Unusual Punishment: Parts 1 And 2 free porn video

Unusual Punishment, Parts One and Two By Norman O. Johnson In 1900, two primary forces were known: electromagnetic and gravitational. During the following century, two more (the major atomic and the minor atomic) were discovered. One thing was still unknown: a fifth force to hold the other four together, and through them show to humanity the secret of the order to the universe. It came to be called the Unified Field. In the early 21st century, the Unified Field was discovered. Its first practical applications were in medicine. A new device, the Unified Field BioConcentrator, could stimulate the regrowth of amputated limbs, eliminate carcinomas without surgery, remove unwanted body fat, and correct birth defects. All these procedures could be performed in less than half an hour, with only a few minutes of pain and discomfort to the patient. It was acclaimed as a miracle of modern science, because it was. Then the criminal justice system found a use for it. This is the story of an unusual punishment. ### They wheeled me into the room on a gurney, with my arms and legs restrained, and my mouth gagged. I was naked under a white sheet. It seemed appropriate. I had never been so vulnerable as at that moment. Despite that, I took my mind off of my predicament for a moment to take in the sight of a Concentrator. I'd never seen one except on TV. A bulky dark gray box that contained the guts of the machine took up most of the length of the room. I couldn't see the generators. They must have been in the next room. These bad boys used an incredible amount of electricity, as much as two Megawatts, in many brief pulses. Actually, many operations take only a few minutes. A sex change takes 30 minutes. The Juvenile Court had sentenced me to one year at the girls' reformatory, as a girl. Today, they would make a girl out of me. I felt like I was like being strapped into an electric chair. I kept telling myself it was only for a year. I kept telling myself that since I was only sixteen, my name wouldn't appear in the papers, and my record would be expunged when I turned eighteen. Mom and Dad had already agreed that when I got out, I would go to a different school. And above all, I would only be a girl for a year. Yeah, right. Me without a shlong for a year, and I'm supposed to survive, and keep my sanity. No way. The machine had an alcove in the side where the operator sat at a display screen. He was a tall, lanky guy with a trimmed short beard and a receding hairline. "So," he said, "that's our transsexual?" He regarded me with contempt. He knew I was no transsexual. He saw the anger in my face, and snickered. "In a few minutes, girl, you're gonna have a 34-26-35 figure. Your cup size will be B. Want bigger ones? It can be arranged." I growled something incoherent through my gag. "Well, boo-hoo, honey. You don't know how to use it, so now you're gonna lose it." "Let's get on with it, Vaughan," said one of the two correctional officers, a middle-aged black man. He and his younger female associate wheeled me into position between the two focusing elements. The focusing elements were two arcs of metal coming out of the end of the machine. One lay on the floor and curved upward. The other arched downward from above. The gurney was rolled into the space right between them. The upper focusing element loomed over me. It was one pole of a huge magnet. Magnetism was used to focus the unified field. Vaughan was busy at the display screen for a moment, moving a mouse and keying things in. A synthetic voice announced, "Activation in thirty seconds." Vaughan wheeled around in his swivel chair to watch Kevin Lauterbach, juvenile offender, annihilated before his eyes. This is really gonna happen, I thought. They're not kidding. They're really gonna turn me into a chick. I didn't really believe it before now. "Activation in twenty-five seconds." Statutory rape, I was thinking. Why do they call it rape? It's not like I forced myself on that little slut. She loved it. It was her idea. It was her asshole of a father who insisted on prosecuting. "Activation in twenty seconds." How did I know she was fourteen? She said she was sixteen, and she had such big headlights, I believed her. "Activation in fifteen seconds." It's only for a year. I'll be the butchest girl in the school. The dykiest. The most extreme tomboy. I'll keep my masculinity, somehow. "Activation in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. . . ." Who am I kidding? I can't be a girl. I won't. I won't stand for it. "Six. Five. Four. . . ." I'll break every rule in the book. I'll assault the guards and force them to shoot me. It will be better to die. "Three. Two." I won't be a girl. I won't! "One. Activate." ### Part One: This Body, My Prison The concentrator does something to your short-term memory. I don't remember lying there feeling my body being remolded from male to female. I don't remember waking up, finding my penis gone, and screaming with terror. I don't remember weeping hysterically as I was wheeled back to my hospital room. I had lost about an hour of my life. The first thing I remember after that awful countdown is myself sitting on a hospital bed wearing my orange prison jumpsuit. I was under house arrest in a hospital, because that's where all concentrators are found. I was wiping my eyes with a tissue. My throat was sore, which is how I knew I'd been screaming. This new body felt so wrong! I wasn't exactly a decathlon champion before, but now my arms and shoulders seemed pitifully weak. I had breasts now. Hanging inside my first bra, their weight surprised me. My waist was narrower. My hips seemed to be a foot wide and burdened with most of the weight of my body. My thighs also felt fat. And between my thighs I had nothing. Nothing sticking out, and nothing hanging down. I was a feeble, penetrable, defenseless, sexless, terrified blob of fat. Only a year? I didn't think I'd last that long. As I finished wiping my face, my parents came into the room. The time for recriminations and angry lectures was before and during the trial. They had never made excuses for my tomcat behavior, but they were as appalled as I was at the sentence. Turning rapists into females was one thing, but turning a sixteen-year-old boy into one for banging some slut that was only two years younger was quite another. "Oh, my God," said Dad. "He's so damned short!" I was only two inches shorter, but I must have looked smaller because I wasn't holding my head up. He sat down beside me on the bed, hugged me, and let my head rest on his shoulder. "Neither of us is excusing what you did, son, but this is a horrible thing they've done to you." "Thank you for calling me 'son,' Dad. I'm so scared." I was hoarse throughout the conversation. Mom sat down on the other side. She took me from Dad, hugged me, and kissed me on the cheek. "We still love you, Kevin," she said. "We'll do what we can to make this easier for you. Write us often. Tell us just what you're feeling. Phone us too. We love you." "It's gonna be a very long year, Mom," I said. "I'll get through it somehow." Only now I noticed the suitcase on the floor beside my Dad. "What's in that?" "We bought you some underwear," said Mom, "and something to lounge around in when you're not wearing your school uniform. It's all very unisex. You know, sweatpants and stuff like that." "Thanks, Mom. I don't expect to be very girly. Listen to me! Even my voice sounds wrong." It was as high-pitched as it had sounded when I was eleven, but richer and fuller. A woman's voice. "Kevin," said Dad, "neither of us can fully know what you're going through right now, but we have no trouble understanding that it's terrible, do we, Miriam?" "Terrible is exactly the word for it, Mike," said Mom. "You'll be getting letters soon from a girl named Karen." "Karen?" they echoed in unison. "Yes, that will be my name at reform