“I’m not saying I don’t want to go to the expo with the girl I took out on Thursday. I am saying that I’m also dating the boy you are now, and I want to spend time with him if that’s who he happens to be.”
It feels weird to be out with Celia as a man. Even after last night’s dream, I’m still thinking of her as so attached to my “girl” self, and I’m still working on thinking of her as attached to my whole self. It also feels a little weird to hear her talk about dating me, but I’m not going to complain about that either.
The used book expo is more than I’d expected. It has what I expected - rare booksellers with first editions of classics that everyone wants to look at and own but nobody but Doreen can afford, garage sale-style booths with unsorted piles of books that threaten to collapse and kill all who dwell within - but also some sellers with specific niches. There’s a seller specializing in military histories who also has a copy of the Campaign for North Africa board game, in case you want to chase your books about dead white men’s colonialism with a 1,500-hour tabletop simulation of the same experience. There’s a bookseller who seems to exclusively sell literature written by beat poets and records from musicians they inspired. Some local authors who I’ve never heard of have stalls selling their own books; Celia has us stop by most of these to see if they’d be interested in arranging events at the library.
I’m reminiscing about my childhood while looking at a rack of old Choose Your Own Adventure books when Celia grabs my arm. “Ooh! I know what we’re looking at next!”
“You mean after I’m done trying to decide if I want to spend two dollars on a beat-up copy of Return of the Power Master?”
“You know you don’t want that, and I have an oversight to correct.”
This is intense, even for Celia. “What oversight?”
“Well, when we set up our blind book date, I thought you were a queer woman or enby with some gender confusion to work out, so I set you up with Orlando. If I’d known at the time that you’d spent most of your life as a straight man” - she stresses this as a playful insult - “then I’d have opened your eyes to an entire genre of literature that I, due to your unintentional deception, assumed you’d already read.”
“What?”
She continues pulling on my arm, leading me across the expo. “The last few decades have seen a lot more gender equity in the stacks, with women - although not enough - getting printed in genres that are traditionally thought of as masculine,” Celia explained. “However, the same cannot be said the other way around. While gay men have made inroads into feminine-coded or feminine-assumed genres, both as readers and writers, by and large straight men, and probably you, never get any close than Game of Thrones to the massive literary opportunity contained within…” she sweeps her arm down our destination, an entire aisle full of…
Romance novels. Covers featuring women in various states of undress being propositioned by men in even greater states of undress everywhere. “You have to be joking.”
“I am not! We’re walking out of here with one romance novel apiece. But ground rules apply!”
“Of course they do. What are the Sexy Librarian Rules Of The Sex Library?”
“Rule one is definitely that we are never calling one particular bookshelf in my house anything other than the Sexy Librarian Sex Library ever again.
“Rule two is that, today only, we must select heterosexual romance! Queer romance is great, but” - she winks at me - “that’s not what we are right now, is it?
“Rule three! Which is a subrule of rule two! No Chuck Tingle! His work is excellent, but Way Too Niche for a first time!
“Rule four: I have veto power over your book choice. I promise I’m not trying to control you, just protect you from the absolute dogshit that got the romance genre its reputation as trash.”
“I thought it was trash because people thought it was smut-“
She interrupts me. “Rule five, and this is the mean one: You have to wait to read it for the first time until you’re a woman.”
I stop. “Wait, that doesn’t make sense. You want me to buy a straight romance novel as a straight man, but wait until I’m a lesbian to read it?”
Celia shrugs. “It will make sense when the time comes, pun may or may not be intended.”
We walk down the aisle, trying to see what books catch our interest. The thing about the romance genre is that you can probably find something in a genre you like that also counts as a romance novel. I gravitate toward a booth that looks sci-fi-ish. Hang on, I think I’ve heard of this one. “Hey Celia, does Outlander count?”
“Depends. If you’ve watched the show, no – that’s Rule Six. If you’re coming in fresh, absolutely and I 100% approve of that decision.”
I’m so new to this genre that one book is as good as another to me, and I’ve at least heard of this one. I pay up, take my latest Dating A Librarian Tax, and go to see what trouble my librarian’s gotten herself into.
