Take a Lemon

It’s funny. When Nikki gave me “homework” about learning to pleasure myself, I was really eager to try it the first chance I got. That was when I couldn’t see any way to become male again; now, though, even though my chances still didn’t seem good, it felt almost like a betrayal of my male self to give in to the urge – as though I didn’t really care to change back. It was silly; I knew that. It would be just taking advantage of an unusual, and hopefully temporary situation. It wasn’t hurting anybody, and might make me feel better, but just then I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood right then; the day had been an emotional roller coaster for me, after all, and it was hardly resolved. What was I supposed to do about Vicky? On the one hand, she was an important connection to my past, and if all went well, an important part of my future; she was the only one who remembered the real me, and I could talk to her about things that nobody else would understand. On the other, she was incredibly allergic to any discussion of what I needed to do in the here and now to cope, to deal with the real possibility that I was never going to be Marshall again.

And should I offer to get together with her tomorrow night? I was feeling a lot of pressure to spend more time with my roommates, and maybe I should be encouraging Vicky to deal with the possibility that she was going to have to find another boyfriend. It hurt, thinking of her with Kevin or anybody other guy, but if I was unavailable, shouldn’t I be supporting her relationship?

Compared to all of these issues, the idea of touching myself down there was pretty straightforward, and even that was too much for me. Fortunately, I was exhausted, so I managed to fall asleep relatively early and didn’t have to keep agonizing over them.

It was Susie who gave me a part of the answer the next day. We were in the stands watching the football game again, and during a lull in the crowd noise, she commented, “You seem to be in a better mood, today, Marsh. Did everything work out for you?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I did go from no apparent chance to a small chance, so that’s a positive.”

“‘A small chance’ of what?”

“Just something I’ve been worrying about a lot. You know. Relationships.”

“As in, ‘Will a certain boy call’?”

I laughed. “Nothing so mundane as that. How are things going with you and Phil?”

She rolled her eyes in response. “He’s really difficult; no wonder you gave up on him. He just can’t read hints, can he?”

“I guess not,” I shrugged, remembering what Lee Ann had said when I got back from break. “He just won’t let himself believe that a girl as pretty as you would actually be interested.”

“Thanks. Well, we’re all going out to a dance together tonight. Maybe I’ll just pull him onto the dance floor or something. Are you going to join us this time?”

“Um…” I bit my lip, considering. “One of my girlfriends wanted to hang out with me tonight.”

“Somebody not in our group? Bring her along.”

I tried to imagine Vicky getting along with Lee Ann and failed. Still… “I’ll ask her. I don’t know if she’ll like the idea, but I can try.”

When I called her after the game, Vicky was hesitant. “You know how I feel about Lee Ann, Marsh.”

“That was a different time line, Vix,” I insisted. “This Lee Ann never met me as a guy, and never tried to steal me away, if that’s even what she was doing. She’s a nice girl. Give her a chance.”

“You sure? Who’s boyfriend is she playing up to now?”

“Nobody’s. Look, she has a serious off-campus boyfriend, and the guy she’s been flirting with doesn’t even have a girlfriend.”

“So she’s just leading him on, is she?”

“No, you’ve got her all wrong. She’s not… look, she even offered to fix the guy up with me.” In hindsight, that might not have been the best thing to say.

“With you?” she sputtered. “And what did you say?”

“What do you think I said? That I wasn’t interested. But the point is, neither is she, and she’s not trying to monopolize him or anything.”

“I see,” she said in a tone that evinced her desire to smack Lee Ann across the face. “And what does this guy think is going on?”

“Um…” That was kind of an awkward question, given what Geoff had told me. “He knows she has a boyfriend.” I didn’t think it would help my case to point out that Chandra had assured him that said boyfriend was ripe for dumping, as she had intimated to me as well. But that was hardly Lee Ann’s fault, was it?

“Hmm… maybe I will come along,” Vicky said. “Especially if this boy is there. He might need rescuing or something.”

I sighed. Her attitude was going to be a problem, but at least I’d be able to spend time with her and my roommates at the same time.

“Oh, one more thing, Vicky,” I remembered to say before hanging up. “If they ask how we met, tell them that we met Freshman week but didn’t actually become close until the summer.”

“What? Why not just tell them the truth?”

“That I used to be a boy?”

“Oh…. I guess not. That would be kind of awkward, wouldn’t it?”

“Terry actually knew Marsha at the time you and I were dating, so there’s really no other way to explain how she never met you without telling our secret.”

“OK, Marsh.”

I told her to meet us at the room after dinner and we hung up.

We had a fairly large group that evening: the three of us, Greg, Vicky, Susie, Phil, Chandra, Rajiv and Geoff, Fred, Sam, Lisa and Sheila. Greg and Terry quickly vanished to the dance floor, as did Chandra and Rajiv and Lee Ann with Geoff. As the last of these couples left, Vicky leaned over to me, her hand gripping my arm.

“You didn’t tell me that Geoff was her latest victim,” she hissed.

“I did try to warn him, but Chandra keeps encouraging him.”

“Is Chandra the girl with Rajiv?”

“Mm hmm.”

As we were talking, Susie did manage to get Phil to dance with her; I didn’t see how. But just a moment later, Lee Ann and Geoff came back with a boy I didn’t know.

“Guys,” Lee Ann announced, “this is Geoff’s friend, Bill Tendler. Bill, that’s my roommate Marsh, her friend Vicky, Fed, Sam, Lisa, and Sheila.” She looked around. “Susie and Phil are dancing?”

