NOVEL NEXT The Internal Economy Of Ecovilliages, An Explainer
Danny stood in front of the mirror, just outside the herbalists room. He was mostly just disappointed when he looked at his reflection. The way Lavender and Joan had been treating him along with his voice and height had convinced him that he looked like a girl now. Now that he saw himself for real, it was a totally different story.
Sure, he lost maybe a half foot and over 40 pounds, but it was the same damn reflection staring back at him. Greasy shoulder-length hair, piercing world weary eyes, unshaven chin scruff, fat southern lips, and a nice cushion of fat. Looking at that face seemed wholly alien. At first all he felt was disgust at his body, and then he felt disgust at the fact that he found his male form so repulsive.
Was this all he was leaving behind? He was being frogmarched at gunpoint to womanhood, and all he could think when he saw his reflection was “I wish this would hurry the fuck up!” It was terrifying to see himself feel that way. What would his father think?
This was not a place of Christian morals, but did he really want it to be? Would he become, as he imagined, a cold hearted psycho? Obsessed over nothing but sex and death performing his most darkest desires on the world? It didn’t feel like it. He had Narragansett's, but that felt completely detached from his depraved fantasia. It felt like parts of an unassailable edifice were sloughing off, like the walls of Jericho.
Lavender crossed her arms and cleared her throat. “C’mon you’ve been starin’ at that goddamn mirror for a hot minute. Yes, you’re a cutie-pie, but we got things to see! Lets roll!”
That brought Danny out of his revere. “Sorry, I just didn’t expect to still look like…. me.”
“Oh!” Lavender’s tone and posture immediately changed from one of impatience to one of consolation. “Oh honey… It won’t be much longer ok? You got what? Two days?” She laid a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “C’mon, ya don’t have to look at that. Joan’ll make sure everyone treats you right until the change is over.”
Danny was speechless. He looked over his shoulder at Lavender, and ran straight into her reassuring smile. The wave of raw emotion that broke on him in that moment drowned out all thought, all reason, all control, everything. He was in tears. Tears he could not describe, from an emotion he had no name for. Lavender brought him into her chest and held him as his body was racked with sobbing.
Audible now. That was his first thought after the emotion began to fade. He was sobbing uncontrollably, but he was doing it with sound. A barrier had been broken and the tenuous grasp he had over his bodily functions had failed. All he could feel was intense relief. He should feel anything else: mourning, fear, loss, not like the (a?) higher power was smiling down at him!
Danny wiped his eyes, enjoying the feeling of being held, and began the slow methodical process of winding down his tears. His eyes locked with hers as he continued to sniffle. A strong current passed between them. Time seemed to slow down. The air felt hot and heavy. A tension that cried out to him “Kiss her you bitch!” but he was a coward. He looked away. “Thank you.” was all he could manage through the wall of red.
After a drawn out awkward silence a hesitant “No problem.” seemed to be all she could manage. He looked up straight into her equally powerful blush. OH man. She did have feelings for him! And then it hit him like a ton of bricks- she had called him “hot guy
”.That hurt for some reason. Danny was becoming anatomically female, would she even be attracted to him after the changes were done? He was stuffing so much stuff behind the fridge at this point, it seemed to be leaning.
Danny shook his head to try and clear the woolgathering. He still felt dizzy moving on his feet, a not so subtle reminder that he should probably still be in bed, but he had to power through. Pops always felt like fresh air and a bit of exercise was the best way to clear any funk, and made a point of living on the second floor, even when going up stairs carrying an oxygen tank was a nightmare with one lung.
Lavender put a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “C’mon let us start ze grand tour!” She said in a terrible french accent, pointing out at the door out of the hallway. Danny giggled even though it wasn’t that funny. Anything to bring his mind back from painful memories and his own brand of bullshit.
-
The tour itself was a blur, because Danny was having to fight to stay lucid and upright the entire time. Names, faces and introductions bled together, but as he went a general picture emerged that he could understand. Currently the “Village” consisted of a farm house, green house, and barn leftover by the McDaniel’s. The farmhouse was a mid sized two-story and had people living in every room including the halls. The packed nature of the house meant that they were rushing to complete the first communal buildings. There was a massive oak table in the dining room used for communal meals, and lots of equipment from acoustic instruments to various trade tools like lathes.
Standing at said lathe was a mid-sized woman on the rounder side of things and pale as cream. She was working on something, which as far as Danny could tell was probably the leg of a fancy table. As Danny and Lavender approached she raised her goggles, took one look at the darker woman and made a face. Lavender made a contrite expression and raised her hands before walking quickly back out the door motioning for Danny to stay.
