Motion by the door between the Common Vibes bookstore and the Cup O' Jo brought me out of a daydream inspired by the aroma of Dark Roast. It was the woman from the pride march! She'd vanished from the rally afterwards, before we'd been able to talk.
She was looking at the books near the entrance to the coffee shop, the gender section. It was definitely time to say hello and see what would happen! I walked over, waited until she noticed me, and used my best cheerful voice to say, "Hi. Did I see you the weekend before last, at the Capitol?"
The woman startled like a deer caught in the headlights of a moving car. She relaxed and smiled as she recognized me. "Yes, I remember you from the march."
I grinned. "I marched next to you for a bit, then tried to find you at the rally to talk, but you kind of vanished."
"I'm sorry. I felt overwhelmed. I simply had to leave."
"No problem! I remember when I first came out. It was pretty intense for a while."
"I'm not... I mean... Oh, it's not that simple."
She sounded like words were clogging her mouth. "Hey, sorry," I said. "I shouldn't assume anything. Do you want to talk? Just some friendly chatter around a cup of coffee? No strings attached. I promise."
"Well, okay. I don't know anyone around here yet. I have to start somehow!" She smiled again, "My name is Lynne."
"All right! I'm Pat. I've got a cup of coffee going over there. I'll wait while you get something." This was going better than I had hoped.
We talked a bit and exchanged email addresses. Lynne was not so much shy as cautious and reserved. I thought at first she was shy about coming out and exploring her sexuality. I had good reason not to push that. I was interested in finding a friend who had no connections to my past. Sexuality, hers and mine, would come up eventually, of course. Perhaps by then I'd have some idea how to handle that.
During the next couple of weeks we'd met for coffee again, gone to an art show, and exchanged a lot of email. Neither of us had tried to make a move, but there was a tension between us I knew from experience wouldn't go away until we brought the topic of sex into the open.
We both worked downtown. Today was one of the first truly warm days of spring. We arranged in email to meet for lunch and take a stroll on the Riverwalk. We bought corn dogs and lemonade and went to find a bench.
Sitting cross-legged on the bench, our food between us, I began the serious part of the conversation. "Lynne, I think it's about time we talked about a difficult subject, at least a little bit."
That frightened deer look came back to her face. "Take it easy," I said. "I just want to clear the air, so to speak. We haven't talked about it, but you know I was in the lesbian community, we met at a pride march, so it's kind of there, whether we talk about it or not, right?"
Lynne just nodded, so I continued, "I really am only looking for a friend. Not that you aren't attractive. But, oh, crap! I had it all figured out how to say this, and now it's coming out all wrong!"
Smiling, Lynne said, "I have yet to hear someone explain with a straight face that they want to talk about sex but aren't interested in having sex." Obviously trying not to laugh, she continued, "I've been wondering when this would come up, and what we'd do about it. It's often been a problem when I've tried to be 'just friends' with someone.
"Even if a person doesn't want to have sex, they usually want to talk about sex, or the problems they have with or without sex. That's difficult for me."
I blushed, and stammered, "I'm sorry, I thought maybe I could make things easier."
"No, it's okay," said Lynne, "I like you. It is difficult to talk about some things without sex getting into the picture. I think I'd like to know you well enough that we should go to the trouble to work this out."
I'm sure I looked confused, and probably more than a little bit scared myself. I had a secret, or at least I thought it still was a secret.
Lynne left me no time to worry. She looked me right in the eyes and said, "I'll take the plunge. I am not what I seem to be."
I ground the heel of my palm into my forehead, looked at Lynne, and said with a no doubt manic grin, "Oh, shit. I don't know whether to laugh or cry or jump in the river. Neither am I."
Lynne nodded, "I figured as much. Some folks have gaydar. I have another ability, I can't think of a good name for it, but I can usually spot people who are gender different. I'm intersexed. Do you know what that means?"
"Sort of. I mean, it's not just one thing, but it's basically when there is some question at birth whether you're a boy or a girl, because of the way your genitals look. It can be a chromosomal or hormonal thing, too."
Lynne looked impressed. "That's a heck of a lot more than most people know."
"I suppose so. There's a reason for that. But you finish your story first."
"Okay." She took a deep breath. "I was born with some, uh, genital ambiguity. The doctors convinced my parents that was a bad thing, that my life would be a disaster unless I looked completely like a boy or a girl. They said the easiest thing would be to make me look like a girl. So they did."
