Chapter 1 – Becoming Best Friends

Doug and I were close in age, but not in brains. It was the Spring of ’95 when Doug Ryland and his parent’s moved in across the street. I was eight and a quarter and he was soon to turn eleven. I was in third grade and he was in eighth-grade. By all accounts, he was likely to be a sophomore by the end of the year if he wanted. I acted like the kid I was and Doug could act like a forty year adult one minute and a kid the next as he pleased. Mind you, I wasn’t a dummy either by any stretch of the imagination. I was an IQ point below being able to join Mensa. I was a straight A student when I put my mind to it. And I put my mind to it most of the time except when I got depressed about who I really was. But, once Doug moved in, there was no doubt I was outclassed in brains. However, I soon came to appreciate that Doug’s brains weren’t half as smart and intelligent as his enormous heart for others and, in particular, for his best friend, who happens to be me.

The first day I first met Doug, when they were first moving in, I saw how he carried himself around adults -- I guess there is no other way to say it -- I instantly knew Doug was a genius and it made me feel like a total idiot. Chatting with his parents, I found out his IQ was in the 190s. They were delighted to find a boy about his age living across the street. Yet, that same day, I found Doug could be a kid too, and if that was what we had in common, then I could work with that.

During the school week, I had difficult homework being in the gifted and talented group of students. Doug always finished his homework first and came over to my place and patiently waited until I finished. He sat there with a serene look on his face looking out our living room window. He didn’t offer to help, but, by his demeanor, I knew he would. Slowly, I learned to ask him to explain to me the stuff I didn’t get. I don’t know if it was his patience or my need to finish faster and go play with him that first drove me to ask him for help. But once I did start asking for help, he would offer a suggestion about how to look at it without giving the answer. Suddenly, it would click. After homework, it was easy to see why we made such good friends. Neither Doug or I were into sports. We played war games or read books or watched television. Sometimes, we went swimming or fishing nearby. Most times, we just went outside and were kids. Doug became my very agreeable shadow. Where he was, I was. Where I was, he was.

On occasion, we would talk about school and how hard it was to fit in. I was on the small side anyway and the runt of the boys which made me the most likely the first player to be picked on rather than chosen. If I got any kicks in being in sports, it was very likely you would find me being used as a soccer ball. It didn’t help that I was the very youngest in the class. I usually played with the girls. I knew that Doug couldn’t play with his classmates because they were so much older than him and bigger in size too. If it weren’t for his high IQ, he would be in fourth grade and a normal sized boy among his peers. So, in no time it seems, we became the best and closest of friends.

I got to know Doug so quickly in fact that it felt like I knew him my whole life. Nothing seemed out of bounds, except my dark secret. And even there Doug got to know me better than I know myself. The real me.

While Doug is an only child with doctors for parents who are going to win the Nobel prize one day for their pioneering work in cancer research, I am the youngest of three children and fairly ordinary parents. I have brown eyes and mousy brown hair. I have nice eyebrows and an oval face. My mother and father named me Samuel Coleridge Miller. My mother was an English major at university, hence my name. My sister’s full name is Jane Austin Miller. Sense a pattern? My oldest brother was named totally by my dad though. Robert Steve Miller. Robert after his dad. And Steve after some superhero dude on a television series in the 70s. Steve Austin, I think. I heard my Dad say he was bioptic or something, which makes no sense at all to me since Robert has perfect vision. My Mom does occasional substitute teaching in the school district these days, but until recently taught full time. It has meant she can stay home, but be gone on occasion leaving Jane and me alone after school. My Dad is a civil engineer. He works for the city filling pot holes with asphalt most days and pouring cow manure into what he calls ‘political holes’ once a month at city council meetings.

My sister Jane is in the same eighth-grade English class as Doug in middle school. She doesn’t like being around Doug, so once we became fast friends, Jane started to go over to her friends on any day he came over leaving Doug and me alone in the house until my mother showed up. Jane is fourteen and really filling out. I hated the boys knocking on the door trying to see Robert who really wanted to ogle Jane. I am glad Robert put a stop to it. But Mom made him do it. Robert didn’t care if Jane was seen as a piece of meat. Jerk!

My older brother Robert is in ninth grade. He is fourteen too and Dad says he is growing like a weed. He is ten months older than Jane. My dad is sure Robert is going to be almost six feet tall when he is done growing. Robert loves football and baseball. He plays half back and short stop. Which is a good thing because he excels in both and leaves me alone instead of using me as a football or a baseball. He hangs out in the gym after school every day training for whatever sport he is playing at the time or with his jock friends. He hardly is home. The only thing Robert hates, other than me, is school. He does barely enough school to stay in sports.

