MAMA KISS IT,

MAKE IT BETTER

COLD DIDN'T BEGIN TO DESCRIBE the leaden, aching feeling running along my bones.  This was the worst time of the year, early January, when snow and sleet lashed by vicious winds tore through the threadbare layers I wore to try to keep myself from freezing.  Spring and autumn weren't too bad, all things considered, and summer had its moments, but the long winters levied a merciless toll on the homeless.  The other months, a guy down on his luck like myself could try to get a little bit ahead.  But when the skies turned grey and the wind began its howling onslaught, life became just a simple fight for survival.

I buried my hands in my pockets and headed up Market Street, hoping that the early Christmas shoppers might take a little pity and spare a handout.  Honestly, I'd take hot coffee over spare change at this point – the mercury started low and now dropped fast – but the Salvation Army didn't open its doors for another hour and a half.  I just needed to find myself a couple bucks and a place out of the wind until then.

I scanned the pedestrian traffic along the sidewalk, old instincts kicking in from my days in the Marine Corps.  I still calculated fields of fire and looked for decent cover, even with my time in Afghanistan long over.  The thought made me chuckle; I was no unstoppable killing machine, just a lowly rifleman, but the Corps hardwired the training into my brain.  Some part of me would be a Marine forever, I suspected, even though the Corps couldn't get rid of me fast enough when they found out my dirty little secret.

My pocketed hand closed around something hard and sharp-edged.  That familiar mixture of elation and self-loathing washed through me like the numbing cold.  It was something simple, found in the garbage a few days ago.  Just a little rhinestone ring, in the shape of Hello Kitty, with a stretchy finger loop which would fit my large hands.  I slipped my index finger through the loop and felt at peace.  How hard would the average passerby laugh at me, I wondered, if they knew that the wiry, hard-eyed beggar in his threadbare clothes and his soldierly manner got so much satisfaction from feeling something pink and sparkly and altogether girly on his finger?

I guess I'd always known, to be honest.  Sure, I played football just like the other boys, I fought and ran and jumped and came home muddy with skinned knees.  But while the other boys boasted of being just like this famous football player, I secretly dreamed of being a cheerleader.  Huge, toothy smile and perfect skin and hair, leaping and pirouetting with my pom-poms, being that wonderful quintessence of wholesome athletic beauty.  I ached for long, thick eyelashes and manicured nails, the smell of perfume and hairspray clinging to me and the perpetual cute outfit to show me off.

I ran from it my whole life.  Tried not to admit it.  Sneaked out the various articles of women's clothing I stole or found in my bi-monthly purges, thinking that's it, it's out of my system, I don't have to wear high heels any more, I can just be normal now.  But it never lasted.  I would find myself in a department store with my mom for some reason and the pinkest, frilliest thing I could get my hands on would be down the back of my blue jeans in an instant.

My life became typical overcompensation.  I played football, took taekwondo, I fought anything that slowed down long enough to let me.  But always I found myself slipping on a pair of panties in the dead of night, hating myself for my weakness and wondering why I couldn't just be like the other boys.  I joined up right out of high school, hoping the Corps would finally stomp these urges out of me.  During basic, I didn't have enough time or energy to think about it.  I thought I was “cured.”  I never even heard the word transgender at that time of my life.  I figured I could just spend the rest of my life in BDUs and I could finally turn some kind of metaphorical corner.

Panties and camisoles fit just fine under BDUs, it turned out.

The same BDUs that get cut off of you in a field hospital when you take a 7.62mm round in your thigh on a combat patrol.  The Corps didn't waste time – it was the waning days of “don't ask, don't tell” and now my secret was out.  I got an honorable discharge and a purple heart to stave off the potential lawsuit I could bring, a wounded “war hero” drummed out because of discrimination, and the President shaking his fists at the military over their hidebound policies.

I came home, but home didn't last long.  Once Dad found out about why I got dismissed from the Corps, he threw me out.  Said his house would never be home to a freak.  I packed my meager belongings in a duffle bag and a few milk crates, slid into my car, and drove away from my stone-faced father and crying mother.  Lack of marketable skills and a total lack of the basics of managing money claimed my apartment, my car and my few valuable possessions.  I couldn't hold down a job on the rare occasions I actually found one.  It seemed like destiny to wind up on the streets.

