"I got fired, Sharon," Jim repeated.
"What?!"
"They said I was making the other employees uncomfortable." Jim collapsed onto the sofa. "They're giving me two weeks' notice, and my boss indicated in no uncertain terms that if it was up to him, I would have been out without warning weeks ago."
"Isn't there a law against that?"
"There are no laws that forbid discriminating against people with purely 'cosmetic' medical problems. If my legs were cut off, they'd have to build a wheelchair ramp for me. But for these breasts, they can fire me without any repercussions. No laws to protect transgender people, either.
"My boss said I was a freak of nature. Sharon, I just . . . I just don't know if I can do this anymore."
Alarmed, Sharon asked, "Do what?"
"Living. Getting up in the morning and facing the stares. How can I apply for a job looking like this?"
"Honey, it's all right. I'm sure you'll find someone willing to hire you. You're a good sysadmin. Someone in this world has to be able to overlook your appearance and see you for what you can do." She continued in that vein, trying to console him. Later, much later, she made dinner and they went to bed. Jim didn't even ask for his breast milk dessert, which troubled Sharon.
Their immediate problem was that they were now facing a financial crisis. Sharon was relying on Jim's income to cover expenses like rent, food, and incidentals while she finished medical school. Without that money, they'd be out on the streets in weeks. There was only one solution, and they both knew it: beg for money from their parents.
"Hi Dad, this is Sharon. Um . . . that's sort of what I was calling about. No, everything's not all right. Jim lost his job. He has a medical condition called gynecomastia. . . . No, no it's not covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Yeah, it's a big gap."
"Hi Mom. This is going to be really difficult to say, so if you would not interrupt me please . . . I lost my job. There's no tactful way to say this but . . . I'm growing breasts. Have grown breasts. I'm about as big as Edith now. That's why. Please . . . please calm down."
"Dad! 'Bitch tits?' Yeah, I've heard people call them that, but it's not polite. No, there's no treatment, at least not for his condition. Jim's already had surgery once, and it didn't help. No, it shouldn't work that way, but what happens, happens. I know all too well that modern medicine has limitations."
"So my boss fired me . . . thanks Mom. It's good to hear you'll always love me. But right now, I need some money. I'm going to start hunting for another job, but I don't how easy it will be to find one, and I'll probably have to take a pay cut."
"Mom, you're here too now? Yeah, so Jim and I need money. Is there any chance we can get a loan? You know Jim's good for it, as soon as he gets another job, or I'll pay it back after medical school. . . . You'll give it to me? Oh . . . thanks! That'll be a great help . . . yeah, I love you too Mom and Dad. I just didn't want to get all teary or try to play the 'I love you' card."
"I promise I'll pay it back, Mom. I know money's tight because you're trying to save to send Edith to college. Ok, ok, ok, I'll try to call more often. I'm sorry about hiding this from you, but it's really embarrassing. Thanks for all your support. Ok, bye Mom."
Sharon and Jim conferred and discovered that they were stable for about three months now. Hopefully they wouldn't have to use it all, but it would be there if they needed it.
Thus began the long job hunt. Whenever he interviewed, Jim came back broken, defeated by the horrified glances he got from prospective employers. Sharon was used to relying on Jim for emotional support, but now their roles were reversed: he was under so much stress he was having trouble coping.
Nevertheless, they struggled along, and for awhile Sharon thought their situation stable again. In truth, it was just a brief pause before the ring brought down another change into their lives.
When Jim ushered Sharon into the bathroom one day, she became worried. When he stripped off his boxers, she thought for a moment she was seeing an optical illusion. A glance at Jim's face confirmed she wasn't. "What happened to your testes, Jim?" she asked.
He said, "What do you think?" and sat down on the toilet.
"Jim, if you had any idea something like this would happen, how could you keep drinking my breast milk?"
"The breast milk hasn't affected it. It's been happening ever since my breasts started growing, the very first time, before the surgery. Every so often, if I leaned on them the wrong way, my balls would pop back up into my body. It got more frequent and harder to avoid as time passed, and they stayed up longer, but they always came back down in the end. This morning, they were up, they've stayed up, and I don't think they're coming back down."
"Jim, I don't if I can handle this." Sharon felt like she was close to cracking. She wanted to cry and to scream.
