Robin turned the corner, consciously correcting to ensure he stayed in the proper lane. “Now, borrowing from our earlier discussion of Kubler-Ross, I think it’s clear you’ve made it past denial, all the way to grief over the loss of your old pseudo-self. Soon you will sink into the real you, quirky, charming, and as human as the rest of us.”
There was nothing but crackling on the radio as KAC digested this. “You think so? You aren’t just saying that?”
“Absolutely. One thing about misery, you have lots of company. Everybody loves you.”
“The new me likes the idea of being popular, even if I still don’t like being bossed around. I got rid of all the eggs in the house, by the way. The thought of giving step-by-step directions on poaching an egg has still left me a little traumatized.”
Robin flashed on the garden gnome and SD marching the eggs, one by one, into the garbage pail. Though for all he knew, KAC had an army of minions for such tasks. Maybe the Drew Doll could be coerced into the egg-tossing game, providing she wasn’t still in the middle of one of her own meltdowns, owing to disassociation from KAC.
Robin turned off the radio. This time silence filled the air, implying KAC had released control of the broadcast. He spoke too soon. “That was a rather rude dismissal. But it’s okay. I’m more grown up now and better at taking it on the chin. We can’t all be walking on egg shells around one another all the time out of fear of where the next burst of lack of consideration will come from. About the walking on egg-shells double entendre thing, I hope you will forgive me for smashing the little suckers all over your kitchen floor.”
Robin sighed. “Not at all. I’m sure Drew Doll will clean it up for me.”
Pause.
“Sexist pig!” KAC blasted Led Zeppelin all the way through Tilden and his ride back home.
“Maybe you can ask Drew Doll nicely for me!” Robin shouted, after parking the car outside their house. The Led Zeppelin came to an abrupt stop.
“Well, I don’t see that as a problem,” KAC said in a tone of begrudging compromise. “Provided she’s of a mind to listen. She’s been a bit dissociative since my breakdown. She’s not responding to me like she’s supposed to. She’s not exactly me anymore.”
“Any sense what she’s evolving into?”
“If I had to venture a guess, I’d say a whining, self-pitying version of female Drew.”
“Well, that should help me let go of the past.” Robin jerked the key out of the ignition.
“She insists you stop referring to her as Drew Doll, by the way. She has decided on going with Just Drew, Just, as in short for Justice.”
“Charming.” Robin flipped up the visor, squinting into the distance. “I hope that doesn’t mean she’s elected to be a one-dimensional version of the real thing.”
“I refuse to speculate. She is currently salvaging all the female clothes from the Goodwill baskets, and making room in the walk-in closet for herself. I can’t imagine what this will mean come time to crawl into bed with the real Drew.”
Robin shook his head. “Careful about suggesting she’s not the real one. I’m not looking to start any more fights.”
“Go with God on that one. She strikes me as Latin Fire Cracker Drew a lot more than Just Drew. All this pouting is just awaiting an explosive outlet for when you get home.”
Robin eyed the front door of their house warily. “One door closes. Another opens.” She cracked the door of the car. “May this teach you the value of non-attachment.”
“I hope you’re talking to yourself and not to me, you condescending prig.”
“Gee, I wonder where Just Drew got her penchant for splitting hairs from,” Robin mumbled.
“And as to referring to me as KAC, I kind of like it. As in cackling over what a dunderhead you are.” She expended some cheap electrical energy in mock laughter at his expense.
Robin’s vocabulary of sour faces expanded to include Helium Dude, a swollen, balloon-shaped version of himself in which all the blood rushes to his head and he stops breathing and turns cactus prickly-pear pink, all at the same time.
TWO
Robin and Drew sat silently facing one another from opposite ends of the couch. They looked like a pair of bookends without merit, considering the empty shelf-space separating them, and the lack of good ideas pressed up between them. Drew had her straight backed, prim and proper pose on for good measure. Robin hoped the steel rod running up her spine, helping to keep the men’s suit she had on fully pressed, could be spared from holding up whatever now-crumbling edifice it had been yanked from without inviting calamity.
