Everyone from my old life had a different reaction to my change. After I told them who I was, I would look at them and see contempt, confusion, sometimes even perverse delight. I found that the hardest to understand. Maybe they thought, “Wait until I tell my friends about this!” But in the case of my guest, once the usual shock passed, the emotion I saw most clearly was some kind of disbelief. Was it skepticism? Did he think I was playing a joke?
I had been getting ready to receive him in the living room when he came in suddenly, all rainwater and stiffness, making an awkward squeaking noise on the tile with his shoes. The door slammed shut outside, which meant that my roommate had just left. He must have let Sebastian in, which might have been a bad decision. But they had no way of knowing that ahead of time.
The clock read four o’clock on the dot. If I had known, I would have gotten changed sooner. I didn’t even have a moment to fix my hair. In jeans and a carelessly tied ponytail, I felt frowsy, put off, out of my element. Honestly, who showed up to a social call exactly on time? Still, I did my best to give him a friendly smile, as if everything were going as planned.
He didn’t buy it.
“You’re a woman,” said Sebastian.
What was the best response to something like that? I tried to think of something good. But finally I gave up and said, “Yeah. I am.”
I didn’t bother using my natural male voice, which I would do sometimes if someone turned out to be dense. Not so for him: Despite the hair grown out for several years, the breasts developed with hormones, the drawn-out agonies of laser hair removal, jawbone shaving, chin sculpting and brow reconstruction, somehow I still came through to Sebastian as the person I once was. Maybe it was the shitty makeup.
I gestured to the loveseat, but Sebastian stayed standing, gripping his pea coat with white fingers. “When did you plan on telling me about this?” he asked.
“Normally I would have said so right away,” I said, “and then it would have been up to you.”
“So why the hell didn’t you?” He began to raise his voice, and then caught himself. I became aware that we were alone in the apartment, but he wasn’t going to scare me.
I shrugged. “Sometimes I just want to wait and discuss it in person.” I knew that was BS. I absolutely should have said something from the start. That kind of honesty was what my therapist referred to as “building the foundation for your new life.” It was inadvisable to shock the people with whom I hoped to build a healthy relationship as a female. Et cetera, et cetera.
I had no good reason. Several days ago, the day Sebastian called and asked for Tom, I said, “Just a moment, he’s right here.” Then I waited a beat before uncovering the receiver and speaking in my old voice. “Hello?”
“Tom Baines?” he said. He sounded like an auditor. “This is Sebastian, Sebastian Reynolds. Do you remember me?”
“Yeah, of course I remember you. We were best friends in elementary school.” Masculine syllables plodded out, a boring and flat monotone.
Out of all the changes I had to undergo, vocal training had to be the hardest. For months I struggled to achieve the melodious ups and downs, the myriad tones that made women’s voices so wonderful. At home, in the safety of a mirror, I would recite the lines I always wanted to say: “Those mittens are so cute.” “Strawberry cheesecake.” “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met, my name is…” I knew I had made progress when I called home and got my father to pass the phone to my mother without so much as a hint of recognition. I’m sure he would have cursed at least once if he had recognized me.
My voice was still somewhat husky. Nothing could be done about that: Surgery on the vocal cords was expensive and dangerous. But modulation did the job better than a higher pitch ever could.
Over the phone, Sebastian told me how he ran into my mother while he was in Albany on business. After finding out that I actually lived nearby, she gave him my number so he could pay me a visit. I wondered if that was my mother’s rough sense of humor or a genuine attempt to help me out.
“Would you be okay with meeting for lunch?” he said. “We could catch up.”
“We could,” I said. There was uncomfortable silence, and then a manic urge made me speak again. “Hey, how about you just come over to my place?” And so it went. I couldn’t justify myself if I wanted to.
The Sebastian in front of me now was pretty much the person I had expected: Tall yet unspectacular, in a gray rack suit that didn’t work well with his nice designer shoes. He reminded me of one of the clients at the bar, the one who smelled of dinner at the country club and liked when I wore frilly things.
“I’m sorry, Tom—”
“I go by Autumn now,” I said.
“Whatever. Look, I’m sorry,” he said. He thrust one arm into his pea coat. “This is too weird, okay?”
“Well, don’t just go after coming all this way.” I took a step forward. He stepped back and obviously avoided looking at me as he struggled with his coat. But he didn’t turn and run. I had that happen once with a classmate from high school. Sebastian had that going for him, at least.
