Am I Man or A Girl?

Chapter 5 - Changes & Stasis

Maybe that was more a sign that certain businesses just didn’t have a good plan for selling relatively-niche products to this community. An anime store at a blind section of a strip mall where everything else was auto parts, liquor, Chinese food, and used furniture. It just didn’t fit. The video game shop next to a wannabe-hipster coffee shop with old chairs and bric-a-brac strewn about.

And then there was the tiny game place hidden behind a Denny’s. The only bookstores that endured were the survivors of major corporations and used sellers who occupied a tiny corner of a pseudo-intellectual loft next to what used to be an independent theater. And then the Christian bookstores that clung to mega churches.

This was like finding a winged unicorn that shat gold and could grant you unlimited wishes while wearing a wreath made of seven leaf clovers and hauling a sack full of every lost book in history and every wiped golden age television episode.

On the other side of the plaza, a fish grill place, a fresh food market, and an insurance business filled out the rest. The cement slab for a standalone drive-thru restaurant had been laid and flanked by temporary fencing as a sign marked the owner of the property but not the business anticipated to occupy it.

I had to head past the property and circle around on the other side to enter without having to deal with traffic. Pulling into the lot, I drifted off to the side to just admire what was laid out before me. It was like my own personal Brigadoon. I didn’t want to shut my eyes for too long, lest the illusion fade away.

The bookstore was named “Starlight Pages”. An open novel with galaxies, rainbows, and castles spilled across the sign. The entire front row of parking was filled with the sections in the back about half occupied. This half annoyed me because it meant I would have to park a little ways back, but it also pleased me because it implied that at least this place had customers and a decent opportunity to survive a little while.

For all the enthusiasm that spilled from me, I warned myself to temper it with realistic expectations. The most pessimistic version of my thoughts equated the appearance of the bookstore to the emphasized bumps presenting on my chest. I told myself half its bulk was likely storage with a lot of musty used titles and ornamentation to distract from their meager shelves. Likely, as well, several of their products would have to be non-books they were selling on the side, like wooden sculptures, shirts, or trinkets.

The actual floor space devoted to pure and beautiful books would only be a small, precious patch. Even with all those qualifications, it had to be at least as large as the once closer bookstore that only persisted in my memories.

I stuffed my wallet and phone into the little denim purse, after slapping it a few times to exorcise the dust spirits. Cinching the strap tight around my shoulder, I realized that I didn’t have the pepper spray or taser I usually carried in my pocket after a pair of angry teen girls randomly trashed the outside of the house one day.

Maybe that had changed, along with so many other things. So much changed, so much strangely left the same. I shrugged it off, added my keys in a secure spot, and slowly walked towards the bookstore.

The steamy, post-storm breeze batted at my hair as I squinted. The skirt around me clung to my knees like a second skin while the trailing edge warped and buffeted like a loose sail.

It both emphasized my chest and also tangled it beneath a confusing, static-like flutter of the top. Fortunately, the buildings provided a break from the breeze and the recycled spittle of fallen rain flicking at my face. Beneath the overhang, the front windows of the bookstore revealed a summer-themed display with several hardbacks stretched out on beach chairs with shades. The posted prices actually seemed competitive with the big guys and ebooks.

The entryway howled with close, hot moisture that shot through the wiggling front doors like an angry, invisible blow torch. The front area was laid out in the same ubiquitous, familiar fashion to pretty much every bookstore from the tiniest to the mega. An island of the featured titles and a sweep of new releases met you at the door with a cash wrap off to one side and magazines poking out here and there.

My eyes widened as I glimpsed how far back the wall stretched with quotes by famous authors and roughly recreated covers of classic titles. Again, it was smaller than the bookstore across town owned by a big company but instead shared a density of shelves spiraling against one another like a rich, brown forest with the order of a maze. No café with overpriced sandwiches and steaming cappuccinos. Rather there was a stage to one side with several tapestries laid across a dangling brass bar. Clearly, the area seemed to be used for events.

Bean bag chairs, benches, and all sorts of assorted seats filled the area before the small, tapestry-backed stage. Over by the registers, a young man dressed in a light, buttoned plaid shirt with puffy hair and black-rimmed glasses looked up from his work, gave a friendly smile, and recited, “Hello and welcome to Starlight Pages. Is there anything I can help you with or help you find? Do you have any orders or requests?”

