Flowers

"Stop! Larry, don't you unbutton another button! Come on, we're late! You want to wear bras and panties and slips and so on around the house all the time, women's underwear, suit yourself! Sneak around looking like a cutie pie girly all you want! I don't care any more. I've finally gotten used to it. Even to seeing you every night in your study all dressed up with no place to go because you don't dare leave the house! I don't care!"

"But you know that Eva is always prompt, and that she expects everyone else to be prompt. We're right next door so we have no excuse not to be prompt! So here, push that shirt back in your pants and put this blazer on to cover those boobs and you'll be presentable enough. It's only the two of us and the two of them. Who'll notice anything?"

So we crossed through the gap in the shrubs into their back yard. As you'd expect, the scene was set for a standard summer back yard barbecue. The grass was fresh cut today, perfectly flat and even, and it still smelled new-mown. Herb was proud of that lawn. I'd heard his mower going all morning, while I was behind drawn shades trying on two darling end-of-season-clearance dresses I'd just bought, and a long skirt I thought really elegant. I was trying to think through how I should accessorize them, whether now I needed some new jewelry to set them off.

But it was getting to be a hot day, and with the shades down the house was heating up, so was I. The last thing I wanted was perspiration stains on my new dresses. I'd barely begun to enjoy them in my mirror. So I put them away and I wiped off my lipstick. I know, you don't need make-up to try on a dress, but wearing make-up I really do look "cutie-pie girly" as Sara likes to put it. Without make-up my man's face looks strange above my lace-fringed collars and draped bodices. So I wiped off my lipstick and opened the shades and looked out.

By then Herb and his weedwacker were leveling off the last edges of grass along his annual flower bed. He was even more proud of his garden than of his lawn -- it was heavy with color most of the summer, but the annual beds were especially dense now, toward the end of the season. We'd had flowers from that bed on our dinner table and in the living room practically the whole summer. Sara had permission to go over and pick whatever she wanted -- "Many flowers like to be picked," Herb had said. "Then they can branch out and set even more buds. It's a rule of nature." Sara had looked embarrassed when he said that. She didn't like to accept gifts from anyone, but she couldn't refuse that kind of gift.

So a few times each week for the past few months or so she'd gone over and selected flowers from his garden and made bouquets and floral arrangements, and we'd enjoyed them. She'd even started putting vases of fresh-cut flowers in my study, my "boudoir" she called it acidly, where sometimes I did office-work evenings but mostly I dressed up and made myself pretty. As a man, I thought flowers in the house were nice enough, but as a girl, it was thrilling to be surrounded by them. I loved them. I especially appreciated having beautiful flowers to pose with in the room when I was all dressed as if to go out, before finally I had to undress and put everything away again. They helped me feel more feminine, more lady-like. I didn't mind at all one day a couple of months ago when I came home and found the room really filled with them, tiers and sprays and billows of color everywhere. "They're Herb's gift just for you this time," was how Sara explained it. "He says the way flowers are, it doesn't cost him anything, and you may as well enjoy them in here when you're doing whatever you do in here."

When we arrived on Herb and Eva's turf, Eva was setting the picnic table for the four of us, using her best china and crystal, as was usual for her. We always use paper plates for cook outs. "If you've got it, use it," Herb said, the first time I commented on their odd custom. "That's what I say and that's what I do!" And I had to admit, it was nice dining in elegant formality on the grass under the trees while the sun was setting slowly behind us, and birds were twittering in the early gloom up top. It was nice to enjoy nature and civilized sophistication both at once.

I saw that Herb was already in his barbecue action station, a far corner of his garden where the wind wouldn't blow smoke on us. He was laying steaks on the grill.

"Hi, Larry!" he called out, waving a long barbecue fork. "Be with you soon!" I nodded back at him and waved a bottle of Bourbon I was carrying. Sara went over to talk to him.

"Here, Larry," Eva said. "Bring that inside and fix yourself a drink, and fix Sara one too. Then help me carry out some more things. And for goodness sake, take off that jacket and relax! It was 90 degrees at noon today!"

She'd set up a bar in the glass-enclosed sun room facing their rear lawn, where silver chafing dishes were being heated. Talk about dining in style? It was intolerably hot though, what with the afternoon sun still pouring in! I saw that their ice bucket was already half-melted. I burst into a sweat and was almost immediately soaked.

"Here, let me take that blazer off you this minute -- no back talk," Eva said from behind me. I felt her seize my jacket by the collar with both hands and start to pull it off.

I tried to resist -- I was wearing only that thin white shirt over my bra, and the shirt was already wet and clinging. The bra just underneath was a cascade of flowery lace -- there was no way it could stay hidden. No good! She had it off me!

"What's this?" I heard Eva say. "Are those bra straps? Let me look!"

She came around in front of me and stared at my flowery mounds.

"Sure enough!"

