Nine-thirty on a beautiful Saturday morning in October, and I entered the kitchen in my house an emotionally exhausted man. Mack, though – for God knows what reason – was as cool as a cucumber. Maybe he had more experience in this sort of thing than I did. Or – the thought suddenly struck me – he’s really a woman, right? Women understand emotions, all this emotional stuff. They love it. They take to it like a duck to water. In fact, they don’t feel comfortable unless they’re feeling something – it’s logic and reason that they feel uncomfortable with. I’d have to remember that. Not being used to dealing with women, I had a lot to learn.
I bent to pet the cats – buying time to settle my face and voice. I looked toward him, but stayed bent over, carefully avoiding his face, seeing his body only from the chest down, and in that way I became aware of his clothes. He was still wearing what he had escaped the house in last night. “Would you like a shower and something else to wear?”
He was leaning against a counter, his butt against the edge, arms folded. Cocky as hell. And cocky as hell, he says, “Sure. Thanks. (Slight pause.) Would you like to come up and help me?” My heart lurched and my body followed with a jerk. Damn you, Mack.
I composed myself as best I could, then straightened awkwardly.
“Look, Mack. There’s a few things we’re going to have to get straight right now. I brought you home with me. You can stay here – I don’t know how long. Let’s just say for awhile. You need a home, and some good food, and a place to stay where people won’t bother you. I won’t bother you. I can feel your – uh, pull, or whatever you want to call it, magnetism. But I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m lonely – I may as well be frank about this. I don’t have friends, and I’m lonely. I like having you around. So let’s just leave it at that. Except for one more thing – and that is that this teasing – this . . . teasing, has got to stop. It makes me really uncomfortable, and I think you have enough intelligence to see why. To call a spade a spade, Mack, I get the willies from having a man – another man – flirting with me, and making sexual innuendos. You need to stop.”
Mack looked just the way I’d hoped he’d look – contrite. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually say things like that. I don’t know why I am now. But it’s such a great weight off my chest – off my soul, you might say. You can’t understand, I guess – but you’re the first person I’ve told this to who even half-way believed me. It just feels so good – I feel so different, you knowing who I am, how I’m a woman and all . . . I guess I just got a little reckless from the freedom. But I’m sorry, Doug. I see your point. I’d like to stay. And I won’t do it any more.”
I nodded. His apology and explanation were acceptable. I motioned to a kitchen chair. “Would you like to have a bite to eat first, or – “
“Thanks. Later I will. But right now a shower does sound really good.”
“Well, you know where it is – “, I began to say, and at the exact same time he said, “Well, I know where it is . . . “, so our words overlapped, like we were thinking the exact same thing at the same time. We both stopped, and Mack smiled.
Mack’s smile. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it, get immune to it. The sweet, slow smile that started at his now-gentle eyes and curved just the corners of his mouth – it was just irresistible.
Just plain irresistible. It made my mouth go dry. I started to wonder what he looked like as a woman, but I recognized that immediately as dangerous, nonproductive thinking, and I nipped it in the bud.
Mack quickly and easily made himself at home. I told him where I’d stashed his stuff and he got his duffel bag, and I showed him the spare bedroom (the one next to mine) that he could have, and he put his things in the empty dresser and took a shower. He joined me in the kitchen afterwards, where I was making peanut butter on toast. I had realized, while he was showering, that I was ravenously hungry, having had no breakfast because I was in a hurry to go find Mack on the road. Already that seemed like weeks ago.
“You’re really hungry,” observed Mack as I ungracefully wolfed down the open-faced sandwich.
“How about you? You must be, too. When did you eat last?”
“This morning.”
I raised an eyebrow in question as I took another big bite. “Where?” I asked, my mouth full. My mother must be spinning in her grave at my table manners.
“Dumpster behind a restaurant,” Mack returned with a grin. He had such an adorable grin. “You be surprised, the good stuff you can find in there. There was a bunch of spaghetti that – “
“Mack, please! I’m eating!”
More grin. “I know. That’s why I said it.”
