Karens Story 7
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Karen's Romance, Part 2 free porn video
Karen's Romance Part Two: Abstract Expressionism and a Latte
By Norman O. Johnson
On Saturday of the weekend following my breakup with Darla, I decided I
needed a change of pace. So I put on my butch outfit (navy pants, matching
jacket, and a turtleneck sweater) and went to the North Carolina Museum of
Art, where a touring exhibit of abstract expressionist painters of the
Fifties was on display. Aunt Shelly agreed to let me have her car for the
afternoon. Being in an introspective mood, I went alone.
I ordered my butch outfit when I was still at Ida Cynthia Watkins Girls'
Reformatory, to wear on weekends when uniforms weren't required. The jacket
and trousers were the most masculine-looking clothes I could find in the
mail order catalog. But with shoulder-length hair and my made-up face, I
projected an intriguing blend of the masculine and feminine. The whole
ensemble probably gave off Lesbian vibes to most people, but I was okay with
that.
I checked out the permanent collection on the ground floor first. In the
Classical room there was a statue of Hercules resting on a stump with his
trademark weapon, a wooden club worthy of Fred Flintstone, resting on his
right shoulder. It was a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original. Hercules was
shown radically nude, but his muscles didn't interest me. The interesting
detail was that the statue, otherwise completely intact, had no penis. The
round scar where it was broken off is easy to see. This is common among
surviving Classical statues. Teenage boys in every age of history are prone
to vandalism.
I then went downstairs to check out the Abstractions. I sprung for an extra
five-dollar audiotape to guide me through it. All the usual suspects were
there: Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, and some less famous but
important artists, such as David Karp. About halfway through the exhibit, I
noticed a boy of about my age following me around, keeping about 10 or 20
feet behind.
At the very end, I paused before David Karp's "One" and leaned forward to
study it closely. While my eyes were following a long thick streak of black
paint diagonally across the canvas, my peripheral vision picked up a human
figure walking toward me. It was the boy.
"Hi," he said.
I straightened up and turned toward him. "Hello," I replied, grinning
slightly. Shelly had warned me that one of the annoyances of being female is
unwanted male attention. However, this guy's attention didn't annoy me.
Being a Lesbian was no reason why I couldn't have guys as friends.
"We seem to have similar interests in art," he said. "Want to talk about it
over some coffee?" It was funny to me, now that I'd changed, to receive the
standard pickup line I'd used on so many girls once upon a time.
"Yeah, sure," I said, smiling. "But you have to tell me your name first." I
could hear the sigh of relief. The guy was so painfully nervous, it would've
killed him to hear me say no. What the hell was he so afraid of? I was just
a girl.
"Reggie Weinstein," he said, offering his hand.
"Pleased to meet you, Reggie. I'm Karen Lauterbach." We shook hands. He had
a firm handshake.
We walked up the stairs to the ground floor where the coffee shop was. He
treated me to a latte, ordered another one for himself, and led me to a
table for two by the window, where we could watch a sunny fall afternoon.
As we took our seats, I asked myself what interested me about him. He
reminded me of some of the boys in high school I'd known when I was Kevin:
shy, awkward types who were good at school but seldom dated. I would
befriend guys like that, protect them from bullies, and give them tips on
how to get girls. In the fifth grade, I had been a boy like that, until my
brother Steve and I signed up for karate, which greatly increased my
confidence. Confidence was a useful thing for me to have, considering what
was coming up: the onset of puberty.
Reggie might make an interesting friend, since we appeared to be like some
of the same things. However, if we hit it off as friends he might ask me on
a date. Then I would be on the spot, because he was the kind of guy whose
confidence would be hurt if I said no.
We talked about the arts in general and Abstract Expressionism in the
Fifties in particular. I summed it up by saying, "Well, it was the only
original and creative thing that was going on in America in the Fifties,
which was a dreary conformist period in the history of our country."
"Actually, the Fifties was a period of great ferment and creativity and
social experimentation," he replied.
"How do you figure that? In between the McCarthyism and the loyalty oaths
and the general conformity---" My voice trailed off. I shrugged. What could
he be talking about?
He began pointing out things: beatnik avant-garde poetry, Brown v. Board of
Education which triggered the civil rights movement, the beginning of rock
and roll, the downfall of Joseph McCarthy. "The red scare was a late-Forties
phenomenon," he explained. "McCarthy represented the last phase of it. He
was politically dead in 1954, when the U.S. Senate censured him. 1954 was
early in the decade, any way you figure it. After that, the only people who
thought there was a serious internal Communist threat were marginal figures
like Robert Welch, a disappointed McCarthyite who founded the John Birch
Society in 1957."
"So what you're saying is, I'm confusing the Fifties with the late Forties."
"Exactly," said Reggie, warming up to his argument. "What really happened in
the Fifties was, a political consensus was created when President Eisenhower
accepted the New Deal reforms."
"You seem to know a lot about politics."
"I'm fascinated by history, all kinds of history," said Reggie. "It comes
from being Jewish. The Jewish people have more history than anybody!"
