Beyond Binary

by Brit Mandelo

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that, Sweetie. Why do you think I came? I might get some details wrong now and then, but I know you inside and out. I came here because what you want is what I want. Besides,” she adds, “you’re a hottie and I’ve been envisioning this scenario for a while.”

  I smile at her. Suddenly I realize, regardless of the trippy context, I’ve got a strong and brazen beauty in my bed who knows every one of my desires and wants to play through them with me. This is hot.

  She finishes taking off her pants. I glance down. Her legs have a different shape to them, probably due to a few extra years on hormones. That’s not all I notice.

  “Where did you get those scars on your legs?”

  “The big one on the outside of my thigh was from a fight—don’t worry, I messed him up even more. The smaller ones are from cutting.” She watches me closely. I think she’s looking for a reaction, but I’m not sure how I’m feeling. “You don’t need to do that, by the way, if you can find a better alternative.”

  I decide that a minimal reaction is best. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She must see my awkwardness with the topic and redirects us. “Come and get a closer look.”

  I move forward to look at her. The pattern of pubic hair is somewhat sparse, and I can see her labia underneath it fairly well. I glance up and notice her staring at me. I can feel myself blushing.

  “It really is okay to touch it,” she tells me.

  I don’t know why I’m being so hesitant. I pull her labia to the side and take a closer look. Her clit is actually pretty cute. Her bits really look like any other cunt I’ve seen, as unique as any other. “What made you decide to do it?” I ask.

  “I realized that I had always been interested. I had just thought that if I had a spare twenty grand hanging around that I might have better use to put it to. But there are some real benefits to it. I don’t have any problems in clothing optional space anymore, and I can go stealth in locker rooms, with Michigan festies, or even with one-night stands.”

  “You’re stealth now?”

  “Only for a few hours at a time.” She flashes me my crooked smile again. “But I suppose the main two factors that pushed me over the edge were that my healthcare plan covered it—actually Saphira’s health plan—but most health plans cover it now. And that I didn’t want the risk of getting placed in a men’s prison again.”

  It takes a moment for me to catch the significance of again. I should be disturbed by it, but for some reason I’m simply concerned. I look up at her questioningly, hoping for more explanation.

  “Oh shit, that was insensitive of me. I didn’t mean to tell you like that. But don’t worry, I already took precautions to prevent it from happening to you.”

  “How did it happen to you?”

  “It’s a long story I’d rather not talk about. Let’s just say it had to do with an abusive partner and survival crime. Life sucked for a while, but I got through it and I’m stronger now than I was then.”

  I can see the pain again. She’s been hurt a lot. I wonder if, despite her mysterious precautions, that will happen to me.

  “Hey, mind if we get back to the fun stuff? I know you’d love to see me get off, and I’ve actually been wanting to try this for a while.”

  I smile back at her and let her change the subject. “I’ll grab the gloves.”

  “Hmm, that brings up an interesting question. I wonder if it’s possible for me to give you anything? That seems like it would be a bit of a paradox.”

  I think about it a moment. “There’s enough paradoxes floating around already. Besides, it’s a part of my agreement with Saphira.”

  “Oh, certainly. Of course. I just get curious. Those kinds of things are hard to figure out.”

  I move closer to her and run my hand up her leg.

  “Before you start….” She beckons me over. I come to her side and she pulls my head toward her and kisses me on the forehead. “Have fun, darling.”

  A little more relaxed, I cup my hand over her cunt and hold still a moment. Then I back off slightly and give her some light and teasing touches. She responds positively, with a slight shudder and a sigh. A smile comes to my face. I’m getting really turned on. I run my tongue over her thigh. Then I turn my focus to mapping her vulva with the tips of my fingers, enjoying every tactile sensation.

  Once I’m satisfied I slip on a glove and douse my hand in lube.

  I move my hand between her legs and find her opening. After rubbing the lube around a bit, I slide a finger in. Her eyes flutter as she takes a breath. It went in easily.

