Grow a Pair!

Other files and records confirmed that the lawyers' search for me had hit a brick wall, so as long as I continued my life in exile and never resumed my former identity I was safe. Not that I had any choice...I was stuck being a female forever.

I slipped out of my room just as the sun was coming up, catching a nearly empty BART train back to Walnut Creek. I stared vacantly out the window, in a deep funk. I could never go back to being a man.

Cissy didn't show up for work that morning, or ever again. Thanks to her bogus employment application, she vanished without a trace.

That afternoon, back in my cotton dress, leggings and flats from the House of Fabulous, I was once again on a BART train, only on my way to Berkeley this time. My stint as a receptionist, living 24/7 as a woman, had taught me a lot more about myself than just my legal and medical status: I'd learned that I could cope with being female a lot easier than I could cope with being poor.

In fact, now that I knew there was no hope of regaining my manhood, it was easier to accept and even enjoy the little upsides to being a woman that helped to compensate for all the hassles. Life was certainly less stressful without all that testosterone driving me to prove myself, and I found myself taking pleasure in simple things, like the way it felt right now to be a pretty girl in a cute dress, strolling once again the beautiful campus, savoring the sights and sounds that in my prior life would have gone unnoticed in my rush to make my next million. If only I could have my cake and eat it too....

The location of the Biology building was seared in my memory. For the third time, I made my way to the laboratory where my life had changed forever. The door was locked, and I milled around in the hallway, reading the notices and advertisements on a cluttered bulletin board until I spied Nomo Hung walking down the hall, striking in black slacks, heels and a flowing silk blouse.

I waited until she unlocked her door, before poking my head in with a big smile. "Hi!" I said. "Got a minute?"

She gave me a quizzical look. "Do I know you? Oh wait, you're the psych major who interviewed me for your paper, right?" I was wearing the same dress, which helped her make the connection.

"Yep. Although we met again last night, remember?"

An ashen expression came over her beautiful face. "Oh God!" she gasped. "You saw me..."

"You were amazing, Jade."

She strode over to the door and closed it behind me. "Please sit down. What do you want?" she asked tersely.

"What makes you think I want something?"

"Please, whoever you are, don't tell anyone."

"Gee, do you think your colleagues on the faculty would be upset? What's a little moonlighting? Maybe if they came to see you, they'd be big tippers."

"Please, don't do this to me. What do you want?" she asked again.

"I have a business proposition for you."

"Blackmail?"

"Of course not. A straight business deal. And to prove I'm not trying to take advantage of you, I'll let you in on a little secret. We've met once before."

She narrowed her eyes. "Where."

"Here. In this laboratory. Only I looked a little different. And so did you."

She stared at me with an open mouth. "Oh my God..."

"That's right. I'm the maniac who attacked you when you were Dr. Lo."

"Who are you?"

"Your new best friend."

She lowered her head into her hands, shaking with sobs. "Please, what do you want from me?"

"Listen, sister, you and I have a lot in common. You have your secrets, and I have mine. And we both lost our balls, thanks to that fucking pesticide. I need your help."

"How can I help you now? There's no cure. If there were, do you think I'd still be like this?"

"I don't know, you seem to be making it just fine as a chick."

"Believe me, it's not by choice. Although once I realized that I could never go back, I decided to try to make the best of it. It hasn't been all bad," she conceded. Incredibly, we found ourselves talking to each other like two women, and a strange bond began to develop between us, impelled by the unique experience which we'd both been through.

"Is that why you started dancing? To have a little fun with it?" I asked.

"I suppose so. After all the grieving over what I've lost, and the pressures of maintaining my academic standing while trying to deal with the publicity and embarrassment, I have to find ways to escape for a little while...."

"Your secret's safe with me. Tell me about pheminyze."

"How did you learn about that?"

"I'm very resourceful. Is it true that pheminyze is the active ingredient in Atrazine which turns males into females?"

"Yes."

"Can it be isolated and administered safely?"

"I don't know, the question has never occurred to me. Why would anyone want to do that?"

"Are you kidding? Across San Francisco Bay there's a ready-made market for it, and that's just scratching the surface...do you have any idea what percentage of the population around the world is transgendered?"

"You mean as in thinking they were born into the wrong bodies? I don't know...I've done a lot of research into the phenomenon since I started to change...hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, in the United States alone."

"Exactly, and the vast majority of them are men who wish they were women. Do you have any idea how much money we could make?"

"I can't be associated with anything like that!"

"Don't worry your pretty little head about it! You just have to take care of the science...trust me, if they handed out Nobel Prizes for setting up shell companies with silent partners, I'd have one too."

For the first time, she actually smiled. "You are a bad girl," she scolded me.

"Better to be a rich bitch than a working stiff," I replied.

One year to the day after the Atrazine disaster, I awoke at my customary hour of noon, stretching and yawning in my satin peignoir. How shall I amuse myself today? I pondered as I threw back the luxurious silk sheets. Which of the hot outfits in my room-sized closet shall I wear tonight? After I fired up the espresso machine, I stepped onto the terrace of my Russian Hill penthouse, contemplating my good fortune while I contentedly smoked a cigarette. Looking down at the working girls heading off to lunch on the sidewalk far below, I wondered how many of them were happy customers of pheminyze?