Grayality by Carey PW
General Release Date: 12th July 2022
Word Count: 78,383
Book Length:SUPER NOVEL
Pages: 308
Genres:
BISEXUAL,COMEDY AND HUMOUR,CONTEMPORARY,GAY,GLBTQI,ROMANCE,TRANSGENDER
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Book Description
Love knows no gender.
Pate Boone, a twenty-six-year-old transgender man, embarks on a new adventure when his childhood best friend, and yes, ex-lover, Oakley Ogden, convinces him to escape their hometown in hopes for something new.
They land in Cloverleaf, a tiny rural town in Montana, so that Oakley can care for his granny who is battling breast cancer. She pressures the two young men to enroll in a nearby college. Pate immediately becomes enthralled with Maybelle, a young, vivacious freshman to whom he fears revealing his transgender identity. Still, he finds it impossible to resist Maybelle, even after he meets her ex, Bullet, a large, violent man determined to keep Pate away from “his girl.”
But there are others who accept Pate immediately, like Stormy. An outdoorsy, rugged freshman, Stormy warns Pate away from Maybelle and Bullet, but Pate’s too infatuated to heed these warnings.
Oakley tries to support his friend’s new love but finds himself entangled in his own emotional calamity when he unintentionally falls for Jody, a gay and ostentatiously confident drag queen. This new relationship awakens deep internal conflicts in Oakley as he struggles to accept his bisexuality, lashing out at Pate and causing friction between him and Jody.
Oakley must decide if he can overcome his insecurities so he doesn’t lose the love of his life. And Pate must discover if the love between him and Maybelle is strong enough for her to accept him as a transgender man, or if she will break his heart.
Reader advisory: This book contains references to homophobia, transphobia, physical assault and a past suicide attempt. There is use of marijuana and smoking, as well as mentions of gender dysphoria and past sexual assault.
Oakley
The drive from Georgia to Montana took forever, and I doubted that my little car would plow through it. Even when we pulled into Cloverleaf, Pate didn’t look too thrilled. Pate wasn’t big on support groups and trans-friendly organizations, but he did occasionally make use of the ones around Atlanta whenever he claimed that he “needed to be around other trans folks.” Here, he wouldn’t have any safe place to go, but I couldn’t fathom not having Pate around me. While my romantic inclinations had faded, I was still drawn like a magnet to his soul. I believed that he felt the same with mine.
Granny lived a few miles from town on a small ranch. She rented her land to other ranchers for their cattle, in exchange for tending to a few of her own cattle that she mostly kept around to slaughter in the wintertime. My uncle lived in Flathead and would travel back and forth helping her maintain the ranch since he was the future inheritor.
We weren’t far from the front door before the aroma of salmon patties, homemade French fries and biscuits danced up my nostrils. Yes, she hasn’t lost her Southern cooking!
The main door was open for us, so I opened the screen door, knocking to alert her to our presence. Granny walked in from the kitchen. She had had her double mastectomy about three weeks ago but was still recovering. She looked good but frail and tired.
“You shouldn’t be up and cooking, Granny.” I half scolded her because I was starving. I carefully embraced her, avoiding squeezing too hard. I could tell she was sore.
“My friend came over and helped me put it together. I just had to heat it. How was the drive? Long?” she asked as she walked into the kitchen, which was our cue to follow her. She already had the food laid out on the table. I had called her when we were close to give her ample time to prepare for us. She sat down and motioned to the fridge. “Help yourself to anything to drink. I cook, but I don’t wait on people.”
I grabbed a Coke, and Pate motioned for a water. Pate had not met Granny yet, but Patricia had.
As we sat down, Granny’s eyes fixed on Pate as if she were purposefully searching for remnants of Patricia. Pate began eating, placing his focus on the food, but I knew he noticed.
“So how are you feeling?” I inquired. “When do you start chemo?”
“In a few weeks. They want me to heal more first. I need my strength.” She brushed a few strands of her thin gray hair out of her face. Her eyes stayed on Pate.
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Billings.”
“That’s a drive. Let me know the schedule so that when I register, I can make sure that my classes don’t interfere,” I told her, but her eyes remained on Pate.
“Is there something that you want to ask me?” Pate muttered, slowly looking up from his plate and clinching his jaw.
“So…do you have a penis now?”
“Granny!” I snapped.
“I don’t mean anything by it. I just don’t know what all you’ve had done.”
“No.” Pate pushed another mouthful of food into his mouth.
“Are you going to?” Granny continued to pry while rubbing her fingers along the table.
“I don’t know. I don’t have the money,” he replied.
