Chapter 21: I’m dyI’d rehearsed the script the night before and on the bus ride into town this m.

  “Please, call me dy Belmy,” I’d say. “Thanks for st night,” I’d add. “I’m dy,” I’d insist. On that final point, Julia had to be pletely vinced. Preparing Saturday night and this m, I sidered deeply what, exactly, I needed her to believe; and what image would best support the lie. At first I’d sidered dressing a touase, a subtle reminder of the man Julia had dated. Then I tried going the full opposite, an explosion of full-on femininity that bordered queen exuberanbsp; Eventually I scaled it baething more suitable, a carefully crafted performance of dy’s girlishness—of a life chosen, not forced, but simmering with cealed doubts and s.

  Because I couldn’t trust her with the truth. At least, not the full truth. I didn’t know this woman, this older Julia; and I wouldn’t have trusted the one I knew, let alohis stranger. She had more than a little reason to be upset with me, I had to admit, and though fourteen years is a long time, I uood all too well how some grudges linger aer. If she was still angry, would it be enough to turn me in for a priy head?

  No. At least, I didn’t think so. But I couldn’t risk it.

  And of course, more than anything she’d probably want to know how or why her boyfriend of the past had, rather than keep pace with her in age, instead shed a few years and, yeah, his gender along the way. My pn, galling as it might be, was to vince her that this was by choice, that I’d made the decision to live as a woman – that I was a woman, and always had been, though I’d been in denial about it for some time. I just o vince her to respect the new me – to not mention David up my old existeo just let me live this new life I’d willingly crafted for myself and keep my secret.

  I stood as she ehe café and waited bashfully by the table. Julia was dressed for fort in loose-fitting harem pants and fts, a pin, camo-green cotton t-shirt ging to her with sweat from being outside in the heat. She pulled off her sungsses and tucked back her long, bck hair with a flick of the head and quick stroke of the left hand, and I found myself smiling at the remembered, familiar gesture. I envied not only her fortable clothes but also the unscious fidence she exuded as she strode purposefully towards me. I’d been too drunk on Friday night to really notice, but Julia seemed to have embraced her thirties with vi. She looked good. Like, really good.

  Smiling openly, I extended one hand gracefully to greet her. “Hi! Please, call me—”

  “Sit down and shut the fuck up,” she said, cutting me off.

  Stunned, I dropped into my seat as Julia, with surprising iy, took the chair opposite.

  “You don’t get to talk. This is my moment, not—” and here, she waved her hand in a vague gesture taking in my appearance, “…yours, whatever this is.”

  “But—”

  “Shut it.” Her voice was firm and trolled. She leaned close. “You have no idea how many times I’ve rehearsed this.” She swallowed, and I could see the tightaut through her nebsp; “With my therapist. In my head. To the mirror. How many times I’ve dreamed of fronting you. How many times I’ve written down what I wao say.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “You hurt me,” Julia said. She said it softly, momentarily uain, as though she didn’t quite believe this thing she had dreamed of so often was actually happening. “You hurt me,” she repeated, her voice growing in fidenbsp; “Ten years ago. I was in love with you.” Her hand briefly reached out towards me, as though to pull me close, but instead fell to the table and gripped its edge tightly. “I loved you and you threw that away, threw me away after you used me, like skin peeled from a fug piece of fruit. When I woke up in another man’s bed ahat you’d dumped me – by phone, you cowardly, iive prick! – it destroyed me. Do you uand? You fug broke me!”

  I licked my lips nervously ao speak, though I had no idea what to say, aated at the slick taste of lip gloss.

  “No!” She bahe table with her first, and my cup cttered noisily. “Still my turn!”

  I nodded.

  “It took me years – years! – to get over that night. I gave up my job, friends, my goddamn life to get away from the memory of you and start over. And I hated myself for it!” She took a deep breath, and when she tinued her voice was low again, trolled and firm. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to hate yourself so thhly you want to die?”

  Yes, I wao say. I do.

  “For years I hated myself for letting you talk me into that night with… with, what’s his name?” She sighed with frustration. “Whatever. Your friend. I fug gaslighted myself, saying it was my fault, that I should’ve been stronger and just said no. Or I told myself it wasn’t a bit deal, it was just a threesome, I must’ve wa, right?

  “But it wasn’t my fault. It was yours.

