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VERONICA AND VERONICA by LAIKA PUPKINO |||)=0==0==0=> HOW PERFECTLY GODDAMN DELIGHTFUL So there I was, running around my apartment in my bra and panties like a crazy woman. My search for my handbag had started out fairly methodical, but by now I was getting desperate. I'd begun to look in places where I had looked before and was swearing up a storm. Not ladylike perhaps, but if the damned thing didn't turn up I was in serious trouble It was 11:30 on a Friday night. I'd just come home from going to the movies with some friends, and I was about to go to bed, or so I thought. I was washing my face, thinking about a neat effect with eye shadow that I'd seen this girl in front of me in the line at the snack bar wearing--- wondering how I might go about duplicating it and if it would look as good on me, or if it would be a bit much for my more casual style---when the thought popped into my head. When had I seen my purse last? "Oh God- No!" It wasn't on any table or counter surface. Not in the slot between the sofa bed and the wall. Not up on top of the fridge. Or inside of it, which was stupid to even suppose, but I was clean out of un-stupid ideas. It was my big purse, that monstro embroidered tote with a wooden bottom that I mostly just used for smuggling goodies into the movies. You couldn't lose a bag that size in a dinky studio apartment like mine. So then it had to be Shit..... Shit!..... SHIT! *0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0) There was a line in the British romcom we'd just seen, that various characters would use when things were really going wrong for them: "How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure..." While the picture had played this phrase for laughs---especially with the way Alan Rickman would drawl it---it registered. This pretty much summed up how I felt about my life these days It's not that my expectations about my Real Life Test were unrealistic. I'd had plenty of mentoring in the matter from the transsexuals in my online group. I knew I would be struggling, saving every penny toward my trip to Thailand and my SRS; and that some of the people around me wouldn't "approve" of the new me, and they would feel they had some right to treat what wasn't any of their business as if it was more their business than it was mine. All that didn't come as any surprise. But it seemed like from the very week I started my RLT I had been hit by a barrage of rotten breaks and evil surprises which would have been hard to cope with at any time. It almost seemed like the Fates themselves were objecting to my new life. Plus I was coming into my third month of my hormone therapy, and that tended to magnify everything. That part had caught me a bit off guard. Despite all I'd read and been told, on some unconscious level I had felt well, estrogen, it was gonna bliss me out or something; that I'd be floating off on some pink cloud of my own glorious femininity. I figured maybe I would cry more over movies or whatever, but not how damn FRUSTRATED every little thing could make me. And anger too. Wasn't that one of those "male" emotions that I would be leaving behind? Yeah, right. It was quite a roller coaster, as this emotional weirdness would have to land on me right when I lost my much-needed second job, through no fault of my own; as well as getting that kiss off letter from my mom, effectively disowning me until such time as I "came to my senses". I might have expected this from my dad when he was still with us, but not her And part of my emotional havoc might not have been chemical, but from the fact that I had finally given myself permission to just BE. When I was in the closet there had always been that lid I kept on everything; the fear that if I let myself feel certain things I might lose it, or at the very least cracks could appear in my fa?ade, through which people might see the real me. My shameful freakish essense. Well with the changes in my wardrobe they were getting a pretty good picture of all the stuff I'd been trying to hide. There wasn't that fear- driven imperative anymore. So maybe there was some kind of slingshot effect at work, from all those years of repressing things *0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0) Finding the phone book I called the movie theater. There was a long spiel about the upcoming Aquaman flick---a guy who sounded like he was eating a Slim Jim reading the thing in a lethargic monotone---before I even got to the part where I was allowed to "press one for movies and show times" and "press two for more information..." I pressed #2 and was given the location of the cineplex, which I knew already, having just been down there. I was told that their popcorn had been voted best theater chain popcorn