Revelation

"Remind me never to get on your bad side, will you?" I said, cautiously.

"Don't get on my bad side, OK."

"That's a promise! Of course I don't think you have a bad side."

"Flatterer."

"I try. You ever think of doing improv?"

"Nope. I spent all week rehearsing once Coach told me who swiped my bag."

"Then maybe a scriptwriter."

"I do like to write."

"And perform. I was tempted to shout 'Bravo!' a few times but I didn't want to distract you."

"Brava is the female version."

"Then Brava to you. Uh, where are we going?"

"I don't know. I just know a good exit line when I hear it."

"I suppose we could go to my place, it's walking distance."

"Sounds good to me. I hope I didn't embarrass you, Luke."

"Nah! If anything the guys are going to be jealous as hell."

"I suppose so. I don't usually walk off with random guys as a rule, but then you're hardly random."

"Thanks. Want to stay for lunch?"

"Sure. Just let me call my Dad and tell them where I am. I was going to take the bus home."

 

"Hi, Mom!" I hollered as I came in the front door. "I brought company with me."

"Oi vey!" came the reply from the kitchen."

"Where did that come from, we're not Jewish?" I asked as we joined her there.

"I spend too much time watching Broad City, I guess."

"Maybe we need to limit your TV time, Mom. Bad influences and all that."

"Oh, it's Caitlyn. That's fast work, Lucas."

Caitlyn was looking lost.

"Mom was telling me I need to ask you out for a date once you left the other night, even though I'm not allowed to date until I'm sixteen."

"What?"

"My Mom has good taste, but she can be pushy."

"Is this a date?"

No, I just invited a friend over to visit. You should have seen her, Mom! She took that slimeball Ryan apart in front of everybody. That's the guy who stole her gym bag."

"Was there much blood? I hope you did it outdoors so they can use a hose to clean up."

"Oi vey!" cried Caitlyn.

"You stole that from my Mom."

"Are you two always this crazy?" she asked.

"Nope. We save it until we have an audience, Caitlyn." My mother answered. "If we're alone this smartass kid can out-think me half the time. He does keep it under control in front of potential girlfriends."

"Mooooom! She's not my girlfriend."

"I said 'potential,' didn't I? She gets to decide if she wants to be a girlfriend."

"Is there a time limit? Can I call a friend like on that TV show? And what's the prize?"

"That would be me, but I only have a million dollar smile."

"Not to change the subject, but where's your bathroom?"

"Down the hall just past the laundry room."

"I'll be back."

"I like that girl!" Mom said once she was gone.

"I kind of like her, too."

"Feel free to invite her over any time."

"I like that idea."

We were interrupted as Caitlyn came back.

"All right already, Luke. Is that my bra I see hanging in your laundry room?"

Oops. I hadn't thought of that when I invited her over.

"I suppose it was your bra at one time," Mom said.

Mom was enjoying this far too much!

"So why is it hanging in your laundry room?"

"Because I washed it?"

Mom was really enjoying this.

"And why did you wash it? I mean it was actually you who washed my former bra?"

"Because a certain slimeball had contaminated it and then it ended up in my garbage can."

"I may have to become a dentist, this is like pulling teeth. So why did you think it needed washing?"

"Mom told me it was an expensive bra. It seemed like a waste to just throw it out. We could give it to the Goodwill or some needy orphan."

"Can I watch when you give a bra to some strange girl that's built like me? It ought to be interesting. I could maybe call an ambulance when she decks you."

"I knew you were a kind person."

"And you're some kind of nut. Do you actually know the proper way to wash a bra?"

"Hey! I do laundry all the time. In a mesh bag, gentle cycle, cool water, never in the dryer. I do Mom's bras sometimes."

"He actually does, Caitlyn. I showed him how a while back when he bled all over my bra before I went out with some friends."

"Is there something stronger than oi vey that I can say here? This is one seriously weird conversation. So OK, tell me just why you were bleeding all over your mother's bra, Lucas."

"Well, it was this way…"

So I told her all about it with Mom providing the color commentary.

"So did you get the bra clean?"

"He did. I wore it until it wore out sometime last year."

