Annette gave her attention to the baby. “But how can that be? Surely her mother knows what gender her own daughter is.”
“Oh, I’m sure the mother knows the gender. Perhaps it may not be the gender that the baby is presently.”
“Interesting,” Annette gave a subtle nod.
Nathaniel glanced at Annette then to the mother and child.
Time moved through many Christmases in their client’s life. Several varied ornaments were given to Louis: a clay tablet with an indentation of a foot to commemorate the year of his first steps, a miniature yellow school bus in honor of his first day of school, a soccer ball to immortalize the moments of his afternoon extra-curricular activities, a small diploma with a thin red ribbon in celebration of his graduation from elementary school, and a wooden, hand-whittled angel made of polished rosewood to signify the transition from youth to manhood in the junior high years. These years flipped in front of Annette and Nathaniel in quick succession with the fluidity of notes and chords being sung by carolers during the holidays.
In Louis’ earliest decade, gender between boys and girls was almost imperceptible if it were not for the differences in clothing and hairstyles. Louis seemed blissfully unaware that he was different from the opposite sex. But when puberty caused a drastic divergence in their physical paths, Louis looked in the mirror half expecting his own body to confirm with the females. While females began to grow well-defined breasts and developed women problems of their own, Louis’ chest remained as it always had been. And then there was the pitch change of his voice! Time stopped in front of fourteen year-old Louis as he stood in front of his bathroom mirror studying his toned physique. He was shirtless, wearing only a blue towel around his waist. His long brown hair had been tied up in a ponytail, which framed his increasingly chiseled jaw-line. To add insult to injury, his face was spotted with a thin layer of hair. He angrily studied the facial hair, tightening his grip on a hand-held razor.
“Who are you?” Louis, with a deep voice, asked himself in the mirror.
“Louis?” his mother called from beyond the bathroom door. Louis shifted his eyes to the closed door. His mother went on: “We’re leaving the house in fifteen minutes. Put a move on, buster!”
Louis brought his eyes to the mirror, frowning. He sprayed a bit of shaving cream on his left hand, smearing it across his face. Taking the razor, Louis rid himself of the hair on his cheeks, chin and Adam’s apple.
More years raced by in front of the muses settling upon a moment in time when Louis, in his early twenties and living in his own college dorm room, unpacked his holiday decorations. He was in the living room of his apartment with a fake eight-foot tree. Snow blotted out the rest of the world as he applied the ornaments and strung white lights. Louis’ diverse collection of mismatched ornaments was a shrine of assorted accomplishments: a miniature silk top hat to signify his high school prom, a rusted stopwatch with roman numerals in regards to his transition spent in the first year of college and, his most recent ornament, a blue glass ball with the names ‘Louis’ and ‘Halia’ connected by a heart. He held the blue ornament to the light, examining it closely.
“And you say that every year your parents give you a unique ornament?” Halia asked as she fastened hooks to his ornaments. Halia was in her late teens. Her long black hair waved freely between her shoulder blades. Being from Hawaiian descent, her skin was naturally tan. On this day, she wore a gray wool turtle-neck and a long, flowing blue skirt.
“Yes,” Louis told her, still looking at the glass ornament dangling from his index finger, “every year for as long as I can remember.” He put the ornament in an empty space on the branches.
“Oh look!” Halia exclaimed. “I think I may have found the first one.”
From both Annette and Nathaniel’s perspective, Halia held the brass ornament that had first been introduced at the beginning of Louis’ life. Louis held Halia from behind, placing his chin on her shoulder. They silently admired the ornament together.
The following scene was of Louis and Halia again, only this time the lights from the city caught the crystallized frost on the windowsill. The tree was aglow. A space-heater hummed happily. The two lovers explored one another’s bodies. Louis’ touch was warm as he reached under Halia’s turtle-neck. He lifted the shirt from her figure exposing her skin and the straps of her brassiere. His fingers were gentle as he unhooked the support.
He continued to undress Halia. She trembled at the upcoming prospect, undressing Louis, unbuttoning his shirt and dropping it to the ground. She then removed his pants and boxers until they both stood staring at one another taking in the full effect of their anatomy.
