Take a Lemon

After class the next day, I had to start on a paper for my literature class. It was the first one I had had to write since my freshman writing class, and I was not looking forward to it; however, I had found a subject that seemed appropriate. In homage to my own situation, I was going to write a comparison of cross-dressing in the works of Bocaccio and in Shakespeare. I had so far found one example of it in The Decameron, which is what gave me the idea, and of course I knew Shakespeare had used it in As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Wikipedia reminded me that it was found in The Merchant of Venice, as well.

All of the examples I had found so far were of females dressing as males, and that was going to be my focus. In some ways, it was probably wish fulfillment for me. I would really have preferred not to keep wearing dresses, or at least to have something else to put on when I got to drop out of character in the privacy of my bedroom. The problem, of course, was that wearing pants was not something that I had figured out a way to explain Marsha doing if I were caught.

I started my research for the paper by re-reading As You Like It, which took me about half of the afternoon. Then I decided to get back to my sewing-machine practice. I was now able to get a reasonably straight line when sewing two strips of cloth together, but the stitches didn’t really look much like the ones in any clothes I’d ever seen. Instead of a row of neat line segments, there were these little bumps all over the place. I tried tugging on the material as it fed through the machine, but that just made the lengths uneven as well.

“You need to adjust the tension, Marsh,” a female voice said in my ear, causing me to jump. I looked up to see Alvin’s girlfriend, Nikki, wearing a green Piques College T-shirt that didn’t quite reach the top of her short denim skirt. Her brown hair was tied back in a complex braid, which gave her an almost boyish look, if one only looked at her above the neck..

“I knocked several times and you didn’t answer, but I heard the machine going, so I let myself in. You must have been really intent on what you were doing. Anyway,” she continued as I gaped foolishly, “the knots on top mean that your tension is too high.”

“Nikki…” I started.

“I know,” she interrupted. “Alvin told me. You don’t remember me, do you? Come here.” And she opened her arms for a hug.

Like pretty much everybody else I knew, she was taller than I was now, and her hug felt very motherly. “You poor thing. I’ve seen what this has done to Ben, and I can only imagine what it must be like for you.” At the same time, the revealing outfit that she was wearing was causing my brain to expect me to be attracted but not show it because she had a boyfriend. I wasn’t sure how my female body was supposed to handle that mixed message, but it did cause me to miss part of what she was saying.

“… different for you?” she was asking me.

“Yes,” I managed, trying to cover my distraction. “And it’s been really uncomfortable and confusing. The university should never have allowed that experiment.”

“I know, right?” she replied. “The damage those morons did…”

“Um, I hope you don’t mind my asking this…” I started.

“Ask, Marsh. With what you’ve gone through, how can I get angry?”

“If your brother is so miserable, why hasn’t he gone back to ask them to change him back?”

With an angry sigh, she released me and turned away, wringing her hands in frustration. “He’s paranoid. He’s convinced they did this to him on purpose. Because they hated the basketball team or something. I don’t know. Maybe because they thought that he would have made the team really good and they’re really on our rivals’ side.” She looked at me with a face starting to tear. “He’s my little brother, and I don’t know how to help him! He’s miserable, but refuses to hear anything I suggest. He’s passing his courses… barely, but he just doesn’t care about anything. What’s your secret? How do you keep going? What… Alvin said you were embarrassed to tell him, but can you tell me what changed for you?”

“Nikki, I’m sorry. It’s really personal, and I’d be humiliated if anybody knew.”

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “OK, we won’t talk about it, right? At least you’re trying.”

“Well… I sort of got mad and boasted in front of my sister that I could act the role of… my new self, without people knowing. Not sure how well that’s working right now. Plus, since I am an act- tress…” I didn’t stumble over the word quite so much this time.

“I understand. Right. So… what can I do to help you? I only really know mostly your theater friends, and Alvin’s already told you about Naomi and Jack, right?”

“It’s OK. I found Marsha’s… my Facebook page, and I’m finding out who all I’m supposed to know. What I really need help with is… this.” I indicated the garment rack and the sewing machine.

“Yes, you told Alvin. OK, so… how much do you remember about sewing?”

