Was Matthew

I was driving home from work on a wet Tuesday night when I passed a large silver sedan with it’s orange hazard lights flashing. Standing behind the car, in the pouring rain, were a man and a teenaged girl who looked to be having an argument.

There was no reason to stop, other than my car was unreliable at best and I’d had strangers come to my assistance more than once. I knew how easy it was to get stressed out and angry when you were waiting for RACQ to come and rescue you. I thought I might pull over and see if I could offer any help.

There was nobody behind me and I was travelling under the speed limit anyway, so I flicked on my indicator, hit the brakes, and pulled over about twenty metres in front of them. I reached for my umbrella and clambered awkwardly out of the car, trying my best not to get wet.

As I approached the couple, the man stopped and stared. While his eyes were fixed on me, the girl turned around and stomped off down the road.

‘Wait!’ the man called, spinning around. ‘Angel, stop!’

Angel responded by throwing him the bird. Then she hunched forward and continued walking away from us.

The man shrugged quickly at me, before chasing after her. Angel responded by starting to jog, her big black boots crunching against the wet gravel. She wasn’t as fast as her companion, though, and he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back towards the car.

‘Fuck you, let me go you cunt, let me go, let me go, HELP!’ Angel screamed, kicking at the man and struggling to pull free. ‘I’m going, I’m sick of you, you can’t make me stay, I’m sixteen and I can do what I fucking well want.’

I had no idea whether I was watching a domestic violence incident between lovers, or if they were father and daughter. I went to reach into my handbag for my phone, but I had neither phone nor handbag; both were still in my car. Shit. I followed the pair down the road, where Angel was still struggling and the man was still trying to drag her back to the car.

‘Angel, for fuck’s sake, just get back in the car,’ the man angrily informed her. ‘A complete fucking stranger has just stopped because of you.’ He turned to me. He was in his mid-thirties with short cropped dark hair and a craggy face. ‘Go home. There’s nothing wrong with my car, if that’s what you’re thinking. I only stopped because Angel was being stupid yet again.’

Jakob. Oh my God, Jakob. Even after all these years, and even in the poor visibility of a dark and rainy night, I recognised him.

He didn’t recognise me. Why would he? Last time we’d seen each other, I went by the name ‘Matthew’ and I sure as hell didn’t have breasts. I stood stock still, dumbstruck that after sixteen years of no contact, we were once again face to face.

‘Go,’ he repeated.

The Jakob I remembered wasn’t a violent person, and I highly doubted that had changed. I grew concerned for both of them, because I sensed this wasn’t merely a dispute over some other trivial matter. As I stood in the rain, getting wetter and wetter by the second despite my umbrella, Angel pulled free and ran down the road again.

This time, Jakob didn’t chase her. Instead, he reached into his pocket, leant over and handed me something.

Keys. He’d handed me his car keys.

‘You take her,’ he said, his face showing his frustration. ‘If you’re that concerned about her, you take her. I’ve had enough.’

I was so utterly shocked that I just stood stock still, his keys in my hand. Jakob wasn’t someone who just threw his hands up and ran away. He wasn’t rash or unreasonable, and he didn’t give up easy. There had to be some history, some build up of stress that I hadn’t been privy to, that had led to this point.

Jakob didn’t look at either Angel or I as he hurried across the road. His jeans and button down shirt were soaked through. Where was he going to go? How the hell was he going to get home without his car?

‘Come back,’ I yelled at him. ‘Don’t run away. Please. Come back.’

I wanted to shout ‘Jakob, don’t be stupid’, but given he had no idea I’d transitioned and obviously hadn’t recognised me, I didn’t want to scare the shit out of him by referring to him by name.

Angel heard me yelling and stopped to see what was going on. When she realised Jakob was leaving she had a change of heart, and tried to run across the road towards him. Only, when she darted across the bitumen she hadn’t looked to see if there were any cars approaching. The angry sound of a horn mixed with squealing brakes made her freeze. She stood in the middle of the dark road, illuminated by the headlights of a Corolla, her face a mask of fear.

I ran out to grab her, and pulled her to the side of the road. The Corolla driver beeped again, yelled something at us, then accelerated down the road. Jakob was standing on the opposite of the road, but when I met his gaze, he looked away and walked away from us.

‘Stop,’ I yelled at him.

He ignored me.

My umbrella had been dropped when I ran out to grab Angel, and I heard it bounce away in the wind. My hair and dress were soaked, and my feet were sodden. Angel was no drier; her black and red flannelette shirt was waterlogged and her blonde hair was stuck to her head. She was a pretty girl, but very thin. Painfully thin. I was twenty-four before I started transitioning so I’m used to other women seeming smaller and thinner than me, but Angel was tiny.

As we stood in the rain, she started to sob. Oh no. I knew I had to act. I definitely couldn’t just drive off and pretend nothing had happened.

‘Don’t cry honey, don’t cry,’ I soothed her. ‘We’ll figure this out. Tell me where you live. Do you live with…,’ I stopped myself just in time. ‘Do you live with that man?’

She nodded through her tears.

‘Is he your boyfriend?’ I asked. I was pretty confident the answer was ‘no’, but I wanted to make sure.

Angel shook her head vehemently. ‘No, I just live with him,’ she explained in a choked voice, as she struggled to steam the tears.

‘Is he related to you?’

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and shook her head again. ‘No. I didn’t even know who he was when I moved in. He was just a weird middle aged guy who lived in the same unit complex as Mum and I.’

Middle-aged? Was thirty-five considered middle aged? What a horrendous thought. I peered at Angel. She was in her mid-teens so maybe thirty-five seemed unfathomably old.

There was no sign that Jakob was about to return, and the rain was starting to come down harder. I realised I still had Jakob’s car keys clutched in my left hand.

‘Where would you like me to take you?’ I asked.

She hesitated. The tears had stopped for now. ‘Home,’ she eventually said, very quietly. ‘I’d like to go home please. To Jakob’s house.’

‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘Do you have a purse in his car?’

‘I have my backpack.’

We went over to Jakob’s car and unlocked it. It was a silver Commodore perhaps five or ten years old, with lambswool seat covers and a pine tree air freshener which did nothing to hide the fact that he’d been smoking in the car. We’d both been smokers when we last saw each other, but I’d long since kicked the habit. He obviously hadn’t.

‘Do you know his mobile number?’ I asked. ‘Would he have his phone with him?’

She nodded, wiping at her eyes. Mascara was smeared on her cheeks. ‘Yes to both.’

‘Okay. Give me his number when we’re in my car and I’ll text him to let him know that I’m leaving his keys underneath the car, and that I’m taking you back to his house.’

With no pressing plans of my own to attend to, I took Angel over to my fourteen year old hatchback and told her to take a seat. She sat hunched up in the front passenger seat and stared glumly out the windscreen as I sent Jakob a text.

‘Where do you live?’ I asked.

‘Redbank Plains,’ she said. ‘Do you know the area?’

‘Kind of.’

‘Okay, get on the motorway and take the Redbank Plains exit. I’ll direct you from there.’

As I drove, I could sense her sneaking glances in my direction. I tried to ignore it, just as I tried to ignore my gender dysphoria for the first twenty-odd years of my life. I tend to ‘pass’ on first glance, but the more opportunities someone has to look at me, the more they start to sense that I wasn’t born in a female body.

‘Are you an artist?’ she asked.

I laughed, surprised at how incorrectly I’d interpreted her curious stares. ‘How did you guess?’

She gestured to the back of the car. ‘All of your supplies. Plus, you have an oil pastel tucked behind your ear.’

I did, too. Oops.

Angel gave me a small smile. ‘I’d love to do what you do.’

‘Struggling to make ends meet working in retail, teaching classes and trying to sell your work?’ I asked, a hint of humour in my voice. ‘I’d love for you to achieve a bit more success than that.’

I was rewarded with a giggle.

‘Are you happy?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ It was the truth; I was. I wasn’t on the bones of my arse. I could support myself and meet my child support commitments. I would have preferred not to be single, but given the option between being partnered and miserable, or single and happy, I’d always choose the latter. ‘Are you?’

She shook her head ever-so-slightly and stared out the passenger window. ‘No. He hates me. Jakob.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because he never wanted me. He just got guilted into taking me. My mum and I were getting evicted one afternoon just as he was coming home. Mum begged him to let us live with him. He said ‘no’, which was pretty smart of him, because my mum screws everyone over. She really does, she’s always out partying and taking drugs, and she’ll steal from everyone. Anyway, Mum asked Jakob if he could just mind me for one night while she sorted something out, and he agreed.’

