Step by Step Feminisation, or How I Accidentally Invented Transness

I have no idea where I remember this from, but I heard lesbians often move together very early in their relationships. They’ve got a funny term for that, I think. But honestly, Ash and I might have broken a record. How about, I don’t know, moving together before the relationship even starts? Huh? If you think that doesn’t mean we’re lesbian as hell, I don’t know what to tell you.

Of course, while we do live together, our relationship hasn’t quite reached the point where we, uh, share the same bed. Before going to sleep after this wild first date, we mutually decided it was a little too early for us to do the deed, so to speak. I’m not sure what to think about that, though. Could I maybe ask my girlfriend — gosh, my girlfriend! — if it would be alright for me to keep my current room, were we to start spending our nights together? After all, it feels nice to have my own space.

You see, when first came the time to look for a place to rent, in order to be close to the university that had just accepted me, I thought I couldn’t even put up with a roommate to begin with. The last years living with my family had been so exhausting, and it had become so overwhelming to always have someone in the next room — or, god forbid, the same one — that I thought it would be impossible for me to live with someone else. But in that day and age, and because of the strict budget my parents had allowed me, I essentially had two options. I could either find a room in some sort of crappy, private student dorm; the state-funded ones were prioritising people from way lower income families than what my parents earned. Or I could rent a flat with someone else. Since the first option involved cohabiting with people anyways, but even worse, also meant I would be sharing living quarters with a bunch of unknown students, I naturally went for the second one. That way, I could try to find a nice person that I’d befriend, which would hopefully make all the housekeeping stuff less bothersome. I was truly oblivious to how hard it would be.

In order to achieve my goal, I crafted a meticulous and detailed plan. It involved a very particular several-steps method I’d used for most of my teen years to interact with people my age: step one, hop on Discord; step two, see where it went from there. Yeah, I’ve never been great at the whole socialising stuff, and also what do you mean two isn’t considered ‘several’? Anyways, after a quick research, I joined the university’s main server, and found out I hadn’t been the only one to have had this idea; there was in fact a whole channel dedicated to finding roommates! Most people would send a message introducing themselves, talking about their interests, describing what kind of shared accommodation they were looking for, and inviting anyone to hit them up in direct messages to see what could be arranged.

Best known for being bold, outgoing, not the least bit shy and definitely not prone to sarcasm, would I be able to send a message in the #find-a-roommate channel? Nope, didn’t have the guts for that. Could I talk a bit in other channels to work up my courage? Definitely not, speaking in a big Discord server right after joining it is never a great experience; people often tend to ignore you, which always makes you feel just great about yourself. However, could I at least DM some of the people in search of a flatmate, to avoid sending a message on the actual university server? Also no. I was just that shy.

Despite my fear and anxiety, however, I still read pretty much every message on the server. It had a few hundred members, most of the active ones being students who had just been accepted into the uni, just like myself. And regardless of my best attempts at not creeping on them, I started to learn a few things about the regulars; their names, what they studied — or would be studying upon classes starting — what their hobbies were, what videogames they played, and so on. There was even a point where I felt confident I could send some of them a message about the roommate situation, but as far as I knew, all of them had already found a place. A few days thus passed, during which I assured my parents that yes, I was still actively looking for somewhere to live — which was sort of true — and that no, my increasingly short nails had nothing to do with that — which most certainly was not — until, against all odds, things worked out in my favour.

It started with a message in #find-a-roommate, from someone who had joined a couple of days after I had, but who had already started interacting with others on the server, sharing funny memes and stuff. They were into the same videogames as I was, so I figured I might as well send them a message, just in case. Seeing how much they talked with other people, I probably had no chance, as they would likely be able to get one of their friends to be their roommate. But it was an opportunity regardless, and I managed to invite them to talk about it over some Minecraft minigames. Unexpectedly, they accepted, we minigamed, and that’s how I met the guy that would become my girlfriend.

At the time, I was glad to have found a male flatmate, for two reasons. Firstly, if Ash had been a girl — ugh, you get what I mean — I would never have been able to send her a message basically asking her to move in with me, that would have obviously made me look like a creep. I figured that, as a guy, you would need a girl to really trust you, and for you two to be good friends in order for her to be willing to have you as her roommate. And since I had no female friend — and no male one either, for that matter — I had basically been banking on finding some dude I could share a flat and occasionally a couple of drinks with, who would either become my friend or someone whose existence I’d mostly ignore. The other reason for having a guy as a roommate was that this way, I wouldn’t develop feelings for them and potentially render the situation awkward. Hah.