  I feel around a bit, drinking in every sensation I can. I’m in up to my last knuckle. She’s moaning softly. I back out to insert another finger. This time she gasps. I do a come-hither motion and she arches her back.

  “There, oh fuck, yeah,” she says between breaths, which are coming faster and harder. “Please, right there.”

  “You’re a lot of fun to play with.” With my other hand I squeeze her clit between her labia and rub it. She lets out a series of staccato breaths. Encouraged, I increase my pace. She writhes under me.

  A moment later I slow to add another finger. I push all three in as deep as I can. She starts lifting up to me and I can feel how much her cunt wants me.

  “Oh, yes,” she cries. “That’s what I need, fill me more.”

  I use a fourth finger as well. There’s more resistance and I slow, then drizzle more lube over her cunt. It takes some time, then I can feel her opening up, begging to swallow my fist.

  “Try your whole hand.”

  Doing as she says, I tuck my thumb under my other fingers and press in. I’m in awe and not sure if it will work, but I keep the pressure on. As her moans and movement build, my hand slips into her. She’s gasping. I’m filled with a sense of amazement. Her pulse beats around me.

  She reaches down to stimulate her own clit. Her whole body is tensing and pulsing. I can feel it as her cunt clenches around my fist. I hold her hip tightly as her body rocks. Then she’s spasming. I feel her cunt quiver around me. Her abs tense and she almost sits up. Then her body slumps back and goes slack.

  I take the cue to slowly remove my fist. When I finally am out she lets out a long breath. I lie down on the bed next to her and she puts her arms around me.

  “A thousand throngs of thundering thespians, goddamn, I needed that!” She gives me a peck on the cheek. “It’s been a while.”

  “Of course. I should be thanking you.”

  “You really are an adorable sweetie. I kinda miss that part of me.” She brushes the hair out of my eyes. “So, what do you think?”

  “That was incredible. When did you get it?”

  “In 2015. As soon as I could after I got out.”

  “You know, I don’t think you lost it,” I say, “the sweet caring part of yourself, I mean.” I lean over and give her a kiss. She’s somewhat surprised at first, then kisses me back with a gentle tenderness that makes my heart swoon. I run my hand through her hair and kiss her harder.

  I roll over her and run my hand down her side. Her hand moves up under my shirt and scratches my back. The sharp sensation intensifies the arousal I’m feeling. Her fingers find and undo the snap of my bra.

  She gets my shirt off and cups one of my breasts in her hand. She pinches my nipple between her middle and ring finger. I moan. She twists. I gasp and pull back slightly. I’m disoriented for a moment, then she pushes me onto my back and is sitting on top of me and holding a royal blue dildo.

  “The Empress! You still have her after all these years?”

  “Of course. When you form a psychological connection with one of these babies, it doesn’t go away easily.” She leans over me. “You did such a nice job with me just now, how would you like it if I returned the favor?”

  “Please.”

  She gets off the bed and walks around by my feet. She’s wearing a strap-on harness, but I don’t remember her putting it on. I grab the lube and spread some on my
self. Kneeling at the foot of the bed, she lifts my legs into the air and leans over me.

  She kisses my ankle and guides the Empress to my ass. I’m hungry and ready for her. She pushes the tip into me. I moan. She holds still for a moment while I adjust. Minute by minute, inch by inch, my ass swallows her. When she knows I’ve had enough time, she pulls almost all the way out, only to sink deep into me in one fluid motion.

  I arch myself into her and she alternates between a few slow thrusts and several faster ones. I let out a slow groan. She reaches down with one hand to play with my breasts. As I get more into things she shifts her position so she’s lying on top of me and kisses my neck. She’s panting.

  “How much can you get out of using that?”

  “Quite a bit, actually.” She moans into my ear while making several quick thrusts in succession as if to demonstrate. She grips my hair and grinds her hips into me. Her head lifts up and leans back. She’s a lot louder. Her energy is intensifying, then suddenly she downshifts and returns to her previous patter.