Angel gave me a rueful smile. ‘Well, after two days, Mum hadn’t come back for me and Jakob called the police. They said there was nothing they could do. A month later Jakob managed to track down my Dad and told me to go and live with him. I was there two weeks when Dad got fed up with me and bashed me. The neighbours called the police. When the cops came I asked them to take me to Jakob’s house. He wasn’t very happy — Jakob, that is — because when the police that took me to his place they thought he was my boyfriend and gave him a ton of shit because I was only fifteen.’

‘I take it Jakob doesn’t have a girlfriend or wife?’ I asked curiously.

She shook her head. ‘No. Mum and I lived next door to him for over a year before we got kicked out, and I never saw a woman go around. We thought he might be gay.’

He’s not gay. He’s straight as an arrow. Trust me on that point. But when I knew him last, he was very shy around women and completely lacking in confidence. I felt rather sad for him that he hadn’t managed to overcome that, because despite his frustration with Angel, he was a beautiful person. Hell, I thought to myself, he obviously still is a beautiful person if he was willing to take in homeless teen.

‘I doubt he hates you if he lets you live with him,’ I remarked. ‘Maybe he’s just struggling a bit with the adjustment.’

Angel didn’t respond.

‘It’s probably a bit hard for him to go out with you in public, too,’ I added. ‘People probably think you’re his girlfriend and give him death stares.’

‘That’s true,’ she agreed ruefully. ‘Some men congratulate him. Like, they just come up and say ‘nice work getting a young one’ right while I’m standing next to him. Sometimes he lies and says I’m his daughter, just to get them to fuck off, but I don’t think anyone really believes him.’

We were at the Redbank Plains exit, so I made the turn off and let her direct me to their villa. When we arrived, I wasn’t quite sure whether I should go inside with her and ensure everything was okay, or just leave.

‘Do you want me to stay?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘No. I’ll be alright.’

‘I’ll give you my number. Call me if he doesn’t come home.’

Angel nodded. ‘I will. Thank-you.’

Then she hopped out of the car and ran through the rain up to the door of the apartment. I stayed in my car until she’d unlocked the door, then I reversed out and headed back home.

I thought about calling Jakob. I wanted to make sure that he was okay, and that he knew Angel was safe, too. I wanted to tell him I’d recognised him.