This left him buggeyed and staring into nothing while his mind rushed around trying to figure out why she had abandoned him with a stranger. Who upon closer inspection was smiling at him in a wistful sort of way. Now Danny himself could not think of a worse thing to do then to be stuck in a room with a scary woman with short purple hair an muscles who seemed like she was about to start a conversation. He braced for impact. As she walked forward hand outstreched.
“You must be Darla! Joan’s told me so much about you!” Danny winced as she took his hand and shook it far more vigorously then what was expected of a polite woman. He looked at her with pleading eyes trying to just get this over with. “I’m Clair.”
Oops. Well at least now he knew why Lavender had left him on Clair’s stoop like a flaming bag of shit. “Nice to meet you.” he said in what he hoped was a kind manner hoping to hide the fact that he knew both way too much and too little about her. “Its nice to finally meet Joan’s girlfriend!.”
Clair laughed “One of! One of many.” She stared off at the door “But it seems you’re interested in pursuing my ex?”
Danny had nothing to say to this “Uhhhh…”
“Don’t worry I’m not jealous or mad.” She chuckled gently. “Just watch yourself, shes a wild one.”
Danny felt such a wave of relief, he had to struggle not to pass out. He leaned against the wall and yawned. “So what are you doing here anyway?”
Clair looked over to her work. “Oh just making a table to sell online.” she walked calmly over to the lathe to brush sawdust from the lumpy dowel she was turning. “Lotta folks here are craftspeople, so a huge part of our internal economy is gonna be selling this stuff to rich city-folk.” She looked back at Danny still slumped in the corner. “Or at least, so we hope.”
After a bit more chatter, mostly on the ins and outs of e-commerce that Danny’s brain tried valiantly to remember but failed miserably, he excused himself from the room and let Clair get on with her piece. Lavender was waiting seated outside the door reading a book called ‘Weapons of the Weak’ and frowning. When He exited she looked up and gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I figured you should meet everyone, including the folks I can’t really chill with.” Danny opened his mouth to ask why her and Clair were at odds, but she cut him off. “You ready to go see the farm?” He shrugged mostly to himself, but Lavender took it as assent and began leading him out the door.
Outside in the Northeast corner of the land was a large space designated for gardening, while on the other side a veritable orchard of trees were going into the ground. It seemed like the plantings were centered around the communal building site, which at this point was just timbre loges stuck vertically in concrete. Apparently these were the bare bones of hay bale and dab houses.
Now that he could see those working the garden, he estimated there were probably about 15 or so people involved with the project. At least 3/4s of them were women. Most of them were recent college graduates rather then dropouts, but there was a middle aged lesbian couple they had ran into planting trees. It seemed like they had just signed up whoever wanted to come. To Danny that seemed very irresponsible.
When he voiced this to Lavender they were going down to the creek that ran through the land. “We don’t just take anyone. You’re right, that would be a dumb idea.”
That piqued Danny’s interest. “Well then, what’s your criteria?”
Lavender turned to face him already halfway down the bank, so they were about equal height. Their eyes met. She spoke with a perfectly straight face “Are they Queerdo.” She turned and began heading down towards the stream once more.
Danny watched her incredulously, as she fought a shrubby willow that was in her way. ”That’s it? No other questions asked?” Danny had a vague sense of what ‘Queerdo’ could mean based on the words it was made up of, but was too scared to ask Lavenders exact meaning. Especially since he was fairly certain she had coined it herself.
“Yup! In the end its all about vibes.” She chirped confidently, holding the willow aside for Danny to pass through the thicket. The Stream itself was rather wide, being a feeder creek of the Cygnes River. Sycamores, birches, and oaks lined the waterway, the silty banks gray-brown and covered in grasses, pushed to the edges of civilization by farmers large plots and monocropping. Lavender sat down in the shade of a old gnarled oak, staring deeply into the stony bottom of the stream bed, Danny hesitantly followed her.
It was moments like these that Danny knew he would miss if he ever moved to the city. He stated at the sky watching the small fluffy picturesque clouds float by. Letting himself ponder his position on a large sphere in space. How insignificant he was in the face of the entire world. A bug crawling on the earth’s (Gaia’s?) bosom.
Then he lowered his eyes to Lavender, who was still staring, pensively into the stream. Her dark wavy hair billowing over her tan face. Danny began to watch her cheek just as intently as he had watched the sky, wondering what it would be like to caress it. How soft and perfect it would be. As she turned to face him, clearly feeling his eyes on her. He wondered if, as such a small being on such a large world, happiness could really mean anything without something as big as God? Could he be happy at all? This existence of a few hours was so much better then the one he was living naught a few miles away, but that life had responsibilities that he could not easily relinquish. Unless he was selfish, this would only be a brief vacation for the purgatory that was his current phase of being.