“This is really messed up,” he said. “I’m going to go. I have to catch the cab.”
“Are you kidding? The cab’s gone by now. You’ll need to call another one.” I reached for his coat. “Look, I’m sorry for not telling you. But anyway, it’s pouring outside. Just call the cab company and tell them to pick you up here. It’ll be all right if you wait in the living room.”
“Uh,” he said. He was obviously running through the logistics. “Okay, I need to call for a cab. You’re right.” He hesitated. “But I can wait outside.”
“You’re going to stand in the rain for twenty minutes?” I crossed my arms. “For god’s sake, Sebastian, I’m not going to rape you. Just sit down and fucking relax! You’re making me nervous!”
Sebastian glared at me. Against the living room window, a tree branch in the wind made muffled knocks to the sound of rain.
“Fine,” he said. “Until the cab comes.”
He took off his coat and gloves, but instead of giving them to me, he kept them bunched up under his arm and sat down as lightly as possible on the loveseat in the living room. Sebastian took out a boxy cell phone and began pressing buttons. I sat down in my roommate’s leather armchair and said nothing. Outside, the rain poured steadily, and it was getting colder. I would need to turn on the thermostat soon.
“Who was that guy at the door?” he asked after he finished his call. “Boyfriend?”
“Just my roommate,” I replied. “He was probably going out to see his boyfriend, though.”
“Oh.” He pocketed his phone. “Right, of course.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” Sebastian stared at the floor. “Nice rug.”
I ignored the half-assed compliment. “Are you cold?” I asked. “It’s freezing outside. You must be chilly. How about some hot coffee?”
He studied his hands at his lap. “Coffee sounds fine.” Then as an afterthought: “Thanks.”
“Mm-hmm. I’ll go make some right now. There’s a newspaper on the table if you want to read something.”
The kitchen was only partly hidden from the living room by a section of wall, the better to let natural light in. But there was a tiny alcove where I kept all the dry goods. It wasn’t much, but there was enough space for me to lean against the stove and take a few deep breaths in blessed privacy. I needed to gather my thoughts. I needed to meditate.
Two orange plastic bottles stood on the counter. They were on the wet bar, in Sebastian’s sight, but he was hardly looking as he made his call. One was an oestrogen supplement, the other was an anti-androgen. I alternated between them every day.
As a teenager, I secretly ordered hormones by mail. I paid for them with money orders from the post office, and had my packages received by a much older friend who had his own place. The pills came from god-knows-where, but they had some effect: I felt it in my hips, in the newfound puffiness that manifested in my areolas, in the subtly shifting contours of my face. The morning shower became my most cherished time, when I could stand back and admire my body’s handiwork. Still, there wasn’t a drastic change. I went undiscovered all through high school. I didn’t even join the Gay-Straight Alliance, as much as I could have used the friends.
The day I turned eighteen, I marched straight to a clinic and found the name of a sympathetic endocrinologist. By the end of the following month, I got started on hormones—real hormones, ones that entered me like a man and swirled through my blood, transforming me down to the last capillary. In terms of tangible change, injections did most of the really hard work. But pills helped my state of mind. Born women had their bodies from the start, so of course it didn’t cross their minds. But I knew the truth, even when I mixed drinks at the club in a man’s jacket: Womanhood was a never-ending ritual, each dose an affirmation.
I filled the electric kettle and turned it on. I was about to get out the French press and the coffee grinder, but I stopped myself. I had a better idea.
From the drawer under the cupboard, I pulled out a small tin. The name of its contents was written in fine green pen: Blue Lily of the Nile. I popped open the tin with a souvenir spoon from Wales. It was one of the last little mementos from my family, who took great pride in their obscure Anglo-Saxon roots. My mother bought it for me shortly before I announced my decision to become a woman, and it happened to be among the things I packed up in a hurry when my father kicked me out of the house. I kept it close ever since. Inside the tin were dried flowers: a mass of delicate yellow pistils and blue leaves.
The water was ready. I poured a little into the teapot, swirling it around to heat up the china. Warm vapor curled from the sink as I poured it out. Two heaping teaspoons of Blue Lily went into the pot, plus one extra for the hell of it. The petals made a noise almost like a sizzle as I poured the boiling water.
I put the teapot into a pink embroidered cozy, picked it up with a dish towel and went outside with a plate of cookies. I played good hostess and poured some of the contents into Sebastian’s cup, keeping my fingertips on the lid to keep it from falling out. “I’m all out of coffee,” I lied, “so I hope you don’t mind an herbal tisane. It’s still very hot. Do you take honey or sugar?”