"How in the world did I end up talking about bras with a boy?"

"I suppose it's better than talking about jockstraps, although I suppose they're both support garments."

"Enough!" cried Mom. "Time to change the subject. What are we going to do for lunch?"

So we helped Mom get lunch ready and found other things to talk about. Caitlyn and I spent an enjoyable afternoon and the subject of bras did not come up again. She stayed for dinner and we took her home, so I got to meet her parents. In fact, we stayed more than an hour just talking together, her folks have a way of including everyone in the conversation.

Mom Knows

From then on, Caitlyn and I hung out together quite a bit. We went to each other's ball games and she would often come home with me after ball practice and stay until dinner - or sometimes later. As Mom had predicted, I was interested in girls for reasons my ten-year-old self would not have understood.

We studied together, and did actually study. We talked sports, she was an avid baseball player so we had that in common. Her family were dedicated campers, something Mom and I had never done. In other words, a friendship was developing.

The only downside was that instead of being able to put on my bra after baseball practice, I had to wait until bedtime if I was hanging out with Caitlyn. I did wear it to bed every night because I just plain liked wearing it. I made sure to hand wash it on Friday mornings so it had time to dry before bedtime. Mom just gave me a funny look when I did, but didn't say anything much.

This went on for a few weeks until spring break arrived. That Friday at dinner Mom uttered the words every kid never wants to hear: We need to talk.

With the usual guilty conscience of a fifteen year old boy, I tried to think of what I had done to get in trouble. I came up blank, but Mom is good at reading me.

"You haven't done anything wrong, Lucas. Unusual maybe, but certainly not wrong."

"Uh, OK?"

"You've watched the news shows with me fairly often, so you know what is going on in the world, right?"

"Different people are killing other people than got killed last week. The politicians are being idiots, climate change will kill us all, the Democrats will bankrupt the country, the Republicans hate women, gays, trans and the Federal budget. Is that enough?"

"More than enough. So you know about transgendered people, then."

"A little bit. Maybe I should know more, since you know I like wearing a bra."

"Since you've been washing it regularly, I figured you must like it. Funny - when I was a girl I couldn’t wait to get my first bra so I could be a big girl. I never thought I would be talking to my son about his first bra, but there it is."

"I know its weird, but I really like it. I'm not hurting anyone so I don't know why anyone should care if my own mother doesn't"

"I wouldn't say I don't care, but I do want to be sure of what's going on. You've never taken after your father and tried to be a manly man - something I am very grateful for - but you seem to be comfortable with both boys and girls. You like your hair long and I've noticed you have been reading my so-called women's magazines.

"Just remember there's no right answer to this question: Is it that you think you're really a girl or do you just like the clothes - or the bra in this case. "

"I don't think I want to be a girl; I like being a boy OK and, well, I like Caitlyn. Boy-girl kind of like."

"That's honest. How far do you want to go? I know she left her panties, are you wearing them?"

"No, they're too big."

"Only because they're too big, or would you wear panties if you had them? How about dresses and skirts? High heels?"

"Sometimes I think about it when I'm daydreaming, but since I don't have anything like that I haven't tried."

"They may kick me out of the PTA for this, but would you want to try spending break week as a girl?"

"What!"

"Just what I said. You could try out living as a girl and see if it's something you really want to do. It's a way to find out if your daydreams are just daydreams or something more substantial. I've tried not to say anything about it, but you really do have the looks to do it."

"You really think so?

"We can only try. Are you interested?"

"Sure. I can't believe…"

"Your mother is well aware of how her child is feeling. Daughter or son, I still love you. If by the end of the week you still think you want to be wearing a bra then we can find out where there's a gender-type doctor we can talk to."

"Doctor?"

"Shrink. Someone who knows more than we do about the subject. Now, there's something you need to know."

"OK, what?"

"A girl your age needs more than one bra, and ones that fit properly. Would you be too embarrassed to go shopping for a few training bras tomorrow? And panties that fit, of course. That way you can wear clean underwear all week during the break, as least when you're around the house."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. We'll go shopping a ways away so there's less chance of meeting anyone you know."

