Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2011-07-09 02:43 am
ptahrrific) wrote2011-07-09 02:43 am
Fake News: Sweetness Follows
Title: Sweetness Follows; or, The Remarkably Low-Angst Transition of Joan Stewart
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, transphobia, references to bullying, bad accents, outrageous drag names.
Characters/pairings: Jo(a)n(/Tracey), "Stephen", John Oliver, Wyatt, Kristen
Disclaimer: #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement. Characters belong to the Report. Names of real people are used in a fictitious context, and all dialogue, actions, and content are products of the author's imagination only.
What it says on the tin. Jon switches names, starts on hormones, deals with mood swings, and gets support from almost all quarters, in the office and out. Stephen has a rocky time with the whole idea, but who didn't see that coming?
Last-minute amnesty fill for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
queer_fest, for the prompt: (skip) Any fandom, any MtF character, why she doesn't want surgery--a girl can have a penis dammit! This should NOT be a problem!
In spite of the timing, it's been in progress since back when that was anlgbtfest prompt. Takes place around spring/summer of 2009.
Outtakes including Jo(a)n's family: The Clownfish Files. Related stories: Transverse
*
"Do you know what they're making us waste our time on now, Jon? Do you?"
"Hello to you too, Stephen," sighed Jon, snatching the headset she had bought for this purpose from the corner of her desk. Stephen's calls might have dibs on her ears, but at least her hands would be free to get something done.
"An hour-long workshop!" cried Stephen. "On gender! I've already gone through sexual harassment sensitivity training, Jon! My time is much too valuable to waste on doing it a fourth time!"
Jon shuddered to think how Stephen would react to the news that they were hiring a full-time counselor who specialized in the subject. Probably do a whole Wørd on how far the psych profession had fallen. "This is a different thing. It's about gender identity. You know, trans people?"
"No such thing," Stephen snapped. "You're either a man or a woman, and that's it. You can't just decide to switch sides! There would be chaos! If I can turn into a woman today, what's to stop me from deciding to turn into a goat tomorrow?"
"Just take the workshop," sighed Jon, and, for the first time, hung up while Stephen was in mid-yell.
*
"To explain a little more about this process, let's turn to our Senior Gender Correspondent, John Oliver."
The audience recovered from its stunned silence just enough to manage a halfhearted round of applause.
If John was hurt by the unnaturally feeble response, he stiff-upper-lipped his way through it. He was two sentences into a technical description of the effects of estrogen when Jon held up a hand: "John, John, let me just stop you right there for a second."
"Sure thing, Jon. You have a question?"
"Yeah — are you wearing lipstick?"
John folded his hands crisply together. "Yes. Yes, I am."
"And...eyeshadow?"
"Eyeshadow. Bit of rouge." John frowned, pensive. "And foundation, but I suppose that goes without saying. You don't think it's too bold, do you?"
"Actually, I think it's surprisingly well blended. So, uh, is there a reason behind it? I mean, are you planning to...you know...also come out?"
"What? No!" exclaimed John, turning quickly to the camera. "Sorry, lesbians with good taste, but I'm still all man. Heterosexual man, too. No matter what Wyatt tells you."
"Uh, right. Then why—?"
"You got a problem with this, Jon?" demanded John, slipping into what he had sworn during rehearsal was supposed to be an Italian accent. "You got a problem here? Because that would be funny, wouldn't it, given the way you've been dressing around the office!"
Jon winced, nervously tapping her script into line. "What are you talking about? I've been wearing exactly the same stuff I always do. Except that one day I wore a bracelet, and that's hardly a big...."
"I'm not talking about the bracelet!" The affected accent dropped from John's voice as it spiraled upwards. "I'm talking about the rest of it!"
"H-have you been watching me change?"
"Three years!" shrilled John, ignoring her. "I work here for three years, all the time thinking I couldn't possibly do up my face while on the job, and now it turns out my boss has been coming in every day dressed completely as a man when she isn't!" His face crumpled. "And you never even mentioned it! You're a horrible person, Mrs. Stewart!"
Someone in the audience stifled a laugh.
John was on them like a shot. "No, go on then! Laugh at my pain!" he urged with all the melodrama in his soul. Jon scooted forward to pat his hand, which was yanked away with another sob; and there went a whole ripple of laughter, and for the first time she really felt like going public might not be a terrible mistake.
*
"You're making a terrible mistake."
Jon glanced down at her outfit, wondering if it had been a bad idea to answer the door without changing out of Tracey's blouse first. On the other hand, Stephen was going to have to get used to this eventually.
"It's comfortable," she said briskly, waving her visitor inside. "Although if you're going to tell me red isn't my color, I'm starting to think you'd have a point."
"It's not about the shirt, Jon," snapped Stephen, turning around in the middle of the carpet like some kind of human radar dish programmed to scan everything but Jon herself. "It's about something much more important."
"And what would that be?"
"Your balls."
Jon nearly choked. "Stephen! It's not your business to care about my balls!"
"Someone has to, Jon!" cried Stephen, stopping abruptly to aim a wagging finger and a thundercloud expression squarely at her. "You obviously don't! And we can't afford to lose them!"
"What do you mean, 'we'?" demanded Jon, hackles rising, never mind that she had already gotten more subtle variations of the same sentiment from half her address book. "It's my body. I get to decide what happens to it. End of story."
"Not when it's a matter of national security!" crowed Stephen triumphantly.
"A what?"
"Have you seen the world lately? Do you know how rare true ballsiness is? How could you jeopardize our country by making that resource even more scarce? And in a time of war, too! I should call Homeland Security on you!"
Jon felt as though she had missed several steps of this conversation. "Wait, wait, wait. You think I'm ballsy?"
"Are you kidding?" Stephen's wagging finger settled into more of a flail. "You're walking around in — in a lady's shirt! And you don't care what anyone else thinks of it! That's scarily ballsy, Jon!"
