Patchwork People XVIII Beauty and the Beast
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Patchwork People XVII: Hell's Angel free porn video
XVII. Hell's Angel
Walt was in the workroom of his shop when she called.
He was putting new brake cables on a Rivendell Sam Hillborne. He was customizing the bike for one of his more well-heeled patrons, a dentist who fancied himself a cycling aficionado. He was the kind of guy who outfitted himself like he was racing in the Tour de France just to tool his way through the park. He always bought the very latest, most cutting-edge gear. Everything high-tech and top of the line. But he spent most of his cycling time sipping coffee at the Java King in his expensive four-holed cleat system bike shoes while his thoroughbred ride stood locked to a street sign under his watchful, admiring eye, sparkling immaculately in the sunlight.
Walt shook his head. Well, it took all types.
He was just finishing up the left hand brake when he heard the phone ringing. He put down the specialized metric wrench he was using to adjust the cable tension on the brake, eyed the job critically for a further second or two, and then reluctantly tore himself away. He picked his way through the labyrinth of clutter to the duct-taped wall phone.
"Hello. Everyman's Cycle."
Marcia was on the other end. She sounded rather disheveled.
"Is anything wrong?"
"I need to talk to someone sane."
"Odd place to call for that," Walt quipped, somewhat relieved, but not entirely convinced.
"Do you have five minutes?"
The moment Walt had learned that Phoebe was coming to Hope Crossing he knew it meant trouble of one kind or another. Trouble of several different kinds, most likely. Walt was no stranger to trouble; in fact, for a while there, trouble seemed to be his most faithful companion. It had dogged him everywhere back in the day, trotted after him like...well, like a loyal dog.
He'd been a drunk and a drug addict. There was no other honest way to put it, nothing, really, could you add to romanticize the bare facts. A.A. had taught him that.
Although others insisted on seeing a certain rough glamour in his dicey past, he knew the ugly truth. Those who saw something heroic in Walt's rough-and-tumble life history were usually men who hadn't done a single daring thing in their lives, who never rebelled against anything, except in their imaginations. But rebellion had its price and Walt had paid that price in spades, including a five-and-a-half-year stint in state prison. That part of the story, which he seldom told, was hardly as charming a chapter as the antisocial antics and wild sexcapades that people loved to hear.
Clean and sober now for sixteen years and counting, Walt looked back at the man he'd been in those days and felt as if he were looking at a different person entirely. Take away the chemical changes that drugs and alcohol effect, as well as those that age and maturity bring, and you could quite literally argue that he was a different person. If anything linked him to his former self, it was his natural instinct for rebellion. That streak in him seemed to be indelible. But now that he was sober, that instinct had taken a lot less toxic and destructive form.
The wild biker life had appealed to him not for it's criminality, but for it's flagrant defiance of all the rules that society imposed to limit and define what one could do and not do with one's life. Then, as now, Walt believed that each individual had not only a right, but a duty, to define these things for himself. The only difference between then and now was that he no longer believed that one needed to be entirely blitzed out of one's mind to make these choices, that alcohol, drugs, random violence, or even motorcycles, were prerequisites to reach one's goal.
Still, despite his rebel ways, no one could have been more surprised than he was to find himself in love with a girl like Marcia. By the time Grace had told him, obliquely, about her past, Walt had already discerned the truth. If he wasn't certain of it, then he was about as certain as one could be without confirming the evidence in the only way it could be confirmed. He hadn't yet seen Marcia completely naked. He couldn't help but notice how scrupulously, suspiciously, careful she'd been about that. But by then they'd been intimate enough.
"There's something about Marcia I need to tell you," Grace said one afternoon on her porch. She'd called Walt up to ask about a problem with a stuck window in a guest bedroom that probably hadn't been opened in decades. An imaginary problem, Walt quickly deduced, a mere excuse for the conversation on the porch over lemonade that shortly followed.
"I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone, but there are some trusts you have to betray to remain true to something much bigger. I'm betting that you, of all people, understand."
"I understand. You don't have to say anything."
Grace uncertain if they were talking about the same thing started to explain. But Walt laid a thick, scarred finger to his lips. "I know."
"And?"
"And it's okay."