"Wow! That's crazy!"

"And my son wanting to wear a bra isn't?"

"When you put it that way…"

"How well I remember. When I was a girl I didn't have a clue. Your grandma explained about how my body would change as I grew up, but I think she did it too early because I just didn't understand. I was nine when my best friend started to develop early, and she was very excited to tell me she was wearing a bra one day. We were walking down the hall that first day she wore it and these two boys came up behind us and tried to snap our bra straps.

"I heard the snap on Lisa's bra just as I felt something on my back. Of course I wasn't wearing a bra and the guy was frustrated. Lisa turned around and slapped her guy on the face and left a big red splotch on his cheek. The guy behind me didn't know what to do and just stood there. Lisa growled 'Try that again and you'll never need a jockstrap again' or something like that.

"Lisa actually had to explain what happened, I was clueless. When I told my mother about it she started laughing her head off. She said 'Maybe it's time to get you a training bra' and the next weekend she took me off to her favorite lingerie shop. My mother didn't really like malls and we seldom went into them. I don't suppose anyone's tried to snap your bra strap, though."

"Mooooom!"

"Actually, it turned out I was ready to start wearing a bra, but hadn't realized it. You know about cup sizes?"

"Jeez Mom. Every boy knows about cup sizes."

"So they do, I suppose. Anyway, I was almost an A cup but not quite. Since my mother took me to a specialty shop the lady there showed us how to use a pair of enhancers to finish filling the cup. Wiggly, jelly kind of blobs that could make your breasts look bigger. I was utterly embarrassed, but …"

"But what?" I asked.

"The green-eyed monster. I was jealous of Lisa because she was growing up faster than I was, once the whole thing clicked in my mind. With those enhancers I was able to catch up with her. I assume you've been stuffing the cups like any normal teenage girl would do. You seem to have skipped over the beginning of the alphabet and grown up overnight."

"Mooooom!"

"You should start with an A cup, you don't need to compete with Caitlyn."

"As if I could. She told me sometimes she wishes she wasn't so big."

"Really? She was comfortable talking about her cup size with a boy?"

"She was giving me grief about washing her bra. She thought it was funny that I knew how to do it the right way. We talk about a lot of things that I guess most boys wouldn't be interested in."

"I'm not going to ask! Do you think she knows you're wearing her bra?"

"I don't know. She's awful smart, maybe even smarter than me. Maybe that's why she feels comfortable talking about girl stuff with me. She hasn't said anything, though."

"And you actually like wearing a bra."

"It just feels good. It feels right!"

Well then, if you were born my genetic daughter I would expect you would grow into maybe a B cup, like most of the women in my family. You're lucky, you get to choose."

That's when Mom got a real funny look on her face, the kind she gets when she's planning something she doesn't want me to know about. I was about to say something when she came back from wherever she went.

"Hold on a minute, Lucas. I just remembered something that I have to do right away."

She pulled out her phone and tapped away for a little while, then she had a big smile on her face as she pushed a button on the screen and put her phone away.

"Sorry about that, but I just made the deadline. Now where were we?"

"Picking a cup size. I suppose it's best to start small and see if I like it."

"Good decision. What say we go out for breakfast and then you can have your first bra fitting.."

"Do I really need to? I know I'm a 34, my bra fits comfortably, even if the cups are kinda floppy."

"Do you have red lines on your body when you take it off?"

"Not that I've seen."

"Then it sounds like the band is the right size. Once you have proper underwear we can talk about dresses and such. Completely up to you if you want to. You may be able to wear some of my old stuff if the old lady fashions don't gross you out. I never throw anything out."

"I know. Someday you'll lose ten pounds and they'll fit again."

"Five pounds, you little twerp!

"If you say so. You're the best, Mom."

"And don't I know it. Now spend some time with the Great God Google and learn about transgendered people, but be prepared for a lot of porn. I didn't appreciate a lot of what I found on the subject. I don't understand why so many men want to post pictures with lacy bras, hairy bodies and dangling participles."

"Dangling participles, is it? How literary."

"Be good, try to find some reasonable stuff once you've investigated the porn."

"Mooooom!"