From alt.sex.stories.tg Sun Jul 14 19:53:34 1996
Path: nienor!mordred.cc.jyu.fi!news.funet.fi!news.kolumbus.fi!news.sprintlink.net!news-dc-2.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-dc-5.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-dc-9.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-dc-10.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-stk-200.sprintlink.net!cyberspace.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!btnet!news.euro.net!xs4all!basement.replay.com!not-for-mail
From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.tg
Subject: New TG: Prisoners of Tiresias
Date: 12 Jul 1996 21:02:37 +0200
Organization: Replay and Company UnLimited
Lines: 1112
Sender: replay@basement.replay.com
Message-ID: <4s67gd$efa@basement.replay.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: basement.replay.com
X-XS4ALL-Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 21:02:51 MET DST
XComm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting
XComm: Report misuse of this automated service to <abuse@REPLAY.COM>
Prisoners of Tiresias, (1/6)
Key words: science fiction; sf; sci-fi; sex change;
transformation; fantasy
WARNING: We believe that this story is best told
as a SF social satire with a sexual content that
is only PG, not X. If that's okay with you, welcome
to the adventures of Aaron Carter in the 21st Century.
PRISONERS OF TIRESIAS
Copyright 1996 by Christopher Leeson
Chapter 1
Through the dark, gold-tinted glass shielding I
could see the technicians working. Their monitors
lighted their intense expressions. Their movements
were economic, exact and -- though they had done this
many times before -- I sensed their excitement. It
-- the big It -- would happen soon. Very soon.
Drawing a shaky breath, I glanced at the grating
under my feet, the high-conductivity mesh that would, at
any second, carry a modulated burst of intense electro-
magnetic energy through our bodies, changing the
vibratory rate of our molecular building blocks. I
couldn't help but look around the room, at my equally
nervous neighbors.
Most of them were locked in manacles and leg
irons, as befitted convicts in transit -- ten
felons -- all male. They were mostly street gang
members convicted of serious crimes. These were
the bad ones, the violent two-legged shark that
society could deal with least effectively, the kind
that you never dared turn your back upon. They
were the vicious, fatherless sons of urban America,
the wild beasts of the crime-blasted wastelands,
the rotten fruit growing from the poisonous ground
of the authoritarian state, the sorry distillation
of sixty years of social planning. They were the
random marauders that would kill a fourteen year
old for a pair of Nike shoes or a sharkskin jacket.
They were the gang warriors who fought bloody
battles over drug territory. They were the hijackers
and burglars and stickup men who killed without need
and without remorse. They were the murderous pimps
who knifed their own girls, or their rivals on the
street.
You didn't get sent to Tiresias for minor crimes
-- crimes like grand theft auto, or assault and battery
that couldn't be twisted into a political offense.
Police didn't even try to make arrests for such
infractions anymore, not unless they happened right
under the nose of a patrolman. The prison on Tiresias
was meant for a much more serious sort of human debris.
Even in their teens and twenties most of the
convicts in the transportation chamber had long records
of unpunished crime. The first-time-convicted
malefactor averaged ten prior felonies, which usually
included at least one homicide. Even older criminals
were afraid of this upcoming generation. Life meant
nothing to these kids -- not even their own. Put them
into a traditional prison and they'd only line up into
new gangs and start wasting one another, just to
control a few miserable acres of exercise ground. As
little as courts liked locking up the inner city
criminal (the judicial knives, for the most part, were
out for the political offender), the prisons were
overflowing with them.
It was to control prisoners without self-control
that the facility on Tiresias had been established at
great expense. It was not that internment there was so
brutal; it was just that the possibility of a
Tiresias experience was supposed to "scare straight"
kids who were still at home -- young males with the
exaggerated but brittle machismo of the gutter. Was
the policy succeeding? I didn't see that it was; every
year yielded a bumper crop of new criminals even worst
than the last. Even so, all government policies, no
matter how ill-conceived or badly managed, were
ballyhooed as overwhelmingly successful. I couldn't
think of one federal policy that hadn't been
overwhelmingly successful, though civilization itself
seemed to be crashing down around our heads.
As I looked into the prisoners' youthful faces:
some savage, some just stupidly brutal, some
dangerously cunning. They deserved their fate, all of
them. If you paid me, I couldn't think of a sweeter
bunch of guys to turn into women.
Turn into women. Incredible. Twenty years
ago the idea would have sounded like a demented
fantasy. Today it was a scientific reality.
To think that the once-secret Philadelphia
Experiment had come to this -- inter-dimensional
transfer! The World War II files which had been
locked up for sixty years had been exhumed under the
Gore administration. The technological advances six
decades had allowed physicists to solve the serious
problems that had baffled government scientists in
the 1940's, and which had been so injurious to the
U.S. servicemen whom the White House had allowed to
be experimented upon without their consent.
It had always been hard for me to comprehend that
different universes occupied the same space and time.
Tiresias was one of the "alternate dimensions," or
"parallel worlds," that fantasy literature had
speculated upon for so long, but which science had
actually been discovering, and even exploring, during
the last couple decades. But going to a parallel world
was not like going to another planet. In
interplanetary travel the ground rules at least
remained the same. Inter-dimensional transference was
much different. Each world had its own logic, and it
accepted intruders only on its own harsh terms. Some
undefinable "world mind" seemed to be operating in each
different universe -- and they did very, very strange
things to persons from a different "reality."
On Acteon, for example, human beings were
transformed into antelope-like creatures suitable for
feeding on grass and breeding in great numbers, but not
much else. That made Acteon almost useless for any
purpose that human beings might want to put it to.
With hooves instead of hands one couldn't even mine its
mineral deposits. (Interestingly, some law and order
types suggested making it into another prison world for
lifers without parole. Just turn them out to permanent
pasture).
On Triton, on the other hand, people became a
rather repulsive species of bipedal amphibian which
could breath in the seas of that watery world. On
Nessus, Earthers remained human-looking, but gained a
couple more bodily organs which helped them survive
environmental toxins that would have swiftly killed a
normal person. Likewise, native "people" taken from
the parallel worlds to Earth changed into ordinary
human beings -- ordinary for our world, that is. One
of the intelligent antelopes born on Acteon had
actually transformed into a pleasant-looking woman when
abducted to Earth -- much to her shock. Tiresias had
its quirks, too, but those quirks made even less sense
than those of the other worlds. On Tiresias, Earth men
became women, and vice versa. It was as simple as it
was astonishing to contemplate. What purpose could
this serve the God-mind of the Tiresias universe? No
one could explain it, it was just the way things were.
These prisoners were scared about their impending
fate, all right. It showed in the way they looked at
one another, or refused to look at anything at all,
except their own feet. For most of them, courage had
always been false bravado, their daring deeds amounted
to little more than attacks on the weak, or of the many
upon the few. The street gang warrior was no real man,
after all. Only a man can make a boy into another man,
and these street kids had grown up without supervision,
with no one to model themselves upon except the older
pimps, pushers, and gunmen. When you got right down to
it, the young career criminal was just a messed-up kid
playing at being an outlaw. Unfortunately, he played
for keeps. Most older career criminals alive today had
come from their pathetic ranks, of course, but there
weren't a great many older criminals. The death rate
in these urban wolf packs just ran too high.
There were practical reasons for using Tiresias
as a prison for violent offenders. Besides the
demoralizing aspects of a radical physical
transformation, there was the accompanying loss of
size, weight, and upper body musculature. All this
made a prisoner a little less dangerous to his guards,
and which both physically and mentally sapped him of
his confidence. Also, studies had demonstrated that
the Tiresias transformation brought with it a marked
psychological change. Just as women changed to men
became more aggressive on Tiresias, males changed to
women became more passive. That was just the reality
of sexual psychology and it made for more docile
prisoners.
But the trouble was, us correctional officers were
going to be transformed right along with them!
I regarded the other three custodians who were
being "sent over." Two males, one female. The female,
Rother, was big-boned for a woman and fairly ugly. She
seemed pretty steady, considering the incredible thing
that was about to happen to her. I guessed that she
was a volunteer. Women who volunteered for Tiresias
usually hated men, motivated by an androphobia that was
carefully nurtured by our educational system. If the
power-elites were to remain in control, they had to
keep society divided into splinter groups at permanent
war with one another. The support of the government
could be transferred from one faction to another on
short notice, the end always being the same -- the
ruling class remained the ruling class. The sexual
antagonism which had made America the wonder and
laughingstock of the world was one of this band's
proudest achievements.
So, given relationships were a running sore, why
did such number of such women want to come to Tiresias
and become men? I suspected that it was just envy,
though I don't know why anyone should envy a man in the
United States of the Twenty-first Century. But even
with American males topping the list of the under-
employed, under-paid, and under-educated, the militants
still raged against them as if it was still 1900,
pretending that they still had the best of everything,
and at the expense of everyone else.
The men who shared our chamber seemed much more
dubious about our journey than did our female
colleague. That figured. Very few men volunteered for
Tiresias; those who were sent over were mostly the
screw-ups teetering on the brink of charges for
misconduct or who had to work off "black marks."
Their Tiresian tour was seen as discipline or atonement.
Some few men volunteered for Tiresias, naturally, but
these were few -- mostly gays, tv's, and ts's. But the
Service did not have nearly enough willing men of any
stamp to staff Tiresias year after year, despite all
sorts of recruitment inducements. Hence the arm-twisting.
I couldn't help but imagine what my brother
officers would look like as women. I wagered that
Brady, the smaller man, might translate into the
average housewife type -- not much to look at, the sort
that populated supermarkets and dreamed dreams of
glamour while reading glossy fashion magazines. The
other, Volsted, was a big Scandinavian-looking guy who
looked like he lifted weights. Whatever he became, I
was pretty sure that he wouldn't be the sort of woman
that I'd ever want to take to bed -- but of course that
wouldn't be my option. -- That was what bothered me.
Then the space around us hummed, I felt a low-
voltage current coursing through my body, and I
suddenly felt hollow inside.
*Holly shit, it's starting!*
The power throbbed along the floor grid, vibrated
through our skeletons and made my teeth chatter. I
tasted something strange in my mouth. I cried out as
every nerve in my body charged like a live wire. But
the pain lasted only a few seconds before everything
went white.
*No wonder you had to pass a physical!
Too bad I was as healthy as a horse.*
My vision cleared, but I still had an intense
ringing in my ears. I stood reeling, only dimly aware
that the throbbing under my feet had faded away. The
room was coming back into view and only slowly did it
dawn on me that wasn't the same room. It was a
transfer chamber of about the same size as the first,
but the paint of the walls were apple green instead of
steely gray, and the setting of the fixtures were
different, or at least they were installed in different
places.
*Oh, my God! We're there!*
#
There was an obscene mutter around me. As the
transference energies dissipated, I realized that I was
standing behind a crowd of a dozen women, most of them
cuffed and ankle-chained, and just one guy -- a big,
ugly-looking palooka in clothes much too tight for him.
It was a good thing that "he," Rother, had been warned
to loosen his tie and buttons before entering the
chamber.
I was aware of a different smell to the air,
something hiding under the prevailing odor of ozone.
It wasn't bad, just different. I realized that it must
be the air of Tiresias. We had reached another planet,
or at least a parallel world of Earth! But whatever we
were, the reality of leaving old Earth behind came as
one hell of a shock. Despite my emotional state, I had
a sense of adventure that could not be denied.
As I shifted slightly, I noted the looseness of my
clothes. It had happened! I'd lost stature. I had
the urge to look at myself, to see what I had become.
But I fought off the impulse, just as a disfigured
person will refuse to look into a mirror. I didn't
want to touch myself either, and so let my arms hang
slackly at my sides. I felt an over-stuffing in my
duty jacket, even though it hung amply on my shrunken
shoulders. Oh, Lord, was it true? Did I have breasts?
Sure I did! Intellectually I knew that I did. I hoped
that they would do no more than fill an A-cup, but they
felt huge.
For a moment my imagination ran away with me. I
had seen hundreds of pictures sent back from Tiresias,
printed as before and after shots. It was, in fact,
routine for pictures of prisoners to be sent back to
their hometown and neighborhood news services. (It had
taken years and a Supreme Court decision to allow this
practice. Many privacy advocacy and prisoners' rights
groups had spent millions to defend the tender
sensibilities of killers, drug pushers, and rapists).
The idea was that a person in a criminal society
had a hard time functioning successfully if he had
suffered a devastating lost of "face." And among the
outwardly tough, but inwardly brittle, young men of the
street gangs, puncturing their pose of machismo --
usually a ersatz one anyway -- with public postings of
their feminine incarnations was a good way to do it.
That most of these mortified and broken criminals soon
became alcoholics or wasted drug-users was not
important to the establishment. The burgeoning numbers
of people with special needs only proved that more
social programs were in order, even though those on
the books often had to go unfunded due to the progressive
impoverishment of the tax pool.
I glanced at my colleagues again. Brady had
become a small woman, just as he had been a small man
-- a Plain Jane really, but one who looked like she had
been a woman from the day of her birth. Volsted was
still a big person, but not so tall or broad-shouldered
as before. "Miss" Volsted looked like a strong working
class girl who might casually pick up a blacksmithing
anvil in some screwball comedy set in the Wild West.
And damn! Were those a pair of muskmelons tucked into
her jacket? Her face wasn't bad though. If she had
been just a little more fine-boned, I might have --
Volsted was returning my look of amazement --
*Christ, what do I look like to her?*
I might have laughed, if it all hadn't been so
fucking horrifying. The gorge rising to my throat
burned like acid. The worst thing was I didn't dare
yell and rant and rave and let my emotions out. I had
to take it on the chin like a good officer. I had to
protect my ass and keep my career perking along until
retirement age. I had to appear steady and
unflappable. If I lost this job it would be very hard
to find another. I wouldn't even have the dignity of
being a tax-cow then. And when I was totally
dependent, a welfare bum, the feds would really have
me by the balls.
*Balls? As long as I remained on Tiresias
I would have to change my metaphors.*
Just then the doors slid open with a hissing
sound. A man in a lab coat stepped inside our chamber,
regarding us with interest and, probably, with mild
amusement. "Ladies, gentleman, welcome to the United
States Federal Penitentiary, Tiresias," he said. "Some
of you are correctional officers, some of you are --
inmates. Don't be nervous. The type of transformation
we undergo here usually doesn't have any bad side-effects.
We haven't lost anyone in a long while.
"Prisoners will be taken to holding cells," he
went on, "to begin orientation. And you new personnel
shall be immediately conducted to the infirmary and
checked out. You won't have any regular duties until
you have attended introductory classes and have made
the necessary adjustments. From experience, we don't
expect any problems."
He raised a hand and several guards, both male and
female, came in, prodding, and in some cases, helping,
the transformed prisoners from the chamber. As far as
the women inmates went, there were a couple of
fantastically ugly suckers there, but two or three
foxes as well. I particularly noted a Latina girl,
about twenty years of age, with modest-length curly
black hair. Prisoner pants were tailored tight these
days, but now, on this one, they were cracking-tight
across her ass. I grinned sardonically as I watched
her sashay away. A pretty little se orita for sure!
Then I shook myself. Don't worry about her; worry
about yourself, guy. What did I look like? I felt a
little dizzy just then and looked around for something
to hold onto -- until the white-coated man steadied me
with an arm around my shoulders. I looked up at him
towering over me, looking about seven feet tall, until
I realized that I must have lost some inches from my own
height. He also seemed a little too solicitous in the
way he held me. I didn't like being singled out as the
weak sister in the room.
"It's a little shocking at first, I know," the man
said, not unpleasantly, "but don't worry. You've made
a fine transformation, Mr. --" he read my name tag "--
Carter -- Miss Carter, I should say, of course. You'll
be fine. You're a very lovely young woman."
I blanched.
*A very lovely young woman? That was all I
needed!*
#
Dr. Trent was a good-looking female of thirty-
something, her hair a light brown. Her eyes sometimes
seemed yellow-brown and sometimes green; they were keen,
intelligent, and striking when they fixed on one, but
they didn't do so in any particularly intimidating way.
The second most outstanding particular about Dr. Trent
was that she was pregnant. Very, very pregnant.
That shocked me, knowing that she must have been a
man just a few months before. Almost nine months
before, I guessed. To have grown that big already she
would have had to have gotten knocked up "just off the
boat" -- That is, if her tour was only for a year like
most people's was.
It shouldn't have thrown me for such a loop. I
had read that pregnancy was possible for Earth males on
Tiresias; in fact, that was one of those sensational
aspects of the planet that had caught the imagination
of the supermarket tabloids. But to be confronted with
it so soon. . . .
Trent picked up on my unsettled stare and touched
her enlarged belly with a smile. "Don't let it throw
you, Mr. Carter. It won't happen to you, unless
you're careless."
"Were -- were you careless?" I asked with a
stumble in my voice -- a voice that sounded like a
stranger's.
"Only in my choice of wives," she replied
ambiguously as she adjusted my position under the
diagnostic scanner. Her hand motions were efficient
and very precise.
"Your wife?" I instinctively began thinking in
terms of the conventional lesbian marriage, but I
quickly grasped that she really did mean wife, as in
"man and wife."
"It's a long story,," Trent replied. "Maybe
we'll be able to talk later over a glass of
prune juice."
"Prune juice?" I muttered with distaste. "Is that
what people drink here?"
"No. It's just me. I've had a craving for prune
juice lately." She shook her head. "It's crazy what
pregnancy does to you. But it's wonderful," she added
with a thin smile.
Wonderful? I couldn't believe that. A nightmare
would be more like it. I was glad when the doctor
dropped the subject to turn her attention to the
settings of her equipment. "Don't move," Trent told me
as the scanner light went on and advanced along its
track, over the entire length of my body -- a woman's
body that was now draped in a simple examination
pullover. I still hadn't had the stomach to look at my
own face, and couldn't help but shudder when I had had
to take my clothes off in the antechamber. But even a
brief, loathing glance at my nudity had confirmed that
I had sizable tits -- and all the plumbing that went
with the sex imposed upon me. As distraught as I was,
I wondered how the physician expected to get a valid
blood pressure reading from me.
While the examination went on Dr. Trent didn't
discourage me from talking.
"Is your -- wife -- happy about the baby?" I
asked.
She shook her head. "I'm divorced."
I almost asked "who did it" or pried into
why she hadn't had an abortion, but those questions
seemed just too personal to throw at an -- individual
-- whom I had only just met.
"What did you do to get here?" she asked me
suddenly.
That subject brought back a lot of pain, so I
just shrugged. "Maybe I volunteered."
"We don't get many male volunteers and, anyway,
volunteers don't look so hangdog. You must have
screwed up pretty badly, my young lady, to get posted
to Tiresias."
"I'm not a young lady!" I flared.
"You're under thirty. And I'm willing to assume
that you're a lady until you prove otherwise."
I glanced annoyedly into her face, but the whimsy
I saw there disarmed me. "Okay," I said, cooling it,
"I was on report for -- sexual harassment."
She smiled sympathetically. "Nasty. Did you have
a female EEOC officer?"
"How did you guess?" I asked, my tone dripping
with sarcasm.
"I've got an idea how things operate in that loony
bin back home."
"It was a bum rap!' I protested. "Is asking the
same woman for a date twice harassment?"
"Of course it is, if she complains about it. Do
you think America's a free country or something?"
********
Chapter 2
I sized up the doctor anew. There had been no
humor in her last words. Did she feel like I did?
Beat up on, put upon, victimized? I held so much
rage inside just then that I wanted to blow up, but
though I wished to unburden myself to a sympathetic
ear, I didn't dare say much. Trent could be a
provocateur who would report me, and I could ended up
doing an extended tour as a female officer! Or, worse,
be fired and packed home as an unemployable. Uncle Sam
needed unemployables. Spreading destitution made the
people who controlled the money pump more secure in
their power. It was as if someone had chosen Haiti
for the model of a future America.
Anyway, even if the doctor wasn't an informer how
could I trust her? There had to be something wrong
with a man who would come to Tiresias, get pregnant,
and think it was wonderful.
Then Dr. Trent pivoted the scanner away. "Get up,
Miss Carter, and get dressed. You're as healthy as a
Missouri mule."
I'd rather be called a mule than a "miss," but
I supposed that it was only one of the indignities
that I would have to get used to. I sat up and rubbed
my thighs. Bad idea. They were slim and smooth under
the thin skirt of my gown; they reminded me of my present
condition.
"What happens next, Doctor?"
"Oh, you'll be taken to your quarters to rest and
be by yourself. Rest is a good way to start your
period of adjustment. You'll meet your roommate before
long. She'll be more of a counselor, actually. She'll
help you to get oriented over the next few weeks." Trent
gave me an ironic grin. "She'll even help you get ready
for your ingenue party."
"My what?"
"Your initiation. All the new Sallys and Charlies
get an ingenue party. It's hardest on the Charlies."
She mistook my "I don't want to believe it" look
for a misunderstanding of her terms, which was not the
case at all. I had done plenty of preparatory reading.
"Charlie and Sally were characters in a couple of
classic movies who got sex-changed suddenly and against
their will," she explained. "It's just slang. If you
don't approach Tiresias with a sense of humor it'll
drive you crazy."
"What's this initiation like?"
"Sometimes it gets pretty heavy, like the Equator-
crossing ceremonies back home. You'll have to wear a
party dress, dance with all the men who want to dance
with you, receive a gift that will embarrass you to
hell, and then you'll get to watch a porn movie or
two."
"That sound humiliating! Does the whole staff
come to gawk?"
"No, its mostly just the rats who want to give
the new people a hard time."
"Shit! Do I have to go through with this?"
"I'd advise that you do, Miss Carter. We have a
lot of bad asses on the staff, especially among our
`men.' If you come off as a good sport, you'll earn
their respect and your tour probably won't be a bad
one. But if they get the idea that you're a jerk or
just a scared little rabbit, the hazing could go on for
months."
"Hazing? I thought the feds were going to protect
me from that now that I'm a -- a --" I couldn't say
the word.
"You were a second class citizen at home, my dear,
and you're a second class citizen here. Face it; if
people like you or me are ever expect to get justice,
we're going to have to start a revolution."
There it was again, the sense that some sort of
rage smoldered under Dr. Trent's genial exterior. I
felt mad enough to be a revolutionary myself, but I
rarely had heard a superior in government service
talking that way. I looked squarely into the doctor's
strangely compelling eyes, and thought I saw
something in them that told me that I had just made a
friend.
#
After my examination, I was escorted to the
dormitory by a uniformed woman -- a "Charlie" -- who
didn't bother to give her name. I was shuffling along
in over-sized shoes, which added to the awkwardness
caused by my unaccustomed new size and weight. Arriving
at the room, my silent usher left me and I saw that my
assigned quarters were simple but comfortable enough,
with two queen-sized beds standing separated by just a
narrow aisle. There was a phone on one of the two
dressers, and a tv\audio unit on the other. Obviously
they could provide local service only.
I peered into the closet, which contained very
little except linens and my luggage, which some porter
had neatly arranged upon on the floor. As I stood
there contemplating unpacking, I caught a glimpse of my
hand on the door frame. It was a woman's hand,
naturally, and a stranger's hand. I bit my lip and
steadied myself against a sudden rush of despair.
A woman! I still couldn't believe it. Not until
one has lost his identity so completely as I had, can
he understand how it devastates a normal psyche. Well,
it wouldn't do to go to pieces the first day, and so I
bucked myself up and, turning around, I noted that
there was a mirror. I almost yielded to the compulsion
to take a look at myself -- but couldn't find the
courage. The man in the lab coat had said that I was
"lovely." I wasn't sure I wanted to be lovely. I
wanted to be invisible. I wanted to blend into the
background of Tiresias penitentiary and go unnoticed
for the entire year of my tour.
I tossed my jacket on the floor, then flopped down
on the bed, dead tired. DCE, Dimension-Crossing-
Enervation, the books called it. It would pass, Dr.
Trent had assured me, but it as sure as hell had left
me as weak as a kitten just then.
I think I napped for a while, but a rattling sound
woke me up with a start. A young woman was coming
through the door loaded down with suitcases. She saw
me blinking at her and smiled my way. I smiled back
mechanically. It had to be my new roommate.
*Not too shabby. A well-stacked girl.*
She set her gear down beside the unoccupied bed
and gave an exhale of relief. I estimated that the
newcomer would probably be in her mid- to latter
twenties. Her long amber hair was tied back with an
elastic hair band and she wore the standard duty
uniform -- jet slacks, a short-sleeve gray shirt with
black trimming and simple cloth epaulets. Her insignia
told me that we were of equal rank, U.S.C.S.O. First
Class.
She sat down upon her mattress and took my
measure, her eyes benign, wide-set, and richly
blue. She had a pretty mouth whose smile brightened
her whole face.
"Hi," she said. "You've got to be Officer Carter,
right?"
I nodded.
"My name is Milholland -- Alice. That comes from
Alex -- Alexander. Most people call me Allie." She
waited attentively for my reply.
Struggling up to a sitting position, I said,
"I'm Aaron. -- Christ, will I have to use a girl's
name around here, too?"
"It's the custom," she grinned. "You'll be
getting one Saturday night, at your ingenue party."
"Somebody else names us?" I asked, not liking that
idea at all.
"That's the privilege of the Sally with the
longest continuous service on Tiresias. That'll be
Mort these days. He's not so bad. He won't call you
anything raunchy. Maybe he'll think up a feminine
version of your real name, or maybe just pick one out
of thin air, like Melanie, or Laura. -- I think you'd
make a good Laura," she observed.
I fell back upon the mattress and stared dismally
at the ceiling. "I don't need this. Take me out of
here, Lord! Please, take me out of here."
Allie got up and stood over me. "Aaron, you can't
let this get to you. You'll make it. I was in worse
shape than you are now eight months ago."
"I don't want to be a girl! I don't want to be a
girl! I don't want to be a girl!" I chanted the words
like a mantra.
Allie sat down on the edge of my bed and put her
hand on my forearm. "It's hard, Aaron, know. That's
why I'm here to help you. I hope we can be friends. I
just lost my best bud, Jodie, when she went back to
Earth. I hope you didn't leave a lot of people behind.
That's always tough."
"No," I answered dejectedly. "I don't have
anybody, anything. I'm nothing. Nobody will miss me.
So turn me into a girl. Humiliate me! I don't care!
I'm giving up. I'm checking out."
She laughed softly. I liked the sound and,
despite my best intentions to be miserable, I felt the
ends of my lips tighten into a pained smile as I
glanced up into her sympathetic features.
"That's better. I think you'll be all right. If
it gets too rough, if you really need to get your head
fixed, we have a couple psychs on the medical staff who
specialize in identity problems. Most new Charlies
don't need them, actually. It's usually the Sallys who
get the worst reaction."
I arched my neck. "Why's that?"