"I'm Jewish too," I said.
His eyes lit up like a couple of supernovas. "Oh, really. Where do you
belong?"
"The Reform temple on Creedmore, but we don't go very often."
I could tell by Reggie's reaction that he wasn't one of those young Jewish
guys who yearn to taste the forbidden fruit that is Gentile women. His
family belonged to a local Conservative synagogue. (Conservative Judaism, by
the way, advocates middle-of-the-road religious practices, neither Reform
nor Orthodox.) He was a freshman at NC State majoring in "undeclared," and
lived with his family. We exchanged phone numbers and parted as friends. The
question of my sexual orientation hadn't come up.
---
Reggie called, as promised, on Monday night. He said he needed to unwind a
bit, since he'd taken a big chemistry test that afternoon. He says he thinks
he did okay on it, but he was glad he wasn't a science major. We chatted a
bit about that. I was more interested in science and less interested in
history than he was. I offered to help him study chemistry if he liked. He
said he'd consider it. Then I discovered that we both like playing tennis
and racquetball. "We'll have to play sometime," I suggested.
"That would be great," said Reggie, sounding very interested, "but it would
have to be mixed doubles."
"My brother George and his wife play," I said. "We might be able to do
that."
"That would be great, Karen, but I'd also like to take you to a movie. Can
you think of any movies you'd like to see?"
"Yeah, sure, that would be fun."
I was a bit surprised at my own reply. When I was a boy, I was attracted
only to girls. At reform school, it had been easy for me to make a Lesbian
out of myself, especially since there was so much experimentation going on
there. Even when Aunt Shelly took me to the mall for my makeover and to buy
some feminine outfits, I couldn't resist subtly checking out women's butts
as they passed, if their pants or skirts fit them just right. Once in a
while, I even stole a glance down a girl's cleavage. With one Lesbian love
affair in my past, suddenly I was agreeing to date a boy. Why? Well, because
I liked him. We had a lot in common. Where we didn't agree, we complemented
each other's strengths and weaknesses.
---
I was sitting at my vanity table brushing my hair. "Seventy-one,
seventy-two, seventy-three," I was counting. Yes, I owned a vanity table
now.
Aunt Shelly was sitting on the edge of my bed. "I'm really surprised you're
having a date with a boy, Karen."
"Shelly, people date for lots of reasons, not just sex, not just to find a
husband. Seventy-eight, seventy-nine."
"You just want to broaden your circle of friends here in Raleigh, I guess,"
she said.
"That's part of it." I was still brushing my hair. "Eighty," I counted. "I
don't know anybody in this town outside of family." I put the hairbrush in
my lap and turned toward her.
Shelly looked back at me with a knowing grin on her thick sensuous lips and
winked one of her big blue eyes at me. "And the other part would be what?"
"Shelly, I'm not quite sure what the other part is. After all, I changed my
sex. You can't expect consistent behavior from somebody who went from he to
she only a year ago."
"You didn't change it, Karen. The Juvenile Court changed it for you. It was
no more voluntary than the body change I went through." She grabbed a lock
of the top of her auburn red-tinged hair and pulled. The wig came off. She
tossed it across the room into my lap. "Alopecia areata," she said. "A
woman's nightmare." Now there wasn't a hair on her finely shaped head except
her thick nicely styled eyebrows. Despite being bald, she was gorgeous and
she knew it.
Stepping over to her, I handed her back the wig. "Please put this back on,
Shelly. You look like a space alien. A very beautiful space alien."
Shelly laughed. "Okay, I admit it's not the same," she said. "After all,
nobody told me I had to become a man because I lost my hair."
"Exactly," I said, sitting at my vanity table again, "but in the last
analysis, I was the one that changed my sex, when I embraced my womanhood
and made it mine."
Shelly stepped over to me and leaned forward, so she could adjust her wig in
my mirror. Then she pointed to the hairbrush in my lap. "One hundred
brushes, woman," she teased. "Remember? For that bouncy look."
"Where was I?"
"Eighty." Shelly resumed her position on the corner of my bed.
"Thanks." I began brushing again, counting silently now.
"So, you really like this Reggie Weinstein, huh?"
"Like him enough to let him take me to the movies."
"You haven't told me much about him," Shelly observed. "All I know so far
is, he's very nice, very handsome, very intelligent, and interested in a lot
of the same things as you are."
"You'll get a chance to meet him when he comes to pick me up."
"Does your mother know you're dating now?"
"Yeah, I phoned her this morning. She gave me a few tips about safe sex, but
then she told me it's best to wait till you're married. Know what I told
her?"
"No, what?"
"I told her I'm not the kind of girl to get duped into the sack. I know how
to handle guys. I know all their tricks, because I've used them all."
"I hear that," said Shelly. She snickered.
"Shelly, I don't know about the long term yet. I might never have to tell
him I, um, used to be a guy." I counted off the ninetieth stroke. "The idea
of telling that to Reggie made me nervous."
