42 Misdirected Passion
Nikki stopped and stared at me. “All those dates you say you had in your old life… you don’t mean that you dated a lot of boys, do you? You meant girls, right?”
In the dark, she couldn’t see my expression, but my physical reaction seemed to tell her all she needed.
“I mean, I’m not judging you, Marsh. There’s nothing wrong with… I mean, it’s just a surprise, since I remember you as straight. But… I guess, that would make it a bit harder to do that scene, you know, if you don’t like boys…”
I didn’t have to see her to see that she was more embarrassed than I was – the rapidity at which she was speaking was evidence of that. And to my strong relief, she had guessed wrong. As uncomfortable as she was imagining me a lesbian, I suspect that she would have been much more so if she knew that I had been male.
“Wait! I just thought of something,” she added. “When you said that you were having trouble finding… “certain people” attractive… did you mean girls in general? You’re not attracted to girls any more?”
“As far as I can tell, yeah. As far as I can tell, I’m not attracted to anybody any more.”
“Oh, Marsh,” she said, sympathetically. “That’s horrible.” It looked as though she was torn between hugging me and feeling uncomfortable about how I might react. Then friendship, or her tendency to mothering or something kicked in, and she did hug me. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through, with this on top of everything else.”
“Yeah.”
After a moment, she held me away and looked at me. “So you’re not suddenly finding boys attractive?”
I shuddered at the idea. “Definitely not.”
“Wow, that’s going to be… I mean, not even in dreams? You can’t imagine yourself liking a boy in a dream or something like that?”
“No,” I started, and then suddenly I stopped. “Dreams…” I repeated. “Oh my… goodness, I just remembered something. When I first woke up after… this happened, I thought that I was dreaming. I took my sister to choir practice, and while I was waiting for her, I met this boy. I told myself that I should be fascinated by him… and I was.”
“So you do have a memory of being attracted to a boy.”.
“Yes, but don’t you see? It wasn’t a dream. It was real! That means… that he was real, too.” I tried to remember what I had actually said to him, but the only thing that came to mind was my telling him that I was Tina’s big brother. “He must have thought I was a total idiot.” And even worse, I had been attracted to a boy!
“Does it matter? Are you likely to see him again?”
“I… I don’t know. This is just so strange, realizing that I had been speaking with somebody while thinking he was a figment of my imagination.”
“But you can use that memory, right?” she insisted. “What was his name?”
I stopped to think. I could picture his face, and hear his voice. “I remember… he was telling me something interesting about math and music, I think. But when I got talking with Tina afterwards, I forgot all about him.’ I shook my head. “I can’t remember his name. I think it was something like… Jordi?”
“Jordi? Really?”
“No, that doesn’t sound quite right. Look, I thought I had invented him; remembering his name wasn’t important.”
“And it probably isn’t important,” she suggested. “What really matters is that you can use the memory. Jordi is sort of like ‘Jared,’ right? So does that help?”
“I… think so.” I tried to remember how I’d felt, seeing myself as a girl talking with “Jordi..” I closed my eyes and visualized him. Of course, I had no memory of wanting to kiss him, but I did remember a feeling of excitement – and it did feel something sort of like what I had felt for Vicky. Maybe not as strong, but it was definitely there. Exciting and, in retrospect, a bit horrifying.
I tried to visualize myself as Mollie, next. Mollie, seeing her husband of just a year, Giles. I felt a faint smile come on to my face as I lifted my arms towards towards an imaginary Giles – and stopped with a shudder. I seemed to have mentally labeled Jared as “harmless.” Trying to think of wanting to kiss him, or rather Giles, or “Jordi” was another step.
“I’m going to have to work on this, I think,” I told Nikki. “I have the memory, and I think I can get the feeling, but it’s this mental block, this aversion…”
“… to kissing a boy? You did seem awkward with Jared.”
