This is How We Change the World Ch. 03

Lyric gulped her coffee down, dressed and put her makeup on in record time, and hurried to the small convenience store across the street. Maddy thought it was adorable, but she appreciated the help. She had planned on wearing blue jeans, and didn't want to risk it with toilet paper. Plus, she would've had to carry around the whole packet of the stupid things if she'd bought some on the way.

"Thank you!" she beamed at Lyric, who spread her loot on the kitchen table. "Oh, were they out of night pads?"

"Night pads?" Lyric looked at her quizzically. "Are these not the right kind? I was sure I got the Always Ultra 3!"

"No, that's right, but I still need to stock up on night pads. For, you know, nights." Maddy rolled her eyes and smiled. "For the bed."

Lyric smiled back, but she looked troubled. Maddy went to the bathroom to sort herself out, and started to assemble her outfit for the day. Normally she would've just worn her uniform already on the way, but today they were going to have dinner with Megan before the shift began. The place wasn't fancy, but wearing another joint's uniform felt inappropriate.

"Are you okay?" she asked, brushing her hair and looking at Lyric, who was puttering in the kitchen, putting away dishes that had been cleaned and left to dry. Lyric shrugged.

"Listen, I'm sorry I wasn't more clear on what I wanted from the store," Maddy said. "I should've realized."

Lyric shrugged again. Maddy didn't push her, but instead hustled around the apartment, getting her stuff together.

They were early in the restaurant, but Megan was already there. She rose to meet them, smiling, and hugged and cheek-kissed both of them.

"So good to meet you!" Megan said, beaming at Lyric. "I've been pushing Maddy for ages!"

Lyric smiled feebly. "It's hardly been ages."

"Curiosity just makes it feel longer," Maddy said, frowning at Megan. "Excessive curiosity."

Megan gestured dismissively. "Yeah, yeah. What can I say? Comes with the profession. Or at least helps with it."

"Megan is a bartender," Maddy said to Lyric. "We worked in the same bar at one time. You'd be amazed how many people really want to pour out their hearts at the bar."

"Yeah! My wife doesn't understand me, yadda yadda," Megan said with a wide smile. "Somehow it's always the wife's fault that the guy is a clueless asshole. Not meaning to gender discriminate!" she added, widening her arms apologetically. "Plenty of wives doing the same. I suppose members of non-hetero couples too, but with the gay bar next door, we don't draw much of that crowd."

Lyric's smile was a little more genuine when they ordered their appetizers. Megan got a drink, but Maddy and Lyric stuck to water, because they had to work later.

"So tell me all the latest gossip," Maddy prompted, and Megan didn't need much to get going.

Maddy didn't know many of the people working in the bar personally, but she had listened to Megan's stories about them. Megan was a good storyteller, and even Lyric, who knew even less of them than Maddy, didn't seem bored. If anything, she seemed happy not to be the center of the attention.

The appetizers were good, but Maddy was displeased. Lyric and Megan seemed to be settling into some kind of polite but indifferent acquaintanceship, and that was not what Maddy had in mind for them. Not at all. She poked the rest of the scampi with her fork and eyed them both.

Her back was aching and it made her grumpy. These two persons were probably her best friends, and she wanted this to make sense. She didn't want them to be this hi, how are you level friends. She wanted more.

Once the main courses had arrived, Maddy glanced to see there was no one near their table. There wasn't; their table was at the far corner, and nearby tables were empty. They all toasted with their glasses and complemented each other's food on how tasty it looked. Once the other two had their mouths full, Maddy lowered her utensils and said, "Now listen here ladies."

They turned to face her with similar questioning expressions.

She smiled. "I wanted you to meet, because I want you to know each other. And I mean more than passing acquaintances. So... I'm gonna break the ice. I'll drop dead of old age before we get to it otherwise, and I can't have that."

The others, who were both younger than her though Lyric was by far the youngest, glanced at each other, then back at her, shrugging and trying to nervously chew and swallow.

"Megan here has breast implants and Lyric would maybe one day be interested in having the same," Maddy said. "And Lyric has the most amazing masturbating routine, like omg, game changer level shit."

Both Lyric and Megan looked surprised, embarrassed and infuriated. They stared at her, swallowing the rest of the mouthfuls, and Megan recovered first. "You bitch!"