I usually see my siblings in the morning before school and at dinner. I am the homebody. So, Doug has really changed my life for the better. And the best gift of his being my friend was that we would become more than best friends. Our relationship deepened over the next few years by what unfolded next which exposed to me Doug’s hidden asset, his huge empathic heart. An asset which I would come to discover that was truly infectious and healed so many hearts as it beat a path into my soul and healed my wounds.

One Saturday, almost two months after Doug moved in, while setting up a war game to replay the battle of Midway at my house, Doug off handily said, “You pretend to be crazy. I really am crazy!” I looked at him and said incredulously, “You think so, huh? Let me show you something. Please set up the game. I will be right back.”

I knew we were going to be alone for the whole day. So I thought I would share with him my deepest and darkest secret to prove that I really was crazy. While Doug set up the battle boards, I went up to my room, opened my secret stash, got dressed, and came back downstairs.

Holding my breath, and grasping at straws for the courage to follow through and prove I was crazy I found at least a straw to do what I needed to do. I entered the room as Samantha dressed in my sister’s old clothes. I wore a simple dress of hers I really liked and her old shoes and socks because it was quick to get into and I didn’t want to lose the moment. Doug looked up calmly at me, much to my surprise, and said nothing. In the quiet of the room, I found the courage to say the truth, “Hi Doug. I am Samantha. I am crazy. I want to be a girl. I am a girl and I am afraid to tell my parents.”

I don’t know why, but hearing those words spoken out loud for the first time to another human being, was both a relief and a nightmare. My mind went with relief while my body went with it being a total nightmare. It began to sob in pain and fall apart. This eight-year-old kid had just opened up to someone telling them who she really was. And it was to someone who was still a stranger. How could I tell a stranger that I really was a girl on the inside and not my own family? But I did. I smoothed my dress underneath me as I sat down on the couch, hung my head down, and bawled my eyes out letting out years of pain because of holding onto my dark secret and personal hell back from a world I was afraid to share it with.

Doug came over to me, sat down next to me, and said, “It’s good to cry. Let it out. It’s going to be okay. Tell me when you are ready to talk. This is a safe place for you.” For the next twenty minutes it felt like, I was a heap of blubbering flesh.” I finally was spent enough that Doug began to speak to me firmly and quietly. “I know Sam. I know you are a girl. I saw you in your room with my binoculars from my window getting dressed in your sister’s clothes when I first moved in. I figured it out. I want to help you. I thought if I said something about my being crazy, I could get you to tell me. I am so glad you did and felt safe enough to share your secret with me. It is an honor that you can trust me enough to know your most important secret. I promise to keep your secret without you even having to ask. I want to help my friend.”

He kept gently stroking my back to comfort me. His words soothed my soul. I was such a mess that I didn’t even notice until that moment that he started stroking my back when he sat down next to me.

I looked up at him and smiled briefly through my tears. Did I hear him right, I thought? I considered his words. He didn’t run to my parents or his. He took the time to find out about me. He didn’t judge me. Then I said, “If you mean what you say, what do I do, Doug? I don’t want to go through puberty. I don’t want to grow big. I want to be a woman when I grow up, not this! I want to be a girl right now. I see my brother and he is huge. And I don’t want to tell my parents because they will try to fix me instead of helping me. I don’t want to be a boy anymore. So how can you help me when you are just a kid too?”

Doug said confidently, “I can help you and I will. I figured out what your condition might be after watching you and researched it already at the university where my parent’s work. I have read up on the latest medical protocols and I think I can follow them as if you were going to a real doctor and getting real help. I even have some new techniques that will really help you with puberty.”

His parents’ cancer research was attached to the university. Because of that, Doug was serious when he said he had access to medical research. And I knew he was knowledgeable about medicine. So, I could believe that he already had learned a bunch of things about my condition and knew how to treat it. Doug gave me hope when he said, “So, I have a plan for you to either become a girl or be a healed boy. It is up to you, not me, what you become. Your journey is your own. But I can be a part of your journey and guide you as your friend so you won’t be alone.”

I continued to cry, but now silently. The years of pain still were driving those tears and I couldn’t shut them off. “You do? You already have a plan for me?” Hell, I didn’t even have a plan for who I wanted to be when I grow up. I was leaning to being a bum on the street corner asking for donations. Seems to be a lot of job satisfaction there and you make your own hours. And my life was every bit an insane wreck in my eyes as a bum’s might be.

“Yes, I do!” Doug got up and walked over to our wall of family photos. He pulled down a dual photo frame of my grandfather taken at about the age of nine on the left side and a current picture of me on the right side of the frame taken at my eighth birthday. We looked nearly identical.

Doug came back and sat down next to me and said, “Sam, we are going to use this photo to hide from your parents your journey to womanhood until it is too late for them to say no. And if I do it right, when you do become a woman, they will accept you and love you like you were always their daughter. And if you stay their son, they will accept you as you are too.”

