In the words of one of the greatest poets of the 21st century: I’ve become so numb.
In the forty minutes I have spent at this college party with my back against the wall I have not received any of the promised boons, be that social interaction, networking with peers, or having a good time. All I got was a headache from how loud it was, and dysphoria from being perceived.
I needed to come to not be a complete hermit. If you want to exist on the periphery of people’s vision, you need to be there enough to leave a burn on their retinas. A college kid that spends all their time locked away in their dorm room dissociating stands out much more than one you can see from time to time. It’s because rumors can spread much more easily if people don’t know you’re just some girl. In an ideal situation people don’t care about you at all, more often than not people make up some wild things about you if they can’t be convinced you’re perfectly boring. I’m achieving that at least.
When I first entered Tau Eta Epsilon’s Sorority House I had trouble connecting the pristine image of it that’s on the school website with the scene before me. Not a single inch of the marble floor or of the numerous carpets was visible through the masses of people. The haze of tobacco and cannabis smoke clung to the ceiling, making the chandelier give off the impression of a lighthouse in fog. The serene, constructed atmosphere of the space was broken up by a swarm of youths. I could almost picture the ghost of the old owner, with a neatly kept mustache and some very tiny glasses, looking across the hall and screeching “Charles! The poors and the slaves got in! Remove them at once!”
His apparition didn’t manifest, which was good news for anyone trying to get laid. I’d have appreciated the supernatural distraction myself, embroiled into the hidden world as I already am with my experience of witchcraft. And not only that, it would have afforded me an opportunity to book it before I got noticed by someone I was aware of was here, and without having someone I knew at the party to watch my back I could be in deep shit.
There’s a major difference between knowing someone and being aware of them. The person I was aware of the moment I noticed him was one Richard Bought, dubbed DickButt after the meme image in private by those he bullied. If I had known he got a sports scholarship to this school specifically, I would have gone elsewhere. He had first become aware of me nine months ago, at the start of the Spring semester at his high school, the last one I went to, and the one I stayed the longest at. That allowed him to smell the queer on me, if not identify it. Phobes don’t really care about the distinction between a tranny and a faggot, they both fall into the category of failed man to them, the distinction is how far. How far you’ve fallen, and how much they’ll beat you up if they get the chance. If it’ll be because they think you’re coming onto them as a gay dude, or if they feel you tricked them because they thought you were hot when you’re a trans woman. I’m closeted, so it wouldn’t be the latter, the category I actually fall into.
And know what? For the first half hour I had spent at the party, nobody had approached me or talked to me. I managed to go largely unnoticed. I just stood around, with an empty cup in my hand so that I could fake drinking from it without actually hurting my liver, taking up space against the wall near one of the many fancy decorated windows. And I’m talking carved window sills here. What’d they call the style that was in vogue when the Americas were colonized? Baroque? If the dorm building was kept in such good condition for long enough it could be downright older than the US.
So that’s how I spent my first half hour at the part. But then I got noticed. When you’re an outsider, you develop a sixth sense forif and how people are looking at you, if and how they’re judging you. And currently, it was going off hard. For whatever reason, the Tau Eta Epsilon girls had their eye on me, checking me out, thinking themselves slick in their subtle looks from the corners of their eyes and whispers to each other.
They really weren’t.
There were three of them. Three THE Sorority girls judging me. Maybe they figured out I had invited myself into their little hangout. Maybe they sensed my hidden femininity and were discussing how to deal with the disgusting thing that was in their presence, that thought it could play at being a woman, no less play at being a human. I really did not expect what followed when they were done deciding if they’d set up bots to dogpile me off of social media or if they’d have one of their boyfriends beat me up. I got approached by a stick-thin, five-foot-three blonde girl, a college freshman like myself as far as I could tell, with a request.
The reason I’m feeling so numb right now is simple: I’m substituting for the lead male role in the play “Heterosexual Sex.” The actual lead must have skipped town, and the only reason I was made to substitute was because I had to rehearse with him, learning all his lines in the process against my will.
The only thing that had me agree was desperation. Not for getting fucked, mind you, I feel too disconnected from this shell to want to fuck or be fucked in it. It was desperation for materials. A personal item from a girl to perform a specific scrying ritual. And this was the most ethical way to get them without outing myself. So I took her up on the offer, and performed adequately.
That is, with the enthusiasm of the tree in Christmas plays. And I died a little every second of it. Just in and out, in and out, grunt at appropriate moments, listen for her reactions. I think of pastrami on rye, and chuckle to myself silently as I “finish,” faking it and half certain she’s faking it too. There was only one moment during the transaction when I broke character, leaving her with a hickey on one tit.
We both stare at the ceiling afterwards. “Well, what now? How do I prove to them I’ve done this?” she asks, and I put my plan into motion.
“Now,” I begin, holding up her discarded underwear, “now I claim these as a ‘trophy’, if you will, and corroborate with you that we did the deed, and it won’t be a lie. If that doesn’t work, show them the hickey. Why do you need to prove anything to them?” I get up and get cleaned up just enough for it to still be visible that I had intercourse.
“That’s, uhm, that’s nothing you really have to care about.” She answers. I bite back any desire to push the questioning further. I prepare a question I should have asked much earlier
“By the way, what’s your name? So I know it’s you when you come to pick them up.” Is it rude to ask it now? Maybe, but neither of us did this because we were into it. It might have been more enjoyable if we both got to be the girl. It definitely would have been for me.
