Amy at the Gulf

by Amy K

The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2010 Amy Komori. All rights reserved.

Chapter One:

Dr. Strangeshop or, How I Learned to Hate the Mall

Full-on summer came around.  Temps rose, mosquitoes snacked on precious bodily fluids, faces went shiny from the humidity.  Emily was no longer a senior at Delacroix High, and I was still trapped in a tiny female body.  But at least I’d found a home with the Komoris.  They gave me the run of the house and put up with generally black moods.

I hated having a girl’s body, I hated being short (out of curiosity, Emily measured me against the wall one afternoon and I came out just under 5'; I prayed for a growth spurt) and I hated being a little weakling; no more opening peanut butter jars with a mighty, manly twist.  Being weak made me feel diminished and puny, and it was the worst part of the whole thing.  Well, that and being called "cute" all the time.

About the only thing I didn't hate about it was being Japanese, or at least Asian.  I mean, both Emily and her mom were, too.  In the aftermath of the transformation, that was one thing I took some comfort from, such as it was.  I was more like Emily now.

By now, I thought changing from Mr. Average White Guy into Emily's tomboy cousin Amy from California put me on the city square in downtown Weirdsville, population:  me.  I figured life couldn't show me anything more bizarre, couldn’t possibly fuck me over any more than it had by robbing me of my Y chromosome and substituting an X—yeah, as if no one would notice.  But I discovered I was only at the outermost bus stop in Weirdsville's suburbs, and there was a lot more to see on the journey to the true center of strange.

It started with the preparations for our summer vacation. 

Emily and her mother had planned this beach trip for over a year now, their first real vacation together since Emily's dad died.  They insisted I come with them, and they weren't about to let me hole up in the rented house and hermitize myself the week we were on the Florida coast along Gulf of Mexico.

"It's not healthy," Mrs. Komori said by way of convincing me.

And my mental health was definitely an issue at this point, since I mostly sat around and did nothing.  I stewed in my own estrogenic juices, I guess.  Watched TV, barely spoke.

“Yeah,” I said with a shrug.  “I guess it’s not.”

“Well, here’s the deal.  Emily and I would like to get you out of the house, maybe… if you’re willing… buy you a few things for the trip.  Those clothes you’ve been wearing are getting moldy.”

I sighed.  I thought about it for a few moments.  Thanks to those obnoxious skater punks, the mall and I were totally quits on our already strained friendship and I’d barely left the house in weeks.  My initial inclination was just to say no and disappoint and hurt Mrs. Komori.  Surprisingly, as I searched my mind for an excuse to beg off, I found deep in my tummy this dull ache to go outside, to get off the sofa and face the world again, or at least do something just a little different that day.  But I didn’t want to agree out loud.  I nodded instead.

Mrs. Komori smiled.  “Good!  I’m so glad, Martin.  You’ll see.  We’ll have a great time and it’ll make you feel so much better.”  She jingled her car keys and the three of us set off for the mall to prepare me for our beach blast and sort of re-initiate me into the world of the living.

Before we could even deal with the clothes, we had to walk past the stupid skaters who had humiliated and intimidated me.  Mrs. Komori’s adult presence acted as a kind of authoritarian shield from any verbal taunts, but they certainly stared me down as we came through.  The skaters sat slouched in their circus-tent clothes.  One guy was stretched out on his back, staring up at the ceiling.  They had their skateboards leaning against the painted concrete walls of the fountain—which was turned off to conserve water, there being a drought—and I felt jealous.  I seethed with envy at how they could roll along and do tricks and still pee standing up and live in a world where they were who they said they were.  The fierceness of this whole jealousy-storm took me by surprise 

How they looked at us made me angry, too.  Under their intense, sulky skater punk gaze-- so uber-boyish and childishly surly and I could imagine their nasty thoughts because they had once been my own—my cheeks and even my ears glowed as if they’d been painted with radioactive substances and then we were out of the Skater Hot Zone.  I felt my rage subside in waves.

And there we were, at the Gap, of all stupid places.  We stood outside its youth-oriented corporate blandness and the pretty and vacuous models in navy blue and khaki stared down at us from the windows, waiting for us to step inside where it was white and blonde wood all over.

“Do I have to get… you know… girl clothes?” I asked, dubiously.

I'd never dressed up like a girl even as a joke, or for Halloween.  It wasn’t that I had been afraid of it or felt it challenged my manhood; it just hadn’t come up, or really crossed my mind before that one time with Emily’s friends back when I was still semi-male.  Now, facing the choice, I just didn’t want to wear girly stuff.

“Why not?”  Emily asked.  “They’re just clothes.”

“If that’s the case, let’s go to the guy section.”

“Amy can wear anything she… uh… he wants,” Mrs. Komori said.  “Sorry.”

“Look, I just think girl clothes are better than guy clothes—“

“But you wear guy clothes!”

“Shut up, dude.  I’d really like to see you embrace your sassy, girly-chic side.”

