FALLING IN LOVE
by Aimee Norin
Copyright 2012 by Aimee Norin. All rights reserved. Beyond the legal minimum, no part of this book may be reproduced or shared. Email Aimee Norin at
[email protected] This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarity to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All characters, things and events appearing in this work are fictitious. While the largest airshow of its kind in the U.S. has occurred annually at Oshkosh, Wisconsin for decades, representations made herein do not reflect anything in particular, or event, year, or situation. As well, any flying or information about flight, aircraft and airshows are represented solely for this fictional story and the flawed characters involved, seen as they see them, done as they do them, for the development of their character, and should not be taken as suggestion, instruction, recommendation, or as representative of the people or organizations involved.
This novel is for mature understanding. The situations and concepts covered in this novel are mature and sometimes sophisticated, yet because the characters, themselves, do not usually prefer to discuss them in objective terms, an unaware reader may not understand all that is being shared. If this novel were made into a film for television, I believe there is nothing in it that would prevent it being broadcast during prime time. It is a novel of a male-to-female transsexual and a female-to-male transgender falling in love.
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Falling in Love
By
Aimee Norin
Begin Reading
Preface
Copyright
Table of Contents
Emancipation
About the Author
Contact the Author
For Michelle:
There is more to the story.
PREFACE
Falling in Love is a novel about a difficult romance between a trans woman and a trans man, both pilots, who fall in love one summer during the United States' largest annual airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Lourdes is a Hispanic American, long term transsexual, ashamed of who she is. Desperately needing to be as female as any other, her standards are high, too high to be achieved, so she lives in anguish, hating anything that would diminish her as she sees it.
Jim, a well-adjusted, well-liked transgender man whom Lourdes meets at the air show, has had issues in his own life and doesn't need her to add to them. Where Lourdes initially blasts him hard, his gentle nature wins her over, and in the end, she succumbs to him. He becomes her savior.
This is her growth process.
Falling in Love has one of the two most beautiful endings in my novels to date. While it sizzles at times, Falling in Love is represented in such a way that, I believe, if it were made into a film, could be shown on prime-time broadcast television. Lourdes and Jim are personally unwilling to use harsh language, and while they are eventually open with each other, one can sense they are modest in how they share their intimate moments. The emphasis is on romance, not sex. It's on watching them fight through their issues to fall in love, not on anger or divisiveness.
Falling in Love is set in the world of flight. Cliquish terminology and phrasing are used, though explained, throughout. If you're a pilot of light general aviation airplanes, you will feel at home in the novel. If you're not a pilot, then you may fit right in with those who are by the time you're done reading.
Note on reading acronyms:
In the pilot world, there are a lot of acronyms. You can set your O.B.S. on your V.O.R. to check your C.D.I. to get the F.A.F? So to help someone who is not yet a pilot read the acronyms herein as a character may say them, I've taken to spelling without periods those acronyms spoken as words, and spelling with periods those acronyms spoken as individual letters. Examples: "NOTAM" is spoken as "KNOW-tam," and the "F.A.A." is spoken as letters such as "ef-ay-ay." "We're CAVU," one pilot may say to another-spoken as the word "ca-vu," with "A" as in "hat," the acronym for "Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited": good weather.
As well, some disclaimers are needed. Falling in Love is entirely fictional. All persons and events represented herein are fictional. While there is a major, annual airshow event at Oshkosh, Wisconsin-well known and public-the events of this novel are fictional and do not represent events of any particular year or anything in particular. Also, flying information or scenes are represented by flawed characters in the novel for the storyline. Nothing herein is represented as instruction or permission to engage as the characters do, nor even as necessarily correct. It's what the characters are doing for the dramatics or humor of the novel. As well, Lourdes' airplane, Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra, a white and blue 1964 Cessna 150, is fictional and is not meant to refer to any actual airplane that may be in existence. As of this writing, the F.A.A. database shows the "N-number" is not assigned.
Fly safe.
Aimee Norin
BRIEF INTRODUCTION
LOURDES HAS BEEN lied-to so many times she no longer trusts people, and she has suffered so many of her own painful choices that she no longer trusts herself, either.
Who knows her secret? Who really cares about her? Her heart is afraid to ask: Why is she living!
CHAPTER 1
"Someone like you should understand!" The bloodied woman scolded Lourdes and walked out.
It hit Lourdes like a hammer in ways the woman would never know.
Be professional! Lourdes tried to catch herself. She was an experienced E.R. nurse. The lady's daughter had just been killed in a car wreck. It didn't matter what the lady said-
No. It did matter what the lady said. Her daughter had been killed. What could be more important?
But it wasn't personal? It was the lady's reaction to her loss? She didn't mean that I- The lady couldn't know that I- Did she? It wasn't about me, was it?
Lourdes didn't believe her own guesswork. She felt light-headed, walked away from the nurse's station and tried to counsel herself. The lady meant that an E.R. nurse should know about the pain of loss. Right? A nurse sees it every day.
But was that all the lady meant?
