Carrolwood Chapters 21-22 (Patreon)

Chapter 21

Sunni pushes a 25-pound plate onto each end of the barbell in the garage. Grabs it. Squeezes the gnarled steel. Snatches it right from the ground over her head. Laughs. This is what she used to life as a girl. It now feels like lifting air.

Carl sitting in a big, cushy chair while one girl works on his fingernails and another his toes. The air smells of violets, and the gentle sounds of waterfalls chime in the background. He and mom are chatting about this and that, he hardly knows, but there is something warming and fun about chatting, and he has never felt more relaxed.

The slabs of cold iron gleam. Four thick, 45- pound plates. With the weight of the bar: 225 pounds. Sunni grips the gnarl. Plants her feet. Can I really lift this? She wonders. Taking a deep breath, she snatches it right off the ground, popping her hips forward and bouncing the bar right up over her head. She holds it over her head for a moment. Laughs. Fuck, I’m strong, she thinks, dropping the bar, letting the weight clang against the floor.

Carl comes out of the dressing room, a big smile on his face. He puts a hand on his hip and does a “model” pose, then twirls and does another, giggling. He’s wearing a tiny little black dress. Mom smiles and nods, but then says, “Let’s look at a couple more.” Carl won’t argue. He has discovered he loves trying on clothes. He pauses at the mirror outside the dressing room and sees how the dress hugs his curves, the swell of his cleavage nestled in the plunging neckline. Damn, I’m hot, he thinks, tossing his hair.

Power cleans give way to deadlifts, give way to bench presses. Sunni’s hard body is slick with sweat, and droplets gleam in her beard. She has 250 pounds on the barbell, more than she’s ever lifted, and she is doing reps, lifting it again and again and again. She strains on the last attempt, pushing her feet into the floor, arching her back to push the weight that last inch up so she can rest it on the clamps. She doesn’t feel tired. She only feels the need for more.

Carl doesn’t feel tired, either. He’s in his bra and panties, holding up the latest little scrap of fabric his mom has picked out for him. This one is powder blue with a floor length skirt. It seems a little— dowdy— but Mom has been in Pinterest and insists this is in style. Carl isn’t so sure. He steps into the dress, slips it up and— Oh. Wow. He looks— so pretty. The dress leaves his little round shoulders bare, and it makes him look like— royalty or something. It’s so feminine, he feels all bubbly inside looking at himself, grabbing the skirt and kind of waving it around like a matador waving her cape. He is almost scared to walk out in this dress, to have anyone see him in it. The other dresses were sexy. This one is gorgeous. Mom calls for him. Heart fluttering, Carl steps out of the dressing room, cheeks blushing. Mom covers her mouth. “Oh, my,” she says. Carl turns so she can zip him up, and he feel the dress grow tight around his body. They go to the mirror together, Mom standing behind him, Carl in front, beaming. 

“What do you think?” Carl asks. 

“Lovely,” Mom says. 

“How much is it?’ Carl asks, almost hoping for an excuse to say no to the dress. 

“Who cares?’ Mom says, then with a wicked smile. “Nothing is too good for my son.”

Sunni has thrown off her t-shirt. She has thick black hair on her chest, ridges of abs. She’s doing crunches, grunting in her deep voice. Her abs are burning, and she loves the burn. Needs the burn. When she reaches 200 she roars, pops onto her feet and grabs a 20 pound slam ball, lifting it over her head and hurling it to the ground, catching it as it bounces back up, lifting it, hurling it back down— the ball makes a loud whomp as it smashes into the floor, and Sunni loves the violence of this, feels it through her whole body…

The salesgirl is strapping a pair of open toes heels onto Carl’s dainty foot. He LOVES these shoes in a deep, soulful way he has never loved shoes before. His Mom seems to love them, too. They’ve been at the mall for hours, but instead of getting bored and annoyed, Carl is buzzing, getting more hyper. He needs to shop! Carl has never worn heels, but the splicer has taken care of it. He stands and glides effortlessly across the floor, his walk so smooth and feminine that women around the shoe department stop and stare in admiration. Mom is no different. She’d thought he might stumble and struggle, but he moves in his heels like he’s been taking modeling classes since he was five. Her jealousy flares for a moment. He is more graceful than her, more feminine, better at being female. But she pushes those feelings away, decides she should be happy for him. If he is to be a woman, it’s better that he be able to turn on the femininity, she feels. It will open a lot of doors. And he can still have some days of sweats and a baseball hat if he wants. Being a girl it’s like that.

Sunni is cooling down, rolling out her hamstrings on a foam roller. She feels hungry. Her appetite in this big male body is off the charts, and it is a little consolation to her that she can now EAT. She plans to load up on protein. Turn all that work into muscle. She’s making a mental checklist: she needs protein powder, creatine, recovery powder. If she’s gonna be stuck as a guy, she wants to be strong. She wants to be able to kick some ass.