“I don’t have one of those… sassy…”  I started to protest, and let my voice trail off.  Emily’s face was undergoing an alarming contortion.  Mrs. Komori and I stared at her as Emily clamped her lips tightly together and her cheeks quivered and darkened.

Then she couldn’t help herself and started giggling.  “I’m just messing with you!”

I flushed hotly.  “That wasn’t funny.”

“Don’t be mad,” Emily told me.  “It was a joke, for God’s sake.”

“Okay, okay.”  Still a little angry about it all, I told Mrs. Komori I didn’t want Gap clothes anyways.

She shrugged and we all walked down towards the Macy’s.  At malls, especially ours, there weren’t many choices outside the mainstream, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted anyways.  I’d always bought my clothes on the cheap at Target or factory outlets.  Once inside the department store, I nervously led us to the boy’s department.  There weren’t many shoppers, which was definitely a good thing.  We got just a few funny looks.  Granted, I must have made a vision of intense strangeness:  a tiny, black haired girl wearing her would-be hipster father’s clothes.  Pre-pubescent androgyny.

“I-I want like some t-shirts,” I said softly, looking down at my big stupid shoes.

“Anything you want,” Mrs. Komori told me reassuringly.

We did a safari through the racks, and I chose a few things here and there, avoided the expensive name brand stuff.  I didn’t care about any of that anyways.  It was hot out and I needed light tees and some shorts for knocking about on the beach.  By the time we hit the underwear section, we had a small audience of mostly older women craning their necks to see what this weird kid was doing with the seeming support of her sister and mother.  Breaking some kind of unwritten gender code, I suppose.  I frowned fiercely, feeling ashamed, but not because I was doing anything wrong.  It was as if they were projecting the feeling they thought I should be having into me, marking me as a freak by their surreptitious scrutiny.

“Excuse me,” a guy in business attire said to Mrs. Komori.  “May I help you ladies?”

“My… um… niece is just picking out a few things.  She’s visiting us for the summer and for some reason, her luggage ended up in Italy.”

“Would she be more comfortable in our girl’s section?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

I shook my head no, too, and sent special psychic waves of “go away, go away” at the guy, but obviously his receiver was out of service.  Or I was doing it wrong.  Had X-Men comics let me down?  I felt as though I’d flunked out of Professor X’s School for Gifted Youngsters.  I’d never get my superhero uniform or my code name:  Vagina Girl.  Boy-Girl.  Girl-Man.  Weak Sister.  The Lightweight.  Once started, it was difficult to stop and I must have come up with about one hundred self-deprecating handles for my hypothetical comic book self, as quickly disdained as she had emerged from my imagination.

“Well, if you need any help, just let me know,” the sales guy said, conceding the point.  After all, what did he care?

Then it hit me.  “I don’t even know what size I am.”

Mrs. Komori playfully smacked her forehead.  “That’s right.  I didn’t think to measure you before we left.”

“Probably a small,” Emily suggested.

“She’ll just have to try these on,” Mrs. Komori said.  She turned to the sales guy.  “Where’s the dressing room?”

“Well, the fitting room is right over here, but she’ll have to use the girl’s rooms.”

“And where are they?”

“In the girl’s department.  But… uh… I’m afraid I can’t let you take the merchandise with you from this section.”

“Why not?”

The sales guy gave us an apologetic smile.

“Well, I’m not paying money for something that doesn’t fit her,” Mrs. Komori said.  She looked deadly serious.

“Why can’t she just use the boy’s fitting room?” Emily asked.  She emphasized the phrase “fitting room” in an almost British-sounding snarky way I would have enjoyed under other circumstances.

“We just… we… It’s store policy.”

I kind of ducked my head down into my chest and raised my shoulders.  I thought, Jesus, motherfucker, why are we even discussing this?  Now the other shoppers were watching us openly.  Live entertainment, and for free.  I wanted to run away.

“Are there any boys in the dre-- fitting room now?” Mrs. Komori asked.

“No.”

“Then why can’t she use it?”

The sales guy’s brain must have jumped a track, because his face froze in this rictus of goofy, mannequin-like politeness.  “I guess there’s no reason why not.  You’re completely right.”

That settled, I began the trying-on process.  I wasn’t exactly stoked about wearing kid clothes, but at least they were for boys.  As I took off my faded, worn Martin crap and stood there in my oversized old cotton briefs that had gone from smart white to a kind of crusty off-gray, looking at my insipid face and vulnerable little body, I felt as though I were stripping away something else.  I wasn’t sure what it was.  I found myself trembling a little under the fluorescent lights, maybe from the Macy’s A/C which seemed to be turned down to the “New Ice Age” setting, maybe from something inside.

We’d guessed my size correctly, so everything fit for the most part.  I was officially a pre-teen boy’s small, although medium fit me in certain things.  It took forever to do the deed, too.  Having conceded the use of the fitting rooms, the sales guy was adamant about sticking to the “two items at a time” policy.  That added time and increased my frustration.  I’d never particularly enjoyed shopping and hadn’t gone through this process in years, since my old mom had last bought my fall school clothes.  As an adult guy, I’d just walked in and grabbed what I liked and paid for it, no sweat.

