Chapter 22: The Story of the Wedding DressI started with the story of the wedding dress.
So, I’m seven years old and with my mother. We’re out shopping. I vaguely remember feelied? or maybe simply wanted? being out with her instead of dumped on a baby-sitter or an irritated friend, or just left at home on my own. She’s with a friend, that friend is getting married soon, and they’re shopping for a dress. And I remember – how to put it? – this tiny, tight knot in my stomach as we step into this store, with its ivory-cd mannequins, and racks of white dresses, all glittering and shimmering in the bright summer rays of the te afternoon sun.
In my memory, the whole room is bathed in a ruddy, warm glow in which seasonal charmeuse and ivory brocade cascades off the slender figures in the window. Swathes of gauzy tulle traps the light of the setting sun in its delicately sheer weave. Embroidered pearls and sequins glitter in the vividly coloured bridesmaids’ dresses. And it feels wrong, being a boy in that pce, this intensely female space, like sneaking into the girls’ bathroom at school. It’s a nd of d veils, but to my prepubest self it feels as though a mask is pulled from his eyes for the first time. I stand, speechless, as my mom and her friend bustle into the shop and shove me to one side, out of the way.
And I remember wandering, stupefied, among those mystifying clothes, crawling and hiding uhe skirts of the rger dresses, or threadiween those hanging on the racks and losing myself in the sensation of fn fabrics softly sliding against my arms and fabsp; For an indefiime, I explore this garden of taffeta femininity. Emerging from this forest of satin and silk, I see my mom’s friend step out of the ging room wearing her first choice of dresses.
And it’s strange, so very strahat for all the vividness of the memory, the dress itself remains vague and indistinbsp; There is a powerful impression of ivory, a a of petticoated pearlesd effervest fabric that seemed to draw in and hold the light, and she is made nearly indest by her clothes. I stare, utterly enraptured, and a single, absolute certainty burns itself into my young sciousness.
Someday, I want to wear a wedding dress.
“That really happened?” Julia interrupted.
I nodded, spearing a morsel of delicately fvoured soy chi. She’s brought us to a trendy restaurant-ssh-bar a short cab ride away from the café. It’s definitely out of dy’s price range. Julia chose the seat, and so we’re sat unfortably close to the rge windows at the front of the restaurant. A steady trickle of people flowed past outside, some pausing to gn at the patrons.
The heavy, tinted windows absorb much of the brutal afternoo, but increasingly I’m regretting my choice of clothing: the heavy skirt and fanderwear might keep me feeling all girly for the enter, but I could feel what might be boob sooling in my bra, and those damogs kept threatening to slip down to my ankles. It felt like my face was going to slide off, and meanwhile Julia seemed totally unfazed by the filtered gre of the sun, perfectly fortable in her loose clothing.
And I couldn’t help but gaze enviously at her steak and potatoes, and at the way she wolfed it down with obvious relish. She’s got a frothy pint of beer to wash it back, something craft and local. Meanwhile, I’ve got a pte of fake meat with a small sad and a gss of white wine. Still, as painful and humiliating as the whole act was to maintain, the charade appeared to be w. My ex-girlfriend was buying the lie that her former boyfriend had always been, deep down inside, a prissy and dainty girl.
“And that’s when you knew,” she said.
I swallowed, washing down the chi with a sip of wine. “Yup.”
“But it was just a dress,” she said, sounding doubtful. “Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, dressed up in your mom’s clothes when she was at work or something? Like, how did you know you weren’t just a cross-dresser, or just curious or something? We grew up iwenties. High point fender fluidity, right?”
I ughed – an iently genuine one, not one of dy softer, trolled giggles. “Where I grew up? Like fuck I could’ve swished around in a dress. I’d’ve been killed.”
Her eyes widened, and she stared at me wordlessly.
“What?” I asked, suddenly self-scious. “Is it my makeup?” I reached for the phoo check.
