JKLM+15 Chapter 3
JKLM+15
by Stephanie Silver
(sjtw69@yahoo.com)
Chapter 3 - Boy Loses Girl
Lucas followed Jenna's Mustang along Highway 11 toward Mayville until they reached an old run down motel. H-ell Motel is what the sign actually said, although most of the letters, specifically the ones between the H and the E, were obviously not working. Or maybe they were just trying to be honest, because the place certainly looked like hell, in Lucas's opinion.
"Are you staying here?" asked Lucas as he turned off the engine.
"Yeah, why?" asked Jenna, who Lucas still thought of as Jed wearing a dress. She noted the incredulity in Lucas's voice and looked around to see what he meant. Peeling paint on the doors, weeds growing through the cracks, cement stairs slanting oddly to the right. Heaven only knew how many cockroaches they'd find inside. Okay, so her question was obviously rhetorical.
For a brief instance Lucas considered inviting her to stay with him. He opened his mouth, intending to say that, but caught himself before he could speak.
"What?"
"Nothing. I think I can talk Katon into letting you stay with him," he said. "He's got an extra room. He'll probably try to molest you a little, but..." his voice trailed off.
"But it's better than this place?"
Lucas grinned and then laughed when he saw that his friend agreed. "Yeah, about anything is probably better than here. What made you pick this place?"
Jenna was quiet, her face turning sober. For an instant Lucas thought she might cry. He. Whatever. "I don't have very much money," she admitted. "It's all I could afford."
He wanted to be sympathetic. The person he was looking at had once been his best friend, after all. But he couldn't. At least not as much as he wanted. Despite feelings that Jedidiah had betrayed him by leaving, he had still wanted to keep in touch. Who knows? Maybe buried deep down inside him was a part that still wanted to believe Jed would come back to him some day. So he knew that Jed had a good paying job and lived comfortably on an engineering salary. This person he was looking at now had not only turned his friend into a girl, but had also apparently squandered all his money. Bitch, he thought.
Lucas looked around, allowing his indifference to settle into place. "Yeah, well, Katon probably won't charge you very much," he offered. "He might even let you stay there for nothing." He resisted the urge to add something about Katon possibly accepting sexual favors in lieu of rent, but decided that might be needlessly cruel.
"I'd want to pay," she said.
"Yeah, well, that's between you and him," said Lucas coldly.
Jenna looked hurt. She was hurt. She looked like she was on the verge of tears again. Lucas hated himself for treating her that way. Jed may have betrayed him, and turned his friend into a girl and stolen all his money, but somewhere underneath all of that wasn't this the same person he'd once wanted to spend the rest of his life with? He decided to let his heart soften toward her just a little. It was just for a few more minutes. And then he'd be on his way back to his home in southeast Tennessee and he could forget all about Jed ever returning. It obviously wasn't going to happen now. He parked his bike, lowering the kickstand, and said, "Let's make sure your key fits before I go."
The key fit, the door opened, the water came out of the faucets at what seemed to be the right temperature. The sheets on the bed looked clean and pressed. The TV only picked up a few channels, but that was to be expected this far from a big city. "I wasn't planning on watching a lot of TV anyway," said Jenna. She looked hopeful.
Lucas noticed her hopeful look and wondered why. Didn't she remember he was gay? He had actually been hoping, when Jed had written saying he wanted to meet him, that the evening might end with sex, and that he might be spending the night. He knew Jed was a Mormon, and had supposedly left all that behind him the day he left Mayville right after graduating. He also knew that people changed. Or didn't change, depending on your viewpoint. Something in the letter made him hope that was the case here - that Jed wanted to see him in hopes of reviving their teenage romance.
But then he'd figured out that the girl at Jo & Lou's was actually Jed, and so that had answered that question. It didn't answer the question of why Jed had wanted to see him in the first place, but by then Lucas had pretty much lost interest in getting answers to any more questions. One answer a day seemed sufficient.
With nothing much left to say, Lucas was ready to make his exit when Jenna finally asked, "Lucas, uh, would you, uh, like to see my girls?"
Lucas stopped the door half open. "What?" He slowly pushed the door closed. "Who are your girls?"
"These," she replied, pointing toward her breasts. "Do you want to see them?"
Lucas finished closing the door. "Do you want to show them to me?"
"It's kind of why I drove halfway across the country," she said.
Lucas felt his dick starting to get hard."Yeah, sure. I'd like to see them."