school. But I won't let either of you guys call me anything but Kevin. Okay?" Hugs and good-byes were exchanged, and they left. The two correctional officers escorted me out of the hospital to a waiting bus. It was a prison bus, taking some new girls to the school. As the bus pulled away from the hospital, I looked back on it sadly: Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, the place where Kevin Lauterbach had been put to death. I looked down at my lap. Under the jumpsuit lurked a female organ. I knew that this thing was more than just a hole. Now that I owned one, however, I felt like it was only one more way a hostile world could get into me. I ignored the passing scenery, and ruminated on the horror of my existence. They have turned me into a girl. They have named me Karen. This body is my prison. Only suicide can free me from it. But I cannot be killed. I must already be dead, because I am in hell. ### The prison bus took from Durham southwards to Garner in Wake County, near Raleigh, the state capital. Ida Cynthia Watkins Girls' Reformatory School was on an attractively landscaped campus with shade trees, outdoor basketball and volleyball courts, and three main buildings: dormitory, gymnasium, and a main building that contained both the offices and classrooms. All three buildings were connected by breezeways. A fifteen-foot high chain link fence with razor wire on top surrounded the whole campus. This school was also a prison. As if living in this body were not prison enough. The bus stopped in front of the gym. The guard detail on the bus turned us over to school security personnel. Fifteen of us, twelve black girls and three white girls, got off the bus and stood together on the pavement. Four burly female guards took positions around us. A fifth one, a tough looking stocky blonde demanded our attention. "Welcome to Ida Cynthia Watkins Girls' Reformatory School. My name is Rachel Hunsucker. I am Chief of Security here. You may call me Chief or Ms. Hunsucker. First I'm going to call the roll, to make sure you're all here." It was in alphabetical order. Midway down the list was a certain Wanda Jeane Lassiter. The next name was Karen Lauterbach. I hesitated. I couldn't bring myself to answer to the name of Karen. "Karen Lauterbach," she repeated. "Is Karen Lauterbach here?" "Here," I said, dying a little inside. It was the first time I'd ever answered to a girl's name. It would not be the last. "Front and center, Ms Lauterbach!" the Chief barked. I stepped to the front of the group. "Why didn't you answer when I called your name?" "I'm not used to being called Karen, Chief. It, it, wasn't, wasn't my name until this morning." She smiled like a hungry wolf bearing her teeth. Then she addressed the other girls. "Well, now, girls! It looks like Ms. Lauterbach is a new girl in more ways than one." The girls laughed. The Chief wheeled suddenly back to me and touched me between the legs with the tip of her billyclub. She rubbed it back and forth against my labia for a second or two, then withdrew it. I shuddered. The girls were still laughing, jeering, catcalling. One voice jumped out, a slow Coastal Southern drawl from the white girl named Lassiter. "Come own ovah to mah cell sometime, Loser-Bitch, an' we kin do ah nails togethuh!" It came to me in a flash. The sex change girls were at the bottom of the heap here. I was in for a lot of hazing. Just off the bus, I already had my personal bully: Wanda Jeane Lassiter. As for the Chief of Security, I resolved never to forgive her for humiliating me. I was off to a great start. ### They lead us into a locker room and ordered us to strip to the skin. It was a terrible thing to have to unclothe this unwanted body in front of a bunch of strange girls, who, whatever they thought of their own bodies, didn't object to being female. I overheard some of them snickering or giggling, and was sure they were still making fun of me. We turned in our jail-issue clothes, were measured, and received new uniforms, including socks, shoes and underwear. As advertised, my new bust was B-cup size. In a few minutes, we were suited up like proper schoolgirls. We wore black low-heel pumps, black knee socks, knee-length black pleated skirts, white blouses, red neckties and black jackets with the school seal on the right breast. We were also issued a shoulder bag, which contained some necessary school supplies: pens, pencils, erasers, and blank notebooks. They were trying to pretend this place was a school. I already knew better. The girls who measured us and issued the clothes were about our age. I guessed they were also "students" at the school. The Chief now had another announcement to make. "You will now meet your principal, Helen Martindale. When she says, 'Good afternoon,' you will reply, 'Good Afternoon, Ms. Martindale.'" Helen Martindale, Principal of the school, walked in. She was taller than most of us. Her regal bearing and her navy pantsuit emphasized her height. Greetings were exchanged. She began by assuring us that although the security procedures were tight, this was still a school. The State of North Carolina was offering us a chance to continue our education. She said she hoped we would make the best of our opportunities here. She then read off our daily schedule. Reveille at seven. Breakfast from seven-thirty to eight. We would find our class schedules on our beds when we got to our rooms. Lunch was served at 11:30 or noon, depending on our schedules. The last afternoon class ended at 3:00. The next two hours were our own, but we were expected to study. Dinner was served from 5:00 to 6:30. In the evening on school nights we were expected to study. Lights-out was at 11:00. She pointed out that as juvenile offenders, our criminal records would be wiped out when we turned eighteen, so we could make a fresh start. As long as we studied and obeyed the rules, all would go well with us here. She expressed confidence that most of us would go on to lead productive lives as law-abiding citizens. We were then escorted to our dorm rooms by the guards. With every step I took, my upper thighs reminded me of the horrid absence between them. My punishment had a certain brutal logic. I had misused certain body parts, and therefore they were taken away from me. I didn't feel female, though. I felt like a fat-assed eunuch. I felt like an "it." We crossed a breezeway into the lobby of the dormitory, and were split up by floors. The dormitory had four floors and was divided into three wings. Each wing of the building had a large shower room on each floor. Each room had two beds, two desks, two chairs, two dressers, and a lavatory with sink, medicine cabinet, and toilet. Each floor had a big common room with seats, couches, and wide-screen TVs where the wings met. All the windows were very narrow slits. Four of us, including Lassiter, and me were taken to the second floor. Lassiter was taken off into the West Wing, two other girls to the East Wing, and I to the South Wing. Good, I thought. That bitch Lassiter and I won't be rooming near each other. Many of the girls were sitting in little clusters in the common room, chatting, braiding each other's hair, watching TV, enjoying girl talk, and giggling. Most of the girls were black. That didn't surprise me. I didn't mind that they were black, but they were also criminals. I tried to tell myself that they probably weren't violent criminals, just hookers and shoplifters. Nonetheless, I was scared of them. Surely I didn't qualify as a criminal, did I? How would a freak of nature like me fit in here? I had gotten little encouragement so far. A guard escorted me into my room. I laid down my luggage and my satchel and caught my breath. Goddamned wimpy female muscles! "Where's my roommate?" I complained. "You'll see her directly, I reckon," drawled the female guard. "Have a nice afternoon, hon." For better or worse, I was a girl for the next year. Somehow, I