Such a Prude
By Sabrina G. Langton

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Author's Note: The penultimate one of this series, I don't know what I'm thinking, I really don't know where my mind has been finding itself lately. I hope YOU like it and I know YOU, yes you, over there in the corner will understand... ha...

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I remember the first time my nylon legs hit fresh air.

I remember I was in this dark room in the basement of my parent's house, my room, it was really late, it was really quiet. I was wearing borrowed tan pantyhose, a borrowed cyan leotard, and a borrowed tan skirt. I was wearing these platform shoes, beige, they were called buffalo heels even though there were no heels. They were borrowed too.

I opened my side door leading to an alley, directly across the way from another family, a family of about nine. The chances of one of those nice nine people seeing me, well eight, one was a baby, were pretty high. I wanted to go outside, I wanted to go out in the world, I wanted to do a lot of things.

I was in my teens, seventeen, I went out the door for the first time. Just a little walk down the alley at about three in the morning. I did this several times over the next couple of weeks until I heard a window screen move, open, or do something. I jogged back to my side door, I almost had a heart attack. No more traipsing in the alley for me, that was it.

Before that I was, actually caught by one of the neighbors, but that's another story...

Hmm, lets see, I had a van, I have talked about that before, it was pretty big, it was blue and had privacy screens on the windows. My parents gave it to me, I just had to pay the insurance. I also had to do whatever they asked of me. I had to work for them... almost for free... it was okay, life was getting interesting and I was enjoying myself. I had plenty of friends and so many adventures in that blue van.

I have discussed this elsewhere too. I lived, and still do, in Brooklyn, NY. I would drive out to Long Island and dress in the back of the van. I would walk around the neighborhood. I had interactions with people, it was mostly a positive experience. Only once was someone mean to me.

I used to do work for my parents and have to drive to Connecticut, I did the driving in my best appropriated outfits, my highest heels. For some crazy unknown reason, I wanted to go out, I wanted to be seen, I wanted to show off my long strawberry-blonde hair. I don't really understand why, I was extremely shy, I had difficulty in social situations and I had a habit of losing my focus and voice if someone surprisingly spoke to me in public, someone I didn't know. When I was dressed and feeling fabulous some of those social stigmas were gone, totally gone. While I drove I always gave eye contact, always smiled, always waved when someone let me pass.

I met some people when I was presenting female when I was a teenager, 18, 19. I am sure some knew I wasn't female. I didn't feel comfortable passing until I was in my early twenties, 22, 23, then, you couldn't stop me. From then until I was around 28, I didn't worry about anything. My most pressing issue was how was I going to get a new pair of stockings, some more blush, a pair of heels that weren't scuffed or broken. I never went shopping even though I was never worried about someone clocking me, saying something negative, or doing something nasty... even though all those things happened to me during those years. I thought I would never write about those experiences, but I have, I let that old retired, bad karma into my writing, into my world.

When I was in my twenties I had a friend, Alyssa, she was a beautiful woman, we were the same age. She was the reason I wasn't worried about anything, she was my accomplice, she was my barrier and wall. She thought I was funny, she loved that I was up for anything, but mostly she loved that I had a van, then a car. I took her everywhere. She took me to buy stockings, makeup, and heels, I stayed in the car. It was more than a fair trade.

I remember the first and second times someone was angry with me for wearing a dress.

Back then the derogatory term I heard most was Fag. That was what men would call me after they looked at my legs and fake breasts. Alyssa would make a scene, I would hide, I would vow to practice more. Older women were always okay with me, they were the ones I gravitated toward, they never called me anything but my name. Younger women called me fake, fucked up, and would tell me I didn't pass. It didn't really bother me that much, I had Alyssa. It bothered Alyssa.

"Fuck them, they are all assholes." Alyssa loved to curse, she was tough, she looked like an actress, a model, a nurse, someone who didn't curse.

"It's okay." I would say. I figured it didn't happen that much, why should I start being upset about it? I heard horror stories, I've seen things on the news. I thought I looked great in my mirror and that is all I really needed, plus I had Alyssa.

"Well, that is it, we are doing something drastic." That was her favorite word, 'drastic,' she liked it more than the Ef word and much more than the A word. Funnily enough the 'drastic' word made me more nervous than the others.

She took me to her salon, the one she went to since she was little. It was full of younger women, the ones that liked to call me names if I let them. It was fine, we did something drastic. They made me cut my hair, style it, they gave me a bob-cut. The cut was named after a man, but I looked like a girl, especially from the back, a girl who was twenty-two. I had to go to work wearing a hat.

I went back to the salon thrice a week for makeup lessons, help with my mannerisms, and help with my voice. I swept up, then I started washing some of the customer's hair, then I started getting paid. I now had three jobs. I worked in a bank, a gallery, and now a salon.

"Look at you, you look fantastic." Alyssa was full of compliments, which meant she wanted to go somewhere. That meant I was driving.

With the new style, I felt better, though I don't think I looked more 'female.' I knew my hair was feminine and in my male mode, it made me even more uncomfortable. The bosses at the bank never said anything about the baseball hat and probably assumed I was going bald, they never asked. I left soon after anyway. I also never received another slur, not one the whole time I was in my mid to late twenties. That is when I moved to California and lived part-time, then full-time as a 'female.' I just assumed that Cali was more agreeable to fags, fakes, and those that are fucked up. While there, someone once called me a 'tranny,' it was the first time I ever heard that word, the person that called me that was a tranny.

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Now all grown up, living life much less glam than I would like, I still get called derogatory terms. All of them online, of course, all of them make me feel disappointed so much more than when I was young and according to my teenage self, fabulous. Most of those names are not even used as derogatory terms, not even meant to be hurtful. They appear in chatrooms, comments on my stories, emails, and personal messages. I won't list them, I won't let the bad karma form around my writing anymore. I also realize that so many of the girls, I follow, I read, I like... love those words, so I know it is probably just me.

Who the hell do I think I am? That's what I think when I get a little sad from something written towards me, for me. I've heard horror stories, I've seen things on the news, I am not even involved with the scene and culture anymore. I never get embarrassed, part of me doesn't care, but it still makes me a little sad. Just a little. I know most people are uninformed, maybe a little ignorant, but so am I. I don't understand football, most religions, what's going on in politics, or almost all the new shows streaming somewhere on Earth, and I try not to bring any of that up. I stick to subjects I know... like, um, 60's and 70's music, cocktails, speculative fiction paperbacks, and all the breweries within a hundred-mile radius... Oh, and I never call anyone by a negative term, ever. I especially Never, Ever use those three words that I don't like. The other S word, the other C word, or even the other F word. They are not what you think, they are not terms for sex they are supposedly terms for someone like me. Come to think of it, I don't like the slave or breed term either, but that's another conversation for another day.

Phew, I remember the last time someone wrote me something inappropriate.

Oh, well, sometimes I am such a prude.

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The End