And, okay, Jon had gotten similar compliments from the other half of her address book, but Stephen had been the last person on the planet she'd expected to hear them from. Maybe red wasn't her color, but right now her face sure didn't care.
"So you see why we can't lose that!" continued Stephen, who had yet to take a breath. "Ballsy people like us are practically an endangered species! I bet I could call the Fish and Wildlife Service on you! You don't want to mess with them, Jon, believe me. You should have seen how they reacted when I tried to market those spotted owl burgers!"
"Stephen, it's okay!"
Stephen stopped short and immediately swayed, gasping for some of that much-neglected air.
"Take a couple breaths, all right?" Jon took her friend's elbow and steering the unsteady pundit into a chair. "Nobody's losing anybody. I'm gonna look a little different, and switch names, and I might come out of this slightly less neurotic, but that's all. I'm not going anywhere."
*
"Are you ready for the test?"
Jon did a double-take. "There's a t-test?"
"Of course there's a test!" exclaimed Kristen. "What, you think us women let just anyone join our ranks? Hang on, I have a copy here somewhere..."
With practiced discomfort Jon let her gaze dart across the audience, checking to make sure she was really the only one who thought something was off. Her Senior Feminist Correspondent, unperturbed, kept the faucet of bubbly cheer running. "Here we go!" she enthused, pulling out a powder-pink questionnaire.
"Do we have to do this now?" stammered Jon, tucking an unruly curl behind her ear. It was too short to stay in place, though it had reached a length where hairspray was losing its power; her stylist was on the point of revolting. "I, uh, didn't exactly study."
"Oh, I'm sure you'll do fine! We just want to make sure you don't play into too many transgendered-woman stereotypes." Kristen whipped out a glittery purple pen, then leaned close and squinted at Jon's face. "Hmm. Way too much makeup. You'll lose points for that."
"I'm on camera!"
Kristen shook her head and tsked with great solemnity. "A performer, too? This isn't looking good. What about names? Are you going to switch to some outlandish and obviously fake pseudonym, like 'Connie Lingus' or 'Felicia Jollygoodfellow' or 'Nancy Grace'?"
"Um. I was thinking 'Joan Stewart', actually."
The younger woman's face lit up with a smile that could have spontaneously generated a shower of tulips and ice cream. "Good! See, you've got some points back already. You'll pass this thing yet!"
She was turning the page when Jon held up a hand. "Listen, Kristen, I appreciate the effort...I think...but I am who I am, okay? Even if I don't pass, it's not like that's going to stop me — just ask my college professors. So let's drop this whole test thing and move on. All right?"
"But, Jon — I mean, Joan," protested Kristen, face melting into a look so plaintive it would have given kittens a run for their money, "if we don't get some kind of confirmation, how are we going to know if it's okay to let you in on the Female Conspiracy?"
"The what?"
Kristen clapped both hands over her mouth. "Nothing!" she gasped, looking frantically around at the audience before turning to the camera. "Please, male viewers, forget I said anything! There really is a correct answer to the question 'Do these pants make me look fat?' You'll find it one day, I promise! Just keep trying!"
Joan sighed. "Kristen Schaal, everybody! We'll be right back."
*
"Hey, boss, did your phone die? You're not picking up, and we need—"
Joan ducked her head, not quickly enough to hide the wetness on her face. Wyatt twitched with the kind of full-body nervous tic that would make a great visual gag if he could pull it off on cue.
"Oh, wow, sorry," he stammered. "Can I help? Is this one of those woman things? Should I go get Sam? Becaue I can totally go get Sam."
Joan shook her head. "Just shut the door."
Wyatt pulled it closed so quickly its glass panes rattled, then looked from the drawn blinds to the heap of emotional flotsam that was his boss. "Uh, was I supposed to be on the other side of that?"
"You can go if you want." The clipped phrases were all Joan could manage without her voice crumbling. She reached for another tissue. "Be fine in a minute."
After pondering the doorknob for a moment, Wyatt let it go and held up his hands. "Is it sexual harassment now if I offer you a massage?"
Joan snorted wetly. Not that she doubted her correspondent's honor as a gentleman (usually), but now there were bra straps to be considered, and it would just be awkward all around. "I'll pass. You can sit."
She tried to sweep some of the clutter from her desk, the scraps of rejected script and the ridiculous pile of tissues, while Wyatt explained the debate that had sent him questing forth from the writers' room in the first place. He had the grace to talk enough that she didn't have to ask a lot of questions before handing down a verdict, though the distraction was helping to wind her down all the while.
Armed with a decision from on high, Wyatt hesitated. "Hey, listen, I don't wanna push or anything, but if this is because of another of those hate letters...one, they're full of crap, and two, the Best Fucking News Team Ever will totally get in the van and drive cross-country if somebody needs an ass-kicking."
"Wasn't that," she said, throat finally settling down. Still sore as anything, but she had replaced half the building's stashes of Swedish Fish with lozenges when her voice started changing, so that at least was manageable. "But thanks."
"No problem. It isn't something Colbert did, is it? Because I was mostly kidding about the cross-country driving, but he's only like a couple blocks away."
"He's taking it better than I expected, actually."
"Oh. Good to hear."
"It was the bit from the script," admitted Joan.
"The one about the lesbian in the tux in the yearbook, right? Or did you have a terrible childhood experience with panda sperm?"
An appreciative smirk forced its way briefly onto Joan's face. "Yearbook," she echoed, shaking her head in admiration. "God, these kids — these brave, crazy kids — would've run circles around me when I was—" Her voice caught again. "Don't know if I wanted a full-on prom dress, but it would've been nice to wear a necklace or something without getting the shit kicked out of me, you know?"
"Yeah." Wyatt shifted in his seat. "I mean, I don't know know. That's more Oliver's department. But, you know. Are you sure you're okay to do this?"
