It's Complicated (Teiah!)

[PunkPrince]

"Get dressed and get out."

Marilyn didn't have time to react before the bundle of her clothes hit her in the back of the head. They were what she usually wore for her nightly "work." She pulled herself to her feet and grabbed her bag from the floor, the one that held everything she owned. She had been kicked from the motel room she had spent so long in, and was forced to carry her things wherever she went.

Slipping away into the apartment bathroom, she dressed herself again, comforted by the pocketknife that rested in her against her thigh in the pocket of her shorts, and then attempted to scramble from the apartment, but was stopped by the man she had just serviced as he pinned her against the wall. "We should do this again sometime," he purred, running a hand up her thigh. In a panic, Marilyn bolted from the room without a word, dashed down the stairs and out onto the street.

She walked quickly down the streets, which were spattered with droplets of water from the light rain that had just started. The only light was the dim glow of the city street lights. She made sure to keep underneath them as she moved. She was out again. She'd only had a single client the entire night. She needed to find someone else soon or else she definitely wasn't eating tomorrow.

This was the only way she had to make money, as much as she hated it. She couldn't put limits on herself if she wanted to make enough to survive. Men had asked her to do some pretty messed up things and she'd agreed to almost all of them. As long as she got paid it would be fine. Sex had become a chore for her, a way to survive rather than something pleasurable. Something that left her with painfully deep scratches down her back and left the rest of her in pain. Maybe one day she would be able to sleep with someone that actually saw her as a woman and not some sort of glorified drag queen, maybe one day have some sort of family to raise. It was something she wanted more than anything, but had long ago accepted she would never have.

But oh, how she wished she could. She could give love to people. She just wanted someone who wouldn't see her as a man, whether that person be a man, a woman, or someone in between. Her own parents still saw their son. She hadn't spoken to them in nearly ten years. She could be a motherly figure to someone, regardless of what she had between her legs.She loved children. When she was younger she had often taken care of her younger cousins when her aunts and uncles hadn't been able to. She didn't even get to see them anymore. If coming out hadn't been enough, the sex for money thing had been enough for her never to be allowed to see her cousins again.

The only family member she still spoke to was Devin, her twin brother. He had always been there for her. Her gender had never mattered to him. He was always checking up on her, making sure she was safe. Even now, while he was away at film school, he was constantly calling the cell phone he had gotten her, sending her things when she had somewhere to stay. Marilyn missed him, and she felt guilty. He shouldn't have to worry about her. She should be mailing him things and worrying about him being away at school. He had tried to go when they were younger, but he had given it up to help her. She should be sending him things, worrying about whether he was okay or not.

She knew that doing this was dangerous, especially tonight. She was completely alone. She normally looked for people with gay men so nobody would get the wrong idea about her parts, but her "friends" weren't with her tonight. She'd often been beaten up by men who didn't realize what parts she had, and Tammie, an old friend of hers that was also a trans woman, had been found strangled and shoved under a bed a few years ago. They never did catch who did it. Marilyn wished they would. She missed Tammie a lot. Her death had broken Marilyn.

She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the side of a parked car and leaned closer to check herself. She smoothed down her honey blonde curls and inspected her makeup. It seemed okay, though her lipstick had smudged just a bit. She fixed it as best she could and then went on to the rest of herself. She wore a red corset top and black leather shorts with fishnet stockings underneath them along with black high heels.

Marilyn noticed her apparently lopsided chest and frowned as she noticed that her left breast form was nearly falling out.
"I'm losing my left tit," she said quietly, fixing her top. "God damn it." She looked toward her lower half, making sure her parts were hidden. Even if the people who wanted her needed to know she had them, it definitely wouldn't look right to have a bulge in these pants. Upon seeing that she was fine, she stepped back to survey her entire reflection.

She was fortunate enough not to grow a lot of facial hair, it took several days for her to get anything really visible, but that didn't stop her from being incredibly paranoid. She hated the way her body looked. She was about 6'0" without heels. She lacked feminine hips, though the corset helped, and the closest she had to breasts were the silicone ones she put in her bras. Without that, she was just as flat as her twin brother. That could change with hormones, but she couldn't afford them at the moment. Then there was her lower half of course, something that never ceased to make her uncomfortable with herself. Hormones could only do so much. After that, surgery was her only option.

