Kate Draffen (Chapters 32 - 33)

By Swishy

Michael Taylor was a 17-year-old boy living in a town in Australia. Something happened and he found himself on a path to becoming a 17-year-old girl. This is a story about an ordinary teenager that had something extraordinary happen to him and how he tried to cope.

Gemma comes home from Sydney and tries to deal with her mounting problems.

CHAPTER 32

"…then I got whisked through at the airport and the flight was OK." I summarised my story for my Mum who was driving me back to Marrang. Flying First class seems so much more classy when the very next vehicle you get in is a brown 1990 Toyota Carolla. Despite jumping out of luxury and into banality or perhaps because of it, it felt good to be home. Or at least in the car traveling the three hours to home.

"Well, it sounds like you had a great time. I missed you a bunch too. Life's just not the same without photographers in the bloody garden and boys breaking down the back door!" She wound down the window to smoke. The cold night air whipped inside the speeding car and began throwing things around like a biker gang in a bar. Cigarette smoke was preferable to the chilling winds that made my nipples alert as soldiers.

"And that yellow dress you wore to the party! I died when I saw you in the paper this morning! You looked so pretty, Gemma! Like a little angel! Just made me so excited for your Deb." I inwardly cringed as Mum nattered away about the Deb ball. I was always a little uneasy about doing it and now with my newfound malaise I was positively dreading it. "And in the photos I saw you were wearing heels? Wow Gemma! I'm so bloody proud of you. You are growing up so fast. It seems like just last week you became a girl."

"It was a month ago," I sighed.

"Only a month? Wow, you've come so far so fast! With your little dresses and the way you move and talk and act, it's like you were never a boy at all!" Great! Even my own mother thought of me as complete woman. She had known me longer than anyone else and even she was forgetting who I used to be. What chance do I have? Maybe I should let go and become the giggling, cocksucking bimbo the whole world wants me to be. "Next thing I'll know you'll have a boyfriend!" Little did she know that her sweet little daughter was already having casual sex.

The long car trip home was a little too silent. I kept my answers short which probably made the trip seem longer. It wasn't unbearable silence between us but I'm sure Mum knew that something was upsetting me. The signs whizzed by, each one proclaiming that Marrang was a little closer. The sun was climbing down the sky, saying its goodbye by making the horizon look pink and purple and beautiful. I wondered if the sun ever got bored with doing the same daily grind over and over, up, over the top and then down again. Repeat.

"Mum, can we stop at the toilets in the next town?" I asked.

"Yeah, of course. It will give me a chance to have a ciggie," Mum replied. I'm not sure why but ever since I turned into a girl Mum barely smoked in the car anymore. I guess maybe she thinks that this little body couldn't possibly handle any puff of smoke. Either way, it made driving in her car much nicer.

"Can I ask you a question?" Mum asked. I told her she could. "Do you miss being able to take a piss standing up?" I buried my face in my hands, the citizens of Sydney never asked me questions like that. They asked how I was so brave and things of that nature. None of them asked about urinating.

"Not really, I know I should but sitting down isn't that bad," while I felt more disillusioned with my new gender than ever, the truth was peeing sitting was fine. What I didn't like was how often I needed to go - my new bladder seemed tiny! If guys had small bladder that would make sense because they all need to do is whip it out and go wherever, but somehow the women ended up with the smaller bladder.

We arrived at a sleepy town much smaller than my own. With a pub and a petrol station and that's about it. Mum pulled the car up to the public toilets, "Here we are!" she proclaimed as if she had brought me to the Promised Land.

"Can you pop the boot for me?" I asked. Just a simple question really, a question that really doesn't need a follow up question.

"Why?" asked Mum. Damn her!

"Because I need something out of my bag," I told her. Hopefully that would be enough information for her.

"Like what?"

"Just something," I snarled. I am a teenager and thus I am allowed to snarl. Only teenagers and predatory cats are given that right.

Having older teenage daughter Mum must have known it was a wrong move to ask another question after a teenager had snarled but she did it anyway. "Is it in you backpack? Or do you need help getting your suitcase out?"

"Fuck! What's with all the questions? I'm getting a tampon! Is that OK with you? I've got blood and stuff oozing out of my pussy and I have to plug it up with something! Bloody hell, Mum! Can't an ex-boy have his period without his Mum asking him a thousand fucking questions!" I flung open the boot and rummaged around for the purple box. I'm sure the commotion I was making was the biggest event to happen in the sleepy little rest stop of a town all year.

"I'm sorry Gemma," my Mum mumbled as she fumbled for a cigarette. I winced at hearing my stupid girl name and sprinted up to the toilet blocks to get the disgusting deed done with. Gemma's large round tits bouncing around with each step. As far as I could see it was all Gemma's fault. I had to change Gemma's tampon, she was the one totally in lust with Tyler and it was her body that caused all these problems from the start. I didn't hate myself in the slightest, my main problem was that I hated Gemma.

