The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2496 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

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I couldn’t get back to my survey work, I was too worried about Danielle. She’d taken to most girly things like a duck to water. She was occasionally a little gauche but she is only thirteen. She rarely appears without some makeup, though her skills in application have improved enormously possibly assisted by Julie and Phoebe, who are experts and I know have given their younger sister some advice from time to time.

I wondered if the makeup was worn to disguise her previous identity as a boy, or to reinforce her girl identity, or possibly because she just likes wearing it. I thought back to my days in the grotty bedsit where I spent hours practising with makeup. Eyeliner and lip outlines were the easiest to mess up. With the former, I wanted a fine line which tapered from the outside of the eye towards the nose. I’d get one eye almost perfect and mess up the second. Once or twice I made one of my eyes quite sore cleaning off the messy eyeliner to try again. Then one day it clicked, helped by a better quality brush, and most of the time I get it as I want it nowadays—when I can be bothered to wear it.

As for lips—I could never get the upper lip to match on both sides. I tried all sorts of methods, lip pencils, brushes, applicators and so on. Then I just relaxed and applied it from a lipstick directly and it looked all right. I’m sure if I’d looked carefully, I’d have noticed some sort of anomaly, but as I wasn’t posing for close up photos, I decided it was okay. It’s what I usually do today when I wear lipstick, which isn’t often. I don’t use skin makeup or blusher or concealer—unless I have a spot on my face—I usually go au naturel. Danni, like many teenagers, looks as if the front of her face tanned very evenly but below or behind her jawline, it missed the sun.

The school doesn’t like girls to be wearing much makeup, but it will allow a bit of mascara and fine eyeliner, or eyebrow colour. The parents undertake not to let the girls dye their hair outlandish colours, such as pink or green. One girl who did turn up with green hair—to match her school blazer—was sent home, which I was told later was why she did it. Her older boyfriend was home from university and her mother was out at work. She left a while later to be homeschooled during her pregnancy.

I was concerned by Danni’s original interest in things feminine which was more transvestite than anything, enjoying the fetishistic side of things. It was what got her into trouble, practising with Peter who later called himself Pia, in crossdressing and wearing makeup. I had no problem with her being a crossdresser if that was what she enjoyed until Pia struck and my son began to resemble another daughter and would never have children of his own.

I know it’s possible to rebuild male genitalia after a fashion presumably using techniques perfected on female to male transsexuals, but how functional or effective such surgeries are, is questionable. So far Danni hasn’t said she wants to try them, which lets me hope she won’t. At the same time I suspect she possibly won’t fit into a neat box as female, in the majority view. But then again, do I? How many women enjoy tinkering with bicycles, truing wheels or even building them from scratch? I do.

It’s funny, in a logical way, I can see myself as a normal but infertile female, who functions as a normal thirty year old busy professional woman, who also happens to have a large family. It’s only when I start the self doubt stuff that I get all emotional about it and think I’m a fake. Danni still sees Stephanie about once a month unless we have issues—she’s due to see her next week—which I hope is helping her. Like most adolescents, she doesn’t often talk about these things, perhaps because they can’t. It might be too personal for their self-consciousness to cope with.

I tell her I love her for herself regardless of gender or anything else, but for her core self, or himself if that is how she sees things. I don’t know, she doesn’t tell me. At the moment, she’s acting and treated as female.

It’s interesting but she’s kept hold of the later Gaby stories where it appears that Gaby’s female biology is taking over. Okay, unlike Gabs, she can’t have periods or possibly have children, the irony of the boy stuck in a female body while starting off as a boy pretending to be a girl, and the reluctant acceptance of this position by our heroine, possibly mirrors in some ways Danielle’s situation. She’s reluctantly accepting her girlhood because she has to cope with her body, whereas most male to female transsexuals refuse to cope with their bodies and thus want to change them. Gosh, this is getting deeper than some of those bids I’ve tendered.

I went back to my survey—except I couldn’t—I had no stomach for it tonight. It was ten o’clock and I went in search of a cuppa even though I knew I’d probably have to pee in the night. Simon was watching football so after handing him a mug of tea I went into the kitchen and looked at the paper. The crossword was set by Rufus supposedly the easiest ones. I did it in just over twenty minutes. I’ve done it faster but not at this time of night.

Tom shuffled into the kitchen to rinse his whisky glass and I could smell it on his breath as he pecked me on the cheek as he wished me goodnight. I loved this old man, he was such a good surrogate father to me and I’m sure his generosity in adopting me when I was racked with self doubt about so many things, his cooperation in allowing my ever expanding family to fill his home, has kept me sane or even saved my life.

He always claims it’s the other way round, my occupation of his house, his department and much of his life, has saved his life—given him a reason to live—so he says. How can I argue with that? We do argue over many things, often he’s right, but as a wilful child, I have to test it first, just as Danielle and her older sisters test me. It seems to be part of the interaction of the parent child relationship, although her older sisters aren’t much younger than I am. The younger ones push the boundaries as well but at the moment that’s a little easier to cope with but I know it will get tougher, especially as Trish and Livvie are so bloody clever. I hope I can keep them safe, possibly from their own cleverness, until they mature enough to look after themselves. With Trish, that might never happen, she is seriously intelligent, and that doesn’t always bode well for practical living, so we could be stuck with each other while she exercises her huge brain to improve science or whatever interests her and I and whoever is still with Simon and I, try to keep her grounded.

I glanced at the clock, it was bedtime.