NOVEL WEB Notes On the Pychosexual Results Of Feminization On Cis Men Versus Trans Women
Dear Secretary Cheney,
For the last time! I know your mad since Liz got it, but persecuting [Redacted] for [Redacted] cannot happen! It would be the best way for the counter culture to rear it’s ugly head again. Unless we could [Redacted], which you know is not possible at the moment. Any public inquiry would reveal too much confidential information would quickly be made into ammo for the far left.
Look, you’re really going through it right now, but look on the bright side! Your son will be able take your place! You can found a bonafide political dynasty off this.
-Note to the Secretary of Defense from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1991) declassified by FOIA in 2017 by Narragansett Truth Now!
Darla could hear an argument. It was… elsewhere. She tossed about in her sheets, it just felt so soft! She rolled onto her side and rubbed her thighs together and hummed contently. Relishing the sound of her voice. She was going to have to move at some point since she was very hungry, but… wait a sec. He wasn’t Darla! He was scummy ol’ Danny pretending to be Darla for the sake of his friends and uh… Darn. He really hoped he hadn’t screwed up with Lavender. He sat up wide awake, now fully aware that he was back on the futon in Paul’s office and the argument happening outside. He wiped the fossilized drool from his mouth, coming off with crystallized goop sweat. He idly wondered, as he stared at the disgusting byproduct of his body changing, if he was just going to keep waking up in Paul’s room every time he passed out, no matter where it was. He should get a shower.
Jesus! Danny felt... softer, somehow. He looked down at himself. The now very rumpled flannel over a white wife-beater which now had two peaks pushing it off his chest… He had tits. Shit. They weren’t big or even fully developed looking, but his nipples were big enough that it was clear he needed a bra. He didn’t know what to think as he poked one experimentally, it hurt. He winced, rubbing the gross sweat that had accumulated in his cloths and skin over the past day-and-a-half off his hand onto the utterly sopping futon. Paul was going to have to take drastic action to save this thing. He needed that shower.
“…Fuck off! Just… Fuck off!” a dry husky voice shouted. Danny looked up thankful for the distraction. The argument outside sounded like it had escalated,.
“Jesus Lavender can you take responsibility for your actions for once in your goddamn life?” Ok, that was almost certainly Joan, darn.
“You were the one who convinced Darla to pretend to be a different person! That shit’s all on you” Danny felt a little embarrassed that he didn’t pick up that it was Lavender, what other woman had he known with a voice like that? He wondered, as he struggled to get up, if that was part of being “a transgender”.
“Okay?? My bad I guess for trusting my friends to cover my admitted mistakes!” Man, Joan was furious. Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. He was going to have to intervene to stop this nonsense, wasn’t he? He slowly struggled to his feet, as his head throbbed an industrial beat in his ears.
The door slammed open and he hobbled out to where Joan and Lavender were frothing at each other. The taller of the two was hunched over fully in the space of the other. The deathglare eyecontact was so intense that it nearly bowled Danny over. “Hold it!” He managed to shout drawing both sets of eyes, which seemed to soften the moment they weren't locked in the thunderdome. “What on earth was so important that it had to be argued in front of a sleeping sick person?” Danny leaned back against the doorframe, noting how his voice sounded even more airy then it did before.
The two stared at Danny like fish in a tank before Joan was able to size the high ground by speaking first. “Your dad’s been blowing up your phone since you didn’t come home last night, and frankly its fucking Lavender's fault for not remembering y’all had to do that.”
Well shit. That was very bad. He had no idea what his dad would think if he didn’t call in. That he was kidnapped? Killed? Out on a drunken bender? He wished he could be like Mike and have a neglectful father rather then a man with the diligence of a saint but the impatience of a sinner. Then again, maybe it was just his fault for projecting an aura of being a dutiful son. Still she shouldn't blame Lavender for his moment of weakness. “No its not.” he sighed.
Lavender had been looking like she was bracing for him to throw her under the bus, and when he didn’t she breathed out “You can’t blame one party for being horny. It takes two to tango.” She said in a 50’s cowboy movie voice and then raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah!” Danny added putting his hands on his hips like old church moms do. He figured if he was growing hips he might as well use them.
Joan covered her her eyes and sighed heavily. “Darla has always been such a dumbass, I expect this from her.” She pointed at Lavender “But you should know better by now! You’re older then most people living here!” Lavender had told Danny she was in her mid twenties, they really didn’t have anyone over thirty except that one tree planting couple, huh.