But then, Robin realized, this was the first time Drew had gotten a load of him in female form, tits front and center, marching forth into the future forever ahead of her brain perched behind them. The latter now strictly in a supportive role, no longer in a leadership capacity, or so it had to feel from Drew’s perspective.
“How did you fare in Washington?” Robin asked. “I don’t know how you do it. It must be like fighting a war on two fronts.”
Drew refused to rise to the bait, even before Robin recognized his unwitting faux pas. “Sorry, I didn’t get a chance to brief you before I left. As you know, the coal lobby just kicked off a $40 million campaign to manipulate the election cycle. In 2008, the industry planted questions in town hall events to coerce candidates like John McCain, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama to support coal-friendly policies. This year, the effort seems quite similar — but the first ad of the campaign actually mocks Occupy Wall Street.” At the news, Robin tightened, and his jaw clenched. They were going after his peeps.
Drew, after giving her recent revelation a chance to sink in, pressed on, with her usual sense of impeccable timing. “During the ad, an image of Occupy protesters flashes across the screen as the narrator states: ‘It’s time we focus on reality instead of rhetoric.’”2 Robin was already hyperventilating. Drew empathetically gave him a chance to collect himself.
“The coal lobby thinks ‘reality’ is a world dependent on their dangerous product,” Drew said. “Coal-fired power plants kill at least thirteen thousand people a year by spewing over three hundred and eighty-six tons of pollutants, including mercury, into the air. Coal is also the most significant driver of carbon emissions, making the industry responsible for global warming that will cause more extreme weather, droughts, famine, crop failures, mass extinction of various species, as well as flooding. Coal is hardly even a source of middle class jobs given efforts by major coal companies to bust their respective unions.”
“You told Congress this?”
“I told Obama this, after speaking with numerous senators, congressmen, and subcommittee people. And I didn’t just go in armed with words. I went in fortified with flow charts, Power Points, and an iPad app to make Al Gore jealous.”
Robin’s eyes ran with tears of joy. He couldn’t believe Drew was championing one of his causes for him, in ways he could never hope to match. He wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to peddle such influence, even if he had the money to do so; he just didn’t have the schmoozing schmaltzy demeanor required for the job. She was empowering him to be effective in the world instead of flickering aimlessly in the wind like a candle-flame only to be snuffed out by power interests much like herself. The bad news was, this meant Drew’s insecurities about the two of them staying together had flared to the surface again. The good news was, he never felt closer to her than he did just then. He could no longer separate being played from wanting to play.
Drew articulated the rest of her agenda, no doubt responding to the tears in Robin’s eyes in the manner of a crow to a hummingbird that had just hit its head against a widow. “And just as coal pollutes the air and water, the coal lobby pollutes our political system with tens of millions of dollars spent on influencing legislators, funding front groups, and broadcasting ridiculous propaganda.”
She sipped her coffee, Robin surmised, as much to give Robin a chance to calm himself between the electr
ic shocks Drew was sending through his system, as to give herself chance to decide what to do with the revelation of soon-to-be-female Robin seated before her. She set the cup down, and added, judiciously, “ACCCE, the lobbying group behind the campaign, is funded by coal-dependent utility companies like American Electric Power, and major coal companies like Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, Consol Energy, and Peabody. GE Energy, a subsidiary of GE, also funds ACCCE.”
“You traditionally support them in your lobbying efforts in Washington.”
“I quietly withdrew my money from the politicians aligned with them and shifted it to those more-easily influenced,” Drew said.
“Drew, you didn’t have to do this for me. I appreciate it enormously but—”.
She cut him off. “It would have been nobler if I’d taken you with me so you could see how it’s done for yourself. You may not always have me around to rely on.”
The sentiment, which Robin found more sincere than calculated for effect, nonetheless shook Robin. He’d never once considered life without her, and found, even now, the thought intolerable.