“Nothing, actually. In my previous life, Mom never taught me to sew.” It was a dangerous admission. If Nikki really knew my family, she might ask why Mom hadn’t taught me, and I was afraid of what would happen if I told her that I used to be a guy.

She was indeed surprised, but didn’t pry. “Wow! So then… let’s start really simple. Come away from the machine.” She fished in Marsha’s sewing basket and pulled out a needle, a spool of thread and a pair of scissors. After snipping off a couple of feet of thread, she sat down on the bed next to me. “First lesson is threading a needle. A basic skill, but you cannot sew without it.”

I took the needle and the cut thread. I’d certainly seen Mom do this from time to time, but had never tried it myself. “The hole in the needle’s pretty small,” I complained. Shouldn’t I be using a bigger one? Or thinner thread?”

“That hole is called an eye, Marsh, and it is just the right size. Here, look.” She took them from me, licked the end of the thread and then somehow poked it right through the hole… the eye of the needle in one try, just as Mom had always done it. Then she pulled it back out and handed the needle and thread back to me. “Now you try it.”

So I did. I poked the thread at the eye, and missed. I pulled it back and tried again, and this time I was sure I had hit it, but no luck.

“OK, stop,” she said. “Why do you have one eye closed?”

I do? I opened both eyes and looked at her. “I… guess I was just trying to see it better.”

“You need both eyes to do this, Marsh. Try again, keeping both eyes open.”

That actually made a lot of sense. I was trying to connect two objects in three-dimensional space, and needed my depth perception. It was obvious, once she had pointed it out. This time I got it on the second try.

“Very good,” she said. “Now knot the end to make a loop.” As I started to put down the needle to knot the long end, she added, “With one hand.”

I just stared.

“Hold the thread at the eye so that it won’t come out,” she instructed me. Once I had done that, she continued. “Now grab the other end with your right hand and loop the thread around your finger twice. Good. Now use your thumb to roll the thread off the end of your finger. See? Now you have a loop in the thread. I never saw how you used to do it, but I usually use that loop to start my stitches.”

I shrugged. “That sounds fine to me.”

“You see, some girls pull the loop closed into a knot, but we’ll do it my way for now.”

She used the scissors to snip off the loop.

“Why cut it off?”

“So that you can practice some more. Try it again.”

It turned out not to be all that difficult when I followed Nikki’s instructions, and after a few more tries, she pronounced herself satisfied.

“OK, great. But how does this help me? Won’t I just be using the sewing machine?”

“Not this time, you won’t. It’s easy enough to sew buttons on by hand, and there’s always somebody who needs help with buttons.” As she said that, she had started examining the garment rack. “Here. This is a simple one. Somebody must have lost weight, and she just needs the buttons moved on this skirt.” She dove again into the sewing basket and came up with a razor blade. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “You’ve marked these two buttons as needing to be moved, so cut them off. Slide this blade against the back of each button, being careful not to cut the skirt itself.”

“Oh, I think I see.” I took the blade and made short work of the threads holding it on the skirt, then looked at where Marsha had marked the new location of the first one. The next step seemed obvious, so I pushed the threaded needle into the marking and pulled it out through the loop. “Now, I just pull the loop tight, right?”

“Yes, exactly.”

A few passes through the holes and I had the button in its new location. Nikki watched me as I pondered how to finish it off, but didn’t say anything. Something told me that a few interlocking knots would work, and when I was done, she raised her eyebrows.

“Atta girl, Marsh! Are you sure you never learned this?”

“I’m sure,” I answered, trying to bask in the intended praise without being overly bothered by the ‘atta girl’ comment.”

“Well, you’re obviously a natural. That would explain why I remember you as being so good a seamstress. Just cut off that loose end and why don’t you do the second button from the beginning?”

Threading the needle again and moving the other button took me amazingly little time. I was feeling a bit smug when I finished, as Nikki praised me again.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, taking three garments off the rack, “why don’t I take care of these? The work is a bit complex, and even with your aptitude, it’s going to take a bit of time for you to learn how. I’ll bring you some of my simpler jobs to work on for now, and we can pass things back and forth as needed. How does that sound?”

Quite frankly, it sounded terrific to me, and I said so. The tunnel was actually beginning to show a bit of light at the end. So I thanked her and she left.