“Good morning my lovely-dovelies, I hope you’ve all had some wonderful holidays.” I sat with my brand new mic and headset setup specifically for my first stream of the new year. It took an uncomfortable amount of working with my computer to finish preparing things before my next scheduled stream, but I had managed to get everything set up with half an hour to spare. I used a tiny bit of that extra time to set up my new keyboard to alternate between the rainbow and trans colors, because of course trans rights.

My most loyal followers were already online, most notably the increasingly adorable Luna_Evans13. She had been a close friend both pre and post her coming out as trans, and I was more than happy to provide her with a warm environment to be herself in. Well, her and a good number of my other wonderful viewers. I seemed to have cultivated a reputation as a safe place for trans people to congregate, and it was a reputation I was happy to have. 

Speaking of Luna, I heard a familiar ping go off on my Discord, and found a short message from her:

 

LunaMoona: Hey! glad to see youre back! you sent a tweet about some fight with an uncle, you okay? 

 

Oh shoot, I did tweet about that. Well, more like rant. My uncle was a bit of an ‘old school conservative’, and had been getting more and more open about his more extreme views. My family, myself included, had for years done the normal thing southern white families did and just silently judged or agreed with his views. This year, though, I wasn’t quite able to hold my tongue. He started going off on a rant about how ‘trains’ and other LGBT+ people were ruining America, and that soon our next president would give the all clear to start ‘cleanin’ up the place’.

Now, he didn't know it but his comments were targeting me, a bi guy, as well as everyone else. He might not have known about my occasional attempts at dating men (they unfortunately never worked out), but I was still one of the ‘enemies of the state’, as he so eloquently put it. 

So this time I decided I’d speak out. I called him a variety of words too big for his brain, but he understood homophobe and spent the rest of the night drunkenly calling me a variety of anti gay slurs. I had, more than once, hoped some family members would intervene, but they all silently blamed me for rocking the boat to begin with.

I ended up ranting on Twitter about my uncle and family as a whole, but otherwise had been radio silent for the holidays. My parents hated my streaming habits almost as much as they hated my long hair, so when I was away from my college dorm for the winter I didn’t stream. They tolerated the hair simply because I was an adult and unwilling to do more than simply trim it. Thankfully I had a lock on my room door, I still had nightmares of my mom cutting my hair in my sleep like she did when I was a kid. 

I didn’t exactly know how to adequately respond to Luna’s question. I was fine, more than happy to return to my dorm. I was lucky enough to have a quiet dormmate who just respected my space like I respected his. His girlfriend was a little overbearing, but at least she was friendly. 

 

Chrisalis: Oh yeah! Family’s been silent all month but that’s fine. Haven’t seen RtR yet but his girlfriend has been out and about. 

 

RtR was short for Ronnie the Roommate, as he was dubbed by chat. His real name was Ronald, but he said he hated that name and went by Ronnie around everyone. Sometimes I felt the same way, but my name was too boring to get a good nickname out of.

 

LunaMoona: Okay good ^_^ i was afraid your parents flipped out again

 

Chrisalis: Nah, nothing like that. 

 

I focused my attention back to my stream as my audience grew to its usual size of a few dozen people. I was surprised at the quick growth of my streams, within just half a year I had gone from basically playing games and talking to myself to having a small, loving community. I was nowhere near a popular streamer, but I was happy to just be a nice place for some people to spend their time.

I set up some calming background music as I prepared the game I was playing, the hit classic Mass Effect 3. The twentieth anniversary of the game’s release was just around the corner, and I was so excited to finish the series. It was all building up to what must have been an amazing ending. It was such a shame that no one talked about it anymore.

I checked my chat as the game’s intro screen popped up, and found that Luna was talking to XDarkwolfX, a regular user known for being ignorant and kind of rude. 

 

XDarkwolfX: Yeah, I’m sorry for all the lashing out, I guess it was just a subject I never wanted to approach. 

 

Luna_Evans13: Youre fine! i think we all had those moments. nobody here will judge you for that

 

Luna_Evans13: And if they try Ill eat them! ^_^

 

I didn’t need to see more. This was a fairly common event on my streams. Trolls or curious individuals from a variety of sites would pop in now and again, especially after parts my streams were linked in the egg_irl subreddit a few times. Usually they’d be an annoyance or confused for a bit, but over time they’d have some gender revelation and come out. Darkwolf was the fifth.

