Tea & Red Roses Part Three

*Before….

She went to her car and opened the door and she looked at me and I looked at her and she said loud enough for me to hear her from over there.

“Chris?”

“Yeah…?”

“Thanks…”

She got in the car and she drove off and I just sort of stood there with this sort of kind of ache going on because that thanks…it just sounded on the edge of stuff grateful.

God that feeling when you think you have a crush on someone maybe and they’re kind of maybe hurting and you don’t know them well enough that it just sucks.

*And Now… and in the present from now on….

I’m tired and sort of happy and yet melancholy as I go inside and close and lock the door.

I had a seriously good night, the best in a while and Rose seemed just so great.

Right up until the end.

Then she just seemed kinda sad.
I head to bed and crash after a shower and getting my make-up off and drift off thinking of Rose and who she is and what she is and dream of her a little I think.

Okay as much as I can think of what I might have dreamt of.

I wake up when I have my alarm go off and get ready for the day and classes and I’m pretty groggy but I can’t help but to smile as I look at my phone and see Rose’s friend request and she left me a PM.

[Thanks for last night. I had a good time and I had a lot of fun Chris.]

It was short and sweet and I accept her friend request and send her a message back.

[I had a good time too. and it’s been awhile since that’s been a thing I can say without actually thinking the night over.]

I plug my headphones in and get myself a coffee to go and a slice of raisin bread with cream cheese swirled with apple jelly on it and go out and deal with the city and the ever so awesome (Sarcasm) Toronto busses.

*** Rose…from now on in the present…

I went home and yeah there was a bit of funk that sort of happened with the end of me meeting Chris and I hate, hate, hate when I do that but it’s really hard sometimes to wear the whole I’m awesome face when you are actually pretty tired and lonely.

And pretty tired of being lonely.

I get home and get cleaned up and over think and replay the whole night and all the interactions with Chris and I and I’m trying so really hard to not read into things.

I learned a long fucking time in a lot of hard ways to not ship myself with someone else.

It’s a really damned painful thing to learn too.

It comes at a high cost in life lessons.

But…

And it’s a pretty significant but…

I am a romantic girl at heart really and after my hair is up and in a towel and I’m in my flannel pjammas and that when I screw my courage up and send Chris a friend request on Facebook and send her a PM.

Then I go to bed.

……… and I hate my dreams.

I slept but it wasn’t good sleep and it was dreams of what-might-maybe with Chris and I with my head going hey I’m going to screw with you I got to have like seventeen scenarios of her and I and us together and then it all bled into every relationship or near relationship and life-train wreck that I’ve ever like had.

It really sucks when you wake up and you are still fucking stuck being who you are and what you’re stuck as even if you’re trying to fix all of that and just…just…have it all slam home and I roll over and grab my pillows and cry.

And cry and I actually have one good thing that is going for me and that’s a low tolerance for myself when I’m like this.

I basically cry until I’m mad at myself for working myself up like this and I scream into my pillows and have enough anger energy to get out of bed and start to get ready for the my day.

Another shower because I’m paranoid about not being like clean.

Guys are so often not clean…and that’s always sort of stuck with me.

And as much as I really don’t like the lower parts of me there’s something that always helps me and that’s a shower.

And it’s not the water falling off my breasts or soaping them either it’s actually washing my hair.

It’s like I can wash the bullshit away and it’s purely in my head but it relaxes me a lot.

After that is getting breakfast and I’m actually pretty good at breakfast.

An egg but in a shallow coffee bowl mug and in that I put just a little bit of creamer for my tea and a cold slice off my butter and that’s the key I set it over the yolk and try not to break it. It all goes into the microwave for one minute and twenty eight seconds and I take out some of the pre-cooked bacon slices and make a single slice of toast that I cut into triangles after it’s toasted.

Orange juice and my meds and then my shot for my hormones since it’s due today and a woman’s multivitamin and a vitamin E and C and D over that and Selenium. Yes I’m one of those people mostly because I hate getting sick and I never had this stuff as a kid or when I was on the streets.

The egg gets done and I crumble the bacon over it and a little fresh pepper and I sit with my tea and my tablet and check my stuff online as I eat this creamy and buttery soft boiled egg and spooning it over my toast triangles with just hints of bacon and pepper.

Oh…oh yay!

Chris accepted my friend request and she messaged me back.

And right there and then my day went from Hurt by Nine Inch Nails to Pocket Full of Sunshine by Natasha Beddingfield.

I happy dance my butt to the bedroom and get my clothes ready and myself. And that’s lotion the things that usually need it and I like the smell of this really light tangerine cheap lotion I have and then it’s just plain old Soft and Dry spray on Deodorant and I do a little spritz of this ginger rose and I mean little perfume and I wear mine under my clothes.

Tuck and put on my little spandex thong buddy that keeps things in place and then some cute panties and I can’t help but smile because it’s gone.

Cue Oprah Winfrey like long happy note mental singing the word gooooonnne!

And I do some poses in front of my mirror that I’m honestly not to do in front of anyone else and then I get into one of my favorite braziers.

It’s a deep red lace number that has satin lining and lots of support but it’s smoking and sexy and it’s from La Senza.

And then I do my hair and my make-up and I’m good with my hair too, I condition well and I take good care of it even though it’s dyed. Actually I like that color…trans woman red.

No seriously there’s a whole lot of trans women as well as regular ones that play with colors and one of the go to colors for a lot of us is red.

