Stray Figures - 1. Closing the Distance

“I liked the most recent set of photos you sent. The pencil skirt is sexy and you have the legs for it.”

“Thanks for that and for the shopping tips for in New York. I collected a decent wardrobe while I was there.”

I can’t help smiling when that message comes through even knowing you can’t see me. You’ve been purchasing items of clothing regularly the last few months and emailing photos of the new additions. Usually the photos show you modeling the new clothes but sometimes you send just a link to an online catalogue listing, keeping me abreast of your growing collection of skirts, blouses and sweater sets.

“Won’t be long now and you’ll be able to wear them full-time.” I type back my response as the train’s squealing brakes drown out the conductor’s announcement of my station stop.

“Two days. I fly into San Francisco tomorrow and then it will be just one more day.”

“Nervous?” One thumb typing as I stand to put on my bike helmet and sling my briefcase crossways over my chest.

“Excited. As much to finally be meeting you as I am about experimenting with a new life.”

“You flatter me. I have you scheduled for 10am day after tomorrow. Gotta run.”

I click off, unable to wait for an answer, and shove my phone into a sleeve on the briefcase. Threading through the passengers starting to disembark, I unhook my bike from the rack and wheel it onto the train platform. How long has it been that we’ve been chatting in the mornings? Four months? Five? The 25 minute train ride into work is the best part of my day. Even the most banal exchange has me grinning to myself, starting my day on an upbeat note. The banal exchanges are rare. Our chats and emails are more frequently filled with thoughtful reflections on our daily interactions with the world or exchanging music or movie or sports interests.

Most meaningfully though, we share our inner worlds. You offered up that personal arena to me, delighted me with your secreted thoughts, your most private knowledge of yourself. I responded like a treasure collector enchanted by the beauty and rarity of his find. I vowed to prevent the mere dabblers, the dilettantes whom you will inevitably encounter, from tarnishing the perfection of who you are.

Which is sort of my job. The one I’m heading to now, threading my bike through rush hour traffic. I’m a customer service representative at one of the new biotech companies in San Francisco’s Mission Bay district. It might not sound like a job where people entrust me with their inner most secrets, but consider that my company produces a liquid supplement that allows people to change their gender. The stories I hear on a daily basis from people wanting the product are fantastic to say the least. I do my best to shepherd them through the first three months of their transition when their inner identity is first seen publicly.

The discovery of the supplement was entirely accidental. The company’s original goal was development of a therapy to reverse baldness. Instead, they discovered their product had the effect of inducing gender change on a molecular level within a small percentage of the population. It’s been hailed as a natural gender transition therapy since ingesting the liquid over time alters the body right down to the level of DNA.

The company wanted some who’d had a sex change to work with potential customers. That’s where I come in. I transitioned several years ago so I got my sex change the old fashioned way – surgery and hormone supplements. Nowadays, that’s considered a crude approach to transformation.

Anyway, that’s how we met, you and I. You were different, even from that first email. You wanted to know about the product, of course. I explained its newness, that it’s still in trial mode. It doesn’t “take” with everyone, a pre-disposition for gender change is necessary, and if the therapy isn’t continued for life, everything reverses. This actually, is a plus for a lot of people. The reversibility. But it’s also a negative. Cost. The supplement isn’t cheap and if you’re going to do this and make it stick, you better be able to afford it over the long haul.

Our first exchanges were professional, focused mainly on your questions about the supplement and what others have experienced. Unlike most people who contact me, you didn’t lead with your life story. You didn’t even give me a name, just initials. As much as I try not to slot people into a ♂ or ♀ identity, I find it impossible not to guess at the gender in which someone was raised.

We exchanged five or six emails this way and after one I would think…boy.

Then your next email would come and I would think…no, this is a girl.

Then another, and I would think…this is such a girl, but, she sort of wants to be a boy.

You had to come out to me as a straight male. I never would have guessed that was how you were living.

Then those other emails arrived, the ones that left me wondering and flushed at your interest. Your interest in me, in my history, you mined my perspective on gender, on transitioning, on life in general. You became my flattering importunator, one who gave so much more than he sought.

