CHAPTER 31 -- Summer Education -- Beginning Section

People didn't call Gabriel students nerds for nothing. At West High, kids spent the summer lifeguarding or working at fast food places or just hanging out and getting into trouble. Gabriel students went to summer school. If anybody was doing something else, I didn't hear about it. Most of the people I knew were taking classes at Greenwood High, because the classes were free, but I heard that some kids were taking intensive music classes at the conservatory downtown.

Teresa was taking conversational French in the morning and a computer course in the afternoon. She'd gotten Bethany and another girl, Judy Klemp, to agree to go with her so she wouldn't be the only girl in the class. I decided to take a morning class in Spanish, so I could get to Spanish III or maybe IV by graduation. I thought it would look good when applying to college. Dennis was taking an advanced chemistry class in the morning, I guess to help him get into a good pre-med program. He seemed to have his life planned out. Sylvia was taking remedial algebra, and counting on my help.

The morning classes let out at 12:30, but my appointments with Dr. Gordon were still at 4:30, the way they were during the school year, and it took about an hour to walk to them from Greenwood High, so I had something like two or three hours to kill on Tuesday and Friday. Dennis's condo complex was almost on the way from Greenwood to Dr. Gordon's, so I got in the habit of walking home with Dennis and hanging out with him until it was time to go to Dr. Gordon. His complex had a pool, which made it even better. Sometimes he'd tease me: "do you love me for myself, or for my pool?" Sometimes I came over even when I didn't have an appointment with Dr. Gordon.

The summer school classes were a lot easier than the ones at Gabriel. I could get all my homework done in maybe a half hour each day. The other kids, though, kept complaining about how hard the class was. I hadn't thought of my Gabriel classes as so hard, maybe because we were all doing the same amount of studying, so it seemed normal.

One thing I didn't like about summer was the street harrassment. I never had any problems when I was walking with Dennis, but twice on the way to Dr. Gordon, I had cars slow down and somebody shout something out the window. The second time it was an older guy, which was really creepy. I finally asked Dennis to walk me to Dr. Gordon. He was happy to do it, but I felt bad making him waste an hour walking around. Coming home, I'd take the bus, which wasn't so bad.

On Saturdays, if I was hanging out with Teresa and her friends, we'd sometimes have trouble walking down to the ice cream shop, like in the Spring. I didn't feel so scared since there were a bunch of us, but it made summer less fun.

One time, though, I had a really bad experience. We were about to walk into the ice cream shop and three big guys, like football players, were going in at the same time. They started talking to us, saying something about how nice it was to meet up with a bunch of pretty girls and pretending it was a date. I was already feeling like, get me away from here. One of them said to me, "hey, girlie, what's with the long face? Lemme brighten up your day," and then pulled me over and tried to kiss me. I was so mad I punched him in the stomach as hard as I could.

"Hey, what was that for? I just wanted to give you a kiss," he said.

"And I just wanted to give you a black eye!" I yelled. "I guess neither one of us are going to get what we want." I added. Suddenly I was afraid they were going to beat me up, but the guy's friends just laughed and said, "she's got you there," but I was already starting to shake. I was suddenly remembering the time Tom Prescott and his gang dragged me into the classroom. I thought I was going to fall down or faint. I dimly heard one of the boys say, "hey, what's the matter with her?"

Somebody helped me onto a bench, but I hardly noticed. I was having some sort of double vision, or maybe more like double feeling. I could feel my shirt being pulled up, I could feel Tom's hands on my breast, I could feel my pants being pulled down. I saw Teresa and Carol looking at me, and I managed to croak out, "flashback." I couldn't stop the memories. I could feel Tom's hand on my crotch. I felt ashamed of being undressed and exposed, like I wanted to die. I felt even worse than when it actually happened.

I could hear Carol talking to me. She was sitting next to me and saying, "Melanie, it's okay. You're at the ice cream shop. You're not at West High. Nobody's going to hurt you." She was saying it over and over again. I nodded and started taking deep breaths. I couldn't remember telling her about the almost-rape, but I guess Teresa told her that something awful had happened to me there.

The boys came out of the ice cream shop and gave us all ice cream cones. The one who tried to kiss me came over and said, "Jeez, I'm really sorry, if I'd known you'd get so upset...." I realized he wasn't a mean kid, he just thought it was normal to kiss a girl without asking. I thought that, too, back when I was a boy. Teresa explained, "she had some really awful experiences at her old school."

My afternoons with Dennis were the opposite of this. We'd come to his house and change into our bathing suits and swim for an hour, and then come in and change and eat something and talk. Mostly, he'd talk about his plans for the future. I didn't say all that much because I hadn't thought about the future, and I thought he'd be bored if I talked about Sylvia and the street harrassment. When the weather was hot, we wouldn't bother to change after swimming, we'd just eat in our suits and then sit on a towel and talk and cuddle. I'd bring my sundress and just put it on over my suit when it was time to leave. We were always alone there, because his parents both worked, and his older brother was a lifeguard at a city pool and away all day.

One time, Dennis asked if he could touch my breast. He sounded kind of embarrassed about it, so I wanted to make him feel okay about it, so I said, "I'd love it." At first, he just touched me real lightly, through the bathing suit. I had to show him how to hold my breast. I told him I liked it, mostly to encourage him, but it took a few times before he felt comfortable really holding and, well, fondling it so it felt good. I started sliding the strap down on the bathing suit so he could touch my bare breast. It felt really good, like I wanted more. I also started unbuttoning his shirt, or, if he had a T-shirt, pushing it up, and stroking and tickling his chest.

