Once again, time passed and soon I found myself graduating high school. I may not have been top of my class, not even close, but I at least made it through. As a graduation present, my parents got me my own laptop! Finally, I had unrestricted access to the internet. So what did I do? Well for one, I spent a lot more time in my bedroom. The signal was better and I could have some privacy. Even with that, I was unsure what to do at first.

Before long, I was starting college. My major was criminal justice studies. I’d always been fascinated with police and how the criminal justice system worked, and I’d always wanted to become a police officer one day. I wanted to help people. Having a degree would certainly give me a leg up on it, right? Sadly, I couldn’t really afford to go away to college. There was one in town that did teach my major at least, so I’d just commute there. It certainly helped that my best friend’s dad taught there sometimes.

I haven’t talked much about my friends, have I? While I never had many, I always tried to make quality ones to make up for it. In my senior year of high school, I met this one guy. His name was Jeremy, a big, heavyset dude who might be a bit intimidating at first glance. Once you talked to him though, you’d see he’s just a big ol’ nerd. He loved Pokemon, Star Wars, anime, all that fun stuff! He and I became fast friends and soon, I counted him as one of my best friends.

Other than him, there was my ex-girlfriend, Amanda. Somehow, I’d managed to score a cheerleader as a girlfriend way back in my freshman year! However, things just never really worked between us. I was shy and wasn’t great at showing affection, I never even kissed her. She had her own issues too, like being very bossy, not to mention jealous. Honestly, I think she was depressed too. Though all of this is beside the point. After we dated on and off for a while, we settled for just being friends. She was a regular around my place and it was nice having a female friend like that. 

However, neither Amanda nor Jeremy actually knew the truth about me. That in secret, I was just a freak. The urges to dress up never went away and I’m ashamed to admit that I nearly fell off the wagon a few times. Once I got the laptop though, things became a bit easier. I found online communities, people who enjoyed the same stuff I did. One anime forum in particular kept me occupied for quite some time.

This forum was connected to an anime streaming site I used at the time, and soon I found myself making friends. While we never met in person or even heard each other’s voices, it was still nice knowing these people cared. I even added a few of them on instant messaging services so we could talk one on one. Given that I’d always been a huge pro wrestling fan, my screen name was “HHHFan91”. I tended to use that, or some variation of it, a lot online, wherever I needed to make an account.

After a while of this, I found a website where I could express myself and possibly learn more about why I had these urges. I joined a popular art website, where people from many different backgrounds gathered. Now I couldn’t draw worth crap, but I could still browse what other people made. And I was surprised when I found a lot of art related to crossdressing! A lot was showing Pokemon characters, especially Ash Ketchum. The franchise was still near and dear to my heart, and I vividly remembered the episode where Team Rocket dressed him up as a girl. Looking back, I secretly wished it was me.

Along the way, I found out there were more episodes where Ash dressed up as a girl. I, of course, went back and watched them. A pleasant surprise for sure! Honestly, seeing all these pictures and stuff felt amazing. All these people loved seeing Ash as a girl, crossdressing, or things I never expected nor really enjoyed. Still, this brought a pleasant feeling like nothing before! Well, except wearing my sister’s clothes maybe. Finally, I had something that could help me keep my promise to Tara. I could be normal again! Maybe if I got this out of my system online, I could eventually stop completely! Wishful thinking…

For the next year or so, this pattern continued. During that time, I actually wrote a Pokemon fanfic, about some of the girls from Pokemon dressing up Ash in a pretty dress. Admittedly, it wasn’t very good. The plot was basically non-existent, no one really acted in character and my writing skills were just not up to the task. And yet, it was a hit! People really seemed to like it! I suspect it was less because of the writing, and more because Pokemon and crossdressing. Oh well, you take what you can get!

I also stumbled upon a transgender webcomic called Rain, which weirdly drew me in. I wasn’t even trans, but the story seemed interesting enough. The story of a teenage trans girl named Rain trying to make it through her last year of high school as her true self. I got in fairly early on this story and genuinely enjoyed it. One character in particular really stood out to me, His name was Rudy, a gay guy who took up crossdressing as a hobby! This was it, right? My explanation! Not that I was gay or anything, but that I just liked looking pretty sometimes like him. Maybe that wasn’t so bad, maybe I could be like him. It seemed like a simple enough answer.

Around this time though, my health started to decline. I had no idea why, but I’d often just feel absolutely sick and miserable for days at a time. My mom would bring me to the doctor, only for us to get told stuff like, “oh it’s likely just the flu.” Or, “there’s a bug going around, you’ll be fine”.