would survive it. I just wasn't sure how. I looked around the room. The beds were bunk beds. My schedule wasn't on the bottom one. I climbed to the top one and found a clipboard with some papers on it. It was the class schedule of Karen Lauterbach. I dropped the clipboard on the bed. My bladder was calling me. I walked into the bathroom, lowered my panties, lifted my skirt, and sat. As the urine leaked out of me, I reflected on my reversal of fortune. A few weeks ago, I had been a testosterone-fueled corndog, always on the prowl for my next conquest. School bored me. The courses were so easy, I didn't have to study. Even Bach and Beethoven bored me at last. Sex filled the gap. Now I belonged to the opposite one. Goddamned dickless female crotch! I'm sorry I screwed that piece of jailbait. I promise I'll never do an underage girl again. Honest! Cross my heart and hope to die. Now can I please have my cock back? I pulled two sheets of toilet paper off the roll, folded them over, and wiped myself off. One of my ex-girlfriends used to let me watch her pee. I had never realized that one day I too would be emptying my bladder like a female. When I was finished, I looked for my face in the mirror. Raised in a house full of boys, I saw the sister I'd never known looking back at me. She had my short dark curly hair, my thick eyebrows, my familiar big brown eyes and elegant nose. On the other hand, her lips were slightly thicker than mine had been. I ran my right hand across my face. No stubble. I lifted my chin slightly and regarded my slender, delicate neck. No Adam's apple. I looked at my right hand. This mysterious Karen, created by the State, had my long nimble piano-playing fingers, but they were attached to fine-boned hands and weak looking arms. The concentrator had stripped of every male characteristic. Kevin lived only inside my brain. I climbed to my bunk, sat on it with my legs over the side, and tried to tell myself that it was only for a year. I had never been this lonely in my life. I heard footsteps in the hallway, and conversations in at least two dialects. Eight girls came into the room together. Five were black. One of the white ones, with honey colored hair cut rather short, stepped forward. "My name's Trey," she said. "I'm your roommate. Welcome to Ida-Watts." Ida-Watts, I thought. Sounds like a Los Angeles ghetto. Seems appropriate. "My name is Ke-Ke-Karen Lauterbach." There was a tall light-skinned black girl with many braids in her hair in the center of the huddle. I heard her whisper, "Get Noodle." One of the black girls left the room. Trey reached up with both hands and touched my legs as close to my knees as she could reach. She pressed them both inward. Taking the hint, I snapped my knees together. Everybody in the room now knew that I had never worn a skirt before. The girls laughed. I laughed too, just a little. I'm not sure why I laughed, unless it was to let out some of the unbearable tension. The tall girl looked up at me. "You used to be a guy, didn't you?" she asked. Though she was black, her dialect sounded Midwestern Caucasian. "Yeah. I don't usually stutter, but I wasn't Karen until today." "I'm Angel," said the tall girl. "I'm president of Mary's Girls, which is a gang. We control this end of the second floor. Our loyalty to each other is absolute. Somebody tries to jump your ass or steal your shit, your sisters are there to back you up. But if you don't join the gang, and you get your ass jumped, that's your problem." I took a deep breath. "What other gangs are there?" I asked. She glanced at the ceiling. "I'm gonna try and explain this one more time, Karen. Listen carefully. We----control---this end---of the second floor." Her meaning was plain: join the gang or we'll kick your white ass. I wasn't as strong as I used to be, and a mob of five or six girls could do me some damage. I remembered the jeers and taunts in the parking lot. I was familiar with high school cliques, but this was clearly more intense. "Okay. I'll join." Two black girls entered the room. One I'd seen before. I guessed the other was Noodle. "You have to pass your initiation first," said Angel. "Noodle, the pantyhose." Noodle was a lanky athletic looking black girl with short nappy hair. She and Angel both had a slightly masculine demeanor, not strictly butch, but definitely butch-femme. Had these two girls once been guys? Noodle stepped up to me and handed me a wadded-up pair of pantyhose. "Come down from there, Karen," Angel commanded, "and put 'em on." Every eye in the room was on me as I came down, took the pantyhose, and went to a chair. Fortunately, I'd watched one of my ex-girlfriends putting her pantyhose on once after we had sex. That would help. I sat down, removed my shoes and knee socks, and stood up to remove my panties. For the second time today, I was going to flash my pussy---an organ that I loathed and abominated---to a whole roomful of strangers. I sighed, dropped my panties, and sat to begin. I wondered if this peculiar thing, which already had a run in it, would fit over my butt. A petite dark black girl with delicate facial features entered the room. She and Angel kissed on the mouth. I bunched up the right leg of the pantyhose down to the toe, inserted my right foot, and got the end over my toes. I pulled it on as far as the heel, then did the same to my left foot. It was awkward, because I couldn't move my legs very far apart. I pulled the hose up my right leg a few inches, then did the same to the left. I kept repeating this process until the strange garment was up to my upper thighs. Then I stood up, and pulled the panty part of it over my broad flabby butt. Mary's Girls laughed and giggled throughout the performance, but they cheered and applauded when I was done. Nobody cheered louder than Noodle. "Aw-right!" she shouted. "The first part of de-initiation now complete!" Trey turned to me. "You better, like, put your shoes back on. The beat down is about to start." Beat down? I didn't like the sound of that. Angel turned to her messenger. "Get all the sisters you can find. It's time for the beat-down." The messenger scampered out of the room. In the distance, I could hear her calling out, "Beat down!" I heard the sound of doors being knocked on. Angel turned to me. "If you pass the beat-down, you're in the gang. Every girl in the gang gets to hit you. They can hit you in the guts or slap your face. If you fall, get right back up. They can't kick you, they can't scratch you, and they can't punch you in the tit. You pass this one, you're in." I immediately put my shoes back on. "You can't, like, lean against the wall or furniture either," Trey explained. "You've gotta stand in the middle of the room." I took my place in the middle of the room. Angel, as leader, took the privilege of the first punch. She swung into me with ballet-like steps, driving her fist into my left kidney. Angel's best girl came right behind her, and slapped my face. Trey slapped with the back of her hand, hard. Noodle came at me with her right fist balled up. That got my attention. Something slammed at the underside of my chin. I fell on the floor. Noodle was left-handed. "On your feet, Karen!" commanded Angel. I immediately jumped to my feet. More slaps. More punches. The room wasn't big enough for everyone to stand and watch. Girls were coming and going throughout the beat-down. Angel, Noodle, and Trey observed the whole trial. I wasn't knocked down again, though I staggered two or three times. When it was finally over, Angel stepped forward and shook my hand. "Welcome to the gang, Nylon." "Nylon?" I echoed. "Nylon, that's your gang name, because you're so good at putting on pantyhose." Angel grinned. "You must have worn them before." That drew laughs from Trey and anyone else who was still there. "No, but this chick I used to date did." Several of the girls exchanged knowing glances. "Now that you're one of Mary's