Immediately, I shook my head and brushed back a few locks of hair, to keep them from finding their way to my mouth as I said, fighting to keep my voice as high-pitched as possible, “Hi! Thanks… No. I’ve never been here. How long has this been open?”

He explained that the grand opening was a little over a week ago, but they had been softly open for about three weeks prior to that. I didn’t avoid this road when traveling but there were plenty of times when I would blithely ignore something that was being constructed or that had been changed just because I was set in my travel patterns. It would’ve been pretty difficult to miss this for an entire month and then however many months it took them to start construction previous to that. That said, I couldn’t exactly remember the last time I’d driven by this stretch of road and gazed in the direction of this plaza complex.

It had to at least have been since January and there was no way anyone would build something like this so quickly. But here it was and here I was. He explained that there was a free coffee and water bar next to the main stage I’d already glimpsed. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to take drinks outside of the area and I was further warned not to bring any books over while drinking. Just made sense.

He also laid out that “many” titles had an inserted barcode connected with a partner app which allowed me to redeem a digital version of the book in a non-proprietary format at no extra cost. Furthermore, he mentioned their digital bookstore, where I could browse and order directly. We weren’t the only two people in the store, as a small group brought their purchases up to him. I thanked him and said I would just look around.

In the bestsellers row, the second volume of The Winds of Winter had fallen to second place. And that was the only title I recognized.

Meandering past the magazines, I glanced to see if there were any crossword books or other puzzlers. After that, it was all about science fiction and fantasy, which had a sprawling home across six long, connected rows. Some of it mixed in graphic novels along with mangas and expanded universe books from major franchises but the mass market paperbacks filled seven rows with a special area on the occasional shelf devoted to a featured title in hardback or trade paper form.

This felt like book heaven and my next thought was that my parents had to know. It then hit me that they both had smartphones, same as me. I could just text them the details along with interesting photos.

The bookstore wasn’t the most groundbreaking thing I’d ever seen in my life. Not all of the prices were discounted in the range I was hoping for, but they weren’t priced unreasonably, especially for new titles. Still, it made me happy, especially to know that it was within walking distance of home.

One big surprise though was a section devoted to “gender bending” titles. It was relatively small, compared to the rest of the store, filling less than a single shelf in a section devoted to related topics. Many of them were either non-mystical true stories or manga titles moved over for the theme. A light handful of titles even got close to broadly tickling my fancy.

One in particular, with roughly drawn cover art, did detail about a young boy finding a transformative lagoon of mermaids. Another alluded to an adventurer becoming the corrupted, shapeshifting thrall of an ancient vampiress. I was curious, but not ready to buy yet. Nothing else even got close to pulling me in.

After roaming the store for well over an hour, to the point that narrow rays of light stretched the spindly shadows of freshly planted trees in the lot, I ultimately decided to buy an annual collection of short speculative fiction as a way of helping this business along. It also had one of those barcodes for a digital copy.

The guy at the front was pretty busy, with a line five deep. I decided to browse the magazines until I found the sort of games and puzzles title I was looking for. I used to relax and flounder through their crosswords and logic puzzles, as I wrote, in barely-legible fashion, with a pencil. My wrist even gave a little pop as I flipped it open and browsed through the selection. It had about half as many pages as the editions from my childhood and twice as many ads but it was better than the digital copy which didn’t have any interactive elements, instead urging you to print it out. It wasn’t worth the posted price, except in the weight of nostalgia.

At the cash wrap, I passed the book and magazine to the clerk. His eyes flicked over to me. And they lingered. Because of the slight platform the register area was on and my diminished height, he had to look down at me. But I noticed his eyes weren’t meeting mine in that instant. He was looking down even more. To my chest.

A quizzical shiver passed through me. If things had been different, maybe I would’ve thought about it a different way. But my first reaction was an animated butterfly of delight bouncing around inside me. He noticed that I actually had boobs! …Granted with some artificial emphasis to them, but still.

The moment soon passed and he surrounded that one, lingering look with ones that darted all around me. I let myself have what I hoped showed up as a playful grin.

“You like science fiction?”

“Totally.” Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.…

Never mind how mindless and cliché that single-word response sounded as soon as it slipped past the internal censors of my brain. But the rising tone was also way too loud and carried an ambiguous enthusiasm which made me want to rewind several seconds and take a second try.

All I could do, however, was reframe it by adding, “Yeah. I’m a big reader of science fiction.”

“So, this is like Star Wars stuff?”