I stood with one leg on the toilet seat, my jeans and underpants around one of my feet. I hate pulling on the little string and seeing the slightly bloodied prize waiting for me. After it was removed, it swung in the air like a bloody little cotton wrecking ball. Annette had told me it was wrong to flush a used tampon down the toilet but this tiny town's public toilet didn't seem to have a sanitary napkin bin, let alone a bin at all. The water came crashing into the bowl and the second tampon I had ever used was washed away. I tapped another one out and cautiously inserted it. This sucks!

Avoiding my mother's eyes was my main objective getting back in the car. There nothing to be proud of, I shouldn't have yelled at her. The car spluttered into action and we drove away, the roar of the dilapidated car and the whir of the Beach Boys tape the only sounds. I looked at my mother, whether I liked it or not I was her daughter now. I used to be her son and I liked that relationship, it was casual, friendly and close. Without a father figure in my life she taught me well, she coached me through my first shave and listened to my romance problems whenever I felt I could open up to her. But I was always a little jealous of her relationship with Nicole, while Mum was just my mum, Mum was not only Nicole's Mum but her best friend. They would hang out together for fun, laughing and joking. Their mother-daughter bond was so strong that some people thought they were sisters, something my Mum would brag about whenever she could. I always wanted that. And now, I was fully equipped to have it.

"Mum, do you remember your first period?"

There wasn't even a moment's pause as she launched into the story, as if she had been thinking about it and me asking her had given her permission to open her mouth and let it all come tumbling out. "I'll never forget it until the day I die, Gemma. I was 11 and I was at my friend Sandy Lynn's birthday party and I remember I was wearing my brand new white jeans."

"Really? White jeans?"

"Shut up! They were in fashion. Anyway, I didn't notice right away in fact, Sandy's Mum came over to me and took me in the bathroom. There was the small red dots on the crotch of my new jeans. I was spotting. I was so devastated, but she was really sweet. She gave me some new undies, a pad and let me borrow one of Sandy's skirts. But I was way too mortified to come back out to the party so Sandy's Mum called my Mum to come and pick me up.

"I remember Mum pulling up in her old Ford and me just bloody bolting for it, not saying goodbye to any of the girls or anything. I just sat in the car and sooked the whole way home." The parallels weren't lost on me.

"When we were driving home, your Nanna said to me, 'I know it might not seem like it now, love, but you've just received a very special gift.' It came off as sappy to me back then but once Nicole had her first period I understood it. Being a girl is fun and all but being a woman is incredible. I know that sometimes you didn't like being a girl at all, but it's different now, you're a beautiful woman now." Mum started to tear up, her voice crackling like a camping fire. "And I am so proud of you."

"I don't like what I am at the moment, Mum," I told her honestly, "I know being a woman is a wonderful gift but I'm not sure it was meant for me. I didn't gradually become a woman I was shoved into this body. I really want to love being a woman but I don't even know that it's possible."

"OK, I wasn't aware you felt like that. I know I haven't been the best Mum in the world during this whole thing. I didn't know how to raise a boy and I know even less how to raise a girl who used to be a boy. So for all my mistakes, I'm sorry. But, you can learn to love yourself, you've always been a remarkable person and it doesn't matter what body you are in you'll always be remarkable. I really want to help you, Gemma, help you to love yourself."

OK, I cried. We both did. In all my life I had never had such a deep moment with the woman who gave birth to me, maybe it took the realization that I could now give birth to truly understand how important she was to me. It's weird having a moment like that on hour number one of a three-hour drive, normally after an emotionally draining moment like that you would excuse yourself.

Becoming Gemma had given me a lot of Taylor qualities that seemed dormant as a male and I wasn't just talking about the large chest. Mum, Nicole and now I shared a quick temper, I always thought I could always figure things out rationally before acting but now my emotions were on a hair trigger. I did things I almost instantly regretted. I didn't know if I could blame that on genetics, my new hormones, or the fact that acting crazy was an appropriate action in my new crazy world. I definitely had Mum's lust for life now, before I was a little too laid back but now I felt passion for things that I never had before. Dr. Chisholm had told me that I would change and I guess there were worse people to emulate than my mother.

"Do you know why Dad hasn't approached me yet? I know he's been absent for years and all but I thought he would have shown after his only son become his daughter." It was true I didn't think about my Dad much but there was a niggling feeling inside me ever since the change.

Mum sighed the same exacerbated way as she did whenever I asked about Dad. "Gemma, your father is not the type of person to admit he made a mistake, nor is he one to think a man is an important part of the child rearing, luckily he is also not one to ever ask for a handout. He's not going to show up."

"You really don't think he's going to?" My memories of my father were like tiny nonsense poem written in the margins in my mind. I'm not sure if the memories I have are even real or fabricated ones. He left when I was really quite young and after a few minimal efforts at birthdays and Christmases he vanished completely. I did, however, get a crisp $20 note from his mother every birthday. I wondered if he thought about me much and if his memories were a hodgepodge of tiny slithers of memories too.

"From what I know, your father doesn't even live in Australia anymore. He's in Indonesia or somewhere like that," revealed my Mum nonchalantly, "Went there to work for a mining company and fell in love with a local woman, a nurse I think."

"Um… How long have you known that?"

