Darren stepped up to the hostess. “I have a seven p.m. reservation under Hamilton.”

She looked down at her clipboard. “Party of three?”

“Two,” he replied. “We had a last minute cancellation.”

Aubrey, bless you and curse you. After grabbing a dark gray wrap as a last minute concession to modesty, I descended the stairs to find Darren already waiting. “Wow,” he had said, swallowing in quite a satisfactory manner. “You look amazing.”

“Thanks, you too!” I replied brightly, as if my heart had not just done a backflip. “That green really looks great on you.”

“Thanks.” His eyes took me in, a quick flip down and back up to my eyes, and then he looked around. “Did you see Aubrey?”

“Earlier this afternoon. I’m sure she’ll be down shortly.”

And a few minutes later this proved to be true, in a sense. She was wearing a dirty, paint-splattered smock. “Hey, sorry I lost track of time. I was just working on something that wanted to finish. Can you two go on without me?”

I stared at her, and she looked back at me innocently, the sly little vixen. “You are coming out later, though, aren’t you?”

“Oh, definitely!” she replied, and my stomach unclenched a notch or two.

Okay, yes, when Darren first asked me, I had been a little disappointed that Aubrey had been asked too. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want her there. She was a friend and a safety net, and I couldn’t imagine the evening without her. It just would have been nice to be the only one he asked, that was all. With a wry smile, I realized that this was exactly the sort of thinking that confused men and made them accuse women of being irrational. But now that I was in the situation myself, it made perfect sense.

And that’s how I found myself, ten minutes later, getting into the front seat of Darren’s car. I slid a hand down from my butt to the bottom of the skirt, pressing it against my legs so I wouldn’t sit on it crooked. My knees I kept pressed tightly together, legs crossed at the ankles. It was amazing how much more room there was in the passenger seat of a car at my current height.

The ride was pretty quiet at first, just a few banalities exchanged on either side. Pretty soon, though Darren put on some music. The first few tracks I did not recognize, but about ten minutes into the ride, the song “Home” by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes came on.

It was a song I knew well, and I was used to belting out both parts whenever it came on during my commute. I started out humming along, but when Darren began singing Alex Ebert’s part, I restricted myself to that of Jade Castrinos. It occurred to me that I had never sung as a woman before, and after a bit of adjustment to the higher base pitch, I found I could carry a tune with gusto. By the time we got to the bridge, with the spoken word part, I was completely swept up, and we finished it off laughing.

“You sing pretty well,” he said when we had finished, turning down the volume to permit conversation. “Where you in chorus or choir or anything?”

“Band nerd,” I replied. “Flute, believe it or not. That was mainly in middle school, though. I was never much one for marching band.” It was true. I had gone to an all boys school in junior high, and someone had to play the flute. I actually enjoyed the instrument, but a combination of the rigors of marching and the ridicule of my classmates put that to an end, by the time I reached a co-ed high school.

“Still remember how to play?”

“Are you trying to get me up on stage?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. We’re always looking for new performers. And anyway, this isn’t like a real concert or anything. Just a bunch of friends making music for each other. You know, while drinking.”

“I think I’ll just spectate this time. I don’t even know where my flute is anymore.” Except, with a moment’s thought, I did. It was buried in the back of my coat closet, back on Long Island. I remembered bumping the case with my vacuum the last time I did the carpets. Must have been four months back. Like most of the creative parts of my life, the flute was buried by the necessities of providing for myself.

“Didn’t you move everything up to the house yet?”

I shook my head. “I figured the first thing would be to get myself up here, scope out the place, see what it made sense to bring. I’ve still got an apartment back on Long Island.” A flash of inspiration came to me, and I went with it. “At some point, I’ll need to go back to get everything packed up, sold off, or put into storage. I might even do that this coming week.”

“Well, let me know if you need a hand. I’d be happy to help with the heavy stuff.”

The conversation petered out shortly thereafter, and Darren once more increased the volume of the music. But it was a more companionable silence, one that neither of us felt the need to fill. By the time we got to the restaurant, I was feeling a bit more kindly disposed to Aubrey for her matchmaking.

When we got to the table, there was a bit of awkward interplay as Darren tried to pull my chair out for me. I hadn't expected it, and we wound up playing a few seconds of tug of war. I let him win, and he tucked the chair up under me as I sat.