“Some of it. I saw there’s an entire section of Star Wars. That’s cool. I don’t read that as much.” Surviving those words felt like it took half the energy I had left. Just talking to a person and trying to confidently explain things was an ordeal before all this, but with the added feeling, it took me to the point that I worried my teeth might start chattering.

“What’s science fiction outside of Star Wars? Is it like Marvel?”

After a pair of beeps, he told me the price and I laid out my debit card from my wallet in my purse.

“It’s anything, so long as it has some idea starting with science. Like a world just like ours where someone wakes up and everything they remember is different because they’re like in a world that’s like theirs but different. Some guy they know is a girl now, their dead parents are alive, and like everyone thinks they’re someone different. It could happen. Although really like stuff people invent and do in the future is also like a huge part of it.”

Stop saying “like”, me! It was almost as bad as me weaseling my way through words like “a little“, “somewhat”, and “a bit”.

His response was, “It’s weird a guy would turn into a chick. We have books about that though. You into that?”

Maybe, somewhat, a little bit… I responded with a shrug, and answered, “I just like good stories.” I paid the extra twenty cents for a bag for the books and thanked him before heading off.

It was another stray thought, but my mind wandered to imagining him waking up like I did today but with the whole package and more than just a little hint of some ripple that had to be played up. A busty, cute librarian type, only placed in a bookstore. The kind of thing my brain mused over for a minute and then released.

Back at the car, I considered between dropping my stuff off in the backseat and holding onto the puzzle games magazine, despite the fact I didn’t have a pen or pencil on me to start filling it out.

Working from right to left, I surveyed everything along the strip flanking each end of the bookstore. I liked the look of the fish place. The prices were even better than the one on the other side of town, though it had an emphasis on fried versus grilled. Mainly, I was puzzled how on Earth they could get fresh fish this far inland without exorbitant prices. There was a recently finished bypass tunnel which cut the truck travel time in half. That was all I could think of.

Slipping past the front of the bookstore, I noticed that I caught the eye of the clerk again, even though I was outside. A grin lingered on my face as I checked out the sandwich shop. It seemed like Subway, but with a broader variety of deli sandwiches. My eyes and mind were on the game store.

Most of these felt like they’d been copied from another age. The 90s especially persisted in them, even though they often had many signs of the modern day. The carpets often felt like threadbare, wiry old man pubes dyed a dull color, like the worst pharmacies. Even covered up, it was easy to feel itchy in them.

Fortunately, this one had a wooden floor which looked pristine and freshly lacquered. My first impression placed it somewhere between the aroma shop I just left and a classroom. The ghostly scent of pizza caught the edges of my nose. Beyond that, it seemed rather nice. Like the Warhammer gaming shop that magically seemed to thrive between an Asian donut store and a Rite Aid on the other side of town. This had the same essence but without such a hyper-specific focus. A full sweep of gaming from the 1970s to the present was on display further back and a locked case of board games and miniature figurines lined the front wall, leading into a series of PCs decked out with colorful lights.

I always felt awkward in this sort of place. Everyone inside had specific, encyclopedic awareness of something in particular, either a card game, a fantasy realm, or the lore behind an imaginary species. And they clung to it in isolation as fervently as Gollum.

A mustachioed guy at the back, who vaguely reminded me of a young Richard Garriott, was the first to speak, “Hey there, looking for something in particular? We’re getting ready for the evening Magic night. That’s a card game.”

“Oh, cool. It’s my first time here and I didn’t realize there were shops here that were open.” I didn’t pay as close attention to my inflection and pitch, which oddly gave me a sound closer to like a valley girl than anything else. Like, fer sure...

He gave an assent of his head before inquiring, “What do you know about hobby gaming?” His face briefly tightened as though bracing himself to hear me mention something like Fortnite

or whatever was popular now.

I briefly wondered if his question would’ve been different before today, but I figured social subtlety was not the strong point for those who ran these sorts of shops. It showed up in reviews online.

Not that random, largely anonymous online reviews mattered that much. No one got passionate to write a review where they had a decent but unremarkable experience. It was always those who felt transcendent, those who wanted something out of it, or those who felt something unjust had occurred and needed to rectify it with vehement sass and screaming.

I still felt the shadow of no one even giving me a simple, offhand comment about my pictures online. To some extent, it felt like I woke up and my three out of ten had gone to the nines and I wanted to show off. I felt good about myself and that should’ve been enough. I needed to chisel into my brain that it was enough, but I wasn’t there yet. The guy at the bookstore giving me a glance and a once-over was the kind of stuff I wanted. To feel, quietly and subtly, that I was cute and people thought well of how I presented myself. Again, it didn’t matter, I knew that. But I wanted this.

