Trans-demic
Chinese Flu
Sam Wong read the email from Josh Epstein, the partner in charge of the fiendishly complicated real estate deal that had consumed the last three months of their lives.
“You’re going to have to close this deal without me. I’m sick as a dog, and my wife just called an ambulance to take me to Bellevue. I just hope it’s not that fucking Chinese Flu. Do whatever it takes to get this done.”
Sam flinched at the slur but was used to minority bashing that goes on behind closed doors of politically correct law firms like Knight & Knight, the Wall Street sweatshop where Josh was Sam’s supervisor. Josh wielded all the power as the head of K&K’s real estate department, and he always assigned Sam to his biggest and most complex deals. Sam searched the documents for Josh’s signature pages.
“You have three missing signatures, plus the firm signature on the closing opinion.”
Only partners could sign closing opinions, and the trajectory of Sam’s legal career had missed that mark.
“Copy and paste them from archival documents, I’ll give you ink signatures when I’m out of the hospital.”
“Can you send me an email directing me to do that?”
“Yeah, I will, but just do it!”
Josh was the partner; Sam was his underling, in no position to argue, much less refuse.
“No problem, Josh, I’ll make it happen.”
Sam heard coughing, a thud as his phone dropped, then nothing.
She googled “Chinese Flu.” It was a cruel name that the President had tagged on the SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that had surfaced in Wuhan, China. After killing thousands in China and Italy, it was rampaging through the New York City suburb where Josh lived.
Big Law
Sam spent most of the next week in K&K's office high above Downtown LA, billing eighteen hours a day, handling all the calls, pretending to consult Josh, and inventing commentaries in his distinctively profane Brooklyn idiom, pretending he was on top of the deal when in reality, he was fighting for his life on a ventilator.
Without any help or advice, Sam negotiated and finalized all the documents on a sale and leaseback of a portfolio of twelve office buildings valued at a billion dollars. Josh was incommunicado, in an ICU, without his cell phone. Sam was stressed, downing Adderall with Expressos all day, then boozing and popping Ambient to get four hours of drunk, drugged sleep, awakening from one nightmare to live its sequel in real life the next day.
Josh’s absence would be no excuse if K&K failed to close the deal; Sam would be blamed, and be vilified, even though Sam had never blown a closing. Sam had to succeed, no matter what.
Not that any success, or the weekends and vacations Sam had canceled to attain them, would advance Sam’s standing at K&K. Christmas 2018 had brought Sam the professional equivalent of a lump of coal: Sam had been designated a “counsel”, the purgatory to which big law firms relegated senior associates deemed too useful and profitable to terminate, but not worthy of promotion to partnership.
Sam had dreamed of becoming the first MtF Trans partner in big law. But K&K had rebuffed her, and the headhunters who usually swarmed around disappointed counsel seeking outplacement had spurned her too. Big Law wasn’t ready for an MTF transgender partner.
Josh probably knew that, and he had probably sabotaged her partnership run at K&K, secretly preferring to keep Sam as his trusty subordinate. But the K&K’s managing partners had also spurned Sam, unwilling to admit an androgyne like her into their inner circle.
So Sam had recalibrated. A career as a “counsel” would be less lucrative, and the billable hours demands on counsel were closer to slave-like conditions of associates than to the seigneurial status of partners. But a counsel was an employee, with all of the protections of Title VII against discrimination. So she’d disclosed her intention to make a transsexual transition to HR. K&K’s antidiscrimination policies would require the firm to cooperate with the transition of Sam as an employee.
She’d been on hormone blockers and low-dose HRT since college, Having come out as trans, she accelerated her HRT, increasing the estrogen and adding progesterone, and her boobs and butt blossomed. She’d scheduled FFS and boob implants three times, but she’d canceled three times because Josh demanded her time and attention on his deals, and, she suspected because he was afraid that a fully transitioned Sam might spook the clients.
So she’d hidden her budding breasts and her broadening butt beneath men’s shirts and trousers and concealed her femininizing persona behind a blisteringly sarcastic, profane, and aggressive demeanor.
Everyone respected Sam as a demon for details and a demanding deal runner, whose Time, Task, and Responsibility charts were updated twice daily and identified the laggards ruthlessly for shaming.
But now it was K&K that was delaying the deal, but before anyone could object, Sam photoshopped Josh’s missing signatures and emailed the forty-five documents comprising the closing documents to a list of twenty recipients. Then she entered her eighteenth hour of billable time for the day and shut down her computer.
