyone. Lets update this house. It’s probably thirty years old.”

I’m reclaiming my home!

“Electricians: I want all new outlets, all new light sockets, light switches, light fixtures, the works. Okay? With the new lights we picked. She’s been too tired, too long.”

“You bet!”

“All you guys,” Kay said to the painters, “repaint everything inside and outside this house, the colors we picked. Everything!”

“Okay, Mrs. Knapp.”

“If there’s any part of any wall, any ceiling, any door, any trim that’s not painted over by the time you’re done, no Christmas bonus. When in doubt, paint it, and Santa will love you.”

“You bet, Mrs. Knapp.”

“New drapes!” Kay said to that contractor. “The ones we chose! Thank you.”

“But what about the painters?”

“You’ll have to coordinate with them. Lead the way taking them down, and follow them around after their paint dries to put up the new.”

“Okay.”

That will mess up a few bugs.

Smiling faces went to work.

Kay sat on her master bedroom balcony in a lawn chair, with Wookie on her lap.

He squirmed a little.

She kissed him on the head and sat her book down on a patio table for a minute, Redefining Realness, by Janet Mock.

She cuddled Wookie and looked across the channel at the most magnificent view in the world.

Even sitting on the patio, she could smell the fresh paint from inside the house.

“Do you like your new home, Wookums?”

Wookie snuggled into her lap.

The lights are beautiful, she thought. She trusted the outlets, now, not to have any bug in them.

The curtains really made a difference, too.

She’d called the carpet guys and rescheduled them for a month down the road, however, because Wookie was clearly going to have some difficulty with the whole go-outside-to-go thing.

“But you’re a smart boy,” she said to him. “You’ll get it. I’m sure it took Chewie a while to house break, also.”

Wookie looked at her. “Hmm?”

She brought Wookie up to lie on her shoulder, again. It was a natural place for him, and he seemed to love it as much as she.

She picked up Redefining Realness to continue reading.

Kay stood naked in her bathroom, her hair gathered into a clip on top of her head to stay dry. She hadn’t had a hot bath in years.

Wookie bounded into the bathroom as if to see what she was doing.

“Mommy’s going to take a bath. I’m not going any where.”

Wookie accepted that and sat on the tile floor, his hind legs splayed, one to each side.

Kay tested the water, and it was almost hot enough. Steam slowly rose off the still water. She slowly lowered herself in.

Ooooohh—

She felt the warm water soak into her bones—but it wasn’t hot enough. She raised one foot out of the water and turned on the spigot to let more hot water pour in.

She felt its warmth around her feet.

Totally immersed except for her head, propped against the end of the tub, she moved her hands and feet enough to circulate the water.

She tried to clear her head, but the question from 60 Minutes kept circulating through her mind.

How did their marriage survive all that turmoil?

She thought. Was the turmoil not that much? Intrusions, assault, rape, burglary… No. Yes! The turmoil was great.

Did their marriage survive beause of Kay? She played that through her mind, and while she was dedicated, there was a lot more to it.

Because of Wayne? Yes, to a great degree. But, she thought, it wasn’t just mechanics of life that he employed that did it: lawyers, inclusions in his Trust, what he said to or did with people, how they may have accepted her more because they wanted the services of his company. It was mostly him, his being.

It was his nature—

No, it couldn’t be just that?

Mostly that.

She nodded to herself in the tub, reaching up with her foot to turn the hot water off. It was hot enough in the tub.

Steam rose from the water. The skin on her foot was red.

It was hot enough.

She closed her eyes and settled deeper into the water, letting it caress her lower face and her lips.

So it was mostly Wayne, she felt—that amazing, miraculous man!—but it was more. It was their chemistry, combined as well with the world around them.

Yes, it was hard, but her marriage had survived because of the overall mix of things within their beings and within the world around them.

There was no one answer to what made it work; it was everything.

Did torment from others help make it work? There was no question but that the torment had been horrific. No one should have to put up with that. But could that have also helped to unify them as a couple? Standing together against the world?

Maybe, she thought. But the negatives of that far outweigh any possible positive resultant effects.

“It was him,” she had told 60 Minutes. “Wayne was so amazing. He—” Kay had sat with her interviewer, her chin on her hand, and tried to answer in the most complete way. “Wayne was this amazing genius who could bring a simple answer to any complex situation. He could look at a problem and give you a succinct answer—and he did it in such a way that everybody knew it was correct.”

“So he could see through things?”

“Well, he saw through me. All the time.” Kay smiled. “He couldn’t tell the future. Bad things would happen, and he would help me through it. But he seemed in touch with a course of action to help. His confidence was unshakable.

“He was not a worrier; I was the worrier.”

“So what could he do to help you through, say, a home intrusion?”

“His plan, his action, but also the things he’d say to me, and his touch.”

Kay began to remember Tchaikovsky’s lovely waltz playing from speakers somewhere, and in her mind she could see Wayne standing with her, together, in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

She looked up at him and admired his face.

God, he is handsome!

Her left hand rose an inch in the water, to touch the memory of Wayne’s hand.

Wayne said nothing. He took her right hand in his left and put his right around her waist, kissing her gently on the lips, then drew her in closer to dance.

He smells divine!

Kay rested her face against his cheek and moved with him to the rhythm of the multi-platinum music, in love, on their 20th anniversary.

People stood by and watched with approving smiles. Sleeping Beauty’s castle circled, then Snow White’s wishing well, a horse-drawn carriage, trees, more people smiling—until all were forgotten. All Kay could see was the side of Wayne’s hair. All she could hear was the waltz. All she could smell was his scent— She nibbled his cheek a little to taste him. She could feel his hand holding her hand, his arm at her waist, his chest against her beasts, his clean-shaven face against her cheek—

—as they danced in a circle, together forever.

CHAPTER

33

Kay looked at herself in the mirror with a mixture of courage and disgust. She was pleased with the person, inside, she had become in life, but she could still see parts of her that had been ruined by earlier-life exposure to her hormonal incongruency.

A fuzz-ball ran into her foot.

“What do you think, Wookums?”

This is wonderful! she seemed to feel Wook thought.

She picked him up and carried him downstairs, putting him through his doggie door as a morning habit.

He went out, and he came right back in.

That was fun!

“Yeah, fun for you.”

Kay went to a switch panel on the wall and opened all the curtains in the house, looked out. The yard was immaculate; the gardeners had done a good job. The windows, themselves, the glass, still needed to be cleaned, but the view off the cliff out over the ocean, across to Catalina Island and north over Venice, Santa Monica, and the Pacific Palisades was breath-taking.

She walked into her study and picked up the phone, dialed an old doctor’s office.

“Hello? This is Kay Knapp.”

“Kay! We are not going to take any harassment from you. We gave you a copy of your medical records, and you’re still hounding us!”

“You never gave me my records, and here’s how it’s going to go,” Kay told them, fed up with their shams. “I get a full copy of my medical records as required by law—and I mean but quick—or I tell the truth that the doctor was prejudiced against me and basically said so on entry into the exam room that day. You gave me only one assessment sheet that said I started an argument in there—false because he did. Now you’re denying me a copy of my records by claiming you already gave them to me. In my opinion, you should go to jail.

“I wouldn’t go to the authorities to avoid highlighting my own sexuality, but I am not closeted any more. If you’ve been watching T.V., you know about that.”

“I do. I’ll get them for you today. You should have them by Fed Ex in two days. And don’t you ever call here again.”

Kay hung up, her hands shaking, her heart pounding.

She went into the kitchen to make some breakfast, but she couldn’t hold still. Adrenaline. She adjusted the curtains wider, but she didn’t have the touch just then.

What’s going on?

Clean the windows!

No! I’d probably break them in this condition.

Jog?

Run?

She pulled her phone out and tried to dial Betty Arboghast of the yacht club. “Snub me for all those years?” But she dropped her phone on the counter.

She tried to pick it up and dropped it again.

What should I do?

Where should I go?

Kay paced her living room, looking for an answer.

She held her phone long enough to dial Sally.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Sally asked.

“I—” Kay was very unsettled. “I don’t know. I thought I was doing better!”

“You sound upset.”

“I know. I just called someone up and put an end to some harassment—”

“Did it work?”

“I don’t know. I guess so! Maybe! It might have!”

“Good!, so— Ah. I get it.”