three years in a row, because it was always popped fresh, using heart-healthy canola oil, and provided 83% of my daily recommended fiber. Then I learned how easy it was to purchase my tickets on line through fandango.com; and that Millenneum Theaters gift certificates made a "heller" gift for grads. And then it ended. No emergency or office number given. I knew I should have rushed right back there, but I sat down and drank the last of the wine---not quite a full glass---from my bottle of Trader Joe's pinot grigio. I sat there thinking about what a shitty, stressed- out week I'd had at Tidewater Title Company---capped by a perfectly grueling Friday---and how much I had been looking forward to tonight. The rare extravagance of going to the movies, and not by myself like I had done so often as Vic, but with my friends Ellie and Heather, after a quick stop at I. Carumba's to unwind over a pitcher of margaritas, laughing and gabbling and being just a little too loud; a "girls night out" that was not only great fun but felt perfectly emblematic of what my new life should be. It was exactly the sort of comfortable, emotionally rich female socialization I used to fantasize about Which might be why in the middle of some typical dumb anecdote about our day at work I found myself getting teary-eyed; and they just laughed and gave me those looks that told me I was "impossible" but they loved me anyway. And then Ellie said that she couldn't imagine my ever having been a guy. I would probably remember her saying that long after I had forgotten the movie we'd seen. Just about a perfect night out with friends. And then this had to happen.... SHIT!!! And worst of all it was my own stupid fault. *0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0) I remember when I first decided that I needed to present myself as somebody I wasn't. When I was little, the first couple of years of school, I took a lot of flack from the other kids---and certain adults--- for being girly. It hurt, but it never occurred to me that there was anything I could do about it. Until one day in about the third grade I made a conscious decision to learn to do things "the guy way". At first it was specific things that I'd been taunted about. Those were easy. To stop holding my school books against my chest in what had seemed like the natural, ergonomically efficient way ("Hey! He carries his books like a girl!") and start lugging them around under my arm at my side in a way that felt oddly apelike. Things like that. Then came all the subtler mimicries, a whole way of existing in space, of being in the world. Stiffening up how I moved, like I had voluntarily contracted some strange neuromuscular ailment. Even learning to laugh differently. It had felt like I was becoming less in some way---less real, less connected to both myself and the world---but it had worked. I was a perfect fake, indistinguishable from Bill or Jimmy or Tom. And so now I had to reverse the process- to unlearn all that camoflage that I never should have had to learn in the first place. I am convinced that if I had been allowed to develop unhindered there would have been no need for lessons. But in my first month of my RLT I enlisted the help of a feminization coach, an elegant transwoman named Judith. She wasn't just the kind of teacher who would answer my questions right as they were about to be spoken, but was fun to be with, as much of a friend as someone being paid her rather steep hourly rates could be. But when I lost the second job (No way to prove it was due to my now showing up as Veronica. I was "downsized" along with three others, while some real winners were kept on...) I had to cut back somewhere, and everything else in my life was infrastructure. So I guess we never got around to the part where she taught me the one thing that genetic females managed to do pretty much as a body memory: To remember that they had a purse with them. I had spaced on it a few of times in my first couple of weeks of living as a woman---in a restaurant booth, setting it down as I fed coins into a coke machine, just being stupid---but I always managed to think of it before I got too far away, or some cashier would come running after me with it and I would thank them, making some self-deprecating blonde joke. But gradually I began grabbing for it automatically. Until tonight. This time I truly fucked up. It was miles away! And with my credit cards, driver's license and carry letter in there this was sooooooooo serious! I watched the bubbles rising in my aquarium, where just that afternoon I had accidently murdered Gil and Finlay by dropping a large bottle of Windex into their little world. And of course the plastic bottle's top would have to pop right off, letting out all the toxic shit. I hope their dying was