Girls, Nylon," Angel continued. "You have to act like a girl. You have to learn to walk, talk, stand up, sit down, and cross your legs like a girl." "Also nails, hair, and makeup," said Trey. "Trey and Noodle will be in charge of your training," said Angel. "It begins immediately. And now, you'll have to excuse me. I have other pressing business." Angel left, and with her all the other girls except Trey and Noodle. "How did you get the name Noodle?" "I was in a food fight with a lot of macaroni and cheese." "I'm Heather Amundsen from Durham. When I got here there was, like, two other girls named Heather, so I became Trey, which is, like, card-player's talk for the three in a deck of cards." "How do a girl get in a car, Nylon?" Noodle looked at me with a grin. It sounded too easy, like a trick question, but I bravely started in. "Well, you put one foot in, you put the other foot in---" They both laughed again. "Well, maybe if you were, like, getting in the back seat of a two-door, you'd do that," Trey said, "but what if you were getting, like, in the front seat?" I looked from Trey to Noodle, completely bewildered. "You put your white ass on da seat, den you swing both your legs in." "Okay." I nodded. Noodle stepped up to me and patted me on the shoulder. "I know what you goin' through, Nylon. I used to be a dude too." "Really?" "Really." The look in her large brown eyes was bleak, almost desperate. "Does it get any easier as the weeks and months pass?" "Yeah, it do get easier, if you act like a girl. Everybody gotta be girly here. I get to be a dude again in ten mo' months, and let me tell ya, Nylon, I'm countin' da days." "I wouldn't trade places with either of you guys," said Trey. "If they turned me into a guy, I'd, like, get a knife and cut if off the first day." So I was to be emasculated twice in one day. It's only for a year, I told myself. Only for a year. ### Part Two: My Girls After some coaching in various feminine ways, Noodle left to dress for dinner. I got out of the pantyhose again and back into my panties, knee socks and shoes. Presently the dinner bell rang, and we filed into the cafeteria on the first floor. All members of the same gang dined together. Princess always sat on Angel's right hand. Trey sat on Angel's left. Noodle and Squeak and Shug (two girls I didn't know yet) all sat across the table from Angel. All of these girls belonged to Her Majesty's court. I was allowed to sit on Trey's left, which indicated that I too enjoyed the royal favor, at least for now. During the meal, Noodle looked at me across the table and said, "Round here, de name for girls like me and you is 'freak bitch.'" "It seems appropriate. I feel like a freak." I could see the other girls pointing me out to each other and exchanging whispered observations. The new girl was a freak bitch. By dinnertime on my first day, I knew of only two of us in the school. A freak bitch came to Ida-Watts in vulnerable condition. She was afraid, confused, and mortified with her own body. This attracts bullies. Angel's attitude toward us was benign, if only because we were now her sisters, whatever our past gender. During the meal, I noticed Angel and Princess were spooning food into each other's mouths, like a pair of lovers. Looking across the room, I saw another couple doing that. Lesbianism was out in the open here. How could it not be, when you put four hundred teenage girls in this manless environment just as their bodies are starting to ripen, their hormones are starting to surge, and their identities are in flux? In weeks and months to come, I would see pairs of lovers kissing in the halls and walking to classes hand-in-hand. Sometimes, especially on weekend afternoons and evenings, I would see hand-lettered "do not disturb" signs on closed doors, and hear squeals and giggles from within. Trey seemed to guess what I was thinking about. "Can't you, like, smell the estrogen in the air around here?" joked Trey during the meal. "All the security people are women. Most of the teachers, too. The only guys are, like, the men teachers and the guys who come in sometimes to do repairs. It's no big surprise that some of us, like, turn on each other." She looked at me closely, to judge my reaction. "You're a Lesbian too, now, you know." "No, I'm not." "You still like girls, don't you?" "Yeah." "Well, duh! In that body, what could you be but a Lesbian?" "I'm not a Lesbian." She leaned right up to my ear. I knew what she was going to say: that I didn't have the equipment to be anything else. But that was not what she said. "Anytime you're interested, Nylon, I could, like, show you a few things. Just give it a try. If you don't like it, it's okay. But if you do, that's even better." I thought about that for a minute. Trey was pretty and smelled nice. She didn't seem to be on drugs or anything. She might even be capable of intelligent conversation. After all, this was the only way I was going to get any action while I was in here. Deep inside me, a voice was screaming, I don't have my cock any more! I would have to learn to use completely different equipment. On the other hand, it was flattering to know that even though I'd been here for less than three hours, some horny girl had already propositioned me. Some of the old Kevin Lauterbach charm was still there. "Tell you what, Trey," I began. Then I leaned closer to her. "I'll give it a shot. When do you want to get together?" "Sunday afternoon, like, three o'clock. We'll put a sign on the door." "It's a date," I said. She giggled. I laughed a little. No one had taught me how to giggle yet. Not bad, I thought. Here it is only Tuesday, and Sunday I'll be having sex again. Now I had something to look forward to. But sex without a penis? How was that going to work? Anyway, it was only a test. If I didn't like it, there would be no hard feelings. This was familiar ground. The old Kevin had made love to some of his girlfriends only once. ### My arrival at the school came only three days after the start of the fall quarter, so there was almost no catching up to do. My first class of the day was General Science: Physics in the fall quarter, Chemistry in the winter quarter, and Biology in the spring quarter. Myron Hirsch was the teacher, a pleasant fiftyish man with a full neatly trimmed pepper-and-salt beard and not much hair on top. I was reminded that my current gender was immune to baldness, but I wasn't old enough to worry about that anyway. My curriculum was tailored to my courses and grades at my old high school. This was one of the few classes at the school that wasn't remedial, and Mr. Hirsch actually made it interesting from time to time. "Can anyone tell me what the five primary forces are?" he asked. "Well, I heard of gravity?" ventured a girl. "And there's the one they use to turn boys into girls." Many of the girls laughed at this. I, the freak bitch, grinned gamely. In my mind, I grumbled. Yeah, you stinkin' hos, it is funny, isn't it? A real laugh riot. Mr. Hirsch rolled his eyes. "Oh, yes, the unified field. Everybody thinks they know about the bioconcentrator, but in fact the bioconcentrator is used for a lot of things besides sex changes." He went to the board and wrote "Gravity" in large firm capitals. "We'll put the Unified field on our chart in a minute. Anybody know the other three?" Various hypotheses were advanced, as a joke. Love? The Force in Star Wars? Then I raised my hand. "Ah, the new girl in the class. What's your name, Miss?" "Karen Lauterbach. The other three are electromagnetic, major atomic, and minor atomic." "Very good, Karen!" said the teacher, and completed the other three sides of his chart. Then he wrote "Unified Field" in the center of the rectangle, and drew lines to connect it to the other four. Kevin had always been interested in science. Although my brain was now floating in female hormones, my scientific circuits had never been shorted out. After one of the girls gave a