by Renee James
The unending days of discomfort have driven me to a desperate act today. I am going to a public beach to lie in the sun.
I'm making my way across North Avenue beach, looking for Cecelia.
She has made me her personal project. She wants to help me get more comfortable in my female identity and not even I can resist her constant efforts to make me try new things. And I appreciate her intentions. She’s right about me—I lack courage.
I thought Cecelia was completely daft when she suggested the beach outing, but she wouldn’t let it die. Over a period of weeks, I saw her pale skin evolve to a healthy glow and realized that I should be getting a little sun, too. I’d prefer to do my sunbathing on a roof, in privacy, but my building doesn’t allow roof access.
I find Cecelia. It’s not hard. It’s ten o'clock on Tuesday morning. There are only a few people scattered around the beach, and only one is a six-foot-something platinum blonde.
The early hour is a sort of practical compromise. We both know about the potential for skin cancer, so we don’t want to be on the beach between noon and three. Cecelia prefers the late afternoon for sunning, but I would only agree to expose my she-male body to the public in the morning, when fewer people would be around.
“Good morning, Bobbi,” Cecelia says, looking up at me from a sitting position on her beach towel. She is wearing a one-piece swimming suit that minimizes her heaviness, which is in her belly. The suit is modest, but it reveals her large breasts in a way her high-neckline dresses and tops don’t. In spite of myself, I gawk at her cleavage for a moment then force myself to look away.
“Please tell me you aren’t wearing a nun’s habit underneath all that,” Cecelia says. She’s smiling. It’s a good-natured ribbing. I’m wearing a flowing white sun dress over my two-piece suit, and a loose cotton top over that. Everything is in white. I look like a snow storm. But it feels wonderful. It’s feminine and the morning air on the lakefront is just cool enough to make the over garments comfortable.
“I couldn’t find any nun’s clothes at the resale shop,” I answer back. “But I got this outfit for fifteen dollars, Ms. Smart Ass.” I’m now the girl who can’t afford anything, but I did splurge on this. I mean, you can’t really have a monumentally new experience in an old outfit, right?
Cecelia smiles and launches into a monologue about sunbathing at the crack of dawn. I lay out my towel, set down my bag, and take a deep breath. Time to expose my transgender body to the world.
With Cecelia prattling on as though nothing important is happening, I take off the top. Gentle breezes flow across my bare shoulders like a cool shower. I feel naked and glance around to see if people are staring. They aren’t.
Slowly, I peel off the sun dress. I thought about doing this sitting down, so people wouldn’t notice me. But my rational side insisted otherwise, and Cecelia’s presence sealed the deal. If I’m going to be a woman, I need to quit hiding.
As I step out of the dress I am bombarded by sensations. The overwhelming one is nakedness. My two-piece suit is modest as beachwear goes, but it’s a lot less than I’ve ever worn in public before. The morning air skims over every pore of my exposed skin. It moves like a chill fog around my bare legs, my tummy and back. I feel it on my feet and on the exposed parts of my breasts. It flows under my arms and over my bare shoulders. This must be how a stripper feels the first time she takes off her clothes in front of strangers. I have goose bumps all over, but it’s not cold air that’s causing them. My heart is pounding loud enough to wake the dead. I feel sexy and ridiculous at the same time.
I sneak another look around the beach. No one is looking.
***
AT ELEVEN, WE SIT UP and re-apply sunscreen, each helping the other cover her back. I have been drowsing for the past half hour, at peace with the world. Unaware of anyone else on the beach except Cecelia who was also quietly napping.
As I apply her sunscreen I look around. There are a few more people on the beach and I can see more coming from the parking lot. A woman about thirty feet away is watching us; her girl friend is still prone, basking in the sun. She has made us but isn’t even talking about it to her friend.
A group of high-school boys passes by, laughing and carrying on. We draw some second looks, but they keep moving.
“What’s the world coming to when a tranny girl can’t even get a good insult on the beach,” says Cecelia, reading my mind.
“No kidding,” I agree. “If tits on a bull don’t piss you off, what will?”
At noon we pack up and head for a café for lunch, Cecelia’s treat. The heat of the day is building. I overrule my ingrained modesty and pack my jacket away, opting to dine in the comfort of a sun dress no matter what those around me think.
We draw plenty of looks and second looks in the café, but Cecelia blithely ignores them and I follow her lead. By the time we place our orders, we are old news to the other patrons and no one pays much attention to us.
Our conversation is lazy, aimless, an extension of the beach conversation. I’ve never seen this part of Cecelia. She has always been focused and intense. Serious. Here we are talking about odd news items, jokes, great lunch foods, fifties music.
I’m having a wonderful time, I realize.
“Cecelia,” I say, when the conversation wanes, “this has been a great time for me. Thank you very much.”
She holds up her hands. “Now don’t go getting all gooey on me,” she says. “It’s just a day at the beach.”
I smile. “It’s more than that for me,” I say. “You got me to do something new. I never thought I’d say this back when we were arguing about TGA politics, but you’re a really good influence on me.”
Cecelia blushes. She actually blushes!
“Truth be told, Bobbi,” she says, “You’re a good influence on me, too.”