as quick for them as it had appeared to be, the way they just flipped over and rose to the surface Sigh. Maybe it's for the best that I can't have kids. . . |||)=0==0==0==0==0=> TRAFFIC JAM AT MIDNIGHT Glad of the fact that I hadn't yet removed my breast forms (When, oh God, would I see some development?) or my gaff, I threw on some sweats and a pair of sneakers, wrapped my hair in a scarf and left my stuffy little apartment. This trip would probably be a wild goose chase, I reflected. There wouldn't be anyone at the theater, or they would tell me to come back tomorrow. But I really needed my license, those papers I had in my handbag. I hated to think of some theater employee or customer chucking it all out, just to make himself a lousy $27 richer. They had no idea the hell I had gone through to get that license in there! The Kafkaesque insanity there at the DMV, that awful woman Darlene who- "FAGGIT!" somebody shouted. A quick stacatto bark, like he was trying to condense it down to less than a syllable. The tweekers across the hall were awake. No surprise there. Their door was open, rock music from another era blaring muddily from within. There were always at least five or six of them in there, and I was never clear on who among this wasted-looking bunch actually rented the place. With their forced rowdy exuberance and their chalky wasted flesh they could have been as old as fifty or still in their thirties. Like they'd decided to skip adulthood and go straight from being teenagers to some weird state of living mummification I didn't think they were truly dangerous. They didn't seem motivated enough to do more than the occasional sick practical joke. But never once did they see me go by without shouting something. Explaining why I wasn't a "faggit" per se would be on the order of trying to teach calculus to a hedgehog. I deadbolted my own door and headed for the stairs, glad to be moving out of their line of sight. Other neighbors were getting used to seeing me dressed this way, and one middle-aged Unitarian couple took particular pains to be nice to me. But these honchos across the way..... If they saw me, they yelled. Like this was some duty they had to perform. They must've felt extremely vindicated the first time they saw me dressed en femme: "Dude! You know that little fudge-packer across th' hall? Well guess what I saw!" I climbed into my rattletrap old Jeep, checking first to see if my purse wasn't in there---but of course no such luck---and then making sure that the speedfreaks hadn't left any more of their Rottweiler's shit on the front seat. I did find my cell phone, which I remembered now I'd tossed into the dark space of the doorless glove box before going into the theater, to make absolutely sure it wouldn't start blasting out Blondie's cover of IT'S MY LIFE right in the middle of the movie. I slipped it into the pocket of my sweatpants, coaxed the engine to life and started the long drive back to Oceana Mall. Stewart the jeep had seen better days, but I loved the battered old thing. We had a history together. He had carried me to my new life out west, and together we had explored most of our state's wilderness areas, some of the best times in recent years that I could recall. So it was particularly infuriating when they dumped shit into my faithful steed. Or the obscenity that somebody, probably them, had scrawled on the door. Stewart seemed to wear the coat of white primer I'd slapped on that door proudly, like a war wound It sure would be nice to move away from those assholes. That was how I'd envisioned it, back when I went from just dreaming about living as a female full-time to planning it. To move into a nice little house someplace (maybe one of those cute little stone Hobbit cottages that lined that alley off of Center Street), a fresh start, with neighbors who had never known me as Victor. But with the cost of the shrink, the endocrinologist, prescriptions, on and on and on.... and with the way that rents had skyrocketed citywide in the past few years, it just wasn't gonna happen. Not if I was going to save up enough in the next year for my surgery. *0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0) 'So much for the freeway being quicker,' I thought. Who could have imagined there would be a traffic jam on the 99 at this time of night? All the westbound lanes were utterly deserted, mocking us poor shmucks who were travelling east, while ahead of me the sluggish river of blazing red tail lights stretched for miles. There had to be an enormous accident or something up ahead, but whatever it was I couldn't see it. Start, stop.... Start, stop *0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0) Up on a billboard, a young shirtless guy with chiselled features and long hair, advertising some