Out of My Zone

Yep, I'm a day late, but that's because yesterday was kind of a weird day, and Tuesday popped up with surprise work for me to do, so I wasn't able to finish a post in advance and schedule it for you. Sorry about that.

But in a way, I'm glad, because I spent about five hours yesterday sitting in a Panera, editing and writing. I'm sprucing up something that I'd discovered was a good four-fifths done so I can submit it, and I got about halfway through that before my brain rebelled and wanted to do something new, so I decided to try to get a jump on next week's shortfic for my project with Lynn.

Just a refresher, in case you (like me) read about a zillion blogs and have trouble keeping everyone's projects straight -- Lynn and I are each writing a short prompt-style fic a week, and have been since January. (We've each missed a week or two, and mine are sometimes late, but we've both been remarkably good about getting them done.) The plan was to write a bunch of them, then weed out the crappy ones and bundle the rest of them together and offer it all up as an anthology, possibly to JMS Books, because we didn't want to limit ourselves to a particular sexuality.

That's the plan.

About a month ago, Lynn noticed that we were both -- independently, simultaneously, and without discussing it -- writing a fairly wide margin of stories that stretched the boundaries of the norm. In more than one way. We were bringing in kinks that we don't usually write about, things that are definitely not for everyone (even a few things that aren't really for ourselves). We were playing with writing constructions (one story I wrote leaves the reader completely in the dark as to either character's gender, for instance). We were not necessarily standing on happy endings. And we were introducing characters who didn't fit the usual molds.

So yesterday, tired of editing and wanting to write something new, I thought: what haven't I written before, that might be fun?

You know what I've never written before?

A transgendered character.

But you know what I have done? Gotten so deep into the head of a male RPG character that my face started to itch from his imagined beard.

So I took a deep breath and I dove in.

It's a little terrifying, the "what if I got it wrong?" thought -- but it's also a bit exhilarating, stepping out of my comfort zone like that.

Zach met me at the airport. I texted as soon as we touched down: Landed now. Come get me? and the answer had shivered onto the screen nearly immediately: Already at bags run run run XOXOX.

He folded me in his arms and we kissed like starving lovers, and if there's an argument to be made against my starting the medicals, it's that no one gave us ugly looks as we reunited, just a short, skinny guy kissing a shorter girl with close-cropped, slightly butch hair. Thank God for unisex styles and the ubiquity of jeans and t-shirts.

"Missed you, babe," Zach whispered, pulling me tight into a full-body hugs, and if there's an argument to be made for starting the medicals, it's that I wished to God I could push my cock against his thigh the way he was doing to me. I ground against him anyway and grabbed a handful of his hair to drag his head down so I could growl into his ear, "I cannot wait to get you home and fuck you senseless."