Trismegistus Shandy: chapter 15

2017-02-19T08:54:59Z

chapter 15

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

----

After that I felt less stressed about hanging out with Katie, though I
still didn't feel ready to start dating again, and tried to invite other
people along when Katie suggested doing something together. We went
out to dinner with Radhika, Paul and George the following Friday,
and talked a little about _The House on the Corner_, though not much.
George had listened to the whole series, and Radhika and Paul hadn't
heard it at all, so we couldn't go into plot details; it was mostly
just us recommending it to Radhika and Paul, and them replying with
recommendations of their own. George came over to my dorm Saturday
afternoon and listened to episodes three through five with us, though
he'd heard them a couple of times before.

After George left, I offered to walk Katie back to her dorm again, though
it wasn't as late as it had been last time. For the first few minutes we
speculated about where _The House on the Corner_ was going. Then, when
we got to a little garden spot with benches about halfway between central
campus and her dorm, she sat down on a bench and I gratefully joined her.
My hip wasn't bothering me as much these days as it had during puberty,
but a rest halfway through a long walk was always welcome. The sun was
setting, and I figured it would be full dark by the time I got back to
Carroll Hall.

Then Katie put her hand on mine, and I tensed up a little. I wasn't
ready for this -- or was I? Katie and I had been hanging out for three
weeks, and it had been more than six weeks since I broke up with Larry
and Bill...

"Do you want to just keep hanging out and being friends," she said,
"or are you just not sure how to be with a girl as a boy?"

"Um, can it be both? For now, anyway? I mean --" I stopped, flustered.
After a few moments' thought I said: "Did you go to the symposium back
in February, the one on North Carolina neospecies?"

She stared at me, the tips of her ears bent in thought. "That's a way
to change the subject. Yeah, I went to part of it."

"Particularly Dr. Wilson's talk about Raleigh rabbits, and how some of
us have a lot stronger tendency to change sex than others?"

"No, I missed that one."

"Well, basically, some Raleigh rabbits have a genetic predisposition
to change sex really easily, whenever there's a slight imbalance in the
pheromones they're exposed to, and some are really resistant and won't
change unless there's a big imbalance and it stays imbalanced for a while.
And some are in between. Anyway, since I went through puberty so fast,
and changed sex so soon afterward, I figure I'm probably in the first
category -- I'll probably change sex pretty often compared to most people.
So... what if we start dating, and then I change again next semester or
the semester after that? It's almost certain to happen sooner or later."

She was quiet a moment, and said: "I might change too. This last summer
was the second time I'd changed sex, not counting the Divergence and
puberty; I developed as a girl and then changed into a boy junior year
of high school. But just because something can't last forever doesn't
mean it's not worthwhile."

"If you're sure..." I squeezed her hand back. "Then let's do something
without George around next Friday, okay?"

She smiled. "Yes, let's do exactly that."

-----

I'd usually seen Katie wearing jeans and T-shirts -- sometimes boy-cut
jeans with a loose crotch. "Waste not, want not," she said; none of
the clothes she'd worn back when she was a girl the first time fit
her anymore, and she didn't want to buy a whole new wardrobe at once.
But on our first real date, she wore a new skirt and blouse.

"You look really nice," I said when I met her in the lobby of her dorm.

"Thanks. You're looking sharp too."

Neither of us had a car, so we took a city bus to an Indian restaurant
Katie recommended that was right near a bus stop. We held hands as we
walked from the bus stop to the restaurant and again after we sat down
in the waiting area. We'd eaten lunch or supper together several times
in one of the dining halls during the last week -- sometimes Katie would
come over to the dining hall near Carroll Hall, and sometimes I'd go to
the one near her dorm, but usually she visited mine because I walked so
much slower.

A waitress came and seated us at a booth a few minutes later. I propped
my cane in the corner of the booth and studied the menu.

"The chicken marsala is pretty tasty," Katie said.