She dipped her headlights as a semi-trailer barrelled down the road towards us. Mum didn't take her eyes off the road but said this as if she was staring me in the eyes, "Long enough that I felt guilty for not telling you about it, got over it and then felt guilty again, let's just say that much."

It was nice to feel so close to Mum, she wasn't just a parental figure but a woman and a friend. She had made some mistakes but she always tried to her to make me the best person possible. As the car pulled into our steep driveway, I felt an overwhelming sense of security wash over me. I was finally home, far away from pretty yellow dresses, Kate Draffen and Tyler's throbbing member. "Thanks Mum," I said as we unloaded the baggage from the car, although the emotional baggage I now had though would take more time to unpack.

"Anytime love," she told me.

I took a nostril full of my house's smell. I dropped my bags just inside the front door (Mum hated when I did that). It was good to home and felt my body relax, a body I definitely was sick of though, a body that needed me to change its tampon again. Perhaps I was being a little over zealous with my tampon changing but Annette had been fairly explicit when talking me through Toxic Shock Syndrome, and I didn't want to die because I left some cotton inside me. I grabbed my backpack and went to the bathroom. Since it was bedtime for me soon it was time for a pad, I couldn't leave a tampon inside me all night so Annette had also equipped me with some nighttime pads. I grabbed a fresh pair of panties out of my backpack and stuck down the pad. I felt a little bit like a nappy as it snuggled up against my vagina, but I would have to deal with it.

I walked carefully to my room. Excellent, barring the bathroom and maybe the beach I wasn't going to leave this room for anything ever again. As Nicole had threatened me she had moved one of her full-length mirrors into my room. Nicole had two of them and said that no girl should be without one, so it appeared like she had donated one of hers. I looked in the mirror and was disheartened by the fact that although I was dressed as androgenous as possible I still looked alarmingly female. I guess it's hard to look sexless with your secondary sexual characteristics sticking out all over the place.

"Enjoying the mirror or the reflection?" said a voice that had peeked into the room. I didn't have the heart to tell Nicole I hated both.

"You flew home wearing that?" Nicole clearly disapproved of my casual attire, "I thought Dolly Magazine gave you a whole new wardrobe of clothes." News of free clothes travelled faster than my plane home.

"They did," I said still grimacing in the mirror, "but I didn't feel like dressing up today," (or ever again). Nicole walked over to me and shared the mirror. Two pretty blonde sisters looked back at us, one smiling and primping the other one staring expressionless. No prizes for guess which one I was.

"I love having a sister," Nicole grinned, wrapping an excitable arm around me, "and I'm not just saying that for some free clothes. I mean it. When I was little I used to bug Mum for a little sister constantly. This was after Dad left so it was kinda impossible but I didn't know any better. Not saying that I didn't like you but just I wanted someone to play with who wouldn't make Barbie fight the Ninja Turtles." Just for the record, the Ninja Turtles always won, even though Barbie towered over them.

"I'm a little old for dolls," I revealed.

"I know that, dickhead, I'm just saying that we've got a lot of sisterly activities to catch up on." My guess to explain the way both my sister and mother were behaving was that they realized that they should be a little gentler towards me and this overly sappy sentiment was their idea of being 'nice'. Or maybe I was feeling so down that any showing of sentiment would appear 'sappy' to me.

"Sisterly activates?" I groaned.

"Don't worry, it'll be fun. Christ Gem! Even when you're not dressed up you're hot!" Nicole fell back into her standard mode of flattery, telling me how hot I was. "I wish I was as skinny as you. I cannot wear low riding jeans because I get a terrible case of muffin top, but you can pull it off easily." She lifted up my T-shirt just under my boobs to admire my slender form. Her fingers explored my torso, searching for love handles or something of their ilk. I squirmed and pushed my T-shirt back down.

"Stop it!" I whined.

"I was just admiring your tummy," confessed Nicole defensively.

"Well, don't be jealous, Nicole. It's not like I earned this body through hard work or anything, I got infected, that's all! So don't be jealous, believe me if I could give you this body," I squeaked, my voice was higher than Nicole's and I hated it, "I would!"

"Fuck me! Settle down, I was just saying you have a rocking body," said Nicole, who had obviously read too much women's mags to come out with 'rocking body'. "No need to spazz out on me."

"I'm not spazzing out!"

"Fair enough, you're not," she said, trying to calm me down, "I'll catch up with you tomorrow, OK sis? I'm going over to Ben's for a bit." She smiled a natural smile at me and gave my shoulders a tight little squeeze.

My damp, depressing thoughts picked me up and threw me on the bed. I lay there very still, pinned down by how wrong I felt. I was stuck in this body and try as hard as I could there was no way out. It was weird; I felt like I did right after the change, the same gloomy malaise spreading through my body. I thought I had grown. I thought that I was enjoying it all, loving the attention and the new friends, but maybe it was all an act.

The tinkle of music and the feeling of a minor earthquake caught my attention. It was my phone in my jeans' pocket. Girl's jeans all seem to me frighteningly tight and these were no different, so pocket space was minimal. Struggling, I gripped my flip-top phone with my thumb and index finger and gently tugged it out of its denim burrow. The call was from Tyler. I didn't answer it. I wasn't sure what I would say to him. I couldn't tell him that after having sex with him I had fallen into a depression and desperately wanted my old gender back. I couldn't tell him that a part of me really like the sex and the rest of me absolutely loathed that part of me. Instead I sat the phone in front of my face on the bed and stared it down until it stopped ringing.