  “And I didn’t want it; you did.

  “But I did it anyway, because I loved you.” She stared at me, at the girl sat opposite and her eyes widened slightly with disbelief. “I loved… you, so deeply and totally that the thought of losing you drove me half-insane and so I vinced myself to go along with it and what happened…? You dumped me anyway. You dumped me and told me it was my fault, that I was disgusting, and you never wao see me again.”

  For a moment, the soft lighting at the back of Café d’Eon glimmered in the er of her eyes. She gnced away angrily, and then back, and her gaze was clear and hard. “And I fug believed you. It was my fault and I was disgusting, and I hated myself so thhly I wao die, and the thought of never seeing you agai a hole inside of me, a pain so deep inside of me I wao disappear into it.”

  Julia took another deep breath. “You have no idea what that kind of pain feels like,” she said.

  I wao ugh; I o speak. The desire bubbled up from somewhere deep inside. But taking a deep breath and feeling the tight stri of the bra, I kept silent.

  “Something you want to say?” she spat.

  I shook my head, earrings joung against my cheeks.

  “It took me years to recover,” she tinued. “And therapy. And drugs. And at first I hated myself for that too – for being so weak, for needing help, for letting the pain sink such deep roots into me, as though it was a choice, something I wanted or did to myself.

  “But you did that to me: you.”

  She fell silent, sinking deeper into her seat, staring at me over steepled fingers. Storm clouds gathered at her brow. A waiter, a sharply-dressed young man closer to dy’s age than Julia’s, took the moment to surreptitiously slide up to our table. “Uh… dies?” he said, voice low and deferential, direg his attention ever so slightly more towards her than me, “ I get you anything?”

  Julia started. “Ladies?”

  “Miss?”

  Her lip curled in a sardonic smile. “Whatever. Yeah. I’ll have whatever … whatever they’re having,” she said, waving her hand at me.

  We waited for the waiter to return. Julia seemed momentarily tent to sit, silently appraising me in silenbsp; Meanwhile, I tried tain some of my posure, reag for that pce from which I could vingly perform as dy. A twisted ugh, short and sharp, lurked somewhere dark and deep within, at the absurdity of this se and the pain we echoed. I hadn’t expected this, not this… ahis bitterness and pain, not after all these years; and Julia’s rant had left me scrambling for some way to cim trol of the situation.

  The waiter returned, deposited Julia’s drink, and silently withdrew.

  She quietly picked it up and took a long sip. “Good choice,” she murmured, sounding a little surprised. She then sighed and put the cup down. “So… this,” Julia said, and waved her hand at me. “What’s the fuck’s all this, then?”

  She sounded exhausted, and for the first time I noticed that she looked tired, too. She must’ve had a sleepless night, maybe rehearsing what she wao say, as I had. Her makeup was light, and I could appreciate that she’d made some small effort to ceal the dark under her eyes, and the hint of wrihat had started to worm their way into the thirty-something flesh of her cheeks.

  My makeup was siderably heavier, fashionably so, and not to ceal tell-tale signs of aging; there were no fws to hide… no trace of errant masity. I fairly glowed with feminine youthful vigour. What must she think, how must she feel, looking at her boyfriend of fifteen years ago and seeing twenty-year old dy, a girl even youhan the man I’d been then?

  “Please,” I started. “Call me… -” but my voice trailed off, and died, and I swallowed heavily over an ued lump in my throat. I held up a fio signal I needed a moment.

  The previous script wasn’t going to cut it. I could see that she yearned for something from me: an apology, mostly, for snition of what I’d doo her and remorse for the pain caused over all those years. Every tense, angry line of her body made clear that she wanted me to say: I’m sorry. I’m sorry for hurting you. I was wrong.

  That is what she wanted. But beh that I detected a darker, more primal desire: an unrealized need far more potent than the want for some apology. Iormy embrace of her gaze, in the way her eyes drank deeply of the image of her feminised former lover, I saw, restrained but irely supressed, an almost feral hunger.

  She wanted me to say sorry and disappear from her life again, past trauma resolved. But what she needed was to e me, utterly, te herself in an attempt to fill that void of pain and loneliness left by my departure. She needed – me.

  And desperate need? That’s an easy thing to exploit.

  “It’s good seeing you again, Julia,” I started, tentatively.

  She ughed. “Is it? Really?”