“This is me,” Halia said with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
“You’re beautiful,” he told her, looking reverently at her breasts. It was a look that reaffirmed that this was the body that he had wanted, not just sexually, but on his own figure.
“So are you,” Halia said earnestly, wiping away his tear. Halia wasn’t sure why Louis was crying but she found it endearing.
The relationship progressed exponentially in a matter of seconds. Louis and Halia explored the sexual intimacy of their partnership as well as the domestic. It was evident that, with each passing day, Louis’ desire to have the same female figure of his fiancé, and later wife, grew to an uncontrollable, yet unspoken, yearning. The greatest blow to his ego came at the birth of his two children: identical twin girls. It was a balmy afternoon as he sat next to Halia on a park bench, looking into the squinting eyes of his daughters.
“Aren’t they breathtaking?” Halia asked Louis.
Louis swallowed his bitterness and smiled. “They take after you, no doubt about it.”
Time passed and the relationship grew colder. The physical aspect of their relationship disintegrated. Louis felt a sense of disgust when Halia touched him. When Louis was asked what was bothering him, he shrugged it off. He told her he was growing older and tired, that he didn’t have the spunk that he used to. It was a barefaced lie. He fantasized, late at night, about being a different gender. He would lay awake in bed and daydream about being a woman. Dreams manifested themselves as visible thought bubbles to both Nathaniel and Annette, who watched the hovering ideas as they swam inches above him like swirling cotton-candy-like clouds of joy. As Louis slept, the thought bubbles dissipated. It didn’t change the fact that, no matter how much he dreamed of being someone different, he was who he was when he woke.
“It’s not that I want to be someone different,” Louis told the marriage counselor one afternoon during a private session. “It’s that I want to be the real person beneath this uncomfortable, ill-fitting skin.” It was the first time that he gave a voice to the feeling. “Normal people aren’t supposed to feel this trapped within their bodies. I can’t keep living with this much resentment, and this much hatred. I feel,” he stopped, thinking of the right words.
The therapist, a middle-aged woman with make-up and hairstyle perpetually stuck in an eighties frizz, allowed Louis as much time he needed.
“I feel . . .” Louis looked to the carpet beneath him, giving a laugh. “ . . . Like I’m a woman, stuck inside a man’s body.”
“Do you think you’d be happier if you were a woman?” the therapist asked.
“I think I would be happier,” Louis answered. He turned his eyes to the therapist. “Yes,” he said earnestly. “Yes, I believe I would be.”
The therapist then inquired, “Have you given any thought to gender reassignment?”
“No!” Louis was quick to respond, but his second “no” was not filled with nearly as much zest.
“What you appear to be suffering from is what medical journals call ‘gender dysphoria.’”
“Gender dysphoria?”
“The feeling of being uncomfortable as a certain gender, perhaps believing that you should have been born the opposite sex . . . this is not an uncommon feeling. I have several individuals who feel the same as you do. The question is, if
you feel that you are a woman trapped inside a man’s body, how far are you willing to go to change it?”
Upon researching his situation he found that the therapist had been correct in saying that Louis was not alone in his thoughts. People in his situation were growing in numbers, a statistic that revitalized him. Based on his research, some individuals went so far as taking hormones, changing their wardrobe and way of life without actually shifting genders. He found those who went the full route, having the surgery that would permanently alter their physical attributes. He read success stories of individuals having already gone through the transition. To any commonplace onlooker, the materials perused would have felt obtrusive, abnormal and ‘in-your-face’ about such anomalous taboos. When it came to Louis, he found himself more and more curious, intrigued at the idea that he could finally reach the life that he had always wanted to live. It gave him an unfamiliar sense of optimism that he had been deprived.
“I’m not understanding what you’re telling me, Louis,” Halia said with concern.
“I’ve been doing a lot of research into this subject, Halia,” Louis tried to explain again “and I firmly believe that this is something that I have to consider.”
“Becoming a woman . . . ?”
“Yes, Halia. Becoming a woman.”
“Do you know how insane that sounds?”
