A Bonnie Lass

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Do you go through life wondering what people know about you?

A Bonnie Lass
by Angela Rasch

“Is she really going out with him?” The not-so-subtle whispers echoed through the locker room while grinning boys were exchanging jockey shorts for jockstraps, in anticipation of hotly contested dodgeball, on the gym floor. The comment sounded like the beginning of that song -- that was #1 a few months back, The Leader of the Pack. Instead of the Shangri-Las singing about a motorcycle hoodlum, the other boys in the gymnasium dressing room were questioning the validity, of my love life.

Bonnie Berg and I were going on our second date that following Friday to see Goldfinger, a new James Bond movie. All of us guys had read all the Ian Fleming books. I’d seen Dr. No and From Russia with Love with my buddies and laughed at all the double entendres. But taking a girl to see a spy thriller would be a new experience.

Almost everything I did with Bonnie was a “new experience.”

I hadn’t dated many girls because I had broken my leg in a fight, with a sophomore, during my freshman year. I had taken a sophomore’s position as a fullback on our JV football team, and he couldn’t handle the humiliation of someone younger than him being a better athlete.

There were a lot of boys, in the class above me, Bonnie's classmates, who disliked me. I didn’t know why and elected to think it was because word had gotten out that I had scored in the top one percentile, on a national scholastics test. Only one other person in our small, Catholic high school had scored above ninety-five percentile, and she was deemed “okay” because a girl could be smart.

I was bigger, faster, and stronger than most of the boys in my class, or the class above mine. But that didn’t stop the older guys from calling me names like “wimp” or “dickhead.”

And now, it looks like I’m going to be going steady, with Bonnie. It’s easy to tell she really likes me, and I’m nuts about her. I haven’t gone steady with anyone before because the priests and nuns say it’s a sin, which I question.

Teddy O’Hearn told me “Bonnie” means pretty in Ireland. As far as I’m concerned Bonnie Berg is the prettiest girl in our high school. . .and the nicest.

“Why’s Bonnie going out with you, whistledick?” one truly obnoxious Neanderthal asked derisively.

“Up yours!” I yelled for everyone to hear. “If you weren’t such an incredible loser, maybe you could get a date, with something.”

A year before, when I had gotten into that playground fight, during the first week of December, I had slipped on loose gravel on top of the cement slab where we played outdoor basketball. I had hit my head and knocked myself out. The boy who had just called me “whistledick” had jumped up and down on my leg and broken both my tibia and fibula, in two places.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t kick his butt, if I had to prove my masculinity.

After the movie, we were going over to her friend’s house to make Chef Boyardee pizza out of a box. I’d never had pizza and really looked forward to seeing what everyone was so excited about.

“I suppose she’s going out with me because she likes me. Is that too hard for a moron like you, to figure out on your own?”

“Bonnie’s sort of weird. But eventually, she’ll figure out you’re an asshole.” The guy who said that had one enduring quality. Because of him you never had to worry that anyone would claim you had the worst breath, in school. His personal odor rated somewhere between putrid and horse manure.

Do they hate me because I’m smarter than them and better at sports? Or is it possible I’ve somehow slipped up and given away my secret?

I had a keen interest in girls and loved almost everything about them. I couldn’t imagine anything better than the way they smelled, which was what I thought would be the aroma of heaven. I spent hours admiring the glistening skin on their hairless legs -- poking out from below billowing skirts, that made much the same sound as the slashing against your legs when you ran through a field of fully-grown wheat.

I dreamed of girls for hours on end -- dreamed of dating them, kissing them, slow dancing with them, and pressing against their soft bodies.

Oddly, I also dreamed of being one of them.

That was my innermost secret. A desire I told no one.

My urge was incredibly strong. I had dressed in my older sister’s clothing on the sly as often as I could. I went to bed every night wishing and dreaming that I would wake the next day -- not as the rough and tumble boy I had been born, but as the delicate female I was, on the inside.

