While he would be attending the surgery, Doctor Grimes was not the surgeon who would actually be performing it. Grimes specialized in diagnosing and treating LSDS and not reconstructive surgery. No, that task went to one Doctor Leonardo Escultor. Besides being the surgeon that Doctor Grimes worked with on the majority of his cases when plastic surgery was necessary, he was also the surgeon Michael's insurance would pay for. Grimes assured me he was the best in Austin, if not the best in the business.

   I wonder if he would have said the same thing if I had better insurance?

   "Ah, Miss Angelus," he greeted me the first day we met. "How would you like to look today."

   "Don't call me miss," I growled.

   Doctor Escultor was middle-aged Hispanic man, or possibly of Brazilian descent. He had dark, oily-looking hair and a placating expression. His eyes... were strange. They looked dead.

   We were in his consultation room, deep in his clinic. On the walls were framed pictures of faces. One or two were framed pictures of nude women proudly displaying their breasts. I had a secret stash of dirty magazines under my bed, so seeing something like this was not a shock. The manner in which the photos were so openly displayed made it seem less like a skin show and more like a trophy room.

   "Sensitive, are we?" he asked me denigratingly.

   "Just tell me what I've got to do," I said. "And I'll do it."

   Doctor Escultor spent several minutes staring at a folder with my name on the tab. He stared at me critically.

   Finally, he grinned. It was a fake, plastic grin. It was calculated, and held no real mirth or comfort.

   "I've spoken with Doctor Grimes about your condition. I've also studied the sonogram images he's provided me. Tell me... Gabriel..." he paused several seconds before pronouncing my name, as if he wasn't quite sure how to do it. "Tell me what you're looking for here."

   "I just want to be fixed," I said. "Doctor Grimes said that I would be sick less often," I said, my excuse sounding weak even in my own ears."

   For just a second, something flickered in Escultor's dead eyes.

   "Up here," he said, gesturing at his head, "what are you? What do you want?"

   "What I want is to not have to deal with this," I carped. I really needed philosophy on a day like today.

   "Yesss...." he said, as if he had just found a strange new fungus growing in the bottom of his refrigerator. "When I spoke with Doctor Grimes about your case, he said that there might be... identity issues."

   Mentally, I added Doctor Grimes to my 'bitch' list.

   "Tell me, Gabriel," Doctor Esculto said, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands together, "are you having identity issues?"

   "You could say that," I admitted.

   "You grew up as a boy, yes, and have found out that is not the case. So tragic. So difficult. What do you *want* to be, Gabriel?"

   "That's not really an option is it?" I said, more as a statement than a question. "I can't exactly shell out for a sex-change operation."

   "Oh, there are ways," Doctor Esculto said, his mouth curling up knowingly. "Difficult ways, but those who want them can find them. You sound like you don't know what you want."

   I shrugged. What else could I do.

   "And why should you?" Escultor asked. "You're only fourteen... about to be fifteen. You know nothing of what it means to be an adult yet. Your mind tells you one thing and your body tells you another thing. You are so young and have so much opportunity left... Tell me, Gabriel, how often do you think I deal with 'identity issues'?"

   I raised my eyebrows. I hadn't really expected that line of questioning.

   "More often than people who don't practice plastic surgery," I quipped.

   Escultor grinned. "You are a beautiful young person, Gabriel, boy or girl. You know that, right?"

   I grimaced. "Hardly."

   "I think you'd be surprised. I deal with people every day who are *not* beautiful people. They are scarred people, battered people, deformed people... ugly people. Inside, some of them are beautiful people, but no one else will ever know that. I help them when I can, but I also help beautiful people to become ugly people."

   "Huh?"

   Esculto reached into the folder he was carrying and pulled out a white-bordered photo. It was a picture of a woman from the nose down. She appeared to be a fairly slender person with good skin, but had ridiculously huge breasts. Each one was easily the size of my head. They looked like great, hanging udders. They were in no way sexy, let alone attractive.

   I grimaced at the photo and glanced back at the doctor. He pulled the photo away and slid it back inside the folder.