I didn't move all night.

CHAPTER 33

I let another one of Tyler's calls ring out. It was the third time he had called that morning but still he hadn't learnt that I wasn't answering. I didn't want to move at all, let alone have an awkward conversation with a man that I had recently lost my virginity to. I was sick of hearing his attempts at conversation so the phone was put on vibrate, whenever he tried to call my phone would dance eagerly across my bed.

My period hadn't stopped yet. I had been bleeding for 24 hours now and was not entertained by the fact it may last another six days. At least I hadn't experienced any PMS before the event, which was a good sign. My period felt like my body was angry with me for not getting pregnant. I felt like it was saying, "What?! You're not pregnant? But we got an egg ready and set up a nice womb and everything! And you don't want to use it! Fine! We'll just toss the egg and all the womb lining out your vagina and start again! You better be ready for next month though!" I didn't have the heart to tell it I was never going to let it have a baby.

Mum poked in her smiley face and shined a bright morning grin in my direction. "You want to come shopping with me and Nic? Just us three girls?"

"No thanks," I said, not moving at all.

"Come one, Gemma! We haven't had a chance to hang out much, just us three and I think it would be great fun! We can get some Fish 'n' Chips for lunch and go eat them by the beach and then we can go buy some clothes!"

"I already have more clothes than Michael ever did," I groaned, rolling over to avoid her gaze. My bra-less boobs sluggishly followed, jiggling as I rolled.

"Yes, you have a lot of clothes but there's no such thing as too much clothes!"

"No thanks."

Mum didn't push her luck.

She was a little perturbed however when she came back many hours later to discover I hadn't moved. "Gem, are you OK?"

"Fine," I told her.

"Gemma, you're going to have a period pretty regularly and you can't stay in your room every time you get your monthly visitor."

"I just need some down time after my trip. It was really draining."

"At least eat something," I felt the mattress go down so I knew Mum was sitting on the bed. "I bet you haven't eaten since who knows when. Gemma, you're still growing, you have to eat."

I did eat, my depression wasn't one of self harm just a realization that my life was now thoroughly ruined and all I could do is sit back and let it happen. I ate my dinner, washed my dishes and went back to bed. Not only was I avoiding calls from Tyler but my phone held a whole stack of names I didn't pick up on; Kevin, Lilly, Becca, Alana and even Glen and Dot's calls rang out. I'm sure they were only interested in hearing stories from Sydney but I didn't want to talk to anyone. In lieu on human relationships I turned to movies, my pitiful stack of DVDs only got me so far, and I had the hankering to just head down to the shopping centre and buy a year's worth of movies. I'm sure watching the world's greatest movies for an entire year would actually be a rewarding experience. I always found it ultimately depressing that it was impossible to consume all of the world's greatest works of art in one lifetime. I found it daunting that even if I read/admired/watched/listened all day, everyday I wouldn't be able to appreciate all of the truly great works of art. But a year in my room with nothing but the world's greatest films would take a sizeable chunk out of the 'must-see' list. Mum had bought be a book titled, '1001 movies to see before you die' and if I was strict about it and watched 3 movies a day I could knock over the entire amount. Surely that make me a much more enlightened (and thus better) person.

After Austin Powers 2 finished, I discovered my movie collection didn't really contain many 'true' classics. I looked at my alarm clock, K-mart would be shut so my 'Year of Enlightenment' would have to be on hold until tomorrow. I stood up and arched my aching back. It might have been true that I was going a little too stir-crazy enclosed in my tiny room but the real world was much too depressing. I was a girl outside of my room; inside of it my gender didn't matter. Sure I still had to change my tampons every couple of hours but other than that and the huge full-length mirror in the corner my gender was ignorable.

"Gemma! Time for school!" Mum called out in the morning. She did wake me up but I presumed that she wanted to do that. I didn't reply, I thought I had made it quite clear that my room was my sanctuary and I wasn't about to leave it for something as trivial as school.

She wrapped at the entrance of my little world and I didn't react, I was employing what I think Ghandi had deemed 'Passive Resistance'. Mum came in and saw me lying on my bed, glassy stare in my eyes. "Oh Gem!" she bemoaned.

"Don't make me go to school," I said, without lifting my head.

Pre-serious discussion from the trip home in the car Mum would have hit my on my bottom told me I was being stupid and drag me to school herself but I could see her eyes becoming softer. "Gemma, what's wrong?"

I gave an excuse that if any other kid had given their mother they would have been dragged out of bed by their nose, "I just don't feel like it." But to Mum's credit she suppressed those urges.

"OK, I'll call up the school and say your sick," she said as her ran her motherly hands through my hair.

"Thanks," a minuscule smile crept onto my face.