A sigh of relief. Then the slightest of smiles played on the old lady's lips. She looked like she wanted to snap her fingers and say "hot diggedy-dog, I knew it!" Instead she held up the plate of cookies she'd brought out, leftover from the Blue Cat that day, another of Walt's favorites, as it happened.
"Another vanilla wafer then?"
And that was that. She offered no further explanations or information and Walt required none. He accepted the knowledge as if it had been something he'd known all along and in doing so he realized it really was something he'd known all along. Some part of him, anyway, had always known, and that made the "big revelation" a technical necessity, perhaps, but no surprise.
And that in itself was no surprise. His relationship with Marcia had always seemed completely natural to him. Still, there were times when he thought about how the situation might seem to others. He was always shocked to think it would come as a shock to others. How could he explain it if he were one given to making explanations? He wasn't gay; of that, he was certain. By now, having admitted so much to himself in and out of various twelve-step programs, it wouldn't have been a problem for him to admit that he were bisexual, or even homosexual. It certainly wouldn't have been worse than the things he had already admitted, not worse than the squalor, the violence, the selfishness of his addiction. Certainly not worse than homicide and prison and all the pain he caused those who'd loved him. Although, come to think of it, there were those who might consider sleeping with one's own sex to be even worse than murder.
The fact was that inside the joint, he'd done it with guys without giving it a second-thought. Many prisoners did; it was convenient, it was not a big deal, not the taboo it was outside prison society. It didn't impugn one's manhood. It didn't mean anything life-altering, except, perhaps, that the experience had opened Walt's personal horizons as to what sex was and wasn't, what love was and wasn't.
With Marcia, though, it had been different. He had never thought of her as another man. She was one of the most profoundly feminine beings he'd ever met. Of that, he had not the slightest doubt. He had seen her as a woman from the moment they met. Not for a single moment since then, even when, as an experiment he'd tried, in order to see if it might alter his feelings about her, had been able to able to see her as anything other than a woman.
Too many people saw things as black and white when it came to sex. They saw a lot of other things that way, too, but sex, it seemed, most of all. A man was either gay or straight, a person was either male or female. It was easier to live like that, Walt supposed; if less interesting, it was less anxiety-inducing; many people, you had to understand, didn't want to have choices. They wanted to be led to one bale of hay or another. There was a security in limitation. People seemed to fear that they be lost in a world of fog otherwise, stranded between shades of grey, where anything goes. They didn't want uncertainty, even if it meant being close-minded, bigoted, and downright wrong. Even if it meant living only half a life.
All the same Walt wasn't surprised that it had taken him so long to earn Marcia's trust. And, in truth, he knew he still had a way to go. He had managed to get her to believe that he loved her, but he also knew that she feared his feelings could disappear in an instant. She was right, of course: love did disappear, often in an instant, and their love was no less vulnerable to circumstances outside their control than any other. Maybe even a little more so, to be perfectly honest. There was little he could do to convince her or himself otherwise. Was it enough to simply love her like he would any other woman? He could reasonably do no more. The rest was up to Marcia herself.
In the back of Walt's mind there was always a niggling fear of his own. That something--or someone--would spook Marcia back into her old false self. That, ironically, it wouldn't be Walt who remained unconvinced that she was female. That it would be Marcia herself who would suddenly decide that transitioning was too hard in the face of the world's general disapproval.
And what could be more harshly disapproving than a teenage child?
Ever since he heard the news that Phoebe was arriving in Hope Crossing, Walt secretly feared that Marcia might feel compelled to "man-up" for his daughter one last time.
He would have supported her even in that, given her his blessing, if that is what she truly wanted to do. He was sure of that much, even if it meant losing her. Even though he honestly believed the effort would be misguided, that it would ultimately destroy Marcia, and this he couldn't bear to see. Not just for the loss he would have to absorb, but because it would mean the loss of the beautiful, kind, gentle-hearted woman she had struggled so long and so hard to become. It would be like watching her die. And, worst of all, to die to her true self and not for any good reason either, but only to appease the intolerance of others. It was the boot heel that all too often ground down the rarest and most fragile of flowers. There was still too much of the rebel in Walt. He would accept it if it came to that, but he could not allow himself to stand by and watch that happen. Not without a fight.