And I use a not too jarring red since I need to look professional and all but at the same time it’s a smouldery color. I use a little of my steam curler and I have one of the nice ones with the outside sheaths that you take off and there’s smaller irons underneath so I actually start smaller with the main outer top layer of my hair pulled up and I do a few what I call lifting curls and then I use a bigger iron to set and pull the hair on top into larger curls that are more like waves and with the tighter ones under that there’s more volume and I have some bounce or at least I have some bounce for the first part of the day.

Very little concealer and I use my fingertip to put it on and then a cotton ball to wisp it off just a nano skiff and it looks like I’m not wearing any at all and then I go for a smokey eye and regular eye liner instead of the whole winged eyeliner look that is great sometimes going out but not for work.

Eyelash curler and mascara full and thick and my lipstick which today will be one of my max factors and a nice red that I contour with my pencil.

Then it’s getting dressed.

Stockings first, and stockings not leggings since I’m in an office and then it’s my top which is a nice blouse and I get mine larger than I need and I fix them home on my sewing machine. I’m really sort of paranoid about length and I like to have some actually that I can tuck into my pants or my skirt rather than let it be short and let it show.

I’m actually really serious about how I look at work.

So it’s stocking and not fishnets but dark stocking with the seams at the back of my legs and I slip into them carefully so as not to ladder them and then get my skirt on. I like a knee length skirt and with the whole ensemble I’m in a nice full charcoal grey skirt and an almost deep pewter blouse and I have a matching suit jacket with the skirt and I wear a nice pair of calf high boots with a good solid three inch heel to them.

A final check and then it’s my necklace that I have with a silver rose on a thin chain and my watch which is a Timex sort of nice rectangular one that’s a ladies watch but with a good strap and clean lines.

I get myself my lunch in my lunch box that’s like a faux leather sort of suitcase looking deal and that’s a salad that I had extra from last night and a small Tupperware dish of Ritz crackers and I leave.

I always try to get there early and that helps with my crappy car and traffic and I hate not being on time because…well I’m trans. And people know, well some of the people do at work and stuff since my hiring on was a big thing.

I don’t want the little nitpicks and letting them have excuses to start stuff.

And it’s actually a pretty decent sized office and there’s always a few that are super willing to scrutinize me and to tell the new ones and the casuals that I’m trans and outing me.

I could get really pissed and fight.

But in the end that gets you in trouble with all the others and eventually that will get you fired or they will make your life shitty in the extreme.

And it’s like now totally bad at all either. I mean its Canada and I’m in a good office and there are others that aren’t total shits to others and that makes the trouble makers just sort of do their looks and little digs and if they become a problem they report it.

Okay well anyways I was actually happy to go to work and actually was having a good day despite all of that stuff from above.

And it got even better at lunch when I was getting FB chat from Chris with her having lunch too. I would have headed over but we’d never had made the time with noonish traffic and the time we had.

But it was good, it was really good.

Talking and LOLing together about things.

How guys are pretty much asses, and the ones that aren’t are walnuts.

She doesn’t like walnuts and they’re shaped like little brains that are appropriately sized for some fellows.

And no.

I don’t defend men.

I don’t do the not all men.

Because the simple facts are that all of the bad stuff we complain about well…it because there’s enough men doing it and not enough men even caring or stopping it.

We both like Joan Jett, We both like The Lumberjanes comic and the fact that they have a button and saying that is… “What in Joan Jett?”

She likes soul and hip hops a lot and most female pop singers and Nikki Ménage and I like more female pop and rockers and I like to go see a lot of the local indie bands here when I can and I collect their band swag when I can get it and have it autographed.

Hey you never know when they’re going to be big. I have a pink tee-shirt with all the autographs of The Sheepdogs on it.

She likes science fiction and fantasy stuff and I like romantic fiction and I like reading the newspaper. The actual paper when I have the time to read what I like out of it. And yeah I could online it and tablet it but I like the whole thing from the pages to the paper to the smell.

We both like books over kindle or nooks.

I don’t own either so I have no clue as to what is better only that I don’t care what’s better.

Neither of us watches a lot of TV and when we do it’s online usually. I have DVD’s but no cable.
We both like Rookie Blue and we both like Vikings and I admit that I like some of the reality shows on Discovery network and she will binge watch The Walking Dead.

And she spends the rest of lunch and after we’re both home online trying to convince me to watch it.

I cave…I cave when she calls me. I stared a good twenty seconds before I answered the phone.

“Hello!”

“Hello!!!” She sort of warbles into the phone?

“Mrs. Doubtfire?”

“No Julia Child.”

I burst out laughing and I don’t know why.

And she’s laughing too.

“Why did you choose that voice to use over the phone?”

“My roomies are watching the Meryl Streep movie with her playing Julia.”

“Oh..Okay that makes sense.”

“I can come over sometime and we can watch it together online.”

“You want to come over now?”

“Well not tonight since it’s kinda late, but when are you off?”

“I work nine to fivers so I’m off on weekends.”

“Saturday?”

“Definitely.” Goddess my mouth is so dry.

“I’ll call you and you can pick me up.”

“Okay…and we’ll get some food.”

“Food would be soooo of the good, food keeps Chris from trying to eat brains.”

I laugh and she laughs and she is sending me all sorts of cute stickers in chat and I’m blushing and I’m sending some back.

And we do that for a while going from… “I’ll see you soon.”

To… “You hang up.”

“No you hang up.”

“No you hang up.”

And that went on until I hear her phone beep. “Oops gotta go, plus I really got to go pee.”

“Okay, this was fun Chris…I really had another good day.”

“Me too.”

“Thanks Chris… you made my night.”

We hang up and I let her go offline too and I put my laptop on my coffee table and pulled my knees up and hugged myself around the knees for a good minute before quietly raising my arms up over my head in a pronounced victory… “YES!!!”