The Complications of T (5 page)

“It
is
Stuart.” I grinned.

“Yeah… See, it’s obvious to you. You
are
Stuart. But then everyone around you keeps calling you… ah… Humperdink.”

“Ha!”

Tim chuckled.

“Yeah okay, you laugh now… But imagine, all day long, all you hear is
Humperdink this
and
Humperdink that
, no matter how often you tell them your name is Stuart. No one listens to you.” Tim’s tone got serious, and his eyes went distant. “After a while, you sort of give up trying to correct them. It chips away at you. What’s the point, right?”

I nodded mutely, trying to imagine it.

“Then, you go to bed and fall asleep, and in all your dreams, you’re Stuart. But when you wake up the next morning, knowing that you’re Stuart, folks start calling you Humperdink again.”

“That’s pretty horrid,” I agreed.

“Now imagine that happening every single day of your life. Imagine sometimes not knowing who you are anymore or what people should call you. Imagine giving up for long stretches of time and letting people call you whatever the hell they feel like calling you.”

“But it’s just a name,” I said. “What you’re talking about is worse.”

“Yeah. Far,
far
worse,” Tim agreed.

“Hm.” I stretched out next to him and pulled him against me. I actually understood a little about what he was talking about—I was not the larger-than-life characters I played on film—but I didn’t voice the comparison. Instead, I just stroked the shorn side of his head and let my fingers graze his scalp gently. Something occurred to me.

“What about the makeup in the bathroom?”

“You fucking snoop!” Tim laughed and bit my shoulder hard.

“Ow!” I yelped and then grinned. “Sorry.”

“What about it? I was raised female and got to like the way my eyes look with eyeliner. Doesn’t make me any less of a guy,” Tim said and then added: “Rock stars wear eyeliner. Hey…
You
wore eyeliner in
Exposé
.”

“Right. Okay.” I shrugged, and then I thought of something. “How are you so muscular though, if you’re not taking T? I was always told that women have a hard time gaining. I mean, you’re not huge, but it’s there. Isn’t it unusual?”

“It is a little, mostly because I don’t have to work too hard for it. Throughout my teen years, I honestly thought that someone had made a mistake about my sex and that one day my balls would drop. I bulk easy… I don’t have big mood swings and some other weird hormonal stuff. I even accused my parents of hiding the fact that I’d been born a hermaphrodite or something. But no, I was born female. Nothing weird stood out in any of my blood work.”

“Ah,” I nodded, letting my fingers follow the line of his deltoid down to his bicep. I frowned. “Do your parents support your—”

“No. We don’t talk.” Judging by how quickly he’d cut me off, I gathered that it was a rather touchy subject. I just hugged Tim tighter for a moment, feeling sad for him. He sighed and kissed my neck. It was extraordinary to me how taken I was with him after such a short time.

“Can I call you beautiful?” I asked softly. Tim pulled away and looked at me, his eyes wide. “Because… That’s what you are to me: beautiful.”

He didn’t speak for a few beats, and I could tell that my words had had the intended effect on him, but I wanted to make sure it was okay.

“Do you mind it if I call
you
beautiful?” he finally asked.

I smiled. Beautiful was a word sometimes used in the magazine write-ups about me.

“Not if it’s true.”

“If it works for you, it works for me,” Tim said with a shrug. “The trick is not to overthink it.” He settled back down into the crook of my arm. “I’ve had to drop a shitload of my own preconceptions of what constitutes male and female… and get over hating women.”

“What? I thought you liked women?”

“When you’re desperately proclaiming to a skeptical world that you’re a man, it’s really hard not to go too far and start hating anything remotely female,” he said and slid his hand down my body to cup my limp cock, “and obsess about everything male to the point of blind fetishism.”

I couldn’t recall the last time I’d had such an eye-opening conversation—and never this comfortably entwined with someone whose naked body fit so perfectly into the negative spaces left by my own.

“I’m sorry,” I said gently. “I wish I could make everything better for you.”

Tim squeezed my cock and chuckled.

