Disclaimer: I admit that I copied them from one of the other publishers because I think it says it all. This work of fiction is for the non-commercial use of its readers. Permission to copy and distribute through electronic media for non-commercial purposes is granted. All commercial and non-electronic rights are reserved by me, the author. Please do not read this story if you are offended by adult material, reading this material is illegal in your legal jurisdiction or, if in the United States, under the age of 18. It ain't like this disclaimer is going to stop the determined, but I got to try. But let's get on with the story.
By the was if you want to comment, write to mailtomatt@ymail.com
TONI IS A TRANSGENDER LOVE STORY
There may be parts about sex, intercourse, masturbation, paedophilia, BDSM and the likes but in the end it is a romantic love story.
Toni The Book Chapter 12
It took the sisters over a month to find their way back to the United States. Toni and Mel grabbed the opportunity to show Terry Amsterdam from their side and they stayed there for a week visiting the hairdresser shop and the special friends they had in the city.
When everything was settled Toni and I started the secured comfortable life of the rich high society. I changed my priority from working myself to having money work for me and went into some selected building projects and participated in one of the upcoming vineyards in Nappa Valley.
In the music and movie field there were still some projects that I had thought about but not yet realized. The Ship That Sailed The Time Stream for example was based on science fiction book I head read when still in Holland and we made a comedy movie out of it that was rather successful. I also started a television mini series called Pal Joey based on the night club singer played by Frank Sinatra in the movie of the same name.
As the 4 episodes of the series were successful it was decided to go for a regular series in the following season which meant regular work indeed as the series was broadcasted on a weekly basis. I wanted to be involved as I loved to do the musical programming and assist with the direction of the musical scenes. There were several ideas that I had about this kind of music in regard to instrumentation and arrangements and I could translate these ideas into this series. The enormous success that especially the leading characters got were prove that those ideas were right.
During that time the digital revolution slowly started to take form. One of the first results of that development was the CD. As I understood from the very beginning that that new medium would boost back catalogues in big way I invested a lot of money in old material, music rights, artists catalogues and movies and the returns on these investments was almost instantly.
It was good to return to a regular life in which Toni started to work again. She added a second house to the one already in operation and legalized an organization called the T & R Foundation (For Toni and Runa) to help transgender persons and subsequently a third house was opened in San Francisco.
One incident during this time was an anonymous message from New Orleans. It was delivered by mail and there was only a New Orleans newspaper of a month old in it. Looking through it, our attention was drawn by a headline that was colored by a marker. The article said "Mafia kills in New Orleans". The text informed us that a man known as Big Don had been found killed in one of the back alleys. There were no indications whatsoever who could have been the killers. He was found with his severed member in his mouth. It was assumed that the Mafia had a hand in it as that was known as a way that they killed traitors.
The reporter who wrote the story was a good one and even laid the connection between this murder and the war at the mansion. He said however that the police who had investigated in the same direction had absolutely no clue about the why and who.
We looked at each other and Toni had tears in her eyes when she said that she did not like it at all that people were killed because of her. No matter what they had done to her. We both knew who the Mafia Don was in this case and we also knew that this Don had no connections to this brotherhood.
Three years after the Westerloo reunion we got a son when Leonard Jr. came to Los Angeles with his guitar and high hopes to become a superstar. As I had told him that I would help, I got him a contract with management agency of the Doesburg Enterprises. In this way I became de facto his first manager. I loved it. I even took up the guitar again and practiced together with him. I was back at my own beginnings and we started to look for a band or band members. Los Angeles is the secret capital of Hard and Heavy Rock music and that being the direction that he was really good at, we went auditioning.
We found an existing four men band in which an additional guitarist fitted splendidly making their music from good to very good. Leonard assimilated very quickly. We could get the contracts of the rest of musicians also transferred to Doesburg and I got a touring schedule organized. Their first weeks would be in Los Angeles playing a club on the Strip and afterwards they would tour California.
As I was occupied with the Pal Joey series Toni surprised me by volunteering to play the tour manager. That meant three weeks on the road after one week in Los Angeles. When she came back she was all rock & roll and loving it. She also admitted though, that she had met her limits in stress and drinking and did not want become their regular manager. She also found out that she liked music as a practicing artist. Upon my question how she knew, she told me that she had sung with the band on the last leg of the tour.
As I was curious of course I organized her to sing again with Leonard's band as soon as possible. On one of the following Saturday evenings I was present when she took the microphone at the end of the show. First she joined the lead singer in a duet and after that she sung a ballad. I really was surprised when I saw that the audience that was pure into hard rock reacted favorably.