“You were so pretty as a girl. I thought you and Oakley would get married and have some pretty babies. You two would have pretty babies—”
“Granny,” I inserted, “Don’t—”
“It’s okay.” Pate said gently holding up his hand to me. “Yes, I was a pretty girl. Now, I am a handsome man.”
“You still look like a girl. You have that baby face.” Granny finally started eating a piece of biscuit.
Under the table, I squeezed Pate’s thigh. Pate was more than aware that he looked ten years younger and feminine in the face. He desperately wanted facial hair but little had emerged, and he was very insecure about it.
“So, if you don’t have a penis yet, aren’t you still a woman?” Granny pushed between bites of biscuit.
“Does not having breasts mean you’re not a woman anymore?” Pate stated more than asked, and his green eyes laid right into Granny’s. My throat fell into my chest.
Granny was mid-mouthful when Pate made the comment, and the silence was agony.
Finally, Granny smirked. “I guess you’re right.”
Granny had an upstairs loft in her house that had been converted into a bedroom. When Pate and I walked upstairs, we found two twin beds with heavy winter comforters over sheets squeezed so tight on the bed that only a grandma could do it. There were small refinished gray nightstands beside each one and one large chest of drawers. Some racks were placed along the wall for us to hang our clothes and two large black bean bags sat next to a small table in front of a thirty-inch flat screen television. Two folding TV tables were leaning against the wall with two small chairs if we needed a makeshift desk for homework.
“She made it pretty cozy in here,” Pate remarked as he set his bags down. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“There’s a half bath at the bottom of the stairs on the left. If you want to shower, then you’ll have to use the main bath beside Granny’s room.”
Pate sat down on the bed, pressing his fists into the mattress to test its sponginess. “Did I go too far?” he asked, still focused on his mattress pressing.
“No, Granny’s cool. She loves you.”
He smiled. “Sounded like she loves us.”
“That, too, but she’ll understand.” I started unpacking some clothes. I was exhausted and ready for a long shower and maybe a few hours of playing Zelda on my Nintendo Switch.
“Oakley, what do you think will happen here?”
“What do you mean? Like, will Granny die? I hope not.”
“No. I mean, you didn’t just come up here for Granny. What are you hoping for?”
“I really don’t know.” I sighed and shoved my shirts into the top drawer.
“Oakley!” Granny yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yes!” I leaned over the stair railing.
“So…are you two gay?”
* * * *
Pate
Coming from Georgia, Eastern Montana is a major culture shock. Being transgender, it is a culture shock. Identifying as bisexual, it is a culture shock. Hell, it’s just a culture shock.
After high school, I lost my sociability. I was never a large crowd person, but I enjoyed my close-knit group of freaky goth kids on the weekends, listening to metal music, getting stoned and watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. After high school, it was just me and Oakley and the occasional boyfriend. I always wanted to date girls, but I was afraid of being written off as a lesbian. I didn’t mean to insult lesbians, but instead of seeing me as a man who liked women, getting called a lesbian just placed another misunderstood feminine label on me. Thus, while I had engaged in some sexual experimentation with girls in high school, I had never gone all the way or pursued a serious relationship with one. Since I wasn’t interested in getting married or in having sex in my female form, I only had brief relationships, which felt more like going through the motions than authentic attempts at establishing something long-lasting.
So, socially, this small town in rural Montana suited me just fine. It was relieving to not sit in traffic for hours to drive across town and to not have to wait in line for anything. It was also nice to not have to go into crowded stores or worse, crowded men’s restrooms.
When I first decided to come out, I joined a few FTM (female-to-male) support groups on Facebook. It was nice to have a safe space to ask awkward questions. The restroom question was a common one. It was difficult to try to explain to non-trans people why the act of urinating or pooping in a public restroom was such a challenging milestone that created a lot of anxiety and sometimes fear in many of us. Like many, I asked when other people decided it was time to change restrooms. Some were brave enough to venture pre-transition or no-transition (keep in mind, not all trans people transition). Some waited until they showed more masculine qualities. Others asserted that they knew it was time when women reacted uncomfortably to their presence in the women’s room. For me, I started using the men’s room six months after starting T (testosterone).
Now, I had been spoon-fed the myth for many years that men didn’t talk in bathrooms. The concept of congregating in bathrooms in groups was always a female thing. Hence, I felt sure that if I kept my head down and did my business, it wouldn’t be the traumatic event that my head made it out to be. During my second time going into the men’s room, I felt okay. After all, people always told me that I should own it. As I walked into the tiny gas station restroom which contained only one urinal nestled right smack beside the one stall, I already wasn’t thrilled to see a man at the urinal. One of my illogical fears was that men would hear that I peed sitting down and would confront me, even though that had never happened to me. However, when I walked into the restroom, the man at the urinal flipped around and hollered, “Good morning!” Dumbfounded and too scared to say anything for fear that he’d notice my feminine voice, I just nodded and went into the stall.
