Victoria laid in bed, stretching out languorously. The room was pitch black and perfectly still. There was no clock on the nightstand. She hadn’t used a clock in her bedroom since her last heart attack. Victoria hadn’t woken to an alarm clock since her retirement. There was no reason. Sleep when you’re tired. Wake when you’re rested. And by all means, enjoy an occasional nap. Wondering what time it was, her hand flailed out, groping for the cell phone on her nightstand. 4:30. Absolutely no time for a civilized girl to get up. As she had so often lately, as Victoria neared the end of her days, she let her mind roam through the seventy-five years of her life. Like most of us, Victoria has lived several different lives, careers, and loves. She enjoyed the memories. Her first kiss, for example, was a particularly fond one.
She was fourteen or fifteen, and quite tall. It was a winter evening, and it was snowing. A light snow, with those giant snowflakes that seem to float down from the sky like feathers. She can still remember those big snowflakes landing on her face and the face of Karen. Yes, Karen. You see, she wasn’t always Victoria.
She was born James. Jim was a skinny boy, tall and gangly, and severe allergies had left him slight and not very athletic. He was an avid reader and loved to watch old movies with his mother. This exact memory is that Jim and Karen laughed as they negotiated the difference in their heights, and Karen stepped up onto a porch step and turned her face up to his. For the first time in his life, Jim’s lips met those of another person, with those big beautiful snowflakes falling on both of them. “What a wonderful memory,” Victoria thought. She wondered if Karen was out there, if she ever thought about it.
But that was not this morning’s reverie. This morning she laid in bed recalling when she was an eighteen-year-old boy newly enlisted in the U. S. Navy. She was stationed in San Diego in Amphibious Construction Battalion One. The Seabees.
Jim was eighteen in 1972. There was no such thing as transgender, in his world anyway, and Stonewall had not yet rippled very far out of NYC. Jim loved girls, the Beatles, and pot. He had done most, if not all of the drugs, and loved pot. He was a hippie, or as they say in San Diego, a loadie. He had gravitated to a group of similar boys, and they would buy their weed for $10 an ounce. They lived in modern barracks, four to a room. Someone had found a rental house in a neighboring community, and they were all going to go in together and rent it and live off-base. It was all set and happening soon.
Jim was given a temporary assignment when he first reported to ACB-1 before his permanent position became available. It consisted of running a floor buffer through an empty barracks about once a week and getting high and playing cards the rest of the time.
One day, Jim was pushing the buffer through the barracks when he realized someone was standing in front of him. He shut off his machine and looked up to see another boy dressed in the same uniform. He greeted Jim with a smile and said his name was Chris. Chris lived in the same barracks, and one of his roommates was getting out of the Navy and going home. Jim listened and looked Chris up and down. He was about 5’10”, with blonde hair and big perky brown eyes, and he was quite good-looking. Chris asked Jim if he wanted to move into the room, into the vacancy created by his departing roommate. Jim thought about his plans with his friends and the house they were poised to move into. So of course he said yes.
Victoria chuckled to herself. Jim never understood why, at that moment, his life took such an immediate and dramatic turn. But Victoria did. Chris was handsome. Beautiful. And, Victoria supposed, it was love at first sight.
Jim broke the news to his friends. They responded with, “Huh?” “We agreed!” “Why?”, and every other logical question one could imagine. But Jim had no logical answer, no rational response, so he just stuttered and stammered, and hemmed and hawed. And he moved in with Chris.
This began an absolute highlight of Jim’s life. Yes, of Victoria’s life. For one thing, Jim was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland was dirty, the people were hard, the river had caught on fire. Cleveland was like Chicago’s cousin. If there was a rivalry, a connection between them, Cleveland was the cousin you only see at holidays and funerals. Chicago had a class, a culture, and sophistication that Cleveland didn’t seem to possess. It could be worse. Cleveland could be Youngstown or Scranton. Chris was from Portland, Oregon, the polar opposite of Cleveland. Portland was polite, friendly, and clean.