lay interpretation of magnetism (the obvious one involving the magnets on refrigerator doors), the discussion sputtered to a halt and the lecture began. Even I didn't have the major and minor atomic forces straight in my head. From that class, I got another nickname: Atom Girl. After the class, I had an unscientific question for Mr. Hirsch. "Mr. Hirsch, are you Jewish by any chance?" "As a matter of fact, yes, Miss Lauterbach. Are you?" "Yeah, and I'm looking for somebody to worship with this weekend," I said. "You came to the right person," he said with a smile. "In addition to being a science teacher, I'm also a Rabbi. I'll be leading a service in Meeting Room A in the dorm on Saturday morning at 10:30. I'm looking forward to seeing you there." "Oh, good, thanks, Rabbi." I gave him a shy smile. I had lost all interest in my people's religion within six months of becoming Bar Mitzvah. By the time I was sixteen, I always slept late Saturday mornings, unless my parents made me get up and go to temple with them, which they never did except on High Holidays. The brand-new nice Jewish girl named Karen felt a strong need to talk to God. The only other class that I enjoyed was English composition, taught by a small gray-haired lady named Mrs. Marsden. I wrote a memorable essay for her once, but more on that later. None of the rest of my classes was as interesting as these two. I remember a Physical Education teacher who lead forty girls doing leg lifts to jazz music from decades ago, all the while telling us how good we were looking and how the boys would love us when they saw what great-looking butts we were developing. In the midst of my leg lifts, I nearly laughed when I heard that. These girls called each other "ho's" for a reason. Many of them had been busted for prostitution. In the gym shower after the session, I was lathering up my crotch, when a tall black girl with braids gathered together at the top of her head stepped up beside me. She leaned down to me and spoke softly. "Little freak bitch, is dey somethin' missin' down dere?" "That doesn't concern you," I snarled. "Get away from me." I propped up one of my legs to wash it. "I'm a freak bitch too." "Really?" I looked up. "That makes three that I know of. You, me, and Noodle." "Dat all dey is at dis school," she said. "Then you know the hell I'm going through," I said. "It seem like hell for most of de freaks, but for me, it ain't no punishment. I wanted to be a girl. Now I am one. When my sentence up, I ain't goin' back in no concentratin' machine." I was washing my other leg. "Noddle and I are counting the days till we get to be guys again." "I always wanted to be a girl," she continued. "I prayed to God to make me a girl when I was five year old." She flashed a set of excellent white teeth. One had a small gem set in it. "Dat judge thought he was punishin' me, but de joke on him." "What are you in for?" "Sodomy statute. I was blowin' rich white men's dicks for money." "Do you think they'll let you go back in the world again as a female?" "Dat happened to de last freak bitch dat was here." "Well, I'm switchin' back," I said, stepping under the shower again to rinse the lower half of my unwanted body. "By the way, my name's Nylon. I'm in Mary's Girls." "In de First Floor Fillies, dey call me Street. Back in de world, I wanna be called Shakeelah, 'cause I was Shakeel before." Shakeelah was the first real transsexual I had ever met. When her time was up, she would go back to the street, and make more money than ever. "Nice to meet you," I said, just to be polite. "Nice to meet you too." She flashed that jeweled tooth again, and left me. I was living a teenage boy's fantasy: a shower room full of naked young girls. It was also a teenage boy's nightmare: nothing to jerk off with. ### A casual observer, watching us sitting in classrooms in our clean pressed uniforms, might suppose we were nice girls, four hundred very proper school girls. We were not nice girls. Over time, I learned the back-stories of many of my sisters. Angel, our leader, was a prostitute from Charlotte. Trey, my roommate, was a prostitute from Durham, but, as she always insisted, not a "crack ho." She spent her money on things she really needed, like food and clothes, because she was a runaway. Princess was a crack ho from Nashville, NC. (Yes, there is also a Nashville in North Carolina.) Shug, also a crack ho, had the skills of a beautician. Hair, nails, skin, she did it all. She could even do makeovers for the white girls. Squeak was Angel's messenger at Ida-Watts. Back in the day, she and her boyfriend stole a car in Goldsboro and drove it across the mountains into Tennessee. There they were busted for car theft, and four grams of cocaine were found in the car. Squeak swore up and down she'd never seen it before. Her boyfriend was in one of the Federal pens for drug possession. She was here, an accessory to car theft. Noodle, officially renamed Teresa, was once named Tyrone Jameson from Greensboro. Like me, he was convicted of nailing an underage girl. Keyboard, who could play piano and organ, sneaked big bills out of the cash register where she worked over in Chapel Hill. It was the same story all over Ida-Watts. Theft, prostitution, drug and alcohol dependence. Many students were in twelve-step meetings. Ms. Martindale herself, who used to be addicted to pain killers, led one of them. How do I feel about my gang sisters now? I would like to think that most of them eventually straightened out and became useful and productive citizens. I know for a fact that some did. But I can't help feeling that many of them simply returned to the streets on graduation. It's a tough world out there. A suburban kid has no idea how tough it is. ### On Thursday of my first week, another new girl was assigned to our wing, and there was another beat-down. As a sister of Mary's Girls, I got to make a hit on her. She was an Oriental girl named Alexis. She was five-foot six, slim and delicate. My girls weren't hitting her as hard as they had hit me. When my time came, I balled my right fist and came swinging at her in the ballet-like way that Noodle had used on me. That got her attention, so that when my left hand slapped her face, it took her by surprise. She faltered, caught herself, and steadied up again in time for the next hit. Alexis made it into the gang, and got the name Keyboard. Mary's Girls were now my girls. Every teenager likes to belong to a clique, and wants to have buddies to just "hang" with. I was no different. Under the name of Nylon, I was now one of the girls. This would keep me from getting my ass kicked for a year, until the real Kevin Lauterbach emerged from his girlish shell. ### About 10 or 15 girls met that Saturday morning for Rabbi Hirsch's synagogue service in Meeting Room A on the first floor. I remember being disappointed there were so many Jewish girls at Ida-Watts. One of my conceits was that my people don't become criminals. Because it was the early fall, we were studying Deuteronomy, and the Torah portion (which is a sort of Jewish Bible lesson) was about the purity of the Tabernacle. The girl who was reading came to the verse: "Any man who has had his testicles crushed or his penis cut off is not allowed in the Congregation of the Lord." Of all things for the Torah portion to be about, it had to be this! A couple of girls snickered. I was new, and nobody else in the room was in Mary's Girls, so they may not have known I was a freak bitch. It was bad enough that I knew. Was there ever a person more pathetic in the world? Tears started to well up in my eyes. I wept silently for a few minutes, hoping no one else would notice. Rabbi Hirsch's commentary on the piece was that each of us was created in the Lord's image, which made each of us holy, just as the Tabernacle was a holy place. Your Tabernacle is the deeds of your life, and you should try act so that everything you do is holy in