Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 20:27:59 -0400
From: majalistic@gmail.com
Subject: Krystal Ball - Part 1 (TG)

	Day after day, in the ephemeral ant-colony that is New York City, I
would visit the same coffee shop, at the same time, and sit in the same
seat, and like the proverb about the man and the river, the café was filled
with an entirely distinct set of patrons each time, with the exception of
myself, who never quite looked the same either.  Every day I became a
different person; the wall-street busy-man, the trend-scene yuppie, the
apathetic counter-culturalist, the activist counter-culturalist, Joe
Everyman, Jason Prettyman, Bob Hardyman.  And predictably, in a way that is
solely arbitrary and unpredictable, the people around me, ever-changing,
morphing, would respond to me in profoundly different ways depending on who
I "was" at the time.  Postmodern individualism indeed.  Not that I'm trying
to espout philosophy or dictate psychology, or lecture about sociology, or
any other nonsense -ology word that comes from the latin root logos, "to
guess and pray."  It could be called an experiment but I'm hardly a
scientist; a portrait, but I'm not an artist, or an analysis of humanism,
but I'm barely human.  If anything, I hoped somebody, anybody, would
notice, or care, or that I'd meet someone in that coffee shop, filled to
capacity with a pleasant mix of all of the above semi-human caracatures,
who, at any spontaneous moment, might ascend into some true form of
humanity that I could bare witness to and learn from.  I hoped that someone
might turn to me and say, "you know, I actually love bestiality," or
someone else might talk about how he feels lost in the political nature of
the country, and that he wishes, like I do, that people were more
open-minded, willing to talk about things from the ground-up, "what do we
want from society," "what do we want from other people," rather than
attempting to force ideologies- liberal, conservative, libertarian,
anarchist, or otherwise, with rhetoric and weak rationalizations.  Maybe I
was just hoping that something outside might be smitten by holy wrath, or
be incinerated by extraterrestials before they touched down, and some
greater authority, be it a god, an alien, or some great philosopher, back
from the grave, with all of the answers, all of the insight, and all of the
time in the world to explain it to us, the knuckle-dragging simians cum
world-builders.
	Also, the coffee was pretty good, and cheaper than the Starbucks
across the street.
	If I've already lost you, mea culpa, may I suffer for eternity.
It's not my intention to confuse or overwhelm, to obfuscate or draw
attention away from the reality of the situation, a reality that I
doubtlessly believe to be true, possibly.  At some point, maybe three
weeks, maybe two months (is there a difference?) into my "experiment," the
variables changed.  The control group was polluted.  A single, lone entity
began to emerge as a patterned, ritualistic anamoly to the mundanity of it
all.  A girl, younger than I, it seemed, but wizened still, sat pensively
in the corner, rarely-if-ever sipping her coffee, whilst, day after day,
she would endure, much like myself, while entertaining herself by jotting
down notes, observing other people, and drawing, scribbling, reading,
listening to headphones or humming quietly to herself.  There was almost
nothing consistent about her except for the seating and her punctuality;
always from four to seven, she would wait for nothing to happen, and then
leave her cold, unfinished coffee, without a concern in the world.  In
fact, occasionally, glimpsing cautiously at her expression, I would see a
glimpse of excitement, of joy, or even, of mischief.  I thought that maybe,
maybe, I was just seeing what I wanted to see.  And I did like what I saw.
	Her hair was cut neck-length, and, laid out, was short and spunky,
but fit neatly into pig-tails or side pony-tails or twin-tails, which she
seemed to be fond of, making liberal use of bows and hair ties and hair
clips, along with other accessories, to vary the style.  She did seem to be
heavily absorbed into her fashion, but in a care-free sort of sense, so
that, occasionally, the result might look a little silly, if interesting.
She wore skirts of all kinds and the occasional shorts, it being the
sweltering heat of summer in the urban jungle, making her a little
flustered whenever she came into the café before being cooled off, with
obvious relief on her part, by the air conditioning that kept the
temperature constantly chilled.  Her stature was short, and well-rounded,
more attractive in the "cute" sense than in the guise of beauty, for which
she was too young, too short, and too uninterested.  She seemed to dye her
hair liberally, almost week by week, bright reds and blondes and even, for
a few days, a lemming green, which, surprisingly, wasn't too garrish.  It
was actually kind of endearing.  If she did it for attention, she didn't
know what to do with it, because she rarely spoke to anyone, and didn't
seem too involved in other dealings socially; I never saw her talking on a
cell phone or even checking voice or text-mails, and, more importanty, she
never came in with anyone.  I did indulge in getting the occasional eyeful
of some of her "of particular interest" features, which, for me, meant a
cute ass, a round pair of breasts (though they were somewhat small) and
wide hips.  She often, if not always, wore collars, which was so strangely
alluring that I can't help but feel like I fetishize them.  Her use of
make-up was, by comparison of all else concerned, very conservative.  Her
lips were naturally a soft pink, and she blushed quite easily.  She did use
a bit of eyeliner, but nothing off-putting, and otherwise, her skin was a
milky, well-groomed type, with tiny blonde hairs here and there.  Sometimes
she wore glasses, but usually contacts, it seemed, and she rarely wore
either black or pink, which, for her "type," I thought kind of strange.