Danny wondered if it was ok to be at least a little selfish, if in forgetting his father completely he could save himself. Staring into lavenders eyes at that moment, he made his decision. He stood up, wandering over to a tuft of grass he had noted was big blue, and plucked two fresh stems with the seed heads attached.
Plopping himself back down again Danny handed one wordlessly to Lavender. Never breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen between them. Sucking the sweet out of the back end of the stem he looked over at Lavender who just stared at the piece of grass and then raised her eyebrows at him. As if to say that this was the hick line she refused to cross.
“you never chew grass before?” Danny asked incredulously.
“Can’t say that I have. I sound Texan, sure, but no matter how rural you are, we don’t do that shit down there.” Lavender replied. To Danny this sounded like ‘I may be a bumpkin, but I’m not that much of a bumpkin!’. He laughed.
“C’mon just try it!” Danny began to poke his own partially chewed stem into her face.
Lavender began to giggle herself. “Okay! Okay! Stop it!” she smiled back at him. Placing the stem in her mouth she bit down gingerly. “Oh my god!” She said almost spiting out the grass. “This tastes like fuckin’ watermelon!” Danny couldn’t breathe, his sides were splitting to hard.
Lavender gave him a playful shove, which Danny reciprocated with gusto. Soon they were going back and forth, intentionally getting closer to the ground with each push, until Lavender caught him like a rabbit in a trap, pinning his arms to the ground so he could no longer fight back. Spitting the stem off to the side she smirked into Danny’s face.
Danny’s mind raced through emotions as she slowly lowered her lips to claim her prize. Did he want this? Could he really allow himself to be this selfish? He wanted this so badly. Would she be into him after the change? Even if she did, he was starting to present as a woman now- This was not something that his pastor would condone, let alone the premarital stuff. Could he really turn his back on his community like that? She wanted him and he her, what more was necessary? He felt himself grow hard. But Pops...
And the she kissed him. An electric shock that precluded all thought. He closed his eyes and let himself be lost in the softness of her body, her lips, her chest, even her gun jamming into his leg felt reassuring… Wait… She kept her gun in her bra.
His eyes shot open. He turned away from the kiss. Lavender imminently sat up. “What’s wrong?” she asked worriedly unpinning his hands.
Danny didn’t know what to say the words caught in his throat. As he began hyperventilating he choked out “L-lavender… W-why do you have a DICK?” He couldn’t help screaming that last bit, high and shrill in his new voice.
Lavender looked like she had been slapped. Then her brow furrowed. “Really? You can’t put two and two together?” Then she spat off to the side. “Or maybe you’re just one of the sisterhood with no solidarity between people who get ‘sett’s and hormonal transition?” she made a face like that was the worst possibility.
Danny was confused and a little scared. He felt like a child being told for the first time that they had sinned against god. Dirty, unsure, worried. The grass was cold and scratchy against his back. He felt Lavender’s judgmental stare boring through him like he was just a piece of cellophane on the ground. Him mind raced trying to put together what her words had meant. She had mentioned ‘Sett’s and Hormonal Transition, so maybe she had had ‘Sett’s? That had to be it right? He was panicking fairly hard so maybe if he said something? “Wait you had Narragansett's?”
Lavender put her head in her hands with an audible slap. “NO!” She began to drag her hands along her face as she raised it to meet Danny's eyes “Oh my god… you really don’t know the first thing about what you are do you?”
Danny was baffled “What the heck do you mean by that?”
Lavender pointed at him accusingly “Getting ‘sett’s intentionally makes you a transwoman.” then she pointed at herself. “I’m a different flavor, one who wanted to keep her dick, so I got the ‘sett’s treatment without actually getting it, understand?”
“Oh.” Danny did not understand.
“anyway. I won’t fuck you ‘till you can be respectful of my choices!” She unsaddled him in a huff. Got up and started walking toward the farm house.
Danny didn’t bother going after her. He lay in the grass uncomfortably, mind abuzz. What the fuck was a transwoman? A woman with a Penis? No, that couldn’t be right. Lavender was clearly mad at him for being alarmed by her physiology, but for the life of him he didn’t understand why. She had a genital mismatch! Why shouldn't he find that strange? He bit his lip. The image of her in the nude with a erect dick flashed in his mind. Why was he still so into her?
Then, because his mind could never stay focused on one thing for long, he thought about the whole project. Joan said Lavender had showed up with a suspiciously large amount of cash after disappearing out of her friends lives. The cost of land in this area was fairly reasonable by farmland standards, but people seemed to act like they bought it outright. Which was still absurd for a bunch of poor college students.
So then, Lavender may have paid the lions share of cash? Which raised the question. How the heck did she get her hands on it?
God. Danny was exhausted. He didn’t even think he could get back to the house. He propped his head against the root of the Oak and passed into the second stage of Narragansett’s, while sugarplum fires danced in his dreams.