"I don't know," she shrugged. "Maybe so many of
them have wanted to be men for so long that when it
actually happens it's a letdown. Us Charlies set our
expectations kind of low. Or maybe girls just have
more fun!"
"Please!" I exclaimed. "I'm not a girl!"
"Well, don't decide about anything so important
right away." Her hand remained on my arm to encourage
me, but it didn't feel like a sexual come-on. Normally
I would have welcomed a come-on from a girl as
attractive as Allie, but here -- well, it had to be
different.
"Aaron, it's all a matter of attitude," the amber-
haired officer coaxed in a comradely way. "Believe me."
I rolled away from her.
"You could resign and go back right away," she
admonished, "but you'll probably never get a
decent job again. It's like a punishment to be sent
here, I know, but it's also an experience that can
be of a lot of value later on."
"Like what?" I grumbled.
"Like, I think I'm going to be a lot smarter about
getting into a woman's pants after being a woman myself
for a year."
I almost cracked up. Apparently Allie didn't
have a philosophical bone in her body. "I'd think
you'd have had enough of women's pants by now!" I fired
back, looking at her hips.
Allie laughed again. "That's good! I think I
like you already, Aaron." She offer a handshake.
I took it firmly. The feel of her hand was like
that of many another young woman, but the smallness,
the softness, of my own gave our clasp a fit that I
was not used to. Even so, I perked up a little.
Allie got to her feet, flung a suitcase on her bed
and began unpacking. "Whenever any new people come,"
she said over her shoulder, "a lot of us get juggled
around. My old roommate was Dori. I can't wait to
introduce her."
I still didn't feel like unpacking myself.
Instead, I watched the girl fill the closet and the
dresser drawers with her things. The sight of some
very feminine apparel seemed, on one hand, very normal,
but on the other a little disturbing. I also noticed
that Allie's motions were not manlike in the least,
particularly in the movements of her nice hard
bottom. I closed my eyes. I needed to stop
thinking about Tiresian women that way; it could only
lead to frustration.
After a while, Allie paused in her chores and
mopped her beaded brow with the back of her hand.
"Like I said, Aaron, getting along is all a matter of
attitude. You're going to be a woman for a year;
accept it and don't let it get you down. After all,
it's been the experience of half the human race since
the Garden of Eden. Treating it like a joke is a good
way to handle it at first."
"It doesn't make me feel like laughing."
"You can have fun with the idea. Play act. Be
the sexiest thing on two legs! I was bummed out like
you wouldn't believe when I came here, but being a girl
hasn't killed me and it's not going to kill you either.
We have some assholes, particularly among the guys, but
there's a lot of good people here, too, and I think
you'll come away with friendships that'll last a
lifetime."
"I'm all for friends," I murmured without much
spirit. Then I raised a question that had been
bothering me since leaving the medical unit. "Allie,
is Dr. Trent all what she seems?"
The blonde glanced at me incredulously.
"Pregnant? Of course she is!"
"I don't mean that. It's just that she was kind
of outspoken. She's not a shill for the warden, is
she?"
"Oh, no. Dr. Trent's great! No one ever got
into trouble by confiding in Dr. Trent."
I really hoped I could take Allie herself at face
value. I expected to have a hard time on Tiresias and
getting through twelve hard months could be made much
easier if I had a real friend, and not just an
impersonal counselor, or a company spy.
"Why is she pregnant?" I pressed. "What sort of
man would do that to himself?"
Allie leaned back against the dresser, clearly
made uncomfortable by my question. "Well, that's her
personal business, Aaron. I just don't like to gossip
about people that I like. She'll explain it if she
takes to you. Doc told me all about it when I asked
her. It's --" Allie checked herself with a will and
the look in her eyes suggested that Trent's story
wasn't all fun and games.
I changed the subject. "Allie, sometimes I get
confused about how people use pronouns around here.
Sometimes I'm not sure who's meant when I hear the
words "girls" and "guys" and "he" and "she."
Allie grinned. "Tiresias is a crazy place, all
right! We'll, my sweet young thing, we always look at
things from the Tiresian perspective. You and I are
girls, or women, hers and shes. The people with the
cocks and balls are always the guys, or men, the hims
and hes. Keep that in mind and everyone will
understand you."
"For Pete's sake, I'm a `she,' I moaned. I sank
into my pillow, closed my eyes, and tried to shut out
the cruel world.
#
After Allie had unpacked, she left me alone to
continue resting. I had liked Allie. From her
exuberance I had drawn the slim hope that if she could
handle this sex-change business, maybe I could, too. I
slowly gathered in my willpower, then got up and walked
to the full-length mirror.
*Holy shit!*
If I had had a sister, that would have been her
looking back at me. At first, all I recognized was my
hair, which never could decide whether it wanted to be
light brown or dark blond. Then I noticed that I had a
nose like my mother's, but the rest of my body was
strictly from fantasy land!
I looked away for a moment, sorting out a jumble
of feelings which ran the gamut from deadly shock to
sheer panic. Then I had a terrible thought.
*People will think that I'm a woman!*
*Of course, idiot! Get used to it! *
Standing there in my shirt and tie, wearing
drooping trousers, I faced up to the mirror for a
second time. I had been sporting my hair longish, in
the current male fashion. Now its length added to the
general impression of femininity in my reflected face.
I always had a rather full lower lip, but it now looked
positively bee-stung and pouty. In fact, it was just
about the sexiest mouth I had ever seen on a girl! I
just couldn't believe it. I really was pretty. Some
guy might even look at me twice. Thrice. Damn it, I'd
have to beat the studs off with a hammer!
*Lord, please, don't do this to me! Whatever
you think I did, I'll never do it again!*
*All right, all right, chin up. You're
a tougher bastard than that, Aaron Carter.*
I steadied myself and took a third look. I
couldn't tell much about my build with my oversized
shirt and pants on. I pulled up a sleeve. I had a
slender arm; the muscles that I had carefully built up
through many a game of tennis were still there, but
reduced to their feminine equivalent. I touched my
ribs. Bones. I must have been quite slender. I
probed lower. My waist was small -- but my hips
weren't. I had already caught a couple horrified
glimpses of my breasts when changing clothes at the
medical department. I didn't know what size they
were, but they had seemed like whoppers. The evil
gods of Tiresias had smitten me with an hour-glass
figure! What next?
Allie's key clicked in the lock. I turned,
feeling as if trapped in a naughty act. She came in
carrying a bag.
"Oh, good, you're up and around," said my roommate
cheerily. "It's time we took you to Supply to get you
some new clothes. Here's something to keep you from
looking like an unmade bed until then." She pressed
the bag into my hands. It contained a pair of unisex
coveralls and sandals.
"Thanks," I said. "Better this than a bikini."
"Don't be so sarcastic, Aaron. I just bet that
before you get off Tiresias you'll have your own bikini
and be proud to strut your stuff in it."
"That'll be the day!"
*That'll be the day that I die!*
#
So, we went to Supply and got my basic
measurements taken. Uncle Sam (or was he Aunt Samantha
here on Tiresias?) paid for two uniforms, a pair of
shoes, some underpants (which were only sort-of sexy),
a couple bras, a pair of off-duty slacks, and two print
shirts. I was also issued a pack of three women's
tank-top t-shirts, three pairs of socks, and a grooming
kit containing a comb, some hair pins, soap, lotions,
and hair-care products. The issue had exhausted my
special clothing stipend and everything else would cost
something from my pocket for the rest of the month.
Therefore I decided to put off making any additional
selections until I saw a distinct need, though I knew
I'd soon need another pair of leisure pants. I didn't
notice any lingerie or skirts on the shelves, a
circumstance which I was, for some reason, grateful.
"Do we get all our things here?" I asked Allie.
"No, just official issue and the settling-in
stuff. There's a store for us staff, and even the
prisoners can order from it. Of course things are
expensive and the inmates earn next to nothing."
I donned my uniform in the changing room, only to
be startled at the sight of the sharp-looking female
officer reflected in the mirror. Afterwards, we made a
brief stop at Administration to get my new badge and
insignias, then Allie led me to the cafeteria. They
were serving the same junk that every staff cafeteria
had been dishing out since time began, only it tasted
even more preserved than usual.
*I crossed the dimensional barriers just to
dine on Spam?!*
"Over at the salad bar they have some fresh fruit
and vegetables," suggested Allie. I nodded gratefully
and we walked over to the bar to load up.
"We grow some stuff here," my roommate remarked.
"Tending the garden's one of the things that we have
the prisoners do."
"I hope it's washed thoroughly." Those bastards-
turn-bitches would surely do a lot worse than spit in
the master's soup if they could get away with it.
"We also buy produce from the barbarians," Allie
replied amiably. "It's tricky doing that, though.
Only specially trained people like Dr. Donnalyn are
allowed any direct contact with natives. It's what
they call the `Prime Directive,' after that old Star
Trek series. We're told that we have to do everything
we can to avoid contaminating their indigenous culture.
The Tiresians must know practically nothing about us.
I heard that some of them think that we're gods."
"What do you know about the native cultures here,
goddess?"
"You probably know more than I do, if you've done
any reading," she shrugged. "They're human, just like
us. We can even breed together."
"Breed? What poor Charlie had to get knocked up
to find that out?"
"I don't know how the experiments were conducted,"
she responded with an ernest grimace.
Eating my first meal since I had arrived on
Tiresias both strengthened me physically and improved
my morale. Looking around the cafeteria I could, for a
moment, imagine that the people in it were just
ordinary folks like I was used to. There seemed to be
more women than men, though -- which was reasonable,
considering that this was a woman's prison -- in one
sense at least. I was to find out in time that the
discrepancy in male and female staffing was even
greater than it appeared, since a fair number of
Sally's did multiple tours while few Charlies chose to
stay on for more than one year. I could understand
that. There were many more men in the Correctional
Service than women back home. -- And I was already
anxious to return to good old Earth.
Allie kept up a cheery conversation. It turned
out that we had practically been neighbors while
growing up in the Midwest. She was from around Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, and I was from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
She worked in the Properties office. In fact,
she practically ran it, her supervisor being a goof-
off who spent most of his time away drinking coffee
with his Sally friends. Anyway, there was not much to
do at Properties. The prisoners had been allowed to
bring very little with them and the expense of inter-
dimensional transport precluded that many gifts and
parcels would be sent from home.
In her down time, Allie did a lot of odd jobs
around the prison, such as helping the medical staff by
watching sick prisoners, or preventing one or more
Sallys from being left alone with an inmate. Without
such precautions it was so easy for them to launch a
false complaint and get away with the most outrages
charges. These would always be treated as if serious,
even if made by an inmate with a history of concocting
nonsense. For the last three generations America
had had a strange and contradictory ethos that combined
sexual license with an inquisitorial Puritanism.
The better I got to know Allie, the better I liked
her. If my roommate turned out to be a company rat
underneath it all, I was going to be very disappointed.
Chapter 3
A dark-haired man in a guard uniform approached
the table while my companion and I were chomping down
our greens. "Hello, Allie," he said. "I don't think I
know your friend."
The amber blonde nodded pleasantly to the
newcomer. "This is Aaron Carter. She's my new
roommie. Aaron, this is Bob."
It was the first time I had been referred to as a
"she" in public and I didn't care for it.
The man extended his hand. "Hello, Aaron. I'd
heard that a foxy new Charlie had just come across, but
rumor didn't do you justice."
"Foxy? Me?" I echoed incredulously.
"Haven't you looked in a mirror yet?"
"Oh, I have. I nearly lost my cookies!"
"Well, take it from me, you're a --"
"Nice piece?" I suggested with a smile of pure
poison.
"Well, let's just say that I wouldn't miss your
ingenue party for anything!"
"Lucky me. See you there, Bob," I replied. He
grinned cockily and left.
"What should I make of that?" I asked Allie.
"Bob's sort of okay. He's not as bad as Jake or
Hank, but -- You know, it's probably too early to
bring it up, but I should anyway, just to be on the
safe side."
I studied her across the small table. Her eyes
were intense, serious, and a little sheepish. "What
exactly are you driving at?"
"Aaron, almost every girl here --- well, I mean,
she short of experiments a little before she goes home.
That's to be expected, I suppose. It's the chance of a
lifetime to find out what it feels like from the other
side."
I regarded her suspiciously. "Where's this thread
leading, Alexander?"
"I just want to say that if you ever begin to get
curious about trying out -- the equipment --, you
should first buy some birth-control pills at the
medical office."
"Thanks for the advice," I replied coldly.
"I mean it! Things are different now. We're not
just men in women's bodies. We really are women!"
"I don't feel like a woman," I informed her.
"It's not something that rings in your head like a
bell, Aaron. It's much more subtle. You're going to
be feeling more good and bad emotions than you ever
have before, and it's going to be harder for you to
keep from showing them. That's not so bad, actually.
You'll be surprised how good you feel after letting it
all out. The men have it worse. They're always
complaining to the psychs that their emotions feel
locked up."
"Okay, so I'm going to have crying jags and
laughing jags and I'll love it, but what about --"
"I'm just saying that you might be very vulnerable
for a while. Don't get yourself get emotionally
involved with any of the guys -- not until you can
handle yourself -- and a year is hardly long enough to
learn to do that."
"Handle myself? Am I going to be tempted to paw
those gorillas?"
"No, but you might start feeling an attraction for
somebody, and he might not feel the same way about you.
Real women are taught how to hold back, but us guys are
used to following our feelings. If you like a person
more than he likes you, you could be taken advantage
of."
"Check, no love affairs." My tone was absolutely
condescending.
"This is serious, Aaron," Allie pressed. "A lot
of the Sallys come here with some really bad ideas
about men. Some of them think that when they do us in,
they're getting back at Men with a capital M. They
don't see that they're only hurting their friends and
co-workers. So watch yourself."
"How do they hurt us?"
Allie shifted closer, and he tone lowered: "There
are people who'll do rotten things, like taking you up,
then letting you down -- hard -- just for spite.
There's even the kind of sleaze who'll sabotage his
condom and try to get you pregnant. That's why
contraceptives are so important."
*Jeez! Can't I go ten minutes anymore
without the subject of pregnancy coming up?!*
"What happens when you knocked up?" I asked
tersely.
"What do you think? You either have a baby or you
have an abortion! And don't think that there's any
easy answer, Aaron. I knew a Charlie who got in a fix,
got scared, and terminated. Afterwards she was sorry
that she didn't have the baby instead. It just broke
her. She was sent home on a medical order."
"I understand basic biology," I explained stiffly.
"I was just asking about the official rules and
responsibilities of everyone involved."
Allie frowned. "Listen -- a woman can cut off
your dick back home and then charge you with being
abusive! It's no different here. The Sallys get away
with pretty much whatever they want and it's always
your fault. The system doesn't cares if we get hurt.
So, I'm warning you: Don't make a dumb mistake by
trusting the wrong person."
Her voice had begun to waver and I realized then
that Allie must have had some personal experience in
trusting the "wrong person." Impulsively, I took her
left hand and pressed it between mine. She looked up,
met my glance, and smiled. If we hadn't best buds
before, we were from that point on.
Allie and I discovered that we both like checkers,
so we signed out a set at the dormitory recreation
desk. As my bombshell roommate studied the red-and-
black board, I studied her. I had to keep reminding
myself that this personable young woman used to be a
man -- and would be a man in just a few months. It
seemed nearly impossible to think of her in that way;
she appeared female to the core, even in her patterns
of speech. Yet nothing she said suggested that she had
started out effeminate in any way. If such was the
case with Allie, I wondered what sort of person I would
be by the time I had finished my own tour. And if I
did start thinking and behaving as a woman, what would
the experience mean for the rest of my life?
"Have you ever had sex -- with a man?" I asked
suddenly.
The blonde looked up uneasily. Something told me
that her hesitancy was not just ordinary shyness.
"Yeh. That was a no-brainer," she admitted at last.
"I guess I really learned what it feels like to be a
woman the hard way."
"How so?"
"I'll tell you about it sometime."
"Okay, I didn't mean to pry. We just met, I
know."
She forced a smile. "Hey, come on, Aaron! In a
few days we'll be chatting together like old school
chums! There's just so many better things to talk
about than my boneheaded mistakes."
#
The rest of my week was filled with orientation
classes and tours around the facility. The classes
focused not only on staff procedures, but also topics
that were intended to help us fit in as women on
Tiresias. The most insufferable subject to come up was
feminine hygiene. The body which I now occupied seemed
to require a lot more maintenance than I was used to.
The worst of it all was menstruation -- which we were
assured would come tapping on the chamber door in some
three or four weeks' time.
The classes were small -- just us new Charlies --
Brady, Volsted, and me -- sometimes with our roommates
sitting in. Allie almost always monitored my classes,
probably because we had hit it off so well. Some of
what we learned in class turned my face red despite my
every effort to be stoic. Had my roommate actually
been the young woman that she appeared to be, her
presence would have been a distinct embarrassment. But
I knew that Allie had occupied the hot seat before me,
a fact that created a bond of shared experience.
#
I passed the greater part of my first day off
scanning the grounds outside the prison by means of a
telescope mounted upon a high terrace. The prison
occupied a river island overlooking a pretty
countryside. I thought it looked like rural Kentucky,
with its succession of emerald hills and patchy forests
as far as the eye could see. It occurred to me how
hard it must have been to build the prison complex,
with all the material and construction equipment
needing to be phase-shifted from Earth. Even with
prefabrication and local gravel for concrete,
construction must have been a Herculean feat. I
wondered whether the transformed construction men
whistled at one another while they worked? Possibly.
Here they would only be risking a fist in the jaw from
the offended Charlie. Back home, a construction man's
wolf whistle or admiring stare at a passing woman would
almost certainly result in his unemployment. I didn't
see how such attempted mind-control could be equated
with progress, but that was the ruling ideology.
When I finally came home I found Allie waiting for
me. "I'm glad you're back," she piped excitedly. "I
started to get worried."
"That I committed suicide?"
"That you'd be late for your ingenue party!"
Damn! I almost had forgotten -- or at least
forced that ordeal out of my consciousness.
Allie bustled to my bed and picked up the frock
that she had lain out there. "How do you like it?" the
blonde asked, holding it up in front of herself with a
crooked grin.
"Fuck!" I adjudged seriously.
"I guarantee it fits!" Allie assured me. "I took
your measurements when we first went to Supply. I
didn't pick out the style, though."
I was glad to hear that; otherwise I would have
had to murder my best friend! I really must have
fallen down the rabbit hole if anyone in Never Never
Land expected me to get into a rig like that. It was a
little white party dress with bare-shouldered, a low
cut, and spaghetti-straps. The thing didn't look large
enough to cloth a woman half my size.
"No way, Jose!"
"All the girls are going to be dressed up," Allie
coaxed. "You can't go to an ingenue party in your
uniform! It's just not done!"
"Then I won't go!"
"Be a good sport, Aaron! I'm going to go in my
ingenue dress. Are you saying that I've got more
nerve?"
"You can do what you want! I'm just saying that
not all the brow-beating in the world will ever get me
into that bimbo outfit!"
Just fifteen minutes later my lungs were straining
for breath against the anaconda hug of Spandex and
Allie stood behind me, fixing my hair.
"You've got wonderful hair, Aaron. I love it!
You shouldn't keep on combing as if you were still a
guy. I hope you'll let it grow out as much as you
can."
"I think I'll shave it off!"
"Don't be so cranky! All us girls had parties and
we lived through them. Are you a wimp?!"
"We're not girls!"
"Sure we are, at least until our year is up.
Remember what I said about attitude?" She started to
sing: "I'm a girl and by me that's only great! I am
proud that my silhouette is curvy -- that I walk with a
sweet and girlish gait, with my hips kind of swively
and swervy --"
I frowned back at her. "Alexander, are you trying
to be funny, or are you seriously sick?" She pulled my
hair playfully. "Ow!" I yelled. "Do you know what
you're doing?"
"Trust me. I found out that I have a knack. If I
ever get thrown out of the correctional service, now I
know I can fall back on cosmetology. Come to think of
it, that would be a great way to meet more women. Say,
I can do your makeup, too; is that okay? A little
perfume will make it perfect."
"Perfect for what?" I groused.
"If you got it, flaunt it!" she answered
cheerfully.
I thought Allie was role-playing, but I wasn't so
sure. Rather than plumb the mental illness of my
roommate, I merely asked, "Why did you come here, Alex?
You don't seem like the sort of congenital screw-up
who'd get disciplined."
"I guess I was one. I was -- I was AWOL a lot,"
she replied in a low voice.
"Why?"
Allie continued to work on my hair, but her
fingers were less steady now. "My sister had cancer,"
she whispered. "We didn't have any money, and there was
no one else to take care of her."
I hadn't expected anything like that. "I'm
sorry."
"She needed an expensive treatment," my friend
went on, "but the family farm was estate-taxed when our
parents were killed by housebreakers. We had to sell
it off to pay. There wasn't much left."
I felt a knot in my stomach. "Did -- did they
catch the -- killers?"
"Nah," she sighed. "You know how it goes. When
people like you or me do the least little thing wrong,
we're always caught and they throw the book at us. But
if some strangers walk into your home, rob it, turn it
into a slaughter house, the police can never find the
culprits."
I swallowed hard. People like Alexander and his
sister, people who owned or inherited anything, were
routinely taxed into poverty and then left in the lurch
when they got into trouble. Although National Health
Care still supported thousands of wage-drawing
bureaucrats, it had effectively gone bankrupt years
earlier and now existed only in name.
I reached back and put my hand on Allie's. "I'm
so sorry," I said. "Did your sister --"
Her voice began to break. "Yeh. I stayed with
her as much as I could those last months. But because
of a technicality, I couldn't get any family leave from
the U.S.C.S. I almost lost my job, but then union
arbitrated and got the offense reduced. To get the
black mark erased, I had to accept a year on Tiresias.
I didn't have anything left back home anyhow, so I
decided it might be better to try to get away from the
memories. . . ."
"Allie," I said. "You don't have to tell me
anymore --"
"You've have liked my sister Gladys, Aaron," she
went on as if she hadn't heard. "She looked a lot like
I do now. Sometimes it makes it hard to look into the
mirror. . . ." Her words trailed off and Allie
withdrew to her bed, her breathing ragged.
Now all my grumbling about clothes and some
ridiculous initiation seemed peevish and trivial. I
left my chair and sat down beside a young woman whom I
hadn't even known existed a week before, but who had
since become my best and only friend in a strange new
world. And whether her name was Alice or Alexander, it
didn't seem wrong to wrap my arms around her, to hold
her close until her breathing lost its shakiness. Then
I kissed her on the cheek and tasted the salt of her
tears.
"Can you help me finish putting myself together?"
I asked cajolingly. "I'll look a sight tonight without
you."
She returned a faint smile.
#
The administration building had a pair of large
connecting rooms sometimes used for social gatherings.
It opened onto a wide balcony terrace; a cool night
breeze wafted in from a pair of open doors, and its
caress reminded me of the sparing way in which I was
dressed. I flashed back to that bad dream I'd
occasionally had of coming to a party naked. The dress
I had on was so short that I thanked God for creating
pantyhose, and cut so low that I couldn't help looking
down, just to make sure that my jugs hadn't made a
break for it.
There was a bar and a large table set with
appetizers, sandwiches, and snacks. The Sallys were
all in dapper suits, while the Charlies wore a variety
of party dresses -- some as daring as mine, which was
actually a relief to me.
"You'll be able to keep the outfit, Aaron," Allie
had said. "It's a kind of a welcoming gift from the
management. If you pay half, they'll pick up the rest
of the cost."
"Pay good money for something that you couldn't
cut a decent-sized handkerchief from?!" I exclaimed.
"Who picked it out anyway?"
"The recreation committee chairman. Mort."
Mort. I'd heard that name before. Now I had a
grudge against the bastard!
Allie stepped into the party room wearing a red
slit-skirt sheath, and balancing upon three-inch heels.
She had mentioned that only one girl on the present
staff, Billie Walters, had learned to walk nimbly on
four-inch spikes. My two-inchers were already putting
enough pressure on the ball of my foot to become a fun-
killer and I dreaded dancing in them. When I asked
Allie why the Tiresias females insisted on torturing
themselves just like the women did at home, the amber-
haired correctional officer suggested that it was just
the challenge of the thing -- like climbing Mount
Everest, or swimming the English Channel. "And,
besides," she said, "high heels make our legs look
terrific!"
Sometimes I didn't know if Allie wasn't just
hamming it up, or if there was some sort of genetic
coding that compelled a woman to go around half-naked
and walking on her toes. Every day and in every way I
wanted to be a man again!
Brady and Volsted were there, both in party
frocks, but neither of them as outrageous as the dress
that Mort had foisted upon me. They both looked rather
doubtful of the proceedings, but seemed determined to
get through them without showing weakness. I also saw
the fourth member of our quartet, Officer Rother, natty
in a double-breasted suit and a bow tie. I hadn't
liked his looks as a woman, and still less did I like
them as a male. When Rother turned my way I could tell
from his double take that he only belatedly recognized
me as the man whom he had briefly met at the
transference center.
Allie drew me to the side, where a group of
chattering Charlies were congregating. She introduced
me to four girls in particular, those whom I gathered
were her own gang -- Dori, Andrea, Jordana, and Mickie.
Each was atypically pretty, which caused me to wonder
whether all the foxiest Charlies belonged to some sort
of clique. The flashiest femlins in high school seemed
to, but I had always supposed that the association had
come about innocently -- from getting to one another
during group-dates with local sports heroes.
"This is Aaron," Allie said in way of an
introduction.
"She won't be Aaron for long," chimed a bosomy
black girl with pale green eye shadow and ruby
lipstick. She held out a dark hand. "Put it there.
I'm Andrea -- Sergeant Leonard, C-Block. I was Andrew
before. I wonder what handle Mort'll come up with for
you."
"She looks like a Jennifer to me," suggested the
sleek brunette named Dori Gurtz, Allie's former
roommate. Dori, I soon learned, was an administrative
clerk and the father of two back in Ohio. Sleight of
hand was her hobby, performing sometimes in community
groups back home. Dori showed me some impromptu card
tricks. As she performed, I couldn't help but
visualize her not as a magician in top hat and frock
coat, but as his sexy assistant in fishnet hose and
high-heeled pumps.
"No, I'd say a Penny," offered Jordana McNallen,
an ash-blonde with lively gray eyes. She turned out to
be a accountant from Colorado. Jordana played the
guitar for a hobby and had a penchant for writing songs
in the bluegrass folk tradition.
Allie stood back a little after the introductions
and let me chat with my new acquaintances over sundry
cups of punch while we sized up one another. As with
Allie, I found it very hard to remember that all of
these young women used to be males. I guess I actually
did forget, because, as we talked, they started
exchanging wry glances and smothering laughter. I
wasn't used to that sort of reaction from women whom I
was trying to charm. Then I realized what it was. I
was using the body language and voice tones of a man on
the make. Given their nature and mine, there was no
surer way to make myself look ridiculous.