"Damn. And did anyone live happily ever after?" I asked, softly.
"No. I had feminine gender shoved down my throat to where I thought I was choking to death. A normal girl can get away with being a tomboy, or having an interest in space ships, or just being tired of wearing dresses. Not me. Anything I did that deviated from the girl stereotype made my parents freak out.
"Somehow I made it through the hells of middle school and high school. When I packed to go to college, all the ultra feminine crap got left behind. I've never looked back.
"It gets worse, but I think that's all I can say right now and hold together well enough to go back to work this afternoon. Since I left home years ago I've been trying to piece together who I am, what I am, and where I can fit into a world in which everyone has to be either a woman or a man, when I don't really feel like either one."
"Oh, Goddess, that's rough! I know." I wanted to reach over and give her a big hug, but I held back.
She wiped her eyes, took a gulp of lemonade, and said, "Okay, now what's your sordid story?"
I took a deep breath, but faltered anyway. "This is so hard for me to get out, even after what you just said." I had to set my cup down because my hands started shaking. "I'm not intersexed, so far as I know. I mean, I was born with a female body, I have periods and everything, so it's really unlikely. But it isn't right. My body isn't right." I opened my mouth to say more and nothing came out. I just sat there and stared.
"You think you're a transman?" said Lynne.
Surprised she knew that term, I nodded, "I know I am. I've been talking to a therapist for half a year. I had my first shot of the big T last month." I couldn't help smiling. It had been a glorious feeling, even though it was too soon to see any effects.
Lynne gave me a thumbs up and said, "This would make quite a soap opera. My body was changed without my consent. You're probably standing on your head and kissing ass to get permission to change yours. What a cosmic joke."
"I'm not laughing."
"'Bout as much as I am." She stared across the planks of the walk at the far bank of the river. "Pat, I have to get back to work, but I really want to talk some more. I suspect you've got as much bottled up inside you as I have."
"Yeh," I said. "Sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode. I punched a hole in a wall last week. You said, 'stand on my head and kiss ass,' and that's about right. Pay through the nose for the privilege, too. I have never felt so humiliated and worthless in my life than when I've been trying to explain all this to the medical gods who hold my future in their hands. I need to talk, let my feelings out. I'd be really grateful if you'd listen."
"So shall we get together this weekend? I have an efficiency apartment near here. It's small, but it's quiet," Lynne said.
"No problem!. I rent a house a little way out of town. There's a fireplace, and a patio if it's warm enough. I'll email you the directions. Come over any time after six on Friday. I'll fix us some eats. I'm a whiz with a crock pot. Okay?"
"Cool!" she grinned. "Can I bring some wine?"
I really liked that smile. "For sure. I never keep much on hand, 'cause it's too tempting at times, but I'm a big fan of social drinking."
"Okay. I've got to run. I'm looking forward to it! I've never had a good, long talk with anyone about this."
I showed Lynne around the house. We laid and lit a fire, put some munchies and wine on the coffee table, then sat on the floor by the fireplace. The house came with lots of big pillows, from when they were a craze in the late '70s. Cozy.
"Who goes first?" I asked.
"I guess I'll finish what I began the other day," said Lynne. "There isn't a lot more, really.
"My birth certificate says I'm female, but that's a lie. I don't have ovaries or a uterus. My body looks the way it does because I've taken hormones most of my life."
"You're male?"
"I'm neither. I don't have testes now, either. I could have been given testosterone instead of estrogen, I guess. Then I'd look like a guy and be just as sterile, just as incapable of having sex.
"They decided to make me a girl because I didn't have a good enough penis. That's what they do. If your penis isn't long enough, they remove most of it and call you a girl. If you're mostly a girl already, but your clitoris is too long, they cut it down so there's no chance of confusion.
"The rest of your body, the rest of your life, is determined by a centimeter or two of flesh between your legs on the day you're born."
Lynne glanced quickly at me, then looked at the fire while I figured out what to say. "How do you feel about the choice they made? Not about the surgery and stuff, about their decision that you would be raised as a girl, and be a woman?"
That brought her eyes back to my face. "Am I a woman? I've never had a period. I cannot become pregnant. I take hormones. If I wanted to be deep enough to receive a penis during sex I'd need more surgery. Except that they decided to put an 'F' on my birth certificate and was forcibly raised as a girl, I'm no more a woman than the transsexuals who cause so much trouble at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. Not that I'd ever want to go there."