***
SUMMERS TEND TO BE slow in the salon business and this one is no exception. But my bookings are worse than slow. They are in the disaster zone. The only thing keeping me from tapping my savings account is a little spurt in my home business, and a lot of economizing.
Just before Labor Day, Roger calls me into his office. My heart pounds as soon as he asks me to join him. I’ve been dreading this for weeks.
“Well, Bobbi, we have some good news and we have some bad news,” he starts. I wonder what the good news could possibly be, and I hope that the bad news isn’t a severance notice. I could hold out on savings for a while, but it would put my GRS operation way, way back.
“On the positive side,” he says, “only a couple of the stylists complain about you anymore, and I haven’t heard any complaints from your customers for at least a month.”
He looks up from his notes and establishes eye contact with me. “You know the bad news. You’ve lost a lot of your regulars. If they don’t re-book before they leave the shop, they don’t come back. And most of them aren’t rebooking before they leave. It looks like you’ll bottom out at around thirty or forty percent of the clients you had before you started transitioning.”
Roger says this almost apologetically. He’s rooting for me, I know he is. We’ve always gotten along. At first, everyone thought it was because we were both gay, but that had nothing to do with it. When you own a business like Roger does, the only important things are practical ones. It doesn’t matter to him if you’re cute or ugly, fat or thin, gay or straight, female or male. What matters is how well you attract and retain customers.
What Roger liked about me was that I work hard. I get to the shop early. I stay late. In the early days, when I only had a few clients, I kept busy sweeping floors, helping with shampoos, giving complimentary hand and scalp massages. Any scut work that needed to be done, I did. I soaked up our in-salon teaching classes, and I took dozens of others outside the salon at my own expense.
I got good at my craft, then really good, and still pursued knowledge. I stayed loyal. I didn’t gossip and I didn’t push him for a bigger commission and I didn’t get into spats wi
th my co-workers.
And my business grew. In my time here I have raised my rates four times. This happens when you start nearing your booking capacity at your current rate of charge. And I was getting close to another rate increase when I dropped my transsexual bomb on the world.
“Do you think I need to cut my rates?” I ask Roger.
“No,” he says, shaking his head.
It gets very quiet in his tiny office. My God, he’s going to fire me. My heart pounds. Would anyone ever hire me? I try not to imagine living as a homeless person in Chicago.
“I’ve thought about this a lot, Bobbi,” he says, staring me in the eye again, his face very serious, sympathetic. Like he doesn’t want to say what he has to say. . He hesitates a moment. He’s going to fire me! I’ve never been fired from anything and my heart nearly stops at the thought that this might be it.
“I think we need a new strategy,” he says, finally. “It’s time for you to quit apologizing for being trans and just sort of tout it…let it all hang out.”
Air flows into my lungs and my heart begins beating again as I realize he isn’t firing me. It takes a moment to process what he said.
“You actually have a much, much better retention rate with walk-ins than with your regulars,” he says. “I bet you don’t give them the sex-change talk, do you?”
I nod. He’s right. I never thought of it, but there’s no reason for me to tell a stranger I was ever anything but what I am now.
“That’s what I thought,” Roger says. “So as of right now, this moment, stop with the little talk about your transition. That invites clients to judge you. Bullshit! You’re a great hairdresser, Bobbi. They’re lucky to have you doing their hair. You’re going to give them a great cut and color, the best they’ve ever had, and whether you do it in a dress or a tuxedo isn’t any of their business.”
This is getting interesting. I'm even feeling a murmur of my ego rising.
Roger is on a roll, now, his jaw set, thumping on the desk with an open hand. “The other thing is, instead of dressing androgynously and trying not to offend anyone, just get on with it! Do like the other girls and don’t look back. Wear short skirts and fishnet stockings. Get some spiky heels and sexy boots. Show some cleavage. Wear more makeup. Change your hair color every month. I think people will eat it up,” says Roger. “Even the ones who think they hate transwomen. They hate gays, too, but that never stopped them from having one of us do their hair.”
My God, my boss is telling me to wear sexy clothes, show more skin! How often does that happen outside of a bordello? The elation is followed by doubt. Can I possibly pull that off? In the end, I stand up and kiss his cheek and cry.
He sits me down again. There’s more. I need to send personal notes to each client who does not re-book with me before leaving the salon: it was great seeing you, I enjoyed doing your hair, I have some ideas for your next service, and don’t forget to book another appointment in six to eight weeks to keep your hair looking great.
Roger is buying new business cards for me that show a photo of me as a woman. I pay for the photo shoot and he does the rest.
I have seen Roger coldly fire people on the spot and escort them to the door. And he has no trouble pulling one of us into his office for a dressing down when the situation calls for it. This is a businessman who has no trouble making tough personnel decisions. Which makes this day all the more special. It would be easier and cheaper for him to just get rid of me, but he’s standing by me.
Someday, I will repay him in kind. I swear it.
