THE THIRD SEX Alan Brennert Pulphouse, Spring 1989 Alan Brennert was beginning to make a reputation for himself in the genre in the l970s as a writer of finely crafted short stories, but then he was lured away by Hollywood. Since then, he has served as executive story consultant on The Twilight Zone during its recent television revival, written teleplays for China Beach, The Mississippi, and Darkroom, and has twice been nominated for the Writers Guild Award. His first novel was Kindred Spirits; another, Time and Chance, was just published by Tor and a story collection titled Her Pilgrim Soul and Other Stories is coming soon. In spite of all this, he still finds time for the occasional short story, which show up from time to time in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Pulphouse, and elsewhere. He's lost none of his touch -- as demonstrated by the brilliant story that follows, from Pulphouse, about someone who is caught, quite literally, between two worlds.
I couldn't have been more than three years old, that night I wandered into my parents' bedroom; I'd had the dream again, the one where I was being crushed between floor and ceiling, unable to breathe or break free. Shaken, I raced down the hail, pushed upon my parents' door -- then stopped as I saw what they were doing.
Locked in a sweaty tangle of sheets, they were jerking back and forth, making short, breathless sounds; for a minute I thought maybe they were having the same bad dream I'd just had. Their arms were wrapped around one another, the two of them lying face-to-face, so close I couldn't tell where one began and the other left off. When they saw me, my mother called out my name, my father swore, they pulled apart with a wet, sucking sound and as the sheets fell away I saw a thick, curved finger between my father's legs, and between my mother's, another pair of lips. I rushed up, fascinated, asking a million questions at once; my father just looked at my mother, sighed, and tried to answer my questions -- what is that called? what is that for ? -- as completely and honestly as you can, to a three-year-old; and when I went to bed that night, I reached down under my pajamas and touched the smooth, unbroken skin between my thighs, and dreamed of the day -- Daddy never mentioned it, but I knew it had to come -- when my own penis or vagina would start to grow. But somehow, it never did.
I'd been a perfectly normal newborn infant in all other respects, though not the first of my kind to appear. At first no one had a clue what to put on the birth certificate, much less what to name me, so they equivocated and the name on the county records is Pat; Pat Jacquith. Later, of course, they realized I had to have some identity, and since they were hoping for a daughter, that's what I became . . . at least until that night in their bedroom. "You're Daddy's little girl," my father had always told me, but if I was a girl, why didn't I have what Mommy had, that second pair of lips, that bristly hair? All I had was a pee-hole; it hardly seemed fair. And in years to come, when Mommy would take me out, shopping for skirts, or dolls, or frilly bedclothes, I knew I wasn't really like Mommy, would never be like Mommy . . . and I felt ashamed. Ashamed to be seen in clothes I didn't belong in, pretending to be something I wasn't.
So I started picking fights, at school . . . jumping hedges, shinnying up hills, sliding down cliffs . . . anything to get my pretty dresses torn, or dirty. We lived in a woodsy suburb called Redmond, and between the ages of six and thirteen I could usually be found in t-shirt and jeans, hiking, bicycling, or swimming in Lake Washington. I was a bit taller than the average girl, a bit shorter than the average boy; my voice was pitched a little lower than most girls, a little higher than most boys, but with a scratchy quality that somehow made it acceptable for either sex. I had no curves to speak of, and as the girls had begun to blossom with puberty, I stayed pretty much the same, going on hikes or playing shortstop in sandlot baseball games; but even this new, tomboy role would start to feel wrong, in its own way, soon enough.
I was fourteen; it was summer; a dozen of us, guys and girls, were camping at Lake Sammamish. I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit, my only concession to femininity, and when I dressed in the bushes I was careful, as always, to keep my distance from the others. To my left, Melissa Camry was suiting up behind a stand of bushes; to my right, my friend Davy Foster -- a tall, loping blond who'd been my best pal for years -- was stripping off his clothes in back of a tall tree. I caught a glimpse of Davy's genitals, and a peek at Melissa's impressively large breasts, and I felt an erotic tingle, but for which one, I didn't know; and then they were dressed and into the water, and swimming between them I continued to feel excited, but confused, as well.
