I got away from Melanie's place as fast as I could do without embarrassing either of us.

The wintery sunshine that appeared as the daylight was fading did nothing to help my mood. I'd agreed to spend Christmas day with a woman that I hardly knew, and that woman was going to enjoy dressing me up as god knows what, probably just to post the images of me looking like a fool all over social media.

If there was one thing about the modern world that I hated was Social Media. I’d seen far too many relationships destroyed by the infernal thing when I was a trucker to know that is it anything but social. It had been how my wife’s affair had been bought to my attention by Pat’s then girlfriend.

I had to put those thoughts to one side when my phone beeped. It was a message from my boss, and I needed to call him.

I found somewhere to stop and gave him a call.

"Hello, Jerry. I got your text. What's up?"

"No. The job for Ms Johansen is all done. I'm on my way back to the depot with the van."

“Ok. It is on my way. I’ll pick it up for you and leave it in your office. Is everything ok for tomorrow? We’ll need an early start if we are to get it done in one day.”

I listened to Jerry explain that he was going to lead the team on the next job and that several estimates needed doing in the next few days.

Inwardly, I groaned. I hated estimating how many men and vans were going to be needed for a job. I was just not that good at it, and Jerry knew that very well.

“Why me? You know how bad my last lot of estimates were. You had to do several of the last batch all over again.”

Jerry explained to me his reasoning for the change of plan. For once, I had to agree with him even if I wasn't convinced about the long term implications.

---

[Christmas Eve]
Thanks to my re-assignment, I was able to finish at a decent time every day. I'd done all my shopping, but there was my looming date with Melanie for the 25th not far from my mind. I’d racked my mind for days about what sort of thing I could give her as a present.

I’d had a bit of a brainstorm two days earlier when I was in somewhere I hate, Merry Hill Shopping Centre. It was manic despite the prevalence of COVID everywhere. Jerry had made sure that all of us were fully vaccinated and even boosted, but even so, after nearly two years of the pandemic, there were thousands of people not wearing a mask. I wasn’t one of them but I still felt exposed.

I was looking for the exit nearest to where I'd parked my car when I spotted something in a shop window. I stopped dead for a few seconds while I racked my brain for the answer to a question. Had I seen one of them at either of her homes? The answer was no.

After taking a deep breath, I went into the shop and bought the item. That was it my Christmas shopping was all done apart, from the purchase of some new underwear for myself. Mine were well past their use-by date, and I'd been putting off buying some new ones for months. Now that I was in a place that sold them there was no excuse.

Armed with my two purchases, I headed for the exit. The blast of hot air from the heaters was replaced by an icy wind. It was going to be a cold night, but I breathed a lot easier now that I was out of the crowds. Then I cursed myself. I had not bought a card for her.

I turned around and looked at the bright lights and shook my head. I was not going back in there even for all the tea in China. She'd have to make do with one from my local supermarket provided that I could get there before they closed for the day.

It was hard buying things for adults after five years of only buying presents for my boys, but that is the spice of life, I guess.

---

[Christmas Day]

The almost total absence of sounds from the outside world lulled me into a false sense of 'there is plenty of time'. I got quite a shock when I turned over in bed and saw the time on the clock. It read 09:37. I'd slept well past my normal time of waking up.

Therein followed half an hour of sheer panic on my part. The results of that panic included three cuts from shaving, and finding that the shirt that I'd planned on wearing was missing a button, and I could not find one like it to sew back on. Things didn't look very good for me getting to her home in time to at least try to help out with the preparations. That’s the sort of person I am at heart even though that’s not what my ex told the court several times during our divorce case.

In my haste to get ready and leave, I forgot the card that I’d bought the previous morning on my way to work. Thankfully, I’d only travelled a short distance so I turned around and went to fetch it. The day was going swimmingly.

---

[Melanie’s home]

I pulled up in the middle of the village. Melanie's house was just a few hundred yards ahead. I was at the point of no return. After this, the coward in me could not duck and run.

I was no stranger to being put on the spot by a woman. My last serious girlfriend was very much when I was on the rebound from my ex walking out on me. She wanted a husband to molly-coddle, and that was not me. I'll never forget Milly. She was a great person but so very clingy and jealous. If I as much as held a door open for another woman, she would get suspicious of me. It came to a head after her mother, took me to one side. She advised me to 'head for the hills'. That was on the 13th of February.
The coward in me took over, and I simply didn't turn up for our Valentines Day dinner. That's how much of a cowardly bastard I am.

Those memories were uppermost in my mind as I decided if I should go forward or turn around and head for home.

“This will never do,” I said out loud.

I put the car in gear and drove the short distance to Melanie’s temporary home.

---

“Happy Christmas Nick,” said Melanie as I got out of my car.

“Happy Christmas Melanie," I replied, smiling.

"These are for you," I said, giving her the flowers that I'd bought well before dawn the previous day.

“Thank you, they are lovely,” came her smiling reply.

"I have a present for you. It is in the back of my car. It isn't much, but I didn't see one in the things we moved."

She looked a bit shocked. Then she relaxed.
“I guess using a company like yours to move does expose all my inner secrets…”

I smiled.
"We do try to keep our mouths shut and not tell tales, but sometimes it is hard."

