Chapter 4: An Outing

 

Sophia, Mark, and John were all uncharacteristically free from their jobs before the sun fully came down, so of course, it was time to hit whatever burger place first showed up in their GPS suggestions. Through the holy power of the algorithm, it picked the Golden Arches, a term nobody but fucking boomers uses anymore. Did they ever even use it for real, or was it all just marketing? 

Well, while they were free from work, Mark didn't actually have 'work'. He had a podcast that he doesn't tell anyone the name of - although nobody ever asks, either. He's still somehow with his highschool sweetheart of half a decade, Sandy, and found himself in his 20s with no responsibilities, obligations, or (real) money, and saw it as an opportunity. He's living his best life, watching his bitcoin stocks hourly on his phone, juggling a dozen different "projects".

Sophia could never be ambitious and impulsive like Mark. 

"McDonald's is dogshit. It's just where you go when everything else is closed. It's plebeian gruel," John said from his tower on high.

"No way. No way. It's good shit. Eating a double cheeseburger and nuggets at 3am hits different from anything fucking else. You have to look beyond the taste. Beyond. You can't get that experience anywhere else with some overpriced 20 fucking dollar Five Guys combo. You can't get small shit like this anywhere else." 

Sophia was barely listening, as usual, and was mostly focused on herself, making sure her outfit suitably hid her tiny breasts. Every time she put a foot forward, she would feel her chest bounce with such intensity she almost wanted to scream. Only working could distract her from her body's changes - being with friends just made everything feel more intense.

Her outfit when 'hanging out' was a little different than her work clothes, and offered more security than usual due to her not only being around Mark and John, but potentially threatening Outsiders as well:

1. Sports bra - with padding removed, of course. 
2. Tank top - one size small, to give some extra flattening power. 
3. T-Shirt - with graphic stylings, to confuse any visible contours.
4. Hoodie - extra large, for more roominess and tent-space.
5. Jacket - jean, with pockets on the breasts, for the optical illusion camouflage.

That's right. It’s motherfucking boymoding time. 

Even after some months now, she still felt intensely exposed every time she put on her bra. Sophia felt so ashamed of her body she could barely even look at her own naked body, even in the shower. The very nature of transitioning her body into something more biologically female felt both serene and obscene to her. Her own breasts were the first real naked breast tissue she’s ever seen in her waking life, after all. Does she really deserve to see them? Does she deserve to set her eyes upon a naked woman? Isn’t this kind of cheating? A sort of skipping of the queue? Shouldn’t she ask someone permission first, to be allowed to view the female form in such an intimate way? Isn’t this abuse? Is she an abuser? Is she taking advantage of woman by embodying them herself? Is she raping the spirit of womanhood? So she tries to avert her eyes from her naked body, as much as she's able to.

What if she had pursued girls like normal boys did in school? What if she had gotten a girlfriend, and had sex with her? Would she have been cured of this sickness? Would she have been able to become a normal boy, instead of becoming a girlfriend herself? Maybe she could date Brooke and somehow keep her HRT a secret? She could always wear a binder and double hoodies in bed, right? 

Despite all her interior rants about how fake social dysphoria is, she still liked her longer hair. She'd never had it this long in all her life, as far as she can remember. Even though lots of women have shorter hair, it still made her feel newer, fresher, like she was slowly being reborn, as a more feminine person. Does this make her more of a woman than those short-haired girls, then? Is she just trying to overcompensate for her huge forehead? Is she simply trying to claim back something she's never had to have growing up?

As for her pills - well, her pills made her happy. Whenever she took her pills, she felt a little buzz. That’s all she needed sometimes, to help her get through the mornings and evenings. They almost felt like magic, just like in her stories and captions. It made her feel so, so very happy. Happier than she ever thought possible, since she never realized the emotion could ever reach such heights. It's as if she never actually felt real happiness before until she started HRT. Every time she's said she was "happy" growing up, which she thought was the same "happy" that everyone else was feeling, was actually a completely different, lesser, stifled emotion, compared to what she was feeling now. 

Some trans girls say hormones are boring, and they are. They're just tiny little pills that tinker like chiclets when you shake the little green bottle. But the fact that taking hormones was just another boring routine for Sophia is exactly what made them even more special for her. That she was able to come so far, and do that seemed so insurmountable before, now just another morning ritual for her. If she could do something as fucking insane as get HRT, what else could she do? She'd finally defied what was so forbidden to her, and it was the sole thing in her life right now that gave her any semblance of confidence. For a mid-twenties trans girl, even simple things like going on a date or having their first relationship were exciting firsts that normal people took for granted. Some trans women never even date for the first time until their 30s. 