If nothing else, it was a nice reminder of the role I would be playing at dinner. Darren ordered a half carafe of the house red, after ascertaining that yes, I did like red wine. The server poured mine first, and Darren waited until I had lifted my glass before lifting his own.

“You must have forgotten my performance on Saturday night,” I remarked, covering my embarrassment at the memory. “I think I was trying to drink the cellars dry of red wine.”

He dismissed my words with a wave. “Blame Gerald. He was the one filing your glass, if you remember right. He did the same thing to me when I first got here. You did better than I did. I don’t think I stirred out of bed the next day.”

“What about Aubrey? Did he get her too?”

He shook his head. “Underage. But she will rue the day she turns twenty-one, I guarantee it.”

That led to some college drinking stories of our own. As before, I found it remarkably easy to make my life experience fit my current gender. Aside from the handful of women I had briefly dated, what had I ever done that was distinctly masculine? Was that why I was so comfortable in my temporary role?

Something to consider, but not at that moment. Darren was telling a story about his brother, and I was able to pick up the threads and laugh at the right moments. “What about you, any family?”

I shook my head. “Not anymore. I’m an only child, and so was my mom. My dad had a sister, but we were never close.”

His tone was gentle. “There was a lot of past tense in that sentence,” he said.

I shrugged. “It’s not something I bring up a lot. It’s hard to tell the story without sounding like I’m trolling for sympathy.” I took a deep breath, deep enough to get out the first half. “Mom was hanging up wallpaper. She slipped off the ladder and broke her leg. Dad called an ambulance, and we all rode to the hospital. I was in front, wearing a seatbelt. Mom was on a stretcher with the paramedic, and Dad was in back with her.”

I took the second breath. “We were crossing an intersection when someone sideswiped us. They plowed into the back half of the ambulance. My parents, the paramedic, and the driver of the other vehicle died on impact. I was fine, and so was the driver of the ambulance.”

“Oh god. How old were you?”

“Seventeen.” I reached out a hand to touch his, knowing from experience that it was the person hearing the story that needed the comforting. “It was nine years ago now. It was terrible, and I miss them, but I moved on with my life, and I like to think I would be making them proud.”

There was the lie. I’d been doing so well with Darren, keeping myself to the truth. But would my parents have been proud of me? I started out well, at least. Life insurance put me through college, an art program that helped me work through my grief while improving my skills. But the money dried up, even after I sold the house and the cars, and I had to work to live. So the dream was deferred. Perhaps they would have found some sort of nobility in that.

But now, disguising myself as a woman so I could take someone else’s place at a prestigious program? I was stealing from her, stealing from the other fellows, and lying to everyone, myself included, in order to do it. I know I wasn’t proud of me, and I couldn’t imagine that they would be either.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you. Like I said, it was a long time ago. I was nearly eighteen at that point, so I never really went through the foster system. I finished out that year in high school, and then went to college, and I’ve just been on my own.” How many times had I had this conversation? Enough to count the breaths, to know every beats. Dozens, if not hundreds

Though none lately. No one had gotten to know me well enough to even ask about my family in a long time. But I knew that it was up to me to shift to another subject. “Sorry, I always hate bringing the evening down like that.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I mean, you can talk about it whenever you need.”

I realized that my hand was still resting on his, and I gave it a quick squeeze before pulling away. “At least the server didn’t come interrupt while I was in the middle of it. Neither of us were in the mood to hear about the specials.”

And the server, bless him, arrived no more than thirty seconds later to ask if we had any questions about the menu, and to tell us the specials. I think he was insulted when we laughed, but I ordered the eggplant parm special, which I hope mollified him.

After we ordered, the conversation returned to less emotionally-fraught subjects. Art was always safe, and we were deep in the middle of a discussion about cubism when the entrees arrived. Conversation lulled as we ate, which gave me a chance to take stock of the evening so far.

My feet had already started to hurt a little, after only a brief walk from the car into the restaurant. I was a bit chilly, thanks to the short skirt, and I was grateful for the extra warmth of the wrap, which I continued to wear at the table. The dress was tight, enough so that it provided a constant reminder that I was wearing it with the way it tugged at unusual places. And yet, I felt half naked, especially thanks to the deep neckline. The push-up bra was less comfortable than the ones I usually wore, and the straps dug into my shoulders and back. I had an itch too, right under my left boob, and no way to scratch it. My face felt caked with makeup too, and I kept having to brush my hair back to make sure I didn’t eat it.