She squeaks out “Liz. And you?”
I’d love to tell her. I’m not really satisfied our short connection is built on lies. I can feel a kindred spirit in her. So I’d like to be vulnerable around her, to be honest with her, to make up for the poor showing I did, because she deserves a better fuck than me faking it. She deserves better friends, for one thing. But I don’t know how she’d react to the fact she fucked a closeted trans girl. “I go by my last name, Kouzelna.” And am forever thankful that my family got the feminine form of it when we immigrated in the 1930s. Plus for the joke of it meaning magical, considering my intentions with the trophy.
“Maybe I’ll see you around? Even, even after I, uhm, I pick those up?” There’s a twinkle of hope in her eyes. She’s baring her soul to me, and I hide mine.
“Sure, just come by Cliffside House for them. See you around.” I lie to her, and with my clothes off the floor and on me, I leave the room.
The moment I leave, I am stopped by an individual of indeterminate gender and incredible attractiveness. I didn’t expect this house to get turned into a gay bar, but with them here everyone’s into them and that makes everyone gay. Their hair is almost pearlescent, changing color based on how the light hits it. I catch a pronoun pin on her denim vest and her hand in the air. “Come on, dude, don’t leave me hanging.” I hide my wince at being called dude and my shock at her Gaelic accent. I can’t for the life of me tell if she’s Scottish, Irish, or hell maybe even Welsh! But I still high five her. “I figured you wouldn’t have anyone to high five you after laying down pipe.” Jesus, did she have to say it that way? “One look told me you didn’t have a single bitch, bro or nonbinary hoe to look out for you.”
“Neat, you could scam people by pretending to be a medium.” I try to dodge around her, but she boxes me in against the wall.
“Now hold on just a sec, dude, lemme get a look at you.” Her gaze is intense. There’s something in her eyes that I barely notice, if only due to my familiarity with someone else who possesses the same quality. Her body has been affected by magic. I don’t know what kind, but I won’t risk revealing that I know. I can’t gather what she’s looking for on me, whether it's the same thing I noticed on her or something different. She’s not hostile though, just curious. After a while, she smirks. “Alright bro, leg it.” She lets me pass. I start making my way outside, snaking around the other guests. In short order I’m breathing fresh campus air and looking up at the stars outside. Read: I can still smell the weed and alcohol from the house, and the light pollution means the sky is as blank as I wish my mind to be. Nevertheless, I enjoy the atmosphere of mid-October.
For all of two seconds before the sorority girls walk up to me. “Hey, so, did you and Liz--” I interrupt her by pulling Liz’s underwear from my jeans pocket. They do not react with joy or elation at their friend getting laid. “That doesn’t really prove shit, do you have actual proof?”
“Do I look like an asshole that’d record amateur porn? Why do you even care?” I want to just keep going, but they’ve got me feeling confrontational, if only because I can tell they desperately want to call me a slur to my face but can’t quite justify it.
“That’s none of your business.” The lead one crosses her arms.
“I figure it became my business when I fucked her!” I throw my arms in the air, but they don’t budge, just give me that same staredown again. I sigh. “I left her a hickey on her tit, happy? Just check with her.”
I leave them, continuing on my walk home, barely catching one of them saying “If she has it we’ll need another plan,” as the distance between us grows. I stop and turn around to look at the Tau Eta Epsilon dorm before it’s out of view. A construction of superiority to make the White House blush. With pillars and arches galore. I can picture it in the starring role of a backdrop in an Embrace Tradition picture. If things had gone differently for me growing up, if my consciousness was in a body that didn’t betray it with its development, I could have very well ended as a member of that sorority.
At least I tell myself that as I pass the buzzing streetlights, making my way down the street. The buzz fills the air with an almost ominous atmosphere. It is at times like these that I am thankful for my height and my permanent residence in Narnia. I see the one faulty street light flickering in and out and breathe a sigh of relief as I approach the dorms. Well, it’s a bit of a stretch to call them dorms exactly. It’s an apartment complex with 1 bedroom 1 living room+kitchen 1 bathroom apartments intended for students and priced accordingly that fakes being a dorm to get money from the college. One of the nice things about it is the view of the coastline. It almost makes up for it looking like one of the Panelak complexes my great uncle lived in before his passing two years ago. Just a block of concrete, windows at regular intervals, a door in the middle. I’m pretty sure places like these are considered Council Housing in the UK.
That isn’t to say that it’s all sunshine and rainbows. As it is a dorm, technically, there is an RA that gives me the stink eye as I walk in. “I hope at least you’re sober, I fully expect the third floor kids will have an afterparty if they make it back tonight.”
“I’m drier than Mrs. Shapiro’s pussy, chief, scout’s honor!” With a quick salute I walk into the elevator and wave goodbye as the doors close.
Am buying it, sold on opening line + ghost gf?
Thank you! I hope you enjoy it.
@Katie-the-Angel-Witch I did, beautiful message and wonderful story, thank you for alerting me to its existence with this story release!
“I’m drier than Mrs. Shapiro’s pu**y, chief, scout’s honor!”
LOL I was not expecting that
Interesting opening! Excited to see where it goes, might well buy it! I've never really interacted with the US fraternity system given that I, you know, don't live in the country, but I'm deeply sorry for the poor protag having to deal with people being complete freaks at her. Thanks for posting! <3