Although Lucas thought of himself as being gay, he was really bisexual. After Jed, he had tried to have relationships with a few women. Women were naturally attracted to him. He was good looking, with boyish charm, and a sensitive nature that appealed to a lot of women. He learned he could pick up a woman at a bar just by watching her from across the room for a while. It was almost too easy, he thought. Picking up a cute guy was much more of a challenge.
And more rewarding, if you asked him. As much as he might enjoy the site of a naked woman, with their shapely curves and smooth skin, he much preferred the site of a stiff cock, begging for attention, wanting to be touched, and fondled, and sucked and... other stuff. And with women, it seemed like once he was alone with them, there wasn't anything to say. Things turned awkward. He never had that problem with a guy. It seemed like being alone with a guy just made things feel that much more intimate.
But, for now, the offer to see Jed-now-Jenna's tits, well, he figured he could handle that. It would be interesting. Educational, certainly. And he had driven all the way from Utah to show them to him, so it would be wrong to say no. And he really was interested in seeing just how much his friend had changed.
Jenna blushed shyly. "There's not really an easy way to do this, I guess, so I'll just take my shirt off and show them to you."
And then he was looking at them. They were really nothing more than two swollen mounds, each capped with a dark brown nipple about the size of a quarter. Lucas could see the vague outline of a bikini tan surrounding each mound and a faint strip of white connecting them.
"You can touch them," she said gently. Lucas would claim she begged him to touch her. Jenna herself would deny begging, but would probably admit that she did thrust her chest forward slightly as she said it.
He reached out and began fondling Jenna's small but definitely-there breasts. He ran his fingers across her sensitive nipples, creating a shiver that made her close her eyes and moan. "Ooo,yeah. Just like that."
It occurred to him that she had the smallest breasts he'd ever seen on anyone who wasn't a male. The side of him that felt betrayed by her wanted to point that out as a way of lashing back at the pain she and Jed had caused him over the years. But he restrained himself. He flicked his finger across her tender nipples again, and tweaked them softly between his fingers. "Does that feel good?" he asked. It was obvious that it did, although there was a small possibility her moans of pleasure were actually moans of pain.
"Yes."
"Want me to suck on them?" he asked, guiding her onto the bed.
"Yes." This time even Jenna would admit she was probably begging.
It would have taken less than five minutes for Lucas to bring Jenna to what she called a girly-gasm. A body spasm that, to her, felt more incredible than any orgasm she'd ever had as a male. Unfortunately, that was two or three minutes more than the time he actually did take, sucking on her soft nipples. At exactly the point where she could feel the sensation building up into that intense quiver of sensations that she knew would soon explode from within, Lucas suddenly stopped, rolling her onto her back and standing up from the bed. "Jed, I need to go," he said.
"Call me Jenna," she begged.
For a moment, Lucas considered lying back down beside his one time friend, ripping his clothes off and fucking him harder than he'd ever fucked anyone before. He wanted to rape him. Rape him, and then forgive him. Forgive him for leaving him. Forgive him for becoming a woman. Forgive him for everything and then take him back and hold on to him forever, the way he'd always wanted. That was all he'd ever really wanted from Jedidiah King, who was now asking him to call him Jenna.
No, it was too late. "Maybe some other time," he said.
As the door closed behind him, and she heard the Indian's motor rev up, Jenna sank to the floor and began to cry.
* * * * *
Jenna felt like she'd lost everything. She'd gambled on Lucas, betting he would take her back, and now she could hear his motorcycle pulling out of the parking lot.
Everything.
She'd quit her job. Jed's job. Nobody at her work knew about her secret life as Jenna. That was no small feat, because the girls, her two small breasts, were getting bigger all the time. And bigger meant harder to hide. She hadn't cut her hair in over a year, and now it was down nearly to her shoulders. People had to be wondering about that. The hormones were having other effects, as well. Her skin was getting softer, and she'd definitely started getting curves in places where boys just aren't supposed to have curves.
She probably could have told them, and continued working there as a transsexual. The threat of a gender discrimination lawsuit would see to that, even if she never actually brought it up. But, face it, lawsuits aren't going to make your conservative co-workers suddenly love and admire you, and in Mormon Utah, conservative values demanded that men be men and women be women and anybody caught in the middle better do some repenting quick.
No, it was easier to quit and move to Tennessee, she figured, than deal with the fallout of being transgendered in Utah.
Perhaps, she thought as she sat there and considered the train-wreck that had become her life since leaving Utah, that was a decision she might want to rethink.