No. It’s impossible for anyone else to know how I feel. I’ve been very careful to show only my male side to the world. As far as those pricks know, I’m one hundred percent boy. No one knows I’m really this freak. I’m one of a kind. . .the only guy in the world who thinks he should have been born a girl.

“She’s going out with him because she thinks he’s fun.” Bonnie’s brother, Charlie, had offered his two cents, from across the room. A classmate, Charlie was almost a non-entity — strictly from dullsville. He was on the smaller side and didn’t play sports. His claim to fame was riding a unicycle he had built for himself out of old bicycle parts. “Bonnie told me she thinks he’s the cutest boy in school.”

***

“We’ve been dating, for over four months, now,” she said.

I looked into her beautiful grey eyes and felt the lust that lurked barely below the surface whenever I was with her. Some nights, after our dates, my balls ached from having a raging hard-on, for hours on end. It was still the mid-sixties, and I was as button-downed as required by the ethics of the day. It would be several more years before the sexual revolution.

Probably the most wonderful thing about Bonnie was that she seemed to really “get” me. It was as if she could see into my soul and understand what I was all about. She appreciated me for the person I truly was.

Not that our relationship wasn’t hard.

Dating Bonnie was like painting a house on a tall stepladder. Every stepladder has a warning label. “The top or top step shall not be used as a step.” A stepladder uses the power of the triangle to establish a strong base below. When you go beyond the safety standards and use the top step, all of the advantages of a triangle are lost and the ladder becomes extremely unstable, both in strength and in the ability, to remain upright.

Sometimes, you just have to ignore that warning, not only in the use of stepladders -- but in personal relationships.

Sometimes, you need to reach heights that are beyond safe. Even though it had been scary dating her, I enjoyed immensely every minute — every second of our dating. For example, one night I stayed out until 4:30 AM because I didn’t want to be the first one who said it was too late.

“Four months,” I echoed. We were sitting on the front porch of her house. We’d just gone to a school hootenanny and had our usual great time. People had become accepting of us as a couple.

We kissed, and then she pulled away to arm’s-length. The look on her face was as if I had spit on her mother.

“I’ve been testing you all night.”

“Huh?” I asked stupidly.

“I read this test in a magazine, and I’ve been giving it to you all night.”

This doesn’t sound good.

“You flunked,” she said, as if I was a piece of gum on the bottom of her shoe. “That kiss was the last straw.”

“What do you mean, ‘last straw?’”

“The boy is supposed to kiss the girl,” she said. “I had to kiss you. You’re not the boy who’s right for me.”

And that was it.

We were over.

On the way home, from her house, struggling for answers, I wondered if there was any way she could have known about my urges. No . . . it has to be something else. I wear my lettermen’s jacket everywhere I go. No one has any idea.

I was dumbfounded.

We remained friends. That’s how pathetic I was.

I slowly moved on and found what I thought was the love of my life, picking a freshman, when I was a junior, as my new girlfriend. She was pretty and a cheerleader. I fell head over heels in love.

When junior prom rolled around -- I took Bonnie’s best friend. My girlfriend couldn’t go because she was too young, and Bonnie asked me to take her friend -- because she hadn’t been asked. I didn’t have it in me to say “no.” I’m sure Bonnie had counted on that.

At the time, I thought Bonnie should've had her brother Charlie take her friend to prom.

One time, Bonnie had asked me if I liked Charlie. When I said he was an okay guy, she smiled and answered, "I was afraid you thought he was weird. A lot of people do."

***

During college, I would line up Bonnie with dates when she came to Brookings, where I was enrolled at South Dakota State University. She would reciprocate when I went to Vermillion, where she attended the University of South Dakota.

On one occasion, she set me up with one of her best friends, a girl who might have been Madonna, a few decades later. She was funny, cute, and very with it. We dated several times. But she was too avant-garde for me.

Bonnie called when she heard I didn’t want to go out with her friend anymore.
“You know,” she said, “you’re not the big stud you seemingly want people to believe you are.”

