Free Choir Boy by Unknown Author

when he came. His voice wasn’t breaking like George’s. It was okay. The drugs were working. Berry’s heart sounded like a metronome on top speed, either because of his orgasm or because of the fear for his voice. He stewed in sweat, sperm, and rallentando.
    Berry wiped himself off with last Sunday’s church program and pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans. The sweatshirt more than hid Berry’s chest buds. When Berry came out the front door of his parents’ apartment, Mrs. Franklin came out of the next-door apartment beaming. She’d obviously lain in wait for his approach. Her gray hair hung loose and she wore a big apron. “Your voice is so lovely, Berry,” she said. “You’re like a little angel.” Berry looked down at Mrs. Franklin’s bunny slippers and smiled. He mumbled something.
    Mrs. Franklin talked a bit more, but Berry was too busy thinking about that word “angel.” AH of a sudden, it was like all his hopes and fantasies crystallized around that one word. Berry desperately wanted to be an angel. Berry decided to tell Marsha Joyce at the Benjamin clinic he’d been called an angel. She’d like that.
    Berry skipped into his follow-up interview with Marsha Joyce and talked to her about his life in the choir: “Mr. Allen said I had to look at him when he’s directing me. Mr. Allen liked my posture and intonation. Mr. Allen kept yelling at me for coming in late and finishing early.” It was only when Marsha started asking questions that Berry realized she thought Berry was a prostitute and Mr. Allen his pimp.
    “Does Mr. Allen want you to be happy?” Marsha asked. She wore granny glasses and had her blonde hair tied back around a number two pencil.
    “Mr. Allen wants me in tune,” Berry said.
    Marsha knew that Berry lived with his parents, and that Berry’s parents didn’t know about the hormones. Marsha spent a lot of their second session prodding Berry to tell his parents the truth. “You have to be able to live as your new gender, and that means being honest with the people around you,” Marsha said. Berry nodded without promising anything.
    Two days after his second session with Marsha Joyce, Berry went back to Dr. Tamarind. He didn’t tell Dr. Tamarind about the pills or the tits he was growing. Dr. Tamarind talked about “staring your destiny in the face and making choices. You can’t will yourself to stay dulcet and hairless forever.” Berry jerked his head a lot and hoped it looked like nodding. He wished he could lock Marsha Joyce and Dr. Tamarind in a room together and go for pizza.
    The first few days on spironolactone, Berry felt woozy and like he needed to pee all the time. He’d felt panicky, either because of the estrogen or because of the new secret. A couple of times he felt like he’d throw up and pass out at the same time. But he only felt really woozy when he ran fast, and that made his crotch lacerations angry anyway. He hardly talked most of the time, so now he hardly moved either. He just stayed close to the boys’ room between classes and squirmed through Rat and Toad’s lectures, until finally the hot bladder cooled off after a couple of weeks.
    Berry folded his arms or turned his back whenever people paid attention to him. He slid down so far in his chair at school that his chin grazed the speech balloon of desk. The girls at school used tank tops and tubes to display their own personal growth, which didn’t look much bigger than Berry’s. He hunched his back in the school hallways. In the locker room, he avoided showers and cringed whenever he had to change into gym clothes. The locker room air felt stickier than summer.
    Wherever Berry went, boys talked breasts. They compared the different girls’ developments. Marc said Jee was a “fucking milk cow already,” but Lisa was “stuck with slivers.” Randy liked to cup his thick hands over his own chest and jerk them up and down. None of the girls had jugs like the strippers Berry had seen.
    With only cassock