	After nearly a month of passive, creepy observation, I decided that
I should cash in my chips, and attempt to initiate conversation.
Everything I knew about social interaction was, irrevocably, about to
become more than moot, but useless.
	"Hey," I say, and she looks up at me, almost like a bird,
simultaneously keenly interested and completely oblivious.  I start to
recite what I've rehearsed.  "I notice that you come here every day, but
you don't even finish your coffee.  If you want, you can sit with me and
then you don't have to buy--"
	"Do you wanna go for a walk?" she says to me, with the strangest
accent that I can't seem to place.  She looks excited, almost manic, and I
start to fear for my safety.  I expected her to be meek or put-off, after
all, it was kind of strange for me to watch her for nearly a month before
speaking to her, and I knew that I'd have to shirk the "stalker" mantle
before she'd warm up to conversation, but she was already to go for a walk
with me.  Lucky day, I guess?
	"Sure," I say, and she puts away her book, and I move out of the
way to let her stand, and by the time I look back at her to see if she's
ready to leave, she's already past me and nearly out the door.  Is she
fleeing the scene?
	Today I'm wearing my yuppie attire, complete with an expensive
long-coat and my semi-casual leather briefcase, and patent leather shoes,
so I feel confident in walking around briskly, with purpose and finesse,
but, almost immediately, I'm stuck running a few paces at a time to keep up
with her, as she walks in long, girlish strides, occasionally glancing back
or over at me and saying something like "hurry," or "don't lose me," or
even "don't get lost," as if, suddenly, I'm going to find myself in the
African savanna without a clue as to how I got there.  We're in mid-town;
nearly all the streets aside from Broadway are numbered and I could throw a
rock in any direction and hit a subway station.  Her hair is soft and
bouncy, and seems very fine, as it retains its shape in the wind
(artificially created by our fast pace), falling back neatly into place
after it caresses her cheek or lays in suspension, lofty and care-free.
	After several near-death experiences related to taxi cabs and
bicyclists, I see that she is leading me towards central park, and other
people can see that I'm frantically trying to keep up with a high school
girl while trying to maintain some degree of poise, and failing at doing
so.  Eventually, I decide to jog next to her, finding it slightly less
humiliating, and ask her where we're going.  "You'll see," she says, and
takes my by the arm, pulling me off the path and through some shrubs, on to
another path, through a tunnel, across a street, onto a dirt path, and
finally, she walks off that final path, and carefully climbs down the side
of a rock formation.  I follow her, and find myself on a rock, shrouded by
an oak tree, looking out onto a lake.  I've been to central park plenty of
times before, but never in this area, particularly.  She looks up at the
tree and stretches out her hand towards it.  Her arm is slender, palely
illuminated by the light coming in through the trees, as is her face, her
light brown eyes half-concealed and half-brilliant, peering up at the great
tree with awe and, more heartwarmingly, joy.
	She turns to look at me, and the spell is broken, and I realize
that I'm there, in the flesh, without the lens of a camera or the cloth of
a canvas to separate her from me.  Startled, I nearly stumble, taking a
step back, away, only to regain my balance, having danced my weight from
one leg to the other.  She starts to speak.
	"This is my favorite place to think, here.  I usually bring a loaf
of bread so I can feed the birds, like the ducks, the pigeons, the
sparrows, the mourning doves, robins, and grackles.  They gather and try to
steal it up, and fuss and fight over it amongst themselves, it's so cute,"
she says, and points at the tree again, "and a lot of them roost in that
tree.  There's also a red-winged blackbird family in there; you'll hear the
male occasionally, he's sort of the alpha male around here.  Makes all the
other birds fly away, and he'll even harass people, but he's all bark."
	"The loudest ones usually are."
	"Do you know birds?"
	"Not really.  I'm not much of a bird man," I say, before recalling
the superhero, who gained his strength from the sun and his lameness from
being an animated superhero created during the 60s.  She doesn't seem to
make the connection, too young to have watched its re-runs, I guess.
	"I love birds.  I'm allergic to dogs, and I kind of like cats, but
I can't keep any with my birds, and my mother doesn't like them very much
anyway."
	"Oh."
	"Oh?"
	"Oh, I don't know, I guess that makes sense."
	"Do you want to talk about something more interesting?"
	"No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like that," I say,
and she takes a seat on the rock, and pats the ground next to her.