"I'm fine." Joan dabbed at her sore eyes. Puffy and baggy. Makeup was going to have her head on a platter.
"Because, I mean, I know you want to give these kids their due. But there's gotta be a way to do that that doesn't involve giving you a nervous breakdown."
"Wyatt, I swear, it's just hormones. I'll be fine by rehearsal. It's happened before."
A look of surprise broke through the otherwise permanent sleepy (and/or hung over) cast of Wyatt's features. "Dude...sorry, dudette...."
"Either's fine."
"...those must be some really awesome hormones."
Joan blushed. "Yeah. They kind of are."
*
"...with our good friend Stephen Colbert at The Colbert Report!"
A torrent of cheers drowned out Joan's next line.
It had been months since the last toss, and she always forgot how much the audience missed them. Joan's own excitement was always tempered with apprehension; Stephen onscreen was Stephen at peak arrogance, which always left Joan a little more awkward, a little less comfortable in her own skin.
On the other half of the screen, Stephen absorbed the applause stoically before holding up a hand for silence.
And Joan felt fine.
"Stephen, my friend, it's been a while," she said, without noticing the slightest urge to adjust her suit. Sure, it was impeccably tailored, but no more so than the old ones. "How are you?"
"Worried, Jon," declared Stephen, with lofty tone and stony glare.
Even the name didn't make Joan flinch. "Uh, really? About what?"
Stephen's eyebrows might have been painted in place. "About your penis."
The round of nervous laughter from the seats rolled right off Joan's back. Her clothes felt right, her weight settled the way it was supposed to, and her hair did this really adorable flip; she wouldn't feel self-conscious about her dick right now even if she hadn't made jokes about it to countless packed auditoriums. "Stephen, your mysterious fascination with my dick aside, the only person who gets to worry about what's in my pants is me. Well, and my wife, obviously."
"But it's major surgery!" protested Stephen, pounding both fists on the desk. "What if something goes wrong? What if your junk gets permanently wrecked? And after all the good times you've had with that thing! Sure, maybe it always felt kind of weird and uncomfortable and meant that any kind of sexual fulfillment had to involve compensating for the creeping heebie-jeebies that sometimes got so bad you couldn't think straight, but isn't that better than nothing?"
In spite of her new center of mass, Joan could have been knocked over with a feather. "You've been doing research?"
"What? Research?" The other host forced out a laugh. "Don't be ridiculous. Research is for latte-drinking intellectuals whose guts don't already tell them everything they need to know about mysterious life-changing experiences their friends are going through and will probably need support for."
"We'll talk more later, Stephen," promised Joan. "That's our show! Join us tomorrow night..."
*
Joan was almost prepared to swear off skirts forever.
For one thing, pantyhose itched like crazy, making it impossible to read more than a sentence at a time without stopping to scratch. But she wasn't ready to subject the office to her bare legs; even sheer-enclosed calves had been a stretch, one she regretted every time she tried to walk somewhere. What if she tripped again? Stuff of nightmares.
Focus on the book, Stewart. Never mind that the prose is a stream of almost-unreadable political pandering. You don't have to read the whole thing, just enough to get through the interview.
And what had possessed her to pair it with this particular shirt? It had looked great in the store, the blue slightly brighter than her normal greys while subtle enough to be comfortable, but now all she could think about was how it must be setting off her shoulders.
For a moment Joan entertained the notion of pulling on her show suit early, and was already on her feet before she caught herself. Wardrobe was already frustrated over her need for constant retailoring; the least she could do was not change before lunch.
Not that the show suits fixed all her problems, either. Sure, they compensated for her shoulders, and the desk kept her legs out of the picture altogether, but her hands were still too broad, and there wasn't a makeup invented that could smooth down her face....
"Hey, Jon!" broke in Stephen, grinning like the world's most obnoxious ray of sunshine. "Is lunch here yet?"
"On its way," replied Joan shortly. "Give me a few minutes, will you? I'm running behind."
"S-sure."
Slumping back into her seat, Joan tried once more to marshal her focus. No luck. Now she was uncomfortably aware that her visitor was staring.
She glanced up a couple of times to see Stephen shuffling towards a chair at a snail's pace, eyes locked firmly on her all the while. Even that cautious gait wasn't enough to avoid a poorly placed fan, sending both of them crashing to the ground.
"Oh, for god's sake!" shrieked Joan, throwing the book aside and leaping to her feet. "Just spit it out, already!"
Stephen, who had somehow managed to get tangled in the fan cord on the way down, ended up dragging it along while trying to scramble backwards. "Wh-wha—?"
"Don't give me that! You haven't kept a thought to yourself yet; why start now? Is it the skirt? Does it look that ridiculous?"
With a round of frantic kicking Stephen finally shook free of the cord. "No!"
"You got a problem with the shirt, then? Something you want to say about my hair? My face? My hands?"
"None of that!" squeaked Stephen, now actually hiding behind the chair and peeping over the frame with wide, terrified eyes.
"What is it, then? Why the hell won't you stop staring?"
"Because you're pretty!"
The next shout building in Joan's lungs crashed, burned, and tumbled back down her throat in so many fiery shards.
"You didn't say!" One of Stephen's hands wriggled around the side of the chair and fluttered vaguely in her direction like an epileptic baby bird. "And now you're all...with the hair, and the curves, and the...you should have warned me you were going to get this pretty!"
Joan took a shaky step forward. With a gasp, Stephen ducked out of sight altogether.
By the time Joan rounded the chair, she found the pundit curled up in a tiny ball, eyes still huge and frozen. She tried to say something reassuring, choked before she could even figure out what, and settled for dropping her knees and flinging her arms around Stephen's shoulders.
Stephen let out a squeak of fright and tried to wriggle away; Joan just tightened her grip, shaking her head against her friend's shirt. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you. Thank you...."
"I — I don't understand," pleaded Stephen. "What did I do?"
"Nothing," choked Joan. "Everything."