Afterward, Davy and I went hiking, our trail coming to an end at the crest of a low, but steep, cliff. The rockface was intimidating; neither of us could resist the challenge. We descended carefully, finding ample foot- and hand-holds for the first ten feet; then, midway down the bluff, Davy flailed about, looking for a foothold, not finding any: the cliff was sheer granite for the next ten feet. Davy called up to me, "Hard way down," and, propelling himself away from the cliff, plummeted into the bushes below. In moments I was faced with the same choice, and so, feeling almost like a parachutist, I followed his lead. We found ourselves lying tangled, ass-over-teakettle, in shrubbery. We looked at one another, splayed at weird angles, our legs looped through each other's, and started giggling. And couldn't stop. The harder we tried to untangle ourselves, the harder we giggled; we'd grab at a branch, trying to haul ourselves up, only to have the branch snap off as we fell deeper into the bramble. Davy leaned down to help me, his cheek grazing mine --
And then, somehow, we were kissing. I wasn't feeling the same kind of tingle I had earlier, but it still felt nice; the wonderful pressure of lips against mine, our tongues meeting, licking . . . Before I knew it Davy had his hand under my shirt (withdrawing it when he found that my tits were no larger than his); I slid my panties down around my thighs, part of me knowing I shouldn't knowing there was nothing down there for him to enter, but not caring. Davy's penis was stiff, the tip of it was flushed red; he guided it awkwardly toward my crotch --
And then he saw.
He stopped and drew back, eyes wide with shock and disbelief. "What -- " he started to say, and by then I knew I'd made a mistake, a bad one; but some part of me tried to pretend it would all be all right, and I reached out to him, imploring, "Please . . . Davy, please -- " There was fear, now, in his eyes, but I didn't want to see it. "We don't have to. We can just keep on touching, can't we, we can keep on kissing -- "
I tried to draw him closer to me, but he jerked back, jumping to his feet, swaying as he sought to keep his balance amid the thick bramble. Wordlessly he pulled up his pants, and despite my pleas, staggered out of the underbrush and ran like hell out of sight.
I cried for half an hour before getting up the courage to head back to camp, certain that I'd return to have them all staring at me, whispering about me behind my back; but Davy not only never told anyone else, he never said another word about it to me, either . . . because when we all graduated to high school the next year, Davy somehow managed to transfer to a different school
I never wanted to see again what I saw in his eyes, that afternoon; never wanted to feel so different , ever again. And so, two months before my fifteenth birthday, I simply decided to deny it. All of it.
Overnight, I was no longer Pat, but Patty. Out went the jeans and sneakers; now, to my parents' shock, I wanted dresses, and nylons, and makeup -- I became obsessed with learning everything there was to learn about putting on foundation, blusher, and eyeshadow. Mother was eager and willing to teach me, and my first hour in front of her dressing mirror I was amazed and delighted as my boyish features were transformed, through the miracle of Helena Rubenstein, into a soft, feminine face. My eyes, which had always seemed a bland brown, now looked almost exotic -- hooded and sophisticated -- with a touch of mascara and Lancôme; and as
I carefully applied a coat of coral lip gloss, the image was complete. I stared at the girl in the mirror, so feminine, so pretty . . . and cried with joy and relief as I realized that the girl was me. Mother held me, relieved herself that she finally had a daughter again; that perhaps things might work out, after all.
Once I'd had a taste of what I could become, there was no stopping me: I had my ears pierced, and came to love the feeling when I shook my hair out and felt my hoop earrings jiggling to and fro; I even loved the sound my porcelain nails made when I drummed them impatiently on my desk in class. By the end of my freshman summer I convinced my parents to let me color my hair, and so I began the new year as a blonde, flirtatious sophomore, thrilled that boys would open doors for me, or light my cigarettes for me -- each ritual confirming my own femininity.