She nearly jumped three feet in the air when she felt someone touch her shoulder. She whipped around and took a few steps backward when she saw the man who had tapped her. She sighed quietly, slightly relieved that he wasn't just grabbing her and trying to hold her down. That had happened before, but a high heel to the groin normally sent them running. "Can I help you?" she asked, putting on the usual sultry persona she always used for this. It was the total opposite of how she was in reality. She was normally very shy, but that wouldn't work for her, not now, not for this.

 

[PunkPrince]

Marilyn scanned the man over as she spoke to him, shifting the bag that contained all her belongings onto her shoulders. He was actually fairly nice looking...hot, actually. Most of the men that paid her for sex weren't this good looking. Some of them had the potential to be, but mostly they didn't seem to care. The few women she'd slept with–and there had been a few–had actually been quite pretty, but they'd never shown any interest in her beyond wanting sex. Nobody ever really had. Most of them were just people desperate for sex who had a thing about transsexuals. She suspected it made them feel better about themselves. Sleeping with a girl who used to be a boy, that sort of thing. Marilyn didn't really have any sort of preference with who she would sleep with, for money or in a relationship.

The man seemed nervous as he spoke, saying that she knew what he wanted before pulling money from his wallet. He apologized for scaring her and then continued on. As he spoke, Marilyn realized that she was not with the usual few gay men she searched for people with. She was completely alone, and nowhere near a gay bar or anything else similar. He was probably confused about what she had.

"I know what you want," she said. "But I really don't think you know what you're asking for." Her hand rested on her hip as she spoke, and while most people might interpret this as a provocative sort of pose, she was really keeping her hand near the pocket of her shorts she carried her pocketknife in. She might need it, depending on this guy's reaction to what she was going to have to tell him.

She had always carried the knife when she was out, whether she was working or not. She had become more careful about carrying it after what had happened to Tammie. Tammie had been her only friend. She had been a beautiful person, and she definitely hadn't deserved the death she had had. As shitty as living this life was, Marilyn was not ready to die, and certainly not in the same way as her friend.

"I really don't think you want me, unless you're gay or something else other than straight," she said, pushing his money away. "I'm a transgender woman; I really don't think I have the parts you'd be interested in." Yet, she thought. She hoped to have hormones and surgery one day, putting aside money when she could, but at the moment she supposed she just had to play the cards she'd been dealt.

"If you're not interested anymore, you should go," she said, and then realizing how early it was getting to be, added, "I need to find somewhere to sleep." She didn't even have the money to keep staying in the crappy motel room she had spent so many years in. She guessed she would sleep on a bench or something, and then go hungry tomorrow, unless she could find some other sort of job that needed doing. "And don't try anything on me either." There was one thing she actually liked about her body, which was that she was a lot stronger than your average woman. She had to be.

 

[PunkPrince]

She was glad to be safe, or at least it seemed that she was, but was slightly disappointed. Not that she wasn't going to have sex, just that she wasn't going to make any money. She hadn't eaten properly in days. Her brother had sent her one of those giant bags of Swedish Fish a while ago, and she'd managed to make it last a pretty long time, but she knew it wasn't healthy. And she had to admit that she did miss eating real food.

"I guess I didn't have to be honest with you," she said. "But the odds aren't really likely to swing in my favor if I lie to you. I'm more likely to end up dead if I let somebody find out for themselves. That, and I'm a fairly decent person. At least I like to think I am. To be honest, I'm just glad you haven't tried to kill me yet."

She was surprised when she made his offer. He seemed nice, but maybe he was just trying to trap her. She kept her hand on her hip as he spoke. It would be a risk to go with him, but she supposed that the risk of something bad happening to her was definitely higher if she slept on a park bench or in a homeless shelter.

She had a knife, a way of defending herself if he tried anything, and she would definitely be grateful for a decent place to sleep, food, and a shower, even if it was just for a night. It had been so long since she'd really had a decent place to sleep, or decent food. Living on the street meant that she'd had to learn to go without them.

He said that if she were to accept his offer he expected her to continue dressing as a female, and he could help her get off the streets. "I always dress like this," she said before hastily adding, "Well, not this, but you know what I mean. I'm a woman. I don't put it on for the night and go home to pull it back off again."

"I would really appreciate that, but only if you're sure. I really don't want to be a bother for you. My name is Marilyn," she said, extending a hand for him to shake. "Marilyn Havanna."

 

[PunkPrince]

She tipped her head to the side, slightly confused when he said that he was worried about her stabbing him, and then she laughed. "Oh no, I wouldn't stab you! I try to avoid stabbing anybody for the most part. I don't do that unless they attack me, and even then I tend to try to scramble away from 'em first. The knife is just a last resort." She really didn't want to have to hurt anyone. She would feel guilty. Her brother had often told her that she was too sweet, too empathetic, to be living out her life the way she was. Perhaps he was right.

