Bull

Bull
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

People would say that you cannot ever meet two friend more different than me and PJ Leitch. But the fact is that we grew up in the country on neighboring farms, and a bike pathe beside the road between them. We had a hand in making that path, and also our special track down to the Lohanokie River in front and other up into the Campbell Mountains behind. We loved the outdoors in those days. Hell, I still do.

People have called me “Bull” as long as I can remember. Matthew “Bull” Taubman, but not many will know about the Matthew. I guess even when I was small I was charging into things, and coming from a cattle farm where a bull is a prized animal, it is not a bad name. And I grew into. I grew big and I grew strong.

You can’t say the same about my pal Patrick John Leitch. He was also small, but he was tough. We got into scrapes together and he saved my hide almost as many times as I saved his. We were a team, him and me. Anytime outside school, homework or family stuff we were together.

He was like a member of my family and I was like a member of his. He could turn up to my place and sit down to supper, and I could do the same as his, excepting his Ma would say the Leitchs had the worse because I ate enough for two.

But we used to go hiking together too, and camp out up the mountain or down by the river in one of the hutches that we had built from old packing cases and oil cans. We had four of those so we could pick and choose, and PJ liked to make them all comfortable inside – even homelike.

But this started to change for us in high school. I was playing football – offensive guard was where I could use my size and strength. I was mixing with the jocks. PJ was playing tennis but he was more mixing with the arty types. Then there were girls. PJ seemed to know all the girls and he was popular with them, but I was just looking at girls and dreaming, which would be the nicest thing you could call it.

I was not alone in this. Plenty of guys like me spend their time thinking about sex rather than doing it. I suppose I figured that it was something like sexual frustration that set me off and was set to ruin everything.

The football coach was talking about college and getting a football scholarship if I could only lift my grades. I am smart enough, but I needed help, and PJ was ready to give that. It seemed like old friends are the best friends, and I really felt that nothing had changed. He seemed to feel that way too.

Anyway, we did some study and he was up in my room and he was showing me something and I wasn’t thinking about that – I was thinking about sex. As there was PJ with that wild mass of blond hair and those delicate little hands working the pencil and I was getting an erection.

I told him that we needed to finish because I needed to take a dump and I hurried him out of there. I needed to go alright. I needed to jack off. I took a “Hustler” in there, but I did not even look at it. I closed my eyes and saw PJ in a bikini in my head. I felt about as dirty as a guy can feel.

I know what bulls do. Bulls fuck the female of the species. That is what they are supposed to do. That is all they are supposed to do. Bulls don’t dream of steers. If they dream at all, they dream of heifers. What the fuck was going on?

A few days later PJ suggested that we take some books down to the closer of the shacks by the river and go through some stuff – overnighting as we used to, with our sleeping bags side by side. I told him that I would think about it. I did. I could not get the thought out of my head – him and me, except he had a vagina and I was fucking him like blazes.

I knew that if I was going to put things back on track I would need to do something drastic. I knew that school and the family farm, and the mountains and the river – PJ as everywhere, and I needed to leave all of that. So I joined the Marine Corps.

I told my parents some story about realizing that my duty to my country meant more to me than football and college, but that was not it. I wanted to put my head in a new place with no temptation to perversion, and preferably cold showers every morning. Or I really don’t know what I thought, but I needed to get away.

I suppose that I have learned since that people running away make good soldiers. They are people who are thinkers - because they have problems in their heads show that they use them – but they really don’t care what might happen. I don’t mean suicidal – I mean ready to take chances. They can appear to be braver than they are.

Anyway, I turned out to be a good marine.

We were between wars I guess, but I did my share of stuff close to combat. I liked that. I was with the guys like never-ending football camp. The only sex was pictures stuck on the walls and your hand on your cock. Meals were large. I was busy and I liked it that way.

I was big and strong, liked by the other guys and smart enough to take charge. I was promoted right the way up to sergeant. I felt like I had found my place. And then I got a plush posting as some call it – I was put on the security detail at the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland. It was a reward for service.