some way, that it in some way does the Lord's work in the world, or celebrates the holiness of creation. About four thirty that same afternoon, with my homework for Monday finished, I was idly wandering around the first floor in sweatpants and a sweat shirt, when I passed by that same room again. I could hear organ music, and recognized the piece immediately. It was a Bach cantata, "Wachet auf, die Stimme ruft uns," one of the compositions in his famous "Well-Tempered Keyboard." I peeked into the room. The folding chairs and all the Jewish stuff had been put away. A girl in workout clothes was playing an electric organ, her head bent over the keyboard, totally absorbed in her work of creation. I tiptoed into the room, and sat in a nearby folding chair. When she was done, I clapped. "Brava, brava, bravissima." She looked up in surprise. Her fine shining black hair swirled about her face. "Oh, hi. I didn't know anybody else was here. I recognize you. You're one of Mary's Girls." She offered her hand. "My name's Keyboard. On the outside, my name's Alexis Wei, from Chapel Hill." "I'm Nylon, from Mecklenberg County." I wasn't ready to tell her I was a freak bitch. Since she was a Mary's Girl, she might already know. "This is the last place in the world I'd expect to find somebody else who knew Bach and played the organ." "Would you care to join me?" She moved over on the seat. "I also like to play Jewish sacred music." I sat beside her. "Let me share some of it with you. This is called 'Avinu Malkenu.'" "What does that mean?" "It means 'Our Father, Our King' in Hebrew. The lyrics are a Hebrew prayer asking God to forgive our sins. We sing our prayers." She nodded. "Jewish prayers." "Right." I played the slow, elegant, remorseful melody for her. "That's really beautiful, but so sad." She favored me with a smile, a buck-toothed smile with braces. It faded quickly. "I'm a thief," she volunteered. "I used to sneak money out of a cash register where I worked." Because she had confided in me, I felt safe in confiding with her. "I used to be a guy named Kevin Lauterbach," I said in a low tone. She gave me a long intense look of evaluation, searching perhaps for some telltale sign of my annihilated maleness. "I see," she said finally. "It's kind of scary, that they'll do that to a guy. What are you in for?" "I had sex with an underage girl." I remember hearing the words of my confession. My tone was very matter-of-fact. She was frowning. I saw her move just an inch away from me on the seat. "I'm very very sorry I did it, Keyboard," I said quickly. I gestured with both hands at my lap, and then upwards to my breasts. "I mean, just look what they did to me!" My apology seemed to make her angry. It wasn't easy to look back at those large black almond eyes. "How old was she, Nylon?" "Fourteen." "And how old were you?" "Sixteen." She shook her head sternly. "Those laws are for a reason, Nylon." "Yeah, they're to keep forty-year-old dudes from banging fourteen year olds. Keyboard, I'm a teenager too!" Her hand fell on the keyboard. Four distinct notes collided with ugly disharmony. "Two years is a long time when you're fourteen," she fired back. I thought I understood her. "Oh, I see. You got molested when you were younger." "No! No, I wasn't. I just knew I wasn't ready when I was fourteen." She backed further away from me. "But she wanted to do it! Her dad was the one that wanted to prosecute." She jumped up from the seat and glared at me like I was radioactive. "Nylon, you don't regret what you did! You're just making excuses for yourself." "I said I was sorry, didn't I?" "Sorry? Why are you sorry, Kevin?" She used my old male name like an insult. "You're only sorry because---" She pointed at my lap with one of her long nimble fingers. "Because the State took your penis away. You are so selfish. You disgust me. I'm leaving." She wheeled around and began stomping out of the room. "Don't leave! We can be friends!" I begged. Without turning around, she called out, "Call me when you really regret what you did." I would have given anything for Keyboard to be my friend at the moment. We had our love of classical music in common, something I didn't expect from most kids even on the outside. I went back up to my room, climbed up to my bunk, buried my face in my pillow and cried. Why didn't anyone understand me? Don't they realize that having to live in this body is punishment enough? I wasn't such a bad kid, was I? When I pulled my face out of that wet pillow, I realized this wasn't the way Kevin used to act when somebody hurt his feelings. Kevin would got out play some racquetball or shoot some hoops, or play some Bach on his electric organ, or just flop in front of the TV for a while until he forgot his anger. I hadn't done anything like that. Instead, I'd had a good cry, just like a girl. In fact, I had cried twice today. This was the effect of female hormones coming from my new ovaries. This body was starting to affect my behavior. That was frightening. ### I had sometimes wondered what the female sexual experience was like, but during my male adolescent period I was too busy with other things to observe it closely. Now that I no longer had a penis, I stimulated Trey in the only way I could, with hands and tongue and lips, and got a close view of it. Her pleasure seem to gradually consume her like an incoming tide, then gradually subside at the same rate. It was the afterglow that I envied. A male orgasm is over too suddenly, an powerful burst followed by a rapid collapse. Trey was happy to do for me what I had done for her. The first thing I came to like about my new gender was the silken smoothness of my skin. My breasts were even more sensitive, especially the nipples. While Trey worked away at them, I could feel my pussy tingling. Unlike her, I did not climax, and wasn't inclined to fake it. It took nearly an hour. When we were done, she spoke first. "So, how did you like being a Lesbian?" "It was nice, warm and comfortable, and I'm glad we did it. I'd rather be the guy in this bed, but you can't have everything." "You were wonderful with your hands, Nylon." She propped her head up on one arm and smiled at me in the dim light. "But you know what would be even hotter? If you'd let me touch your pussy, I'd have you howling for joy." "I don't use my pussy for sex, Trey. I hate it. I hate that I don't have a cock and balls down there. I'm still a guy, Trey. You know that." "If you, like, let me eat your pussy, I'd have let you lick mine." "I'd love to lick your pussy." "But it's gotta work both ways, Nylon. What you can do to me, I can do to you. It's only fair." After a pause, she spoke again. "If you won't let me touch your pussy, why did you let me touch your tits?" "You gotta understand something about guys, Trey. Our sexuality is built totally around the cock and balls. A pair of tits doesn't get in the way of a guy's cock, because they're on the chest. But a pussy, well, they had to make my cock and balls disappear before they could put a pussy in. That's why it's so repugnant to me. Anyway, that's my lecture on guys. Are you gonna go back to guys when you get out?" "Heck, no." I could hear her snort in the darkness. "I had my fill of guys when I was, like, working the streets. But I wasn't a crack ho," she quickly added. "I spent my money on stuff I really needed, like food. I was a runaway." She paused for a moment, then spoke again. "No way I'm ever going back to the streets. That was a nightmare. Ida-Watts is a freakin' paradise compared to what I went through on the streets. I'm going back home to Mom and that asshole stepfather of mine, even if he is an asshole, and finish high school. I'd sooner live in the same house with him that walk the streets again." "This place is full of whores, Trey. I met Shakeelah the other day, from the First Floor Fillies." "Don't know her." "She's a freak bitch too. On the outside she was a gay male