Lyric eyed Megan's front. "I never would've guessed."

"Thank you," Megan said and couldn't help herself. She pushed her boobs out and looked down at them, lovingly. "I paid a pretty penny for them, but it was worth it."

They all looked at Megan's boobs. Megan glanced around, then at Lyric and said, "But why did Maddy say you might want ones too? Yours are lovely."

"Because these aren't real?" Lyric said. She was blushing furiously, but she hadn't bolted, which was what Maddy had feared might happen.

"No?!" Megan leaned closer.

Lyric glanced around the half empty restaurant, then quickly showed her the seam under her choker.

"Ahh, right," Megan said. "You know, I used to have fillers. I would've wanted breast forms but I didn't know where I could try some on, and then I just thought I'd get by before the surgery. I was very set on having it, once I lost hope of ever growing a pair myself. I mean yeah, I technically had boobs, but they were so... puny."

Lyric nodded emphatically. Maddy dared take a bite of her own steak; it didn't look like she had made her closest friends into her most passionate enemies, and now the conversation was much more interesting.

"I think they did an excellent job. And I don't usually go around telling people I had them done. I mean, what the fuck, Mads?"

Maddy shrugged, smiling apologetically.

"I think she was trying to give me an opening to tell you I'm trans," Lyric said quietly.

Megan glanced at her, then at her plate as she started to gather another mouthful on her fork. "Good for you, girl. Or how do you identify?"

"Girl is fine," Lyric said. She seemed perplexed by Megan's lack of reaction and busied herself with her own food to hide her confusion.

"Oh but what was that other thing?" Megan said suddenly, stopping eating again. "About... what was that? Some kind of killer masturbating routine?"

Maddy laughed and started to fill her in on edibles and masturbathons. Megan was nodding enthusiastically.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I can imagine... why haven't I thought of that?"

"Well," Lyric said, taking an unusually deep breath, "I sort of force myself to spend a whole day on myself. I mean, I can't really go anywhere once I've had one. I'm obviously on something. It's hard to make time for myself between my job and my..." She turned and looked at Maddy with her eyebrows raised.

Maddy nodded subtly.

"I, um, escort," she said, forcing out all the rest of the air, "a little. Handjobs, mostly."

Maddy studied Megan carefully over the next half second, and was not prepared at all for Megan to nod, sagaciously, and say, "I used to give blowies in the bathrooms at work."

Lyric said, "Really?" at the same time that Maddy, in a hushed voice, said, "Who calls them blowies?"

Megan just shrugged, and said, "Sometimes, I needed a little extra money, and I could usually spot the ones who wouldn't last very long anyway."

"Awesome," Lyric said, her eyes wide, at the same time Maddy said, "How did I not know about this?"

"Well I had a system," Megan said. "Afterwards, I just pretended it didn't happen. If I saw the same guy, there was no repeat business, and there was always staff around." She took a sip of her beer, smirking the whole time, and then added, "I don't know that I would've ever called it sex work, because it was never a whole lot of times, but... yeah. I get it."

"Listen," Megan said, leaning closer to Lyric and lowering her voice a little. "I don't know how much work you do out by Kimball and Midland, out my way, but we've got a back door that I can get you through, or an office you can hang out in. I'd offer to let you do what I did, out of the bathroom, but there was an incident a couple years ago and they added a thousand percent more CCTV."

"No," Lyric said, again looking at Maddy. "I don't know, I... I might not be doing as much of that anymore?"

Megan looked back and forth between them, eyes getting wider with every passing second. "Now, what the hell did that mean?"

Maddy smiled, adjusted herself, and said, "Well, I've been helping with rent, but I think she means..." She took a long sip of her beer. "We're maybe gonna make... porn?"

Megan was a lot less surprised than Maddy would have expected.

***

Lyric loosened her scarf, carefully not to move the choker. It was the kind of annoying day which couldn't decide if it was winter or already spring.

"I can't believe you just asked if you could touch her boobs," Maddy said. "I can't believe she let you!"

Lyric looked around, nervously checking to make sure no one was within earshot. "Her surgeon was good."

"Did she give you any names?"

"Yeah," she said. "I mean, even with you helping on rent for a little bit I'm looking at just barely breaking even. Several thousand for surgery is, just..." Her eyes goggled, alternately focusing into the distance and nearby rapidly.