“Hey, don’t be sorry. My physical peculiarities are what made this unlikely union even
remotely
possible,” he pointed out. “Well, in such a short time anyway. I’m sure I could have won you over eventually even if I’d been born male. When you were making out with Danny O’Rourke in
Fetching Farrah
, you were a
leeetle
too convincing…”

I grinned wide. Truthfully, I’d been unable to keep myself from getting a stiffy during that scene, something that Danny obviously noticed but—good mate that he is—had kept to himself.

“What was it you called yourself? Hetero-curious? Is homo-curious a thing?”

Tim nodded. I was slowly filling his hand with a slightly painful erection, and he was teasing it with his fingers. I couldn’t believe I was hard again so soon—it was like I couldn’t get enough of him, and my cock had found the Fountain of Youth. However, he stopped fondling me and lifted himself up on one elbow to search my eyes.

“I didn’t want to bring this up before, but I’m beginning to feel like a complete asshole here,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Stuart, what happened with Claire?”

I almost groaned out loud. But he was right. It needed to be addressed.

“How do you know something happened?” I asked, my voice rough.

“You kept mumbling about her in the cab. I figured it had to be bad for you to fall off the wagon as hard as you did.”

“Yeah. She wants a divorce,” I muttered, but it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would to say it out loud.

“Oh,” replied Tim, and he pulled away to sit up. “I didn’t even know you two were married.”

“What?” I asked, my problems pushed aside by incredulity. “We’ve been married almost
seven
years. How do you not know that?”

Tim smoothed the sheet in front of him, a funny look on his face as he watched his hand.

“I honestly don’t know that much about you,” he confessed with a small one-shouldered shrug.

“Some fan you are,” I teased, and he shot me a quick look before focusing once more on his fidgeting.

“I know your birthday is in April and you’re a year and a half younger than me. I know you’re Kit Strudwick’s son, but you took your mother’s maiden name when you started acting because—and these are only my theories—you either didn’t want to be in your father’s shadow or because the name Stuart Strudwick makes you sound like a complete tool.” When I let out a laugh, Tim lifted his gaze with a coy slant to his lips. “And… That’s pretty much it. When I said I was a fan, I meant it: I’m a fan of your work.”

“I’m going to call bullshit.” A small part of me was disappointed that Tim hadn’t taken the time to read or watch any of my interviews. For a moment, I thought maybe I had misread something and that the attraction between he and I wasn’t as meaningful to him as I’d thought.

“Hey, don’t make that face,” he said and gently touched the tip of my nose with his finger. It was a silly thing to do, but it made me smile. “Don’t you want to know
why
?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe it’s because I didn’t want to get to know you through strangers’ eyes and I wanted it straight from the horse’s mouth,” he said and leaned over to graze my lips with his. “But it’s not because I didn’t want to know more things about you, you twit. You’re a very talented man… Maybe I found you a little too interesting and didn’t want to make matters worse by finding out that you’re intelligent, kind, charming, and incredibly fucking sexy on top of all that talent.”

I pulled him down on top of me, and we lay there locked in a languid, passionate kiss that slowly but deliberately stoked the fire between us.

Six

W
E BOTH KNEW THAT I was hiding—using Tim’s flat and his ardent embrace as a means to hold reality at bay for a little longer. Though we never actually discussed it, Tim knew I desperately needed to catch my breath, and he was willing to let me do that at my own pace. We’d wake up, then spend the morning in bed, learning each other’s rhythms and desires, wringing passion from almost too-sore bodies until our cries echoed up to the rafters. Spent, we’d forage for food, and when the fridge was finally gutted, Tim ordered groceries and pizza and Chinese takeaway so we could fill our bellies and slink back into bed to whisper and laugh and touch each other like we were the first humans on earth to discover pleasure.

Sometimes we’d curl up on the small red couch and watch movies together. Tim really wasn’t kidding when he said he was a fan, and he surprised me by picking apart my acting in a role I was really proud of. It was a bit uncomfortable at first to know that I’d been studied so closely, but soon he had me laughing and nodding along. He knew my strengths and weaknesses almost better than I did.