I couldn’t, though. It was me that broke contact with him all those years ago. It was me who messed up.

~~~~~~~

The joys of having a dick. It’s great fun when it’s working as it should, but if you have one, you know that you can’t always rely on them to do what you want them to do. You get spontaneous erections at times when they’re unwanted, and then you suffer the indignity of not being able to achieve one when you want one. Thankfully I didn’t start having issues until I was taking hormones, and I’ve never had anyone be outright cruel to me over it.

Jakob wasn’t as fortunate.

He and I attended the same high school but for most of our years there we’d hung around in different groups. Mine was the artsy, alterative type. We’d spend our lunchtimes either in the art room or library, or over the far side of the oval where we’d smoke stolen cigarettes and overpriced, underwhelming marijuana. On the weekends we’d wear eyeliner and paint our nails, dress in gender neutral clothing, and go to West End or Fortitude Valley, which were very different communities in the late nineties than they are these days.

Jakob was one of our school’s best maths brains. He took extension maths, physics and chemistry classes, and had a loose friendship with the other high achievers. He was painfully shy around girls, though, which meant that the popular girls would entertain themselves by flirting with him until he was red with embarrassment.

I think he took up smoking in his senior year to have an excuse to hide out on the far side of the oval at lunchtime. The girls didn’t bother to follow him across the field, which gave him a reprieve from the bullying.

The teachers knew we were smoking but they ignored us because as most educators know, the alternative kids aren’t the sort to make trouble. We were left in peace to smoke our cigarettes and weed, and slowly but surely, we began to make friends with Jakob.

If you’re assuming he was an ugly duckling, you’re assuming wrong. He was a good-looking teenager and he grew into a good-looking adult. He was five foot ten by seventeen with a lean build and blue eyes, and although his face is craggy his skin is a nice even colour. He has a strong jawline and after a course of braces, he has nice straight teeth.

I always pined after him. I wasn’t half as good-looking as he was; I was scrawny but broad shouldered which made me look unbalanced, my face was spotty and my teeth were terrible. It wasn’t until I was an adult and saved the money for dental work that I could afford to have them fixed. I spent most of my time wishing I was a girl. If I was a girl maybe my parents would bother getting my teeth straightened. I’d also have an excuse to wear make-up every day which would hide my craterous complexion. If I was a girl, I might also be able to seduce Jakob.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t a girl, at least not in body, so I settled for friendship. After we left school we grew closer, and I began to fall in love with him. I kept my lust a secret because even though I had a lot of alternative friends, my parents were and are doggedly right-wing Pauline Hanson supporter types. Besides, I knew he only liked women. Despite his agonising inability to converse with them, it was pretty clear that they were the only ones he was sexually interested in.

We were extremely close friends at the point when he experienced critical malfunction at a noteworthy point in his life. We were both nineteen years old. I was working in retail, and he had just dropped out of university. We had a lot of time, but not a lot of money. Neither of us cars, although we both could drive, neither of us had a girlfriend, and neither of us had any clue as to what we were going to do with our lives.

We found ourselves sharing a few dollars worth of hot chips outside a takeaway one Thursday morning. We were high as kites because no matter how broke we were, we always managed to find money for marijuana, and were spacing out and enjoying our lunch when Kimberley and Hannah approached.

They were the ‘cool girls’ from high school and were as pretty as I remembered them to be. A few years ago they would have given me a wide berth, and zeroed in on Jakob to make fun of him, so neither Jakob nor I was initially thrilled to see them.

These days it’s easy enough to buy weed on the dark web, but in those days procuring marijuana was a time consuming, often awkward and slightly seedy endeavour. If you were after a few grams, you’d inevitably ring around a few contacts before hearing that somebody might be able to set you up but it still remained something of a crapshoot.

I always had weed because I made it a priority never to run out. Jakob was the same. Adult life was not what either of us had expected and marijuana gave us an escape.

Kimberley and Hannah were casual smokers. They didn’t put the effort into maintaining relationships with dealers and nor were they interested in actually handing over their own money for a little grass.

A lot of my classmates had assumed I was gay, which wasn’t and never has been correct. These days I’m quite straight, but as a teen and in my early twenties, I had a very clear and definite attraction to both men and women. As such, when Hannah started getting flirty with me, I stopped thinking about what she’d been like in high school, and started thinking how I might be to work her desire for marijuana to my advantage.

I wasn’t a virgin at this point. I’d slept with three women and two men (although nobody, not even Jakob, knew about the men), and had mostly enjoyed the experiences. I knew what the girls were doing; flirting with the hope of getting a bit of weed out of us. I also knew that if they really wanted it, they’d probably sleep with us.

My parents were both at work, so I invited the girls back to my house. We could smoke a bit of weed and ‘hang out’, I suggested. Jakob looked startled at my suggestion. He’d been busy blushing and fumbling and backing away as Kimberley had cruelly giggled and cooed and stroked his arm. I had the feeling that he didn’t really want to them to come back with us, but as it was my house and he had no real reason to object, he didn’t put up any resistance.

Hannah had a car and she drove us back to my folks’ place. We smoked a few cones, listened to some music and, without me needing to do any prompting, Hannah and I began to make out on the lounge. We were young and horny and I soon had Hannah’s shirt and bra off. In front of both Jakob and Kimberley I began to suck on her nipples as she moaned and stroked my hard on through my jeans.

‘You two, get a room,’ Kimberley giggled.

Hannah stopped moaning and regarded her friend with bloodshot, hazel eyes. Her erect nipples, glazed with my saliva, stood proudly at attention. ‘Why don’t you get a room, Kimberley? Why don’t you show Jakob some, um, appreciation?’

We all laughed at that, except for Jakob, who just looked pained. While my friend was awkwardly turning a bright shade of red, Kimberley’s face had taken on a thoughtful expression. She was weighing up Hannah’s suggestion.

‘You heard the girl,’ Kimberley said, suddenly and decisively, standing up and taking Jakob’s hand. ‘Come with me. I’ll make you a man before the hour is out.’

The moment we were alone, Hannah and I stripped off. She sucked greedily on my cock, making loud slurping noises, her beautiful lips leaving lipstick marks on the shaft. With no thought as to what Jakob and Kimberley might be doing, I laid her on her back on the couch and began to eat her out. My mouth was dry from the weed but her pussy was wet, and after a while she came, locking her thighs around my neck and grinding into my face.

No sooner had she finished than I was ready to fuck her senseless. I didn’t have a condom but she said she was on the pill. I told her to get up and lean over the dining room table, where I fucked her doggy style with gusto. I came after no time at all, heaving and thrusting and shooting my load into her well-used cunt. A virgin she most certainly was not.

Our little romp was followed by giggles and a quick clean up, before we got dressed and smoked another cone. To say we were high was an understatement. We were off our fucking heads.

‘You know, I always thought you were so fucking gay,’ Hannah giggled.

‘No way,’ I exclaimed. As I said, my rendezvous with men were secrets that I shared with no one. While one of my high school friends had recently come out, I wasn’t yet stupid or brave enough to do the same.

‘No, really.’ More giggles. ‘You act like a girl, do you know that?’

I bluffed another ‘no way’, even though inside I was secretly pleased. Yes, I thought. Because I should be a girl.

‘I’m so fucking high,’ she said. ‘What was I saying? Where’s Kimberley?’

I tried to remember where her friend was. It took me a while to remember, because my brain had been stuck thinking about how wonderful life would be if I’d been born in the right body.

‘Maybe with Jakob?’ I guessed.

‘Yes! Oh my God. She’s going to fuck him. Let’s go and check on them.’

It was a great plan, but we were greatly off our faces, so it took us a couple of minutes to coordinate ourselves enough to stand up and walk down the hallway.

‘I can feel your sperm,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s in my panties. Are my shorts wet? Feel them for me. Is it wet?’

I grabbed her cunt through her shorts. ‘It’s wet.’

‘Oh fuck.’

‘It’ll dry.’

She fell to the ground in a fit of laughter. ‘Oh my God. What are we doing?’

‘Um,’ I hesitated. ‘Checking on Kimberley?’

‘Yes! Checking on Kimberley! Let’s go,’ she ordered, looking her arm through mine, Oktoberfest style, and marching me down the hall.

We burst into the bedroom where our friends were both completely nude. But they weren’t having sex, and neither of them looked happy.

‘He can’t get it up,’ Kimberley announced.

I was only nineteen and the whole concept of erectile issues or not wanting to have sex with someone who was offering it, was beyond my understanding. It took very little stimulation for me to get hard, and seeing a woman naked was more than enough to get me cracking a fat.

Not for Jakob. He was hunched up, naked, in the corner of the bed looking dejected.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was twenty-two I met a lovely, open minded woman to whom I was intensely attracted. The love was mutual and with all the ‘it’ll be right mate’ attitude of two Australian artists, we decided to have a baby.

Cassie was the first person I told of my desire to be a woman. Before we had Luka, she was happy with it. After Luka was born, however, something shifted. She didn’t give two shits if other people were gay or transgender or polyamorous, but she wanted a traditional family. I was deeply unhappy. Although I hadn’t made concrete plans to transition, I felt immensely betrayed.

Our relationship was over before Luka’s first birthday. She was the one that ended it, even though we both wanted out. I’d just kept hoping and praying our relationship would somehow magically fix itself because I was terrified that once we’d separated I’d no longer be able to see my son. Everyone had a horror story about an unreasonable ex and stupid child support demands. I assumed that a Court battle would ensue, and that I’d either have to keep living as a man to prove I was ‘normal’ or have people laugh at me when I rocked up to hearings looking like a man in a dress.

Thankfully, Cassie and I were both dedicated to putting Luka first, and have managed to arrange and rearrange custody over the years to suit ours and Luka’s needs. And when a year after our split I went to a doctor and told her I couldn’t keep living like this, I was referred to a shrink and given the help I needed to start living as the woman I knew I was.

Luka call us both ‘Mum’ and treats us with that same mix of irritation and disdain, interspersed with periods where he’ll be incredibly needy. The joys of adolescence, right?

When I ran into Jakob and Angel, he was living with Cassie and I was taking him to his extra curricular activities because they fitted in easier with my schedule than hers. On Thursday afternoon, two days after I stopped for Angel and Jakob, I took Luka to cricket training. He doesn’t like me to hang around. He just wants me to drop him off, go, and come back to pick him up. The other cricketing mothers tell me they get the same instructions. We are wanted for our chauffeuring, not our presence.

After taking Luka to the club I went for a walk through a nearby park. I’ve always loved going for walks. Parks, wetlands, rainforests, as long as the scenery is peaceful and I’m in comfortable shoes, I’m happy.

This park made me think of my youth, and the evening trips to the park Jakob and I would take. When the kids had left the playground he and I would sit on the swings and share a joint. We’d talk about life and music and random shit as we watched the sun sink beyond the horizon. I’d be wearing my ratty old Doc Martens, tight jeans and flannelette shirt, and he’d be in Asics, cargo shorts and a Nirvana or Metallica tee.

One summer night the kids had stayed out late and while they played, their parents stood around in clumps, staring at Jakob and I and talking about what we might be up to. Jakob and I had a joint we wanted to smoke, but we knew that we wouldn’t have a chance to consume it unless the parents and their offspring pissed off home.

‘We should go to the bathrooms before they close,’ Jakob suggested.

The toilet block was a hundred or so metres away. They were the usual green cinderblock affairs that our council likes to construct, and they were located in front of a small car park. There was a car in the parking lot with a driver at the wheel, but he didn’t look like he was going anywhere, so Jakob and I went in.

He handed me the joint and searched for a lighter. There was no lighter in either his pockets or backpack, but we managed to find an old box of matches with just three matches left inside.

Jakob was about to strike one when there was a knock on the stall door. Jakob and I froze in terror. The knock was followed by another, along with instructions to ‘open up’. We peered at the gap under the door and saw two brown boots. We didn’t know how or why, but we knew we were in trouble and from the authoritative tone of the knocker, we guessed he was a cop.

‘Fuck,’ Jakob mouthed, quickly dropping the unsmoked joint in the loo and pressing ‘flush’. We both watched in a combination of relief and horror as the paper tube and it’s contents disappeared from sight.

Jakob’s blue eyes met mine and we grimaced in unison. Then, as the policeman was knocking on the door for the second time, Jakob opened it and we stepped out.

In hindsight, I know that the cop was expecting to interrupt two homosexual men having sex. When Jakob and I exited the stall fully dressed, the surprise on the cop’s face was clear.

‘What were you two doing?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Um, we were going to have a cigarette,’ Jakob lied, nervously glancing at me out of the corner of my eye.

‘Why would you go to the bathroom to do that?’ the cop asked.

That was a good point. At the time of the incident the legal smoking age was sixteen, and the activity wasn’t at that point banned in public parks.

‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged. ‘We were trying to remember what it was like back at school when we used to hide in the loos to smoke.’

The cop looked at us like we were crazy. Then he spoke.

‘Get out of here,’ he ordered, pointing to the door. ‘This is a known beat.’

‘A what?’ Jakob asked.

‘Fags,’ the cop said slowly, annunciating every word. ‘Poofs meet here for sex.’

‘Oh.’ Jakob turned red. ‘Well, we’d better go.’

‘Yes,’ the policeman agreed. ‘You’d better.’

The memory of the incident is one that has mostly been forgotten, but as I watched the sun slowly begin its descent, I mentally revisited that afternoon. At the time, Jakob and I were relieved just to escape without being charged with possession, but as an adult, it annoys me. What pious little fuck thinks harassing young, gay men is a worthwhile use of police resources? There wasn’t anyone in the toilet with us. I could have sucked Jakob’s dick and it wouldn’t have harmed or affected anyone, anywhere.

My phone beeped and I saw there was a message.

Hi. You pulled over on Tuesday night when I was on the side of the road with Angel. I don’t know where to begin or how to say this, but there are no words to tell you how angry, ashamed and embarrassed I am, and how thankful I am that you stopped. I also want to assure you that Angel and I are coping a bit better. There was a lot going on and unfortunately it just got too much for me. It won’t happen again. Jakob.

 

I’d thought about texting him several times over the past few days. I had his number stored in my phone from when I’d texted him to let him know I was taking Angel home, and leaving his car keys underneath his car, but using those details to follow up had seemed inappropriate.

If I didn’t know Jakob, I wouldn’t have responded to his message, but I did know him, and I’d loved him for several years of my life, so it was impossible not to reply.

I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. Angel told me a few details on the way home. I can’t imagine how difficult the situation must be for you. I know this might sound out of line, but have you tried contacting Centrelink? They should be able to provide you with a social worker free of charge.

 

I didn’t expect him to respond. Why would he? My message, upon re-reading, sounded both patronising and belittling. But respond he did.

Centrelink can’t help. Until her mother and father both sign to say that she can’t live with them, she and I aren’t eligible to access any services. Mother is still claiming Angel lives with her for the government $$$. It’s okay financially, I have a small mortgage and can support us. It is just emotionally taxing. Plus everyone gives me the stink eye when we are out together as they assume I am some knuckle-dragger out with his teenage girlfriend.

 

He obviously wanted to talk. I wanted to listen, too, but I couldn’t let this go any further without telling him who I really was. It was I who cut off contact. It me who refused to come to the door when he came around, who ignored his texts, who hung up when he called the family phone, and who returned his letters marked ‘undeliverable; return to sender’.

Jakob, I need to tell you something. I’m Matthew. Was Matthew. Was Matthew Henderson, am now Kaylee Evans.

 

There was no response. Did I expect one? No, not really. I knew I didn’t deserve his forgiveness.

