A Taste of Strawberry Ch. 03

"You . . . know?" she gasped.

"Yes, of course – I'm not dumb! I know you're taller than me, but it doesn't matter, honestly."

"You nut," she laughed as she planted a loud slap on my fanny. "Listen to me a minute, I'm trying to be serious."

"I'm sorry, Nan, I was just trying to lighten you up a little. But I really do know your secret." I lifted my mouth to whisper in her ear, "You like women, don't you, darling? Well, I've decided I do too, at least one particular woman! But given my first point, you're either going to have to let me put on my heels again or sit down or something if we intend to continue kissing – and given my second point, I sure hope we do – because I can't stand on tiptoes much longer."

Her lips trembled and I held my breath, wondering if she was going to laugh or cry. She held me so tightly I was having trouble breathing and a tear trickled down her cheek and onto mine.What on earth did I say? Was it the implication that she was a lesbian? I didn't mean it that way!

Her arms relaxed and I got my feet back flat on the ground. I was afraid to ask what was wrong, almost afraid to even look at her. "I'm sorry, Alyssa," she sniffed.

"No,I'mthe one who's sorry! Whatever I said, please believe me that I'd never intentionally hurt you. Can we talk about it?"

"We will – just give me a minute to wash my face. And it's absolutelynotanything you said, so you have nothing to apologize for, all right? Why don't you fix us an rum and Coke, if you don't mind?"

I waited in the living room with the drinks, wondering if I should get dressed, wondering what she was going to say. Maybe she was married! They'd had a quarrel or he'd dumped her for another woman. She'd moved into this apartment but now he wanted her back – that would explain a lot, including why she never talked about anything but her recent past! Before I could go on and imagine even worse scenarios, she returned, gave me a quick kiss, then took her drink and sat in the chair across from me. I almost told her what I was thinking, but remembered that's what had led to this and decided to keep my mouth shut and let her talk this time.

"This is something I've thought about telling you ever since I found myself falling in love with you, but just couldn't think how to." She paused for a sip of her drink. "But when you talked about doing more things like going skinny-dipping together and . . . and how nice it was to kiss, I decided it was time."

Wait! Falling inlovewith me? What!

"I can't think of any good way to start, so rather than a long, rambling explanation I'll just tell you the main point. If it doesn't make you run away in disgust, I can try to answer any questions you might have. Alyssa, I'm a transsexual. Do you know what that means?"

I did, sort of, and it came as a complete shock. But I needed to make sure. "I think so, but why don't you tell me more? Besides, I can't run away without my clothes, and I don't remember exactly where I left them."

Another tear slid silently down her cheek, but at least I had her smiling.

"They're over by the door next to mine, where we dropped them about a minute after we first came in, in case you want them later. But what it means is that I wasn't born a woman."

I nodded. "So you had an operation, like Christine Jorgenson back in the fifties?"

"Yes, it's called Sexual Reassignment Surgery – SRS. Along with hormone therapy, it changes your body into a woman's except that I can't have children, of course. But legally Iama woman now, including a birth certificate that says so. You might never have found out, but I couldn't take that chance. I wanted you to hear it from me now, instead of finding out later. I'd rather lose you right now than risk hurting you very badly some time later. Whatever else you might think of me, I never want you to think of me as a liar!"

I took a much-needed swallow of my drink, trying to sort through all the implications. I guess it would have been worse if I were a man finding out his girlfriend used to be a guy, but since I liked men anyway, it wasn't a show-stopper that I could see. Which brought up another point.

"Are you gay? I mean, when you were . . . I mean, did you like men? And do you now?"

"Good questions, all of them," she laughed. The answers are it depends, no and no. I've never been interested in men and I'm still not. Lots of other transsexuals aren't either, by the way, but the rules they've set up for SRS are that the only acceptable reason is that you want to sleep with men. Some people are lobbying to get that changed, but for now the ones like me just, well, lie through their teeth to get around the requirement. Let me put it this way: I love women, love every little thing about them. I love them so much I wanted to be one, and now that I am, I'm happier than I've ever been in my life! The 'it depends' part depends on whether you accept me as a woman or not, because if you do, I'm a woman who wants women as sex partners, which technically makes me a lesbian. I hope that makes everything perfectly clear?" she concluded with another of her throaty chuckles.

"Well, semantics aside, you're basically saying I'm not likely to pick up the newspaper and find out you've married the remaining English prince, right?"

"Not even if he asked, no."

I looked at her closely. "Earlier you said you had found yourself falling in love with me?" I made it a question.