Along with losing a very good paying job, she was also on the verge of losing her church membership. A member all her life, there was no way that would continue once her church leaders learned that she had decided to change gender. You can be a lot of things and still be a good Mormon, but transsexual isn't one of them. Of course at this point, her church leaders didn't know, and Jenna was in no hurry to bring it to their attention. Better to just run away for a while, and let it happen when she was ready for it.
Because, frankly, there was a much bigger problem to face than work and church, as far coming to terms with her new sexuality was concerned. That was her family. As Jed, she'd come from a very loving and close family. And a very religious one. Her father, Jed's father, had been a mission president. That was one reason Jed had been sent to Mayville when he was in high school. Not that his parents didn't love him or want him, but because he needed time to figure out who he was, and being on a mission in Sweden with his parents wasn't the time or place for that.
Even as Jenna sat slumped against the door in her hotel room, her parents were on another mission. This time to Mongolia. Jed/Jenna couldn't even imagine what it was like in Mongolia. They weren't due back until fall of that year. He figured he could put off telling them until then.
Uh, Mom, Dad, I decided I wanted to be a girl from now on. Yeah, that was going to be a pleasant conversation.
As Jed, and even now as Jenna, he'd always had a way of manipulating things from behind the scenes, making it look as if he had nothing to do with the result, when in fact it was what he'd planned all along. He'd done that a lot with Lucas. Lucas thought of it as good Jed and bad Jed. There wasn't really a good Jed or a bad Jed; there was just Jed, wanting to please everyone and not sure how to do that and keep himself happy in the process. And so a lot of times it seemed like he had two personalities.
Which was true, in a way. Just that nobody, including his psychologist uncle, Uncle J, ever considered that one of those personalities was female.
She hadn't told her parents about the hormones, or letting her hair grow, or quitting her job, or even about donating all her boy clothes to charity before leaving Utah. Yeah, that had been her plan to keep her from backing out - make it as hard as possible to go back to being a boy.
"Be careful what you wish for, for you will truly get it." She could still hear Brother Ross telling them that during early morning seminary in high school. Good old Brother Ross. He'd probably said it more than once, or maybe it was just the conditions under which he'd said it, but the words had sunk in. Jed-now-Jenna remembered them now, years later, even though she couldn't remember very much else of what Brother Ross had taught them.
She smiled. Softly, a little bit. The words were a painful reminder that the thing she had wished for had turned out to be just as unpleasant as Brother Ross had warned. But just thinking about that kindly gentleman helped her forget her own troubles for a moment. She almost wished he was here now, to give her some of his homespun wisdom and advice. "I could really use some help right now," she whispered, as if he were right there to hear.
But he wasn't, and Jenna finally heaved herself up from the floor, realizing that if she was ever going to solve her problems, she'd have to do it alone.
Getting up, she went over to her suitcase and found the electric drum set she'd brought along for entertainment. She plugged in the headphones so that she wouldn't disturb the motel's other guests - not that there were any - and proceeded to pound out her frustrations by playing along with some of her favorite songs.
A few times she even let herself sing along. Singing wasn't what she did best when it came to music, but she could at least carry a tune without mangling it. Especially if there was someone there to help her, and help her find her pitch. Singing made her forget what it was that made her so unhappy, and forty minutes of drumming helped her work up a pretty good sweat that helped too to ease her mind. It probably had something to with endorphins and stuff, she figured.
Which reminded her, it was time for her nightly hormone treatment: hormone cream and one of the pills she'd started using without a doctor's approval. The cream had been easy; just go online and order it. No prescription necessary. And, to her surprise, it had worked. At first, as Jed, he'd been doubtful. But after a few weeks of regular use, he noticed a definite increase in how sensitive his nipples were. At first they just itched, making him wonder if he was having an allergic reaction. But then they'd gotten tender, and he knew he either needed to stop using the cream or face the reality of a life with breasts.
He chose the latter.
A few more weeks went by before he noticed the swelling. His nipples didn't look all that much bigger, and he wished he'd been smart enough to measure them before he started, just so he'd have something to compare them with. But after nearly two months, there was no denying the swelling he felt.
Or the pleasure of fondling himself. the itchiness had soon subsided, not quite as quickly as it had started, and was eventually replaced with a tenderness and sensitivity that was as erotic and sensual as it was painful. No, MORE erotic and sensual than painful. It would have, definitely, been painful, if not for the sensuality. But the feelings of sensuality seemed to outweigh everything else, making his new breasts a pleasure to caress and fondle.