As long as she was taking her pills and changing her body, she was happy. Even if she had to hide herself forever, even if she was afraid of being abandoned for expressing herself too femininely. Being on HRT is all she cares about. Even if never socially transitioned, never made friends as a woman, never dressed in real women's clothes, never told people her female name, never came out to anybody, she still wouldn't go off HRT. That's what being trans is really about. It's about her body, not the dressing or decorations adoring her. She didn't care about those things at all. She didn't care one iota. Not one bit. She will be happy in a ratty hoodie for the rest of her life, even with her breasts growing inside them like a cocoon. 

Sophia will never detransition.

"Alright you fucks, what are ya gonna get? I'm doing Big Mac combo."

"Everything here is shit," John proudly declared.

"Okay, one Big Mac," The Waitress overheard.

"Uh, I'll take just a Junior Chicken. Two of them actually. With tomato. And extra mayo. For both." John said.

"And for you, miss?"

"Hm?" Hm!? MISS!?

"Uh, red hoody? Hello, what would you like?"

"Oh!" Ohhhh. She's talking to me! A miss!

The waitress had no idea just how grateful she was to her for that one, gracious, blessed four-letter word. 'Miss'. It's what every trans girl dreams of, and silently beg for, but can never openly declare to want unless they seek to make a mockery of themselves. You're never supposed to say what you want, or else you get revoked the privilege of an authentic response. 

This has happened at work multiple times, of course, but never in front of her friends. 

She felt a gust of wind rush over her face, as she was teetering off the edge of the cliff between Boy and Girl. She could feel a dozen eyes stare right through her, threatening to ruin her excitement, while also lighting a fire underneath her at the same time. She was fired the fuck up. 

Did Mark hear that? Did John? 

She buzzed and fluttered to her phone for no reason, butterflies in her tummy. Maybe this would be the key. This would finally resolve the aching anxiety tearing her up inside lately, scarring her soul in two. They say that once a stealth transwoman is outed as trans, everyone around her suddenly starts being able to tell the signs that they're "really a dude!" all along, as if they have magical hindsight vision. They start hyper-examining every bone contour with a microscope, saying, "It was obvious all along! I could always tell she was a MAN! Just look at those wrists and browbone! Once a man, always a man!". 

But with encounters like this, in full boymode, it can trigger the opposite effect. People would instead start to see her feminine features for the first time as contrasted by her still masculine presentation, first enlightened to them by a part-time struggling teenage McDonald's cashier. What's going through her friends minds right now? Something like, "Wow, hey, they kinda DO look like a girl, don't they..."? 

It was exciting. It was scary. It was something she'd daydreamed about. Being able to be feminine. Even just being recognized as androgynous, as something unique and special, was at least a worthy consolation prize. Being ambiguous, being able to toy with gender in other's eyes, being ‘queer’. That sense of power and novelty. Maybe she'd even inspire desire in others. Something she'd never, ever experienced before - being important or special at all. 

The sense of danger was there as well. Maybe rumors will spread. Maybe her friends will hate her for it. Maybe they'll all start to intimately examine her body and notice her budding breasts, her softer skin, all the new changes she's become so proud of. Maybe she'll be fought with and be forced to move out. Maybe there'll be drama as well, jealousy between their girlfriends over her new feminine allure, "Don't you dare steal away out mans!". Maybe something will happen in her life that forces her to finally make a fucking decision, any decision at all, about anything in her life. 

"C'mon, Nick, she's asking you what you want."

Mark came in like a sliver in her ear, and she could hear some chuckles enter from surround. Have they not told her the truth yet, of her overwhelming inherent maleness? Does she still get to be ignorantly thought of as A Girl by their good ignorant graces? Does she still get to exist as a girl in other people's minds, for a little while longer?

"Um, uh, a 6 piece - a 6 piece nugget combo, thank you! Sweet and sour sauce! For the sauce. Like always. Sweet and sour…" She'd never really been at this place before, but she couldn't contain her glee. Her voice had raised itself a few semitones already.

Was that the first time she was able to 'be' a girl, in real life? As recognized by someone else? While on estrogen? It's happened at work every so often, more and more often as the months go by, but never like this. Somehow, her own words stumbling out of her mouth felt like they were passing through a new filter, giving them new weight and conception. After all, you're not really a woman until society grants you the title of one from the great bureaucracy of worldly definitions and perceptions. 'Miss'. She fucking got it. And other people heard it, too - that gives an idea even more power and truth. Maybe it'll even become real for her, if enough people believe it. Maybe, someday, she’ll finally be able to believe it, too.

