Chapter 7 – Half A Girl

Carefully, I stood up from the chair and excused myself to use the restroom. It was down a long corridor next to some loud machines. The men’s room was closest with a lot of mops and buckets stashed nearby. After briefly checking it out, I continued on to a dark part of the corridor, almost at the end, with an emergency exit that looked like it had never been used.

Practically, it was basically the same as the other restroom since neither had a urinal or any kind of division or stall. Just a toilet and a sink with a lot of boxes in the corners. I made sure to turn the lock and check that it was secure. The seat had a wave shape to it that rose on the edges but at least it wasn’t scratched up with gang signs or stained.

Slipping my skirt down while bunching it up around my ankles and doing the same to my underwear, I tried to relax as much as possible but the pee came out as a nervous quivering dribble while a few farts squeaked their way into the bowl. Shivers, shakes, and quivers fought their way through me as I tried to drain my stress away.

Once I was finished, I crept over to the sink and blasted my arms and face with the intense flow. The wind tunnel of the hand dryer blasted me again as I made my way out. I tightened up all my emotions so I wouldn’t cry in front of Camille but I felt beaten down by a single trip to the restroom. How could I possibly survive the waterpark with an untested swimsuit, in the middle of summer, and with untold amounts of people looking at me? I couldn’t cancel but it terrified me to go ahead with it, like a mental execution.

Okay, maybe I was being melodramatic, but that didn’t mean I was wrong. Everything thus far seemed to be going my way, aside from a little uncertainty at that game store. So my expectation was for some kind of correction, where everyone would just see me for what I was. but what was I?

If they truly truly saw the genuine me, then what would they see? I liked to reference platitudes where the body I woke up with today was a slight approximation of what I felt internally. This felt good but, in many ways, it was still a costume. Maybe there was no truth beneath my skin. Maybe it was all protective layers, all the way down.

But what did I really want? I got a pretty face with lovely hair in an exuberant shade. I was smaller with a girlish curve to my body. I was far more hairless than I deserved. Sure, I kept my regular voice but no one minded so far. And my chest wasn’t anything special. But, for all the aspects of a girl, I still had a dick and the bits beneath.

I didn’t especially desire all the hidden complexities of being physically female, but it felt like a deep reassurance, at least conceptually, that I wouldn’t have to hide anything. Go on and look at my folds. Oh Christ, don’t look at them. But it felt like the sincerest reassurance.

I didn’t want to be different, but at the same time that felt like too much. I had too much to process and I couldn’t do it while my body was being an active processing machine and my emotions were processing my companion and my liver was processing some alcohol and everything else. I didn’t expect any of it to slow down for me, but I just prayed that I might be seen sincerely. Even when I had the appearance of myself, I still struggled with being myself.

Returning to the table, I picked up my pace and did my best not to let my worries and trepidation show, even though they were an ocean I could barely hold inside me. Camille was practically done with her margarita and I had a long way yet to go.

I screwed up my social courage, like trying to twist a steel rope around my arms. The process should’ve been invisible but Camille glanced over too soon to check on me and caught me before I slipped on my resolve. Her expression immediately recoiled in concern and I felt a jagged pit drop in my stomach, raking everything on the way down.

“Everything all right? Restroom troubles?” She curled her hands together on her lap and joined arched eyebrows of concern with an expression that wasn’t sure if it wanted to be a grimace. I smoothed out my new clothes and flashed a friendly look before declaring, “I’m fine. It’s all right. Just tried to not get lost in there. Heh.”

She kept her eyes on me, for a few long seconds, before nodding. “All right. Glad you made it out. I think they can pack up your drink, if you don’t want to finish it. You know, how everyone did it for a while. I’ll be staying, until I feel comfortable to drive.”

At first, I tried to glide down smoothly into my seat but it wound up looking more like my skirt had me bound up and I was flopping down into it. “Oof. How long is your drive back? And yeah, it might be better to save it…to save mine. For later.”

The restaurant offered to keep Camille‘s entrée warmed until she was ready to go. She also ordered a second drink, more like mine with lime, to take home with her in the fashion she described.

Why do I expect that things would be any different just because some of my physical aspects changed? I could have all the remaining pieces that this morning left out, along with the highest pitch voice that could break glass with a yell, and I would still be living this sort of life. Why was it excruciating meeting someone, even worse than trying to find someone? The closest thing to a normal conversation I’d had the whole day was with the guy at the bookstore who was basically, I guess, trying to hit on me in a way that even I could tell.

I had gotten better…I have gotten better than I used to be with this kind of thing. Communicating like a human being to someone else required practice, same as anything else from cooking something to being a writer. The only problem was, either in text or in words, it hurt to fail. Talk to a neighbor and feel like your cadence and mood are entirely wrong to the situation and you laugh when you should’ve done something else. Then, those few minutes of talk rest heavily on your shoulders for the rest of the day and pile weight that you just can’t dislodge.

With mom and dad, despite the craziness of the situation, it had been so long since we last really talked that I already had so much lined up to say and even more not to say. Mom knew how to push and dominate a conversation, at least the old version of my mother did. I fed off the energy of someone who actually wanted to talk to me.