I couldn’t figure out the gay/lesbian/bi/straight thing at all but there was definitely a sexual élan about you. The person writing to me was far from asexual.

In time, your complexities were revealed so that even when we had those rare, banal exchanges I knew I was hearing from the you that’s male and girlish and decidedly queer.

Right now you’re living as a lithe male – lithe as in graceful and lithe as in pliable. The next three months are a trial run at living as female. It’s the sporty, tomboyish women who catch your eye and I imagine a Diana or Sappho or Atalantia goddess will soon catch you up when you transition. But I detect a certain pliancy in your desire. Or perhaps it’s simply a desire for sexual pliancy. Perhaps an Iphis still has a chance.

In any case, it’s all a moot point because you’re a customer and very strictly off limits when it comes to sex. Even our epistolary friendship could get me fired if my managers ever found out.

In two days, you’ll be sitting here in this office, across from me and I’ll play a video for you and explain again what you can expect from the full course of treatment. You’ll sign your release forms. I will send you off on a three month trial and advise you to check in with me weekly. It will all be very clinical. You’ll go in the records as customer 724. My 724^th clinical observation of the course treatment. I swivel in my desk chair, lean back and look at the empty guest chair across the desk. I’m having trouble picturing you there.

Oh, I’ve done plenty of commiserating and celebrating with the first 723 customers. I like hearing from them, learning what surprises them and thrills them as they begin to move through life in their new gender. It’s not impersonal, my relationship with these other consumers of the supplement. But they are not you.

I don’t want to sit across from you here in this office in two days. I don’t want to cover your anticipated transition steps by ticking down a bulleted sheet of legal paper. I’ve done that 723 times and I know you better than I knew any of them. You know me infinitely better than any of the first 723 cared to. So, why is it so hard for me to envision you sitting across the desk from me? Why don’t I want you there?

********************

We missed our morning chat. You were on your flight into San Francisco. I drove into the office instead of taking the train and bike. Your plane landed at 2pm. You sent a text. I resisted responding or emailing or making any contact with you. We haven’t communicated since my ‘Gotta run’ yesterday.

I still can’t imagine you sitting in my office guest chair. I tried, last night, to do some visualization of how tomorrow’s meeting would go. I, who have pictured you so often, imagined your life, read your descriptions of your frequent travels. I’ve seen a plethora of photos of you in all manner of clothing. Why can’t I place you in my office?

Somewhere around 3am, I convinced myself that my managers were right. There’s a reason personal friendships should not be established with customers. It clearly is hindering me from doing my job, preventing me from doing my best for you. It’s a little late in the game, but refraining from any personal contact today should surely help reestablish the professional relationship.

I had my assistant email your appointment reminder. Of course, I pestered her all afternoon until she assured me you had confirmed. You almost got a call from me after all. Had you delayed another 20 minutes and I would have checked in. But, now the day is over and our meeting is set for tomorrow morning. I slip a thumb drive into my pocket. Maybe I’ll watch the video at home tonight, try again to imagine going over it with you.

There’s a misty rain turning the late evening to gray and blurring the city skyline. It’s a quick drive to the freeway exit, the one that would take me home to the suburbs. Instead I find myself driving into the city. As I circle the streets of Union Square looking for a free parking spot, I finally admit to myself what I’m doing.

I want to see you tonight. Oh, the idea of keeping a professional distance is still alive and well. My guess is that you’ll be down in the hotel’s bar, enjoying a nightcap before turning in. I don’t have to announce myself. Feeling on one hand that what I’m doing is deeply creepy, almost stalkerish, I nonetheless carry on with my vague plan to observe you. If I can just see you in person tonight, I’ll be able to visualize you sitting in my office. I’m just here to be better able to do my job.

You’re booked into one of San Francisco’s boutique hotels. It’s old, from the late 1800s, and survived the fires that swept the city after the 1906 earthquake. The hotel is small, only two stories, but done in the beaux-arts style so that the multitude of swags and cornices on the façade cause it to stand out among it’s taller neighbors.

The lobby is rich red and gold, overly ornamental by today’s standards. Even so, there is something welcoming and almost homey about the place. The bottom floor of the hotel is mostly taken up by the hotel bar. The room always puts me in mind of a large drawing room in a country estate, if such a room were to also have an old west saloon bar on the back wall.