She laughed.

“Get your things and come inside. I’m still getting things ready.”

"That's why I came early. I have two hands that mostly work well in the kitchen."

She turned and went back into the house, laughing. That laugh was killing me.

---

I had to admit that her take on Christmas Lunch was very good. Not a dry and overcooked turkey in sight. Instead, we had homemade Venison Wellington with all the trimmings.

That was followed by a slice of some truly heavenly homemade velvet cake.

I was about to start clearing things away when Melanie said calmly,

“When did you first realise that you have another side to you?”

Her words stunned me. She didn’t stop there.

“And that side is feminine?”

She had me dead to rights.

I wanted to respond but I just didn’t have the words.

Melanie reached over the table and took my hand.
“You have never told anyone have you?”

Somehow, I managed to say,
“No… I was just too afraid.”

“Afraid that they’d laugh or simply not believe you? That doesn’t matter here. What matters is that in the short time I have known you, those fears have come to the surface again and it is well past time that you dealt with them. Not in a negative way. You have been doing that all your life. Isn’t it time to accept that there are people in this world who won’t laugh at you or run a mile to get away from you?”

The arrows from a thousand archers were hitting my heart. I knew that it wasn’t true but it felt like that.

Here I was sitting in her dining room being told that I was a coward. The thing was that I am a coward. I’ve pushed those thoughts and desires down into the deepest depths of my psyche for almost thirty years. I was five when I knew that I should have been born a girl.

“Are you ready to try for at least a few hours to let the real you out to play?”

"I don't know, but how did you know about me?"

Melanie smiled and squeezed my hand.
"That day when you first saw my collection of shoes. You could not decide if you should stay or get the hell out of town. It was even worse with those containers of dresses. You just didn't want to touch them, did you?"

“I guess that I fell headfirst into your trap then?”

"Not a trap, but there is another person inside you wanting to get out, but the male part of you is just keeping a lid on it."

She was right, of course.

“What do you propose then?”

“What I propose is that we have a bit of fun dressing up just like children all over the world do every day.”

“But?”

“No buts. Isn’t today a time when billions of us celebrate the birth of someone special? Are you not someone special?”

I shook my head.
“I’m not special.”

Melanie smiled back at me.
"I happen to think that you are a very special person. There was something about you that made me invite you here today."

“Not just to make a fool of me and post it on Social Media then?”

“Ouch!” said Melanie.
“I don’t do Social Media other than to advertise things for sale.”

Melanie smiled at me.
“Look at me. What do you see?”

Her change of tack surprised me.
"I see a very attractive, and determined woman. Your complexion is just about perfect if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Anything else?”

"What else is there to say? You seem to have a bit of a shoe collecting fetish. I don't know much about what sort of clothes you like to wear, but I get the impression that you don't shop for them where everyone else does. That good enough?"

Melanie laughed.

“You are a wise person Nick and very observant.”

I smiled back at her.
“I went to Merry Hill to buy you your present. I felt sad at all those women who were literally queueing up to get their fix of Botox for Christmas. You don’t need any of that poison in you. As far as I’m concerned, you are just about perfect.”

Melanie stood up and took my hand.
“Ready to walk on the wild side?”

"Only if you go with me?" I replied, feeling rather uncertain about what the next few hours would bring.

---

Melanie took me upstairs and into what was a second or third bedroom. She’d hung a lot of clothes from movable racks.

“Are those the clothes that I moved here in those boxes?”

“They are. They are just a small selection of what I have.”

“How much stuff do you have?”

She grinned.
“More than I should, but I excuse myself because I run a retro clothing business. I have a small factory in Dudley and a warehouse near the Airport. I also have producers Manchester and Chennai. They make very good copies of the originals that I buy at markets and even antique shops.”

"I didn't know…" I replied, feeling very inadequate.

"It has taken me years to get where I am today. I started with a Saturday market stall aged sixteen. I bought and sold old clothes intending to fund my university education. That proved so successful that I put going to Uni on hold and grew the business. That's when I met my partner. He said that was looking for an outfit for an Amateur Theatrical production. In a couple of minutes, I knew that was a lie, and it was for himself, or herself. His whole persona, said to me that I am a woman inside just waiting to get out. That's what I saw in you."

“So, you began very much like Alan Sugar then?” I asked, deliberately ignoring the bit about seeing right into my inner core.

"Not really. I'm very much a small operation, but I try to fill a niche and that suits me."

"What are you going to wear?" I asked, hoping to delay the inevitable a bit longer.

Melanie grinned.
“This is one of my favourite outfits,” she said proudly as she pulled an item from one of the racks.

She held it for me to see.
“Very 1930’s. Add some appropriate shoes, a shawl and a cloche style hat, and I'm good to go."

Then she added,
“There is a matching coat that goes with it in one of the boxes that I have not yet unpacked.”

She held the plum-coloured dress up in front of her. I could easily imagine her wearing it to go shopping and stopping people dead in their tracks.

“That… that suits you.”

"Thanks. Now, what about you?"