And yet, all of those discomforts felt so minor, in the moment. Darren was interested in me and interesting to me, which made for a pleasant dinner companion. He looked me in the eyes when I was talking to him, and it took nothing more than a glance down to show how much incentive I was giving him to look elsewhere. And sure, he did sneak a peek every now and then, but I think I would have been insulted if he hadn’t. If nothing else, he never made me feel objectified or less than equal.

I surveyed the restaurant, for the first time noticing other women as having an experience similar to my own. Yes, there were several women here on dates. Two of them had cleavage even more extreme than mine, and one kept leaning forward so that her top sort of gaped open.

Other couples appeared to be more used to each other. The clothing may have been more modest, but it looked no more comfortable than mine. I had thought of my own toiletries as a kind of creative endeavor, and it was, but here was a restaurant full of women who had done the same, who did it every day. Young women trying out new techniques, old women who had settled into comfortable patterns, and every age in between. I had only just begun learning the craft myself, but I felt a kinship with them.

And there were the men, mostly oblivious to all of it. Oh, I’m sure they noticed the effects, but that’s not the same. When the public sees a finished painting, they see what the art represents, if it is representative, or the colors and patterns if it is abstract. The artist sees that as well, but also judges technique and skill, and slots that finished work into the great conversation of art that has been going on for thousands of years. My eyes were opened, and I wondered if I would ever go back to seeing a dolled-up woman as just the finished product ever again.

I ate more lightly than I might otherwise have wished, knowing that it would show up on a dress that was already tight. Darren likewise left part of his chicken behind, though in his case, he had a long night of playing and singing ahead of him. We both turned down dessert, albeit reluctantly. “Next time we come, we’ll make sure we can be as bloated and fat as we want afterwards,” he said. Next time. I gave him a sad smile in return.

I tried to pay for my half of the meal, but the offer was rejected out of hand. “I made a few sales this week. When you start making some sales, you can take your turn to pay for me. Deal?”

“Deal.” I was pleased, not just that he cared enough to pay for my food, but that he respected my work enough to think I could make sales at the same level he did.

Flanagan’s was just down the street. It was close enough that we could have walked, although with the cooling air and my impractical shoes, I was glad we drove. Aubrey was already there when we arrived, wearing a modest lavender top and black pants, not to mention a wristband identifying her as under twenty-one. “How was dinner?” she asked, once again all wide-eyed innocence.

“Good!” I replied, in unison with Darren. We shared a smiled, and when I turned back to Aubrey, she had arched a knowing eyebrow.

“What can I get you ladies to drink?” he asked.

Aubrey pointed glumly at her cola. “Still working on this, thanks.”

“I’ll have a Jameson, neat.”

I wondered what his reaction would be to an order of whiskey, and I was pleased that he took it in stride. “Do you prefer Jameson? Or would you rather be more adventurous?”

“I place myself entirely in your hands.”

He sketched a short bow and made his way to the bar. As soon as he was out of earshot, Aubrey leaned in. “Oh my God. He is totally crushing on you.”

“Shut up! Really? Shut up.”

She giggled. “Okay, I’m going to want to hear everything tomorrow, but they know him here, so we have like two minutes, tops. So how did it go?”

I managed to cram in quite a bit, from the singing in the car to the mealtime conversation, minus my parents. Now that the news had broken, as it were, I knew I had to tell Aubrey as well, but that could wait until tomorrow. We had just gotten to his thing about getting dessert “next time” when he returned, bearing two long wooden paddles, each bearing four shotglasses of amber liquid.

“I had Peter pour us a flight. That’s your Jameson on the end, as a baseline. This one is Green Spot. It’s a single pot, very woody. This one is a Knappogue, twelve year, they do it in bourbon barrels. The last one is the Midleton Very Rare. I think this one is twenty-two years old? Older than Aubrey, if nothing else.”

I picked up the Jameson on the end. “Sláinte,” I said, and we brought the glasses to our lips.