After buying all of that regular-wear stuff, we got into a discussion about swimwear.  Boy’s tighty-whiteys were fine, tees and shorts were fine for our newly-minted Amy-girl as she encountered the great, big world all around her.  But we were going to be at the beach and that meant swimming and sunning.  I couldn’t wear a guy’s swimsuit for that, because society apparently disapproved of chest displays by young females.

“Maybe if you were younger,” Mrs. Komori said, thoughtfully.

“Why can’t I just wear like a t-shirt and some shorts?” I asked.

“Well… no reason, I guess,” Mrs. Komori said.

Emily shut one eye and frowned.  I could see her mighty brain working.  “Why don’t you just try one on and see if you like it?”  She meant a girl’s swimsuit.

Chapter Two:

The Grand Epiphany of the Brightly-Lit Department Store

After all, what really was the big deal?  It was all just cloth. 

But if so, why had those women noticeably reacted to the sight of a girl getting an exclusively boy wardrobe?  I had to smile ruefully when I thought about the opposite, too.  What if I’d been a boy who wanted to wear girl’s clothes?  The biddy brigade was bemused by the tomboy, but the sissy would have been almost completely unacceptable. 

Emily could wear guy jeans or one of my old shirts and no one would think anything of it.  As long as Emily kept her long hair and wore some mascara and remained kind of lanky and sleek, she was within acceptable parameters and had quite a bit of leeway within them.  Let her little cousin have a semi-short haircut and wear y-fronts and they thought it a little odd.

Let her grow up and shave her head and dress like a construction worker, or have someone with a dick wear a skirt, and those concepts were way too fucked up for them to process. 

I felt confused by it all, almost dizzy and headachey.  Here I was sticking to guy stuff, somehow resistant to the idea of putting on anything made for a girl, despite cotton threads in the cloth being molecularly identical no matter for whom the clothing manufacturers wove it.  Therefore, I was full of the same prejudices.

If I did without said prejudices, what was my objection to wearing a girl’s swimsuit after all?  And was going the t-shirt and shorts route any escape?  Boy or girl or whatever, people wanted you to conform to their expectations.  I concluded people’s minds were full of shitty, mean ideas and this simple stupid shopping trip was forcing me to confront things I’d never before considered.  Received gender notions accepted without contemplation.  Traditions.  Mores.  Yuck, I thought.

While I thought about that, the three of us drifted with our bags full of inadvertent gender rebelliousness into the girl’s section.  Now I saw all this fashion stuff with a field observer’s objectivity.

On first blush, the girl clothes weren’t that different from the ones over in pre-teen boys.  T-shirts, button-up shirts, twill and denim shorts.  Jeans.  On second, almost all of the tees were colors I’d always associated with femininity without even thinking about it.  Pinks and purples and pale pastels.  The prints, too.  Florals.  Powerpuff Girls.  Minnie Mouse.  “Surfer Girl.”  “Princess.”

And it struck me that most girls must actually this stuff.  But was it because society taught them to, or was it because of their biology?  I had this feeling I was going to find out firsthand, that I was some kind of test case in spite of myself.

For a while, anyways.  Then boredom set in.  It was still shopping no matter what kind of philosophical nonsense I brought to it.  It was time to get it over with.

“I guess I’ll… you know,” I said and gave the swimsuit section—a riot of flowers, ruffles and neon colors—a glance.  “But I want something one-piece.  And not too frilly.” 

Apparently, despite my epiphany, I wasn’t about to start a gender revolution right then and there.  And after all, there were plenty of girls and women who hated the stuff marketed towards them.  Which made me for a split second wonder if maybe I was reacting to this stuff as a girl, not as a guy after all.

Once again, confusion.

“Whatever, dude,” Emily said.

I found this orange one-piece suit.  Smart-ass Emily jokingly held up a day-glo pink one I crinkled my nose at in disgust, and I waved my find at her. 

“I’m gonna try this one,” I said. 

“Cute,” Mrs. Komori said, and her eyes darted away. 

The sales woman let me into the fitting room without so much as a protest, and I discovered the suit was a bit too small.  The shoulder straps kind of compressed me a little and made me not want to stand up straight for fear of bursting a seam.  Then I was worried we wouldn’t find another orange one.  Green would’ve been okay, and I might have accepted one with maybe an embroidered sailboat or sun on the front.  Maybe a frolicking dolphin.  Anything but that bright pink travesty.

“I’m sorry, we don’t seem to have another one in that color,” the sales woman told me.

Luckily, there was a green one.

“Kinda plain,” Emily said, disappointed.

“I like plain,” I told her.

“Just try this,” she said, holding up a blue two-piece.  It had a little ruffle trim.

I winced.

“Just try it, Amy,” she said.  “It’s not really so different than what you’re used to.  That one-piece might feel a little confining.  Kinda.”

“It’s a bikini.”

“Technically.  Think of it as… um… trunks and a top.”