"I don't know. I never dreamed that it would be like this. There are so many stories on the internet, where the male is humiliated beyond reason before being allowed to put on a stitch of female clothing. They are made to shave everything or get smothered in hair remover."

Melanie reached over and took my hand in hers.
“That must be horrible. That is not what I had in mind. I just want to get you comfortable wearing clothes before even thinking about hair and makeup. Only when all of that is almost second nature would I even think of asking you to go out to dinner with me.”

“Dinner?”

Melanie smiled back at me.

“Look Nick, I like you a lot. If our little game today is fun then we can do it again and again.”

She'd just launched a broadside, and I'd taken a direct hit.

“What’s wrong?” asked Melanie when she noticed my discomfort.

“This is all very sudden. Asking me to Christmas lunch was one thing but…?”

“I’m going too fast for you?”

I nodded.
"Then just choose something to wear, and you can take it home with you. Try it on in private. Look at yourself in the mirror and try to imagine how it could be in the future.”

I think my expression might have told her something.

“You do have a full-length mirror, don’t you?”

Slowly and very reluctantly, I shook my head.
“Then get one. No self-respecting woman goes very long without one.”

I had to admit to myself that while she had an answer for everything, she'd given me an out without even blinking.

“Thanks for that.”

“Thanks for what?”

“Being so understanding.”

“Life is a journey. You are just starting on a new part of that journey if you want to that is?”

“I… I think I do but…”
“Slowly, slowly?”

I nodded.

“Good. Then let me let you choose something to wear while I go downstairs and get you some of the leftovers to take with you. There is far too much for me.”

She was right about the quantity of food that she’d prepared.

“Ok.”

Melanie squeezed my hand.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to embarrass you. Your journey has just begun. Like a baby who is learning to walk, small steps and get used to walking before trying to run.”

Melanie turned and left me alone. She took the plum-coloured dress with her.

---

There was nothing left but to look through the fifty or more outfits and try to find something to take with me. The problem was that I had no idea where to start. Knowing what looked good on other people was all well and good but what would look good on me?

I pulled one outfit from the rack and held it up to myself just like she’d done.

I shook my head.
“That will never do,” I muttered.

With each item of clothing that I rejected; my hopes died a little more until…

I picked a white dress with a floral pattern from the rack.

"That's for the summer and not the middle of winter."

I put it back and looked at a few more, but my eye kept going back to that dress.

I closed my eyes and sighed.
I tried to visualise how it would look going out for a picnic in mid-summer.

Something was missing. It just didn't hang right. Hips. My lack of hips.

I moved onto another rack. One dress caught my eye.

As I held it in front of me and looked in the mirror many of the doubts that I'd had went right out of the window.
The green faux-silk 1920’s style dress was perfect. My lack of hips would not matter.

There was even a gold-coloured wrap or scarf to go with it. It might be an old-style, but it just looked so nice.

I hesitated for several minutes before going downstairs. I was having second, third and fourth thoughts about the whole thing. Much of me wanted to do this but there was still part of me saying ‘no, don’t do it, take the easy way out’.

I was still thinking about what to do when I heard a voice.

“Are you ok up there?”

Melanie’s voice broke my indecision.

“Just coming,” I called out.

I went downstairs and got a bit of a shock. Melanie had put on the dress that she’d selected.

“How do I look?” she said as she did a twirl.

“Like a million dollars,” I replied smiling.

She looked so good and so happy.

“I see you have chosen something to wear?”

I held the dress up in front of me.

“That’s a good choice,” said Melanie smiling.

“My choice was rather forced on me by my lack of tits and hips.”

Melanie laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

"Not funny, but it shows that you are starting to think like a woman."

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I replied.

Melanie just smiled at me.
She knew that she had me by the short and curlies...

“Don’t look so worried Nick. I’m not going to eat you alive.”

“It is not that… I’m just a bit scared. Scared of what might happen.”

“Don’t be scared. I know what it is like to have to admit that you have lived a lie for most of your life.”

It took a second for me to grasp what she had said.

“Are you like me then?”

She shook her head.
“Not me but my wife.”

“What? You are married?”

Again, she shook her head.
"Not any more. She died from Sepsis that sprang from a UTI. That was five years ago next Easter but we had six great years together.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Shortly before she died, she told me to find another one like her. I’ve been looking for the last few years but without success. Then, you came to me just as I was moving here.”

I put the dress down carefully over the back of a chair.

The miniature devil that is forever sitting on my shoulder telling me to run was screaming its tiny head off. For once, I decided to ignore its advice and not be a coward when it came to women.

“How long are you going to be renting this place?”

“Why?”

“Please… This is hard for me. How long?”

“Three or four months. My new home is being converted at the moment. Why do you need to know?”

“I think that in three or four months, I may well be ready to move on as well. If you’ll have me that is?”

“Do you mean that?”

"I do. I may come to regret my decision, but at this precise moment, I don’t know where else I’d rather be than with you.”

I didn't wait for an answer. I stepped towards her, and our noses met in the middle. My feeble attempt at kissing her had failed but only temporarily.

We tried again, and this time, we kissed long and hard. This was turning out to be the best Christmas ever. I never did get to take any of the left-overs home with me.

[the end]