cologne. And the long-haired girl who had him by the arm and was trying to lead him someplace, she was really sexy too. I knew that a month ago I would have been attracted to one or the other or both of them, depending on the tidal fluctuations of my bisexuality. And yet I felt nothing for either of them. It was like my libido had simply vanished. Not just the erections, which I had expected, and whose mocking presence I sure didn't miss. But my most basic sensuality had fled as well. Luxuriating in touch, or getting off from what my mouth was doing, or having done to it. It was all gone. I felt like a robot. Dr. Morris had assured me that this was a temporary problem, that my brain needed time to be able to sort out what was going on with my body now, and that the androgen suppressor would hit me before the E did. But I couldn't help thinking: WHAT IF THIS ISN'T TEMPORARY? I would still go through with this, because the alternative was unthinkable. But it would be nice to feel like a woman and not some neutered THING. Stop, start.... Stop, start *0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0) Darlene at the Department of Motor Vehicles "Window C" had acted like she'd never heard of a motorist changing their gender before. She really layed it on each time she pronounced MISTER Nelson, like it was some really neat thing to say. She had said things that could have really gotten her in trouble if I'd cared to raise a stink. But all I'd wanted was to get my license, get out of there, and to never have to think about the bitch again. Yet it was hard to forget the woman's eyes. Their adamant refusal to even recognize me as a fellow human being. Immense hatred for no reason. I felt the tears starting to form, but I would not give that little cloven-hoofed pigwoman the victory! I pounded my fist on the steering wheel, commanding myself out loud not to cry. Apparently I had shouted this loud enough that the old couple in the car to my left heard me, and cast pruny scowls my way. They didn't know what this was about but they didn't like it. Somebody was having emotions! "Oh, blow me!" I shouted---an expression that my freind Ellie always used for some reason---then began to laugh really hard at the absurdity of this. Of everything. *0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0) Darlene's supervisor---a weary-looking apparatchik named Mr. Dinnehan--- had not been as outright insulting, and he did think to call me Veronica, but he wasn't much more helpful. The state's Public Safety Commission had just that week changed the rules for granting licenses to people in transition. While a month ago any pre- op with a note from his or her doctor could change the sex on their license, the new rules said that you had to have undergone actual vaginoplasty before they would change that little "M" on my license to an "F". Which could mean some very embarrassing moments until such surgery was attained. If you were lucky embarrassment was the worst you would suffer from being outed every time you flashed your ID. For a transgender person it could get a lot worse, genuine horror stories (our getting-murdered statistics being astronomical compared to those of the general public...) that it could paralyse you with fear to dwell on too much. And what about FtM transsexuals? Some of them didn't want to be outfitted with what my friend Frank Cheng called a "fraudulent and basically useless" cock. Would Frank be forced to exist in some horrible genderless limbo because of some bureaucrat's arbitrary decision that he needed phalloplasty to qualify as a man? "NO DICKIE, NO DRIVEE FRANKIE!" I yelled on some strange impulse, which earned me another disaproving scowl from my lane-neighbors there, and started another laughing fit. I was definitely losing it here But then, about the time I was asking Mr. Dinnehan if there was somebody higher up the chain of command I could appeal to, I got lucky. His computer showed that I had filed my request for my new license and submitted my letters and medical data a week earlier, and had been told to come back. The fact that I'd done this before the rule-change went into effect made all the difference in the world. Darlene didn't look too happy as she took the picture for my morphodite driver's license You would think that after all that, I would have managed to hold onto the damned thing. But no, I was too into that English romantic comedy we'd just seen, me and my girlfriends discussing all our favorite scenes and lines as we made our way out to our cars. So now I would be right back there at good old Window C, with my luck facing Darlene again, who would be citing the new rules to me and gloating in triumph Fuck! *0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0)*0) Suddenly I saw the offramp, a strip