Kay paced, turned to pace the other way, back and forth. “What?”

“You’re new to this. You stood up for yourself, but you’re not accustomed to that, so it’s got you scared.”

“Yeah! Hell yeah! Oh!” Kay looked to God for help. “That’s probably true.”

“Did you tell ‘em off good?”

Kay nodded. “I think so. Yeah. I think so, but that wasn’t my goal.”

“They deserved it, I’m sure. There’ll probably be many more, right? You’re a little overdue. Whole change of life, thing, here. You fifty yet?”

“I’m nearly sixty!”

Sally laughed at her.

“Menopause?”

“Sally! I’ve been on H.R.T. since I was eighteen!”

“Well, it threw me. Bob got a team of doctors to sit on me.”

“I think it’s like you said before,” Kay said, regaining herself. “I’m public, now. Anywhere I go, people will look at me like a trans-something, until they forget. I can’t move away and change my hair, because even then, someone will figure it out and people will gossip!”

“Don’t you know it. Big time.”

“So before I was in a closet and people harassed me and gossiped about me. Now I’m out of the closet and people gossip about me and I’m getting flack from transgenders because I don’t join their social movement—you ought to see some of my hate email!”

“But maybe you’ll have less harassment?” Sally asked. “And now you can answer the gossip and stand up for yourself a little.”

“Sometimes—but I have to do it as a transperson, and I don’t like that! It’s not who I need to be!”

“I know, but like you said, people can’t actually change their sex!”

“I know! But I don’t want to be this!”

“Well, this is what it is!” Sally said, sounding very much like Kathy Bates.

“I have to live like this?”

“Like yourself, yes.”

“But I never had the goal of being transsexual. That’s the nature of transsexualism.”

“And that you are.”

Kay plopped down into a chair in her living room.

“But Sally—”

“Black people are out. Even when you have a black person who is so light he can pass as white— Pretending? With all those secrets! You can’t live like that! Gay people come out for the same reason!”

“But black people really are men or women. Gay people really are men or women!”

“And transsexuals really are men or women—”

“Sally! You know what I’m saying!”

“You’re saying—”

“People will look at a black man and say, for this metaphor, ‘He’s a black man.’ Or a gay guy and say, ‘He’s a gay guy.’ But for me, they’ll say, ‘She’s a man,’ or ‘She’s a trans-woman’!”

“You’re really focused on this.”

“But I can’t be that—”

“A black man isn’t a white man, and a gay man isn’t a straight man or a woman, or whatever.”

“So?” Kay asked.

“The point is, that you’re adjusting to being a woman, who is female in every way medical science can do, who is transsexual because she’s biologically male and switched—”

“Yuk!” Kay screamed into the phone.

“A shrink would say ‘accept yourself.’”

“But transsexualism is about needing to be that other sex! Not accepting trans.”

“Yes. It is. I see that in you, and I get that.”

“So what am I gonna do!?” Kay begged Sally for an answer.

“You’re gonna accept that you need to be female, and you’re also gonna accept that you had to switch to it but you can’t biologically switch all the way, and that that is the duality you have to live with! You have to do that, girl! It hurts, but if you don’t do it, you’ll hurt a whole lot more from dealing with all the extreme stealth shit and the consequences of it.”

“I can’t do that!”

“It seems like you can’t do that, but you already are.”

“It hurts!”

“That’s what that doctor in the documentary was talking about? Neuroplasticity. Your brain is patterned your old way. You need to force new thinking, and wait for it to pattern this new way. In other words, it’s hard, now. But in a year or few, it’ll get a little easier.”

“It hurts!”

“It’ll always hurt. But not as much as the hell you’ve seen, I think, like before. Do you really think those assholes could have picked on you the way they did if you were open?”

“Ever heard about cross burnings in people’s yards?” Kay asked.

“And worse,” Sally said.

“And they were openly black.”

“Yeah. Trouble may still happen, and maybe of a different sort than before or even worse, that’s true. Better maintain some security procedures against that, it’s true. They could do that anyway. But short of that, aren’t there other ways that life would be easier with a little less secrecy?”

“I am so sick!” Kay said. “My stomach feels like a vacuum again.”

“It probably always will,” Sally said. “So what about some kind of semi-stealth position for you? Where—now that all this shit has happened—you pull it out when you need it, to stand up for yourself, but you keep private when you can—only worrying less about having to disclose sometimes!”

“It may have to be.” Kay was exhausted.

“There’s a duality in you, Kay. It’s not your fault. You were born with it. You need to be something that you can’t be.”

“People soooo don’t get that. You’re precocious.”

“No. I’m just full of pizza.” That was their joke. “And also, if people sense the truth of you and don’t like it, and they’re mean, now you can oppose it, where you couldn’t before. You didn’t even feel you could go to the police before! Remember that?”

Kay was silent.

“It doesn’t have to be a lot different,” Sally said.

“It already is a whale of a lot different.”

“But after the dust settles, it’ll only need to be a little different in daily living. Just think about maybe being only semi-stealth, sometimes. Like maybe when you need to be to stand up for yourself.”

CHAPTER

34

Kay checked her email on her phone. There were a number of emails from reporters and news agencies, some people she rarely heard from but who were representing themselves as friends, and three from fellow “stealth” transsexuals. Kay was older and much more experienced than they. She didn’t want to sound like a sage, but in a world where so many people gave out false information about transsexuals or enabled their dysfunction, embarrassment, or loneliness, she felt out of compassion, she had to at least try, now and then, to work in some truth.

Zoe was a flight attendant for a current airline. Kay had met her at Dulles, one time, a few years ago on a brief, weekend trip. Kay had recognized Zoe immediately as transsexual, and at the same time, she noticed why. As talented as Zoe appeared to be, as very well as she could present as the female she obviously wanted to be—marvelous figure, delicate hands, height in the normal range—Zoe compromised her presentation by displaying her obvious male pattern baldness. Kay got the impression presenting as trans was not Zoe’s intent; she just didn’t see how others saw her.

When no one was around Zoe, Kay had approached her, sharing that she used to be a flight attendant for Pan Am, and that she felt they were sisters. Zoe was alarmed at first that anyone could tell, and she doubted Kay’s assertion of herself, until Kay re-affirmed. Eventually, Zoe could see it in her.

“But how did you know about me?” Zoe asked.

“Your hair line,” Kay said.

“That’s natural. That’s my real hairline,” Zoe had shared, obviously in distress.

“Yes, it is, but it’s a line that—”

“Women have a hairline like that sometimes!” Zoe pleaded to be understood.

Through a two-hour layover, Kay learned that Zoe was being torn between a transgender movement that said to be yourself (which included out), and her desire to be a natural female. Zoe had objected to a wig, because it’s “fake”—a la what she had learned from transgenders she’d known—yet she wore cosmetics and had G.R.S. and F.F.S. Zoe had never met a stealth transsexual before, that she knew of, and the two had swapped emails—on provision that Kay not pressure her to wear a wig and that matters not be discussed overtly, no matter what.

That last part was a common request.

In this email, Zoe was questioning Kay’s outing.

Kay! I’ve seen u on T.V. What are u doing?

Shouldn’t u have ignored her when she outed u?

Kay thought. Zoe was probably worried about how it would reflect on her, what she should do.

People interested in privacy, even if they sabotage themselves, always worry about how to interact with or navigate social systems.

Zoe, hi. I hope u r fine.

I had no choice. It was waaaaay out by the time I got to it. I had to share my side, or be taken as the other group, which I am not.

BTW, you r outing yourself daily, as we’ve already discussed. I couldn’t be honest, if I didn’t say so. With love and to help, I do say: If u do want people to take u more as new role, u do need a hair piece.

Kay sent it, but she feared it would be the last she heard from Zoe, which saddened her. Yet someone had to tell Zoe the truth, she believed—and with so many around her who will say, “Oh, no! You’re lovely!” or “Really? I didn’t know!” then Kay knew she’d likely be the odd person out in information Zoe received.

People! Such assholes, enabling dysfunction in someone who needs the truth. That sabotages them, provides short-term fake-happiness, and promotes social alienation down the road.

There was another email from Gail, a stealth transsexual in Sydney. Kay had never visited down under, but Gail’s worries were familiar: Gail worried about how people took her, because they never said what the really thought, to her. Gail was sharp enough to realize she was being shined.

