The couple lay in bed, Sylvia resting her head with eyes closed on Dakota’s chest as Dakota ran her fingers through Sylvia’s now unleashed hair. Sylvia in her boxers and a-shirt and Dakota in panties and a t-shirt said nothing as they simply enjoyed being with each other. Neither wanted the moment to end, but knew it had to eventually. Sylvia struck first.

“Hey, babe?”

“What’s on your mind, hon?” Dakota asked back, never once stopping the steady movement of her hands through the hair laying on her chest.

“How would you feel if I, maybe, possibly, cut my hair?” Sylvia looked up as she finished, Dakota having stopped her fingers and cocked her head to look at Sylvia’s face.

“Do you mean like buzz it all or…?” Sylvia burst out laughing at the suggestion, shaking her head no as she laughed.

“Oh, lord, no, I’d look like a damn skinhead! I don't think Rabbi Freed would much like it if I walked into the synagogue like that!” Her laughter proved contagious as they both burst out laughing at the idea, taking a few minutes to fully calm down before Sylvia could continue. “No, but, seriously. I was thinking maybe like shoulder length, maybe a bit shorter.”

“So, a bob?”

“No, not a bob! That’d be… just no, not a bob. Just like, I don’t know, something like Starbuck maybe? But curlier obviously, cause of how my hair is, you know.”

Dakota nodded as she thought over what Sylvia had said. “I could do that for you.” 

Sylvia sat up at that, propping herself up with her hand as she looked away from Dakota. “You don’t have to do that for me! I was just trying to get your opinion, not force you to give me a free trim!”

Dakota sat up and gave Sylvia a kiss on the cheek, drawing her attention back to her. “Honey, I cut hair for a living. I’m perfectly happy to give you a quick cut for free, especially with how much this has to have been bothering you to get you to bring it up.”

“I mean, bothering is such an awful strong word.”

Dakota shot Sylvia a glare, clearly not buying her excuse. “Uh-huh.” She stood up and stretched, a loud crack coming from her back just before she turned around to once again face the bed. “Look, you just get the folding chair out of the closet and I’ll take care of the rest. Back in just a second.”

Dakota was out the bedroom door before Sylvia could utter a single word in protest. She sighed and got off the bed, slowly opening the closet as she yawned. Pushing the shirts in front of her aside, she grabbed the small steel folding chair that the couple kept for reaching the top shelf of the pantry. It was cold to the touch, the cold digging into Sylvia’s fingers as she unfolded it in the middle of the moderately sized bedroom. She sat down to wait for Dakota to return, her a-shirt keeping the cold of the back of the chair at bay. Her shins had no such luck, the boxers she wore serving to only protect her thighs as they sat on the metal seat. 

Dakota walked in holding a large brown towel, a brush, her hair shears, and Sylvia’s curl cream. She shot Sylvia a quick smile before she got ready to work. Moving the small trash can from beside the bed to sit behind the chair, she put the towel over Sylvia’s shoulders and looked down at her. “You ready?”

Sylvia couldn’t bring herself to look up and stared straight ahead as she spoke. “You really don’t have to do this if you don’t wanna. I don’t want you to do this because you think you have to or something.”

Dakota sighed and shook her head at her girlfriend's constant fear of being a burden. “Darling, I want to do this for you. It’s going to make you happy and I want to see you happy. Look, if you can’t bring yourself to believe that, just think of this as my thank you for having double jointed fingers.” 

Sylvia’s face turned a bright red as Dakota started brushing the knots out of her hair in preparation of the actual cutting. After a minute, Sylvia had found her voice again. “Yo-you don’t think it’s weird, do you?”

“Think what’s weird?”

“This. You know, me wanting my hair cut short.”

“Why would I think it’s weird? Lots of people have short hair.”

“Not lots of trans women.”

“So? You’re not the entirety of trans women, you can do what you like.”

“I don’t know, I just feel like I’m hurting the community by not wanting long hair.”

Dakota’s brushing stuttered at that, continuing as she spoke. “How could you possibly be hurting the community by styling your own hair how you like it?”

“I mean, you know how the story goes. Hell, it’s your own story - OW!”

“Sorry, some of these knots are pretty big. Keep going please.”