He laughed, and I grinned. This was so nice. This was just so nice, so much fun, eating and bantering and laughing with Mack in my kitchen. I couldn’t have done this with a woman – felt this safe.
“Well, do you want something now, or not, or what?”
“Oh no, I’m really still full – all that spaghetti, and those slices of half-chewed garlic bread, and – “
“Mack! Cut it out! I’m warning you.” I threatened him with the crust. He pretended to cower. God, I was crazy about him.
“C’mon, Mack. You didn’t really get food from a dumpster.”
“Yeah I did. It’s not that bad, you’d be surprised at the good stuff they throw away. I’ve done it many times.”
“Well, you won’t be doing it any more now. I’m gonna cook for you. You’ll gain ten pounds. Twenty pounds. Fifty. And get really fat.”
God, I was loving this. I had never done this before, all this kidding. I wanted it to last forever. He looked just plain adorable. How a skinny guy like him could look adorable, I’ll tell you frankly, I have no idea. Maybe it was the woman in him shining through. Maybe it was just his own wonderful self shining through. Maybe it was just that I was in love.
I wanted this to go on forever. And for a while it seemed like it would. But as we kidded, and ate (Mack finally made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and poured a glass of milk) things began to get . . . uncomfortable.
I wanted to touch him. Yes, I always wanted to touch him, I always had since the first time I was close to him, when I picked him up that very first time, when I wanted him to shake my hand and he wouldn’t. But now this feeling was growing more urgent, more intense. I was starting to have real trouble resisting it. Mack was careful not to touch me; he stayed a careful distance away, moving skillfully around the kitchen as I tried to get a little closer. I wasn’t going to touch him, I just wanted to be closer. But he seemed to know that and evaded me in small, subtle ways, timing his moves to fit into the conversation, which was still silly, but starting – I thought – to get strained.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I could hear him say in my at the bar. What was this no touching stuff? I began to think of the last time I touched him, when I tackled him on the side of the road this very morning. I had grabbed him around the knees. And I had gripped his upper arm when escorting him to the car. So what was it about touching? I had done it, and survived. I wanted to do it again. Just a little tiny bit would be okay, wouldn’t it? Just a little man-to-man playful punch on the arm, maybe. Or a poke in the ribs when we were laughing. Just a little pat on the arm, or something. Or something. Or anything. Or damn you, Mack, I want you, I need to touch you, I want to so bad, so bad, so bad, and I’m going to, I’m just going to, and you can’t stop me. Right now I’m –
On a burst of nervous laughter I crossed the distance between us like greased lightning, intent on grabbing whatever part of him I could, or patting whatever part I could or something, anything, just to satisfy this itch that was tormenting me to scratch it before I lost my mind.
But Mack was too quick for me, as fast as I was, and the laughter in the kitchen came to an abrupt halt. Suddenly embarrassed as hell, I could hear my own loud breathing – the only sound in the room. I closed my mouth with a snap.
“Don’t,” said Mack, his voice too quiet.”You know you can’t touch me. I know what I’m talking about. Don’t touch me.” His voice was soft, not at all stern, more pitying than anything else. I was ashamed of myself, but still played dumb.
“I don’t know what you – “
“I told you before, don’t touch me. Just don’t. Just take my word for it. I know you want to, but don’t.”
I was frustrated into honesty at last. “Yeah? Well why? How come you say this all the time? What happens if I touch you – it was just a friendly gesture, my God, I mean, really, Mack.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a friendly gesture. If you touch me it gets worse. Much, much worse. Take my word for it. Don’t do it. Don’t try it. I won’t let you. I know what it does – believe me, I know.”
“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, but I was still embarrassed and still seething with the desire to get closer, get real close, maybe . . . oh God. Damn.
The sadness had descended. Mack looked very very old, just all of a sudden, like he’d done before. But this time it was all my fault. My stomach contracted, and I though for a moment that I might be sick.
The knocking started softly, then turned hard and insistent.