"I don't think anyone would question you as a woman."
"Which is stupid," she said with sudden anger. "I'm a woman so long as I keep my pants pulled up and play the social role according to the published script."
"Huh? I don't understand."
"For my first surgery, I was three months old. There were more. To look 'normal' I would have needed who knows what else as a teenager. The body grows. Surgical creations and scar tissue don't. Eventually I refused. I threatened to kill myself if they touched me again."
"So you didn't have more surgery?" This was a subject very close to my heart at the moment.
"What's the point? I can't feel anything."
"You what?"
"I'm numb. Between my legs it looks like the result of a car wreck, and I'm numb where it counts."
I couldn't think of anything to say.
"Do you want to see it?"
My face must have shown how shocked I was. I couldn't speak.
"Why not? I can't be the first woman to offer to pull down her pants for you."
"Like that, yes."
"I want you to see it."
"Why?" I wasn't at all certain this was a good idea.
"Look, if we were talking about a leg I banged up in a biking accident, you'd want to see the scars, right? If I had a cool piercing down there, it'd be okay to look at it, right?"
"Yeh, but..."
"But what? You're scared, aren't you? Of what?"
"I don't know."
She looked around. "The light isn't good in here. How about the bathroom?"
"I don't think I believe this is happening, but lead on." I got up to follow her.
Lynne turned on the overhead light and the fluorescents around the mirror. Then she took off her jeans and underwear, and sat on the Burgundy toilet lid.
"This is the legacy of my childhood," she said, like some sideshow barker. "It doesn't look like any pictures I've ever seen, and that thing, what is supposed to be my clitoris, is almost numb. No sexual feeling at all. Might as well be dead meat. When I piss, I spray all over. At least I don't get infections. And that little hole down there, that goes in about an inch and a half. Whadya think?"
"I think I would kill anyone who did that to me on purpose."
"Oh, but you don't understand. I'm sure I looked like a freak before they did this to me."
I wanted to do something, say something, but nothing in my life had prepared me for this. "Lynne, I don't know what to say. Sorry is so goddamn inadequate, and I almost feel sick. Can we go back to the den?"
She seemed to deflate a little, loose some of the manic energy that had allowed or forced her do what she had just done. She pulled up her pants, we turned out the lights, walked back to the den. I filled our wine and water glasses while she stared into the fire.
"Here, hon. We should think about eating soon," I said. I didn't dare touch her.
"Yes, that would be good. Do you want to talk about yourself now, or do we get food first?"
"Let's get food. But I have one question for you, if that's okay?"
"Shoot." She idly ran a finger around the rim of her glass.
"You didn't say how you feel about being raised to be a woman. Was that the right choice? For you?"
"I don't think it mattered, for me. There's a set of rules to follow, either way. I'm not comfortable in any situation that forces me to be one or the other, because I'm neither."
"Third sex?"
"I'm stone sterile. What does sex have to do with it? I can't reproduce. I can't have sex the traditional way. Am I human? What does sex mean to me?"
"But gender..."
"What good is gender if you don't have a sex and can't have sex? Yes, it's probably easier for me to live as a woman than as a man. You know as well as I do what that says about how the roles are constructed in this society."
"But if you had a magic wand and could be either, which would you be?"
"I don't know, Pat. The first thing I would want to be is me, like I was before I was changed. If I had lived that way, perhaps I could answer your question, perhaps it wouldn't seem to be such an arbitrary choice."
My mind was getting overloaded. "Yeh, you're right. How much of what I feel is wanting, not to be a man, but wanting to be 'the other' of what I don't like being. For you there isn't so clear an image of 'other'.
"We better go fix some food," I said. "I can't think."
We got up and went into the kitchen. I had a crock pot of chili going, so we served ourselves bowls of that, with crackers, and ate sitting at the kitchen table. We talked about inconsequential things, the house, our jobs, nothing heavy.
After we washed the dishes I built up the fire while Lynne fixed hot chocolate for our desert. We got comfortable and looked at each other.
"Your turn," said Lynne.
I collected my wits and began. "You know the stereotype. I always felt I should have been born the other sex. Though the past few years I've wondered how I would have felt if I had thought there was more than one choice for 'other' when I was growing up.