Lavender laughed “Look Joan, what’s the worst that can happen? Old Joe Kenton thinks his son’s run away, and Darla here can start clean slate without anyone the wiser.” Danny was really warming up to that eventuality. His dad had enough cash flow to hire Faibein full time, and frankly needed a reality check. He could stay here out of the judgmental eyes of the town and Pops would get his just deserts!
Joan exhaled nosily. “I mean that not a bad idea, but that’s not the worst eventuality. If there’s a missing persons case, I’m the top suspect.” Oh right, Danny forgot about the previous conversation he had had with Pops. Dang. What they needed now was decisive action.
“I guess its time to call him and clear this all up then.” Danny said confidently, grabbing his phone from Joan, and thumbing the call back button. Joe Kenton would see sense, he was sure of it.
“Wait no! Your voice doesn't even begin to pass as masculine….” Lavender shouted as the phone began to ring.
Danny panicked. He hadn’t been thinking about the voice stuff. His voice was so unmistakably feminine, that he would probably have to meet his father in person to convince him. He began to go for the hang up button, but it was too late. “Danny!” Joe spoke with the worried voice of a father under stress.
‘Too late’ Danny mouthed at the two women, before mustering the best masc voice he could make. “Hello?” it sounded wrong, too nasally, like a classic nerd in an 80’s movie. “Pops?” God (gods? Gaia? Goddess?) the suspense was killing him.
“Who the heck are you!” the old veteran bellowed.
Danny dropped the voice since it clearly did not work, and switched tack “I’m Danny you got to believe me!”
“My son does not sound like a sultry harlot!” Pops screamed into his receiver.
He could still save this. “Look, remember that fever I was telling you about yesterday? It was Narragansett's!”
There was a stunned silence on the other side of the line, then “Why didn’t Danny tell me then? Danny is a dutiful son, right with God, why would he test him so?”
Danny felt wetness dripping off his check, when had he started crying? Again?! “Why does God test any of us?” All he could hear was soft muttering of prayer so he continued. “Call Mike, he will vouch for me. I’m at the Old McDaniel's farm. Pick me up and see for yourself.”
The muttering continued, but he let his Pop pray in peace, as he glanced back to Joan and Lavender both looking very nervous. He set his phone on speaker so they could hear just as the Kenton Patriarch cut in. “I have asked God. He tells me you CANNOT be Daniel. My son would die before he lost his manhood.”
Danny was shocked. What sort of internal narratives did his father have about him? “But...”
“You have him somewhere, though, I’m sure of it!” Danny’s heart sank. There would be no convincing. “My friend Vincent Darrow has some Ideas how to handle you, Darla!” He spat that last phrase and hung up.
Danny was too shocked to speak but Lavender was able to summarize everything with a “SHIT!” as she kicked the trim.
Joan joined in “Oh man! We are so fucked. Darrow’s a fucking psychopath!”
Danny began to hyperventilate as he sank to his knees. He was able to choke out “The last plan He proposed was kicking y’all out with an armed posse.” before sound cut out and the walls began to close in on him. He fell back and his vision began to close in on him, like he was looking up from an open grave. He could just see enough to register two different arms cross his vision and suddenly he was being held from both sides.
Danny slowly swam back to the surface. Decompressing for the time he spent underwater. He was cracking with too much pressure. Pressure to be the man his father wanted of him. Pressure deal with his Naragansett’s. Pressure to be Darla. And now pressure to resolve this brewing conflict. He couldn’t take it. He needed a break.
His first word when he could finally speak was a rather morose “Sorry.”
Joan had started rubbing his back. “Don’t be. You did your best.” Lavender began to nodd along to Joan’s words. “All we can hope for now is when he sees you...”
Danny interrupted with a shouted “No!” Which earned him confused and worried looks from both parties. “I can’t deal with this right now!” Danny was honestly kinda peeved about how much of a cry baby he was becoming, as tears dripped off his chin. “Can… can we talk about this later?”
“Really?” Joan cocked her head at him.
“Yeah, I need a rest, a shower and I’m starving.” Danny glanced down.
“That’s very fair!” Lavender chuckled, giving Danny a look that he could not read.
“Well we gotta warn people!” Joan said biting her nails. She got up and began to pace “It’s been three years, and I haven’t been keeping up with local politics...” She bit her lip “I’m telling people.” she wheeled around to face them “Get back to me when we have the lay of the land.” And marched off.
Lavender and Danny sat next to each other on the hallway floor in perfectly awkward silence. She gave him an appraising look. Seconds felt like hours as the both struggled to break the membrane of silence. Lavender escaped first with a resounding “So…“
Danny cut her off. “I’m sorry for yesterday…” He stopped. “It was yesterday right?”