~~~~~~~~~

Within a week of the Kimberley incident, it was public knowledge that Jakob van der Mooren was impotent. It was the era of brick-like Nokia phones and twenty cent texts, and I dread to think how much money Telstra made off the back of Jakob’s equipment failure.

Jakob was mortified.

I was furious for him, but I was soon having issues of my own. Taking a piss was excruciating and I had a weird discharge from my dick. It was gonorrhoea, as it turns out. A bulk billing doctor diagnosed me, gave me antibiotics and lectured me on the importance of condoms. The doctor also asked for a list of my past sexual partners, but I refused to give it to him. I said I’d contact my previous partners myself.

My reasons for not disclosing my previous partners’ names were selfish; I was confident that if I told Hannah she’d given me a STD, she’d feel guilty, and would agree to tell everyone that she and Kimberley had only been joking when they’d said Jakob hadn’t been able to perform. And, when I went to Hannah to give her the bad news, she seemed keen to go along with my little plan. ‘Of course,’ she said. She’d definitely get herself tested and she’d definitely make sure everyone knew Jakob wasn’t impotent.

I should have known that my plan was ridiculously optimistic, and that the stupid little cow wouldn’t stick to her word. What ended up happening was that she told everyone I’d given her a bug, and that I’d probably picked it up from Jakob, who was himself obviously gay if he couldn’t get an erection for a beautiful girl like Kimberley.

Needless to say, we were soon even bigger pariahs than we’d been in high school. When people saw us walking down the road, they would hang out of their car windows, toot at us and yell out homophobic comments. We got nasty texts about HIV and STDS. People prank called Jakob’s house at all hours of the day and night.

Jakob grew very quiet, very introspective. He was only working twelve hours a week for a local supermarket, and he had a lot of time to dwell on our situation. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t any happier, but I don’t think I took it quite as hard as him. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t quite receiving the same amount of abuse. Nobody was calling my house. I didn’t have to explain to my parent’s why there were rumours floating around that I was homosexual.

At night Jakob and I would go to a park (a different one to the one where we’d been shooed away from the men’s toilets) and get stoned. We’d sit on the swings and push ourselves higher and higher into the air. We didn’t speak because we didn’t need to. We both wanted to be swallowed up into the abyss, but perhaps Jakob wanted it more.

I went around to his house one evening maybe three weeks after the Kimberley and Hannah incident. I normally just knocked on the front door and he came out, but this time when I knocked, his Mum answered.

‘Come in Matthew,’ she offered, holding the door open. ‘Jakob worked an extra two hours this afternoon. He’s still in the shower.’

Jakob’s parents were Dutch immigrants. Their house always smelt like coffee and cigarettes, and they had a Keeshond called Neeltje and a glass jar of salted licorice in the middle of the coffee table. Jakob was their second child; he had an older sister called Annette, but she was eight years older than him and had moved out years before hand.

Mrs M, as I called her, told me to take a seat at the kitchen table. She lit a cigarette and offered me one, which I accepted.

‘What’s going on Matthew?’ she asked me.

‘I, uh…’ I bent down to pat Neeltje. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

She exhaled a long stream of smoke, tapped the ash from her cigarette, and crossed her arms on the table. Like Jakob, she had a very heavy, craggy face, but her hair was darker and her eyes were dark brown.

‘I think you do,’ she corrected, not unkindly. ‘Matthew, are you and Jakob a couple? Are you romantically involved with one another?’

I was halfway through taking a drag, and her question made me choke on the smoke, even though I didn’t get the impression that she was angry at the idea that her son might be homosexual.

‘No,’ I coughed. ‘No, we’re not a couple.’

Mrs M eyed me thoughtfully as she took another puff. ‘Somebody has been ringing the home phone and telling me that you two are gay and have been swapping STD’s.’

I wanted to die. I shook my head and focussed my attention on their dog. ‘No. It’s just stupid rumours.’

‘Jakob seems to be taking it very personally.’

‘It’s a pretty shit… bad, excuse the language… rumour,’ I argued.

Mrs M was about to speak when Jakob walked out, his hair still wet from the shower and his shirt damp. He took one look at me, one at his mother, and reached for her pack of cigarettes.

‘Jakob,’ she scolded, slapping him on the wrist.

He just grinned cheekily at her and pulled one out. She said something in Dutch, sighed, and smiled ruefully at me. I smiled back guiltily. I honestly found my friend’s relationship with his parent’s a bit baffling. Mine would have flogged me black and blue had I dared openly steal one of their smokes, and given how homophobic they were, the idea of them supporting a gay relationship was preposterous.

Jakob lit his cigarette then went to the pantry and emerged with a blue and white tin. Speculaas. They would be our dinner tonight.

‘Before you go, I want to speak to you boys,’ Mrs M said. ‘You both need a holiday. My cousin has bought a piece of land out west. You should take the caravan out there for a few days.’

Jakob’s parents had an old, seventies style, white and yellow van. They went on caravanning holidays once or twice a year, and kept the vehicle in immaculate condition.

Neither Jakob nor I could think of a reason to decline the offer. In fact, as we sat on the swings that night, smoking the cigarettes he’d pinched from his mother, we decided to go the very next day. Jakob hated his job, and I was getting only four or five hours a week work from mine. There was nothing to gain by staying in Brisbane.

We took off the next morning in his mother’s station wagon, the van dragging behind us. We nearly lost it on a roundabout less than two kilometres from his house, and spent the rest of the journey laughing and joking about how his folks would react if we came home minus the van.

We had no idea how long we’d be away. We had no idea how to park a caravan, wash our own clothes or even cook a proper meal. We were just two nineteen year old losers off to escape reality for a while.

It was October, nearly two years to the day since we’d graduated, when we left. That camping trip was nearly sixteen years ago, and yet I remember that holiday so clearly, all of it from the very moment we first got in the car. I remember being so happy, so free from all the burdens of home, where my parents were always nagging me to do something with my life, to stop wearing make-up, and to, well, stop being me.

I was in skin tight black jeans, a singlet and red nail polish. My hair was long, the docs on my feet were on their last legs, and the love of my life was sitting in the driver’s seat, singing along to the radio in his croaky, hoarse voice, while intermittently taking a pull on his smoke. He’d stolen his mother’s weekly carton of cigarettes before leaving the house. He knew she’d forgive him. I, too, had something I’d secretly stolen; a month’s worth of my mother’s birth control pills. I wanted to see if taking them would make me less of a man, and more of a woman.

There’s nothing like true love. There is nothing that can compare to staring at someone and wondering how the fuck they can be so perfect. Jakob was quite simply my everything. There was never a point in my day where he wasn’t on my mind.

Jakob’s father was a shift worker and had woken up that morning and done some shopping for us. We had everything we could possibly need, and then some.

It’s funny, because as an adult I realise how much his family loved and cared for him. They knew he was struggling and there was no judgement whatsoever. They just did what they could to help pull him out of the depths of the depression that again, with the benefit of hindsight, I realise he was struggling with.

For the first day or two we just ambled around, figuring out how to work the generator, getting stoned, and cooking up basic meals. On the third night, everything changed.

We were lying on the double bed, watching television on the twelve inch black and white TV. There was a movie playing. God knows what, I don’t remember, but I remember the sex scene. It was the prime time movie so it wasn’t explicit, but it was certainly erotic. Both of us fell silent and stared at the tiny screen as the male lead, under the cover white cotton sheets, made love to his romantic interest. We saw a glimpse of the woman’s breasts as she lay beneath him, her arms around his neck and her body moving in time with his. By the time they climaxed my cock was rock hard, and I looked away guiltily, embarrassed by how aroused I was.

‘Fuck,’ Jakob muttered. ‘Why can I get hard now, but not with Kimberley?’

I laughed at his honesty. ‘Because that bird’s not a scrag and Kim is?’

He sat up and reached for the cigarettes and ashtray. He lit one and offered me the pack. I wriggled into a seating position, accepted the smoke, and lit it.

After a few puffs, Jakob spoke again.