"Talking with you makes my head hurt. So much of gender and sexuality is simply convention, the way we do things, the myth we have that there are only boys and girls, male and female, masculine and feminine.
"Physically, I have a body that could go with what people think of as an attractive woman. Lots of people would love to have my body. But for me, it's never felt right. Puberty was awful. I hated my body. I felt betrayed by my body.
"Maybe folks forget what a giant change puberty is, how similar boys and girls are before puberty. Most of what I have to do now is to un-do the effects of puberty. I'd be a lot happier still having my nine years old body than I am with this!
"This body screams 'woman' at the world. And I just cannot make myself play the role that goes along with that. I can't. There is something deep inside me, there always has been, that does not agree with what is expected of the body I have.
"I don't fit in women's groups. I've always wanted to be one of the guys. I'm comfortable doing guy things. I don't believe all that stuff about men being from Mars and women being from Venus, but so many people do believe it that it might as well be true.
"Like it or not, everything revolves around whether you're seen as a man or a woman. That's true in straight culture, it's true in queer culture, it's true in the womyn's movement. Life just doesn't work right for me when people see me as a woman. Maybe it isn't perfect as a man, heck I know it isn't perfect, having been on the other side, but if I have only two choices, that's where I belong.
"I can't fix the way I feel, or fix all of society. The only way I know how to make my life more livable is to change my body so I can be seen to be and accepted as a man."
"That's a pretty drastic cure, isn't it?" said Lynne.
"Yes. Some people do find another way to deal with it, or take another way out. There aren't many people who start on the path I'm on, and a lot fewer who reach the end.
"Is it so strange, though? People have nose jobs, boob implants, tummy tucks, hair implants, work out in the gym, diet, and so on. It's perfectly acceptable to try to change your body. It's changing your performance of gender that blows people away."
"That's not quite true," said Lynne. "Changing your genitals is taboo. It's only okay to change the genitals of a baby, before it can tell you how it feels about the situation. Most people think of what you want to do as being a sex change, not a gender change."
"Which is absurd! Biological sex can't be changed. All I can do is reverse some secondary characteristics, cut down my boobs, grow a beard, and maybe get me a built-in dildo.
"But I'm not changing my gender! I'm changing my body so I can express my gender with less chance of being beaten up and killed for doing so. This body is a trap, yes, but it isn't as simple as most people think."
"You do want the changes in your body for their own sake, though, don't you?" asked Lynne.
"Heck, yes! I would give anything to have been born in a male body. But that's pure fantasy. I can do only what is possible. But I have to do something. This oh-so-wonderful female body is strangling me!"
Lynne set down her glass, folded her hands in her lap, and said brightly, "May I see yours?"
"What!?"
"Would you believe I have never seen between the legs of an adult woman?"
"I do not believe this. Here I'm explaining to you that I'm a transman, a freak, a pervert, an abomination, and you want to look at my crotch to see what's normal for an adult woman?"
"Have any of your lovers ever said anything to indicate you don't look normal down there?"
"Well, no. But, aw, crap. I guess turnabout is fair play. Okay, c'mon." We trooped back to the bathroom and I pulled down my pants and sat. I didn't actually mind it that much. It didn't feel at all like being in a doctor's office, or a sex situation, more like a childhood 'show me yours and I'll show you mine' thing. Lynne was studious. I was amused. Then I noticed she had started to cry.
"It's like the pictures I've seen," she said. "It all has feeling, right? And you lubricate when you're excited? Of course." Tears were streaming down her face.
I pulled my pants back up. "If I could give it to you, I would," I said gently.
"You say that," said Lynne, wiping away tears, "but in exchange for what? Not for what I have, even if what I have is more 'male' that what you have!"
I was silent a long time, while we walked back to the den and resumed our positions in front of the fireplace. Finally I said, "That's hard. How much less than perfect am I willing to settle for? What risks am I prepared to take? I haven't figured that out yet."
"At least you get to make that choice for yourself. I was ruined. There is no way to get back what I lost!" said Lynne, her face contorted with grief and rage.
"Damn, damn, damn. What can you do, Lynne? Is there anything, anything at all that can be done?"
"You mean surgery? Do you think I would let anyone near me now with a knife?"
"But you're living as a woman, even if you don't truly identify as one. Wouldn't it be easier if you looked the part?"