As soon as Mass Effect finished starting up I opened my game save. Before too long Kara Shepard appeared on the Normandy’s flight deck, and I had to retrace my steps to figure out what I had been doing. Going over a month without streaming meant a month without most games, as I quickly learned that gaming just wasn’t as fun without others around.

After getting my bearings I started getting into my normal, upbeat stream personality as I both focused on the game and my chat. Darkwolf had apparently changed her profile name to BrookeingandEntering, which was a cute, if wordy, name. Otherwise it was business as usual. One of the guys was celebrating getting his first binder and Luna was helping Brooke set up pronoun info on the Discord server. That reminded me to set up pronouns for my account at some point, but eh. I could get to it later, not that being misgendered was that much of a bother. Sometimes it felt kind of refreshing.

It was half the reason I played women characters, after all. That, and it just felt more immersive. I was a guy in real life, there was no need to play power fantasies as one. I was glad I didn’t say any of my internal thoughts aloud, whenever I did some user would post an egg emoji until Luna shushed them. I wasn’t an egg, I was comfortable in my boring male sex, thank ya much. 

I continued the stream for my allotted two hour gaming period before saying my goodbyes. Luna called me shortly after I shut everything down, her excitable voice all the brightness I needed to get me through my studies. 

“So! How did you like getting back in the swing of things?” Luna asked as I set up my books and journals. I was reluctantly studying for the upcoming semester, but I was a notoriously bad test taker and needed all the help I could get. My statistics professor had even opened up all of the homework of the semester early for us, and sent the syllabus ahead of time. I was jumping at the chance to get all of the major work out of the way with a week before I had any class to do. 

“It’s been fun! I didn’t realize how much I missed the community. Plus watching newbies hatch has grown into something to look forward to. I’m glad Brooke(?) was able to find herself. Do you know if she has a good family?” I was rambling a bit, but I always did that with Luna. I had a crush on her since before she came out, and that didn’t exactly change when she did. She was aware of my feelings, but unfortunately didn’t swing my way. 

“She, uh, has an uncle who she’s going to try moving in with. She’s only fifteen, and her parents are the old school conservative types. They apparently stopped speaking to her uncle when he came out as gay.” I already felt for the poor girl. I knew the feeling, I had no intention of ever coming out to my parents. I was basically stuck exclusively dating women until I graduated. “But! He apparently already added her on Discord, so everything should work out.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Thank goodness she had someone to go to. It took a lot of hard work to break yourself of toxic beliefs, doubly so if you had to do it alone. Without her uncle she might have repressed who she was out of fear of being caught and hurt for being herself, but maybe with him she had a chance to get the medical help she needed. Thank God for the New Equal Rights act, I couldn’t imagine a world where her parents had full jurisdiction over her regardless of what was medically necessary for her well being.

Our conversation moved on to less important topics, and eventually became little more than a few comments every few minutes as I got more into my studies and she invested herself further in watching the live action remake of Frozen. By the time her movie finished I was more than ready to pack it in for the night. Statistics was hard, but I’d gotten myself through two assignments already. With all the time I had I could probably finish more than two-thirds of the homework before school even started. 

Luna let out an adorable yawn as I stretched my back in my chair, nearly causing me to fall out of it entirely. I quickly recovered, thankful for push to talk keeping her from hearing the sound of my reckless flailing. “I think I’m gonna go to bed, Riss. Oh yeah! Go check on Ronnie at some point. I need more Ronnie stories in my life.” Of course she wanted me to check on Ronnie, the nerd. If I didn’t know better I’d have thought she formed a crush on him through my stories, but seeing as he was a guy I had several doubts about that.

Speaking of Ronnie, it was probably not the worst idea to check on him, I hadn’t heard from him or his girlfriend all day. Normally one of them would have asked me for permission to eat my snacks at some point in the day. I always said yes, but they asked every time anyway. It was nice, respectful, and appreciated. I got really lucky with Ronnie as a dormmate, we just clicked so well. I was worried he had some terrible secret with how often he hid out in his room with his girlfriend, but wasn’t that normal for a lot of college guys? 