‘I didn’t want to have sex with her. Kimberley.’ He said suddenly. ‘She was a bitch to me in high school. Why would I want to fuck her?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied, wondering why I had wanted to have sex with Hannah. In hindsight, I should never have done it, and not just because of the STD she gave me. ‘You like women, though, right?’

‘Right,’ he agreed, matter-of-factly. ‘Well, I like their bodies. But most of them are just…not nice, right? And the ones that are nice already have a boyfriend.’

The comment bothered me a bit. I guess that because I felt like a girl on the inside, I took it as a bit of a personal insult.

‘If I had boobs, do you think I’d be a good girlfriend?’ I asked.

Jakob half-snorted and half-laughed, a broad and genuine smile on his face. ‘If you had boobs, you would be perfect. Like, a hundred and ten percent, who could want anything more, perfect.’

Why couldn’t I have been born with a female body? Why, why, why? Why did I have to carry around this awful male physique, one which I knew was preventing me from being with someone I loved? He liked me. Oh God, fuck, shit, hell, he liked me. This could have been perfect. If I’d been born with the right body we could have made love, declared our feelings, and maybe be happy for once.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised, noting my silence. ‘I guess that was a bit far.’

‘No, don’t be sorry. I’m um… I’m not really offended at all.’

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘You’re bisexual, aren’t you?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Have you had sex with a man?’

I nodded again. My heart was racing as I exposed a secret, but I also felt relief at having the opportunity to tell him. It was the only thing I’d ever hidden from him. I didn’t like keeping secrets.

‘I gave one guy head, and I had proper, anal, sex with the other,’ I told him.

‘Did you like either of them? As people?’

‘Not really. I think I’m like you in a lot of ways. The people I’d want to be with are always out of reach.’

His blue eyes travelled over my body. I was away from home, and away from other people, so I was dressing in a fairly daring way for a nineteen year old man. My jeans and tee were ‘men’s’ clothing, but with my long hair and mascara, I think I looked reasonably feminine.

‘Yeah, well, now you know,’ I said nervously.

‘I just told you that if you were a woman, you’d be my dream girlfriend,’ he pointed out. ‘That’s just as weird as being bisexual. Probably even more weird, if you think about it.’

We finished our cigarettes and stubbed them out. Jakob moved the ashtray to the side of the bed, and we both laid down and pretended to watch the remainder of the movie. After a few minutes, Jakob got up and switched it off.

‘It was annoying me,’ he said.

‘Me too.’

He laid on the bed and rolled onto his side so that he was facing me. Once again I could feel him inspecting my face and body. He was doing to me what I did to myself; imagining me in a woman’s body.

He leant over and touched my hair. My already thumping heart was now in overdrive. Was he going to kiss me? Was he going to have sex with me? My cock, which had deflated during our conversation, was now hard again.

Jakob’s blue eyes met mine. I could see the questioning expression on his face, and I knew what he was asking.

‘Keep going,’ I whispered. ‘Take it as far as you want.’

Jakob rolled over, covering my body with his, and kissed me. He felt warm and heavy, and I laid on my back, entirely submissive, barely believing what was happening. I let him take the lead. I didn’t want to scare him off, even though every fibre of me was screaming at me to rip his clothing off.

His erection was pressing against mine. I knew that if I could feel his cock, then he could feel mine, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He just kept kissing me, his tongue exploring my mouth, his blue eyes closed tight.

I carefully pushed his shirt up, sliding my hands along his torso. His stomach was hard and flat, and he had hair on his belly and a bit on his chest. Not much, just a little, and all of it sandy coloured. He half sat up, pulled his shirt off, then leant down to remove mine. I wriggled out of it then resumed my position on my back.

Jakob’s mouth found my nipples and he gently sucked and licked them. I hated chest hair, and had always kept it shaved off, something I was very grateful for at that moment. I knew he was pretending I had boobs and that was fine by me, because I was pretending the exact same thing.

He began to kiss and nibble his way lower, over my chest and down to my belly. He stopped for a second, unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans, and pulled them down to my thighs. Through the fabric of my trunks he kissed my erection. He was seemingly unbothered by the presence of my dick, which pleased me. It might sound quite odd, but I’ve always liked my penis and have never thought to get rid of it.

Jakob and I had gone to the bore on the property, refilled our water supplies, and showered that morning so I wasn’t too worried about my cleanliness. I was actually more worried that he’d stop what he was doing, because I was incredibly turned on.

He glanced up at me. ‘Can I suck you?’

I nodded mutely, and reached down to help him undress me. I lay completely naked on the bed, my cock throbbing with desire. Jakob wriggled in between my legs and leant down to kiss my balls.

I bit back a groan and stared at the ceiling of the van. How the hell was this happening? He experimentally moved my foreskin back and forward a bit, pulling over the head of my cock, before pushing it back and running his tongue along the slit.

Jakob grew more confident as the seconds passed. He took me into his mouth and gently sucked me, licked me, and stroked my shaft. I waited for him to show some sign of disgust, but he seemed intrigued by my penis and gave it his full attention.

Of course, being nineteen and horny, it didn’t take too long for me to be ready to come. I didn’t want to come in his mouth, so I asked if he minded if I kissed him while I finished myself off.

‘Was I doing that wrong?’ he asked, concerned.

‘No, I just don’t want to come in your mouth.’

‘it’s okay if you do. I don’t mind.’

‘No, I’d feel weird about it,’ I argued. ‘Take your clothes off and lie next to me.’

Jakob kicked off his shorts and briefs. I eyed him up lustfully, taking in the thick patch of dark brown pubic hair and what is quite possibly most beautiful penis in the world. His cock was a little shorter than mine, but thicker, and the skin was the same, flawless, heavy cream colour as the rest of his body.

He blushed and hurriedly lay beside me. I didn’t know what he had to be embarrassed about. He was gorgeous, and I loved him. Never in my life had I been so intensely emotionally and physically attracted to someone.

‘Can I try and finish you off?’ he asked, wrapping his hand around the shaft.

I nodded. ‘Sure.’

He leant down and sucked on a nipple while he wanked me. The stimulation was more than enough to get me there. I reached behind me and grabbed onto the pillow as I came, happy to let him manage my orgasm. He did a good job, wanking me steadily through the most intense period, before slowing down and finishing with a few firm strokes.

Jakob left his sticky hand on my cock while he kissed me. I hugged him and kissed his face and neck, before burying my head in his chest. I loved him so incredibly much.

‘Are you horny?’ I whispered.

‘Fuck, yes.’ He moved one semen coated hand down between my legs and probed my tight hole. ‘Can I fuck you?’

‘Um, sure. I haven’t done this before though. The guys I had anal with, I was the one on top.’

‘Oh, okay. Never mind.’ He pulled his hand away guiltily.

‘No, no, try it,’ I argued. ‘Just be, um, careful please.’

‘Do you think I should use your jizz to lubricate us?’

‘I guess so. I can’t see a reason why not.’

He wiped another clump of cum against my entrance, and carefully pushed a finger inside. I was still quite relaxed from my orgasm, and the intrusion felt good. I’d played with my rear a few times, but I’d never put anything other than a few fingers in there. Jakob’s cock was quite thick, and I was worried about whether or not it would be physically possible for him to fuck me.

He spent a bit of time trying to loosen me up. By then the semen was drying, and the lubrication factor was going.

‘I’m going to get the cooking oil,’ he said. ‘I think that’ll work pretty well.’

The oil worked superbly. Jakob managed to get three fingers inside me, and I think we both felt things were looking promising. I was lying on my back and when he looked at me with a questioning expression, I nodded. Yes. I was ready.

He wiped his hands on the sheets, spread my legs, and lined his cock up with my entrance. But when he pushed the head inside I went white with pain.

Jakob noticed my reaction.

‘Shit, I’m sorry,’ he apologised, pulling out.

‘No, no,’ I replied, eyes clamped shut. ‘Try again. Just go slow.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

He applied some more oil for good measure, then slowly pushed inside. This time the pain wasn’t so bad. He pushed a little further in, and I focussed on my breathing. The pain wasn’t excruciating, and I knew I could work through it.

Slowly but surely, he inched his way inside until he was fully buried in me. That’s where he stayed, his hands on my legs, waiting for me to give him the sign to either pull out or continue.

‘It’s starting to feel good,’ I admitted. ‘Does it feel good to you?’

‘Um, yes,’ he replied. He gave a small thrust. ‘Oh shit,’ he swore.

‘What’s wrong?’

His voice was strangled. ‘I think I’m going to come.’

‘Now?’

He nodded. ‘Now.’