prostitute. I met her in the shower at the gym, and she was all, 'I like bein' a girl. I won't go back in the concentrator. I'm stayin' a girl.' She'll be back on the street the day she gets out of here." Trey shook her head. "That won't happen to you, Nylon. You'll be a guy again someday." She looked at me closely in the dim light. "Were you handsome as a guy?" "Very handsome, charming too. That's why I was such a successful corndog." "If you'd been one of my tricks, we could've had us a great old time." She giggled. "No. Guys who have to pay for it are lame, pathetic losers." I also thought the women they bought it from were ugly, smelly, disease-ridden filth bags, but I didn't tell Trey that. "When I get out of here," I went on, "I'll be a one-woman man. I'll also go to college and make everyone proud of me. Get a cool job in scientific research, maybe astronomy or genetics. And I'm gonna forget about this place." "It's good to have ambition and plans. I'm not sure what I'll do yet, other than finish high school. And stay Lesbian. I'm through with men, Nylon." She grinned. "Nothing personal." "You're gonna be a Lesbian in senior high?" "Yeah, I'll, like, carry my closet around with me. The outside world isn't like Ida-Watts. Here, being a lez is like the favorite sport." I climbed out of Trey's lower bunk, found the light switch, and lit up the room. Trey got out of bed. "Trey," I asked, "do you think my ass is fat?" She laughed. "Oh, Nylon, you're so like a girl sometimes." "It is kind of funny, isn't it?" I said without irony. "But seriously, Trey, I can't see it so I don't know. That's why I have to ask." "Well," she said, stepping up beside me. "You look okay now, but you'd look even better if you lost, like, ten or twelve pounds." "So I'm not huge, just ten or twelve pounds overweight." "Yeah, that's about it." She slapped me playfully on my butt cheeks. "Every chick on the planet is overweight, Nylon. Or at least that's what we think." "No offense, Trey, but the sex thing: I don't think we should do it again. It just didn't feel right." "Yeah, I know. You're not really a girl anyway. You're, like, in between." "Thanks for understanding." "I really don't understand, Nylon. I don't know what it's like to be a guy, so I don't, like, know what it feels like to have that taken away from you." "Take it from me, it sucks. I enjoyed what we did do, though." "You know more about touching than most guys. Most of my tricks, anyway. Thanks, Nylon." "Thank you." As I put on my sweatpants, a bra, and a baggy T-shirt, Trey threw on a robe. She stepped outside and took the "Do Not Disturb" sign off of the door. Minutes later, with me dressed and Trey nearly so, someone knocked on the door. I answered. It was Keyboard. "Hi, Nylon," she said, favoring me with that nice smile. "Uh, hi," I said. She was the last person I'd expected to see. "Can we talk privately?" "I'll check." I looked back into the room. "Trey, could you step outside for just a second? Keyboard and I gotta talk." "I'll go in here," said Trey. She went in the bathroom and shut the door. Keyboard and I sat in the two chairs. She pushed hers closer to me, and spoke in a low voice. "You said you wanted to be friends, and I'd like us to be friends. After all, we have the same taste in music, which is kind of unusual stuff for kids our age." "Okay," I said cautiously. "I'm not gonna say any more about what you were like on the outside. I'm not gonna take it back either. I just think the experience of being a girl for a year is gonna teach you a lot about us. You might've already guessed that girls and women are, uh, vulnerable in some ways that guys aren't." "Yeah." "Good. I think it's very important to have friends," Keyboard continued. "I'm gonna be pretty lonely here, I think. It's partly because I don't want anything to do with this Lesbian stuff. It's not a moral thing for me. I just can't bring myself to do it." "Fine. We're buddies. But when we get out of here, Keyboard, I'd like you to see the real me." "That would be nice," said Keyboard, a bit louder, and showed me that smile again. "Till then, we're girlfriends." She kissed me on the cheek, like a sister. ### A couple of weeks after I started to school, Mrs. Marsden assigned my English class to write an essay about a deeply emotional personal experience. I wrote about my first period. Not wanting to call attention to myself as a freak bitch, I failed to mention that I had just finished my first one. I wrote that I was prepared for the blood, and I knew about the mood swings already, but I wasn't prepared for the cramping, the bloating, the sore nipples, and the feeling that my body had been transformed into a shapeless sack of slime, sludge, glop, and goo. When I read my essay aloud for Noodle and Trey, they laughed their heads off, especially at the words "slime, sludge, glop, and goo." I couldn't help but laugh a little bit, even though I was revisiting my initial horror and mortification at the strangeness of my body. I didn't say this in my essay, but one of the weirdest things about becoming a female is that I couldn't see my sex organ, except in a mirror. For me, that was the hardest thing about putting a tampon in. In my essay, I gave my sisters credit for showing me how to put in my first tampon, not mentioning that the "sisters" in question were Trey and Noodle. Once I got it in, I proudly stood up and showed them. "Oh, no, look," observed Noodle. "She have a string hangin' down." They both laughed. I sat back down on the lower bunk to tuck the string in, smiling gamely through my tears. They sat down on each side of me, and pulled the three of us closer together. "Everybody have a string hangin' out de first time, even me," said Noodle. "When was that, Noodle?" Trey teased. "Last month?" Even though I knew Noodle's teasing was good-natured, I was pleased to see Trey intervening on my behalf. "Dat seem about right," Noodle replied, with a chuckle. She had an admirable sense of humor about herself. "Isn't there something easier I can wear?" I asked. "Yeah, I use pads," said Noodle. "Tell you what, Nylon, tomorrow we'll show you how to put on a pad." So I put on my sweatpants and finished my essay. Mrs. Marsden gave me an A-minus, with a note: "You will be a writer someday." My initial revulsion against my body began to fade again after my first period. In the night, I would pray to God for strength. Then I would stroke myself and try to get some pleasure out of it. Sometimes I even stroked myself "down there." ### The girls at Ida Watkins were high school age but many read on a third or fourth grade level, and nearly all the courses were designed to reflect this. Angel had heard of President Ronald Reagan, but she refused to believe he'd ever been a movie and TV star. The American people would never elect, she insisted, someone so unqualified. Squeak had thought Franklin D. Roosevelt was black until she saw him in an educational film. After all, every guy named Roosevelt she'd ever met was black. Noodle didn't know what the Berlin wall was. Shug thought the Second World War had been over for 100 years. At the time, it was more like sixty. Trey thought Winston Churchill was an NBA star. "We done learned a new word in English class today," said Princess at dinner one night. "IS. Dis IS my sweater. Dis IS my girlfriend Noodle. Dat IS my girlfriend Nylon. Who make dis shit up? Dis my sweater. Dis my girl Noodle. Dis my sister Nylon." "Keep on talkin' like dat, sistah," Shug joked, "and your skin turn white." ### Every human society contains guys and girls. Our brains are wired to expect it. In a men's prison, some of the guys become girls. At Ida Watkins, some of the girls became guys. The gang leaders and some of their closest associates had a butch-femme style. Angel was a butch-femme. Noodle was a butch-femme. With her as my example, I hoped that such a style would be permitted to me, but I had to