I was fourteen the year I found out the secret; I've kept it between me and May until now...I never thought...that I could be so in love with someone who was the same as me physically, with the same "tools" I was born with. But I guess the beginning is the best place to start, I don't want to get too emotional with you just yet...
Mama J. and Mama S. met sixteen years ago, after being completely and utterly in love for two years they decided to have a child of their own. Mama J. being the stronger of the two decided to have the child, she was inseminated and nine months later I came along. They knew I wouldn't ever be a normal child, but who wanted to be normal nowadays?
Here we are now, fourteen years after I was born is when my story takes place, Mama J. and Mama S. are still fighting to make gay marriage legal; that's hard to do because New York is stubborn. My best friend is May; she was a very beautiful girl with short wavy brown hair, and deep chocolate brown eyes that shyly hide behind reading glasses...she often had a dreamy look and seemed to float like she wasn't all there. We've always been friends...and always will be. She knows I've never liked girls, she knows I love wearing dresses, and bras, and panties, and tights. She knows of my first girlfriend, I tried to like her but...I just couldn't, poor Essie. May knows I have liked boys for a long time, she knows that I love to watch them shower and see their glistening teenage bodies dripping wet from head to toe. Watching them like this always made my "little soldier" stand in salute, but May knew my "little soldier wasn't as "little" as I let everyone believe. May understands that I will never like girls and knows they don't make me feel the same way men make me feel. May understood me so well, not only because we grew up together but, because she was bisexual. Our secrets have stayed with between us forever, I hope she will forgive me for the story I must tell...forgive me May...rest in blissfully sweet peace....
The summer was like any other, hot, muggy, and full of promise. May and I were sitting under our favorite oak tree in Central Park, our ice creams melting faster than we could eat. Where the Sun touched May's pale ivory skin it turned bright scarlet showing the world that she couldn't tan. I rubbed sun block on her shoulders where her buttercup yellow dress didn't cover. May always wore yellow dresses, all in different shades, with small floral designs at the waist. Her hair always had a blood red ribbon tied within it, a great contrast with her yellow dresses.
"Billy," she said in a tinkling voice as she stared up at the clouds.
"Yeah?"
"I think I'm going crazy..."
Looking aghast at May I asked, "How could you of all people be crazy?"
"I'm starting to see things...," she said gazing off into space at something unseen to anyone but herself.
"May," I said putting an affectionate hand on her shoulder, "Everyone is a little crazy. Without people being crazy it would be insanely boring," I said with a smile.
A small smile spread across her ruby red lips and she finished her ice cream, glancing over at the couple hand in hand walking so close that one misstep and they would both come crashing to the ground in a tangled mass of legs and other various body parts.
I looked down suddenly grim and mumbled, "Its Shawn and Sarafina...."
May put her hand on my shoulder and we walked home. I looked back only once and saw, sitting under our tree, Shawn and Sarafina. Their lips locked in a passionate and blissful kiss.
After we were at my house I was silent, fighting the urge to cry after seeing Shawn kiss someone else, "Why can't he kiss me like that????" I whispered sullenly to May who had picked up a book on birds, "Why couldn't I have been born a damn girl?"
May put down her book, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Billy, if you were anyone but yourself then we would not be friends. If you were different even the tiniest bit! I would not like you," we embraced and I smiled for once.
"May, you know just what to say every time."
Right after I said that Mama J. and Mama S. ran into the room screaming in excitement and waving a paper in the air, "We did it!" they yelled, "We did it! We really did it!! Its legal!!!"
May and I looked at each other in realization and I said, "It's really legal?"
They nodded and Mama S. said, "We just said that silly goose! Clean your ears out!"
May screamed in excitement and jumped up and down with me taking my hands, "They did it Billy! They did it!"
A week after Mama J. and Mama S. came home with that news we went to an interview on "Elle". We were interviewed for the paper, news, and television. And somewhere along the way Shawn had noticed me...
"Hey, Billy is it?"
I looked up and saw Shawn standing above me, he was so close I could smell his Axe cologne, "Yeah" I tried the best I could to hold back screaming in excitement.
He put his hand out and I took it, "I'm Shawn."
I couldn't stop smiling and i said, "Nice to meet you."
"You want to hang out sometime?" he asked helping me up. I almost fainted when he asked me and all I could do was nod.
"Good." he said leaving, "Arcade tomorrow, meet me at noon."
I nodded and stood there dumb founded for a few moments before running home to call and tell May and to also get ready for tomorrow.
After our first time hanging out Shawn hung out with me more than Sarafina.
"Sare," Shawn said into the phone, "I'm just hangin' with Billy," He paused, "No Sare Billy IS a boy."
I sighed hearing Sarafina squawk in his ear jealously before she calmed down with just a few short I love you's from Shawn. They tore me apart but I didn't let it show.
Near the end of summer Sarafina got very sick, with what no one knew. She died after only three short weeks in the emergency room.
Shawn was at my door after she died and he threw himself in my arms, weeping bitter tears of sorrow. His parents had gotten a promotion and they would be moving away. He wept over the little things, like when he smelled the perfume she always wore or a shirt she would have liked. Sarafina's death was horrible for him and all he could say was, "She didn't even know how much I loved her" or "I didn't get to even say good-bye."
A week after Sarafina died Shawn and I were in his room packing for him to move to Japan. Shawn kept half-heartedly smiling at me.
"Billy" Shawn said to me stepping closer. "I know that you like me."
How long had he known?
"Uh, what do you mean?" I said folding some pants into his suitcase.
"I mean I know you love me!" he said stepping closer once more.
I blushed, "Well uh..."
Before I could say anymore I felt his warm lips on mine with the small prickle of upper lip hair.
HE'S KISSING ME!!
He put his arms around me as I wrapped my arms around his neck. The places where we touched tingled like electricity and he kissed me harder.
Heading to his bed losing our clothes as we went we spent the rest of the say in sensual bliss.
Shawn moved a week after our day together and I never saw him again. May died a year after in a car accident, we were heading home from Mama J. and Mama S' wedding. May was sitting in the backseat with me and my mothers. A drunken driver hit our car, turning it into a mangled mess. Mama J. and Mama S. crawled out with a few bumps and bruises. I pulled May out with my legs and tail bone crushed. The only pain I felt was of what had happened to May.
Blood matted May's hair, her chest was caved in like a poked soufflé. She was crying as I held her in my arms, she held my hand and with her last breath she said, "Billy, I love you...your my best...friend...don't...forget me..."
May's funeral was a long one, I was diagnosed paralyzed from the waist down the day before. There has never been a day that I don't think of Many. I write this in remembrance of all I had and all I now have twenty years after all of this.
I lost everything in such a short amount of time, happiness I guess just never lasts...
Fin