The Greatest Lie Part 11

"En Francais", they say "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose:" the more things change, the more they stay the same. When Tran and I got back to Minneapolis from our trip to Thailand for our sex change operations, it was every bit as dark, frigid and depressing as it had been when we left. I returned to the same tiny, dreary apartment in a drug infested, sleazy stretch of Hennepin where the rents, and life were both cheap. It hadn't changed, but only felt worse after our balmy, thrilling, and successful trip to my home town, "LaLa Land", and the "Land of Smiles."

The shock of returning from balmy Thailand to the dark and cold of Minneapolis so shocked weakened body that I considered blowing off school entirely. But that would have been stupid, since I have a full scholarship and I had greased the rails for a really easy semester. I had it so easy that even if I weren't an academic genius, it would have been difficult to screw up. But it was so cold, and I was so weak, I couldn't stand going outside. So I just skipped another week of classes instead.

Tran had given up her place and moved in with me. I love her like a sister (okay, even more than that), and after all we had been through couldn't think of living without her. But after three consecutive days of being house bound by below-zero weather, and eating only delivered food, I was going crazy. "Tran, I have keep at this homework. Can't you please go out and get us some real food: broccoli and brown rice or something. We can't live on kung pao and pizza indefinitely. That's hard enough on anyone's colon, not to mention ours," which had been sectioned to lengthen our neo-vaginas.

"You go, I don't want to freeze my boobs off."

"Tran, they're saline. Like the ocean. They won't freeze."

"I can't go. I'm Vietnamese. We don't like the cold."

"Tran, you grew up a hundred miles from here. You must be used to it by now."