At night, when I was in bed and playing with myself, or just thinking about it, I started imagining it was Dennis stroking my crotch and my thighs, and I'd get really turned on. Actually, it was more like I was getting swept away. I'd get cold chills, and I felt like I wanted Dennis to do this to me in real life more than anything in the world. It was wonderful and scary at the same time. I talked it over with Dr. Gordon, and she said it was pretty common for teen-agers to feel real strong urges like this. People usually called it "hormones." I guess I must not have had many hormones when I was a boy, because I never felt anything this strong until now. She thought that maybe the sex-change thing made these "hormone" feelings even stronger in me than in most girls. She suggested I not worry about it, and she didn't think it would be too bad if Dennis did end up doing what I wanted, but I should be sure to listen to how he felt about things and not push him into anything.

I wasn't spending all my free time with Dennis. Sylvia needed my help, so on the afternoons when I wasn't with Dennis, I would go over to Sylvia's to go over her class and help her with her homework. She could actually do the math, but she still panicked a lot and needed me to calm her down and walk her through everything. On the days when I saw Dr. Gordon, or if I was at Dennis's, I would go over to her house before dinner, eat with her family, and spend the evening helping her. Her mom or dad would then drive me home. I felt a little guilty mooching off of them, but they told me it was the least they could do for me helping Sylvia.

On Saturdays when I wasn't with Teresa and her friends, I would hang out with Sylvia and her friends. They had an above-ground pool in the back yard, so I'd bring my bathing suit and we'd paddle around or just sit and cool off. Usually Sylvia and Doris were there and Judy Klemp, the girl in Teresa's computer class. Sometimes her friend Nick, who she insisted wasn't her boyfriend and who played guitar, was there, too, and once or twice his guitar-player friend Jeff came. On days when there weren't any boys, we would sometimes just go naked in the yard and the pool. Sylvia and I thought it was a little naughty, which we liked, but Doris thought it was stupid to get so hung up on whether somebody else could see our bodies. "We all know what everyone looks like under their clothes." But actually, I didn't really. I'd try to see what the other girls looked like to see if the sex change really made me look just like them. I couldn't see much of their crotches, what with the pubic hair, but I did notice that Doris and Sylvia had bigger breasts than mine and Judy just had sort of bumps. Judy had kind of a boy's figure, anyway. I'd thought of Doris as some sort of butch lesbian because of how she looked at the prom, but now she was growing her hair back and wearing summer dresses.

"You know, Melanie," said Sylvia one time when we were hanging out all naked and naughty. "When you first started coming to Gabriel, and everyone knew you used to be a boy, a lot of people were wondering if you still looked like a boy under your clothes."

"Ugh," said Doris. "That's so disrespectful! Didn't they ask themselves how Melanie would feel?"

"Yeah, I thought it was pretty gross, too, and I didn't even know Melanie back then. Anyway, I heard that some of the girls in your gym class said they knew for a fact that you looked just like all the other girls, and after that, the talk died out."

"Yeah, I remember on my first day, one of the girls was looking at me, and she said she hadn't expected me to look normal. But she apologized. I guess she told everyone else, or maybe some of the other girls were looking, too. I didn't think about it too much, because I was expecting it to be a lot worse. It was so bad in the boy's gym back at West Hell -- that's West High, ha, ha -- I refused to go any more."

"I wasn't sure whether to tell you. I hope it's long enough ago that it doesn't bother you. And I hope you know now that when stuff like this comes up, we'll defend you. We have your back."

I shrugged. "It wouldn't have done me any good to be bothered by it. But I guess you're right, I had enough to worry about back then without worrying about that, too." It did make me feel a little less weird about checking out the other girls' bodies, though.

Saturday evenings, if I was at Sylvia's, we'd go over to that church basement where the youth minister had what they called a coffee house, which didn't have coffee, but did have pizza and pop and fruit and juice, and Nick and his musician friends would play and we would talk. Doris was really interesting to talk to. She thought for herself a lot and had her own ideas about everything. She said she was a radical feminist and had read all the big authors like Simone de Beauvoir and Andrea Dworkin and Naomi Wolf. When I asked her if she was a lesbian like everyone said, she said that was a stupid question. When she saw how I shut right up, she said she didn't mean I was stupid, just that I needed to think about it. She said the right question was were we being with people we liked and were we making love with people we enjoyed making love to. She didn't see anything wrong with her making love to boys or to girls, as long as she was treating them with respect -- the Gabriel girl was showing, I thought. And she didn't see why I shouldn't make love to a boy or a girl, either, if I wanted to and he or she wanted to and we weren't disrespecting anybody. It made me think of my feelings about Dennis. Then sometimes she'd sing a song called "R-E-S-P-E-C-T." Nick and Jeff knew all about how she liked it, so when she started, they'd switch to playing along with her singing and try go get her to go up on the stage, which was just a platform in the corner with a mic. Doris made me think of Ellen, who liked to talk about sex a lot, but I had the feeling Doris had done more than she talked about, while Ellen talked more than she did.