Vintage Toys For Lucky Boys (3 page)

everyone? Because there were people out there who could and would

do him real harm, given the opportunity. He had to protect himself.

The back room might have once looked spacious—like on

blueprints—but was now overrun with boxes and stuff. In its own era,

before houses on this street had been converted to shops and offices,

this room had probably been the kitchen of a family home. Back in the

corner, there was a vintage fridge. The dingy window looked out onto

a snow-covered garden. From the trellises and structures, he could tell

it was extensive in the growing season. “I’m not much of a gardener,”

Max explained. “When I bought this house, it came with so much land

in the back that I rented out gardening plots to apartment-dwellers up

the street.”

“That’s a good idea,” Randy said, pondering what he might

possibly be able to rent out. Probably nothing.

“Yeah, and they say money doesn’t grow on trees.”

Randy smiled as Max retrieved two mugs from the cupboard.

One was shaped like the Roadrunner’s head. The other was pinky-

beige with a penis growing out the side for a handle. He thought he

should find that one funny, but it seemed inexplicably jarring. “I’ll take

the Roadrunner,” he said. “Unless it’s yours.”

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“Well, they’re all mine now,” Max replied, pouring out two cups

of coffee. “The handles on these novelty mugs break off like nothing.

Lots of people will come into the shop, they’re looking at a mug, and

the handle just comes off in their hands. I glue them back on, but the

value is so low I just end up stocking my kitchen with them. I’ve got

more mugs than I can handle. Cream and sugar?”

“Black is good for me,” Randy replied.

Max handed him the Roadrunner, laughing, “Once you go

black….”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. When Max offered him a seat at the table by

the window, he sat in the one padded vintage chair that wasn’t piled

sky-high with papers and crap. It felt so cozy to be sitting in a warm

kitchen with Max. “Hey, I can just picture that cock snapping off in

some guy’s hand. He must have gone beet red.”

Topping the penis mug with cream from the fridge, Max nodded

toward the window. “No, this little guy was a gift from one of my

gardeners, Mrs. Pham. Older lady, but she just loves me.” Picking up a

pile of file folders from one of the kitchen chairs, he looked all around

for somewhere to put it. There were already masses of papers

everywhere, so he tossed it on the floor. “All summer she was trying to

set me up with her granddaughter, saying, ‘If Huong is going to date

white boys, I should be able to choose which ones.’”

“Oh no,” Randy chuckled, sipping his coffee. Very gourmet. Good

stuff.

“Yeah,” Max said with a giving smile. “And I kept making my

excuses, but this lovely woman had tunnel vision: I was going to date

her granddaughter. That was that. So one day, I finally had to say, ‘You

know, Huong sounds lovely, but I’m gay. I date men.’”

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When Max paused to sip from his penis mug, Randy asked,

“What did she say?”

He placed the mug down on the 1950s gold-specked tabletop,

smiling as he swallowed. “She didn’t say anything at the time. She just

kept on gardening with a scowl on her face. I thought she’d pack up

her magic beans and never come back to my garden.”

“Did she?”

Taking another sip, Max nodded. “After the weekend, she came

back with this thing. Found it at a flea market, she said, and thought of

me right away. ‘Because you like the boys’. It was hilarious. She was

just glowing, with this impish look on her face. It was great.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Sometimes people really surprise you. That

was like my mom when I sort of came out to her.” When he said those

words, came out, he looked down into his coffee, but when he’d

finished his sentence he looked up to find Max nodding. “I mean, she

probably sort of had a sense for a long time. We still live together and

everything, so there’s a lot of interaction there. And, you know, a lot of

the ‘guy stuff’ I grew up doing was right there alongside my mom. All

the sports and the fixing stuff around the house, you know? I learned

all that from her. So she understood, when I told her how I felt. I guess

I knew she’d understand and that’s why I was so okay with talking

about it. I wasn’t even all that surprised when she said she’d had some

of those same feelings, just not so strong as me, I guess.”

“Sounds like a good mom you’ve got there,” Max replied, absently

running his fingertips along the penis-handle on his mug.

“Yeah,” he said. He couldn’t keep himself from smiling at the

thought of her acceptance. “She’s really great. That’s why I decided to

sell those toys Brent gave me. I wanted to get her something

incredible for Christmas. Bagging groceries for a living, you know, the

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money’s tight.”

“I hear that,” Max replied. When he got up and walked to the

counter for a top-up, Randy realized his Roadrunner was still almost

full up. He took another sip. “Try being an entrepreneur. You spend

the first few years of your business working fourteen-hour days seven

days a week and still owing everybody else money. You kiss your

social life goodbye when you take on a business, that’s for sure. I’m

only at the point now where I could even consider either taking on

staff or finding a good guy.”

“Unless the staffer and the guy were the same person,” Randy cut

in. “Then every workday would be like a date night. God, wouldn’t that

be awesome?” It was only after he’d said it that it struck him how he

sounded. A little like, You can hire me and date me. How’s about it? Max

must have thought he was totally desperate.

But Max seemed to be mulling over something altogether

different as he fixed his coffee with cream. “So, how do they pay you at

your work, if you haven’t changed your ID yet?” The question made

Randy nervous… or embarrassed… or something like that. He didn’t

want to answer. He didn’t answer. Max returned to the table. Sitting

across from Randy, he asked very casually, “Do you still identify girl at

work?”

