Independence
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Part 1

It was supposed to be an experiment in socialization. No physical changes except some blockers to hold back the growth of a beard and make the male genitals sit quietly in the delicate panties. Just to play with the male mind. And then it would be over. There would be a follow up in a week or two to confirm re-assimilation as a male. I suppose I never thought that was in doubt.

I signed up for the cash. It was a two-year program and while they housed all of us and watched us interact as we were slowly feminized, I just counted up the daily fee. With full board and nothing to spend money I would be leaving there a wealthy guy. I never thought I would be anything else.

For two years I looked forward to independence day. That would be the day that I could return home to my apartment that they had been looking after in my absence, and collect not only the payoff for the experiment but the rent they had collected off a sub-tenant in my absence.

Wealthy – yes. But a guy? Of course I was. I mean I responded to the conditioning, yes, but only because it was relentless. Now it was over. I never doubted that I would simply be able to go back to the man I had been.

But my independence day was a sunny day in spring. And the floral dress was just perfect. With a dress like that and bare legs, I knew I had to shave them smooth, and wear shoes to match. The necklace was last minute. They said I could keep it. The whole outfit.
They said that unless I had some homosexual or transgender inclination, I would re-adjust immediately. I was just a normal guy, so why wouldn’t I?

I should be in my male clothes, down at the marina looking for that sailboat I wanted to buy, but instead I was sitting in a café in a dress and red heels, thinking about spending my money on women’s clothes, and using a compact mirror to check my lipstick. On my Independence Day.

There was a magazine in the rack at the café, and I was thumbing through it, gasping at all the beautiful clothes. It was not me. Was it?

Then “he” walked in. I barely noticed him, but I could see that the café was full and that he had ordered and was looking for a seat. For some reason I smiled. I still had my compact in my hand. I guess it was just checking to see that there was no lippy on my teeth. Maybe.

“Do you mind if I …?”

What could I say? I just shrugged my shoulders. Was I going to talk in the way I been conditioned? In that silly girly voice?

“It does seem to be very busy here. Busier than I remember.” The words came out of my mouth in a high and simpering tone. I am not even sure why I said anything. I was looking at a magazine.

“So, you are not a regular here?” He was looking straight at me. I had the strangest feeling. He was a very good-looking man. Tall and fit, tanned, and with tousled sandy hair, a little too long, perhaps.

“I live nearby. I used to come here everyday. But I have been away.” Why was I talking? What was this feeling? It was deep inside me. I had a sudden thought that my little cock might be growing. I moved to smooth out my dress to check. No. It was tiny. I crossed my legs to crush it, just in case. He watched my legs. They looked great. Why had a shaved them the day before Independence Day? That was stupid considering that I was never going to shave them again.

“Somewhere exotic?” he asked.

“Nothing like that. A girl has to make a dollar.” That was me. A girl. They said that the genitals would recover in size and performance from the moment that the blockers ceased to have effect. That might be a week or two. Maybe longer.

“Can I ask what you do?” he asked.

Hell no, I thought. But I am not doing anything. What can I do? I had to say something, so I said: “I just quit after two years in the same place. That is ancient history. I am looking for something new.”

He smiled, and there was a surge of that weird feeling. Was he attracted to me? My hand instinctively went to my hair. It had been cut in preparation for Independence Day, but I looked so good with longer hair. Why had I cut it? It made me look like a tomboy. I was not a tomboy. What was I?

His coffee arrived. It was an espresso in a cup, plus a large takeaway cup. He downed the single shot.

“If you are not doing anything perhaps you might consider joining me for lunch?” he said.

The nerve of this guy. I never would have been so forward. I liked it in a man. I liked him. Maybe more than that, if such a thing were possible. Which it is not. So why was I grinning at him like a fool? Worse still, I had nothing to do.

“I was just going to do some shopping.”

“Let me take you down to the Waterfront Shopping Centre,” he said. “That is where I am living at the moment. I am living on my boat down at the marina next to the Centre. Do you know that area?”

“Any spare moment I am down there. Everybody knows me down there,” I blurted out. Then I had the sense to add: “Or they used to. I have been away for a while.”

“Are you interested in boats?”

Now this could get me into trouble. Say no. Tell him you hate boats, was what I was telling myself. So, I said: “Yes. I love boats. I have always wanted to sail away from here.”

He had a rental outside. It was a pickup with some provisions in the back. He opened the door for me.

“I don’t usually get into cars with strange men,” I said.

“Dane,” he said. “Dane Sogard.” He thought that he was no longer a stranger by telling me.

“Michelle.” I did not give a second name. I sort of liked the name “Sogard”. Could it be Danish? Was he Dane the Dane? Michelle Sogard. It sounded nice. “What sort of boat do you have, Dane?” I asked.

“It’s a 90 foot Brooke design with a schooner rig,” he said, as we drove down the road toward the waterfront. “Do you know what that is?”

“I sure do,” I replied. “Do you think a girl doesn’t know her forepeak from her transom?”

He laughed. What a laugh. A laugh that can warm a whole room. God knows it warmed me. I was suddenly aware that I had a penis. A horrible ugly little penis. If it were not for that thing, this is the kind of man I could turn gay for. He could sweep me into his arms and take me aboard his boat. We could sail the oceans together. We could make love every day.

Was I turning gay?

“I can’t wait to see it,” I said.

“But shopping first.” It seemed more of a statement than a question. He was not going to rush it. But I knew what he wanted. It was the same things as me.