Gail’s email also questioned Kay’s outing, but Kay knew her answer for Gail needed to address her always-concern of how can she know when people know.

Gail:

I know. U don’t know who reads you and who doesn’t, and learning that would be very hard. People don’t seem to want to admit it, and then they gossip. Being the center of gossip is common for us, and it’s part of a hard life. It’s not easy being TS.

So how can u tell? How do u know if they know? My experience, and my guess from other people’s experience, is that the longer the term of exposure to you, the greater the likelihood someone will read u. There’s no such thing as a good secret—people talk and say ‘don’t pass this on,’ but they do anyway—so once someone gets it, I tend to assume all will get it in that group.

So ……. Continuing to go to the group gives you social contacts, some social interaction, which we need, but will have pain in it because u will fear the outing. Who knows? What do they know? What do they think they know?

Not going any more separates u from the humiliation, but it also leaves u alone, which can b easier today, but MUCH HARDER in the years to come.

What is best, only u can decide.

Kay held Faith’s email to last, so she could think more.

Faith was an extremely talented stealth transsexual, the most extreme Kay had ever seen. She was “local” in the Los Angeles area, which was all Kay had ever gotten from her. Faith had evidently seen Kay a few times at Marina Del Rey with Wayne, and she had approached Kay one day when she was on her boat by herself.

They’d talked.

Faith shared herself with Kay, which surprised Kay because she hadn’t noticed. Faith shared she had read Kay, however, and she asked to exchange emails so they could talk sometimes.

Faith had no one to talk with. She was so capable she was very rarely read—Kay agreed with that—and she was so closed, so private, that she hadn’t even ever told her husband.

“What?” Kay asked.

“I know, but I need someone to talk with, and I have no one! Sometimes I don’t know what to do! A lot of the time I don’t know what to do!”

“Oh, my God, Faith! Not telling him— Can’t that throw the validity of your marriage in question sometime?”

“How would he ever find out?” she asked.

Kay understood. Her need was so strong, and her talent so great, that disclosure was, Faith felt, optional.

“I don’t know. What if you were in a car accident, and the hospital calls him to come in—”

“What difference would it make?”

“X-rays? Blood tests? Genetic testing? It’s getting common. These things can tell.”

“I wouldn’t give them his name!”

Kay could see Faith’s internal wheels turning.

“What if you were unconscious in the hospital, and they go through your things to find someone to contact?”

Kay could see more wheels turning.

“I’ll take all contact info out of my purse.”

“Yeah? So you think the insurance company won’t know him? You think he won’t live at your address? Does he live with you?”

“Yes!” Faith was in severe distress. “Does your husband know?”

“Of course!”

“If you’re open with him, how can you stand to even see him?”

“Because I love him,” Kay said.

“But he knows!”

“I have no choice about that,” Kay said.

“Well, I do!”

Kay shook her head. “I’m not so sure.”

“I’ve been doing it for six years!”

He knows, and if she’s truthful with me, he’s just not telling her.

How to tell her that?

“Faith, love: Longer-term exposure makes it more likely he or someone will know. People sense these things, inside. You can’t cover it up forever. There are some people who have to know: your doctor, your lawyer, your husband— What about the police?”

“What have they got to do with it?”

“What if you were picked up for something? Your husband may get it from them. What about your old legal documents? Social security—and I expect all big government databases—keep your old records and mix them with the new. They just don’t tell people. Can’t even get them to tell you, most of the time.”

Faith was looking around as if to leave. “It hasn’t happened. We fell in love, we married. He’s wonderful! I can’t live without him, or with myself!”

“I hear you—”

“I just need someone to talk with. Can I email you?”

“Yes! But I’ll tell you a couple of things now, and I’ll tell you later as well: You cannot grow close to your husband unless he knows what you are. It’s not a reciprocated relationship without—”

“I can only love him as the female I need to be!”

“I think as you grow older, even if he never dumps you for this, you will get lonelier and lonelier. Because you can’t connect with anyone being false to them.”

“Other thing?” Faith asked.

How to tell her?

“Honey, I’ve been in this a long time, I’m old enough to be your mother, and I have to give you some info that—yeah, it’s a guess, but it’s based on a lot of hard experience. Mine and others.”

“What?”

“Hon: It’s very likely he already knows, and he isn’t saying so.”

“What? How?”

“Like I said: People can usually tell, over time. Especially if they’re that intimate with you.”

Faith stood straighter and turned around, looking up and down the docks. She looked back at Kay and shook her head. “Uh-uh. No. He can’t. Look at my hands. My height! Listen to my voice. There’s nothing to sense.”

“Apples and tomatoes,” Kay said.

“What about ‘em?”

“How can you tell ‘em apart?”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“No, really. It’s an example, but how?”

“One’s an apple, and the other is a tomato. You can tell.”

Kay nodded. “Yeah. And they’re both red and round, both fruit. From twenty feet, many people might mistake one for another, but up close— Many of us do well ‘sidewalk passing,’ and some of us even do well up close for a while. Maybe loving, dancing, sex… Some are so good—like you—they blow people’s mind. But none pass up close all the time, that I’ve ever known of. Not if you were raised one way and if you’re living the other, now.” Kay didn’t use terminology that stealth transsexuals usually don’t want to hear.

“You just think you’re better than I am? You’re not. I read you!”

“It’s not that.”

“You’re cutting me down as readable?”

“It’s not that, Faith. It’s what happens. He probably knows and doesn’t say.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Maybe it’s out of respect for your wishes, which he also knows about and doesn’t say. Then you have two people keeping secrets. Bad.”

“He doesn’t even know my wishes.”

Kay’s look was knowing.

“Or maybe he doesn’t want to admit he knows, which is worse. What about if denial is forced out by a later circumstance? Big backlash. And if that happened, he’d make it loud and clear everyone knew you’d duped him, and exactly what you’d duped him about.”

“Then he’d tell everyone? Blab it all over?”

Kay nodded. “Likely. Best way to avoid that, is to handle it privately. Prep him. Warm him up to it, and then be clear. And document it in writing—”

“I know all his friends! I’d tell them all he knew the whole time! ‘Of course he knew. We’ve been married for six years’! Or however long.”

Kay nodded. “But that’s after he blabbed your business all. You don’t even want your closest people in life to know? What about someone trying to make you look bad to an enemy? How would you feel about that? Best way to inoculate against that is to get it in writing first. Then if he ever decides to break up? He may use some other reason, saving you. And I’m not a lawyer—check with one or few to make sure—but if he wanted a divorce, later, and if he could play the fraud card with you, you’d have cheated yourself out of your wifely rights. We’re minorities— Life is hard enough, without making it harder.”

“I make him very happy! He won’t divorce me! I satisfy him every day. I cook, I clean, I have sex—”

“Sometimes a man just falls in love with someone else. Or what if he, indeed, does know, and gets tired of playing the game? Or it turns out he’s gay, or feels the call to the priesthood?”

Faith stayed with it longer than Kay would have expected. She really did need to talk.

“I could move away! Change my name!”

Kay shook her head. “That used to work in the good ole days before social media. Now? It’d be much harder. In the interim, many may know, and you’d always be that good story, waiting to be dug up.”

Faith’s shoulders slumped. “Is life easy for you?”

“No.”

Faith had stood there, still on the dock, so Kay invited her to sit on her boat while they talked.

“You think he might really know?” Faith asked.

Kay shook her head no. “I’m guessing, now. How could I really know? I don’t know you. But likely— I’m willing to bet that it’s not a question of does he know or not. It’s probably a question of is he okay with it, or is he keeping his knowledge a secret from you because he senses you’d nearly die or leave or something and he loves you, or does he really know but he’s in denial about it, doesn’t want to admit it to himself. I think it may be one of those. Then how would you handle it?”

“Thank you!” Faith said, getting up. “Thank you for your email, and I’ll be in touch—”

Faith jumped off the boat and disappeared down the dock.

Kay never saw her, physically, again.

Over a few years, Kay had gotten to know Faith a little through emails, though it was sketchy because Faith never shared any details of her life, only general ideas. Out of curiosity, Kay also learned that Faith’s internet address, her I.P., in her emails varied enormously. She was using public Wi-Fi hotspots off a laptop and a separate email address for Kay. She evidently wanted protection against disclosure.