  She smiles at me. “A little more of that, and I could have come.”

  After a while I roll us over so that I’m on top. I’ve got room to touch my bits now. She’s still thrusting up into me. Everything feels so good. She’s staring straight into my eyes with such intensity and focus. The sensation is arcing. Waves of pleasure crash over my body. I collapse onto her. A tingling sensation is still making its way back and forth over my spine. I wrap my arms under her back and clutch her to me.

  After it subsides I lift myself up and pull the dildo out. I snuggle up to her side. “Damn, I love you,” I say.

  “I love you, too.” She laughs. “But seriously, I’m really glad you still think I’m worthy of your love.”

  “I don’t think you’ve changed as much as you think you have. At least not in the important ways.”

  “Keep that in mind,” she says. “You and I, we’re resilient. I’ve been through a lot. A lot that I hope you don’t have to deal with. But even with all that, you can still love the self that I’ve become. I hope you never stop loving the self that you are.”

  It’s a rather beautiful sentiment. “Is that the message you came here to give me?”

  “Maybe.” She grins and looks to the side. “Hey, you wanna try something really weird?” She pounces back onto me and changes the subject, a habit I hadn’t noticed about myself before. It’s also interesting to realize how much bubbly energy she has, and I wonder if I’m like that too. She interrupts my thoughts and holds up a condom. “I’m creaming all over at the thought of you fucking me with your bits—if you feel comfortable with it.”

  I smiled. “I like how you think.”

  We keep going like that for who knows how long. We try everything we can think of. I’m getting to know her body really well, and she already knows mine. Occasionally we take breaks and she tells me more about her life. Time slips by. It’s hard to keep one moment distinct from the next. I don’t remember it becoming night, but suddenly it’s morning. I must have fallen asleep.

  I feel arms around me. I turn around to kiss my future self, but she’s not there. Instead, it’s Saphira. She’s awake and kisses me.

  “Saphira, when did you get here?”

  “I got back really late last night and you had already fallen asleep. You looked so happy I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Now that I’m more awake, I think I realize what happened. Oh well, I say to myself. I guess I can never deny being vain again.

  “I had a thought last night, darling.” It would be nice to keep my options open. “What would it take for me to be on your health plan?”

  ∞

  The Metamorphosis Bud

  Liu Wen Zhuang

  It was an ordinary morning in every other way the day Georgia awoke to discover that she was not herself. Usually, the first sounds she heard were the thin horn melodies coming from her cheap bedside clock radio, tuned to a local jazz station. She would lie there in the dark thinking how snug she felt wrapped within her blue and white comforter, and doze a few more moments before launching herself out of bed and into the world. Today, however, she rolled onto her side and felt something cool shift inside her underwear.

  Her eyes flew open and in the same instant it seemed that the temperature within her little cocoon dropped by a few degrees. She felt her eyes must be so wide open that the whole dawn darkness must be seeping into her head, an ebbtide that left in its wake light that lifted and brightened in front of her. The effect was dizzying.

  She realized she was just holding her breath and watching the day break. Slowly, so as not to shock her system, she let the air out of her lungs.

  Georgia put a cautious hand onto her abdomen. She felt the elastic edge of her panty directly below her belly button, the superfluous satin rosette attached to the lace-trimmed edge just like the rosettes that adorned all her bras and panties. So far, nothing unexpected.

  Her hand crept further down inside her panties, over her hair, which on any other day, would have been covering her pubis, the bone palpable underneath the fur. Instead, she felt a tube of very soft, fine-skinned flesh lying amid her hair.

  Upon touching it, she drew sharply back and put her hand instinctively on her chest in a gesture of supine surprise, breathing shallowly but quickly the whole time. How terrifying. She’d flinched away and at the same time the mass of flesh had moved in an equal and opposite direction from her, one of the muscles down below contracting through instinct. She squeezed her eyes closed even more tightly and willed herself to sleep, hoping that on the second try she would wake up and find nothing about herself changed.