“I’ll tell you what’s insane, Halia,” Louis countered “having lived this long feeling this way, and thinking that I’m cornered in the wrong body. What’s insane is how I feel when I look at you, when I look at any woman and think how bitter I am! What’s insane, Halia, is how much I hate who I am when I look in a mirror, how disgusted I am with my own body!”
Halia tossed her hands in surrender to straighten the children’s toys in the living room.
Louis went after her. “I have to do this, Halia. I have to at least try. And I want you to go on this journey with me.”
“Now that notion is insane, Louis, thinking I might go on this ‘journey’ with you.” She did not look at him as she spoke, but instead turned her attention to the toys, tossing them forcefully into the toy chest beside the entertainment stand. “What about the girls? Have you thought about them? Have you thought about how they will feel if they have to watch their father pop hormone pills, wear women’s clothes, and transition from one sex to another? What do you think they’ll say when the doctor chops off your manhood?”
“That’s not how the surgery works, Halia. Yes, the testicles are removed,” but before he could explain, Halia swooped beside the sofa to swipe a rogue toy.
“I don’t want to hear it!” Halia shouted. “I don’t want to hear it, Louis!” She cried, facing her husband. “You can’t do this to me. To our daughters. To . . . us! You and me!”
“Halia,” Louis approached, reaching for her. “Halia, listen to me. If I don’t do this, if I don’t at least make an attempt, I’ll die. And I don’t want to die, Halia. I want to live.”
Halia scoffed. “And you can’t live the way that you are? With me? With the kids?” She clutched the toy in her hands as if fixing to strangle it. “Then I suppose I have no choice, Louis. If you want to live in this new lifestyle, do what you have to do.”
“Do you honestly mean that?” Louis asked.
“Yes, Louis. I mean that. But you have to know: if you do live as a woman, as far as the children are considered, you’ll be dead to them. I refuse for you to subject them to this monstrosity you’re about to create for yourself.”
Louis was visibly taken aback by this.
Time sped forward through the ending of their marriage to the gut-wrenching custody hearings where Louis fought to keep his children. Halia gained sole guardianship. Though filled with anguish, he went to the west coast, keeping with him photographs of his daughters. Nathaniel and Annette watched the long process of Louis’ transgender passage. They were with him as he visited therapists and as he began taking hormones. They were with Louis as, after two years, the physical reactions to the hormones took effect. His voice was higher-pitched. His skin was softer. His upper body strength decreased and his body fat grew leaner into a womanly figure. The muses were there as Louis dressed as a woman, functioning in society as the gender he had often dreamed. Louis maintained a steady job at his local bowling alley, went to school part-time, and volunteered in his new community. Louis immersed himself in support groups of like-minded individuals, connecting with others on the same path. When he visited the therapists and doctors’ appointments, he did so alone. Often, he would pull out the pictures of his children and wish he were a part of their lives as the person he wanted his children to see him as: a happy, thriving individual who chased dreams to the bitter end.
After receiving three letters of approval from the appropriate therapists, Louis achieved his dream. After nearly four years, and after working so closely in discussing everything with the mental health doctors and also his surgeon, Louis closed his eyes and opened them as Luanne.
As the years went by, Luanne seemed to adjust well to her new lifestyle. However, with each passing day, she felt numb. In all those years, Luanne had been so concerned in finding herself that she abandoned her collection of Christmas ornaments. Each Christmas that passed, she would forgo the fake tree and ignore the holidays. Luanne found herself drifting farther and farther away from the original hope of reconnecting with her children. She had achieved being a woman, definitely. But what did it mean now that she didn’t have the most important women in her life to share it with?
These thoughts, and more, flooded her mind until one afternoon when Luanne found a Christmas ornament sitting on the counter of her bowling alley work station. The ornament was a crushed soda can with the face of Santa Clause crudely painted on it. A red ribbon was attached to the top, enabling the ornament to dangle perfectly on any tree branch. When she held it, Luanne smiled. It appeared that, from that moment on, everything was going to be okay.
Luanne’s life reached its midway point and the muses were deposited back into Annette’s cathedral office. They sat in silence for several moments before Annette said anything.
“I had forgotten how raw these colored pegs can be once turned.”