Why do I recede from a conversation? Why does it feel like an ordeal that needs to be tackled? If you asked me before today, I would simply say it was because I was a girl and I just didn’t have the right look for it. And so I had to play a role and so I had to feel a feeling and so I had to live a way that didn’t feel genuine to myself. That was my excuse.

What was it now? My voice isn’t high enough. My little dickie isn’t small enough and everything should be stuffed inside. And I should have a bountiful, thick-nippled bust. Would the excuses stop there? If it was all finally perfect, would I be ready to be myself? Somehow, I doubted it.

Camille took a sip from her water glass and rested her hands on the table, once they took her plate away to warm it. “I used to live near Kyle King Park. Now, I’m even further into the fiery desolation of the desert. All the sand storms.”

I’d been out that way a few times. Out where the buttes marked the hard landscape. A freeze-dried, pained world waiting for something it might never get.

“Do you think of me as a girl?“ I curtailed my efforts at making my voice sound like someone else’s and just settled into my regular feeling. Relaxing it like that actually made it sound closer to a soprano in my ears. Of course, my ears were also on fire along with every screaming, freaking out neuron.

She cocked her head sideways and scrunched up her fair eyebrows. “Well, you are a girl. What’s there to think over?”

I had a little image of my brain. represented as a cartoon, which was screaming at me to end this stressful conversation before it freaked out. “You should know that I don’t especially feel like a girl. I want to, but it’s tough.”

She moved her head around a bit as though trying to discern an extra sense or layer to my words before she declared, “It happens. Soul and self searching sucks…no matter how you look and no matter how you want to feel. For what it’s worth, I think you’re really cute. And I wish you didn’t give yourself so much stress. But then, I need to follow that advice myself. For now, feel like talking about it? Maybe blast some garbage with smiles?”

No and yes, but yes won out due to momentum. “Yeah. And thanks. I kinda need that. To feel cuter and stuff like that. To not be as stressed, when I should be relaxing. It’s just complicated.”

She leaned forward on her elbows with a faint smile and focused interest. “Start from the easiest part and work up.” Now that sounded like a teacher strategy, to which I smirked knowingly before sifting and settling through the pool of thoughts that felt like the best starting point.

“Today has been one of the strangest days of my life. I woke up like this when yesterday, I looked pretty much like a normal guy with short, dark hair, a boyish body, and standing several inches taller. My mom and dad had been dead for several years but they came to visit me today. And other little things in the world seem different too, but those are the big ones. I want to be a girl, but I woke up only partway there. Mostly there. And stuff. Although, I don’t know if it’s how I’m supposed to be or honestly really want to be forever. Also I dunno if the universe is just playing a joke on me with a monkey’s paw wish granted.”

While I rattled that off, some fellow patrons came through the door and made their way over to the bar. I dipped my volume down when they got close but leaned towards Camille to compensate. My brain was now a deceased little cartoon representation which had basically checked out and whatever else I had left was now running the show.

Was this crazy to say? I could’ve left out the fact that, for me, my parents have been dead for years and they didn’t exactly look or act like they did today the last time I saw them. If I was going to lay it all out then maybe it was best to just lay it ALL out. The worst thing that could happen would be either that she’s mad at me or she leaves. I could deal with that.

Neither of those things followed my words. Rather, she scrunched up her brow a little bit more and delicately sifted through what I had claimed. Normal guy? I gave her a general description. Taller, far less cute by my personal estimation, and no red hair. My parents were dead? So far as I remembered. But their ashes were gone and the only physical evidence I had were memories I didn’t especially enjoy dwelling on. Little things? I hesitated. I felt like my credibility was balanced on a razor’s edge. All out. One of my boy students was now a girl and a bookstore suddenly existed on the edge of town where I was sure none existed before, but I qualified that may just be me missing new construction. Even though I doubted that theory.

It was a lot to absorb and I brace myself for Camille‘s inevitable, wide-eyed gaze and careful scrutiny of me. I have lied about many things in my life. Small things usually. Stupid things. Mostly stuff that keeps relatives from freaking out about how lonely I am. I know so and so on the Internet but actually claim I met them in college so they can’t possibly be a secret serial killer. My grandfather did this sort of thing all the time, only it was in service to several mistresses who seemed to fall out of trees everywhere he walked. He practically reshaped reality with his subtle fibs and overwhelming charisma.

Camille released a slow puff of a breath as she brushed her hair back. “That’s… quite a lot. Not sure what to say to it, but I can offer what I know and have seen. Not to overrule what you said but let’s maybe figure this out based on what we each have. Okay..”

I appreciated that and I also got the sense her demeanor was right for being a teacher. She scratched at her wrists and adjusted her posture before laying out her perspective. “I met your mom and no one at the school was surprised to see her, me neither. We didn’t talk for that long, but I interacted with her in a way that leaves me no doubt that she was there.”

Yeah and I had to agree that I had even more experience with my mom and my dad physically interacting with me. I told her as much. Her next step was to postulate whether I may have just had a very deep and involving dream where I imagined they died. I considered this possibility.