The feelings of having his nipples stroked just seemed to send shivers of excitement all through his body. And the shivers of excitement all through his body just seemed to make his nipples respond that much more. It took some doing, but he could literally make himself cum, just by playing with his nipples.
Wearing a bra to work was... Well, it was what he should have done. He noticed it the most when he was walking up and down stairs. It was almost a painful feeling as his breast tissue would bounce, pulling on the underlying muscle in a way he wasn't used to. But it was a pain he relished, because he knew its cause. He definitely was getting female breasts.
The pills, like I say, had been trickier. They were actually birth control pills, and they belonged to Mrs. Gibson, his next door neighbor and landlady. He'd been at her house one day while she was on vacation, watering her plants and feeding her cat, when he'd noticed the prescription for birth control pills. With trembling hands, he'd picked it up and examined it, as a plan began formulating in his head.
The prescription was for two years, and had just been issued by her doctor. Gynecologist, Jed corrected, feeling his stomach doing flip-flops at what he was considering. "Just issued" meant, in this case, that the prescription was nearly one month old, with none of the monthly prescriptions having been actually used.
Bu using a pharmacy across town, one that was unlikely to be connected with Mrs. Gibson's own pharmacy, he just might get away with it. He would claim to be there to pick up pills on her behalf, and then keep them for himself. It might work. It did work. For nine months, neither Mrs. Gibson nor the pharmacist said a thing. He had no idea if Mrs. Gibson had simply forgotten about the prescription, or if she had her gynecologist re-write it, telling him she'd lost it. Or maybe she decided that after divorcing Mr. Gibson there really wasn't much need for birth control pills. But, whatever the reason, Mrs. Gibson's birth control pills became Jed's turn-me-into-a-girl pills.
He hadn't actually started taking the pills until six weeks later, two weeks after picking up the first of twenty-three refills. By that time he figured if anyone was going to say something, they would have said it, and since no one was saying anything, he thought he just might get away with it.
He'd considered making it ten weeks. That was his original plan. Ten weeks would have given him the original prescription and two refills; three fraudulent pharmacy visits in all. If no one said anything after three times, he was pretty sure he'd be safe.
But six weeks living with pills that had the power to turn him into a girl was too much to resist. Plus by that time the hormone cream was definitely doing its job, and he knew it was time to either get serious about changing gender, or abandon the idea completely. It was already starting to cause problems with his ability to live life as a man. Appearing in public without a shirt on was out of the question now and had been for some time. No, he either had to go back to the way he was, or keep going the way he'd chosen.
It's hard to say what a person who is transgendered is thinking at a time like that. If you've never been there - which describes most of the world's population - it's hard to understand the desperation.
As Jed stood at his bathroom sink, studying the pills he'd managed to obtain, and realizing that one of them was about to go in his mouth, he considered his choices.
As far as Jed was concerned, there was no choice. He could continue living a life that was, in a word, hell. Miserable. That's another good one-word description. Or he could try something else.
Ever since he'd first started on-line chats, Jed had figured out that his life made much more sense to him if he was female. He didn't choose it; it chose him. At least that's how it felt to him.
Ever since Joey had talked him into wearing a bra, Jed's life had never been the same. He'd tried to deny it. It wasn't like he'd spent all his life wishing he was female, either. But every now and then he'd remember things. Little things. Like wearing his mother's nightgowns, or that time with Lucas and the Jedry brothers, when they'd played strip poker and he'd been wearing panties. He could even remember wishing a few times that he had breasts, or that his dick would fall off. And now, he grinned, he was getting his wish.
But maybe the most telling moment was the day shortly after he moved into the apartment across from Mrs. Gibson. For several days he couldn't get comfortable. At first he figured it was just the newness of where he was living. But more than a week later, the feeling persisted. In fact, it grew even stronger. Jed would describe it as restlessness.
Finally one night, in desperation, as the hockey game was about to start, he opened up a sack of clothes he'd brought with him and pulled them out, laying them across the bed: a black cotton bra, black cotton bikini panties, black thigh high stockings, and a black miniskirt. Not sure why he was doing it, he put them on. Still wearing them, he made a bowl of popcorn and settled down on the couch to watch the hockey game.
Immediately, not almost immediately and not eventually, and not soon, but immediately, that feeling of restlessness disappeared, and Jed felt, for the first time, that he was home. That's when he knew he had a problem.