A number of us murmured in the affirmative, and then Lee Ann looked expectantly at the newcomer.

“Would you like to dance, Marsh?” he asked me.

“Um… thanks, but no,” I managed. Vicky’s hand on my arm tightened suddenly.

Lee Ann sat next to me on the other side from Vicky and whispered in my ear, “This has to stop, Marsh. Bill is no threat and he’s not going to come on to you. He has a girlfriend back home, and just needs a girl to dance with. That’s all. It’s about time you got over your fear of guys.” To Bill, she added, “She’d love to dance with you,” and launched me out of my seat at him.

Confused, I looked back at Vicky, who seemed to be in shock, then at Bill who was watching me curiously. My brain was definitely not working just then and I couldn’t think of any reasonable excuse, so I followed him with trepidation. Not only was I about to dance with a boy, I had just left Vicky and Lee Ann sitting next to one another. Oh boy.

It was hard to speak over the music, but Bill tried. “What are you majoring in?” he shouted at me, as we started to dance. I’ve never really cared for what passes as dancing these days. In my grandparents’ time, they apparently had fairly formal dancing with actual steps and you could tell who was dancing with whom because they were always touching. I think modern dancing started in my parents’ time, and nowadays it seemed that you sort of danced at your partner than with her. Under the circumstances, though, I was grateful. Bill was gyrating eagerly to the music while I moved tentatively back and forth in his general vicinity. That made conversation doubly difficult, of course.

“Biology!” I yelled back. And then, just because it would be impolite not to, I added, “What about you?!”

“Math!”

Naturally, the music had stopped just before he shouted that, and he drew a lot of stares. I overheard somebody remark, “Yeah, I always thought ‘math’ would make a good curse word, too,” which got more than a few appreciative chuckles.

The band started again, and Bill evidently decided that conversation wasn’t the best use of his time, and started dancing again. I joined him. It’s not that I disliked dancing; in fact, I was sort of enjoying the motion and the music, and after a while I started swinging my hips, as I had at the concert. Of course, the fun part of dancing was enjoying your partner as well, and that simply wasn’t happening tonight.

Then the music changed. The next song was slow, and Bill pulled me in for a slow dance before I could react. He was tall enough that I couldn’t even see over his shoulder; I found myself staring wide-eyed at his chest from an inch or two away, my arms pulled in on either side of my head.

He must have felt my tension. “What’s wrong?” he asked, talking to the top of my head.

“Everything,” I managed. “Could we please just go back to the gang?”

“Huh?” he asked, surprised. “If you don’t want to slow-dance, why don’t we just go back to dancing the way we were?”

“No, you’ve already manhandled me, and I’m really not comfortable being with you. Let’s go.”

“Oh, sorry,” he said, and released me. “I just thought…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I thought.” But he followed me back off the dance floor. “See, I’m used to dancing with Julia, and we always slow dance, and….”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I cut him off. “It’s done, OK?”

“Lee Ann’s going to kill me, and I don’t even know what I did wrong.”

“Look, you were just being… I mean, you weren’t thinking, is all.”

“Are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” I snapped. “But I’m also through with dancing for now.”

“Right. Sorry.”

By now we had reached the place where my friends were sitting. Vicky and Lee Ann were talking, and Vicky seemed wary, but not openly hostile, which I took to be a good sign. I didn’t see Sam and Sheila, so presumably they had paired off.

“Back so soon?” Lee Ann asked us. “How was it?”

I shrugged. Lee Ann had moved to sit next to Vicky, so I dropped into her old seat and watched as she shot Bill a questioning look and got a shrug from him as well, although his looked guilty.

“She didn’t appreciate the slow dancing,” he admitted when she tilted her head at him. He sat in the seat next to me, which was much closer than I would have preferred. As far as I was concerned, Lee Ann’s little experiment was over, and he should really focus his attention elsewhere.

“Vicky tells me you two spent a bit of time together over the summer, Marsh,” Lee Ann said, changing the subject.

I nodded, suddenly wishing that Vicky and I had discussed what it was we were going to say that we had done. Fortunately, she jumped in then.

“I told Lee Ann about spending time at your parents’ house while they were away,” she said.

“Right. She came over to keep me company,” I agreed.

“This was when your parents took that second honeymoon?” Lee Ann asked. “Cool,” she said in response to my surprised nod. Apparently that was something else in my family’s life that had gone unchanged; plus, she had obviously known about it, but hadn’t been the one Marsha had invited over. I wondered why. I made a mental note to ask Tina about it.

“Marsh,” Vicky said suddenly, “I’ve just remembered that I have an art project due, and I need to get back to it. Can you walk me out?”

“Oh, sure,” I responded, and excused myself.

“What?” I asked Vicky, once we were far enough away not be overheard.

She gave me a poisonous look, “What was that like for you, slow-dancing with a boy?”

“Not very pleasant, and way too long,” I answered.

“Uh huh. Take a look, Marsh,” she said, bitterly. “This is your future, if you don’t change back. Lee Ann is going to keep pushing you into situations like this. Your friends are going to expect you to date boys and dance with boys and fuss over boys, and do all kinds of things most girls usually do. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t see what else…”

“You don’t, huh? You said that you needed to start getting used to living as a girl, maybe. I just wanted to remind you why you’re not going to be comfortable. Don’t lose sight of that, Marshall. Being my boyfriend again is your only realistic future.”

We had gotten to the outside door, and Vicky paused before leaving. “Have fun with Lee Ann; I’m sure she has even more… creative ideas for you.”