"It's good to have goals, though."

Lyric nodded slowly. Their train came to a stop, and the two of them exited out onto the platform in lock step.

"Can I talk to you about something?"

This struck Lyric as a strange way to start a conversation in the middle of a conversation, but she blurted, "Sure," anyway.

"I want to be delicate, and I want to be... respectful, but I also want to help. Sometimes helping means being blunt."

"Okay," Lyric said, slowly.

"I worry about you. A lot."

"And that's... good?"

"I was thinking, earlier, about what Megan said about what she used to do at the club."

"Blowies," Lyric said, disbelievingly.

"Yeah, but, the thing is, she did it where she had... other people, and potentially some people who would keep her safe. Even if what she was doing was risking her job a little, she was always going to walk away from it."

"Uh huh?"

"It made me realize, like... the way you do it. It's so dangerous."

Lyric tensed a little as they walked.

"And that made me think, a little bit, about how... you know, for me, I was... I was made to be afraid of sex, and of being alone with men, and how that would be different from how you grew up."

Even though she felt it coming, the knowing didn't help. "Oh?"

"Yeah, I think there's some fears, and some—"

Maddy was talking next to her, but Lyric was having trouble focusing on it. Really hearing it. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She had not been able to successfully think about her life before her transition, without panic, in years.

"—sure you're okay? You look a little pale?"

"I'm alright," Lyric said. "Go on."

"I think I might just be having this kind of... realization out loud."

"So I didn't grow up a girl," Lyric said, sullenly.

"That's not what I meant," Maddy said. "What I mean is, I got that talk from... my parents. Teachers. Gym teachers. A priest, once. That mindset took some growing out of, later, but in their way, those people tried to look out for me."

Her mood was plummeting. "And no one looked out for me."

"Not so much that, but... it's all so fucked up, you know? The whole rape culture thing? Why should sex be scary?"

Lyric glanced at her, surprised into silence, but Maddy didn't notice. She continued, "But it is, and especially for trans women, and... and no amount of me being a crazy hippie feminist is going to keep you any safer, and... and I think that's why I want us to really get somewhere with the videos. You know?"

She looked at Lyric, who shrugged and tried to look like her mind wasn't going in a million directions.

"I mean, at first I was excited because I wanted to do something beautiful, and sexy, and fun, but now I'm kind of thinking I want to... I don't know, make a difference! By having our own trans porn production company! Create a safer way for you and other trans girls to, to..." Maddy was gesturing wildly. Lyric had never seen her so animated. She had red dots on her cheeks, and she looked very determined, almost possessed. "...to explore your sexuality! And make a living! Safely! And, and... normalizing all sorts of bodies, and... and selling how hot consent can be, and..."

They were almost at the coffee shop. Maddy stopped and looked at Lyric intently. "Right?"

Lyric couldn't think of an answer, but she found herself nodding.

***

16 Feb 2023

Maddy looked up at the five story building, as people filtered past them, and nodded. "I'm sure."

"Alright," Lyric said, shrugging but also secretly brimming with excitement. "Remember—"

But Maddy interrupted her from repeating herself, and said "I think I got it," with a gentle, good natured smile. They didn't say anything else. They went up the stairs, following the signs together until the signs said that the LGBT meeting was one way and the one for family members was the other. Lyric gave her one last look before turning and heading toward the meeting. She had an awful pit in her stomach, but somehow, also, she thought that it might turn out okay.

The meeting went well. The group had grown enough that they were now splitting into four smaller groups, and hers was almost all new faces. She found, though, that in previous meetings she'd speak up when it was her turn while older members would chime in on everyone else's to offer advice, or reinforcement, or hard-won wisdom.

This was the first time she found herself in that role, frequently adding, "It will get better," when there was an opening for it. It was only four words, and she probably recited them a half dozen times at most, but there was something intensely profound for her in saying it because, for the first time, for her, things had gotten better. Not by inches, gained by crawling through mud, but by bounds.

It was possible, and enabling that hope in others made her feel good.

By the end of the meeting, she was feeling particularly wrung out. The new faces had been new to the whole process, not just transplants who were used to the strain, and so, given the opportunity to talk about things they couldn't normally, they had unloaded as much as they could in their span of allotted time. It was as grueling as it was necessary.