During the next tour through the Mid West I accompanied them together with their acting manager. I found out what Toni had meant by reaching one's limits. Not really being on the road for more than 10 years meant being out of routine. The young guys seemed to be able to go on for days in a row without sleep. I was exhausted already on the second day although I did sleep.
Being on the road with a relatively unknown band meant back to the roots of the rock & roll business. As I did not want to sleep in other hotels then the rest of the crew, I also was lodging in motels. During this tour there was reason to party several times as we got the news that their first single started to break in the Los Angeles. The second reason was the break through in the San Francisco area. After that tour I delegated the position of manager to the colleague that had been already part of the crew during the tour. I returned home with the acknowledgement that we had outgrown a part of the rock & roll business.
Toni in the meantime had found a session guitarist with whom she started a duo. Both of them did not really need the live performances but they hired at one of the folk clubs anyway. After that first engagement I realized her wish and became the producer of her first and only album. I was surprised to learn that the ballad she had sung with the band and other songs that she had sung during her club days were written by her. Altogether she had so many songs that she could fill the album with them. The songs were very intimate as they were about our love and the problems we had had. With these lyrics the album was a kind of coming out for Toni but none of the reviewers seemed to notice. The album received favorable reviews but because she was not very available for promotion it never did much on the sales front.
After about 6 months in the States Leonard met Wendy a girl who to our liking was a little bit too wild but we were the last to oppose young people. Everything continued to look good for the band and they used a 3 months pause in their touring to go into the studio to record their first album.
They must have been partying a lot during that time because the only times we saw Leonard was when he needed to change his clothes and bring his laundry. One night he came home much earlier than he normally did and he was in a foul mood. Upon inquiries he only said something about that fucking bitch and we understood that he and Wendy had had a quarrel. In weeks that followed Leonardo however kept his negative mood and when I heard him play during that time I noticed that his playing had gotten a kind of haunting quality.
Being myself in the music business and because of Ton's history I became suspicious and asked a police friend whether he could look and hear around a little. When he came back to me it was no good news that he had. Leonardo and Wendy had had a fight alright but the other band members had said that they had quarreled before and that Leonard had expected to kit their affair after some weeks. Before that could happen however Wendy was dead from a bad shot and was found with another boy who had died in the same way.
I confronted Leonard with it but he did not want to talk about it, his moods however did not improve. On the contrary I now suspected him to have started with drugs also. Toni and I were at a loss and did not know what to do. We did not have children and the first one that we more or less adopted now turned on us. Especially Toni, who loved him really like her own son, took it hard
In our despair I called Italy, Leonard had known already what was going on but now I asked him to come over and try to help his son. Within days I was at the airport with Toni to collect them. Them as Nicola had wanted to come along. It seemed to help as Leonard opened up a little bit to his father and grandfather but I did not like his reasoning. He blamed himself to have killed Wendy. He kept on repeating that she would not have died when there would not have been that argument.
Although Leonard and Nicola were in high hopes when they returned I was not so sure that their visit meant saving for Leonard Jr. And unfortunately that would be confirmed in the months to come.
We saw him going down but again there was nothing we could do because he was over twenty one. Still in his case we decided to have him arrested and force him by juridical decision to go into detox. It did not work. When Toni had gone through the same treatment she had wanted to become clean with all her will, Leonardo did not have that urge and three months later he was released from the clinic and only one month after that he found also the bad shot that he had seemed to be looking for.
We were called to identify him as the next of kin and when we saw him in the morgue we noticed that he face had lost the haunted expression of last year and I had the impression that he was glad to go and join Wendy. That night I told Toni my observations but she was in no way consoled by them.
The funeral was a tragic affair. When I saw Nicola again only some five months after his last visit I saw a broken man. Still he thanked us for our efforts to turn away the inevitable with the forced detox and our plea for help to him his father and he especially comforted Toni after she talked top him about her blame in the affair. Ele threw herself on the casket of her brother in an outburst of southlandish sorrow and had to be removed with force. The family reunion was not a happy one and somewhere deep inside I was glad when they went back to Italy.
After they left we sat together and tried to talk about it but although all reason told us that we had done everything possible we both felt an irrational guilt. This was although we had seen several people in our surroundings die from overdoses and bad shots. Being in the business that we both were this was to be expected, but those other people were always far enough away with Leonard we felt it had been different. He had come to us, his parents had trusted us to guide him, to help and what was the result. He was dead and buried.
I worked a lot during that time in an effort to forget these awful months and being a rather optimistic person I succeeded although business successes were not greeted with joy and parties for a while. Toni was another story; although she dug into her work as much as I did I noticed that her eyes lost a part of the sparkling that I had become used to and that I loved so much.
