3 SUM (6 page)

“What was it like, Steve, turning to the other side?”

He laughed.

“You mean going after men?”

“Yes.”

“You're considering changing sides after all this time?” he asked.

“No, but I always wondered how it must feel.”

“It seems like the most natural thing in the world.”

“Still, I couldn't.”

“Then you must like the peg,” he said.

“You know?”

“The whole office knows, Valery. Gillian let it slip out.”

“The shame,” I said.

I could imagine the catcalls, and the toys pushed into my desk to remind me of my greatest humiliation.

“Hey, don't feel sorry for yourself; most of the office is jealous.”

Claude ran up to us as we entered his emporium. He smiled at Steve, and then looked me up and down with his mouth turned down. He wore an obvious silver curly wig that covered the tops of his ears.

Claude had a Roman theme in the shop this year, and the staff wore togas. He clapped his hands, and Steve and I parted ways.

My beautician was Keenan 15. He'd tried to greet me with a kiss on the cheek, but I'd turned away; machismo handshakes were banned years ago. It wasn't a good start and I staggered out, still grimacing. The things a man had to do to stay beautiful.

I was a biological freak, too much oestrogen in the food chain, finally engineered into what I was today. But was it really for the better? I'd keep those thoughts to myself, but what did I do for excitement, satisfaction? Look through glossy magazines, dress up, or simply shop for bags, was this fulfilment or betrayal? Instinctively, I knew something was missing.

The often submerged sensations were enough to drive you into the arms of Mason Adam Deviant, the underground masochistic. His movement was outlawed, but I suspected there were women who harboured sadistic dreams. After all, they were human too. In which case, I needed to find them, and lose myself in total subjugation. Is that why I hadn't mentioned the token ride, or had fear caused my amnesia?

“You want a hand?” Steve shouted through the bathroom door as I showered.

“No thanks.”

Steve was in the lounge, towelled dry, and waiting for me.

“Why don't you wear one of my catsuits this evening?” I asked him.

“You got something against guys in dresses?”

“Of course not, take a look in my wardrobe if you don't believe me. I just thought tonight we could try something different.”

“OK.”

We stepped out on the town, foundation powdered and suited, if not suited to be together.

We dropped by Suzi's nail bar, for a file and paint. I went for lime, Steve for sunset pink. We never paid, and instead left Suzie more boxes of samples from the office.

We breezed into the crowded restaurant, garnering our fair share of stares, and ordered our usual vegetarian pizza and pasta. There was no meat; the cost of production was extortionate, prohibitive. It took seven units of grain to produce just one of meat.

Animal specimens were outlawed too; food was needed for humans. The last zoo in Europe had closed its gates twenty years ago. Mother Nature was our guardian, and we lived in an agricultural utopia.

Yet still we had to be careful, ruthless. There were no props anymore. If you needed long term care, then your future was short term. The invalids were invalid, and the fragile geriatrics quickly put to compost for the benefit of the next generation. Nature had always been cruel.

Steve couldn't resist using the monitored phone booth whilst we waited for our meal. We left in different taxis. The bus driver was in Steve's.

This was crazy, like my mind. I needed to feel something, anything, and I held the candle above the cage that might no longer be a prison but a gateway to freedom. Was it agony or ecstasy I felt as the burning wax landed onto me? Claude's treatment had changed my body; this changed my mind. The candle was both a weapon and an instrument of desire.

It was difficult and time consuming to remove the congealed puddles of wax once they had melted into place. I had writhed in agony and pleasure, sensations that had seemed joined at the hip. My mind was both curious and alarmed. I yearned to fit in and hide, and my desires below the belt were corroding my sensibilities. Would I really gamble a lifetime of comfort for a momentary pleasure?

I had taken the first dangerous step, replacing the sensual caresses of another with pain. I was shaking, covered in sweat, feeling first hot and then cold. No woman would or could love me legally; pegging was neither love nor sex, it was power, aggression.

I would trade my pain for a woman's love. Although I didn't know who she was, if there were a hidden column of masochists amongst us, then there had to be sympathisers. Every force had an opposite.