She shook her head. “No. No, you look…” She trailed off, and then: “Jesus Christ, you sounded just like… -him-, the way you said that.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It slips out sometimes. I’m w on it but… you know.” I shrugged. “It’s hard.”
“No,” she said, and she shook her head. “I don’t know. Tell me.”
With a little nod, and a lighter voice, I resumed. “But no, that dress ged everything.” So I told her aory, and the whole time I was watg her closely, trying to read her resporying t her to the pce, emotionally aally, I needed her to be.
My story picked up a year ter, and how afterwards I shared my secret with a young girl I knew from school called Amelia, a friend who took pity on the small, sy, half-Japanese kid who so often sat on his own in the pyground. How she took me home after school one day, a me try on one of her party dresses—a frothy, bright red thing—and looked at me sadly, and said: no.
It isn’t right, she said. Boys don’t wear dresses.
And I realised that she was right: boys don’t wear dresses. But wearing that dress that afternoo sht and fortable; it was the most fortable and right I’d felt my whole life. I khen that even if boys didn’t wear dresses, that I most certainly did. And by that logic, the only thing that made sense was that for me to be able to wear a dress, that I had to be a girl. Once I was a girl both inside and out, no one would question my right to wear a dress, be it for a party or wedding.
By this time Julia olishing off the st of her pte. I watched enviously as she speared the final morsel of red meat disappeared between her lips. She knocked back the st of her beer and signaled for the waiter. “And thus dy was born,” she said.
“More like killed,” I said, and brought the half-fial story of my childhood to an end. I told her how Amelia, a few days ter, after we had a minor falling out over… something—who knew what trivialities eight-year olds fight about—well, the girl went and told some of the bigger boys in rade about my love of dresses. She even had a picture on her phone; she hadn’t told me she’d taken in.
Cue the age-old story: they called me sissy and faggot and queer, they pushed me around, they made my life hell until I snapped and tried to fight back, and then they absolutely destroyed me and I ended up in hospital. It was there during recovery that I learhe best possible thing to do was to leave dy behind in that aic pabsp; I buried her deep, so deeply I nearly fot about her, and made damn sure nobody was ever able to hurt me like that again.
Julia expression was uedly stony and withdrawn as I ed up my story. I couldn’t quite read what she was thinking behind veiled eyes, but when she finally spoke she sounded genuine. “Da…. dy. Christ, I’m… sorry, I had no idea.”
I shrugged. “Why would you? I’ve never beeo talk about the past.” Which was the truest thing I’d said that afternoon. “To be ho, the worst thihe hospital bills. Mom never fave me.”
The whole story flirted with the truth, filtered through the fial lens of dy’s past but hewing close enough to actual events so that I could remember the story for the future. The vi of delivery doubtlessly would’ve suffered without its foundation of hoy. My mother did brio a bridal shop when I was seven. I may or may not have wandered around a bit befrowing bored; I certainly didn’t remember any transdental revetion beyond the fact her friend looked like too much gristle stuffed into an ivory and taffeta sausage g.
And there really had been an Amelia, a seemingly friendly girl who’d taken pity on the lonely, sy, half-Japanese kid who sat alone in the pyground, and she brought me home one day. She showed off her party dress to me, excited about her ing birthday party. I’d beeed as well and held her hand and tried to kiss her. A few days ter, wheold me I wasn’t io her party anymore because her parents didn’t wahere, I got upset. Theold some of the other boys that I’d kissed her.
They beat the shit out of me and put me in hospital. But along the way I discovered that I could be a mean little bastard too. They took me down, but I brought one of them with me. I learhen just how stubborn I could be, and mean, and from that day forward I got tough and learned how to fight, the best and hardest way: through stant practice.
And it was that stubbornness and practice that caught Sakura’s attention a couple of years yer as I y broken on the polished wooden floor of her dojo.
Which, it seems, ultimately led to me sitting here, squirming and sweating, in a skirt. So thanks a fug lot, Amelia.
“So,” I tentatively asked, in the brief pause as the waiter took away our ptes, making room for some desert.
