Take a Lemon

Something I really appreciated about Bill was that he didn’t try to act as though we were a couple. He brought me a drink and danced with me, but that was it. He didn’t try to hold my hand, touch me when we weren’t on the dance floor, or walk me home. We were just two people who happened to have danced together a bit. It was very nice.

“You seemed pretty comfortable dancing when you let yourself get into it, Marsh,” Lee Ann observed as we walked home.

I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I had been a bit uptight. Um… thanks for yelling at me. I did enjoy myself.”

“Any time you need somebody to yell at you, Marsh, Lee Ann’s your girl,” Terry commented, snuggled into Greg’s arm.

I was suddenly aware that I was the only one walking alone. Of the other single girls, Vicky had left early, and the others had paired off at the dance. Geoff and Lee Ann weren’t actually touching, but were walking close to enough to be seen as a couple to anyone who didn’t know otherwise. It’s not that I wanted to be with anybody in particular, but it seemed really ironic, given my dating history, that I would be the only one without somebody.

“Anyway, you’ve taken a big step,” Lee Ann added. “If we work on it, maybe you’ll be ready for an actual date soon?”

“Let me know if you need any ideas, Marsh,” Susie added. “You were really helpful to me.”

“How’s that?” Phil asked her.

“Nothing…” she said. “But keep it in mind, Marsh.”

I forced myself to smile, and as soon as we got to the dorm, disappeared into my bedroom. I didn’t really want to encourage my friends’ thoughts along that path. There were some lines that I was simply not willing to cross.

At rehearsal the next day, we did one of Alvin’s “games.” In order to help us get comfortable with our lines without thinking about them, he had us run the entire show, double-time. The idea was to make knowing your next line a reflex, since you couldn’t stop and ask yourself, “What’s my next line?”

When one of us stumbled over a line, or even took to long to say it, Nikki fed it to us, rapid-fire. The main focus was on keeping up the rhythm, and she kept us going and going, obviously having done this with Alvin before. It was very rough at first, but we soon learned to anticipate when our lines were coming up.

The acting certainly suffered; you can’t change your timing like that and keep the same emotion. My kiss with “Giles” turned into a quick peck, my screams turned into gasps, and Trotter’s slow interrogation of the survivors turned into a series of snapped-off questions. We finished the entire show in about forty-five exhausting minutes and then took a break.

I collapsed into the chair next to Jo, who was the only one of us not out of breath at that point, having had the entire shortened second act to recover.

“Fun, huh?” she said.

“Yeah, I think I’ve got the hang of it, now,” I gasped, high on adrenaline from the drill.

“Did you guys do this last year?”

“Last…?” I started, before remembering that Marsha had done two shows with Alvin. “Oh, um, yeah.” Which I thought sounded authoritative enough for Marsha, but ambiguous enough in case he had only done it with one of his shows.

“So…” Jo said, nodding her head toward the room. “What do you think?”

“About the rehearsal?”

“No… Jared.”

“Um… I think he’s doing a great job.”

She gave me an “are you being stupid?” look and said, “Marsh, c’mon. What do you think?”

I stared at her, clueless for a moment. Then something in her expression clicked. She liked Jared! My own experience with him had forced me to classify him a harmless friend, and the idea that a girl would actually be interested took some rethinking. To cover up my hesitation, I said, “Oh! Yeah… probably!”

“I just can’t believe he doesn’t already have somebody.”

Given the way he’d come on to me, I can’t say that I was really surprised, but if Jo was interested, I wanted to be a bit tactful.

“Well, I think his technique needs some work,” I ventured, and that brought a laugh.

“I think you intimidated him. He probably just needs the right handling.”

“And you’re just the girl to do that,” I suggested.

“Thanks!” she said, and as if I had just given her permission, she got up and sat next to Jared, who was studying his script by himself.

I looked up to see Nikki finish a conversation with Alvin and head in my direction. “Good job,” she complimented me as she took Jo’s vacated seat. Then she smirked, “How’s the homework coming?”

“Actually,” I admitted, a bit embarrassed, “I sort of decided not to do it.”

“What?”

In a lowered tone, I explained, “I just didn’t think it would be appropriate.”

Nikki stared at me, looked around, and then leaned in closer. “You’re being silly, Marsh. Why wouldn’t it be appropriate?”

“Um, not in front of everyone.”

“Wait, you’re serious?”

I couldn’t meet her glance as I replied, “Yeah.”

Her tone turned sympathetic and concerned. “OK, what’s going on?”

“Not in front of everyone,” I repeated.

“O… K… Sounds as though somebody needs another pep session over tea at my place.”

I nodded. “I suppose. A bunch has happened in the last few days.”

After we ran – and I mean ran – the show once again in double time, Nikki took my arm and we walked to her room. I wasn’t really crazy about the closeness; it seemed wrong, given where my head was, suddenly, but I didn’t want to pull away.

When we reached her dorm, she sat me down in her sewing room again and went to make tea. I had been thinking about how to explain this without sounding totally stupid, and I hadn’t reached any great breakthroughs by the time she came back, handed me a cup of tea and looked expectantly at me.

“Thing is,” I started, “I just felt that it was kind of, you know, the kind of thing one girl could tell another.”

“Yes…?”

“Well, I figured out something that might give me a way back, so I don’t know that I should think of myself of a girl now.”