I dated around, saw lots of boys, but knew I could take the role only so far. The dates would often end up in a boy's car, parked at a romantic lookout, with the two of us necking hot and heavily, his hands roaming my body; my breasts were still nonexistent, but now, taken in the context of my new look, the boys didn't seem to mind. But the petting always stopped short of one point: when the boy's hand reached for my panties. I'd let him masturbate against them, or bring him off myself, but that was all. They couldn't know it was as frustrating for me as for them. They at least could masturbate, but all I knew was the pleasure of touching, of caressing, of kissing. I read about orgasms, listened to my girlfriends talk endlessly about them; the more I listened, the more envious I became. And so I kept searching, hoping that someday, the right boy, the right touch, might bring me that release, that . . . fulfillment . . . everyone else seemed capable of. Most of the boys I dated didn't see me more than once or twice before dismissing me as a tease; but that reputation worked to my advantage, too, because there was always a ready supply of boys who saw me as a challenge, a prize to be won, and I was more than willing to let them try.
It was in my last semester of high school that my parents unexpectedly whisked me away for a rare day trip into Seattle. At first they tried to pass it off as a whim, but as the white brick buildings of the university medical center swung into view, they dropped the pretense; they seemed excited and enthused, and I became more than a little afraid at the whisper of jealousness in their tones. I could tell the extent of their preoccupation because when, nervously, I lit up a cigarette, neither of them gave me any grief about my smoking. Whatever this was about, it was important.
They wanted to be with me when I saw the doctor -- a surgeon named Salzman, a balding, gentle man in his early fifties -- but Dr. Salzman insisted on seeing me alone. My heart pounding for no reason that I knew, I sat in his comfortable office, in front of his expansive desk; I took a pack of Virginia Slims from my purse, then hesitated, but Dr. Salzman just pushed a heavy crystal ashtray toward me and I lit up, feeling a bit more relaxed, but certain that this amiable man was going to tell me I had three days to live.
"You've grown up to be quite a lovely young lady," he said approvingly. "I imagine you don't remember the last time I saw you?"
I smiled, shook my head. "I'm afraid not. Was I very small?"
He nodded. "Seven months." He leaned forward a bit in his chair, saw my nervousness, then laughed, putting me immediately at ease. "Don't look so worried. There's nothing wrong with you, at least nothing you don't already know about." He paused a moment, then, in a slightly more sober tone: "When did your parents tell you? About your -- condition?"
It felt so strange, talking about this with someone other than my parents, but there was nothing threatening about this man. "They said it was a . . . birth defect."
Salzman nodded to himself. "Yes, that about covers it as well as a child could understand. But you're no longer a child, are you?"
Suddenly it was a welcome relief just to have someone to talk to, someone who wouldn't cringe in fear. "It's called -- androgyny, isn't it? I looked it up. But that's just something out of mythology, isn't it? How can I be -- I mean, why -- ?"
Salzman stood, paced a little behind his desk. "It used to be something out of mythology. Your case, eighteen years ago, was the first on the West Coast, but before that there was one in Denver, two in New York, a few in the Midwest . . . the incidences are still rare, less than one hundredth of one percent, but . . ." He circled round and sat on the edge of his desk. "You were lucky; the first few cases attracted the most attention. Lived most of their youth under a microscope, and for all that we still don't know anything about the causes. Your parents wanted you to have as normal a life as possible, so we restricted ourselves to periodic exams. There was nothing we could do until you reached maturity, anyway."
I sat up, snubbing out the cigarette in the crystal ashtray. "Do? You mean there's something -- "
"Slow down, now," Salzman cautioned. "What you are, you are; you have a . . . different chromosome, not X, not Y, something entirely new . . . and no one can change your genetic makeup. But we can give you a closer cosmetic resemblance to a normal female. We can start you on a course of hormone therapy to facilitate breast and hip development, augmented with silicone implants . . ."