“Um. Honey,” said Sebastian, staring at my hands. My nails were freshly clipped and buffed from the salon down the street, but they were unpainted. The ladies who ran the shop did their cuticles perfectly, but they were all out of the color I wanted, and I wasn’t about to go around with hot pink or cherry red like some queen. I dipped into a dark jar of honey and twirled the spoon as I pulled it out, like playing with a strand of spider web.
“You should be excited,” I said, as I stirred the honey into Sebastian’s cup. “This is a very special flower you’re drinking.”
He took a tentative sip, his eyes not moving away from my hands. “What is it?” he asked.
“A kind of lily. Priests in ancient Egypt used to use it to induce a state of ecstasy.” I smiled when he stopped drinking. “But supposedly they smoked it. As a tea it’s harmless.”
“I see,” he said. He gestured at the plate. “Is there anything in these cookies I should know about?”
“Chocolate chip and cranberries?” I poured myself some tea. I arched an eyebrow and added, “Try one. They’re oatmeal.”
Sebastian took one, stared at it, made as if to smell it, then looked up at me and stopped. He probably thought that might be going too far. He made a very small bite, chewed very slowly, swallowed. Then he sipped some tea. “These aren’t bad,” he concluded. “Did you make these?”
“Mm-hmm. Feel free to have as many as you’d like.” They were store bought, but he didn’t have to know. I went through my Julia Child, Someday-I’ll-Open-A-Pastry-Shop phase when I was sixteen, but that ended after only a few weeks of salty pies and rubbery ginger snaps. My father was the harshest critic, but I think he resented how much pleasure my mother got from watching me shuffle around the kitchen. Luckily for him, baking was a bitch. Now I just paid my weekly dues to the patisserie on the nicer side of town.
Sebastian finished the palm-sized cookie in two more bites—big ones, the bites of a man eating something he liked. Well, finally. That was the first endearing thing I’d seen about him since the moment he came in. He finished his cup, and I poured him some more. “Thank you,” he said.
“Oh, of course.” I hummed as I poured for myself next. “So, what do you do for a living? You look like you came from a business meeting.”
“CPA,” he said, working on another cookie. “I balance the sheets for corporations.”
“Oh. That sounds complicated.”
“It can be,” he said. “Actually, just last week I had to take a job from,” he named some company that I was vaguely aware made more money than a small African country. Once he started talking about them, he warmed up to the topic quickly. That was nice to see, but it was a long story, and kind of complicated.
Before long I felt the effects of the Blue Lily settle in. It was a kind of euphoria, a subtle spreading of the mind, as if my brain were a sponge and suddenly had room to grow in the inner expanses of my head. Unique, perhaps, but it wasn’t much worse than having a couple mimosas. I could tell it was affecting Sebastian, too. He looked a little less dour, more inclined to relax, which was what I wanted. On his third cup of tea he put in a huge spoonful of honey and savored the aroma.
“This honey smells like clover,” he said. “Is it clover honey?”
“French forest,” I said. “Do you like it?”
“Mmm,” said Sebastian. He wasn’t chomping on cookies anymore; he was nibbling them slowly, letting bits and pieces crumble in his mouth. Blue Lily will do that to you, too. Simple pleasures become something you want to draw out and enjoy indefinitely. The spreading looseness in my limbs reminded me of a good smoke, or the afterglow of climax. It reminded me of death, too.
Sebastian moved away when I was twelve. He left at a good time, just before puberty set in and I felt myself become a monster. At thirteen, my voice cracked, hair grew everywhere, and my shoes needed replacing every six months. Every night I found a new indignity visited upon my body, which all the plucking and shaving and special creams in the world would not fix before another popped up in its place. The transformation was unbearable. One day my parents found me in the garage, sitting in my father’s car with the engine running and the windows rolled down.
I lost consciousness just as I heard them jangling the keys to the front door. They were home earlier than they said they would be, which was annoying, but only distantly. My consciousness floated, taking my limbs with it up dark clouds of carbon monoxide. Then I awoke to beige walls, locked windows, the tears of my mother. The doctors said I was very lucky to have survived. My father was red in the face and alternated between talking very quietly to doctors and shouting at me. Gradually I understood what made him so mad: The nurses at the ER had cut off my clothes and seen that I was wearing a bra.