   "This patient had an identity problem," he said. "She was not a large-breasted woman like those her husband enjoyed watching in certain gentlemen's clubs. Now she is. I have visited with her since her surgery, and as far as I can tell, she and her husband are happy with her new... appendages."

   "Really," I stated in a kind of disgusted disbelief.

   "You would be surprised at what some people consider attractive," Escultor told me. "You would also be surprised at what lengths people would go to be 'fixed', as you said. How far are you willing to go, Gabriel?"

   "I just want to be normal," I said. "I certainly don't want *that*!" I exclaimed, gesturing to the folder.

   "So, for the time being, you're willing to follow the dictates of your body and genetics and become a normal young woman?" he asked, mock disbelief in his voice.

   "Please don't patronize me," I asked tiredly.

   "I can give you 'fantastic'," Esculto said, clearly amused. "I can give you 'otherworldly'. I can even give you 'maddening' if you were of the mind. You want 'normal'?"

   "Well, I don't want to be hideous."

   "That gives us a starting place. If you would, please step behind the screen and remove your pants. You're not allergic to ink, are you?" he asked, uncapping a felt-tipped pin.

   "Joy. This is going to be really embarrassing, isn't it?"

   "Very."

   Doctor Esculto and I looked at Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds for about two hours. That's what it seemed like. Rather, I laid down on his table in front of a mirror, and after selecting a laminated page from a binder full of photos, magazine centerfolds, and drawings, he would draw the approximate shape of what I had selected in dotted lines over my crotch.

   What makes a woman's pussy attractive anyway? Like I said, I was no stranger to porn. Living with only your older brother has a few advantages. In addition to the stash of magazines under my mattress, Michael had a few videos stashed around the house. Aside from that, we owned a computer and had free internet access from Michael's company. If you know where to look, the internet can be a vast cornucopia of free pornography.

   Now that I was trying to select what I wanted my parts to look like, I was faced with two problems. The first was the simple fact that I really wasn't sure *what* I wanted to be. Having this surgery seemed like more of a 'sex-change' than a real gender reassignment operation.

   The second problem was one that set of genitalia looked basically like any other. According to the sonogram images, I was only going to have to have changes made to my inner and outer labia. I had to decide what shape I wanted those to be.

   Doctor Esculto said that was very fortunate that was all I had to do.

   "Why?" I asked him.

   "Surgery to the clitoris almost always results in a loss of sexual sensitivity," he explained.

   I didn't even want to think about that.

   "What's just normal?" I finally asked.

   "Women's bodies are like snowflakes," the doctor replied. "No two are the same. Nor should they be."

   "That's a lot of help."

   Eventually, I settled on design number three-seventy-two, as Esculto called it. Basically, it was most like what I already looked and would require the least surgery. It didn't have protruding inner lips like some of the pictures I looked at, and it still mostly covered everything.

   At that point, Doctor Esculto said that he would recommend against performing any kind of breast-enhancing surgery until I was at least twenty-one.

   "That's not even a concern," I quickly informed him.

   Then came the fun part. Doctor Esculto explained exactly what would happen during the surgery in graphic detail. He told me where the scars would be-- right on the edges of my labia-- and the real fun part, I would have to urinate through a catheter for at least a week after the surgery. I could go home a day or so after the surgery, but I would be stuck changing catheter bags for several days.

   "You don't make this easy, do you?" I asked him.

   "I once operated on a woman who ate through a tube in her nose for a month after the surgery," he related. "Her case was more serious than yours, but there are sacrifices to be made for the sake of any surgery. Yours will be quite simple compared to some I've performed."

   After I got dressed again, Esculto and his secretary scheduled the surgery.

   April thirteenth.

   Wonderful. Happy birthday, Gabe. This year you lose what was left of your manhood. What a great present.

* * *

   Aside from driving me around and signing the release forms at the surgeon's office, Michael didn't talk much to me. I guess he was still upset. I know I was.

   It was okay, because I didn't much feel like talking myself. Instead, I studied the stack of notes Doctor Escultor had given me. It was funny, because he gave them to me, and not to Michael, my legal guardian.

   I'm not sure, but I think he winked when he gave them to me.

   One was a note excusing me from school for two weeks for 'surgery'. What kind of surgery was unspecified. I was thankful for that if nothing else.