So now, over three emails, Faith was distressed over Kay’s outing and subsequent T.V. appearances. It seemed to Faith that Kay had betrayed both herself and Wayne’s memory, and she worried that Kay may try to out her as well.

What are you doing? You’re all over T.V. with this! ??? How could you? Did Wayne ever approve? Would he have?

Please don’t include me in any of it! Please?

What are you doing?

Please tell me what you’re doing.

Kay typed in her response on her phone, trying to be clear without using certain terms that Faith hadn’t wanted even Google to have. Kay wouldn’t have wanted them, either, in the past, and even with her outing, she was still very uncomfortable with them.

Hi Faith,

It’s always nice to hear from u, but it scares me as well, as I’ve shared before.

No. I’m not sharing any other info. I don’t even know you, remember? Just me, and only because of that youngster. U know.

And u should be glad how I responded. I had to stand up 4 myself and share the truth about the differences ---they’re so obvious, yet people miss the differences if no one says anything. It nearly killed me, it made me so sick

Please relax. I am not going into anything else. In fact, I hope 2 slip away, some, as it were. As much as I can. Not as much as before, because I cant but nearly so.

But please let me share, still and always, that I don’t want that to happen to you --- I say because if something comes in an uncontrolled fashion (like mine), against your will from close to u that relates to ur marriage, then it can blow through the air waves like mine did.

please consider what I’m saying? Look at the torment I suffered?

Have you disc any of this with him?

I did not cause the crisis. I just tried to deal with it.

In d future, docs will scan us all like Star Trek and give instant results----and note: data sharing n mining are the rage.

What will u do to prevent ur own future crisis?

Kay sent the email, feeling sadness at the life Faith was following, but there was noting she could do about it.

A lifestyle of stealth, where it could be had, should be as respected as a lifestyle of being out and open. One person should be as free to be in as another person is out. It is wrong to pressure either to change.

So what am I doing when I tell her she must disclose for intimacy—and even as an inoculation against possible larger disaster later, for self-defense?

Kay thought.

I’m just trying to help. Not forcing anything on her. She is free to choose.

Transsexual life is a paradox: the need to be something you cannot be: the other sex. A person can’t choose her way out of that. It’s not a decision.

Kay picked up her phone and called Lourdes, in Missouri, for a long chat. Lourdes was ahead of her, it seemed, in her ability to accept a little bit less privacy to find a greater overall happiness.

CHAPTER

35

For the next four weeks, Kay existed, day to day. She tired not to make any plans, tried not go change her routine much, other than leaving her curtains open and going out into the yard more often.

Wookie made progress, and eventually, Kay did get the carpets changed.

Glory be.

She did go to the boat more often. The super-fast Scarab, then Sea Ray, of youth had given way to a medium sized Bayliner cabin cruiser several years ago—slower, but much nicer, as it had a larger stateroom for her, immensely better head and galley, settee.

Soft weather clouded the coastline and Catalina alike—perfect for a cabin cruiser such as hers. She got in the boat one day with Wookie and drove over to Avalon. Underway, mist hit the windows hard enough to drip down like rain. She switched on the wipers.

Her vision was limited, so she turned on the radar, set the G.P.S.

There was a cargo carrier—huge tanker-like ship—about six miles of the port bow, moving across her course, it’s blip a lighter spot on the dark green radar scope. As she motored, she saw it, visually, and watched it move across her bow then disappear to her right, never getting closer than two miles.

At Avalon, she rented a mooring, and a man from the Harbor Master’s office helped her get settled.

She spent her days walking the town’s streets in mist, shopping for nothing, sipping drinks in El Galleon on the water front in her favorite U-shaped booth on the north side. The management didn’t mind Wookie, as long as she held him in her chest pouch

“Oh! Kay!” Someone called.

Kay looked up to see Betty and Em, with their two husbands, walking in.

Shit!

“Kay! What a surprise to see you?” Em said. “May we share your booth?”

“What a lovely puppy! How old is she?”

“He,” Kay said. “Three months.”

They had to gawk over him, pet him.

“Maybe Kay wants to be alone, here,” Em’s husband, Mel, said.

Betty stood by, waiting for an answer.

“We can take another table,” Jerry said, Betty’s husband.

“You’re all over here on your boat?” Kay asked Betty. It was a large Hatteras cabin cruiser.

“Yes.” Betty was usually rather quiet.

“It’s good weather, for cabin cruisers. Have a seat.” Kay indicated her booth.

Niceties were observed.

Meals were ordered.

Betty seemed to be waiting for things to slow down before she’d speak. “Kay. I’ve been thinking about our talk. At your house. When everything hit.”

Kay waited, didn’t offer anything to help.

“You didn’t have much to give me. Maybe you will, now.”

“Why bring it up. It’s old news, now.”

“Because maybe I understand a little more than I did then.”

“I think we all do,” Em said with a smile to Kay. “Not that we didn’t before, either.”

“I know,” Kay said. “The way some of you treated me. Made me sick.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Em said.

“You accusing my wife of something?” Mel asked.

“Maybe some shit went down, Mel,” Jerry said. “Stranger things have happened. Lets listen, if she’ll tell us.”

Betty looked thoughtful. “Things you said when you left, didn’t make sense.”

Em smiled unpleasantly at Kay.

“Betty, things in my life— People like me habitually can’t tell people what the real reasons are for leaving without highlighting the reason for oppressive things that go on—hatefulness, rudeness that occurs behind the scenes or in deniable ways—without highlighting very thing I live to keep private.”

Betty seemed contemplative.

“See?” Em said to Mel.

“Emma! Shut up,” Betty said.

Em started to object. “Mel—”

“Shut up, Em,” Mel said.

Jerry sat back in the booth, deferring to Betty.

Betty gathered her thoughts. “So all this time, all these years— You were the odd one out, the member of the Club who never got close—or, no. You’d get close. You’re talented in a lot of ways, and I thought you liked us. But then you’d withdraw for some reason. Pull away.

“Some of us obviously knew what was going on, but wouldn’t say.” Betty glanced at Em. “But others of us, including me, didn’t know. And when any of us would ask, you wouldn’t say the truth, and you’d give us some cooked-up reason for why you had to leave?”

“Almost nobody puts that together, even when I spell it out for them, Betty. Yes.”

Maybe she’s not so bad.

“So you seemed crazy to us, but instead, you’re a strong person dealing with something extraordinary.”

Kay looked sad.

“How long has that been going on?” Betty asked.

“All her life,” Em said.

“Shut up, Em!” Mel said sternly.

Em slumped in the booth.

“Always,” Kay said to Betty, Jerry, and Mel.

“I mean at the yacht club,” Betty asked.

“The whole time.”

“For, like, twenty years?”

Kay nodded.

“How could it go on that long?” Betty asked.

Kay thought back. Wayne used to console her at home. ‘Why go there?’ he’d ask. A tear fell down her left cheek and she wiped it away without distorting her face.

Kay tried to answer. “People doing it won’t say. And they know I won’t say.”

“Perfect victim,” Betty said. “So why go there so long? If it hurt.”

“Because I needed friends.”

Betty’s reaction was visceral and evident. She sipped her drink.

Neither man said anything.

Em looked like she would, but one glance from Mel, and she didn’t.

Betty sat her drink back down and responded. “To have to search among people like that for friends.”

That turned on the faucet for Kay. Her tears flowed. She tried to wipe them off her face, but it was useless. She thought about leaving, but it wasn’t an easy escape. All four of them blocked her exit from the booth.

“You believe her?” Em said.

“That and more,” Betty said. “Kay, next week is our Halloween Party, and I want you to come.”

“You’re not going to use me as a lesson for them. That highlights me, and no matter what, that makes me sick!”

“No lessons. Nothing said. But we’re learning, as a group—and it’s a good group, in spite of things like that that have happened.”

“She’s not in the Club any more,” Em said.

“That’s not her fault, it’s yours.”

Emma’s mouth flew open.

“Yours and a few others I could name.” Betty looked at Em with daggers.

“Kay, my grandmother was Hopi, for what it’s worth. I remember as a kid, and that was back in the ‘50s, how people used to dump on both her and my grandfather for it. Now things are different, and people are actually glad to have some Native American blood. But back then, people were called names, even by other tribes. Not any more. We won’t do any highlighting at the Club. You’re just good people, and that’s what we need.”