***

"Oh god no," Sebastian said, lips mostly hidden by his cup.

Maddy turned and watched the girl in the corner, nodding her head to the beat of a song as it counted in.

"Girl, you can't sing Mariah."

"Ooooh," she said, as she finally recognized the melody.

Next to him, Mars frowned and rolled her eyes.

"I mean, she can't. It's just—"

The girl started singing, and Maddy was glad for the volume of the music because it masked Mars and Sebastian's groans. According to Lyric, their after-group meeting had never coincided with the bi-weekly karaoke night at the bar they frequented. Rose turned and frowned at them, again, for about the hundredth time, but they ignored her.

Mars said, "I'm gonna need another beer to get through this," and stood up. Rose and Sebastian both raised their cups, signaling they wanted one too, but it was not at all clear if Mars noticed them.

Sebastian snorted, and said, "Bitch" quietly enough that only their table would have heard him.

Lyric looked over at Maddy and winced. She stopped short of mouthing the word Sorry as she had once already, but Maddy understood it. Maddy turned to watch, and while it wasn't a good rendition of Fantasy, it was spirited and it was stylish.

Everyone at the table, except for Lyric, was kind of prickly. Raw, maybe. Sebastian and Mars were especially going after each other, which was surprising for Maddy because Lyric had confided in her that she was pretty sure they were going to get together at some point if they hadn't already, in secret. She'd met them all once before, several weeks earlier, and they'd all been a lot more congenial then. Lyric seemed very conscious of how badly it was going, but her attempts to break the stalemate had withered in the face of Mars' and Sebastian's ironic detachment.

Truth be told, though, Maddy was a little shaken herself. Her meeting had been very different from what she'd been expecting. Yes, everyone there had been an ally, and was there for the right reasons, but the fact that it was a safe space meant that a lot of them opened up about doubts and fears that surprised her. Talking about how embarrassed they are most of the time, or how they hope their daughter grows out of it. Things they maybe couldn't say the rest of the time. It hadn't all been like that, and she didn't regret going, but it had been hard.

The worst part, though, was the realization afterwards that Lyric hadn't had any of that. No family support. Not even a facade of it. No friends, present company excluded. In Maddy's head, when she'd tried to work backwards from how old Lyric was, and how long she had been in New York, and how long it probably would have taken to hitchhike, she was pretty sure that Lyric couldn't have been more than eighteen when she left. In the retellings, there was a long time between I left home and I finally got a stable job.

This isolation, this loneliness, spoke to something in Maddy. Something she could relate to, having lost her own parents early. The situation wasn't the same, but when she thought about how long Lyric had been adrift, trying to find her way without role models, or older sisters, or friends that have it a little more figured out... without someone by her side, the way she'd had Amy.

And then Lyric turned to her and smiled, genuinely. Genuinely and a little sheepishly, when they both realized that Mars had returned with only a drink for herself. When Rose and Sebastian gave her looks, she just rolled her eyes at them and pretended she didn't care. The pretending was familiar to Maddy, which was how she knew it was pretending.

They were all hurting, and it was easier to cut people slack when she knew they were hurting.

The song ended, and Lyric's smile became a lot more upbeat. Her eyes widened, and her spine straightened. Neck elongating. She turned and looked toward the corner, where the machine was. "I love this song," she said.

Maddy hadn't even realized another song had started, but the transformation that had come over Lyric was as good as magic. "Come on," she said, standing up. "Dance with me."

Lyric froze, and Maddy could see the conflict happening behind her eyes by the way she looked at Mars and Sebastian without looking. They'll make fun of me, it said, which Maddy didn't think was true. It was one thing to poke at strangers, when the chances were good that they would never see any of the other people in the establishment again, but one of their own? Maddy was betting on no.

She held out her hand, and it was a long heartbeat before Lyric took it.

Nobody was singing this one. It was some kind of pre-programmed interstitial between performances, but the song was real. It wasn't anything Maddy recognized, and it took her a few more seconds to pick out the clapping intro that had been masked, before, by applause. It was quick enough that Maddy was able to get into stepping at half time to cover the distance. When she turned around, having crossed the room to the open space at one end, Lyric had her arms over her head and was clapping along with the beat while her hips whirled. Her feet were planted, but every other part of her was moving. She wiggled back and forth on her toes, shoulders moving like a wave.