Vicki

We met one day when I was out shopping as my femme self. We both reached for a colorful tablecloth at the same time and our hands collided. I jumped a bit as I felt a kind of jolt. It looked to me as if she might have felt it too.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, when I had recovered. “You go ahead.”

“No, you have it. I’ll get another,” she said.

“I was just going to look at it; I didn’t really want to buy it.”

She acquiesced and took it. We both admired it, and she decided to buy it.

We kept looking at each other, as if we expected something to happen.

To break the tension I invited her to have a coffee with me.

“I’m Vicki Manners,” I introduced myself. (My own little private joke, MANners.)

“Chelsea Taylor,” she said and held out her hand.

As we shook hands I felt that little jolt again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I felt a little electricity there. Have you been shuffling around on carpet, by any chance?”

“No,” she laughed, “But I felt the spark too.”

We bonded over coffee and it just seemed like we were old friends reconnecting. We were close to the same age (twenties) and had enough common interests to make the meeting seem even more synchronistic.

We liked each other enough to exchange contact information, and I impulsively invited her to go see a movie later that week.

As time passed we grew close and met several times a week, for movies, meals, walks and so much more. She became my best friend, and I really liked her, but I was beginning to get a little frustrated. I wasn’t Vicki all the time, and would have liked to have a friendship and physical relationship with her as Morgan, but the longer we were together the less likely that seemed. But in the end, I was just happy to have her as a friend.

-o0o-

It all came crashing down one day when we were having lunch at a café. I had my wallet out on the table, and went to use the Ladies Room. When I got back she was glaring at me.

I looked at her, puzzled, and she held up my driver’s license, in the name of Morgan Manry, Sex: M. My heart sank. Obviously she had assumed the worst.

“Well, Morgan, care to comment on this?”

“No… not really,” I said in a resigned way.

“You’ve been deceiving me for months!” she hissed.

“But have I, really? I have a different name, yes, but I’ve never lied to you, and my feelings of friendship are sincere.”

“You’re a different SEX!” she said, as if that was a crime.

“Chelsea, this really isn’t the time or place to have this conversation. All I can say is that I am your friend, no matter how I’m dressed.”

She obviously didn’t want to hear that. She gathered her things and almost ran out of the café.

I felt awful. Wasn’t the important part that we were friends? I mean, I could understand why she felt deceived, but it had nothing to do with how I felt about her. I wasn’t trying to, say, lull her into a false sense of security by dressing as a woman, and then attack her. I’d certainly had numerous opportunities to do that, and it would never occur to me anyway.

Heaving a huge, sad sigh, I paid the bill for both of us and went home.

As I sat alone in my small living room, I was sorrowful that I’d lost a good friend. Chelsea made a lot of stuff fun, stuff I’d never taken a lot of pleasure in before.

-o0o-

I went about my business and tried to be philosophical. I couldn’t help it that I liked to present as a woman. I didn’t have the sort of job that would allow that so I had to lead a double life. I was blessed to have an appearance that allowed me to pass successfully as Vicki, which was great, because I preferred her to Morgan.

I wondered how Chelsea would have reacted if I had had SRS and then found out I used to be a man. Would that also be a deal-breaker? Oh well, I guessed I wouldn’t be finding that out any time soon, or at all. I was not the type to push myself on someone who didn’t want me. Friends were rare for me, and I’d miss her. I just sadly chalked it up to Life Lessons Learned.
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Chelsea

When I accidentally found out my best friend was really a man, I was pissed off. All this time, the things we shared—some of which I would never share with a man!

What would possess a man to dress and act like a woman? Was he trying to get me alone in order to… No, we’d been alone plenty of times, and in each other’s houses. Was he trying to do undercover work to find a mate? Find out what I liked, and so on? If so this seemed a pretty overelaborate way to go about it! No, that didn’t seem practical.

As the weeks passed I did miss Vicki. She was fun to do stuff with. Wait, he was fun to do stuff with… No, that didn’t seem right either. I never felt Vicki was anything other than a woman. I was getting confused about this.

To try and figure things out, a few times I hid near Vicki/Morgan’s apartment and watched him set off for work. He was a kind of androgynous little man, skinny, with thick glasses, and he didn’t look very happy. Head down, hands in pockets. Nothing, in fact, like Vicki, though knowing what I knew I could tell it was her, er, him. Just as a contrast, one Saturday I hid again in order to see Vicki come out for her weekly workout. She looked better than Morgan, but seemed to have lost that spark that I so used to love.

-o0o-

Somehow I couldn’t just put this whole thing behind me. I needed some help to try and figure it all out, so I went to see a counselor.

The counselor tried to get at what was making me so mad about the whole thing. When I said it was about sharing stuff with a man when I thought it was a woman, she said,

“It sounds like this man has a very strong feminine side. In fact, had it not been for you violating his or her privacy to see the license, you would not have known, and would still be happy about the relationship.”

I wanted to protest that, but it was true, and at the time I thought I was dodging some sort of bullet by confronting him. But really, all that had resulted was that I missed my friend.

“I miss my friend, but the whole relationship was fictional, based on a lie.”