Jakob withdrew a bit before lurching forward and making an angry, frustrated noise. I wished I could have told him not to worry, just to enjoy coming, but I was suddenly aware I was facing a physical issue because of the sex that was equally unwanted. In fact, mine was worse than a premature orgasm.

When sex with a casual partner is less than perfect, you often feel humiliated and quite low. It’s hard to chalk it up to ‘just life’ when you can see the irritation or disgust in their face. With Jakob, it was extremely embarrassing for both of us, but although we both felt bad about how unreasonably our bodies had reacted, it wasn’t the sort of night that made us want to be swallowed up by the earth.

We cleaned ourselves up as best we could in the tiny shower, stripped the bedding off the bed, and went outside for a cigarette.

It was Jakob that laughed first.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

He couldn’t respond. He was catatonic with laughter. ‘Sex,’ he gasped. ‘That was not… how it… was supposed to be.’

I felt myself smile. It was kind of funny in hindsight.

Jakob pulled me close to him as he kept laughing. With him snuffling and snorting with amusement, it was impossible to feel lousy. I just felt loved. Very loved, very protected, very safe.

Over the next week we fucked like rabbits. We figured out how to make our bodies do what we wanted them to do, and the sex developed from ‘awkward and messy’ to ‘fantastic’. He loved me, I loved him, and our bedroom antics (which were no longer being kept indoors — we were on a large enough property that we could easily make love out in the sunshine) were mind blowing.

I didn’t ever want to go home. I loved it out there, away from the world, with just Jakob and I. We’d go fishing in a local dam for extra food, we’d explore nature trails, and we’d build campfires and sit out under the stars talking about anything and everything. Who would want to leave that? It was perfect.

I painted and drew frantically that week. Pictures of the caravan, pictures of the scenery, sketches of Jakob. It was the days before digital cameras had become widespread, and we didn’t have any other way of recording our time together, but I knew I couldn’t allow myself to forget.

Maybe I also knew that once we left, the spell would be broken. Maybe that’s why Jakob and I stayed until we had literally nothing left to eat, no money, and barely enough petrol to get ourselves home. I nearly cried when we packed up. I didn’t want to leave. I knew it was all going to be over soon.

‘What should I do about the sheets?’ Jakob asked me, holding them up for inspection.

I took one glance at the sheets and grimaced. ‘Um… I don’t think we can bring those back with us.’

They were still stained, despite our attempts to wash them with dishwashing liquid and hang them up to dry over a tree branch. The bottom sheet had a hole in it.

‘I might just leave them here,’ Jakob said. ‘I’ll tell Mum we washed them and hung them out to dry, but forgot to take them home.’

Jakob wasn’t nearly as morose as I during the drive home. In fact, he seemed happy. He sung along to the radio, he smoked the ‘made up out of the remnants of old butts’ cigarette I rolled for him, and he kept looking over at me and telling me he loved me.

We were almost home when we got stopped at a red light. A pedestrian was waiting to cross. I noted with a completely unreasonable amount of anger that she was a beautiful young woman in her early twenties, wearing skimpy jogging attire. Her breasts bounced invitingly as the ‘walk’ arrow switched green and she made her way across the road.

Jakob was drooling.

‘Would you like a tissue?’ I asked snarkily.

‘What?’ he asked, averting his gaze and frowning at me.

I jerked my head in the direction of the jogger. ‘You basically have a wet patch on your lap from all the drool.’

He knew I was mad. He bit his lip and regarded me carefully and apologetically.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

‘Whatever.’

The light had green, and we’d entirely failed to move forward. The people behind us beeped. Jakob put the car into gear, stalled, and was rewarded with another angry toot.

‘Just fucking drive,’ I snapped at him.

He put the car into first gear, successfully this time, and took off. His brow was furrowed with concern and confusion.

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

‘I said ‘whatever’,’ I retorted. ‘I don’t care, Jakob. I know you’re straight. Just take me home and you can go and find a woman to fuck.’

‘I don’t want to find a woman to fuck,’ he argued. ‘I love you. I want…. Jesus fucking Christ, Matthew, what the hell’s come over you today? You’ve been shitty ever since we woke up.’

‘Because I know that the moment we return to reality, you’re going to remember that you like women.’

‘No! That’s not going to happen.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I argued. ‘Just shut the fuck up, okay? I don’t even want to hear you argue. It’s all just bullshit, everything that comes out of your mouth is just fucking crap. Shut up and take me home.’

Jakob didn’t utter another word during the journey. He just drove me home, pulled up out front, and waited for me to get out. That’s when he spoke.

‘I love you,’ he said softly. ‘I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise.’

But I knew he would. I knew he wanted a woman, and I knew that if we stayed together, then eventually he’d start to stray. I could cope with many things, and many betrayals, but I knew I’d never forgive him if I found out he’d been with a woman.

I should never have let our relationship switch from friendship to a sexual relationship based on love. Maybe if it hadn’t, we would have maintained our friendship until I’d started to transition and maybe, if he saw me as a woman in body and not just spirit, we could have had a normal relationship.