Mason Adam Deviant would know where to find them, but did I really want to find him, or was the fantasy better than the reality? I poured myself another glass of wine, wanting to abandon my caution, just for once. But I couldn't fight the habit of a lifetime or the propaganda. I had to save myself from myself, before I ever stared into the abyss again.

The token ride for Tilda's Boat House was still a secret, if it meant anything at all. Danny 55 would never talk. After all, which tools could a woman use to extract the truth on a horny male masochist? But maybe I should. I curled up on the rug, smashed, with my month's supply of wine wasted in one night, like me.

Chapter Nine

I had bags under my eyes, and just taken a couple of painkillers with my breakfast muesli. The desk sergeant was surprised to see me. She sat on a high stool, looking down at me. On the bench to my right sat two guys looking sorry for themselves. They were dressed to be killed, not kill, in women's attire, power suits. The men were protestors, hence the handcuffs.

“We don't normally get voluntary returns. Forgot your bag?” she asked. “Or perhaps you can't resist a woman in uniform?”

“I'm medicated,” I replied.

She removed her black latex cap, undid a clip, and her hair tumbled down, a brunette fountain, with no split ends. I wanted to faint at her feet, worship her. She could feel my consternation.

“You were saying?”

Was it a trap? I was unsure how to answer.

She put her cap back on and laughed.

“You'll never change, no matter how many meds, or operations. I keep telling them, but no one listens to Sandra Eve. You were saying.”

“I was here a few days ago. I think I could be of use in finding Mason Adam Deviant.”

I had a hangover but didn't want hanging. I'd decided to relinquish the truth about Danny 55. The stress of knowing what they didn't was killing me.

“If you say so.”

She sounded decidedly unimpressed.

“Look, just let me see the judge who interviewed me.”

“You'd be lucky to; it's the weekend. Fill in this form, and she'll read it Monday.”

“Traitor,” muttered the guy next to me, under his breath.

“I heard that,” said the sergeant, standing up. “To the cells, now.”

Slowly they stood to their shackled feet. As they marched off, one looked over his shoulder studying my face, remembering me should we ever meet again.

I sat on the bench, and begged to make amends for my earlier misdemeanour of not reporting the stickers. I almost wrote the whole truth and nothing but the truth before regretting my moment of daring. There were screams from the cells, before a deadly silence. I was now dreading further involvement, wishing instead to be a wallflower.

My hormones were all over the place, should have had my depot, and my hand shook as I wrote. I kept it short and not sweet, a grovelling apology. I had presented a token, only it was no longer Tilda's.

I had no testosterone, nothing to challenge the world, and no reason to invade anyone's territory, including women. A hundred years ago I would have been a failure, now I was celebrated, the new man who was safe around females. But beyond the front lines lay the Undiagnosed, barbarians; they were the way we used to be, before our balls were emptied and our minds cleared.

I walked home through the Park, there were couples, gay men, and single guys looking to hook up either for the night or for life, should they find the one. No one strutted, promenaded, or swaggered, rather they ambled, lazily strolled, unless they teetered on come and get me heels with their asses pushed out.

No prams, nor children were there. They were brought up by the state, weeded. Birth took place away from men; the chosen ones at the Bank never knew if their seed had been harvested, whom they had fathered. Perhaps we were selected for extinction, and soon they would reproduce without us. A female only planet: Lesbos, with their endless supply of Lusterone.

It hadn't taken long for male homosexuality to become the new norm in Utopia. A mind shift concentrated by the rising numbers swamping the earth. New additions were strictly limited, selected. We had saved our resources, reclaimed and recycled. Now the Undiagnosed wanted what we had earned.

The sun beat heavy on my neck, and I purchased a paper lemon parasol. I was a peacock, but were my feathers splayed for a man or a woman? Maybe I could have my fairy cake and eat it. Take the chop like so many before me, but then be a lesbian. A choice that was the best of both worlds? Or would the female hormones prove irresistible, would I turn against my own will? Desire, lust, was hard to fight, impossible even. If you wrestled with it, submerged and denied it, it would rear its ugly twisted head, deviant, perverse, MAD.