of unoccupied asphalt leading down into darkness, apparently going nowhere---a dismal wilderness of chain link fences, oil derricks and boxcars---but I knew this offramp from having worked down here. But could I get to it in time? Miraculously, when I put on my blinker, the guy in the big pickup truck stopped and waved me through. Oh thank you, gallant sir! Industrial Bypass #7. A lovely name for a beautiful road! Past the gypsum dock and the insecticide refinery, across the tracks of the Northern Pacific freightyard, up the switchback through the Shell oilfield on the bluffs to the unpreposessing start of West Oceana Boulevard. And there, a mile or so ahead of me, lie Oceana Mall. . . |||)=0==0==0==0==0=> VERONICA AND VERONICA It was lucky that the cinema complex was not inside the mall itself, which was all closed up, but in a seperate building along one edge of the vast parking lot that encircled it. It was eerie to see the whole mall so deserted. And yes it was one of those sorts of places that never used to spook me as a male, and did now; but with only three cars here there was a place to park right next to the theater, and somebody right inside by the door. A young mexican guy was running an upright vacuum cleaner in the lobby. When I tapped on the glass he shrugged, let me in, and pointed down a long dark hallway to a door with light shining from under it and through the spy hole. Just as I was out of range of the noise from the vacuum cleaner, my cell phone rang. "Is this, uh, Veronica Nelson?" asked a man's voice. He told me he'd found my purse, and asked me when I could get down to the theater. "Actually I'm in the building. I think I'm heading your way..." The door up ahead of me opened. A big fat guy was seated at a desk. He grabbed my purse and stepped out into the hall. "It's good you got here tonight. When I turn stuff into the managers, anything with money in it, half the time it disappears. I got yer address off of the license and the number outta the phone book there, good thing it was listed." He held my purse out like he was nervous to be holding one. Like it was going to bite him. I took it. Took a brief inventory. The $27 I'd had was still in it. I pulled out the fiver and held it out for him, "I really needed my papers in here. Sorry it can't be more." "Oh no, I don't need no reward, Honey." he said, staring at me. Oh great! One of these clowns who "honeys" women. Bad teeth, at least a hundred pounds overweight, with hair it looks like he cut himself, any old way. And he probably considers himself a real Casanova "Well again, thank you," I said. Then it occurred to me that my name in the phone book hadn't been changed. And my driver's license noted that I was in transition. So he knew. And his staring and his self-consciousness was all about this. Maybe he's a tranny chaser, I thought. Some hoser who gets all excited over pre-ops and their weenies. Or a dude who just wasn't too choosy, maybe he'd done a little prison time, and thought he has a better chance with an almost-woman like me, devalued as I was in the dating marketplace. But now that I thought about it, his interest didn't really seem lascivious. So probably I was just some oddity to him. Something he'd never seen before, that he could tell stories about later down at the bar. One of these clueless dolts who get real nosy about every aspect of SRS, fascinated by the 'grossness' of it all, oblivious to how you might find such overly familiar questions about the most intimate parts of your anatomy offensive.....Yes, that was most likely it! Well I was no circus sideshow attraction. No stranger's free entertainment. As I turned and left I snapped, "So now you know what a freak looks like." I was a few steps away when I heard him mumbling something. Of course, the male ego. They always have to get the last word in. I turned and glared at him, "What?!!" His voice was soft, imploring, "I said please don't say that." "Huh?!" My somewhat nasty comment had devastated him. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. "Please, don't make me out to be someone like that, who would think something like that. That kind of ignorant, thinks he knows how everyone else should all live, who they have to be.... You don't know me, okay?" I had really upset the poor lunatic, "I shouldn't have snapped at you, I'm sorry. I can see I misjudged you. I had such a bad day." "Okay. That's okay. It's just-" he was sobbing buckets now, "To be put in with that. I hate people like that. They make this world so it's.... it's all fear, y'know? I mean this life, I do this. I wake up every day. I get through it, but it's not- it's not right. Not who I am. And so I would never call you a freak. Because I know how it.... how it feels-" Then the light came on. Oh. My. God. "You're