"But I'm also calling Annette to come down and have a look at you. I'm worried about you, you haven't been the same since you came back from Sydney." Annette? Great, suddenly school didn't look that bad. I moved my head enough to be a nod. I should have been thrilled that I was getting a free sick day, any day not wasted by the drudgery of school is a day worth living but all I felt was the warm air trickling through the crack in my window. It felt like this summer would never end.

"OK, I've gotta go to work now. Will you be fine by yourself?" Mum asked.

"I'll be OK," I sighed but I wasn't certain. Mum leaned down and tenderly kissed my forehead, she stood up and walked out of my room. My little world's population was back down to one, just how I liked it.

You might think lying on my bed for two days straight would have been boring but I was numb to boredom. I kept replaying my meeting with Kate Draffen in my head over and over. He had seen through my prissy little act before I had. I wasn't happy wiggling my hips, putting on dresses and admiring boys' bodies. It must have been an act I convinced myself was real. This body was more powerful than I thought, it had me convinced that being a girl was alright.

When I met Kate I thought I was the smarter one, the one who was getting on with life. I knew in my heart of hearts that all Kate needed to do was embrace his newfound masculinity and he would have been happy again. It upset me to think of how wrong he truly was but the truth was I was wrong. Saturday morning, when I awoke, bleeding from the hole between my legs, was the day it finally dawned on me — I was in the wrong body. And I was stuck. I didn't know what I was going to do with the rest of my life anymore.

"So, you're sick are you?" said a voice. It was Dot's voice.

"Hi Dot," I said. It was only a matter of time that someone would come and see why I wasn't answering their calls, a little bit of me was happy it was Dot.

"Hi Gemma," said the guy who followed behind Dot. It was Glen, his usual position was directly behind Dot or me but now that he was Dot's boyfriend I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to separate the two. They looked cute together actually but it was obvious who was in charge.

"Glen and I just wanted to see how you were doing." I sat up in a gesture of respect. I hadn't showered and my hair was a little clumpy. I felt how I looked.

"I'm OK. Just didn't want to go to school today."

"Yeah well, when the country's biggest celebrity doesn't show up for school people notice," explained Glen, "I had people asking all day where you were."

"Me too," Dot agreed, "No-one had a clue. We thought you might still be in Sydney but we stopped in at your Mum's pub on the way here and she said you were sick. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, just didn't want to go to school," I repeated, I didn't like them standing over me, "Sit down already, I'm not about to kick you out." Normally, when us three sat down in my room, one of us would take the bed, someone else would take the beanbag, leaving the computer chair spare for the third. But since they were both in the lovey part of their relationship they climbed into the beanbag together. It was weird watching two people who once had the platonic-space-boundary enforced for so many years be so intimate together, especially after Dot had found it so hard not to laugh when we were being intimate.

"So, you missed diddley-squat at school today," sighed Glen, "Just more of the same, ever grinding towards the end of Year 12 and then uni and then work and then death."

"Wow, grim much?" asked Dot.

"Says you, you wannabe emo!" Glen knew that was one of Dot's buttons. Although she wore dark clothes, listening to moody music and read gothic horror stories she was endlessly frustrated being lumped into the 'emo' or 'goth' group. But instead of calling Glen a 'fucktard' or something of the like, she playfully wrestled him in the beanbag. It was disconcerting, like watching the Coyote having a tickle fight with the Road Runner instead of trying to kill it.

"Saw your pic of you at your gala thing on the net on Saturday. Little yellow dress? Geez, Gem. Are you sure you weren't a girl all your life? Because boys don't pose like that!"

"I had to wear it," I lied, "Dolly Magazine forced me to."

"Sure they did," she said, obviously not believing me, "But it looked like a rocking party."

"It was fun," I said, but the disinterest in my voice made it sound like I could have been saying anything.

"And what about John Draffen?" Glen got excited, "That must have been a historic moment meeting him.

This wasn't a question I just could flog off with another 3-word answer and I knew it. "Kate, he likes to be called Kate."

"Why?"

"Well, she was forced into using a guy's name and he would rather not be called it, I think. Anyway, she's pretty messed up, you know she's a woman trapped in a man's body so it's very tough. But I think she's got a lot of things right by fighting the changes, you know? Just because she's got a cock doesn't mean she's a guy."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure it does," teased Dot.

My blood boiled a little bit hearing Dot say that, for a girl who could be a very deep thinker she looked at the issue of gender with a pretty confined view. "You know what I mean, she's in a very fragile state and it kinda reminded me how weird all of this is."

"Gemma, a month ago you used to be a quiet movie nerd and now you're on the front of magazines showing off your Double D cleavage in party dresses, there is nothing at all in this story that is not weird."

"Just a D," I pouted, "Not Double D."

"I'm sure some brands you're a Double D." It was a technicality but she was right.

It wouldn't have been a conversation with Dot if she didn't mention my breasts. Perhaps she was jealous of the large fatty deposits on my chest or perhaps it was her awkward way of making me feel more like 'one of the girls', either way 10 minutes couldn't past without her making reference to my chest.

"Anyway," I said changing the subject, "Kate made me realise how unnatural I was acting."

"What do you mean 'unnatural'?" Glen said, "I think you are coping really well."

"Yeah, all joking aside, Gem," Dot joined in, "What you have achieved is pretty amazing. I mean, if it happened to me I would freak out but you've really embraced it."

