Chapter 2 - The Crux of the Argument

I didn’t have any destination in mind. I just wandered aimlessly. Money wasn’t a problem. I would drive until I was tired, slept for the night, and woke up and drove again. Sometimes I doubled back on the way I came from the previous day, sometimes I continued on. When you have no home, no rock, any place you stop is home. At least, for however long you want it to be.

I guess you could call it my “Forrest Gump” period. I just drove and thought, thought and drove. Maybe I made peace with their deaths, maybe I didn’t. I’m not sure. But I woke up every morning and drove. I told myself that the first morning I woke and didn’t feel the need to drive, that was when my wandering was over.

I allowed myself to take as much or as little time as I needed. I placed no requirements upon myself. I would mourn as long as I felt like I needed to, then I would mourn no more.

It was in Las Vegas that my journeying came to an end. Not Las Vegas, the city of lights in Nevada, but Las Vegas in New Mexico. A quiet town that was as different from that other well known city as day is to night.

It’s amazing how quickly real estate agents are able to drop everything they are doing when you walk through their door and show them a bank statement that says that you have the ability to make a cash offer that day on any property they could show you.

I stayed that the local Holiday Inn for ten days while I paid asking price on a small 3 bedroom home. I then confused the homeowner even further by paying the costs for a professional moving company to pack, load, and move the contents of their home within that time.

I knew I was already starting to raise some eyebrows within the small town, but I didn’t care. As I said, I had the funds available to do this, and now I had no heir to pass along my wealth down to. As they saying goes, “You can’t take it with you.” Well, I guess unless you are a Pharaoh, they tried to take it with them. Still, I doubted I was going to stipulate that a U-Haul must be part of my funeral procession.

So, I settled down and prepared to live off the fruits of my labors for the next 40 years or so (I did tell you I retired early).

Neighbors came to introduce themselves to me. Really what they were doing was trying to size up this strange man who had seemed to take a sudden interest in their small town. Was I a developer about to try to snatch up land for a resort or housing complex? Was I a business tycoon looking to build a factory, and bring new jobs to town?

No, I was just an early retiree who had far too much time on his hands and didn’t want to be part of “the rat race” anymore.

Slowly, people began to leave me alone, realizing that there was no sensational story to be had from me. If they only knew...

I probably would have whiled away the rest of my days in that sleepy town if the world hadn’t started going crazy trying to call men women and women men.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe you can feel however you want to feel. Dress how you want to dress. Screw who you want to screw. If you say you feel like you are a cat, I’ll take you at your word that you feel like you are a cat. But I’ll draw the line at saying you are a cat.

As a scientist, I had to come back to the cold truth that genetics, not feelings, determine sex. It all comes down to chromosomes, XX and XY. Depending on your camp, it’s either how our species evolved or was designed. XX you are female, XY you are male, and the contributing factor is determined by which sperm fertilizes the egg first.

Cold, hard science. It was something that could never be changed ... or so I thought.

Have you ever had a moment when you are doing something completely ordinary when something extraordinary suddenly happens? Like a bolt out of the blue?

It was that way when I was listening to the morning news one day, applying butter to my english muffin, the talking heads were yapping in the background. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular ... and then the connection was made.