When everyone finally left, I spent the rest of the day until sunset looking out the window, at the leaves outside, which barely held their branches before fluttering in the wind in patterns of red and gold. That day, I felt a manic urge stir in my breast, and I decided I would live to become a woman. After my fifteenth birthday, I ordered my first set of hormones. And, just because it happened to be on the same page in the catalog, because I was feeling curious and more than a little rebellious, I also ordered one and a half ounces of Blue Lily.
“I don’t get it, Tom,” said Sebastian.
“Autumn.”
“Autumn, right. I don’t get it,” he rubbed his left temple. “Why did you want to be a woman?”
“Well, why don’t you want to be a woman?”
“Well,” he said, “I’m fine with what I have.”
“And I’m fine now, too. I’m a hell of a lot happier than I used to be.” I sipped my tea. “It’s not that hard to get, right?”
“I guess,” he said. “But did you feel this way when we were kids? Were you playing tag in the woods and wishing you were a girl?”
“Not in so many words. But I realize now that yes, I did.”
He bit into another cookie and talked as he chewed, covering his mouth with his hand. “Couldn’t you just be gay like your roommate?”
I laughed. “Just gay. God, Robert’s going to get a kick out of that.”
“You don’t have to tell him. I don’t care what he is.” He finished his cup and poured more for himself. “I just don’t understand why you have to dress like a woman if you feel feminine, that’s all. A couple of my friends are gay,” he added.
“That’s only part of it.” I tapped the table with my index finger. “And I’m not just dressing like a woman, I am one.”
“So,” said Sebastian, tapping the table himself, “you’re saying you did everything? Sex change, implants, all of it?”
I stared at him, not quite sure what face I was making, but it couldn’t have been nice. He eventually looked me right in the eye, but only for a moment.
He coughed awkwardly. “My cab’s not here yet. It’s taking a while,” said Sebastian. He looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Another cookie?”
“No, no. I’m fine, thanks.” Sebastian leaned back in the loveseat. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just hard to figure out what to say.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
We were silent for a while. “So,” said Sebastian. “You were a guy. Now you’re a woman.”
“I was always a woman.”
“Right. But,” he looked at his hands, “Do you also like men?”
“Yes. The ones who like women are called trans-lesbians. Nothing wrong with that, though.”
“Uh-huh. But is it ever, you know, a problem, being a woman? How do people take it?” He half-chuckled. “I mean, it’s no small thing.”
“People who meet me for the first time usually can’t tell unless I tell them myself.”
“Do you ever have to though?
I struck a thoughtful pose. “Why, what do you mean?”
“I mean, like…”
He was trying to ask about my sex life. People were naturally the most curious about that. They wondered if I had to go to newspaper personals, or reenact the lyrics to “Lola” at night clubs, as if I couldn’t hook up without beer goggles. It was hard to explain that quite a few normal men were actually attracted to women like me.
The customers at the bar tended to be well-off, often married, with a kid or two, but they tended to hide their rings from me. One gave me a long confession about his first homosexual experience at a boarding school in New Hampshire. There were plenty of receipts that came with phone numbers scrawled on them, or awkward fellows trying to buy me a drink while I was still on the clock. The guys weren’t always so nice, but they were, as far as I could tell, what anybody would call normal guys. Just like Sebastian.
“If people need to know, I tell them,” I said.
“You mean like you told me.”
I dodged the insinuation. “Right, and now you know.” I drank what was left in my cup in one go. It was cold, and the honey congealed at the bottom. “I’ve dated as a woman before, Sebastian. It’s not that weird.”
“Sure,” he said. “I never said you didn’t.” He polished off his cup, but he didn’t get more. He seemed to be thinking about something. “Hey. Do you remember playing pretend?”
“A little bit,” I said. “You mean when we were kids.”
“Yeah. There was this one time I’m thinking of now…” Sebastian trailed off. He shook his head. “No, never mind.”
“What? What was it?”
“It’s stupid. Forget I said anything.” He reached for a cookie.
I reached for one, too, or maybe I was trying to stop his hand. “Well, now I’m all curious. You can’t just…”
Our fingers brushed. There was a moment of silence, and then Sebastian took his cookie, which was actually mine. I gave him more tea.
