Love on the Road 2015 by Sam Tranum Read Free Book Online Page B

first banshee yodel was not enough to send me packing. When I’m sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs, when I finally call Richard by his name, when I’m terrified Laurie will think this is what a wife looks like, I see a passing oxcart that appears full, but I make room. I pile on my favourite blue leather recliner, my books, and, of course, Laurie, the only one left at home. I take what I need, not a finger more.
    But something is not right. In spite of my small load, my balance is off. I know immediately what it is.
    I throw my piece of night sky caught in a lasso of stars into Lake Roland. The circus is waiting. No sequinned leotard. No safety net.

4.
Janus: A Path to the Future
    Nod Ghosh
    It was a Sunday when you told me you’d decided to transition from male to female.
    After more than half a lifetime together, it can’t have been an easy revelation. Your anxiety showed in the way you twisted your hands, wrapping them one around the other, like you were washing a sheet. It wasn’t clear if we’d be travelling the same route together, or whether we’d met a fork in the road. You’d go your way and I’d go mine. But you invited me to share the journey, if I wanted to. I did.
    You had genuine fears about how the world would accept a six-foot-one ‘tranny’. You worried for our children, and how other people would perceive them: fatherless, with two mothers. You delayed telling them until we could meet face to face. By that time, you had started on testosterone blockers and were wearing oestrogen patches. Your hips were filling out, and you’d managed to prang the car whilst reversing out of a supermarket car park. Some things hadn’t changed. You’d always cried more readily than I did when watching sentimental films.
    You had concerns about the world of employment, the uncertainty about fundamentals that provide a raison d’être and put bread on the table. Your livelihood could potentially be eroded by insidious prejudice or overt bigotry. We made two lists of friends, family and colleagues. One included those we guessed would accept the change. The other was for those who would likely shy away. Ultimately, not everyone slotted into their anticipated category. We lost some acquaintances as we journeyed along the precipitous route, and we gained others. But, in those early days, it was the fear of the unknown that haunted me.
    You wondered if I would still love you. I speculated about whether you’d still want me, or whether you’d be attracted to men once your hormonal profile changed. I’m more epicene than ladylike, but perhaps my hair-speckled chin and I-don’t-give-a-toss attitude wouldn’t be enough. It took a while to learn that gender identity and sexuality were independent variables.
    On the flight to Belgium to see ‘Dr Bart’, I reflected on how long I’d known your internal woman. Bart was going to perform the first surgical procedure of your transition: facial feminisation. There were too few surgeons in New Zealand who specialised in that area, so we’d had to look overseas. The surgical plan sounded like something from a horror film. Amongst other things, it involved peeling back the skin of your forehead, flattening the male bony bossing at the eyebrow, shaving a few centimetres from your jawbone, and transplanting flesh from your abdomen onto your lips. He would be like a sculptor, hewing a woman out of a male rock exterior – the woman I’d always known you’d harboured within.
    When we got together thirty years earlier, I was aware of a powerful female element to your psyche. You kept Herhidden from friends, family and colleagues. You wouldn’t generally appear in public wearing a dress or in full makeup, unless copious amounts of alcohol were involved. At fancy-dress parties, other stubble-chinned males in dresses commented how well you carried yourself as a woman, whilst they fluffed up their artificial bosoms and flounced voluptuous wigs. They wouldn’t make