  “It is.” I offered a gentle smile. “I haven’t, you know, really seen anyone from… before.” Truer words were rarely spoken, and I would’ve happily kept it that way. It’s not like I went out of my way to catch up with ex-girlfriends; that sort of enter is awkward enough at the best of times and this… this wasn’t the best of times.

  This was a bad time to be fronting Julia. It’d been two months—two whole fug months of dresses and skirts, of taping my cock bad shoving my balls up inside, of makeup and heels and wearing a bra and simperingly soft versations and smiling, smiling, smiling so much I wao scream sometimes. I hated it, ever goddamn minute of it, but if I was brutely ho with myself it was also getting easier.

  It’s like, I couldn’t go around all day fug freaking out because I had tits, right? At some point I sort of stopped notig them, just as the stogs, or earrings, or makeup faded into the background—well, for short periods of time, anyway, until jabbed by an underwire or because the goddam bra strap kept slipping off my shoulder or, most likely, I caught some dude staring at me. Sometimes I could go for, like, aire hour without really thinking about the misery of my existence, just absently floating along with dy as she went about her day, silently her from the outside.

  The darkest hours were usually the alone hours, after work or on weekends, when the fort of being out of the public eye was made agonising by the freedom to see myself for what I’d bee. It was so much easier tet myself, in some ways and perversely so, during the busy hours of a workday when I was caught up in the bustle of work. Bound tightly into routihere was some relief from the ay of simply existing as something I wasn’t. Through the repetitive nature of work, the unfamiliar habits of this unwanted life were being normal; part of me; and therefore familiar and easy if no less hateful and embarrassing.

  How easily, now, I slipped into a bra as I dressed for work. ation, as I did my makeup on the long ute to work. Sliding into my seat when wearing a tight skirt, simple; trotting in heels, sed nature. To say nothing of the unscious little touches: fixing makeup, smiling at colleagues, tweaking clothes and underwear into pce throughout the day, and the half-unaware glimpses into mirrors that validated all these efforts.

  It frightened me, sometimes, the ease with which I ting to this life. I’d always been a quick learner, especially when I put my mind to it, but I seemed to be mastering a lifetime of feminine habits eoo swiftly. And it was in the lonely, dark hours alohat I frohese ges. Why did this all e so easily? What did it say of me, as a man? How quickly would these new instincts fade?

  And where might these habits lead me?

  But now, meeting someone who knew me as the man I’d beehan a year ago? It brought all that instinctive fidence crashing down. Under Julia’s probing gaze, I found myself acutely and painful aware of how far I’d fallen, and keenly felt every femirait I’d taken on as part of this disguise. Makeup that had faded to an invisible, weightless mask once agai heavy and thick; longer fingernails bee ungainly; and I doubted every motion. The familiar once again became fn, and the performaeetered towards pantomime.

  “You look good,” I said, and took a calming sip of lukewarm tea.

  “And you look…,” I watched her reach for an appropriate word, “different.”

  “I imagi’s a bit of a surprise.”

  “You could say that.” Something akin to a smiled twisted her face, trapped between wryness and bitterness. “Let’s just say it’s not quite how I pictured this moment.”

  “What did you expect?”

  She flicked her hair back, smoothed it dowhe left shoulder. “I don’t know. That you’d go, maybe? Or balding? That the years had worn you down to a pce where you could look at me and think – damn, I wish I’d dohing differently.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Instead, fug hell, David, look at you.”

  “dy,” I said. “My name is dy Belmy.”

  “Whatever.” She shook her head. “Jesus, what’re the girls going to think when I tell them?”

  “Please,” I said, allowing a note of pleading to enter my voibsp; “I’d really prefer it if you didn’t tell anyone.”

  “And why the fuck, David,” she said, all but spitting out the name, “should I care what you ‘prefer’?” She said the st in a ming, little-girl voice.

  I winced. “Please, Julia,” I said pleadingly. “It’s not nice.”

  “Nice?” She stared at me. “You wao be nice?”

  I nodded.

  “And were you being nice when you maniputed me into that threesome fourteen years ago? Was it me along like that and drop me in your friend’s bed when you were doh me?” She leaned in close. “You used me like a fug toy; you fucked me and dumped your load in me and then you left me. So, yeah, maybe deadnaming you isn’t particurly ‘nice’. Maybe bringing up the past isn’t ‘nice’. But tell me, please, why the fuck should I be ‘o someone who destroyed years of my life?”