Still life went on and we had positive moments the best being when Toni was successful with saving some of her girls. That is when we partied and I was slowly thinking that things might better themselves when the next blow came and it was terrible one for both of us. Only three months after Leonard Jr. had been buried Nicola died of a heart attack.
The reunion with the Italian relatives was of course a said one and Leonard told us that since Nicola had come back from the USA he had started to develop heath problems. Strangely enough the doctors had not find things much out of the ordinary and it seemed as if he had ied from a broken heat. "And Matt, as I know ma father in law and the way he adored Jr, although he was not the technical genius we both longed for, I guess that theory may not be too far from the truth" .The funeral in Italy was as bad as the one in LA and it was the first time both of us visited Italy without enjoying it. We kept the visit as short as possible and returned to the USA via Holland. At least the visit with the Westerloo parents lifted our spirit a little bit.
We had to shorten the Dutch visit because Pal Joey had received an Emmy after its first season. We were obliged to attend the awards evening and the party afterward. The leading man Kevin Ford sung The Lady Is A tramp and Bewitched in the old Pal Joey tradition and was looking directly at Toni. I from my side wondered what he knew. Toni's reply to this little stand came when she sat down next to him and sung a very sensual My Funny Valentine. During that evening I had a feeling that Toni had put the experiences of the former12 months behind her and that things would get back to normal.
Normal was only a relative description for our life. Some months after our return to LA her mother was announced and settled down in the house as if she wanted to stay for good. But it was a good time and we both talked a lot about her youth and what we called the lost years. I told her about the conflicts that their drawing back from Toni at the time had created and Mrs. Westerloo confessed that she had been the source of that decision and that had caused grave emotional problems for Toni's father and she must have apologized herself for her coldness during those times at least 5 times a day.
The visit did Toni good however as she could convince her mother that every thing was alright now. At last she could show her mother our way of life, which the elder woman adored of course. Our hobby of Italian food exited her so much that she started to cook herself. Toni was perplexed because she told me that she never had seen her mother in the kitchen. When she was back in Holland Toni's father called and asked us what we had done to her as she had surprised him with an evening dinner of home made Italian food.
The next bad news came again from my family as my mother died shortly after the diagnosis of blood cancer in a late stadium. Again Toni was hit hard because my mother had been the second replacement for her own mother after Mrs. Johnson. Although my mother had not known about her transsexualism, the two women had developed a very tight bond from the beginning.
Fate was not on our side and half a year after we buried my mother the next blow blew Toni really apart. Eric died in an airplane crash. He had been in Seattle on a business trip and with 4 other associates they were flying back in a private jet. Although the whether had been bad all participants had decided to fly as it was ´Friday. All of them wanted to be home for the weekend. What had happened never became really clear but they went down in the Rocky Mountains. Also the black box that was found later did not really shed a light on the cause of the accident.
Our trip to the East was a sad one. From the outside Toni gave the impression to take everything rather good but I had the sense that she was eaten from the inside. Since the news had broken she had hardly eaten and during the nights I noticed that she was frequently not lying besides me.
With time progressing she fell into some blacker than black moods. I saw her getting into a depressive state and I could not do anything. I tried to talk about but she did not want to. I tried to get her to a doctor and she said she would but she also said that she knew what the doctor would do. I was worrying about her like never before. I went to doctors and asked for advice and they told me nothing positive. When she would accept a therapy she would go into a closed clinic for an undefined time and I knew that she would not accept that.
Then after I came back from a business trip to New York my worst nightmare became reality. Entering the house late in the evening I was met by a strange atmosphere. At the gate I had noticed that Mama Sue and Uncle Tom were not there. That was no big deal as I remembered them talking about a trip to New Orleans. In the house everything was tidied and somewhere a soft classical music was playing. From our bed room light was visible. When I came into the room my first impression was that she rested on top of the bed. Her arms were crossed over her breast. Looking around, I saw the glass on the table next to the bed and my heart stood still. I sank to my knees and buried my face in my hands not able for some time to articulate a thought.
It could not be true; she could not have left me; not in this way. Very carefully I laid myself next to her and put my arm over hers and felt the coldness of her body. She probably had done it the first of the two nights that I was away. Only then I saw the writing on the big make up mirror.
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
Laying there besides her I relived my life with her; I saw her walking in front of me and I saw her in mini skirts and high heels crossing the Delfter market place. I saw the horror in her face when I got out upon my first realization what she was.
