This announcement threw me for a loop. My hurt at his calm rejection of my love was now superseded by bewilderment. I must have looked pretty stupid; my face froze, then took on a look of foolish incredulity, I could feel it. But Mack didn’t see me. He just lay there on his back, eyes directed around the room at the decorative molding where the ceiling meets the wall.
“It’s the only way,” he was saying. “It’s the last thing I want to do, but it’s the only way. And even then, I don’t know if it will work.”
“Mack, now wait a minute. What about your speech?! What about learning your lesson, and your life of atonement, and dishonor, and the sacrament of making love? What about not being able to – to have relations with a woman because you’re not a lesbian? What about all that stuff?” I couldn’t figure this guy out. I just couldn’t figure him out at all. Going through with Maggie’s plan was the last thing in the world that I thought he’d want to do; he’d made that perfectly clear.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He lifted his arms, then, linking them behind his head on the pillow, and looked at me. There was more curiosity in his face than anything else I could identify. “What’s the matter? Don’t you want me to be a woman again?”
I grew suddenly wary and uncomfortable, scenting a trap, or a place where I would mistakenly say the exact wrong thing through my own ignorance and shyness. “Well, sure I do, Mack. Sure I do. I – I love you, like I said. I wish you were a woman right now. If I could snap my fingers and make you change, I would in a minute. But the idea of . . . I mean, really, Mack. Maggie’s plan is – repugnant, I think. And you thought so, too. You made it very clear that you wouldn’t even consider it.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“What about not being able to make love to a woman, because you’re not a lesbian?”
“Yeah. I know. It wouldn’t be easy. I’d have to talk myself into it, find some way to trick myself into doing it. If I could.”
“What about your disgust at having Maggie pimp for you?”
“Actually that was your feeling, Doug – not mine. I wasn’t really disgusted. Just angry at not being consulted.”
“What about suffering for your crime?”
His look was piercing. “Maybe I just decided that I’ve suffered enough.”
I shook my head, thoroughly confused. “I don’t understand you. I thought you really believed what you were saying.”
“I did. I do.”
“But your speech was so moving. What about the sanctity of the body, what about not abusing the privilege of making love? You said that’s the greatest gift we have – that’s the most important thing we can do!”
He looked hard at me – then undid his arms, and slowly reached one toward me, palm up, outstretched on the bed – waiting for mine. Like a mouse riveted in place at the approach of a snake, I was mesmerized. I had no choice but to undo my bent and aching fingers and take his hand.
So there I was, sitting beside the man/woman I loved, doing what he forbade me to do (touch him), feeling the dry warmth of his skin, falling more in love with him with every passing nanosecond. He gazed at me steadily, and I gazed back. His hand was relaxed in mine, and gradually mine began to relax, too. That made it all the easier to give in to the growing desire to slide my thumb gently back and forth over the ridges of bone on the back of his hand; feeling pulsed underneath. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I whispered.
He said nothing. He didn’t stop looking at me. His eyes were moving slightly, as if he were focusing on the different details of my face – eyes, glasses, nose, cheeks, chin. Was it possible that my face could grow to be as beloved to him as his was to me? His hand was melting in mine, and mine was melting in his, and the two were mixing together, like when kids become blood brothers by nicking themselves and letting their blood flow into each other’s open skin. Except that we didn’t need to open our veins – we could take each other in like this, just like this, skin to skin. A liquid feeling, sensuous and warm, began to fill my whole body, and my neck relaxed, and my shoulders, and the circling of my thumb on the back of his hand became more – slow. Smooth. More charged. I was slipping into him. He was drawing me in. I felt like my eyes were starting to roll backward in my head, and I wanted to slide over and lie on top of him and drown in his body. I was almost over the edge when he pulled his hand from mine with an abrupt jerk. My fingers snapped shut on empty air, and I moaned aloud. Mack jammed his hands under his elbows, crossing his arms over his chest. He stared at me sharply.
“See? Now do you see? Now do you see why I have to do this? Why I have to be a woman again?”
I needed air. I took a deep, deep breath. I could still feel the impression of his hand in mine – I could still feel his skin. The connection was still there, even though he was glaring at me, and shielding his heart from me with his arms clutched to his chest.