saying you know how I feel? Why I'm transitioning?" Nodding emphatically. Lower lip between his teeth. In theory I knew better than to assume you could tell a person's gender identity just by looking at them. But in practice I did. Everybody does. But I see now that his calling me Honey, it hadn't been smug condescension, but a clumsy, veiled affirmation of sisterhood. "I didn't know..." "Of course you didn't KNOW! Nobody sees it. What do they see? Some damn slob. But that's just, I just do that. My whole life is that..." "Hiding the truth. Believe me, I've done it too." Another big nod, "Because back when.... growing up. What I saw was, I figured like there were two ways to pretend it. I could either be tough, or I could be a slob. Well I knew I wasn't tough," the edges of his mouth shot up into a pained smile, "You can see how not tough I am. But this, they see a slob, they don't look twice. So I just- oh nevermind." It seemed like a weird time to clam up. "What do you mean, nevermind?" "You got your purse. You don't need hear all this. I'm just stupid." "You're not stupid. And maybe I do need to hear it. You're a woman aren't you?" He made a frustrated gesture, indicating a large portion of his body. "Not really though." "But you feel like you're a girl." "Yeah. I really do," he said..... She said. "Well that's what women do. We listen to each other. Help each other," Hardly as true a statement as it should be, but she probably wasn't going to know that, "And we don't lock away our feelings. We don't have to. So tell me." "But it's-" a keening animal noise welled up from deep inside her, "It's so fucking HARD sometimes!" I stepped in and put my arms around her, then she wrapped hers around me. Scary at first, so much pain and desperation being translated into pounds per square inch, that I thought I might be squashed by this big hairy woman, but she sensed this and eased up a bit. "I'm sorry," she said. "Sorry? For what?" "You don't need all my drama. I shouldn't put it on you. You don't even know me." I patted her on her broad back, "Yes I do, Honey. Yes I do..." At this she sagged against me, her sobs now reflecting gratitude. The fact that just that small acknowledgement of her female reality would be so desperately received was heartbreaking. Then it occurred to me that it might be her very first such acknowledgement. "Have you ever talked to anyone about this?" A big heavy head shaking no on my shoulder. "Do you have a name?" "Um.... Veronica." "You're kidding! How about that? That's my name too." "Really?" she asked, afraid that I might be mocking her. "Yes, really. You called me, remember?" "Oh. That's right." "So do you like Ronnie, or just Veronica?" "I guess it's okay. But nobody really ever called me either one. I'm always Ronald. So I don't know. But you..... You're doing it. Really doing it." "I had to." She sniffed, "I think I did to. But I didn't. Even though I always thought about it. Well now I'm almost fifty. I guess I'm not brave like you. I can't even..... I mean I even have trouble going out around people as a boy. In line at the market, I get like..... all of the sudden I have to get out of there! I mean that's why I do this. This job. I'm here alone mostly. It's easier being alone. You don't have to pretend anything." "You can't just live with it inside you. It will kill you." "I know. I know. I think about that too." "Well don't. And if you do think about it, PLEASE talk to someone. You promise me, Veronica? In fact, here. You can call me. Call me about anything." Wondering what I might be getting myself into, but knowing I didn't have any choice, I broke away. Found a chewing gum wrapper in my purse and put my number on it. "Don't lose that. Do you have any friends in the Trans community?" She stared at the carpet. "What good would it do me?" "What do you mean, what good?" "Well look at me. I can't be a woman!" "I don't think you have any say about that. You are what you are inside. And maybe you won't be able to live as one. But you don't have to be alone." The faintest "Thank you," came out of her. Like a prayer. She said, "Well I got work to do. Graffitti to clean and stuff. I better go earn my pay." "But you will call me, right?" "You really we want me to? A-and we can talk? Like about.... you know." I knew what 'you know' was. I smiled, "You'd better! I have tomorrow off and I expect to hear from you. Don't you dare throw that number away. I know where you work. I'll come here and kick your ass!" We both thought this was pretty funny, given our relative size. She grinned timidly. "I will. I swear." Then she turned and walked off down the hall, tool belt jangling, my guess is feeling happy and hopeful as she had in a long, long while. . . |||)=0==0==0==0==0=> EPILOGUE.. . And that's