The way she said it caused me to wonder again if my slip was showing. But that was impossible. I had joined the most masculine fraternity on our campus and had become one of the hardest drinking, women-chasing, BMOC’s imaginable.

I had also taken every psychology course I could, eager -- and yet fearful -- to find out what was wrong with me. In all those courses, I found one paragraph, in one textbook, which discussed the “abnormal” desire some men have, to dress in women’s clothing. At least, I knew there were more like me, abnormal as I was.

***

The last time I saw Bonnie was at her wedding.

All I remember of it was -- that for some reason -- fate had dealt me one last opportunity when her husband walked into the same bar I was drinking at -- about an hour before the ceremony.

Out of spite, and a sense of justice, I kept him there, pouring scotch into him until five minutes before he was scheduled, to meet her at the altar. He made it, slightly the worse for wear and then I had to watch her float down the aisle to a life with him.

In truth, he most likely was the better man for her. He was so darned cute I probably would have screwed him, even though I’ve never swung from that side of the plate. He was noted as one of the nicest people in our high school. He didn’t have a reputation for his brains, although he graduated from college with a pharmacy degree . . . an extremely demanding curriculum.

***

In my early sixties, I finally went to an all-school reunion. I hadn’t thought of Bonnie, in years. My memory of her had faded when other loves were lost and found, including my current wife, of over thirty-five years.

One of my classmates came up to me. "Have you seen Bonnie? She's the best-looking woman at the reunion. She's here, with her sister."

He's drunk. Bonnie doesn't have a sister. But . . . I have to see her.

I searched for her, for about ten minutes. When I finally did locate her -- I thought I was seeing double. From thirty feet away, it looked like Bonnie had somehow split into two incredibly elegant women.

My mind shifted into overdrive and poured doubts into those crevices that had eroded in my brain from years of guilt and shame. Somehow, she had to have known. Way back then, she had to have realized I’m transgendered, even though no one knew that word at that time. But how? How did she know? Even now, I maintain a masculine persona.

I found the courage to walk up to her. When I got close, I could tell which one was Bonnie. The fact that she had her arm hooked through her husband’s arm tipped the scale. Both women are gorgeous. The other one must be a cousin, because Bonnie only had the two brothers: Charlie and. . ..

A smile split Bonnie’s face. “It’s so good to see you. I was hoping you would come to the reunion. It’s been too long.” She hugged me warmly.

I accepted her husband’s handshake and wished I hadn’t been such a jerk before their wedding.

“Have you and Charlene had a chance to catch up?” Bonnie turned me toward the other woman. “You remember my sister, don’t you?”

Sister????

I looked to the girl I had thought was Bonnie’s cousin and suddenly realized I had been Charlene’s classmate many, many years before.

The End

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Thanks to Gabi for the review and help.

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Stories available through Doppler Press on Amazon:
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Comments

A Bonnie Lass

I like this story with the O.Henry twist at the end. Kind of a poetic justice, in a way.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

Brilliant as usual

An unusual angle, and with a kicker at the end.

Susie

Bonnie

Our hero has nothing to be ashamed of.
You might describe him as a person capable
of being content and happy if born a
female. And it appears he is content and
happy at being a male. Any fantasies he
shares as a male on the opposite sex he
would probably share if he were a female.
What disturbs him is that Bonnie made
remarks about his manhood. Our hero can
now understand these remarks as coming
from a girl with a family with issues and
insecurities. His CD can be viewed as a
phase. I think this can be analyzed from
the position that he finds girls so
fascinating that he has "internalized
the natural object of his affections..."
something to that effect. I read an
article that a person might fantasize
being like the girls he is attracted to.

Our hero held his ground and maintained
his manhood despite some of his emotional
problems. And from the out come it
appears he made the right choices.

Excellent story though I was clueless at
some points.