   Another was a note indicating that I should be allowed to take the narcotic pain-killers he had subscribed during school hours for up to a month after I returned to class. Both those were dated. They were normal doctor's notes by all accounts.

   The next two notes made me start to wonder about Doctor Escultor. The first was an undated letter explaining my condition in general terms. It basically read, 'He's now a she and should be allowed to change classes if necessary." It used the phrase 'congenital birth defect' a few times. The other was also an undated note, which excused 'Mister Angelus' from PE, swimming, or any other strenuous activities due to 'possible complications' from my surgery.

   The implication was clear. Here's the note you use when you get back to school and here are the notes you use when you decide how you're going to deal with losing your gender.

   Freaky doctor knew at least how to do something right.

   The thirteenth-- a Friday of all days, *and* my fifteenth birthday-- was about a week and a half away. It was the first available slot the doctor had. He told me that the wait was usually much longer, but that he had a patient pull out of a rhinoplasty procedure on that day. Basically, I got to have surgery on my birthday because some old lady decided she didn't want to have a nose job after all.

   It meant I had ten days to prepare for the end of my life as I knew it.

   It's amazing how fast ten days can pass when you don't want them to.

   I turned in the first of the notes the next day at school-- the one excusing me from the thirteenth to the twenty seventh.

   Most of my teachers at Benson's found out about it the day after and started to load me down with extra work. It was inevitable, I guess. I spent the next week completing more assignments than the other students would get the entire time I was gone. Luckily, I'm fairly decent at bullshit, so the essays my English teacher assigned were not difficult. I wanted to pull my hair out over the geography assignment, though. Who the hell cared what Japan's three alphabetic systems were called. Why in the world would I ever need to know the chief exports of China and Taiwan?

   Before I realized it, it was Thursday. I was preemptively caught up on my schoolwork, but was exhausted. I realized at some point during the day that I was shaking. I think it was during lunch.

   "You okay, man?" Tony asked me.

   He was leaning over me at the lunch table. I jerked a little, startled by his presence.

   I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell him everything that was about to happen to me. I wanted to beg him to help me get out of the surgery somehow. I wanted to plead with him to hide me from the doctor until the time for the surgery had passed.

   "Yeah. Just haven't been getting a lot of rest," I said.

   He nodded. "Yeah. You're surgery's tomorrow, isn't it?"

   He must have overheard the teachers talking. Maybe I mentioned something about it and forgot about it.

   "Yeah."

   "Nervous?"

   "A little," I admitted. "People die during surgery."

   People who were having plastic surgery, I didn't say, tended to bleed to death.

   "Most people don't," he assured me.

   Of course I couldn't say what I was really frightened of, no matter how much I wanted to.

   "You want me to come visit you at the--"

   "No!" I said, probably too quickly.

   "Nah, you wouldn't right after hernia surgery, would you?" He laughed. "Don't sweat it. You got good drugs yet?"

   "Drugs? Oh, pain pills. Yeah."

   "You'll be just fine, Gabe."

* * *

   The surgery was going to be performed in the small surgical wing of a new medical center in Southwest Austin. It wasn't a hospital per se, but was set up just like one. I had to check in around six o'clock Friday morning.

   I didn't get much sleep the night before. I kept myself up with an unending string of 'What-ifs'. What if I died? What if I bled to death on the table? What if I got a horrible infection? What if the doctor messed up and made things worse than they were. What if the surgery just *failed* for some strange reason and left me like I was?

   When I did sleep, I kept having fevered dreams about going to the hospital. I would check in, get undressed, and then run away at the last moment, just before the surgery. I would be running through the streets naked, my deformed body visible to everyone. They would stop and stare at me in horror and revulsion. After a few iterations of the dream, they started to throw rocks and bottles.

   In one particularly surreal repetition, Tony was following me around with a fake dick and balls made of clay, asking if I had lost mine.

   My alarm went off. I got up from my bed, showered, and brushed my teeth while doing the best I could to forget about the disgusting images I had dreamed.

   I went to the bathroom... and have never wiped so carefully in my life as I did just then.