Margaret Branson had been my love interest and my rival, but now, this minute, with her rapping on my kitchen door, she was both rescue squad and unwanted intruder, rolled into one.
“Mack!”
Poised behind a chair, holding its back while I collected myself, breathing heavily, I could hear her voice call shrilly from the other side of the door. She had seen Mack through the window in the door. Mack was across from me; he had carefully kept the table between us, and he was closest to the door. We looked at each other. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and I gave a short nod. I stayed still as he took ten steps or so and crossed the distance to the door. He turned the knob, but when it didn’t open he fumbled at the lock, turned it, and started to open the door. Maggie, pushing from the other side, whipped it open in a second, and before Mack could get away, she had flung herself headlong into his arms.
I gasped with shock, and watched, frozen in place, as Mack tried violently to extricate himself from her embrace. No touching, eh Mack? No touching?
Maggie had wrapped her arms around him like an anaconda, and I watched in horror as she quickly brought her mouth to his. I think I yelped. I made some sort of yelping noise, and finally pulled myself together enough to start moving in their direction. I stumbled over a chair, not even looking at the objects in my path because I was riveted on the sight of Maggie holding and kissing a violently squirming Mack. He was actually flailing his arms, beating on her, pushing her, shoving, doing everything possible, but Maggie was unbelievable, holding him with superhuman strength.
I understood the power of the desire that fueled that strength.
Mack was making a hideous noise, a smothered scream; and in slow motion, moving through oatmeal, I made my way to him. My heart was beating hard, and when I finally got there, I wasn’t sure how to help. It seemed wrong to touch Maggie, and it was wrong to touch Mack, and I couldn’t see a way to wrench them apart without coming into near-contact with Maggie’s breast area, which I couldn’t possibly do. I didn’t know what to grab, where to pull, what place to put my hands, and she was wrapped around him so tight, and kissing so hard ….
It was Maggie who helped me. She broke the kiss for just a second – she must have needed a breath by then – and the minute she lifted her mouth to get a gulp of air, Mack let out an incredible howl. And then – then – he cried out my name.
I can’t tell you what that did to me. I can’t begin to describe what it meant. It was as if, at that moment, I knew I was his, and he was mine. He called for me. He called my name. He needed help, and he called for me. Me, personally. It was like he had told me he loved me. Like he was a damsel in distress, calling for her knight in shining armor. I had always dreamed – silly, hopelessly romantic me – to be that for a woman, sometime somewhere. Though, I must confess, I never expected that it would be a woman who had changed into a man, and was now struggling in the arms of love-lusting Maggie Branson.
Well, that scream galvanized me at last, and I didn’t worry anymore about what body part was grabbing where. I just thrust my hands into the fray, and joined my strength to Mack’s, and somehow (God was on our side) we prevailed. It was done. And Mack moved quickly behind me, and I felt huge and powerful and strong, all five foot six of me, shielding him with my body from this animal.
Maggie looked like a maniac – like a madwoman. I half expected to see her slavering. And she wasn’t through yet. We all began talking at once – Maggie babbling something about having found Mack at last, she loved him, etc. Mack was doing some sort of “Don’t, don’t – ‘ stuff, and I was being the big man still, my hands stretched in front of me, fending Maggie off the way we were taught to guard in high school basketball Phys Ed, but she didn’t stop, she kept coming at me, and I kept backing up, going around the table. Behind me I could feel Mack’s presence, though he didn’t touch me, not even to hang onto my clothes. But I could hear his warnings to her, and all our voices talking at once, and let me tell you, it was surely one of the weirder things you could imagine.
“Now Maggie, just don’t, you’ve got to cut it out, now get a grip – ” I was saying, and Mack was muttering “Don’t touch me, just don’t touch me,” behind me.
Maggie, in front of me, came towards us with the relentlessness of a jungle predator, moving her head this way and that like a cobra as she approached, trying to see the object of her desire behind my back. Her voice was disjointed from her heavy breathing. “Mack – I love you. Love you. You’ve got to – “
I could see the lunge coming, and I blocked it successfully, but I was shocked by her determination, and a little scared, too.