“Now you see why I like to review the lives of our clients over reading a good novel,” Nathaniel answered. “The truth, however odd or inconsistent it may be with how we normally view things, is far more intriguing than any work of fabricated fiction.” He sighed and asked “so are you satisfied, Mrs. Slocum?”
“Satisfied?”
“There was not a hint of Mr. Rothchild inside Luanne’s life.”
“Oh,” Annette said, lost in her own thoughts. “I suppose I am. For now. But I would like to review the others.”
“Of course you would,” Nathaniel said dryly. He stood from the swivel chair and started to leave. “We have envelopes that need attending, and more clients to inspire. Luanne’s life is one story in a cluster of millions of others that need our care.”
“What would I see if I were to turn your peg, Mr. Cauliflower?” Annette asked.
Nathaniel turned his eyes to the manuscript on Annette’s desk. “It’s in there on those pages,” he told her, “If you’re really that interested in knowing.”
“Even your seventh life when you rescued my library books?”
Nathaniel didn’t answer Annette’s question. He was already out of her office door headed back to his own. Once safely in his own office of seven obsessions, he closed and locked the door. He pressed his back against the door, closing his eyes, and thinking on what he had seen in Luanne’s peg. He took several deep breaths, righting himself. Within moments he was in front of the cabinet of rescued library books. He pushed several aside and, from beside a copy of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he removed a bundle of pages. On the pages was scribed the details from his seventh life; pages that he had taken from his manuscript when he cleaned the department before the Nine Greatest Muses had arrived.
“Someday you’
ll be ready for our story, Annette,” he said to the pages. “But not now.”
*
“Excuse me,” there came a voice from the other side of the desk. Luanne, who had been spraying the shoes with disinfectant, turned to find a middle-aged man with stark white hair. He was wearing a black suit and tie. “My name is Jonas, and I was wondering how much a typical game would cost? My friend and I are interested in rolling a few bowling balls, hoping to work on our strike record.”
Luanne turned to the aforementioned friend. Jonas’ friend had their back facing the counter. He was wearing a black hoodie with the hood obscuring any details of the face.
“Well,” Luanne told Jonas “it depends on how many games and how long you intend on playing?”
Jonas glanced over Luanne’s right shoulder where he spotted the Christmas ornament resting on the counter. He then looked at Luanne and smiled. “I suppose however long it will take for me and my friend to perfect our method.”
CHAPTER 10: LOVERS, REVERSED
Warm rain poured worryingly during the summer afternoon in 2009. It was a storm with scattered rumbles of thunder which sporadically germinated throughout the atmosphere’s hovering clouds. Jonas and his partner in the black hoodie occupied the same dry space underneath a black umbrella. They looked out onto a graveyard: the hallowed ground precarious with thick, wet mud. There was a man in the distance who was on his knees in front of a grave mourning the loss of a loved one.
“Why are we standing out here in the rain?” Jonas’ accomplice asked. “Are we here for the man kneeling at the grave?”
“No,” Jonas responded. “We’re here for the woman in the car.”
“What woman?” came the reply “what car?”
A Honda Civic pulled up a little ways from their right. The red and white tail lights flickered as the vehicle was put into park.
“The story between Doris the waitress and Lyle the car salesman goes as follows: our bereaved bachelor here has frequented Doris’ diner several times. For the past three days our waitress has been secretly admiring the newcomer, but Lyle hasn’t yet acknowledged her. For the first three days Lyle’s come and eaten his eggs, paid his bill and left without even batting an eye. That was, of course, until a donut was dropped to the floor of the diner, causing Lyle and Doris to have locked eyes and briefly connect. Here she is, watching Lyle from afar again, and before her bravery with the funnel cakes, hoping for more of an association. Also, at this exact moment, a previous version of Annette Slocum, working her second inspiration in her first term as a Ninth Generation muse, is appearing in Doris’ car in miniature grasshopper size offering one a word of encouragement to her client. In a few seconds, Doris will be climbing out of her vehicle and fighting with her umbrella. According to what I’ve been told, an obsession with baking funnel cakes will ensue, which Doris will make for her stranger, ultimately bringing her to Lyle’s doorstep to ring his doorbell which will lead to a beautifully Management-constructed happy ending.”
Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Page 14
