Chapter 6

"The hell of it is," said Nancy, "it's more fun going shopping when you're a guy than when you're a girl."

Madison turned her head carefully to look at Nancy. It was just one of the things she had learned over the past couple of hours. With her shoulder-length hair all tied up and stuffed, and not well, under a baseball cap, it was one thing to turn her head, and quite another to turn it without spraying passersby with a shower of blonde hair. But at the same time she couldn't turn delicately; the whole thing had to look natural, as if she wasn't hiding a mane under a baseball cap. They'd spent more time stopped in corners fixing things than they had shopping.

"That's just because you get to drag me into the lingerie shops and watch people's eyes bug out when we start discussing stuff," Madison said.

"Don't tell me you aren't enjoying it," Nancy said, grinning.

"I'm not enjoying it," said Madison, and stuck her tongue out at her.

"Hey," Nancy said, "don't point that at me unless you intend to use it."

Madison rolled her eyes and took her tongue back in. Ever since Madison had used this line on her last week, Nancy had been using it back. They still hadn't broached the issue of what had happened between them, but Nancy was at least joking about it, and Madison thought that a good sign.

"It's a good thing it isn't too crowded here," Nancy said, "or going to the bathroom might've been more of an adventure than it has."

"No kidding." The first question Madison had had to ask herself was which bathroom she was going to use. She looked like a guy—nobody had said anything yet either way, which Madison took to mean that she was doing a good job of this whole crossdressing thing. But, if she looked like a guy, it wouldn't do to go stepping into the women's room. And yet she wasn't sure she wanted to go into the men's room either. What if something went disastrously wrong and she was revealed for what she was? She didn't want to be around guys when that happened. Especially since she didn't have Devin for protection at the moment. (Not that Devin was likely to be any protection, timid little whelp that he was, but at least he'd be one of the guys. As opposed to some exotic alluring foreigner outsider. As opposed to being female.)

The correct answer, she decided, was to get it right the first time, so that she wouldn't have to be ducking into washrooms every fifteen minutes to cinch this or adjust that. And wasn't that a guy thing anyway? When she went to the bathroom with her girl friends, the guys would all be standing aroound outside waiting when they were done, and complaining that the girls had taken double the time. Men just went pee faster, that was the only explanation she could come up with—which made sense, considering all the dangly-out-front parts and the fact that they didn't have to wait for stalls to open up. Men just peed faster.

Or, at least, so she figured until she went into the men's bathroom to get her hair straightened out.

"Oh my God they don't even wash their hands, " she hissed to Nancy. "That was Dwight fucking Herlinger and he didn't wash his hands after he went pee."

"Dwight Herlinger?" said Nancy.

"All of them."

"So, you mean ... They just ... They handle their ... And then they just go straight out again?"

Madison nodded.

"I am never touching a man again," said Nancy.

"That can't be," Madison said. "That can't ... I mean, it can't last, can it? I'm sure they ... Like, some time when they grow up, they learn to, you know, to not be so ... So..."

"Infested?"

"I mean, what if they do that after they masturbate?"

"Hon, I don't think men ever grow up," Nancy said. "I think they stop growing at about the age of fifteen."

There were other reasons why Madison didn't want to use the men's room.

"How can we even be the same species as them," she said to Nancy. "I mean, we like flowers and ponies and things that smell nice and look pretty. They like mud and sweat and explosions and guts flying everywhere."

"Well, we must be the same species," said Nancy, "because we can breed with them."

"So? There's interspecies breeding in other animals. I mean, like, I know some birds can do it, and there's probably—"

"Really? Birds?"

"Yeah, I heard it on the news somewhere. My point is, just because they're different species than us doesn't mean that we can't crossbreed. I mean, what about apple-pears?"

"But then, how come it breeds true," Nancy said. "Shouldn't the result be a hybrid, a half-man half-woman? Instead of kids who are entirely-male and entirely-female?"

" ... Umm," said Madison, realizing that Nancy had a good point.

"Shouldn't people like you be the rule, not the exception?" said Nancy.

" ... Okay, so maybe we aren't different species," said Madison. "But we might as well be."

