A Learning Experience Ch. 07

Small pops coming from the back of the warehouse, told me Jeff and Lou had taken off, and that Maxy's boys were firing their revolvers at the Pantera as it left the parking lot. I looked at Simone and we both started down the hall to the farthest stairs from Jeff's office. The final sugar cube kicked in and I got an immediate buzz and I could feel my heart rate once again get a massive boost, as my attention level also was giving me a tremendous rush of information. I was speeding up, while it seemed the world was slowing to a crawl all around me. I carefully made it down the stairs to the hallway outside my rooms. I told Simone to go to the garage and get into the Chrysler, as I opened the door to my rooms and grabbed up my personal things from around the kitchen, then went back into the bedroom, threw them in a bag along with my male stuff from the closet, and finally met Simone in the garage after a couple minutes.

"You expect to outrun Maxy in this thing?" she yelled, "damn Josie, you're not giving me a lot of confidence here!"

"Gonna have ta trust me," I replied, "This 'thing' has a few tricks of its own!"

As I approached the overhead sliding door, I realized they had jammed broomsticks and other items into the rollers on the door to keep it from opening. I walked around the edges of the door, looking out to see if I could see what was happening.

"Looks like one of the cars left," I reported to Simone, "Don't see anyone else though, and the shooting's stopped so Jeff and Lou got away."

"Josie," she was absolutely whining now, "maybe we could just sneak out the front or something, I mean there has to be some other... well, something ELSE!"

I looked across the back parking lot and it was surrounded on each side by half high brick walls, in other words the parking lot itself was about 15 feet below street level. That confirmed my requirements... that I wouldn't be shooting into populated areas, and in fact I'd be shooting into dirt, the best place to shoot a bullet that you didn't want going anywhere else. I went over and opened the driver's side door, leaned in and put it in neutral.

"Simone," I asked, "we need to push the car as far back from the door as we can."

Once again I'm dealing with her rolling eyes, somehow I've been transported into a bad B-grade action flick where everyone looks to the hero or heroine to lead them to safety. Except in my case of course, NOBODY listens to me here... oh no... lets just do it whatever way we want, I thought as I also rolled my eyes and shook my head. When I finally cajole her into helping me push the two-ton car up against the back wall, I then go to the driver's side and put the shifter into park. Its going to get a whole lot louder from here on, so I look over at Simone to give last instructions.

"Okay Honey," I plead, hoping she will do as asked, "get in and buckle-up!"

I get the requisite rolling eyes, but she does as asked. Now I started up the big Mopar engine, then got out and climbed onto the Chrysler's roof, pulled the Beretta from my belt, clicked off the safety, and got into a firing stance. I pulled the trigger and held it as each 3 round burst blew the roller supports along with all the various junk jammed into the rollers right off the door - all along the right hand side. After the clip emptied, I hit the clip eject, and flicked it out of the handle. Reaching under my skirt, I grabbed the two clips there, and reloaded with the first and brought it back up to firing position and held down the trigger once again, this time firing down the left side.

The results were good, as I could see very little was remaining of the door rollers or debris that had been jamming the sidetracks of the door's frame. But I wanted to make sure we wouldn't get stuck trying to crash our way out, so I repeated blasting down the right side, and when the second clip was emptied that I had retrieved from under my skirt, I reached into my blouse, and grabbed the last clip I had placed there, quickly reloading and blasting the left side once again. It now appeared nothing was left that could hold us back, so I stuck the gun into my clutch, then hopped onto the ground next to the open driver's door.

Suddenly Maxy's front door watchdog appeared, he must have heard my Beretta, and kicked open the inside door to the garage and was now aiming the .357 at my head. My hands went for what I had taped across my abdomen while jumping to my right behind the Chrysler's massive door. I threw the first knife, and saw it bounce off his gun arm before I ducked down behind the door again and passed the next knife to my throwing hand. Simone screamed as one of the big bullets from his revolver disintegrated the driver's side window. But popping back up covered in glass bits, I let that second knife fly just as hard as I could throw it. I knew that actually knocked him down as I saw it impact his thigh, and heard him cursing as he fell back into the hallway.