learn the femme half of it first. A girl named Mary, who had since graduated to the adult prison system, had founded Mary's Girls some years before. Angel was one of the few girls that had actually served under Mary's command. Angel held court in her room on Saturday afternoons, where girls who were in favor came to hang out and chat. Noodle and I enjoyed the royal favor the whole of our stay at Ida-Watts. Although gang conflicts were rare, that didn't mean we weren't territorial. Girls from other gangs seldom walked onto the West Wing of the second floor, which was our turf. The East Wing on second floor belonged to our rivals, the Dub-D's. (I think the gang was named after a bra cup size, but I never found out for sure.) The North Wing was the West Bank of the second floor. The rooms on one side all belonged to Mary's Girls. The rooms on the other belonged to Dub-D. Before the weather got too cold, we played volleyball outdoors during PE. Teams were chosen on the basis of sisterhood. Once Keyboard had to retrieve a ball that had bounced into the other volleyball court, occupied at the moment by Dub-D girls. She didn't get far into the other court before three big mean girls mobbed her, calling her Chinese crack ho and similar insults. Keyboard was cool about it. She kept asking politely to get her ball back. Angel went after her, and being careful not to step into the other court, called out, "Keyboard, come back here, and let me handle this!" Keyboard came back to a place beside Angel. "Now listen up!" Angel said, using her best command voice. "We can't play till we get our ball back. You guys already have one. So hand ours back to us, and everything's cool. Okay?" "Well, maybe we will and maybe we don't," drawled one of the Dub-D girls. Meanwhile the Dub-D's were playfully tossing our volleyball back and forth among themselves. When it worked its way over to Lassiter, she hurled it with all her might at Keyboard's head. Lassiter's throw was powerful and her aim was good. I stepped up just in time to grab the ball before it hit Keyboard in the head. "Thanks," she whispered to me. I saw tears in her eyes, and remembered those "Chinese crack-ho" remarks. Although the school was about two-thirds black, racism had been abolished by pretending everybody was black. Within your gang, everyone was a sister regardless of race. The music was all girl's hip-hop and R&B: TLC, Lil Kim, Da Brat, Destiny's Child, and some other New Millennium acts that I have since forgotten. Outside the gang, there were only "niggah ho's." Every girl outside the gang, including every white girl, was a niggah ho to us, and a sister to her own people. Even the redneck girl Lassiter quickly figured out the rules and became a "sistuh" of Dub-D. ### One Saturday afternoon in early October, I encountered Noodle at the gym. She was shooting foul shots. As I sat on the front row of the bleachers and watched, she swished six in a row. Only then did she noticed me. Twirling the ball on a fingertip, she approached. "When I was a man, I could SLAM dat ball in dere!" I grinned slyly. "Now you have a chance to concentrate more on the fundamentals of the game." "Wanna go one-on-one, Nylon?" "No, I wouldn't be much competition. My sport is racquetball." "You," she teased, "ain't nothin' but a pussy." I reached down and touched myself in the crotch of my sweatpants. "You're completely right, sistuh," I deadpanned. "I am." She laughed. I laughed back. The laughter faded away quickly. Her large brown eyes met mine. "Noodle," I asked, "does it get any easier?" "I don't know, man. Maybe a little." "Noodle, why do they make us do the girly stuff, with the nails and the hair do's and the wiggle in the walk and everything?" She sat down beside me with the ball in her lap. "Because of how tough it is for dem on de street. Lot of dese girls really ho's, Nylon. Dey been beat up by dey tricks, or by dey pimps, or by dey cocaine-dealin' boyfriends. Dey look at us freak bitches, and dey think, here my chance to get even with de male sex. I know it ain't fair, but dey stren'th in numbers, you know. Dey more of dem dan dey is of us." "What are you gonna do when you get out of this place?" "I'm joinin' de Marine Corps. I'm gettin' as far away as I can from this house full of pussy." "That word is gonna be thrown at you a lot at Camp Lejeune, Noodle." "Pussy? Yeah, dey be callin' me dat. But it won't bother me none, 'cause I'll have dis experience behind me." Those large brown eyes locked themselves on me again. They were full of sorrow and pain. "Ain't nothin' in dis world dat sucks more dan a sex change, Nylon. When I get my manhood back, dey'll be no place left to go but up." "I hear that." "Nylon! Come over here and get your ass whipped!" It was Angel's voice, echoing through the vast main room of the gym. I could see her striding toward me, rapidly, confidently, holding two rackets. I turned back to Noodle. "Angel and I are playing racquetball this afternoon." I got up to go. Noodle got up and drew my ear near to her. "Be good to Angel. She your best friend in dis place. She almost a guy herself." "You mean she's a---" "No, but she be actin' like a guy. She kind of butch." So I went with Angel to one of the racquetball courts, and we began to play. Word had gotten around, and lots of other girls were already there, watching us from the railing above. I was glad to see Trey, Keyboard, and Noodle among them. Angel let me serve first. I noticed at once my serve wasn't as powerful now as it used to be. Damned wimpy female muscles, I cursed to myself again. Angel volleyed back. I scrambled across the court to get a piece of that ball. It bounced off the rim of my racket and careened far out bounds. Angel had scored the first point. It was a portent of things to come. My game, to put it bluntly, sucked. Every time I swung at the ball, my breasts seem to get in the way of my arms. My backside seemed to weigh a ton. Both of these components jiggled constantly as I moved, distracting me and dragging me down. Because my arms and legs were shorter, I underestimated my reach and the length of my stride. The ball was constantly getting away from me. I hadn't practiced since my sex change. That was why this body was so awkward to play racquetball in. Before long, she was leading me 19-13. Almost everybody was chanting, "Go, Angel! Go, Angel! Go, Angel!" I glanced up at them. Only Noodle and Keyboard were cheering for me. "Come on, Nylon! You can do it!" Noodle cheered. I was sweating profusely. It was a different smell, a musk and not a reek. Even my sweat had changed sex. Angel's next serve came arcing over the net. We volleyed and lobbed that ball for a long time, almost forever, but the point was mine. The score was now 19-14. The next point was also mine. And the next. And the next. Legs, arms, fingers, and brain were working harmoniously together now. But I wasn't thinking about my body. My world contained only my racket, the ball, the net, and the limits of the court. When I tied the score at 19-19, I heard a familiar voice. "Shit! Shit!" Angel's racket came sailing across the net and clattered to the hardwood floor. "Go Nylon! Go Nylon! Go Nylon!" echoed around the court. Suddenly I had lots of fans. I calmly walked up and picked up Angel's racket. Her face was livid, and not entirely from the exercise. Without a word, I handed her back the racket. "Sorry," she gasped. "Sorry." "It's okay," I whispered. I was as winded as she was. The next point was mine. The next point was hers, tying the score. The last point was also hers. Gasping for breath, aching in every muscle and joint, sweating salty droplets off of my chin, I almost staggered to the net to shake her hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "Great game, Angel," I panted. "I hate to lose, Nylon. So do you." She was puffing and blowing. "Made you work for it," I boasted, using the last of the breath that was in me.