"	Gene's Story or How I Gained a Cousin A novel by Karen Lockhart Copyright 2016

Gene and I finished the pizza. I must have been hungrier then I thought, I had four slices. It was now 10pm, so I turned on the television to get the early news and see if there was anything about Gene or MacDonald's Trucking Company.

My house guest fell asleep during the weather forecast, with his head back and snoring quietly. I listened through the sports, happy the Bruins had won again. With a big yawn, I got up and gave Gene's shoulder a shake.

“Come on sweetheart, time to wake up.”

Well, he woke up all right, falling to the floor and shrieking “I won't say a word, please”. He looked around, sighed, and stood up, his face bright red. “Sorry.” If it wasn't so serious, I would've laughed.

“Come on, we have to remove that make-up before you go to bed. Follow me.” With that I headed for my bedroom, Gene right on my heels. Speaking of heels, he walked in three inch heels as well as I did. I suspect he was lying about just how much he 'walked on the wild side' to quote an old song.

The first thing I had him do was remove the dress and shoes he had borrowed from me. I handed him a jar of make-up remover and told him to get started with cleaning his face.

“You need to do this every night before going to bed, otherwise your skin could break-out, and you'd make a mess of your pillow.”

Gene laughed at this, “That's the least of my problems."

“Your biggest problem is going to be me, I mean these are cold-blooded killers, drug smugglers. I'm now involved just as deep as you! I don't see anything funny about that!” I snorted.

“Sorry, please calm down. Without your help I'd already be dead, my body tossed off a lobster boat off Graves Light.”

I checked out the job he did with removing the make-up.

“Not bad, you've done this before haven't you?”

With a sheepish smile Gene admitted it.

“You know, by the way you handled those heels, that wasn't the first time with those either. Come clean! You do this all the time don't you.”

This led Gene to start crying, “Yes, yes every chance I get. I get out of my disguise and into Ginny, the person I've always been.”

“But”, I started.

“No, let me finish. You can't imagine how it feels to live a lie like this. I wanted to play with my sister's dolls, and would swap my trucks and army guys with her. As soon as my father saw this he grabbed my arm and shook me until my mother made him stop.

“It was no better at high school. I got beat up two or three times a week, and was called Mary by both the boys and the girls. If I went to my parents for help, all I would get is 'Be a man, stand up to the bullies'. Look at me,” he said “Even half the girls could beat me up!”

“So all your life you felt you were a girl?”

He nodded, 'Yes.”

“I've read of this; I think it's called GID - Gender Identity Disorder, and the people that have it are transgender, like Bruce Jenner.”

“That's it,” Gene said. “That's me.”

“Alright, here's a pair of pajamas for you to wear tonight. Let's get some sleep and talk about this in the morning.”

To be continued

Many thanks to Bronwen Welsh for fixing the typos and grammar.