Champion
A Story for the BCTS Christmas Contest 2024
By Maryanne Peters

I guess I am just one of those people who can’t stand to see injustice being done. Sometimes I felt that it was my duty to stand up for people who can’t fight injustice by themselves. The way I see it, this has nothing to do with being gay or trans, it is about freedom, and that means being free to be who you are.

But we all know the minorities gay or trans people are a minority, and the way I figure it, democracy only works if you look after minorities. Look at Nazi Germany – the majority wanted to blame a minority for their problems. That would be a democracy, but not the one I would want to live in. A democracy that doesn’t look after people is not about freedom.

It is just about bullying. I don’t like it. I have never liked it and I won’t stand for it. It is not because I have ever been bullied. I was lucky to be born to be an athlete and a sportsman – one of those people who are popular in school and never get bullied. I think that makes me more inclined to help those who are not as lucky as I am. That is the way it should be.

Some people called me a crusader, like that is a bad thing. I call myself a person of strong principles, who is prepared to go to extremes to stand up for what I believe in.

I think people are born gay or born trans, just like people are born small or weak. A minority can get bullied. Often the majority lets it happen. I went to school in North Texas so I should know. There in school I felt that it was my duty to stand up for those people.

Guys would say things like – “Hey, Malc, why are you backing the fags? Are you turning gay or something?”

“Maybe I am! If I was would you bully me?” It made me wonder whether they would, but it also brought home to me that I really had no understanding of what it would be like to be in the position of one of their victims.

I never liked being called “a fag lover”. What does that even mean? I am a human being brought up to love my neighbor – whether he is gay or not, black, red or yellow – I love my fellow man. It was just a term of abuse that says to me that I am not a victim, I just pity the victim. That never sat well with me. I suppose that is why I decided to put myself in the same group as them. Can you truly be an activist as an outsider? You have to join them to champion them. From there I could call out the bullies.

Besides, somebody once told me that activism can be fun and enlightening.

I didn’t even know Alison when I started, or rather I did not know who she was before – what her male name had been. But that didn’t matter. She was Alison and she was the only transgirl in our school … before I joined her.

“I want to share your journey,” I said to her. “I want to transition with you. I want to support you against all the bigots and rednecks and we have plenty right here.”

“But you are on the football team!” She could not believe that a guy like me could be trans. But I had done my reading. I knew all about the big girls trying to run away from their femininity.

“Now I am on your team,” I told her. “I am going to be your BFF. We will be transgirls together for as long as it takes to get you accepted. I guess that I have some accumulated goodwill in this school, and I am going to put it work for you, and for all other gender variant people in our school, and our city, and our state.”

She hugged me. I remember thinking then that it was important that I should receive this hug as the person she expected me to be – as a fellow transwoman. This was not a sexual thing, which is not to say that transwoman cannot be lesbian and there is nothing wrong if they are, but this need to be a hug shared between to women – transwomen.

And so our journey began. I pulled out of football training and I joined Alison on hormones. I told the coach and the principal the same thing – I was just the same as Alison and we were going to support one another through our transition. I started by asking for their support, which is not something that Alison would have been able to do.

When the coach said that it would be hard to break to the guys on the team I volunteered to do it myself. It was at a pre-season meeting in the locker room. I just put it out there in words that the guys would understand.

“There is a medical reason where I have to drop out,” I said. “I am trans and I am transitioning to female. I know that everyone of you guys are probably thanking God or whoever, that you don’t have the same thing to worry about. Just remember the code we all signed up to every time we charge into the opposition, we support one another. Even after I pull out of the team, I still expect you to back me, just as if I was holding the ball in open play. Support me and protect me, in the way I always have for you guys.”

I mean they were all shocked by the news, but to a man they nodded, and some even shouted out a team call. Generally, they followed the promise given that day, and where they didn’t, they had reasons as I will explain.

Public announcements were made, and the school staff generally followed Education Department guidelines that placed to interests of students first, but there were the usual issue with parents.

“One of these so called ‘girls’ is a ex-football player. There is no way that this guy should ever use the girls restrooms,” is one I remember because it targeted me. I said that I had no desire to use any space where I made cis-gendered people uncomfortable. In fact, there was a unisex staff toilet that we could have keys to.

The fact is that Alison and I we re agreed that there was only one strategy to meet these attacks. Firstly we were not going to crusade for the rights of others. If there was a simple way to avoid confluct we would follow that route. Secondly, we needed to be the best women that we could be – more feminine and more conscious of the rights of all women, than the general body of female students.

Alison had the advantage of being small and slight, whereas I wasn’t. But I guess that I soon discovered that I had a face that worked as a woman – that is to say I was going to be quite beautiful in a striking kind of way with my fair hair and blue eyes that looked even more blue with eyeliner around them.

Rather than go with a slow transition gradually changing clothing choices and slowly picking up feminine affectations, I suggested to Alison that we go all out and get it done. There might have been something of the coach’s approach in this, but Alison agreed.

We went to get hair extensions and facials plus makeup. My mother made the reservations but it was not until I got back that that both of my parents finally realized that I was serious about all of this. I looked surprising good, but that was not going to cut it. Both Alison and I needed to learn and learn fast to not look totally stupid the following Monday.

Obviously, my parents had reservations about what I was doing, but they both understood the kind of person that I was and they admired me for it. Still, there was enough resistance that I decided that it was better not to discuss the hormones. I just felt that I needed to follow what Alison was doing, so I arranged to have the same shots that she got, albeit from a different source. They would take months to show their effect but for Alison and me the challenge to “pass as female” required immediate changes to our behavior.