“To wanting to kiss a boy. To finding one desirable. I have this memory, so that’s a start. I just have to use it somehow.
“OK…”
“And thanks for helping me come up with that memory. I think it’ll give me something to work with.” I shrugged. “I guess we don’t need to go to the Grill, after all. Good night.”
“Hold on,” she said. “We can go anyway. Come on, I’ll treat you to ice cream.”
“I don’t think…”
“I know that you’re not bringing in a lot of money yet, and I’ve taken on some of your more expensive jobs, so I am, and we’re friends, right?”
I smiled. “Of course.”
“And I don’t want you going to bed thinking that this revelation makes me uncomfortable around you.
“You don’t have to twist my arm, Nikki,” I grinned. “I accept.”
Over ice cream, we kept talking, but about almost anything except the play. She was particularly interested in talking about sewing. “Somehow you seem to know a lot more than you realize, Marsh. I’m just wondering how far it goes.”
“I don’t really know,” I answered. “I just seem to pick things up, almost as if I did once know them and forgot.”
“That is what it seems like. So… would you know what to do if I told you to do a lapped seam?”
“Absolutely not. I’ve never heard of it.”
“How about a flat felled seam? A topstitch?”
I shook my head. “I have no clue.”
She nodded. “And yet, I suspect that if I showed you, you’d pick it right up.”
I nodded. “My brain doesn’t know sewing at all, but my hands seem to – or at least I have an aptitude I’d certainly never expected.”
“You know, I bet you might even be ready to tackle some simple alterations. Why don’t you come over to my room… say, Thursday afternoon, so I have time to pick something out for you to work on?”
“Sounds great,” I said enthusiastically. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
So I was in a pretty good mood, all things considered, when I set down next to Geoff in Organic Chemistry the next morning.
“Good morning!” he greeted me. “It may interest you to know that I spoke to Chandra about Lee Ann.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it seems there’s a bit going on there. You were right that Lee Ann wasn’t planning on dumping her boyfriend.”
I sighed with relief. “Good. I just wanted to make sure you knew. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m not the issue. The problem is making sure that Lee Ann doesn’t get hurt.”
I shook my head in confusion.
“Chandra says that her boyfriend is a jerk, and that Lee Ann’s parents sent her here to get her away from him. Chandra’s trying to get her to go for somebody else.” He grinned. “That’s where I come in.”
“I think you’re wrong. Stephen seems like a nice guy. I… I think you’re wasting your time.”
“Oh, you’ve met him? What’s he like?
“No. I haven’t met him,” I admitted, before realizing that Marsha probably had, given my conversation with Lee Ann about last year.
“Well, Chandra has.” He shrugged. “In any event, at least the effort will be enjoyable.”
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. Knowing that Lee Ann wouldn’t have been leaving her boyfriend after all had been a consolation for the loss of my apparent chance to replace him. But if Chandra was right…
I didn’t get a chance to question Lee Ann at lunch because she didn’t come in until I had started to return my tray after lunch, while in the middle of a discussion about classic Rock with some of the guys. To my surprise, Marsha had a reputation of being fairly knowledgeable on the subject, despite not playing the guitar. She must have been pretty close to Grandpa, which made his overlooking her for the inheritance all the more confusing.
And it was becoming increasingly clear that Chad’s suggestion that I look for the lab was a good one, as it was taking a long time to find it. I’d gone back to the physics building with an empty notebook to track my search. This time I started a diagram, making sure to note the doors I had been unable see into. Different professors seemed to have different schedules, and there were several labs on the floors I’d already searched which had been locked the day before, some of which were locked today as well, and some were not. Patience was to be the key, clearly.
I search for another hour before going back to my room again. I couldn’t exactly ignore my studies, after all. But first, I called Tina again.
“I need some more help with the kissing thing, Teen,” I explained when she expressed surprise at my calling her two days in a row. “I think I can imagine liking a boy, but wanting to kiss him? That’s tough.”