I instantly tried to cool it, then found myself at
a loss as to how I should act, smile, or even
gesticulate. There was a mode of behavior expected of
me, I now fathomed, but no one had bothered to cue me
in as to what it was. I began to feel awkward,
uncomfortable, and generally out of my element. I
looked yearningly at the clock on the wall, only to
discover that just fifteen minutes had passed since I
had entered the room. How could I tough out this
fiasco for three hours more?
*******
Chapter 4
One of Mort's friends brought over a camera and we
four new people had our pictures taken. It was hard
for me to smile. I was uneasy with the prospect of a
picture of me "in drag" getting back home and
circulating among people who knew me.
Just then the dance music started, ending the
photo session. As it happened, the gang of Sallys
running the affair had made it the rule that our
dancing should be kept strictly traditional. That
meant they wanted to rub sex roles into our faces. To
drive home the point, or twist the knife, two couples
demonstrated some dance steps for us newcomers,
emphasizing the art of leading and following. After
the exhibition was done, the rest of us tried our hand
at it.
Us new "girls" were the first ones asked to the
floor. There were both classic ballroom dances
offered, as well as more current ones. At least they
didn't foist an Apache dance off on us, but I did find
the female role in the tango a very strange experience.
I greatly preferred the contemporary numbers, where the
music was hot instead of cloyingly romantic, and the
sex roles were not so obvious. I guess I did all right
hoofing it. Anyway, my partners changed rapidly and I
didn't have a chance to get acquainted with any of them
-- not that I wanted to.
I had been dancing enough to make my feet sore,
when the music stopped and the time came for Mort to
bestow our new Charlie and Sally names. Mort was a
gray-haired senior administrator whose broad, if
smirky, smile tended to deepen the creases face into
canyons. He brought each of us new people forward in
turn and poured a dribble of plain water upon our heads
to christen us -- liquor being too expensive on
Tiresias to waste. Volsted became "Olga," Rother
"Chester," and Brady "Dotty." Then it was my turn.
"The best for last," announced Mort loudly. "This
young lady has to have a name just as lovely as she
is."
I cringed a little at the idea of getting "special
treatment," Tiresian style. I couldn't help but tug
nervously at the hem of my dress, which was riding too
high. I stopped when I realized that I was only
calling the men's attention to my nylon-sheathed legs,
the last thing in the world that I wanted to do.
As I felt Mort's cold libation sinking through my
hair to my scalp, I clenched my teeth, wondering what
"Mort"-tifying moniker the duffer would saddle me with.
"I christen you Erin!" he proclaimed. The crowd
seemed to like his choice and there was applause and
appreciating laughter.
Erin? That wasn't too bad, actually. It sounded
so much like "Aaron" that I really couldn't tell the
difference unless I listened very carefully.
"Now speeches," trumpeted Mort. "Tell the people
something about yourselves."
Wanting to be good sports, each of us, despite our
misgivings, spoke for about five minutes. The crowd
was getting a little loose and it wouldn't have held
still for more anyway. When my turn came, I mostly
talked about where I had been posted, my hobbies, and
other impersonal subjects.
"Why were you sent here?!" a Sally yelled.
"Maybe someone didn't like my face!" I answered
with a forced grin.
"He'd sure like it now!"
*Maybe she would have -- the dyke!*
"Presents! Presents!" bellowed Mort over the
laughter and the noise.
The presents were swiftly conveyed from the closet
and we ingenues were given gift-wrapped boxes as the
men and women crowded around us. I had been warned
that our "gifts" would be a test of our intestinal
fortitude and so I braced myself. Olga received a
latex dildo. I patted her big shoulder
commiseratively. "Mine must be even longer. My box is
bigger anyway." I told her.
Rother got a bundle of cigars, and Brady a box of
tampons that evoked a heavy sigh from her. I opened my
parcel to discover that somebody's fantasies must have
been running wild since I'd made planetfall. It
contained a skimpy, mint-green sleeping tunic, along
with a matching hair ribbon. Additionally, there was a
tiny bottle of perfume, "Passion in the Dark."
"Thanks, guys," I said with a tolerant smile.
"But I'll have a gray beard a foot long before any of
you degenerates get to see me wearing this crap!"
They laughed, and I laughed along with them.
Then the tone of the party relaxed somewhat and
became more freeform. The last scheduled event would
be a vid and we were told that we "girls" should get to
know the men quickly, because we'd be expected to watch
the movie while sitting on the lap of a gentleman of
our choice. Chester Rother, for his part, would have
his pick of any Charlie present. I anticipated my fate
grimly and again looked up at the clock. The hour it
registered didn't give me much comfort.
There was more dancing then and I tried to be
gracious whenever I was asked to the floor. I also
kept a lookout for any male congenial enough to double
as a comfortable chair, but without much luck.
By far the most agreeable part of the evening was
getting to know Allie's friends. A lot of other
Charlies introduced themselves, too, and offered me
their handshake. The staff seemed to like welcoming
new people into their little exile. I was asked
repeatedly about current affairs from home; political
being was heavily sanitized by the time it reached them
through official channels.
I turned out that they had heard nothing about the
latest jailing of dissidents or the South American
drug-smuggling operation that was charged against the
current administration. In fact, I had only heard of
this stuff myself through the BBC world broadcast.
There was no point in hoping that crime and tyranny
would bring down the government, though. Official
denial, a press corps that would have won the respect
of Joe Stalin, and a friendly majority in Congress
always smothered political scandals before they harmed
the majority party.
Besides a hunger for news, I perceived
friendliness from the Charlies. It was hard to put
aside my reserve, though; it was awkward being invited
into a society that one didn't want to identify with.
Dr. Trent came by to pay her curtesies. I would
have liked to have talked more to the physician, but it
was hard for her to stand around and difficult for me
to avoid being interrupted by third parties. I did
notice, though, that the whole staff was very polite to
Dr. Trent, even to the point of reverence. Very few
children were born to Earth people on Tiresias, of
course, and the arrival of the medic's baby seemed to
be awaited with excitement and good will by all.
"What are you drinking, Doctor?" I asked when I
managed to break away from the others. "Can I freshen
it for you?"
"Gabrielle," she corrected me. "-- From Gabriel,
of course. It's just mineral water. I'm not about to
put anything down my throat that I wouldn't put into a
baby bottle."
I nodded. She was being conscientious about this
pregnancy, that was for sure. I was still bothered by
questions that I would have loved to ask, but Andrea
arrived just then to make a new introduction, this time
to Billie Walters, a pretty young woman wearing a
scarlet sequined minidress. Blonde with blue-green-
eyed, Billie seemed a nice, funny, and enthusiastic
girl whom I liked at once, but I nonetheless regretted
losing my opportunity to talk longer with Dr. Trent.
The Mickie Olson came up to me again and engaged
me in a chat about personal computers. I learned that
"she" lived in Pennsylvania and had a young wife there.
As it turned out, promotion came slowly in her company,
which provided computer maintenance service for the
U.S.C.S. The Tiresian slots were hard to fill and so
Mike had decided that accepting the transfer would look
good in his file. Mickie's main regret seemed to be
that there was no hookup to the ISH available on the
planet. Once I understood that that was her main
concern, it came as no surprise to learn that "she" and
her wife didn't have any kids.
When Mickie got to talking technically about her
equipment -- computer equipment that is -- I tried hard
to keep my eyes from glazing over. Perceiving this,
she nimbly changed the subject, asking me if I was
married. I had to admit that I wasn't and the redhead
expressed a mild condolence. I gathered that her own
marriage was a good one.
I didn't care to go into it just then, but I
actually had asked a woman to marry me once. She had
been a rising star in a food wholesaling firm. In
fact, she was earning a good deal more I was. For me
it was about love and not money, but her parents
started looking daggers at me once my aspirations to
marriage became known. I could sleep with their
daughter, of course -- who could ride herd over an
adult woman anyway? -- but they'd let her marry a
"fortune-hunter" over their dead bodies. It was all
inferred very politely, of course, over white wine and
Brie.
In the end, the love of my life yielded to the
irresistible biological imperative that Woman must
marry up. She was soon afterwards happily conjoined
with a senior executive of her company -- a man twice
her age and a driven workaholic with no time for a home
life. But I couldn't fault him for being what he was.
It's all about making oneself more popular with the
ladies. If that means disappearing into a corporate
gopher hole and coming up only infrequently for air, so
be it. If the female population suddenly decided that
they wanted to bear only the children of poets, we'd
soon be up to our kazoo in poets.
As Mickie and I we were chatting, I became
sensible of some harsh male laughter and a simultaneous
agitation among the Charlies. I looked around,
wondering what the excitement was, and I saw a
distraught Allie holding something in a shaking hand.
Mickie saw it, too, and we both started toward her.
But Allie saw us coming and ran out onto the
terrace balcony. Just then Jordana intercepted Mickie
and me, asking, "Did you hear yet what Jake and his
gang did?"
Mickie frowned. "No, what?"
"They got some pornographic pictures made of
Andrea and some other girls."
I felt a clutch in the pit of my stomach. "Allie,
too?"
"I don't know. But Andrea's going off the deep
end!"
"Try to help her, you two," I said. "I want to
see if Allie's all right."
I hurried out onto the dark terrace and I saw my
roommate sitting huddled all alone against the parapet,
half-hidden behind a potted tree. I padded over to
her, as if approaching a wild bird, so as to not
frighten her away again.
"Are you upset about Andrea?" I asked softly.
"Andrea? I'm sorry for her, sure, but -- oh, God,
Aaron!"
"Allie -- Alex -- did Jake have pictures of you,
too?"
She bit her lip and nodded.
"But they're just fakes, right?" I asked, hoping
against hope.
"N-No," she sobbed. "They're not. -- Do you hate
me?"
"Hate you? For what?"
"For making you room with a slut!"
I knelt beside her and took her hands in mine.
"Allie, you're not making sense. I don't know what's
going on!"
She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. "I
hate dresses. No place for a handkerchief."
I didn't have one either, but I plucked a paper
napkin from the small table next to us and handed it to
her. She blew her nose, then, shaking with sobs, told
me the story.
After being on Tiresias for a few months, Allie
had gotten friendly with one of the Jake's friends,
Buck Channey. His gang had a bad reputation, but she
and Buck seemed to get on pretty well. The trouble was
that Buck kept nagging her about having sex. Allie
actually had been getting curious about that subject,
and so she let herself be persuaded. But the next day
Allie learned that Buck had had a hidden camera working
during their lovemaking and he had printed out some
very explicit images. Now Allie realized how much she
had been played for a fool. Buck told her that some of
his friends were interested in her, too, and that if
she'd treat them right, no one would ever have to see
the pictures.
I don't know how many real women could have been
blackmailed that way, but Allie had been a guy and the
cruel trick had left her feeling guilty and humiliated.
She went along with Buck's demand, but the poor girl
never guessed what she was getting into. She found
herself being passed back and forth between four
different guys -- Buck, Jake, Hank, and Rocky. They
were a bad bunch all around, power-trippers who liked
to bully women, all of them on their second or third
Tiresian tours. Back home they'd all been militant
feminists, hated men, and had done dirt to a quite a
few of the Charlies before Allie's turn came around.
"The more I did, the more pictures they took,"
said the blonde miserably, "then I was really hooked.
They would always talk down to me, like I was a whore.
I had to do all sorts of disgusting things that I never
would have wanted to do with men, especially not with
men I hated so much. They even made me take a little
money from them now and then, just to rub it in. I
guess they were pulling the same thing to some of the
other girls, too. We could have stopped them from
hurting more people if only we weren't too ashamed to
talk.
"After about a month," she went on, "they just let
me go, but they said that they wished they could do to
every man back on Earth what they'd done to me. There
was such hate in their voices. They didn't seem to
have anything personal against me, though -- it was
just that I used to be a man. But I never treated any
woman that, so what was the deal? What, Aaron?" Tears
were rolling down her face.
"I don't know," I answered, stroking my roommate's
hair and drawing her close.
Allie finished her story then. She seemed to be
off the hook, but was always afraid that the gang would
start blackmailing her again sometime. They didn't,
but tonight the other shoe had dropped. They had made
up this set of pornographic "trading cards" with
"Collectable Hookers" printed on the back and the names
of the girls whom they had abused captioned in scarlet
letters. The men had blacked-out faces, which made the
pictures look as impersonal and vulgar as imaginable.
I simply couldn't believe what I had been told.
Or I should say that while I believed it, I couldn't
understand how people could sink so low. And innocent
person had been blackmailed and passed around like a
domestic animal, then finally humiliated in front of
all her friends and coworkers. And Allie wasn't even
the only one whom they had treated that way!
"They'll all get fired! Maybe even indicted for
-- for whatever!" I tried to reassure her.
"No they won't," choked Allie. "Warden Gershom
likes them. It'll be covered up, and maybe us girls
will even be charged with being prostitutes or
something. All the Sallys here have an old-girl
network, just like the women do at home. We don't have
anything. We've just got to take it. Oh, Aaron, I
wish I could die!"
Tears were flowing down my cheeks, too. I didn't
know what to do to help, except to hold Allie and
whisper stupid things in her ear -- like that it wasn't
so bad, that people would understand, and that no one
would blame her for making one little mistake.
Especially not the other girls.
Then Mickie found us. "Andrea went back to her
room" she jabbered excitedly. "Those rats got Frankie
and Jean mixed up in their dirty business, too." The
redhead bent her head. "Frankie's a little wild, I
know, but Jean's an angel --"
"Don't blame Frankie, and don't blame any of the
others, either!" I cut her off angrily. But my anger
wasn't directed at Mickie. "The people who pulled this
rotten stunt aren't girls. Watch after Allie for me,
I've got to do something."
*Exactly what I'd do I'd worry about after
I caught up with Jake!*
#
I found the smug bastards responsible in the
second party room, where most of the men had
congregated. Jake was a big guy with a narrow beard
and large ears. I knew he was a senior sergeant in
Cell Block D and that he was reputedly a tough
customer, very good at keeping the wild animals there
in line.
I stomped up in front the creep and stared venom
up into his face. "They say you made those
pornographic pictures, Jake. Do you deny it?" I
demanded.
"What if I did?" he replied with amusement.
"What's a pussy like you doing to do about it?"
"Listen, shit head, I don't know the other girls
very well, but I know Alexander Milholland and he'd
never do anything to deserves what you did! And I just
bet it's the same for all the other girls, too!"
He grinned. "You women really stick together."
He reached out and tried to touch my face. I slapped
his hand away. "You're mascara's running, Sweet
Cheeks. Been bawling?"
I clenched my fists, wanting to punch him out, but
I thought that force wasn't the way to handle the
situation. I just didn't have the strength to do the
job. But if not that, what?
"You're beautiful when you're angry," Jake teased,
giving a broad leer to his cronies who were gathering
around us -- the guards Hank, Buck, and Rocky.
"Don't mind her, Jake," laughed Rocky. "It's PMS.
You know what that does to a woman! It makes her
opinionated and bad tempered!"
I had a temper all right, and it was getting
hotter by the second. If any man back home ever made a
PMS joke to a woman co-worker in front of witnesses he
was dead meat as far as his job was concerned. But
there was no versa in the vice, no symmetry in the
system, no fairness, no recourse. I was on my own.
And so was every other female on Tiresias.
I jabbed my index finger into Jake's rock-hard
chest. "You bottom-crawling scum-sucking piece of
slime!" I growled. "You've got no sane grudge against
anyone on this planet, but you still lay awake at night
thinking of ways to make other peoples' lives a living
hell!"
There was laughter behind me. "I think we've got
an angry white male, here," Hank taunted. "Only she
doesn't seem so male anymore. Hey, Love Lips, do you
think you still have balls there under that little
white dress? Check it out. You've been castrated."
I couldn't let that kind of oral diarrhea get to
me. It was hard enough tough trying to talk tough
dressed the way I was, with all the outward symbols of
power and virility stripped away. I ignored Hank for
the pet dog that he was and concentrated my ire on his
ring leader:
"You haven't got the guts to tell a person you
hate him just for what he is, so you lie and you
defame, you demonize and dehumanize! You use the
system like a lynch mob. That's about all there is to
that sickness you call feminism!"
"You can call me anything you want, but watch what
you say about feminism, Baby."
"Don't call me Baby, Fuck-Face!!" I gnashed back.
I was getting to him and he reached for me. I
stepped back, but Rocky and Hank were Johnny on the
spot, like a pair of backstops, keeping me penned in.
Jake figured he had the advantage now and touched my
cheeks, ran the back of his fingers over my nose and
lips.
"I like your skin, Baby. And that sexy mouth. It
give me a hard-on. I keep thinking about what those
lips would feel like tugging on my sausage." He moved
his hand lower and stoked my cleavage.
"If you keep touching me, I'm going to get really
mad," I warned.
"And what does a little piece do when she gets
really mad?" he asked, beginning to fondle my breasts
in earnest.
I lifted my hands, as if to remove his, but at the
last instant I made them into fists and snarled:
"This!"
I swung my fists down, hitting Hank and Rocky, who
stood behind me, each precisely in the balls. They
crumpled like men made of Reynolds Wrap. As Jake gaped
at me in surprise, I took a half step back -- and
kicked him in the crotch with all my strength. He
didn't curse, he didn't yell. He just went down,
grasping himself and wheezing like an asthmatic.
"You dames wanted to have nuts," I trumpeted above
their sprawling forms, "so now enjoy them."
Just then I spotted Buck in the corner of my eye
and swung around, just in case he was coming to blind
side me. My face must have been positively witch-like.
The pseudo-man returned my stare for just a couple
seconds, then dropped his glance and walked briskly
away, not having lifted a finger to avenge his stricken
cronies.
I just threw up my hands in disgust and stormed
back to the balcony. I wanted to see how Allie was
coming, but the terrace was empty when I got there. I
wondered where Mickie had taken my despairing roommate.
Suddenly somebody stepped up behind me, blocking
the light. I wheeled and found myself squared off
against a man's broad-shouldered silhouette. Did Jake
have another friend with a taste for vengeance, one
with more spine than the pathetic Buck Channey?
I gritted my teeth, ready for the worst.
Chapter 5
"Take it easy, Erin; I just want to talk."
When I didn't answer, the man stepped closer. In
the moonlight I could see that he was about my age,
tall, dark haired. And I recognized him; he was one of
my dance partners. In fact, he had been the only
person to dance with me twice -- once before we opened
the presents, and once after.
"Talk about what?" I asked brusquely. "I said
what I wanted to say inside."
"I heard. I was wondering if you were all right."
"You mean all right in the head?"
"No, I don't mean that."
He strode closer, causing me to step back to
maintain a comfortable distance. "Just what is it that
you want?"
"I'd only like to say that I thought Jake and the
others had it coming."
"Okay, so now you've said it!"
"You might not believe this, but what those idiots
did made me just as angry as it made you."
I gave him a bitter grin. "Oh, yeh? I'm the one
who had to bust their balls, Sir Galahad. You did
squat!"
"Touche!" he conceded amiably, then extended his
hand. "My name's Rod. It used to be `Rhoda Ganners.'
In a couple months, I guess it'll be Rhoda again."
"Unless you've got a yearning to homestead in a
prison colony." I regarded him carefully. He was a
good-looking male. He must have been a attractive
woman. "Something tells me you're not a guard. Are
you in administration?"
"No. I'm a journalist."
"A journalist? Here?"
He moved around me and rested his arm upon the
parapet "People are interested in all these parallel
worlds," he said, "but most of all in Tiresias."
"Figures. People are hooked on anything that has
to do with sex. So what are you writing? It is about
the prisoners, the system --?"
"This sex-change business mostly, and how people
cope. I thought that coming over here to interview
first-hand sources would be the best approach. I'm
glad that I did. Nobody could understand this
experience until he's lived it himself."
"Why is it always the women who come here
voluntarily?"
"Tell me why you think that is, Erin."
I regarded him warily. His body language wasn't
threatening or mocking in any way, so I decided to give
him a straight answer.
"I think its because a woman defines herself by
the fact that she can make a baby. It's a simple
business -- you can do this, so you're that. A man's
identity is only a set of ideas, hard to string
together, even harder to hold on to. You don't want to
tamper with it if you don't have to, because if you
lose it, you're not a man anymore. You're not a woman.
You're nothing at all, except pathetic"
"I think I understand what you mean."
"Is that all that brought you here, Miss Ganners?
The story?"
He looked back into the big lighted room. "Not
quite. I've always had trouble trusting men. Besides
winning a Pulitzer Prize, I hoped I could finally catch
on to where men are coming from. Maybe what I'm
finding out can improve my social life."
I laughed.
"What?" he asked.
"Allie and me were just talking about that."
"But that's not the reason you came here,
obviously."
"We came here because we had to. If we get to
understand women along the way, it's all gravy."
"Are you beginning to understand anything?"
"What's there to understand?"
But he wasn't buying my ingenuousness. "I think
you've got better insights than that, Erin. I wish
you'd open up. What my book needs is the point of view
of someone other than myself. I can do pretty well
with the woman-as-man perspective, especially after
interviewing so many Sallys, but I need to get into the
head of an intelligent man looking at a woman's life
for the first time. You, for example."
"You want me to help you with your book?"
"You might as well. You're going to be in it,
after what you did tonight."
"Don't I get a choice?"
"Why? Do you have a problem with giving me a
hand?"
I gave him a searching glance. "And I suppose
that while we work on your book, we'll be seeing a
lot of each other. Lots of private sessions, lots
of time to win my trust, to get my guard down.
Maybe what you really want is a story about a Charlie
who gets fucked then dumped. Or will it be the one
about how a male personality has to choose between
abortion or motherhood? That would be good copy --
a grown man going through hell, trying to decide
whether he should hold on to a shred of his own
identity and abort, or save the life of his child --
just the sort of thing to give your readers a laugh!
Who could imagine that men out here are human beings
with feelings?! We're just Charlies. Just dirty
jokes!"
Maybe I was getting a little hysterical, but how
could I be civil to any Sally after what had happened
to Allie and the others?
"So, you're one of those women who think that men
are only after one thing?" he replied ironically.
"Don't make me sound like some stereotyped female!
I'm being logical."
"Don't you think that those stereotyped females
can sometimes be logical, too?"
"I don't know about them. The world they're
always whining about doesn't exist anymore. What I
really think is that they should wake up and hear the
birdies sing."
"Look, Erin, I just want to understand your
experiences. I certainly don't want to seduce you. In
fact, I'd advise that you don't try sex for a long time
yet. It's a brew too strong for kids."
"I'm twenty-seven. Don't I look it?"
"You look about twenty-two," he smiled. "But from
what I've heard, you were born just a few days ago.
You've got a lot of growing up to do, young lady. And,
to your credit, you've done some of that tonight."
I looked at him hard, not quite sure what to
think.
He extended his hand. "Friends and
collaborators?"
I hesitated. I knew how low a Sally could sink.
But I also didn't want to condemn half the human race
just because of Jake and his buddies. After a moment's
reflection, I took the proffered hand. "I don't trust
you," I warned him, "but until you double cross me, or
I hear that you've hurt somebody innocent, I'm giving
you your chance. But I'm going to be watching you
every second."
"I'm going to be watching you, too, Erin, and I
bet that I'll have a lot more fun than you will."
I regarded him sourly. "That's lookism! It's a
federal rap."
"Not on Tiresias."
#
A charming bastard, I thought. But bad things had
happened to Allie and Andrea because they trusted
liars. I wasn't about to suffer the same.
"Can I take your picture?" he asked with a
suddenness that made me blink. "For my book."
I eyed him suspiciously. "Maybe for your wall,
too?"
"What of it? You're decent."
"Just barely."
"Please, I'd really like to."
I wondered if I should dare to go along. I'd
already been photographed in my party getup and,
anyway, no one could blackmail me just for wearing my
ingenue dress. What I had to do was avoid was getting
myself seriously compromised like Allie had.
"All right, shoot!" I decided.
"Thank you, Erin. Could you stand over by the
parapet? I'd like the light on the river for a
backdrop." I did as asked. "Rest your arm on top of
it. That's pretty good, except don't look so angry.
When people read about you, I want all their sympathy
to be on your side."
"You're running a big risk," I cautioned
sardonically. "It's not smart to hang around with a
ball-buster."
He looked up from his view-finder. "I don't think
that you want to bust anybody's balls. I bet that
you're just the sort of person who gets worked up when
she sees innocent people being pushed around."
"You could be wrong."
"I don't think I am. But I'll wear a box until
I'm sure."
I laughed. Damn, but this guy's manner was
disarming.
"I like that grin," he said excitedly. "Keep it
steady, one-two-three!"
He snapped the picture and then, the ice broken,
he directed me in posing for several more. Before I
realized it, he practically had me doing cheesecake!
*"Just a little more leg! Drop a strap over
your shoulder! Great! Lean forward --
gorgeous!"*
I knew I had to be careful about this character;
he could "handle" me much too easily. I knew that
other Sallys had gotten to other Charlies in the past,
often to their grief.
*Sex. Who needs it?*
Just then the balcony doorway grew crowded with
women -- Allie with her friends along with some others.
They saw that I was talking to someone so and paused
waited for us. Rod, reading their desire to speak to
me, backed away saying, "I'll look you up later. You
can count on that."
The journalist went back indoors and the Charlies
came toward me en masse.
"You were incredible!" chimed Dori.
"Did you see Buck run?" laughed Mickie. "Those
scum-suckers are cowards! What have we been so afraid
of all this time?"
Allie stepped up and put her arms around my neck.
"Thank you," she said. "You're the best friend a guy
ever had." When she let go, Mickie hugged me, then
passed me to Jordana, who did the same.
"Hey, come on, people, don't get mushy on me!"
"You've given us a new motto, Erin," suggested a
grinning Billie: "If thy guy offends thee, kick him in
the nuts!"
"They might kick back," I warned.
"Not if we kick first!" someone pronounced.
Then all the others pressed closer, squeezing me
or shaking my hand.
"Thanks, Erin. Tonight you taught those bums that
some of us can't be pushed around," Jordana said
solemnly, "but I'm afraid that by tomorrow it'll all be
back to the way it was before."
I turned serious myself. "Look, we've got to stop
being so blasted passive about this stuff. It's easy
to play the ostrich and hope that the lion will eat
somebody else but, sooner or later, it's going to be
your turn to die."
"We know that," said a woman. "But what do we do
about it?"
"What we have to do is do what the women back home
did fifty years ago -- raise hell until the people
running things give us what we want."
"Women had it easy last century. Their men really
cared about them. Nobody cares about us."
"We must have some king of leverage," I suggested.
"Some of these Sallys act as horny as wart hogs. Why
don't we try cutting off their sex until they shape
up?"
