Caitlin is worried about the fall out that her outing would cause. Alison and Meredith corner her in order to have a conversation about what's going on. Can she do this without another panic attack?

Sorority Boy
Chapter 13
 
By poetheather
 

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Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. There should be no way that these characters are like anyone else, but if that isn’t the case, it has definitely been unintentional. Also, if you happen to find that your life is represented in these pages, I’ll be impressed.

 
 
A few days had passed since the party and I had nervously avoided Alison as much as I could, which wasn’t much as we had several meetings at the House to go over various bits of information as a pledge class. Right now we were learning the history of the sorority, needing to memorize names and dates and all sorts of events. It was a lot to keep in mind all at once with everything else. There was a quiz over the information on Saturday and it seemed like no one was looking forward to that. Trying to juggle classes and the House was a bit crazy.

I’m not so sure I would be handling things well if it weren’t for the fact that there was a mandatory study session in the House, to ensure that we were doing our work. That wasn’t too bad but there were too many thoughts, too many ideas, too many facts, too many people that were getting involved in my life. I just wanted to scream as I was so overwhelmed. I was also waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Alison to pass on what she had discovered at the party to all the other girls. That it hadn’t happened yet only increased my nervousness on the matter. Meredith told me it was going to be okay but I was sure it wasn’t. Needless to say I was stressed.

Thursday, after the study session Alison caught up to me before I managed to scamper upstairs to hide from the rest of the world. “Caitlin, wait up.”

I paused, shaking inside. She caught up and smiled at me in her usual friendly manner. She looked adorable with her hair in ponytails, and they bobbed nicely when she moved. “I wanted to talk to you and it seems like you’ve been avoiding me lately.”

I nodded. She frowned a bit at my reaction and sort of dragged me into the sitting room, away from everyone else. It was clear that she was upset and that made me worry even more about the fallout of the discovery. “Caitlin, what is wrong with you?”

“I’m scared.” I admitted. I just might as well get this all out into the open since she wanted to talk.

“Of what? Me?” The goth girl looked a bit shocked by that. “Why?”

“Don’t give me that. When’s the other shoe going to drop?” I accused.

This only seemed to confuse things even more in her head. “What?”

Now it was my turn to get confused. Was she really unable to follow this? She knew that my stress was due to her discovery…right? “You know…telling everyone else?”

“Telling them what? Caitlin, what are you going on about?” Alison cocked her head and looked rather confuzzled and this conversation was going nowhere fast.

Surely she knew what I had been talking about…right? It hadn’t been that long since she had discovered that I was a guy, so why wasn’t she understanding me? What was going on? “About my little…you know…problem?”

Alison blinked at me a few times, trying to process things. I could see it all connect when she looked up at me quizzically. “What about it? Who cares? I wanted to talk to you about getting some help memorizing the history information for this weekend.”

“Hunh? You’re not going to tell anyone?”

“Why should I? It’s your business. I support you, what else matters?”

This conversation had not gone anywhere I had expected it to go. I was completely stunned and had no idea what to say. Thankfully I was rescued by Meredith. “Hey Caitlin, there you are. You took off so fast after the study session that I lost track of you. Hey Alley. Just heading up to the room to watch something, want to join us?”

The goth smiled at the invitation. “Sure. Sounds like a good idea.”

I just nodded and followed along. Meredith and Alison were chatting casually on their way up and I was busy trying to make sense of everything that had just happened. She didn’t care? How could she not care? I was a guy pretending to be something I was not, or at least that’s how it started. The lines were starting to get blurred now and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I said I would do this, and even if I was afraid I would stop being a man, which I was, I had given my word. I would hold up my end of the bargain and I knew that the House would hold up theirs. No, I was doing this but I had really no earthly idea what it was doing to me in return. That part did bother me a lot.

Once we were in the room, Meredith closed and locked the door, standing with her back against it clearly cutting off the main escape route. This got both Alley’s and my attention. “Okay…Alison…are you going to spill the beans about Caitlin here?”

“No.”

“Why not?” It was a reasonable question and one I wanted to know the answer to as well.

“Like I told her, it’s her choice. The whole Goth community is filled with a great deal of gender fluidity, so this is not unusual to me. This is simply no big deal. Besides, Caitlin spoke to me when she didn’t have to and made friends with me when she didn’t have to. That would make me a crap friend if I didn’t have her back when she needed that.” Alison looked very adamant at that.

“So…are we good?” asked Meredith casually.

“We’re good. Relax Caitlin, you’re my friend and I won’t risk it over something so minor.”