“Because you’re thinking that you’re a boy, right?”
“Mm hmm.”
“Can you think of yourself as a girl while you do it?”
“I don’t know, Teen,” I said, skeptically. “I can think of myself as playing a girl, but actually thinking of myself as one? That’s a bit tougher.”
“Well… what do you see when you look in the mirror?”
“I see myself – in costume,” I laughed.
“You have a full-length mirror, don’t you?”
“Sure,” I replied. “It’s for when girls come in to be fitted.”
“And for you to check yourself when you get ready to go somewhere.”
“That too.”
“So try this. Take off all of your clothes and look in the mirror.”
“What?!” I sputtered.
“Just do it.”
So I did. I made sure that my door was locked, and undressed, feeling extremely self-conscious. Then I stood in front of the mirror and looked at this naked body I was wearing. No, I scolded myself. I looked at my naked body.
“Still see a boy?”
“Not really,” I had to admit. Under the dress, which had covered most of my body, it had been very easy to pretend that everything I saw was costume and make-up. Seeing myself naked, really looking at myself that way, this way, made that impossible. The curves of my body, the contours of my crotch, stripped away the illusions with which I had been comforting myself.
“Look at yourself carefully and try imagining the kiss again,” Tina suggested.
So I did. I put down the phone. I’m a girl, I told myself, at least for the moment. Looking carefully at my feminine reflection, I imagined “Jordi” in front of me. I hadn’t expected the sudden feeling of modesty that made my wrap my arms around myself in response to the thought of him seeing me this way. I took a deep breath and tried again. He’s your husband, I insisted. It’s normal for him to see you like this.
I summoned up the memory of my fascination with “Jordi.” I closed my eyes, opened my arms to reveal my nudity to “my husband” and reached up my arms to be kissed. This time, I felt a nervous excitement, a terrified passion that reached not only into my lips, but touched my breasts and… Firmly, I admonished myself to memorize the feeling in my face and my neck and my mouth, as Alvin had directed us.
After a moment, I shuddered and hid myself with my arms again. The feeling had been much more intense than I had expected. This wasn’t supposed to be a passionate kiss, Alvin had said. But I had to affix this memory in my body, so I tried it again.
I licked my lips as I pictured “Jordi” standing over me, and reached for him. I caught my breath as I imagined his arms enfolding me. Breathing slowly, I eased myself off my toes and picked up the phone again.
“I… think it worked, Teen,” I said, shakily.
“Really? Are you OK?”
“I think so. I guess my imagination works pretty well.”
“What happened? What did you feel? Tell me!”
“I, um… imagined that I was a girl kissing a guy that… “ I stopped myself from telling her what guy – it occurred to me that he had known who she was; what if she knew him? Better that he remain anonymous. I didn’t want to make him too real.
“A guy that…” Tina prompted me.
“Um. A guy that… this girl liked… that they were married, and… anyway, I felt it. I felt the kiss. I felt it in my neck and in my arms… and in my body.”
“Wow…”
“Yeah, I think I might have overdone it a bit. I’m going to have to take it down a little.”
“Well, Mr. Condrin said that was easier than adding passion and energy, right?”
I smiled to hear my sister quoting our drama teacher the way I did. “Right. I’m gonna get dressed and try this with my clothes on. Thanks for your help, Teen.” I almost hung up, but remembered, and added, “Oh, what’s new with you?”
“Since yesterday?” she laughed. “Not too much. I’m practicing for the Carousel auditions, that’s all.”
“Well, good luck,” I wished her. “Not that you’ll need it, of course.”
“Thanks, Marsh. Take care.”
“You, too, Teen. Bye.”
I am not sure what I think of this chapter. You might want to change your rating a bit on webfiction guide.
OK, my first comments, and probably no more till next chapter:
1) Nikkis conclusion was obvious in the last chapter, and Marsh’s reaction was not consistent with his earlier desire to preserve Marshas reputation in that light. And it did not even make sense for Marshall.