"Cut off their dicks?! Gross!" exclaimed a girl
who had been introduced to me as Davida. I suspected
now that she had had too much to drink.
"No," I explained patiently, "we just won't sleep
with them. That old stunt's been paying women good
dividends for a million years."
"I can't help you there," apologized Davida, "I've
never slept with a man."
"Then start sleeping with somebody -- and then
push him out of bed the second he steps out of line!"
suggested someone.
They all laughed. I lifted my hands to quiet
them, saying, "We've got to do some serious thinking
about our situation, girls -- uh, people."
"No justice, no piece!" suggested a woman in the
back.
I got the joke, which held more wit than the
original canard, "No justice no peace" -- pseudo-
revolutionary claptrap. Better to say, `No peace,
no justice,' since in all history no nation ever
had established social justice under the cross
fire of permanent class and group warfare.
"Well said! If we can keep a sense of humor," I
predicted, "we've got the battle half-won already. But
the bottom line is that we're decent people who deserve
respect. I'm not sure how to go about getting it. We
can't beat up all those guys because they're bigger
than us. We can't sue them because the courts are on
their side. We need ideas. Get together, talk things
over, try to pin down what might work for us here and
now. Once our ideas are formed up, we'll be able to
draw up a plan of action!"
The Charlies seemed to like my idea because I got
some more kisses and hugs. It was then that I realized
that my emotional distance from these female officers
had evaporated during the crisis of the night and the
camaraderie of the moment. These people had become my
tribe, my comrades. It was suddenly as if the most
important thing in the world was that I didn't let them
down.
#
Back inside, the excitement had died away. Mort,
passing along the word that the movie was about to
begin, stepped up to me. "If you haven't picked out
anyone for the evening yet, Erin, don't sweat it. I'm
not too old that I can't hold a little thing like you
on my knee."
I had decided that the codger was harmless, so I
just smiled and shook my finger at him. But tradition
was tradition, and so I weighted my options. Bob
hadn't offended me since I'd arrived, but I didn't
really know him well enough that I wanted to sit on
him. I had danced with a good many Sallys, but they
had all come off as anonymous pressed suits. So far
there had been only one man who had treated me with the
least little respect.
I looked up Rod and I took hold of his sleeve.
"Come on, guy, you're the lesser of fifty evils."
"I'm flattered."
"Just don't try anything clever in the dark."
Dotty and Olga had found their seats, too. Olga's
was a small man; the Scandinavian looked heavy enough
to break his thigh bones. Chester chose pretty Billie
Walters to join him for the showing.
Us new "girls" were granted seats of honor up
front near the wide screen, Rod and I laying claim to
a comfortable settee. Once we settled down, his hands
went instantly to my waist.
"Hey, what are you? Some kind of octopus?" I
chided, pushing his mits away. Then I leaned back
against his sturdy shoulder and made myself comfortable.
I noticed only then that Rod was wearing a spicy
cologne.
The movie began with a dance number under title
credits reading THE LOVE-SLAVE OF THE WARLORD. Because
the actresses were wearing skimpy Hollywood-style
barbarian slave girl outfits, I expected that the movie
would be erotic. The title didn't jive with the
opening scenes, though, which were set in modern
America. I quickly grasped what was going on. It was
a movie about an archaeologist on his way to Tiresias.
I had seen a couple films set on Tiresias over the last
few years (including one starring supermodel-turned-
actress Kathleen Randall as Capt. Lester Pierson!), but
there were several more which I had never bothered with
-- mainly low-budget sexploitation films.
Long before the scene changed to Tiresias I picked
out which character was going to be the "love-slave" of
the "warlord." He was a swaggering chauvinist who
apparently spent the greater part of every day doing
things that would have gotten him kicked out of any
real-world university in nothing flat. He was a
coarse stereotype of a man -- nothing but brag and bad
manners. It was Hollywood up to its old male-bashing
habits again.
Just as I expected, the hero went to Tiresias,
turned into a knockout girl (played by a popular porn
actress, Tina Rae), and then, on "her" first night out
with her party of scientists disguised as native
travelers," she catches the eye of a barbarian chief.
The sly rogue steals to her tent that night, cuts off
her pajamas with a hunting knife, then takes her away
to his village, bound and gagged. All the rest was
unimaginative porn.
There were a lot of things wrong with the movie.
The "warlord" seemed more like the lazy and voluptuous
chief of a second rate village, but he was hung like a
gorilla. The big pie-faced actor who had played the
archeologist as a male could never have morphed into a
fine-boned beauty like Tina Rae. And while the story
might have been interesting done well, all plot
development stopped twenty minutes into it. It took
only about thirty seconds for the warlord to spank the
rebellion out of his new slave girl, reducing her to
model of boring passivity for the rest of the movie.
After an initial banging by the warlord, the
"slave" had to engage in a threesome with the warlord's
"blood brothers." The dauntless duo ordered her to
begin their "pleasuring" by sucking both their cocks at
the same time. Merchant traders showed up at the
village right afterwards, and the hospitable warlord
loaned them his love-slave. The archaeologist-turned-
sex-bomb had to dance nude to the beating of the drums
(at least Tina Rae was a competent erotic dancer) and
then she was gang-banged by the traders, which she
didn't seem to mind. After such a busy day, the
archaeologist still had enough energy to initiate a
lesbian scene with one of the warlord's kept women at
bedtime. Through it all, the heroine never formed a
real relationship with any of the other characters.
Why had the committee picked this particular vid
for us ingenues to see? I supposed that the joke was
to remind us who were not girls about the dangers of
this planet. If so, it I didn't get an anxiety attack.
The story had been just too unreal, the characters too
unlifelike.
At the end of the film, the girl gets rescued and
taken home, where she becomes a guy again. But his
strange experience has wiped out his self-confidence
and he becomes a wimp who can't work up the courage
even to ask an ugly girl for a date. The script writer
had proved himself every bit as inept in character
psychology as he in plotting. Pretty weak stuff.
While the vid progressed, Rod's hands were like a
pair of swallows coming back to Capistrano. The third
time his birds roosted around my waist I ceased to shoo
them away. Part of the reason that I had become so
tolerant was that one of the Charlies had been
assiduously serving drinks to us movie-watchers all
along. I had already drunk enough to begin to feel a
little sleepy and nestled down very cozily against Rod.
That was when one of his hands slipped down to my
thigh.
*Boys will be boys.*
After the vid ended, people started leaving the
party. Allie had not stayed for the vid and I wanted
to get back to our room and check on her. I picked up
my gifts, said goodnight to such new friends as were
still there and, a little unsteady on my sore feet,
made by goodbyes to Rod. When he asked if he could
escort me to my quarters I didn't see any harm. I
could use someone to lean on just then.
*******
Chapter 6
Things moved rapidly on Sunday. Some of us from
the party got together and organized ourselves as the
charter members of the "Tiresian Women's Rights
Association." Before I knew it, I was elected
chairperson.
"Why me? I just got here!" I complained.
"Because you've got the balls for it, Erin,"
explained Andrea.
"I wish I did!"
"Listen, Erin," said Mickie, "the rest of us can
gripe all we want to, but the Sallys will just shrug it
off. But you've got special credibility. You faced
off with four goons and when the smoked cleared you
were the only one standing."
"There's got to be more to leadership than kicking
an asshole like Jake in the nuts!"
"Like what?" asked Dori. "Anyway, this is just
for now. Once we get rolling, all the officers will be
up for election by the full membership. I bet
everybody will want to join."
Being stuck as chairperson, I decided the first
order of business had to be appointing a temporary
committee of officers. I asked Jordana to be
treasurer, which was a snap because we didn't have any
money. I also invited Billie to be secretary.
"Do I have to take the minutes?" she asked.
"Sure."
"I can't do that."
"Why not?" I asked.
She sat there roiling in anguish for just a
moment, then got up and left.
I looked bemusedly to the others. "What did I
do?"
"Billie can't read or write and she's sensitive
about it," explained Jordana.
"You mean -- ?"
Andrea nodded. "Our fucking public education
system! I can hardly read myself. Do you think I'd
still be herding cows down in the exercise yard if I
was good for anything else?"
The system had been damaging innocent young lives
for over thirty years, but whenever a candidate
promised to be an "education president," it only meant
that he was in the pocket of the wealthy teachers'
unions. And most of Congress was no better. The
United States, long placing behind Indonesia in student
performance, lately had fallen behind Congo. There had
long been a brain drain to America to make up for the
scientists and technicians that our own schools were
not training. This flow was only now slackening
because U.S. companies could no longer compete with the
high wages paid in healthier economies, such as
Thailand's, or the Philippines.'
Getting back to the business at hand, I asked
Allie to take the job that Billie had turned down.
"Okay," she laughed, "if you don't try to make me
sit on your lap."
"Please, I don't swing that way," I demurred.
#
The "hooker trading card" incident never developed
into the terrible ordeal that the victimized girls had
expected. Maybe that was because Jake and his gang had
ended up with egg on their face themselves. The rest
of the Sallys seemed embarrassed by the trick.
That was all to the good, but the offense had
been a serious one and it couldn't be allowed to lie.
Because Jake's clique hadn't been called to account
by the warden, or even by the Guards supervisor, we
submitted a written complaint to Gershom's office,
demanding disciplinary action against the four men.
When he stalled, as we expected he would, we did the
paper work to appeal directly to the Director of
Prisons on Earth, and to the EEOC, alleging sexual
harassment. Finally, we filed a formal grievance
with the officer's union.
We were not very optimistic about being heard
sympathetically in any of these official snake pits.
The agencies were part of the system, and therefore
part of the problem. The public employees unions
had always been gung-ho for the in-party. Union
bosses, as the Chinese used to put it, were its
"running dogs." Although the law protected all
people equally in theory, in practice it was only
what empire-building bureaucrats and crusading
judges said it was for this week. To enforce its
guarantees impartially, or even reading it as written,
wouldn't have occurred to any of them.
Well, we were no babes in the woods and we knew
how the system worked. While doing all we could though
channels, we understood that the real progress would
have to be made through group action. The first
big step was holding a general meeting of Tiresian
women. Toward the end of the week we met with most of
the staff on the lawn outside the dormitory. The
assembly (alas) confirmed me and all of the temporary
officers I'd appointed for one-year terms, then we
settled down to discuss business and grievances.
For whatever reason, the group had trouble getting
to the meat of our predicament and the first complaints
voiced seemed distressingly trivial. For example,
somebody thought the nickname "Charlie" was demeaning
and we should demonstrate to ban it.
"Listen, people," I said after a lot of pointless
discussion, "these aren't important issues. I think
word games are for -- well, now don't be insulted --
but they're for intellectuals."
My plea was only partially heeded. The discussion
next turned to ingenue parties. Some people thought
that initiations should be prohibited. Finally a woman
named Georgette threw the question directly on to my
plate:
"Erin, you just had your own party, and it was one
of the worst that I've ever seen. What did you think
about it?"
I leaned back on the bench reserved for
association officers. "Oh, that's a hard question!" I
finally replied. I really didn't want to go, that's
for sure. Unfortunately, all I wanted to do was crawl
into a hole and hide for the next year. I hadn't met
anyone except Allie up till then, and I didn't want to.
I felt like a freak. And, well, I guess that's what I
was thinking all of you were, too. When I look back at
it now, I can see that wasn't a good attitude to have.
"I think that having an ingenue party is like
being a fledgling pushed out of the nest. You've got
to fly or you've got to die. That's just the way it
is. My party wasn't a total disaster. I met a lot of
you people there -- and I even met a decent Sally. I
think the experience did a lot for my self-confidence
and it helped me to fit in a lot faster than I would
have otherwise.
"-- And after wearing that goddamned dress, I know
that I've got the nerve to try anything!"
There was some laugher and we were finally able to
get on to the more important matters -- like fair job
assignments, promotions, -- and equal protection under
the law.
#
The next day I was introduced to my duties as a
personnel clerk. It was the sort of work I was used
to, having bid out of my entry-level jailor's job as
soon as I could. The dismal state of reading, writing,
and arithmetic among the usual job recruits had made me
a good candidate for office work. Guarding prisoners
had always made me feel like a lion tamer -- all by my
lonesome and surrounded by bloodthirsty predators. I
disliked the shadowy cell block corridors with their
slamming doors, the echo of surly voices and wary
footsteps, the feral hatred in the prisoners' eyes. My
job was just a job to me; I had become a correctional
officer only because I didn't figure in the quota lists
for the better jobs.
Rod was after me every day to give him an
interview. I had mixed feelings about seeing the Sally
again; I still didn't trust him very deeply. I was
getting used to the Charlies, but the Sallys still made
me uneasy. Rod looked like a man, and outwardly acted
like a man, but deep down I knew that he wasn't a man.
Worst of all, he was a journalist. To me that
suggested a cynical propagandist for the status quo and
-- worst of all -- an intellectual. One could not
underestimate the damage that the press had caused to
America. Without journalists to sugar-coat the poison
pill, the Establishment never would have become the
Establishment.
But despite all these misgivings, I made an
appointment to speak with Rod on my next day off.
We met up on the parapet, where he was waiting for
me with a pitcher of lemonade. I passed the next
couple hours answering a series of probing questions.
In particular filling him in on my first days upon
Tiresias and the impressions that I had drawn from
them. He was especially interested in our "rights
association" and encouraged me to talk about it at
length. I did so, until my voice got hoarse.
"We've got a lot of stuff down on CD," he said at
last, clicking off he recorder and refilling my paper
cup with lemonade. "Maybe we should knock it off for
now. -- Just the interview I mean. I'd like to take
you to lunch."
"You mean chow down on the cafeteria's barf?"
"For today. Maybe we can do something special
later on. I'm not a bad cook."
"I'm not either."
"We'll have to trade recipes," he suggested.
I was slumped down in my steel-wire chair, sipping
my sweet-sour drink. "You do look like a boy slouched
down there," Rod observed.
"I am a boy -- a man, I mean!"
He changing the subject: "You said you were home-
schooled. Didn't you ever get lonely for kids your own
age?"
"I thought the interview was over."
"It's just a friendly question. I'd like to know
more about you."
"No," I reminisced, "I wasn't lonely. My folks
pushed me into all sorts of community and church
activities. Did I ever tell you that I was a Boy
Scout? I went the distance -- to Eagle Scout! Anyway,
I did go to a public high school. What a waste that
was!"
"You're a Boy Scout! I should have known!"
"Would you recognize a Boy Scout if you met one?
There can't be many where you come from."
He ignored my jibe, asking, "You've never been
married?"
I shook my head and slurped some more lemonade
"Why not? You're such a beautiful woman, you must
have been a handsome man."
"Looks don't cut it with women. It's never
enough. You know what I mean."
"Suppose you tell me."
"Women select rich killer-males. What first class
woman is going to marry a one-pay-check-from-homeless-
ness, downwardly-mobile prison officer?"
"You don't sound like you have much self-esteem
yourself."
"After all I've told you, can you blame me?"
"No, probably not."
"At least you're open-minded."
"I'm a journalist."
I laughed.
"I guess you think that everyone in the press
corps is out to change the world."
"Don't flatter yourself. You guys want to keep
the world exactly the way it is. Massa's running the
plantation and you wordsmiths are his happy house
servants."
To my surprise, Rod didn't toss back a zinger, but
looked thoughtful. "A lot of us were like that when we
started out. But Tiresias doesn't just change bodies;
it changes minds."
"How so?"
"Lots of little things sneak up on a person. I'm
seeing the little meannesses, little injustices
everywhere. To cut to the chase, I don't see anything
wrong with what you and your friends say you want."
"Well, thanks. But don't be so sure that there's
anything `little' about the meanness or injustice
around here."
"Maybe not."
#
A couple days after our first big association
meeting, the shit hit the fan. A Sally, Jesse, had
beaten his Charlie lover, Christy, to a pulp.
I guess they were a disaster waiting to happen.
The two of them had been into some weird stuff-- a
French-maid bondage fetish. But Christy had been
getting more and more unhappy and finally decided to
call it quits after attending our first big meeting.
Unfortunately, power-tripping Jesse like things the way
they were. Before their argument was over, Christy had
been sent to the medical division with severe bruises
and multiple cuts and abrasions.
I was with Rod when word came about the domestic
abuse case. I realized at once that I had to get on
the stick and call an emergency meeting of the
association. Rod asked me to let him monitor it, and
I told him that it would be all right.
As the women gathered on the lawn ground, I could
see that the news about Christy had come to them as a
terrible shock. Our association was little more than a
week old and already we felt ourselves in crisis. None
of us were particularly proud of the fact that Christy
might have gotten hurt because she had acted on our
rhetoric.
It wasn't easy to get the discussion rolling.
People were too upset even to be angry. And Rod's
presence only added to peoples' unease, making me
wonder if I had done the right thing by letting him
attend.
"Friends, I guess we all know about Christy," I
began slowly. "Me and the committee officers are going
to go over and see her at the infirmary as soon as we
finish here."
"Maybe we're finished already," suggested a
Charlie whom I had only lately met -- Donna.
"No, we can't look at it that way!" I said firmly.
"Maybe we thought that this was going to be easy. It's
not. There may be more of us who'll get hurt. We have
to accept that; we're fighting a kind of war. But I
will tell you, if it comes down to beating after
beating after beating, we can't win. They've got
everything --the muscles, the system, rules that they
wrote themselves. All we've got is justice, and it's
been a long time since American justice has been
anything except a statue wearing a blindfold."
"So what do we have?" asked a woman.
"We have a lot of disadvantages," I said. If we
can win at all, it's because our opponents -- most of
them anyway -- are decent people. Decent people will
let other decent people win. Sometimes they let people
who don't deserve to win win, too. The story of America
is the story of the head taking advantage of the heart.
Sometimes I think that that's how our society got so
fucked up in the first place. But anyway, even if we
lose we can just expect more of what we're already gotten
used to. If we win, it should make things better for us,
and especially for our kids. But then we've got to kill
the insurgency dead -- stone cold dead. We all know what
its like to live under a permanent revolution run by
limousine radicals. Nothing gets done; progress can't
be made, the infrastructure rots. Men and women should
be on the same side -- against those people who are really
the problem."
"Maybe we shouldn't be talking with a Sally
listening," suggested a Charlie.
"What difference does it make?" I asked
resignedly. "You can bet Gershom's got an electronic
ear or a hidden mike hearing every word that we're
saying. If you're worried about Rob, I'll tell you
right now that he's my friend and I'm willing to vouch
for him. If he's willing, maybe he can help us by
writing about what's going on here."
Rod stood up. "Can I say something on my own
behalf, Madame Chairman?"
"The chair recognizes Rod Ganners," I replied with
like formality.
"I'm not here to spy on you folks, or to put you
on the spot. It's just that I think that something
important is happening with this group and I want to
understand it. As for Christy, the very idea of what
happened to her makes me sick.
"Listen, you may think that it's demeaning to be
put at the end of the line for all the good things of
life. But you don't realize how degrading it is for
someone like me, someone who's supposed to have all
the advantages. I'm good at what I do. I'd the best
there is under any system. Even with the same training
and an equal chance, I think I could beat out any man
trying to do my job.
"But now I'm beginning to realize that I've never
been treated like the best there is, but as some sort of
incompetent little waif who'd still waiting on tables if
mainstream men got a fair shake at competing. -- And
this lesson isn't being taught by any so-call male
chauvinists, but by the very institutions and persons
who are supposed to be on my side. They work on you from
childhood, try to make people like me dependent, to make
us afraid, and to turn that fear against people like you.
It's a racket -- a power game. That's all it's ever been.
And, well, I'm dealing myself out of it!
"I guess all I have left to say is that Erin
doesn't have to worry about my wanting to help." He
fell silent then.
"Rod," I spoke up soberly, "the best way you can
help us is just by doing your job the old fashioned way.
Just tell the truth. The rest will take care of
itself."
He only nodded, apparently talked out. The
Charlies, too, were quiet for a moment, but then Dori
spoke up: "We sure can use all the help we can get,
but how do we keep more people from being beaten up
like Christy?"
"We have two choices," I told everyone. "We can
be nice, tame little girls here, and be nice tame,
emasculated men back home. . . ."
"Those aren't much for choices," put in Davida
suddenly.
"Davida, that was only the first choice," I
explained. "The second choice is that we refuse to let
Christy's sacrifice be in vain. She's our first fallen
soldier and what's happened to her should mean
something."
"What does it mean?" asked Mickie dolefully.
"I want to get some pictures of Christy bruised
and cut as she is now, and make up some posters. We've
got to put the mirror up to the ugly face of this
system. We have to show the Sallys exactly what
they're defending. In fact, I'd like to have Christy
photographed in that maid cap of hers. It would speak
volumes for what the status quo is. Unfortunately, I
don't know how to get the cap. It's probably still in
Jesse's quarters."
"I've got one you can use," volunteered Billie.
"You have a maid's cap?" I asked incredulously.
"Shucks," Billie gushed, "I've got the whole
outfit!"
"William. . . " I sighed.
Chapter 7
Directly after the meeting, I followed Billie back
to her room in order to borrow her maid's cap.
It was true; in Billie Walters' closet there hung
the complete outfit of a little French maid, down to
the feather duster. Never having understood the
excitement around the French maid (except that I could
always appreciate a good set of legs), I now found
myself wondering where the fetish tradition could have
come from. French bawdy houses? I couldn't imagine
that any well-to-to 19th or early 20th Century
household would have accepted for decent entertainment
a servant costume that looked like a cross between a
miniskirt and a ballerina's tutu.
Had Billie lived a strange lifestyle back home? If
not, how else could she have come by the ensemble? I
asked her.
"The Sally's had an all-guy party a few months
ago," Billie explained cheerfully, "and they needed
someone to play the maid and serve drinks. It seemed
like it'd be fun, so I helped them out. They all
chipped in to get me this uniform. When I go home I'll
have to pass it on to one of the other girls here, but
I'll be taking back some of the cutest pictures of me
wearing it when I do. Do you want to see them?"
I let the question go.
*But I did want to see those pictures!*
"Billie," I began uncomfortably, "I'm sorry that I
embarrassed you the other day."
"That's all right, Erin. You didn't know. I
suppose that I'm just stupid. I couldn't learn much in
school no matter how hard I tried. All I can remember
being taught is that the president, Congress, and the
Supreme Court are the best and smartest people in the
world, but that America is the worst country there,
with the cruelest and most selfish people, -- and that
teachers aren't paid enough."
I put my hand on her shoulder. "No, you're not
stupid! I'd be in the same boat as you, except that I
was home-schooled. Dad went to a private school and
Mother attended a parochial one, so they had all the
basics. They gave up a lot of quality time so that I
could have the same chance that they'd had."
"You're lucky you had parents like that," she said
wistfully. "How are they doing now?"
I looked down uncomfortably. "They're dead. A
boating accident." I changed the subject: "Say! I
could teach you to read and write, if you'd like me
to."
The girl stared with disbelief. "Honest? If you
could do that -- I mean, I've felt like half a person
all my life. But -- but it's too much to ask of a
friend."
"What are friends for? I like to keep busy. What
else is there to do at night? Go out and get laid?"
"Maybe," Billie suggested teasingly. "You seem to
be getting awfully chummy with that Rod Ganners guy."
"We're just good friends."
She smiled wisely. "I understand. But if you
ever want to borrow my maid outfit --"
"Stuff it, Billie!"
#
Rod, Jordana, Allie, and I met with Christy at her
infirmary bed. She was a terrible sight to see, eyes
blackened, lips broken, bruises all over her face and,
where there were no bandages, dark cuts just scabbing
over.
The patient seemed to withdraw into herself as we
came in, not knowing any of us very well. Beating
victims, I had read, often felt humiliated. But we did
our best to reassure the young woman and we soon had
her coaxed into talking.
"Maybe it was my fault," Christy suddenly said.
"Your fault? How can that be?" asked Jordana, who
was just a little better acquainted with the girl than
the rest of us.
"I was doing some bad things. What else can
happen to you when you do that, except something bad?"
"Why did you do those things, Christian?" I asked
softy. I had used her real name without thinking.
Whenever we Charlies tried to express a serious or
intimate thought, it seems more sincere to use our male
names.
She shrugged her bruised shoulders, an act that
registered discomfort at the corners of her swollen
lips. "I didn't feel very good about myself, I
suppose. I had trouble making friends. Then Jesse
came along, and one thing just led to another."
"Well, we want to help you now, Christy, so you
won't have to depend on people like Jesse after this,"
Jordana promised.
*Was Jordana right? Or did we just want to
use Christy's tragedy for our own ends?*
"But we need your help, too," continued Jordana,
"so that nobody else will ever have to go through what
you did."
"How can I help?" the battered girl asked.
"We're going to start a Violence Against Women
action against Jesse," explained the ash blonde. After
that, when you're better, we want to get to know you a
lot better. I suppose that it's always the shy people
who overlooked. We're all sorry for not paying more
attention to you."
We had to try to use the VAWA, of course, as well
as the hundreds of other hate-crime statutes that Jesse
had broken. But I been advised by people more
experienced than me that no VAWA claim had ever been
acted upon on behalf of a Charlie. The Women's
Protection Commission was staffed with feminist lawyers
who treated any pro-female legislation as an upper-
class women's empowerment scam. If men -- even men on
Tiresias -- became the beneficiaries of such
legislation, it would simply confuse the crucial
issue -- which was always power, never justice.
There was no Men's Protection commission, of
course, no People's Protection commission, and despite
the broad language that the gasbags had used in writing
the VAWA, there was not, truly, even any Lower-Class
Women's Commission. When an elitist male did dirt to a
non-elitist woman, it was like it was like the year
1700 all over again. I remembered a hushed up scandal
during the Daschle administration, when White House
higher-ups had raped a rural-Southern file clerk with
"big hair" and only trade school credentials during a
drug party. Even the Supreme Court had gotten into the
act to prevent her case from being heard.
"How can anyone help me?" Christy asked glumly.
"If you just want somebody to mistreat you,"
replied Allie evenly, "there's nothing we can do. But
we want to start a support group for people who have
special problems. Sometimes the psyches just don't
understand us."
"I don't want a support group. I don't want
anyone feeling sorry for me," Christy whispered. "I
just want a few friends." She had said that as if it
had taken a lot of courage. I guess it had.
We talked for a little while longer and the
battered girl finally consented to let us take some
pictures of her. Rod had said nothing all this while,
but I think he was affected by Christy's plight as much
as or more than the rest of us. Maybe he was feeling
guilty just because he was a Sally and a Sally had hurt
the girl. I didn't care for that. Good people should
never feel responsible for what scoundrels have done --
unless, of course, they had voted them into office.
Wrongless guilt just leaves people open for other
scoundrel to manipulate them. Whole societies can be
twisted out of shape by a cunning and disciplined
pressure group playing the blame game.
Rod took the photos and Jordana promised to visit
Christy again the next day. As we were leaving, Dr.