She stopped in mid-sip. “Wait. You what?”

“I had an idea.” I explained about Eric, and how he was going to look for a paper from the professor behind the experiment.

“And is that likely to work?”

“Well… I think there’s a chance, anyway.”

“And what does that have to do with learning about your body?”

I looked away. “I just didn’t think it’s something a guy should be allowed–”

“Are you insane?”

“Huh?”

“Or just stupid? Because if you’re trying to convince me that you’re really a boy, that seems to be a good approach.”

“Wait. I…”

But she wasn’t letting me finish. “You claimed to have dated a lot of girls in your old life, Marsh. Were you a virgin?”

“What?! No! I had sex with lots of–”

“And I guess you weren’t very good at it, huh?”

“Nikki!”

“I’m trying to make a point. The functioning of the female anatomy is not something most girls want kept secret from their boyfriends. If you ever become a boy again, it is something that your girlfriends will wish you knew. You have a unique opportunity to get to experience what feels good down there – and it’s something that will be valuable to you whether you change back or not.”

“Um…”

“And I cannot believe that you couldn’t figure that out, so there’s some other reason you didn’t try, Marsh.”

I tensed. “Like what?”

“You tell me,” she said, suddenly calm again.

“If I knew…” but I stopped under her gaze. “Well… it just feels…”

“… As though you’d be jinxing the whole thing if you allowed yourself to enjoy being a girl?”

“I… I don’t know. It just…” I shook my head. “If acting like a girl jinxes anything, I probably blew it last night, anyway.”

“Oh?”

“Lee Ann talked me into slow dancing with a boy. Well… she sort of browbeat me into it, actually.”

Her head came up at that. “Did she! Good for her! How was it?”

I squirmed a bit. “Not bad, I guess. I mean… it was kind of weird, only…”

“Yes…?”

“I like having my arms around somebody else. I just wish it was me being the guy.”

“Well, maybe it will be again, one day. In the meantime, you got some enjoyment, right? And nobody was hurt?”

“Maybe. Vicky wasn’t pleased, though.”

“How does Vicky come into all of this?”

“Well, that’s really complicated.” I repeated what Vicky had told me about dating Kevin, and how she had reacted to my dancing with Bill.

Nikki sounded concerned. “So she’s going to be a problem about you, um, exploring your female side.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “I’m not all that comfortable with it, myself, but I can sort of recognize that I need to do it – at least some of it. Maybe not as far Lee Ann wants me to go.” I shuddered at the thought of following all of her suggestions. Being stuck for an entire weekend with a boy who thought he could make me his girlfriend was about the most horrific thing I could think of right then.

“Marsh, think of it this way, then. Not only is this a way for you to deal with what you might need to deal with… the more insight you have into how girls live, the more sympathetic a boyfriend you could be if you change back.”

“I suppose. Maybe I can explain that to Vicky. I’m sure she had plenty of complaints about what kind of a boyfriend I was; maybe she’ll appreciate the chance to improve me.” I looked Nikki in the eye. “But none of her complaints were about sex. She liked sex with me.”

Nikki grinned. “OK.”

“The thing is, I know this is really hard for her. I’d have thought that she could just find another guy – not that I really want her to, of course,” I added hastily. “At least… it would probably be better for her, but she seems to think that… well, that she’s never going to find another boyfriend as good as me.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“That’s what she says.”

“And I’ll bet you just eat that right up.”

“Well… I mean, yeah, it makes me feel good, but at the same time I’m worried about her.”

“So… what kind of relationship do you two have, now?”

I put down my teacup. “That’s difficult. I mean, I still lo– care for her, and I think she does for me, too… but it’s awkward. We’re used to relating on a certain level…”

“As in, ‘horizontal’?”

“No! Our relationship was never just about sex. I mean, that was important, but we enjoyed each other’s company, too.”

“And now?”

I stood up, too agitated to sit. “It’s weird. I mean, I think we still like being together, it’s just…”

“Your old habits don’t work.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it. Plus, it really bothers Vicky, my being like this, even more than it bothers me, I think – and it really bothers me, don’t get me wrong.”

“But when you look at her, you see the girl you’ve been in love with. When she looks at you, she sees a girl standing between her and her boyfriend.”

“I… never thought of it that way.”

She nodded.

“Oh man, and I really hurt her, you know? I mean, before. I sort of abandoned her to chase after… well, another girl. And after this happened, she still went looking for me, to take me back.”

“I’m not sure if that’s commendable or pathetic.”

“Nikki!”

“Sorry, Marsh. Maybe if I met the girl I’d like her, but I’m not crazy about what I’m hearing from you.”

“Maybe I should introduce the two of you. She’s really a nice person. I… I think she only wants what’s best for me. And she’s like my anchor. She’s helping keep me sane. If I didn’t have her in my life… I don’t know. At least she makes it easy for me to remember who I am.”

Nikki took a final sip from her cup and then put it on the side table next to her sewing box. “Marsh, if she’s that important to you, I can forgive her – for now. But you need to make sure that she really is trying to think of what’s best for you, and not just trying to hold you back because it will make her feel better.”

I nodded, and didn’t argue any further. I trusted Vicky, but I didn’t know any great way to convince Nikki that she was alright. Maybe I’d just have to introduce the two of them at some point.