Emily sat in her wheelchair and clapped along with the beat of the music.
“Lovely!” Regina said to Oceanna’s mother.
Emily looked up.
Oceanna motioned to Sarah, in effect, “Can she stand again?”
Sarah nodded, and she and the rec therapist helped Emily stand once again.
Oceanna hugged her mother as always.
Mason and Derie joined them, everyone embraced them.
Connie left her cameraman behind and jumped in with them.
Her cameraman called after her, but he couldn’t be heard. He found a picnic table and stood on top of it, taking in the entire scene.
Sheila saw Paula.
“Whaaaaaaaat are you dooooooooo-ing?” Sheila yelled.
Regina saw Pala and took her by the hand to join them.
Sheila took Paula by the other hand and led her in.
Mason reached over to shake Sheila’s hand but got a hug, instead.
“You! There’s no going back for you, is there?” Mason yelled to Sheila.
Sheila kissed him on the cheek.
Mason laughed. “You going to live here in Kingman?”
“I don’t know!” Sheila’s eyes teared.
Paula kissed Sheila again on the neck, and the two forgot to dance.
Journey played their hearts out on stage.
Arnel sang his love to a grateful audience.
“… I still love you, girl
I really love you, girl
And if he ever hurts you
True love won’t desert you
Nooooooooooo
Nooooooooooo …”
Gary stood to the side of the stage and spoke into his radio.
The fireworks built immediately into a climactic flurry.
“That guy is good,” Gary said to himself. He smiled in satisfaction and turned toward the stairs that lead down from the stage—bumping his wife, Irena, who was coming up.
He smiled.
They looked at Journey playing so hard.
Mason saw Gary and Irena from the audience and reached out to hold Derie’s and Jason’s hand, turning together to look at the scene around them: a warm, summer’s evening, sparkling trees, fireworks popping in the background, with conservatives and liberals dancing arm in arm, each accepting that the other is, while continuing to be him- or herself self at the same time, sharing life together.
EPILOGUE
The whole family walked into Nordstrom. Kathleen started picking dresses off a rack.
Simi wrinkled her nose. “I don’t wear things like that!”
“What about Christmas?” her mother said.
Larry, Simi’s taller-but-little, 20-year-old, evil brother home from college, began to laugh through his teeth and chanted like a kid, “Simi’s gonna get girl clothes!”
“Larry!” Fulton admonished, obviously trying to stifle his own chuckle.
Harry smiled but hit both of them in the stomach with the back of her hands.
Simi looked embarrassed.
Larry bent over in laughter and pointed at her.
“Mom! Tell him to stop!” Simi demanded.
Kathleen turned on them. “You three get out of here. Go watch sports down at Hooters or something!”
They didn’t move.
“Go on! Scoot! Shoo! Get out of here!”
“Okay! Okay!”
The three turned and filed out.
Kathleen turned back to her work. “Grown up or not, you’re still my daughter, and you need something nice to wear!”
“Dude, I’m gay!” Simi said in protest.
Kathleen pulled another dress off a rack. “Take this!” She shoved a dress in Simi’s arms and pushed her toward the dressing rooms.
Simi tried it on. “This is horrible!”
Kathleen opened the door to Simi’s dressing room and looked. “Right.”
“So why’d you give it to me?”
“Because I’m not a dude!”
Simi pulled the dress over her head and threw it at her mother.
Back at the racks, Kathleen pointed out. “See this?” She held up a dress. “You don’t want this material. This slinky fabric won’t work for you. You have— Your figure is not—”
“I know,” Simi said.
“Your abdomen is a little larger than it should be—” At Simi’s expression, Kathleen corrected: “You’re skinny! But it’s still larger than one would expect for a model.”
“I drive a Harley!”
Kathleen called out to a passing sales lady. “Miss! You have a corset?”
In the dressing room, Simi tied the corset around her middle.
Kathleen opened the dressing room door enough to shove in another dress.
Simi took it with a face. “Sleeveless?”
“Your arms are fine,” Kathleen said, “But you need some hips. This one’s got a stiffer fabric, and it’s pleated at the waist.”
Simi tried it on.
Kathleen opened the door and stopped to look. “Better,” she said with a smile. She zipped Simi’s dress up the back and handed Simi a slip and some pantyhose. “Thank God you shaved your legs.”
“You’re kidding!” Simi complained.
“On!” Kathleen ordered. “And panties off!”
“Why?”
“You don’t need both!”