  “Because that person wasn’t me,” I said. Very deliberately, I pushed the sweep of my long, blonde hair back over the left shoulder, and tucked an errant strand behind my ear. “I’m a different person.” As though I couldn’t meet her gaze, I stared at the table and spoke in a very quiet voice. “You’re not the only one who’s suffered, you know,” I said, and swept one hand ay body. “Do you think this was easy?”

  She stared at me for a long, quiet moment. Her hands ched, knuckles whitening, then rexed and she released a heavy breath. Somewhat unnerved by her rea, I looked away and towards the front of the café and bli the dazzling bright afternoon sun.

  Part of me suddenly wished I could trust her with the truth, yearo share my secret with her – with somebody, anybody. The desire bubbled up within, inexorably growing, like an illness needing to be expelled: this isn’t me! I desperately wao shout. I don’t want this! Trembling briefly overtook my hand, and I dug my nails into my palm, and wished for something more painful, like a fork to jab into my thigh, t me bayself.

  But when I looked back to her, something akin to momentary doubt or fusio across her face, and she sat bad studied me, really looked at me, and under her appraising eye I nervously fidgeted.

  “Goddamit,” she muttered under her breath. “This isn’t what I wanted.” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t good. I ’t afford another fug repse.” She was turning inwards, and in the way she shifted in her seat signaled she was about to leave, about to storm out. I couldn’t let that happen, not yet, with so muresolved.

  “Julia,” I called out.

  “What?” she snapped, almost distractedly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She went rigid, momentarily – staring at me – and for a moment Julia seemed as though she might cry; and then instead she all but colpsed into the depths of her chair.

  “You have no idea how long I’ve wao hear that,” she said.

  I reached out tentatively, furtively, reag for her hand with mine. “I mean it,” I said. There was something surreal in the appearany hand, slender fingers and carefully manicured fingernails, painted a rosy pink, resting over hers. Julia’s nails were unpainted, maybe even slightly gnawed—I’d fotten she used to chew her fingernails, and apparently still did.

  “No,” she said, withdrawing her hand.

  “But I…”

  “No!” She cut me off. “Why the fuck would I want an apology from some… some, fug caricature of a girl? I don’t want -your- apology; I want -his-!”

  Around us, the café buzzed with activity. Patrons had been steadily flowing in throughout our talk: young couples, sat at small tables; individuals in smart business attire striding in and out with coffee in takeaway cups; a gaggle of schoolgirls, cutting css; a man, sat alone and ingruously dressed in tweed, reading a neer, apparently an anaistic specialty of Café d’Eon. Our booth, distant from the entrance, remained secluded and our versation private, though we’d attracted a number of curious gnces, many of them young and male.

  “I’m not a caricature,” I said. It took some effort – though less than expected – to summon the promise of tears to my eyes. “This is who I am.”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “A girl.”

  I nodded. “I’m dy,” I said. “And I wao thank you for Friday night.”

  Julia couldn’t suppress a tiny smile. “You were a mess.”

  “I knht?” I gave a small, self-depreg ugh. “It kind of snuck up on me. It still catches me by surprise sometimes, how… small I am now. A lightweight.”

  “Yeah. I noticed.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said, and she picked up on the shift in tone. “How?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did you… you know… know?” I leaned in closer, and all but whispered spiratorially. “How did ynize David?”

  She ughed. “It’s really b you, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. And it was. Not for the reasons she probably thought. But I o know where I’d gone so disastrously wrong. This… disguise, this girlish frame those Asklepios butchers had hacked from my mase corpse, was so far removed from the person I’d been that it just didn’t seem possible that someone could reize me. Especially once you yered in all the work I’d poured into this… this e, the endless hours of practice: void speech, walk and posture, the clothes, the makeup and hair, perfeg dy’s behaviour…. How had she seen through my disguise? Because if she could do it, then one of Steele’s fug agents would damn well be able to do the same.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve worked really hard to, to be….”

  “Girly?”

  I frowned. “Me. And I thought this—” and I passed my hands over my curves, “and this—” as I gestured at my face, hair and makeup, “and all of it was, you know… pretty ving?”