"God, yeah," said Nancy. "Anyone who doesn't wash their hands after taking a piss ... I mean, what the hell is that?"

And so they spent a pleasant fifteen minutes discussing the foibles of the opposite sex, laughing at the dumb or weird little behavioral tics, sometimes pointing out people they were passing by: boys with their waistbands belted around their knees; boys in wifebeater shirts with their nipples crisping in the air-conditioned mall; boys standing impatiently outside Macy's or Victoria's Secret; girls standing impatiently outside the video games stores. The moms waiting patiently—or sometimes not-so-patiently—as their kids scrambled around the miniature play area built into the mall: "How come you never see the dads at these things? How come it's always moms?"

And, of course, the peeing standing up.

"What does it look like," Nancy asked her.

"It was..." Madison shrugged. "It's just rectangular, and white like all toilets, but the bottom lip sticks out so there's, like, a little sink down there." She had no idea why Nancy was treating the stand-up urinal like an object of religious value. "And there's this little semicircular cup stucking out of the bottom for some reason. It looks the same as the last three times you asked."

"Yeah, but, I can't visualize it, I don't under—"

"Oh, for crying out loud. I'll draw you a picture, if it's that important to you."

"No, I think I get what it looks like, but, I don't understand how it's used."

"You stand in front of it, undo your pants, point your guy-bits at the wall and you let go. Or, if you're a girl, you stand in front of it and let go and then realize you're a girl and you're going straight into your panties. God, I wish there was some way around that."

"Some way around— What?!" said Nancy.

"I wanna learn to pee standing up."

"Uh, honey, you kind of don't have any guy-bits you can point at a wall," said Nancy.

"I know, but ... Christ, I dunno. Couldn't they come up with, like, a device or something?"

"A what?"

"You know, some sanitary helper object that I just take around with me and, like, install down there whenever I have to go pee?"

"You'd better wash it out when you were done, or that would be the most disgusting thing ever," said Nancy. "And how would you carry it around? Would it fit in a purse? Or in your massive manly boy-pockets?" Nancy was envious of the ginormous pockets on Madison's cargo pants, not just the knowledge of urinals, and she had quickly installed most of her things into the vast array of pockets. Madison felt her pant legs swinging wide with every step, and she made a truly alarming amount of noise, but Nancy didn't have a purse for the first time in years. It was pretty cool.

"I dunno. But, like ... I mean, if I'm gonna do this a lot, I should learn to pee standing up, right?"

"No, you shouldn't," said Nancy, "because even if you get up to the urinal and drop trou, everybody's still gonna notice that you aren't pointing your guy-bits at the wall and instead have some sort of weird prosthetic plastic penis. Which, incidentally, you just pulled out of your purse and/or massive manly boy-pockets. How's that gonna keep a low profile?"

It was only once they got outside, back to the car for the drive home, that Madison squared off against Nancy on the topic that really concerned her.

"Okay, so. It's been like a week, practically. It's been a while, is the point. But you've been avoiding me, kind of, and so has Devin—"

Nancy looked up. "Devin's been avoiding you?"

"Yeah, I dunno why. Ever since all of everybody came over that Tuesday."

"Why, what'd you do to him?"

"I have no idea!" said Madison. "But we'll figure that out later. Right now we gotta talk about you."

Nancy turned a flinty eye on her. "I haven't been avoiding you, Madison. I've been busy. My mom dumped that whole college-applications thing on me, so I've been researching where to apply and starting to write essays. There's a fucking ton of them, by the way. She also signed me up for some tutoring to get all those applications filled out properly and, as she put it, 'maximize my chances' for getting in. It's a lot of money, and I need to take it seriously." She was calm, not defensive, but Madison could tell she'd had to rehearse this moment, prepare herself to defuse the situation.

"Well, doing the tutoring I get," Madison said. "But just researching colleges? We could've done that together."

"Yeah," said Nancy. "We could've. What's it to you?"

Oh, for crying out loud. Madison slammed her car door shut with more force than was truly necessary. "What it is to me is what I told you after we were ... Together. Nancy, if you're having second thoughts about that, I want you to tell me. I think you've been avoiding me because something about the situation makes you uncomfortable, and if that's so I wanna work it out with you. You're my friend. I need as many of those as I can get. So spill."

