Trismegistus Shandy: fix link

2017-02-19T08:46:36Z

fix link

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	[[You Could Go Home Again/~~Part03~~\|Part 3]]		[[You Could Go Home Again/Part08\|Part 8]]

Trismegistus Shandy: chapter 7

2017-02-19T08:46:12Z

chapter 7

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[[You Could Go Home Again|Table of contents]]

----

Monday evening, I went over to Grandma and Grandpa Hampton's place with
Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler. They were surprised to see me like that -- I
think Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler had procrastinated on telling them I was
developing as a girl until the last minute. Grandma seemed pleased that I
was dressing well; she asked if Raleigh rabbit girls wore earrings (a few
do, but not as many as among Lincoln bison or some other neospecies), and
had some other suggestions about making myself look nicer. Grandpa didn't
have much to say to me or anyone else; I was worried he was upset with
me, but it wasn't like I could do anything about turning into a girl.
I couldn't even dress like a boy unless I had money to burn.

Tuesday, Carl was busy doing boyfriend-girlfriend things with Julia,
but I hung out with Ron and played video games for a few hours. I asked
him to tell me some more about Lindsey, but he seemed oddly reluctant
to part with any details. "She's nice," he said. "I don't know her
that well yet, but we both like Ken Liu; that's how we met, I saw her
checking out his latest book at the library."

I'd suspected something was up Sunday afternoon, and by Tuesday evening
I was sure of it. When we were playing games and Ron's eyes should
have been on the screen, they were too often on me instead, and it was
throwing him off his game. I finally confronted him about it when we
took a break to eat supper.

"Look," I said, "I know this is a shock to you, and maybe I'm expecting
too much for you to get over it in a day or so. God knows it's taken
me several months to get used to the idea of being a girl... But what
about if we pause the game, and you just stare at me for as long as
it takes for you to get it out of your system? Instead of, you know,
glancing at me out of the corner of your eye and then trying to pretend
you weren't looking."

He looked down at his lap, mumbling something incoherent.

"I didn't quite catch that."

"I'm sorry," he said a little louder. "I'll try not to look at you like
that... it's just..." He shut up.

"No, I wasn't being facetious. Really, stare at me all you want, just
get it over with."

Again he mumbled something I couldn't make out, but he looked at me
this time. I looked him in the eyes and smiled encouragingly. But I
realized his eyes weren't on mine, they were a little lower down. On my
breasts... well, he wasn't used to me having them. Still, it was kind
of creepy; if he were a Raleigh rabbit it would be more understandable,
maybe flattering, but from an Omaha sheepdog...

"I'm still me, remember. Let me know when you're done staring and we
can get back to me kicking your ass at Road Hog Mountain."

"Yeah, let's do that." And he picked up the game controller to unpause
it, but as he did, he shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, and I glanced
down... and saw he had a huge bulge in his pants. Involuntarily I
squirmed away from him a couple more inches.

"Are you a xenophile?" I asked in a low voice.

He flinched and looked at me in horror.

"Don't tell anyone, please?"

"...I won't. Oh... but, you understand I'm not, right? I like guys, but
only Raleigh rabbit guys." I paused. "At least, as far as I can tell.
It's all still pretty new to me."

"I know you're not... I mean, I didn't really expect you to be.
Even though you grew up here with nobody else of your species around,
and some people say that causes xenophilia..."

"Maybe for some people. But I didn't go through puberty until I was
surrounded by Raleigh rabbits, remember."

"Yeah. Please promise you won't tell anybody, especially not Carl,
or my parents?"

"Of course. I promise. But... oh. That's why you said you didn't have
any pictures of Lindsey to show me."

He nodded and smiled weakly. "She's a Mississippi mudcat. She's pretty,
even on land, and the most beautiful creature I've ever seen in the
water."

"Do you really not have any pictures of her?"

"No, I just didn't want to show you. Here," and he pulled out his phone
and brought up a head-and-shoulders shot of a girl with mud-brown skin,
no hair, ears flat against the sides of her head, and whiskers like a
cat or catfish; she looked like she was laughing.

"She's pretty."

"Yeah."