	"It's okay.  I kind of brought you here to talk about stuff I can't
really tell anyone else.  Nobody really likes talking about anything
personal.  At my school, everybody just cares about television or the
internet or their hobbies."
	I approach and take a seat next to her, close enough to brush up
against her arm.  I'm usually fairly confident with women, but, for some
reason, I feel like I'm going though puberty again.  Every time her arm
brushes mine, my heart races.
	"Well, uh, hrm, what do you want to talk about?"
	"I don't know, lots of things.  How I feel, about who I am, how I
want to change, who I want to be.  Nobody seems to have any real idea what
they want to change in the world, or who they are, or who they want to be,
they just go by what bothers them on a day to day basis, or what they read
about in blogs," she says, and looks down at her hands, which are in her
lap, "nobody wants to explore."
	"And you want to talk about those things?"
	"Yeah.  I know I'm not perfect, and I know I can't be perfect and
that it doesn't really exist, but I just wish there were things about
myself that were different, and I have nobody to talk to about that.  Do
you know what I mean?"
	She turns to look at me, and she's closer than I had to come to
understand.  I can feel her breath, hear her breathing, waiting for me to
respond with pleading eyes.
	"I think I do.  You want a friend, right?"
	"Yeah.  A friend.  But a close friend, someone I can talk to about
anything.  I mean, I don't just want one friend, I want a lot of friends."
	"I can be your friend."
	She smiles, and blushes, and looks back at her hands.  "I was
hoping you'd say that."
	"I'm glad I said it," I say, and I'm not sure if that was the right
thing to say or if I'm just inept.
	She laughs, a bit, to herself, and then looks back to her right, at
me, and says "my name's Krystal."
	"James."  She fumbles about in her seat for some reason, looking
kind of uncomfortable, and then she starts to talk.  We start to talk,
really.  She tells me about her insecurities, her favorite guilty pleasures
(though I'm sure she omits a few), the kinds of things she does when she's
feeding birds on this rock, her fears, and, most of all, her complaint
about being a social outcast.  I can't quite understand why such a
charming, friendly girl could be as socially awkward as I am, but I can't
exactly say that to her.  I tell her about my social withdrawal following
high school, my favorite guilty pleasures (which mostly mirrored hers,
sleeping in late, sleeping outside, and, for me, sleeping in a boat, though
it made me realize that I enjoy sleeping far too much), and my
"experiment," trying on a different face, every day, to see what it was
like to walk a New York City block in someone else's shoes.  She thinks the
idea is interesting, and says that she'd picked up on it, and asks me which
face I'm wearing now.
	"Ah, this is closest to my true nature, the yuppie.  Clean, artsy
and well-dressed, though I tend to swap these shoes for a comfortable pair
of sandals more often than not, to be honest."
	"Sandals?"
	"Sandals.  Yep.  My true form."
	She laughs, and looks up at the tree, holding her knees to her
chest.  We've been talking for hours, and the sun is starting to set.
	"Anything else you want to talk about?" I say, still more than
interested in conversation, and I try to emphasize that.
	She nods.  She doesn't turn to me, this time, and she says, in an
unintentionally muted voice, "sex," trying to be casual, but sounding
nervous at best.
	"What about it?"
	"Oh, well, um, actually, what I mean to say is, for instance, uh,
have you ever heard of uh, LGBT?"
	"Nope, never.  Is that a new sandwich?"
	"Very funny.  I mean, what do you think about it?"
	"Like, queer studies? Stuff like that?  I've taken a few classes,
had a few friends in the gay-straight alliance in my highschool, but I
never went to the meetings myself, why?"
	I'm calmer, now, and somewhat defeated.  It turns out that the girl
I've been flirting with for the past four hours or so is a lesbian.  Worse
fates have befallen mortal men.
	"Oh, so, you don't mind?  That kind of stuff?"
	"Are you asking if I'm a homophobe?"
	"No!  I'm sorry!  I guess I am, but I don't mean it like that.  You
never know, you know?"
	"We're in New York, you can kind of assume."
	"You'd think that, but that's not really what I've seen."
	"Ouch.  Yeah, I guess you have a point.  Sorry, it's just
surprising to me for someone to be so worried about something like that.
Don't worry, I was friends with lesbians in high school, no big deal."
	She skips a beat.  I might have outted her before she expected.
She looks at me with a strange expression on her face, like a blush, but
more surprised.
	"I'm not a lesbian."
	"Doy, I'm sorry, I just assumed when you said LGBT..."
	"You really can't tell?"
	"Tell what?"
	She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.  I lean in a
bit closer to look at her, and I do feel as if something is slightly off.
Nothing too jarring, but there's definitely a sort of quality about her
that I haven't noticed about other women before.  To be honest, it's
anything but negative.  I lean back, as my body temperature rises, and I
struggle to calm myself.  If she's not a lesbian, then the flirting wasn't
in vain.  But what is it that I haven't noticed?