I didn’t want to be a model or a sex doll or a sex idol or a sex anything really. I just wanted to feel like me outwardly as I felt inwardly and see that appreciated in subtle, even nonverbal, ways. Just be a normal lady. Whatever that meant.

Maybe it wasn’t all that different from being the me of yesterdays. At the same time, it felt like the inscriptions of me had been written across my body as overtly as a complete tattoo. I just wanted someone to notice them. I didn’t even need to be praised for them. Why should anyone be praised for just being themselves? But I created photos with emotion, reflection, and feeling with the new tableau of what I could express physically. And I got these new clothes with a cute skirt and a metaphorical magnifying glass on my chest. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. I was just one person. And it was good that people didn’t overtly treat me differently. But I really really wanted to be found cute. I felt cute, I tried to project cuteness, and I felt good about it. Just a meager mote of validation, please.

An absence of reaction hurts almost as much as a negative reaction. It can make you feel like a ghost crying into the unfeeling void. At the same time, every crawl towards self felt like too bold a step. The will of my parents, the ones who lived before, was like a blanket of rough smoke trying to build to flame.

They weren’t violent, they offered so much, they were often fair, and they really didn’t demand that much from me. And that’s not lingering Stockholm syndrome. Out of all the parents in the world, I didn’t get the worst. The only problem was they had a clear idea of who I was supposed to be and they used every tool in their emotional, rhetorical, and psychological repertoire to express that, either bluntly or cunningly.

Mom was going to have a boy, no matter what. Like a spell cast over the world. An incantation of masculinity. Not anything weird, like the mother side of an Oedipus complex. But it dominated her thoughts. I spent a lot of my early years just being normal. Just being her little boy.

When and how did it change? It’s impossible to look back through anything but a distorted lens discolored by time. And it’s easy to linger in the experiences of others claiming that puberty sucked the most.

But I was smothered for a long time. Even a passing mention of what it might be like to be different, to be this little ember of a girl who lived in me, met with the relentless downfall of counters. Mother said that if you weren’t a woman then you could never understand the struggles, the secrets, or the unspoken details that amounted to an Illuminati-scale domain. It was vain hypocrisy to even try without intimate awareness of all the pain and suffering she cited.

I thought I knew enough of pain just being human. How could anyone tabulate one load versus another? And why did it matter? I can never know, with perfect clarity, what another person feels. I can only do my best to guess and take them at their word.

Why compete with them about how shit some things are? I may never know, or even get close to understanding. But I actually wanted to, as much as possible.

I could take the good with the bad, the problems with the possibilities. Maybe it would turn out to be more than I ever anticipated, but I liked to believe I was persistent. Getting through the elderly child and babyhood of both my parents, with the only reward being a darker sense of loneliness, felt like the worst iteration of parenthood. No advancement or encouragement, just a dogged clinging to little moments that were better than the last. Nothing really to look forward to but climbing and crying and clawing through one more day.

When does the shit I got over fill the right side of the measurement? When is it enough? I don’t care about the competition. I just want things to be better.

All that was way too heavy for the sort of group meandering around me. Whatever they had going on, this helped. It was hard to judge further than that. What did I know about hobby games? I knew how little my original family thought of them despite indulging quite a bit. They didn’t see the point.

My experience started out reading about games in magazines and other texts, like the puzzles in my car. Instead of buying an NES, I received Nintendo Power and pieced together how the gameplay would proceed based on the author's description and explanation about secrets and movements. Every game played out as a fabrication of my imagination, an ideal version exclusive to my brain. It wasn’t as though it was too expensive to purchase the games, but rather once again, they didn’t see the point, especially when it took up a television for no reason.

A Game Boy, my Christmas gift for getting a perfect score on my multiplication tables, never really matched up with the hype from my own brain. We had a mostly scientifically-accurate version of Monopoly where you could own the moons of planets, along with a variety of other board games that my parents often tired of. No experience with D&D. Just a passing, mystified experience with card games ranging from fighting monsters to the other one with virtual monsters to yet another with cards that came to life.

“That it exists”, was what I arrived at for an answer, after what almost felt like too much private contemplation of the question.

