The Story Of Creation Revised - The Miraculous Womanhood Of Fielding Potter

Fielding Potter had grown up straight as an arrow – macho father, femme mother, football captain, teenage Casanova, and prom king; so it was surprising that he changed sides when he was an adult.  He had decided to become a woman thanks to all the beautiful, charming, alluring women he had seduced; and he wanted to know what it was like to be made love to, to be desired and cherished.

His was a transitional transformation – hedging his bets -  one without radical hormone therapy or surgery.  It was a trial phase; and if he liked his new person, he would go all in.

His new transgender friends were delighted, and took no offence at his dalliance.  Sexual transformation was the way of the future, the right and only way for men and women to find their true selves.

So Fielding, now Felicia Potter became happily feminine, a persona drawn from his dramatically female mother and from a selection of his former lovers - Miranda, the seductive Guatemalan who dressed in huipiles and serapes, a flamenco diva from Chichicastenango; the severe, slightly leather-and-bridle Birthe; Monica, the Argentine firecracker; or Betty, sweet milkmaid Betty.

Rather than create a composite of these women, he chose them serially. Elision of course was the key.  It wouldn’t do to be Tong-U from Burma and then whiter-than-snow Ingrid, so he went from one to the other gradually.  A scent of perfume signaled the change, or a Hermes scarf.

It wasn’t quite vaudeville, but this time of his life was certainly melodramatic.  Women were never expected to be self-contained.  They were all finery and glitz, pearls and rhinestones, Dior and off-the-rack eclectic.  As a woman he could be flirty, severe, alluring, demure, and flighty.  No more suits and ties, cordovans, and suspenders.  No wonder Tennessee Williams wrote about women.

Of course since this was only a trial run, Fielding never gave up his maleness; but he was a master of disguise.  No woman could ever imagine that an insatiable male lurked beneath the silk and sequins.

The zeitgeist being what it was during his transition – accommodating, tolerant, and litigious – Fielding showed up at work without one eyebrow raised.  As long as he did his work, his sexual identity meant nothing.  As a matter of fact his firm had long been hounded by gender supervisors to diversify; and this was now finally one box that could be checked.  His nameplate was changed to Felicia Potter, his new pronouns respected, and access to the women’s room secured.

Wasn’t it all just wonderful, he thought? And what a great country America was to take him in like a prodigal son, smiling and adoring of his beauty and admiring of his courage and honesty. For Fielding it was much more. He had created Woman.  He had revised and retold the old myths of Creation.  More than Adam’s rib, his woman was what God must have intended, a hermaphroditic version of an  unknowable divinity, never one thing but all things. How amusing!

The transgender movement was thrilled by the idea – a Biblical source for its legitimacy. This idea of hermaphrodism and its divine nature of course was nothing new – the Ancient Greeks had imagined it as had the Aryans – but no one had given it this particular twist.  It was Man who was creating Woman, no divinity involved.  It was the ultimate enabling, verifying statement of humanity.  It dismissed the old, fanciful notions of a God-inspired Creation and replaced outdated and discredited mythology with a modern, progressive ‘theology’.

Fielding was asked to be a spokesperson for the movement – not to the convinced and committed liberals on the coasts, but to the heartland where traditionalism and Biblical authority was still respected. “Tell it like it is”, his colleagues told him.

However for Fielding the curtain was coming down.  His play had had its run, time to strike the set.  It had been a marvelous, unimaginable ride. Every dog has its day.

He wondered how his friends and colleagues would take the reversal; but the ethos of gender fluidity being what it was, his return to maleness was accepted without question.  He was simply one point among many on the gender spectrum, and he might well decide at a later date to move along it.  Fungibility was the key, transformation the operative word, temporariness the meme. 

And so it was the Fielding Potter returned to his seductive ways with a new understanding of women.  Now that he had been one, he could unlock the sturdiest gate to their hearts.