Slowly, tentatively, Stephen began to unroll, until they were in an awkward but definitely mutual hug. "You could have warned me about the PMS, too."
*
Joan could get used to this.
Stephen held every door, took her hand to help her out of the cab, even pulled out her chair at the restaurant. It was the kind of thing Tracey would never put up with, and on some level Joan still thought it was faintly ridiculous; but she knew it was Stephen's way of treating her like A Lady, and that felt...well, good.
(It didn't hurt that, every time someone gawked at her for a little too long, Stephen stared them down until they collapsed like a cheap futon.)
After they had ordered (she had to stop Stephen from ordering on her behalf, but even that wasn't as annoying as it might have been), her friend's suave composure began to recede, revealing the fidgets and fissures underneath. "J-Joan? Can I ask you some stuff?"
Joan giggled self-consciously. "Is it the kind of thing you could ask the counselor? I know she's technically on our staff, but she's handled a couple of your people so far, too."
"I've, uh, talked to her already," said Stephen cagily.
Joan raised her eyebrows. "Meaning, you passed her in the hallway once and said hello?"
"No!" Stephen's hands wrung the napkin so hard it nearly tore. "Meaning I've talked to her. Once a week. For a couple of weeks now. ...And, uh, by 'a couple' I mean 'seven'."
The late-afternoon sun slanted across the table.
"Well?" demanded Stephen at last. "Can I ask things? Or are you gonna start crying again?
"Sure," stammered Joan, hastily wiping her eyes while making a mental note to give the counselor a very large bonus. "I mean, I can't promise I'll answer everything. But go ahead and ask."
*
Most of Stephen's questions were impeccably restrained. Asking after Tracey and the kids, catching up on what Joan had been doing in her free time, and finally a few tentative inquiries about her history of dressing as female.
She was surprised to find that it was a relief to talk about, even briefly, now that she could have shared it all without worrying who it would get back to. How being a comedian had been at least partly an excuse to dress female on mainstream stages, even if she wasn't brave enough to do it often. How she had lost girlfriends to 'the drag thing' until she met Tracey, whose only demand had been that her then-boyfriend not borrow her clothes without asking. How the kids got used to her wearing long wigs at home, while she tried to work out how to explain to her wife that it had stopped being enough.
"Speaking of your wife...." said Stephen, with a particular blend of hesitance and awkwardness that made Joan rein herself in, sensing that the honeymoon period was about to be over. "Is she...I mean, are you two still...y'know, doing it?"
Joan raised her eyebrows. "Stephen, far be it from me to cast aspersions on your pure altruistic concern for my sex life, but...."
"Wordinista," sulked Stephen. "It's a simple question. Are you and your special lady still getting your freak on, yes or no?"
If it had been anyone else, or if Joan's patience had been worn thinner, she might have packed up and called it a day. But a certain amount of obnoxious questioning was the price of admission for being Stephen's friend, and for the moment she had the stamina to fend it off. "My wife is not looking for new guys to sleep with, Stephen. Stop asking."
"I didn't want to sleep with her!" yelped Stephen.
There was a full four-second delay before Joan choked on her martini.
The pleasant conversation. The handholding. The fancy restaurant...actually, they had been here a couple of times before, but always as two guys on business, when now....
"Is this a date?"
"No! Of course not! Nothing like that! Maybe." Stephen plastered on a Stepford grin that stayed intact for about half a second. "I mean...not that that was on my mind in the least, but now that you mention it...you're a beautiful lady, Joan, and I'm a red-blooded heterosexual American male, so, well, I wouldn't kick you out of bed for having a Y chromosome."
"Aw, Stephen," sighed Joan, running her hands through her ever-lengthening hair. "Everything's fine with my wife, okay? And even if it wasn't, I'm into women. I used to be a straight guy; now I'm a lesbian. End of story."
"Well, maybe I'm secretly a lesbian too!" snapped Stephen petulantly. "You don't know!"
Of all the exasperating, trivializing throwaway comments Stephen could have made, this was the one thing Joan couldn't brush off. Not while she could remember the feeling of the axe in her chest during the seconds of smirking before Tracey realized it wasn't a joke.
Taking a deep breath, she cocked her head and regarded Stephen with perfect seriousness. "Are you?"
She waited for the splutters, the protests, the eye-rolling groans of Jon, stop being ridiculous.
Stephen looked at everything in the restaurant except her.
"Stephen...?"
"What? Don't be ridiculous!" spluttered Stephen, with a half-hearted attempt at eye-rolling that ended up looking shiftier than ever. "I'm not — I never — why would you—? —Waiter! Where's our check?"
*
"You're not mad, are you?"
"Don't worry about it," said Joan.
"Because I'm trying," continued Stephen, walking with her out of the restaurant. "This is weird and uncomfortable and I couldn't find anything in the Bible about how to do it right, or even if you're supposed to do it at all, but I'm trying to be appropriately supportive of your decision to get a vagina."
Joan wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be a sidelong apology, an all-purpose justification, a hastily rewritten summary of the evening that left out all the bits Stephen didn't want remembered, or some mixed concoction of all three. She took it anyway. There would be plenty of times to argue with her friend, and maybe even times to pry, but this wasn't one of them.
"I know you are," she said. "And I appreciate it. Which is why I'm going to tell you something, and trust you to keep it to yourself. Can you do that?"
The shifty-eyed look returned, but only briefly. "Of course. I'm a...a pundit of my word."
Joan stood on tiptoe, silently rejoicing for whatever genetic quirk had given her a perfectly average female height, and put her mouth to Stephen's ear. In a low whisper she confided, "I'm keeping my penis."
With that, she twirled on her tennis-shoed heel and set off down the pavement, hips swinging. She didn't have to look back to know that Stephen would catch up.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, transphobia, references to bullying, bad accents, outrageous drag names.
