Matty and Shar:
A Valentine's Day Story
by
Timothy Stillman
When he became Matty instead of Mattie, she believed he would love her. She thought of him incessantly, dreamed him when she touched herself. He was her world, caught up in university, when she dreamed the boy the girl, and things were never to be the same again. And she the girl become boy. She was smart and brave and all the things Boy Scouts should be, and when she became he, then she knew the stars would finally align correctly. She had never been one whit of a boy. She had always hated it, until Mattie, girl to become boy. And Shar, boy to become girl. As it had been before, they had tried. They had believed as hard as they could. And now Matty and Shar sat underneath the summer tree here in the beginning of October, a nice yellow harvest moon shining the night down on them.
Shar, they had decided, would keep that name. It could be either sex. They held each other this time, one over the border, the other the other direction. It should have been simple. Mattie would be pronounced in no uncertain terms. For Shar had not had anything to do with boys, except Mattie, because he had been an effeminate boy, and she had found herself, himself, drawn to him, because she got to imagine him a girl. His hair was brown and shiny and shoulder length, and his body was thin, with tiny waist, with long legs that wore jeans uncuffed. For some time Mattie was a confusion to Shar. Shar had never been attracted to boys, not once. Even when they went beyond petting, even when Shar felt the erection in Mattie's jeans and it was intriguing, it was somehow belonging to a girl, as she unzipped him and took out his five inch penis and as it was milked with awe in her hand, her hand became the hand of a boy, not that of a girl, and his penis was that of a girl's, for it seemed of her, seemed to fit, as though it were the most normal thing in the world.
Shar had never cared for breasts that were large, but only ones that were small and boyish, and when it happened, though they still dressed unisex, their tie dyed scarves, their long paisley shirts, their jeans and sandals, when it became girl to boy and boy to girl, they would somehow become the same sex. Shar's hair had always been cut short. Her jaw had always been determined, as she pretended to be stocky and rough, though she wasn't at all, and now she put away he, now, but a straw girl become a straw boy, and when Mattie touched her vagina the first time, examined it the first time, he said, she said, that her, his, vagina was perfect for a boy, perfect for the boy Mattie, Matty, had always wanted to touch, and examined it closely, touching it, as she had touched his, her, penis, and both believed they were of one world, one skin, and sexuality was transferred. Delayed never. But here was harvest. Here was the beginning of simply everything.
And now, late night, no one else around, they put their hands on each other, as they tried to remember when they pretended with each other. When boy pretended girl and when girl pretended boy, both of them needing their dreams pegged to each other, making them what they were not, but a certain designation that meant both boy and girl and girl and boy were able to rise above themselves and what mistakes nature had made, for now they knew, or then they knew nature had not made a mistake. For it had meant they were made for each other. For it had meant they were forever caught, penis in vagina, girl. In boy instead of the other way round. This they had finally declared, for they were normally very shy, Shar and Mattie. They had been tossed together in laughs on campus, for they seemed to be brother and brother or brother and sister or sister and sister or brother and sister, for though Mattie had been a bit darker of skin, and Shar a bit lighter, they looked^×together. They looked complete in and of themselves. The jokes brought them together, when they had heard enough of them when separate. Mattie had come to Shar's room or Shar had come to Mattie's room, or Matty's room, and they had said almost at the same time, knowing each the other, what the hell is everybody laughing at us fors^×and then stopped, and then knew, not in a meeting cute moment, but in something that bordered on salvation.
Boy to girl and girl to boy, these were hurdles that need not have mattered. Penis became feminine, so lickable, and small breasts, so lickable, became masculine; vagina had become male and balls were kissed and sex happened, as each lost their virginity. As each fell in love because it seemed they had to. Because it seemed there were no other codes to break apart. They did not discuss these things as much as lived them. They were together as often as possible. They moved into room together. They ate together. They went to movies together. They heroically washed the oily beads of shame and hurt and being different off each other. That took some time. A year of hurting the hurts and scaring away the fears, of learning each in their own way that it didn't matter that students their age, or teachers, or parents, or whoever the hell could not decide who was a girl and who was a boy in the pair.
