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Train Crossing -*- Copyright 1999 by Ellen Hayes.

Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual
persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when
used for satirical purposes.

This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and
possibly sex.  If you are legally not allowed to read materials
containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading
this.  I am not responsible.
Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it
in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally
allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish,
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All rights reserved.  See the bottom for distribution rights.


Train Crossing

     Matt stared at the commuters in front of him.  They were going to
get a shock real soon.  He wondered how many of them would go home to
recover, and how many would continue on to work, to talk of the lunatic
they'd seen jump in front of a train that morning.  Then he wondered how
many of them cared about their jobs, and how many just didn't have
anything else to do with their lives.
     He had something to do with his life, a real purpose.  Something to
achieve, something that would make it all worthwhile.  The problem was,
it was impossible.  Which is why he was here, edging forward to get to
where he could get a train to remove him.
     He'd wanted to be a woman as long as he'd been alive.  Ever since
he could remember, three or four or something like that, he'd been
envious of the girls around him, and it had never gone away.  Not with
the therapists his parents sent him to.  Not when his parents explained
the impossibility of it all.  Not when he found out what was possible,
surgically and chemically and with enough practice.
     The problem was, ironically, that he was a perfectionist in this,
if nothing else.  There was nothing anyone could do to make him a woman;
all they could do was mutilate his body and reshape it into a
not-especially-good facsimile.  Sometimes it worked really well.  He'd
seen people that he would have sworn had been that way since birth, and
then talked to them and found out that they had longings similar to his.
But even the best of them, the models and housewives and career women,
even the best were a poor second, in his mind.  Not in theirs, and he
had always been careful not to put them down, not even in his own mind.
After all, he couldn't call them 'strange,' not with his own desires.
     But they would never be real women, and neither would he.
     And it hurt.  It hurt bad enough that he wanted to die.
     Matt had been driving around the country for a couple of months,
trying to make sense of it all.  He'd ended up in some suburb of New
York City - he wasn't even sure what the name was - and last night, he'd
been unable to avoid it any longer.
     There wasn't anything that could be done to realize his desires,
and he didn't want to live.
     He'd tried, tried so hard to find reasons for living, like the
therapists had told him.  But nothing worked, and every woman he saw
aroused in him a certain amount of envy.  They had what he was quite
willing to die for, and no one could possibly give it to him.
     A fatal encounter with a commuter train had seemed like the best
solution.  After all, it happened every so often, in America as well as
Japan, and it would leave most of the 'important' things, the things
other people would have wanted, safe and secure.  Even his car was
unlocked with the keys in the ignition, in case someone else needed it.
     He wouldn't.
     Ever since the revelation had become unavoidable last night, he'd
been moving as if he was in a daze, but everything had fallen into place
with surprising ease.  He noted this with a sense of irony; his life had
been so hard, full of frustration and fear and envy and struggle until
now, but since he had come to the natural end of things, it was as
though everything was falling into place.
     He blinked once, in the cold New England morning, and noticed that
he was right in front of one of the tracks, and a train was approaching.
That was how it had been since last night, as if he was on a slide or
something, letting natural forces guide him to the place he needed to
be.
     He stopped, and looked deep within himself, in the last chance he
would get.  The reasons and arguments and counterarguments were the same
as they had been last night, and he felt the same way.  He looked
outward again, at the approaching engine, which had not slowed, and
imagined his body shattering on the nose of the diesel, the immense pain
and the blackness that would overwhelm him.
     No change.  Any amount of physical pain was preferable to the hell
of his life as a male.
     The train was an express, and not scheduled to stop for another ten
miles.  He thought that it would be stopping today, and he almost felt
bad about the amount of disruption he would cause, but it was really the
best way.
     As he turned his head to watch the train, the last thing he would
ever see, he experienced a curious sense of deja vu.  A doubling of
conscious, or a faint memory, or something.  It was peculiar, and he
smiled and almost laughed at the strange feeling that he'd been there
before, looking at the train-
     Looking at the train-
                               waiting for it to come and end his life.
                            waiting for it to come and end her life.
     He felt a strange dizziness, as if the world has shifted around him
     She felt a strange dizziness as if the world had shifted around her
and he saw the world through HER eyes-
and she saw the world through HIS eyes-
                                       "Who ARE you?" he gasped.
                                        "Who ARE you?" she gasped.
     I am Matt/a man/I hate it/just graduated college/history/high
     I am Amanda/a woman/I hate it/the war/the job at the plant/her
school/prom night/Jessica/sex/dances/locker room/the stories/hated them/
fiance/the letter/engagement/enlisted/dances/so handsome/he kissed her/
a nothing degree/who cares/moving too fast/so hard/I hate being a man/
then he left/women's college/a job/meaningless/I hate being a woman/
couldn't they see?/hurt him to live/couldn't stand it/and so he had
couldn't they see?/hurt her to live/couldn't stand it/and so she had
decided to die.
decided to die.
     Matt took her hand.
     Amanda took his hand.