***
ALONG WITH PAYING the rent, my other great challenge is sleeping. I frequently have angry dreams or nightmares about Mandy. They are fueled by an anger that goes beyond our friendship. It's that Mandy was a symbol of hope for me and people like me. She was about as close to perfect as a transwoman can be. She was small and thin. She had a perfect face, perfect breasts, a tiny waist, a girly butt. She even had a feminine voice. If she passed you in a bar or restaurant all you'd think is how beautiful that girl was.
Mandy was the goal for transwomen like me. We think if we can look like that, if we can pass as women and even be admired for our beauty, we'd have it made. For people like me, every day is a struggle for acceptance, but you think if you could look like Mandy everything would be fine. You could just live your life.
Her murder crushes that fantasy in a savage way. There's the brutality of it and then there's the fact that no one seems to give a damn. It's like the best I could hope to be was still not enough to be considered a human being in this so-called civilization. If someone like Mandy can be chewed up and spit out without a ripple in polite society, what chance is there for any of us to be accepted as people?
It is eating me up. I’m obsessing and time is making it worse, not better. I've had dreams where I see John Strand’s reptile eyes staring at me, his face coming closer. I close my eyes to kiss him back and I have an image of him beating Mandy with his fists, even as I feel his hands stroke my body making me hot.
It is disgusting. I hate myself for it, still. I awaken with a sore jaw from clenching my teeth, still exhausted. I continue to think that I should get myself a lover, maybe even buy one, to try to blunt my physical attraction to this monster. If it worked, it would do wonders for my guilt and disgust. But I’m committed to celibacy until I am really sure about my gender identity.
And so I carry on.
***
Her hair smells of smoke. Her breath reeks of cigarettes. He can smell it from here, even though her face is buried in his crotch. She is moaning as she works. Her fake ecstasy is as repulsive as her odor. He almost wretches and pushes her away.
She startles. “Is everything okay, honey?” she asks.
Her breath hits him like a stink bomb. He covers his nose with one hand. He cocks a leg and drives his foot into her face, shoving her sprawling to the floor. . She squeals in shock, but he doesn’t hear her. His inner rage is rising. The Beast. The part of him that takes over sometimes, when the sex is done and his mind is working again and the thing that made him hard comes into focus and it's just a thing, an ugly thing that needs to be stepped on and squashed.
She looked perfect on the Internet. Sultry face, big tits, pre-op cock, thick lips, smooth skin. ‘I want it all,’ the ad said. Well, hallelujah. And the timing was perfect. . Andive owed him for legal services. Andive set up the meet. . Andive reserved the room. An untraceable encounter. A night to let the beast out.
“…Are you listening to me, goddammit? Who do you think you are?” The foul smelling bitch is yelling at him. She’s rubbing her face and angry.
The beast roars in rage.
Suddenly she is sprawled on the floor again, her legs splayed, her big tits heaving in sobs, her cock lying limp on the floor. Blood gushes from her nose and lips. He sees blood on his right hand, tries to remember the feeling of hitting her so he can savor it. One shot! The beast is hungry tonight. He can feel his fists on flesh, hear her sobs and whines.
“Shut up,” he says to her, just loud enough to penetrate her hysteria. It takes all his will power to resist hauling her into the bathroom and pounding her head on the tub until her skull breaks open and her brain leaks out. It would be delicious. Much better than the last one. She was an accident. This one is disgusting. It would be fun to kill her, to kill her stink. But this isn't the right time or the right place. Too dangerous. Another time, he promises himself. He can control the beast. That’s what makes him great.
He gets a wet cloth from the bath and drops it on her knees. She flinches, expecting another blow. He stands over her. “Clean yourself up,” he says. “Don’t get any blood on the carpet.”
She uses the cloth to dab blood from her nose and lips. He sits in a chair a few feet from her. Breathes deeply. The beast is still hungry. The beast wants more, but the great one is in control now.
“I’m sorry,” he says, peeling large bills from a roll. “It’s a war thing. I have blackouts sometimes.�
� There is no emotion in his voice. He doesn’t try to hide the fact he’s lying. It doesn’t matter. She’ll believe because she wants to believe.
He hands her a wad of bills. “There’s $500 there. Will that cover everything?”
The bitch starts to count the money then sobs. She nods her head yes.
“Okay,” he says. “You can get dressed and go now.”
She struggles to her feet and dresses. With the money clutched in one hand, she reaches for the door with the other. He grabs her wrist.
“Put the money away,” he says. She looks at him, scared. He takes the roll, opens her tiny purse, inserts the cash, snaps the purse closed.
“Like that,” he says. “We can’t have the neighbors talking, can we.”
She nods. Shaky.
“Now, just so we understand each other, that means you don’t say anything to the hotel or the cops, right?” His voice is falsely warm.
She nods.
“Okay. I’m taking you at your word. But just so we understand each other, if you betray me it will be the last thing you ever do. Understand?”
She takes a deep, convulsive breath and nods, eyes down.
“Good,” he says. “You have a wonderful evening and enjoy the money you made tonight.” It’s his close-the-sale voice. Warm, mellow, inviting. The money and the send-off will overcome her memory of the other stuff. She’ll feel sorry for him in a day or two, a poor war veteran with violent flashbacks, so sweet and generous otherwise. She’ll come willingly when he calls the next time. Eager. And there won’t be a time after that.