My words were beginning to sound like babbling now, too. It was the only thing I could think of, to keep talking, and I spoke whatever came forward “Now, Maggie – “
“I want you, Mack – “
“You can’t have him; you just settle down now – ” Another half lunge, which I blocked. Behind me, Mack banged into a chair.
“I love you, Mack, so help me God, I – “
“Don’t now, don’t, stop this – ” I was getting really scared now. She had backed me halfway around the old oak table, two chairs were down, and I was beginning to wonder wildly whether I should call the police, and how I could leave Mack undefended to do so. I was nearing the side of the table near the cabinets and drawers, and I actually wondered for a second if I should open one and get a knife. But I never could have used it except as a threat – and in the state she was in, Maggie might possibly have called my bluff, and then what?
It was while I was eyeing the knife drawer that she kneed me in the groin.
I had seen this in the movies and so forth, but – I guess because I was always such a homebody and was never athletic or anything – I had never had it happen to me until now. Let me tell you, it hurts. It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, and I was effectively eliminated from my role as protector in that instant. I assumed a fetal position on the floor, my arms wrapped around my guts. I heard a scuffle behind me and Mack’s voice shouting, “Because I’m a WOMAN! A WOMAN! A woman like YOU! So get your FUCKING HANDS OFF ME!
And then a slap. A loud, loud, angry, hard slap. And then silence.
I couldn’t turn around to see. But in a second, I heard a bump, like a body slumping to the floor, and Mack crawled to my side. He looked so distressed, so worried, that I – cross my heart – was glad I’d been hurt like that. He cared about me – I had been wounded, had suffered pain – for him, for my Mack. I’d do it again in a minute for you, Mack, I tried to tell him with my eyes. In a minute. And he nodded his head.
“Are you okay?”
I groaned. I’m afraid I was guilty of milking this a little. Well, yeah, milking it quite a bit. But I needed all the weapons I could get in my mission to win Mack, to make him love me. I groaned again, with feeling. I heard Maggie get up, and then she came into my field of vision, and slowly righted a chair that had fallen, and sat down on it. Her left cheek was very red. She turned her head and looked at us both.
“A woman, huh?”
Mack rubbed his eyes hard with one hand, and thumped down to sit on the floor beside me. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”
And while I gathered strength, feeling the pain gradually ease to an aching tenderness, I listened to Mack – still there beside me on the floor – relate, for the second time that day, his ridiculous, completely unbelievable, story. Would Maggie buy it?
“And so that’s it. That’s the whole story,” Mack said in conclusion. He looked so sad again, like he had looked when he told me. “And I can’t go back. I can’t ever go back.”
Maggie pushed her hair back from her face, then unclipped a barrette, pushed the loose ends back again, and fastened them down. She did the same thing with the other side of her head, saying calmly. “I don’t see why not.”
Mack looked too sad to answer, to understand, but I had a funny, funny feeling. Something was up.
“What did you say?”
She shrugged and waved a red-nailed hand. “He could change back.”
“What do you mean? How?”
“It’s so simple.” She looked at us, and blew upward at her bangs, and seemed surprised that we hadn’t figured it out. Actually, now, in retrospect, I’m surprised we didn’t think of it, either. It really is obvious. “Reverse the process,” she said.
When we didn’t say anything, she went on. “Do the opposite.” She looked from one of us to the other, and back. “You want to be a woman again, you said, so the wish is there, like when you wished to be a man.”
Maggie spoke so simply and calmly, like she was giving us a cake recipe or something. She had bought the whole story, hook, line and sinker, and had no trouble with it whatsoever. When I thought back at how upset I had gotten over the whole thing, and how I had treated Mack in my anger, I wondered at the whole notion I had always accepted that women were the emotional sex.
“So, keep on wishing. And instead of going down on guys while you’re wishing, you go down on girls.” She looked from one of us to the other again, and then she smiled broadly. Her eyes fastened, bright and hard, on Mack, who looked like he’d been hit by a truck.
“You can start on me,” she said.