"I expect I'll try it, then." But I studied the rest of the menu before
I made up my mind. I was nervous about how this was supposed to go, and
trying to remember how Larry had acted toward me during our first couple
of dates. I didn't have a senior girlfriend to act as go-between and ask
what the junior girlfriend wanted, and I didn't have a car door to open
for Katie, and I wasn't sure if she'd like that sort of thing anyway.
Anyway Katie was more experienced at this from both ends; I wasn't sure
how many dates she'd been on as a girl between, I'd guess, ages thirteen
and sixteen, but probably more than I'd been on in the seven months I
was with Larry and Bill.

Why not just ask her?

"So," I said, "I've never been on a date as the guy before. And not that
many as a girl, and I'm not sure how typical they were -- how typical
Larry and Bill are. How do you want to do this?"

"We can talk about whatever while we eat," she said. "And we can kiss
after dinner. And then we can cuddle while we listen to the next couple
of episodes of _The House on the Corner_. How's that?"

"Sounds good," I said, though I wasn't sure what all she included under
the heading of "cuddling." Did she want me to touch her breasts, or
just put an arm around her shoulders, or what? I decided I'd ask later,
when we were alone, not here in the restaurant. "So, I've got to take
History 201 next semester. Which professor did you have for it...?"

When I'd paid for dinner, and we got up from the table, I put my arm on
her shoulder and tugged gently. She leaned over toward me and we kissed.
It was good; not as exciting as the first time I'd kissed Larry, but good.
We kissed a couple of times more, sitting on the bench at the bus stop,
and again on the bus.

Then we were back at my dorm room, and I put on episode six of _The
House on the Corner_ to play. Katie took off her shoes and laid down
on my bed, squeezing close to the wall to give me room. I took off my
shoes and laid down next to her.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked in a low voice as the opening
credits music played.

"Just hold me," she said, and I put my arm around her shoulders.

We talked for a while between episodes six and seven, speculating about
where the show was going, whether the family in the house on the corner
were aliens, or people from a parallel world where the Divergence happened
differently, or what. Katie thought they were nonhumans native to Earth
who predated the Divergence -- elves or fairies or something, who thought
it was safe to come out of hiding now that humanity had diversified so.
I was leaning toward the aliens theory, but I admitted that the evidence
supported her view nearly as well.

After episode seven, I walked with her back to her dorm, and we kissed
again goodnight.

-----

Somehow, once I was dating Katie for real, I found myself more at
ease with Larry and Bill, and could relax and be friends with them.
Sometimes they ate supper with me and Katie at the dining hall near
Carroll Hall. I didn't see Rob or Sarah as often as I used to; I didn't
share any classes with them that semester, and I think Rob was a little
reluctant to spend too much time with me now that I was male, or Rico
might be jealous. I still saw George, Radhika and Paul fairly often,
and did stuff with them when I wasn't doing boyfriend-girlfriend stuff
with Katie.

Katie and I went on some kind of date almost every week for the remainder
of the semester, except when we were studying for finals and working hard
on our term papers. Even then she helped me out with studying for the
classes she'd already taken. Radhika invited me to spend Thanksgiving
with her family again, and I said I'd let her know in a couple of days,
but right after that Katie said she'd gotten permission from her parents
for me to spend Thanksgiving with them.

By then we'd moved on from holding hands and kissing to touching in more
intimate places, though we still hadn't had sex. I think Katie might
have been ready, but I wasn't. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving,
Katie's stepdad pulled up in front of Carroll Hall, having already picked
up Katie and her suitcase and bags of laundry, and I got in his car.
He asked me about myself, and I told him about my family and my history,
and how I'd almost made up my mind about my major and expected to declare
by the beginning of next semester, and so forth.

It didn't take us too long to get to the Cartwrights' house in Auburn.
After grilling me about myself for a few minutes, Katie's stepdad started
asking her how she'd been doing since her last visit home, which I
gathered was more than a month ago. Apparently she hadn't told them
she was dating me until she asked them if I could spend Thanksgiving
with them, saying that my family lived too far to travel, etc.

The Cartwrights' house wasn't much bigger than the Eames' house, but
it had a lot more people in it; besides Katie's stepdad, mom, dad,
and stepmom, there were more kids than I could keep track of at first.
It wasn't until supper that they were all sitting still at once and
I could count them: two high school girls, one boy in middle school,
and two asexuals, one about six and one about three.