"But c'mon! I was shaving my legs by like the third day! Lusting after boys a few days after that! Wearing a girl's school uniform, doing my deb, wearing make-up, being a model. That's not embracing it, that's going insane! I was more girly than most girls!"

"So what?" shrugged Dot, "If that's who you are then that's who you are." Glen nodded in agreement. "It took me sometime to realise that you're different to who you used to be too, Gemma. Don't take this the wrong way but you’re a much better girl than you were a boy."

"How could I possibly take that the wrong way?" I snarled.

Dot and I had been through too many fights recently and it seemed like Dot was trying her best to avoid another one, one she had seemed to have started. She talked slowly, patiently explaining herself, "I mean, you seemed to be really enjoying the finer points of being a girl, where as you were never a big fan of manly things like sports, being chauvinistic and all that Alpha-male bullshit."

"I don't care if I'm better at being a girl," I huffed, defensively crossing my arms, "It's so shit! Why can't everything go back to normal?"

"It must suck, Gem. And you know what, I wouldn't swap places with you for a million bucks," Glen said, forgetting I had already made well over a million bucks, "But you're so incredible, I was so proud of you taking all this in your stride. Whatever Kate said to you has messed with your head, Gemma, and I'm sure whatever she said was wrong because out of you two, a depressed shut-in and a bubbly, caring person I know which one I'd rather be friends with. I'm sure you're just going through a one month slump."

Dot's ears pricked up, "One month? Gemma dear, are you having your monthly visitor at the moment?"

"That's kinda personal," I grumbled.

"Yeah, and we are your best friends. You know, the people you talk about personal things with."

"I'm not sure I want to hear it," Glen said as soon as he realized he soon could be in the middle of a conversation about menstruation and as far as bad places for a guy to be, talking about menstruation was only a notch above stuck in quick sand with scorpions surrounding your slowly sinking head.

"Don't be such a sook, you fucking moron," Dot scolded her new boyfriend, "All girls get their period; your Mum, my Mum, all the girls at school and me. Oh shock, Glen! Once a month blood oozes out of my vagina!" I bet Glen was having second thoughts right then and there. "If that is what's keeping you from school, that's totally fine. I remember how bloated and gross I felt on my first period. I blagged a few days off of school."

"When did you get your first period?" I quietly asked.

"End of Year 9," Dot said, "I know, I was a late start. Plus I was irregular for like 6 months. 24 days, 15 days, 40 days, just whenever it wanted! And I'm not sure if you know but I PMS pretty bad, I cramp up tons!" I liked hearing Dot's problems with her period; it made me feel a little better about my own relatively non-dramatic period. "So, how did your's go or how is it going?"

"OK, it's been going for like 3 days now, I just want it to end. I'm so terrified of tampons too, I'm scared I'm going to lose it up there."

"Gross," squirmed Glen, he had been doing well, until that point.

"Well, I last usually around 6 days."

"Great!" I bemoaned, "Half way."

"OK, we…we're agreed periods are terrible and weird. What's next on the agenda?" I don't think Glen liked being the minority in our little friendship group anymore. It used to be that Dot was the odd-woman-out, which suited all of us just fine. But then again, they were in a relationship so I guess I was the odd-woman-out.

"So, are you going to school tomorrow?" Dot asked me.

"No, I don't think so. Unless I get dragged out of bed and shoved into the car."

"Don't give us ideas," Dot grinned, "C'mon Gem, a bit of school will do you good. Alana, Alison and Lilly are just dying without their little Barbie Doll to play with." I sighed, school would be good if I could walk back in there as Michael, that way I could appreciate the fact that I'm good friends with the hottest girls in school.

I sighed a long world-weary sigh. It echoed through the room and everyone knew — I was one confused person. The conversation had petered and that sigh signalled the time to leave. "We should probably get going," Dot said, always in charge.

"OK, thanks for coming, guys."

Dot strode out the door and Glen, in a position he was now fixed into for the rest of his life, followed behind her. He turned around and said, "I hope you feel better," smiled, furrowed his brow a little and then trundled after his girlfriend.

Before I could think back on the conversation Mum knocked on the door. "You decent?" she asked. She must have just seen Dot and Glen leave so why would she assume I was in a state of undress?

"Yes," I said.

She entered the room, her large breasts coming past the door before anything else, I wondered if the same thing happened to me as well, considering we were around the same proportions I guessed so. But her breasts weren't bothering me, what was in her hand was. It fluttered lightly as the breeze blew by, the white satin shimmering in the sunlight. "Ready for a fitting?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said, although it was clear that I meant 'no'.

"Gemma, I've done as much as I can do without you trying it on again. It'll just take a few seconds," she promised.

The truth was in my vegetative state I had already decided that I was no longer doing the Debutante Ball anymore. It seemed ridiculous to shun this body and at the same time wear a glorious garment designed to show it off. But I couldn't tell her I wasn't doing the Deb while she was holding the dress, it was impossible. I guess Mum took my sitting up as a 'yes' and began to order me about. "Good girl, Gemma. Thank you. Don't worry I called Annette today and she'll be around tomorrow to help you with your little problem." Whenever Mum had that dress around, everything else seemed small — the fact I now hated myself and couldn't stand my new gender was now just a 'little problem'. I wasn't looking forward to seeing Annette but I did want to feel better about myself and I am sure she would have some pills or something to help it.