“You’re fine, no need to apologize. Where was I? Oh yeah, I mean every single trans woman I’ve ever seen has long hair and loves it. Damn near everyone talks about how they hated getting haircuts as a kid and how happy they were to finally reclaim their hair by growing it out. I never really minded getting a haircut, but I also can barely remember anything before sophomore year of high school so maybe that doesn’t mean much. I just feel like I’m letting down the trans community by not loving my hair long.”

“Alright, I’m going to start cutting now. Please, try not to move your head too much.”

“Will do.”

Dakota gathered up a small bunch of hair and started to cut, the trashcan catching most of the falling strands. “That didn’t mean stop talking. You know I do my best work when I’m talking to my client.”

“I mean, I don’t know what else there is to say really. Well, there’s also the fact that I just kinda thought that long hair would separate him from me. I mean, what’s the point of even asking other people to see me as a woman if I don’t even put in an effort? I have to have long hair and train my voice and wear dresses and panties and all those other feminine clothes or else I might as well detransition and go back to living as miserable old him.”

“Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this but, you’re currently wearing boxers that I know for a fact are older than the space force. I think if you were a panty type of person you would have thrown those out by now.”

“They’re comfortable!” Sylvia exclaimed as she went to turn her head to glare at Dakota. Dakota quickly forced her head back into place with a firm push.

“I said, don’t move!”

“Sorry, but somebody had the bright idea to insult my boxers!”

“Well, I just had another bright idea too, so what do you mean that you ‘have to voice train’? Honey, I love your voice, but I’ve never once heard you train it.”

“I mean, you try voice training. Shit’s hard.”

Dakota cleared her throat before speaking in a far deeper voice. “Gee, I didn’t know that!” She coughed and stuck her tongue out as if she had tasted a barf flavored jelly bean before continuing. “Ulck, I can’t believe I used to sound like that. But see, this is what I mean Sylvia. You haven’t trained a bit and have no problem speaking when your dyspraxia isn’t acting up.”

“Well, I mean, I had to go through all those years of speech therapy where they tried to give me that northern accent. I had to purposefully reclaim my natural accent to get my own voice back. I-I just don’t want to lose what I had to work so hard to get back.”

“It’s perfectly fine to like your voice, honey.”

“It’s not though. I mean next to wanting breasts, voice dysphoria has got to be the most common dysphoria out there. It just doesn’t make sense for me to not have even a touch of it and actually be trans.”

Dakota sighed as she switched positions to begin putting the finishing touches on Sylvia’s hair. “You do realize that there is no one trans experience that you have to adhere to, right?”

“It’s just a number’s thing, babe. I have a male voice and, statistically, I should feel dysphoric as all hell over it.”

“Look, what even makes a voice male or female?”

“Do you want an actual answer from my textbook or do you mean like figuratively?”

Dakota let out yet another sigh as she set her hair shears down and began to use the curl cream in Sylvia’s newly shortened hair. “I meant figuratively. God, this is what I get for falling in love with a speech major. Look, you,” she said as she grabbed Sylvia’s head and gave it a gentle shake, “are not a man. Therefore, you do not have a man’s voice and do not need to feel dysphoric over it. There, I solved your problem.”

“I mean, that’s not how resonance and pitch works though.”

“Hush, hush, and go look in the bathroom mirror, you’re done.”

Sylvia nodded and stood up slowly, simultaneously excited and afraid to see what she looked like after her first haircut in almost three years. She walked through the slim hallway into the bathroom and positioned herself in front of the mirror without turning on the light. Holding her breath, she turned on the light and gasped at what she saw. Her hair was just above her shoulders, lightly curled to frame her face and give a hint of familiarity to her previous longer hairdo. She wiped her eyes to force away the happy tears that were threatening to spill out, the sheer force of the euphoria she was feeling palpable in every part of her expression.

Dakota leaned against the bathroom door, going unnoticed by Sylvia who was watching her hair move in the mirror as it simultaneously tickled her neck. Smiling from seeing Sylvia so happy, Dakota finally commented on Sylvia’s new look. “See? I told you, you’re handsome.”

Sylvia turned her head to look at Dakota, wearing a smile that made Dakota’s look like a frown in comparison. “I-I think I might be able to see it now, just a little bit.”