I was leaning forward in my seat, my heart racing, barely able to contain my excitement. Dr. Salzman went on, "Now, as to sex organs, we can make a surgical incision in your -- please tell me if this is getting too clinical -- in your groin; then place a sort of plastic sac just inside the skin, and fashion a vagina and clitoris out of skin taken from elsewhere on your body. This is similar to what we do for male-to-female transsexuals, and it may require a follow-up operation to make sure the vagina remains open, but -- "
"Oh, Doctor, thank you," I said, tears starting to well up in my eyes; "You don't know how often I've dreamed about -- "
He held up a hand. "Don't thank me yet. There are limits. Like a transsexual, you won't, of course, be able to conceive children; but unlike a transsexual, whose vaginal lining is made of penile tissue, yours will be relatively insensate . . . no more sensitive to pleasure than any other part of your body. Do you understand?"
My hopes plummeted. "Why not?" I asked, voice low.
He looked at me with sadness and sympathy. "Because, child, you don't have any sex organs, and no tissue of the same sensitivity as a penis, or a clitoris. Perhaps the estrogen will give you some sensitivity in your breasts; perhaps not. This will be cosmetic change only . . . but won't that still go a long ways to relieving your gender discomfort?"
I thought about it a moment, my reservations melting away. I could go to bed with a man . . . get married . . . live something approaching a normal life. What did the rest matter, really? "Yes. Of course," I said. I stood, and couldn't help but hug him in gratitude. "When can I have the surgery?"
"We'll want to do a routine exam on you now, and if everything's satisfactory, we can do it whenever I can schedule an OR. Within the week, if you like."
When I left the office my parents saw at once the happiness in my eyes, and the three of us embraced, and laughed, and cried. All the way back they talked about how long they had been waiting for this day; how happy they were that their daughter was going to have a normal, healthy life. That night, there was laughter from their bedroom for the first time in years. The week until surgery passed quickly. And then, the night before I was to go to the medical center, I told my parents I was going out to meet friends, got into the flame-red Datsun my father had bought me for my seventeenth birthday, and I ran away from home.
I left a note, saying how sorry I was, explaining why I had to leave, and how I knew I couldn't live with their disappointment and betrayal. But I simply couldn't go through with it.
Oh, at first I was thrilled; I lay awake in bed, that first night, dreaming about being a girl, a real girl, for the first time. I had a date the next night, a new boy named Charles: good-looking, studious, and a little nervous. We ended up at the lookout outside town, but as we sat there, necking and petting, I realized nothing was happening -- not even the whisper of anticipation I us
ually felt with a new boy, wondering if this, maybe, were the one who would be different -- and as his hand reached under my blouse, I pushed him away with a little shove. "Charles, please don't. Let's go back to town." To prevent any further moves, I lit a cigarette and used it as a subtle shield between us. Charles turned slowly away, started the car, and headed back.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror and, reflexively, began to primp, more concerned with my own appearance than Charles, beside me. It wasn't until he dropped me off that I saw the hurt and anger in his eyes, and by then it was too late; he was gone before I could apologize. He hadn't even been in danger of discovering my secret; I'd just become bored, and used the same coquettish tone I always did to end the scene, without any thought to him. My God, I thought; what kind of selfish, manipulative little bitch am I turning into?
That night, I undressed in front of the full-length mirror on the inside of my closet door, and stood staring at my reflection, taken aback at what I saw. I saw a girl's face, immaculately made up -- pink lipstick, blue eyeshadow, a hint of blusher along the cheekbones -- framed by strawberry-blonde hair. A girl's face, sitting atop a boyish body... not muscular enough to be a boy's, but too contourless to be a girl's, either. The juxtaposition seemed suddenly, and painfully, ridiculous. Looking at the head of a Cosmo girl sitting atop a neutered body, I knew for the first time that I was neither boy nor girl, but -- something else.