   Michael was quiet. He was dressed like he was going to work, in his typical polo shirt and slacks outfit. No surprise there. I sensed that Michael was probably going to be quiet for a while about this. He had asked me the night before if I minded if he went to work while I was actually in surgery.

   I told him I didn't mind. I was too frightened and too tired to mind anything right about then.

   I must have dozed through the drive to the hospital, because I didn't really remember it. Mike and I answered a few dozen questions, and then they took me in the back, away from Mike.

   The nurse gave me a thin cloth robe and told me to change into it. I didn't even bother asking if removing my boxers was optional or not.

   I don't really remember a lot of what went on after that. I got several shots. Pain killers, sedatives, and a few others. I was pretty loopy. I very vaguely remember laying down on a gurney and being wheeled into the emergency room. The last thing I clearly remember was the feel of the plastic mask on my face Just before they knocked me out with nitrous.

* * *

   I was one huge ball of pain when I came to. My mind wasn't clear-- aftereffects of the anesthetic, I'm certain-- and I felt like I was falling. It was like a horrible nightmare.

   After a while, I realized that a nurse was asking me a question.

   "Would you like some water, Miss Angelus?"

   "'n't 'll me 'ss," I hissed, the effects of the drugs slurring my speech. "'ater," I repeated, realizing how dry and crispy I felt.

   I vaguely remember tasting water at that point. The coldness seemed to revive me, but that was when the worst of the pain set in. My hand hurt from the IV in it. My hips hurt from being spread apart for so long. My... flesh... hurt from being flayed from my body and sewn back together in a new shape. I didn't want to move, and I didn't want to be awake.

   A little later, another nurse came in to give me another shot.

   This made the world a lot easier place to deal with. Ah, morphine!

   I was groggy and loopy, but I could think through the pain now. It was at this point that I realized that I was pretty much wearing a diaper made out of bandages with a tube coming out of it... My new catheter. it'd be with me for a week or so until I healed well enough to live without it. I was able to sit up a little and spread my legs apart so they didn't hurt quite so much.

   "How are you doing, Gabriel?" Doctor Esculto's voice sounded out from nearby. It took me a few seconds to find him since I was so dull from the drugs, but I eventually found his face hovering above mine.

   "'id it work?" I asked.

   "Quite well," he said, oozing with pride. "I think you're going to be quite pleased with the results. There was almost no tissue damage and there will be very little scarring. I would call it 'textbook', but it was a very easy procedure. You're an excellent patient, Gabriel."

   "Nn..."

   "Your brother has left some gifts for you," he said. "Some rather expensive electronics, it looks like."

   I glanced over the side of the gurney, my stomach turning slightly as I did so. Next to the bed, with a large blue bow on it was a new, unopened laptop computer.

   Michael, you dummy. We *really* couldn't afford that.

   "We'll let you rest here for a few more hours and then perform an inspection later this evening when we change your dressing. As I said, the surgery went very well. I think we have 'fixed' you by any definition of the word."

* * *

   I only had to stay in the hospital for another day, and for most of that time, I was so drugged that I didn't mind. I didn't even get a chance to look at the new computer until it was almost time for me to go. Even then, I was groggy because of the pain pills I was taking. Michael stopped by a few times, but he never stayed very long. Mostly, he asked me 'how do you feel'? 'Is there anything I can get you?' 'You like the new laptop?' and then left again, citing work.

   Yeah, you better be working some serious overtime to pay for this toy, idiot. I didn't yell at him for spending the money, but I didn't really feel like talking, let alone yelling.

   Still, it was nice to see that I had at least someone watching out for me.

   Thankfully, the nurses avoided me for the most part. Well, that's except for nurse Gonzales, an older woman who's job it was to show me how to change the catheter once I got home. I don't think the experience was pleasant for her, and I know that it sure as hell wasn't pleasant for me. She was nice and quiet, if a little overbearing. That didn't mean that what she did to me could be described as anything other than agonizing.

   Pain and torment aside, it was the first time I got to see the results of my surgery while the bandages were off. Of course the whole region was scabbed and swollen, and I had about two hundred tiny stitches in places I'd rather not think about, but what I had looked somewhat similar to what I had seen on magazines and in Michael's trashy videos.