She’s over at a table with… horror romance? I didn’t think of her as the Anne Rice type, but maybe – I crane my neck to see – The Coldest Girl in Coldtown isn’t the same kind of vampire romance? She checks out and we keep walking through the expo.
The rest of the expo proceeds uneventfully. We both pick up a couple more items - classics with fancy covers for her, bookmarks and Return of the Power Master (to prove a point) for me - and we head to Celia’s car.
“Do you actually own a vehicle, or is dating me a way of freeloading?” she jokes as she gets into the driver’s seat.
“Get me a two-gendered driver’s license and we’ll find out,” I reply. It does bother me that I don’t feel safe driving, but we still haven’t thought of a good legal solution.
Celia blinks. “You know that in many states, including this one, you can get your gender listed as ‘X’ for non-binary?”
“Huh. Good to know. Now I need a new freeloading excuse. I don’t want to drive in heels?”
“Nobody does, Imelda Marcos. We all either figure it out anyway or stow flats in the car.”
----------
Once we’re back in the car, I have a chance to ask Celia a question I couldn’t ask in public. “I’m curious – why are you so normal about my sex-shifting so quickly?”
Celia glances over at me. “I was wondering if you’d catch that.” She takes a deep breath. “When you came into the library last week, you looked like you were trying to make sure nobody knew your gender – if you even had one. I found you cute, but I also found that cute. My last two relationships were an engagement to a negative one futch, followed by a thankfully brief fling with a guy who could not stand any moment he was not The Man in the room. Your lack of binary gender performance was a welcome relief from those.
“Then I came to pick you up for our date, and you were so femme I had whiplash, and we almost didn’t go to the bookstore. Not because of the femme presentation – I assumed that was Doreen’s doing – but because you had this intense aura of “I am hiding something” that I couldn’t shake. I had it worst when you spilled the water on Chuck, but when you then spilled the water on yourself, I started to wonder if I was misreading ‘nervous about looking like a disaster lesbian’ as ‘hiding something’.”
“And, of course, both ended up being true.” I added.
“The Facebook search made me more nervous – and it was an innocent search so I could friend you, I promise. It felt like each time I found you, I was finding a different person. I was less worried about who you were than who you were hiding. Once I trusted that you were being honest, it was such a relief that you probably could have had five tits and three dicks and I’d have just asked where you expected me to put them all.”
I consider this for a second. “I think a better question is where I would have put them all.”
After a couple minutes, Celia looks at me. “Hey, can I ask you a weird question?”
“I feel like we don’t have any other kind; go for it.”
“We’ve thrown around a lot of terms around your gender and sexual identity, but I never asked you specifically how you think of yourself.”
I look out the window and think about my oddly gender-affirming dream. “I’m still thinking about that myself. When I first shifted, I didn’t know what to think. When our date rolled around, and Doreen had me dressing as a woman, that felt right for the me that I was then. Now, I feel like I’ve felt my whole life until the shift.
“As for sexuality, attracted pretty much exclusively to women in both bodies, I think. I’m put in mind of an old Eddie Izzard routine before she transitioned where she referred to herself as a ‘male lesbian’.
“I don’t know where that puts me in terms of the gender spectrum – maybe I’m a both-gendered lesbian who performs the gender of their body’s current shape? Is that a thing?”
Celia shrugs. “I don’t really know what’s ‘a thing’ either – beyond being tolerant of people self-identifying and considering myself as a bisexual woman, I haven’t had to think too deeply about it. But if we’re accepting that people can self-identify their gender, being a both-gendered lesbian who performs the gender of your body’s shape is ‘a thing’ because it’s what you say you are.”
I nod. “That makes sense.”
----------
We get to Celia’s house and she invites me in. I barely have the door closed before her sundress hits the floor. Apparently I look a little surprised, because she gives me a look and says, “What? You didn’t except that I invited you in to make you dinner. Unless…” She licks her lips and looks at my chest and groin. “Unless you’re really hungry.”
I feel myself rise to the occasion, and I start to take my shirt off. “Not for dinner, but I could do some dessert if you have something sweet for me.”