“All right,” he said, finally. “There was this one time, we were playing knights and dragons, or something like that. It was all guys, some of us were knights, and some of us were dragons.” He paused to see if I was recognizing anything, but I said nothing. He continued, “So, anyway, we’re playing—I’m a knight, by the way—and one of the guys decides we need a goal. The dragons have to be guarding something, right? So… I don’t know why we didn’t just do treasure or something, but we decided on a princess. And,” he sipped his tea, grimaced and added honey. “And nobody wanted to do it. But then somehow, you ended up being it. I don’t remember if we forced you, if we played rock paper scissors…” He didn’t look at me. “I don’t know. Was it because you wanted to?”
I told him the truth. “I don’t remember this.”
“Really?”
“Nope.”
Sebastian let that sink in. “Yeah, I guess I don’t know why. I wasn’t even the one who saved you at the end. I remember that, too.” He finished his cookie.
“I’m surprised you can recall that.”
“Well, you remembered me when I called, didn’t you?” he said.
“That’s true. Somehow or other you stuck.” I smiled.
After a pause, he said, “All right, another question,” he wiped his mouth with a tissue. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to.”
“We’ll see. Just ask away,” I said.
“Do…” Sebastian paused. “Do you have to shave? I mean, your face and stuff?”
I blinked. “What? No!” I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “Oh my god, that’s gross!”
“Well, come on! I don’t know!” He acted indignant and made a funny smile. It was a frowny-smile, pretend seriousness.
“I guess it’s not a bad question.” I cleared my throat. “It was all lasered. My face, my torso, my legs too. I guess I could have just done the face, but I wanted it all gone.” I rolled up one leg of my jeans and showed him. “See, I even have a scar right here from an electric burn.” I pointed to a spot on my calf.
Sebastian leaned forward, staring closely. “Couldn’t you sue for that?”
Of course he’d say something like that. “I didn’t think it was worth the time, and it got discounted,” I replied. “You can hardly notice it anyway. See? It sort of looks like a birthmark.”
He touched it. He prodded it like a science experiment, rather than how one ought to treat a woman’s leg. He was so graceless about it, and it was so sudden that I drew in a sharp breath. But Sebastian seemed to realize what he was doing when he heard that, and he withdrew. His touch when he pulled back was gentler, somehow.
“Sorry,” he said quickly.
“No, it’s fine. Now you know I’m not a mutant,” I said. I tried to play it casual, but I felt my ears betray me by growing hot. I looked at Sebastian’s fingers: long, nimble like a piano player’s, with gracelessly clipped cuticles. I couldn’t remember which finger it was that touched me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, breaking the awkward silence. “For not telling you everything.”
“You said so already. It’s all right,” he said. “I mean,” he searched for words, but seemed to come up empty. “I’m happy. For you. That you made the choice that was… best, I guess.”
“Thanks.”
There was a honk outside. A few moments later, Sebastian’s phone rang. He picked up.
“That’s the cab,” he said when he hung up.
“Good timing,” I said.
“Yeah, tell me about it. Really good.” Sebastian stood up. He wobbled a bit as he put on his coat, but if he felt bothered by the unexpected intoxication, he didn’t say so. Instead, as he headed for the door, he handed me a business card that he had pulled out of his pocket. The paper was warm and weak in my hand, touched by Sebastian’s body heat.
“Here’s my contact info, Autumn,” he said. He stuttered around my name. “I’m not sure when I’ll be around next, but…”
I felt a manic urge in my breast then, and I followed it out of my body, across the few feet or so of distance between my childhood friend and me, all the way up to Sebastian’s cheek where I planted a light kiss.
Sebastian’s hand touched my shoulder, made almost as if to grip it. With a heavy exhalation, he let go. He turned and left without another word.
I stood in the silence for a long while after he shut the door, listening to the cab drive away. The card was in my pocket, losing Sebastian’s warmth but gaining mine in return.
I went back to the living room. His cup was half full. I emptied it into my mouth, tasted the overwhelming sweetness, and as I lowered the cup I noticed something: Sebastian had left his gloves on the sofa. I picked them up and went to the kitchen.
The tin of Blue Lily was still out. I looked at the side of the tin and read the words that were scribbled on masking tape, in fine green pen: “In scrolls and engravings from ancient Egypt, Nefertem, the goddess of beauty and desire, is depicted with a flower blooming over her head. That flower is the Blue Lily of the Nile: the center point of creation, the embodiment of womanhood and the womb of the universe. This gentle herb promotes relaxation and holistic well-being for the senses.”
That was the description I read on the day I ordered my hormones. Still, to this day, with all my heart, I believed it. Thinking of those words and about the future, I put the flowers and gloves into the same drawer, and I wondered if Sebastian would call again.