Characters/pairings: Jo(a)n(/Tracey), "Stephen", John Oliver, Wyatt, Kristen
Disclaimer: #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement. Characters belong to the Report. Names of real people are used in a fictitious context, and all dialogue, actions, and content are products of the author's imagination only.
What it says on the tin. Jon switches names, starts on hormones, deals with mood swings, and gets support from almost all quarters, in the office and out. Stephen has a rocky time with the whole idea, but who didn't see that coming?
Last-minute amnesty fill for
queer_fest, for the prompt: (skip) Any fandom, any MtF character, why she doesn't want surgery--a girl can have a penis dammit! This should NOT be a problem!In spite of the timing, it's been in progress since back when that was an
lgbtfest prompt. Takes place around spring/summer of 2009.Outtakes including Jo(a)n's family: The Clownfish Files. Related stories: Transverse
"Do you know what they're making us waste our time on now, Jon? Do you?"
"Hello to you too, Stephen," sighed Jon, snatching the headset she had bought for this purpose from the corner of her desk. Stephen's calls might have dibs on her ears, but at least her hands would be free to get something done.
"An hour-long workshop!" cried Stephen. "On gender! I've already gone through sexual harassment sensitivity training, Jon! My time is much too valuable to waste on doing it a fourth time!"
Jon shuddered to think how Stephen would react to the news that they were hiring a full-time counselor who specialized in the subject. Probably do a whole Wørd on how far the psych profession had fallen. "This is a different thing. It's about gender identity. You know, trans people?"
"No such thing," Stephen snapped. "You're either a man or a woman, and that's it. You can't just decide to switch sides! There would be chaos! If I can turn into a woman today, what's to stop me from deciding to turn into a goat tomorrow?"
"Just take the workshop," sighed Jon, and, for the first time, hung up while Stephen was in mid-yell.
"To explain a little more about this process, let's turn to our Senior Gender Correspondent, John Oliver."
The audience recovered from its stunned silence just enough to manage a halfhearted round of applause.
If John was hurt by the unnaturally feeble response, he stiff-upper-lipped his way through it. He was two sentences into a technical description of the effects of estrogen when Jon held up a hand: "John, John, let me just stop you right there for a second."
"Sure thing, Jon. You have a question?"
"Yeah — are you wearing lipstick?"
John folded his hands crisply together. "Yes. Yes, I am."
"And...eyeshadow?"
"Eyeshadow. Bit of rouge." John frowned, pensive. "And foundation, but I suppose that goes without saying. You don't think it's too bold, do you?"
"Actually, I think it's surprisingly well blended. So, uh, is there a reason behind it? I mean, are you planning to...you know...also come out?"
"What? No!" exclaimed John, turning quickly to the camera. "Sorry, lesbians with good taste, but I'm still all man. Heterosexual man, too. No matter what Wyatt tells you."
"Uh, right. Then why—?"
"You got a problem with this, Jon?" demanded John, slipping into what he had sworn during rehearsal was supposed to be an Italian accent. "You got a problem here? Because that would be funny, wouldn't it, given the way you've been dressing around the office!"
Jon winced, nervously tapping her script into line. "What are you talking about? I've been wearing exactly the same stuff I always do. Except that one day I wore a bracelet, and that's hardly a big...."
"I'm not talking about the bracelet!" The affected accent dropped from John's voice as it spiraled upwards. "I'm talking about the rest of it!"
"H-have you been watching me change?"
"Three years!" shrilled John, ignoring her. "I work here for three years, all the time thinking I couldn't possibly do up my face while on the job, and now it turns out my boss has been coming in every day dressed completely as a man when she isn't!" His face crumpled. "And you never even mentioned it! You're a horrible person, Mrs. Stewart!"
Someone in the audience stifled a laugh.
John was on them like a shot. "No, go on then! Laugh at my pain!" he urged with all the melodrama in his soul. Jon scooted forward to pat his hand, which was yanked away with another sob; and there went a whole ripple of laughter, and for the first time she really felt like going public might not be a terrible mistake.
"You're making a terrible mistake."
Jon glanced down at her outfit, wondering if it had been a bad idea to answer the door without changing out of Tracey's blouse first. On the other hand, Stephen was going to have to get used to this eventually.
"It's comfortable," she said briskly, waving her visitor inside. "Although if you're going to tell me red isn't my color, I'm starting to think you'd have a point."
"It's not about the shirt, Jon," snapped Stephen, turning around in the middle of the carpet like some kind of human radar dish programmed to scan everything but Jon herself. "It's about something much more important."
"And what would that be?"
"Your balls."
Jon nearly choked. "Stephen! It's not your business to care about my balls!"
"Someone has to, Jon!" cried Stephen, stopping abruptly to aim a wagging finger and a thundercloud expression squarely at her. "You obviously don't! And we can't afford to lose them!"
"What do you mean, 'we'?" demanded Jon, hackles rising, never mind that she had already gotten more subtle variations of the same sentiment from half her address book. "It's my body. I get to decide what happens to it. End of story."
"Not when it's a matter of national security!" crowed Stephen triumphantly.
"A what?"
"Have you seen the world lately? Do you know how rare true ballsiness is? How could you jeopardize our country by making that resource even more scarce? And in a time of war, too! I should call Homeland Security on you!"
Jon felt as though she had missed several steps of this conversation. "Wait, wait, wait. You think I'm ballsy?"
"Are you kidding?" Stephen's wagging finger settled into more of a flail. "You're walking around in — in a lady's shirt! And you don't care what anyone else thinks of it! That's scarily ballsy, Jon!"
And, okay, Jon had gotten similar compliments from the other half of her address book, but Stephen had been the last person on the planet she'd expected to hear them from. Maybe red wasn't her color, but right now her face sure didn't care.
"So you see why we can't lose that!" continued Stephen, who had yet to take a breath. "Ballsy people like us are practically an endangered species! I bet I could call the Fish and Wildlife Service on you! You don't want to mess with them, Jon, believe me. You should have seen how they reacted when I tried to market those spotted owl burgers!"