“Minor?” What the hell was minor about this? Here I was, freaking out and she called it minor? What the hell would it take to have something that she might call major?

“Yes, minor. I like your reasoning for doing this. It’s pretty noble. You make a really cute girl and if I hadn’t known several transpeople through the whole Goth scene I would never have figured it out. So chill out.” Alison smiled at me and that helped some.

I sat heavily on the bed, sighing, suddenly tired. “Sorry. This whole thing seems anything but minor to me. This whole thing caused me to have a major panic attack and now this…I’m just not sure I can take much more of this.”

Meredith looked worriedly at me. She rested on hand on my shoulder. “Do you need to quit? We can do that if you need to. Sarah would back that medically if needed, to make it no harm no foul. You know none of us would hold this against you and none of us would stop being your friends. That’s why we’re worried about you.”

I smiled weakly. It really was nice of her to offer that and I knew tat I wouldn’t have any grief from the House should that happen. “I know. It’s just that it’s been so easy to loose myself in being Caitlin that I am forgetting about being Richard. I am pretty okay with all of this and that scares me. Part of me is screaming that this is wrong and part of me thinks it’s neat. Everything in between is just confused. Why can’t life be simple?”

Alison actually started laughing at this which sort of pissed me off. I was baring my soul here. “Gods, who would want their life to be simple? Even if we reincarnate, is that a good reason to live a placid and boring life? Why not have a life filled with…well life? I want my life to be crazy and exciting and interesting and complex and full of wonder. Why should you settle for less than everything?”

This got Meredith smiling and nodding and I had to admit that it did make a measure of sense. That might help me in dealing with this. It surely couldn’t hurt. “Okay…I understand that. But I just don’t want my idea of who I am to be as complex as it is right now. I am pulled between being a man and being a woman and generally it’s really uncomfortable. Sometimes I can get out of my head long enough to just accept things the way they are, which I like. Right now I want to live as a girl, to experience this as it is presented but I can’t turn that male part of me off and it makes me skittish as hell.”

“So why bother trying? If it won’t shut up, use it.” Alison was making sense but I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to hear, which made me wonder if I was looking to fail.

“Fine. But I have no idea how.” That might buy me a moment or two in order to think all of this madness through. Again.

Both Meredith and Alison looked at me and then back at each other. They shrugged and I sighed, so much for solving that issue. It was a relief that Alley had no intention to do anything about the whole gender thing. She seemed cool with it and that helped me relax and try to get back to that place of equilibrium I had managed to reach before the party. Maybe I needed to talk to a shrink, to help me get my head where it needed to be? That might make this whole experiment easier to deal with in the long run. “Okay. Better now. But I think I need to see someone to talk things over with.”’

“You mean like a shrink?” asked Alison.

I nodded.

She smiled. “Okay. I can ask my friend Calpernia if she knows any gender specialists in the area.”

“Calpernia?” I was really confused with that name. What kind of name was that?

“Yeah. It’s a really good goth name. Calpernia Moriarity. She’s trans as well and used to live here. She preformed in some drag shows and was really good.” replied Alley.

Meredith nodded in thought. “I think that a gender specialist would probably be really helpful to you. If you want I can come with you the first time and help explain things?”

“Please? I’m nervous enough about this without having to stress over that as well. Besides, who would believe this without support? It’s not like I would be going in and saying that I was trans, but this sure as hell looks trans-ish to me.”

The others had to agree with that. That topic closed thankfully and we turned to the much more important issue of choosing a movie to watch. Alison and Meredith were discussing the finer points of several films quite heatedly, trying to prove why one film was better than another. After fifteen minutes of discussion they finally settled on Moulon Rouge. I was a bit hesitant about the whole musical thing, but they didn’t really give me the option. Hell, like I’d really had an option in months.

The costumes were lavish, the singing was intense and now I can never listen to “Like a Virgin” again without it triggering flashbacks. The Tango Roxanne had been incredibly intense as well. I was stunned. It had been an incredible roller coaster ride and I was wiping away tears by the end. The film had been worth the whole being forced to watch it.

It affected my dreams however and I kept playing both the male and female leads, which was rather confusing as I ended up without a clue who I was, Christian or Satine. The dancing around in dresses, the hair, the everything was so vivid that it almost felt like I wasn’t dreaming at all, that I was really there, being held in strong arms. The screeching alarm clock dissuaded me of that idea soon enough however. I groaned and swatted the clock. Time to get to classes.
 

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