 

I ducked into an alley I knew, just to take a break from the biting wind.  I stamped my feet and blew warm air into my hands until they stung, taking refuge behind a makeshift wall of recycling bins.  I picked out the huddled forms of some people I knew and moved closer.  One old junkie, a shambling wreck of a man named Rodney, coughed up a thick gob of nasty-smelling phlegm into a storm drain and scooted over to make some room.  A couple cans of Sterno, pilfered from the trash of a nearby catering company, formed a little island of blessed warmth.

“Thanks, man,” I grunted to Rodney.

“Nice ring,” he said, nodding towards my Hello Kitty trinket.  I'd forgotten to take it off.

“It ain't worth nothing,” an older woman with a thick scarf and gin-blossomed nose barked.

I shrugged, trying to play it off.  “I found it.  I just liked the way it looked.  Maybe somebody will give me something for it, you never know.”

A huddled mass of rags and third-hand coats stirred.  A thick woolen scarf shot through with moth-holes parted to reveal the face of Freddy Mac, a wildly schizophrenic ex-barber local to Market Street.  He high-fived me, the way he high-fived everyone, and offered me a yellow-toothed smile.

“Hey, Greg,” he rasped.  “Haven't seen you around in a while.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Been looking for work, hanging out around 16th and 17th Streets.”

“Any luck?” Rodney asked.

“Couple day jobs, didn't pay shit,” I said.  “Lots of rich folks though, heading to that new bar up there.  Made some pretty decent cash for a while, but it's all dried up now that the weather's shit.”

A chorus of croaking agreement traveled around the circle.

“Hey, man, you still clean?” Freddy Mac asked me.

I chuckled.  “You know I am.  How the fuck am I gonna afford drugs?”

“You could suck dick for them like Rodney,” the nameless woman laughed.

“Fuck you, Tammy,” Rodney hissed back.

“Why d'you ask?” I said, bringing the conversation back to Freddy Mac's question.

“You can go give blood,” Freddy Mac told me.

“No shit?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered.  “Blood center up on Williams Avenue.  Clean blood, they give you something to eat and fifty dollars.  I can't go on a count of my hepatitis.”

“That's enough to get us a room for the night,” I said.  “Out of this fucking cold.”

“Us?” Tammy asked.

“I wouldn't leave y'all out here, if that's what you're asking,” I replied.  “I can't feed you, but at least it'll be warm, right?  I'll head up there and get paid.  Meet y'all back here in a couple hours.  We can maybe get a hot meal at the Lutheran mission and then go get us a room for the night.”

“Greg, you a good dude,” Rodney said.

“I try,” I said, levering myself up and steeling my nerves for re-entry into the cold.

*****

I sat awake in the garish caustic light of the television in a darkened room.  Around me, in the gloom, my friends snored and farted insensibly.  But something in me – maybe my training, maybe my instincts awakened in Afghanistan – pulled my focus towards a sound that should not be there.  I reached beneath my pillow and took out the makeshift shiv I carried for protection and slipped from the bed.

Click.  The strange noise occurred again, outside the room.  A mechanical sound, apart from the hum of the heaters and the muted garble of the infomercial on TV.  I crept silently across the cheap carpet and pressed myself against the wall beside the window, peering through the small gap between the crooked blinds and the smeared window at the night outside.

Parking lot lights backlit the scene outside, but my eyes adjusted to the sight of a figure in a long coat pointing a camera through the curtain and into the motel room.  Muscles tensed inside me, focusing on the doorknob.  If the shadowy figure made a move for the door, I would use the long, skinny blade held point uppermost against my forearm.

Why would somebody be interested in a bunch of homeless bums in a motel room?  I wondered, narrowing my eyes and trying to get a clearer look at the figure outside.  No answers emerged from the feverish muddle in my mind.  But the doorknob never moved, not in the breathless eternity of seconds, and I saw the figure retreat into the murk.

I waited beside the window until the sun came up.  The figure never returned.  Before my compatriots ever stirred, I pulled on my clean but threadbare clothes and left, wondering who could have been looking in on a bunch of nobodies in the night.

Unless one of the nobodies was a somebody...

*****

I panhandled for most of the day, trying to ignore my growling stomach as I watched the scant coins in my cup grow no more plentiful during the cold, windy morning.  Hunger got the better of me shortly after noon, and I wandered the deserted restaurants along the stretch of Market Street I haunted looking for leftovers.  Nobody came out in the nasty weather, so I resigned myself to a long day of cold and hunger.  I decided to camp out in line for the Lutheran shelter, hoping to get a hot meal in the evening before they ran out of food.  As I cut through Freddy Mac's alley to get to Crawley Street, I ran across Rodney, contentedly smoking a cigarette gleaned from god-only-knew what source.