"Stephen, it's okay!"
Stephen stopped short and immediately swayed, gasping for some of that much-neglected air.
"Take a couple breaths, all right?" Jon took her friend's elbow and steering the unsteady pundit into a chair. "Nobody's losing anybody. I'm gonna look a little different, and switch names, and I might come out of this slightly less neurotic, but that's all. I'm not going anywhere."
"Are you ready for the test?"
Jon did a double-take. "There's a t-test?"
"Of course there's a test!" exclaimed Kristen. "What, you think us women let just anyone join our ranks? Hang on, I have a copy here somewhere..."
With practiced discomfort Jon let her gaze dart across the audience, checking to make sure she was really the only one who thought something was off. Her Senior Feminist Correspondent, unperturbed, kept the faucet of bubbly cheer running. "Here we go!" she enthused, pulling out a powder-pink questionnaire.
"Do we have to do this now?" stammered Jon, tucking an unruly curl behind her ear. It was too short to stay in place, though it had reached a length where hairspray was losing its power; her stylist was on the point of revolting. "I, uh, didn't exactly study."
"Oh, I'm sure you'll do fine! We just want to make sure you don't play into too many transgendered-woman stereotypes." Kristen whipped out a glittery purple pen, then leaned close and squinted at Jon's face. "Hmm. Way too much makeup. You'll lose points for that."
"I'm on camera!"
Kristen shook her head and tsked with great solemnity. "A performer, too? This isn't looking good. What about names? Are you going to switch to some outlandish and obviously fake pseudonym, like 'Connie Lingus' or 'Felicia Jollygoodfellow' or 'Nancy Grace'?"
"Um. I was thinking 'Joan Stewart', actually."
The younger woman's face lit up with a smile that could have spontaneously generated a shower of tulips and ice cream. "Good! See, you've got some points back already. You'll pass this thing yet!"
She was turning the page when Jon held up a hand. "Listen, Kristen, I appreciate the effort...I think...but I am who I am, okay? Even if I don't pass, it's not like that's going to stop me — just ask my college professors. So let's drop this whole test thing and move on. All right?"
"But, Jon — I mean, Joan," protested Kristen, face melting into a look so plaintive it would have given kittens a run for their money, "if we don't get some kind of confirmation, how are we going to know if it's okay to let you in on the Female Conspiracy?"
"The what?"
Kristen clapped both hands over her mouth. "Nothing!" she gasped, looking frantically around at the audience before turning to the camera. "Please, male viewers, forget I said anything! There really is a correct answer to the question 'Do these pants make me look fat?' You'll find it one day, I promise! Just keep trying!"
Joan sighed. "Kristen Schaal, everybody! We'll be right back."
"Hey, boss, did your phone die? You're not picking up, and we need—"
Joan ducked her head, not quickly enough to hide the wetness on her face. Wyatt twitched with the kind of full-body nervous tic that would make a great visual gag if he could pull it off on cue.
"Oh, wow, sorry," he stammered. "Can I help? Is this one of those woman things? Should I go get Sam? Becaue I can totally go get Sam."
Joan shook her head. "Just shut the door."
Wyatt pulled it closed so quickly its glass panes rattled, then looked from the drawn blinds to the heap of emotional flotsam that was his boss. "Uh, was I supposed to be on the other side of that?"
"You can go if you want." The clipped phrases were all Joan could manage without her voice crumbling. She reached for another tissue. "Be fine in a minute."
After pondering the doorknob for a moment, Wyatt let it go and held up his hands. "Is it sexual harassment now if I offer you a massage?"
Joan snorted wetly. Not that she doubted her correspondent's honor as a gentleman (usually), but now there were bra straps to be considered, and it would just be awkward all around. "I'll pass. You can sit."
She tried to sweep some of the clutter from her desk, the scraps of rejected script and the ridiculous pile of tissues, while Wyatt explained the debate that had sent him questing forth from the writers' room in the first place. He had the grace to talk enough that she didn't have to ask a lot of questions before handing down a verdict, though the distraction was helping to wind her down all the while.
Armed with a decision from on high, Wyatt hesitated. "Hey, listen, I don't wanna push or anything, but if this is because of another of those hate letters...one, they're full of crap, and two, the Best Fucking News Team Ever will totally get in the van and drive cross-country if somebody needs an ass-kicking."
"Wasn't that," she said, throat finally settling down. Still sore as anything, but she had replaced half the building's stashes of Swedish Fish with lozenges when her voice started changing, so that at least was manageable. "But thanks."
"No problem. It isn't something Colbert did, is it? Because I was mostly kidding about the cross-country driving, but he's only like a couple blocks away."
"He's taking it better than I expected, actually."
"Oh. Good to hear."
"It was the bit from the script," admitted Joan.
"The one about the lesbian in the tux in the yearbook, right? Or did you have a terrible childhood experience with panda sperm?"
An appreciative smirk forced its way briefly onto Joan's face. "Yearbook," she echoed, shaking her head in admiration. "God, these kids — these brave, crazy kids — would've run circles around me when I was—" Her voice caught again. "Don't know if I wanted a full-on prom dress, but it would've been nice to wear a necklace or something without getting the shit kicked out of me, you know?"
"Yeah." Wyatt shifted in his seat. "I mean, I don't know know. That's more Oliver's department. But, you know. Are you sure you're okay to do this?"
"I'm fine." Joan dabbed at her sore eyes. Puffy and baggy. Makeup was going to have her head on a platter.
"Because, I mean, I know you want to give these kids their due. But there's gotta be a way to do that that doesn't involve giving you a nervous breakdown."
"Wyatt, I swear, it's just hormones. I'll be fine by rehearsal. It's happened before."