So as he stood at the mirror that day several months before, with Mrs. Gibson's pill in his hand, he pondered his choices. He could, of course, do nothing, return the pill to its package and throw everything away. That was certainly one solution. If not exactly a realistic one. Jed imagined himself doing that, trying to determine what his feelings would be if he did. The best way to describe them, he realized, was loneliness, despair, and resignation. Life would go on as it had for all the twenty-eight years of his life just as it always had.
Jed shook his head, simultaneously saying no to the image, and clearing it from his mind. No, life as it had always been was too bleak to consider. Life as it had always been was life without hope. The pill, he knew, was going into his mouth. It was the only way he could continue to live. That was his only real choice.
Like I say, if you've never been there, it's hard to understand just how desperate you can feel. The best way to describe it, I guess, is a question in a gender identification survey I once saw. The question asks you to imagine that there are two medical procedures, both completely safe, both completely effective. One will change your way of thinking to match your outward appearance, while the other will change your outward appearance to match your way of thinking. The question asks which you would choose, and why.
To Jed, and others like him, the choice is obvious. The first one, having your way of thinking changed to match your outward appearance, feels like a form of death. "If I chose that," Jenna once told me, "I'd lose the part of me that makes me who I am. I'd be someone else."
That was Jed's reasoning as he examined the little pill that was about to go inside him and start changing his life. He wasn't choosing it, it had already chosen him. He was only choosing to live the only way he knew he would be able to. As a woman.
Those were Jenna's thoughts as she stood topless before the mirror in a Tennessee motel room, looking at the pill she was supposed to take for that day. So far they'd done their job. Those were her thoughts as she looked at the body that was now decidedly feminine. Those were her thoughts as she swallowed the pill, stating yet again, to no one in particular, her determination to live the rest of her life as a female. Those were also her thoughts as she massaged the hormone-laden cream into her soft breasts, feeling the familiar tingle that was probably more the effect of nipple stimulation than anything else, but which she liked to imagine was the tingle of hormones changing her body.
Yes, she was choosing, again, to be a woman. Even if, in the end, it cost her everything she could imagine; her family, her friends, her church membership, yes, even Lucas; it was the only choice she could possibly make. For the briefest of instants, before throwing the pill into her mouth, she considered the ironic fact that she could get it all back if she just quit taking the pills.
"But that's just crazy," she thought, and popped the pill into her mouth.
* * * * *
On the other side of the door, Lucas took two steps and paused. For the briefest of moments he fully intended to turn around and go back, forgive Jed for becoming Jenna, forgive Jenna for taking Jed away from him, and make a determined effort to become a heterosexual.
Four seconds later he was mounting his motorcycle. Twelve seconds later he was headed back to his home in southeast Tennessee.
The three-hour ride in the dark gave Lucas time to think. Not that he wanted to, actually, but every time he tried turning on some music to keep his thoughts off of Jed, it just seemed like a bunch of needless noise and he'd end up turning it off again.
Did it bother him that Jed had decided to become a girl? Not really. It was probably more that he'd gone and done it without even letting Lucas know. If he let himself think about it, he guessed there'd probably been signs of it all along. Lucas had known a couple of other transsexuals, and they'd told him more or less the same thing, that they started off as basically normal males, but somewhere along the way the urge to switch genders had taken over. It bothered him that Jed hadn't felt him worthy enough to confess such a thing.
He let himself think about Jed's small breasts. Not Jed. What had he called himself? Jenna? He had to get used to thinking of Jed as Jenna. And as a girl. That was weird. Maybe if he hadn't ever known him as a guy it would be easier. Hell, he thought, I had sex with him as a guy.
And turned down the opportunity to have sex with him as a girl, he realized. Why had he done that? Was it because he was gay? Lucas dismissed that idea as quickly as it had come to him. Although he identified himself as gay, he knew he was actually at least partly bisexual. Girls were sexy. There was no denying that. Seeing a naked girl aroused him. It's just that feeling aroused by one and doing something about it were two very different things.
Had he been aroused seeing Jed's tiny breasts? The tingle in his crotch as he recalled just what he'd seen told him he was. Jed had called them "his girls" He thought he was going to throw another surprise his way, showing him pictures of two daughters he'd fathered, also without so much as telling him.
That's what really bothered Lucas. It was that way Jed did things without telling him. It had been like that ever since high school. Sure, he was a couple thousand miles away once Jed went back to Utah. But there was email. There were phones. He didn't see why Jed had to suddenly act as if everything they'd done in high school had been meaningless. It certainly hadn't been meaningless to him. And he was pretty sure he'd never let Jed think any differently.