“And she has a nice boat,” Em said.

“Some people will never change in their heart.” Betty glanced at Em. “But the group will, because there are other good folks there—who didn’t know about all this. We— You couldn’t tell us about it without highlighting something you hated? But we didn’t notice it, either, because you never said anything. And that was happening while Wayne was dying, and you were left alone.”

“So you gonna go back to them and tell them all I’ve said? That’ll highlight me further.”

Betty nodded. “Yes. Because the trouble-makers need to be slapped,” she glanced at Em again, “And the good ones need to know to put it in check. But after that, no. I’ll also tell them your way is not to highlight it, and it won’t be brought up again unless you bring it up. It has to be dealt with, so it will be, and then it has to be a non-issue, so it will be. I want you to come to the party.”

“After all this recent publicity I’d walk in the door, and everyone would stop to stare at me.” Kay was obviously embarrassed.

“You will enter with us,” Jerry said. “So you won’t be alone.”

“You were friends with Wayne,” Kay said.

“I’d like to think so,” Jerry said.

Kay nodded. “Maybe I’ll try. What costume would I wear?”

“I think Maleficent would suit you,” Em said. Her motive was unclear.

“Actually a good idea,” Mel said. “Seen that latest Disney movie with Angelina Jolie? Maligned, resigned, yet strong and dignified. What do you think?”

“Uh, as much as I hate to admit it, it could work.”

CHAPTER

36

Kay walked into Disneyland through the side that had Walt’s old apartment, over the Fire Station, on Main St. She and Wayne had been up in that apartment on the “Footsteps” tour, one day, just a few years ago, and that was where Kay finally got Walt.

Wayne had always understood, of course.

Walt was a businessman. He wanted to help people resolve life or childhood issues, bring some closure, some happiness, touch that part inside that wasn’t always so happy and help it become so—yet Walt also wanted to run a business that could do it. Two very different things. How to do them both? And with remarkable, world-wide success?

The businessman in Wayne understood the businessman in Walt. He looked up to him and admired him.

Kay had stood in Walt’s small, studio apartment—white walls, red floral print, red curtains, pink-tiled bathroom, a lamp ever-shining in a window, indicating Walt is in residence—and listened to the tour guide talk about what the park meant to Walt: a safe place where families or anyone could come without fear of conflict, without other things in life that could spark an unhappy memory.

It rang with Kay, whose life had been largely full of troublesome issues that had plagued her husband and her.

Then Kay remembered the movie “Saving Mr. Banks,” and it all hit home harder for her, because in the movie, with Emma Thompson’s superb performance of a traumatized child dealing with her own form of abuse, Tom Hanks explained, as Walt Disney, what he was trying to do. In wanting to make Mrs. Travers book into the movie, “Mary Poppins,” Walt acknowledged her troubled childhood, explained some aspects of his own troubled childhood, and asked her, pleaded with her, to let him work with this story to bring closure to millions of other people, who also need to move on.

You can’t remake your past, Kay thought. But you can remake the emotions you attach to them—not as in denial, but as in getting past some of it.

That was, she felt, what Walt had done in such grand fashion, reaching out to people all over the world. That is what the park was for, and the movies.

Kay identified with P. L. “Mrs.” Travers that day, with Wayne, in that room, listening to the tour guide’s story, for she was, as well, abused as a child. Traumatized. Hurt beyond total repair—and she wasn’t just referring to the closet.

So how can anyone live after that? Especially when the nightmare keeps happening?

Answer: You just keep living.

Time allows for new insight, new changes in people and society, new ways of living, and in time, new feelings, for it’s the nature of man to need happiness and to shun pain.

Kay walked up Main St. and noticed “Elias Disney” painted on a window, high to her left, a tribute Walt left to his father from so long ago. It would remain, she knew.

The street was full. It didn’t matter what day of the week it was, Disneyland was well attended.

“Can you take our picture?” someone asked, handing Kay their six hundred dollar phone without worry. A middle-aged couple, probably there on vacation from far away.

“Sure.” Kay waited for them to retreat a few steps.

“Can you get Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in the background?”

“Sure,” Kay said.

Kay carefully framed the photo and took three of them in quick succession. She knew from experience one of them should be better.

“Thank you!” The couple took the phone and looked at the pictures. “Beautiful! You got it!”

Kay smiled at them and gave them a simple wave.

A costumed figure dressed like Goofy walked by and waved at Kay.

Kay waved back and continued to walk north toward “the hub,” as locals called it, the garden center of the park with a statue of Walt, from which sprouted Adventureland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland.

A horse drew a wagon with people in it, its hooves clomped with the beat of music from the musical “Oklahoma,” the one about the surrey with the fringe on top.

Why has no one from this park ever been rude to me? Not even me! Not even once.

Every other place in the world she’d known had, at some time or other, been disapproving, somehow dropping note of discontent to her—except Disneyland.

Walt was the reason why.

Because his message was working.

At the Castle, Kay veered right and walked the short path to Snow White’s grotto.

Kay’s heart would not hold still.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs stood over a pond to the right, and Snow White sang “I’m Wishing”:

“…I’m wishing (I’m wishing) for the one I love

to find me (to find me) today

I’m hoping (I’m hoping), and I’m dreaming of

The nice things (the nice things) he’ll say (he’ll say).”

Kay knew she’d cried too often in her life, and she did so again that morning by Wayne wishing well.

She took a penny from her jeans pocket and held it rightly between her thumb and forefinger.

Wayne! I love you! Please—where ever you are—please know I love you with all my heart. If there was any way, I’d give you my life and trade places with you. I know you’d spend this life better than I. I pray, I beg you to hear me. Thank you for everything in life. Thank you for saving me, for giving me life, for loving me when no one, not even I, could. Thank you for everything, Wayne. Everything. I love you so much.

She held up their penny to show him.

My wish is that you are happy, where ever you are, and that I can find happiness too, because I know—

“Yes!”

Whether it was an old Wayne tape in her head, her belief of what he would say, or him in spirit, she could feel him, confirming her thought as she thought it, sending her his wish for her happiness.

That’s it, she knew, that you be happy, and that I, also, be happy.

“Yes!”

I love you, Wayne. Always.

Kay kissed the penny and dropped it into the center of the well, while Snow White continued to sing.

A cast member walked by and noticed Kay’s tears.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

Kay nodded. “I used to come here with my husband.”

The cast member looked alarmed as she recognized the implication of Kay’s statement.

“Don’t worry,” Kay said. “I’ll be alright.”

The line was always long through the Temple of the Forbidden Eye but it never seemed like it. The atmosphere of rustic, 1936 archaeology was so thick, the music so lovely—like Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade”—the thirty minute walk through the ancient Bengalese temple renovation felt like part of the ride in itself. Indiana Jones couldn’t stand snakes, so, naturally, there were (fake) cobras, one bigger than the articulated car used in the jolting ride through the ruins. Sallah was a nice touch. And, as always, surviving the temple’s dangers with Indiana Jones was impressive.

Next up: Star Tours—taking a shuttle that R2-D2 highjacks, along with a complaining C-3PO, to smuggle a rebel spy (one of the passengers) through Empire-controlled space.

Then Mark Twain’s river boat on the Rivers of America…

CHAPTER

37

Kay drove onto M.C.A.S. Miramar with a sense of detachment. When she’d left, last month, in crisis, she never thought she would never see it again. Anderson Avenue—

She knew her mind was in a fog.

Focus: Every day is new, she told herself. The channel is new. The air is new—

She still didn’t believe herself.

She still had knots in her stomach.

But that could change, in time.

Is it possible to love something when you’re not here?

Embrace it! Memorize it!

In case—

She drove her Jag slowly to soak in every bit of pavement, the curbs, the sidewalks adjacent to the curbs and the trees beyond.

There’s the O. Club!

She stared as much as she could and still drive.

The C.B.Q.!

She turned into the parking lot for the C.B.Q., her hands shaking, and got out of the car.

This was where Major Matt caught up with me—

It seemed like so long ago. So much had happened.

It occurred to her that she had not been talking to Wayne as much lately, in her mind, and then she thought why:

I’m adjusting.

Sadness gripped her heart, and she purposefully hugged him.

I’ll never forget you, Wayne.

“What if you move on?” Kay could almost hear Wayne’s question. “And you should move on,” she could have sworn she heard him say.