Kathleen led Simi through Nordstrom’s to the shoe department.
“No heels!” Simi asserted.
“You’re short enough, and they shape the back of your calf!” Kathleen said. “Men like it—”
Simi leaned in to her mother’s ear and spoke accusingly: “Who cares!”
“Sex isn’t everything!”
“I can feel these pantyhose crawl over my skin every time I move!”
Kathleen turned to a sales lady. “Flats. Neutral. Chanel-esque.”
Shoes on, Kathleen studied Simi. “Hair.”
“Keep it simple, will you?” Simi told the stylist.
Hair done, Kathleen studied Simi some more. “Makeup!”
Simi was about at her limit.
“Sit there like a lady and put up with it!”
Simi sat on the stool by the cosmetics counter. Her dress draped the sides of her legs.
“Cross your legs,” Kathleen said.
“Hard to do on this stool!”
Kathleen leaned in close to Simi and spoke firmly. “Then cross your ankles, but keep your knees together! Even if you weren’t in a dress—”
“They don’t naturally fall that way—”
“A lady keeps her knees together!”
A cosmeticist walked up to the counter with a smile. “Can I help you?”
“Chanel, please.”
Simi rolled her eyes.
“Foundation, eyeliner, shadow, mascara, rouge, lip liner, lipstick—the works—but light. The ‘no-makeup’ look. Oh, and, uh: Don’t paint lips on her as if she didn’t have any. Use her existing lips. Just do them. And set the ones we like aside. We want them.”
“Mom! I’ll look like a clown,” Simi complained.
The cosmeticist looked at Kathleen knowingly.
“Kids!” Kathleen said.
Kathleen stood a little to the side and watched a calm, serene Simi walk into Hooters.
Heads turned at the door, then the register, then the tables.
Men and women alike stopped what they were doing to see. Television monitors blared, but no one watched them.
The upper half of Simi’s hair was pulled back behind her ears and held by an elegant clip over the lower half that was allowed to drape the nape of her neck in a turn over the dropped rear collar of her dress. Her dress was a light blue almost-print, sleeveless, zippered up the back, with a matching belt, pleated at her narrow waist. It hung just below her knees, allowing her fine calves to show over neutral flats that matched the delicate bag over her left shoulder. Her face was done equally well: soft and elegant, a refined look of natural grace.
Emba
rrassed but stately, Simi slowly approached the table where her lover, Harry, and her father and little brother were watching sports on a T.V. monitor.
Simi looked to her mother, then to herself, then to her family at the table. She could not believe how beautiful she felt—
* * *
BANG!
The window exploded through the cockpit of the chopper.
Blood splattered across the panel to the windows on the other side.
The co-pilot screamed—
People were yelling, fighting—
The chopper crashed into buildings below—
* * *
Simi’s head moved slightly aside as she fought her memory.
Her eyes teared.
She looked at her mother with a worried face.
Kathleen touched Simi’s hand.
Her little brother happened to notice first.
His jaw dropped. “Wha—?”
Harry and Fulton turned to see. Their reaction was the same.
No one said anything.
Simi fought her tears.
* * *
Starve me! Beat me!
Tied at the wrists, suspended above the floor, tears dripped from her onto the pool of blood, urine, and feces beneath her.
You can do nothing to me that God hasn’t already done worse, she knew. Nobody knew. Nobody would care if they did how painful her life had been for so long—how cringingly painful her every moment of life had been as a male, how torturous it had always felt that she wasn’t, that she couldn’t be female. You have no idea! No idea! You can’t hurt me!
God! Let me die!
The little boy cried throwing his brand new Christmas truck into the trash.
“No, Mommy!” He fought through daemons to reach his mother and grabbed her skirt, begging her to understand. “Mooooomy!”
As an adolescent, he looked in the bathroom mirror in horror at the changes in his body.
He ran with his platoon—
* * *
“Simi,” Harry said softly, slowly moving to stand near her.
Fulton and Larry scrambled to their feet, following Harry’s example.
Other tables watched in silence.
Kathleen didn’t move.
After a time, Fulton put his napkin down on the table and made his way around to Simi, standing before her.
He reached out with both his hands to touch hers.
Simi’s eyes teared, but she didn’t let them fall. She struggled to bring a gentle smile to her face and looked into his eyes.
Her father reached up with his right hand and brushed her left cheek, back to her ear.
A small tear crept below her right eye.