My family and I were getting frustrated but what else could we do? So I sucked it up, took any medicine they gave me, and kept moving with my life as best I could. This continued on and off for nearly a year, until one day it all came to a head. It was a lazy Sunday, I slept in until around noon. My parents were off with friends and Tara had moved out with Samantha a few months prior. So it was just me, not even any clothes to get dressed up in anymore, not that I wanted to. 

That day, I woke up with some discomfort in my gut. I thought nothing of it at first. I’d been stuffed up with gas like this before, no big deal. Yet, even a trip to the bathroom yielded no relief. That was weird. As the day went on, the discomfort turned to pain and it got worse and worse. I was freaking out at this point, what the hell was going on? I’d never been in so much pain before, not like this. What was I gonna do? I needed to get to the hospital, but no one was home. Finally, just as I was gonna call an ambulance for myself, my parents arrived home. I greeted them at the door with a single sentence, “I need to go to the hospital, now!”

With no hesitation, my dad helped me to the car and we took off for the hospital. The pain kept getting worse as we drove, leading to me telling him to stop multiple times on the way so I could puke. Luckily the hospital was only a few miles away. We pulled up and Dad rushed me into the ER. We explained what was going on and before long, I was ushered into a room. When the doctor asked me what my pain was on a scale of one to ten, I adamantly told them it was a ten. So, out came the battery of tests. I could barely hold down the contrast fluid they had me drink in order to do a CT scan. Before long, they had the test results. It was my appendix, it was swelling up like a volcano, ready to blow at any time!

Soon they had me prepping for surgery. I was frightened, what was gonna happen? Was I gonna be ok? Was I gonna die? I’d heard about this before, if your appendix bursts inside you, it spreads toxins throughout your body and can easily kill you! I wasn’t ready to die! Especially not from my own body turning against me! I used my phone to log into one of my instant messengers so I could talk to my friends and hopefully calm down. I didn’t have a smartphone, so this wasn’t quite as easy as it would be these days. This friend went by Pokeshipper09, we’d known each other a year or two by this point. He was a pretty cool guy from down south, though location didn’t matter much when you were online.

HHHFan91: “Hey, you there?”
Pokeshipper09: “Yea, I’m here. What’s up?”
HHHFan91: “Um, I’m in the hospital. I gotta get my appendix out.”
Pokeshipper09: “What??? Are you ok? Is there anything I can do?”
HHHFan91: “No, not really. I’m scared and they’re about to operate on me. They said I won’t feel it, that I’ll be asleep for the procedure, but what happens if it’s already too late? What if, you know…”
Pokeshipper09: “No, none of that! You’re gonna make it through this! I’m sorry, I wish I could be there to help you. Please let me know when you wake up. I’m here for you, I promise I’ll do whatever I can.”

HHHFan91: “Thanks, I really appreciate it. I hope I do wake up and I can tell you that I’m ok. I promise I’ll message you if I can. If I can’t, I’m sorry.”

With that, I got off. Soon, it was time. They brought me to the operating room just past midnight and put me under. I just had to hope I’d wake up. Luckily, I did. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in recovery. It was slow and I was pretty groggy, but my parents were there. The surgery was a success, they had gotten the appendix out just in time. It had actually burst while they were taking it out! Which, if there was ever a good time for it to happen, it would be while you have a surgeon already working on it. I would need to stay in the hospital for a while to recover, they seriously cut me open and it was painful, but otherwise I would eventually make a full recovery.

Once I was cleared, they moved me to a room. This would be where I would stay while recovering. They had me on some pretty hefty pain meds, but my mind was clear enough. Later that day, Tara came to visit. Mom and Dad had called her and told her everything. “Hey bro, how are you holding up?” She asked, before coming in for a hug.

“Oh, hey Tara. No hugs right now, please. I’m in a lot of pain,” I responded.

She stopped, “Sorry Mike. Anything I can do to help?”

“Yea, can you just hand me that Jell-O cup?” She nodded and handed it to me. “Thanks, I’m kinda hungry and they say I can’t have solid food for a few days.”

“Yea well, they’re doing you a favor at this point. Hospital food is gross!” We both had a good laugh over that, before I winced in pain. “Easy little bro, relax. Here, I brought you a goodie from home.” She went into her purse and pulled out my Nintendo DS and the charger for it. “I figured you could use some entertainment while you’re here. Can’t be easy to just lay in a hospital bed all day, right? And I was thinking, maybe we could play together? Like when we were kids, you know?”