I can— No! I can’t!

“You have to.”

Please?

“Kay…” came Wayne’s gentle rebuke.

Thank you, Kay felt to him. I love you to say my name.

“I gave you everything to live.”

So now I must live?

“Yes,” she felt him say.

Will you always be there?

Kay listened, but she heard no answer.

Why? Was he gone?

Kay felt for him. No. She felt the reason he did not answer, that her mind did not answer, was because if he answered yes, he could never move on, himself, if there were any way he still existed or if he was anywhere in the first place. And if he answered no, then it would scare her.

He was wise, she knew.

And his memory was wise, in her mind.

Thank you for the greatest gifts in the universe, she said to him: his love for her; his letting her love him; his thought patterns reflected in her mind.

Her phone vibrated to let her know a text message had come in. Rosetta said it was working out. She’d disclosed the truth of her sexuality to a young woman, with whom she was spending the day. Kay had discussed deception with her.

Kay texted back. “Good girl. Happy Thanksgiving.”

Kay thought about it and checked her contacts. Yes, there it was. She touched the icons and texted to, from years ago, whom she had met during her F.F.S. “Rey: I know it’s been a long time, but I thought I’d reach out. I wondered what you might be doing for Christmas?”

Kay took her one bag out of the passenger seat, locked the door of her Jag and walked into the back of the C.B.Q.

A response text came in from Rey. It was a question mark.

Kay texted back to Rey: “I’m sorry for my views before. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was wrong. Pressure is less, now. I was in a different place. Have you read Janet Mock?”

“I’m just staying for one night,” Kay told the corporal at the front desk of the C.B.Q. The same one as before.

Is she going to stare at me?

Kay looked, but noticed nothing.

This time, the room they gave her was in the same building as reception, the building that used to be the B.O.Q. when the base was Navy.

It stung for a second that it wasn’t her nostalgic B.E.Q. building across the small street, but then she noticed it was okay with her heart. She didn’t need to keep the other building all the time.

She dropped her bag on the table by the bed. The room was clean, and a little nicer than the other one. And it was a shorter walk to the O. Club or Denny’s, which were the only places she expected to go on this trip. One evening, one night. One breakfast. In and out.

Soak up everything.

Her life’s happinesses had been so fragile, it was her automatic response to anything beautiful.

She walked out a west door of the C.B.Q. and down the platform’s steps to the sidewalk below.

The lawns are so large, and the smell of freshly cut grass!

The O. Club was directly across the street to the west, also in a 1950s-1960s style architecture, but she felt she had to take a few minutes to enjoy her surroundings. Probably, she wondered, some of the younger Marines felt abandoned to the stark surroundings, but to Kay, they were beautiful.

She turned left and walked south on Anderson Avenue, by the golf course, toward Denny’s, a couple of blocks’ distance away. She smiled at herself.

Think of it! This is one of my favorite walks.

It’s because we shared it together, I know.

Am I sick? Have I become one of these old ladies who lives in the past? Remembering, talking about times long ago?

Young people who could think such things don’t know what they’re talking about—literally don’t see the phases of life the way an older person might, and haven’t experienced enough precious things in life to know that those things, themselves, actually are life. They make it up. They make it valuable. And they’re all anyone can hope for, before that time comes when they, themselves, pass on.

She carefully examined the Anderson side of the golf course, it’s pro shop, and the Denny’s, all part of the same complex, as if it would be the last time she’d ever see it.

You never know for sure, she felt with sadness. Life ends at some point, and everything is then in the past.

It’s beautiful—and it’s okay.

Walking here with him was what was important, the same as if it had been on the course.

She was surprised her memories of him—while it still hurt that he was gone, over two years—didn’t hurt as much as they used to.

She opened the large front door of the Denny’s and walked in.

Will people recognize me? Will they stare?

Will it matter to me if I am recognized as the transsexual—or worse, as the transgender—on T.V.?

The lady at the front counter smiled at her and took her to a table.

“Can I have a booth against the south wall?” Kay asked. “The view of the golf course is much better from over there.”

“Sure,” she said, taking Kay there.

Kay hadn’t planned on eating. She just wanted to linger.

“Can I just have some hot tea? Green?”

“Sure,” the lady said, leaving to get it.

When she got the tea, she snuggled it between her cool hands.

Do they know?

She looked at everyone inside. No one was paying her any—

No. There was one. A man in uniform, in a booth against the east wall. The hostess had walked her right by them on the way to the booth. The man glanced at Kay a few times, and then the man with him also glanced at her.

Made.

Kay held her place.

It’s going to happen. But is it bad?

Hell, yes! It’s bad! What do you think my life is about?

God, he probably thinks I’m a freak. I know I do—

“You’re not a freak.” A thought from Wayne seemed to insert itself.

You’re right; I’m not, she thought back to Wayne’s thought. (But yes I am.)

“No, you’re not.” Wayne’s thought asserted. “You’re my wife. And how can you dis that? Don’t be biased against yourself.”

Arguments flew through her mind, but she consented: that train of thought was pure Wayne. He’d said it to her, often enough. And she respected him too much to argue.

I’ll pretend, if you’ll hold my hand, Kay thought back to him. She felt his mind—baby steps—and she acknowledged the possibility.

Kay’s phone vibrated. She checked it. It was a text from Rey: “THANK U. U grossed me out on TV. But I have no plans. Will take a chance on u -- it’s a big chance.”

Kay replied with her address and asked Rey what day? Would she like to be picked up at an airport? L.A.X.?

In the Officer’s Club parking lot, a Cadillac pulled up on Kay’s left and parked. Sally and her husband, Bob, got out.

“Kay! How are you!” Sally hugged Kay ferociously. “I’m glad you came. Who says telemarketing doesn’t work?”

“She wouldn’t leave me alone,” Kay told Bob.

“Good to see you,” Bob said.

“We went to the Commissary while you were getting here,” Sally said. “Picked up a few things for later, some dry goods for later—I have to cook for Christmas, you know, like maybe some canned ham, some canned pie, canned potato salad—and look what we have here: a bottle of Champagne!”

“Good to see you two, also.”

“Can’t get a word in edgewise, all day,” Bob said.

Kay’s smile grew. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“I think she’s happy,” Bob said.

“We are gong to have some of this!” Sally said, taking each of them, Kay and Bob, arm-in-arm—keeping a firm grasp on the bubbly—and walking them inside the Club.

Where’s the reverence for this marvelous place?

We’re just walking in!

Sally looked around. The place was crowded. “Where are they?”

The club was busy. There were a lot of people celebrating Thanksgiving there.

“I bet out back—” Bob tried.

“Probably out back,” Sally but in.

Kay laughed with Bob at her.

“That’s my Sal— A freight train with breasts,” Bob said, then leaning over to Kay’s ear. “When I think of all the places we could have made babies, if God wasn’t so picky about where you put it.”

“Bob!” Sally slapped him on the arm in mock dismay. “He’s making that up!”

“Sure.” Kay smiled. No, she hadn’t been able to have children. Though she craved it for years, she finally accepted that it was a real part of other people’s life.

“Speaking of kids!” Sally said to Kay. “Norman couldn’t come today. It’s his first Thanksgiving with his new wife, and he went with her.”

“Please tell him I’ll be glad to see him next time.” Kay never felt a connection with their kids—or with most people—but it seemed important to them for her to indicate a friendly nature.

They were still standing in the foyer under very large model depictions of Navy and Marine aircraft suspended form the ceiling.

Sally cut over Bob again. “We got to get some glasses!” Sally took off, squeezed through groups of people toward the bar.

“Come on,” Bob said. “She knows where we’re going. I bet.”

“Weather’s nice, so I’m guessing the patio?”

“Where they didn’t film ‘Top Gun,’ right?”

“God! I am so embarrassed!”

“You won’t be if you hang around long enough. Once I told Oscar off but good—blasted him with every inch of my life! That was at China Lake, but it was a long time ago. You knew him since he was a lieutenant?”

“Yes.”

“Who’d a’ thought he’d make General! I thought I was so screwed! And now I have to call him Sir, at least some of the time. When some people are looking— ‘General pain in the ass,’ I think is more to it.”

“You’re retired, now, so you don’t have to,” Kay told him.

“Yeah, but— Nah! I gotta. The little prick deserves it.”