Trent intercepted me in the receiving room.
"Erin," she said with some slight agitation, "I'm
sorry that we haven't had a real chance to talk since
you arrived. Are you doing anything for dinner
tonight?"
"No, Doctor. What did you have in mind?"
"Gabrielle. My place. Eightish?"
"I'll be there. Thanks -- Gabrielle."
#
Being a senior staff physician had its advantages.
Gabrielle had a private two-room apartment and her own
small kitchen. The air was warm and sweet with the
cooking aromas. Our main course was Tiresian "duck"
(it looked more like a loon, actually) bartered from
barbarian bird-catchers. I could appreciate a skilled
chef because I was an amateur gourmet cook myself. We
talked pleasantly, about cuisine mostly, until we moved
to the sofa, when our conversation grew more serious.
"Was there any particular reason that you asked me
over tonight, Gabrielle?"
She nodded, touching her gravid belly. "I've
regretted not attending your meetings, but there's so
much on my mind these days. But I've been very
impressed by what you're doing," she went on,
"-- organizing the women, I mean."
"I don't know," I shrugged, "it was more their
idea than mine."
"You've taken a load of guilt off my shoulders,
Erin. As the ranking -- Charlie -- I should have been
doing more to help our people." She lowered her gaze.
"Remember, the very first time I met you I brought up
revolution. Me? A revolutionary? That's a laugh!"
I smiled sympathetically. "Don't feel bad,
Doctor. For all its jawboning, our group hasn't really
accomplished anything yet."
"I think you've done quite a bit for morale. Men
-- Earth men -- have lost the art of standing up and
bitching. Back home, it's all taken so much for
granted that we sometimes forget how low we've really
sunk. Once you get to Tiresias, though, the blinkers
come off. We're living a feminist fantasy of the Bad
Old Days and it's hell. Sometimes people need that
kind of good slam in the face to wake them up."
"Christy got slammed in the face, I know."
"We're all at risk. Just be careful," Dr. Trent
warned solemnly. "The system doesn't like anyone
rocking the boat. Remember that policeman in
California who tried to start a male officers' advocacy
group?"
I remembered. Such things were -- unofficially --
always suppressed in the Land of the Free. Even
Senegalese illegals had their own advocacy groups with
the blessing of powers on high. But the California
officer, an honest crime-fighter with a sterling
record, had been suspended, harassed, and finally
driven from the force. I slumped back into the sofa
fatalistically. The future for a rebel under tyranny
was never bright. "A man has to do what a man has to
do," I finally said.
"Yes, we do, don't we. What's next?"
"We're following the official channels as far as
we can. And we'll be putting up those posters. If the
Sallys are going to defend their position, we have to
show them exactly what kind of sleaze they're
defending."
"It's a good start," Gabrielle nodded. "We have
to change things. But we can't stop with just
Tiresias. We have to set matters right back home,
too."
She suddenly grimaced self-deprecatingly. "Big
talk from a do-nothing, I know. It's easy to spin
one's wheels. I didn't live badly before. A
cardiovascular surgeon of either sex can get along,
even as a second class citizen. Maybe I don't deserve
any better; I don't know." Gabrielle then touched her
stomach thoughtfully. "But that's not good enough for
my son. My son can't be second class to anyone!"
I knew that the boy would be exactly that, unless
some important changes were made, and quickly.
"It's going to be a boy, then?" I asked, skirting
a subject that was just too big for me.
"It's going to be a girl here on Tiresias, but
he'll be my son back on Earth."
I could tell that that was the way she wanted it.
"I'm very happy for you."
"Thanks. The baby should be here in a couple
weeks. "I should be a father a couple weeks from now.
That's incredible."
"You don't think of yourself as a mother?" That
seemed slightly incredible to me.
"Biologically, I'm the baby's father. I couldn't
bring viable semen for artificial insemination across
from Earth, so I found a willing egg-donor and had as
many of her eggs as I could fertilized in vitriol with
my sperm. She was a concert pianist with a 160 IQ and
a family of good physical and mental health. The sex
of the eggs changed when I brought them over, of
course, but their viability remained. I had to have
three eggs implanted before one took. That wasn't bad
odds at all. I guess it was fated."
"What would you have done if all the implants had
failed?"
Trent frowned. "Then I would have found a Sally
willing to do the job for me. I wouldn't have liked
the randomness of it, naturally, but any port in a
storm."
I nodded but remained in the dark as to why such a
seemingly normal and intelligent person like Dr. Trent
would go to such lengths to bear a child herself. So,
despite the delicacy of the subject, I put the question
to her.
"That's what they all want to know," the doctor
smiled wanly. "The truth is, I had a bad experience in
marriage. One of the worst a man could have. I swore
that I'd never trust a woman with a child of mine
again."
"Those are strong words. It must have been a
terrible experience."
"It was," she sighed.
The young doctor explained that she had been a
staff surgeon servicing cases referred over from the
Mayo Clinic. "I was married and wanted children very
badly," she went on. "My wife had seemed to want the
same things that I did when were courting, but after we
were married she kept putting off starting a family for
the sake of her career. She was an English professor
-- quite a mediocre one, really, but she had
connections and could work the University quota system
for all it was worth. If she'd judged on her merits,
she wouldn't have had any career to worry about."
Gabrielle, lowered her gaze abashedly. "I'm
sorry. That's my bitterness talking."
"No problem. I'm still mad as hell about what my
fiancee pulled on me."
"Well, you can imagine," Trent went on, "that my
wife's attitude was driving me up the wall. By the
time she'd gotten pregnant, because of contraceptive or
condom failure, things weren't at all good between us.
She was very ambivalent about having the child. I did
everything I could to encourage her, but toward the end
she decided that it just wouldn't fit in with her
plans.
"To get me off her back, she got a restraining
order and put me out of our house. No problem there;
it's easier to get a court order against a husband than
it is to get a fishing license."
*Right, carp, but not husbands, are a
protected species.*
"But even on her own she kept vacillating, giving
me hope, then taking it away, until the baby was due.
Then she opted for one of those partial-birth
abortions. You know how they go -- the doctor pokes
hole into the baby's head when it's already emerging
from the birth channel, then sucks out the brain with a
catheter. It's infanticide in everything but name."
Trent rested back in the sofa, her face gaunt. "I
loved my son, even unborn. I would have been glad to
rear him alone, if that's how it had to be, but I
couldn't do anything; the whole system all against me."
Her mouth turned down bitterly; I listened quietly
as she went on. "I knew where my son was going to die.
I knew when he was going to die. I knew who was going
to kill him, but I couldn't stop it. The man is
supposed to protect and preserve his family, isn't he?
I failed miserably. After you've washed out that
badly, you stop being a real man. Tiresias is as good
a place for me as any."
*No, Dr. Trent's story was not fun and games
at all.*
When agony like Gabrielle's comes out --
especially out of a person whom his listener doesn't
know well -- his company can only sit in stunned
silence. He doesn't know what to say, he doesn't even
know what to do with his hands and feet. When to blink
or swallow becomes a major decision. Even so, when Dr.
Trent fell silent I reached over and laid my hand upon
her forearm.
She looked my way gratefully. "Sorry to get so
emotional, Erin, but you did ask. That's all there is
to it. I have to do this. At least this way there's
nobody in the universe who'll ever be able to say that
I don't have any rights as a parent!"
By the time I left the apartment I had become
pretty solid with Dr. Trent. What she had said had
given me a great deal to think about.
#
By now life on Tiresias had started to fall into
some kind of routine. I met with Rod almost every day
and filled him in on everything that happened to me,
but he would never let it go until I had also told him
exactly what I felt about it. In a way, the journalist
had turned into my confessor. I could talk to Allie
and some of the others, but the greatest relief was to
talk to Rod. Maybe it was because Rod could be
considered one of "the enemy camp" that I felt a
special need to talk to him, to justify myself,
regarding the life I was living, and how I was living
it.
"I'm going to have to remember that my book is
about everybody on Tiresias, not just you," Rod
remarked one day. "I want to write about you so much
-- I mean, the material that I'm getting from you is so
good -- that it's making the whole work top-heavy.
Erin-heavy."
"You can't let that happen, as if I were something
special," I cautioned him over a glass of lemonade.
"It's tough."
I wondered exactly how he meant that.
Usually, after the formal interview, we'd pass
some time in friendly banter. Rod once asked me: "Do
you girls teach one another how to walk that way?"
"What way?"
"That sexy way."
"Do you mean I still walk like a guy?" I asked,
feeling glad to here it.
"No, I mean you walk like a sexy girl."
I wasn't glad to hear that. "I do not!"
"You do so!"
"I do not!"
We seemed to end a lot of conversations like that.
I usually got in the last "I do not!" Maybe the
instinct that men had for conceding arguments to women
was built into the interaction of the male and female
pheromones.
Even though I didn't think of myself as a woman,
Rod believed that I should be full of new insights into
male-female relationships. If anything, life on
Tiresias had only confirmed what I had known
intuitively for years. My new perspective had, in
fact, given me the confidence to articulate my thoughts
more clearly and defend them more doggedly than I ever
had had the nerve to do before.
"Why do men fear commitment so much?" Rod once
asked.
"He doesn't want to diminish the intimacy of the
relationship," I replied without batting an eye.
He seemed genuinely astonished. "You're joking!"
"For crying out loud, Rod, its a plain as that
Grecian nose on your face!"
"Explain."
"Commitment is a swell racket for a woman," I
said, feeling quite wise. "When she commits, she's
taken care of financially. Marriage sets her free.
She can work full-time, work part-time, or not work
outside the home at all. She can putter at low-paying
jobs that carry personal rewards, like in volunteer
groups. If she's a particularly stupid and self-
deceived specimen, she even has the luxury of feeling
morally superior to the man who's giving her all her
options. The woman in a commitment has choice, and
choice is power.
"But pity her poor husband. His part in the
commitment game forces him to work harder at the same
old dull grind, only now he's supporting two people
where he only supported himself before. Then before
long there'll be kids. The burden gets heavier, the
hours of work get longer. He has no time for romance,
he can only be a part-time parent. He has to kiss up
to people he can't stand because the promotions have to
come at any cost. And then he gets the real payoff for
having "committed" -- his family hates him for
neglecting them."
"But hasn't the economic success of women changed
things?" Rod asked..
"Where have you been?! Does a millionaire woman
ever feel secure enough to marry a handsome, amiable
guy who'd has the time to be there for her? Not on
your life! If she has money, she'll insist on chasing
after men who have even more. A growing boy learns
that looks and personality won't cut it in the mating
game, like it will for a girl. If he ever expects to
win the femlin he wants, or keep her after he wins her,
he has to be an economic success. He's always being
judged by the filthy buck in his pocket, or the power
he wields in the work place. A man never gets any
credit just for being a fine person, or for supporting
his family in any way except the financial one. Men
want sex and beauty; women want material security.
Women are expected to raise hell if her guy treats her
like a piece of ass, but a man isn't supposed to get
worked up if his lover just sees money tree when she
looks at him. The two views are just the male and
female version of the same thing."
What I liked was that Rod usually didn't get
contentious when I graced him with a gem of my wisdom.
In this he way encouraged me to be frank and open
whenever he asked me a question.
"Why do you think that women always want their
husbands to change and men always want their wives to
stay just the same?" he asked me at a point early in
our association.
"Because men marry for love and women for money."
"There you go again!" Rod moaned.
"Open your eyes! If you like somebody because of
the person she is, and the way she looks, you don't
want her to change. But women never marry a man. They
marry a wallet which only happens to have a man
attached. Only after a woman has her hands on the
gold, does she remember to take a look at the man who
earned it. She'll never have considered it important
before whether she ever liked his looks, his
personality, or could tolerate his human habits. A
husband might as well be something that a woman pulls
out of a grab bag. When you get a weird piece of
merchandise that you can't take back, what do you do?
You try to find a use for it -- even try to make it do
something that was never intended by the manufacturer.
A man is expected to serve his wife's function, not his
own, or he goes out with the trash."
Another good question was: "Why are men such
jerks about sex?"
I threw up my hands. "You'd be a jerk, too, if
you had to do all the work that goes into building a
relationship and run all the risks that goes with it!
If you're a woman you only have to sit there rating
your suitor's performance. If a man makes one misstep,
or tries to angle a little pleasure for himself in
exchange for all the bankrolling and ego-stroking
that's expected of him, he's suddenly a jerk."
"Am I a jerk?" Rod asked all of a sudden.
I regarded him with surprise and couldn't help but
smile. "You've got your good points," I said.
******
Chapter 8
But understanding the deplorable state of male-
female relations was a far cry from being able to do
anything about them. I didn't even try, there was so
much else going on. The association members made up
some great posters for our shame-campaign against the
Sallys, featuring the beaten-up Christy. The most
effective on that we concocted was a picture of the
doe-eye girl smiling shyly at the camera wearing her
ingenue party dress juxtaposed against a close-up of
the battered woman.
"This is Progress the Establishment way!" the sign
said. It was crucial at this stage that we tar the
status quo with both physical and psychological
brutality. This wasn't a new strategy, and we surely
hadn't invented it, but history had proven it an
effective means of propaganda.
I could be detached, even cynical, about launching
what, if we could be perfectly frank, was essentially a
campaign of half-truths. What we Tiresians were
confronting was an entrenched set of assumptions born
of a broad anti-male, anti-Western social revolution.
Considering our country's history and Jeffersonian
traditions, it should have been rejected by American
society at every level.
Instead, a faddish political and social doctrine
(born of upper middle class ennui in the salons of the
wealthy) had been enshrined into a harsh permanence
through the fatuous reading of Constitutional law. The
system, granted, was unfit to live under and hurt most
of all those whom it pretended to help, but its methods
of choice were psychological coercion and manipulation.
Only when it felt especially threatened, or its most
unstable supporters were allowed too much freedom of
action, did it sink to physical brutality, as in the
case of Christy. Our opponents had shown great skill
in keeping a large population of oppressed people
anesthetized back on Earth, but our desperate hope was
that the unique conditions of Tiresias would somehow
render the keepers of the faith so disoriented that we
could manage some change for the better.
Knowing all this, we of the association steeled
our stomachs against what we had to do. After all, no
revolution can get off the ground if it lets itself be
embarrassed by its own tactics. Still, aware of the
dangers inherent in stirring up passions, I tried to
impress moderation upon some of the more excitable
association women, such as Andrea. No matter what we
said for public consumption, we had to keep ourselves
grounded in reality.
To my mind, taking an extreme stance prior to
sitting down to negotiate has to be accepted. The
danger is that an immoderate starting position will
decay into an uncompromising doctrine. Bad things
happen when any movement's leaders get too full of
themselves. They will eventually make compromises with
the Establishment in their own interests, not their
peoples,' and are often bought off with cushy
commission appointments tendered by sly politicos. The
revolution then takes on the trappings of permanence,
though it has in become an empty shell coopted by the
system for its own ends. We Tiresians were a long way
from being coopted, though, I was therefore a long way
from my tax-supported limousine and cellular phone.
(And may I be dead before I accept them!)
Beside my work with the association, I occupied
myself teaching Billie to read and write. I enjoyed
these sessions, owing to the Virginian's liveliness and
charm. The girl was no airhead either, I found out,
though she tended to be reticent about those things
which she could do well. It was hard to imagine the
mild and agreeable Billie as a prison guard but, in
fact, she worked closely with Andrea in Cell Block C.
Beside a knack for entertaining, Billie had a
surprising aptitude for language. I discovered that
she had picked up a good command of Spanish, and even
some passable Chinese, just by growing up on the edge
poor immigrant neighborhoods. Gregarious to a fault,
Billie had mingled with foreign-born neighbors and had
often helped them to get along. The boy's interpreting
skills had been especially helpful when his immigrant
friends had to deal with the brusque personnel of
government agencies -- cold and remote men and women
who spoke only a thick bureaucratese, and that only
between the hours of nine and five-thirty.
Billie's antics on Tiresias were surely the
actions of a person trying to get her fair share of
attention in spite of many handicaps, of which
miseducation was the most painful. She instinctively
used every asset that she could martial, especially her
charm and good looks.
The golden-maned girl was learning to read and
write at a pace that I could never have predicted at
the outset. It was a terrible indictment, of our
educational system and the posers who benefitted from
it, that they had so utterly failed to educate one as
bright an eager to learn as William Walters.
About that time, and much to my dismay, Jordana
composed a humorous fight-song that made me look like
some kind of hero. Maybe Stonewall Jackson could go
all the way to the grave and never let his friends
down, but I was just simple Aaron Carter -- and sooner
or later I was going to fall on my face. When I did I
would see people shaking their heads and saying, "Some
hero!"
Even so, Jordana was a good chum and I never
doubted that her intentions were among the most
innocent.
Her song went:
Come all you proud women and open your ears,
Of Jake and his bullies you quickly shall hear.
They went to a party, but came not to dine,
They came to bash Charlie and keep her in line.
All rowdy, all shouting, and giving the yell,
Like so many demons just burst out of hell,
The gang was all drunken on power and wine,
They came to bash Charlie and keep her in line.
They came to bash Charlie, they came not to pay,
But bold Erin Carter stepped into their way;
Their faces turned purple, their blue tongues
stuck out;
They discovered at last just what Charlie's about.
All rowdy, all shouting and giving the yell,
Like so many demons just burst out of hell,
The gang was all drunken on power and wine,
They came to bash Charlie and keep her in line.
They came to bash Charlie, but dared not to stay,
Buck Channey knew Erin was heading his way,
He saw her eyes flashing and got such a fright;
He ducked in the toilet to get out of sight!
Oh, Carter's a fighter and everyone's friend,
Yet woe to the Sally who tries to offend;
She takes what they dish out and serves them back
more,
But for good folks their's never a bolt on her
door.
#
Whenever Tiresian officers went back to Earth at
the end of their tours, new personnel were sent over
for the first time. That had always been the case, but
now there was a difference: the rights association was
providing an unofficial welcoming committee for new
Charlies. I went along with the first delegation, to
find out for myself whether the new committee would
turn out to be as good an idea in practice as it was in
theory.
I remembered my strange state of mind on my own
first day, so I knew that it would not do to put any
additional strain upon any person so disoriented. I
knew, too, that we shouldn't come off as seeming
excessively political, nor make the association sound
like a coercive outfit that everyone had to join. And
I especially didn't want us committee persons to look
like the local gang of bull dykes trying to put the
move on a fresh fish. So, we delegates agreed to keep
the meeting short, friendly, and to avoid specifics,
except to answer those questions which might occur to a
new arrival. There was much that should rightly be
left to a person's roommate/counselor. Allie, after
all, had done pretty well with me.
My spiel to each new Charlie was this: "Turning
into a woman isn't easy to adjust to, but we've all
been through it and it's really not an all-negative
experience. The main problem on Tiresias is that
sometimes the system doesn't treat us very well, and
we're doing all we can to peacefully change that.
There are times that you're going to feel alone, but
you don't have to. Help and advise is only a phone
call away. And we're starting some group hobby groups
and sports clubs. If you want privacy, you can have
privacy. But if you want to get into the thick of
things as quickly as possible, we'll do all we can to
help."
That was about it. We ended by passing along some
phone numbers.
One of the new Charlies was not a correctional
officer at all, but an anthropologist named Lyle
Rudensky. The prison required a team of trained
ethnological scientists for dealing with the
aborigines, but few officers h ad contact with these
people. Dr. Steven Donnalyn had for the last couple
years headed the detail, normally aided by two or three
assistants. But one by one these associates had been
reassigned back to Earth, there to assist the human
studies department of Duke University, which was
preparing a major expedition to Tiresias. To replace
Donnalyn's experienced staff in the interim, the
correctional office had recruited a promising graduate
student, Lyle, who was then working on his doctorate in
the Shantee language, the tongue spoken by natives in
the vicinity of the penitentiary.
Normally, Lyle would have been oriented by a
Charlie from her own special detail, but Dr. Donnalyn
was now running the alone and he was a self-involved
prig who couldn't bother himself with "little people."
So Billie Walters had been asked to become Lyle's
roommate\counselor.
I thought it amusing that a staid young academic
would be paired up with a fun-loving eccentric who,
through no fault of her own, was so ill-educated. Yet,
as it developed, the two of them got along fine. In
fact, as I thought about it, because Lyle was lacking
in social graces the outgoing Billie was exactly what
she needed to acclimate herself into our peculiar
little community. And given Billie's interest in new
languages, the match was an inspired one. Since it had
come down through the bureaucracy, however, it had to
have been dumb luck.
About twenty-five years old, Lyle was tall for a
girl, thin, and had a pale, translucent skin. I
suspected that she could respond to make-over very
well, but her too-large, male-style glasses, balanced
precariously upon her pert nose, gave the impression of
ungainliness. A stock comic character came to mind,
the nerdy girl in the unbecoming clothes and frumpish
hairstyle who always could turn into a raving beauty
with the removal of her glasses and the unbinding of
her do. I would be interested to see what Lyle
Rudensky would look like once Billie had worked some
cosmetological magic upon her for her ingenue party.
#
A few days, the party took place. I wore my white
dress again, having taken the government up on its
half-price offer. After all, I was no stay-at-home by
nature and a person needed something to wear for those
special occasions. What's more, as chairman -- chair
person -- of the rights association, I had to maintain
a confident public profile.
Jake and his boys were on hand, too, but this time
they seemed a little subdued -- which was all to the
good. Jesse, I noted, didn't show up at all. Christy
attended, accompanied by Jordana, with whom she had
become very friendly. The poor girl still had on some
bandages and many scabs and dark bruises showed.
Christy's appearance in that way sent a message,
telling everyone that physical coercion would not break
the spirit of the Tiresian women, not even the meekest
of us. When our Establishment types saw the marks of
the girl's beating I hoped that they would be asking
themselves, "Is our system so wonderful that it can
only exist by doing things like this to people like
Christy Giustini?
I danced with Rod often that night; most of the
Sallys being polite but stand-offish toward me. Maybe
I really had earned the reputation of being a ball-
buster! But, after all, the party was for the new
people, not us old-timers who had been there for almost
a month, and I so tried to introduce the ingenues to as
many genial people as I could.
Mort had christened Lyle Rudensky as "Lila."
Billie had introduced her to several of her Sally
friends, and one of them she would duly ask to join her
for the vid showing. In her short, mist-blue party
dress, I was amazed to see how much the tall, slim Lila
looked like a Parisian fashion model. She even had the
small breasts common to the distinctive denizens of
those Parisian runways.
When I had first come to Tiresias, I had envied
the Charlies with tiny breasts. But by now I had
stopped pitying myself and actually felt sorry for
girls who had been "shorted" by Nature. My own
thoughts surprised me. I must have been getting vain,
because I certainly knew of no practical use that my
more womanly mammae might serve, either for me or for
anyone else.
The movie that wound down the night was porn like
the last one, but it had nothing to do with Tiresias.
"Bad Babes," it was called, I think. One of the
ingenue Sallys asked me to adorn his lap during the
showing. I hadn't expected this, and I didn't really
want to be torn away from the deep conversation that I
was having with Rod, but I couldn't hurt an innocent
man's feeling, nor break the community tradition, by
refusing.
*Anyway, the guy must have thought I was
pretty.*
#
The next day came news of community-wide
importance. Dr. Trent had gone into labor.
All the gossip for the rest of the day was about
Dr. Trent. Then in the late afternoon the word came
that Gabrielle had given birth to a strong, healthy
baby daughter, and that the mother was alert and doing
well. A cheer went up all over the office.
I reflected on the event. It was an astonishing
thing, really. Less than a year ago Dr. Trent had been
a man who was hoping to be a father. Tonight he -- she
-- had given a new human life to the world, and from
out of her own being. As awesome as it was, there was
an unnaturalness to it that gave me pause.
Amazing to tell, Gabrielle was already back in her
apartment by noon of the next day. Rod, Dori, and I
went over together to pay our respects and to see the
baby. Even if it were only for the benefit of his
book, and not for the fact that he and the doctor were
already friends, this was one call that Rod could not
have failed to make.
Gabrielle's small apartment was full of baby
things now, most of them only half-unpacked from their
storage boxes. The greater part of her tour was
already over, but a year's extension had been approved
and I understood that the doctor would have six months
unpaid maternity leave and then function in a part-time
and advisory capacity at reduced pay until the end of
her second tour. It seemed that the surgeon had
sufficient private resources to make this arrangement
palatable.
"A baby does best if he's suckled and has a
mother's attention for as long as possible," Gabrielle
explained. "It was good of Warden Gershom to approve
my extension, especially since I'm not going to be able
to give my job anything like my full attention
anymore." That the warden had done right by Dr. Trent
was something in his favor, I granted, but otherwise
the Sally's acts, both of omission and commission, been
hard on the Charlies' morale.
"Who's going to baby sit?" asked Dori.
Gabrielle blinked bemusedly. "It's strange," she
finally answered, "I bought nearly every baby thing I
could find in the catalog before I left Earth, but
neither then nor anytime afterwards did I give a single
thought to who I'd find to take some of the burden off
me. Maybe it never occurred to me that a baby might be
a burden."
"Don't worry, Doc. I've got two kids," offered
Dori. "I think I can take care of your little girl
once in a while without breaking her."
"If only you could," the new mother replied
gratefully.
I was happy to hear that Dr. Trent would remain
part of our little community during the whole of my
exile upon Tiresias. I liked her a lot and realized
that the weeks and months to follow my other Charlie
friends would be leaving one by one.
But I was not easy to think of Dr. Trent as merely
a Charlie now. It was almost as if she had undergone
some arcane rite of passage, emerging ennobled in some
way, a real woman amid a flock of us sorry make-
believes.
"What are you going to name her, Gabrielle?" I
asked.
"Eva. That's her mother's name. I'm going to
call him Evan when he's a boy."
It was disconcerting to be reminded that Dr. Trent
was, biologically speaking, the father of the infant.
I found it disconcerting, too, that she instinctively
thought of the tiny girl as her son, not her daughter.
*Boy or girl, she's lucky to have a
parent like Dr. Trent.*
Rod stepped closer. "May I hold her, Gabrielle?"
Consenting without words, the woman passed her precious
blanket-wrapped bundle to the journalist's arms. Rod
held Eva like a woman would.
"I'll be forever glad that I was able on Tiresias
at the right time to see this," he remarked, rocking
the infant back and forth. Then he looked across to
me. "Erin? Would you like to hold her?" We both
glanced to the mother for permission. Trent nodded.
I took the child with the same care I would have
afforded a loaded and cocked .45. I couldn't manage to
cradle her exactly like Rod had, but without starting
Eva crying, I successfully took hold of her and
clutched her gently. Gazing down into that miniature
face, many stark impressions whirled through my mind --
just like the birds on the turning mobile that
Gabrielle had already erected above the baby's crib.