Back into the fitting room, where I tried on the bikini and found it was actually a lot more comfortable than the one-piece.  Only it felt bizarre to have to cover up something I didn’t even really have.  It suddenly struck me as unfair that guys got to go topless if they wanted.  Especially when so many had larger breasts than a lot of the women I knew.  And so what?

Why were breasts so bad they had to be covered?

Then I got a little thrill of fear and discomfort.  I didn’t want anyone staring at my breasts.  When I had them.  They would be mine, not someone else’s to own through his eyes.  I couldn’t even conceive of one day showing them to a lover.  Fuck that.  Fuck it with a lit stick of dynamite.

A minute or so later, I was bopping out of the changing booth to show Emily and Mrs. Komori.  Emily had this look of narrow-eyed interest, somewhat sardonic.  But Mrs. Komori beamed happily.

On the way to the cashier’s station, we passed a long rack of dresses.  I wasn’t planning to give them so much as a glance, but curiosity got the better of me and I peeked.  Nothing, nothing… and then, something.  Stainless steel rack.  A hanger.  There were these little string bows, like the ones you tie in your shoelaces, the topmost part of the thin straps of this sundress with teensy flowers all over it in blues, greens and yellows.  My breath stopped for a beat.  Within the space of that beat, I thought about how I’d looked in the mirror before and how that dress would look on me.  My breath resumed its normal cycle.

And Emily saw it happen.  She smiled at me and I tried to act like it was no big deal.

When we put the two swimsuits on the cashier’s station and the saleswoman rang it up for us, I couldn’t believe how expensive this trip was.  With my cooperation, we’d gotten carried away, bought much more than I’d need for three weeks at the beach, much less just one.  Mrs. Komori pulled out her credit card and paid for it all without a complaint, but I knew she was almost as shocked as I was.  How had this happened?

“You need shoes,” Mrs. Komori said.  This, instead of complaining about the money she’d blown.

“Okay,” I grunted.  I genuinely couldn’t believe after all she’d spent already she was still willing to go that extra mile for me.

On the way out of the pre-teen girl’s department, I tried to steal a glance back at the sundress, with this surprisingly poignant ache.  I wasn’t so much surprised to find myself wanting a dress for the first time in my life, but at the wanting, the desiring any piece of clothing.  What the fuck was happening to me all of a sudden?

Again, Emily spotted me.  She’d evidently been watching me intently ever since she caught me out looking kind of—I had to admit it—longingly at that dress.  I looked away and put it out of my mind, just banished it like a god-king would a failed general or something in some Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or an episode of “Xena, Warrior Princess.”

I saw Emily mouth, “You want it?” at me.  I shook my head.  Negative, sister. No way.  Not me.  Despite all my recent insights, I savagely thought only dumb girls and fags wore dresses, anything to shock some sense back into me.  Instantly pegging me for the liar I was, Emily nodded.  Then we were in the shoe section.

Shoe were easiest.  We got me some black Vans, smaller versions of the ones I’d treasured in another life.  I wore them out of Macy’s, with my Martin clodhoppers shoved into the box under my arm.  And my feet rejoiced.  The lightness in my legs served to inform me just how difficult it had been walking around in big-ass sneakers.

On the way through the mall, with our load of bags, I thought about all I’d seen and learned about the world and even myself.  I especially thought about that weird moment of transitory desire after seeing that stupid dress, which I was now in the process of convincing myself I hated.  What was that?  Why would I even think I wanted something like that?  And Emily.  She was going to be on top of me from then on.  I could feel the beginning of a fascination; it shimmered off my former girlfriend like the white mist that rose from hot asphalt streets after a summer rain.

I was officially under investigation.

“Who wants a Great American Cookie?” Mrs. Komori asked, as if to lighten the mood.

“No thanks,” I grumbled.

“No?  Okay, then.”  Mrs. Komori sounded a little disappointed.  Maybe she’d wanted a cookie for herself and needed one of us to act as enabler.  Oh well…

The skater punks had vanished like ghosts, and outside was like a sauna.  I practically danced with delight at being blasted by hot, moist air after the goosebumps-inducing fast freeze of Macy’s and the rest of the mall.  We found our car and threw all the bags in the trunk and I flung my little body into the backseat as soon as Mrs. Komori popped the door locks.  I slumped down as my elation faded and reaction set in.  I was exhausted, physically, emotionally, intellectually.  It was so hard to hold onto my new insights, if insights they were.  Already I could feel them jumbling, bumping against each other and becoming even more garbled than they’d been in Macy’s.

What had I left in there?  What had I found?

“Hey, Amy,” Emily said.  “When we come back from the beach, maybe we can go to Moldy Oldies.”  Moldy Oldies was a local vintage clothing store.  Emily and I both knew they didn’t sell guy clothes.

"Maybe," I muttered.  Amy?

After a supper where I’d barely talked, I went to my room, threw myself on the bed and buried my face in the pillow.  I missed being a guy so badly it hurt, and I was bewildered by all the things I’d suddenly felt and thought during the shopping trip.  I felt buffeted by forces beyond the farthest limits of my ability to comprehend.  Is this what it’s like to be a girl?  I thought.  Or is this what it’s like to be a girl who wants to be a boy?  What am I now?  What have I become?