A look of surprise broke through the otherwise permanent sleepy (and/or hung over) cast of Wyatt's features. "Dude...sorry, dudette...."
"Either's fine."
"...those must be some really awesome hormones."
Joan blushed. "Yeah. They kind of are."
"...with our good friend Stephen Colbert at The Colbert Report!"
A torrent of cheers drowned out Joan's next line.
It had been months since the last toss, and she always forgot how much the audience missed them. Joan's own excitement was always tempered with apprehension; Stephen onscreen was Stephen at peak arrogance, which always left Joan a little more awkward, a little less comfortable in her own skin.
On the other half of the screen, Stephen absorbed the applause stoically before holding up a hand for silence.
And Joan felt fine.
"Stephen, my friend, it's been a while," she said, without noticing the slightest urge to adjust her suit. Sure, it was impeccably tailored, but no more so than the old ones. "How are you?"
"Worried, Jon," declared Stephen, with lofty tone and stony glare.
Even the name didn't make Joan flinch. "Uh, really? About what?"
Stephen's eyebrows might have been painted in place. "About your penis."
The round of nervous laughter from the seats rolled right off Joan's back. Her clothes felt right, her weight settled the way it was supposed to, and her hair did this really adorable flip; she wouldn't feel self-conscious about her dick right now even if she hadn't made jokes about it to countless packed auditoriums. "Stephen, your mysterious fascination with my dick aside, the only person who gets to worry about what's in my pants is me. Well, and my wife, obviously."
"But it's major surgery!" protested Stephen, pounding both fists on the desk. "What if something goes wrong? What if your junk gets permanently wrecked? And after all the good times you've had with that thing! Sure, maybe it always felt kind of weird and uncomfortable and meant that any kind of sexual fulfillment had to involve compensating for the creeping heebie-jeebies that sometimes got so bad you couldn't think straight, but isn't that better than nothing?"
In spite of her new center of mass, Joan could have been knocked over with a feather. "You've been doing research?"
"What? Research?" The other host forced out a laugh. "Don't be ridiculous. Research is for latte-drinking intellectuals whose guts don't already tell them everything they need to know about mysterious life-changing experiences their friends are going through and will probably need support for."
"We'll talk more later, Stephen," promised Joan. "That's our show! Join us tomorrow night..."
Joan was almost prepared to swear off skirts forever.
For one thing, pantyhose itched like crazy, making it impossible to read more than a sentence at a time without stopping to scratch. But she wasn't ready to subject the office to her bare legs; even sheer-enclosed calves had been a stretch, one she regretted every time she tried to walk somewhere. What if she tripped again? Stuff of nightmares.
Focus on the book, Stewart. Never mind that the prose is a stream of almost-unreadable political pandering. You don't have to read the whole thing, just enough to get through the interview.
And what had possessed her to pair it with this particular shirt? It had looked great in the store, the blue slightly brighter than her normal greys while subtle enough to be comfortable, but now all she could think about was how it must be setting off her shoulders.
For a moment Joan entertained the notion of pulling on her show suit early, and was already on her feet before she caught herself. Wardrobe was already frustrated over her need for constant retailoring; the least she could do was not change before lunch.
Not that the show suits fixed all her problems, either. Sure, they compensated for her shoulders, and the desk kept her legs out of the picture altogether, but her hands were still too broad, and there wasn't a makeup invented that could smooth down her face....
"Hey, Jon!" broke in Stephen, grinning like the world's most obnoxious ray of sunshine. "Is lunch here yet?"
"On its way," replied Joan shortly. "Give me a few minutes, will you? I'm running behind."
"S-sure."
Slumping back into her seat, Joan tried once more to marshal her focus. No luck. Now she was uncomfortably aware that her visitor was staring.
She glanced up a couple of times to see Stephen shuffling towards a chair at a snail's pace, eyes locked firmly on her all the while. Even that cautious gait wasn't enough to avoid a poorly placed fan, sending both of them crashing to the ground.
"Oh, for god's sake!" shrieked Joan, throwing the book aside and leaping to her feet. "Just spit it out, already!"
Stephen, who had somehow managed to get tangled in the fan cord on the way down, ended up dragging it along while trying to scramble backwards. "Wh-wha—?"
"Don't give me that! You haven't kept a thought to yourself yet; why start now? Is it the skirt? Does it look that ridiculous?"
With a round of frantic kicking Stephen finally shook free of the cord. "No!"
"You got a problem with the shirt, then? Something you want to say about my hair? My face? My hands?"
"None of that!" squeaked Stephen, now actually hiding behind the chair and peeping over the frame with wide, terrified eyes.
"What is it, then? Why the hell won't you stop staring?"
"Because you're pretty!"
The next shout building in Joan's lungs crashed, burned, and tumbled back down her throat in so many fiery shards.
"You didn't say!" One of Stephen's hands wriggled around the side of the chair and fluttered vaguely in her direction like an epileptic baby bird. "And now you're all...with the hair, and the curves, and the...you should have warned me you were going to get this pretty!"
Joan took a shaky step forward. With a gasp, Stephen ducked out of sight altogether.
By the time Joan rounded the chair, she found the pundit curled up in a tiny ball, eyes still huge and frozen. She tried to say something reassuring, choked before she could even figure out what, and settled for dropping her knees and flinging her arms around Stephen's shoulders.
Stephen let out a squeak of fright and tried to wriggle away; Joan just tightened her grip, shaking her head against her friend's shirt. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you. Thank you...."
"I — I don't understand," pleaded Stephen. "What did I do?"
"Nothing," choked Joan. "Everything."
Slowly, tentatively, Stephen began to unroll, until they were in an awkward but definitely mutual hug. "You could have warned me about the PMS, too."
Joan could get used to this.
Stephen held every door, took her hand to help her out of the cab, even pulled out her chair at the restaurant. It was the kind of thing Tracey would never put up with, and on some level Joan still thought it was faintly ridiculous; but she knew it was Stephen's way of treating her like A Lady, and that felt...well, good.