I said my goodbyes to Luna and set out to actually check on Ronnie before he or I headed to bed. It was only 8pm, but he was known for having radical sleeping habits. Plus the sun was down, and these dorm beds were surprisingly comfy. I had fallen asleep on them unexpectedly more than once. 

Our living room was empty, save for the still packed box containing Ronnie’s gaming consoles. I hoped he brought his Switch. It was a little old but I preferred Smash Bros Ultimate over the newer two games. I missed playing it, and my brothers were rarely home to give me a proper challenge. 

I knocked on Ronnie’s door after hesitating near the console box for a few too many moments. As soon as I did I heard two feminine voices whispering something, but could only pick out the expletives. Wait, why did I hear two women speaking at all? Did Ronnie have another friend over I didn’t hear come in?

“We’ll be just a minute!” Ronnie’s girlfriend, whose name I vaguely remembered being Aubrey, yelled through the door. Oh man, were they not decent? I was starting to feel bad, I shouldn’t have just barged in on their private time like that. God knows there wouldn’t be time for that during school with Ronnie’s habit of taking 21 credit hours a semester.

“I can come back later, I just wanted to check on y’all. We hadn’t talked since last semester, and I wanted to make sure you were both doing alright.” I felt awkward as I said it, and it felt too little, too late, but I had to make the offer. Maybe they could still have some time alone to cuddle or something once I was done bothering them.

“No, no, it’s fine. We just. Fuck, what? Are you sure?” Aubrey was cut off in the middle of her response by either Ronnie or the second girl with them, and in a second the door swung partially open to reveal Aubrey’s familiar face. Her hair was much shorter than it had been last semester, barely reaching her shoulders now, and it was dyed a nice blue color. I liked it, it seemed to fit her a bit better than her usual blonde. 

Before I could get a look in the rest of the room Aubrey glared at me and barely spoke above a whisper. “I better not hear you being shitty about what you’re about to see, understood? Sh- Eri - They’re trusting you with this, so I expect your best behavior. I know where you live.” I slowly nodded as she spoke, understanding dawning on me. Aubrey was still as protective of Ronnie, or whatever name they wanted to go by, as ever. 

I tried to act casual as I walked into ‘Ronnie’s’ spotless bedroom and saw a vaguely familiar girl sitting on ‘Ronnie’s’ bed. She was cute, with her brown hair held back in a bun and a new pair of glasses sitting on her face. The pajamas she was wearing were undoubtedly ‘Ronnie’s’, but they looked just a little too big for her. Then again, clothes just big enough to be baggy was ‘Ronnie’s’ style, so that wasn’t exactly new.

“So.” I awkwardly began, flustered at the sight of my now much cuter roommate, “Can I have your name so I can stop mentally deadnaming you? Or is it still that name?” Fucking hell, could I be more weird? The surprised looks on both of their faces told me that definitely didn’t expect this, but how couldn’t they? Didn’t they know my best friend was trans?

“Oh! I didn’t know. You’re super casual about this. Um. My name is Erica, if you could please call me that.” Luckily it seemed my incredible awkwardness must have been overshadowed by their surprise at how aware of an ally I was. I could have sworn I saw Aubrey look impressed in the corner of my vision, but that look was replaced by her usual stoicism too quickly to know for sure.

“Got it, Erica. You still okay with having a guy sharing a dorm with you? We might have locks on our doors, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” Had to be sure. I was forty-five percent sure the university had a tendency to place trans students with cis counterparts of their presenting gender, and it was pretty obvious Erica was not going to be presenting as masculine ever again. I was starting to get a little envious of how pretty she was.

Aubrey cut in, and by her tone I immediately knew I wouldn’t like the answer. “Not allowed, we checked. Since we’re at a private university they get to be a little more shitty about their rules related to trans people, and here they require confirmation of sexual reassignment surgery.” Aubrey’s tone was mocking as she talked about the university’s policy, and I was in full agreement. How could they just ignore anyone who couldn’t or didn’t want to get SRS? 

I knew from curious research that even with modern technology you were out for at least a month if you had the more basic surgical options, and much longer if you wanted to have a full reproductive system replacement. How many people had up to three or four months to spare on recovery and adjustment? If you weren’t in a state that provided universal basic income you were forced to make sure you either had someone willing to take you in for months or you had savings to last several months.