I heard the door open and Emily peeked in.

"Can I come in?" she asked softly.

I grunted, or tried to. It sounded like some kind of little girl noise. Emily shut the door behind her and sat by me on the bed.  She was so close, I could feel her radiant body heat. No so long before things like that led to freaky sex until we fell asleep sometime after midnight. Now it just made my stomach feel sickly-sweet, like I'd drunk a bottle of Log Cabin maple syrup.

"Shopping sucks, dude,”  I said finally, my voice muffled by the pillow.  “And those old bitches in the boy’s section were staring at me like I’m some kind of freak.  I dunno, maybe I am.  Oh, and those fucking skater kids…”

"Amy--"

"Martin. When we're alone, I'm Martin."

That set her off, and led to a long discussion about "you've changed, probably for good" and "making the best of a bad situation until we figure something out." So I asked Emily if she wanted a tube to better blow smoke up my ass, and also reiterated my position that inside, I was all guy, the same Martin I'd always been and always would be.

I guess I wanted to fight with Emily, or make her cry so I could convince myself the guy thing was still true. If she screamed at me, we'd go to war. And not a month before, that's what would've happened; Emily would've torn me a new one.  Instead, she took it serenely. I couldn't stay angry with a calm Emily.  She was too rational, her voice was too assured and I was too much in love with her. I cooled, calmed.

With persistence and quiet determination, she soothed and comforted me.  We even talked a little about the gender thing and some of the thoughts I’d had at Macy’s, but neither of us contemplated it too much before today.  Well, Emily had a little, but only on a case-by-case basis.  The beginnings of an earnest back-and-forth on the matter sputtered and died.  Mostly, Emily just held forth that people were stupid about almost everything and their opinions counted for little.  And that somehow, I’d figure it all out in time.  But before that happened, I had to find some kind of personal peace.

"It's not your old life, I know," Emily pleaded. "But you're going to have to get your shit together sometime.  Be a boy, be a girl, be something in between, or something new.  It doesn’t matter.  Just, please, I don't want to lose you."

"Okay," I said with a sigh. "But no vintage clothes.  At least not now.  I wanna think this over some more.”

"Deal."

Chapter Three:

Might Be Thinkin' 'Bout Goin' Down to the Shore

That weekend, we got up before light, loaded up the Mountaineer (Emily always made cracks about how her tiny mother loved to drive this massive tank) and moved to the sea. Actually, not the sea- to a little resort town on the Gulf of Mexico. I wasn't much help packing the SUV; my skinny arms were so weak, I couldn't carry even my own suitcase without setting it down once between the door and the Komori Family Truckster. 

“You need help?” Emily asked as she passed me with her own suitcase.

“No,” I squeaked and hefted the bag again.

“It has wheels.  Why don’t you just roll it?”

“I want to do it my way.  Now shut up!”

Emily squinted her eyes at me and went back inside to get more stuff.  I barely managed to get the suitcase up high enough to throw it in the back.  Stupid wheels.  Why hadn’t I noticed them?

We hit the road in the dewy early morning, just after sunrise. It took seven hours down twisty country roads and along the interstate to get there, but it was worth it to come around the final curve, break free of the pines and see the gulf shining in the afternoon sun.

As we drove slowly along the beach highway, I took note of the older girls down by the water. I could still look, although the expression on this face probably would've creeped out anyone who saw me. My mood had been better that morning, but the thought struck me that I'd be on that beach in that blue two-piece, slopping sunscreen on this tiny body and generally being a beach girl, too.  None of those girls down there on the sand would see me as a potential mate by any means; they’d see me as some stupid Asian girl-kid, Emily’s tagalong.

"What's wrong, Amy?" Emily asked, and I cringed. "I mean, Martin."

"Nothing," I lied. Nothing at all. Just getting with the program.

We checked in, unpacked and settled into a very nice older house right between the highway and the beach. We ate sandwiches that night because we were too tired to cook or go out. Then Emily wanted to go onto the beach and walk down to the pier.

I hadn't planned on going, but Emily insisted, so I had to get dressed for my gulf-side debut as little Amy Komori.  I’d worn my Martin clothes for the drive with the idea of using this moment as a sort of chrysalis-opening thing.  Spinning a web of silk (or frayed cotton as the case may be), I’d wrapped myself up and it was time to come out metamorphosed into…

Me.

Just like I had in the fitting room a few days before, I dropped my sagging slacks and my rolled-down BVDs and tossed off my t-shirt and took out of my suitcase what was essentially a smaller version of my usual summer outfit, with underwear that actually fit (although the y-front pee slot was useless to me now), a gray-green Alien Workshop tee and khaki shorts.  Free from the outer wrappings of the past, I no longer looked like the Littlest Hobo.  I gazed regretfully at my Martin clothes in heap on the floor; they were going into the big plastic garbage can outside our beach house.

I sighed.  I was rapidly becoming a sigher.