  She gave a little smile. “Oh, it’s very ving,” she said. “And there’s no way I would’ve guessed. So, Friday night, after I bumped into you waiting in line for the toilet, there was… something.” She tapped the table with one fihinking. “I couldn’t say what it was. Maybe the way you said something, a gesture. I dunno. I’d had a few drinks as well. But it just seemed familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t pce it.

  “And I’ll admit I kept an eye on you from then on, although I couldn’t really say why. My colleagues were pretty fug b, for one. Ollie kept going on about the new dataset and…” She trailing off, and drummed her fingers oable. “Mostly I was curious; believe it or not, there’s been a bit of talk on my floor about the new girl at V.I.”

  I smiled weakly. Inside, my stomach twisted. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” She ughed. “Fresh meat, right?” Seeing my expression, she cocked her head to one side. “I mean, you must’ve realised the guys are all eyeing you up, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Really? ‘Cus you wouldn’t have dohe same?” she added.

  I nodded mutely. In all likelihood, I would’ve had dy in the sack by now.

  “Anyway, when I saw you rush to the toilet I figured you could use some help. And you did, and then some. But what I wasn’t expeg was for you to suddenly call me by that fug stupid niame.”

  I shook me head. “I… don’t remember,” I said, and genuinely didn’t. “I retty drunk on Friday.”

  “No shit,” she said. “Surprising, really. You used to really be able to pack it away.”

  Sighing sadly, I said, “Not anymore, not like I used to. I think it’s a hormohing or something.”

  Julia paused momentarily, as though processing that, and then shaking her head she tinued. “So you called me Little Caesar. Remember that? Like, a week after we’d started dating, we were at this pub quiz and you were terrible at it, like at every categeneral knowledge, movies, even the easy stuff, you didn’t know shit. And so you just started drinking, and got really obnoxiously drunk.

  “And then a question came up, I ’t remember, maybe something about crossing the Rubi, and I shouted out ‘Caesar’ and you looked at me with this stupid drunk grin and shouted ‘Julius!’ at me. You seemed really pleased with yourself, and I ughed, because it made me happy seeing you happy. But then you just wouldn’t let it go. You started calling me “my Little Caesar’, especially when you saw how much it pissed me off.”

  I stared bnkly at her. I had no memory of callihat on Friday. I barely remembered callihat fourteen years ago.

  “I’m… sorry?”

  “Whatever.” She sighed. “Anyway, when you said it, your name just kind of popped out of my mouth in response. I mean, I didn’t for a sed think it was really you.” She frowned. “I mean, how could I? Everything about you is totally different. Like, even your skin’s paler, you’ve lost the colour you used to have, and your hair’s gone blonde… you’ve got tits, right? But then at the same time… I don’t know. Maybe at some gut level I suspected something, like you were his sister? Or maybe there was something about the way you said the he way you looked at me—your eyes?” She leaned closer, staring ily at me. “Maybe that was it. Under all that makeup, there’s still something of the old you in the eye.”

  I self-sciously traced the side of my face with one finger, suddenly intensely aware of my own skin, the heaviness of mascara on shes and the carefully applied eyeliner and colours atuating those features.

  “Ynized me because of my eyes?”

  “Yup.” She grinned. “Well, that and the fact you then put your hand over my mouth and then said really, really loudly, ‘Shush! Don’t tell a’sh’a secret!’ Then you leaned in really, really close and whispered in this stagy slurred voice: ‘I’m David Saunders!’” She gave a burst of ughter. “Total fug meltdown.”

  “I did not.”

  “I shit you not.”

  “So I just told you.”

  “Yup.” She took a sip of tea. “Then you passed out.”

  At which point, she went on to expin, she pretty much escorted me out of the bar, telling the guys from work that she’d get me home. Apparently, Dan had offered but Julia insisted and bundled me into an auto-taxi and rode home with me, finding my keys aing us into the apartment. Which brought her to a final point of evidence.

  “Of course, the final proof was when I stripped you for bed. You imagine what I found hidden away in those ooh-- panties of yours.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did.” Her grin ositively cat-like. “Everything else about you might’ve ged, but you bet I reized that cock of yours.

  “Anyway, I left you in your bed, had a little look around your pce, a home.”