She held my gaze steadily. "Yes, I did, and I meant it. There's no obligation on your part to even acknowledge it, but I wanted you to understand why I had to tell you about myself. It's stupid, really – I feel like the girls who got married right out of high school instead of waiting to find out exactly who they were as an adult first, to meet enough adult men to find out what was available," she shook her head in mock disgust. "So now that I'm really a woman, instead of exploring the field I go wacky about the first beautiful, sexy redhead I run across!"

"Pretty dumb, all right," I said deadpan as I tried to get my thoughts in order and analyze my feelings for her – I'd already decided that I had no trouble still thinking Nan as a 'her'. She had earned the title with pain I couldn't even imagine, both physical and emotional, I was sure, while for me it was just an accident of birth. If the law said she was a woman, and what I saw and had held in my arms said so too, that was good enough for me.

"Yep," she smiled. "Of course, I might still change my mind and run away with some member of the Royal Family, but it would be with Princess Kate!"

"Well, before that happens how about I make us another drink?"

"Sure," she said, handing me her glass. Alone in the kitchen, I sighed and splashed a little water on my face. Mixing the drinks, I decided that right now I was more interested in finding out more about Nan and what had led her to such a – literally – life changing decision than about my reaction to it.

"Carry on, Scheherazade," I said as I held out her drink. "I'm certainly surprised by what you've told me, but I have no intention of bursting into tears and running screaming into the night. I'd like to hear more about why you decided you wanted to be a woman, if you don't mind."

"You can't run screaming into the night, anyway. I hid your clothes," she said as she accepted the glass.

Thinking she was joking, I glanced towards the door. Sure enough, both our piles of clothing had disappeared.

"I hung everything in the closet while you were in the kitchen. I would have done it sooner if I hadn't gotten a little distracted earlier," she smiled. "Anyway, it's not that I mind telling you, I just have trouble finding a starting point. I guess we're really dealing with two parallel stories here, so I'll start with the women. My mother was a Sunday School teacher, and the age group she taught was supposed to be 25-30 year old women. Some of them liked her classes so much that they refused to be 'promoted' so sometimes they met at our house and the whole living room was full of attractive women in their twenties, thirties and forties all wearing nice dresses, hose and heels. After the adolescent girls at school wearing jeans all day, it was like a visual banquet. They thought it was so sweet that I wanted to sit in, but I don't think I picked up all that much of the lessons – I was too busy looking and admiring. The pretty dresses and sheer nylons, lovely hairstyles and a little whiff of perfume occasionally were my idea of heaven! I don't remember anything overtly sexual – I was pretty young – or any thoughts about wanting to be like them. I just loved being around them.

The other thread is exhibitionism. When I told you last night I couldn't remember a time when Ididn'tlike to be naked, that was perfectly true. Sometime before starting the first grade – it's very fuzzy – two sisters who lived next door and I started playing 'You show me yours and I'll show you mine.' It's a neat game because everybody wins!" Laughing, she took another sip of her drink and raised an eyebrow in my direction.

"Sounds reasonably normal so far," I commented. "Makes sense that you enjoyed being with your mother's students; most men enjoy looking at nicely dressed women, though I don't know how early they start. You do sound as if you were a little precocious, though! And while I didn't, myself, I've heard that lots of kids play that same 'game.' Did you do anything, uh, physical about it?"

"Not that I remember, no. It was all just looking. The urge to touch came a bit later."

As I grew up, my fascination with being nude increased – maybe if I'd been born into a nudist family it would have been different, but forbidden things have a real fascination. And so did my fascination with women. I remember when I went to college I felt a bit jealous of the girls who got to wear skimpy bikinis to the beach – I wanted to show as much skin as possible, but they didn't make bikinis for men. Somewhere in there I got to be envious of all the beautiful, sexy clothes women got to wear and the attention they got. No one's interested in seeing naked men, but naked women are a different story! Look how much of modern culture, especially advertising, is full of images of scantily dressed women – and they're usually admired, not arrested, when they show off their charms."

"So you think that becoming a woman was motivated by your desire to be a socially accepted exhibitionist?" I asked.

"I'm sure it was, to a large extent," Nan admitted. "The first time I crossdressed, the feeling of looking in the mirror and seeing a woman looking back was really exciting. I had to squint a bit and use a lot of imagination, of course - it's not like fiction where all you have to do is put on a dress and a wig, and suddenly you look like a ravishing woman, believe me! Anyway, as I got more involved with it I got more confused. I knew I wasn't gay – like I said earlier, I really,reallylike women – and I was doing my share of dating, so why did I enjoy 'being a woman' so much? I do know part of it was the desire to be noticed and admired, to have people look at me and smile, the way they do when they see an attractive, nicely dressed woman."