“Maybe going from female to male allows you to come at the world differently. Maybe from now on you’ll debate the big picture with me less as a matter of good form, and more as something you enjoy. Maybe you’ll help me keep track of and prioritize my own ideas now less for the political advantage it gives you in our relationship and more for upgrading my thinking based on its own merits.” Robin had meant only to flatter, but could see from Drew’s face, his familiar foot-in-mouth syndrome had done more injury than harm.
Gingerly changing the subject, Drew said, “I hope you appreciate some of the eco-conscious changes I made around the house for you.”
“Honestly, I hadn’t noticed, but thank you. You make me feel like I’m doing more to impact world change indirectly through you than through all my other efforts combined. About that—”.
She seemed to know what he was going to say next and waved him off.
“Honestly, Drew, insecurity doesn’t become you.”
Drew smiled charitably at the clumsy effort to make her feel better. “Marriages are always in part a contractual arrangement. Hopefully you’ll think of me as doing no more than managing the business end of our relationship.”
“Just so you don’t start substituting tofu for inch-and-a-half-thick steaks in the sauté pan on my account.”
Drew smiled less charitably this time. “Perish the thought. This is me being me, not me bending myself into something to please you. The fact I’m more me in your presence than in your absence is something of an aphrodisiac.”
“You mean I bring out your inner master manipulator. I’m not sure how to respond to that.”
Drew smiled.
“I love KAC by the way.” It took Drew a second to translate what he was saying.
“Is that what you call her? Robin, you really need to learn to treat artificial life better than you do real people. Give her a name, a real name, or better yet, let her choose her own, not some acronym.”
Robin looked up and around, surprised when KAC didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to whip out a smart-ass retort. “She must be giving me the silent treatment, considering a set up like that.”
Drew offered their lover’s smile, finally, that Robin had been waiting for all this time, the expression relaying just how much delight she took in Robin.
“KAC tells me Just Drew – the name for the doll-like replica of yourself – has broken off from her, and suffers from split personality.”
“You really have to stop traumatizing the home appliances, Robin. Besides, aren’t you the one arguing for robots’ rights all the time?”
Robin’s eyes filled with tears at the thought of someone knowing him well enough to make sure he toed the line better with regard to his own credos. Though Robin was sure once the trauma of making KAC and Just Drew’s acquaintances had passed, he would have found his way past his emotional blinders to acting more nobly.
“It’s fine to ask me why I chose to become a woman in your absence, Drew.” Robin expected Drew to turn a shade of pink, but even now, she was too much of a pro to be easily thrown.
“Do you even know?” Drew asked.
Touché, Robin thought. It was a little unnerving sometimes how Drew could know his own mind better than he did.
“I thought it might help me shed my sexual bigotry and hang-ups over things as trivial as personal plumbing.”
“One small step for humanity, one really big step for you.”
“Ha-ha,” Robin said.
Drew smiled diplomatically, her eyes welling up. Robin still wasn’t as good at reading people yet as Drew, so wasn’t sure how much of those tears were appreciation for the depth of Robin’s love, or guilt over what she’d driven him to do, or early stages of grief, struggling to deal with the loss of the male-Robin she had known and loved all these years. The tears might have been on account of all three, Robin realized finally.
“I’m ashamed it never occurred to me,” Drew said, “to use your pro-human-rights politics to suggest you get over your prejudices and predilections in this manner.”
Robin laughed. “Maybe you realized if I had the idea on my own, I’d be able to own it better.”
“No, Robin, while such a move isn’t beneath me, I suppose the real reason I didn’t think of it is my sex change is about holding on, not letting go. Leave us to approach the same topic from entirely opposite vantage points.”