“Uh huh,” I breathed. “Yeah. Yeah, Mack. Do it. Do it as fast as you can.” I nearly groaned aloud. “I’ll help you.”
And suddenly the future – The Plan, with all its insanity, its strong conflicting emotional entanglements, its nobility and its ugliness – was laid out before me, and I saw myself, Mack, and Maggie as clear as could be. Maggie, with her street-smart common sense and her earthiness and her business acumen for prostitution, would be the midwife to a Mack who was in labor, lying on his back, pushing and straining and crying with pain as he gave birth to his new self, his woman’s body. And me? Oh, I saw my role clearest of all – I was the hapless, comic father-to-be, necktie dangling loosely, shirt sleeves rolled up, sweating, pacing the waiting room, smoking endless cigarettes, muttering under my breath, sweating and wringing my hands whenever my straining ears caught an echo of Mack’s tortured cry. That was our picture – the tableau vivant that we would inhabit for the next just possibly be worth it. For Mack, Maggie, and me – partners in crime. For all three of us.
If I didn’t die of lust – and jealousy – first.
And if it worked.
“Doug . . . what are you thinking?”
I crossed my hands over my chest, too. “Would it work?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have any idea?”
“No.”
I ruminated for a moment. “Hell of a thing to go through, if it doesn’t work.”
He turned his face away from me, but didn’t reply,
“I mean, you know.” I cleared my throat. “You know.”
“Maggie’d have to show me how.”
This made me break out into a cold sweat. Over my dead body! “Don’t you – uh, know how?”
“No.”
“Really?” My voice was a little squeaky at this point. My mind was whirling, but the thought that predominated was that that meant no man had ever done it to him when he was a woman. Right? I mean, if they had, then he’d know how it was done. “You didn’t ever . . .”
“No, I didn’t.” He seemed a trifle irritated. “I didn’t like my woman’s body. I told you. I hated it. I didn’t let guys make love to it. I didn’t want to feel it, what it could do. I hated it. I didn’t want to acknowledge that it was even there. So I went down on guys, but I never let them do anything to me.” He grimaced, and I felt pain. “Believe me, they didn’t mind.”
I wanted to kill. I wanted to kill all of them, those faceless perverts. I boiled for a long moment, but then I got a new thought. They hadn’t made love to him. They hadn’t touched him. This was a comfort; I felt some of the tension I was holding seep out of me, replaced by relief. He was a virgin, in a way. I mean, he had never been made love to. Hey – maybe he was a real virgin – was that possible, when he had had hundreds of guys? That he had – urn, serviced them, but not let them – penetrate him? Was he actually a real virgin, like me? I was thrilled! But I better confirm this.
“Mack,” I said carefully, awkwardly. “You mean you – you’re technically – I mean you still have – “
Mack could grin at the most unexpected times. And his unexpected grins were the most disarming.
“I’m cherry, Doug. Still got it, yeah.” He laughed out a clear, pure ringing laugh, and I laughed, too.
“That’s wonderful! I’m a virgin, too! We could do this together, be one another’s first time! I mean, it’s gonna be so great – “
“Don’t.” The grin was instantly replaced with Mt. Rushmore. “Don’t. Don’t love me. You don’t know me. You don’t even know what I really look like. My real body – my woman’s body – and my real face – you don’t know what I look like.”
“N-no.” He had caught me red-handed – caught me in my dream that wouldn’t die. He stared at me, and I couldn’t read him. “But I imagined you . . . ” That just slipped out, almost a whisper. But he heard me – you can be damn sure he heard me. If he would have been a dog, he would have pricked up his ears. His eyes got bright and interested, and I – inexperienced with women to the degree that I am – I nonetheless suspected I’d made a mistake, and I hoped uncomfortably that he would let the remark pass.
No such luck.
“Yeah? How did you imagine me? How did I look?”
‘Be as noncommittal as possible’, some new instinct warned me. ‘You aren’t going to be able to do this right, you aren’t going to do it the way a suave, experienced guy would, so just try to get into as little hot water as possible.’