The newborn was surely no beauty, except for those
striking eyes that were so much like her "father's."
Otherwise, Eva looked sort of wrinkly, flushed, and
pinched, just as, I suppose, all day-old babies do.
The tyke yawned as I held her, an action that reminded
me of a monkey which I had seen in a zoo shortly before
leaving Earth.
But to feel the weight of her (and she was heavier
than I expected), experience the reality of her, was
something to give one a moment. Getting pregnant was
on my short list of things that I least wanted to have
happen to me during my tour, but knowing and respecting
Dr. Trent the way I did, my thoughts on the subject
were no longer simple. This child, in a strange way,
represented the incredible new world of possibilities
of which I was now part -- whether I liked it or not.
I looked to Dr. Trent, who never took her eyes off
her child. How different her life would be because of
this birth, I realized. And the incredible
possibilities! If this child lived and had children of
her own, and they had children, too, and they had
children -- ad infinitum -- the issue of Dr. Trent
would, in the course of generations, number in the many
thousands. Each of them would be a person who never
would have lived without a strange and courageous act
on the part of a man named Trent. And by their numbers
the world itself would be transformed, made-over into
something that it could not have been had Gabriel Trent
never lived.
Dr. Trent was making himself forever part of the
future by the simple act of parenting, perhaps to the
very end of the human race. This was true of any
parent, naturally, but how much more starkly the cosmic
significance of it registered upon one's mind when he
was allowed to think in terms of the archetypical
mother with her newborn child.
I passed the child back to Gabrielle. She
regarded her baby's face as if she was seeing it for
the first time, though I doubted she had ever taken her
eyes off it for more than a few minutes since leaving
the infirmary..
"This planet made a miracle," Dr. Trent whispered
as tears -- of humility and awe, I think -- began
rolling down her cheeks. She pressed the cooing infant
to her soft breast. "I love this world," she
murmured," but I couldn't tell whether she was speaking
to us, her visitors, or to some entity much greater
than any of us will ever be.
Chapter 9
I was taking dinner with Mickie and Jordana when
Billie and Lila came into the cafeteria. Billie, being
Billie, had on a low-cut white blouse, a mini-skirt,
and high heels. Lila was wearing a woman's wine-
colored leisure pants suit, which I knew she had had
the foresight to bring from home. The young scholar
was squinting right and left as she crossed the dining
room; Billie had advised her charge that such
unflattering eyewear should be kept out of sight, and
her new spectacles were not yet ready. In fact, I
understood that Lila was expected to return to Earth,
if briefly, for laser surgery to cure her hyperopia.
She had a phobia against contact lenses, alas, and
wearing glasses during her future field work upon
Tiresias would make her a curiosity to the tribesmen.
As I waved Billie and her roommate over, I noted
that Lyle had misjudged Lila's size and, her overly-
long pantslegs slipping under her heels, she stumbled
into the back of a man standing in the lunch line.
But Lila was far from the most coordinated person
whom I had ever known. When the pair had gotten their
dinner and joined us, Lila bumped her chair against the
leg of our table, scrambling what was left of our meal.
A moment later, being introduced to Mickie and
extending a handshake, she knocked over a paper cup of
soft drink.
The disruption notwithstanding, we wished to
welcome Lila into our odd little community as warmly as
possible. She was rather isolated in her own
department with no one but the self-absorbed Dr.
Donnalyn for company. The disorientation and
strangeness of life on Tiresias could be a deadly thing
at times. Loneliness had lured Christy into a bad
mistake; none of us wanted the same thing to any other
Charlie.
The young linguist seemed as ill-at-ease as she
had during our earlier meetings. Very probably us
working stiffs were not Lyle Rudensky's accustomed
company. As with most egalitarians, class distinction
was the be all and end all. While Lyle had not been
himself an elitist (after all, he had been a male of
poor background, limping to a degree by means of tax-
subsidized scholarships), his education had conditioned
him to be a loyal bootblack for the ruling class.
Fortunately, most intellectuals crave an audience
and playing to that trait in Lila was the best way to
help her to relax. We had already discovered that
whenever we got the slim brunette talking about any of
her favorite subjects she became lively and animated.
And, in fact, what she could tell us was always very
interesting.
"I've wondered why we don't have a company of
marines here," remarked Mickie. "We're just a little
island of civilization in a sea of warlike barbarians."
"Attack is always a possibility," admitted the
linguist, "but a remote one. Your guards are drilled
in using military weaponry, should the need arise.
That makes each of you worth twenty to a hundred
barbarian warriors. Anyway, troops could be sent
across from Earth at short notice."
"I remember the training I got when I first
arrived," put in Billie excitedly. "I'm pretty good
with an M76!"
So, the vivacious blonde had another talent that I
hadn't suspected -- weapons proficiency. I felt a bit
envious.
"I've never been trained," I said.
Billie shrugged. "Budget cuts."
"The prison is built in a backward, low-population
area," Lila assured us. "Primitive people are friendly
to strangers, provided they're shown strength but not
aggressiveness. Mountain men used to travel among the
Indians all their lives -- and Jim Bridger lived to be
seventy-seven. What the Indian traders did in the
American West, we're trying to doing here -- a non-
judgmental appreciation of aboriginal cultures: learn
the local languages, treat the people with respect, and
provide a market for their trade goods. In fact,
trading helps to defray some of our expenses. Museums
still pay well for Tiresian artifacts."
I silently chuckled at the very idea of old Jim
Bridger filling in some band of craggy frontiersmen
about his "non-judgmental appreciation of the
Shoshones' aboriginal culture."
"But there are cities on this world, too," I
reminded her.
"Oh, yes. They're on the level of the Bronze Age
of Earth, which is actually quite impressive. We're
making aerial surveys of the closest of these city
states from Base Gephardt."
"I wonder what the natives think when they see a
helicopter," grinned Jordana.
I had read about Base Gephardt, another major
"punch" site for two-way traffic between Earth and
Tiresias. Unlike the penitentiary, Base Gephardt was
strictly scientific in its purpose. There also were
nonspecific reports of other, smaller "crossing
points." Some good work was being done by foreign
institutions, too.
"Gephardt? That's a new word," murmured Billie.
"What does it mean?"
"It's the Tiresian god of greed and destruction,"
I quipped.
Lila, somewhat short in the humor department, gave
me an annoyed glance and cleared up the matter
factually: "Speaker of the House Gephardt led the
fight to get tax funding for the exploration base.
Duke University honored his patronage by naming it
after him."
Ugly names and crass political patronage aside,
Tiresias was a fascinating place for many reasons.
The planet's fauna was very rich, and a large
portion of its animal species appeared to be the same
as, or merely minor departures from, Pliocene mammals
of prehistoric Earth. It was as if the biology of the
two worlds had run in close parallel until recent
geological history, after which the worlds for some
reason went their own different ways.
The reasons why some beasts became extinct on
Earth while they survived on Tiresias was not at all
clear, except that Tiresias seemed not to have had any
Pleistocene glaciation. Perhaps the Ice Age had forced
evolutionary changes in wildlife that only had proven
to be a detriment to them after warm weather had
returned. But the survival of ancient mammals on a
neighboring world intensely excited the world's
zoological gardens, which were bidding desperately for
specimens. Care had to be taken when transferring
animal life back and forth between planes of reality,
though. Who could say that dangerous microbes might
not be transferred with them?
So far, though, no new diseases had been spread
via transdimensional exchange. In fact, virulent new
cultures often translated into commonplace ones during
the transfer process. Even so, extreme care had to be
taken lest a Tiresian plague sweep unchecked across the
Earth, or vice versa. Like so many other
bureaucracies, the United States Center for Disease
Control had its thumb in the Tiresian pie. Actually,
the U.S.C.D.C.'s contribution could potentially be the
most useful.
The subject of xeno-exploration was an extremely
exciting one. If only I could "boldly go where no man
has gone before, to explore strange new worlds, to seek
out new life and new civilizations." How I envied what
shy, clumsy Lila Rudensky was about to do. But where
was my opportunity to do the work which I craved? I
had been born in a country too wracked with both social
and economical ills for that.
Despite our talk about interdimensional diseases,
Lila seemed more interested in another kind of
contamination. She emphasized the lengths that
official policy went to avoid passing on Earth-specific
knowledge, and particularly American traditions, to the
natives of Tiresias. Clearly she was parroting the
accepted cant, not thinking deeply in any independent
fashion. Everything about a new culture was wonderful
and exciting to the sort of people who had trained her,
while everything about Western Civilization was
decadent and corrupting. I recalled a line from "The
Mikado": -- "the idiot to praises with enthusiastic
tone, every century but this, and every country but his
own."
But it was just as well that government policy was
what it was. Their actual intention was to protect
aboriginal innocence from Voltaire and Charles Dickens,
of course. But, in doing so, they were also protecting
the Tiresians from their own civilization-killing ethos
which held that Truth was "situational ethics," Love
was "sex," Social Customs were "politics," Faith was
"fantasy," and Accomplishment was "winning the
lottery."
"It really sounds like they treat women rough!"
Billie observed when Lila described how the proudest
act of Tiresian manhood was to kidnap an enemy's woman,
tame her with the whip. Then, branded, chained, and
collared, they were trained to cook, clean, make love,
and dance.
"It's a paternalistic culture," Lila replied
without any of the posturing and loathing that usually
went with that word. "Woman-stealing makes sense for
them. It keeps the gene pool stirred. But you're
right, Billy," she went on; "you shouldn't go outside
these walls under any circumstances. You'd probably be
considered by the locals what they call `sheri tigi' -
- `slave meat.'"
"I'm not the one who's going out there," Billie
reminded her pointedly. "You are."
The young scholar fell silent. Did Lila only now
begin to doubt that coming to Tiresias might have been
such a wise career move?
#
I began my first menstrual period the same night
as our lunch with Lila and Billie. Allie, coming home
to find me in a funk and reading the instructions on
the back of a box of tampons, took charge and did her
best to talk me through the terrible days which
followed. She even made an effort not to enjoy my
suffering too much.
I was already better by Friday night when my
roommate popped in carrying Rod's camera and a brown
paper bag. But what struck me at once was the excited
mischief in her blue eyes.
"What's the camera for?" I asked, looking up from
my library book, a piece of male-bashing tripe called
"The Weaker-Minded Sex." It was a book of cartoons
which couldn't decide whether men were bullies, wimps,
conceited asses, or just plain basket cases. Its
strained gags accused them of everything at the same
time. I had only borrowed the book because it was so
easy to see in the illos the very real vices our Sally
tormentors.
"I want to take some pictures of myself!" Allie
chirped. "Will you help me out?"
"Sure." I sat up, pitched the book aside, and
reached for the camera.
"Not yet! Let me put on something sexy."
"What kind of pictures are they going to be?" I
asked suspiciously.
"Lingerie, bikini shots. My tour is up in three
months and I want to have something to remember this
planet by."
"Allie, I thought you'd be the last person who'd
ever want to be photographed again."
"Oh, Erin, those trading cards were dirty-minded
and sick! This is going to be fun.'
"Different strokes for different folks."
"You know," she said, "I was thinking that maybe
I'll become my own favorite pin-up girl!. `Who's that
hot chick on your desk, Alex?' she mimicked a man's
voice. `She's a real turn-on! Where can I find that
babe?'"
"All right, I'll photograph you, if that's what
you really want. But isn't the backdrop here pretty
grungy?"
"That doesn't matter! A good paint program'll
plug in any sort of background that fits -- a beach, a
boudoir, a Wild West saloon -- anything. Say, do you
think I could make a convincing saloon girl?" She held
up in front of herself a modern version of a sassy
Victorian bustier.
"Is that what you have in the bag? Costumes?"
"Yeh! I don't have a lot of lingerie of my own,
so I borrowed what I could from the other girls.
Billie has a pile of the stuff."
"That's our darling Billie. Did she loan you the
French maid costume, too?"
"Oh, jeez! I forgot to ask!"
"You're getting weird, Allie."
"Oh, well, I've got plenty. Maybe later."
For the next couple hours I was able to live out a
personal fantasy of mine, of being the man behind the
camera of a girly magazine. Unfortunately, the girl in
front of the camera wasn't a real girl, and the man
behind the camera wasn't really a man.
Not that Allie didn't look every bit like a girl.
I snapped her in baby dolls and then in garter belts,
in bustiers and camis, in teddies and briefers, in bras
and panties, and bikinis. She started getting carried
away and, before long, she had me photograph her with
her bra almost off, then completely off, her panties
gradually rolled down to the last modicum of modesty,
then shed entirely. My roommie sure looked cute naked
and hugging that borrowed teddy bear.
If the shots turned out well enough she might even
make some money by selling them to a magazine, I knew.
Sometimes serials like RUBY or GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT
ran photo features of gorgeous Charlies along with
their regular fare of all-girl models. In fact, I had
seen one pictorial entitled "The Girls of Tiresias."
That had come out almost a year before my planetfall,
and so none of my current friends had appeared in it.
I wondered, though, whether my roommate would show up
in some future issue. A man has to earn what he can,
wherever he can, considering the economy.
Allie then fell back on the bed, tired out from
all the costume changing and posing. "I guess that's
enough for me," she panted. "I wonder what my
grandchildren will think when I show them those
pictures someday."
"I just hope you wait until they're over
eighteen!"
She gave a rippling laugh; it hardly sounded
grandfatherly. "Say, Erin, why don't you let me take
your picture, too, now that we've got all this stuff
already here?"
"Me? I don't think so."
"Come on, A.C. Be a sport. You'll probably want
to do it before you leave anyway. When will you have a
better chance?"
"No way!"
About fifteen minutes later I was wearing a purple
bikini, holding a beach ball, and pretending that I was
happily broiling under the golden sun of Acapulco.
Allie had a knack for talking me into the silliest
things!
After overcoming my initial reluctance, I actually
had fun. With Allie's help I went through many changes
of hair style and makeup, trying on garments which I
would have loved to have ogled upon the body of a well-
proportioned, natural-born girl, but which didn't
exactly sit right with me. Nonetheless, Allie's mania
proved infections and, just to show that I didn't have
less nerve than she, I posed for my own series of semi-
nude, and nude shots. My Svengali roommate even coaxed
me to going to the absolute limit -- hugging the teddy
bear in the buff while looking as cute and empty-headed
as I could manage.
Then, on my own initiative, I went to the drawer
and brought out my one and only real piece of lingerie,
the green tunic that Mort's gang had given me. I
slipped it over my head and Allie helped me with the
hair ribbon. Then she clicked away and, even as the
shots were being taken, I knew that this experience was
going to seem unbelievable after I had my proper sex
restored -- an event that I looked forward to with
relish.
Then, just as worn out as Allie had been, I
collapsed into bed. My roommie fell in beside me,
wearing only panties and a flower-printed cami. She
looked so exciting just then that I couldn't help
thinking, "If only I were a man and she wasn't."
"You're incredible!" Allie exclaimed.
I closed my eyes and stretched like a cat. "If I
have to be a woman, I prefer to be a gorgeous one. Not
that I wasn't gorgeous as a male."
She reached out, putting her hand upon my bare
thigh in a way so unlike her that I looked up in
askance. Her smile began to fade as if some troubling
thought was passing through her mind like a dark cloud.
"Erin, I --" she began haltingly, "I've been
wanting to ask you something, but -- but no matter what
it is, you have to promise me that we won't stop being
friends."
"You sounds serious," I remarked slowly, losing my
own smile. "Well, sure, I promise. I'd never want any
silly little thing to come between us."
"That's good," Allie grinned weakly, as if not
wholly reassured. "I --"
Her question was still sticking in her throat; I
got the strangest feeling that it might be better if
she not ask it at all. Despite my misgivings, I
reached out and took her hand in mine. "What is it,
Alexander?"
I think that calling her Alexander actually
encouraged her to swim out into dangerous waters, and
so its use probably had been a mistake. "I don't know
how to say this, Erin," she struggled, "but -- but
sometimes, like now especially, I get the strongest
feelings -- about, well, like asking you to --"
I studied her troubled expression carefully.
"What, Allie?"
" -- to let me make love to you."
I sucked in a long breath.
She had said it. Her face, though forcing a
smile, was braced hard, as if expecting pain. I don't
think my own expression changed, but my discomfort was
keen and my mind raced to find words to answer.
*Oh, Alexander, why did you have to ask me
that?*
I knew what my reply had to be, but how could I
express it a way that would give no hurt? Allie, my
best friend, had asked me something very personal, very
difficult, and by so doing had rendered herself very
vulnerable.
I stared at her, taking in the way in which the
fluorescent light illuminated her amber hair. A
feeling of crisis squirmed within me. It was like my
best friend had just dropped the bomb that she was gay
and wanted me to be her lover. But this wasn't
homosexuality, not really. What was happening to
Allie, I realized, was that she was reaching back into
her male persona and seeing me, and not herself, as an
attractive woman. What a strange thought!
"Erin?" she asked in a ragged whisper, licking
lips that suddenly felt dry.
I was taking a long time to answer, true, but it
was only because I didn't know how to frame that
answer. One wrong word and our friendship would be
scorched, scarred forever. We might still smile and
have comradely words afterwards, but it would never be
the same. Allie was opening her heart to me, baring
her soul. If I couldn't reply in a similar spirit
something very precious to both of us would be lost
forever.
At last I gazed directly into her eyes, as if I
was a pilot trying to guide my ship through a mine
field.
"Allie," I said, "I won't be able to take very
much away with me from Tiresias. Some souvenirs, some
clothing, some sexy pictures, but that's about it.
Except for one other thing -- something that's more
important than anything else. It's something so
important that I don't want to leave it behind no
matter what."
"W-What do you mean, Erin?"
"Our friendship, Allie. I came here expecting a
bad time and some hard knocks, but I found a best
friend instead. I want to see you again when we're
both back home. I want to see a lot of you. I want to
be best buddies for life."
"That's what I want, too."
I squeezed her hand. "I know. But we've got to
be careful or it just won't happen."
"You're mad at me!"
I winced, as if an exploding torpedo had just torn
the bottom out of my hull.
"No, Allie," I insisted, "I love you. I love you
in almost every way that a -- human being -- can
possibly love another. But we don't dare love each
other -- that way."
"Why not? I love you, too!"
"Because we're living an illusion! It won't last.
What we do today will be gone tomorrow, no matter how
hard we try to hold on to it. But if we're not
careful, it's an illusion that'll ruin things for the
rest of our lives."
She didn't reply, so I hurried on.
"Allie, I could very, very easily make love to
you. I could have a wonderful time being a lesbian,
I'm sure. In fact, that's probably what I really am."
"Don't make it sound that way, Erin."
"I only mean that there's no one I'd rather go to
bed with than you. I know I could be gay as a girl.
But -- but I could never be a gay male. Could you?"
"No! Of course not! But it's not about being
gay."
I stroked the back of her hand. "Back home we're
going to be two guys again. That's great, but if we
have sex together now, could we ever look one another
in the eye later on? All we'd feel is embarrassment.
Straight guys like us couldn't handle that. It would
drive us apart. Don't you understand?"
Allie bent her head. I studied her expression
anxiously, afraid that I had hurt her despite my best
efforts not to.
"Damn it, Aaron!" she said.
She had used my male name. What that meant I
wasn't sure. I waited with baited breath for the other
shoe to fall.
"Damn it, Aaron -- you're right!" she exclaimed.
#
She dropped back to the spare pillow beside me and
her azure irises rolled up toward the ceiling in self-
censure.
"What was I thinking?!"
I raised myself on one elbow and looked down into
her grimacing face. "You were only expressing what
I've thought about doing a hundred times, Allie. You
just had more nerve than I did."
"But less brains!"
I smiled and felt a surge of relief. Even though
I had sexually rejected her, I really dared to believe
that I had saved our friendship!
I stroked her pale hair. "I've had sex before,
Allie, but I've never had a friend like you. I'd never
want to do anything to spoil what we have. I only wish
that we could be the opposite sex when this is all
over."
"Me, too."
"Of course," I added, "I'd want to be the man."
She cocked her head in surprise. "Hey, why should
it be you? I want to be the man! You make a better
woman than me."
I looked at her incredulously. What she was
saying was so patently ridiculous that I picked up my
pillow and hit her with it. "What do you mean I make a
better woman?! You've got woman written all over you!"
She took her own pillow and replied in kind. "I
do not!"
"You do so!" and I hit her again.
"You're the hottest chick on the whole planet!"
she laughed, smacking me in the face. "I bet you're
great in bed!"
"I am not!" I yelled and the pillow fight went
wild. Once we had pummeled one another for all we were
worth, we fell down together, laughing hysterically,
our arms wrapped around one another -- in care, in
trust, and comradeship.
*****
Chapter 10
There really could be an upside to being a woman,
(which didn't include menstruation, of course). On the
other hand, there could be a downside to being a man,
as some of the Sallys were belatedly finding out. Men
needed more sex than women -- or, rather, women could
sublimate their drive so much easier than men were able
to do. It didn't help the Sallys that so many of us
Tiresian females were holding off from sex, while even
those who didn't shun it were cutting back, in many
cases, to punish piggish boyfriends -- exactly as I had
recommended the night of my ingenue party. The tension
of the situation mounted. Interestingly, some of the
most gonadal types, like Jake and his randy pals,
seemed to remain their usual steady, obnoxious selves,
as if nothing was happening. Go figure.
The news came down that Jesse was being recalled
to Earth to be charged with a criminal assault against
a co-worker. He was confined to quarters until then.
It was just a token gesture on the part of the
Establishment, we all knew, but history demonstrated
that tokenism often goes in the vanguard of real
concessions. It meant, possibly, that our movement as
a whole was making progress.
#
On Thursday night Dori and Andrea invited me to go
watch a taped Falcons vs Jets football game in the
dormitory monitor room. The event was a courtesy of
the official prison recreation committee, intended for
the entertainment of the staff and, after them, the
prisoners. I really preferred baseball, though, and
the pigskin action soon had my mind wandering. On the
other hand, because I was not very deep into the game,
I began to see in it some things that I had always
glossed over before.
Why would a man make a career out of the physical
danger and punishment of professional sports? The
money? The cheerleaders? The popularity? I suddenly
realized that I wasn't looking at strong men exercising
a power that they took for granted, but of desperate
males trying to escape the consequences of a systemic
powerlessness.
To win the esteem of his parents, his community,
the more attractive girls, and even of his peers, every
boy wanted to become an athlete if he could. The
majority of us who couldn't cut it lived vicariously
through the sports hero's life. Everything outside of
sports that a young boy could do was considered second
best. If he performed well in school, he was just a
nerd. If he excelled at the arts, he was a sissy. The
lad who made the field goal was a champion, while the
boys who couldn't perform for the crowd were ignored.
Did such youths find power in just being a male?
Hardly. It was a whole different world from their
sisters.' To win esteem, a woman simply had to be what
she was, her challenge to the world was, "Take me as I
am." A man was considered incomplete in his own being;
he had to make something out of himself -- no matter
what the cost to his health and soul.
To me, in this light, the professional athlete was
not a being to be envied. Where was the cheerleader
who would tell Rocky Rhodes, a has-been at thirty-five
with the knees of a geriatric, "I don't care that
you'll never walk again without a cane, Rocky, that any
woman you marry will have to work to support you.
You've got a cute face and I love your personality."
Fat chance.
The whole history of the male in society was one
of his trying to get around the unescapable fact of
powerlessness. It was the male who wore the
prosthetics acquired in the course of dangerous work
that women could disdain, it was the male had to endure
the lonely sea voyages, bleed and die protecting hearth
and home with the weapons of war. There were plenty of
bad men -- like the prisoners of Tiresias, twisted
products of a twisted culture of dependence, but the
brute male of modern sociological fantasy, burning and
raping his way across human history, had to yield to
the reality -- that of a very human being whose
capacity for self-denial and self-sacrifice bordered on
the heroic. Or was it something else -- a disfunction,
a craving for outside approval at any price?
#
As I did almost every day, I got together with
Rod. We both liked tennis and so we agreed to have a
few sets of love while talking about stuff for his
book. Neither of us owned a real tennis outfit -- we
wore just T-shirts and workout shorts; it made no sense
to buy a lot of expensive clothes for Tiresias that we
couldn't use back home.
The employees had no special tennis court for
themselves, so we had to use the prisoners' during
those hours when it was closed to them. Surrounded by
a high wire-mesh fence and with plenty of tough Sally
guards patrolling, we felt safe enough, though the
court abutted the recreation grounds and some of the
prisoners were able to press up close to the wire and
gawk at us.
Rod and I had earlier discussed the Jesse business
in detail. Rod thought that the Service's decision was
just a sop to the Charlies and I tended to agree.
Tiresian women didn't appreciate that Jesse wasn't
being charged under the draconian VAWA, which had
become a sort of Jim Crow law to handicap American
males in any confrontation with women. That in itself
was "privileged treatment." We also agreed that it was
significant that Jake and the others, so far, hadn't
received any discipline at all. But because rehashing
the subject, though, was lousing up our game, we cooled
it and concentrated upon the sport for the next quarter
hour.
Once, when Rod was chasing after the ball, my
attention wandered to the prisoners watching us. Some
of the inmates were pretty good-looking, especially one
wearing cotton-Spandex shorts with high-cut tulip legs,
and a tank-top that advertised 36 or 37 inches of
jiggle. She was a beautiful hispanic whose black hair
bounced thickly in large ringlets. Her outfit looked
genuinely feminine -- as it was intended to.
Transforming a prisoner's self-image was part of the
psychological conditioning. The more these killers and
thieves thought of themselves, and one another, as
women, the less dangerous they tended to be. Much more
could have been done in this regard, but this was
federal prison, not some transvestite humiliation
fantasy.
But I thought that I recognized the girl. Of
course! She was the same hot tamale that I had seen at
the end of my own dimensional crossing -- the one with
the knockout ass. She had just as good a face, I could
now see, with dark liquid eyes that could send shivers
down a man's spine. Despite my transformation, I
wasn't totally immune to a woman's beauty. But, I
reminded myself, the femlin wouldn't have been there at
all if she didn't possess the mind of a violent
criminal.
"Allie invited me to Andrea's bikini party," Rod
commented as we broke for the evening and headed toward
the gate.
I nodded. It was the custom for a person to get a
going-away party at the end of his or her tour. The
most popular variety was the "bikini party," a last
chance for the Charlie to "strut her stuff" and to get
some photos of her best buddies made up in a way to
blow the mind.
"I didn't know that you and Allie were such good
friends," I remarked. "Are you escorting her?" There
had been a hint of irritation in my voice. I hoped
that Rod hadn't noticed it.
"No. She said you were unsure about going.
She thought you'd be more likely to go if I escorted
you."
"I wasn't unsure. I told her flat out that I
wasn't going!"
"Why not?"