I jumped into the drivers seat, buckled my harness, and threw it into Drive and stood on the accelerator pedal. The metal garage door vanished in a cloud of dust and debris as Maxy and his lone remaining henchman outside drew their revolvers and fired from in back of their car, which was still parked the wrong direction for following anyone out of this lot. The old pace car still had plenty of kick, her tires screaming sideways as we left the warehouse driveway and flew across 3 major thoroughfares before I threw it into a hard right and headed for the George Washington Bridge, this allowed me to quickly cross state lines into Jersey, then we turned around once again and headed back into the city to pick up Charlene and Kelsey. No one ever followed us that I could see, and I cut back many times.

In case of trouble we all agreed we would use Charlene's house as a temporary safe house, since the title was in her grandmother's name and there was no link to Charlene. As I pulled up to the old row-house, it seemed like a block party was in process, and dozens of our friends were laughing, crying, and partying... cars parked all over the street... but I just could not fathom what was going on. Simone saw my confusion...

"Um... while you were gathering your stuff out of your rooms, I used your phone and called Charlene and let her know we were on our way,"

"Y-y-you... God Simone!" I cried out, "All these people! Maxy will find out, he'll come looking for us here... Ohhh Shit! What were you thinking?"

But that was as far as my rant got, because we were pulled from the car and hoisted on to everyone's shoulder's as we were paraded up and down the street, with enough congrats and hoots and whistles to make you think it was a Fourth of July block party!

As we got down, I realized my shakes had returned, along with some serious vertigo, I was getting so dizzy, that I could barely walk. As I stood up against some chain link fencing there on the sidewalk, I thought that none of this was making any sense. The sugar cubes never had any kind of reaction like this, somehow I must have allowed them to become exposed to the air, or the chemicals broke down or... something.

I noticed most of the people in the crowd were oriental, and as they parted, an older oriental man in a wheelchair was being rolled towards me by a young woman flanked by two beefy guys in black suits, and coming up next to me was Simone. I tried to restart the tongue-lashing I'd begun before I was run around like some moronic movie heroine on everyone's backs, when I realized he was rolling towards me...

"I am indebted to you Ms. Hartmann for saving my ex-son-in-law's life,"

As the man in the wheelchair spoke the crowd went quiet, and I had a confused look on my face while I processed what was being said to me. Simone was a woman, and I was just flustered trying to make the term 'son' make any sense with anything I knew about Simone. And suddenly the image of her scars came screaming into my already screaming in pain mind, and my expression must have changed. Because as it did Simone jumped towards me and held her arms around me like a vise. There was a murmur through the crowd as I realized I had one of my throwing spikes in my throwing hand, and the guys in the black suits had their hands in their suit jackets.

This was the 'father-in-law' that Simone said caused those scars... those scars I had nightmares about for days after seeing... I had every intention of killing him, and would have done before I ever had any time to reason it out. My mind was in a strange place, and now with Simone wrapped around me, I was seriously lost. Lost somewhere between life and death, reason and insanity... I thought I might breakdown right then, right there, but I knew I was sick, I just didn't know why and what I should do about any of it anymore, so I dropped the spike and fell into Simone's arms, and immediately was surrounded by Kelsey and Charlene as well. We all stood there as a group as we cried, no one spoke for over a minute, maybe longer.

"Josie I'm sorry," Simone began explaining through her tears, "You see, my Father-in-law didn't directly cause my scars, he is the head, or boss, of a local Korean... um... gang in Chinatown... in Korea it is known as the Kkangpae. When I told my wife, his daughter, I had to divorce her because I knew I was really female, he said I had disgraced the family. One of the men who works for him overheard him say this and HE was the one who actually raped me and whipped me, nearly to death."

I looked at Simone and held her hand as I began to apologize, but she put her finger to my lips and continued her dialog.