And then Jed went on a church mission.
Okay, he'd kind of expected that. It was in Jed's plan all along to go on a mission as soon as he turned nineteen. Not that Lucas really understood what a mission was. Jed still wrote him letters. But the letters were different. Naughty Jed was no longer there. Lucas liked good Jed, of course, but it was naughty Jed that excited him.
Jed's mission was in North Carolina, of all places. Tar Heel country. God's country, if you asked Lucas. He'd had taken it as a sign that Jed still belonged to him. Once his two-year mission was over, Lucas was positive Jed would come back to him. So positive that he'd arranged to meet Jed one day while he was on his mission. Jed, who as a missionary preferred to be called Elder King, had seemed less than thrilled with the idea, but had eventually agreed to meet him one day on his weekly day off. One day off a week! Lucas couldn't imagine how anyone could live with just one day off a week.
And it wasn't even a whole day off. When Lucas had suggested they meet someplace for dinner - hoping it might lead to a romantic twilight walk or something, Elder King had informed him that his day off ended at five o'clock. After that it was back to work.
And so they'd met, in the middle of the day, on the UNC campus. Lucas couldn't think of a much better place to confirm Jed's return than right there in front of Dean Smith's basketball trophies. Yeah, Smith was gone, and Williams was doing a pretty good job with the program so far, and promised to keep it at the same high level as Smith had, but Lucas couldn't help imagining that if God himself were to come to Earth, he'd probably come in the form of Dean Smith. Okay, maybe that was a little bit blasphemous, he admitted, but the truth was probably not that far off.
Except it was a Monday and the arena was locked, so there was no meeting in front of the trophy case. And then there was that other fellow. Lucas couldn't remember his name now, but he was a missionary, too, and he and Jed were dressed the same, in white shirts and ties. "Hey, this is me. You didn't need to put on a tie," Lucas had joked. But Jed, Elder King, had said it was the way they always dressed.
The meeting had gone wrong from the very beginning. He'd imagined greeting his high school friend - his high school lover and sweetheart - yes, sweetheart was the only way to describe the relationship they'd had - with a hug. Possibly even a kiss. If it had been in front of the trophy case, with no one else around, yes, a kiss was quite likely, if Lucas had had anything to say about it.
But that other missionary, Elder Whatshisname, had been watching them like a hawk. He literally wouldn't let Jed out of his sight, and Jed seemed to want it that way. Every time Lucas tried to get Jed to go somewhere private with him, Jed would invite his companion along. Companion. Yeah, that's what he called him.
And the greeting! No hug! Just a handshake. The stiffest, coldest handshake he could ever remember getting. From anyone. Not bone crushing, but firm. It was obvious Elder King was well-practiced at shaking hands. What? Was he practicing to be a politician some day?
And that's when Lucas realized he'd lost Jed. Not even Dean Smith and the UNC campus could bring him back. Whatever they'd had in high school was gone. Relegated to nothing more than memory status. And even Jed's memory of those times seemed to be suspect; he only wanted to talk about the "good' times - the times when naughty Jed hadn't been there and good Jed had been in charge.
Lucas shook his head trying to clear it of the memory. He reached over and turned on the radio in another futile attempt to drown out his thoughts of Jed.
After that meeting in North Carolina, Lucas had quit responding. At least emotionally. He still went through the mechanics of answering Jed's letters, but without nearly the enthusiasm or interest he'd once had. He became distant and moody. He became a recluse. It wasn't that he wanted to be like that. It's just that nothing really seemed to matter anymore.
He turned to his work, programming computers. That gave him some comfort. Computers were predictable. They did whatever you told them to do. If something went wrong, all you had to do was look at the program they'd been given, and see where you'd made a mistake, telling them to do the wrong thing. Once you found that, you fixed it, and everything was right again. Computers didn't tell you one thing one day and then do something completely different the next day. A computer wouldn't betray you, telling you they were your best friend, and then stabbing you in the back later.
They certainly wouldn't forget to tell you something as important as wanting to change from being a boy to being a girl, and then call you up all the sudden and ask you to meet them somewhere, and then see how surprised you acted when you learned they were a girl now and not a guy. Yeah, he guessed that did bother him just a little bit. He twisted the throttle, revving the bike's engine and sending them hurtling down the deserted highway, finally edging the speedometer up over a hundred, while he finally got the radio volume up high enough to stop himself from thinking.