2) I now understand a lot about what you were doing earlier in the book. I still disagree, but I at least see where you were trying to go. I think to arrive at this point you would need to show a lot more deliberate denial earlier in the book.
3) The psychology here doesn’t work for me. Where I would expect ‘absolutely not’ I get ‘that would be tough’. Where I would expect total panic, I get ‘well, that worked’. The ‘get the play right’ is totally overshadowing the ‘who am I’. I have a hard time believing that anyones self-image is that wrapped up in a play. But then, perhaps that is why I have only played bit parts and melodrama’s.
Even for those whose outward speech rises to the level of the PC stuff here, I would be very, very surprised if their inward consciousness was anywhere near as blase.
I’m wondering if perhaps you’ve read more into the chapter than I intended. You do understand that Marsh is only working on thinking of himself as a girl during the play, right? That it’s just a matter of trying to get into character, and not changing his whole view of himself?
I´ve worked in amateur plays in the past and can tell that good acting takes this intense concentration on character´s feelings and emotions. One of my coleages at that time used a process to get in character that looked a bit like a possesion.
I remember my drama teacher telling me in private that a certain girl would never be a good actress because her own personality was so strong that she could never really get into character, she always showed her true personality. Although, latter experience showed me that strong personalities can be used to get into character … well, let the rant on theather theory for another day.
Anyway, your main character is doing it for the play, but the process used shows to us, external observers, where his new sexuality is. And, in this context, it should be called her sexuality.
One more time we see Marsh using ruses, smoke curtains and self deception to avoid his/her real problem.
Now, I would find it more interesting if Marsh was still attrated to girls (although, possibly not in the same way as before) or, at least, bisexual. But, it is your book, I am just along for the ride.
>>I’m wondering if perhaps you’ve read more into the chapter than I intended. You do understand that Marsh is only working on thinking of himself as a girl during the play, right? That it’s just a matter of trying to get into character, and not changing his whole view of himself?
I think one difference between us is in how important ‘the play’ is. For me it is a vehicle only. As Marsh I wouldn’t give a rip about the play if my whole Etre was at stake; let alone my relationships with my sister, best friend, parents etc. I would be appalled at the immorality I had shown so far, including the visual rape of all these women.
IOW we disagree over what is important. For me (as reader):
Unimportant vehicles:
The play
The paper
The sewing business
Important elements of life and thus the book:
Relationships with Mother, Father, Sister, Chad, (G-d)
Lesser relationships
Underlying ‘who am I’ and ‘who should I be’
Sexuality
Thus I see that someone, purely for a play, might imagine themselves someone different (altho not, morally, another sex). But someone who is already having a crisis of ‘who am I’ and sexuality, cannot, IMO, relax into the idea of ‘let’s just pretend I am a girl for the play’. Besides the moral issue, it is, for me, absolutely unbelievable at this stage of the plot. This chapter, even assuming it sort of ‘happened’, should have provoked an absolute panic reaction: “I was attracted to a boy!!! Help!!! Save me!!”
>>One more time we see Marsh using ruses, smoke curtains and self deception to avoid his/her real problem
If I saw this, it wouldn’t be such a problem for me.
As it happens, the idea of the ‘forced sex change’ happening to an actor, who is already more or less comfortable with the idea of taking on a different and foreign persona, and not treating them as parts of himself, was a major motivation for this story in the first place. Ideally, an actor should be able to separate, ‘who I really am’ from ‘who I am playing,’ although getting that separation perfect is not easy, and is always an issue.
Actually, I found the sewing business to be more interesting than I anticipated it being. It caused me to form the theory of Marshall (the active thought process) versus Marsha (the subconscious thought process). When Marsha was talking to some girl who’s name eludes me at the moment, he could sew just fine. It’s only when he thought about it he was having trouble (kinda like riding a bicycle). This conflict of thought process was confirmed in this latest chapter.