Mum walked me out to the TV room, which had become the Debutante Dress room for the next few weeks. Without Mum having to ask I pulled off my T-shirt. "Whoa! I didn't expect to see you so undressed so quickly. Looks like someone is desperate to see her dress on."

"No," my breasts softly bounced, "I just want it over and done with." I didn't care that Mum saw me topless anymore, it wasn't like this was my body or anything; I was just stuck in it.

She helped me into my petticoat and I didn't complain once, complaining would only slow the process down. At least she didn't make me strip of my pyjama bottoms; you wouldn't be able to see them under the dress anyway. Hardly any of the girls where wearing petticoats, I guess the full skirt wasn't a big fashion but Mum seemed to think it was paramount. I looked like a Disney Princess getting ready for the ball, but instead of a cartoon mouse helping me, I had my 30-something cigarette smoking Mum. "OK, lift your hands up," she instructed. I did so and the world disappeared underneath the white satin. All I could hear was the rustling of material and all I could feel was the cool satin against my soft, soft skin. Although I was disgusted with the result, the sensuous feeling of it all was heavenly, even to my numb mind.

Mum got a little choked-up seeing me, I guess she saw me as a little princess and not as a boy in a girl's body in a girl's dress. "Gemma, you look like an angel. Thank you so much for doing this for me." It's very hard when she says things like that. She looked me over and checked the bodice. Since Nicole is a little huskier than me Mum had let in a lot of the seams. It now clung to my body. I know saying it fit like a glove is a cliché but that's exactly how it fit, conforming to my every curve. It's seemed such a shame that the dress looked so perfect on this body and yet I was inside it.

"I may have not let it out enough in the bust," Mum tutted with her critical eye firmly in place, "Is it comfy?" I told her it was fine because it mainly was and I didn't want to spend any more time in it. She reached into the top of my dress and 'plumped' up cleavage by lifting my boobs higher and closer together, the dress was tight enough to hold them in place without having them look like they were about to spill out.

So rarely did Debutante dresses look both beautiful and sexy, but this one was alarmingly close.

Upon hearing a knock at the front door Mum left me alone to suffer. It was going to be impossible to tell her I wasn't doing the Deb, the way she looked at me while I wore my gown was swimming with beautiful nostalgia and unending pride. It would break her heart.

"Oh my God!" cried the girls at the door, the boy there just looked stunned.

"Gemma, you have some visitors," Mum smiled, inwardly proud of the reaction her dress received.

"Wow, Gemma! Just wow! You're sooooooo cute!" said Alana, her eyes as wide as they could go. You could see the Debutante Ball-madness creep into her eyes. Girls have a tendency to go a little bit loopy during Deb season. I looked over at Lilly and saw that the madness was spreading. I just hoped I was impervious to it.

Glen and I dubbed it Debutante Ball-madness or just simply 'The Madness'. It seemed to affect all girl involved in any way with the Deb Ball; the debutante themselves, their mothers, the teachers, pretty much any girl anywhere that knew someone making their debut. Symptoms include (but are not limited to): higher than usual pitched voices due to excitement, flapping arms, wide 'crazy' eyes, endless talk about dress styles, overuse of the words 'gorgeous' 'fairytale' and 'sweetheart neckline', elongating the word 'so' to an agonising length and extreme dieting. Boys, no matter if they are doing the Deb or not, aren't affected, neither is Dot.

"You look like a frigging princess, Gem!" squealed Lilly in a pitch that only people with similarly high voices could hear.

"Hi guys," I shrugged casually, trying to calm them down, "Hi Aaron."

Lilly's train of thought had seemingly lost its driver, "Hi Gemma, we just came to see if… Spin around!"

"Yeah," agreed Alana with the symptoms of the madness very clear.

I did so, quickly, thinking that maybe the swirling image of me might snap them out of The Madness but to no avail. "Awwww… That dress is so fairytale cute! Where did you get it?" Nope, the illness was probably terminal.

"My Mum made it," I told the girls and Aaron who didn't seem as interested.

I couldn't help but watch Mum swell up with pride, like a slowly inflating balloon as Lilly praised her, "Really? Wow, Mrs. Taylor, that's such an amazing dress! Gemma's going to steal the whole show dressed like that."

"Nicole was supposed to wear it but she had an asthma attack before the night and couldn't do it. So, I'm just refitting it for Miss. Fussy here," Mum gestured to me, as if I routinely demand to look perfect.

"It's so intricate! Did you do all the sewing yourself?"

"Yes, took me months. But it's a labour of love. Just seeing one of my daughters wearing it will make it all worth it," Mum smiled as she imagined the scene.

"So, where were you today?" Aaron asked, thankfully breaking The Madness conversation, which may have lasted days without intervention.

"She was sick," Mum butted in, "But she'll be right for school soon, wont you?" It sounded like a thinly veiled threat to me but I'm sure the others didn't hear it that way.