"Hey do you see that? What is that, a tranny? Transvestite? Bruhhhhh, ahahaha. I should take a pic. Maybe just an ugly girl though...oh don't be too mean...it looked so fucking weird man. It? yeah I mean what the fuck else is it?"

A group of young kids were sitting in one of the bigger stalls, clearly designated as Their Hangout Spot they probably hogged every week. She caught sight of some punk looking girl in the next booth over too, with even some dye in her hair - like something out of some gang movie. It was a little scary. Maybe this spot wasn't so great of a choice tonight. 

Only 9 months on HRT. She can't expect too much. She'd hoped her friends hadn't heard that. She didn't want to lose what desperate little magic she'd managed to capture.

She knew she had some level of androgynity. She knew she was in some strange exciting transient state that few ever are able to venture into, a rare dimension. Sophia knew she wasn’t feminine at all growing up, but she wasn’t all that masculine either, thankfully, she thinks. She was just the bare minimum amount of masculine it took to be classified as one by society, nothing more, nothing less. She was already a little used to exist in a state of the in-between, of nothing, of worthlessness, or no identity. Nobody ever really wanted to play with her, or go near her, because she was just that kind of freak. She doesn't even remember if she ever had a real friend or not growing up. If she was more masculine, then maybe the other boys would've been nicer to her, and she wouldn't be so afraid of them now. If she was more feminine, then the other girls would've wanted to be friends with her, and she wouldn't be so afraid of them now. She wasn’t androgynous - she was undifferentiated. She was, simply put, "Overwhelmingly Without". 

What people don't understand, she thought, is that genuine androgyny is actually quite unnerving to most. A bearded lady, or an adult masculine man with full breasts - people with both explicitly distinct male and female features, not someone with no strong features of either. Androgyny in most people's minds, however, was being the spitting image of an effeminate elven fae, a dubious magical intersex creature who lived in Mirkwood. Almost no living male's natural testosterone levels allow for them to ever be able to look anything like women without medical intervention -  medieval or otherwise - but many women can be capable of looking more unlike a female than male if they try, with a few decorative touches. When people think 'androgynous', they really mean 'slightly boyish female'. This is what makes male androgynity more enticing, more desirable, more beautiful, because it's virtually impossible outside of fiction due to the power of testosterone. The mythical 'trap' becomes the infertile fertility goddess ruling the chaser's brain and dick.

She knew this is all she could ever be to anybody. That's probably why Chad agreed to date with her. Embracing that identity was probably the only way she could secure a future free of loneliness for herself. To be the in-between. To be nowhere at all. To be without a home, without a family, without an identity, without a sex. She'd have to sacrifice herself to gain any kind of security or love. Nobody will ever know the real her, whatever that is. 

"Hey, red hoody, here's your gruel," John said from behind, surprising her. "Let's eat while walking home before it gets cold. This place is a dump, they just let any freak in here I guess."

If they heard 'red hoody', did they hear the cashier say...no, never mind...

Sophia walked home in silence, with John and Mark on either side of her, as became typical lately. While nibbling on her nugget gruel, she'd realized that trying to imagine a life past 30 as her current self was getting increasingly impossible as it inched ever closer, year by year. She was sure that HRT alone would help her - and while it definitely has, she didn't want to admit that she might've hit a wall. Is this what she’ll be doing forever? Is she truly happy like this? Does she truly not desire more? Does she even deserve more? Does someone like her deserve to want more? She wanted to tell herself more comforting lies and copes, but everything just reminded her of what her life was like right now - the excitement of being borderline passable but not quite there, the terror of being found out as a girl, the exhaustion of still being seen as a boy. Everything became grating, and the few drops of dopamine she was able to receive from accidental miss-gendering just made her all the more desperate for a change. Something has to change.

Sophia often felt like a floating brain in a vat. Her body was invisible to her senses, and underneath her thick boymoding clothes, the changes to her body that has sparked so much excitement in her in private, become muffled under their suffocating layers of polyester. She wanted to be seen, but couldn't bear to be looked at. She wanted to be known, but would rather die than to have anyone become aware of her. She wanted to be loved, but couldn't understand how anyone could feel that for her. Is she even capable of love herself?