"You're not gonna like hearing it," said Nancy.

"So? Whatcha gonna do? Hold it in and ignore me until it's too late, and hurt me even more? Or hurt me a little bit, now, and get it over with? It's like a band-aid. You pull it off in one quick motion and get it all over with."

"You've never pulled off a band-aid before, have you," said Nancy, sounding amused.

" ... That's beside the point," said Madison. "The point is that this isn't just your friendship, Nancy. It's mine too. Whatever it is, it's between the two of us. And don't you think I should have some say in it as well?"

"You're not gonna like it," said Nancy again, and Madison just gave her a direct look, and Nancy sighed. "All right, all right. I'll talk."

Madison pulled the car out into traffic. "Good. Jesus. If I'd known it was gonna take this much effort, I'd've brought some irons and pincers. Did you like what we did?"

"Yeah," said Nancy.

"Did you want to do it again?"

"I ... I wouldn't mind," said Nancy, shrugging.

"Even if I said I wasn't sure I wanted to do it to you?"

"Isn't that ... Isn't that kind of self-contradictory? I mean, you said I could do it with you, but you won't do it with me—"

"No, no, I said I didn't wanna do it to you. I'm totally okay with you, y'know ... You going down on me. But I'm not sure if I'm—if I'm, what, willing to reciprocate." She bulled on before Nancy could protest. "If that means you aren't interested, that's fine. Truthfully, I'm okay either way. But I'm just saying."

"So, you want me to eat you out, but you won't eat me," Nancy said. She laughed. "Jeez, Madison, you really are a guy."

Madison shrugged, feeling a little uncomfortable. "Well ... So what if I am. I feel bad, believe me I do—" It sounded lame even as she said it, true or not. She remembered her father's words: Saying 'I'm not stupid!' just proves you are. The same principle was clearly at work here. "—but I just ... I'm not interested in that. I'm not a lesbo." Out of the corner of her eye she saw Nancy wince. "Okay, maybe that's a little rude, but, it's the truth. I just don't..." She sighed. "Fuck, I mean, what am I. Apparently, a straight girl. With testicles."

"At least they aren't hanging," said Nancy judiciously. "I mean, they're nicely concealed in this case."

"Thanks," said Madison. "So what about you? Where do you stand?"

Nancy was silent for a bit, and then she gave a weird little laugh. "The funny thing is, even if you said, 'Okay, Nancy, you're allowed to go down on me, but I'm not gonna go down on you, ' I'd be okay with it."

Madison turned to her. "What, are you that lonely? I mean, you could get a boyfriend or something. You got Don Calhoun to date you, and he's hardly a toad."

"Totally aside from that whole pressure-his-girlfriend-into-doing-it-with-her thing," said Nancy, her voice thick with irony.

"Yes, aside from that," said Madison, completely serious. "The Don of Before. The one you were actually attracted to. You got his attention." Gentler: "It's not like you have no chances with guys, Nancy."

"I know, but that's not the problem at all," said Nancy. She sighed then, and the sound of it stayed with Madison forever—a long draught, like the warm musty air from the bottom of her soul. "The truth is...

"I think I'm gay."

Madison felt her mind go slate-blank for a moment. Then brake lights rippled in front of her as the light turned red, and thankfully she had the presence of mind to stop the car before she trundled on into somebody. Then she could safely turn her head to stare at her best friend. "You're..."

"I think I'm gay," said Nancy, and the simplicity of the statement spoke for itself.

"Jesus Christ," said Madison. "I didn't know I tasted that good."

"Better than freaking Don Calhoun did," said Nancy without heat. "That was the first sign. I mean, I never swallowed after the first time. All the other girls were saying that it was supposed to taste good, but I thought it was awful."

Madison, who realized she had probably been one of those 'other girls' once—not to Nancy; they hadn't been friends yet; but to others—said, "You do realize we were all just making that up, right? Like any of us had any experience back then. Hell, I still don't know what it tastes like. Probably the only one who does is Haley. And besides, I don't think if it's a big deal if you don't like swallowing some guy's stuff."