Other times we would lie naked on the small roof patio, soaking up the last rays of Indian summer and listening to music on his tiny stereo; turns out that Tim and I had very similar tastes in many things. I’d always scorned people who just fell headlong into relationships, arguing that it couldn’t possibly be
real
what they felt… But I couldn’t help but think what an incredible match Tim and I made.

In the end, I stayed with him for only five glorious days before I knew that my tiny vacation away from responsibility had to come to an end. I could only put off my engagements for so long, and Greg was having fits rescheduling my interviews. In fact, there was one in particular that I couldn’t delay any longer; I had to be on a plane back to London by the following evening.

W
OTCHA, GUVNAH,” SAID TIM AS he sat down next to me on the couch and passed me a beer. He was still convinced that he could teach me to moderate my drinking and that limiting myself to one beer a day didn’t mean I was going to suddenly wind up spewing loads of rubbish for the camera before passing out drunk behind a potted fern at a gala dinner. I wasn’t convinced, but it was nice to have a “cold one” while watching a movie. At least for the time being.

“How’s it going, eh?” I replied.

“That is the worst Canadian accent I’ve ever heard.”

“I won’t even comment on your butchering of the Queen’s English.”

We grinned at each other and then took a swig from our beers. However, a moment later a shadow of something in Tim’s expression wormed its way into the mood, and I reached for his hand. I looked down at his hand in mine—his skin was fair, pale compared to the almost Mediterranean cast of my complexion, and his fingers were smaller and less rough looking than mine. I rubbed my thumb over his knuckles.

A deep breath.
Now or never.

“Come with me,” I said, lifting my eyes to his.

“To London?”

I nodded. Tim didn’t reply right away. Instead, he tilted the beer bottle to his lips, and I watched the movement of his throat as he swallowed. He knew I didn’t mean a simple holiday.

“And Claire?” When he finally spoke, his tone was restrained.

“Claire gets her divorce.”

He frowned and contemplated the dark-brown bottle he held in his other hand. I didn’t like the way his posture had gone wooden, as if he was steeling himself against something.

“Stu… You know I can’t.”

“And why the bloody hell not?” I squeezed his hand, but it had gone limp in mine.

“For a million fucking reasons,” he said. “Don’t be so fucking stupid.”

He sounded angry, and all I wanted to do was crush him against me, but I didn’t want him to push me away. Maybe I
was
being stupid, but I didn’t want to leave this, whatever it was, and just go back to being me.
Alone
.

No, it was more than that. I didn’t want to be without
him
.

“Sorry,” he muttered. My feelings must have been written plain on my face because he sighed and planted a chaste kiss on my lips. “Just… Think for a second what that would mean for you. For your career. For your life. How do you think bringing me into the picture, even in the guise of ‘just a friend’, is going to look to the media? Our relationship is going to gossiped about and dissected by anyone with a keyboard and half a brain. And what about me? My life… I’ve spent a long time trying to secure my privacy so I can shield myself from all the shitty fucking things that people will say abou—” Tim’s voice broke then, and he covered his eyes. When I pulled his hand away, his face was wet with tears.

“Tim… god, I didn’t mean for this to turn into…” I didn’t know what to say. My heart hurt just watching the tears roll down his cheeks.

“I just don’t know if I’m strong enough for that,” he whispered.

“I think we can make it work. I think this thing between us deserves more than five short days.”

“Six, if you count tomorrow.”

“Six is not enough, Tim. I want more.”

“So do I,” he said and let out a shuddering sigh. Then he shrugged, but the hopeless look in his eyes hadn’t diminished. I leaned over to put my bottle on the little side table before pulling him into my arms. I rested my cheek on top of his head while I hugged him tight, contemplating the situation. Oh, I knew what people would say:

Not a real man
…
Freak
…
Tranny
…

Hell, Tim didn't even like to use the term
trans man
when referring to himself. He said he was a gay man first and foremost, and it was no one’s business that he was trans.

“It might not be that bad. The world’s changing,” I said, hopeful.

“Not fast enough,” came the mutter against my shoulder.

“Well… you know… If you come with me, it’ll give you more time to work me up to letting you use that
ridiculously
big cock of yours on me…” I smiled when Tim began to laugh, and he pulled away, scrubbing at his tears.