Lourdes' eyes darted to others in the E.R., looking to see if they knew, but it was unclear. Some were looking at her; others hurried through their work.
Did they know?
Lourdes didn't know. She was getting to a place in life where it was hard to tell, she'd been hurt so many times. It had been thirty-five years, since she was seventeen. Her heart was raw from years of fears, living through decades of social evolution and deniable prejudice. There was nothing left inside. Over and over again she was hurt-her whole life-and always over the same things.
Lourdes felt herself withdrawing. She felt dizzy. She stood motionless by a doorway. The noise around her faded. She felt like ghost in a fog, unable to think or focus, unable to touch anything. Unreal.
A doctor got in her face to tell her something, but Lourdes didn't hear. He moved away.
Worried people rushed silently by.
Another nurse got in her face and told her something. Lourdes still didn't hear. The nurse seemed to repeat herself.
Lourdes' legs began moving, but they stopped by the nurse's station to wait for a mass to roll by. The back of her mind noticed it was a covered gurney, the patient clearly dead.
A man on another gurney reached out for Lourdes' hand, but her hand recoiled on its own.
Lourdes turned to walk into the current "myo" room.
A man was sitting by an unconscious patient, holding her hand. "Nurse! What's going on?" He was pleading, not demanding. He obviously loved her. "It's been over an hour. I've been waiting. Please? Will she be alright?"
Lourdes looked through the man to the patient. She was a woman in her forties, in the E.R. for a heart attack, a myocardial
infarction. Part of the heart muscle was damaged from a blocked artery in the area. She was lying on her back in a bed. Her clothing had been removed. White sheets covered her up to her chest. Leads webbed off her torso to the EKG. She was hooked up to two different IVs and had been intubated. The respirator showed she was initiating some of her own breaths, and her color wasn't too bad.
But to the man-
Lourdes filled in a scenario for herself: maybe the wife was an otherwise healthy woman, surprisingly hooked up to a dozen space-age machines-a wife who, earlier that afternoon, had been swimming in the pool with family after a back yard barbeque, a woman who, the man had always believed, would be with him into old age.
Lourdes tried to focus on her job. She knew what to say. She'd been through this a thousand times over the years. In general, she should refer the husband to the doctor. He could handle it. It was his place, not hers. But-
Resistance was too hard.
Lourdes' limbs didn't seem to move well. Her mind wouldn't function-yet curiously, to her, she was able to watch her mind not working. She could comment on it to herself, as if she were watching herself-
"Nurse! What's happening?" the man pleaded again.
Lourdes answered without looking directly at him, "I think she'll be okay," she encouraged. Lourdes felt it was not her best answer, but she couldn't muster the energy for diplomacy.
She turned to leave.
"Really?" the man said, grabbing her arm. "Because it looks bad." His eyes were pleading.
"Yes," Lourdes tried. "I've seen this before. It does look bad right now, hooked up to all that stuff. But I don't think it's as bad as it looks. These things," Lourdes said, indicating the machines, "look scary, but, really, they're helping. Don't fear them; be thankful for them. I think she'll be okay. Your job, right now, is to give her lots of love. It helps. And give the doctors a good history on her."
The man started crying in gratitude and hugged Lourdes, unexpectedly. He dug his fingers into her back. His tears soaked her hair.
Lourdes heart ached for him, but her arms did not return the hug. Her mind reached out to him with words of comfort that never left her mouth. They were spoken, but only in distant thought.
Lourdes had to get out before she collapsed. She tore loose from the man and headed out of the room.
Where was the door? She couldn't think. Tears formed in her eyes.
She felt like such a failure. She was fifty-two, a success in her career, but the rest of her life was so heavy, and it had weighed her down for so long. Her marriage had ended in disgrace for her and still hurt miserably, even if it was a hundred years ago. "Friends" were so phony to her.
And she felt she had to leave so often.
Because she couldn't stand what she was.
Because her need, inside, since forever, was to just be normal, and she couldn't be. She begged God every day of her life for peace, but it never came. This thing she had become was never her goal.
A therapist years ago told her she was undetectable, that she seemed to be as normal as anyone else-average height for a woman, a little plump, long dark hair, small hands-but Lourdes knew the therapist wasn't entirely correct, that her seeming natural way was because she had tried so hard for years to overcome her past. And she also knew that people told her things like that because they, themselves, wanted to believe it.
Unable to cope, she usually ran away from places that hurt.
And here I am, leaving again.
She watched herself walk out the E.R. door without saying a word to anyone.
This time, though, she knew, it wasn't because of the way anyone looked at her. It wasn't the lady's comment. This time she was leaving because she couldn't take life any more. It was the accumulated weight of a million things over the years that had been too heavy to carry for too long.
Her heart was as damaged as the patient in the myo room.
She believed there was only one machine that could help.
CHAPTER 2
In her small, one bedroom apartment, Lourdes watched herself throw a small overnight bag on the bed and stuff it with essentials: a few tops, two pair of pants, a few underclothes, socks, toothbrush, her Estradiol for daily H.R.T?.
