Out of the Pan
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

The door closed and Janey was finally gone. She had been called into her office, even though it was a Saturday morning. She could only promise that she would be back before lunch. That left me alone with Tanya for the morning. The whole morning had seemed totally unreal.

“I’ll put another pot of coffee on,” Tanya said, as she worked quietly in the kitchen, wiping down the bench, her long blonde hair hanging loose. I accepted the mug of coffee when it was ready, and the kitchen was clean. Tanya seemed to me to be just as quiet as Thomas had been – the boy that surprised everyone when the beautiful Janey took him as her boyfriend. But it was still so strange to believe that this was the same person.

“Are you happy with your choices?” I asked, because I needed to know. The silence was awkward. We would be together for perhaps hours, and she needed to play a part in a conversation that Janey had forced by inviting me and then leaving.

“Not really my choices,” said Tanya. Her voice was soft and girlish, in keeping with her look – clearly practiced. “But I am sure that I can be happy. I know that you are a close friend of Janey, but can I talk to you frankly, without it getting back to her?”

“If you are under some kind of duress, you should tell me,” I said. I was suddenly concerned that there might be something very wrong – more wrong than this would otherwise be.

“No. It’s not that. It’s just that I …, I am not sure that we can stay together. But I have not told her.”

“We’re not that close,” I said. We had been, but now I was seeing what she was capable of, having effectively destroyed this man. “But even if we were, I would respect anything you told me in confidence. I am good at keeping secrets. I know how important it is to get things off your chest.” It was true I was a listener.

“I have met somebody,” Tanya said. “You know how Janey has me working as a female assistant in a menswear store? She did not want me to work with girls. She is just a bit suspicious of me, I guess. She thinks that she might lose me to another girl. After all she has done, that is what she is worried about.”

“So, you have met another girl, anyway?”

“No,” said Tanya. “I have met a guy. In fact, he’s my boss at the store. He is the son of the owner. He’s way taller than me. And man, he has a great body.”

There was a dreamy look on Tanya’s face – like a woman imagining a naked man before her.

“But, how can you have fallen for a guy? You’re a guy.” I sputtered it out, but even as I said it, it seemed ridiculous. This was not a man talking to me.

“He likes to come up behind me and nuzzles my hair,” she said, with a dreamy look on her face. “When there is nobody in the store he likes to play with my breasts. See. They really have got quite big.” Tanya pulled down her top to show two perfect B sized breasts. I had assumed that she was wearing a bra, but she was not. They were large and pert, even as mine seemed to droop a little more each day.

“That could be sexual harassment,” I said, which is something that I would say to a woman.

“He knows that. We both do. He knows that I want him touching me. I do. Alison, I think I’m in love with him.”

“I thought you were straight. Everyone did when you took up with Janey. I mean, you have been having sex. Right?”

“Up until recently, yes,” she said. “More recently the hormones have been slowing me down. I can pleasure her orally, but to be honest, I don’t like that much - I don’t like the taste of it. At least you can smear a cock with the strawberry stuff.”

“Wow. You mean you are sucking cock?”

“Just a couple of times,” she said. And then for some reason she added: “I don’t feel that’s gay. Look at me. Do you think that it’s gay?”

“Well, I can’t think what Janey would call it,” I said. “Your secret is safe with me, but I assume that it was not her attention to turn you into a man-loving woman?”

“I think that she wanted me to be a lesbian. I am not sure what she wanted. She wanted a man in bed who looked like a girl, and then I was too manly and she got me onto the hormones. My hair grew long and just hated the idea of cutting it. She likes it but she is terribly jealous. We hardly mix with her lesbian friends because she thinks they all desire me – the tall blond dyke with a penis. It is just that the penis doesn’t work any more. He doesn’t mind. He likes it that way. He wants me to get rid of it, and I want whatever he wants. I suppose that it is a bit of a mes.

She looked up. She was fiddling with her hair while clearly thinking about her man … it was just so feminine. Her eyes were blue and moist, with just a little makeup. She was absolutely beautiful. Janey was not unattractive, but she would look plain beside her. But this was Janey’s work.

I was not looking to condemn Tanya for being unfaithful to Janey. I was beginning to realize that somehow it was unavoidable. Janey had created the very opposite of a monster, and it seemed that her creation would turn against her, or already had.

“So, where do you go from here?” I asked.

“I know I have to tell Janey,” she said with a sad look. “He says that I can move in with him. He wants to support me through the surgery and everything.”

“You don’t want to think about making permanent changes without counselling,” I said as firmly as I could. It struck me that Tanya, maybe just like Thomas, was too impressionable and easily controlled by a strong personality. Was she jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire?

“I’m just too pretty to be a boy,” she said. I thought that she might be right. What do you think?

The End
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© Maryanne Peters 2026

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