Mostly, though, I don’t dwell on the ‘what if’s’. I know I messed up, and I messed up big time, and there is nothing I can do to change that.

~~~~~~~~~~~

‘Why did you change your surname? Are you married?’

Jakob’s text came on Friday night as I was cleaning my bathroom. I put the spray n’ wipe down so that I could reply.

‘My parents didn’t want anyone to find out about my gender identity and transition, so I changed my surname to keep them happy.’

 

Jakob didn’t immediately reply. I finished cleaning the bathroom and put the dirty kitchen towels in the bin, and the spray n’ wipe back in the cupboard. I switched on the kettle and that’s when I heard my phone beep to advise I’d received another message.

‘Why did you leave me? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I’ve just spent a lot of my life wondering what made you change your mind about me. Was it really just the jogging woman? Or was it because you wanted to be a woman?’

 

I didn’t contact him after the day he dropped me off outside my house. He tried to contact me. He called me over and over and over again, both on my mobile and on the house phone. He didn’t stop until I screamed down the phone at him to leave me alone. He tried writing to me after that, but after tearing up the first few letters, I simply took the rest down to the post office, had them marked ‘return to sender’ and sent them back.

I heard through the grapevine that a month after we returned home, he tried to commit suicide. It was early afternoon and his mother was still at work, and his father was asleep. He ran a hose from the exhaust pipe of his father’s car into the driver’s side window, and waited for carbon monoxide poisoning to claim his life.

Neeltje the Keeshond sensed something was wrong. She started barking and didn’t stop until Jakob’s father woke up and investigated. An ambulance was called. Jakob survived. Rumours increased a thousandfold.

My fault, all my fault. I was his only friend, and when I exchanged that friendship for love, and then brutally took the whole lot away from him, he had nowhere to turn.

‘I don’t know why I left. I was scared. I loved you, but I knew you were straight. Plus, I’d been taking my mother’s birth control pills that week. I think the oestrogen might have been making me be unreasonable. I don’t know. The only thing is that I’m sorry. I’ve spent so many years wishing I was a better person. I loved you, Jakob. I was just…scared. I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.’

 

A minute later my phone rang.

‘Hi,’ I greeted nervously.

‘Hi,’ Jakob replied. ‘Is now a bad time?’

‘No, no. I just finished cleaning my bathroom. Then it’s onto Netflix, bed, and sleep.’

There was a pause.

‘Are you seeing anyone who would be angry if I asked to meet up with you?’ he asked.

‘I’m not seeing anyone at all.’

‘Okay.’ He paused again. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Of course. Um… are you doing anything now? Should I come around?’

‘Yeah, if you want,’ he offered. ‘That’d be nice.’

I asked him to text me his address, and to let me know what I needed to bring with me. He agreed to the former but told me not to bring anything but myself. He had food, coffee and beer.

After we hung up, I could almost smell the coffee scent of his parent’s house. I remembered the salted licorice, and the heavy furniture, and his parents’ accented English. Did they ever find out about us, I wondered? Did they ever learn we’d become lovers? Did they hate me? Blame me for their son’s attempt on his life?

I went to my wardrobe and tried to find something to wear. As an artist who works in retail I had exactly two choices; work uniform or something marked with paint. There was nothing sexy. Nothing that said ‘look at me, I’m a hot woman’.

I settled for tight blue jeans, a black singlet and Docs. My hair was long, my make-up was light, and my perfume was non-existent because I hate the stuff. Did I pass as a woman? I didn’t think so. But at least I looked reasonable.

Half an hour after we’d ended our call, I was at Jakob’s house.

He lived in a two bedroom single level villa. It was neat and tidy, but quite sparsely furnished. You could definitely see it was the home of a single man.

I had so many questions. Had he been with a woman? Had many relationships? What did he do for a living? Was he happy? How were his parents? What about Angel? Was she doing any better? But I knew that the time to ask wasn’t now, so I meekly followed him inside.

‘You want a beer or a coffee?’ he asked.

‘Just water please.’

He reached into the fridge for a container of water and poured me a glass. He flicked on the kettle and while he was waiting for it to boil, lit himself a cigarette and gazed curiously at me. I felt very self conscious.

‘I know I don’t quite pass as a woman,’ I admitted.

‘Oh, you pass,’ he corrected. ‘I never would have guessed.’

I blushed, but I also felt quite teary. There was something intensely emotional about seeing him again. I might have ended up crying had Angel not come out of her room to get a drink. She smiled, embarrassed, when she saw me, and I gave her a quick wave. She plucked a can of Diet Coke out of the fridge, said she was in the middle of a drawing, and thanked me for taking her home.

Jakob and I watched her head back to her room.

‘She’s anorexic,’ he said quietly, when her door was shut. ‘She wasn’t when she first came here.’

‘That’s not your fault.’

‘It feels like it is.’

I sipped my water and tried not to stare at him too obviously. In my memories he had remained a nineteen year old, but he was definitely a man these days. His waist was thicker, his shoulders were broader, and the stubble on his face was dense and dark.

‘What did you do?’ I asked. ‘After we… after I left, what did you do?’

‘You mean after I tried to kill myself?’ he asked matter-of-factly.

I nodded, shamed. ‘I’m sorry.’

He shrugged. ‘I’d left a note explaining to my parents that you and I… well… I said that something had happened on the camping trip that I couldn’t cope with. When I was in hospital I ended up telling them about us and what we’d done. I told them you didn’t want to see me any more… I don’t know. I had nothing left to live for. You were the only thing that had kept me going all those years.’

Jakob took another draw on his cigarette. ‘I saw a shrink, went to TAFE the next year, and became a refrigeration and air-conditioning mechanic. I liked it. I liked getting out each day and doing something. It helped me get my life together.’ He paused. ‘What about you? You just seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. I couldn’t even find you on Facebook. I tried, you know.’

‘I found a flat share in New Farm and moved out one day. Just like that, no thinking, no planning, just saw the ad, rang, and moved out. I met a woman, had a baby, and separated. I did a Fine Arts degree but it got me exactly nowhere. I work in retail, teach classes, and try and convince people to buy my art.’

‘So you’ve got a few paintings in the boot of your car to show me?’ he teased.

I leant over and gently whacked his arm. ‘Shush you.’

Jakob ducked his head and laughed. ‘Do you want to sit outside with me and talk?’

‘I’d love to. I’ve always missed our talks.’

‘Me too.’

He had a small backyard, but it was private and safe and it made me think back to our camping trip. I’d never been so happy as I had during those days. I’d never felt so loved and cared for. I felt teary once more, and rather than cry, I changed the topic of conversation to Angel.

‘Angel told me her mother just left her here one day and never came back,’ I said.

Jakob nodded and snorted. ‘Yep. That’s about it.’

‘She never contacted you? Phoned you? Sent you money?’

‘She’s come by a few times. The first time she pulled me aside and told me if I paid her a thousand dollars cash she wouldn’t call the police and dob me in for having sex with Angel. I told her to shove her money where the sun didn’t shine, because the police already knew she was here, and they knew damn well I wasn’t sleeping with her.’

‘Wow. That’s terrible,’ I sympathised.

He nodded his agreement. ‘Yeah, Angel’s mum is… interesting. The father’s no better. I should never have sent Angel to live with him, but it just seemed inappropriate for her to live with me. She’d barely come out of her room. I’d try to speak to her but she wouldn’t utter a word.’

Jakob finished his cigarette and stubbed it out. He gave me a rueful smile.

‘You know what I was like in high school,’ he joked. ‘I couldn’t speak to teenage girls to save my life. It hasn’t improved as the years have gone by, it’s just now I can’t speak to them for a whole other host of reasons. I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable, but that makes it hard to show I actually do give a shit about her. She’s growing on me. Kind of like mould, really, but I think I’d miss her if she went.’

I stared at the night sky. ‘Did you ever want kids of your own?’

‘I’m uh…’ he laughed sadly. ‘I had a kid. A son, Charlie. He died when he was three days old. There were problems with his heart and he died in surgery.’

I shut my eyes and wished I could take my question back. My head spun. I couldn’t imagine Luka dying. The mere thought made me break out in a cold sweat.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I apologised.

He shrugged, stood up and went inside. When he came back out he had a pack of cigarettes and a six pack. He offered me both, and I gingerly accepted the beer.

‘I had the perfect life until he died. The perfect wife, the perfect house, and a job I loved,’ Jakob remarked. ‘Then it all fell to shit. Charlie died, the council resumed our house to make way for a road, and Renee’s father, who lived in Adelaide, died. Renee went down for the funeral. I was supposed to go with her, but I ended up with the flu and couldn’t travel.’

He took a sip of beer. ‘She called me a few days later and said she couldn’t come home. She couldn’t deal with losing Charlie, and having to find a new house. She wanted to stay in Adelaide with her mother. She said I could come and join her, and she meant it, but I couldn’t. I felt the same was she did; moving was impossible. We both stayed where we were. Charlie died five years ago, but we only just finalised our divorce a few months ago.’

‘I truly am sorry.’

‘I know. I appreciate it.’ He gave me a small smile. ‘I couldn’t do it again after that. I’ve barely been able to date. I downloaded Grindr a year ago. I thought maybe I was latently bisexual. I remembered how much I loved you, and thought I’d at least have a look and see if any of the men interested me. But none did. You were the only man I’d ever been attracted to. And, I guess, you weren’t really a man, were you?’

I shook my head. ‘No. But I’m kind of flattered you saw through the external and somehow knew I was a woman inside. Knowing a straight man could love me while I was in a male body is an amazing thing.’

‘You look really good as a woman,’ he said matter-of-factly.

I blushed. ‘Thanks. You’ve held up pretty well, too.’

The years seemed to melt away into nothing. He was exactly who I’d remembered him to be, only more confident, and more happy within himself.

He told me the details of his marriage and work life, and how he’d come to be living in Redbank Plains, and I told him the abridged version of my life to date. I fell in love with him all over again.

That was no surprise; he’s always been the love of my life.

From the day he nervously walked to the edge of the oval and reached inside his backpack for a crumpled cigarette and pack of matches, no doubt aware that all of the alternative kids were suspiciously watching him, I’ve known he’s someone special. I can remember him coughing on the first mouthful of smoke, keeping his watering eyes firmly fixed on a mountain in the distance, while we tried not to laugh out loud.

I was the one who approached him. I knelt next to him and asked if he wanted me to show him how to smoke. He blushed bright red and said that would be good, thanks. I was so close to him that I could smell the combination of male, adolescent perspiration and Lynx deodorant.

By the end of our first lesson he was ready to vomit. But he foolishly persisted, and I continued to teach him until he became at first adept, and then addicted. Then school ended, and we grew close, so intimately joined at the hip that it probably isn’t a wonder his parents believed we were a couple.

I think that when you meet someone truly special, and who you truly connect with, that love is always worth pursuing.

I stayed at Jakob’s house until two am and I only reluctantly left because I was due at work in six hours.

‘You can stay over, if you want,’ Jakob offered. ‘I’ll sleep on the couch.’

‘No, no,’ I argued, rummaging in my bag for my car keys. ‘I’m not going to kick you out of your bed. Besides, I need to wear my uniform to work. I can’t show up in jeans and a singlet.’

Jakob’s gaze flickered over my body. I saw lust in his eyes and understood that he felt the same way towards me as I did towards him.

He walked me out to my car.

‘I know I messed up,’ I told him. ‘But would you give me a second chance?’

Jakob nodded, his face serious. ‘We were kids, Ma… Kaylee. You were a kid. I was a kid. I don’t hold it against you. I was just curious as to what went on. That’s the only reason I asked you. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was judging you, or I resented you.’

I leant over and kissed him, quickly, on the lips. ‘Should we do dinner tomorrow night?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, definitely. I’ll get my parents to mind Angel.’

I bit my lip. There was just one thing I needed to make him aware of.

‘I, uh, still am a male down there,’ I told him, gesturing to my crotch.

He shrugged. ‘That’s okay by me. Is it okay by you?’

‘I really like my dick,’ I confessed.

‘I liked it too.’

My face contorted. ‘Really?’

He shrugged, flushing faintly. ‘My parents had a lot of weird Dutch porn.’

I laughed, relieved. So he was interested in chicks with dicks? Good. That was really, really good.