We were quiet for a minute or so, and then I said: "Let's get back to
the game," and he agreed.

Later, when he was giving me a ride home, I asked him: "So... I kind of
gathered you were attracted to me?"

"Yeah. It's not something I can help, but I'll try not to stare at you
like that again."

"If you're a xenophile, why are you attracted to me now when you weren't
before?"

He shivered a little. "You weren't so pretty before. And, um... you
didn't have breasts."

"So that's it, huh?"

"As far as I can tell... and I'm still figuring this out... I'm attracted
to girls of any species that has breasts. Chicago tripods don't do it
for me, for instance."

"Or Athens magnolias," I added.

"Who?"

"Amy, my roommate at NC State -- I think I mentioned her? She's an Athens
magnolia; they don't have breasts except while they're nursing a baby."

"Oh. Yeah, I probably wouldn't be attracted to her either."

There was a lull in the conversation, and I hesitantly asked: "What
about guys who have breasts?"

He didn't respond right away. Eventually, he said: "I don't know.
I haven't met any. Do you know where there's a neospecies where the
guys have breasts?"

"I can't remember where they live offhand, but yeah, I've heard about
them." I was regretting asking that question; it was way too personal,
and I'd had enough of people asking *me* too-personal questions in the
last few months.

"Well. I guess I'll find out eventually."

"What about Lindsey? I mean, if it gets serious you'll either have to
tell your parents, or not invite them to the wedding..."

"Man, that's way too far off to think about yet. We haven't done anything
but kiss yet."

"Sorry."

"No problem."

We reached my house and he let me out, but didn't come inside.

-----

A couple of days later, Julia invited me to join her and a couple
of friends for a girls' day out. "We're going to Lincoln to do some
shopping and maybe see a movie, if you want to come," she said on the
phone, and I said I'd be glad to come. It was time to replace some of
my shirts and blouses that were getting too tight.

Julia came by my house a little after nine, with two other Lincoln bison
girls in the car. I got in the back seat, Julia told the car where we
wanted to go, and we were off.

"So, Joel, I think you know Leanne and Teresa?"

"I've seen you around, yeah." We'd all gone to Thayer Central High
together, though I hadn't really gotten to know any of them except for
Julia, because she was Carl's girlfriend.

"Joel?" Leanne asked. "Wow, you look different."

"Everybody keeps saying that. I wonder why."

Teresa laughed. I was afraid I'd have to answer a barrage of questions
from Leanne and Teresa about how I'd turned into a girl, but I guess
Julia must have filled them in on the basics, because they didn't ask.
We talked about school for a while -- Leanne was going to the University
of Nebraska with Carl and Julia, but Teresa was going to Loyola in
Chicago. Leanne and Julia talked about their boyfriends for a while;
Teresa wasn't dating anybody at the moment, though there was a Lincoln
bison in her Calculus class that she was trying to get to notice her.
I said briefly that I wasn't ready to start dating.

It was a long drive from Hebron to Lincoln, and when conversation died
down, Julia put on some music and she, Leanne and Teresa sang along.
I didn't know most of the songs, but when a song came on that I knew,
I tentatively joined in. It was about as fun as a long car ride can be.

We pulled into the parking lot of a mall outside Lincoln just before
eleven, and started seriously shopping. I tried on a bunch of shirts
and blouses and bought three that were just a little big on me, and got
another pair of bras that fit my new size. When the other girls wanted
to go to a jewelry store next, I said I'd go to the bookstore and meet up
with them later, but Leanne said: "Come on. You wouldn't try on dresses
because you said you'd outgrow them too fast, but you won't outgrow a
necklace or a bracelet."

"Yeah, but I can't afford that stuff, I'm having to buy new clothes so
often what with outgrowing them so fast."

"Some of it's not as expensive as you probably think," Teresa said.
"And you don't have to buy stuff just because you try it on."

I'd run out of excuses and had to give them my real reason. "Look,
I don't actually want to wear jewelry. Even if I could afford it.
I may be female but I don't want to be that feminine."

"Go easy on her," Julia said. "She's new to all this."

