Delyla: You want to tell them the rest?
Jimmye: What do you mean?
Delyla: Like, for example, why you have
been telling this whole story in past tense?
Jimmye: I was hoping to avoid that.
Delyla: Then let me tell it. I met James when I was thirty two years
old. I had long since given up hope that
I would ever find someone to settle down with.
But then James showed up. He was
smart. He was funny. And he was …cute. How could I not fall in love with him? And he’s right…I mean, she’s right. She did tell me about herself. She said that she was a woman inside and that
when we made love, I was making love to a woman. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was a silly little game she
liked to play. Believe me, some of my
other boyfriends had fantasies that were much worse. This one seemed innocuous. So I played along. And when it was Jimmye who proposed to me, I said,
“Well, thank you for that, but I’m going to have to wait to see how James feels
about this. I’ll get back to you.”
Our
marriage was glorious. After twenty
years we still held hands and kissed each other…in public. We were the epitome of PDA. All of our friends kept looking at us as models
of how things should be. They said we
gave them hope that two people could actually stay in love. For twenty years, “Jamesanddelyla” was one
word. In those rare times that we were
ever apart, we would call each other at least three times a day just to say, “I
love you.” You know that aging couple
that made kids run away saying, “Ewww!
Old people are kissing?” That
was us. It was one of our rituals. We had so many rituals. You remember in that movie Ghosts where
Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore kept saying “ditto?” We did that.
We did that before that movie
came out. One would say, “I want to go
out for dinner tonight” and the other would say, “ditto.” One would say, “you’re gorgeous” and the
other would say, “ditto.” One would say,
“I love you” and the other would just say, “ditto.” I
loved that ritual.
When James first came to me and told me that he just
couldn’t live as a man anymore, I didn’t know what to think. He couldn’t possibly be serious. Why was he taking the game this far? I only agreed to let him “transition” because
I loved him and I knew he was very unhappy.
I thought he would come out of it just like he had always come out of
his depressions before. But he didn’t
this time. He started taking those
damned pills and just became more and more female. And the more feminine he became, the more
frightened I got. Why was this
happening? What had I done to make my
James want to leave me like this? It was
like I was watching my husband kill himself slowly. And I fought for James…because I knew that
nobody else would. I shouted and cursed
at that bitch that was taking him away from me. But it didn’t do any good. She won.
I know this is the same person I married, but inside I can’t help
feeling that this woman killed my husband. I miss James.
(Delyla starts to exit
but pauses when Jimmye speaks.)
Jimmye: Losing
your love was the greatest tragedy of my life.
Delyla: (stopping and momentarily facing front) Ditto.
(She exits. After a pause to accentuate that she is
really gone, spotlight goes down. )
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