Nancy gave a shrug of indifference. "Well, that was the first sign, but it wasn't the only one. I mean ... Christ, I dunno. You were talking about the Don I was attracted to. The truth is, I never really was attracted to him. He asked me out, and I'm all like, you know— Well, hell, he was the first boy who ever did. Don't tell me that's not a big deal."

"I won't," said Madison. "It is a big deal. God, I remember how excited I was when Sean Cormier first asked me out. And, honestly, I wasn't entirely sure I liked him either."

"What, like, 'Oh, he's available, and he likes me, but I'm pretty sure I could do better'? That sort of thing?"

"Yeah, exactly."

"Yeah, exactly," said Nancy. "That's how it was with me. But I never ... He just didn't do it for me. And then, afterwards, when I would be looking around and trying to find a boy I hoped would ask me out ... There just ... Wasn't." She sighed. "For a long time I thought I was asexual."

"Because you didn't see anyone you were attracted to," Madison supplied.

"Yeah," said Nancy. She gave an abortive laugh: "I started getting desperate, too. I mean, fuck, I was even looking at porn to try and find some hot guy to drool over." She snorted. "Not that that works. All the guys in porn are really, really ugly."

Madison blinked. "What? That's ... That's ridiculous. Why?"

"God, I dunno," said Nancy. "I guess they just know that girls aren't looking at it, so the guy doesn't have to be anything special."

"But you didn't say they were boring, you said they were ugly."

"They are. Butt-ugly."

"There's sort of a distance between transparent and butt-ugly."

"I know. Like I said, I haven't figured it out either."

"But ... Looking at the porn ... I guess that must've helped you figure things out, right?"

Nancy gave a short, cold laugh. "Yeah. So I'm watching these dirty movies, and of course the point is to make the guy who's watching it feel good about himself, you know? The girl's all moaning and twisting and it's stroking his ego. And he's supposed to go, 'I am a manly man, I take exquisite pleasure in my ability to please women in bed, ha-ha, ' and then he squirts all over the keyboard. Well. Here I am, and I'm watching the thing, and I realized ... That's exactly what was going through my head. That's exactly what was going through my head. —Not the squirting-all-over-the-keyboard stuff, but ... You know. 'Wow. Wouldn't it be an achievement to make a girl come? Wouldn't it be something to be able to pleasure her like that.'

"And suddenly I realized that, whenever I'd be off in thought, or just letting my eyes wander, I was looking at other girls."

There was nothing Madison could really say to that. "When did you realize this?"

"About ... God, I dunno. About a year ago."

"So ... What you did with me must've been the last nail in the coffin," said Madison.

"Chyeah, just a little. It wasn't ... I mean, God, Madison, Don did stuff to me, too. It wasn't just, you know, him-first wham-bam-thankyouma'am. I mean, he wasn't enthusiastic about it, but ... He was like, It's the polite thing to do, you know?"

Madison grimaced. "And here I was all going to—"

"Oh, no, no, Madison, that's not what I meant!" Nancy cried. "I wasn't— God. Foot-in-mouth disease much? I was just trying to tell you that I had experience with it. That he had ... That somebody had done it to me."

"It's okay," said Madison. "I'm a jerk and I know it. So Don was doing stuff on you."

"Yeah, and ... I just couldn't get into it, you know? I felt so bad about breaking up for him, because he cared, he fucking cared, but I just ... I didn't. And then here we are and we're alone in your room and I ... I saw a chance, and I ... Took it."

"So you were using me to test out your hypothesis?" said Madison. Before Nancy could reply, she smiled. "Always wanted to be a guinea pig."

"You're not mad?" Nancy said.

Madison shrugged. "I suppose I could be. But it's over and done with now; what would be the point? Besides, I came really hard. You're pretty darn good at that."

"Thanks," said Nancy. "You're taking this really well, all things considered."

Madison shrugged again. "It hasn't really hit me yet. I haven't had time to think about it." This was flat truth; she'd been too busy sorting through Nancy's account and making the right leaps to really digest it all. "Wait 'til tomorrow."

"Ha. When I get to turn your own words against you? 'If it's bothering you, then talk to me about it.'"

"So turn 'em against me," said Madison in a fit of flippancy. "You're allowed. In the meanwhile, though, I still need your help with Devin."

