Ditto

(This is the short short story I am submitting to the Transparent folks.)

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.  James did tell me about himself.  He said that he 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 he liked to play.  Believe me, some of my other boyfriends had fantasies that were much worse.  This one seemed …innocent.  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 a lot of 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 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 girlier 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.

Sorry for crying.  I feel like an idiot.  The last time I saw James he had the gall to tell me that losing my love was the greatest tragedy of his life.  I just got up to leave and said, “ditto.”