We met up at the food court an hour later. Julia was wearing a new
silver necklace; the others hadn't bought anything. I'd bought a new
novel by Mira Grant.

Lincoln was only a little more diverse than Hebron; we saw more Omaha
sheepdogs around the mall than we saw at home, and a handful of North
Platte dreamers, but only two people of other species. One was a Chicago
tripod, the other was something I didn't recognize. I had Mississippi
mudcats on the brain after Ron's revelation about his new girlfriend,
but I didn't expect to see any here, so far from the Missouri -- nearly
all of them live within a few miles of one of the big rivers.

"So," Leanne said to me when we'd eaten a few bites, "you said you don't
want to wear jewelry... you don't want to be the kind of girl who wears
jewelry?"

"Yeah, that."

"So what kind of girl do you want to be?"

I was stymied. Not that I hadn't been thinking about it, but a lot of
my thoughts were hard to put into words. "I guess I'm still getting
used to the idea of being a girl, period. I want to take it slow.
Maybe I'll wear jewelry someday, but not any time soon."

"What about makeup? Do Raleigh rabbit girls use it?"

"Maybe some do? Not many, I think; it doesn't go well with fur."

"I don't think any of the Omaha sheepdogs I know use it," Teresa said.

"Yeah, some dye their fur, but that's not the same thing," Julia said.
"Do Raleigh rabbits do that?"

"I've seen a few, but it's pretty rare. About as rare as shaving part
of your fur; I've seen maybe two or three kids on campus that do either,
and one or two people off-campus."

"What would you wear if you had more money to spend on it, and you
wouldn't outgrow it in a few weeks?" Leanne asked.

"A lot of jeans and T-shirts, and a few nicer things to wear to church
or job interviews or whatever. What do they call them, those outfits
like men's business suits but tailored for women?"

"Pant suits," said Teresa.

"Yeah, I'll probably buy one or two of them once I stop growing."

"No reason you can't try some on now, to get a feel for the kind of thing
that looks good on you, even if it doesn't make sense to buy them yet."

"And you should try other things too," Leanne said; "several different
styles of dresses, for instance. You won't know you don't like them
until you try them."

"No, thanks."

After lunch we hit several more stores, but I didn't buy anything more,
though I tried on a couple of different pant suits and several different
styles of jeans and other pants, wondering how long it would take before
I could actually buy and wear them. The tops of those pant suits were
either way too big for me or were too tight across my lower breasts;
stuff made for the local neospecies wouldn't fit most Raleigh rabbits.
One suit, I realized only after I'd tried it on, had a little round hole
in the chest designed for a North Platte dreamer's middle arm; on me it
served as a boob window, which I didn't like at all, even though Leanne
said it looked good on me.

The other girls went to a salon to have their horns buffed and polished;
while they were in there I went by a game store, but didn't buy anything
there either.

We ate supper at a Mexican restaurant nearby, and got back to Hebron an
hour later.

-----

Saturday, we visited my parents' graves. We had a little walk up a
hill from where we parked the car, and though the slope wasn't steep,
my hip was aching by the time we got to the Hampton family plot.
My parents were buried there, along with a couple of great-uncles and
aunts, great-grandparents and other remoter ancestors. I stood between
the graves for a while, thinking, Uncle Tyler right behind me and Aunt
Ellen a little further off. It was almost ten years since they'd died,
but I'd be thousands of miles away when the actual anniversary of their
deaths rolled around. I felt like I should do something more besides
just visit their graves, but it was the wrong time of year for flowers in
our garden, and I wasn't sure I could afford to buy them from a florist.

I wondered, not for the first time, what might have happened if my
parents had lived. Would my dad have married a second wife? Or would
he have changed into a woman, and her and Mom married some guy together?
Or split up and married different guys? Maybe none of those things;
some couples who'd been together since before the Divergence were still
monogamous, but among young people it was considered selfish for a woman
to want one man all to herself. And whatever might have happened to them,
whatever they would have done, I'd have grown up in Raleigh, and gone
through puberty at the usual time in the normal context -- surrounded by
people who were going through the same confusing experience at the same
time, instead of people to whom puberty was old hat, for whom dating
and sex were routine things they'd figured out years ago.