Kaptin Nibbles

Ah yes

kristina l s's picture

The only one in the world, the ladder against the wall and that top step. The sometimes surprising knowledge that people now and then see more than we might think or perhaps wish. Nice little kicker at the end, so much for the only one huh. Must admit I'm curious at the conversation that follows, but hey I can play with that one in my head.

Kristina

I Hope You Do

. . .play with it in your head.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Can I play with it on the floor

Andrea Lena's picture

with my metaphysical Barbies? Nice touch...like a Havlicek jump shot in the fourth quarter. Thanks for a great story.

She was born for all the wrong reasons but grew up for all the right ones.
Con grande amore e di affetto, Andrea Lena

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

Good Tale!

An excellent twist at the end.

But I wonder: "...scored above ninety-five percentile, and she was deemed okay because a girl could be smart."

Now, my big sister is just a couple years older than the narrator, and it seems like she carefully hid exactly how smart she was (and is) from the boys. For that matter, she still does, even as a teacher in a "gifted" program. . .

Even when I was in high school at the beginning of the '70s, it seemed like a lot of the girls soft-pedaled their academic talents, concentrating on their social skills instead. . .

I Agree

It could go both ways at that time. Some girls played the dumb blonde role, others got good grades without making a big deal out of it. Keep in mind the narrator's desire to be a girl and his obvious pride in his intelligence. He would want it to be okay for a girl to be intelligent. Also, my date for the senior prom was head cheerleader, homecoming queen AND our valedictorian . . . a smart blonde.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Grades

In Catholic schools it is okay to be smart.
It is expected in high school. They just
don't take anyone. My comments are based
on experience at both the grammar school
and high school level.

Kaptin Nibbles

I'll Have Nun of That

In that particular Catholic High School it was also okay to be molested by the parish priest. I wasn't, but a brother of a good friend was and shortly after high school he committed suicide, supposedly because he couldn't get his family to believe him. A cousin of mine was also a victim of that priest and hasn't talked to rest of his family in years for similar reasons.

As the school song flows through my mind I think of the days of innocence -- and want to SCREAM!

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

It Was Never Okay

It was never okay. These things happen
because there is a tendency of some persons
to look the other way when bad things happen.
You find these types everywhere.

Kaptin Nibbles

I'm sorry, but I thought your hero came across as -

A big W**ker, from his point of view he was the best scholar, a better sportsman than his class mates and the next grade up?

He was so good he had his leg broken, twice!

At Bonny's wedding he had the character of a weasel choosing to get the groom plastered for his own revenge. It wasn't about him it was Bonny's wedding day, what an A***ole.

I'm surprised he didn't become a politician, he had all the qualifications?

Good story about a real jer-double-k.

LoL
Rita

Age is an issue of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter!
(Mark Twain)

LoL
Rita

Thank You for Calling Me an A***ole

As this is mainly (almost 100%) an autobiographical story I guess that makes me a complete asshole. As I hate politicians your remark couldn't be more hurtful. Your taking out letters doesn't make that word any less awful.

Uhmmmm. A selfish transgendered person (weasel) -- now there's a novel idea. How many transgendered people do you know who aren't selfish?

What were you like as a teenage boy? Did you have any kind of self-absorption?

Seeing as I was one of the only boys to graduate from my high school, in its entire existence, that lettered in four sports, the remarks about the athletic prowess stand. I simply was bigger, faster, and stronger than MOST of the other boys in my class or the class above me as the story stated. A couple in each class were better athletes, but not many. I went on in life to be a standout tennis player, marathon runner and decent at man, many other sports.

The test scores were what the test scores were.

I scored a 99+ on the PSAT. No one else in the school came close. Another boy did transfer in who later became an aeronautical engineer, got bored and than became a neurosurgeon. He was easily many times smarter than me. Some one always is.

The boy who broke my leg was a snivling coward and a psychopath. What he did offered no judgment on my character, but rather on his. I was unconscious when he jumped up and down on my leg, as the story stated.