One of the guys sitting on a bench off to the side burst out with a giggle somewhere between the cry of a hyena and a spastic cough. Aside from the owner, there were only seven others present. One of them reminded me of a stick bug shaped into human form with a curly, broccoli plume of dark hair at the top. Another wore sunglasses inside and hunched over a cluster of cards as the tight tangles of his scruffy beard almost touched the table. A pair looked almost like brothers with broad glasses, and blond, closely-shaved hair.

The guy who giggled didn’t really stand out from the group except for the fact that his shirt appeared really heavy for this weather and his black hair was shaped into a short, immaculate dome. With the remaining two, my first thought was that they were girls since one of them had brown hair longer than mine and way silkier. And the other had a soft, slight look to them. Several answers, ranging from someone like me to a tomboy to a simple pretty boy, floated through my head without the expectation of resolution.

The owner folded his hands together in what felt like a subtle reference to something I didn’t catch. Gesturing, he gave me a methodical outline of the card games they sold and what needed to be bought, if I didn’t have any. He emphasized prizes for certain matches. A small, devious part of me considered comparing it to bingo, but I resisted that.

He encouraged that I could buy a certain pack they sold in a recently released line and have everything I needed to create my own competitive deck. From the side, sunglasses guy chimed in with an alternative from one of the older releases which had the benefit of such and such card and being more balanced. The owner held up a sheet and explained that certain cards had to be banned for the sake of balance. All through this, I brushed my hair back, cleared my throat, and tried to absorb as much as possible. It made sense but still mystified me far from any sort of clear understanding.

After that, I gathered that the computers were available but there were a lot of rules regarding that as well. My eyebrows raised when he mentioned a deal with the “neighboring“ bookstore where I could get 10% off on one of the gamebooks along the wall if I showed a recent receipt. I could definitely head back to the car for that. However, the books were all at the original publisher’s price and some looked like they were already gathering dust despite the newness of the location.

I did like the look of the ones with apocalypse scenarios but, considering my stray fear that my mind might be controlling recent events, those were not ideas I wanted to feed my potentially multiverse-twisting brain. It didn’t take long for everyone in the room to forget I was there as I browsed. The owner checked in a few times and offered his opinion about cyberpunk games with easy comparisons to popular movies.

Their selection of video games, which I considered looking through for dad, was sparse and lacked anything I recognized. Older titles ranged close to $100, regardless of quality. I sighed.

This was how it always went with these places. I’d be intrigued by the look and the allure of something different. But everything seemed like it could be found other places cheaper. Even other little hobby shops like this. It was disappointing, all that excitement, hope, and anticipation flattening out.

Even considering the core and starter card sets, it was well over the price of buying a full, retail video game. Maybe I could try the app on my phone to at least figure out the mechanics and if I might be interested in any of this. I quietly and politely thanked the owner before slipping out the door.

I had thoughts about how that would go and it was all dashed to pieces. Not that I expected to walk through the door and be treated like divinity. I just… I just figured it would at least feel a little bit different because of how much I changed. I could’ve had that conversation any day of my life. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten the laugh quite as easily, but maybe I still would’ve gotten it.

Outside, the wind dragged my skirt along roughly like a stray bag caught in the breeze. My hair fluttered like dense, burning cobwebs. At least I got back to the car faster. The only sign it had rained earlier were the fresh watermarks on the edges of the windshield.

The status quo eagerly reasserted itself. I slumped back in the seat as harsh, feral gusts hissed through the seams of the car. A random piece of geeky music flashed and cycled through my brain to save me from thinking too hard. I needed to eat, even if it was the leftovers and spare groceries from lunch. It had been a long day, with so many remarkable moments on top of one another.

My progress from struggling to comprehend my reflection in the mirror to where I was now felt like a lifetime apart, even though I desperately wished I could’ve traveled more. Part of me wanted to cry but the rest told me to shut up because I didn’t have any good tissue in the car to deal with that. Instead, I just pushed my little nose around with my small fingers until I could smell the faint traces of moisture and humidity. My eyes held their ground as I carefully backed out of the parking space.

Where could I go now, aside from back home? The mall? Fuck that. It had returned to the regular crush of humanity despite listless, disappointing shops. Even though my priorities had shifted, nothing I remembered it offering really appealed to me. I could strut into Victoria’s Secret for the hell of it. It was a stupid store though.

Pulling out first onto the main road, I worked my way back to the roundabout. Retracing my steps from before, I continued down that street, passing a few restaurants on my blacklist because of late-night food poisoning. It wasn’t too far from the elementary school that mom talked about earlier with that teacher who used to be one of her students. Miss Lawrence...