“Dane?” I asked. “Would you consider yourself open-minded?”

Part 2

His boat was named “Independence”. I knew from the moment that I saw it that I wanted it to be my life. I was independent at last, and Dane accepted me for what I was. I could finally accept that I was independent of gender. I was a person. A human being. And that was all that mattered.

After two years in the program I was sexually neutral. That was the idea. Neutralize my maleness. Blockers to remove the male hormones and render me temporarily impotent. Deny me male clothing – just plain colored smocks and other sexless garments. Hair neither short nor long. Face neither bearded nor beautified. Be of no sex, for two years. Engage in useful work not attached to any stereotype alongside other neutralized people. Be subjected to physical examinations and interviews. Two years and then collect a payment and make my choice.

Some of us had developed soft tissue including incipient breasts. Apparently, the presence of blockers can encourage latent female hormones to come forward, but it was not intentional. It was not supposed to make us female. That was not the purpose of the program, as I understood it.

When I left, there was no question in my mind that I would return to life as a male. Why then did I put a dress on to go out for that first time? I told myself that I would look too odd as a man, but the truth is that the moment I put that dress on I felt great. The necklace, a little mascara and lipstick, the thin red belt, the shoes. Everything just happened. My hands moved of the preparation with such ease it was almost as if I was just watching it, not doing it.

“I have sailed all over the world,” Dane told me. “There is nothing that I haven’t seen. There is nothing that I haven’t tried.” I thought that qualified as open-minded.

I told him that I had always dreamed of having a boat just like “Independence”. It was just that in my dreams I walked the decks as a man, not in a tighty whitey bikini.

He could not believe what I was saying, so he insisted that we go below deck so that he could examine me.

I was used to examinations. I had endured one every week for two years, but this was nothing like that.

I assumed that he would just want to examine the part that offended my appearance otherwise, but he stopped me. He wanted to look at me from head to toe, starting with my hair, which he pushed away from my face. It was short then, like the photo of me he took in the café. But he approved. He ran the back of his hand, which was less rough than his palms, across my smooth face, and he skillfully moved to unzip my floral dress at the back. It fell.

I wasn’t wearing a bra. I didn’t own one. I don’t even know why I owned the dress. He caressed my breasts, which suddenly did not seem so tiny. I have to say that I felt something, and it made me gasp. It was the first feeling of a sexual nature that I had experienced in two years, and it was not male. It was thrilling. I gasped. He smiled.

Then there were my underpants. I was wearing the neutral ones. He pulled them down and stood back to see what was there. Tiny and hairless, and flaccid. Incongruous. Ugly. He ignored it. Rather than run his rough hands down my legs he kneeled and ran his nose down my inner thighs, first one and then the other. I gasped again.

He stood up and looked me in the eyes. He was a powerful man. I could feel it. I was weak. I was not even a man. I was something in between, but a long way from what he was. I could smell him, and I liked that smell.

“Come aboard,” he said, in a whisper, as if he was saying: ‘Come to bed’. But I was. Aboard that is. I was standing in the main cabin of “Independence”. I must have looked confused.

“No, I mean come aboard my boat and stay with me. Sail with me. Back in the café you told me that you were uncommitted, looking for something new. What about this, for as long as we like?”

What should I say? I knew what I should say. In the café I had been in the same position. He had asked me whether I was interested in boats, and if I had said I wasn’t we would have parted after simply sharing a table for one cup of coffee. And I would not be in this position, of having to turn down something I longed to do. But that, I knew I must do.

“Ok,” I said. “Count me in.” What!? “I don’t have any kit. I mean, not with me, and not at home.” I just kept on digging myself deeper.

“Fresh start, then?” Dane was staring into my eyes. Dane.

“That’s right,” I said.
We’ll need to get you some clothes, then. You told me that you were on a shopping trip today. Let me buy you something. Something suitable for a sea voyage.”

“I have money,” I offered. I should have. The payment was due in today.

“I would bet you that I have more,” he said. “I insist, but I chose. Nothing silly. Something tasteful and something practical.

His idea of tasteful was a blue sailor inspired figure hugging dress. His idea of practical was a bikini. Two in fact. Should I have been surprised or disappointed that they fitted me so well? The bikini bottoms that is. Then rope bottom plimsol shoes, that would not slip on a wet deck, and a pair of blue heels for when there was solid land beneath my feet. A toothbrush, and hairbrush and a eyelash brush, and a tube of red lipstick. I was spick and span and seaworthy.
“Are you sure that you have left nothing behind he said, as he started the engine and stood by the aft mooring line while I stood by the bow line.

“Nothing except my old life,” I said.

Do not think for a minute that life at sea is easy. But with my limited clothing options, we need to follow the sun.

Am I male or female? Dane likes to say that I am a man when I need to take the helm at 8 bells, but a woman when I need to take him at 8 inches. But less a man. I have to say that my hair and my breasts have grown enormously of late, but I have been engaging in some amateur pharmacology on that score with results that I have come to love as much as Dane does.

I suppose there will come a time when I will consider whether the pressures of a binary world might force me to make a decision, but I am just a member of crew, so I will leave that decision to the master of “Independence”, who is, I suppose, the master of my independence too.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2020

Author's Note:
Readers may know that I post on the Fictionmania site, little shorts drawn from captioned images that I find. I wrote one for Independence Day last years and it turned into this story.