That sounded awfully close to my attitude last night when I decided to dress up and go to the restaurant; a very feminine feeling that made me more empathetic to Nan's desire. "Did you ever talk about it to any of the women you dated?" I asked, wondering how I would have reacted if someone, say Matt, had revealed something like that to me. I like to think I would be open-minded, but I honestly don't know.

"No, not then. Remember I was pretty mixed up about everything myself – thought I was the only person in the world who felt like that and that I'd just be laughed at or dumped. In fact, a few years later I ruined a good relationship when I did admit it to a woman I was dating. She thought it was one step below being an ax murderer! Thank goodness for the Internet – at least I'd learned that even if I was crazy, I had lots of company. I also got up the courage to talk to a psychiatrist, but it turned out she knew less about it than I did at that point, so it was back to the Internet for more research. There are quite a few crossdressing blogs and some by transsexuals, so I learned a lot.

One site was run by a doctor named Anne Lawrence, who's a transsexual. She's written quite a few medical papers on the subject and has a theory that seemed to describe me exactly. It's called autogynephilia, which, loosely translated from Latin, means 'in love with the idea of being a woman.' So - no subconscious interest in men, no 'submissive' side that needs expressing, not even the feeling that most transsexuals describe of feeling you were really a woman born in a man's body and you're just correcting the mistake – just a conscious decision that I wanted to be a woman. Maybe my reasons weren't pure and noble, but it's how I still feel and I'm glad I made the decision I did. Crossdressing was very pleasant and I loved it, but I wanted to reallybea woman, not just look like one. Before, if I wanted to look like a woman I had to get all dressed up to do it – now I look like a woman whether I'm wearing clothes or not, and I just love it!"

I thought about her comment after the pizza guy left, "Don't you just LOVE being a woman and being able to do things like this?" and understood the significance.

It was a lot to take in, and hard to understand how someone could go through all that to satisfy their inner vision of themselves. I thought about the anorexics who were so obsessed with the current ideal of being thin that they literally starved themselves to death, and of the women who spent small fortunes on plastic surgery to mold their bodies into some idealized image. "What are you going to do now? Do you intend to have more plastic surgery to, uh, further improve your looks?"

That question provoked a loud laugh. "No way! I've developed a slight aversion to knives and hospitals, so if anyone doesn't like the way I look, they can just not look at me! I know I'm not perfect, but I'm quite happy with the way I look right now, thank you."

She took another sip of her drink and chuckled again. Well, she seemed sane enough about that at least. Nan hadn't asked for my opinion, and I appreciated the fact that she was letting me take my time. There was one thing I could say with all sincerity, though. "I'm glad, because I think you look fantastic!"

She smiled and leaned forward, reaching out to touch her glass to mine. "Thank you." she said simply.

"You've given me a lot to think about, Nan. Okay if I light the candles again and we just sit here a while?"

"Of course. That would be very nice."

She stood and headed over to the table to get them, and I turned to watch her walk. After placing them on the end tables and lighting them, she started back to her chair but decided to go look out the window instead. The candlelight flickering on her smooth, pale skin brought a sudden lump to my throat. I'd done a very good job of being logical and unemotional up to this point, but I realized that logic wasn't the only factor I should be thinking about. Nan's warm, caring personality was just as appealing to me as before; when I looked at her I still felt the same tingling deep inside, the same urge to touch her soft skin, to feel her hands on me and her lips on mine. Maybe I was going crazy myself, but it was something I had to consider. Then I finally realized she wasn't asking me to make some lifetime commitment right now. All she had been saying was that she had deep feelings for me and realized our relationship might go further, so she had the courage to let me know in advance exactly what I might be getting into. And all she wanted was to find out if her revelation would 'send me screaming out into the night' or if I was willing to stick around and let whatever happened, happen. Once that sank in, my decision was easy.

"Nan, why don't you come over here and sit next to me?" I patted the love seat. I saw the smile on Nan's face as she turned and walked over, and couldn't help returning it. My mind might be confused but my body knew what it wanted as I slid my arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Her warm, soft thigh pressed against mine as I leaned my head against her shoulder and sighed contentedly. I had no idea how this might eventually end up, but I knew I wanted to stick around and find out.

Author's note: Before anyone asks, no, I'm not a transsexual but I have met a few. Some were gorgeous, some were plain, but one thing they all shared was a feeling of happiness and fulfillment that I tried to capture in the story. As I put into Alyssa's mouth, they've earned the title of 'woman' and I respect their courage.