She plopped her flight bag next to it on the bed and began loading it as well. She grabbed her tablet computer off the dresser and checked it. The charts in it were current. She put it in the flight bag along with other helpful things. She had charts for the whole nation in her tablet, which, she always knew, could be essential.
Her resolute mind followed her eyes over her meager belongings in the rest of the small one bedroom apartment: bed, couch, T.V., dresser- There was nothing of real value, she knew. Pictures of her life that she wanted and the few important papers she needed for daily living were already transferred to her phone and to her tablet. Any other papers? None. She didn't have any. What? A deed to a house? She didn't have one. Not since her marriage to Raul. The pink slip to her car? The car was trash, anyway. Diploma from nursing school? It was replaceable.
She wanted to leave the whole planet-leave the species forever-but failing that-
She watched herself turn and walk out of the apartment, closing the front door behind her.
Under a gray overcast of persistent low stratus clouds, Lourdes drove down concrete freeways through Los Angeles, between concrete construction barricades, past glass and steel buildings void of any warmth or sensitivity. The city was forever curbs and sidewalks and roads, traffic lights, car engines, exhaust, motorcycles racing between cars, streets filthy with grime.
Get out! She felt it more as an urge than a thought.
She depressed the accelerator and drove a little faster up the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass to the San Fernando Valley. Her car didn't make noise any more. The shocks weren't loose. The fender didn't rattle. The steering wheel bearing didn't grind. The fan didn't tink. The valves didn't tick. The clock never did tick. The air conditioner never did blow. The wind didn't rush through her open windows. The other traffic didn't make any more noise.
The hospital didn't know where she was-
She parked in front of the F.B.O. at Van Nuys airport-the Fixed Base Operator that rented tie-down space-and she looked up. The sky was getting a little lighter, especially to the north, as if the stratus may break up soon. She got out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition, the windows still rolled down, and lugged her two bags over asphalt into the F.B.O.-banging one on the steel door frame on the way in.
She dropped her bags in a chair in the pilot's lounge, went to the bathroom down the hall, and came back to the pilot's lounge to call Flight Service and check on the weather.
She stood there holding the phone.
Where was she going? she wondered. She didn't even care.
There was a large, plastic chart on the wall of the Lower 48 States, with cut-ins for Alaska and Hawaii.
So, where?
She put the phone back down, never making the call, and lugged her bags out onto the ramp.
There were several small airplanes on the ramp: a variety of Pipers and Cessnas-the Ford and Chevy of planes-with one Mooney nearer the fuel truck and an old Bonanza near the FBO.
Lourdes found "Bes" two rows to the right of where she was normally tied down, an old, oxidized, white with blue 1964 Cessna 150 that she got off one of the guys at the airport who had used it to teach his son how to fly, years ago. It had the older "straight tail" which stood more vertically, as opposed to the sleeker slant-tails of later models.
On seeing Bes, Lourdes started crying. It felt like Bes was the only person in the world who understood her. She was short enough to walk under the wing without stooping, so she walked over to Bes' left wing strut and hugged it, thanking God for Bes, praying she could always keep her, somehow, no matter how else she screwed up her life.
Tears still on her face, she opened the left side cockpit door. There was a lock on it, but it had never worked. The two interior seats-side-by-
side for two skinny people-were ripped because they were old. The plastic on top the panel and in the small cargo bay was cracked, but that was cosmetic, not an airworthiness issue. The panel was largely original, which meant old, with an asymmetric assortment of now-antique basic flight instruments including an old style turn-and-bank and directional gyro. There was one radio that worked, thankfully, one transponder. One "Johnson bar" between the seats to manually work the huge "barn door" wing flaps. That was about it. As were all 150s, Bes was "stiff-legged." The "gear," the wheels, were fixed and stayed extended in flight. They didn't retract.
Lourdes thanked God she had the plane to fly. It helped her cling to life. Taking the plane on camping trips was about the only thing that had kept her sane, she was so alone.
She put her overnight bag in the small cargo bay behind the seats, on top of her tent and sleeping bag, which lived there. She put the seat-back straight up again, and put her flight bag on the right-side passenger seat, unzipped it. She mounted her tablet on the passenger-side yoke so she could see and operate it from the left seat with her right hand.
With a practiced eye, she preflighted the plane, checked the gauges, checked all nuts and bolts, looked for hanging body parts or flat tires, manually checked the fuel level-she kept it full-drained the bluish 100 low lead fuel from both wing tanks and the gascolator under the engine, checking for water or contaminants in the fuel, checked the oil level, looked under the engine cowl for birds nests?and everything else she had to do.
Most of the windows were still in good shape, she observed. Only the passenger-side window was cracked a little below the top rim. Very good, for a fifty-year-old 150. The engine was a Continental O-200 with about a thousand hours on it since it's last major overhaul, and all she could do was hope it hung in there maybe another eight hundred hours or so, if she guessed from the experience other owners had had, because she couldn't afford to spend twenty-thousand dollars to overhaul it. The old air-cooled engine burned about a quart of oil every six hours of operation, so she carried some extra oil in the cargo bay.