Kay could tell Bob was teasing Oscar en absentia.

Bob started guiding her left through people in the bar area, when Kay begged off.

“I’ll go out there and join you in a bit,” she said.

The look on his face was a question.

“Ladies’ room.”

“Oh,” he smiled. “Okay.”

Kay went back through the foyer, north about ten feet to the ladies’ room and entered, nearly bumping into—

“Kay!”

Kay didn’t quite make her. From the silver oak leaf on her collar, Kay could see she was a Lt. Colonel, and her name plate said ‘Donlon.’

“Jennie Donlon!” Jennie said. “We met last time you were here.”

“At the table?” Kay was getting there.

“Yes! Hi. How are you?”

Someone else entered the ladies’ room and proceeded to a stall.

Is Jennie going to embarrass me?

“Uh, I’m fine.”

She’s— How did she rate sitting with Oscar?

Jennie spoke quietly. “Really? That T.V. biz could shake anyone up.”

Diversion.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Yes. Here on base. And look!” Jennie held up her left hand to show Kay. There was a ring on it, silver, with a small diamond atop it.

“You and Oscar?” Kay asked.

“No! Me and Tom?”

“You’re with Tom? The chaplain? I didn’t know. You’re engaged?”

Jennie nodded at Kay with enthusiasm. “The whole love affair took me by surprise. He’s a chaplain, and I’m so—liberal, shall we say. But he swept me off my feet!”

“Well, congratulations! I’m happy for you!”

Jennie was about to bust.

“It’s such a surprise. He just did it last week.”

“When’s the marriage?”

“Marriage!” Jennie said in mock shock. “I have to marry him?”

“Yes, the ceremony!”

“We’re both getting leave next month. We’ll marry here, then go to the Caribbean. You want to come?”

“I’ll bring my bathing suit.”

“Smart ass!” Jennie laughed. “I mean to the wedding!”

“Sure,” Kay said. “I’d love to.”

They swapped contact information.

“You going to bring anyone?” Jennie asked.

Kay shook her head slowly side to side.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Your husband. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Life goes on, Jennie. Don’t worry about it. But, no, I don’t have anyone. I’ve become a nun.”

Jenny’s face went straight. “Nun?”

Kay nodded and spelled it out for her. “N.O.N.E.”

“That’ll change in time. For now, I’m going back to him. Our table is out back, about the middle.”

“Okay.”

“The table is loaded with food. We’re about ready to dig in. So hurry up in here, okay? I’m starved.”

On the way out to the patio, Kay peeked into the “Ballroom,” opposite the bathrooms, to see if there was a flight simulator in there, but it had been removed. That was obviously for the air show.

Pity. I enjoyed it.

While Kay was squeezing through the crowd, an entire group of flyers recognized her.

“Hey! You’re—”

Oh my God!

Run!

No! I have to be here!

“What?” Kay asked them.

Too much challenge in that.

One of them said, “That lady from T.V.”

In an uncharacteristically bold move, Kay stayed with the man, a Marine captain with wings on his uniform. “Yes. What was your impression of it?”

“Uh—”

A friend of his, beside him, with gold Lieutenant’s bars on it, butted in. “Forgive him. He was abused as a child, and his manners never properly developed.”

“It’s true,” another captain said. “He was raised by baboons on the Serengeti.”

“Tigers!”

“No, it’s not true. He wasn’t raised! They opened a dinosaur egg, and there he was!”

They’re about two-and-a-half sheets to the wind.

Kay knew that, normally, she’d leave these men, and then feel badly that she’d left, criticizing herself for it, re-working it in her mind, figuring out what else she could do.

But really, what would they do to hurt me? The recognition is already made.

It is I, who would hurt me.

Leaving would give them a bad impression. Staying, though it hurts, wouldn’t hurt as much as giving them a bad impression and then questioning myself.

By strength of will, she forced herself to stay and talk with them.

“You guys fly planes?” Kay asked them. “What kind?”

“Helicopters,” they all seemed to say. “You know: they go up, they go around, they go down—”

They were drunk.

“So you know why helicopters always fly so low to the ground?” Kay asked.

They shook their heads no, as if they didn’t.

“You don’t fly them, or you don’t know?”

They looked at each other for an answer.

General Oscar Harkness walked up to stand beside her.

The younger officers didn’t notice for a second, then they acknowledged him. “Good afternoon, General.”

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Oscar said, turning to Kay. “So why?”

Kay told them. “Because helicopter pilots are afraid of heights!”

Oscar smiled at her.

The young pilots didn’t laugh, Kay guessed, because they didn’t get it.

Kay turned away from the men toward the patio and ‘whispered’—spoke out loud but just loud enough to be heard—to Oscar. “I think they’re a little tipsy.”

Oscar smiled, nodding. “Let me show you to our table. You going to sit with us? Tom and Jennie have some news.”

“I heard! I saw Jennie in the ladies’ room.”

Oscar snapped his fingers. “There goes the dinner discussion.” Pause. “Let me ask you a question.”

What!?

“Okay.”

“You knew my wife, Valerie.”

“Yes. Ever since you were a major, maybe twenty years ago. And I’m sorry she passed.”

“Almost four years, now,” he said.

Kay nodded. “She was always nice.”

“She was nice to everyone. Some people are just that way.”

“And I’m sorry for your loss, too,” Oscar said.

“Thank you.”

“But my question is, after Wayne passed, did other men start asking you out? Even when you were nowhere near interested? To the point where it felt intrusive?”

Not him, too!

“Yes, actually.” Three from the yacht club—two of the assholes were even married—and two from the marina. It was the only place she visited, after he passed. “It was disgusting.”

Oscar nodded in agreement.

Kay asked hi, “Women did that to you?”

“Not outright. Well, one did. But mostly, they just let you know indirectly.”

She could see he hadn’t liked it.

“I loved Val, and I’m sure I always will. She was special. You know.”

“Hey, I get it!” one of the captains said to Kay over her shoulder. “That’s like the ‘nose bleeds’ joke!”

“You gentlemen mind if I spirit her away?” Oscar asked.

“No problem, General.”

The men were jovial, and Oscar smiled at them. They needed to let off a little steam now and then.

Oscar extended his hand to show Kay the way, and Kay led them out of the bar onto the patio to what was obviously their table. Sally and Bob were talking about something funny. Sally was showing them with large arm gestures. Matt was by himself again to their left, and Tom and Jennie were to their left.

“There they are!” Sally said. “I’ve been waiting hours—”

“Days!” Matt said.

“Ten minutes!” Bob said.

“—Because we need a toast, and I’ve got the stuff!” Sally was enjoying herself.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Kay said to all of them.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” they said back to her.

“Hi, Matt,” Kay said to Major Matt.

Should I be embarrassed in front of him?

“Good to have you. Happy Thanksgiving,” he said to her.

“You, too.”

“Have a seat right here,” Bob said, indicating the seat to his right. “This is the table with all the good food.”

“Oh, yeah,” the colonel said.

Kay sat in her assigned chair and read his nameplate across the table. But he was sitting beside Jennie, so, “Tom.”

Jennie smiled beside him.

Oscar sat in the only remaining seat, between Kay and Jennie.

Kay offered, “Nice to meet you.”

“Again. You were a little busy last time. I’m surprised you remembered me.”

“Jennie spilled the beans in the head, and that did it,” Kay admitted.

“Who wants to open this!” Sally asked, holding up her precious champagne. It was more of a demand than a question.

“General?” Major Matt asked.

“Oh, not me. ‘bout shot my nose off with one of those one time.”

There was a little chuckling.

“I’ll do it,” Matt said. “I’m brave.”

Sally handed it to him.

“With expertise, gained from my one-time former experience opening one of these when I got my commission, a hundred years ago …” Matt sat the bottle on the table in front of himself, kept the bottle pointed skyward, and twisted the wire off the top while pressing down on the cork with the heel of his other hand. “The trick here, is—” He looked at Tom. “I forgot the trick.”

He acted like he wasn’t sure what to do with the thing, all the while doing it safely.

People jumped in with cracks and advice.

“Give it to Jennie!”

“This is a man’s job! It takes skill and daring!”

“What it takes, is finesse!” Kay said. “And brains.”

“Then I better do it,” Jennie said.

Sally all but yelled to the dawdling Matt. “Gimme that bottle before I lose my patience!”