Left to my own devices, I have always tended to be an early riser. Once I’m awake, I stay that way, and when I get tired, I go to sleep. But I felt no impulse to retire as the clock advanced to ten, eleven, past midnight. I talked and I drank and I laughed and I danced — this last very badly, but the combination of the others meant I didn’t care quite so much.

Thanks to my excesses of the previous weekend, I was more aware of my limits, especially now that they were lower than I was accustomed to. Aubrey also looked out for me. She remained sober, of course, and made sure that I drank plenty of water in between new and exciting whiskeys.

I had come away with the impression that Darren was more or less the star attraction, so it surprised me that he did not go on until after two. My energy had started to flag by that point, but seeing him up on stage with his turtleneck and his guitar pumped life back into me. I recognized quite a few of the tunes he played. He sang as well, and supported other singers and instrumentalists by backing up their particular songs.

I felt bad that I was drinking while Aubrey abstained, but her happy-go-lucky attitude meant that she was perpetually two drinks in, all the time. And so we took to the floor ourselves, skipping arm in arm and generally acting like fools.

That was probably how I attracted attention to myself. On a trip to the bathroom — one of many, thanks to all that water — I felt a sudden pressure on my left breast. The hallways was crowded and I stood there for a moment, looking around in confusion. Aubrey suddenly appeared at my elbow. She hip checked the guy next to me, and hustled me off into the women’s room.

“What was that about?” I asked when we were behind closed doors.

“You didn’t feel that asshole grope you?”

“Was that what it was? I figured it was just an accident.”

She looked up at me, half in consternation and half in disbelief. “An elbow or something, sure. But people don’t just walk around with their hands like this.” She raised them straight out, fingers grasping. “He was going for your ass when I got there.”

“Oh.” I leaned against the row of sinks, thankfully in a dry spot. “Well, thanks.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. You probably won’t believe this, but that was the first time something like that had happened.” Suddenly, my outfit felt very, very exposed. What was I thinking, pushing up my tits and putting them on display? What did I think was going to happen? I expressed this sentiment to Aubrey. She immediately got right up in your face.

“I don’t care if you’re wearing a sock and nothing else, that does not give any of those fuckwads the right to touch you. You do not blame yourself, understand me?”

I blinked. She was legitimately angry, and my shock must have shown on my face, because she immediately threw her arms around me in a tight hug. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to yell at you, but you’ve been really, really lucky if you’ve never gotten felt up like that before.”

The implication in her words came through. “You have?”

“Oh, loads of times,” she said, voice dripping with scorn. “Some guys will go after anything they can get away with.”

“Damn.” This was a side of womanhood I had not considered before. The threat of sexual violence was something I knew existed, in a theoretical sense, but I had never applied that threat to myself. Suddenly, the women’s restroom felt like a haven, and the bar outside a minefield of harassment, groping, rape. My wrap was back behind the bar, where Peter the bartender had stowed it as a favor to Darren. I wanted it back very badly.

We stayed in there talking for about ten minutes. About that time, another group of girls overheard us, and mentioned that they had seen the guy, and that the bouncer had thrown him out. “Flanagan’s is actually really safe,” said one, in between reapplying her lipstick. “It’s pretty zero tolerance. You see guys like that thrown out all the time.”

That was a wretched condemnation of my gender, wasn’t it? That a “safe” place meant that it happened, and happened all the time, but that the establishment would put a stop to it when it inevitably did. Still, her words consoled me enough to shift out of the bathroom and back out to the main part of the bar. I retrieved my wrap and went off to the corner we had staked out earlier in the evening.

Darren came by shortly thereafter. “Hey, I was looking for you. Everything all right?”

I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him. Maybe it was because I had already been the victim in one story that night, and didn’t want to get another round of futile sympathy. Maybe it was because he was the one good part of the evening, and I did not want to taint it with the one bad part.

But I also know that I felt a little ashamed that it had happened. Despite Aubrey’s insistence, it felt like I had somehow brought the treatment on myself. For that reason, and no doubt several others, I just smiled up at him and said that I was fine.

I did feel safer with him at the table, though, and soon I had regained more animated spirits. His set had gone well, and we happily discussed the selection of music and other performers, most of which Darren knew very well from past events.