  Behind her lids, however, Georgia’s mind buzzed like a fly the thickness of a windowpane away from its life. A thought occurred to her and, blinking, she reached out tentatively to see if her left breast was there, which it was, and then the right breast. She imagined her breasts under the skin—green veins woven around and through fat over her chest muscles—and was relieved.

  Very well, she thought, is this a matter of addition to what I already have, or a substitution all together? Of the two, she supposed she preferred the additive effect, as at least there would be something familiar still left to her. Extra things one could deal with, like a newly discovered wart or a toenail that had grown unchecked, but substitutions implied an unknown force keeping some sort of balance on the grand genital ledger, on which she had come out on the penis plus side.

  There. She’d finally said it. She blushed in the lifting dark, imagining her mother’s ghost frowning; she had most certainly not been brought up to speak so baldly about her…parts, making so bold once and only once to refer to the love-thumb set among the whirlygigs, but this was an unusual situation, maybe even properly clinical in nature, and so for once coy baby names and the gutter nomenclatures she noticed so many young people using these days seemed wholly inappropriate. And what else could that tube be?

  She sighed. If she had to have a penis, Georgia thought, she hoped at least that it was hers. That is, she dreaded the idea that she had been subjected to some cruel cosmic joke in which she lay here, sweating and agitated, completely without dignity, with someone else’s organ while some other person elsewhere did the same, wondering how his genitals had suddenly gotten so complicated and involuted. A newly sprouted penis could be borne, like an unexpected guest, so to speak. It was a lot like having a hernia, she imagined. To be vagina negative, however, struck her as deeply terrifying.

  Had she wanted children, or been much younger, it might have been devastating in another way to wake so altered. True, Georgia had never enjoyed the cramps, the bloating and monthly feeling of over-ripeness, but those years were very much behind her. No, she couldn’t say that she felt an abiding regret for children never birthed, nor unadulterated pleasure that she would be without menses. It was this, Georgia decided: the appearance of a penis meant changes in the superficial contours of one’s body, but the absence of a vagina bespoke internal rearrangeme
nts that went to the deepest parts of one’s being. The vagina was connected to the uterus, the uterus was connected to the ovaries, the clitoris anchored to the vulva, and so on. Georgia wanted to believe that her inner organs were aligned around the assorted sacs and spaces that had always been there. She wanted badly to have her innermost self unaltered, whatever that was.

  The phone rang just as Georgia was preparing to lift up her nightgown and check.

  “Claude?” she said with agitation, as if she didn’t recognize the voice of the man she sat next to while answering the lines every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at the Senior Health Clinic Hotline.

  “Georgia? Are you feeling all right today?”

  “Yes, well, no,” Georgia said, rasping her voice a bit. She cleared her throat. This faking was undignified. “I’m sorry I didn’t call; I won’t be coming in today.”

  “Hmmm, well, we thought something was amiss when you didn’t come in on time. Coming in on Monday, do you think?”

  “Impossible to say,” said Georgia. “I’m feeling a bit out of whack…sorry not to call earlier.” She noted that the sun was high in the sky—how long had she been sitting here navel-gazing?

  “Yes, well, get some rest. Check in with us tomorrow.”

  Georgia murmured a farewell in feeble tones and hung up. She’d barely been able to keep the tremble out of her voice—she’d been handed a day off from work, and maybe the next day too! Should she call May and…? No. Better to keep this to herself, for now. She didn’t feel like sharing something so unlikely. Still lying in bed, she peeled off her underwear clumsily, snagging it over the unfamiliar mass of flesh. She kicked the panties off her feet, sending the covers flying. Georgia stood, nightgown bunched around her waist, feeling her spine crack vertebra by vertebra as she bent forward to see herself more clearly.

  Indeed. There it was. It had a cowl around its neck. She shook her hips: it waggled from side to side. Well! When she was little she had always wanted a tail. And here it was.