I looked at Mum, showing her that I acknowledged her threat but refused to kowtow to it. "As soon as I'm feeling better," I groaned, using my best sick voice.

"It's just not the same without you," sighed Alana as if we had been friends for decades and not just three weeks, "Plus you're missing out on tons of Deb practice."

"It's OK," smiled Aaron, I liked his cute little smile, "I can come 'round and teach them to you whenever you want." I liked Aaron, he was charmingly sweet with a shade of nervousness behind him. He was also painfully cute, but I was trying my best to ignore my feminine urges these days, they made me ill. Plus he was Lilly's boyfriend and definitely a 'Hands-Off-Boy' as the girls liked to call them.

To be honest, I liked the A-Group Girls a lot. People 'lower' than them always saw them as snobby, vapid bitches that did nothing but plot to steal boyfriends and wear slutty clothes. But the truth was quite different, they are sweet and caring and kind of astonished they are considered the 'cool kids'. Are there bitches in the A-Group? Of course there are, but as I had noticed, bitches came from all walks of life. I wondered if people were aware how sweet they really were if everyone would idolise them more or less? I hoped more, I feared less.

They stayed for a drink and I watched them sit down. Lilly sat close to her boyfriend and they clutched hands tightly. Maybe she knew I used to have a crush on him but she probably didn't know that I currently was in a world of depression and didn't care much for cute boys. We talked about Sydney, well, they asked questions and I answered in as few words as I could. "Sounds like you left that town in your wake, party girl," teased Alana.

Lilly's brown eyes sparkled with the thought of stars, "We all saw the pics in the paper, Gemma. You're a full-blown celeb now!"

Annoyingly, Mum was finished fitting my dress and I could have taken it off, except for the visitors who wanted to talk for 'just a bit longer'. "And next you're going to shine at the Deb!" Alana grinned, "It must be such a fairytale for you!"

"Is there a Prince Charming coming up next?" Lilly giggled.

"Umm…no," I stated quite clearly, "I don't think so." I saw a vision of the dystopic future; me, Alana and Lilly all pregnant at the same time complaining about our swollen feet, waiting for our husbands to get home from work. I knew both Lilly and Alana have grander plans than that and so did I, but the vision was scarily clear.

My friends were sweet and gracious, and the conversation was fun and bubbly. I acted like my usual self and they would have never suspected a thing. We had talked for so long that Mum had gone to bed. I sighed as the door finally clicked shut and my friends laughed into the warm, overcast night. The house was deathly still and I was finally alone to wallow in my self-pity. It's impossible to wallow around people having fun, especially when that fun is contagious. A few times during our conversations I had actually forgot that I was miserable. But as soon as I was alone I knew the truth — I hated myself.

I sulked all the way to my bedroom and swung the door open. The room felt cold, even though the night itself was warm. I shivered as I walked inside, the mirror reflecting the truth: I was a cute girl in a princess-like dress. I hate this body and I hate this dress! It was brutally painful that the dress looked so good on the body, which also looked spectacular. It was confusing to hate something so beautiful, it was like hating an sunset.

The dress seemed to mock me. The way it shimmered like moonlight, illuminating my breathtaking curves, the intricate sewing that made me look like an angel. Everything that made it exquisite made me furious. I pulled it off over my head, recklessly, not caring if it got damaged and threw it on the floor. There was no way I could face the mirror anymore, my naked feminine body would only enrage me further. I felt the sting of tears in my eyes. Why couldn't I love myself? Everybody else does. People love Gemma! People who only tolerated Michael or barely knew he existed love Gemma Mae. She was the nation's Sweetheart… But I hated me. I liked Michael, dull as dishwater, old Michael. Not this giggling floozy that hungrily sucks cocks.

Gemma took my body away. My life away. Sure, she was having fun but at what expense? My life. She had taken my life away. My body away from me. Well, two can play that game! She's not the only one.

As if possessed, I rubbed my eyes in frustration and rushed to my draws. It was so obvious what I had to do. I ignored the buxom reflection as I searched through the draws. I knew exactly what I wanted but I didn't know where to find it. It wasn't the in top draw. Nor the second. Where was it?!? I searched the top of my desk and there it was, under some stupid blue top.

There it was! I held it in my hands. I knew what I was about to do was terrible but it had do be done. Sure, some people would be hurt but I had to get my revenge on Gemma. The light glinted off the metal in a menacing way, as if it knew what I had planned for it.

It was wrong, it felt right.

I kneeled on the ground, not smiling nor frowning. This wasn't something that I was going to take pleasure in but it was something that needed to be done. I took the scissors in my hand, and opened the blades. I used to call scissors 'Hungry Crocodiles' when I was younger because they looked like the jaws on a crocodile. Mum used to make me laugh whenever she helped me cut out something by making a 'chomp chomp' sound.

But this crocodile was strangely silent as it bit down on the supple white flesh of Gemma's Deb dress.

****

As always, feel free to email me any comments, questions or criticisms to [email protected] The response I get to this story is amazing. Thank you so much to everyone who has ever e-mailed or commented, it means a huge amount.