On another occasion, I was patiently following my bathroom routine in which I quietly peed a little, then stopped to avoid the noise of peeing sitting down. Several men had come and gone from the restroom, and I always let my pee explode freely whenever a toilet flushed or a sink ran. I sighed in relief as the last man left, hoping that I would be alone to pee in peace. Suddenly, a loud, excitable voice emerged entering the restroom. The man went directly into the stall beside me, which was my cue to just give it up and try another gas station restroom, a common dilemma for some trans folks with public restroom anxieties. Just then, the man yelled, “How’s it going in there?” followed by an awkward laugh. He said something else, but by that time my pants were pulled up, and I was getting the fuck out of there!
Oakley and I both found jobs at the local Walmart in Cloverleaf, making using public restrooms more of a daily ordeal, but doable. Fortunately, I had already legally changed my name before leaving Georgia, as well as my gender on my driver’s license. Thus, I avoided any awkwardness of presenting as a man with a female name and ID. But I could tell that people suspected Oakley and I were gay. While I was still learning about my masculinity and figuring out the man I wanted to be, I still upheld many of my female mannerisms, which I supposed would be more characteristic of a stereotypical gay man. In a way, I was relieved. It meant a lot of people would leave me alone.
What I loved most about Montana was Granny’s barn. It had been cleared out recently by Oakley’s uncle, and I had brought along all my surround-sound stereo equipment. I wanted to create a large space where I could dance. Ever since I was in elementary school, I had loved to dance. Sometimes we would drive up to one of the Atlanta clubs, not to pick up women, but to dance. Typically, women, and sometimes men, would immediately dance with me, which Oakley claimed proved that one, I was good, and two, women liked me.
Granny was fully supportive of my use of the barn, especially because it kept the music from disturbing her. Oakley and I both agreed that it was a good place to smoke pot, a pastime we both planned on continuing, even in Montana.
After setting up my surround-sound system and cleaning up the floor, it was only a question of which song would serenade these walls and my body with the emotional power that woke within me whenever I danced. In a new place where no one knew the dead me, I selected Mr. Roboto by Styx. The words about throwing away one’s mask and having others see the speaker’s true identity swelled my heart, and I let it lead me all around the barn floor and occasionally, on top of the beams. I was in awe of the way my new, lean body seemed even more made for dancing. This barn alone made moving here worth it. I spent hours every night in that barn, the one place where I could be myself.
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Carey PW
Writing has always been my passion, as well as the way that I process my own life experiences. I am an openly transgender (AFAB), panromantic asexual living in rural Montana. There are few LGBTQIA+ resources here, and I always feel there is more room needed for LGBTQIA+ literary works. I have always written fiction as a hobby and earned a B.A. in English Literature and a M.Ed. in English Education from the University of Georgia; however, I ended up earning a Ph.D. in 2013, which moved most of my writing to the academic genre in which I have published several co-authored articles in peer-reviewed academic journals.
After coming out as transgender in 2018 and as asexual in 2020, I decided to refocus my writing on LGBTQIA+ themes in which I write about my own experiences through fictional characters and stories. Writing about my experiences has been extremely therapeutic for me. I am particularly enthralled with the complexities behind LGBTQIA+ identities and highly advocate that sexuality and gender identity exists on a spectrum. This topic is highly personal because my husband married me when I presented as a woman and was adamant that he could not be with a man. He underwent his own process of reevaluating his sexuality and now identifies as bisexual with a preference for women and feminine men. I think he is a wonderful example of the true fluidity behind sexuality.
Likewise, I choose to write about what it means to be LGBTQIA+ in a rural community like my current residence in Montana. Rural communities offer their own unique challenges due to little to no existing resources in some areas and a true feeling of isolation and invisibility. I want to share my experience coming out in a rural community and choosing to live openly as a transgender person and openly in a same-sex marriage.
Additionally, I work full-time as a human services instructor and a mental health counselor at a community college. Through this work, I also educate and advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community. My work as an educator and a counselor fuels my desire to use my fiction to increase awareness and acceptance for LGBTQIA+ people. Lastly, I would characterize my writing as person-centered, a term created by Carl Rogers as a counseling therapy and later as a life philosophy. My works center around the beauty and extraordinary complexity in being vulnerably authentic.
Check out Carey’s website and Instagram.
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