~~~~~~~~

Jakob might have believed I passed as a woman, but the reality was that I didn’t, not all of the time. I was unusually tall for a woman, and that was the first thing that attracted curious stares. Once their eyes were on me, they inevitably noticed the broader shoulders, heavier jaw and larger hands and feet. I’ve had no surgery done on me, just hormone treatments and a lot of learning how to dress, walk and sit. There just hadn’t been the money for surgery fix the bits and bobs I’d like done.

I was scared that someone might say something to us while we were out together. I knew if I dressed modestly I was less likely to be picked, but although my natural style of dress was very tame, I didn’t want to wear a boring outfit on our first date. The choice was to either dress up and increase my chances of someone picking me, or dress down and feel less sexy.

After a lot of deliberation I picked a pair of nice jeans, a cute top and low heels. My hair is probably my best feature. I have an excellent hairdresser who knows how to cut it in a way that softens my features, and although I use home hair dye, I get a lot of compliments on the colour.

Jakob came to pick me up. When he saw me, he tried to hide a smile, but I knew him too well, and I demanded to know what he found funny.

‘When you stopped for Angel and I, you were wearing a dress. That must be the only time I’ve ever seen you out of jeans. Even now you’re… beautiful… you wear jeans.’

I knew he very nearly said ‘even now you’re a woman’, but I wasn’t offended.

‘Nice save,’ I told him.

He leant over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘You are beautiful. Before we go, can you show me your artwork?’

There is always a mixture of pride and concern when someone I know and like asks to see what I do. It felt far more personal to show Jakob my sketches, than to show a complete stranger.

‘You still draw people so well,’ he complimented.

‘Thanks. They’re still my favourite subject.’ I reached into a filing cabinet and pulled out some papers. ‘Here. I found these this afternoon. It was you and I, that time we went camping.’

It’s a simple pencil sketch of Jakob huddled under a blanket, sitting outside next to a morning campfire, smoking a cigarette. In the background is the bush and his parents’ van. My angles and shading could do some with some work, but all the same, it conveys a quiet, peaceful moment in a very poignant time in my life.

Jakob quietly surveyed the artwork.

‘Wow,’ he said eventually. ‘We were so young, weren’t we? I think those were some of the unhappiest years of my life. You were the only thing that made it better. God, I loved you.’

‘I loved you, too. I was just scared. I thought you’d leave me for a woman. I was eaten up with jealousy at the thought of you getting to be with someone who was born in the right body, and who could, who you would want to, who you would be attracted to,’ I finished awkwardly, fumbling with my words.

‘Did you know you were going to become a woman?’ he asked. He paused. ‘Sorry if that came out wrong. I don’t mean to offend you.’

‘You’re not offending me. I’m only offended when the intent is cruel.’ I shrugged. ‘I knew I wanted to be a woman. I knew I felt like one inside. But I didn’t think it would ever happen. I thought I’d end up looking like some man in drag if I tried. I didn’t want that.’

‘You don’t look like a man in drag.’

‘Not to you. People still pick me. I’ve had enough snide comments and sniggers to be able to pretend otherwise. You might want to make sure you don’t touch or kiss me when we’re out in public. Some people are really homophobic.’

Jakob mulled over my statement. ‘Would it make you more comfortable if we pretended we were just friends?’

‘At this point, yes.’

‘Would you rather we were just friends?’

‘Um, no. No. I want… do you… I mean…’

He leant over and kissed me again, this time on the mouth. He pulled back slightly, his blue eyes staring into mine. He was waiting for a sign. He’d always done that, in every facet of our life. He’d always waited for me to give permission, or ask him to stop.

‘That was nice,’ I muttered.

He pulled me into an embrace and kissed me more passionately. ‘That was better,’ he whispered.

He smelt and felt divine. The older I’ve got, the more my attraction to men has grown. I affectionately rubbed his cheek and watched him smile in response. Being in his arms felt like coming home after a long journey.

‘Still, after all these years,’ he said.

The statement was obtuse to an outsider, but I knew exactly what he was saying.

‘I know. Me too,’ I whispered.

‘You’re so beautiful, Kaylee. I wish I could make you see what I see.’

‘I’m a woman. We’re insecure,’ I joked.

He pulled me in for another kiss, this one deeper and more intimate. Over the years on hormones I’ve lost a lot of muscle mass. It felt good to be with someone who was physically stronger than me. I liked the power imbalance. I liked being able to surrender myself to someone. And there is no one I’ve wanted to surrender to more than Jakob.

Jakob very gently traced his fingers over my chest. My breasts are small, but Jakob didn’t seem to have any complaints about the size He was deeply aroused, and his kisses became rougher and more insistent.

‘Shit, sorry,’ he said suddenly, pulling back.

‘No, no,’ I argued. ‘You want it, I want it… why not?’

‘It seems sleazy. I should buy you dinner first.’

‘Buy me dinner afterwards. I’ll buy dessert.’

He bit his lip. Then another, cheeky, smile broke through. ‘Deal.’

We went to my bedroom. There was a mountain of clothes on my bed; items I’d tried on and discarded as I prepared for tonight, and I pushed them off, apologising to Jakob profusely as I did so.

He didn’t care. He was horny, and sex was the only thing on his mind. He kicked off his shoes and dragged me onto the bed, before pulling my heels off and throwing them onto the floor. He’d definitely become more sexually confident over the years, not that I was complaining.

We rolled around the bed kissing and cuddling each other. Jakob removed my shirt and bra, and let out a little grunt of happiness as he fondled, sucked and admired my breasts. I was by now just as eager as him, and I took off his shirt. He was heavier and more hirsute than when we’d last been lovers. He was a physically mature man, and with age had come the ability to better control his cock. He was taking this slow, and it was me, not him, who tried to get us both bottom half naked. But when I reached for his jeans, he pushed me away.

‘Ladies first,’ he argued, unbuttoning mine.

‘You probably don’t want to see how I hide my male bits,’ I told him, trying to wriggle away.

Jakob grinned evilly. ‘I do, actually. I want to pull that cock of yours out and suck it.’

My prick was already trying desperately to escape, and it sprung free the second Jakob released it. He massaged my balls, letting them return to their usual spot, before roughly spreading my legs and kneeling between them.

He’d never been shy with his tongue, and that hadn’t changed over the years. His hands and mouth were everywhere I wanted to be, and then some. The rubbing and pulling and sucking and licking drew me closer and closer to orgasm. It had been nearly two years since I’d had a sexual partner. Jakob was just incredible, and the way he touched me had me wriggling and gasping.

‘Jakob, getting close,’ I warned.

‘Good.’ He moved out from between my legs and lay next to me. ‘Sit on my face. Let me control how much of your cock is in my mouth, but sit on my face.’

He was still in his jeans, but a quick glance at his crotch showed he was hard. I gave him a quick kiss, then took the opportunity to remove the last of his clothing, before kneeling over his face.

He moved my hands to my breasts, hinting that he wanted me to play with them. I squeezed them softly, then let out a gasp as he directed my prick into his mouth. Oh fuck, I was horny. I started to rock back and forth, being careful not to push myself too far down his throat.

‘Jakob, I’m really close,’ I warned.

He had one hand on the base of my cock, and the other was resting on my bum. With the latter, he gave me a small slap, as if to say ‘well, do it’. I let out a yelp and a cry, and grabbed my cock as I started to come. My prick fell from his mouth with a plop, and I wanked myself firmly, letting my seed fall over his jaw and neck.

Jakob just lay beneath me, a faint smile playing on his face as he watched me come.

When I was all done, I rolled off and searched for some tissues. There were three left in the box, and I used them to wipe my mess away from him before throwing them over the side of the bed.

‘I missed doing that for you,’ he said, pulling me onto the bed alongside him. ‘You taste good.’

I kissed him. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too.’

‘Do you want to fuck me?’

He nodded. ‘If that’s okay?’

‘Of course. I’ll get lubricant.’

I rolled over and reached into my drawer. I reached for the lubricant, then hesitated over the box of condoms. Would he be offended if I asked him to wear one? I’d been very careful ever since Hannah gave me gonorrhoea. It wasn’t that I suspected Jakob might have something, but I had no idea who he might have been with.

While I was pondering the question, Jakob reached over the top of me and picked up the box.

‘You don’t need to think you can’t ask,’ he told me. ‘Whatever you want, I’ll do.’

It was impossible to not love him. How could I not, when he gave me everything I wanted and then some, when he showed me respect and paid my attention, and when I knew I could say ‘no’ to him and he’d listen? There are precious few people on this earth who are willing to put your needs before theirs and not resent you for it, but Jakob has always been one of those people.