"Why, what's he doing?" said Nancy.

"Ignoring me. I don't know why. He just ... It's like you were, last week. He talks. When I corner him. Otherwise he doesn't return my phone calls or ... God. What do I have to do to get two normal friends on my side. If one of you isn't giving me the cold shoulder, the other is."

"Well, speaking only from personal experience," said Nancy, "we cold-shoulder you because we're scared of hurting you, or perhaps getting hurt by you."

"I would never—!"

"No, of course not, not intentionally," said Nancy. "But as I of all people should know, sometimes the hurt just happens. So, did you say anything to him that might've hurt his feelings? Or been taken the wrong way?"

"Christ, I dunno," said Madison. "We had quite a bit of a conversation after everybody left."

"About what?"

"About ... Stuff."

"About what we did?" said Nancy, giving Madison a damnably perceptive glance.

"Well, I had to talk to somebody about it, and you were avoiding me too!" Madison said. "I didn't tell him any details. I just said that ... Things had happened between us, and they seemed to have made you uncomfortable—which was really the only important stuff to begin with."

"That's true," said Nancy. "Fair enough. Anything else?"

"Nothing really," said Madison. "I mean, I thanked him for being my friend. God knows I don't have so many people doing that right now. Who else was I going to talk to about this?"

Nancy was so silent at this that Madison almost apologized—she hadn't meant it that way. But then Nancy said, "Very kind of you, I'm sure. How did he react?"

"What? How did he react? To what?"

"To you thanking him. For his friendship."

"I dunno, he ... Umm. Well, he seemed appreciative, but..."

"But not, you know, accepting? He wasn't, like, enthusiastic about being thanked?"

"No, not particularly. Why?"

Nancy shook her head and made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "You are such a girl, Madison."

"I'm a what? Five minutes ago you were saying I was a guy."

"Madison, he has a crush on you."

This was another blank-slate moment, but this time they were on the freeway and Madison struggled to keep focus. Devin? Sweet, high-voiced, wimpy little Devin?—having a crush on her? But he was so... "You can't be serious."

"I'm serious. Madison, you know you're a pretty girl, no matter what else is going on. Is it really a surprise that somebody would find you attractive?"

"But ... Then ... Shouldn't he be happy to be my friend? I mean, if he weren't, I'd be cutting him out of my life and he'd have even less chance."

"Madison, does he have a chance?"

Madison opened her mouth ... And then closed it again.

"If you think about him right now, you don't really see him as being attractive, right? He's not ... He's just one of the girls. He's cute, he's fun, he's reliable, but he doesn't make you all, you know, hot and bothered. You just aren't attracted to him."

Madison spared a look for her friend. Nancy's face was grave, and her eyes seemed to hold some ancient wisdom.

"Is this what they mean when they talk about the 'Friend Zone'?" she asked. She'd heard the term from the boys—Craig, Brent, any of the satellite boytoys her former friends had occasionally dragged into orbit—but never much thought about it, or what it meant. She'd always figured what she did now, that (if anything) it must be an advantage.

"This is what they mean. It's just how girls are wired. Hon, there's 'attractive' and then there's 'safe'. Sometimes they're mutually exclusive. Most of the time, in fact. Just think about what kind of a relationship you might have with Devin. He's smart, he's attentive, he's kind—you know he'd open doors for you, or cook you soup if you got sick, and that he'd never push you to, you know, do inappropriate stuff with him. Does that sound enticing to you?"

No, it didn't. As a matter of fact, it sounded boring. Nancy's description made her think of the tea parties she'd held with her dolls at a young age: lace and flowers and tiny, tiny cookies. And an extreme emphasis on where precisely your pinkie finger landed while handling the teacup. She'd outgrown those years ago. And, while she didn't think tiny, tiny cookies were Devin's idea of a good time...

"So what do you think I should do?"

"I think you should call him up and ask him out."

Madison was getting tired of forcing herself to concentrate on the road. "Nancy, you just said that I don't find him attractive. You just said he'd bore me!"

"And I'm probably right," said Nancy. "But, hon, he adores you. He really, really really likes you. Give him a chance."