Fulton slowly brushed the tear away from Simi’s right cheek. He looked at her, at their family, then back to Simi—more deeply into her eyes than before.
Slowly, Fulton hugged his daughter in a full embrace—the length of his arms wrapped snugly around her back—kissing the side of her head. He held her still: no rubs, no pats. He just held her.
Kathleen’s eyes began to tear.
Fulton kissed the side of his daughter’s ear and spoke to her in a simple statement that said it all. “Simi, this is you.”
Simi’s tears began to flow more readily.
Kathleen took a napkin off a table and dabbed Simi’s face. “Don’t let those tears get on your dress. They’ll stain.”
Simi laughed briefly, which broke the tension.
Fulton turned to the family. “Everyone—”
Harry hugged Simi—indelicately. Simi hugged her back and gave her a light kiss on the lips.
Kathleen jumped. “Don’t smudge your lipstick—!”
“I know, Mom,” Simi said back to her.
Harry moved over to admit Larry.
“I’m sorry,” her brother said to her. He hugged her. “She’s wearing a bra!”
“What did you expect!” Simi shot back.
Harry turned on Larry, but Kathleen intervened with a sharp look.
Simi regained her grace.
Harry turned around and pulled out a chair for Simi.
Simi glanced at her mother and moved in gracefully to sit in the chair, knees together, and she instinctively coordinated with Harry to move the chair closer to the table. She linked her ankles together and sat her purse in the chair beside her.
The rest of the family took their seats together at the table.
After a time, a waitress walked slowly to the table, gave them water and left menus with them. “When you’re ready.”
Harry handed Simi a napkin and sat in the chair next to her.
Simi laid the napkin on her lap.
People at surrounding tables went back to their meals.
“Thank you,” Fulton said to Simi. “For coming home.”
“Thank you so much!” Kathleen said, crying a little, laying her head briefly on Fulton’s shoulder.
Harry held Simi’s hand under the table.
“I can’t get a girl, and but she does?” Larry said in frustration. “What kind of crap is that?”
“It just happened,” Simi said.
“Not many girls at Comic-Con?” Harry asked. “Nerd.”
“No, not actually,” Larry said.
“You’ll get one,” Fulton said. “Give it time. Some women like geniuses.”
“I do,” Simi said.
“Thanks,” Harry said.
“You, too, Larry.” Simi said.
“Fat lot of good it does me if they don’t say anything.”
The server came back to take their order. She was very beautiful.
Larry spoke to her. “You like genius nerds who will get their doctorate from Stanford who are socially awkward and a little gangly but do research to save the world for too little money?”
The server took a second to group then smiled at him.
Simi could feel herself, sitting with her family.
She felt a calm she had never known, a peace. For the first time in her life, she sat fulfilled, without worry or pain, in the hope she could simply live her life—
She stopped to explore her thought.
She could feel her hair on her head and the way it fell to her neck and back. She could feel her breasts, her genitalia, her legs—all those outside things, for sure, but— She explored further. The difference was inside, where no one could see. Inside. Was it the hormones on her brain? Affecting her mind? No—yes! No! Not just that, she was sure; it was that her body was in so much closer sync with what she had always known she needed.
The young child who begged God every minute of every day: Please help me!
She looked at her soft hands.
People at the table noticed.
“She doesn’t know what to do with her hands,” her brother teased.
“Yes, she does,” Harry said, teasing the sex-starved nerd.
But it was even more than that, she knew. She looked around the table at her lover, at her family—her little brother, her mom and dad, Harry. She remembered friends she had made and how they treated her. The peace she knew, the joy she felt, wasn’t just from becoming more herself; it was also their acceptance—her family and friends who accepted her as the person she needed to be.
Her smile changed, slowly, subtly, from one of grace in presentation to one of true joy.
She nodded to her mother, who smiled in return, shedding another tear of happiness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aimee Norin writes about transsexual and transgender 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. 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.
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nbsp; Trans lifestyles are not yet commonly accepted in most societies, and transpersons are usually heavily schachtered on an ongoing basis, with daily diminutions, or “daily dimunitions,” as they are sometimes felt. Prejudices and oppressions, soft and loud, misleading and painful, can exist for a transperson 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 transpersons 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 transpersons 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 transpersons 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 transperson in self.
Aimee believes if most people got to know transpersons 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 a transperson appearing to be someone who is unduly concerned about social rejections or prospects, real reasons may be revealed that indicate the transperson 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 a transperson 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 transfolks—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.