I hated the way my thoughts were drifting into self-pity, and I tried
to focus on memories of my parents from way back. Oddly enough, the
first that came to mind was a Nebraska-associated memory: of Christmas
at Grandma and Grandpa Kritzer's house, when I was about five or six.
I had woken up early, gone and looked over my presents with awe, and then
dragged Mom and Dad out of bed to "show them what Santa Claus brought me."
I remember excitedly pointing out one toy after another to them, and then
asking Dad how the robot worked. (It wasn't a Transformer, but one of
the cheap knockoffs. I was too young to be class-conscious about that,
the way I was a few years later when I was in second or third grade and
had friends from school over who didn't think much of my off-brand toys.)

That led to a memory of the plane ride to Nebraska, how Mom let me sit
in the window seat, and I craned my neck to see out while the plane was
taking off, and then took off my seat belt once they said it was okay
so I could stand by the window and see better. I remember Mom's arm
around me, holding me steady as the plane jiggled and jostled in the
slight turbulence.

I'd probably never ride a plane again; they were more expensive these
days, with fuel costs so high, and probably wouldn't be very comfortable
for me with my bad hip.

"You about ready to go?" Uncle Tyler asked.

"I guess so," I said, and we started back down the hill.

-----

That evening, Carl hosted a little Christmas party at his house.
There were only about eight or ten kids there, mostly our age but with
a couple of younger siblings who were juniors or seniors in high school
-- Carl's little sister, Ted's little brother, maybe someone else I've
forgotten. Most of them hadn't seen me since I'd been back, but all
of them remembered how I looked before -- I really stood out in our
homogeneous little high school -- even if they couldn't remember my name.

After a while, Carl put on some music and we started dancing. Andrew, a
Lincoln bison I didn't know well, asked me to dance, and after some brief
hesitation I joined him. I decided nobody would think I was a xenophile
because I danced with someone of another species at a party like this
where there wasn't anybody else of my species around. (I hadn't gone
to any of the big dances in high school, for obvious reasons.) It was a
little awkward, since I'd rarely done any dancing before because of my bad
hip, but once I got over my anxiety it was fun. And that gave me an idea.

There were only two Omaha sheepdogs at the party besides Ron, and they
were boyfriend and girlfriend, Will and Macy. Ron had danced once with
Macy, but every other time she was dancing with Will, naturally enough,
and Ron was sitting out the other dances. I went up to him and said,
"Want to dance?"

He looked panicked and glanced around to see if anyone was watching.
I said in a low voice, "Nobody will know. Nobody's going to think I'm
a xenophile because I danced with Andrew when no other Raleigh rabbits
were around, so why would they think that about you?"

"Are you sure you want to?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

So we danced. It was a loud fast song, so we didn't have our arms
around each other or anything, and I don't think either of us knew what
we were doing, but it was fun. I kind of regretted it afterward when
my hip was aching worse than usual, though.

We sat down when the next song began. I saw Leanne talking with her
boyfriend Ted, and they were glancing over at me and Ron. I was worried
that I'd done something wrong, that Ron's secret was going to be out
because of me. But then Ted came over and said to me (ignoring Ron),
"Do you want to dance?"

"Sure," I said, and got up. We danced through the end of that song,
and then I asked: "So, were you asking Leanne for permission to dance
with me, or was she telling you to ask me to dance?"

"Um... she told me I should dance with you. Since there aren't any guys
like you around."

"Thanks," I said, and walked with him back over toward where Leanne was
sitting with Teresa. "Thanks for letting me dance with Ted," I said.

"No problem," she said, and to Ted, "Let's take the next slow dance,
sweetie."

I went back and sat with Ron, and we chatted about inconsequential things
for a while. When the party was almost over, I gave Carl and Ron their
Christmas presents, and also gave out little things I'd bought at the
last minute for Julia, Leanne and Teresa.

-----

[[You Could Go Home Again/Part03|Part 3]]

You Could Go Home Again/Part07 - Revision history

Trismegistus Shandy: fix link

Trismegistus Shandy: chapter 7