"My Father-in-law was horrified that this was done to me, and has regretted his rash words ever since. The man who so badly hurt me was turned in to police and remains in jail today, and probably will be there for a long time to come. My ex-wife and I remain friends, but I was abandoned by my own family and lived homeless on the street for over a year and nearly killed myself. She found me and helped pay for my transition, but I've supported myself ever since, that's the true story my friends,"

As Simone finished, we were all barely holding it together, as once again the Father-in-law motioned for his young woman 'attendant', which I now assumed to be his daughter, to move him closer to our little huddle.

"My dear Ms. Hartmann," he began speaking again, "now that you know a little more of the truth, please accept the humble thanks of our family, and I assure you that Simone will be protected and taken good care of. This monster that abducted her will probably be in hiding by now, but if he is careless enough to come out in public... well... you have my assurance that he will hurt NO ONE else... ever. And please accept this small token of our thanks."

He then placed a small envelope into my hands, which obviously contained money, and a quick look saw hundred denominations and at least 10 bills.

"Please sir," I was still a little shaky, "I didn't save Simone from that asshole for any reward... so I cannot accept your wonderful gift. I did this because of my love for her, a love that I might have for a sister. Also to prove to myself and my family that has abandoned me, that as a woman, I... am... s-still worth something, I... have value."

"Josie please... I know its hard but," Simone was crying, "f-for me? Please?"

I suddenly realized Simone wanted to leave me with something, as she would probably be going into hiding, and who knows when, or even if, we might see each other again.

"Alright honey," I finally replied, "I'll buy something special to remind me of you!"

We embraced, and the rest of the 'stray cats' brought us into another group hug. But I was shaking again, and I knew very well why. Much more shaking and there would be demands to know why and probably a trip to the hospital ER... I was too far gone, I just could no longer deal with this, my addiction, my rescue of Simone, it was all just too much and my vision was slowly becoming a swirl of light and dark.

"Listen," I tried to be as nonchalant as I could, "Charlene, where was your bathroom exactly again?"

Charlene laughed as she pointed me up to the old house's first floor and then hooked her thumb to the left to express the direction to take once inside. I laughed too, and said goodbye as I walked away. She didn't make any connection and that was as well, because I walked toward the house, then ducked across the car-strewn street, and then down an ally behind some other row houses, finally coming out at a major street. After walking a couple blocks, I found a little Mom and Pop corner grocery store and called a cab to take me back into center city.

Once again I had run away from those I should have embraced, my own issues had again caught up to me, and I was overwhelmed by my own feelings of needing to be self-reliant. Combined with simply being so ill I could barely walk, talk, or see... and that... more than anything else... was something I didn't want my friends to see, because I had done THIS damage to myself, and I knew it, maybe this was how it was all supposed to end. Simone was safe, the girls would be okay without me to draw the focus of Maxy's wrath onto them along with me, and I was never supposed to be as happy as I had been with the 'stray cats' this summer... I was just so tired.

I had the thousand dollars from Simone and her Uncle. That should get me back... I just needed to sleep, if I could just... sleep. I had the cab take me to a Center City church that had a homeless shelter, it was clean and I should be safe for a couple nights while I got over this 'withdrawal' of the Meth. I had no idea what I was about to go through, and if I had I would have jumped off of a bridge, but right then all my body wanted was sleep. Once he dropped me off, I paid the cabbie, and went inside. My other option was to go to a motel again, but I'd pushed it last time I tried to get into a motel with my current ID. I just didn't have the energy, plus at least I knew the shelter system, as I'd stayed here many times when it got late and needed a place to crash.

But lately I'd grown more wary of shelters, at least those right in Center City, because they had just started this new program for the homeless that 'appeared' to be the most wonderful thing in the world, and that was going to 'solve the city's homeless problems'. It would turn out to be closer to something the Nazis might have come up with. There were people who roamed the shelter after curfew looking for 'girls like me'. Because in their small minds there was no such thing as a girl like me, I was a man... who dressed as a woman... to 'fool' heterosexual men, or simply entice gay men, into committing... sodomy, a serious charge that could get you committed to a mental hospital. So if you propositioned men like I did and somebody complained... you could be reported as propositioning for sodomy, and targeted for special treatment.