Less than a week after his conversation on Grace's porch, Marcia made her big reveal. Was it only coincidental? Again, Walt didn't ask. They'd just finished cleaning up after dinner at the carriage house. Marcia had fixed one of his favorite meals: shrimp salad served in a flaky, buttery pastry cup. Homemade pecan pie and vanilla bean ice-cream for dessert.
She'd hardly touched her own dinner. A small portion of the spinach-goat cheese-walnut-cranberry salad that she'd made large enough for them to share.
Something was bothering her, Walt knew her well enough by now to recognize even the subtlest signs, but after asking her what was wrong several times to no purpose other than to have her redouble her efforts to seem cheerful, he gave up. He knew that no amount of prodding beyond a certain point would get her to reveal what troubled her. He would have to wait for the weather to break in its own good time.
An hour and a half later she sobbed out the entire story on the couch. They were watching television. Half-watching it, really. Something about the ancient Egyptians on the History Channel.
Walt had been trying for days, ever since his conversation with Grace, to let Marcia know in the subtlest of ways, without coming right out and saying it, that everything was okay, that he knew and accepted the situation. Perhaps it was his awkward attempts at putting her mind at ease that had evoked the exact opposite emotion in her, the unease that triggered her confession. Instead of comforting and reassuring her, Walt had inadvertently opened a flood-gate and released a long pent-up tide of guilt and grief.
"I can't stand it anymore," she sobbed.
"Can't stand what?" Walt said, knowing perfectly well what she meant, but having no idea how to tell her what he knew or how he knew it.
"Having you love someone who doesn't exist."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, me."
"Oh baby, you exist more than anyone I've ever known."
"No!" Marcia shook her head. Her eyes were closed, tears were streaming. "What you see is not who's really here. It's more complicated than that, Walt."
"I don't care how complicated it is."
Marcia opened her eyes and they had a stricken look. Christ, he should just shut up; he felt that whatever he said now was only bound to make things worse. What was it that she needed to hear, anyway? Or was it not a matter of what she needed to hear, but of what only she herself could say? If that were the case, he should just shut up and let her say it.
So he shut up. He tried to take her in his arms instead of talking, but she would have none of that either, not until she'd spilled what she considered to be the whole sordid truth. It was as if she were consciously punishing herself, refusing all consolation, as if this were her due.
She retreated to her end of the couch, hugging herself, cold, alone, vulnerable, the most alone person Walt thought he'd ever seen in his entire life. It was awful how alone Marcia looked at that moment, as if her end of the couch were a thousand light-years away.
On television, they were talking about Nefertiti.
"I kept wanting to tell you, please believe me. I never wanted to deceive you. But I kept thinking our relationship would end of its own accord and what would be the point if that were the case? At first, I didn't even think it was serious. I thought you were just flirting, like guys do, you know, just automatically. And it felt so good. But then, even when you asked me out, and I saw it going in a more serious direction, well, of course, that's when I should have put a stop to it. But I just...I don't know. I just couldn't do it somehow. I couldn't pull the trigger. It felt so good; it was like a dream come true and I didn?t want to wake up just yet.?
She drew a deep sobbing, ragged breath. ?I was just being selfish. There?s no other way to put it. No excuses. And when I saw that it would actually hurt your feelings to break up with you...what was I going to do? If I told you, I thought you'd feel like a fool."
She was shaking all over now. It took all of Walt's self-control not to go to her, but he knew it would do no good, not yet. She was going to say it one way or another; she needed to say it. She was forcing herself to suffer the worst of all possible outcomes: his rejection, obviously, his disgust, and, perhaps, even worst.
Walt felt sickened by what Marcia was courting. And that she might think him capable of it. She could hardly discount the possibility, after all, that he would react violently. Discount it? Given his past, she might almost expect it. She might even be welcoming his rage as the punishment she deserved. It was unspeakably sad to consider that this is what she'd been given to understand was due her To be punished for who and what she was. To be beaten, maybe even killed. To be punished for being human.
"I was a man," she blurted it out, just like that. As if she were revealing the ugliest thing anyone could ever say about themselves. Her face was twisted in the distaste and disgust that she probably expected to see mirrored on Walt's, except, of course, she didn't see it mirrored there. He only looked back at her kindly, with all the love he felt for her.
She was confused. Not only by his lack of reaction, but by her own statement, because in telling the truth, she was actually telling another kind of lie.