   It's funny. I was almost thankful when I was wrapped back up in gauze bandages because I didn't have to look any more.

* * *

   I very vaguely remember the ride home. They had given me the pain pills at that point, so I was pretty out of it. They didn't actually kill all the pain, but they made it seem not to matter so much. I was quite thankful for them when I stood up out of the wheel chair and had to walk five paces from the curb to Michael's car. Afterwards, I resolved to do as little walking as possible until I healed. The pills also made it very, very easy to zone out or even fall asleep.

   Sleep was what I did for the next three days, simply because I made sure to take one of the pills the second I felt a twinge from my nether regions. I didn't even eat until Michael more or less forced a bowl of soup down my throat.

   I was up and around the fourth day, simply because my legs and back were starting to hurt from lying in bed so much. I felt weak and had poor balance. How much of that was the effect of the pain drug and how much of it was due to more than a week of forced inactivity was questionable. It was on that fourth day that I discovered that my new computer had a fairly nice feature. The disc drive was a DVD-ROM drive. I could watch movies in bed without relocating to the worn sofa in the living room. The only thing I had to get up for was to use the bathroom or to change my catheter bag.

   Michael still wasn't talking much, but when I asked for some movies, he brought every DVD we owned into my bedroom. It was a small collection, especially when compared to some of my friends, but it was still a welcome sight.

   I spent the next few days in outer space, in foreign countries, in fantasy worlds, and many other places that weren't Texas. The pain pills made it strangely easy to concentrate on the movies. Assuming I didn't fall asleep with my eyes open-- and I did a few times-- I could do nothing but stare at the screen for hours at a time.

   It was a welcome diversion. Aside from the pain, the days up until my return to school were rapidly running out. Just a few days ago, it had been two weeks. Now it was one week. If I watched Sean Connery traipsing around France as James Bond, I didn't have to think about the two notes from Doctor Esculto hidden in my nightstand.

* * *

   Humiliation is pissing on yourself.

   The 'area' had grown itchy, a sign Nurse Gonzales had said to watch for. I had been bathing myself with a wet cloth since I couldn't shower, but I had been instructed to leave the area under my bandages alone. This was my chance to scrub myself clean, at least as well as I could without reopening the sutures.

   You'd think you wouldn't have any piss in you if you were constantly being drained by a plastic tube. Unfortunately for me, this did not seem to be the case. As soon as I removed the device, sharp-smelling urine dribbled out of me and down my legs. It stung like fire where it splattered on my sutures. Luckily, I had gone into the bathroom for the procedure... I had considered trying to do it in my bed... so when I finally managed to clench my muscles enough to stop, I only had to mop the mess up off of the linoleum floor rather than scrub it out of my sheets or my mattress.

   "Gabe? You okay?" Michael's voice echoed from behind the door. "You've been in there a while."

   I was down on my hands and knees with my naked ass to the door, mopping the puddle off the floor. I very nearly slammed my head into the toilet when Mike started to open the door.

   Instead I jerked back and levered my foot against the door, slamming it back shut before it swung open.

   "GO AWAY, MIKE!" I yelled, pushing as hard as I could on the door. It wasn't very hard due to my weakened, partially drugged state, but I heard the thin veneer crack a little.

   "Sorry."

   Asshole. He doesn't speak to me for a solid week, and the second I have my pants down, he wants to peek in. If I didn't know better I'd say he wanted to see the results of my body-work.

   I finished cleaning myself and drying my dampened sutures as rapidly as I could. Despite stinging, the sewn-up cuts where my body had been altered were surprisingly solid. I had never really been a fast healer, but I guess a week of bed-rest is good for something.

   I quickly completed the process of inserting a new catheter back... where it's supposed to go... and rebandaged myself so I didn't have to look at the mess between my legs.

   I didn't see Mike between the bathroom and my bedroom. Frankly, I was thankful.

* * *

   A week became four days. Then three.

   By this point, I had given up on the catheter. It was more pain that it was worth, and my sutures seemed to be healing just fine. It meant, however, that I tended to piss on my hands while I fumbled around trying to get things working right so that I didn't piss on my leg again.

