February 4, 2004
Voyage to Planet California
by Jan Steckel
I land at the airport, rent a car and drive over to my friend Susie the Gynecologist's apartment. She takes me to the Good Vibrations outlet where a transgendered person is signing his book of nude photographs of female-to-male transsexuals. Naturally, he has plenty of negative feelings to express about physicians, having gone through so many surgeries and taken so much flak from doctors about his decisions. So two hours off the plane, I find myself representing the entire medical profession to a roomful of angry people in various stages of transition from female to male, and I'm thinking, whoa, Toto, I don't think we're in Boston anymore. In the excitement of the moment, I buy the guy's book. It will make a great coffee table book. Now I'm going to have to buy a coffee table.
Afterwards Susie and I do Tequila shots with lemon and salt until she's crying in my arms and trying in vain to dial her ex-girlfriend to whom she hasn't spoken in seven months. I give her the correct number and go to bed. In the morning, the first thing I see is a cat-o'-nine-tails hanging on the door knob. I turn my head, and there on the bedside table is a thirty-two ounce bottle of Astroglide bearing the legend "For Office Use." Before I have time to wonder where I am, I realize it could be only one place: San Francisco. Susie tries to go into work, throws up in front of her Chief Resident and is sent home with putative flu. All she wants to do is sleep.
I feel fine, however, so I get dressed and drive down to Half Moon Bay to visit my cousin Beverly the Holistic Healer. We meditate with crystals, walk by the ocean and converse with the seals, then go to get my Tarot read. Lucy the Tarot Card Reader puzzles over one card, saying she's getting conflicting messages. That is, she can't tell if the card represents me or a man I'm going to meet. She thinks it's me, but that doesn't make sense because it's distinctly masculine. Oh no, I think, Don't even go there. It must just be the vibrations from all those people I met last night still clinging to me. Because while I believe in sampling widely from the menu of life, here's my order: "Waiter? Uh, waiter! I'd like my genitalia internally, thank you. Maybe a little fruit and nuts on the side."
I decide to have a talk with my inner man. Knock, knock. Hello, Jerry! You in there?
Yeah.
What do you think?
I think it's time to change the oil in the Honda.
I mean, about last night.
All I remember is drinking Tequila in the kitchen with the cute gynecologist. I didn't think we scored.
No, before that. We met a man who used to be a woman.
Must be in San Francisco again, huh?
Jerry, you ever dream about being expressed?
No. I'm a shy guy. I want to stay inner.
You ever think about me getting a sex change?
You want to change something?
Yes, I do.
Change the oil.
First appeared in BiWomen, Vol. 15 No. 2, April/May 1997, p. 7.
Jan Steckel is an Oakland, California writer and former pediatrician who has fiction, poetry and nonfiction forthcoming in Lit Pot, Problem Child, Writers Monthly and Affaire de Coeur. She is working on a book-length collection of interrelated short stories. You can read more of her published writing on her web site at www.jansteckel.com.