Current mood:	stressed
Current music:	"Mission Impossible Theme" by U2

Hands Down
"Hands Down"

I knew it had been too long before I stepped off the Red Line train at the Belmont stop. I remembered that feeling in my stomach, the first time I had walked across this same platform, coming to see him, and I was amazed at how similarly my stomach felt today. After all, this time it wasn't anything new. We were lovers. We had been lovers, off and on, for two years. We were as close as friends could be. We talked every week, and each time I was newly amazed by his deep voice, and we still commented in each other's journal like it was our job. We shared our stories and pictures. We even cybered, when we were both hard-up. We were still lovers. We knew each other, inside and out, so intimately. So why were the butterflies back?
The stairs looked the same as they had that Wednesday afternoon. I knew it had been a Wednesday, because I had had that long Art History class that day, which had nearly given me a coronary to sit through, and because it was the middle of the week and no one ever dates in the middle of the week, unless, like us, they needed to see each other so badly that they couldn't make it until the weekend. Today was not a Wednesday; it was a Sunday, my third day back in Chicago after too long.



As I looked at the familiar graffiti picture in the CTA station, of the man with the spiked hair, rainbow t-shirt, and giant ear piercings, I felt the butterflies double. Butterflies, I thought. Those notes I had written him were on paper from my butterfly notepad, a pad I still had somewhere, in some unused purse. I realized that I should have gotten it out and written something for him for the occasion, but then I scoffed inwardly. That was definitely overdoing it, just too damn sentimental. Then again, we knew each other. He knew that I was too damn sentimental. And I wouldn't be surprised if he had notes to give me, which would cause us both to tear up a little. That was when I decided I would have to write about this experience, at least, for him.

My stomach jumped again as I went through the door onto Belmont. I thought about him. He had been my first, in so many ways, and I his. I had met him right after coming out, just as I was coming to terms with everything and needed a supportive friend as well as a compassionate lover. He had met me when he most needed to meet a woman who would accept himself as himself. He had been my first pansexual relationship, and the first one to make me come in bed. He had been the first one I had not feared in bed. I had been his first woman, as a man. His girl. His femme. But finally, he had been more than someone's butch-he had been my guy. He had learned to love me, as a guy, just as I had learned to love without inhibitions. He had taught me to like kissing. I had not just given him oral, but sucked his dick. I had come to him as an innocent questioning girl, just coming to terms with being pansexual and genderqueer. He had come to me when he was learning to show the world that he was the man he always had been inside. We had explored together, taught each other, learned from each other, were amazed by each other, and sometimes just held hands. He had been the first guy with whom I'd ever walked around with for hours on end, holding hands, and felt totally comfortable and at home in myself and with him.

It had been too long. We had both done so much since then. After that amazing year, I had been accepted at that school on the East Coast, and off I had gone, ready to explore even more. He wasn't ready to leave Chicago, and that made sense. It was perfect for him. We had had other lovers, in the past two years. I had been with a woman, finally. More than one, to tell the truth. I had been in love again. So had he. I had been with another transguy, and so had he. Mine made me miss him, my first, and his helped him explore his pansexuality the same way he had for me. We had had our hearts broken, and cried our eyes out to each other. I had given up on love last January, and he in June. Now I was back to being a romantic and trying to encourage him to try it again, as well. I knew that we still had the same personalities that we had, that chilly October Wednesday when we met, but that they were more fleshed out and more understood, and that we had new problems to work through and new questions to answer. There were always new questions.

It was lighter tonight than it had been when we met, even though it was 7:00 PM, because now it was July as opposed to October. We had met right after Daylight Savings Time, I remembered. That time of year when it got dark too early. I had cursed the darkness then, because it prevented me from checking him out from very far away. I could only see a shadow, that time, of a young man in a leather biker jacket and baggy jeans. I looked up to check him out again, now. He was standing in the doorway of the Army Surplus Store, the same as he had that night, staring out across the street, not looking towards me. No jacket this time, because it was hot Chicago summer. Just a blue t-shirt, which I knew would match his eyes , and which looked great on his muscular frame. His muscular frame. It was the first sign that this was not the same body I had left him in. Sure, when I had left he had had his first few shots and we had counted the hairs in his sideburns, just as I had promised to that second night, but now it was a whole different story, as his sideburns came all the way past his ears, and looked sexy rather than pubescent. He looked so comfortable in himself, with his flat chest, which I knew didn't come from a compression shirt this time, and a bulge below his waist line that was no longer artificial. I felt a stirring below my own waistline when I saw that bulge. I hadn't been with a guy in a long time, and I hoped he would be able to satisfy that. No, I knew he would. His hands were in his pockets and he slouched a bit, but it looked good on him. I could tell from his posture that he knew it did, and that excited me even more. His hair was a little shorter than it had been that late fall evening, but it was the same shiny brown that made me want to run my hands through it. I instinctually put my hands up to my own head, checking my short blonde cut, even though I knew he would like it no matter what. It was windblown, but what could I do, it was Chicago. I had missed Chicago, even the winds. I was glad to be back.

I crossed the alley, and he looked over to me, his light eyes lit up, and he grinned. My heart leapt, because I knew that grin was rare-at times I had been privileged enough to know that it was reserved only for me. That same mouth that had once looked so boyish against his smooth, hairless skin was now manly. He had dark stubble above his upper lip, and on his chin grew a short goatee. I smiled, knowing that he hadn't shaven on purpose, just to show me. I felt honored. I absentmindedly turned my eyebrow ring, which the school I was going to teach for here was allowing me to keep, and remembered talking to him at the IHOP that night about my nervous habits. I realized I was walking slowly, reminiscing rather than living, and I took the last few steps at a gallop, greeting him the way I wish I had the first night. I wrapped my arms around him, feeling his soft skin through his shirt, rather than a layer of binding. I buried my head on his shoulder, breathing him in. He held me just as tightly, and I felt the muscles in his arms flex, as well as…could it be? I blushed a little to feel the pressure on my leg. I realized that it had been silly to ever wonder if he would be able to satisfy me now, since even back then he had done more to satisfy me than any man before him. I looked up and his eyes immediately met mine, piercing my soul. He moved towards me, not nervous now. He knew what to do. Our lips touched as softly as they had on the train when we parted that night two years before, but then came on with more pressure, which was what I needed. I remembered the lyrics from "our" song…He kissed me like he meant it, now just as he had then. I returned his embrace with abandon. We kissed forever, but it wasn't long enough when he pulled away a few seconds later.

"Welcome home," he said in a hushed voice, so as not to share his sentiment with all the people walking by on the busy sidewalk. In his voice I heard all the emotions of our friendship. I heard the scared trannyboy, the lover, the friend, the cracking voice of early T, and the man standing before me now. I knew they were all one and the same. I searched his face and saw the boy I had seen that night, and the boy I had seen in my dreams since then. I couldn't resist kissing him on the nose and twirled his goatee around the pointer finger of my left hand as he gazed at me, amused and not at all surprised at my impishness. He reached down to grasp my right hand for the walk to the restaurant, which I knew would seem as short on this hot summer evening as it had that cold night so many seasons before. I hoped we would wander the Boystown streets tonight the way we had back then, forgetting the way back to the train station in our eagerness to be together. Tonight, however, we had no timetable and we were not afraid to get busted.
Squeezing his hand, I whispered back, "It's been too long."