  At that point I should’ve been all over her, for vioting my privacy, for stripping me naked. And I was angry. But the anger was directed entirely inwards. Putting aside the objectively discerting fact she thought she could identify my penis years on from st seeing it, or that she’d let herself into my home and stripped me naked; I couldn’t believe I’d just… told her who I was. I’d drunk and drugged myself to the point of stupidity, to absolute, i idiod left myself totally vulnerable.

  I’d fucked up; I’d fucked up huge, and I couldn’t remember any of it.

  And I couldn’t even really bme her for any of it. In some ways, she’d probably saved me from a possibly far worse oute. Ultimately, the fault was my own and I had to own it. But how was I going to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen again?

  I sat in silence, and Julia seemed quite pleased with herself, slowly slipping her drink with a self-satisfied smile, her eyes fshing with pleasure over the rim of the cup. She clearly enjoyed my disfort and dismay at having been found out. She had something over me, now: a secret she knew I’d rather keep buried, though not for the reasons she thought.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’d like to start fresh. I’d like to thank you for looking out for me on Friday. But mostly, I’d like to… I don’t know; maybe get to know you again.” I gave her what I hoped came across as hopefully, pleading eyes. “Please?” And I stuck my hand out to shake on it.

  She eyed it for a sed, took my hand in hers, and gave it a firm handshake. And then she ughed, and it sounded genuine. Shaking her head, she seemed to visibly rex. She took a deep drink from her tea and sighed tentedly. “And so, now your name really is …?”

  “dy,” I said firmly. “Please.”

  “That’s short for thia, right?”

  I shook my head. “No. Well, yes, it be, but not mine. My dy’s short for Luda – you know, like “Lucy”? As in “light”? But yeah, please, just call me dy.”

  “dy.” She paused, as though testing the feel of the name oongue, and once again drank me in, abs the fastidiously arranged details of my female self. “You look…,” she started.

  “Pretty?” I interrupted.

  She ughed. “Yeah, sure. Like a fug doll.”

  I winced. “Ouch.”

  She shrugged. “I mean, look at you. You’re dressed the way a thirty-year old man thinks a twenty-year old girl dresses, or like something copied off your socials. How long did it take you to get ready this m?”

  “A while.”

  “Yeah, I bet.” I preened slightly under her gaze. “And… you enjoy it?”

  “What, the getting ready?” I shrugged and lied. “Yes. No. Oh, I dunno. Some of it?”

  “Like what?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Like what—what?”

  Julia shrugged. “I mean… like, what’s so enjoyable about femininity? Because I really just don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong,” she said, raising one hand to forestall any ent. “I’m totally happy with the way I am. Well, mostly. But I’ve been a woman all my life, and you know what? There’s just so. Much. Bullshit, to deal with, every fug day.

  “And then I see guys, and how easy they’ve got it, and I think, we might be able to send a woman off to Mars, but whes back here oh? We’re still going to treat her like shit. Half a dozen waves of feminism, and we’re further back than we were two decades ago. We still earn less mohan men for the same job. We’re still getting smacked around at home and murdered in parks. We’re still held to hypocritical standards of beauty and dress and behaviour and... and…” She took a deep breath. “And it’s exhausting, sometimes, just so very fug tiring. So… yeah. Frankly, I ’t see why anyone, given a choice, would give up the joy of male advao deal with this crap.”

  fronted by her passionate words, I thought a very long time before answering. “Shoes,” I said.

  She groaned.

  “No, seriously—I love the shoes.”

  “Oh, , give me a break. You’d give up all the bes of the brotherhood for a fug pair of heels?”

  Stretg out my legs from beh the table, I modelled my fine, slim legs for her, sleek in their ivory stogs, and the open-toed, slingback sandals that arched my feet into their delicate pose. “They look good?” I asked.

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “No,” I said, “not whatever. This is serious. How tall do you re these shoes are?”

  She shrugged, looking utterly ued. “How the hell should I know?”

  “Seveimeters. It’s about the highest I fortably manage for a day. I go higher, but not for very long, at least not yet. I’m sill practig.”

  “Good for you. But why? High heels are bullshit. Just more oppressive crap girls have to deal with, more impossible standards. Okay, fine, you’re a girl; doesn’t mean you have to wear heels. Or makeup, or skirts.”

  “Sure. And that’s easy for you to say, because you are a girl, have been seen and accepted as one your whole life. No one’s going to question that.”

  “dy,” she said, shaking her head. “Nobody’s going to question you, either. You look… totally ving.”