She broke out into a delighted smile. "Well, well, Larry! What a secret! You too! I know so many gay men! And gay women too! In fact tomorrow morning I'm off for four days with Patricia Frye, you know her? The dancer? I'll be doing press and publicity for her, and we always share a hotel room on the road! Hardly any breasts, but what thighs! I could eat her up! I have, too, a few times! You didn't know that about me? Herb doesn't mind. As long as it's not another man, he says."

Eva wasn't just babbling this incredible self-revelation. She was deliberately sharing it with me, so I'd feel a little better that she'd inadvertently exposed what was obviously for me a devastatingly shameful secret. She was watching me closely all the while she spoke, giving me a chance to recover from my paralyzing embarrassment. When she saw me finally take a deep breath she walked over to hang my coat on a peg, still watching me, waiting for me to say something.

"I'm not gay, Eva. I'm a transvestite, I guess. And... and... please don't tell Herb! He's a friend. I'd feel so ashamed! I can't help it! But I just...like it!"

She came back and pushed a damp lock of hair off of my forehead. "I know, baby, I know! You don't have to tell me anything! I work all the time with artists and performers of all kinds, and believe me, they come in all kinds. Don't worry. Maybe you'll want to take that bra off now, if you don't want Herb to see it."

I did just that, feeling better every moment, even though Eva was watching me carefully the whole time. In some ways I was enormously relieved that someone else besides Sara finally knew and wasn't at all bothered. It made me feel more normal. By Eva's lights, I was normal. Not even different!.

She reached for my bra and examined it. "Very pretty, Larry! But only 'A' cups? With your build, you easily need a 'B,' even a 'C' in some models. Don't you have breast forms? Or are you only now starting hormones? I know a wonderful endocrinologist, if you've wanted to try having your own boobs but feel a little shy. Make yourself a drink, please, Larry. And Sara's too, if you know what she likes, now that I see she's coming back from chatting with Herb. "

She folded the bra and tucked it snug into my jacket pocket for me, all without breaking conversational stride.

"Tell me, dear, how do you know you're not gay? Ever tried it? Herb says he could be gay with the right kind of person, under the right circumstances, or so he claims when we get to talking about how I swing both ways. And Herb is all man, and loves women! Trust me, I know what I'm saying! It would be fun sometime, seeing him make it with a man! I wonder if the man would feel the same way about him women usually do. Oh, don't be shocked, Herb loves me, but I know he spreads the wealth around, and that's only fair, seeing as how I do too with women who interest me. Tell me, what does Sara think of all this?"

I started to put ice cubes into glasses with tongs, grateful to have an excuse not to look up. "Eva, I've never tried gay sex. Men just don't attract me. Women do. I love everything feminine, that's my problem. And I am true to Sara! Though she doesn't think so. She thinks I'm unfaithful to her with some kind of woman inside me, and she resents it." I filled my glass first with ice and then with Bourbon, and then I splashed Sara's glass.

"Really? How very gothic! In love with a succubus who lives inside you and possesses you. Like in a B horror movie. I really must have a talk with her some time! Do you dress up completely, lipstick and everything? Do you go out en femme?" She paused and looked at me the way women look at themselves in mirrors. "I'll bet with the right hair style you'd look gorgeous! I know a wonderful hairdresser...."

"Is that drink for me?"

Sara! I handed her her drink without a word. How much of any of this had she heard? I still couldn't meet anyone's eyes, so I turned to watch the thick smoke pour out of Herb's grill and drift skyward.

"Would you two mind carrying out these chafing dishes? Careful, they're hot. I'll go in and take some things off the stove -- our cookouts are not at all as primitive as Herb likes to pretend. I should judge from all that smoke we're just about ready."

We gathered at the wooden-slatted picnic table, and ate delicious dishes one after another off of Herb's and Eva's delicate bone china. We washed down Herb's burnt but bloody steaks with a very fine Margaux poured into crystal wine glasses. We made lively conversation about the commerce of art, tricking flowers into winter bloom, and Eva's upcoming trip. No one said anything about Eva's bed-companion for her trip, or my brassiere. Then, in the dark, Sara and I crossed back into our garden.

"I see you're not wearing your bra now," Sara said as soon as we were inside the house. "Did you feel so compelled to bare your nipples to Eva, that you had to take it off in front of her?"

"No, she took my jacket and saw it under my shirt, and suggested I remove it before the rest of the world saw it too. Namely Herb. She was trying to save me further humiliation."

"Too bad! I'd hoped she'd see and you'd feel ashamed, so you'd give up this... thing of yours. I'd hoped Herb would see it too, so you'd know what a wimp sissy you are compared with him, and know that he knows it too. It would have served you right. And I heard what you said about not being gay, and what Eva said about not knowing till you've tried it. I've wondered about you that way too!" She suddenly realized she'd gone too far, and lapsed into silence.