Carl’s Mom has a list. They are walking back to the car, loaded with shopping bags. “Right after school, you’ll get your hair and makeup done,” Mom says. “Then, you just have to be careful until Sunni comes to pick you up.”

“I can do my own hair and makeup,” Carl says, because he feels he should object, not because he isn’t excited about the idea.

“You have so much to learn about being a girl,” Mom says.

Chapter 22

“It’s the Kardashians,” Kennedy explained. “And social media. There’s so much pressure to be perfect all the time, and all it takes is one bad video on TikTok, and you are immortal for all the wrong reasons.” 

“Incredible,” Carl said. “I mean, I sort of heard about it, you know? Around? Like, girls getting nose jobs and stuff.”

“Exactly. And boob jobs. So, yeah, professional makeup for a high-school dance? It’s the new normal.”

They were chatting after school, each girl with her phone in her hands, constantly glancing at their alerts and texts. “It seems weird,” Carl said, finding himself far more interested now that he was the one facing all the pressure to be stylish and pretty. Not that he had to worry about nose jobs or boob jobs. He was, as has been stated, angelic, a marvel of feminine perfection. But peer pressure being what it was and high-school being high-school, even a girl as pretty as Carl had to keep up with the latest fashions, shades of lipstick, shifting trends and styles. Especially if she wanted to be popular, which Carl most certainly did. 

“Weird?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. I see all these things about women’s progress, and women directors and scientists. I just thought, you know, things had changed?”

“They have, but they haven’t,” Kennedy said. “I mean, feel free to join the science club, but you’ll never be one of the cool kids that way.”

The day of the dance, Carl went right to the salon after school. He sat patiently skimming through an issue of Glamour, reading about Gal Gadot’s workout routine, thinking he should spend more time doing squats and lunges. He’d decided to go with big, glamorous hair, and the girl had added body and some curl, so Carl’s hair framed his face in thick, golden waves. Then, he went to have his makeup done.

Though he’d been implanted with a sound makeup game, he still took the opportunity to quiz the cosmetologist, picking up some tips he knew he would make part of his daily makeup routine. When she finished, he looked at himself, beaming with pride. “You really are good,” Carl said, smiling, turning his face this way and that, admiring how he looked from different angles. 

“Thanks,” Maria, the makeup artists said, giggling. “I mean, with a girl as pretty as you? It’s just— you’re gorgeous!” She gushed.

“Thank you!” Carl said, sucking in his cheeks to emphasize his dimples. “You’re really pretty, too.”

Sunni had gone home and done some pushups, chin ups, crunches. She wanted her muscles to be pumped. She took a shower, put on a dress shirt, good jeans, a tie with she didn’t pull all the way up, but let hang loose around her open collar. She’d asked some of the other guys about the jeans, wondering if she should wear dress pants, but they’d all scoffed. “This isn’t a formal,” Jake had said. “Only the dorks are going to be dressed like they’re going to church.”

As she checked herself out in the mirror, she couldn’t help but note, once again, the inequality between boys and girls. She knew what Carl was going through right now, had been going through, and how much time he was spending to get ready, while all she did was throw on some clothes that really weren’t that different from what she wore every day. It seemed to her, and I will agree, that the extra time she’d been forced to spend as a girl worrying about fashion, hair and makeup amounted to a huge mental disadvantage, because while she’d been doing all that, the average boy just gave his t-shirt a smell, threw it on and ran a hand through his hair. Done. 

It bothered her she was getting off so easy, and she vowed that she would work, as a man as that seemed to be her fate, for more fashion equality. Yet, she did look good in those jeans, and the tailored dress shirt hugged her rigidly muscled frame. 

Her phone buzzed. Sunni took her eyes off the mountain of man in the mirror and glanced at the message, at first idly, and then with interest. It was from Dad, and it read, “meet me on the porch.”

What’s this all about? Sunni wondered. She shrugged and headed down. As fall had advanced, the leaves had now all turned, the backyard ablaze in reds and golds. Dad was standing with his back against the rail, two dark, sweaty bottles of Sam Adams next to him. “Looking good,” he said as Sunni approached.

“Thanks,” Sunni said. “My first dance as a guy.”

“Nervous?”

“Yeah,” Sunni admitted.

Dad handed Sunni one of the bottles of beer. “Let’s have a beer together.”

“Really?” Sunni said, looking at the bottle like it might explode. Is this some kind of test? She wondered.

“Yeah,” Dad said, giving her a little pat on the arm. “It’s a tradition in our family that father and son have a beer when the son turns 18. I would have done it sooner, but well, um—“

“I get it,” Sunni said, finding herself touched and moved by this gesture. She’d been feeling so distant from everyone, and especially her dad. “I wasn’t— quite— your son then.” The words sounded strange to her— calling herself “your son.” And yet, saying it out loud brought a release of stress she hadn’t even known she was holding.