  “Maybe.” Under my makeup I felt suddenly hot, flushing crimson at her words. “But I don’t always feel that way. I still feel like a fraud; I’ve felt like a fraud most of life, pying a part, pretending to be someone I’m not.” And I had to pause for a moment, swallowing unfortably at how closely my impromptu words hewed to the truth. “And now I’m dy, I’m a girl and the thing is, wearing heels and yes, makeup and a skirt, well, it vinces me just as much as ag that this is who I really am.”

  She sidered that for a moment. “Fine. But you love them? They’re bloody instruments of torture!”

  I shrugged. “, they’re not that bad. Especially as I’m getting used to them. I don’t know if I’ll ever mahe really high one, but even those, maybe someday, right? Because—I’ll be ho here—I like the bump i. Do you remember, ba the day, how you didn’t like wearing heels because you’d be taller than me?

  “I was always short, and you know… that really suck fuy. You talk about double standards, right? Well, it’s fine firl to be short. Desirable, even? But for a man, somehow it makes him less of a man, right? It’s a stupid fug power thing. And it used to piss me off. You have any idea how many bitches won’t even date a guy if he’s too short? It’s literally in uage, we ‘look down’ on someone we don’t respect, and you ’t imagine how it feels to be judged on some geic fluke you have no trol over.”

  Julia arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?” She gestured at her tits. “Every woman knows what that feels like.”

  I winced. “Okay, fine. But as a man? The whole height thing be… frustrating; emasg, even. And so… yeah, I guess I get this kick out of making myself a bit taller, you know, strutting around with a bit of fidence.”

  She still seemed bemused. “So, wearing heels makes you feel more… manly?”

  I ughed. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way.” I sidered for a sed, especially since—yes; in a weird way, I guess Julia’s point was true. I fug hated dy’s footwear, these ‘implements of torture’ as Julia so aptly described them; but at the same time, by wearing them I recimed some of those precious timeters the Asklepios surgeons had callously chopped away from me. With more practid higher heels, I’d even surpass my old height.

  “But no, obviously,” I tinued. “And I ’t say I uand it, but… well, wearing them, on the one hand, yeah, it fills me with fide’s just such a femihing to be able to dht? These shoes are like the epitome of girly. And then, at the same time, well… I get what you’re saying, right, these things, they’re stupid. I could barely stand ihings at first! And even this pair,” I added, gesturing at my shoes, “I walk in them all day, but I wouldn’t want to have to run in them. I still wobble if I’m not careful. I ’t tell you how often I’ve nearly twisted my ankle in the past few months.

  “But shoes like this, you know, the delicate heel, the way it forces me to take smaller steps, even the way they’re impractical… I guess that’s how it makes me feel, wearing them: delicate, small. Vulnerable.”

  Julia raised an eyebrow. “And that’s a good thing?”

  I gave ahusiastiod. “God, yes!”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Julia said, and her voice otent mixture of s and frustration, “you sound like some stone age misogynist’s wet dream.”

  “I’m not,” I said softly. “You said being a woman was exhausting. Fine. But so’s being a guy, Julia. I always felt as though I had to be strong, had to fill the room, had to be… be, I don’t know, invulnerable. And it was exhausting. So. Fug. Exhausting.” I poi my shoe. “And now? Now I get to be like these things: pretty and delicate, and you know what? You’re right, sometimes it’s not easy. And yes, it be exhausting.

  “But it’s wonderful to finally step bad let somebody else fill the room, you know. Someone else step up arong. And so maybe I’m tired, and sometimes even terrified, but I’m also… happy.” And I smiled for her as vingly as possible, shyly, l my eyes demurely, whilst inside I died a little.

  We sat like that for a few minutes, in silence, finishing our teas. Café d’Eon tio bubble and froth with life. The schoolgirls were gone; so were the corporate minions, repced by nearly identical repts in dark suits and ties, power dresses and pantsuits. Only anaistic Mr Tweed remained, slouched behind his broadsheet neer, through which he seemed to be making steady ahodical progress.

  “So you’re trans, then, right?” Julia said, and my attention snapped back to the table.

  “I’m dy,” I said.

  “And when did you…?”