“Is that really true, Chelsea? You said she told you she was your friend, no matter how she was dressed. You have only happy memories of the time you spent together, so where is the fiction and the lie in that? It’s the same as a dream. If you learn something valuable in a dream, should you discount it because it happened in the dream world?”

“I see your point. I’m just confused because I really liked her, and I find it very difficult to transfer those feelings to him.”

“It’s simply another aspect of one personality, Chelsea. We all have both female and male characteristics in us, and in some one or the other can be stronger. I don’t think he lied to you about being your friend.”

“No, neither do I, really.”

“Let me ask you this: what if you two had been friends for, say, fifty years, and when she died you found out she was physically a man. Would that negate all the happy years you spent together?”

I had to think for a minute. Was the amount of time the real issue? By the time we had been friends for fifty years, we would have known each other pretty thoroughly. I really didn’t know the answer to this, but maybe by the time she died I would be more open to think of it as a quirk of personality. Maybe?

-o0o-

The counseling was helpful. But it took me ages to get things straight in my head. That a man could be such a convincing woman was something new to me, and reconciling my old friend with a man was hard to do.

After some months of all this mental effort, eventually I worked up my courage to go there and knock on the door. Morgan answered, squinting at me and looking rather lost.

“Yes? Can I help you?” he said.

I felt very let down, that he wanted to play it like this. It did not seem like an encouraging new beginning. “I… it’s me, Chelsea,” I said.

“Oh! I’d say it’s nice to see you, Chelsea, but I’m having trouble finding my glasses, and I can’t really, actually, see you. Please come in.”

Hearing that my hopes rose as I stepped inside. I was surprised to find I was a bit taller than he was. I guess Vicki always wore heels. He led the way into the living room and offered me a seat. He sat across from me, tucking his feet under his butt. He reminded me of a hurt puppy.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked, very politely.

“No thank you.”

“So, to what do I owe this unexpected visit?” he asked, in a neutral tone of voice.

“I’ve had a lot of trouble figuring out how I feel about you and Vicki. I have never known a man with a strong feminine side and I just didn’t know how to handle it.”

Morgan was silent, waiting for the rest of it.

“I even went to a counselor to try and understand why I feel this way, and why you do what you do. But she got me to see that the experience was real and valuable, no matter what you looked like. My gut reaction was that you were trying to take advantage of me in some way.”

He still said nothing, but looked very sad as he sat there.

“Then I thought over all the time we spent together, and the opportunities you had to do something nasty, but you never were anything but a good friend to me. I’m very sorry I misjudged you.”

He thought this over, and then softly said “Thank you for that.”

“So I was wondering if I could take you out for dinner some time, if you are still interested in being friends.”

“Who are you inviting, Chelsea?”

“Either one of you. I like Vicki, but I don’t really know Morgan. So I’d be happy to take either one out.”

“It might be a good idea for Morgan to go, so you realize I’m not some sex fiend or some kind of, I don’t know, crazy person. And to be totally honest with you, when we first met I had hopes of Morgan getting together with you, but the longer we were friends, the less it seemed like that could ever happen. I really did feel a jolt of electricity or whatever that was the first time we touched each other. I even thought, ‘Could she be The One?’ And do you remember right after that, we were standing there, kind of waiting for something to happen?”

“Yes, I remember that feeling, and I felt the jolt too, and wondered about it a lot! And it’s true – there was a real feeling of expectation, but I didn’t know what I was expecting. I’d never been attracted to a woman before, so it was a bit confusing.”

He perked up a little at hearing this.

“Maybe it’s something worth exploring,” he said. “Now, could I ask you for a favor?”

“Sure,” I answered.

“Would you please help me find my glasses??”

I laughed. “Of course I will!”

-o0o-

Morgan and I did go to dinner a few days later, and I enjoyed his company. He reminded me of Vicki, yet he was different, and in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He was certainly low-key in comparison, maybe even guarded.

Eventually we came to an agreement that every other time we went to do something together Vicki and Morgan would alternate. I found this useful because it let me see the personality differences between them, and also because I grew to love both of them. Frankly, I’m not even sure Vicki was aware of those differences in herself. She just automatically acted a certain way when she was Vicki. I also came to feel that Vicki was more of a real person than Morgan. As time went on he almost felt like a hollow façade.

The nice thing was that Vicki got that old spark back in her eye, and that made me feel better too.

When we moved into a physical relationship we experimented with necking with both personalities. Morgan was kind of clumsy but sweet, and eager to please. Vicki kissed like a girl, but I somehow didn’t end up feeling like a lesbian. I almost wished I hadn’t known about Morgan, so I could have seen if I would have felt the same with Vicki…well, assuming we had ever gone down that road.

The important thing was that that initial spark was still there between us, and we relished our relationship.

We ended up moving in together, and I convinced Morgan to find a job where he could be accepted as Vicki. It was obvious he preferred to present as a woman, and I knew he’d be happier if he didn’t need to keep switching back and forth. He was able to find another job in his field, with a progressive company, and her productivity increased since she was a happier person.

We tied the knot two years after we started cohabiting. Poor Vicki had to pretend to be a man for the small ceremony, but she really made up for it on our girly honeymoon.

The End.