Iceman

North Buckhead

In the living room, Daddy was drunk and disorderly, and very much on. He was unpredictable when he drank too much. Sometimes he would get horny and want her, and the sex might be rough or it might be sweet and tender and remarkably gentle. Or he would fall asleep and snore like a dockhand and he would not want her. Or he would become jolly and gregarious and want to take her out and show her off. Drink with the guys. Party. He could be very funny. Or he might become brooding. Moody. Mean. He could turn ice-cold and very dangerous.

She was nude and stood looking at herself, shoeless and wet, toweling off after a delightful bubble bath. She loved her body. She was a very beautiful woman, even now. One of the uniquely lucky ones. She had the small bones that had made her so womanly. The Beverly Hills were perfect, neither too large nor too small, her ass high and firm. Very female in every sense. The hormones, both the IVs and the regimen of oral drugs, had helped her voice, which was already a sexy huskiness, and her skin, which was her worst feature.

Nicki wasn't perfect. Her hair was too coarse, but she could afford the best wigs money could buy. Her jawline was a bit wider than she liked, but Daddy said it made her more interesting-looking and he looked at her with a critical eye. He loved the look of her long, slim legs in high heels. She had starved herself for so long—through her teens, in fact—that she no longer thought of food as she once had. She would subsist on bits of fruit, vitamins, the bare minimum. She went up on her toes and posed, then stood hipshot, but she could catch a glimpse of those ugly things a mocking God had placed between her legs, and she quickly changed position. She would tuck tonight, tuck them back out of sight.

Nicki Dodd, nee Nicholas Dodstardt, was a freak. She was neither female impersonator, nor transvestite, nor transsexual, nor any of the other categories that run the gamut from cross-dressing straights to drag-queen homosexuals. She was a woman with a penis and testicles. Not a play woman. Not a make-believe, Halloween, limp-wristed, flaming, swishing, lisping, pretend-time closet-faggot woman, but a REAL woman, through and through. Biologically, psychologically, every other way a woman. Just not physiologically. She was a beautiful, soft, slim, sexy, dynamite show-stopper of a freak of nature. A woman with a dick.

It still bothered her. She wondered how enraged her daddy would have become if he'd heard the conversation she'd had a few weeks ago. He thought she was totally comfortable with her plumbing. Depressed after one of his rough numbers, paranoid from his growing carelessness, and maddened by the frustrations of his goddamned fucking therapy, she had called Baltimore. Just for information. Nothing more. Dialing a toll-free hotline so it wouldn't show up on their bill.

“Nurse Recruitment?” a pleasant voice said into her ear.

“Hi. I'm calling long-distance to inquire about your program. What are the prerequisites for working in the—I'm not sure what you call it—your gender surgery clinic?"

“The general surgery clinic? Just a second please.” No, you idiot, she said as the woman clicked off to take another call. An eternity later the woman returned. “I just have the regular university number. I don't have anything called General Surgery Clinic."

“GENDER surgery."

“Oh. Gender surgery.” A long pause. “Is that like, you know, sexual?"

“Yes.” Another long pause.

“I'm trying to figure out how to look that up."

The line made noises while the woman did things to a computer far away in Maryland. The obtuse woman came back. Made her wait again because someone had just come into view whom she thought might know these answers. Her voice was rather patronizing, or so Nicki imagined, when she returned to say, “The university no longer does them.” THEM. She couldn't bring herself to enunciate such a word. “So that's why I couldn't find it under Gender or Sex, you know, in the listings."

“Do you know why they no longer ... Oh, never mind.” She hung up. So Johns Hopkins was no longer part of the scene. It took her another half-hour on the phone to learn that Barnes in St. Louis did them. Two other hospitals. Just making random calls to whatever toll-free numbers she could think of to try. She wondered if there had been malpractice suits. If the surgery had proven unsafe. Or was it public relations—that kind of thing? Probably none of the above.

Would getting her outside plumbing whacked off make her feel more womanly? Would trading a cock and balls for a vagina—complete with ersatz clit, no doubt—make her able to satisfy her man better. Hell, no. It would be an unnecessary and stupid risk. Just something she toyed with—her little ace in the hole, so to speak. An option. She was still in love with him. He was everything. Her life. Without his desire she would be dead. He wanted her this way.

“From-a Lick Pier, Sanna Monnica Bitch Californium, Itsa Larry Welg anna Champagna Muzik Makers,” she could hear him screaming over some taped dance band. “An now hereza Norma-um Enema to singa an play the accordiona-enema, Lady of Spain-enema!” Crazy fool, she smiled.

She would keep him with her hot mouth and kinky mind and beautiful eyes and long legs and great ass and Beverly Hills and cosmetic trickery. He liked it when she'd savaged the one with the low-cut blouses, Princess Di with her smug-ass mouth, telling her, “I'll do it,” when Nicki started packing her things. Saying to her later, “No, I need all of these,” when they packed her cosmetics. “I have to keep my peaches-and-cream complexion, you know.” Yeah. Nicki knew. She had sliced off the bitch's fat tits the moment Daddy had finished with her. The knife blade was sharp and she felt surprisingly good about it, not squeamish in the least, and Daddy really got off watching her work out. She could remember how he laughed like a little kid when Nicki had sliced the toes off, “This little piggie went to market,” slicing her fucking toes off like little white stubs. Blood all over everything. Daddy turning on and them playing in the blood.

She went into him naked but for a pair of heels, standing and posing for him naturally, a beautiful woman in profile, as he played his ricky-tick music, “Thang hugh Norma-enema. Anna loog whoze here now, itsa Myron Florn-enema, to play his latest tits for us. Let it all hang out, Myron-enema."

“Every chance I get, baby."

“Did you call Bonnie like I wanted you to do, enema?"

“I will. Promise,” she said sweetly, still coming to him, but he turned away from her and said in a cold icebox voice, “Go do it."