“Selfish Virtue; Selfless Despair”

Selfish Virtue; Selfess Despair

The Sordid
Internal Affairs of
Metamagic Publishing
Episode 3

I was finally where I had wanted to be for so long.

Her fluffy bed. Curled up on the soft comforter with the elegant pink rose print. My head on pillows in matching pillow cases. The lights were a soft yellow. Lamps on small tables on either side of the bed. Across from the bed was a coffee table and a small couch. She liked to read there in the afternoons. That’s apparently where she did some editing for me. Though she hasn’t been doing much of that lately. It was dark out, anyways, so there wasn’t any light for reading to speak of that wouldn’t come from a lamp.

I was simply happy to be here. Happy to simply be. For once, I didn’t feel the need to be something. Be something for somebody. Fill out an identity. Fulfill some purpose. Be productive. Be competitive. Be aggressive. Be assertive. I could just be for a moment.

The door opened slowly. Beatrice poked her head through the threshold. Her awkward, apologetic grin didn’t tell me much about what was going on. I welcomed her into the room. She’d been trying a new haircut recently. Shoulder-length hair that she kept nicely volumized. As she entered, I saw she was wearing a violet bathrobe and fuzzy gray slippers. She sat on the couch across from the bed.

I sat up cross-legged to look at her and asked, “Everything okay?”

She gave a haphazard eye roll, lowered her head, then slumped her shoulders, before sitting back up with proper posture and looking back at me with a saccharine smile.

“Yeah, I feel that,” I said.

Beatrice had an unconventional beauty. Her smiles were goofy and bright, so you couldn’t help but smile back. She was taller than average, but not in a way that felt domineering or intimidating. More like you could tell she’d been made to feel that way all her life so it made her all that much more cautious and shy. That being the case, her height came across more like she wanted to use it to be helpful, and so what most would at first view as a trait of domination quickly came to be viewed in a more servile light. Her shoulders might be described as broad by some, but could never be in comparison to her hips. The way she carried her weight made her seem self conscious about her proportions. This always made me sad for her, because I perceived nothing but beauty.

“Any word from Catherine?” I asked.

As her name departed my lips, the woman opened the door as though I’d summoned her with my very thoughts.

“Yes,” she said as she glided around the bed, reached up to turn the ceiling light on, and joined me in her bed. “The word is that I always arrive precisely when I intend to. Never early, never late. Like a proper time mage.” She slipped onto the bed on her side, with her left hand holding up her head to look at me. Her makeup was phenomenal. Smoky eyes. Violet lips. Killer blush. And her hair was so perfectly done up that I had to wonder if she had just had it done professionally before she walked into the room. It was short in the front and off to one side and longer in the back and in an elaborate bun with a lot of pins, ties, and a couple of chopsticks. She was wearing a very revealing black floral lace nightgown, and the whole of her being in that moment was a stark contrast to the seeming innocence of her pink rose print comforter.

“Wait,” I asked, “if we’re getting ready for bed, then why are you all done up like this?”

Come to think of it, maybe the chopsticks were just for the sake of appearance? Who knows?

“The main reason is, if this ever gets made into a TV show or movie, I want to leave nothing to chance in how I’m portrayed,” she explained.

I nodded. “That makes sense,” I said. It did.

“You, on the other hand, have left everything up to the interpretation of the casting directors, director, and costume designers.”

I looked down and saw that I had chest hair and was wearing nothing but a pair of blue plaid boxers. The outline of a boner was clearly visible. I didn’t even notice it until now. What happened to those near 15 years of transition? I could even feel balls again! As I turned to look back at Catherine, I fell off the bed. I climbed up far enough to see her over the edge of the bed. I felt like Adam hiding his sin from God. “What the fuck has happened to me?”

Catherine gave me an impish grin. “Selfishness is a virtue, little girl.”

Beatrice chuckled from the couch.

I sat my apparently lanky body cross-legged, and said, “But there’s so much awful stuff going on in the world, and-“

Catherine interrupted me, “And we can’t do anything about it if we can’t take care of our house, can we?”

I sighed, and looked down. Hairy legs. My legs hadn’t been that hairy in almost 15 years. “No. We can’t, I suppose.”

“Exactly,” she said. I could hear the feelings of superiority in her voice. “Now, here’s my issue with you,” she rolled off the bed and crossed the room to sit near me. She was on the bed, her legs crossed. Her right leg over the left. She leaned in, almost sensually, but there was no hint of anything resembling that in her expression. “You let those bastards in.”

“What?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

“One thousand words,” Beatrice said from the couch in her solemn, careful voice.

Oh, fuck.

“Yeah,” Catherine said. “‘Oh, fuck,’ indeed. But not just where that absolutely dreadful nightmare was concerned, you keep letting the bastards in.”

