Transgender J

by Nia Eze

  She got up and made to go towards the stairs. At the foot of the stairs she turned back to him. “HE has used you to remind me.” She smiled that small wry smile again. “Find HIM Jay. HE holds the key. To everything.”

  And she walked up the stairs, leaving Jay there with his thoughts.

  EPILOGUE

  Jay sat in front of the mirror starring at his face and lost in thoughts. He had a scruffy beard these days. That always brought a smile to his face. He had no idea how long he sat, his thoughts going on and on until a figure joined him in the mirror. He jerked back to reality when a hand palmed his shoulder softly. He looked up, through the mirror into the beautiful eyes staring at him, through the mirror and felt a smile tugging at his lips, fighting to be released.

  Jay looked steadily at her face and noticed the lines and other signs of the strain and stress she had been through as she travelled this road with him.

  “I thought you would be almost delirious with joy.” She said. “It’s about the best news we’ve had in all of this.”

  Jay sighed and placed his hand over hers, rubbing it, whether to comfort her or him, he wasn’t sure. He sighed again, a smaller one.

  “I would have imagined so too.” He smiled wryly at her. “I guess…it’s been so much, too much maybe. It’s been one thing after the other, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I can scarcely believe that it could all work out you know.”

  Angie placed her other hand on his other shoulder and rubbed it in a massage intended to soothe the tension she could still feel coiled underneath.

  “What…the baby could be deformed or challenged in some way” Jay said in a quiet voice, as if he was testing the weight of his words as he spoke.

  Angie was quiet for a while. Then she responded, she knew he needed to hear her answer. “True, but why borrow trouble?” she asked. “A couple of years ago, no one would have imagined this day would come and here we are now.” She stilled her movements across his shoulder stopping abruptly as a smile lit her face. Jay was transfixed by that smile. It had been a while since he had last seen it as the strain of fertility treatments had taken its toll.

  “We are going to be parents!” She exclaimed breathily.

  “God willing.” Jay added and watched the enthralling beauty of Angie’s smile growing even wider across the mirror.

  JAY’S FIRST PUBLISHED WORK

  I AM HUMAN. LET ME IN!!!!

  By Human Experiment ‘Jay’

  Yeah, Yeah! I read like a really poorly made sci-fi movie.

  It’s life imitating art I guess.

  What did I ever do? What did my now unknown and forgotten parents ever do to deserve this? I don’t know. I can’t remember.

  Who was I before Jay? What was my name? Was I good at school? Did I go to school? How old am I?

  I can’t remember?

  That’s the simple truth of it. I don’t remember a lot.

  Perhaps if I did, it would relieve everyone’s mind. I would fit nicely into a slot somewhere… I would be human.

  I am flesh and bones. It has been mutilated, modified, annihilated…but still flesh and bones.

  I have a brain and though it doesn’t always seem to know what it should be doing, it’s functional.

  I am male.

  I didn’t always know that. I wasn’t always accepting of that. I didn’t always know. Some days I still wonder.

  In all of this though, I am human. I just can’t prove it. I do not come with the right provenance, any provenance at all.

  I come from a laboratory. I am an experiment gone wrong. Or gone right? But I am who I am. JAY.

  I don’t always understand what that means, but then we none of us always understand ourselves. We just go on and live and make each day count hoping that in the living of it, it would all make sense.

  That it would all come together in a dazzling picture of clarity.

  I am Jay. And even though I don’t have the provenance to prove it, I am human.

  Will you let me in?

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The first chapter of this book actually came to me in a dream. 

  Since that time, the transgender debate has heated up, a lot.

  I have had a lot of people give their opinions on what they feel about transgenderism but no one seemed to know how exactly to address it or even understand it.

  This is my own contribution to that conversation.

  I hope you enjoyed reading and that while you read, you thought about what your reaction would be to a ‘Jay’ and how that reaction would affect a life.

  I ask the Divine for inspiration for you.

  Love, Nia