"Oh, you look adorable!" Mrs. Komori exclaimed as I sheepishly entered the living room. I turned about as red as the sun going down outside over the pier.  She must have noticed my extreme blushing, because she quickly added, “Oh… is that… is that okay for me to say, Martin?  Handsome?”

I felt a little bad, so I told her adorable was fine.  I even managed a fake smile.

"Martin, let me do something with your hair, okay?" Emily asked.  I let her.

By then, my hair was pretty out of control. I kept it combed to prevent tangles, and being basic Asian hair, it was mostly straight, with just this little bit of a wave now that it was longer than when I’d had a dick.  Still very boyish, but like a sloppy, haircut-phobic boy's. Emily parted it down the middle, brushed it to each side and put a couple of hairpins in, then took the rest and made two short ponytails held in place with elastic bands behind my ears.  I didn't dare look in the mirror.

“Lemme grab something,” Emily said, hit her bedroom and came back.  She had her sketchpad and a pencil.  “You never know when you might see something worth commemorating in fine graphite.”

“Have fun, you two,” Mrs. Komori said as we slammed the door behind us.

I was barefoot, Emily wore flip-flops.  Emily also had on a funky muscle-tee with neat kanji on the front, right on top of those teeny boobs I used to love putting my mouth all over.  I couldn't help but wonder how my new girly lips would feel on them. But then I felt that disgusting sugary-sickly feeling again, teamed up this time with a painful wave of nostalgia, so I tried to concentrate on the other scenery.  We stopped once for Emily to draw a quick gestural drawing of a stinky dead fish while I held my nose.

I have to admit, if I'd still been a guy and I'd seen the two of us walking along in the orange sunset, I'd have had to look twice. I mean, Emily was all long and lanky, all legs but with this slouchy grace as she walked the shoreline. And I'm sure little Amy in her boy clothes was just as cute as a bug, trying to keep up as best she could.  Bouncy ponytails.  I felt them softly batting my head and snorted.

We made it to the pier and before too long, they came: horny guys. It was like Emily sent out some sort of signal they caught on the stiff gulf breeze. Shirtless tourist guys, locals in jeans, the Abercrombie and Fitch crowd, the JCrew Crew, Plaid Dorks, none of them seemingly her type- no pale artists or pretentious rockers here on the beach. Emily basked in their attention, but she cut her eyes at me constantly. I set my mouth in a tight, lipless frown.

"Uh, hey," one of the braver guys ventured. Emily had her sketchbook open and pencil ready, but she smiled at him, which, for reasons obvious to anyone who's ever met her, encouraged him to stop and lean against the wooden railing. "Cool sunset, huh?"

"Um, sure," Emily said. Quick glance at me, sketchbook shut.

"Hey, uh, my name's Todd," the interloper said. No interest in her drawings.

"Emily. And this is Amy." Grrr...

Todd Interloper offered us both his hand to shake. Emily took it, I looked away, like he'd tried to hand me a fresh turd.

"Oh, is that sand down there?" I said, as if I'd seen the beach for the first time. Todd's turd-hand slowly dropped.

"So, where you staying?" he wanted to know.

"Over that way."

"Cool. Nice places there. Staying long?"

"We're leaving tomorrow," I said, sharply.

Emily put her arms around me from behind and started rocking me.  I sent mental "go away" signals to Todd, but failed just as I had in Macy’s.  Had Professor X taught me nothing?  Powerless Girl.  Failure Bitch.  Kid Useless.

"Actually, we're staying a week," Emily said.

Was she interested in this guy? He looked like a lame-o to me, the complete Mr. Jackass package, not at all the type of guy she'd go for back home. And his attempts at conversation?  Please.  Come on, Emily, ditch this sack of shit, I thought. You're ten times smarter than he is!

"Cool. Maybe we can… uh… you know, hang out, and stuff."

"Maybe."  No, not maybe. Definitely not!  Not ever!  And absolutely no "stuff."

Emily and I made our way back to the house not long after that, and if anybody had heard our conversation on the way, they would've felt severely confused.  Schizophrenic, even, as hallucinatory as it must have been.  Because I really let Emily have it, and loudly, which was the completely wrong thing to do, looking back. But I wasn't feeling too understanding at the time. No, this time, I wanted to fight, to draw blood.

“That stupid fucker!”  I said.  “And you were like flirting with him and everything.”

“I was not.  It’s called being friendly.”

“That’s how friendly you were with me the first time we met.  Yeah.”

“Dude, being social is my normal state of being.  If you want to hate everyone and everything, that’s your business.  I’m down her trying to have fun.”

“That guy was hitting on you.”

“So what?  Like I can control stupid shit other people do?”

“You didn’t have to flirt back.  You could’ve been like, ‘I’m here with my cousin, and it’s a family vacation, so see ya, Todd McMotherfucker.’”

"Well, yeah, I thought he was... you know… attractive," she said. The pause before "attractive" meant he got her motor going. Really got it going, or she would've said something cruder, and made it out to be a joke.