Aubrey hinted that it might not be a bad idea to start heading back to the house. The night was not over, and would not wrap up for several hours, but Darren had no objection to calling it earlier than usual. He had sobered up before his performance, except for a single pint of Guinness that he nursed throughout the set. Together we bid Peter and some of the others a good night and stepped out into the chilly night air.

Since Aubrey had driven herself, that left Darren and me alone in his car. The alcohol and exhaustion had started to catch up with me, and I found my head nodding only a few miles down the road. My metabolism was so run down that I started to shiver, especially since the wrap could only insulate half of me at a time. But Darren had a clean blanket in the back seat, and he retrieve it. I tucked it around my legs.

Soon, I was warm. The rocking motion of the car was soothing. The strong metal walls of the car were soothing, as was Darren’s steady presence. I let go my anxiety, and presently I slept.

The romantic end to the story would have him putting me to bed, but instead I woke up on my own as we pulled behind the house into our private parking. I blinked wearily and accepted his hand to help me out of the car. Aubrey was just arriving, and together the three of us trooped into the house.

Darren went off to the kitchen to get his regular post-ceilidh snack. He invited us, and I saw Aubrey give me a questioning look, as if to say, “go ahead if you want to,” but my brief nap had left my brain sticky. Plus, my feet hurt, and I was desperate to get my bra off. I told him none of this, of course; instead, I thanked Darren for dinner and the wonderful evening, and asked maybe we could do it again next week? His nod and smile made the stairs way easier to climb.

Aubrey walked me to my door, making me promise to drink a whole glass of water before I went to bed. I would have agreed to three, just to get some time to myself. I peeled the dress off, tossing it in the general direction of the closet. I popped off the bra next, and it got only a little tangled in my necklace before it too was discarded.

Dear God, that was heavenly. I had gotten used to the itching and pulling and general chafing throughout the evening, but the sudden release of those sensations was overwhelming. I scratched at itches without restraint, especially the underboob places that were damp with sweat. Ditching my panties felt nearly as good, though my nose wrinkled at the mixture of odors that were released, sweat and body odor and hot, musky vagina smells.

Despite my exhaustion, I paused to look at my form in the mirror, naked save for the necklace. In my half-asleep mindset, I felt an almost wordless sense of power, mixed with danger. The very thing which I had spent such care and labor to make beautiful, had also summoned ugliness. Could there be one without the other? Was the price worth the prize?

I rinsed off in the shower, though I did not get my hair wet. The hot water got rid of the clamminess but only increased my sleepiness. Remember my promise, I filled up a glass with water, downed it, peed one more time, and then plunged, still nude, between the covers.

There was no chance for me to reflect further on the developments of the day. One breath, two breaths, and then I slept.

I was walking, or perhaps gliding effortlessly, down a corridor. It was unfamiliar, but I knew where I was, knew it intimately. I knew that at the end of the hall was a door, and a staircase, and it would go up through a building where the thing I wanted was going to be.

I passed doors, which were closed but I knew what was behind them. Someone came out of a door, looked at me without speaking, and passed on, and I knew that I was not wearing anything. But it was not my nakedness that bothered me, because I had been naked before. I was male, and that meant I was exposed.

Panicked, I felt for the necklace, and there it was around my neck. As soon as I knew it was there, I felt the breasts that came with it, felt the hair tickling my back. That was better. That was more like it.

I came to the end of the hall all at once, or rather the hall I had been in became the room at the end. Darren was there, and I was dressed now, though I did not know in what. Suddenly, I decided that I wanted to kiss him, and as if I was directing his actions he approached and bent down, and I was kissing him. I couldn’t tell if it was me who was kissing him, or me, which me, man or woman or formless body, but I still kissed him, and I felt small and safe and good. But his arms got tight and I opened my eyes, or maybe I just created an awareness of what was around me. And it was Him, ugliness itself, his features void and unformed but I knew him.

I tried to go up the stairs, but the ceiling was so low and the gap to get to the next floor so narrow that I had to contort my body to fit. My head was through, my chest (female now), my hips, but then he had my ankle and was pulling and I had my arms on the sides and I pressed as hard as I could.

The dream opened up, the light of awareness pouring in and dissolving the world. I awoke in tears, light streaming through cracks in the shades and making dazzling patterns on the sheets.

I stopped the tears by force of will, because men don’t cry. I rose, threw on a robe, and began to pack.