   Worse, the flesh exposed by the surgery felt raw and overly sensitive. I hated to touch it because I could feel it so clearly.

   A couple days later, it was Thursday, the day I was supposed to go in for my follow-up exam by Doctor Esculto. I wore sweat-pants and a tee-shirt, knowing that I would probably have to discard them.

   Indeed, to my chagrin, Esculto's nurse made me take them off and replace them with a thin paper gown.

   She also put me on a gurney with stirrups and spent several minutes arranging the lights in the examination room so that they would all focus on my exposed crotch.

   Joy.

   To my extreme discomfort, almost forty minutes passed between the time the nurse left me alone in the examination room and the time Doctor Esculto came in with another doctor. My hips were aching from being spread apart so long and my butt was sore from sitting on hard surface of the gurney.

   "And how are we doing today, Mister Angelus?" Esculto asked.

   Damn. Why did that sound every bit as patronizing as 'Miss Angelus'?

   "Ready to be done with this," I answered.

   "This is Doctor Scherblock. He'll be confirming my appraisal. We'll probably be removing your sutures today, and he'll take care of that for you."

   Lovely. Scherblock was a very round man with European features and thin, white hair. He wasn't old enough for it to be white from age, so it was either stress or that was just his real hair color.

   "I'm going to raise your gown now," Esculto said, flicking the switch on one of the lights pointed at my crotch.

   Not only was he creepy as any horror movie. He was going to be staring at my crotch for however long it took to remove the stitches. He looked entirely too eager for my comfort.

   "Ah, yes, very good progress here," Esculto said. "The skin tissue is healing very nicely. I don't think we'll have any problems at all. You are a wonderful patient, Gabriel!"

   "Yay." I replied. "Let's get this over with already."

   I tried to block the next hour. Basically, Doctor Sherblock poked, pulled, and prodded on my privates while the hot lights made them sweaty and sticky. Occasionally, he would dab my with alcohol, making everything sting like fire. Esculto went away a few minutes in-- probably to draw boobs on some flat-chested lady with his felt-tipped pen-- while Torquemada continued to extract his gleeful vengeance.

   After the hour had passed, Esculto came back in with a hand mirror. "I think you'll be quite pleased with the results. Would you like to see?"

   "Maybe later," I said.

   If nothing else, that scored a point. Esculto's expression seemed to deflate a little.

   Without even waiting for Scherblock to leave, I hauled myself out of the stirrups and swung my legs over the gurney. I was embarrassed as hell... but really, these guys had seen me in ways that even *I* hadn't yet. How much worse could it possibly get? I pulled my boxers on underneath the gown. Then I discarded that entirely, throwing it over the gurney, and pulling my shirt back on.

   "Well, I'm certain you'll want to get home and rest up before you return to school," Esculto said. "This must have been a very trying ordeal for you."

   "Something like that." To my joy, Scherblock looked distinctly disappointed.

   "There is a small amount of scarring... nothing horribly noticeable, but it is most prominent on the edges and around the base of your labia. You really should take a look at it... when you feel more comfortable." Esculto said when I got the drawstring on my pants tied. "If you choose, we can probably remove those in a few months."

   "I really don't think it's gonna be an issue," I told him. "But I'll keep it in mind."

   I realized I was being denigrating to the guy who operated on me. Part of me felt it was completely justified. I felt like I had been constantly patronized and spoken down to from the second I met him. Another part of me felt like I was being less than grateful.

   "Thank you, Doctor, but I really just want to go home right now," I added, hoping my apology came through.

   Esculto nodded, and led me out of the examination room. To my relief, Scherblock had something to do in another part of the office.

   "I quite understand," Esculto told me. "But you don't seem very happy, Gabriel. If I may..."

   I raised an eyebrow.

   "Gabriel, this is something that I tell a few of my patients," he said. His Spanish accent was getting particularly thick. "My job is to change the way you look. A lot of people think that I can change the way they feel about themselves, but I cannot do that. Your case is a little different. We repaired a defect, something that was a necessary change rather than cosmetic. The same thought applies. If you're not happy with who you are, no surgery can change that."

