"Is this where the swimsuit material is?"
I turned and looked down on a fireplug of a woman. She's definitely not making herself a swimsuit.
"I'm sorry, but I don't work here," I smiled. "But, yes, this is where the swimsuit material is."
We calmly studied one another---all the unspoken questions being answered as clearly as dogs sniffing one another. Her mouth half opens, and I expect her to ask if I'm family, but that would seem archaic to her. Besides, she had no time for such pretense. She looked back and forth between me and my husband and simply intuited.
"I need to make myself a binder," she launched off. "Someone stole mine and my packing too! Can you believe that?"
Well, no, I can't. Someone in Reno is now packing her---I mean his packing.
"I'm thinking Spandex," he continued, pushing his tongue through the gap where his front teeth should be.
"Yes," I nodded, casting a glance over to my husband. "But he's the tailor. My interest falls off somewhere below rayon challis."
My husband didn't seem to mind being volunteered. He pulled some Spandex off the racks and they discussed the merits of each fabric and ideas on how to sew a binder, which included stretching the material over each others chests to see how much material would be required. Of course Roland really had only a vague idea of what sewing a binder would entail, and 'Sam' had never done more than some simple mending. Roland thought that buying something like a small sports bra at a thrift store might be a good way to experiment on how to sew something that might actually work.
"Oh, I'm not experimenting," Sam misconstrued. "I've been doing this for years. I just haven't the money right now to replace the real thing."
So Sam gave us a grand detour through Chicago, operations desired and hormones. The latter perked up my husband, since he knows way more about hormones than binders.
"You know, they have excellent transgender services in Sacramento."
"Really? Cool." He pulls out a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. "Do you have a pen?"
My husband gave him a pen and some information.
"There's a casino bus that goes between here and Sacramento," Sam mused aloud. "It's real cheap, like six bucks."
But in Sam's mind the bus was already leaving for Phoenix, where there's a famous and handsome Native American transgender---and for me this surreal situation started falling into place. I had stood back a bit once my husband took over, occasionally looking over the challis for a sundress for our house sitter but occasionally engaging in the conversation, too. Frankly I was uncomfortable with Sam's forwardness and the leaps in his thinking process, but underneath my uneasiness I was receiving a sporadic buzz that made me stay engaged. Now I could deduce Sam's ancestry, and it matched my admittedly limited exposure to Native Americans---of speaking with people boxed into Western civilization. I started reviewing the scene outside of that box---the spiritual communication,
and found a person in the now and without pretense. Yes, he spoke of change in the form of operations and hormones, but the goal---for the lack of a better term---was not an exchange of physical for spiritual, that thing we call happiness. He was literally seeking a more comfortable form to be present in.
The conversation wound down, and Sam reached to shake my hand. I had to juggle a bolt of challis to do so, and it gave him enough time to decide to fall back into what came naturally to him---to reach out and hug me and kiss me on the cheek. I was amused by his generosity---amused by the fluidity of gender that knives can't cut or hormones alter.
On the freeway on our way back to our hotel, the Atlantis---the proverbial lost and therefore exotic---a car came up behind us and started beeping as if my prairie skirt was caught in the door. The car slowly passed by, a middle aged blond man waving from the driver's seat. Below his Nevada license plate was a bumper sticker stating Family Car.
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