Devastation. An emotional Hiroshima, a Nagasaki. A Bikini Atoll.  She’d blown my ass completely away, taken my love and annihilated it, spreading it like fallout across the stratosphere where it would join the chattering background radiation of every romantic failure ever.  Hurt replaced anger and now my heart was booming.

"Emily, I'm still your boyfriend in here!" A desperation ploy.  High-pitched, a little too whiny.

"Just give me time to figure this out," she said. Then, quietly,  "I just don't know. I'm still just... weirded out by this whole thing..."

"Are you saying you want to break up with me?"

"Break up? Are we even together anymore? I mean, look at us-- we're both girls. And not only that, you're a little girl. It's wrong, that's all. Wrong."

"How can it be wrong when I'm still the same person inside? I love you."

"And I love you. Just not in that way... anymore."

“But…”

“A-and… I haven’t.  Not for a while now.”  Her voice broke as she said it.  Then, very quietly, “And now you know.”

Emily went silently over the dunes and through the sea oats towards our house and I plopped my skinny little girl ass on the sand and prayed the tide would roll right over me and carry me off to faraway Mexico or around the Keys into the Atlantic where I could sink forever into the deep. The Pixies's "Wave of Mutilation" started playing itself in my mind. I was riding a real wave of that nature- my life was completely mutilated. I'd just lost my greatest heart's desire and I was going to be an observer of her love life from now on, instead of a participant. But realistically, what was I asking Emily to do-- molest me? Even if she were gay or bi, how could I expect her to want to do that?

And from somewhere in the darkness, that crappy "beach baby, beach baby, give me your hand" song came wafting on the wind. It was like this falsetto-singing Brian Wilson wannabe was talking directly to me.

I got up, found a young couple making out on a towel with a boombox nearby. I got a little glow from their befuddled facial expressions as they watched this tiny cross-dressed Japanese girl stalk out of the darkness and, with a fierce look (and a wimpy grunt), take their radio and throw it into the water where it promptly shorted out completely. Of all the-- ! This is an outrage!  We demand to speak to the management!  Their eyes went round and their mouths gaped, but they didn't dare say a word; I vanished as quickly as I had appeared.

Finally, I had my X-Men code name:  Anti-Oldies Avenger of the Night.

Chapter Four:

Drowned Rat-Girl

The next morning, despite all the tension and silence between Emily and me, we went down to the beach and set up our little Komori family play area.  Mrs. Komori tried to talk to us, but gave up after a while.  Probably tired of one-word answers or indecipherable sounds.  She sat in a beach chair and tried to read, her eyes hidden behind large, dark sunglasses, her body slumping like someone near defeat.

“You want some sunscreen?” she asked me.

“Uh huh,” I answered, totally uninterested.  She coated me in it and I sat on my towel watching the clouds.  I tried not to think of anything at all.  A cloud for my brain.  Nothing in it.  A cloud in my chest.  Nothing there, either.  Not a heart.  Nope.

Emily stirred beside me, a Rolling Stone magazine occupying her attention.

When I got bored, I went down to the water and played in the surf.  I quickly found my new, practically bird-weight form was a bit more vulnerable while body-surfing than my old one had been.  Storms out over the Gulf had stirred up its usual placid, mirror-like surface and turned the water into Chop City.  Several times, the merciless waves did me like a cigarette and stubbed me out on the sandy bottom. Not fair.

One time, I came up sputtering, salt water burning my eyes, snot running out of my nose, my knees sore and bleeding a little from the vicious sandpapering they’d received.  I couldn’t see much, just dazzling lights everywhere and then I got blindsided by another wave and tumbled ass-over-teakettle in the white foam.  Underwater, I saw green and a froth of bubbles, brine gagging me as sea water went down my esophagus into my lungs.  I might have even been yelling, but my ears were also full of sea water and all I could hear was Neptune’s roar.

Then someone was splashing near me and pulling me close.  It was Emily.  She kicked until we were out of the breakers and bobbing up and down where the bottom dropped away.  I coughed until I felt I was about to puke.  More mucus poured from my nose.

“You okay?” Emily asked.

I was afraid to open my eyes because of the burning and I couldn’t speak, so I nodded.

“You don’t look it.”

“I’m fine,” I croaked.  I wanted to add, “Since when do you care?” but obviously she did or she wouldn’t have been holding me up, her legs thrumming down below to generate buoyancy.  I pushed away from her and started kicking, my arms outstretched on the water’s surface.  “Thanks.”

“I thought you were going to fuckin’ drown, dude,” Emily said.

Wiping my face did nothing but rub more salt and sand into my already overloaded eyes, but I opened them against the pain and looked at her as best I could.  Her own dark eyes were wide, her black hair smeared across her face like thick ink.  She looked crazed.  I knew she was scared, maybe more scared than I had been.

“I didn’t drown, so don’t sweat it.”

“You almost did!  Don’t try to play it off like you didn’t.”

I swept my own heavy bangs out of my eyes and smiled at her.  “It’s casual,” I said.