They each twisted the caps off their bottles. Dad held his toward her, and they clinked them together. They each took a drink. Dad made a satisfied sighing sound. Sunni made a sour face and forced herself so swallow. “Good,” she lied, coughing. “Sam Adams.”

“That’s not your first beer?” Dad said, surprised by her reaction.

“No,” Sunni said, smelling the top of the bottle. “I had some before, but it was— more like water. Maybe Budweiser.”

“Piss water,” Dad sneered. “This is the good stuff.”

Sunni took another sip. Swished it around her mouth. “It’s definitely stronger.” 

“You don’t have to finish it,” Dad said. 

“It’s a ritual,” Sunni said. “I’m gonna drink it down.”

“Good man,” Dad said. In fact, he felt like he was talking to a man, and not at all to his little girl. Yet, he knew she was in there, and he was determined to be her father no matter what.

Perhaps the reader is wondering, what happened to all that Oedipal stress we’d seen earlier in the story? Did the writer merely forget? Indeed, not. In fact, Sunni’s father had struggled mightily with his feelings of inadequacy, and with his largely subconscious fears that Sunni was replacing him as the man of the house. When his wife had gone out and bought an SUV for Sunni despite the fact he’d expressly stated he opposed the idea, it had triggered him to the point that he had plotted to find some excuse to ground Sunni, take her phone, do everything he could to let her know her place. In fact, he’d even planned to sneak into her room at night and shave off her arrogant beard.

But then, he’d gone to work and sat down at his desk. Arrayed across the front of his desk, to the right of his computer monitor, were framed pictures of his wife and Sunni— through her many stages. There was Sunni as a little baby, Sunni dressed in a onesie, Sunni at her first dance recital, Sunni at 4th grade graduation… in all of them, she was beaming, the purest, prettiest smile on her face. As he’d looked across those pictures, Sunni’s Dad had begun to cry. He was not a man prone to tears, but the pictures had warmed his heart and driven away the hate, and what he’d remembered and rediscovered was the pure love he had for his wonderful daughter.

Indeed, many days when he’d suffered setbacks, or not felt like working, he’d looked at those pictures and remembered that he was doing all of this for her, to provide her with the kind of life and opportunities she deserved. 

The anger and resentment he’d been feeling toward her now shamed him. She was not his little girl anymore. She’d changed. But she was still Sunni, and she was still a miracle, the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Once the tears had subsided, he determined to do better, to be the father he’d always sworn to be. Sunni was his son now, and he would be there for her the same as always.

And so, he’d put aside his ego, and he had remembered to be a man, and a father, and to love and take care of his child no matter what. 

“Dad? Are you okay?” 

Dad realized with a start that he’d been lost in thought, and that there were tears rolling down his cheeks.

Sunni had never seen her dad cry. To her he had always seemed the strongest person in the world, and it shocked her now and even scared her a little to see the tears on his cheeks.

Dad — smiled. He told her about the pictures on his desk. How he’d been thrown off by her changes, and how he’d realized how much he loved her, and that he would always love her. Sunni was now crying as well, and the two exchanged a hug.

Dad took a swig of his beer. Sunni did as well. They were each now feeling a little masculine embarrassment at their emotional outburst. “Well, that happened,” Dad said.

“Yeah,” Sunni said. “It did.”

They drank their beers in silence for a time, just staring out at the yard, watching some squirrels skittering around, gathering nuts for the winter. “I have to get going pretty soon,” Sunni said, checking the time on her phone.

“One more thing,” Dad said, fishing in his pocket and pulling out a little rectangular packet.

“Is that? Dad!” Sunni said, appalled to see her father trying to hand her a condom.

“You’re a guy now,” Dad said. “We can — lose control sometimes. It’s better to be prepared.”

“I’m not going to— with Carl?”

“Sunni? Son?” Dad said. “Just take it for your old man. I’ll feel better knowing you have protection if you need it.”

“Fine,” Sunni said, snatching the condom packet and shoving it in her pocket. “But I really have no plans to be— doing it.”

“Good. That’s good. Better to wait. Trust me.”

“Okay,” Sunni said, retreating before her father could start getting really gross and telling her about his sex life. “Gotta go! Bye!”

“Have fun! But not too much,” Dad said, enjoying the teasing now.

As soon as Sunni slipped back into her house, Mom seemed to materialize out of nowhere! “Oh, my handsome son off to his first dance!” Mom said, throwing her arms around him. “Make sure to get pictures!” She added while snapping one of Sunni. 

Sunni headed toward the front door, eager to get away from her parents, who seemed to her to have gone completely bonkers. “Bye!”

“Your Dad is right about the condom!” Mom called.

“Ahhhhh!” Sunni yelled, hurling herself out the door and practically running to her car.