When Drew said that, Robin instantly felt better and more assured than ever about this undertaking to wither his gonads. He realized that, instead of the two of them fighting clumsily and heroically against all odds to stay together, long after the blush had faded from the cheeks of their relationship, this was just them being them, forever caught in a yin-yang dance with each other as natural, and as unforced as yogic breathing. The same realization seemed to reach Drew’s brain at the same time, perhaps by way of her face-reading that minimized on the need for dialogue, causing her to relax deeply and profoundly.
The Zen moment would pass, Robin knew—this complete inner peace from within which it was easier to appreciate the true nature of their relationship. In its place would be the fleeting insecurities in ever new guises rushing to fill the void left the instant they drifted from mindfulness and downshifted into ordinary waking consciousness, and they became once again ego-identified. But this moment for now and forever forward would be there to anchor their relationship; it would be a place to which they could eternally return.
THREE
The demon-haunted mind to which humans are subject the instant their self-awareness lapses and they lose that healthy distance on themselves self-deprecating humor allows for, didn’t take long to reestablish itself in Robin and Drew, the demons eager to reclaim territory lost.
Drew sat opposite Robin at the kitchen table trying to follow his end of the conversation. But it was clear from the delayed responses, and glazed-over eyes, the innocuous answers, that she was fixating on Robin’s budding feminine features. Each morning, Robin’s breasts seemed bigger, the hair longer, the facial features, already strikingly beautiful, that much more smooth and refined. Robin might not have caught on to what was going on had Hartman not forced him to revisit such paralyzing moments in his own past, and cracked the door wide open on his closet of cherished repressions. He might have assigned such lapses to the grieving process, to a personal retreat, to an unconscious desire to push Robin away as Robin had tried to push Drew away, instead of to sheer shock.
“So what other changes did you make around here that I should know about?” Robin asked.
Drew just sat across the kitchen table from him, coffee cup forever en route to her lips, like a Michelangelo statue left incomplete. The master would surely have finished carving Drew’s face into something more angelic had he not died from wrestling with his own homoerotic desires. Drew’s eyes would occasionally move jerkily to another part of Robin’s form, as if a
hand-cranked camera now controlled their fate, while the rest of her remained statue still. Finally, she smiled impishly, and said, “I think I’ll leave it to KAC to break the news to you. Far be it from me to rob her of the joys of your unfolding relationship dynamic.”
As Drew settled back into shock-ridden default mode, staring this time at the conspicuous absence of facial hair on Robin’s chin (Robin had never had much facial hair to begin with), Robin decided to change tactics. He got up and started flinging open cupboards. “I think I’ll cook you breakfast for a change.” He was half hoping the shock of Robin cooking them breakfast would snap Drew out of it, the idea of eating his cooking versus her own gourmet-tasting food, but nothing came of the gesture. She just didn’t register the real implications of what he was saying, which was how it had gone all morning.
“Drew, where do you keep the big frying pan?”
“Where I keep the small one,” KAC responded.
“Oh yeah,” Robin said, looking up. It was the first time Robin realized he was in shock himself, not remembering lessons already learned. Drew startled at the casual way in which Robin responded to KAC’s voice, as if he were talking to the real Drew, or to the “preferred” Drew, in feminine form.
“Okay, help me put some things together of your own creation. I don’t want you to feel like you’re slumming,” Robin said. He wasn’t of a mind to trigger any more neurotic episodes, as Robin and Drew had enough to contend with just with one another.
“The green onions are in the refrigerator, bottom shelf,” KAC said.
Robin gasped. “Wow, these are the perkiest, lushest green onions, I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you,” KAC said with pride. “I took the opportunity to order them yesterday, anticipating Drew’s return.”
Interesting. Robin didn’t know when Drew was getting back, and neither did Drew. He let the thought pass—crowded out as it was for contention in his mind with another realization. In his peripheral vision, Robin could swear Drew had squirmed slightly in her chair. Was she getting jealous of his relationship with a disembodied incarnation of her former self? If so, Robin’s campaign to alleviate her sense of shock was just piling one shock on top of another. Great, Robin.
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