Sophia didn't know how much more of this she could take. Something had to change, or she was going to fucking lose it. She needed someone to rescue her from this hell - no, this purgatory. That's what boymoding has become for her, even though it was supposed to be a saving grace, a cocoon of comfort for the anxious soul. She can't move backwards, she can't move forwards. She can't be a girl, she can't be a boy. She felt alive for the first time in her life, but still as dead as ever. Someone expose her. Someone take her. Someone save her.

Save me. Save me. Save me.

Suddenly she felt pulled to the right with a sudden strong yank, rattling the brain in her little cage from side to side.

"Uhwhha??""

"Junkie. Shh," whispered John to her ear.

A dude in ratty clothes was hunched over in the middle of the sidewalk, clearly administering a form of non-prescription drugs to some blood vessel in his waiting forearm.

"Ah...thanks," Sophia said. She shivered a bit. Wow. She felt scared, but safe now. John was really fucking strong.

After a little distance of keeping quiet, Mark started bantering, "Fuuuck, man. He was shooting up right in the street. He's fucking fearless! What a fucking city, man. You can find anyone here can't you."

"Well you know the neighborhood. It's the fag part of town," said John, referring to the fact this was the 'gay village' of the city - little more than 2 and a half shitty apartments on a single street.

"I dunno man. Maybe I should give him my fucking burger. Remember when they used to call it 'Golden Arches', man? El Oh El. Actually no, just my fries. Well some fries. Fuck they're all scattered in the bag now. Ah fuck it we're already too far away, he's too busy with his heroin anyways."

"The burger would probably be more unhealthy than the heroin, probably," Sophia joked. She heard John quickly exhale at her comment. Victory.

She only joked when she felt comfortable around certain people, and it took her a long time to build up trust. She likened herself to some kind of rescue dog, pitiful and anxious. She was able to talk with Mark and John unlike anyone else, and simply exist around them sometimes too without feeling like a ball of neuroticism, which she'd never actually experienced before. Even if she still has to hold back around them, doesn't everyone? It's still better than nothing, she thought. 

"Oh fuck bros one of the big Crypto Devs just tweeted this meme go look at this it's so funny wow o-m-g..." 

She laughed, even though she didn't understand a single thing about any of that stuff. Mark and John existed in their own worlds, but she still cared about them anyways. And despite not knowing the 'real her', maybe others can still care about her, too. Maybe this is all she really needs. Maybe this is all anyone really gets in life anyways, and she should be grateful for any scraps of gruel at all. She might not ever be seen as a girl, or even as a woman, by them, but maybe that's for the best. Maybe that's all someone like her could, or even should, ask for.

As they walked across the bridge back to their apartment, the shimmering still moon reflected on the river running beneath, swimming silent against its current, frozen in time.

 

---

 

"We've talked about this before. You have to stop playing with your sister's toys."

"Okay. Why?"

"They're not for you. You have your own toys." 

"Okay. I was just playing...I'll clean them up!"

"I'm going to stand here until you've put them all away and go back to your room."

"Okay."

Why?

While Sophia was a frightfully obedient young girl, she considered herself smarter than the average kid, and the reason she was given wasn't quite a good enough reason for her to fully accept her new orders. She was allowed to play with her brother's toys all the time, so why not her sister's? They were colorful and something new to play with. Polly Pockets with little gadgets hidden inside. Weird horses with long frizzy hair. Some dolls with weird velcro around them. She got a bit bored with her dinosaurs sometimes, after all. She'd even play with them together with her sister a lot too, so what could be wrong about it? 

Sophia simply couldn't understand. So she'd go to play with them again in a day or two. And the same thing would happen again, and again, and again. Her towering mother's figure by the doorframe growing more foreboding and terrifying each time. 

And so she grew quieter, and quieter, and quieter, learning which wooden floorboards creaked the most, how to open the closet door without making a sound - even when she knew nobody was home anyways. All so nobody could ever find out her horrible new secret. 

Forbidden. Forbidden. Forbidden. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. 

And somehow, this made reaching the treasure all the more exciting.

"Nick, how many times do I have to tell you. You're not allowed to play with her toys anymore. Period. Do you understand me? XXXXXX, you tell your brother."

She was so careful this time, but she was still found out, somehow. Her sister was there too this time, tucked underneath her arms.

"You can't play with them anymore, Nicky. They're my toys. Okay?" she said, looking down at the ground.

Sophia finally understood one thing  - that she never wanted to feel this ever again.