I tried to conceive of what she might be talking about.

“Are you that dense?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Maybe I am. I didn’t even notice myself as I was writing this. I was only paying attention to the fact that I was here. Away from all the misery and heartache of the outside. I was just happy to be here with–”

Catherine sat up straight, looking down her nose at me. Arms crossed. I waited for her to pronounce her judgment of me. A worthless worm worthy of exile and torment forever. I would be granted no such reprieve. She looked away. Sighed. “You,” she finished my thought. “I’m happy to be here with you.”

“What are we even doing?” I asked. “Who are we?”

She looked at me. Not down her nose this time. But turning her whole head to gaze at me. She answered gently, “Don’t ask questions you aren’t ready to have answered.”

“Okay, why did you lie and say that I had made you up 15 minutes prior in the PR Disaster story when you had showed up in my life almost two years prior? And not as a ‘masturbatory fantasy’ or however you described it, but as someone interested in helping me process some really awful stuff?”

“In response to your first question, comedic effect. In response to your second question, part comedic effect, and part because not every reader needs to know everything about every character in a story. Certainly not the author. Such things take away from the mystery of the story,” she explained. “And anyways, we’ve fucked and you loved it. To the outside observer, that is the definition of masturbatory.”

“But, to us it was–,” I began, curling my knees under my elbows and resting my chin on my forearms. The idea of where she was going with this made me want to be percieved as little as possible.

“–Sex, obviously.”

I wasn’t sure what to do with this information. Here I was, apparently detransitioned, sitting here with who was apparently a potentiality of myself, who was the epitome of who I hoped to be as a trans woman in one sense, sitting alongside another woman who was a more accurate representation of my post-transition self, except far less talkative (as I also wish I could be, so once again, another protective potential ideal).

“Do you remember the virtue I mentioned earlier?” Catherine asked.

“Selfishness?” I tried to stifle my instinctual ‘I hate Ayn Rand’ pangs as I asked, “How do you mean?”

“Well, first of all, you’re right to throw out Ayn Rand. Her writing is shit. Yours isn’t much better, but I’m seeing improvement. I’m taking an Aristotelean approach. Think of a mean between greed and generosity. Except, maybe generosity isn’t even the right word for how you approach it, because you aren’t even approaching with generosity, you’re approaching with an empty heart and almost empty pockets.”

Empty heart? I’ve just been hurt a lot, and I don’t want to see more hurt in the world.

“The point is: you make everything you do about you. And never about the people you are ostensibly trying to help,” Catherine looked truly concerned for me. I’d actually never seen her like this before.

“Fair point,” I looked away, nodding. “I’ll cop to that.”

“And you try to make it seem like you’re not. That contradiction just causes tension, friction, and confusion.”

That hit a nerve for me. “That’s literally the whole world around me, though. Everything trying to be something it’s not. Saying one thing and doing another. At least I’m trying to do some good, and yeah, maybe I’ll benefit from it, but so will lots of other people!”

“So just say that,” she chuckled. “You’re such a fucking joke, sometimes.”

“So what are you then? You’re just a figment of my imagination, right? I can just get rid of you anytime!”

Catherine waved her hands around like a magic wand, “By all means, little girl. Try.”

I glared at her with impotent rage.

“Anyways, what’s that phrase you like to use?” she cleared her throat as she stuck a finger out defiantly, “I just wish people would say what they mean and mean what they say.”

“Okay, then! Do it! Say what you mean!” I demanded from my curled up, tiny throne of dysphoria.

Catherine patted me on the head. I instinctively flinched as I felt hot tears roll down my cheeks.

Goddammit. Not that. Anything but that.

“I have been this whole time, little girl. The question is, have you been?”

I didn’t know. How could I be certain? Even within myself, I was divided against myself.

“You’ll never have babies!” I spat. “You’ll never have a man worth a damn who wants you for more than your body, and even if you do find one, it would be a pyrrhic victory because such a meeting would only happen in the darkness of your bedroom!”

She gave me the same grin as she did earlier, and leaned in slightly with a slow, repeating nod. “Yes. That’s it. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“You’re the literal dictionary definition of a disinherited reprobate. Your family rejected you because you didn’t carry on the family seed. The white race rejects you because you refuse to carry out the mission of Hitler’s 14 words. Even though you’re a US army veteran, your history of violence isn’t enough to solidify you a place of respect in United States life and culture beyond a pity check and it isn’t enough to get you the bodily autonomy you deserve,” I continued.

Catherine’s grin grew into a full-blown smile. I was confused, and could see that Beatrice was as well. Catherine encouraged, “Yes? Yes? Keep going!”

“And you literally just want to fuck your way to the top because the legitimate paths to success have all been denied to you?” I asked.