She nodded when she said his boys were young, but frowned when she heard the words, 'why a grown man dresses like a woman.' It reminded her of the night her parents had kicked her out, how her mother had screamed at her. The memory still stung her, even nearly ten years later. She tried so hard to just forget about the horrible way her family had treated her, but it was always floating around in the back of her mind. The memories were painful, yet they were the memories she had that stuck out the most.

The man said that he didn't quite understand, and Marilyn was silent for a moment as she thought of how to explain it to him. "I think a better way to explain it is that I was born in the wrong body. Imagine it like...you waking up the opposite gender. You'd still know you were a man, wouldn't you? It would bother you if people started calling you a woman and using a female name and pronouns for you, wouldn't it? Because it bothers me."

"I would get surgery if I could afford it, but I can't. I won't tell your kids I'm trans if you don't want me to, but if you change your mind a man is the last way I want to be described. If I were a man that's what I would have told you before. I just..I have a woman's brain, just the wrong body. All the estrogen went to my brain and none of it went into the rest of me." She shrugged. "It's...unpleasant to live with, to say the least."

"Nice to meet you Luc," she said, smiling as the man motioned to his car. "Cool name, by the way. And no, I haven't eaten...in a while. I don't know when the last time I ate was."

 

[PunkPrince]

Marilyn had to laugh at the word "un-stabbed," and she nodded when Lucian asked if she really carried a knife with her. In response she pulled the knife from her shorts and flipped it open, then quickly closed again. "I used to forget to carry it," she said. "I had a friend I shared a motel room with a couple of years back and she went out one night and never came back…I found her three days later shoved under a bed in a hotel room. Somebody strangled her and left her there. She was like me. And now I carry it almost everywhere. I'm not really happy, but I don't want to go out like that."

She and Tammie had had a strange relationship. Friends, at least. It had evolved into something more over their time together, though she wasn't sure that she could classify it as a relationship. There had been some romance. She had loved Tammie, and as far as she'd known, Tammie had loved her too. They had had sex more than a few times, and spent nights curled against one another, but the circumstances under which they had lived had made putting a label on what they had had pretty useless.

"I'm twenty-eight. I've been living like this for the majority of the past ten years. I've had a few steady jobs here and there, but nothing really lasted long. So," she shrugged. "Here I am."

"Thank you," she said softly when he opened the car door her. "I'm not a hundred percent sure where the name came from. I tried to get my parents to call me Moxie back when I was really little…which didn't go over too well. My brother used it when my parents weren't around though, which was nice. He uses it still sometimes."

"I came out to him first, and we just kind of fired names back and forth at one another until we found a few that sounded nice. He suggested Marilyn to me and I guess I just liked it. It's nicer than the name my parents gave me. My old name was too plain for my taste."

When he mentioned food to her, she nodded quickly. "That sounds wonderful," she said, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

 

[PunkPrince]

Marilyn just shrugged when Luc commented on Tammie's death. It was horrible, but it was a reality for a lot of girls like them. Marilyn had constantly been warning Tammie to be careful, saying that she took too many chances and that something bad was going to happen to her. And eventually, something had. The wrong name was on her gravestone. The few remaining members of her family hadnt cared enough to put her chosen name on her grave.

"I finished school," she said. Her grades hadnt exactly been brilliant, but she had made it through. It wasn't that she wasn't smart, at some point she had just stopped caring. She'd been sad constantly, and had just lost all interest in existing by that point. "I mostly waited tables when I did have a job. That or I worked in retail. Or fast food. Basically all those things everyone hates."

She let out a high pitched squeal as Lucian slammed on the brakes, and apologized for the noise she had made just as Lucian was apologizing for the sudden stop. "Sorry!" she said quickly, and then upon hearing his apology added, "Well, we aren't dead, so that's good."

"No, they weren't happy," she said with a shrug. "I figured they wouldn't be. My mom yelled at me a lot. I think my dad yelled at me too but I blocked most of it out. He told me to act like a man or get out and not come back until I could, so I left. I think they're pretending I don't exist. I haven't spoken to them since I left. My brother doesn't talk to them much anymore either." Her only real options had been to leave or stay and end up killing herself.

Marilyn slipped out of the car and nodded as Lucian spoke. She couldn't help but laugh as his face blushed scarlet. "Sorry!" she said quickly, apologizing for her laugh.