“Hey, man,” I grunted to him.  He patted my shoulder and passed me the smoke.  I took a long drag – trying not to gag on the menthol – and exhaled before passing the Newport back to him gratefully.  Anything to curb my appetite.

“What's goin' on, Greg?”

“Struck out on Market,” I said, jingling my nearly empty cup.  “Was gonna head over to the Redeemer mission, camp out in line.  I'm hungry as shit.”

“Man, fuck Redeemer,” Rodney said.  “Head over to the new place.”

My eyebrows rose.  “What new place?”

“Private joint,” Rodney said.  “Corner of Crawley and Congress.  Ain't no sign on the door or nothing, you gotta know where that shit is.  Just opened the morning, in the old real estate office.”

“No shit,” I said.

“Yeah, they got tons of food.  Serve all day,” Rodney said.

“Shit, sounds good to me, brother,” I told him.  “You coming?”

“I just left,” he said.  He patted his stomach happily.  “Biscuits and gravy for breakfast.”

I waved to him and tried not to break into a sprint around the corner, my hunger driving me on.

The old real estate office looked no different than it had the millions of other times I'd passed it.  I pushed through the door into a warm, freshly-painted interior.  Everything looked new and clean, even the folding tables and chairs filled with street people, all hunched over heaping plates of food which gave off delicious smells.  I piled into the line, only a few people before me, and tried not to fidget or push people out of my way to get to the kitchen.

 

A young, svelte girl of about nineteen or twenty greeted me with a welcoming smile, a younger boy who might have been her brother standing beside her.  “Hi,” she said.  “Welcome.  You hungry?”

I could only nod dumbly.  She heaped a plate with food and passed it to me with a cup of coffee and a bottle of water.  I slumped into a nearby chair and fell to with a will, stuffing my face and swallowing as fast as I could chew, feeling the gnawing emptiness in my middle start to sate.

A slender hand alit on the table next to the plate that was the center of my universe, manicured nails clicking softly against the formica.  I looked up to see a glamorous, slender woman standing next to me, regarding me with a considering smile.  I immediately felt like a filthy bum just being hear her, in her designer outfit with the tasteful jewelry and the movie-star perfection of her makeup and dark hair.  She looked me over through expensive glasses, then addressed me in a warm, friendly contralto.

“Are you Greg Reynolds?” she asked softly.

My natural suspicion got the better of me.  “Who's asking?”

“My name is Dr. Cynthia Thorne,” she said.  “May I sit?”

I gestured towards an empty chair, trying to swallow my mouthful of food and nearly choking.

“Mr. Reynolds,” she said, steepling her fingers.  “I was hoping you'd find us here.”

“Find you?  What are you talking about?” I sputtered.

She laid her purse on the table alongside her arm and accepted a cup of coffee from one of the passing volunteers.  She waited a moment, like this was some fancy little café in the trendy part of time, as she stirred creamer into the thick black liquid before she continued.

“Please, don't let me stop you from eating,” she bade.  “You look like you haven't eaten in a while.”

“Couple days,” I said, sinking my teeth into a burger.  I couldn't keep my eyes off of her purse, though, a pink leather Gucci hobo bag that I'd seen in one of the store windows of the upscale boutiques on Market Street.  A purse for an important woman, a glamorous woman, a woman who got whatever she wanted.  The kind of woman that dwelt inside me, looking for ways out.

“I have a proposition for you,” she said simply.  “I received word of you from a colleague of mine who worked at the blood and tissue center where you donated.  You have very unusual genetics.”

I grunted.  “Proposition?”

“I'd like to speak to you about running a series of tests,” she said.  She slid a business card across the table towards me.  “You'd be compensated, of course.”

I eyeballed the card skeptically.  “Look, ma'am, I appreciate you doing your part to help the homeless and all, but I'm not interested in medical tests,” I told her.  “Couple buddies of mine volunteered a few months ago.  Whatever they gave them in there really fucked them up, pardon the French.”

“I see,” she said.  “I'm not talking about a drug trial, Mr. Reynolds.  I mean taking blood and tissue samples from you, studying your genetics.”

I slid the card across the table back to her.  “Not interested.”

She placed a finger on the card and slid it back.  “Keep it,” she said.  “In case you change your mind.”