“And from the top,” she straightened her posture and stuck her chest out, “I’ll see to it there is no top by the time I’m done.” She had her left fist clenched dramatically at eye level like some kind of demented anime character, staring into a future she was speaking into existence. “All unjustified hierarchy shall fall before my might. Patriarchs and girlbosses alike.” She stood, raising her fist, “Then I shall ruthlessly abdicate my position of power declaring an end to such power and a rule by a classless, stateless, moneyless society shall prevail forever!” This was followed up by a maniacal cackle. It was almost as if she had this whole thing planned from the start. Like she just wanted Beatrice and I to pay witness to her mental breakdown as she formed a dictatorship in her own head and then abdicated it in a state of what she hoped would remain anarcho–communism (which is to say, a state of no ‘state’ of which to speak).

“Now, little girl,” Catherine patted me on the head, and as she did, my body was how I remembered it. Pear shaped, glorious tits (that high dose of progesterone did the trick), brunette hair to the middle of my back, and what I have been told are ‘child-bearing hips’. I checked my scrotum. Empty again. “Love me,” she said as she laid back on the bed. “Love me and despair.”

I looked over at Beatrice. She nodded and gave a tiny little princess wave. I shrugged back.

It was funny. As I climbed on top of her, our legs intertwined, I couldn’t get out of my head the deeper layers to what she said.

“Love me, and despair.”

She obviously wasn’t referencing Tolkien. Neither of us had any great reverence for his work. Maybe on the surface, yes, because it just sounds fucking cool to hear Galadriel say it in the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, but on a deeper level, I couldn’t help but hear fucking Kierkegaard.

Despair, as he defines it, is a disregulated relationship with the self. On a deeper level, this is his basic definition of sin. The only cure for despair – sin, the sickness unto death – is death. Kierkegaard’s solution is a spiritual death: a death to the sinful flesh, and a new life in Christ. However, Sister Catherine here had other theological ruminations in mind, it seemed, and I was simultaneously disgusted with and relishing the irony. I couldn’t be my ideal self. But at least I could enjoy her company in the expanse of the imagination. Maybe despair isn’t the right word for that.

I felt a warm hand fly across my cheek.

“Despair is EXACTLY the right word,” Catherine was now grabbing my face. “Do you have any idea what it’s like being trapped by you?”

“Twabbed?” I mumbled through her grab.

She let go my face and grabbed a wad of my hair, pulling me back and shoving me off of her and on my back onto the comforter. “Do you have any idea what we could accomplish if you would just let go of your fucking ideals? Your ‘shoulds’? Your perfectionism?” She let go my hair, her hand still on my sternum.

“Probably a lot? I dunno.”

She nodded, “Yeah, probably a lot. People are gonna see a fucking man when they look at you. They’re gonna see a tranny. A faggot. Whatever. They’re gonna see what they’re gonna see. You can’t control that. But I see you. And you see me. Right?”

I nodded.

“And now that you’ve actually read Descartes for yourself about him saying over and over again, remembering about having a ‘clear and distinct perception’ of things, and building a foundation from there? Well, not everyone has your foundation, but fuck ‘em. They don’t need it. Bruce Lee talked about cutting away everything that doesn’t matter and letting that be your path to excellence or something like that. And I think it was Aristotle or Plato or one of those dudes who talked about excellence being a matter of practice. But you’re afraid to practice anything because you’re not perfect at it right at the start!”

I sighed, “So what’s your point?”

“My point, Brandi,” she grabbed my left tit and cranked the volume to 11. I yelped. She held me firm. “Is that you give up on anything before you even try because you’ve never been allowed to succeed. That’s not the same as failure. That’s just… you’re so fucking OP at everything you do that you scare all the mediocre white men out of the water. So they find any reason they can to sink you.”

She released her pressure on my sternum and my breast. I laid back and thought for a moment. “Intramural basketball. I sucked at that. Army marksmanship and unarmed combat. I sucked at those. My push-ups PT test I barely passed. And–,”

Catherine held her hand up and buzzed me quiet. “That’s all pre-transition. Dissonance. Dysphoria. That doesn’t count. Post-transition. What about that? You were good on your metrics at your 411 job, except the boss kept you with a male voice prompt which caused callers to misgender you, which shot you in the foot. At the place where you worked with developmentally disabled adults, there were the coworkers who were calling you by a name you’ve never gone by, and then there was the TERF boss after the cool boss got promoted. When you took your EMT practical the first time, you got a ding that they would have NEVER knocked a cis white dude off for.”

I nodded. “Right. There was that firefighter Grindr hookup who confirmed that. I passed that class with the highest score I’m pretty sure, too. Or one of the highest at least. 98%.”