“Yes?” Julia answered distractedly, sing the drinks menu. “I shouldn’t,” she muttered to herself. “Gotta work tomorrow. Then again: fuck it,” she decided, and when the waiter returned, she ordered desert for both of us, and a Ma for herself. “Make it a double.”
“I trust yht?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“On what you’re trustih.” She leaned back, arms crossed, again impassive.
“My life,” I said, sweeping my hair back over the shoulder with a flick of the head and smoothing it down with my left hand, avoiding her gaze. “Please,” I tinued, softly, “These past few months, they’ve been… difficult. Like, really difficult, learning to live this new life. I’ve always known this is who I was meant to be…”—and I had to stop here for a moment, to swallow a momentary pang of disgust— “but actually bei’s… hard sometimes.
“But I’m getting there!” And here I looked up, log eyes with her. “I’m learning. Every day I’m a little bit more me, and little bit less… who I was. And then to suddenly meet someone who looks at me and has these memories of who I was, I feel like it knocks me right back to where I started.
“And then if others knew….” I shook my head. “You know how it is firls like me. Especially with all those new ws they’ve passed. If anyone found out I used to live as a man? I think it would destroy me.”
Julia stayed silent as the waiter returned, with two thin slices of cheesecake, her whiskey and another small gss of wine for me. She picked up the tumbler and inhaled deeply, and sighed, as she swirled the gss and its golden tents.
“Maybe so,” she answered evenly. “But you still haven’t expined why I should give a fuck.”
“But—”
“No,” she interrupted. She suddenly surged forward in her seat, leaning over the table, her face close to mine, and she spoke in a cold whisper. “Fuck you, David. Or dy. I don’t give a shit who you think you are. And I don’t care how hard your life is. Why should I?
“You say your life’s difficult. Wele to the party, girl. Yeah, life’s tough being a woman. And you’ve been one for what, two months, and you’re already pining? Thirty years of living it up with the patriarchy, and now after a couple of months of guys staring at your tits, you’re already pining?”
“That’s not—”
“Fug deal with it. Like, sure, it sucked that you had a rough childhood. It sucked you didn’t get to wear all those pretty dresses you wao wear. And yeah, I get it, maybe that made you into the twisted pile of toxic masity bullshit I fell in love with all those years ago. I get it.
“But the fact remains: you hurt me. You wrecked years of my life, years I’ll never get back, and I don’t fug care what happeo you that made you into such a colossal pribsp; And maybe you sit there, all dolled up sexy, and sure, it’s a new you, but it’s still you, you who hurt me, so sorry, dy, if I’m not particurly ined tive and fet tonight.” There was an almost chilling iy to her delivery, a clipped, rapid monotone; was this, at least in part one of the speeches she’d practiced over the years? Were we just perf rehearsed scripts tonight, engaged in a melee of prepared dialogue and practiced emotions?
“So again: why should I give a fuck what you want?” Her eyes bzed and her cheeks were flushed, and there was something wonderfully sexy in her anger and her closehat suddenly had me sitting unfortably.
Just as suddenly as she’d moved in, she sat back, and was all smiles again. Very deliberately, she sliced off a piece of her cheesecake and stabbed it with her fork. She took a bite. “Mmm,” she sighed, momentarily closing her eyes. “So good.” Gestig with her fork, pointing the tip at me, she added, “You really should try it.”
Carefully maintaining dy’s fa?ade—her mouth a little ‘o’ of surprise and horror, eyes widening aears—and with a slight tremble to my hand, I reached for my gss and took a desperate sip of wine. As though uo meet her hungry gaze, I looked aside and outside. There was a young man there, silhouetted against the setting sun, watg us through the window and my refle in it. Our eyes met; he grinned and made an obse gesture; and ughing, walked away.
“I… I he toilet,” I whispered, standing up, smoothing down my skirt, reag for my clutch, fumbling as the strap got tangled in the chair, the very image of feminine distress.
“Yeah, whatever.” Julia waved one hand dismissively. “Take your time. I’m in no rush.”
Author's Notes
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