Katie had told me some about her family during our dates, and I pieced
together more from what people said during the weekend. Katie's dad had
stayed male for the first five years after the Divergence, and he and
Katie's mom had married Gus a year or so afterward, who'd been his best
friend, and changed into a woman right after the Divergence. Then five
years ago, Katie's dad became female as well, and rather than break up
the family, they decided they'd all stay together and find another man,
and if they took too long to find one, maybe one of them would turn male.
They married Katie's stepdad Iris a little over a year later, and things
had been stable since then except for a couple of the children changing
sex when starting a new grade.

I shared a room with Katie's little brother Alice; there was a second
bed in the room, which apparently belonged to his brother when one of
his older siblings was male. At the moment both of them were female.
Katie had a room to herself, but her various parents kept an eye out
and made sure I didn't go near it.

I got to know Alice a little better than Katie's other siblings,
sharing a room with him; he was thirteen, and had a big shelf full
of dolls or action figures representing most of the three hundred and
seventy-one neospecies found east of the Mississippi. "I'll have all of
them in another year," he said, "and then I'll start in on the western
neospecies."

"What about Mississippi mudcats?" I asked. "Do they count as eastern
or western?"

"Both," he said, "but I've already got them, look here," and he pointed
to one of the four-inch figures on a lower shelf. I bent down and
looked, not wanting to pick it up -- I wasn't sure if it was a toy or
a collectible. It wore a little swimsuit, which I was pretty sure most
real Mississippi mudcats didn't bother with when swimming. Its skin
was a little darker than Lindsey's. Most Mississippi mudcats have skin
darker than they had before the Divergence, but some of those who were
African-American before got a little lighter.

He asked me bluntly why I used a cane, and I told him about the car
accident my parents died in, and how the doctors hadn't been able to fix
my broken leg and hip quite right. Then he asked me about the neospecies
that lived in Nebraska, and I told him something about Lincoln bison
and Omaha sheepdogs, and a little about North Platte dreamers.

About then, one of his female parents -- it took me a while to get them
straight -- called us to supper.

-----

At supper, I met the rest of the family who hadn't been there when we
arrived, and was introduced to them, though it took me a couple of days
to get everyone's names straight. Katie's dad had just gotten back
from a last-minute grocery run, and she and Katie's mom and stepmom
wanted to hear all about me. Katie and I told them how we met, and
how we started dating, and so forth, and I told them how I'd lived in
Hebron most of the time since the Divergence, but kind of glossed over
the fact that I hadn't gone through puberty until I went off to college.
Water under the bridge, and I'd had enough weird reactions to that news
already, back when I couldn't avoid some explanation for why I was so
undersized and young-looking.

"So you're the only rabbit in your family?" Katie's dad said. "That's
too bad. All my brothers are different species, but we're fortunate
that Kathy and I and the kids were all in the same change-region on
Valentine's day, even if Kathy was out running errands at the moment
and Katie was visiting a friend. I was frantic, hearing about all the
accidents on the news, and not able to get through to them because the
network was so clogged."

"I did get in an accident," her mom said, "but it wasn't too bad; I
and another car behind me were already slowing down at a stop light,
and he ran into me while I ran into the car that had already stopped at
the light. None of us were too badly hurt, but we were so confused...!
And then we waited a long time for the cops before we realized they
had worse problems to deal with, and decided to just exchange insurance
information and go home. But it took a while because of all the wrecks
blocking the roads."

So that led to everyone telling about where they were and what they were
doing when it happened, at least everyone who was old enough to remember;
and Katie's dad filled in for Alice, who'd been with him at the time.
"She was really scared," she said, "and she didn't seem to recognize me at
first, until I spoke. My voice hadn't changed... She was already using
the potty on her own by then, we'd gotten her out of diapers just a few
months earlier, and so it was a while before we realized she'd become
asexual -- we didn't think to look until we heard on the news about all
the other kids." Alice's ears were twitching, and I felt bad for him;
Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler didn't tell embarrassing stories about me as
a child as often as Carl or Ron's parents, but I'd been on the receiving
end often enough to know what it was like.

