Storytime!

Writing fiction and poetry is something I feel I was born to do. Other than Queer activism, I feel that writing is what I was put on this earth to do. This is the first part of my newest creation "The Eternal Dreamer" (though I'm seriously considering changing its name to "Yin and Yang"). Please comment on it--I'm looking for feedback at this stage in the writing process:

I shivered as I stood outside the pharmacy. It wasn’t even the icy February weather, freezing my insides with every breath, which made me shake so violently—it was the fact that I was holding in my glove-encompassed hand a prescription that would change my life forever.

“Sir?” a woman said kindly, placing her hand on my shoulder. She had on a uniform with the pharmacy’s emblem and name embroidered on the left side of her shirt. “Are you alright, sir? Can I help you with anything?” She touched my hand and my fist released, the now-crumpled prescription cascading to the snowy sidewalk. “Let me get that for you.”

I was in shock. She was being very nice to me now, but once she found out what my prescription was for, she was bound to call me a pervert, slap me on the face, and chase me away. Still, I didn’t move.

I waited for the sharp sting of her hand against my cheek, but it never came. The next thing I knew, I was standing at the long counter inside the pharmacy, and the woman I’d met outside was placing two vials of testosterone into a discreet brown paper bag which I could only identify as my own by the sticker it yielded with my birth-name printed on it in bold black letters.

“I’m Kendall,” she spoke softly. “Look, it might not be my place, but I know what you’re goin’ through.” She leaned in closer to me across the counter, and I did the same. “When I was born, my name was Kenneth. I was eleven when I learned the real anatomical difference between boys and girls and I realized that my mind was female but my body wasn’t. I knew I had to make everything match up.”

I was touched by Kendall’s acceptance of and openness with me. A tear tumbled down my cheek, dropping onto the countertop; Kendall wiped the flushed side of my face with a tissue. “You know, there’s a meeting tonight for people like us—“

“Transsexuals?”

“Yes; Transsexuals.” She wrote down the address and the time on a piece of scrap paper and slid it across the counter to me. “We give each other support. And love. And lots and lots of hugs. And we cry together and laugh together, and it’s amazing that we’re not just friends, we’re—“

“Family,” I finished for her.

“Yeah,” Kendall replied sweetly.

I looked over my shoulder at the long line forming behind me. “I should go.”

She grasped my arm, and I as I looked down at it I realized that she wasn’t lying to me about her own experience because her hand was much larger than that of any biological woman I’d ever known. “Will you come tonight?”

I shrugged. “I’ll try.”

“Not good enough. Will you come tonight?”

I nodded and looked her square in the eye. “I will, Kendall.”

“You promise? I’ll never let you back in here if you don’t promise.”

I grinned brightly and genuinely at Kendall’s enthusiasm. “I promise.”

“That’s a little more like it.” She turned her attention from me to the man who’d stood behind me in line. “Good morning! How may I help you?”