how I met my friend Veronica. Big goofy, insecure, often quite depressed "Big Ronni", the name she had been given in our group to distinguish her from yours truly. She turned out to be every bit as needy as my presentiments had warned, but with a whole bunch of us sharing the load it's not so bad. And plus Ronni gives as much back as she takes. She is a sweetheart. Still pretty much a recluse in real life, she took to the online transgender community like a duck to water, despite not being able to spell two consecutive words correctly. Driving home I think about my life. About how easy it is to dwell on our problems and lose sight of what we have. I don't know that gratitude is a natural state for the human race. But to meet another ts Veronica, in the dead of night in a deserted theater, to feel the pain of this woman who assumed there would never be a place for her in this world, it puts my wrangling with DMV beaureaucrats, my asshole neighbors, my HRT worries in a whole new perspective. And family problems? In my case at least, there's always hope. And I am incredibly grateful I still wish I hadn't killed my fish, though. .. =>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=> =>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=> =>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=> "How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is to be sure," is by cartoonist R. Crumb's late brother, Charles. =>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=>=> AFTERWORD: CONFESSIONS OF A "BIG RONNI" There's a germ of autobiography to this story. Some time in the mid- 1990's a version of the late night meeting at the theater actually did happen. Unfortunately I was the Big Veronica character; and our heart to heart talk wasn't really anywhere near as heartfelt and tearful as I've portrayed in my story. I'm not sure why I made my character kind of dimwitted, maybe it was an easy way to have two distinctly different voices for the dialogue part, or maybe it was based on what I imagined the young transsexual woman was thinking when she first set eyes on my slobby self. And all the rest of VERONICA AND VERONICA, about her life and her bad day (it was originally written for a story challenge where the theme was "the really bad day" under the title VERONICA ON THE CROSS) is fiction. Although a lot of Veronica's ideas and feelings, the childhood memories, were taken from my own; and back when I first posted it in late 2008 it was the most emotional self-honest work of transgender fiction I'd ever written, having mostly just knocked out silly stuff---a story about a crossdressing caveman, a t.g. SIMPSONS fanfic---before then. I worried that it might be presumptous of me----a mere wannabe---to try and write a first person tale about an MTF transsexual going through her Real Life Test; and I was afraid what the reaction would be from real transsexuals when they read it. I was relieved that the transwomen who commented seemed to like it, and didn't find it as completely unrealistic or lacking in understanding ("I don't know what the hell you are buddy, but you're not transgender!") as I'd feared THE ENCOUNTER THIS WAS BASED ON: I'd found a big red wallet at the theater I did maintenance for, and since she'd had a business card in it I was able to telephone the owner. I was aware of her ts status before I even met her because she had a special transitional driver's license, something I'd never heard of but it wasn't hard to figure out what it meant. And as I gave her back her wallet I was a little in awe, that here was somebody living the sort of life I could only fantasize. She must have misread my awkward, quiet behavior, because she did go, "Now you know what a freak looks like!" This horrified me, that a girl such as I would be taken for some sort of macho transphobic Neanderthal, and I managed to stammer something like, "Believe me, I don't think you're a freak. We might have more in common than you think..." Which was clearly the last thing she was expecting me to say. She apologized for snapping at me and we talked for maybe five minutes. It felt good to actually be out with somebody about who I am inside. She asked me what I was doing my gender stuff and I said nothing, I just don't think I could pass living as a woman. "You never know," she said, and suggested the first thing I should do is I see a counselor, a few years of really digging into her feelings had helped her take the plunge. Then she left. I don't recall what her name was (probably not Veronica), we didn't exchange phone numbers, we didn't hug, I didn't cry. But later, working alone in the empty cineplex after the janitors had finished up and split, realizing that I'm basically just too big of a coward to probably ever transition, I burst into tears.