"You don't have to tell him right away." She got up from the bed, walked to
my bedroom door and spun around. "But if it gets serious, he's entitled to
know the truth."
"You're right," I said. "He is, if it gets serious." I stepped over to the
full-length mirror to check out my total look. I was wearing a sleeveless
green floral-print dress, very tasteful, with ankle-style socks and my best
pair of sneakers. My curly brown hair was now long enough to fall in
ringlets down the sides of my head. I looked pretty and felt confident. My
new female vanity and my old male desire (and envy) of women rubbed together
to generate an autoerotic charge. Male or female, I had always a sensualist
streak. I would enjoy my altered life to the fullest.
The doorbell rang. Shelly called from downstairs. "Karen, your date is
here."
"Be right down," I called. I picked up my purse from the vanity table and
started down the stairs. I had reached another milestone in life, my first
date with a boy, as a girl. Unlike most girls, I hadn't spent years looking
forward to my first date with a boy, because I'd been a boy until a year
earlier. Modern technology has made a new strange world for us, where it's
so easy for anyone to change sex.
At the foot of the stairs, I met Reggie. He was dressed casually, mostly in
denim, and looked very glad to see me. He seemed a bit shy, as usual. "Hi,"
he said.
"Hi, Reggie," I said, smiling. Once again, I sensed his relief.
---
The movie was a Saturday matinee. Reggie was committed to having me home
again by 8:00 tonight. Taking my hand, he led me out to his hand-me-down
late-Nineties Toyota Corolla, which looked its age, but ran like a top when
we got out on the road.
"How many miles has this thing got on it?" I asked.
"Let's see." He glanced through the steering wheel at the odometer. "Two
hundred sixty thousand and something."
"That ain't bad," I said, laughing a little.
"Yeah, once in a while, something breaks down and I have to replace it," he
said, as some of his shyness drained out. "This car reminds me of the knife
that had two new handles and three new blades."
"So it's not the same knife, then, is it?" I asked. I had a personal reason
for saying that. If it was the same knife, I was a guy in a dress.
"If you're a Platonist, yes it is. If you follow just about any other school
of philosophy, it's not."
"Sounds like something a college boy would say," I observed, as we pulled up
to a stoplight. He glanced at me and smiled. I smiled back. Our eyes met. So
far, the reactions were all positive.
"Yeah, I read your dad's book this summer."
"Which one?" My Dad wrote three books on philosophy.
"'A Brief History of Reality,' by Dr. Michael Lauterbach," he said.
"Cool." It was the only one of Dad's books that was selling, because it was
the only one in everyday people's language. It explained philosophical ideas
about the nature of knowledge for a lay audience, drew in a few extra bucks,
and got him on a couple of talk shows.
The movie was forgettable. It was the last movie Sandra Bullock made before
she died. Or the next to the last, I forget which. Anyway, it was the one
that was released after her death, and everyone who liked her stuff had to
go see it. Reggie had been a big fan of hers ever since he saw "Miss
Congeniality" as a kid, and he was struggling hard to find something good to
say about it. I thought it was terrible, just what Sandra didn't need as the
capstone of her career. Our relationship survived our difference of opinion
on this.
After the movie, Reggie treated me to dinner. We got a chance to chat some
more at Denny's. Yes, I'm not ashamed to say I let a guy take me to a chain
restaurant instead of some place really expensive. I'm not the kind of girl
who needs to have lots of money spent on her. We chatted some more over
dinner. It impressed him that I was being home-schooled. He said it showed
what a smart girl I was.
He was curious to know why I wasn't living with my parents. I said there was
a long story behind that, and I would have to tell him some time, but I
didn't feel like doing it right then. I hadn't bothered to think up a
plausible lie yet. He nodded his head and said, "Oh, I see." He probably
thought they'd divorced and I was mad at both of them.
We really got along fine, right from the start. Part of the reason I was so
comfortable with him was, I was in control. Reggie was a shy guy. I was an
assertive girl.
He got me back to George and Shelly's place promptly at 7:50 PM. On the
front porch, he hesitated. Something was on his mind, but he was too shy to
say it.
"What?" I asked.
"Karen, may I, um, kiss you?" he ventured, giving me his usual
saying-no-will-destroy-me look.
I gave him my nicest smile. "Sure." We shared a brief smack. Then he was
gone, promising to call me.
Girl, I told myself, if you're not careful, you're gonna turn heterosexual.
As I watched his Toyota pull away into the growing shadows of dusk, I
laughed a little, a brief ironic chuckle. I knew I wasn't finished with my
changes. Then a darker thought crossed my mind. Would Reggie still accept me
when he found out what changes I'd already been through?
TO BE CONTINUED
Copyright (c) 2002, by Norman O. Johnson (normanoj@hotmail. com).
With the author's written permission, the above copyrighted material may be
archived, copied, transmitted, and redistributed, provided that it remains
in its original form with all warnings, copyright, author credit, and other
information intact. It may NOT be distributed for profit or sold for profit,
except by the author. Norman O. Johnson.
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