"I was too embarrassed to tell y'all anything," Katie's sister Tom said.
"You were so worried about Mom, and everything was so weird I didn't
want to bother you with this other weird thing."

"When I saw I was asexual I thought it was another thing that got
messed up in the accident," I said. "I got a concussion and couldn't
remember the transformation or the wreck, but I knew I must have been
in an accident because the last thing I remember we're in the car,
and the next, I'm waking up in a hospital with my leg in traction."

At this point Katie's stepmom Gus asked if we could talk about something
more appetizing, and we changed the subject. It wasn't until later that
Katie told me what she'd been doing at the time of the Divergence: she'd
been across the street at a friend's house, sitting in her friend's
bedroom talking and listening to music. They freaked out when they
transformed, like most people did, but were safe enough, unlike her
friend's mom, who was carrying a basket of clean laundry up the stairs
when she transformed, and fell backwards down the stairs -- fortunately
she'd just started climbing the stairs, and had only two or three
steps to fall, or she might have been killed. As it was she suffered a
concussion and several broken bones, and was in the hospital for months.
Katie's dad had come over to get her when she hadn't come home right
afterward, bringing her little brother and sister with him since he
couldn't leave them alone, and found Katie and her friend standing by her
friend's unconscious mom, trying to dial 911 and getting busy signals.
It took them over an hour to get through.

-----

Thanksgiving morning, Katie's parents had some work for us to do, but not
in the kitchen. It was too crowded with four adults working at once.
They asked Katie to watch her little siblings while they were busy.
"You know Tom and Grant have to watch the little ones all the time;
and you haven't seen them in too long," her dad said.

"Sure," Katie said, and she and I took the little kids, Usagi and Jenny,
up to their bedroom and played with them until it was time for dinner.
Both of them were Katie's half-siblings; Usagi's dad was Katie's dad,
and her mom was Gus, while Jenny's mom was Katie's dad, and her dad was
Katie's stepdad Iris.

Usagi and Jenny pulled all of their toys out of the toybox one by one
and showed them to me and explained them. There were a lot of toys that
looked like old-style humans, hand-me-downs that their older siblings had
acquired before the Divergence, and a lot of non-human toys -- dinosaurs,
prehistoric megafauna and robots, mostly. There were only a few Raleigh
rabbit dolls.

"This is Dejah Thoris," Usagi explained, holding up a naked doll that
looked like an old-style human woman except for the bright red skin.

"What neospecies is she?" I asked.

"She's a Martian princess," Usagi said, and Katie laughed.

"When Alice was about four or five," she said, "I read _A Princess of
Mars_ to her at bedtime. And we took one of the old Barbie dolls I'd
bequeathed her and painted it with red nail polish to be Dejah Thoris."

After dinner, most of us piled into two cars and drove to Knightdale
High School, where the soccer team from South Garner High was visiting.
Little Jenny was sleepy and needed a nap, and their mommy, Katie's dad,
stayed home with them.

Katie's stepsister Grant (Gus's child by her first marriage) was on the
SGHS team. They did well, but the Knightdale team was doing a little
better and it looked like they were going to win, until a couple of
Grant's teammates scored goals near the end and pulled ahead.

I remembered that Knightdale was where Sarah, Rob and Bill's families
lived, and I looked around the bleachers during lulls in the action
on the field, to see if I could spot any of them. I finally saw Rob,
and waved to her, but I don't think she saw me. After the game I found
her, though, and we talked for a few minutes before we had to leave.
She told me that Sarah was spending the afternoon with Rico's family,
but her family wanted her at home today; she'd go over to Rico's tomorrow.

In the evening, we watched a couple of movies. I sat squeezed in
between Katie and Alice on one of the sofas, holding Katie's hand,
with her leaning against me and our ears brushing from time to time.
It was almost as good as a date.

-----

[[You Could Go Home Again/Part16|Part 16]]

You Could Go Home Again/Part15 - Revision history

Trismegistus Shandy: chapter 15