Lavender snorted “Yeah. After leaving you I realized you weren’t coming back after me and it was getting late.” She turned to the sided rubbing her nose a little, trying to hide her blush. “So, you know I found you sleeping next to a tree and carried you back to the house.” She smiled at him “No big deal.”
Danny flushed imagined being princess carried all the way back to the settlement. He smiled at image as he rose to his very unsteady feet. Oh how he wished he could have been conscious for it. Her strong arms on his legs and back, the feel of her abs against his ass, the wind whipping both of their hair intertwined, breasts angst breasts… Fuck. He was doing it again!
Desperately trying to change the subject Danny blurted “What’s a Transwoman?”
Lavender sighed like this was a conversation she had had many times before as she picked herself up to meet him. “Transgender folks are those people who don’t feel comfortable being what sex were born as.” She looked away from Danny. “Most of ‘em just wanna be the opposite sex so they get ‘Sett’s intentionally, you know, Gimmes” she looked genuinely sad “the people the media’s been freaking out about for 30 solid years.”
Danny began to walk towards the bathroom. Of course he was aware of Gimmes. It seemed like the only time the pandemic was ever referenced by those in power or in the media was to warn about “Gimme recruitment”. Not that anyone in power did anything. Beyond a few sentences about ‘Sett’s added to abstinence only education and the occasional shooting by someone who got really into AM radio, it seemed the powers that be were cool with using it as a culture war talking point that would be forever unresolved while America rotted out from the inside.
Wait… With creeping terror Danny suddenly realized he couldn’t just write off the occasional killing of an infected person. He was an infected person… Shit… To many all they would ever see when they looked at him would be a Gimme. He turned back toward Lavender with genuine fear in his eyes.
“But!” Lavender cut off Danny’s grim thoughts like a glowstick tossed in a cave. “There are plenty of different types of trans people, people who want different genital and body combinations, people who want to be seen differently without actually changin’ their body, and people who go back and forth between two or more poles!” She did jazz hands while she caught up with him in the hall. He giggled. “The point is with people tryin’ to get back their gender from ‘Sett’s has made the techniques of medical transition ridiculously easy to access, so as a woman who wanted to hold on to her dick I took feminine hormones, did voice trainin’, removed my facial hair, and...” She mimed what Danny had to assume was cutting off her balls.
By the time they reached the bathroom door. Danny felt like a Dutch windmill with a painted clog in the gears. It was nearly too much information, but he thought he got everything. The phrase “don’t feel comfortable as who they are born as” continued to ping-pong across his brain. He never felt comfortable as who he was born as. He never was able be a Man. Even when he was a wide receiver dating Evelyn everyone from the pastor down had teased him for how pussy-wiped he had been. He was happy right now, more then he had been in years, and part of that was being (NO! pretending to be) Darla. But he hadn't given himself it. He was just faking based on an accident.
It was hard to think. There was this dissonance that made his thoughts go circular. There was a build up of pressure, like all his emotions were overtopping a dam, ready to burst. He was a liar, scum, absolutely despicable. Let himself think with his dick, agreeing to ideas just because it was the path of least resistance. It felt like it might make sense, but he felt led to that conclusion, and he hated it.
Danny could barely hold himself up now, the merrygoround of his thoughts increasing the gravity 3 fold. His stomach let out a deafening roar. “Oh Jesus! I haven’t eaten in a whole day, and I still need to take this shower!” He exclaimed trying to change the subject.
Lavender looked confused and wounded. He wanted to reassure her “Look, you’ve given me… a lot to think about?” He winced as his mind plunged into the whirlwind once more he made a fighting retreat back to sturdier ground. “No, listen, I like you. Don’t care ‘bout that stuff.” He blushed it was easier to think now that he moved on. “Kinda hot t’be honest.” he muttered.
Lavender flashed a conspiratorial smile “Oh?” was all she really had to say.
“Look, just… gimme some time.” Danny gestured at the bathroom door which was thankfully open and empty, grumbling, unhappy with himself for being unable to really enjoy that ray of sunshine. “You kinda upended my...” he gestured vaguely. “you know what I mean.” He began pulling himself up. “need to get clean, need food, need to process how fu-fraged we are, and... this stuff too. I guess”
Lavender smile turned less predatory “I look forward to it.” She said in what Danny assumed was her most genuine voice. She got up and offered her hand to him. “and Darla.”
Danny’s heart began to beat faster, as he took her hand “Yes?”
“You know your allowed to swear right?”