K&K’s offices were empty and dark as she walked through the corridors of its 45th-floor office; motion detection lights flickered on and off; the office was almost eerie devoid of the daytime bustle of staff, lawyers, and clients. As she walked by the security desk, Mario the front desk guard looked up from his phone and smiled.
“¿Otro medio día, abogado? Another half day, counselor?”
"Como de costumbre, apago las luces de la oficina, As usual, I turn out the office lights.”
Sam practiced her college Spanish at every opportunity. Like Sam’s native Chinese, it provided little benefit at the office, but unlike Chinese, it paid huge dividends on the dating apps.
Sam walked past tottering drunks pouring into and spilling out of the bars of LA Live, the scattered homeless encampments on Figueroa, to the nearby condo which Samatha had already infused with her feminine tastes: Pre Raphaelite Prints on the walls, a frilly quilt, plush toys and satin pillowcases on the bed, and red roses in the vases.
In her home, and on her nights out, Sam became Samantha. Deterred, and delayed from realizing her feminine identity by day, she had become a femme fatale of the night.
Date Night
Samantha assembled and swallowed her nighttime meds: a 400 mg Zovirax to control herpes she’d gotten from a freshman-year girlfriend, her first and last. In her new role as the submissive girl, she needed her lips to always be blowjob ready.
She took her second dose of HRT, 4 mg. of estradiol, and 400 mcg of micronized progesterone to grow her almost b-cup boobs; to 200 mg. of Aldactone to sissy-size her three-inch dick-clit and cherry-sized testi-clettes; and the second dose of a Truvada in a 2 1 1 PrEP, to HIV-proof her for what she hoped would be a sexy night. She douched her ass, showered, and moisturized. It was after midnight by the time she’d finished her makeup and caging her dick-clit.
Her mind was still racing, imagining what she might have missed in the deal, angry at Josh for ordering her to fake his signatures. She’d delivered the documents for the deal, a billion dollars of Class B office towers, but if there were any problems, she would own a sizeable share of them.
She blew out her hair, applied cosmetics for a demure but enticing look, put on a black silk top and pantaloons, silver stiletto heels and a silver metallic jacket
She opened her OkC app, connected with a hot Latino guy near DTLA, set up a meet-up at her favorite bar, then headed out to celebrate and to calm her rattled nerves with a drink, and, she hoped, a good hard fuck.
The maître d’ of Elevation greeted her as Samantha, waived the cover charge, and seated her at the bar. Her favorite bartender, Antoine, ignored a Latino guy and waited on her.
“Are you having the usual, senorita?”
“Yeah but only after you serve that hot guy you just ignored and pissed off.”
“Of course, sweetie."
Antoine opened a Modelo for the hot guy and brought Samantha a martini, fuming grey mist from a chip of dry ice.
“Don’t burn your lips, you may need them for the hot guy who just bought you this drink.”
The guy circled the bar and took the bar stool beside her.
“Is that drink radioactive?”
“Could be, it doesn’t matter, because so am I.”
“Agree that you’re the bomb, but you’re nuclear?”
“Worse than Fukushima, cuz I’m trans.”
“Would never have guessed that.”
“It’s in my OkC profile.”
“I never got past the picture, you’re so perfect.”
“Except for the T. Can I keep my drink?”
“For sure, and the next one’s on me too.”
Samantha looked into his eyes for the first time. He seemed sure of himself and sincere.
She stirred the hissing dry ice into oblivion, then took the bracing first sip of icy vodka.
“God that’s good, all it needs is a kiss to be perfect.”
She closed her eyes, pursed her lips, and uttered a silent prayer to the god she’d never believed in. Her prayers were answered with a brush of his firm lips against her trembling lips, a flicker of tongues, and a gasp when they parted. Antoine noticed the passion.
“I deserve an extra good tip for that martini.”
The hot guy gave him a thumbs up.
“So I’m Jules, your DTLA paramedic, who are you?”
“I’m Samantha, your DTLA paralegal. So we’re both para somethings.”
Sam always lied about being a lawyer, wary of scaring guys off.
“How’s life in law land:”
“It’s a grind, the partners I work for are jerks, the clients are double jerks, and the parties on the other side are triple jerks or worse. How about you?
“My job’s getting worse all the time too. Just when I got used to the homeless overdosing and dying, we get nonstop emergency transports of seniors with respiratory distress.”
“The partner I work for went from screaming at a financial advisor during his last conference call to calling me barely able to speak three hours later. Normally he sends me at least twenty emails a day. For the last week, nada. He called it the Chinese Flu.”