It was really the first time that I had lived in a city. I was a country boy, and farm raised, and barracks and forward bases were like bunkhouses and football camps. The Corps had dropped me into a strange place, but I had learned about duty. I had to do my term at the embassy.

People tell me that Helsinki is really a quiet place. If you like sea fish, liquorice and buckthorn jam, you might love the place, but the only local thing I liked was the vodka, and that only for the effect. Because the real problem with Helsinki was that unlike the Middle East, or Central America, or bases in the Pacific, was that Helsinki was full of slender blonde girls with big blue eyes – girls that looked like PJ.

I am ashamed of what I did. I am so ashamed that I will not repeat the details. I was overcome by lust and vodka, which is a bad mix for so many reasons. The girl did not deserve to be treated that way. She just looked so much like PJ that I needed to be sure of what she had between her legs. It was a court martial offence.

If it had not been for the Ambassador I would have been in Leavenworth then dishonorably discharged, but the fact is that I had basically saved his life when I was on a protection detail for a hunting trip with other diplomats up near Kuopio. It was only because of him that things were settled with the victim and I was allowed to leave the Corps busted back to the ranks.

Even when I had been on leave I had found an excuse not to go back home, but now I had no excuse. Ma was aching to see me, and Pa said that there was work on the farm until I could find my place – or maybe the farm could be my place if I wanted it.

I just dreaded seeing PJ and having the feelings that I had spent so many years fighting … and failing.

I remember that it was a Friday when I got home. I arrived by Greyhound bus and Ma had driven the truck down to the town to pick me up. Somehow a mother’s hug seems to make you feel like a little boy again, even when I towered over her. It makes all your trouble evaporate and all you think about is getting home and eating her apple pie again.

“Your Pa says he was too busy to come to town,” said Ma. “But the fact is that he would have been so pleased to see you he would have got emotional, and you know he doesn’t like to do that in public.”

It reminded me of just how close I was to my family and what I had been missing. I was thinking how it could be so easy to stay here forever, were it not for the issue I had wrestled with since hight school.

“There is only one person who will be more pleased to see you than your Pa, and that would be PJ,” she said. It was like being stabbed in the guts. All my happiness just drained out of me like blood from an open wound.

“But you have to be prepared for a bit of shock,” Ma continued. “Things have changed with PJ more than you could imagine. PJ is now a woman. Yes, that’s right. You little pal PJ has had a sex change. You would not believe how she has turned out. She must be the prettiest girl in town. And she has won the hearts of all the doubters, even some of your old football pals who were ready to be mean. She is working at that nice coffee shop on main street, charming all the customers. She talks about you all the time.”

It was like I had been carrying a howitzer on my back and it had suddenly fallen off. She was a woman all along. Isn’t that what they say? A woman in the wrong body. I craved … no, I Ioved, the woman not the boy. There was nothing wrong with me. I had to see “her”.

I embraced my Pa. It seemed like I could live here now. It seemed like I could tell him that I was home to stay. But before I did, I needed to drive back and see PJ.

It was late and the coffee shop was closing up. People would be headed to the bars. The “Closed” sign was up but the door was unlocked. I opened the door and there she was.

Her hair was long, past her shoulders, and her face was made up lightly, but it was otherwise the face I recognized. It was PJ, but a girl now. What made that obvious was the two perfect breasts almost bursting out of the top she was wearing. She had changed out of her server’s dress and was wearing cut-off jeans revealing long smooth legs.

“Bull,” she said, more breathing my name than speaking it. “I almost gave up on you coming back to me.”

I knew what to do. I was never more sure of anything in my life. I just threw my arms around her and lifted her up so I could kiss her like no man has ever kissed a woman before. I am not big on talking, but no words were necessary. She can do the talking. I just love the sound of her voice.

“I have a picture of you in this locket,” she said, tugging at it. “You might think it a bit weird, but I have had it since middle school. I just couldn’t wear it until I had a cleavage for it to dangle into.”

It might have been weird then, but it was not now. It proved that she was mine, and I knew I was hers

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2025