Nick: Getting it on

(Written Sunday night.)

To start off with, it's hard enough getting used to a new city, let alone a new physiology. I've been tossing and turning on the couch most nights. It would be more convenient (and plainly sensible) for Traci and I to just sleep together - not do anything, but sleep in the same bed - because it's hardly like we've got anything to hide from each other.

The other night, I was kept awake, as I often am, by the general city noises that float up and penetrate the window, when I heard a scream. A woman's scream, not a block from my place. Suddenly I can't sleep at all. Suddenly I don't ever even want to leave the apartment, because it dawns on me, that I can't be safe walking by myself anymore, a confidence I had, rightly, taken for granted. Not that men are never victims, just that they rarely consider themselves such. Suddenly, this woman's scream will haunt my every moment, at least at night. Toronto seemed like a nice place, but like any city, it has its dangers.

Traci tried to allay this fear by handing me a can of mase to carry in my purse. It's a sensible tool, yeah, but having it around just reminds me - "You're small and weak now, Nicky-boy. This is all you've got."

Fortunately, I don't go out much anyway.

The good news is - I got the job!

Starting monday, I will be working in the PR department of Toronto's BISA chapter. It looks like it will be a steady gig, which is what I need, since my life hasn't exactly been steady lately. It feels good to finally be getting on track. In fact, it's more on track now than it was when I was a man.... which is just a little sad, to me.

Traci, in a rare showing of appreciation for me living in his body/apartment/life, suggested we hit the town and celebrate. I was leery - read: uncomfortable with the world seeing me attempt to "cut loose" in this body - but his insistence and my hidden desire to enjoy myself won over. I wanted to prove that all those fearsome elements of the city at night were nothing to me.

Traci, for his part, has been taking a very casual approach to the situation. He's turned me (my old body) into some kind of metrosexual icon, a woman's dream project. I guess that's fine - I have'nt given her body the same treatment, because dressing how a man would like to see a woman is a different matter, and hardly appropriate, let alone comfortable.

After changing my outfit about three times (and I may never get used to the idea that I have "outfits," but that's comparatively small I suppose) and going with a regular tee (well, one of those deals with the sleeves that barely pull over the shoulders, and lets the navel area peek out) and a pair of jeans (minus back pockets - I never got that.) He hands me a purse - something I have forgotten at least three times a week when leaving the house - and we head down to this Irish Pub, Monahan's.

It was a saturday night, and so it was fairly hopping. I was hoping to just sink into the corwd, get a nice buzz on, have a laugh, and stumble home. Traci, for his part, had other ideas.

We ordered a few drinks and some bar food. I had a beer, he had a rum and coke. "Dude," I told him in a voice not used to using that word, "Rum's a drink for women and pirates."

He looks at me, smiles, winks, and says "Yarr, matey!"

We drank a toast. "To new beginnings!" he cheered. I clinked his glass and felt uneasy. New beginnings indeed. I saw his eyes dart around the room.

"Looking for someone?" I asked him.

"I guess so, yeah..." he kept looking.

Eventually, he spotted a table of girls and told me that, after "another one of these things," (meaning drinks,) he was going to go talk to them.

"What, you mean talk?"

"To start, yeah," he grinned and a little blush came over my old face.

"You're not serious!" I cried out. "There's no way you are going to do that. I wouldn't even have done that when I was you!" the girls were gorgeous.

"I can't help it," he reasoned, "Ever since, well, I saw the way you looked in my skirt... it's done something uncontrollable to me. I can't stop myself. More importantly, I can't stop your... thingy..."

"Stop right there," I told him, "No need to explain. Just be careful. Those things can do as much bad as good."

"Believe me," he sighed, probably remembering something from his prior life, "I know."

With this sudden revelation shaking me to the core, I didn't drink so fast anymore, and began to nurse my pint of (whatever the local beer is, Molson something.) If Traci was ready to start being a guy, did that mean I should start being a girl? I sunk low and slouched my shoulders. If I was real quiet, maybe nobody would notice me.

Eventually, however, that wasn't the case. I was bored, having been foresaken by my drinking buddy on his chase for bar chicks, and started to roam the place, eventually coming to the billiards table.

"You play?" some guy asked me. If I'm about 5'3, (I don't know for sure,) he looked to be maybe 6'. He had a goatee and an earring, and wore a dress shirt with black jeans.

I didn't acknowledge him at first. He repeated, "Do you want to play a game?"

It was a fairly obvious come-on, but the implication was innocent enough. I like pool, I don't suck at it, I'll give it a go. "Sure," I told him, as I thought, crap, what am I getting myself into?

I kept the game friendly, um, as in platonic. We only made small chit-chat between shots. He asked where I was from, I told him I was new in town. Don't ask why, but I was reluctant to admit I was a swapee. I know the counsellors say to be open, but this didn't seem appropriate. So I played the role of mystery girl, all the while wary that I might fall too far into the roll.

He won the game - pretty handily actually, which in the end didn't surprise me. He asked if he could buy me a drink. I didn't want another one. "I think I'm gonna head home, soon."

"Well, look, let me walk you home," he says. I don't want him to, but I keep thinking about the scream.

"Fine."

I wanted to tell Traci, except I couldn't find him. So I grabbed my coat and purse and let this guy take me to the subway.

"I think I can go from here," I told him.

There's a pause. I'm waiting for him to say goodbye, or, uh, something, when he starts to lean in.

I step back. "Er, no. Sorry. I'm really sorry." (I wasn't, but I felt bad.) "Maybe if you got to know me, you'd decide..." I can't find the words. "You wouldn't want to."

"I doubt that," he shrugs. "Can I at least call you?"

This is probably the worst situation I've ever been in, by this point. Finally I tell him, "Maybe I'll call you." Maybe. Huuuge maybe.

He gives me his number, and as he walks away and I'm getting on the subway, I crumple it up and shove it in the purse.

"But you didn't throw it out?" asked Cherie the next day. I decided I wanted a more professional look for my new job - short. Not boyish, because I don't think that looks good, and while I'd like my masculinity back, not having it makes the whole affair seem pointless. So I want my hair to just go down to my chin. Think Lisa Miller on NewsRadio (does anybody remember that awesome show?) Before it started thinning out, I had my hair about that length in high school (it was, after all, the grunge era.) I just wanted to stop having to pull it back.

"Well, no, I didn't," I told her, my hair dunked, neck resting on the sink. "That would be rude."

"But are you going to call him?" she asked.

"Probably not," I said it more for my own benefit than for hers. "But I'll tell you, if I don't get some soon, I'm gonna explode. I just have to figure out what it is I want!"

"Well," she started to say, in what was probably supposed to be comforting, "Don't tell any guys I said this, but you should know. When they do it right, it feels amazing."

Flatly, I tell her, "That doesn't help."

"So, whatever happened to Traci?"

"Oh, that's the worst part," I tell her, "I wake up this morning and he's got some girl using our shower! I can't believe it. Already. And in my body. My body, which hasn't been with a woman in... frankly, I'd rather not say how long. And he looks all proud and tells me, 'Well, looks like I'm a man, now.' I tell him, 'Great. That makes one of us, I guess.'"

She laughed at that little bit of self-deprecating humour, and then sighed, "Oh honey, don't worry." Women always say that. "It'll all work out."

Hmp. As she starts to dry me off, I muse, "I just can't believe he went through with it."

After she was done - and mde me, quite honestly, gorgeous, we took a lunch and browsed some of her favourite stores. I didn't take an interest. In light of what happened last night, it's never been more obvious to me that I just don't fit in this body, even if Traci seems to be fitting into mine.

-Nick