“Oh, yeah! I remember, now! It’s coming back! The trick to this whole thing,” Matt said, keeping the palm of his hand pressing down on the cork, “is to keep pressure on it, here, while you undo everything—”

“Sounds like sex—or like it ought to!” Sally said.

A few of them laughed at her.

“You two! This is a public setting!” Bob teased.

“And when you’re ready,” Matt said, “slowly release the pressure with your hand on the cork.”

He did so, and nothing happened.

The teasing was playful.

“You got us a flat bottle, Sal,” Bob said in mock harshness.

“I don’t know if I can drink flat champagne,” Matt said. “But wait!” Matt acted like he was listening to the bottle. “No! I think— Yes. Maybe!” He gripped the cork with his hand, holding it firmly, twisted the cork slightly, and in a hushed rush of air—FOOP—the cork blew into his hand, “It’s a sleeper bottle! Been staged so long, it forgot to wake up!”

Tom reassured him. “Skilled, just like you said. A master.”

“Does he get a merit badge for that?” Kay asked Oscar.

Oscar’s smile to Matt was pretend-derisive. “I’ll ask the Navy if they have one.”

“And I would accept it! Everyone: It’s wise to be kind to the person pouring!” Matt stood to pour into each person’s outstretched cup.

“Looks lovely,” Kay said.

“It’s always best not to let the cork shoot out like a missile. It’s okay if Navy are in the way—”

“Watch it,” Bob said.

Matt Continued. “Takes the fire out of it. But do it slow, and it keeps the bubbles in there.”

Kay looked around the patio area, a hoard of military personnel and civilian friends, walking around, getting food and drinks, shaking hands with people, smiling, laughing, telling jokes, and sitting at round tables under hexagonal shade umbrellas.

Wayne? This was where we first—

This was our first time together, thirty-three years ago.

Kay looked toward the grass beside the pool area, then to the east, as if through the bar, to what was then the B.E.Q.

Could it have been so long ago? Could so much of life have passed? They’d fallen in love and married, been together so long, yet not long enough.

As a child, of the age of ten— How could that child have possibly known where life would go? She’d been scared and abused. She was lonely, completely misunderstood. She had an issue, a need, that people didn’t understand, that most still do not understand. And she had to summon such strength to gain as much of herself as possible.

All those steps, taken in the dark.

She had clarity of moment. She had hindsight. But she only had guesses about what the future held.

Yet all those steps brought her through this life.

Thank you, God, for Wayne. She felt it with her whole heart.

Thank you, Wayne, for loving me.

Thank you Rev. John.

Thank you Joanna, and Christine for your words of wisdom—and you, too, Canary, where ever you are.

Thank you surgeons.

Thank you nurses.

Thank you everyone who was ever kind to me.

And thank you, God, for these people here.

When Sally got her drink, she raised it to her lips, but Bob put his hand on her forearm to wait as second. “We need a toast.”

“True,” Oscar said.

“You’re the general,” Bob said with a touch of something in it.

Teasing back?

Oscar held up his hand. “Who delegates.”

“No you don’t!” The table seemed to agree.

“We need majestic words of wisdom,” Jennie told him.

Friends who don’t snub you, who actually invite you over. Friends who don’t highlight embarrassments, who treat you like an ordinary person.

Oscar nodded. “Oprah? Where are you?”

“Kathy Bates?” Sally asked.

“Or we could get Kay to do it,” Oscar said.

“No, no,” Kay said. “This is your table.”

Oscar raised one eyebrow like Stephen Colbert, then took on a more serious note. “Okay, but this is with only one minute’s warning.”

“Okay!”

Oscar raised his glass as if it were official. “Bottom’s up!”

“Oscar!” Bob asserted.

Tom jumped on that. “We need a real one. It’s Thanksgiving.”

Yes— Kay could sense Wayne’s positive feeling, helping her. His thought wrapped around her like a warm embrace.

Oscar pretended he was defeated and stood before the table, looking at everyone on the patio, holding his glass out in front of him. “I’d like to propose a toast to everyone, if I may.”

The crowd hushed, and people picked up their glasses.

“I’d like to thank everyone for being here this lovely Thanksgiving Day. We can be thankful we’re here, that we have friends, and that we live in such a wonderful country. I know all these things take work. But it’s through the struggle that the best solution is usually found, to handle any situation. Surely all of wish there were someone else here with us, or that a circumstance was better,” he said, nodding, “but even with things in life that hurt, even with things we lack that can never be fulfilled, I want to assure you all—that we are living through, right now, what we will see later in life as good times. These are some of the good times. May God’s blessings and good cheer help you all through the holiday season, and through life. Happy Thanksgiving, to one and all.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aimee Norin advocates for transsexual and transgender people by writing about experiences in an effort to entertain and illustrate aspects of phenomena which are rarely shared. Ideologies are usually in dispute, so in her books, characters experience lives and share views which are all different. Sometimes a character will even argue vehemently for something she later realizes is wrong or that she grows through. Usually, there are multiple views given within each novel, and some novels as a whole present views quite different from other Aimee Norin novels. As well, her characters are normal in their humanity in that they also have issues in life with which they struggle while they search for love and happiness.

Trans lifestyles are not yet commonly accepted in most societies, and trans persons are usually heavily schachtered on an ongoing basis (Stanley Schachter, Ph.D., on how people who are different are treated), with daily diminutions, or “daily dimunitions,” as they are sometimes felt. Prejudices and oppressions, soft and loud, misleading and painful, can exist for a transgender throughout life in more ways that can be known or counted—not just in larger, social exclusions but also in assumptions closer people make that also keep transpeople on the fringe. A person living in these lifestyles may have to deal with all that on a daily basis—while at the same time needing to wear a smile, interacting with those same, oppressive people at work, in public, or at home, in such a way as to downplay internal fear and pain: smiling while hurting.

Saying things are fine when they’re not.

Aimee’s experience is that most people do not really understand transgenders and tend to keep them at arm’s length. People have opinions, and they may believe they understand—because they’ve treated patients, or known some transgenders elsewhere, or had one in the family. But those contacts are superficial and rare compared to a mutually interactive, decades-long, daily involvement, through every situation good and bad, or even actually being a trans in self.

Aimee believes if most people got to know trans persons more closely—if they gained enough trust to be admitted to inner thoughts and private experiences, if they were to show the courage to ask insightful questions, if they were open to new ideas as they emerged—a different, more human, and more genuine reality could well emerge with reasons revealed for things that, before, had previously seemed eccentric or even spurious. Instead of appearing to be someone who is unduly concerned about social rejections or prospects, real reasons may be revealed that indicate the trans person is dealing with issues of which others are unaware—yet who, still and at the same time, needs to function as the helpful co-worker, the friendly neighbor, the loving husband, the devoted wife, the inspiring parent, the loyal friend.

Being trans takes more courage and inner strength than most people begin to conceive.

As such, a greater effort is needed to peer into the heart of involved peole—to see what is really there, what is really being dealt with, much of which is likely not shared—and to convey a greater and more sincere compassion than previously considered.

NOVELS BY AIMEE NORIN

Sliders: The Dark Side of Transgender

How a person’s issues evolve over 36 years in transition.

Falling in Love

A trans woman and trans man falling in love.

Hate Crimes

A young, biracial Trans woman discovers her biological father, falls in love,

becomes a singing star, while dealing with heinous crimes.

Out of the Closet

Five very different people (some trans; some not) become friends, participate in San

Francisco’s Pride festivities, and take their lessons learned back to a small town in

Arizona, where they overcome oppressions.

Stealth: The Dark Side of Transsexual

A stealth transsexual transitions early in life and marries a man, only to be

severely treated by people in her life who don’t want her there. She becomes

fearful, demeans herself and others, only to learn over time

how to cope.

CONTACT AIMEE NORIN

aimeenorin@gmail.com

http://aimeenorin.wordpress.com/

Because I have been offering these novels for free, I must schedule most of my time for other occupations, and hence, I cannot manage most correspondence as often as I’d prefer. As a consequence, I may find it best to respond to most concerns in the aggregate on my web log, or Facebook, or Twitter, and then, perhaps, intermittently. Sometimes I do return emails directly, though. Please do write, though, as I do read them. Your comments and feedback are most appreciated and valued.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37