Emily recognized the line instantly.  It was from the stoner flick “The Wild Life,” one of her childhood favorites, one we’d watched a few times back when I was her boyfriend.  She grinned, stuck out her tongue at me and ducked me underwater, as if to complete the job the Gulf had started.

“What the fuck, dude?” I gasped when I bobbed back up.

“Don’t you ever fucking die on me,” Emily said and we swam back to shore where we plopped ourselves down on our towels and trembled despite the scorching heat.  The rawness was still there between us, but now we could talk again and be around each other without dwelling on it.

I sat with my legs pretzel style and Emily stretched out and put on her sunglasses.  On the table next to us, her little CD stereo played one of her special mix disks, some Pixies, some Bratmobile, some Jane’s Addiction and a couple of songs by Frente.  “Accidentally Kelly Street” just happened to be on, a jaunty little song that kept me from feeling overly sad while I watched the waves pounding other swimmers.

So this is what a Komori beach trip is like, I thought.

A whole week far from home and the miserable past.  I wore the green one-piece at first, but gave it up because it just felt too awkward and I couldn’t get used to it.  I switched to the blue two-piece and found I could just kind of ignore the top.  My high, chubby Japanese cheeks got rosy from the sun. My body darkened, especially my elbows and knees. As Martin, I'd been one of those instant burn-and-peelers.

Emily wore several tantalizing suits that showed off her long, slim Emily-self, and she got beautifully brown. I had a few emotional moments when we rubbed sunblock on each other. One day, Emily got sand down her bikini bottom and when she pulled the waist out to brush out the grit, I caught a glimpse of her pale tan line and what I thought were a few dark, curly hairs. I had to go back to the house to use the bathroom and I tried doing something I'd read about girls doing, but I must've been too young for it to really work. Or maybe I was just doing it wrong; it's not as though I could ask anyone.

There were a couple of more close calls with that Todd character and some guys-- and once, this chubby kid who looked like a hairless pink seal let me try his skimboard, but when he asked me to come to the pier with him that night, I took off running-- but for some reason, Emily held back. It may have been to avoid hurting me anymore than she already had, and I suspected it was just killing her inside. I think I mentioned before, Emily really liked to do it.  During our time together, I’d come to the conclusion Emily was just sort of like a guy about sexual matters.  Now I imagined that was making my transition difficult for her.  Not just end of our emotional closeness, but the lack of It, the withdrawal of the physical.

My little family got into a sleepy rhythm at the beach, no more arguments.  I dealt with the vacuum inside where my love for Emily used to fill me and just pretended to be her cousin, or sister.  It wasn’t that difficult as long as I went with that beachy rhythm.  Some nights, we'd come in with our skin hot from all the sun and just collapse in a heap, exhausted. Mrs. Komori cooked for us and we relaxed in the air-conditioned coolness and watched "Nick at Night." We loved “The Adventures of Pete and Pete,” and “Are You Afraid of the Dark,” plus all the cartoons.  “Ren and Stimpy,” “Aaahh!!!  Real Monsters.”  Fun stuff that prevented troubling thoughts.  Emily would braid my hair and I'd let her. Sometimes, she'd make a couple of short pigtails, and sometimes, she'd go crazy and braid it all up as many times as she could.

"You should get it cut so when it grows out more, it'll be cute," Emily said. "You know, bangs and sort of a pixie cut."

"Uh huh," I said absently, just enjoying the feeling of her hands in my hair. We both sat cross-legged on the couch, me in front, Emily behind. She would play with my hair endlessly, but not endlessly enough for my taste.

We dined out. I got children's plates wherever we went. And we shopped, which was still stultifying as fuck, but when Mrs. Komori found out I wasn’t enjoying it at all, I was able to guilt her into buying me a skimboard.  Then I managed to skin my ass on the wet sand- it felt just like concrete. I would've been uninjured if I'd been wearing sensible swim trunks instead of that stupid blue bathing suit.  I made a mental note to ask for board shorts or something.

Embarrassment time: tan lines. Sure, I turned a nice rosy brown, but I stayed pale around my chest and groin. I had this irrational fear people would know I'd been wearing a bikini. Of fucking course I'd been wearing a bikini; those women in Macy’s were right, after all, I decided.  I was a black haired, dark-eyed, broad-faced, chubby cheeked skinny little shorty girl.  Bikinis-R-Me.  A million bikinis for Amy Komori.  Dresses—especially that stupid Macy’s sundress.  Bring them to me.

Before and after showers, I practiced looking mean in the mirror, but could only look silly. I had to remember to wrap the towel around my chest, not that I had anything to hide. Yet.

And so it went. Up at dawn, breakfast, into our swimsuits, down to the beach, back for lunch, down to the beach, showers, supper, twilight walk along the water's edge, then back to bed. Emily and I spent the week half naked, and got incredibly dark all over.

Friday night, Emily and I sat out on the beach in lawn chairs and watched the sun set. I felt something touch my hand, and then we were holding hands, just like we did in the old days, before my change. I squeezed and she squeezed back as the sun dipped below the horizon, half over water, half over land. The stars came out. The next day, we packed it up and went home.