“There’s kind of this thing, mostly online, about something called the Mandela Effect. It has a few offshoots I’ve heard of, but mostly I’ve used it for stories and stuff. It supposes there are a multitude of separate realities and universes which coexist alongside our own. The closest thing I have to an explanation, is that during the night I jumped from that reality to this one. Maybe… I suddenly died in my sleep and instead of some sort of afterlife, I wound up somewhere nearby. There is a related theory about quantum immortality but maybe it just happens sometimes without that kind of morbid explanation. Still with me?”

She took another long breath and placed a hand near her forehead. “I think so. I don’t really get those concept, but I guess I see what you’re suggesting… there are some movies and shows where they use that, but it’s still kind of trippy. And those are works of fiction, clearly fiction. I remember science classes in college where they kind of had popular mistakes in science and one of them was all the physics stuff and like light particles and explaining quantum theory. Other universes were like in the math of it, rather than light going two ways at once as like two entire worlds. It’s just a way of theoretically explaining stuff that we don’t understand. Right?”

That made sense to me. It was pseudoscientific to think we can hop around different universe is like multiple choice answers. At the same time, it was the closest thing to a rational, working explanation for all the weird shit I was experiencing. “Right. But I didn’t have long red hair yesterday. I didn’t look like this and I had long ago accepted that my parents passed away. Parallel universes may not be what’s going on, but it’s the closest thing I have for trying to figure it out. And that’s why I’m not sure what to say, because I don’t have certainty that in 10 minutes or 10 hours or tomorrow or next week or whatever that the world will still be like this. I don’t know with 100% certainty what my name will be or if who I care about will be there for me. It’s like a bridge before a chasm that today turned out to be an illusion. Now, I can’t possibly put my foot down without feeling at least a little fear that I might fall.”

I sweated out half of those words, along with speaking them. Honestly, I already felt like I was in the depths of the chasm.

And I was just digging myself deeper with every word. I had too much pride to dip my head between my arms on the table, like I used to do as a child when the world felt too much on my shoulders. That would put too much pressure on Camille to validate what I was saying for purely emotional reasons and, at the same time, it would feel like throwing in the towel. The temptation, compounded with the weight of everything else, felt like invisible anchors making my head dip. Fortunately, I managed to lift it back into position.

A starker resolution occurred to me. My parents, before the end, each experienced forms of dementia related to other conditions both diagnosed and undiagnosed. Mom envisioned an entire other person coming to visit with a whole litany of things they did and told her and stuff that she saw us do. She didn’t believe us or the nurses when we told her differently. My dad had similar partings of clarity in his fugue state.

When she was closer to my age, mom had a daylong, perfectly normal chat with her deceased father at a stressful crossroads between staying in her hometown and marrying a friend or moving to another state with all sorts of possibilities. My existence depended upon the flip of a coin and the presence of that philanderer from beyond the grave. Either something supernatural or momentary madness in my mother.

Perhaps everything before today has been a mistake of certainty in my mind or everything so far today was the mistake. But I wasn’t placed before some monumental choice or worrisome conundrum. Or was I?

I reached out to touch Camille‘s hands on the table, despite the awkward positioning. “I don’t know what to think or exactly what’s going on, but I’m grateful to share this time and supper with you.”

The subtext to those words was the unspoken pleading that she wouldn’t think I was crazy. Assuming, of course, I wasn’t crazy. She twisted the edges of a smile around her lips before letting it go. “Thank you. I’m glad we came here. And I’m glad to talk to you. Even if we both vanish, like fading dreams, the next time the world hiccups.”

I had to give at least a little laugh, even though it sounded like a split between a sigh and a cough. I hoped it didn’t sound forced. I needed it.

She took another long breath before laying out, “Well, there’s all that. Would you like to hear everything I have to share? Just my perspective and what I remember.”

To that, I nodded eagerly. She assured me that this wasn’t to negate my memories or all that I was grappling with, but again to share her perspective. “For me, Mrs. Jones always kind of had reddish hair, but I was young. However, I remember you specifically having it the brightest. Whenever I finished one of the lessons, I would go get a book from the rolling rack in the corner and prop it up on my table with Desiree, who I was grouped with for much of the year. But I always watched you for that hair and for your soft smiles.” She gazed down at my hands like they were a human reflecting pool.

I let her continue uninterrupted, “I knew it was weird but I also knew you were different although it wasn’t weird yet I felt weird even though I was told once not to feel weird. Sorry, it’s kind of haha…weird.” I gave her a quick smile and urged her onward.

“I just had the biggest crush on you. And I made up so much stuff like what was gonna happen someday and how perfect everything would be. I had super extensive plans for a little kid about how we were going to fall in love. But every time I set myself to take a step towards it, I freaked out and lost my nerve. All I really had was that kiss to show for it and like, in my head and with everything, I buried it under so many explanations. And I was so grateful it didn’t change anything.”

Calmly as possible, I asked her, “So, to you and everyone, I was just a girl?”