At that moment the tears came and I cried silently for hours seeing flashes of her in my mind's eye. Clapping to exhausting during the Last Night Of The Proms and walking with her and Mel as Matty on high heels in Amsterdam. I saw us in an everlasting loving embrace on our Island. I felt the blows of New Orleans again. I saw her with Nicola in the kitchen, complimenting me out. I saw her during her shopping spree in Paris and with two Eles in Milan. I saw the faces of my friends again when I introduced her for the first time, I kissed her on the Greek island again and in the back ground I heard the Rolling Stones sing You Can't Always Get What You Want. Did I put the record on or was it only in my mind?
I do not know how long I had lied there but it must have been hours as the first sun rays where playing on the terrace. I realized I had to inform someone and I called our family doctor and Toni's therapist, Brian.
Brian also living on the coast was there in minutes and judging the situation he gave me a tranquilizer that would have felled an elephant. The rest of the day was a haze. I only remember sitting in a chair in the living room. I saw medical people and police officers and police people in civilian and I had a girl on my lap who cried her heart out. Brian had called Terry and she was that crying girl, also full of tranquilizer.
Late in the afternoon when our drugs had lost a part of their effect, Terry asked me whether I had called Mel. When I denied we called her together. Terry had the presence of mind to ask her whether she was alone in the house. When Mel said that Eric's nanny was still there, she said to fetch her.
After Mel heard the news we heard only a long nooooo... , which became weaker and ended in a silence that was broken after a long minute by the nanny when she told us that Mel had passed out. Mel was so shocked that she had to be hospitalized but was out of that again in time for the funeral.
During the first days after the suicide Terry called friends and relatives to break the news to them. Brian was there every morning to see after me. During 3 days he had me under strong sedatives. I forbade them to clean the mirror, but every time I looked at the text on it I started to cry.
One day before the funeral Mama Sue and Uncle Tom returned and their sorrow had me started all over again too. But Mama Sue was as tough as a Southern mother of a big family is supposed to be. Soon she had the reigns of the household steady in her hands again. When Mama Sue saw Mel for the first time she crossed her chest and asked me what kind of Voodoo I had performed to get Toni back alive. When she learned who Mel was she closed her in her heart instantly. That evening she asked me whether they could stay now that Toni was not there anymore. I took her in my arms and told her that they were now the only family I had.
The funeral was of course a said affair and we wanted it to as small as possible. Toni would not have wanted a Hollywood glamour affair and so it was only family and a few close friends. On request from the Westerloo parents we had also a church ceremony and when I came into that church with Mel one of the first people I saw was, towering over all the others...:Pierre LaCroix.
When heads turned in the church to look at us he turned also and dropped his jaw. With big eyes he looked at Mel then to me and I realized that he must have thought that he saw the ghost of Toni.
At that moment we had no possibility to talk with him but later that day we got together and I took Mel with me. After introductions he told me that he had heard it by chance from some associates in LA whom he had met some days after the news had made the rounds in the entertainment community and that he had wanted to say a last goodbye to a woman that had meant very much to him.
We had to tell Mel of course what the connection was and when we parted she stood on her toes to kiss the big man and got rewarded by being swept of her feet during a passionate embrace. Tears shot into my eyes as I had an overwhelming deja-vu at that moment.
After the funeral I tried to get my life in order again. Her parents had stayed an additional week and had returned to Holland. After that I had gone to New York as that was the City that reminded me the least of Toni. I had send Mama Sue and Uncle Tom back to New Orleans. Especially Mama Sue needed time within her own family to get over the shock. About a month after the funeral, one of my lawyers came by and handed me a letter written by Toni. After he was gone I opened it with trembling fingers. I saw her hand writing and started to read:
"Love of my life
When you read this I have gone away and maybe the hurt about this has mellowed a little bit and you can accept what I have to write.
As you know there have been several depressive periods in my life. The ones that I had before I met you were bad but the worst one was when we were separated after my outing to you. After we got together again the depressions did not disappear but lurked always in the back ground. Sometimes they hit me with short blows when I found out about your several sex adventures for example. Also after the wedding of Mel I had a period in which I was afraid to slip into depression but you were there. Also on other occasions you were always near and during our separation in New Orleans there were the drugs and Pierre.
But New Orleans was a turning point in my life firstly because I let you down. I don't know what in the world had ridden me when I walked out on you. During the first time in the Mansion when I still could think straight, I was sure that I was punished with that fate because I walked out on you. I had thrown your love away and I needed desperately someone to love. That is also probably the reason why Pierre was so important to me.
As you know I did not come out of that whole affair as a whole. The blow with the bowie knife cut also a piece of my soul and when you later proposed the gender surgery it was in part a confirmation to me that you felt the same way, that I was not whole again.