And, in telling two lies, therein was something that approximated the truth.
"Well, I never really was a man," she started, and fell silent for a moment, before trying again. "I was born male...but I was never really a boy. Oh Christ, it's so complicated. There's really no way at all to explain this."
Marcia wanted to explain that she was born in the wrong body. But what did that mean exactly? When you came right down to it, saying something like that just sounded stupid. How could you be born in the wrong body? She was born in the body she was born in; that made it the right body, didn't it? She was born with the wrong mind, maybe? Or was it that she'd simply lost her mind? That's how a lot of people saw it. That's how her brother Matt saw it. That she had psychological problems, that she needed to go to a shrink. They didn't realize that she'd seen several psychiatrists over the years. They didn't realize that it was a psychiatrist who'd confirmed her instincts in the end. Gender dysphoria, the psychiatric profession called it. A fancy word for what amounted to: "born in the wrong body."
"Are you done now?" Walt asked gently.
"Yes," she said in a small quiet voice.
She looked mildly surprised. Walt hadn't bolted off the couch or flown into a rage or reacted with disgust. He wasn't looking at her with loathing or horror or in any of the ways Marcia had imagined he might. He was looking at her with something she didn't recognize at first because it was an expression she'd never seen before in her entire life. He was looking at her with total love, total acceptance.
"I guess it should make a difference to me," Walt explained. He spoke quietly and carefully. He wanted to get this right because it could only be said once. "But to be perfectly honest, it doesn't. It's as simple as that Marcia. To me, you've always been a girl. There was no subterfuge about it as far as I'm concerned. You've been yourself from the start. What's between your legs may not coincide, at least not conventionally, with what a girl is supposed to be, but in the end that's irrelevant. I'm guessing that you understand that."
Marcia was so surprised hear what Walt was saying that she almost forgot to answer. She nodded quickly, belatedly.
"So if you can understand that, what makes it so hard for you to believe that it would be impossible for anyone else to understand? Me, for instance?"
"I don't know,? she stammered. ?It just seems too much to hope for, I guess."
"Maybe you should allow yourself to hope a little."
Marcia was crying again, but now it was a good sort of crying, the kind that almost feels orgasmic, better, though, in some ways, than any orgasm could ever feel because such deep weeping massaged places physical pleasure alone could never reach.
She let Walt take her into his arms now, and, without protest, take her from the couch to bed. There he proved to her in the best, most explicit way he knew that he considered her a woman from head to toe.
It was typical of a guy, Marcia thought later, lying there, staring up into the darkness, as Walt slept soundly, satisfied and satiated beside her, that he should have resolved the issue with sex. But, ultimately, she was glad he had. Because it did prove, if maybe not exactly in the way that he?d intended, more than any mere words ever could that he considered her a woman. And perhaps it was something that Walt needed, too. To prove to himself once and for all, as well as to her, that he really did accept her as she was without any reservations.
He?d proceeded slowly, with great care and gentleness. The pain, however, had been considerable. She didn't stop him, but she didn't fully respond either; it was too soon yet for her to feel that level of comfort with herself.
?It?ll get better,? he assured her, as they lay side by side afterwards, just before he drifted off. ?Better and better. I promise.?
She believed him. She had almost enough money put aside for the operation. She had in mind the clinic and the doctor she wanted to do it. She'd done her research. What she wanted, more than ever, was to be the woman Walt already said he considered her to be. She wanted that more than anything.
"You had to expect that this wasn't going to be easy," Walt said. "Especially not at first."
Before ringing off, they had agreed to meet in front of the town library in a half-hour. Just long enough for Walt to finish the brake job on the Hillborne and for Marcia to check out a book she?d been meaning to borrow. The library was a small white clapboard house left to the town in trust by a long deceased resident. The book Marcia had been wanting to check out was a collection of verse written by Edgar Birdwell, long-forgotten poet laureate of Hope Crossing. The thin volume she held, with its frayed, faded covers and stiffened yellowed pages, hadn?t been requested in decades.
Marcia nodded. "I know. I guess I just wasn't expecting it to be so...well, to use one of Phoebe?s favorite words, so ?whatever.? Like here she is after all this time and what is different? I mean, why is she here if she doesn't want to talk?"
