Why am I me?

Chapter 14

'A Guide'

My Birthday was coming up. I hadn't looked forward to this day for several years and my twentieth was no exception.

There was one upside, it was colder out so I had my legs and armpits shaven while they were permanently covered with long sleeve t-shirts, polar necks and jeans. I rubbed my legs together at night, though it was slightly too cold to sleep in just boxers I couldn't help it. My silky legs would keep me up at night, occasionally causing me to become hard but I never acted on such bodily reactions since it would ruin the feminine illusion I had going.

I couldn't think of much to ask for, if I were a girl feeling out of place I could maybe ask for two sports bras, I'd read somewhere that wearing the first backwards then putting the other on over it can have a similar effect as a binder. But anything I chose to do that changed my body like that would be too obvious or not obvious enough.

I sighed rolling out of bed and tying up my longish hair, it was long for a guy anyway and more like a top knot since only the top was long enough to reach the band. But it felt enough for now, growing quicker than I had expected. I had looked like Jim Halpert from The Office for a while which made me look younger and more boyish but that had only lasted a month before I realised I could pull it back.

I was feeling particularly shit today because in six days I had my Birthday and in seven Allison would have had hers. It was one of the ways that got us so close when we met, I called her my little sister as much as possible not long after we discovered the closeness of our ages. She tried to even out the score by saying she was two weeks late but it just so happened that I was too so that got her no where.

I smiled slightly as I moved sluggishly round my room to get changed for the day. It was the weekend and I'd finished my project, or at least the stuff I had to do before Christmas holiday, so I had nothing to do but fester in my own misery.

I sat back down at the end of my bed and went to lie down but something caught my eye as my head fell backwards.

A series of books I'd brought with me sat likely collecting a little dust on the top of my shelves above my desk. I had read them a year ago and promised myself to take them wherever I went to share them with others and reread them. I was yet to do ether in the months that I had been here.

I stood on my tiptoes and took the first book, surprised that unlike my home this book hadn't already achieved a thick layer of dust, not even a sprinkle. I blew on it and flapped it slightly as I returned to my bed all the same however.

Opening it I was hit with a wave on nostalgia. My Dad had suggested these books to me, he had bought the first one for me and I'd later begged for the rest after reading it within the day. I had talked about it non stop with all my friends and quoted it constantly with my Dad and a few of his friends when we'd gone on holiday a few weeks later. The books represented my Dad to me, how he saw me and how he saw himself in me. He'd loved these books at my age and caught me reading out loud to myself one night while I attempted the voices of characters alone in my room. I'd turned and found him smiling and quickly walking away. I wanted to share them with more, sharing them with Allison would have been perfect. She was weird and wonderful and we were told constantly that we were the opposite gender version of each other. That thought would have hurt if it were any other person but this was Allison and it was an honour to have been compared to her. She was a devout bookworm too, always interested, overly so, when she saw I had picked up a book.

I realised I was starting the second chapter and chuckled knowing I wouldn't even have to reread the first, I knew what had happened and felt pleasured to know this book had brought something so pleasant back to me.