	"Please, don't be angry."
	"Angry about what?"
	She blinks.  "You really can't tell?"
	"No.  What is there to tell?"
	"LGBT..."
	"What about LGB..."
	It hits.  I feel as if the rock has turned into quicksand.  She
nods.
	"I'm a boy."
	If there was a word in the English language for a whirlwind caught
within a hurricane that existed only at the chaotic creation of a star, it
would be analogous to the sensation my stomach is feeling.  It takes me a
minute, nay, seconds, before my heart is beating again, and by that time, I
have already decided.  The look on her face is filled with fear and
anxiety, as she puts up her hands in defense.
	"Please don't hurt me."
	In my shock, I can barely speak.  I don't believe it.
	"I don't believe you."
	"It's true.  I'm a boy."
	"I don't believe you.  Prove it."
	"If I am a boy, are you going to hurt me?"
	"No, I promise I won't.  I won't even get angry.  I just can't
believe it."
	She looks relieved.  She bites her lip and smirks. "Um, how can I
prove it?"
	"Do you have an ID?"
	"It's fake, says I'm female."
	A likely story.  "Is that a wig?"
	"Nope."
	"Well, then how else can I tell?"
	Of course, the answer comes to me almost immediately.  She's red as
roses, sitting next to me, and she looks ready to run.
	I pause.  I swallow.  "Can I see?"
	Her eyes go wide and she shakes her head.  "Too embarrassing!"
	"Okay, fine.  If I can't see, can I touch?"
	She hiccups.  "What?!"
	"Well, I need to confirm somehow."
	"How is that any better?"
	I don't really know.  I just had the urge to touch.  I was almost
certain now that, were I to find out this strange, wonderful girl was, in
fact, a boy, I would have be willing to adjust.  Willing, if not eager.
She was a friend, regardless.  I suppose it would kill my romantic
aspirations, but I already had that hope dashed when I thought she was a
lesbian once.
	"I guess, if I just touch, for a second, I can verify it pretty
quickly, almost no contact.  Besides, what does it matter?  We're both
guys, right?"
	She pouted.  "Don't call me a guy!"
	"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't know."
	"It's okay."
	"So then, you do have a problem with me touching you?"
	"Yeah.  I mean, I'm, well, I like, guys.  It'd make me nervous."
	"Just for a second, to verify."
	She looks away from me, and puts her legs down.  She looks back,
and nods.  With a shaking hand, I reach under the skirt, grazing her thigh,
and then, in the moment of truth, I touch her, for just a moment, and
withdraw.  Undoubtedly, what I had felt, soft, and springy, was a penis.
She looked at me with a bewildered expression, almost, and I must have
looked much worse.  It was almost inconceivable.
	"See?"
	"Yeah, I do.  Well, I didn't see, but, yeah, no doubt about it,
now."
	I'm pretty sure I can see a barely noticeable bulge on her skirt,
now, that wasn't there before, and I realize I've aroused "her" if ever so
slightly.  I find that I'm strangely proud of such an accomplishment.  And
that I can't stop seeing Krystal as a girl.
	I can't help but draw attention to it.  "Is that...?"
	"Oh?  Oh, god, I'm sorry, please don't take offense."
	"No, it's okay.  It's not like you can help it."
	She pouts.  "Well, are you satisfied now?"
	Something inside me snaps.  "I don't know, are you?" I say, and
lift up her skirt again.  She goes perfectly still, and turns to me, and I
put my other arm around her waist.
	"What are you--" she starts, and then gasps, softly, as I press
against her panties, with one, two, three fingers.  I swallow hard, and fit
my hand around the bulge, and she moans, for the first time, but, I'm
certain, not the last.  She's leaning back on her hands, but I pull her
forward a bit, and put my arm around her shoulder, and she puts her hands
on her legs, between which, I am lost in a sea of doubt and confusion,
despite my familiarity with the scheme.
	I can feel through the fabric that she's reacting, strongly, even,
to the touch, and not before long, her panties are strained to contain it.
I wrap my hand around her, still encased by them, and she moans again, and
leans against me, breathing strangely.  I hold her close with one hand, and
closer with the other, so intimate and eager that I feel myself warming up
to the idea.  Girl or not, I've fallen for Krystal.  And I want her to
enjoy herself.
	With that thought, I reach further up the skirt and pull down at
her panties.  She protests for a moment, before I grasp her again, and all
complaints become nulled.
	We shift slightly, barely moving at all, and Krystal's breathing
becomes heavy.  She holds on to me, tightly, and not before long, her
breath stops, and I feel the wet, sticky substance on my hand.
	She looks up at me, her face redder than ever, and barely stammers
out a "thank you."  We sit in the park for maybe another hour, before
leaving together silently.  The following day, Krystal and I arrive at the
café, together.

-- End Part 1