They were walking back towards center of town. They stopped off at the Java King for a coffee. They took a table by the warm, flyspecked front window.
"Give her time,? Walt said, removing the plastic lid from his cup and taking a tentative sip. ?She may be trying to find the words."
"But that's just it. Time. How much of it do we have? How long is she even staying? I don't know. I don?t know anything."
"You know she needs you. Or needs something, even if it's just to satisfy her curiosity, to fill in the blank spaces. She came to you, after all; this has to mean something."
"It does," Marcia agreed.
"Tell me, what did you think was going to happen?"
Marcia shrugged. It was a Walt sort of question and more often than not it was the kind of question that Marcia found impossible to answer. It was an attempt to get her to clarify her thinking, to pinpoint the source of her hurt and dissatisfaction; it was an approach that her mathematically-inclined brother Matt might take when analyzing a problem. All it usually did for Marcia was tie her up in mental and emotional knots. It also made her uncomfortably aware of how much of her life was lived in a vague cloud of hope and wishful thinking. The fact was that Marcia had a sense of what she wanted, but that was all. It was nothing as cut-and-dry as what Walt was asking her to describe.
"Let me hazard a guess," Walt continued. "You were expecting some kind of fall-in-each-others-arms reunion, tears, apologies all around, and the revelation of great misunderstandings that would clear away all the bad emotional weather of the past to reveal a thousand sunny tomorrows. Something like that, right? Tell the truth."
"Yeah," Marcia admitted, smiling shyly. ?I guess that?s true when you come right down to it.?
What she envisioned was a slightly more sophisticated scenario straight out of a Hallmark television movie, the kind of thing she would have scoffed at had she read it in a novel.
"Something like that."
Walt took her hand across the table. "I'm sorry, baby. You know that I'd take away this hurt from you if I could. I feel so damn helpless to protect you from this."
Marcia shrugged. "There's nothing you can do."
"No there isn?t. All the same I don't like to see anyone or anything hurting you. You don't deserve it."
"Don't I, though? I left. Of course, I know there were reasons I had to leave, or thought I had to leave. If I stayed I'd have probably ended up a suicide, and what kind of guilt trip would that have laid on everyone? But from Phoebe?s point of view, I abandoned my post. I abandoned her. Twice. First with the divorce and then by moving away and becoming a woman. I was supposed to stay put, even if she never wanted to see me, even if I had no place or role in her life. That was my role in my life: to stay put, on-call, forever, no matter if I were called or not. To be the person she could depend on to reject again and again no matter how often she rejected me."
Walt frowned. ?Yes I see that. But you have been on call. Here. Now. And she has called and you have answered. Listen,? Walt continued, ?I'm just saying, give it time. No matter how much time there is. Even if she leaves tomorrow morning, this is what she needs, you being here. If that?s all she wants from you, you can at least feel you gave it to her, even if you wish you could have given more. Of course, if that is all she wants, it?s her loss. She'll never get to know what a wonderful person you really are. She'll be the one missing out."
"I don?t know about that. I may have something to give, but if a person doesn't want or need it, it's exactly the same as having nothing to give. At least as far as that person is concerned. I don?t see that she needs me for anything, really. What would she need me for anyway at this point in her life?"
"We'll just have to wait and find out, won?t we? That's what I'm saying. Hey, just an idea. How about I take you guys out to dinner tonight? Have you told her about me? About us?"
"Yes, I told her I was involved with a guy."
"How did she take it?"
"She's a teenager. I could have told her that I was dating a talking moon zebra and she'd have shrugged as if she?d heard it all before."
Walt chuckled. ?Yep. Typical teenager.?
Marcia suddenly looked up from her coffee. ?But I'd love for her to meet you.?
?How about if I pick you guys up for dinner tonight??
?Tonight??
?Too soon??
?Not when you?re living like there may be no tomorrow.?
Walt grinned. ?Ha. Now that?s my little biker babe talking.?
* * * * *
Author note: I plan to publish ?Patchwork People? in its entirety in weekly installments here on Fictionmania. In the meantime, the complete novel is currently available as an Amazon Kindle ebook for $2.99.
For more of my writings, drawings, erotica, and photos please visit my blog Bad Pussy
sissyforlife(dot)blogspot(dot)com.
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