The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2155 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“Will I have to go back there, Mummy?” she asked me as we got back into the car.

“Not till next week,” I said and the look on her face was priceless.

“I won’t will I?”

“No, sweetheart, you won’t, but until I know how you intend to present yourself, I can’t really make alternative plans for you, can I?”

“I don’t understand, Mummy.”

“I can’t send you to the convent unless I know you’re going to stay as a girl for the next year. Similarly, I can’t send you to a boy’s school for the same reason. So it looks like home learning.”

“But I dunno what I want to do, do I?”

“Hence the home schooling.”

“Are you gonna do it?”

“No, sweetheart, I have someone lined up for it.”

“What if I decide to go back to being a boy–will that be a problem?”

“No.”

She seemed to be looking out of the windscreen with a sense of not really being there. She was obviously working something out or revisiting something. “A penny for them.”

“What?” she said, “Sorry I was miles away.”

“Thinking about what?”

“I was remembering how it felt to play football.”

“Good or bad?”

“It was good–or it was then.”

“What’s changed?”

“I have, Mummy. I’m frightened.”

“Frightened? Of what?”

“Of not wanting to go back to being a boy again.”

“If that’s what you want to do that’s fine with me and I’m sure the same with the others.” I glanced at her, “You’ve licked all your lip gloss off.”

She fished about in her handbag, pulled down the sun visor opened the vanity mirror and wiped her lips over with the little applicator thing they give you in the tiny bottle. She rolled her lips together, spread a little more gloss stuff, rolled her lips again and presumably satisfied, she closed the mirror and pushed up the visor.

“You did that like an ordinary girl,” I commented and she blushed and looked out the side window. “So why are you frightened of not wanting to be a boy again?”

She continued looking out of the window for several minutes, “I don’t want to be like them.”

As good a reason as any I supposed but fallacious. “You don’t have to be like them.”

“They’re boys.”

“I had noticed, and I suspect there are five or six hundred besides them who haven’t chased you or made stupid remarks at you. Not all boys are bad you know, in the same way not all men are sex monsters.”

“I know.”

“So is that it?”

“Dunno–I also like to wear pretty clothes and makeup.”

“You could go to school as a boy and do that on evenings and weekends.”

“I don’t want to wear boy’s clothes, so it could be difficult.”

“It certainly wouldn’t make it any easier.”

She went back to staring out of the window.

“Do you want a girl’s body to go with the clothes?”

“Why, you got a spare one?”

“Ha ha, not. Look, Danni, I’m trying to help, so cut the wisecracks, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to develop a more girlish body with your own breasts and broader hips?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know anything, Mummy. Part of me wants to be a proper girl like Phoebe and Julie an’ part of me is scared.”

“Is this because of what Alice did?”

She stared out of the window shrugging her shoulders at my question, it was the only answer she gave me.

“I hope you’re not thinking of doing anything like that.”

“Why?”

“Because a lot of people who love you dearly will be most upset.”

“They’d get over it.”

“Why should they have to just so you can opt out because you don’t have the bottle to do something.”

“What you mean become a proper girl?”

“Or boy or both.”

“I can’t be both, can I?”

“You could to some extent, like a pre-op transsexual, or have implants to make your breasts bigger.”

“I heard they only last about ten years.”

“That would give you time to decide.”

“I don’t really like the idea of someone cutting me open.”

“Not even to give you instant breast growth?”

“What if I changed my mind?”

“Breast implants can be removed.”

“They’d have to cut me open again, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes.” I was trying to work him/her out and I couldn’t. Most transsexuals I knew had little fear of surgery if it was going to make them look better, even facial reconstructive stuff which I suspected hurt quite a lot. It’s usually men who are more scared of such things–was this a manifestation of his maleness surfacing, or was I being too analytical and was she just scared of surgery?

“I dunno, it sounds painful.”

“What about gender reassignment surgery?”

“Um–you mean doing a Pia?”

“No, that’s more like they used to make eunuchs in India, possibly still do, no proper surgery like I’ve had and Julie and Trish.”

“Dunno–I dunno what I want.”

“Except you want to wear what you like for the time being?”

“Yeah, that’s about it.” She stared through the side window again.

“Okay, if it’s what you want.”

“I’m sorry, Mummy, I know you’d like me to be a boy again.” I glanced at her and saw a tear drip off her nose.

I pulled over and hugged her. “Danielle, let’s get one thing straight for good and all, I don’t want you to be anything but happy and that includes a happiness with your body and how you see yourself.

“You don’t have to do things to please me or anyone else, but at the same time if you’re going to dress and act like a girl, I want you to do it properly; by that I mean not looking like a bag lady or a drag artist or combination of both.”

“Ugh, I don’t want to look like a bag lady–triple yuck.”

I felt like issuing a warning that for the moment he was quite capable of presenting as a young woman but once puberty really kicked in, it would get harder and harder and then he could begin to resemble a man in a dress. The problem then is who am I assisting–him or my own prejudices?

She wiped her eyes in a very feminine manner, dabbing just below the lash line to avoid smudging mascara–yet this was a boy, albeit an undecided one. When all this started I honestly thought it was just a fad, then began to wonder if we had a budding transvestite, which could still be the case, or some form of transsexual who doesn’t quite know it yet or has yet to come to terms with who or what they are.

Because I knew at age three, I wondered if I expected others to know. Sometimes they don’t.