This raises the question in my mind of whether or not Marsha can play guitar. Yes, Marshall knows how to play guitar, but can the mind overcome the body? I think so, but it’s going to take the two meeting half way. Also, I’m curious why the lack of callouses is that big of a deal. I think he could try using a guitar pick. They may even have one he could try to use over in the music department. But that’s probably a plot thread for another chapter.
And I still want to know the details behind the experiment in the science building, but I know that would remove a bunch of the mystery of what’s going on.
>>As it happens, the idea of the ‘forced sex change’ happening to an actor, who is already more or less comfortable with the idea of taking on a different and foreign persona, and not treating them as parts of himself, was a major motivation for this story in the first place.
Ah, well that explains a lot that seems forced to me.
>>Ideally, an actor should be able to separate, ‘who I really am’ from ‘who I am playing,’ although getting that separation perfect is not easy, and is always an issue.
But, of course, in this case, it is the ‘who am I’ which is actually the issue… which throws the issue back for me.
A good actor, forced into the female body and forced by some dramatic circumstance (which this is not) to act as a female… great.
>>>This raises the question in my mind of whether or not Marsha can play guitar. Yes, Marshall knows how to play guitar, but can the mind overcome the body? I think so, but it’s going to take the two meeting half way. Also, I’m curious why the lack of callouses is that big of a deal. I think he could try using a guitar pick. They may even have one he could try to use over in the music department. But that’s probably a plot thread for another chapter.
Actually there are three issues: mind, brain, and body. Marsh has Marshalls memory, but he has Marshas brain and body. These two things go together to allow for things such as sewing, but more often walking, etc. to be natural once the mind gets over its attempt to control.
My guess would be that he would know the theory, but his hands would not ‘know’ how to work the guitar.
>>Also, I’m curious why the lack of callouses is that big of a deal. I think he could try using a guitar pick. They may even have one he could try to use over in the music department. But that’s probably a plot thread for another chapter.
Have you ever tried playing a guitar? You cannot use a pick to hold down the strings; you must use your fingers. And until you develop callouses, that can be quite painful; especially during extended playing.
Actually, no, I’ve never played the guitar. My instrument of choice was the trumpet back in high school. Always confused me how the clarinets and such could remember all the complicated fingerings for their instruments. They were confused how I could play all those notes with three valves. Good times.
Well I have played the guitar before… and I must say that there is a little more than callous to it. You need a proper kind of hand strength to depress the strings correctly and hold it in the position while strumming the instrument itself. You can think of it like this. When the guitar is “open” IE. your left hand is not pushing down on an strings, the strings and finally tensed at the top of the neck where they are bend over a jutting piece, but to make a certain note you must push down in the middle of the neck. These depressions in the strings take some strength to make the same tensing that occurs at the top of the neck. When that is added to the complicated positioning that is often required of the fingers themselves… Well lets cut to the chase here. Your hands won’t be able to do whats necessary the very first time you pick up a guitar. So, Marsha’s sewing hands may be inadequate for Marshall’s guitar prowess.
Just a thought~
Xi
Ahem, I seemed to have had some minor difficulty in that last post~
>>IE. your left hand is not pushing down on an strings, the strings and finally tensed at the top of the neck where they are bend over a jutting piece,
was supposed to be IE. your left hand is not pushing down on any strings, the strings are lose and unblocked and finally are tensed at the top of the neck where they are bent over a jutting piece.
Forgive my lackadaisical aptitude toward checking my post. I should have preformed my check before posting. This will be remedied in future commentary.
You know, that’s funny because I started on the trumpet (in elementary school) and didn’t like it much, so I switched to clarinet and played that through the end of high school. I don’t remember when I tried out the guitar, but it wasn’t something I pursued very far (probably because I had other musical interests).
“OK” <– is missing its punctuation, too. 🙂