(It didn't hurt that, every time someone gawked at her for a little too long, Stephen stared them down until they collapsed like a cheap futon.)
After they had ordered (she had to stop Stephen from ordering on her behalf, but even that wasn't as annoying as it might have been), her friend's suave composure began to recede, revealing the fidgets and fissures underneath. "J-Joan? Can I ask you some stuff?"
Joan giggled self-consciously. "Is it the kind of thing you could ask the counselor? I know she's technically on our staff, but she's handled a couple of your people so far, too."
"I've, uh, talked to her already," said Stephen cagily.
Joan raised her eyebrows. "Meaning, you passed her in the hallway once and said hello?"
"No!" Stephen's hands wrung the napkin so hard it nearly tore. "Meaning I've talked to her. Once a week. For a couple of weeks now. ...And, uh, by 'a couple' I mean 'seven'."
The late-afternoon sun slanted across the table.
"Well?" demanded Stephen at last. "Can I ask things? Or are you gonna start crying again?
"Sure," stammered Joan, hastily wiping her eyes while making a mental note to give the counselor a very large bonus. "I mean, I can't promise I'll answer everything. But go ahead and ask."
Most of Stephen's questions were impeccably restrained. Asking after Tracey and the kids, catching up on what Joan had been doing in her free time, and finally a few tentative inquiries about her history of dressing as female.
She was surprised to find that it was a relief to talk about, even briefly, now that she could have shared it all without worrying who it would get back to. How being a comedian had been at least partly an excuse to dress female on mainstream stages, even if she wasn't brave enough to do it often. How she had lost girlfriends to 'the drag thing' until she met Tracey, whose only demand had been that her then-boyfriend not borrow her clothes without asking. How the kids got used to her wearing long wigs at home, while she tried to work out how to explain to her wife that it had stopped being enough.
"Speaking of your wife...." said Stephen, with a particular blend of hesitance and awkwardness that made Joan rein herself in, sensing that the honeymoon period was about to be over. "Is she...I mean, are you two still...y'know, doing it?"
Joan raised her eyebrows. "Stephen, far be it from me to cast aspersions on your pure altruistic concern for my sex life, but...."
"Wordinista," sulked Stephen. "It's a simple question. Are you and your special lady still getting your freak on, yes or no?"
If it had been anyone else, or if Joan's patience had been worn thinner, she might have packed up and called it a day. But a certain amount of obnoxious questioning was the price of admission for being Stephen's friend, and for the moment she had the stamina to fend it off. "My wife is not looking for new guys to sleep with, Stephen. Stop asking."
"I didn't want to sleep with her!" yelped Stephen.
There was a full four-second delay before Joan choked on her martini.
The pleasant conversation. The handholding. The fancy restaurant...actually, they had been here a couple of times before, but always as two guys on business, when now....
"Is this a date?"
"No! Of course not! Nothing like that! Maybe." Stephen plastered on a Stepford grin that stayed intact for about half a second. "I mean...not that that was on my mind in the least, but now that you mention it...you're a beautiful lady, Joan, and I'm a red-blooded heterosexual American male, so, well, I wouldn't kick you out of bed for having a Y chromosome."
"Aw, Stephen," sighed Joan, running her hands through her ever-lengthening hair. "Everything's fine with my wife, okay? And even if it wasn't, I'm into women. I used to be a straight guy; now I'm a lesbian. End of story."
"Well, maybe I'm secretly a lesbian too!" snapped Stephen petulantly. "You don't know!"
Of all the exasperating, trivializing throwaway comments Stephen could have made, this was the one thing Joan couldn't brush off. Not while she could remember the feeling of the axe in her chest during the seconds of smirking before Tracey realized it wasn't a joke.
Taking a deep breath, she cocked her head and regarded Stephen with perfect seriousness. "Are you?"
She waited for the splutters, the protests, the eye-rolling groans of Jon, stop being ridiculous.
Stephen looked at everything in the restaurant except her.
"Stephen...?"
"What? Don't be ridiculous!" spluttered Stephen, with a half-hearted attempt at eye-rolling that ended up looking shiftier than ever. "I'm not — I never — why would you—? —Waiter! Where's our check?"
"You're not mad, are you?"
"Don't worry about it," said Joan.
"Because I'm trying," continued Stephen, walking with her out of the restaurant. "This is weird and uncomfortable and I couldn't find anything in the Bible about how to do it right, or even if you're supposed to do it at all, but I'm trying to be appropriately supportive of your decision to get a vagina."
Joan wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be a sidelong apology, an all-purpose justification, a hastily rewritten summary of the evening that left out all the bits Stephen didn't want remembered, or some mixed concoction of all three. She took it anyway. There would be plenty of times to argue with her friend, and maybe even times to pry, but this wasn't one of them.
"I know you are," she said. "And I appreciate it. Which is why I'm going to tell you something, and trust you to keep it to yourself. Can you do that?"
The shifty-eyed look returned, but only briefly. "Of course. I'm a...a pundit of my word."
Joan stood on tiptoe, silently rejoicing for whatever genetic quirk had given her a perfectly average female height, and put her mouth to Stephen's ear. In a low whisper she confided, "I'm keeping my penis."
With that, she twirled on her tennis-shoed heel and set off down the pavement, hips swinging. She didn't have to look back to know that Stephen would catch up.
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Awww, such a sweet and light-hearted story. I really like Joan and Tracey staying together. It's kind of hard to imagine what a female Jon looks like, but I'm trying. Will she get breast implants or is she happy being an A-cup?
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Sexy, I assume =) I don't think this Joan would get implants; she doesn't have enough vanity to demand them, and on the dysphoria side of things, she's taken her whole transition so slowly that the estrogen, new clothes, and switched pronouns seem to be more than enough for now.
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(Anonymous) 2011-07-10 06:17 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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