Still to me the time after the operation and the reunion with my parents was the second best time in my life. The best time was when we lived in Amsterdam. Matt I cried many times about our departure there because in my mind we could have lived on there happily until the end of our lives. Still that problem also became a far away back ground problem after the reunion and my ever-growing love for you.
When Leonard died however something broke deep inside me and it was as if dark clouds were appearing on the horizon. They were still far away but I knew that they would come closer. After Nicola's and your mother's death they became ever more prominent. When Eric died they enveloped me and I knew for sure that they would crush me.
Matt I have studied medicine in combination with my gender studies and although I never finished the university I was so interested about depressions and trandsexualism that I studied them privately. Ask Brian about the long sessions we had about the subject and he is kind of a specialist in that field.
You asked me to get a therapy but that would have meant hospitalization in a closed asylum, yes Matt that's what such clinics are at the end of the day. I did not want that. In my despair about not being able to lift those dark clouds an idea started to form in my mind.
Matt you love Mel, you did so from the first time you saw her. You yourself said that you would have fallen in love with her when you would have met her first. Today I'm going to free you and ask you to become a husband to my sister and a father to her son.
I thank you for your affection during the time we were together and be assured that even my death will not stop my loving you.
P.S. I also wrote a letter to Mel that this is my kind of last will, please talk to her Matt.
Your ever-loving Toni"
I cried my heart out and screamed at her in the sky that what I had felt for her was not affection but LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. I screamed the word until my voice broke and I fell on the floor sobbing.
I do not know how long I was there on the floor; I must have cried myself to sleep. Somewhere in a dream, in which Toni was constantly calling me but I could not see where she was, a bell started to ring. I started to look where that sound came from until I realized that it was the telephone. It was Mel who only said that she had received a letter from Toni and she was on her way.
Late in the evening she stood before me and the first thing we did was cry on each other's shoulder. Later I got her and myself a bottle of whiskey and took her with me to the beach. Sitting there in silence continued to cry silently. We had our heads on each others shoulders and we held hands. After what seemed to be an eternity, we started to talk. The more we talked however the more devastated we became. We both blamed ourselves not to have seen the signs, not to have done enough to help her. Had we both loved and cared for her enough anyway? That night we slept exhausted from crying and drunk on whiskey in each other's arms like we had done in another life so long ago in New Orleans.
It took us over e week to get down to the big issue of the letter; Toni's last will. We both felt that it was too soon. We asked each other whether Toni had known about our night in Amsterdam. We both answered that question with no. At the end I only could ask Mel whether she still wanted me. Her answer was that she thought she did. I accepted; asked her however to go slowly and not like that other time long ago in her apartment in Amsterdam
The next day I proposed to her to talk to Brian and that evening we invited him to meet us in my house. He expressed his surprise about the similarity that Mel had with Toni. He had only seen Mel once during the funeral and also his first thought had been that Toni was not dead after all. After diner, prepared by Mama Sue who had returned in the meantime, he told us that he and Toni had become close friends. When she came to live with me after the detox, she started to visit him as a patient. In the beginning they talked much about the time in New Orleans. On one of their first meeting she had told him about my shock therapy.
When Mel asked what that meant I told what had happened after we met in New York. When I was finished she looked shocked. "I never asked you to scare the living daylights out of her", she told me. When Brian saw however that she was starting to get angry he came to my defense. He told us that when Toni had told him about it, his first reaction was like that of Mel. Toni had told him however that it had been the right way to convince her that in New Orleans she was not herself. The core of their sessions had been to convince her over and over again of my love for her. Although on the outside Toni accepted that, he suspected that there remained a shadow of doubt in her, which luckily disappeared during the following years.
After the death of Leonard Jr. he had to get her on medicine. She was slipping into a depression triggered by feelings of guilt. He excused himself to me because on Toni's request I had not been informed. He said though that it had also not been necessary because at that time she wanted very much to be helped.
After the death of Nicola the shadow was becoming more prominent and after she had buried my mother, he knew that she was right on the edge of the abyss. He as a doctor had the same problems as I had been confronted with. When Eric died we both saw her going over that edge without being able to do something.
But it was double hard on us because she had not wanted any help. She had stopped with her medicine. At the time when Brian and I had our conversation, the stationary treatment was the only possibility left. He knew as well as I did that she would never give in to such a proposal. He finished by saying, that until the very end he had hoped that Toni would not take the final step because of her love for me. When we told him about her reason for that final decision and about the letters to Mel and me, I saw a medical doctor cry.
To be continued.
Again comments would be very welcome, please mail them to: mailtomatt@ymail.com