Because it made being them not being them and being them most regardfully, most soundly, most eclectically. As though home had come calling. And they had this nascent wish inside, not binding, not flame blowing, but there nonetheless..if only Matty would become a girl and change his name, and Matty thinking if only Shar would become a boy, and change her name, thus in the beginning of their junior year, they had felt the need of this grow a little and a bit more, kind of a label tag or a size tag on a dress bought, that could not be pulled from the fabric. Right at the back of the neck. That would irritate the there. That would make it itch. There was more and more scratching after an attempt to ignore it, and hope to get used to it.
But they could not. Matty thought of it as having had a haircut, though he had not had one since he started university, since he was able to push outwards, if only inwardly, and pretend to be a girl, mold his soft voice into a higher register as best as he could duplicate what he would sound like if his wish was granted. But he had loved his penis and never wanted to get rid of it, and yet there was the conflict. He wore panties he had bought after he got over the shame and courage to buy them. It took days of agonizing to make the decision to make that purchase. And he loved the feel of them on his body; round his slope off hips, making his penis harder than it had been before. How he loved to masturbate on the panties and feel like a girl, because that was how it was for him. Rubbing his penis, masturbating, imagining it with boys and girls, but always coming on the side of girls, and in them, wondering what it would be, and imagining cumming on their small breasts, these things to him meant he was a she. There was no doubt of it.
As it had been not this way for Shar. She had always been fascinated by her vagina, from a little girl on, and this was proof that she was not a girl, but a boy. She had loved to soap it and wash it in the bath, from something like seven years old. She had always known she was a boy, and did not miss not having a penis, even before she knew what a penis was. She had been a great baseball player and went through all kinds of hell when she was not allowed on the baseball team in high school. She, he, could climb trees and dribble basketball in her driveway and make the hoops often as not. She loved to be himself and she loved to party in high school till she was stoned stoke to the gills, fascinated to see boys and girls playing strip poker, drawn to them, to the sidelines because even then she was considered weird, which was bad enough, and she pretended never to let himself know this, for it might kill him. She had been drawn to vaginas at these parties, and she had been drawn also to penises, erect and pumping in girls' mouths while the boys played with the girls' snatches, and fingered herself as no one noticed her sitting there, mostly still clothed and feeling her penis where there was none. And that quite simply meant the very opposite of absence.
And now, tonight, history complete, they lay under the summer tree in the October cool with the harvest moon looking down on them. Boy to girl and girl to boy and penis there and vagina here and stroke and excite and lips to kiss, and arms to cover and clothes to take off, slowly, longingly, teasingly, and penis erect at vagina wet and inward they took each other and they kissed tits and breasts and they were Matty, wrong name for the sex Matty was now, but that was part of the plan. Matty no longer had to dress up in his sister's clothes when he was a boy, a girl, at home, and be fearful of his `rents or his sister coming back earlier than they said, eyes always on the doors, always ears pitched to the tiniest sounds like a key in the lock, for he made sure always to lock all the doors at such times, to give himself a lead time, herself, a lead time, to dress in boy clothes, secret panties of sis's underneath, or make a run to the bathroom and hide. He, she, was caught only once. And it was treated as a joke. A horrible mean one.
And Shar told him of the jokes played on her as well, and in fury with the past, in sadness with singular tears at night all those long childhood years ago, they were naked in the darkness, and Matty's penis had been hard as it had become her vagina, and Shar's vagina had become his penis, and this was they the way they transcended themselves, for they had changed a bit into the other. They had accomplished something they believed no one else ever had, for they were young and unknowing of the world around them. But they were deeply knowing of the world inside themselves and inside the other. They were physically the same, but in transit, something had occurred; street corners lost their usual names; roads that should have led to the same places they always did, regardless of how circuitous the route, led now to the edge of the world, or another country, with words and symbols and sights and desires and loves and friendships that never existed for them before them.
And girl shot his sperm into a boy whose vagina massaged her love's penis and took all she had to offer, as he felt her penis massaged by her vagina muscles, and hips pressed downward and hips pressed up to the sky, as they united, as they became, they believed, and who is to say they were wrong?, one forever, and never to be boy and girl again, but only themselves, which was the one thing they had wanted all along, even before they had known it. Jokes had broken their hearts. Jokes had brought them to each other. Sometimes irony is a good and happy thing.