The people that did all of this 'good work' were given beneficial titles like 'Outreach Councilors' but in reality they were more like the Gestapo. They had connections with many local conservative religious organizations... those to whom sodomy was tantamount to raping children... and their documents would often equate the two for gay men, and in their eyes transsexual, or transgendered females, WERE simply gay men. These 'noble social heroes' would comb the shelters after curfew, when the shelter was locked up and no one was allowed to leave, so they had you trapped.

If you were unlucky enough to be found, then you might end up in one of their inner city mental health centers. One especially set up to deal with the city's 'faggot problem' as described privately by our mayor at that time. There was no 'special treatment' for heterosexual streetwalkers, as long as there were no complaints that they had been involved with, or propositioned anyone for, sodomy.

Billy had explained to me what this 'special treatment' consisted of. His brother had described it to him after he had been released from the state hospital, once my old Doctor got involved with his case. The horror involved is bad enough to have been used in horror/suspense movies like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and others. This was shock therapy, a standard therapy used for this type of 'mental illness'. Leftover from a much more brutal era in the treatment of mental illnesses. Unfortunately it was now being used as more of a punishment for the 'breaking' of ancient laws left languishing and hidden, deep inside state law books, or worse... the supposed committing of a 'mortal sin' as seen by the leaders of local conservative religious groups.

***

My Dear Gentle Readers... What follows is a quick discussion of what I didn't fully understand until I'd been out dressing and acting as a female full time. It wasn't until then that I started truly understanding the backlash I had yet to face. I felt extremely lucky that I had been shown... really been made to understand, psychologically and physically... that the thoughts and feelings I had were a reaction to a problem I'd always been aware of and confused by my whole life. These were feelings that I woke up with every single day and were a normal, if unbalanced, part of my brain's function.

I was certainly not 'mentally ill', and I didn't suddenly think 'Oh yeah, today seems like a good day for thinking I'm female and want to have sex with men'. I'd been thinking of what it was like to BE female since I was four, and couldn't understand why my mother's wardrobe was something I needed, long before any thoughts of sex. The way she walked, talked, moved and acted were all-important issues for me, and yet because I was male, at that age I was only told that I shouldn't care about any of that, and to simply put it out of my mind... yeah... as if that was ever going to happen.

However... many young people, males needing to transition to female, or females needing to transition to male, that were trying to deal with this, were told they were 'ill' and that there was a 'cure' out there... somewhere (no one ever explained to them that not one 'therapeutic cure' ever worked successfully). And the only one that was ever documented as having any effective therapeutic value was shock therapy. Years later, instead of a therapy, it was simply described as an effective torture, as it had been shown to have no medically helpful effect or value of any kind.

Because after a few weeks of being shocked and put through more pain than most people could imagine, you would say anything, promise anything, or DO anything to stop that pain from happening again. And many mentally well young people left these 'clinics' as slobbering human vegetables, they were left in disabled conditions, far beyond any mental illness, and would need to be cared for by the state for the rest of their terribly diminished lives.

It took psychiatrists a long time to understand that wanting a behavior even when it is shown to be detrimental or even harmful, means there's something in the brain, forcing it to come out. They know now that many behaviors are genetically crafted, including gender. My brain was designed to be female, but something forced out the Y chromosome and my body became male.

Because of the instruction I received from my Doctor, I knew I needed to create a better balance between my mind and body, making changes to my male body that would allow my female brain to reflect its own self-image with a much more feminized body. Sadly, there are still many, far too many, that see my sexual behavior as 'gay', and since my body then was male, but my brain is female, it means the only way for me to have sex with a male, until and unless I had the SRS to change my sex organ, required sodomy. I hope this begins to explain to you at least some of the great bigotry that we have always faced as transgendered females.