  “A few months ago,” I said. “That is, that’s when I made a total break from the past, moved here and got a job and started living openly, full time, self-identified under a new name. But if what you’re really asking is when was dy ‘born’, well…” I waved my hand in an ierminate gesture taking in me, her, the café and the world around us. “I guess I’ve always been dy. I just didn’t, or couldn’t, admit it to myself.”

  And God, it wasn’t easy, feeding this steady stream of bullshit to Julia. She’d caught me out a few times, but this part I’d rehearsed for, a fine line about a burgeoning awareness of my real self, a female identity denied for most of my life. Hours of surreptitious online research had givehe broad strokes of my own story, cobbled together from genuinely moving stories of admission aion, of denial and ing out a-rending struggles.

  But I felt… unfortable, tellihis story; squeamish, being in her eyes this trans-woman dy Belmy, only just retly escaped from the mase shell of David Saunders she’s presented for all these years. Telling this story, I felt strangely embarrassed and acutely aware of the clothes I wore, both outer- and under. Seeing myself through her eyes and feeling her frank appraisal of this feminine distortion of the man I’d been was like torture.

  “It’s hard to my head around,” she said. “Like you said earlier, you were always so… manly, you know? Like always w out, muscles, all that stuff. And so fident, so domineering.”

  “Domineering?” I answered, genuinely bemused by her ent. “I was… over-pensating, I guess. Took me years to figure that out. But I guess you could say I wore all that muscle like a suit of armour. It rote. Against anyone seeing the real me; against… me, seeing the real me.” Which was a half-truth, I guess. It was a shell; it rote and years of honing my body had served me well in the past against very real and very physical threats. And even after I’d left that life behind, well, I tio do well by being in good shape. Being strong was just part of who I was, the w out an almost instinctive routine of daily life, familiar and f despite the pain and effort.

  Yeah, it was a massive iment of time and energy, but it alaid dividends: in the girls I took home most weekends, mostly, but also in the simple, mundane bes of being fit and strong. And in so many ways it made me fug furious that being dy required an equal iment of time and energy, squandered daily on ephemeral beauty, on developing vain proficies in hair and makeup and walking in heels. What was the fug point when a stiff wind could knock me over now, and I needed help to open a heavy goddamn door?

  The bes of an hour at the gym were tangible and funal and meaningful; but where was the advantage in spending an hour meticulously painting my face when I was just going to wipe the shit away a few hours ter? So much of dy’s time seemed ed by the frivolous demands of simply keeping up appearances, distrag me from more meaningful aplishments.

  She shook her head. “Now look at you.”

  I extended one slender arm, turning it this way and that for her, the ba my wrist glinting and chiming. “I knht?”

  “I could take you in an arm wrestle, no problem,” she said.

  “I’d rather not.”

  She ughed. “I bet. Could you, I dunno, stand up for me? Give me a little twirl?”

  “Sure.” I pushed back from the table and found my feet. My skirt fred out a little as I spun delicately on tiptoe, risking a tantalising peek of stog tops. I gave a little bow and sat down again.

  Julia shook her head in disbelief. “It’s not possible,” she said.

  “Yet here I am.”

  “No,” she insisted. “We used to be the same height,” she said, holding up a finger. “I remember that clearly. Like you said, I didn’t like wearing heels with you because you didn’t like me being taller than you. But now you’re the one in heels and I’m taller than you?”

  I winced. “That’s not…”

  “Two,” she cut me off. “We’re both in our thirties; you’ve got a year and a bit on me. Or should have. But you look younger now than you did ten years ago.”

  “It’s makeup…?” I suggested.

  “It’s not makeup,” she retorted. “For fuck’s sake.”

  “Good genes?”

  She grimaced. “Cut the bullshit. Listen: you’re not the first trans girl I’ve known, alright? And as beautiful and wonderful as some of them have been, none of them shrunk by a half dozeimetres and shed a couple of decades wheransitioned. None of them magically transformed into their idealised twenty-year old fantasy girl self, no matter how much they might’ve wa.

  “So maybe this is who you are, and who’ve you’ve always wao be – but it just. Isn’t. Possible.” She punctuated each word with her finger, pointing it aggressively at me.

  “Yet here I am,” I insisted.

  She nodded. “And I want you tell me where you came from.”

  “Tell you what,” I answered. “I’m starving. Let’s grab a bite to eat somewhere that serves something strohan tea. I’ll tell you over lunch.”

  Author's Notes:

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