I felt that I might struggle in this, given that I accepted that Alison had always lived with a feminine soul while I was just adopting one, but the fact is that it was easier for both of us having somebody to observe and correct. We soon learned that what the advisers had said was true – don’t overdo it. It is far more subtle than you think.

What we were also advised about was hostility. It was just that I was ready for this, and I was ready to use my status and popularity to defend Alison.

“I cannot blame guys for lashing out,” said Alison. “They don’t understand.”

“No,” I told her. “Boys fear us because we show them that they are only eight inches away from being female. That is why I am here to show them that anybody could be like you, and maybe they are lucky … or maybe we are the lucky ones.”

We both got our fair share of the stares, sometimes some anonymous abuse as well, whispered in a crowd. More often it was indecent suggestions, or intrusive and stupid questions.

“That is what it is like for us,” she said. But we were in this together. Alison was grateful for the support. I was glad to be there for her.

But we were not alone. Over time some of the girls at school included us in their activities as “newly minted girls”. It helped that Alison had a flair for dress design, and she is a whizz on the sewing machine. She made some things for herself and helped me with clothes because I was bigger than most of the girls. We started to get more adventurous with our clothes and dresses and skirts became our choice. I suppose that Alison felt that more feminine garments were her way of breaking free of her masculine past, and I was right there beside her, doing the same.

But it seemed to us that we had a bigger disadvantage with hair and makeup. The girls at school had grown up with this stuff, but it was new to us. Slowly they started treating us as two more of them, and including us in their activities. Alison and I were invited to the homes of other girls where they did things like curling or braiding our extended hair, and doing makeup “looks” for a variety on occasions. And there were fashion shows that included some of Alison’s special outfits. It was at last making it into the team after all that effort, or a special club that is very selective.

When you are with the girls then it becomes even harder for the boys to pick you out for abuse. My position as Alison’s champion, was that I was always ready to respond to anything that was directed at either of us, but it very seldom came to that. Guys knew what I was doing because of who I was. I was storing my experiences away and it might come back to hurt them later. We were part of an even wider group, but still my presence added something. I was there for all women, because I now was one.

I had always been proud of myself as being a person who could make sacrifices to help others. My sacrifice in giving up my masculine gender, even if only temporarily, was a huge sacrifice to make, especially in our state where masculinity is such a scared thing. Somehow that made me even more proud, but to be accepted as a woman among other woman seemed like the biggest achievement of my life.

Yes, I suppose that when this all started I just believed that Alison would reach a point where she could go about her life without my help. A champion is there to fight battles on behalf of another but not to live their life.

But I learned that there are two problems with that. Firstly, it is not just the transition that is the challenge – in reality, the lot of transwomen is to encounter the issues that concerned me, right through their whole lives. The start has special challenges but no protector can be there forever. The same applies to all women to a lesser extent.

The other thing that I did not expect was the effect that the transition had on me. I spent some time thinking about how much of this might be the drugs that I was taking – drugs that neutralized the male hormones and substituted female ones. Do they affect the brain as well? I could see that I was losing muscle mass on my arms and legs, but instead of being concerned I was pleased. Even the soft mounds that appeared on my chest I enjoyed cupping in my hands and then delicately enveloping them in my padded bras.

I loved my hair too. I could not stop playing with it and washing it then brushing it until it shone. The idea of cutting it off was starting to terrify me. All of this should have felt wrong, but it didn’t.

I found that I had fallen into the feminine role with such ease that I wondered whether I might have had some kind of transgender tendencies all along, even though I could not recall ever feeling that way in the past. I had always relished the male role, but now the female one seemed to be drawing me in as if by some strong but invisible force.

I suppose what really pushed me over the edge was when Kevin McKinley asked me to go on a date. I had played football with Kevin, and he was quite a bit bigger than me. Now suddenly he saw me as female, and he was attracted to me.

All my girlfriends said that I should date him, and I did not want to discuss with them anything of my sexual orientation that might prevent me. The truth of that was that even that was now in doubt. I liked the way that Kevin looked at me. I started to imagine what it might be like to be held my him and to feel his strong, hard hairy body against my soft and smooth one.

I said yes, on the condition that he find another guy from the team to double date alongside Alison. That would see the two transgirls at school going out with two guys from the football team – the ultimate acceptance of the fact that we had made it.

We had a great night, but Kevin’s friend did not hit it off with Alison for reasons we should all understand, but Kevin remains as keen on me as ever. I was his date at the graduation prom and in what has become a local tradition, that lead to sex that night and settled the question of sexual orientation forever.

Alison had her own similar experience and now faces the future as a confident woman in a stable relationship with a man.

Kevin has a football scholarship and wants me to come with him to his new college. It really does mean that I need to make a decision, but somehow, I don’t think it will be a difficult one. He is my champion now, and my role is to help him to be the best that he can be.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2024

Author’s Note:
I wrote a short vignette based on a captioned image exploring this idea of a teenager helping somebody through teen transition, so when Big Closet posed a Christmas Challenge for a story requiring “the selfless act of a main character helping out someone, somewhere within a story” I thought that this story could be more fully explored. The image from Courtney’s original caption is included, as this is my vision of the hero/heroine. In reviewing the posting of my vignette riffing off this Courtney said – “Feel free to do more. This was one of my fav caps since it's a different scenario.”

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