They were together for about two years, strictly in the platonic sense. They were joined at the hip. They were two peas in a pod. But neither of them ever pursued or even talked about their closeness. They never shared a word, a touch, or a caress. But there was a bond, a bromance, yes, a love between them.
This morning Victoria lay there, reflecting on Chris. “He gave me so much”, she thought. Chris gave Jim music. Today when someone gets in their car anywhere in America, Portland, or Cleveland, the same thing is on the radio. They hear the same deejays, the same commercials, and the same music. But in 1972 there was a definite difference, and Jim heard, for the first time, Grateful Dead, Poco, country rock, and surf music. And he heard so much more. Chris gave Jim books. For the first time, Jim read Tolkien, Hesse, Huxley, and Castaneda. And he read so much more.
They put down an area rug in their barracks room, added a sofa and a hanging lamp, and transformed it into a comfortable living space. Everyone who visited them said it made them feel like home. How many evenings they sat on that couch, smoking dope, and sharing thoughts and dreams! And Chris would draw. He could draw beautifully. He would doodle little things or draw big, complex things. Then he would wad them up and discard them! Jim loved everything Chris drew. Indeed, somewhere, squirreled away, Victoria still had a piece of Chris’ art.
They would go out and explore San Diego. They went to the beaches and found Black’s Beach. It’s a nude beach, and Jim just walked out and stripped. Chris went behind a bush to disrobe and then emerged nude. Jim didn’t understand that at all. Today, Victoria finds that modesty charming. They went rock climbing. They would spend a half-day to get to the top of a peak, and the other half to get back down. They called them mountains, but they were probably large hills. They went to concerts, usually at the venue commonly referred to as the San Diego Sports Aroma. They often went to Balboa Park. It’s just a lovely place filled with music and art, friendly people, a museum or two, and a massive arboretum. And they went to the zoo. The San Diego Zoo was the most beautiful place Jim had ever visited, and they spent many days there, visiting the animals or just sitting in one of the giant aviaries.
There were times, perhaps many times over the years that they argued or fought. This morning Victoria was sure the fault was usually Jim’s. Jim could be petulant, a brat, and Chris always called him on it.
Once Chris was named Seabee of the Month. He was neat and clean. His uniform was always sharp and crisp. He was polite and did his work promptly and thoroughly. Of course, he was named Seabee of the Month. This got your name in lights. You had a special parking space, a plaque, and a couple more little perks. Yes, Jim was a little envious. It was a nice little honor. Chris stood up, looked the Captain in the eye, and said, “No thank you. I am a conscientious objector. I don’t believe in the Navy and I don’t believe in the Viet Nam war. So it would be hypocritical, it would be wrong to accept this award.” Victoria was sure no one had ever done such a thing before, and perhaps since.
In time, everything ends. One day, Chris’ enlistment was up, and it was time to go home to Portland. Their time together was over. Victoria remembered a moment together, a goodbye with mild assertions of affection, and then he was gone.
But the changes in Jim, and Victoria, are measurable. He was nicer, cleaner, and smarter. Kinder. He was just a better person. Jim carried such fond, wonderful memories of his time with Chris. Victoria is not good with computers or the interweb, and she has searched for Chris to no avail. She has wondered if Chris is still alive. Did he come out as a gay man? Or did he marry and have 2.5 children? She has no regrets about not pursuing a more intimate relationship, because those two innocent boys have provided a multitude of warm, happy memories, and any advance might have resulted in a rift or an end to the relationship they did have. Besides, they were both so naïve.
It wasn’t until years later that Victoria came to understand and embrace her own gender identity and sexuality. I wonder, she thought, would Chris recognize me today? Would he accept me? Would he run away in terror? “Ahh,” she sighed, “I guess I’ll never know. But as Bogey said in Casablanca, we’ll always have Paris.” She threw off the blanket and headed to the coffee pot.
~ Jaelle Terrell
copyright©2022 Jaelle Terrell