The shock on my face said it all. The slow smile it grew into as it occurred to me that he was serious and could do what he said. My acceptance of that allowed him to continue. By now, my tears were down to a trickle.

“Samantha, didn’t you tell me that your grandfather was about five foot five?” He called me by my chosen girl name!

“Yeah. I miss him too. He used to be here when I got home from school and my Mom was teaching full time. He missed my grandma who died of lung cancer from smoking too much. She died when I was three. He was the coolest grandpa in the whole world.” The tears returned having found another reservoir of pain and I sobbed fiercely for a couple of minutes as I grieved his passing. After I regained my composer, I said, “When Grandpa died last year because a drunk driver hit him in a crosswalk, it was like my life was over. Then one day, you moved in and I felt human again.”

Doug reached over and held me with his arm. “Thank you for the complement. But you have always been human.” He went on to say, “I am sorry about your grandparents.” Doug had a gentle voice that would one day make an excellent bedside tool while still showing a doctor’s fixation to stay on the crucial subject at hand. “I think I can retard your growth to fit your grandfather’s growth pattern. It will seem to your parents and your doctor if he is called in to diagnose the reasons for your lack of growth that you are his grandson in every respect. Even if you don’t transition to being a woman, no one will question your small stature.”

Doug continued by pulling back his arm, turning his body towards mine, putting his hand gently under my chin and bringing our faces aligned to each other so we were face to face and he said, “But for it to work, I have to do it right. I have to follow the medical protocol that I have found in order to verify you really are a girl in a boy’s body. To do that, I will have things for you to do and you will have to do them or I can’t help you. I am also going to do it in a way that if you are found out, I won’t be tied to your choices, but it will allow you to get professional help instead of your parents stopping you. But I wouldn’t worry about that even. What I need to ask you is this. Do you trust me?” He leaned back to wait for my answer.

Drying the tears on my face, I nodded yes. My inner coward said to my brain, “Do I have a choice?” The last hour seemed unreal and I was beginning to think it was a dream where I would wake up to find I was still in my awful nightmare of a body all alone.

“Okay, every time we are alone, you are to dress as a girl. You are to act as a girl. Even your hissy fits have to be like a girl. You will have to have clothes over at my place for those times you come over to my place and we are alone there. By the way, I think that false compartment in your closet is very clever and well done. If I hadn’t seen you dressed as a girl, I would have never known to look for it. I don’t think you mother will ever find it. But, I plan on making a few improvements so I can make sure that never happens.” I could see then and there that he really had thought this through.

Doug added, “There will also come a time where you have to show me that you can be a girl in public too. And, believe it or not, even with your parents. As for right now, at the end of today, when you transform back into a boy, I want you to come back with me for a sleep over, okay?”

I had stopped crying by this point and could feel the excitement building in me. In the future, ‘sleep over’ would come to mean ‘counselling session.’ “Yes, thank you Doug. But why are you doing this? You hardly know me.” I was lying to myself, not to him. He knew me.

“Because Sam, you are my friend. Without you, I would be lonely and forgotten up until I grow up too. You have saved me already from the pain of having parents who care more about their research than taking care of their son. But you have a special need that comes first. And, I have skills that can help my good friend. All that I ask is that you let me do this for you. It is a win win.”

I thought about what he said and realized I had nothing to lose. “Deal!” I said. I put out my hand to shake his. Doug, looked at me sternly. Then, realizing I was missing something about how serious he was that I be a girl around him when alone, I reached around him with both my arms and hugged him instead. “Deal!” he said.

“There, that’s better. I am glad you did that. A hug is a very girl thing to do.” Doug said confidently, adding, “Besides, I only shake hands with proper boys.” I giggled realizing he accepted me for who I was. I was giddy for the rest of the day and lost the battle of Midway. I was also Samantha for most of the day and loved it. But, I didn’t care. Doug was my savior and my friend. Finally, I had someone who could share my burden.

And that is how my journey to womanhood began.

Copyright © 2017 by AuP reviner (revised March 2017)

[Author’s note: I won’t go into to the details of how I happened on this site. My wife introduced me to fan fiction. I was fishing about looking for sites with romantic story lines. Tripped on this place. Found some stories were well written, some poorly written. Some made me cry they were so beautifully written. That is what I was looking for in a well written story.

Thirty plus years ago, I had such a horrible experience in college in a creative writing class on my way to get my English Lit. degree. I swore I would never try writing again. This site reminded me of stories from my youth. So, I wondered … Should I have quit?

Clearly, I have fallen off the wagon. In that regard, I decided to test my wings and see what would come out of me. AuP (my secret hash code) Reviner (to come back) ]