I step into the bar which I find to be surprisingly busy. It’s quiet, though, as most of its occupants are seated alone at the tables or conversation areas throughout the room. Nearly every face reflects the glow of a laptop. People are immersed in work or electronic socializing. The grand piano on the corner dais is being inexpertly played and I presume that one of the guests has commandeered it for their evening pleasure.

I settle into a chair at a table against the wall, one that I hope is discreet but will give me a reasonable view of the room. A waiter stops by immediately. I’m neither thirsty nor hungry but order a glass of wine and prepare to nurse it for a while. There’s no guarantee that you’re here, that you will be here tonight, but I have no better plan of action.

At first I think that you really will evade me this evening, that I will not get to see you after all. None of the men seated around the room look the least bit like you. All of them too old or too large or too sloppily dressed. My eyes glance over the women in the room, dismissing them, but then my eyes are drawn back to one woman who’s seated at an angle from me, back almost completely to me.

Is that? It is. It’s you. I’d forgotten that you were already a couple weeks into a light dose of the supplement, something we recommend before anyone travels to see us in person. The dose is enough for an individual to know whether the supplement will effect changes in their body, but not so high as to cause any dramatic change.

Really, anyone looking at you full on would probably still clock you as male. But seated on a stool at the long bar, with its dim light and your head bent over your tablet, it was easy to see the girlish you. Already your skin has a soft glow, facial hair invisible even late in the day. You bones are fine, fingers swiping over the tablet’s surface are long and elegant. You’ve let your hair grow since the last photo I saw. It brushes the collar of your shirt, a blousy affair that is snug enough to show what may be the beginning of an indented waistline.

It’s you, without a doubt. I smile, unable to prevent the wash of warm happiness that always accompanies thoughts of you. That sensation is magnified tenfold seeing you in person. Watching you is as pleasurable as I always imagined it would be. You’re doing very little, reading on the tablet or sometimes just staring into the distance, thinking. Yet, I know I could spend hours more watching you do just that and not be bored for one moment.

You must feel my eyes on you because you look around a couple times, taking a close look at others in the room. You never turn far enough in your seat to see me. I’m still concealed. Your fingers swipe again at the tablet and a slight frown. My fault, I think. You would be expecting me to contact you tonight, at least acknowledge your arrival.

I try again, that visualization thing, try to see us sitting across from one another in my office. I don’t quite get the image that I was reaching for. But, I do get a very clear image of the two of us. Of course, I think. It would never work any other way.

You’re tapping at the tablet with a sort of resigned sadness, head bowed over its faint glow. I approach, slip onto the stool next to yours. You take no notice, thinking me to be just another of the bar’s patrons.

One finger moves lazily over the tablet’s surface. I reach my hand out and cover yours, stilling the finger’s movement.

“It’s me.” I say simply.

Your hand squeezes mine, clutches at it really. You breathe one, two shuddering breaths and then relax totally. The tension in your body, unnoticed before, slithers away and you’re suddenly youthful and nearly smiling.

“I expected to hear from you earlier.” The words are quiet. Not accusing. Inviting me to explain.

“I’ll tell you all about my day, everything that’s been going on with me.” You’re warm next to me and I want to pull you closer, envelope you. Later perhaps. For now…

”For now, I’d just like to sit here next to you. I want to hear about your flight out, what you think of the hotel. Then I want to talk about tomorrow. Mostly though, I just want to sit and be with you. The two of us. Together.”

So seated next to one another, hands linked, you recount your day. In time, I’ll recount mine as well. I may even retrieve the thumb drive with tomorrow’s video and sit with you to watch it up in your hotel room. Because what I finally realized is that you’ll never be like my other 723 customers. I can’t be that clinician counseling you through a transition. I want to play with that girlish queer who’s already making herself known, who’s going to see the full light of day in just a few short hours. I want to draw her out, watch her experience the world, want her to return to me with all her stories, her excitements, her disappointments.

My thumb strokes over your hand as you talk. This is how we’re going to proceed. As friends. Next to one another. Side-by-side.