"Why? No way could I fool a doctor, or another woman, and why would I lie to a man to have sex that I cannot feel?"
"There's more to a relationship than sex."
"Yes," she said, "there is. That would be so nice. I would love to have a relationship with someone who would accept me as I am. That's the whole point, though, as I am. Not as an image of something I am not, was not, and never can be.
"My body is finished, as it is. Unless I have some life threatening medical crisis, no one is going to carve on me any more. Maybe not even then."
"Listening to you, Lynne, scares the shit out of me. Here I am setting out on a course that leads to at least one, probably two, maybe three major surgeries. Any one of them could lead to serious complications."
"But it's your choice and your decision to do it that way, to take those risks. How can I know what I would have decided to do if I had been left alone and allowed to make my own decisions?"
"Good question. I'm absolutely set on being able to live as a man. For that I have to have the mastectomy. For my long term health on hormones I have to have the hysterectomy. I admit I haven't made up my mind about the genital surgery."
"You want it, don't you?"
"I want to be accepted as a man. In this culture that means having balls and a cock. I want that. But it's not surgery, as such, I want. Being a man is what I want."
"Including fooling someone in bed?"
I felt a flush of anger. "No. I'm not going to fool anyone, but I would like to satisfy someone."
"Satisfy someone, Pat? I suspect you've done that. Don't you mean satisfy yourself?"
"No! I mean satisfy someone who wants to be satisfied by a man."
"By a man? By a penis?"
"Stop! I know where this leads. I've followed this line of thought, around and around in circles. The logical conclusion is that I should make the best of what I am now. That's what you're doing, and that's great, but you say you have no choice. What if you did?"
"Then I would probably feel different about fixing things. I'd also be awful damn certain the risk was worth it. But I say that because I've lived the result of surgery that did not work. If I had been left to make my own decision, as a teenager or young adult, and I did strongly identify as a man or woman, what risks would I have taken? It frightens me to think I could have been reduced to this after I knew what I had to loose."
I thought about that. "Like I said, I'm nowhere near making that decision. I know what I'd like, but I'm not making up my mind until I see how some of the other changes go, and find out how I feel after that."
"And if it doesn't work out, or you eventually judge the risks to be too great?"
"Then I'll compromise; keep on doing what I do now. But that'll be my decision, not what I'm forced to do by social convention. I don't know, that part of it might not make so much difference if I had the right partner. Right now that doesn't seem too likely, though.
"I'm losing everyone, Lynne. Even the people who say they get it, that it's okay with them." I looked into the fire, tore a napkin into neat strips, continued, "They don't get it, and it's not really okay with them."
Lynne nodded encouragement.
"I thought I understood gender, because of what I am. But I'm coming to realize that what I understand about sexuality and gender, however deep that understanding may be, isn't what other people, the ones who live a single sex and gender all their lives, understand about sex and gender.
"It's kind of like the difference between studying French in school and living in France. I can kind of speak the language, but I don't think in the language, I'm not a native, I never can be one. I'm something else."
"But you're not the only one," said Lynne. "I'm no more a native than you are. And you're not loosing everyone; you found me. There are others out there, waiting to be found."
"But you didn't choose..."
"Oh, stop it!" said Lynne, suddenly furious. "Neither of us chose to be what we are. People are idiots! The only choice anyone has is what they make of what they have."
"Well I sure didn't choose to be called a freak, or a traitor, by women who once were my friends," I said, crumpling the pile of napkin strips into a ball and tossing it into the fire.
"No, that was their choice. So are you living their lives, or your life?"
"Oh, Goddess," I said, closing my eyes in pain. "Once I thought the two were the same."
"Did you? With no doubts, no voice inside saying different? With no knowledge you were living a lie?" Lynne had reached across the coffee table to put her hands on my clenched fists. I let them relax.
After several seconds of silence, I softly said, "No. At first I thought they were like me, that everyone who was a lesbian or a womyn trying to overthrow the patriarchy thought about sex and gender the way I did; we just used different words and needed to agree on some things and we could make a new world. But very soon I realized that there still wouldn't be a place for me in that new world.
"After I realized that, I started to draw apart from them. There are many disagreements in the movement, so at first everyone thought it was just politics. Now they know it's because I'm not really one of them."
"Because you're a man?"