Madison shot her a narrow look. "How much did he pay you to say that?"

"So what if he did? Madison, give the kid a chance. What've you got to lose? And where, precisely, are you going to find someone who knows you as well as he does? He knows about the CAIS, he knows about the testicles ... And he's still interested. Tell me where else you're going to find someone who can offer you that. Hell, tell me where else you're going to find someone who will let you cross-dress in public with him."

She just has to keep being right, doesn't she. "So how much did Devin pay you to say that?"

"Nothing," said Nancy. "We haven't talked. This is just me telling you what I see."

"You can see that he's crazy about me?" said Madison.

"I feel confident about making that assertion, yes," said Nancy.

"God, if it's that obvious, why didn't I see it."

"Well, because it's you he has the crush on. You never see it clearly if you're involved. You know how it is."

So, after Madison had dropped Nancy off, and changed out of her man-clothes, she called up Devin. And, when he didn't pick up, she kept calling until she did.

This turned out to be a mistake. "Madison, this is a really bad time. My uncle is ... Well, let's just say that he hates getting interrupted and leave it at that."

"Oh, I, umm ... Shit. I'm sorry. Umm. Can I call back?"

"I'll call you," said Devin, with no hint of his usual smile, and hung up.

Yikes, thought Madison. That didn't turn out well.

To ease her agitation she went on the Internet and started looking around for material on women managing to pee standing up. Her very first search turned up approximately a gazillion hits. Wow, I can't believe ... Wait, no. This is the Internet, God's greatest gift to deviance. I shouldn't be surprised at all. She adjusted the content filters on her search engine and tried again.

There were, indeed, a number of 'sanitary helper objects' available, from subtle to outrageous—one, called the "Shewee," was a twelve-inch-long gold facsimile of a penis—and, even more than that, she found instructions for going unaided. Evidently there were female urinals in Europe, which involved either straddling some low protrusion or bending forward to urinate backwards against some surface. Madison could already see how the male urinals found in every American public facility could be adapted to such a use. She could also imagine the public-decency furor. How would one achieve such a straddle?—would she have to drop her trousers and then waddle forward? What about if she was wearing a dress, how would she keep all of that out of the way? And what about this whole bending-forward-with-her-pants-around-her-ankles business? She could see the Christian right making a huge fuss about that.

And then there were the reach-down, grab-hold-and-let-go instructions. The female vulva, wrote one site, is soft and malleable; with a little bit of pressure, the stream of urine can be aimed without causing damage or obstructing flow through the urethra.

Madison frowned.

In her bathroom, the door securely locked and the toilet seat up for safety's sake, she ran over the memorized instructions in her mind. They had seemed fairly clear to her while sitting in front of her computer, but now she realized they required a certain amount of geographic knowledge of her own private parts, and the simple fact was that Madison had never seen what she herself looked like down there. It was all tucked inside and down below, unlike a boy's junk which hung out and (so far as she could tell) could be moved around a bit; barring the anatomical impossibility of somehow wedging her head between her own thighs, she would never lay eyes on the place. Unless I was some sort of yoga god or something. But Nancy had seen, hadn't she. —And, for that matter, so had Dr. Winters, the gynecologist. Christ, there's people who are more intimate with my intimate areas than I am! Next chance I get, I'm lying down in front of a mirror.

Okay. The site said to "use your hands to spread your outer or inner labia, pulling upwards and outwards." This was much harder than it seemed, since she was holding the hem of her shirt against herself with her chin and could barely see past the rucked fabric. "Lift to the desired angle, and then release urine into toilet in an arc, making sure to keep labia out of the stream to avoid spray." What the heck do they mean by—

Then she found out.

Later—after some more research, after reading some testimonials online, after getting her hand mirror out so that she actually could see what Mother Nature had wrought down there—she would understand that her labia minora, the inner lips of her vulva, had gotten in the way. Under normal circumstances they did not interfere with the urinating process, but when her vulva was being deliberately deformed this way, they interfered with the single direct stream that she was supposed to issue. But she didn't know that yet. Right now, all she noticed was that, instead of shooting in a straight line directly at the toilet, she had managed to achieve split ends: there were two streams falling from of her, and none of them were aimed at the toilet.