"Please don't tell me that. I don't know if I can deal with this either . . . and without your help, I'm sure I can't. Please . . ."
Sharon sighed and held him, "We'll make it through this, just like we made it through the rest. At least this isn't as obvious as the rest of your changes."
Except that it was. Sharon and Jim repeated their previous pattern of dancing around the central issue: with the loss of his testes, it was clear that he was losing other masculine traits. The fat on his body was redistributing to his hips and thighs, his skin becoming softer, and his body hair becoming lighter and finer. Sharon had already noticed that he had become more susceptible to tears, but worst of all she saw impossible things happening: his bone structure shifting, hips widening while his face softened, becoming rounder and less angular.
As strange as it seemed, it was not too long after these changes started to become noticeable that Jim got another job. Jim suspected that one of the owners was sympathetic to his predicament, thinking he was a transsexual, and that was why he was offered the position. However, neither he nor Sharon cared much about the company's motives. He was to sysadmin for a local company, in a position that didn't require he have contact with anyone outside a small group of people responsible for running the guts of the company's IT infrastructure. When Jim met them, he told Sharon, he was surprised to discover that they were all right working with a colleague who claimed to be male but looked increasingly female. He described them either as congenial geeks who had more important things to worry about than someone else's gender identity, and self-involved geeks who wouldn't notice if they were working with an alien or alpaca, so long as it did its job. And the statement about little human contact was literal: Jim described his new office as a cubicle in a closet.
Jim's new job didn't pay as well as his old one, but they had expected that. Jim's feminization was another matter: it had been bad enough when his breasts had grown. Now, Sharon despaired to watch his muscles vanishing beneath a soft layer of fat and skin, his tight ass becoming rounder. Jim, despite being a geek, had always kept in reasonable shape, better shape than she did, and while he continued to exercise, the exercise was granting him feminine muscles, lean instead of bulging. As time passed, the only prominent male features left were his voice, penis, and beard.
In resignation to the inevitable, Jim had acquired a female wardrobe for when he needed to appear in public. Taking him shopping was like walking through a nightmare. She felt in slow motion, as if the strangers in the store were examining her, mocking her like they did in dreams. Jim made an attractive woman, just as he had made a handsome man, and Sharon could not believe the rush of jealousy mixed with horror that surged through her when a man made a pass at Jim. With the way he was stacked, and his pleasant face, male eyes followed Jim wherever he went.
Jim did not adapt well to his new role, and so he hid from the world. With his masculine voice, he could still conduct business over the phone, but for the most part he refused to leave their apartment. Sharon didn't blame him: she'd had enough trouble handling male attention when she a girl in puberty. She couldn't imagine what it was like to have her apparent sex changed against her will. She had no trouble understanding that Jim was not handling his transformation with grace.
Things would have been better if things had been better between them. Sharon was ashamed, since some of it was her fault: she was avoiding Jim, she knew. She could scarcely bear to look at him. She could talk to him, as long as she didn't look, but they didn't have anything to talk about except mundania. Whenever they approached one of the difficult questions they faced, they stopped talking, or turned the conversation to something harmless and trivial.
Their sex life was nonexistent, and Jim had even stopped nursing. That was more her fault than Jim's: he still seemed interested in her, but Sharon wasn't interested in him, or rather her. Sharon had always been heterosexual, and Jim's new body didn't turn her on. When added to the stress, her sex drive might as well have vanished. She still masturbated, on occasion, but even she didn't even self-gratify as much as she used.
As she might have expected, if she had been thinking rationally, it was on sex that matters foundered at last. She had come from the hospital and cleaned herself while Jim fixed dinner. When she came out to eat, she saw that Jim had gone to a lot of effort to set the mood: broiled shrimp, one of her favorites, lit by candlelight. She had to blink back tears when she saw, but made it through the meal doing her best to seem cheerful. When, at the end, Jim came over and kissed her, she could almost hear their relationship shattering like spun glass when she turned from Jim's attempt to send a hand down her blouse.
Jim sobbed, "I can't do this anymore, Sharon. I'm sorry."
Sharon started crying in earnest then, weeping, "Jim!" as she saw him run out the door. She raced to the window and saw Jim's car starting. She flew out the door and charged after him, but it was too late.
Jim was gone.
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