*****

Christmas shopping came into full swing a few days later, after Thanksgiving.  The weather took such a nasty turn that myself and several of my fellow street denizens took to going into the stores with the throngs of shoppers just to get warm.  Ordinarily we got chased out in short order, but even a few minutes of warm and dry proved to be worth the hassle of the mall cops and store security.

I was doing just that, in one of the larger department stores along Market Street, when my eye got drawn away from the cookware I'd pretended to give a shit about.  Across the aisle I saw Shangri-La, the place I most wanted to avoid.  The lingerie section, with its lace and satin and silk and bright colors drew me like a moth to a flame.  The part of me I tried so hard to deny rose inside me, screaming with want.  My feet began moving towards the racks of lacy, feminine underwear of their own volition.

Dammit, why did I even come in here?  I cursed myself as my fingers trailed through shimmering curtains of lace and satin on the racks.  The want inside me changed slowly but inexorably into needle-pointed need.  I couldn't walk away.  I had to have.

No, stupid, don't!  I screamed at myself.  There's cameras!  Don't do it!

But my hands came to rest on a pink bra with lovely pearl beading and before I knew it, I was shoving it beneath my shirt.  I didn't even check the size, I doubted it would even fit around me, but the girl inside me that ruined my life could no more help herself than I could.

 

I hunched over in a mixture of panic and shame and made my way towards the doors.  The bitter cold and sleet outside would be my punishment, I decided, for being such a weak-willed dumbass.  The greyish light of the sky outside loomed closer with each hurried footstep, edging me closer and closer to freedom.  Five steps before the door, I finally began to feel as though my lapse would not cost me, when a strong hand closed around my bicep.

Marine training kicked in and I rounded on the store detective, striking his wrist and breaking his grip with my free hand while bringing my foot down hard on the inside of his knee.  The man howled in pain and sank to his knees.  I drew back my fist to punch him, to lay him out before making my escape.  A tiny little twinge of guilt slowed me, just long enough for two security guards to reach me and bear me down to the floor.

*****

“Gregory Everett Reynolds, you have been found guilty of assault and petty theft.  I hereby sentence you to ninety days in County and mandatory psychiatric evaluation,” the judge said, bringing down his gavel with dreadful finality.  Bailiffs hoisted me by the arms and dragged me towards the side door as the next case began setting up.  The haggard-looking public defender assigned to my case gave me an apologetic grimace.

“Thanks for trying, man,” I told him as the bailiffs led me away.  I expected to be led back to processing, the way I had before when I got nabbed for the de facto petty crimes by which the homeless survived, looking forward to spending the rest of the winter in a comfy, heated cell with three square meals a day and even cable television.  But instead of making a right at the end of the short corridor, towards the bus to take me to County, the bailiffs pushed me through a door at the end of the hall.  The room beyond held only a small medical exam table and a couple chairs.  Spartan medicine for society's forgotten.  I plopped onto the table and just waited, knowing that if I asked questions the bailiffs might get rough.  They locked me in the room alone with just the hum of the radiator to keep me company.

A few minutes later, the lock clicked and the door squeaked open.  The slender, glamorous doctor from the shelter entered, wearing a white lab coat.  She waved away the bailiff that offered to accompany her, waiting until the door closed behind her before she spoke.

“Hello again, Mr. Reynolds,” she said.  “Remember me?”

 

“Yeah,” I replied.  “The doc from the shelter.  You offered to pay me to let you experiment on me.”

She chuckled richly.  “I suppose I should protest,” she said fondly, “but you have the essence of it.”

“Why are you here?”

“I wanted to take you to lunch,” she told me.

“You're a riot,” I told her.  “I'm incarcerated, in case you didn't notice.”

She pursed her lips sexily.  “I think we can dispense with that unfortunate circumstance,” she told me. “Judge Hoskins is a friend of mine.  He has agreed to release you for an hour or two into my custody before you're sent to County.  Long enough to hear me out, at any rate.  What happens after that is entirely up to you.”

“The proposition again?”

She nodded.  “But now you're a captive audience,” she clarified.  “At least now you have to sit and listen to the whole story before you say 'no.'  That's good enough for me.”

“Fair enough,” I said.  “But I'm not really dressed for lunch on the town.”  I picked at the itchy orange jumpsuit I wore.

“I brought some clothes,” she said.  “I had to guess at the sizes.”

I gave her a sarcastic look.  “I live on the streets, Doc,” I told her.  “New clothes?  I'll make them fit.”