     And then it all left him, and reality snapped back into place with
a fierce concussion that left him gasping, except it sounded higher-
     He staggered backward, the heels not offering enough purchase to
allow him to remain upright.  The train rushed through, roaring
triumphantly, as he stumbled and fell on the snowy platform.
     As he lay there, staring at the fierce blue of the November sky, he
realized that while he was Matt, he was also Amanda, clad in the silk
dress her mother had found for her at the resale shop that made her look
so pretty, and the coat that had been carefully darned at the elbows and
the hem when it wore out and Mother bought a new one, so expensive but
she deserved one and Amanda got her castoff just in time, and the lisle
stockings that were all they could buy nowdays since Japan had bombed
Pearl Harbor and the war they had been fearing for two years had finally
come to engulf them all...
     The crumpled papers in her hand, Matt knew, were the letters that
her fiance, Lucius, had written her, including the last one in which he
said that he had fallen in love with a girl in Iceland, and they had
gotten married, and therefore they were no longer engaged....
     "Miss?  Are you alright?"  Matt looked up, and the concerned
gentleman in the fedora was looking at her with concern in his eyes.
     "Yes," he said, lifting her gloved hand up and letting the man take
it and help her upright again.  "I just, just got lost in thought, and
when the train came by, it startled me, and I stumbled..."  He balanced
on her heels, and took a deep breath.
     "You should be careful around the trains, miss," the man said,
sternness and concern warring in his voice, like her father would have
sounded in a similar situation.  "You could get hurt!"
     "Yes, yes I could," Matt admitted in Amanda's voice.  "Thank you
for helping me up."  He put a hand up to her head, and found that her
hat was still pinned in place, and her hair wasn't out of place either.
     He really was in Amanda's body.
     He beamed at the man, suddenly wildly happy, and said, "Thank you,
but I really must be going, I have a social to get ready for tonight..."
and with that, he dashed off, heels clattering on the platform as he
headed for her parents' car, that she had borrowed that morning, to come
out here, to commit suicide, because she had been jilted...
     "Oh my God, she was going to... for that?"  He could hardly believe
it, but he'd felt her, could STILL remember how she had felt, how she
was so sick of everything to do with the war and men and women and
everything else in her world.  Remarkably like he had felt, actually.
     But now, HE was inside HER, and he could remember both his life AND
hers, down to the smallest details, and it felt as though he was about
to burst with happiness, because he was her, and all of his problems and
worries and angst and fear and hatred and despair had vanished in one
crystalline instant...
     He trotted out into the parking lot, towards the Packard sedan
which was going to have to serve her family until the end of the war,
and slid into the driver's seat, finding the keys where Amanda had left
them.  Her gloved hands trembled a bit with the cold, until she started
the car and turned the heater on.  It warmed the car up quite quickly,
and he looked in the mirror as he waited.
     Amanda's face looked back at him, her fluffy blond curls
surrounding an angel's face.  Not quite Betty Grable, but ten thousand
times better than the last time HE'D looked in a mirror.  Her makeup was
simple, a little mascara and powder and lipstick apparently being all
she could manage, though Matt was of the opinion that it was all she
needed.
     And of course, the smile that lit up her face whenever he thought
of what had happened to him, made her look radiantly joyful.
     He - she - started the car, carefully noting how it felt to drive
the car while wearing heels, and pulled slowly out of the parking lot.

     Amanda regained her feet, or rather HIS feet, quickly enough, and
looked around to see if anyone had noticed.  No one had; they were all
intent in their own business, which didn't include him.  Or her.
     Because she was herself, or she could remember herself, but she was
him too, at the same time, and wearing the leather jacket over the
sweater and T-shirt and jeans and boots, and it was almost fifty YEARS
in the future, between one breath and the next, and the breaths had been
in different bodies...
     Amanda ran back to Matt's car as fast as she could move his body,
wildly exhilarated, because she was finally FREE!  Free of all those
bullshit expectations and restrictions of being a 'nice girl' or even a
bad one.  Free to be her own self, to be able to frown when she wanted
and get angry when she wanted, to be powerful and dynamic and a PERSON,
instead of just a wife.
     She was also slightly fearful that someone had stolen Matt's car.
     It turned out no one had, but as he slid into the driver's seat,
she was startled by a large package in the passenger seat that neither
of them, Amanda OR Matt, remembered as being there before.  And there
was a letter on top, with his name on it...
     She opened it, and found a handwritten letter addressed to him.