Ashamed. That was the name of the feeling Randy had tapped. “I

pretty much dress the same, except I don’t bind. It would just be so

weird because I’ve been working at the same supermarket since high

school. I’ve known some of those people for like fifteen years, and they

all call me Jen. It was one thing explaining the whole situation to my

mom. I don’t want to have to explain myself to a hundred other

people. I don’t want to go to work fearing for my safety, you know?”

“I know,” Max said right away. “Oh, you’re preaching to the choir,

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man. But, I tell you, once my ex—his name was Jack—once he started

on T and really got chin-deep into the whole thing, he became so much

more comfortable in his own skin. It works wonders, having that piece

of ID with your chosen name on it and having those hormones

coursing through your body.”

“It all just seems so huge, you know?” Randy said. “The

hormones, the ID, the telling everybody I’m a guy now, and then

surgeries if I go that far. I definitely want top surgery, but I don’t know

about bottom. It’s dangerous, I hear, and sure I’d have a penis, but it

wouldn’t work. And everything’s got a price tag on it.”

Max nodded. “Well, you know, some things are covered by

Medicare, but you’re right—not everything. And, hey, you’re sixty-five

hundred dollars richer today, remember. Go ask your friend Brent

what other toys he’s got squirreled away. Maybe we can put a few

more dollars in your many pockets,” he chuckled, pointing his penis

mug down at Randy’s cargo pants.

But Randy was off in fairyland. “How did your guy, Jack, get

through it all?”

“With my help,” Max replied. He laughed, shaking his head. “That

sounded way too self-congratulatory, but you know what I mean: it

helps to have friends you can rely on. Yes, Jack lost some friends along

the way, but he gained others through a social support group

downtown. He was lucky to work with a doctor who really understood

trans folks. I’m not saying he was shooting sunshine out his ass every

day of the week, but his transition was smoother than some peoples’.”

With a surge of jealousy toward this unknown Jack, Randy said,

“Wow, I wish I had someone like you in my life.”

“Well,” Max began, shrugging his deliciously huge shoulders. He

looked out the window. It had started snowing again outside. “I know

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we just met, and I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking up a cause

here, but if you want my support, you’ve got it.”

When Max reached his hand across the table, Randy was

overcome with an emotion that could only be described as love. Christ,

he couldn’t be falling for this guy. Why, when he’d only be rejected?

But, then, there was Max’s palm face-up on the table. Maybe it wasn’t

an offer of marriage, but it was obviously an offer of something. Now

Randy didn’t know if he ought to shake it, slap it, or slip his own hand

into it. He stared at that palm until it reached up, grabbed his arm, and

shook him. “Okay, fine,” Max laughed. “I’ll take my support and give it

to some other trans guy in need.”

“No,” Randy cried. He sounded so whiny. Pushing his voice down,

he said, “No, I want your help. I need someone who knows the ropes,

because I really do want to push forward.” Setting his Roadrunner

mug down on the table, he reached over to place his hand on Max’s.

“There’s so much I don’t know, and you know how it is out in the

world of guys: you always need to be the best. You can’t falter or ask

questions. You always need to be in command, be authoritative.”

“You don’t have to,” Max countered, flipping his palm around

until they were holding hands. “There are all different ways of

expressing masculinity. Look at me—I play with dolls for a living—

and do you think anyone would ever accuse me of not being a man?”

“Hell, no,” Randy replied, eyeing his great chest. “But look at your

muscles. That’s what gives you the Olympic edge.”

Max shrugged like they weren’t a big deal. “Once we get you on T,

you’ll put them on like wildfire.”

“Is that what happened with your Jack?”

A reflective smile melted across Max’s lips as he gazed out to the

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back garden. He slipped his hand out of Randy’s. “The testosterone

changed Jack in more ways than one, but that was okay. He was

becoming more himself.” Throughout the pregnant pause that

followed, Randy drank his coffee and watched Max’s face as he

escaped to the land of memory. Finally, Max continued, “I won’t say

the T turned him straight, but it really brought to the fore a newfound

love of boobies and pussies and all things related to skirt-chasing. It

was hard for me, at first. I felt like I’d helped him so much along the

way and suddenly he was leaving me high and dry. But, you know, we

all experience our progressions in life, and I guess that was Jack’s.”

Randy stared into his coffee for a while, wondering if the same

thing would happen to him. He didn’t think so. He hoped not. If he was

going to be attracted to girls, wouldn’t he have been there already?

“Most of the trans guys I chat with online say they went through a

period of seeing themselves as butch dykes before realizing they were

trans. That never happened for me. I never liked girls. I didn’t even

like being friends with girls when I was a kid.”

“Oh, I played with the girls when I was a kid,” Max said. “My mom

thought it was cute. My father hated it.”

“Nope, no girls for me. Even when I was in high school, I hung out

with the boys. But at that point, I didn’t really know how I fit in with

them yet. I was pretty slutty. I liked it though, because I felt… I don’t

know… it’s hard to describe,” Randy said, thinking back through the

years. “At the time, I kind of saw them as gay for sleeping with me. I

liked to take it from behind and picture myself as a kind of a twink

bottom with a totally flat chest taking it up the ass. I mean, I was

pretty flat-chested anyway, so it wasn’t much of a stretch, but I