*****

I figured the sophisticated doctor would have taken me someplace fancy, something in keeping with her refined tastes.  But she picked a middle-of-the-road burger joint and didn't bat a long eyelash when I ordered two triple cheeseburgers, a double order of gravy fries and a king-size milkshake.

 

She sipped coffee across from me while I set to like a starving man.  The burger was done to perfection, dripping with hot grease and cut thick, just the way I liked it.  But even though stuffing my face dominated most of my concentration, I couldn't help shooting sidelong looks at the purse sitting alongside Dr. Thorne's elbow.  I saw the pink, quilted leather Gucci hobo bag in a few of the windows of the upscale boutiques along Market Street, thinking that would be the kind of bag a successful, glamorous, sexy and sophisticated woman would carry.  A woman who got what she wanted.  The kind of woman I wanted to be most in the world.

Dr. Thorne must have noticed my glances, because she regarded me with a kind smile.  “So it is true.”

“What's true?” I asked.

“You are transgendered,” she said simply, without a hint of malice.  Even so, I ducked down and looked around us frantically, scanning to see if anyone overheard.  She placed a warm hand on mine.

“Calm down,” she said.  “You'll get no ridicule or judgment from me.”

I sighed.  No point in denying anything.  “I'm just not used to hearing it out loud,” I told her.  “I keep that secret pretty close to my vest.”

“I apologize,” she told me.  She patted the designer purse.  “You like?”

I nodded.  “I think it's beautiful,” I muttered, cheeks coloring.

She pushed it towards me.  “Once I clean it out, it's yours.”

I almost choked.  “Seriously?”

“It was a gift from an ex,” she told me.  “It doesn't really go with the outfits I choose.  Truthfully, I don't care for it very much, but it would obviously mean the world to you.  You should have it.  You deserve nice things.”

I sat back, eyeing the purse and trying to breathe out the want inside me with long, deep breaths.

“So, on to business,” she announced, sipping coffee.  “I don't mean to presume, but I take it you don't read many medical journals.”

“I don't read many anythings,” I said.

“Well, you wouldn't know, then, that I'm rather famous,” she said.

“Famous how?”

“I invented a few things,” she told me.  “Lots of things, but the biggest thing I came up with was the process by which same-sex couples could conceive a child.”

“No shit,” I breathed.  “That's incredible.”

“Yes and no,” she went on.  “Sadly, the process wasn't perfected until after I used it to conceive a child with my ex-wife Amanda.  So my son Jeff has a few...  abnormalities.”

“What kind of stuff we talking about?”

“The male reproductive cell determines a child's gender,” Dr. Thorne said professorially.  “When two women such as myself and Amanda combine their DNA to form a child, that offspring should automatically be female.  But Amanda wanted a son so badly, that I went out on a limb.  When I changed my X-chromosome into a Y-chromosome to make Jeff a male, something went wrong.”

“He's twenty years old but looks like he's eleven or twelve,” she explained.  “He isn't aging properly.  Also, I discovered some chromosomal irregularities.  He seems to be incapable of experiencing puberty because his cells don't have uniform DNA.  Some of his cells contain a Y-chromosome and others do not.  We corrected the flaw in the process, but that doesn't help my poor Jeff.”

“That's too bad,” I said.  “But what do you need me for?”

“I've actually been watching you for some time,” she told me.  “Since your original Marine Corps physical.  You made the long list of potential candidates to help me find a way to repair the genetic damage to Jeff's chromosomes.  I've been winnowing down that list for nearly a decade.  You kept making the cut, Mr. Reynolds, and now you're one of the last three remaining candidates.”

“So why aren't you talking to them?”

“Because you are uniquely suited to what I have in mind,” she replied.  “The simplest method to repair the damage to my son is to simply replace his damaged Y-chromosomes with healthy ones.”

“Sounds simple enough,” I said.

“It isn't, but that's not the point,” she said.  “But there's a problem.  If I take the Y-chromosomes from a donor, using the transfer process I've developed, they are gone.  The only way to replace them is by cloning the donor's remaining sex chromosome.  The X-chromosome.”

I shook my head.  “I flunked biology in high school, Doc.  You're gonna have to break it down a little.”

“Of course.  Females have two X-chromosomes, males have an X- and a Y-chromosome.  In essence, the Y-chromosome makes you biologically male,” she explained.  “I want to take yours and give them to my son.  When I'm done, you won't have any left.  You'll have to replace those chromosomes with a copy of the X-chromosome you have left.  All the cells in your body with have two X-chromosomes, which would make you...”

“...a girl,” I breathed.

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