I smiled. “Sure sis, sounds good to me! I could use the company.”

We spent the rest of the hospital’s visiting hours playing together. It was a really nice time. Honestly, I had missed this. Spending time, just the two of us. Though in the back of my mind, the promise I had made still lingered. I had still kept it to this day, I hadn’t worn hers or any other women’s clothes since I made it. God I missed it though, every day. Without realizing it, I had gone deep into thought about all of this. Tara noticed and looked at me. “Hey Mike, you alright? You kinda spaced out here.”

That snapped me back to reality. “Oh! Uh sorry, I was just thinking about how I missed this, you know? You and me, spending time together like this. It’s nice. We haven’t done this since…”

“Since I caught you in my clothes. Yea, I remember. That was a crazy time. Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I’ve long since forgiven you for that. You wanna talk about it? We still got like 20 minutes before I gotta leave. I’ll listen to anything you have to say.”

I thought about it. She was extending an olive branch here, maybe I should take it. I’d kept everything to myself for so long, it could be good to finally get it off my chest. I shook my head, I couldn’t talk to her about this! Especially not right now, sitting in a hospital bed. “Um, thanks but I don’t think so. I’m good, I haven’t really even thought about it since then! I was just going through a weird phase, that’s all! I’m over it!” I laughed it off, figuring that would be good enough to get her to drop it.

She looked me over, with the same expression that she had that day. She just sighed, “well, if you’re sure Michael. I should probably get going anyways, it’s getting late and I’m sure the nurses wanna take a look at ya. Just know, if you ever wanna talk, I’m here. You can tell me anything, I won’t judge. Take care little bro, I hope you feel better soon.” 

She gave me a very gentle hug before we said our goodbyes and she left. I was all alone now. While I had TV and my DS to entertain me, I didn’t really feel like doing either at the moment. I had a lot on my mind after what she had just said. I had kinda hoped she would forget about the whole thing eventually, wishful thinking I guess. I told her that dressing in her clothes was a phase, but I knew that was a lie. This wasn’t just a phase, it was more than that. There had to be something more to it. The urges never stopped, even when I started expressing it online. Deep down, my greatest wish was just to be pretty. What did that mean though, really? Something was bubbling just below the surface, but I couldn’t see it.

My mind drifted to Rain. In the story, Rain knew she was a girl from an early age. She may not have had the words for it, but she knew. There was recently another trans woman introduced in the comic, Jessica. She was an older trans woman in Rain’s life. She had mentioned that she didn’t figure herself out until she was in her 20s. So it was possible that someone could be trans and not know it. Where did that leave me then? Well I certainly didn’t feel like a girl. Yet, there seemed to be something there. Maybe I didn’t feel like a girl, but I could describe it as feeling feminine. Whatever the hell that meant. 

Still, it was a start. It told me that being feminine and being a girl were two different things, at least in my mind. So could I be feminine and still be a guy? It seemed possible. What would you call that then? Girls had tomboy, so what did you call the inverse? Feminine guy, feminine man, feminine boy, femboy? Femboy seemed to be a decent word for it. So maybe that’s what I was. I could go with that and see where it took me. It was better than nothing. Maybe I could even dress up again! But how would I do that exactly? I didn’t have access to Tara’s clothes anymore and no way was I gonna get caught at this age, snooping in my mom’s closet. That would mean, getting my own stuff. That wasn’t exactly a thrilling prospect, but I supposed I’d have to think it over.

The next few days went by without too much going on. Everyone visited me, from my parents, to Jeremy and Amanda. Jeremy even got me a little Pokemon plushie as a “get well soon” gift! It was very sweet of him. Slowly but surely, I was getting better. By the end of the week, I could even walk again! Surprisingly difficult when you’re in so much pain. A small price to pay for being alive I supposed. The nurses told me I would be able to go home soon, which was a huge relief. I was desperate to get back to normal, even if that meant having to go back to my college work, which was on hold while I was in the hospital.

Finally, after a week spent cooped up in the hospital, I was discharged. I was still on the pain meds, because it still hurt a lot. I’d have to change the bandages as well, but all of this was stuff I could do from home. When the time came, my parents picked me up and brought me home. I’d spend the next week or so recovering before finally going back to school. Things were starting to go back to normal. 

Still, what I thought about in the hospital never left me. What would I do with this information? I certainly wasn’t gonna tell my friends, not even the ones online. I did have at least some reputation to uphold. I would figure it out, one way or another. I still had a long road ahead of me.

Chapter 3 End

Credits: Rain is owned by Jocelyn Samara