It was incredibly awful of the university for doing this, but I knew Erica didn’t have a choice but to deal with it. Her scholarship paid for everything, and this was an incredibly well renowned school. For most low income families it was the best opportunity possible to move up in the world. “I’m so sorry, Erica. You deserve better than this.” I finally said after spending too long in my own head.

“It’s fine. I, uh,  just wish they didn’t consider this a men only floor. I’m kind of forced to stay out of the closet or hide in boymode.” Her tone as she mentioned going back to pretending to be a boy implied that the university could try forcing her to do that over her cold, dead hands. Mine and presumably Aubrey’s too, of course. “Thankfully the new RA is a rad ally, and he’s making sure no one targets me or anything like that.”

“Good. If anyone does you let me know, I’ll fight ‘em.” I made a fisticuffs motion with my hands, before all three of us laughed out loud at the thought. I was scrawny, considerably smaller and thinner than Aubrey or Erica. I wondered often if I had some sort of testosterone deficiency, especially since I had almost no body or facial hair, and my Adam’s apple was almost nonexistent, but I never bothered to get that checked. It wasn’t high on the list of priorities, and it really didn’t matter to me if a few old people saw my long hair and small frame and assumed girl.

“Oh good, I’ve got two bi disasters lining up to protect me. My guardian angels, you two are.” Erica poked fun at us through her laughter, causing us to laugh more. I loved her new laugh, it sounded so much sweeter and more genuine. Her voice as a whole sounded so much more lively than it used to, plus it was just nicer to listen to. Oh no, was I falling for her, too? 

Nope, nope nope nope. Her girlfriend was right next to her, and she was probably a lesbian besides. Why did I keep forming crushes on lesbians, anyway? One even once said ‘maybe later’ after I confessed to her, and that response had bothered me for months. Not that a girl needed to outright reject me for me to understand that she needed space, that one’s specific answer to my confession was just a little off putting. 

I forced away prospective crushes as quickly as possible with a subject change, as quick as I could. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, how long did you know? If that’s too personal you don’t need to answer, of course.” I felt a little guilty at the idea of deadnaming her for her entire previous semester, and had a feeling I’d been doing exactly that. 

“Oh, not too long. Aubrey made me dress up as a girl one day a few months ago and it just kind of… clicked. I actually tried rejecting myself because I never had much dysphoria, but as soon as the idea was there I just started slowly breaking. I actually started going to a body repair clinic on the weekends in the middle of last semester.” My shoulders slumped as I realized how long I’d been hurting her. God, I was so blind and stupid. Rationally I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t exactly not feel like shit for being partially responsible for her feeling so awful. 

“Hey, Chris, are you okay?” Erica looked at me with a concerned expression on her face and I couldn’t avoid her gaze. Here I was again, being selfish and making her worry about me when I was the one who had hurt her. In her voice was hesitation before she spoke again, “You can… You can be a girl too, you know. If you want.” 

What?

What in the hell caused that misunderstanding? I just felt empathetic guilt over the dysphoria I caused her. I didn’t want to… Be…

All I had to do was speak up and clear things up, just tell her I was just feeling some sympathy dysphoria and guilt over what I did, and then leave before I made things even more awkward.

That was all.

Yup.

So why was I standing completely still, and what was that wet sensation on my face? Wait, were those tears? Why was I crying? 

I didn’t say anything else to those two, I couldn’t. Before they could say anything else I threw out a quiet “Sorry for bothering you.” and nearly sprinted into my room. 

Nothing was making sense, why couldn’t I just explain myself? Why did her simple sentence, a quick offer or promise or whatever, sound so fucking enticing? Why did I feel so envious of her and Luna and so many other girls who got to be themselves? Why me? Why couldn’t this have been someone else’s burden to bear?

Every emotion and memory that felt relevant hit me in relentless waves, and I had no idea what to do with the swarm of information throwing itself at me. Useless, wasteful, painful memories I had no intention of thinking up hit me with full force, and none of them pulled their punches. 

It didn’t take very long for the years and years of puzzle pieces to put themselves together. Within minutes I went from a hopeless dense idiot who refused to really inspect her, yes, her own thoughts and hopes to a sobbing mess alone on a bed. 

Why couldn’t I just have been born a normal girl? Why me? Why did I have to be so stupid and lose 18 years of my life to my own self imposed closet?

Where could I even go from here?