"Because she said I couldn't go if I didn't wear a
bikini. Well, I -- I don't own a bikini. I don't have
any real swimsuit at all! They cost too much here."
"You can borrow one."
"Where I come from you don't borrow intimate
things," I fibbed. The real reason was that being
photographed in a swimsuit in the privacy of my own
room was one thing, but wearing a bikini outdoors was
another. For Christ's sake -- under all this deceptive
flesh I was still a man! I had my pride.
"I'm sorry you feel that way, Erin. Maybe you'll
change your mind."
"Don't count on it!"
#
I was rather surprised and a little disappointed
when Rod failed to make a date for Friday night after
our Thursday get-together. Resigned to pass a quite
Friday night alone, I was reading "Riders of the Purple
Sage" when the phone rang and Allie practically broad
jumped across the room to answer it.
"Yes," she replied excitedly to some unknown
question, "send him up."
"You're expecting a guest?" I asked. "Are you
taking a date to Andrea's party?" This in itself would
have been interesting, because I knew Allie wasn't the
dating type. I think that Buck had burned her too
severely for that.
"Not exactly," she hedged.
My friend clearly wanted to play it coy, so I
decided just to wait her out. The mysterious Sally
would be here any second and then I could then see who
he was. To my surprise, Rod showed up at the door.
"Look who's here!" Allie piped in a tone that simply
resonated with dark conspiracy.
I saw them exchange knowing glances and grasped at
once that there was something going on between the two
of them. Come to think of it, Allie and Rod had
actually been getting very chummy of late. She had
gone to him to borrow a camera, even though some of the
other girls had them. Maybe Rod had offered to escort
her to the party after I had definitely refused him.
All right, that's fair. But why hadn't Allie mentioned
it? I thought that she would have, unless she felt
guilty and wanted to conceal it. But why would she
feel guilty? She wouldn't -- unless she had something
to feel guilty about!
"Are you here to see Allie or me?" I asked with a
touch of asperity. I immediately felt stupid. What
was wrong with me, to ask such a question to such
friends in such a tone?
"To see Allie?" Rod echoed, taken aback. "No, I
came because I've got a gift for you."
"For me?" I blinked, mildly surprised and
incredibly relieved.
He held out a little carton, about the size of a
candy box. When I took it I instantly realized that it
was much too light to contain candy.
"It's not my birthday. It's not any holiday at
all. What's the occasion?"
"It's Andrea's last night on Tiresias."
"What's that got to do with me --?" As my fingers
loosened the tape and fumbled the box open I had my
answer. It was a leopard-spot bikini with a wrap --
one of those high-cut items with a sparing halter,
practically a thong!
"What's this for?" I asked sourly.
"It's your outfit for the party," Rod said. "You
said you didn't have a bikini of your own, so I bought
you one."
I scowled. "You were in this together! What is
it about seeing me naked that turns you two on so?"
"Nobody at the party is going to be naked,"
grinned Allie. "Anyway, wearing a bikini isn't the
same as being naked. If it really bothers you, you've
got a cover-up!"
"You picked it out, didn't you?" I accused my
roommate.
"She didn't have to," Rod broke in. "I know my
way around bikinis. I used to look pretty good in one,
if I say so myself."
I threw the suit at his smirking lips. "Fine, you
wear it!"
"Erin, be fair," pleaded Allie. "You never told
Rod you were against wearing a bikini on principle.
You just said you couldn't afford one and wouldn't
stoop to borrowing. So he got one for you, and it cost
a lot. You're being unreasonable."
"You could have told him the facts!" I snapped.
"I don't tell personal things about my friends!"
she explained ingenuously. "Come on, be a sport. You
don't want to hurt Andrea's feelings. When I told her
that you were getting a bikini, she took it for granted
that you'd be at the party!"
"Every time somebody tells me that I have to be a
sport, I end up having to do something dumber and more
humiliating than the last time."
"What's the big deal, Erin? We're all going to be
in bikinis."
"Except me," put in Rod.
#
Most of the girls were already at the pool when we
arrived. Allie ran ahead of Rod and me, laughing,
"Okay, everybody, `Two, three, four. Tell the people
what she wore!'"
They all began to sing:
"It was an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, wild leopard
spot bikini,
"That she wore for the first time today!
"An itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny wild leopard spot
bikini!
"So in the locker she wanted to stay!"
I froze in my tracks, then wrapped my coverup
tightly around myself and spun on my heels. "I'm out
of here!" I declared. But Rod took hold of my
shoulders and I could no more defy his well-exercised
male strength than I might have dragged a mountain.
The other girls, all wearing their own two-piece swim
wear, surrounded me.
"It was just a joke, Erin," pleaded Dori. The
others offered their own blandishments as they hugged
and kissed me.
"Hey, cut it out!" I rumbled. "I can't stand
being kissed by men!"
"I don't know about you, baby," said Andrea,
striking a glamour girl pose, "but I'm not going to be
a man until tomorrow."
"Chill out!" Jordana told everybody, taking
custody of me from Rod. "Erin's a good sport and we
love her."
"What am I supposed to do with you guys?" I
sighed. "Thank Heaven you only want to humiliate me,
not sell me into white slavery."
"The white slavery don't come until midnight,
buttercup," Andrea teased.
They led me back to the pool chairs and, still
disgruntled, I plopped down into one. Allie sat at my
left side, and Rod took the chair to my right. I
adjusted my short wrap to cover as much of my thighs as
possible.
"Bullshit aside," grinned Andrea, "I'm awfully
glad you came, Erin."
"We all are," seconded Dori.
"You shouldn't be ashamed of your body, Erin,"
urged Billie. "You're so beautiful."
"Don't make a federal case out of it. I'll be all
right!" I said grumpily.
"Everything is a federal case these day,"
corrected Rod.
"You're beginning to sound a lot like me," I
remarked appreciatively. "It's a big improvement."
"You become what you love, they say."
I gave my friend a searching glance. What had he
meant by that?
#
Mickie had shown up just a little after Rod and I
did, but she had quickly taken stock of things and
started filling paper cups with Cool-Aid. Dori pushed
herself up to assist the redhead in passing them out.
I could have used a stiffer drink than grape Cool-Aid.
"I guess you're excited about going home," said
Jordana to Andrea.
"I suppose I am. But I'm gonna to miss all of
you."
"In less than a year you won't know anybody here,"
said Mickie.
"Jake'll still be here, I bet," Billie quipped.
The black girl laughed bitterly. "Earth doesn't
have much to recommend it, but it's gotta be a better
place with him/her/it over here!"
"You've got people at home?" I asked.
"I sure do, if any of them have survived the last
year. Their neighborhoods are like war zones! They
can't get jobs or the government will take the welfare
away and tax them to the sky to boot, their kids can't
read but, man, can they push drugs!" Her expression
turned dark. "I get madder every time I think about
it. If a revolution comes, I'm gonna get me a gun an'
start running up the body count. Either that or I'm
movin' to some free country, like Uganda or Singapore.
Hell, maybe I should take a page from your book, Erin,
and start the revolution myself."
None of us were quite sure whether we should laugh
or not. There had been an angry edge in Andrea's
voice. She had always felt keenly about the ruling
intelligencia's rampant class and sex-based
discrimination, especially after her ordeal with Jake,
but this black mood went beyond her usual cynicism.
"Body counts aren't part of my book, Andrea," I
replied evenly. "The trouble with revolution is that
the people who get killed first will just be the honest
fools doing their duty. The people with the power are
going to hide in the rear until the last."
"They won't be able to burrow deep enough to get
away," Andrea predicted. "Remember the guillotine and
the French Revolution? Man, if I could just get my
hands around the throat of a federal judge, or some
fancy commission chairman ---" She made a pantomime of
strangling someone in the air.
"Hey, all this talk is getting heavy!" laughed
Billie nervously. "Anybody want to join me in the
pool?"
"I will," volunteered Rod, rising.
Billie plummeted into the water like a playful
teenager, and Rod leaped after her. The driblets from
his mighty dive rained down on my bare legs. As I
watched the two of them plashing around the pool my
brows knitted. What was my escort doing swimming with
the most beautiful girl on Tiresias? Actually, I more
felt those words than thought them; I was not at all
sure about what I was thinking or feeling just then, as
I rolled to my feet and walked to the diving board.
"Take your cover off and come on in!" called Rod.
"I'm not taking anything off," I yelled back.
Then, clothed as I was, I leaped into the water,
knifing down, feet-first, between the swimming twosome.
"Oh, Erin, you're so silly!" the dunked blonde
exclaimed.
"Will you stop making a big deal about my
clothes?" I complained as I leveled off and began to
float.
"It's not fair that you get to see all of us in
our swimsuits and we can't see you."
"Just drop it!" I told her sharply as Rod glided
around behind me.
Suddenly my treacherous boy friend grabbed my
arms. "I'll hold her, Billie," he cried. "You undress
her!"
"You voyeuristic bastards!" I yowled as the
traitorous Billie undid the ties of my wrap. Then,
when they were loose, Rod stripped the cover-up off my
back and dodged out of reach. Billie also dog-paddled
a little distance away, so that I couldn't punch her
out. I turned angrily toward Rod, who was breast-
stroking it to the ladder. He quickly climbed up to
the tiles, holding my cover-up like a token of triumph.
"Come on our, Erin. Let's see what you look
like!" Jordana called in apparent amusement.
"Not on your life, you degenerates! I'll stay in
the water until it's dark!"
They all laughed; Allie, padding over to the edge
of the pool, yelled, "Better come out, Erin, or we'll
sing `Wild Leopard Spot Bikini' until you do!"
"Go to hell!"
She was as good as her threat:
"Two, three, four, stick around we'll tell you
more!
"Now she's afraid to come out of the water. I
wonder what she's going to do.
"Now she's afraid to come out of the water, and
the poor little girl's turning blue!'
"Everybody sing!"
"No! No more!" I pleaded. "I'd rather be
tortured in the cellars of the National Organization of
Women!"
I swam over to the ladder and clambered up it,
dripping wet. "All right, laugh if you have to," I
growled. "That's what all this is about anyway!"
"Photographs!" shouted Mickie and there was a
click-click-clicking all around me; every hand seemed
to have a camera in it.
Given my mood, it was a wonder that the water
beading all over my flesh didn't steam. Then Rod
sidled over and put his about my waist. "Simmer down,
Erin. It's just because you're always making such a
big deal about women's clothes that you invite a lot of
joking around."
"Yeh, sure. What's next? Do you want me to drop
my top?"
"Do your thing, baby. We're all grown-ups here!"
yelled Andrea.
I sat down with gritted teeth, but my pride kept
me from retreating back into my soaking-wet cover-up.
You look really wild in those leopard spots,"
observed Andrea. "Don't let the barbarians see you in
that getup, or one of them is just apt to throw Erin
the Jungle Girl over his shoulder and take her off to
the woods for some major whoopee!"
"Remember what Lila said about brands, collars,
and slave dances," put in Mickie with a tinkling laugh.
"You broads have been watching too many porno
flicks," I told them. "Will you stop making me the
center of attention?"
"She's right," agreed Allie. "We've had enough
fun with poor Erin. Let's get off her back." She
turned my way. "Would you like to take some picture of
us for revenge now, roommie?"
I accepted the camera that she offered me. "I
guess so; I can always make some trading cards out of
them."
"That was low," shuddered Andrea, and even Allie
looked pained.
Chapter 11
Things settled down after that and we all chatted,
swam together, and then played some volley ball in the
adjacent court. After another quick dip to cool us
off, we repaired to the chairs again and the topic of
Rod's book came up..
"When's your research going to be done?" asked
Jordana.
"It's really done already," Rod said. "I mean, it
could go on and on. I'm always learning new details,
but I have what I honestly need and, anyway, my leave
is almost up. I won't have a job to go home to if I
stall any longer."
"Have you been stalling?" wondered Billie.
"A little," he admitted.
I hadn't realized that Rod was so close to
leaving. I had almost eleven months to go on Tiresias
myself; I suddenly felt very much alone.
"W-When do you go?" I asked, appalled by my tell-
tale stumble.
"At the next big transfer. It's not scheduled
yet, but it will certainly be in less than a week.
They have to send Jesse back for sure, and Andrea's
tour is up, but they still want a few other things to
come together before they pull the switch. Operating a
transfer isn't cheap."
"Are -- Are you going to miss this place?" I asked
haltingly, despite every effort to be nonchalant.
"Some things I'll miss very much," he replied,
casting a long glance my way.
"When I get back to Earth I'll want to look you
up," I said carefully. "Is that all right?"
"I'd be very sorry if you didn't."
I thought I should say something more then, but
the words just wouldn't come. Suddenly I wished that I
could leave the party gracefully and go off by myself
to have a proper funk.
"It's strange, but I almost regret the prospect of
being a woman again," the journalist remarked
wistfully.
"You wouldn't if you had to put up with what we do
back home," advised Dori seriously.
Rod shrugged. "I suppose that's true."
"You know," Andrea interjected, "this place has
changed my head. I've seen the system with its pants
down. From now on all I care about is what's good for
me, my friends, and my family. If anybody says `boo'
to that, the fuckers better duck for cover!"
"You're turning into quite a revolutionary,
Andrea," Dori observed with a troubled smile.
"Damned straight!" the black girl snorted.
It was getting dark and the insects bothersome, so
we started breaking it up. I had had a good time, over
all, up to the point where Rod had said that he would
soon be going home. That fact bothered me more than I
had ever thought possible.
#
Rod and I had spent much of the weekend
together, without directly addressing the subject of
Rod his imminent departure. But it finally couldn't be
put off any longer.
"Erin," he suddenly said when we met in the
dormitory lounge, "the word's final now. I'm leaving
on Wednesday morning."
I felt a huge emptiness. I had expected at least
a couple more days than that. "That's not long," I
said, trying to hold my voice steady. "You never
mentioned how little time you had left before the
party. Why?"
"You never asked."
I gaped incredulously.
"No, that's not what I wanted to say. I mean I
wasn't looking forward to leaving, not after I met you.
I was trying not to think about it and I didn't want to
bring it up.
"Why?"
"-- Because I was worried that, well --
"That what?"
"-- That you wouldn't think that it was any big
deal."
"Rod! We're better friends than that. We --" I
was reaching for something, but couldn't get a grasp on
it. "-- We could have given you a party."
He laughed, amazed. "I don't need a party."
"I think you should have one."
He squeezed my upper arms. "Erin, listen. I just
want to spend as much time with you as possible before
I have to go. That'll be my party."
I kept my chin up. "Sounds good. Are you free
Tuesday night?"
"I didn't make any special plans. What did you
have in mind?"
"I'd like to cook you a last supper."
"A last supper? Erin, that's sweet, but I'm not
being executed!"
I scowled. He laughed gently.
"I'd love to taste your cooking, but you really
don't have to make it sound so final."
"It won't be. I'll be seeing you once I get back
to Earth. I promise." For some reason, my mind
flashed back to our first meeting. "You know, I was
positive that you were out to seduce me that night we
met," I commented. I didn't add that I was a little
disappointed that he had never even tried.
"I didn't want it that way, Erin. Making love to
you would have been wrong."
"Why?"
"Because there never was a time when it would have
felt right. Maybe things were developing that way. I
don't know. But we ran out of time, that's all. I
hope we'll be given another chance, later."
"We never did have a chance, did we?" I said,
almost accusingly.
"Of course we did. But we both had a lot of past
baggage to overcome."
I turned away. "Why am I feeling so wasted? It's
not like we ever had a lot going. We've never even
kissed!"
His drew me close up against himself, forced me to
face around. "We could change that, if we wanted to."
"I suppose we could."
"When?"
"We're running out of time, so we'd better shake a
leg."
"That's what I was thinking."
He moved quickly, enfolding me in his arms. It
felt strange to be engulfed by such mighty strength,
but I stayed steady. He lowered his lips, tentatively,
and I raised mine. Our mouths came together for the
first time and his five o'clock shadow prickled my
tender flesh as our faces touched. It felt, well, if
not wrong, new, and l had a sense that a door was
opening in front of me, while another was closing
behind my back.
But for all its newness, being held in Rod's big,
strong arms felt surprisingly right and natural.
#
Rod's impending departure and our first kiss
preoccupied me the whole next day, and all I could
think about was seeing him again. In fact, we had a
date to go bowling with Jordana and a friend of hers,
Mark.
The day before had brought Rod and me to a
watershed. We no longer needed to pretend that we were
meeting just to interview. Now I could admit to myself
that I simply wanted to be with him. How I regretted
that our relationship had moved forward at the pace of
a glacier and that we had wasted so much valuable time.
But now the emotional rush left me reeling, unable to
believe that I had kissed a man and wanted to do so
again. I didn't know whether I should go bury my head
in shame, or start dashing in slow motion across a
field of flowering poppies.
I made plenty of blunders at work that day, so I
wasn't too surprised when the warden called me in. I
guessed that my supervisor had complained about my
sudden ineptitude and forgetfulness, or that Gershom
was about to lower the boom on me for creating the
Tiresian Women's Rights Association. I had a
premonition that things would never be the same again
once I got out of that office.
Warden Gershom was an overweight Sally pushing
sixty. "He" had been active in the women's movement in
the 'eighties and 'nineties and then moved into a cushy
job in the federal bureaucracy, helped to the top by
the "old girl network." (Old bull dykes never die;
they just become government thugs).
"Please, sit down, Mr. Carter," he said with a
pleasantness that threw me for a loop.
"Mister Carter?" I murmured when I had collected
my wits.
"Yes, mister. I have very good news for you.
That little matter which led to your Tiresian transfer
has been resolved entirely in your favor. Leda
Cavendish's complain has been set aside as being
completely without merit."
I couldn't believe what I was being told. And to
tell the truth, I was in a state of mind which couldn't
bear many shocks.
"That's good," I muttered, somewhat dazed. It was
good news, no denying. Trashing that nonsensical
charge of sexual harassment would take the single black
mark off my otherwise spotless record of service.
Gershom seemed to want to say something more, but
was taking his time dear about saying it.
"Do these happy circumstances have any further
ramifications?" I asked with clumsy formality.
"Indeed they do, Officer Carter. The main office
agrees that it's not at all proper that you be asked to
fulfill your tour of duty at this installation unless
you absolutely want to. That means you can return to
Earth immediately and you'll have a good new assignment
waiting when you get there. In fact, the next transfer
is scheduled for Wednesday morning. You may have
Tuesday off, with pay, of course, to get ready, if you
wish."
I was stunned. I could come away from Tiresias
with a clean record and, better still, go back with
Rod! Excitement rippled through me. I was already
starting to think of him as "Rhoda." We'd finally be
ourselves again -- and together. We could find out
whether what we had as a woman and a man was real and
if it could survive a life lived as a man and a woman.
I almost sang out loud, "Yes, sir, thank you, I will!"
But I was suddenly warned off by a vague
skepticism. As hard as I had fought to defend my good
name, the system had been stacked against me, its ears
closed. I had been railroaded into an ignominious
exile as a matter of course, to feed a cannibalistic
system that had to be experienced to be believed. Why
would the EEOC division of the U.S.C.S. bother to keep
my case open once I was safely out of sight and out of
mind?
It was a dirty little secret that the EEOC had a
discipline quota and that its officers were expected to
meet it; a certain number of heads had to fall per
quarter or it looked bad on their performance record.
In the best bureaucratic tradition, they offered
incentives for employees to accuse their co-workers on
every imaginable pretext. Any self-anointed victim,
like Leda Cavendish, only had to perjure herself to get
some "white marks" placed into her file. The innocent
person who was made into the goat for someone else's
personal ambition became a useful statistic for proving
that the bureaucracy's work was far from done. For
whatever reason, this "clearance" of my record was
calculated to help the Service, not me.
"Shall we plan on your departure Wednesday,
Officer?" Gershom pressed. He seemed overly anxious to
see the last of Aaron Carter. Why?
"I'd like some time to think about this, Warden,
sir. -- I've made a lot of friends here," I ended
lamely.
"Of course, Mr. Carter, if you like." Gershom
seemed bemused. I suppose that he had expected me to
leap onto the shore to take the bait right out of the
pail.
"I think I can give you an answer by tomorrow," I
suggested.
The fact was, I had no idea as yet what that
answer would be.
#
I wanted to talk things over with someone, but I
didn't get the chance before Jordana called me down to
the lounge to meet Mark and Rod. We all went bowling
and, because Rod and I both had so much on our minds,
Jordana and Mark slaughtered us in all three games. If
it had been only Jordana with us, I probably would have
brought up the subject of my meeting with Gershom, but
I didn't know Mark Norwich at all well.
After we all left the recreational area, Jordana
and Mark split off. Rod and I went up to the big
lounge between the men and women's dormitories and
found a private corner. Rod had been picking up my
unspoken signals that something serious was on my mind
and was anxious to talk to me about it.
I told him what had happened. He gave me a hug.
"That's great!"
"Is it? I don't know."
His elation faded. "Why? Are you having second
thoughts -- about us?"
"Oh, yeh, sure I'm worried. But that's not what's
bothering me."
"Well, then?"
"Rod, this smells bad. I've been wondering all
evening why they'd want me out of here so badly that
they'd clear my name."
"What have you decided?"
"That they think they can catch more flies with
honey than with vinegar."
"How do you mean?"
"I think they're worried about the rights
association. They're thinking that if they can get rid
of its leaders it'll die off of its own accord."
"Will it?"
"I don't know, but if they're manipulating me, I
don't want any part of it."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know. I want to go with you, but I keep
thinking about Gabrielle's baby."
"What's the baby got to do with you and me?"
"Gabrielle had to go through a lot to create
something wonderful."
"Yes?"
"And, well, I've created something, too. Doc's
staying on Tiresias to suckle her baby. Maybe my baby
needs suckling just as much."
Rod looked grim, but I think he understood my
point.
"I've gotten people's hopes up. It hurts to think
of leaving them in the lurch," I clarified.
"What more can you do?"
"I don't know. I don't want to think that I'm
indispensable. Maybe one of the other girls could do
the job better than I could. But even if that were so,
they'd just go after her next."
"It's not fair to take all this on yourself, Erin,
but it's just like you."
I looked up at him. Had I made him angry?
"It's why I love you so much."
"You love me?" I echoed. But that begged another
question: "Like, ah, what do you mean? What kind of
love are you talking about?"
He was struggling. "The best kind of love, I
guess," he said finally. "The boy and girl kind of
love."
That was mind blowing, but I answered with a quip:
"Is that right? Who's the boy and who's the girl?"
"Maybe we should flip a coin."
The crazy guy. I felt like kissing him. So I
did.
*Oh, baby, you've come a long way.*
#
On Tuesday morning I put in for the whole
afternoon off, then went in to see Warden Gershom.
There was no trouble in getting an interview. No
trouble at all.
I told the old Sally that Tiresias had so far been
a good experience for me and I absolutely wanted to
stay for my whole tour. He seemed decidedly
unenthusiastic about my enthusiasm, and made it a point
to keep the offer open, should I change my mind.
Rod had warned me the night before that if the
Service couldn't get rid of me by playing nice-nice,
they'd start riding me so hard that I'd be forced to
take the early out. Maybe they would, but I was
determined to make myself a tough burr to get rid of.
After work, I went to the provisions department
and picked up the food that I had ordered early that
morning. It cost me a lot and it exhausted my monthly
allotment of special purchases, but the occasion
warranted a little splurging.
I carried my stuff back to the dormitory, where I
bypassed my own room and went directly up to Dr.
Trent's. I'd seen her the night before and she had
given me permission to use her kitchen. I left the
bags on her counter and then went to see Allie. I had
to ask her a big favor.
"You want what?!" my amber-haired roommate
exclaimed, her blue eyes almost starting out of her
head.
"You heard me, damn it! Do you want me to shout
it down the hall?"
"Erin, are you sure? You've hardly been here six
weeks. This is moving pretty fast. You won't be
setting the record, I grant you, but it's still pretty
fast. You're the last person I'd have thought --"
"All right, so I'm human after all. All I want to
know is whether you can let me have one!" My
abruptness was born out of pure embarrassment.
"Of course you can have one," she said without
further argument, going to her drawer and locating the
bottle. She explained how I should take it, then with
a suddenness that startled me, she gave me a big hug,
whispering: "Go to it, gal."
Once I had my best friend's blessing I felt worlds
better. There was so much to do that I was sorry that
I hadn't asked for the whole day off. We began by
dismantling Allie's bed to make a serving area. With
the permission of the housefellow on duty we
temporarily stored the bed. Allie did me the favor of
going back to the desk to sign for a small dining
table, while I hurried back up to Dr. Trent's place.
While I puttered around in the kitchen, little Eva
started crying up a storm and Gabrielle hurried to her
crib. Checking her diaper and finding it dry, she next
unbuttoned her blouse and offered a nipple, which
didn't meet with the baby's satisfaction either. So,
finally, the new mother tried to calm it by singing
lullabies and rocking it gently in her arms. Dr.
Trent's voice had a lovely lilt to it I noticed. For
the next couple hours, while I filled the little
apartment with aromatic cooking odors, I listened to
her singing herself breathless.
"There was an old woman
Who lived in Dundee,
And in her back garden
There grew a plum tree;
The plums they grew rotten
Before they grew ripe,
And she sold them quite wisely,
Three pennies a pint. . ."
I smiled grimly; there was a down side to being a
mom. Eva kept up her crying jag the whole time, with
only brief lulls between cranky outbreaks.
During one such respite a tired Gabrielle came
into the kitchen to look over my shoulder. "Are you
finding everything?" she asked in a hoarse whisper.
"No problem. Eva's being tough on you, isn't she,
Doc?"
The physician chuckled sadly. "Last night it was
like sleep-deprivation torture. Everything you read
about infant care doesn't add up to one ounce of the
reality. It all has to be learned by the seat of your
pants." She paused, then sighed, "Be very careful
about what you ask for, Erin. You just might get it."
Her words struck me. I, too, was asking for
something, and the odds were that I would get it, too.
Once I had it, what was I going to do with it?
"Just to stay sane I'm going to have to find some
quiet time," Gabrielle remarked, touching her much-
reduced belly, "especially some time to work out. I
don't want Eva to be stuck with a dumpy hausfrau for a
mother." Looking her over, I got the idea that once
Gabrielle had tightened herself up, she'd have a fine
figure.
But more than that, I noted that Dr. Trent had
unthinkingly referred to herself as a mother and not a
father.
"The association is thinking of sponsoring an
aerobics class," I told her. "Dori might lead it;
she's reading every exercise book in the library."
"I could use it. By the way, do you need any help
in here?"
"I could use a hand chopping the onions."
"Sounds fine; I could use a good cry," Dr. Trent
jested softly.
She seemed so tired that I felt sorry for her.