When I was 22 it was all about alcohol for me. How many TG people do you know who didn't go through a phase of substance abuse? Pouring scotch into the groom was as natural to me as breathing. We actually were fairly good friends. I was happy for "Bonnie" AND him. Although at the time I enjoyed the idea of him arriving at the church a bit worse for the wear.

My guess is you would prefer stories where the protagonist is a beautiful, small boy with elegant manners, who easily transforms into a girl.

Welcome to the real world. The comment that suggested I might have landed Bonnie had a been more attentive to her needs is probably 100% correct. Much to my chagrin. However -- I won't except a condemnation of who I was forty years ago. I was far from perfect -- but given the circumstaces I think I was and am a fairly decent human being.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Begging your pardon, darlin?

If I'm not mistaken, didn't the lad have a bit of remorse at the end? And seriously, things could be much worse. Some of us only get it right half the time, so I guess that would make me a partial A'hole? I liked this story. Who of us hasn't had more than a bit of a lifetime's worth of regret. The old, "If I knew then what I know now?" If I knew then what I know now I can pretty much expect that my dad would of killed me for real if I came out to him at seventeen. So are we all on the same page here? Good Job, Angela. Might I call you Angie?

Regrets. . .I had a few.

I did it my way.

"Angie" is just fine.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Great Story, Angela!

KristineRead's picture

I was out of town most of this week, so just catching up.

Another Great Story by Angela. Haven't we all felt much the same way? I'm a little bit younger then the protagonist of this story, and did not go to Catholic school, but the feelings and concerns expressed are so easy to relate to.

Thanks for a great story, Angela.

Hugs,

Kristy

Good story

Great twist at the end.

But the title... Every time I notice it, I think about P.D.Q. Bach's song "My bonnie lass, she smelleth." Aarrg!

A Bonnie Lass

The story sounds true to life. To hide one's transgender inclinations, the main character compensates by acting macho. Showing one's feminine side wasn't very common in the sixties. Perhaps he focuses too much on his inner struggles and doesn't pay enough attention to Bonnie's needs.

A bitter taste...

I felt a bitter taste of betrayal. Maybe I'm too selfish though... Bonnie had Charlene so she knew signs and she was aware of protagonist conformed them. And sure it was sixties and the macho role was the only way for solitary TG to survive.

kinda sad

our protagonist missed out on finding how deep the feminine part of him went, when it sounds like if he'd been honest with Bonnie, she would have understood, since her sister was going through the same thing.

DogSig.png

Excellent coming-of-age story

laika's picture

You write a pretty good story for an asshole. Don't you just love it when someone attacks your main character's character and your story was autobiographical? That happened to me ten times worse than Rita's comment here when I posted my straight-from-my-diary September 11, 2001 story What Were You Doing on Boom-Boom Day?, which I subsequently pulled and now can't find anywhere- SHIT! And for the record, in my opinion as a card carrying, dues paying professional asshole, you're not an asshole.

This is an excellent little coming-of-age tale that captures the times it was set in and an American Midwest that considered pizza exotic food (LOL!!!) really well. If your narrator hid her true sense of who she was that's what most trans people did back then. And Charlene might have been sharing her feeling with her sister as a teen, but since everyone at school knew her as Charlie it sounds like she had her own journey before managing to come out and decide to transition; I'd be curious to know the timeline + details about that.

And I'd love to be able to listen in on your narrator's conversation with Charlene after meeting her at the end of this story. It's never too late to make some sort of headway in the honest sharing of self, and that would be a good place to start, however tentatively, rather than some lame-ass closeted: "I don't understand this 'transgendered' stuff, but good for you Charl- uh, Charlene..."; which would just be sad. But since the existence of this story implies your character is telling somebody her real life story maybe that was the start; like maybe this is a letter to that wife of 35 years she mentioned.
~hugs, Veronica

.
The closest approximation to what it's like in my brain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u08E7c-FRbU&t=4s