My palms began to sweat. I know that even when you’re in love, things are still hard. I mean, being in love isn’t the end of the fairy tale, isn’t followed necessarily by ‘they lived happily ever after.’ Not without some work, I mean – without some sweat and some elbow grease. But this is what I wanted, this being in love. I had a stubborn feeling that he could still come around – he could still fall in love with me. It was meant to happen, and it would. After all, hadn’t he said himself just a few minutes ago that we were going to get to know each other better? I wanted a relationship with Mack, and when he was a woman again – if he was – then I would propose to him. To her. And if this is what a relationship entailed, this saying the wrong thing, and trying to make yourself clear, and explaining and trying to make the other one understand – well, I wasn’t good at it, being a complete novice – a virgin, if you will. But I could learn. I would learn. I would damn well try, anyway. Try hard.
I suspect these moments of thinking were interpreted by Mack as moments to get a clear picture and find the words to describe it, and he allowed me the time. But I could see his impatience to get the information, so I tried to conjure him in my mind, and what came was the picture I had had earlier in the day, when Maggie was here, of him kneeling in front of some disgusting guy, a picture so painful that I winced, and Mack jumped on my expression like a duck on a June bug.
“So you think I was ugly?”
“No! God no, Mack. Jesus! No, I – I thought you were beautiful.” I glanced at him anxiously. Had I completely blown it?
He gave me another chance, relaxing back on the pillow, suddenly looking (maybe because this interest in how I visualized him seemed just how a woman would act) feminine. “Beautiful how?”
“Beautiful . . . like beautiful,” I fumbled. Get it together, Doug. I cleared my throat, then pulled myself up, sitting more straightly, squaring my shoulders. I was determined not to ruin this opportunity to tell him how beautiful I really did imagine him to be. “Like beautiful. Like your face now – your same face, your same beautiful face that you have now – but without the – the – ” I moved my hand over my jaw, rasping the stubble there, and he nodded. “But with your same eyes – your eyes that are you, that are your soul looking out, so gentle, and sometimes laughing, and sometimes so sad that you break my heart.” Mack’s face softened, and I surged on, feeling instinctively that I was doing well. Feeling like I was beginning to get a handle on this communication thing. This man-woman thing. “Your hair – not like it is now. Longer, and straight, I think. Long and blond and straight.” I had sort of a deja-vu then – this sounded so familiar – had I dreamed about him like this? Not investigating further, I plunged on. “And you were slender, like you are now. But with – with – breasts (had I ever said that word out loud before in my life?!) and your hips a little – wider, softer, you know. Not big hips” (I was well aware of most women’s compulsion not to be thought of as “big hipped”, i.e. “fat”) “but feminine hips, really pretty, a really pretty figure.” Mack’s expression was growing more dreamy and I felt a luscious sense of power and competence. “You were gorgeous, to tell the truth. With your same eyes, your same mouth, only – just your face a little less . . . more soft. And your hands . . . your same, exact hands, the thing I think I love most about you. Your beautiful, masculine, feminine, hands.” I felt a rush of love. “And your same – soul. Your same sweetness, your same goodness. The way you laugh, and that irresistible smile. The clever things you say, the funny things, and your sadness, and your wisdom. Your strength. Your sorrow. Your courage. I love you, Mack. I love you. I love you already – it’s just the outside that you have to change, so that we’ll fit together, man and woman, you as beautiful, very very beautiful, but really, it doesn’t matter what you look like. I don’t care. Because you’ll be the same person. And that’s the person I love. You, Mack. You.”
Mack had been looking at me with increasing sadness, and now he shook his head. I did see pity in his face this time. “Give it up, Doug. Don’t do this to yourself.”
But I only sat all the straighter. It’s interesting what love will make you do. I smiled at him, not the least discouraged by his remark. Yeah, he may not want me to love him. He may not care for me now. But he would. He would, God damn it. He would turn into a woman, slowly but surely. And I – I would work on him as he did. I would woo him. I would win him. And in the end, he would be mine. I was strong now – my love had given me power. He was the one for me – the only one. I would love him in spite of himself. I would never let him go. My devotion would move him, and I would make him love me. I wasn’t giving up. This was one battle I was going to win.