Gabrielle was finding out how tough it was to be a
single parent. But she was keeping her sense of humor
and I was sure that she'd come through with flying
colors. Her friends were rooting for her, too. All of
us Charlies would be ennobled if just one of us could
prove out to be a good mother. I wanted to personally
do something to help Dr. Trent succeed. Maybe it was
time that I learned how to baby sit. But I couldn't
start that night. I had a full and pressing itinerary.
At the dining table, Dr. Trent cut the onions
with the precision of a surgeon. As I watched her
working, occasionally wiping away a tear on her cuff, a
saying that I had not heard since childhood came back
to mind for no special reason.
To be a surgeon, the saying went, one needed the
eye of an eagle, and Dr. Trent's alert and discerning
eyes had impressed me at our very first time meeting.
The surgeon also needed the heart of a lion. Well, our
good doctor seemed not to lack for courage. And,
finally, he needed one more thing, a thing which seemed
especially fateful and ironic in our present
circumstances.
He must have the hands of a woman.
I squeezed Gabrielle's shoulder. She looked back,
wondering what it was that had suddenly moved me.
#
After I got back to my room loaded down with
Pyrex and Tupperware, Allie did everything she could to
help get the dinner ready. While my best bud set up
the service, I took a quick shower to get rid of the
kitchen residue. Afterwards, when I emerged rosy and
well-scrubbed, she did my hair and make-up. Then,
bless her, she made herself scarce.
"I guess I can clear off a piece of floor in
Dori's and Jan's room for the light."
"I owe you one, pal."
"No you don't!" With a wink, she took her pillow
and blanket and vanished.
*Well, Aaron, it's all up to you now!*
Afterwards, I went down to the main lobby and
waited nervously for my guest. Seeing me dressed up,
everyone was curious and every blasted one of them felt
duty-bound to ask me if I was expecting someone. I
felt as awkward as a school girl going to her first
prom.
Then I saw him! I sprang from my seat, at once
regretting that I couldn't play this thing out more
coolly.
"Well, look at you!" he said with a broad grin.
"Well, look at yourself!" I replied.
He had on his natty ingenue party suit, while I
was wearing my little white dress. I had considered
borrowing something which Rod hadn't seen me in before,
but decided against it. Both of the nights on which I
had worn my outfit had been good ones. I had begun
thinking of it as a lucky piece and didn't want to
tempt fate.
"Well, come on up," I said nervously.
He took my arm. "I'd love to."
*******
Chapter 12
The dorm wasn't cold, but as soon as he touched me
I was covered with goose bumps. Showing so much skin,
I must have looked horrible. But Rod didn't seem to
notice as he ushered me into the elevator and up to my
own door.
I put Mozart's "Serenade for Winds" into the
player and after that we had a quiet little supper.
The main course was poached salmon fillets augmented by
skillet rice with shrimp. For dessert we had papaya-
buttermilk smoothies. The wine was Grable's White
Label, a California brand that somewhat embarrassed me,
though I really couldn't have afforded better, even if
it had been available. We didn't talk much at first.
I guess that knowing we soon would have to part didn't
leave much room for empty chit-chat.
"I wish I could go with you," I finally said.
"You could! I'll help you pack tonight."
"Don't tempt me, Rod. I just can't. Does that
upset you?"
"No, I understand, or I wouldn't take no for an
answer. What worries me is that we're up against
something so big that we won't be able to beat it.
We're going to be two completely different people soon,
doing completely different things. Maybe it won't be
so bad if we have a chance to think things over."
On a sudden impulse I got up and stepped behind
him, putting my arms loosely around his neck and
leaning forward. "It'll be bad," I whispered into his
ear.
He clutched my wrists then and kissed them each in
turn.
"Rod --" I muttered throatily, "I've been trying
for two days to think of a way to ask you -- about
something -- and -- and I thought of a lot of different
ways to do it. The trouble is that now that the
moment's here, every way I thought of sounds stupid."
"You're trembling, Erin. What is it?"
"For Christ's sake, how can one guy ask another
guy to let him make love to him without sounding gay or
something?"
"What guys are you talking about?" he asked with a
puzzled blink.
I rapped him on the side of the head. "I'm
talking about you and me, damn it!"
He chuckled and pushed his chair away from the
table.
"That would have been my first guess."
He captured my right arm, then, drawing me around
carefully, put me upon his lap.
#
"Erin this is a big step," he said soberly. "I
don't think things can ever be the same if we do it.
Are you sure you're ready?"
"No. So don't ask me that question again!"
We sat their quietly for a moment, just looking at
one another thoughtfully. Then Rod said, awkwardly, "I
didn't bring -- anything." It frustrating me a little
that he could be so practical at a time when I was so
flurried with emotion.
"I'd have been awfully disappointed if you did," I
managed to reply. Obviously, if Rod had brought a
condom it would have meant that I hadn't surprised him.
"Women! I'd never understand you at all if I
hadn't been where you are a few times myself."
"A few times?"
"A couple times -- once!" he clarified.
"That's better," I said, giving him a hug. "I
hope you took the pill that time. I did. One of
Allie's." My face flushing hotly when I made my
confession. Maybe just so that he wouldn't see me
blush, I crushed my mouth against his. This time I
barely noticed the texture of his shaven face as our
lips met.
"Have you ever made love to a woman?" I asked.
"Not on Tiresias."
"What the hell --?!"
"Take it easy, Erin, I'm only joking."
"Okay. Okay," I grinned uneasily. "I shouldn't
get so up tight."
"No, you shouldn't." He squeezed me again.
"What's up tight is that dress!" Rod observed. "I
don't know how you can breath in it. I don't even
remember how I used to breath in outfits like that."
"I almost can't," I said wryly. "What are we
going to do about it?"
"Maybe if you were naked. . . ."
"Mr. Ganners! You don't know what you're leading
to!"
"Of course you do. Let me show you!"
He turned me around on his knee. Damn, but as a
former woman Rod was good at undoing eyehooks and
zippers a record speed! I let him have his fun, but
then I pulled in the reins, not wanting my scheduled
program to be spoiled. "Whoa!" I said.
"Wait? For what?"
"I want to make it perfect."
"It's a perfect now --"
"Spoken like a man," I remarked. I liked the
chagrined look on his face when I said that.
At that point I pushed away and got up, holding up
my unfastened dress to keep him from getting an eyeful.
My unexpected exit into the bathroom seemed to
exasperate my guest. Well, he could chock it up to
learning. When he got home, he -- she -- might
appreciate a man's plight better. For whatever reason,
it was always the woman who set the pace and wrote the
meter of romance. I had used to think that this was
only because the man needed the woman more than she
needed him. Beggars can't be choosers. But that could
hardly be true with Rod and me. I think now that it's
just part of the baffling dynamics of male and female
intimacy.
I returned a few minutes later, fragrant with
"Passion in the Dark." I also had on my little green
tunic with its matching hair ribbon. I was hoping to
look glamorous, provocative, sexy, but when I stepped
into the room I felt more like an out-of-sorts and very
plucked chicken.
*Oh, God, don't let me make a hash of this.*
"I don't see any foot-long gray beard," Rod teased
even while enjoying the view.
"Don't remind me," I muttered. "We all say silly
things sometimes. I'm trying to look like a sexpot.
How am I doing?"
He came over and placed his hands upon my hips,
gazed down into my face. "You're doing fine, but I'm
not sure I want a sexpot."
"You don't? Well, then, I'm a silly goose!"
"No. I think you're wonderful. In fact, I've had
fantasies about you wearing that thing, ever since I
saw it at the party."
"Fantasies, huh? Got any others?"
Did he! He kissed me boldly, while running his
hands up and down my naked back, tracing the curvature
of my waist and hips through the hardly-there fabric.
I reeled, feeling a little light in the head; rather
than let me collapse, Rob scooped me up and carried me
to the bed. It was like I was weightless; it was the
first time that I had felt completely safe in the
company of someone who was much stronger than me.
He placed my head over the pillow and eased me to
the mattress. "Whew! We really got here in record
time," I said. "-- I'm actually not that kind of
girl," I added with a twisted smile.
"Neither am I," whispered Rod as he loosened his
tie. His shirt was instantly off. I felt myself tense
up. "Relax, Erin. We can stop anytime you want."
I looked up at his lightly-furred pecs. "Oh, yeh?
You'll traipse off to a cold shower if I say so."
"If I have to."
I reached out and playfully tugged at the dark
tufts upon his chest. "You're too good to be true."
"I am. You're lucky you found me."
"I only had to go to another planet and get a sex-
change."
"A piece of cake." He kissed me once more, and
now his hands were on me again. He fondled my breasts
at first, then his fingers located the elastic band of
my thong panties and I felt a tugging.
*Hey, guy! I just put that on!*
I swallowed hard as Rod slipped my briefs down my
thighs, across my knees, along my shins, and over my
feet. Despite my wishes to be pliant and playful, my
body felt as stiff as a board.
"Please, Aaron, I love you so much. Calm down.
I'd never do anything to hurt you."
I nodded and closed my eyes. Suddenly, he turned
me on my face like I was an oaken plank. It was a
lovemaking position with which I was unfamiliar; I tell
you, I got a little worried. But I shouldn't have; Rod
simply wanted to massage my neck and shoulders.
I needed it. How good it felt. But then I became
anxious about the rest of my agenda, about losing my
virginity, and all his efforts to thaw me were undone.
*Hey, what is this? Am I frigid?*
Get it together, Aaron! My virginity? What was
that? I had lost my virginity when I was seventeen and
never looked back. But now, suddenly, in a different
way, both Rod and I had become virgins again. That was
the miracle of this planet. Good old Tiresias!
I savored the massage he was giving me. I had
tried to go too far too quickly, only to discover that
I wasn't as ready as I had supposed. I hoped that my
boy friend wouldn't start to think that I was a jerk.
But then I relaxed, melted in fact. No need to
fear. Women are never jerks, no matter how inept they
may be when making love. I tried to remember exactly
what I would have wanted a nervous virgin to do when I
had been a man. I decided to let Rod take charge, to
lead me through this jungle of passion at his speed.
In fact, he could have done just about anything he
wished at that moment and would have gotten no
complaint out of me.
What he did was turn me over, draw my tunic down
over my arms until I was pinioned like a captive bound
in a rope of silk, then pressed his face into my
breasts kissing and lip-nibbling them.
*Hey, confident guys are fun!*
Someone was moaning up a storm in our room, and I
realized that it was me. Rod was laughing softly. I
tensed again; had I done something silly? But when I
unclenched my eyelids his face was mild and reassuring.
My touch, my expression, conveyed him the permission to
carry on. He moved smoothly to undress me further,
pushing my tunic down to my waist. My arms were free
now, but I kept them close to my sides as he drew his
sensitive fingers along my thighs, across my stomach,
and up to my breasts.
*What is this? I'm so passive! This guy is
playing me like a violin!*
He now noticed how my nipples had hardened and
were standing right up. Tears burned my eyes as I
realized that my reactions were making me seem "easy"
and not worthy of respect.
But Rod never let on if he thought that. He
kissed my lips, as his languid hands continued to
explore my breasts and belly, finally peeling my tunic
away completely. He clutched me close then, but
something else intruded, changing the equation utterly.
His maleness was growing hard against my thigh even
while his soft lips played suction cup with mine.
I could hardly breathe, and it wasn't just because
Rod's face was covering my mouth and nose. My heart
was racing around like some small animal trapped inside
my rib cage; if I had had a coronary condition it would
have been curtains for me right there. Rod broke away
at that moment, but only to pry off his shoes, kick his
trousers down and away, then remove his socks.
"I always hated when a man didn't undress
completely," he explained.
"M-Me, too," I murmured. "I mean --"
"I know what you mean."
He began to ease down the weight of his upper
body; he felt heavy, out-weighing me by at least sixty
pounds. I hadn't realized it before, but my ankles
were pressed close together, as if they had been tied.
This didn't suit Rod, so he slipped his fingers between
my thighs, teasing them apart with a light burrowing
and twisting motion. I tried to cooperate, but my pegs
had a mind of their own and, before I could unstick
them, Rod had brought in the heavy equipment, working
one of his knees between my own. I swallowed a painful
gulp of air; the moment of no return was getting close.
*Erin, as a sex kitten you're a washout!*
I was as jumpy as a colt. Hadn't intended to be
so inept, but --
He kissed me again, but this time pushing the tip
of his tongue inside my mouth. It would have surprised
me more, except that this wasn't first time the big lug
had tried that. I pried my teeth apart with an effort
and our mouths began to play together like two wet,
warm oysters making love.
I understood that he was bringing me along slowly
and carefully, like a doughboy guiding a blind buddy
through no man's land. I guess he knew something of
what I was feeling, because the care he took encouraged
me. But I was still afraid -- afraid that I wasn't
very good in the sack and that I couldn't please him as
much as I wanted to.
Rod was nuzzling my neck as his right hand
continued to swivel over my body, finally arriving at
the curls between my legs. I shuddered as he stroked
my vaginal lips and a shiver went through me when his
fingers edged close to my clitoris. The next thing I
knew, one of them was probing inside me, working its
way deeper, deeper. Gasping, I involuntarily clutched
his sides, my nails biting into his taut flesh.
Regardless, Rod moved his finger up and down, up and
down, letting my lubricants moisten me and slowly
overwhelming my anxiety with arousal.
He withdrew his single finger only to replace it
with two. I sucked in my breath sharply and my hips
raised all of their own accord, seeking additional
penetration. He withdrew his digits before long and
changed position. His penis now inadvertently dragged
over my left thigh, communicating its great size and
hardness.
*He was going to do it! But I couldn't let
him go all the way! I couldn't -- I -- *
My skin prickled with a renewed surge of panic.
He was about to take something from me that I could
never get back again! Yet I forced myself calm. I was
going to do the same thing to him, of course. We
weren't misusing one another; we were sharing
something. But if only the feeling of such a
permanent, unrecoverable change didn't go with it.
I put my hands under Rod's arms, preparing myself
for the inevitable, but unable to keep my eyes from
closing. Doubts still nagged at me.
*Can I let him do this? Do I dare?*
I sensed his fingers guiding the head of his penis
to my loins. I stiffened. What was wrong with me?
Why the dread? I had started this myself! I had
wanted it to happen. I tried to find comfort in the
memory of my own feelings when I had held girls the way
in which my lover now held me.
"Erin," Rod whispered, "I love you more than my
own life."
I looked up into his eyes, looming so close to
mine that I could see my reflection in them. His words
soothed like a balm upon raw flesh. They made me feel
like a person once again, not a piece of meat dangling
above a grinder. I relaxed just a little, then lurched
at the feel of his manhood kissing my fur-covered lips.
"Shhhhh," he whispered as he pushed himself into me. I
pressed my head back upon the pillow, groaned, and
endured.
What was I? A sausage casing being filled? It
was nothing like I had ever experienced before. Except
that it was so strange, it wasn't a bad sensation, once
I made the effort to savor it. The intimacy of it was
incredible. It was like we were merging into one
physical being.
Rod wound his way inside me carefully, until
something seemed to stop him.
"You have a maidenhead," he mentioned softly.
"Inconvenient," I chuckled somewhat hysterically.
But I knew it was my FDA seal of freshness that was
under attack. The thing proclaimed my purity for all
the world to know. Once it was broken, it would not be
coming back; everyone after Rod would know that I was
used goods. Everyone else? As if in a nightmare I
suddenly fantasied myself jaded with a slew of lovers.
I saw myself like a jar of coffee, once opened I'd be
dipped into again and again, then finally used up and
thrown away. What a fate!
Nonetheless, I braced my heels against the sheets,
preparing for General Patton's breakthrough like a
brave soldier on the Siegfried line defending the
bridge at Remagen.
The breakthrough came with little effort required
of the mighty general -- except for a slight back-and-
forth jarring of his hips. I felt something letting go
with a twinge of pain and he slipped deeper into me --
perhaps by only an inch, but it felt like a mile. Rod
had tight-going after that, but he went in smoothly,
probingly. His weight was full on me now, his maleness
filling me, the total effect being overwhelming. It
felt like being inside a woman as a man, only
completely different.
Rod didn't pump me at first; he instead kissed my
eyelids, my temples, my cheeks, and my neck. While he
did so I sensed that he was trying hard to keep his
passion under leash and keep me calm. A futile task,
for his lovemaking seemed to give off sparks of fire,
my edgy desire being all the starting fluid they
required. I moaned in both misgiving and pleasure.
That I could feel pleasure at all just then astonished
me.
Then Rod began to move, slowly at first, causing
my breath to quicken and my heart to beat a wild
staccato. I felt his penis grow longer and thicker,
filling me even more, though I'd thought that I had
reached my limit. My nipples' twin erections were so
large and hard that they hurt when his chest bounced
lightly upon them. While Rod "took" me he was also
caressing my haunches, sending ripples of rapture up my
spine as if it were a high-conductivity cord.
He put his hands under me, raising my hips
slightly, and I unconsciously propped up my knees,
allowing him even easier access into the warm, moist
recesses of my body. His thighs slapped rhythmically
against mine as they worked me over. When I took a
second to think about it, I simply couldn't believe
what was happening.
*How did you get from there to here, Aaron
boy?*
Rod's thrusts grew stronger, more abandoned, as
his primordial male drive crowded out any civilized
desire to be gentle. His organ was like a fire stick
sparking my inner tinder, rasing a heat, forcing me to
smolder into flame. The passion kept building and
building, making the tears roll from my eyes, forcing
me to cry out. But for all that I wanted to receive
everything that Rod had to give me. It was like I
believed that what was happening to me would never
happen again; because of this, I wanted nothing to be
left to the imagination. It seemed he was purposely
not climaxing, despite his inexperience, but trying
instead to drive me into a ever-higher state of
excitement, until finally I quaked and my skin because
covered with perspiration.
As I lay there under him, rattled by his thrusts,
my body seemingly cast off all conscious control,
making me just a passenger in it. Then the rush!
Waves of pleasure swept thorough me, like water through
a sluice gate, its sharpness increasing with each surge
until I thought I was going to lose my mind.
My legs reared up and locked around Rod's waist,
my arms clenched his neck. My breasts were flattened
by his weight and with the pressure with which I was
holding him. My skin had gone all prickly, and my
insides seemed to be ablaze -- hot and soft and oozy --
as though I were melting. I felt my nails dig into his
back, rake across his skin, and when he grunted I knew
it was partly from pain and partly from the pleasure.
*Not bad for a couple of virgins.*
Suddenly we were both sharing climax. I moaned at
the sensation flowing though me, charging not just my
genitals, but every atom of me. Rod groaned and buried
his face in my hair as his spasms overcame him. Warm
fluid gushed into my womb and I clasped his buttocks,
holding him flush against me so that none of it would
be spilled.
Then it was all over, except for the afterglow.
Rod stilled and became like dead weight upon me. Then,
little by little, he recovered himself and rolled to
the mattress at my side. He did not release his hold
on my body, though, nor did I release my hold on his.
Our ragged, wasted breathing, harsh at first, gradually
turned to light sighs as we lay entwined. Rod looked
sleepy though his heart was beating wildly near my ear.
Reluctantly, each of us took our turn in the bathroom,
then returned to sleep side by side.
My tears flowed silently down my cheeks as I
realized what I had done, what I had undergone. My
spring-like innocence of the ways of Womanhood had
departed, never to return. It was my summertime now.
I was no longer a virgin field upon which the pioneer
only gazes with dreams of conquest; I had been fenced,
plowed, sewn. But would I hereafter know a
husbandman's kindly attentions, or would it be simply
slash and burn?
*Foul your nest and move West?*
Rod fell asleep quickly. The last thing I
remember myself was drawing up the opposite sides of
the bedspread that we lay upon, to cover our damp, nude
bodies with it, like with the folding wings of a
butterfly.
#
I slept until Rod's movements awakened me in the
night. I let him think that I remained asleep as he
got up and went again to the bathroom. So much to
think about. So many impressions to sort out. I was
suddenly worried that Rod would hurt me when he came
back, should he realize that I was awake.
Not a physical hurt; I didn't fear that, of
course. But I been rendered so vulnerable. Irrational
thoughts fluttered through the dome of my brain like
moths seeking escape. What if Rod didn't really care?
Was it possible that he had set me up, had brought me
along until I had actually believed that what we had
done had been my own idea? One mocking word, a single
unkind sentiment, would burn me like a match set to
tissue paper. Poor Allie. How had she survived after
Buck had betrayed her? Could I be so brave and
resilient? Would it be my turn to find out? I wiped
away the tickle of a tear from the corner of my eye.
It was like I had felt the Midas touch and had
turned into brittle crystal. One small act of
insensitivity, one deprecating remark, one suggestion
that the miracle which we had shared had been only a
physical thing with him, and I surely would shatter
into fragments. But I didn't want silence from him
either. I wanted -- more than anything else -- some
word of tender reassurance. I needed some small token
to prove that Rod still respected me.
Oh, God, how I had changed! I had never worried
about these sorts of things before. They had never
been absent from my mind when I had been a man, of
course, but they had only lurked in the background.
They seemed so important now. I realized that hadn't
made love because I wanted pleasure for myself. Just
holding Rod's hand gave me pleasure, his hug was bliss,
a kiss from him sent me to Heaven. What I had wanted
was to impart to him a small parting gift. I had
wanted to prove my love in a way that he could take
home with him. I had wanted to say, without words,
that I understood that to be loved is to be changed,
that I trusted him and wasn't afraid to be changed by
him. I wanted -- Oh, I don't know what all I had
wanted! I had wanted the world; I had wanted nothing.
I had wanted to take; I had wanted to give.
I had wanted to form a bond of understanding that
might help our love to survive in the strangeness of
form and role that must overtake us when we returned to
Earth.
Rod was coming back. I clutched at the bedspread,
then pretended to sleep. He paused over me. Somehow
he knew that I was awake. I never knew why, but it was
always so hard to fool Rod about anything. He eased
himself down beside me and I could feel the warmth of
his moist cheek against mine. When I realized that he
was going to speak, my breathing stopped. What would
he say? I feared that I might misconstrue almost any
innocent word that he might utter and ruin something
fine and beautiful.
"Thank you," he whispered.
I opened my eyes, saw the gentleness in his
expression and let the two words sink in. He had said
`thank you.' Simply `thank you.' They were exactly
the words that I had needed to hear!
He hadn't intoned them like "Thank you, I've got
to be going. Maybe we'll run into each other again
someday." It was more like, "Thank you for accepting
me into your life, into your being. Thank you for
becoming a part of me, and letting me become a part of
you."
I nestled closer, my eyes hot and wet with
emotion. We clenched hands. His were so much larger
and stronger than mine. I marveled at the gentleness
with which they could touch me. Rod, still smiling,
was asleep in moments, but I lay awake for just a
little longer.
It was after midnight, I knew. Later today Rod
would be gone -- not just from the prison, not just
from the continent -- but from the planet, the
universe. I could search from pole to pole, ocean to
ocean, like Psyche searching for Eros, and never find
him. Even an exploration by rocket ship would be in
vain. Rod would, in a sense, have ceased to exist.
Not even a grave would be left behind for a monument.
I blinked away the dew in my eyes. I'd be left
alone with my girl friends, with the rights
association, with the routine of my job -- if I could
manage to hold onto the latter with the management
breathing down my neck. Could these little things fill
up the vast canyon of emptiness that Rod's absence
would create in my soul?
Did I love him?
Yes.
Did I love him in that special way, that way which
would forever after leave me incomplete in myself? I
didn't yet know. I thought that only time could prove
what kind of love ours was.
Did fashioning a lasting bond take a little longer
than our brief springtime on Tiresias had allowed?
Perhaps. Possibly the seed which we had planted might
grow again on Earth, but was that so? Could what we
had nurtured here, under a strange, star-lit sky of an
exotic planet, bright and new, survive in the bleak,
cold, decaying world of Twenty-First century America?
I could not say; I could only hope.
What I did know was that loving Rod had changed
me. I might again be a man in a year's time, but I
could never again be exactly the same man that I once
had been. I had become someone else, something else; I
had taken the man whom I loved into my bed and poured
out my heart to him.. The old portrait of myself had
been painted over with fresh colors, ingenious new
shapes. It might be repainted yet again by future
experience, but the buried colors would always remain
as the undercoating, unforgotten and unforgettable.
Some changes are transitory, some are not, I realized.
Living transforms us in ways that only death may
eradicate completely.
If even that.
There had been a time when I had thought I could
be master of my emotions, that I could use reason to
avoid the folly of others. Now I knew that that was
impossible. Likewise, there had been a time when I had
believed that I might stand along the sidelines of life
upon Tiresias, watching, learning, but not
experiencing. That, too, had proven only a dream.
I was no longer sure of what I was, or what I was
capable of. But I better recognized my limitations, my
humanity. I knew I could not go through life wearing
detachment and cynicism for a suit of armor. There was
no iron in me. My flesh was soft; my spirit yielding.
If injured, my blood would flow as freely as another's.
But worse than any physical hurt might be the hurt that
a heart sustains. I could not care and yet not feel.
I could not tread close to things alluring and sweet
without, sometimes, becoming entrapped, like the fly
who steps into a drop of honey. I could not ride the
vicissitude of life like some fearless rodeo star on
the back of a bucking Brahma bull. No matter how
desperate my hold upon the reins, occasionally I must
be thrown off. And when I crashed to earth I might lie
there injured, blue with bruises. When my fall came, I
hoped that I would be able to struggle to my feet under
my own strength, or, in the absence of such strength,
to have loving friends who might help me to rise.
I had learned a little more about the man -- the
person -- that Aaron Carter was. I had learned that I
could not always be brave, nor wise. I could not
always be calm, aloof, and rational. I could not
always be dignified. I could only be that simple,
wonderful, multifaceted, but always human and fallible
creature which the inscrutable gods of Tiresias have
decreed that I must be.
A woman.
THE END?
Erin Carter, our beautiful and plucky prison
guard, will return (sometime, I hope) in the projected
sequel, SLAVE GIRLS OF TIRESIAS. If you thought that
Erin had a hard time standing up to the piggish Sallys,
wait until she has to butt heads with the woman-
mastering barbarians of a new Bronze Age! (If I never
write the story I've sure wasted a lot of
foreshadowing!)
Coming up next (in the first part of September,
after I get some distracting commitments out of the
way) will be an all-new tg story with a gangster theme.
I call it "Noel." The break should also give me time
to finish an additional story that I've been working on
(between feverishly polishing the rough drafts of these
TIRESIAS sections) and which I hope the readers of this
newsgroup will find of interest.
The author welcomes the reposting of this story by
interested Web and newsgroup archivists, as long as my
name and copyright notice are fatefully reproduced.
ALSO: For people who liked TIRESIAS, but missed my
earlier story THE CRUSADER AND THE SLAVE GIRL, it's now
(or at least the last time I looked) on archive at the
Transformation story page, http://www.t0.or.at/~thomash/tsa
Until later, adios.