The birds and the bees were the only animals not culled, and two swans paddled on the calm waters of the woman-made lake. Partners for life. I sighed, loneliness was killing me. I glanced at Tilda's Boat House and the pedal boats outside, before turning away down a familiar path. Indecision was tearing me in two.

Rinse Garden apartments: outside painted pink, four floors high, with plants on every rooftop. I was lucky I was uptown. It was not as if there was ever any violence, but across the tracks the guys were loose. I was a demisexual; I wanted to connect emotionally before bodily. They wouldn't understand, I'd be a tease at first, mocked later, and then mobbed, isolated. At least the guys in Rinse Garden were more understanding, if not aloof. There were three apartments on each floor, and a common kitchen. Lartley 87, Coussan 6, and I timed it so we didn't get in each other's hair. I wasn't even sure what they did for a living.

I decided to take a nap; the heat was wearing me out.

I awoke to find a note pushed under my door. People loved to give me messages.

‘You looked nice in the Park today,' it read.

The signature sent a chill down my spine, ‘Burdizzo,' my stalker. This was the closest she had come to my front door. I felt numb, and my right hand was shaking, though not with pleasure.

It was two months since her first introduction; heavy breathing down the phone at work, then gasping ‘This is Burdizzo' before the line went dead. Fear and intimidation, the anxiety of not knowing who she was, where she was, was giving me sleepless nights, paranoia. But the police had never taken it seriously.

Admittedly, this wasn't a direct threat, just a reminder that Burdizzo was still around, that I was still on her radar. But when you heard of dead guys being found in the woods with their scalps missing, you got a little worried.

Burdizzo was terrifying because she took a man's prize possession, his hair. It had to be a woman; she was too mobile, well informed. It was whispered she was on the Council, protected. But why was no one interested in protecting me?

My flat was my companion, the walls my real friends that cocooned me from the world, whom I could confide in, knew my secrets. Our Mistresses had promised to destroy cruelty but words were weapons, and a new dictionary had emerged with fresh insults on the pages.

I sat on the bright tangerine stool in my bedroom, removing the makeup I'd hid behind. The walls were avocado and the carpet grapefruit pink. It was fruity, but I was a fruit without a crush.

A night time breeze swayed the curtain and I was reminded to lock my windows, thanks to Burdizzo. I stood naked as a camera flash made me blink. I still couldn't focus as a car pulled off. I was both scared and relieved as I sipped my hot chocolate. I might have been willing to feel the pain, but her previous partners were dead, which meant she had something to hide, something more than her crimes.

Chapter Ten

I was at their mercy, under their control. A tranny called Nancy was on my left, and a shemale with a loaded pistol on my right. I sat between them on the backseat, chewing lemon bonbons. The limousine was nondescript apart from the Council number plate. The seats were leather, and Nancy kept rubbing his leg next to mine. I glared but only he pursed his lips framed in black lipstick.

My case was packed in the boot, and I wore my favourite blue velour tracksuit. ‘Wear something comfortable,' they had said, arriving unexpected.

The windows were tinted to halt prying eyes, but they were pretty good at keeping out the sun.

“You're caged. I can tell,” said Nancy.

I uncrossed my legs.

He reached into my bag and stole a bonbon without asking.

“You know, has anyone ever told you you've got great ...”

“All the time,” I said, cutting him off.

“I haven't finished.”

“Great skin, am I right?”

“Yes, smooth and tight.'

Oh my Mother Nature, was I being chatted up while on government business? It was embarrassing.

“Nancy, give it a rest,” said the shemale, “We're at work.”

“And you're perfect, Toni?”

“You know I hate repeating myself,” said Toni.

Nancy sighed, and looked forlornly out of the window.

We entered Dame University through the West gate, and the driver began to slow. Young women were everywhere, students.

“Let's go,” said Toni, opening the car door.