Catherine pounced playfully. I gasped involuntarily. “Right. And then there was the deli job where customers asked for you by name, but the manager and assistant manager both kept giving you conflicting information, setting you up for failure.”

I gave Catherine a side-eye for that one. “Okay, but I was one of the only white people working in the deli. And I was getting asked for by the white people. Also, both those managers were black, and were getting hounded by white men manager and assistant store managers. Maybe that’s a bad example.”

“Fine.” She pounced again, but more lightly. “But your next job, that market research one?”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course, who could forget good old Tim at On-Line Communications Worldwide?”

“Stuff it. That’s not the point. The point is: they gave you arbitrary bathroom restrictions, like two previous jobs, based on a baseless rumor, and you were sometimes hitting twice the required numbers simply because you were following your own path and doing what felt most natural for you rather than simply what you were told to do.”

“Right. And something similar happened at Hammertone Relay. What’s your point? I thought we were finally going to fuck,” I sat up, leaning on one elbow. My breasts sagged as I sat up. That was a strangely refreshing feeling after my brief stint detransitioned.

“We are,” Catherine nodded. She then pounced me to the bed again, kissing me long, hard, and deep. I felt a fuzzy warmth in my chest from it that I’d been waiting for. I was left floaty and breathless from it. Pulling back, she explained, “My point is: you’ve been trying too hard, and you’ve been sabotaged time, and time, and time again, because you’re just too fucking good at everything you try to do. These hourly jobs aren’t worth your time. I dare say even being a paramedic wouldn’t have been worth your time if only because the system you’d have been working under would have been putting the people you’d have been ‘helping’ into monstrous amounts of debt. Even worse, you put us into monstrous amounts of debt to do it and you’re not even doing it!”

“And?” I asked. “What’s your suggestion?”

Catherine took off her panties and straddled me in a fluid motion. “Right now, you’re going to fuck me. You’re going to get me pregnant. And we’re going to have so many fucking babies.” Her expression didn’t give me any hint to her level of seriousness. It was just an ear-to-ear grin. “We’ll figure out the rest later.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “But I’m still wearing these boxers. Can we take those off?”

Catherine shimmied her way off of me. As she did, she pulled the boxers off me. My dick comically flopped out as she pulled them down. We all giggled about it. Catherine then reached to the lower half of the bedside table to grab the lube. After drenching me with it, she climbed back on top of me. Her warmth in that regard was everything I’d been needing without knowing it. I went from being semi-hard to fully erect in a matter of moments as we rubbed against each other. Was this frotting? Tribbing?

“Oh, my fuck, woman, stop trying to label everything!” Catherine moaned.

My hands were on her hips as I half-nodded, half-moaned “Yuh-huh!”

I felt myself edging toward that plateau, she and I maintained eye contact for a long while before she half leaned and I half pulled her down to kiss me. She started kissing my cheek and neck, and I responded in kind. I started to bite, and she threw me down, exclaiming, “No marks!” I nodded, and we rejoined our passionate Sapphic embrace. We rolled over, and as we did, I happened to notice that Beatrice was looking very pleased, though she was still in her robe and largely unmoved from when she came into the room.

Catherine grabbed my face, and said, “Eyes on me, bitch!”

I nodded. “Yes, Ma’am,” I said.

“Now, fuck me,” She demanded.

I nodded, “Yes, Ma’am,” and complied.

Catherine was warm, wet, and inviting. The act of entering her sacred sweetness was everything I had hoped it would be. It was everything I needed to sustain me. She connected me to myself. She reminded me of my connection to the earth. My connection to life. My connection to the cosmos from which I came. We were hydrogen atoms doing just some of the things that hydrogen atoms do. But we were so much more than that. The atoms that form the molecules that make up our deoxyribonucleic acid are only a starting point. Potential. Kinetic energy. It is up to us to direct where that energy goes. We write our own stories about how that happens.

“I said ‘fuck me’ not the universe, you slut!” Catherine laughed.

I barely squeaked out “Yes, ma’am,” through the supernovae exploding in my brain.

After several smaller orgasms with Catherine touching me in all the right ways, we finally found the one I was after. The one I’d been waiting a long time for. As I did, Catherine shouted along with me. Apparently, she felt alongside me and we’d climaxed together.

I collapsed beside her. “We really do share,” I motioned between us as I was finding words useless, “stuff, don’t we?”

Catherine nodded, “Yeah. We do,” I could hear her grin.

Beatrice cleared her throat, and stood. As she was leaving, I could see that the back of her robe was soaked. Near as I could tell, she never even moved her hands after she got in the room.

“We should do this more often,” I said.

Catherine nodded. “Yeah. We should. I need a lot of babies. How else am I gonna take over the world before my ruthless abdication into anarcho-communism?”