     "Dearest Matthew," it started, "You and I both know that you have
decided not to end your life, and we both know why."  The handwriting,
he realized, looked astonishingly familiar, and he flipped quickly to
the end to read the signature.
     Amanda Peterson, it said.  And she knew, then, that it was Matt, in
her body, writing to her, in his body, after an interval of almost fifty
years.  She laughed then, and laughed all the harder as the deep
resonance of his voice startled her for a moment.
     The letter continued, "And I am so glad!
     "I won't bore you with a rehash of my life up to that terrible,
wonderful moment on the train platform, when everything changed..."

     "He's not worth it- I mean, he's not worth ruining my life in some
sort of twisted devotion to him," Amanda explained to her parents later
that first morning.
     "But..." her mother said, trailing off before she said anything
stupid.
     "I'm glad you realized that," her father said.  "I know it was a
severe blow to you, as it would be to anyone, but if he was foolish
enough to give you up, then you shouldn't compound his foolishness!"
     "I know, Daddy," Amanda said, smiling at him.  "And I won't.  My
life," she declared firmly, "my life is just beginning!"

     "The war continued, of course, and ended, of course, as we all knew
it would, with America triumphant.  Oh, the feeling in the air was
wonderful!  And while I finished out my college degree, I knew that
there would be little call for it with all the returning soldiers.  But
I was glad I did, because I met a very special returning veteran while
in school..."

     "Mom!  Dad!  Arthur asked me to marry him!" Amanda shrieked in joy
as she rushed into the house.

     "Thirty years before 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder' was a
buzzword, Arthur had it, but I knew how to deal with it, and he was such
a wonderful man, it was worth it.  We were married in 1946..."

     "Push honey, push," Arthur said, uselessly, and Amanda wanted to
scream at him, but she didn't have the energy after twenty hours of
labor.  Instead, she pushed, and then knew instinctively that one more
would birth her baby, and so she gasped for breath in between
contractions as the world went silent and dark as she concentrated on
the feelings in her body, the tantalizing feelings of movement just
beyond the pain, and she felt the contraction rise up like a wave and
she got on top of it, surfing it, and PUSHED-

     "After our third child, Allison, I got quickly tired of dealing
with nothing more challenging than what to fix for dinner!  So I started
investing in stocks..."

     Amanda opened the envelope and almost gasped as the figures jumped
out at her.
     "What is it, dear?" Arthur asked as she stood there, unable to move
for a moment.
     Finally she spoke.  "It, it's a note from our broker, remember my
'little investments?'" she asked, her voice curiously quiet.
     "Well of course I do," Arthur said with assurance as he got up from
his chair.  "And you got a letter?  Don't tell me we lost everything?"
he joked.
     She turned to him, and smiled timorously.  "It tripled in value,
dear."

     "Of course, I had an advantage, with my 'instinct' for the way the
market would perform.  It was hardly fair, but I wasn't in the mood to
gamble.  We were able to retire when Arthur turned fifty..."

     "Have I ever mentioned I love you, Amanda?" Arthur asked her as
they danced gracefully across the ballroom.
     "Only for the last forty years, darling," Amanda said with feeling,
and smiled at him, that gentle little smile she had on her face whenever
she remembered how much she loved him.

     "Strangely enough, I find that as I have gotten older, I have
developed a sense of my own death.  I would say 'impending doom,' except
it does not feel that way to me, not after seventy-four years!  And as I
feel the weeks and days, and now hours counting down, I realize that
while my life is ending, yours is in a sense just beginning.
     "We both know what extremes of emotion can drive you to," the letter
blurred, and Amanda was a bit surprised to find Matt's eyes tearing up.
She dabbled at them with his strong fingers and kept reading.
     "... and so I hope this letter (or should I call it a novel by
now?) will find you in better spirits than you were a day ago."
     "Oh, you bet!" Amanda said, and laughed again at how deep her -
his, now - voice was.
     "And so, I have a proposition.  Since I and my family have far too
much money, I have started a scholarship fund, and I would like to offer
you the chance to administer it."
     "What?"  Amanda re-read that part, and it really did say that.
     The letter explained, "I know how much you wanted to make a real
difference in the world, and now you can!  I urge you to take this
position, for it is quite real, and should pay enough for you to live
well, at the same time as allowing you to serve in a much more vital and
crucial fashion than simply being a high school history teacher!"
Amanda laughed again at that - she'd wanted to be a teacher for a long
time, and Matt had a fresh history degree!
     "Simply take this letter to my lawyer's firm and present it, and he
will explain the position to you.  It will start as soon as you get
there...."
     Amanda laughed again, in sheer delight, and started Matt's Toyota,
placing the letter carefully under one thigh.
     His life was just beginning.



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"Tallyho!"      \   /     @>--,--'--  ehayes@anti-social.com + vicki
Ellen Hayes --=(*)=(*)=-- Renaissance Woman    ==[--------   + sig
                          http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes  + virus



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