"No. Because I'm not a woman. I'm not a woman. Damn. Am I any more or less trapped in gender than everyone else? We don't have words, Lynne. I can't say what I'm feeling." I felt like my head was bursting.
"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house?" Lynne supplied the appropriate Audre Lorde quote.
I looked at her. She was smiling. She? He? What did those words mean, here, now? Maybe I was just tired, but it seemed like this conversation was moving beyond words, into the realm of meaningful silences. We simply sat for what seemed like a long time, watching the flames of the fire licking up the chimney in reaction to the gusting winds outside.
A crash of thunder interrupted the silence. Rain began pounding on the roof. We rose to look out the window.
"It's really coming down," said Lynne. "Maybe I better leave before it gets too late."
"Are you crazy? In this? These roads are bad enough at night when it's clear." I hesitated. "You can stay. I have a spare bed."
Another big flash, quickly followed by a hollow boom of thunder.
Lynne turned to look at me. "I am awfully tired. Driving probably wouldn't be the best thing for me to do right now."
I wanted her to stay. "That's settled, then. Are you talked out, too? I'm tired enough to call it a day right now."
She looked so soft as she said, "I could close my eyes and be asleep in an instant." She continued staring out the window for a moment, then turned to look at me. "Pat?" She let her fingers rest lightly on my arm.
Shivers of ice ran up and down my back. I didn't dare speak.
"If things were different, I'd want to sleep with you," said Lynne. "Do you know that?"
"I think so. Several times tonight I've caught myself thinking like that, and mentally slapped myself upside the head. I am so sorry."
"Do you think we could share a bed, like friends on a sleep over? I'm a little bit scared of storms like this."
"I'd love to do that tonight. I do like you a lot. And as you said, there's a lot more to a relationship than sex."
"Then let's go to bed?"
"Yes."
Saturday morning was cool and foggy. I got coffee perking, scraped out the ashes of last night's fire, and brought more logs to the porch to dry out.
Those tasks finished, I washed my hands in the kitchen sink, poured a cup of coffee and turned around to find Lynne standing at the base of the stairs, still in the big T-shirt I had loaned her to sleep in. My heart almost stopped.
"Good morning," she said. "I hope you slept as soundly as I did?"
"I did," I stammered. "But I always wake up early. I'm a genuine morning person."
"I didn't notice you get up. I think it was the bed cooling down that woke me." She walked over to me. "Do you know you're big and warm?"
"Lynne, if you talk that way I am going to loose it." I hastily set my coffee cup on the counter. "I don't know whether to break down and cry or bang my head against the wall, but looking at you standing there and hearing you talk like that, I just want to grab you and hold you."
"That would be just fine."
"What? No, way. Are you serious?"
"Yes, I'm serious. Why not?"
Act first, think later, has always been my motto. I grabbed Lynne and held her.
"You are big and warm!" she said.
"What are you doing, Lynne?"
"I'm saying what I feel. Exploring what it would be like not to have my guard up all the time, expecting to be hurt. I've decided I trust you."
"But..."
"But what? You're stuck in a rut, Pat."
"What do you mean?"
"Last night we agreed there's more to a relationship than sex. That doesn't mean you chop out a whole set of human feelings and put 'do not touch' signs all over your emotions."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know. I've never tried it. Let's try it!"
"Lynne, I'm really afraid one of us is going to get hurt, bad, if we do this."
"How many relationships have you been in, Pat? How many have ended without someone getting hurt, bad? How often did that stop you from beginning the next one?
"Has it occurred to you that most of the enduring relationships that people have, don't depend on sex?"
"Dammit, Lynne, the feelings I'm having about you right now are decidedly not Platonic!"
"Oh, pooh. Plato probably screwed his pupils up the ass. I repeat, you're stuck in a rut! There's a lot of uncertain and undefined territory between you and me."
"But I want to kiss you."
"That makes two of us."
She kissed me, and I went along, but I held back, and she noticed.
"You're as tense as a steel spring, Pat. Stop thinking about it and just kiss me. You know what that means."
This time I let my mind go blank and did it. Eventually we stopped.
"That was nice! It was special. It was something I have never done."
"Now what?" I said, totally confused.
"I don't know. Can't you get it? That's the point. I do not know. I have no idea!"
Dimly, I was beginning to see. "For you and me, there are no rules, are there?"
"Only the ones we make."
(March 2000)