   "And what else, exactly, was I supposed to do?" I demanded in an angry voice.

   "Be comfortable with yourself. Be happy," he urged me. "You have options now that were not available to you before. You should explore them."

   Be happy. Right. Sure.

* * *

   After the examination, I was sitting in the waiting room again, waiting on Esculto and his receptionist to schedule my *next* follow-up visit. I had the two notes he gave me with me, so I examined them once more. The choices there were pretty clear. One would allow me to continue on as I had been for as long as I wanted to. The other would set the record straight. It would explain, in general terms, what had happened to me to everyone around me.

   "Yeah, you see, I *thought* I was a guy, but it turns out that I was mistaken," I said out loud to myself when I read the note.

   It sounded pretty stupid.

   In movies, a lot of the time, music makes the scene. Think about it for a second. In 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High', there's a scene where Phoebe Cates drops her top for Sean Penn. If you think about it, it's a really goofy scene about a guy jerking off and then getting busted for it. A lot of people think it's the most memorable scene in the movie. I know I do after seeing it a few dozen times on Cinemax. The thing that makes the scene is the Cars playing in the background while Phoebe gets out of the pool. It plays like the cheesy porno music in Michael's trashy videos, but an order of magnitude better. The music says, 'This is scene is a kickass sexual fantasy. You will never again get to see Phoebe Cates' tits in any fashion, so soak it up now while you have the chance, loser-boy.'

   It's like that in a lot of movies. What is otherwise a completely lame scene is made incredible by the soundtrack.

   I swear, right then, on the doctors' office Muzak speakers, a synthesized version of the Beatles' 'Get Back' began to play.

   I even hummed along. "Jojo was a man who thought he was a woman..." I wanted to cry.

   Across the room, probably waiting for one of the other doctors, was a young woman with long, dark hair and thick, round glasses. She had a gauze bandage over one eye under her glasses, so I guess she scratched her cornea or something. She glanced apologetically at me, like she understood what I was going through.

   I wanted to say, 'Don't even ask,' but I held my tongue.

   The hell of it was that she was really pretty, despite being kinda tall and spindly. If I hadn't just been permanently and forevermore unmanned, maybe I could find comfort with someone like that.

   Unlike Jeff Spicoli in 'Fast Times', I didn't even have the necessary equipment to fantasize about her.

   It was like a knife in the gut. I felt stupid. I felt abused and hurt. I felt like nothing was ever going to be alright ever again.

   On top of everything else, the choice was still bearing down on me. What was I going to do?

   As if to add insult to injury, the girl wouldn't quit staring at me.

   Overhead, the Muzak speaker began to play what was possibly the worst orchestrated version of a song I've ever heard. Of all the Talking Heads songs that I thought were completely immune to being made into Muzak, 'Once in a Lifetime' tops the list.

   "And you may find yourself in a beautiful house... with a beautiful wife... and you may ask yourself, 'Self, how did I get here?'"

* * *

   When I got home, IT was waiting for me.

   There IT was. Purchased from Benson's school store, no doubt, and laying in a box on my bed. It was there when I got back from the doctor's office. Michael had probably bought it earlier and put it out just after he brought me back. The first thing I did after getting home was to get directly in the shower, so he would have had ample opportunity.

   He didn't say anything about it, but then that wouldn't be a big change over the last few weeks.

   Curiously, feeling as if I was examining a dead animal, I opened the box.

   Inside was a dark jacket, cut similarly to the jacket of my school uniform, but not identically. It was slimmer in the waist and buttoned differently. Underneath it was a pleated skirt and a couple pairs of long grey socks.

   I swallowed hard upon seeing it.

   The two notes, still nestled in the pocket of my sweat pants, hung like they were lead weights.

* * *

   "Hey, Angeulus. How you doin'?!" Tony said excitedly the next morning. "Something's different," he noted.

   "I probably lost a few pounds lying in bed for two weeks," I explained.

   "Yeah, like you could afford to lose any more weight. I could pick you up and throw you as it is."

   "Please don't, I'm still sore."

   "So, they get your hernia fixed?"

   "Yeah. Yeah, I did."

- - -

~to be continued...