At first, something that had surprised me was how adamant Ash had been about needing to find someone who’d be fine with LGBT people. At the time, I thought she was simply a gay man, which I had no issue with; I was definitely not into guys myself, so there was no reason for me to worry. I intended to make that clear to her at some point, but as time went on after we moved together, I realised she liked… girls? For the longest time, this had me perplexed; why did she need her roommate to be an ally if she wasn’t homosexual? But now, all these months later, it seems kind of obvious.

In case you don’t understand, let me explain. Going off what she told me yesterday, she already liked me when I was a guy; she said she’s had a crush on me for months. So she is into guys after all! But also, she still likes me now that I look like a girl. She likes guys and girls! She’s got to be bisexual.

As I struggle to sleep way past midnight, I wonder how I would have reacted had someone told me what was going to happen. Sorry to break it to you, Joshua — aeugh — but it turns out you're both gonna become girls and kiss. And then, for reasons you should have thought of way earlier, you'll have to give it all up.

⁂

“Hey, you, you're finally awake,” Ash says without even looking in my direction as I step out of my bedroom into the living room. Awake is a strong word for the state I’m in. “You were trying to cross the border that society has arbitrarily placed in the middle of the gender spectrum, right?”

I giggle at her antics and start brewing myself a mug of coffee, in order to begin experiencing consciousness. I’d love to tell you it’s early in the morning, but it’s not; it’s early in the afternoon. Good, socially acceptable sleep schedule my ass. Once in possession of the elixir of life, I approach the couch from behind to give my girlfriend a kiss on the top of her head, then sit down next to her. “Been up for a long time?” I ask between sips.

“Not particularly. Just planning on spending a lazy day at home, TBH.”

“Tee bee aitch?”

“To be honest. It’s an acronym.”

“Oh, like, pour être honnête. Wait, are you supposed to use these out loud?”

“Nope!” she says with a grin. “But it’s funny. And cringe in just the right way.”

“Why do we always have to speak English anyways,” I lament. “You almost speak French better than me, and I was born here!”

“Precisely! My French is flawless, so I don’t need to practise. Whereas your English is… Well, it certainly does exist, that’s for sure. It’s mostly just there. Unremarkable.”

“Hey! I’m great at writing, but speaking is hard! You bitch.”

“That’s me! Now hold on.” She’s been mindlessly scrolling through something on her phone, but all of a sudden she’s visibly frozen, her smile almost instantly turning into a capital-F Frown. “No… That can’t be right,” she whispers. “Oh no.”

“Everything alright?”

“Uh… Well, it’s easier if I just show you,” she says.

She angles the screen toward me, and I lean on her shoulder. She’s got an Instagram profile open.

“Who’s that?”

“Look at the name.”

“‘Chlochlo_makeup_91’ huh? That’s… that’s gotta be Chloe, right?”

“Well, duh.”

I take the phone from her hand and start scrolling through her feed myself. In addition to basic make-up jobs that she presumably does for her work according to the TV set background in several pictures, Ash’s friend apparently also dabbles in advanced prosthetic make-up. “Damn, that’s cool! Had she not given you her profile link or something?”

“She hadn’t. Give me that back,” she adds while yanking the phone from my hands. “Do I really have to point it out? Look at this,” she sputters, looking almost… angry? “I’m calling her, right now. What the actual fuck was she thinking?”

I squint my eyes a little and look where her finger is pointing on the screen. My heart skips a few beats. “Wait…” I whisper. “What? What the fuck? What do you mean a hundred and thirty thousand followers?”

⁂

Chloe was called. She picked up, and is currently being admonished by the angriest looking and sounding Ash I’ve ever seen and heard. I dash to my room to get my own phone, in order to have a better look at her profile.

Yup. She’s famous, somehow. I guess I didn’t actually ask her how many followers she had when she offered to—

Oh. Right. She asked for permission to publish photos of me.

There they are. That’s me. Looking like a girl for the very first time, with an awkward but pretty smile on my face. Photographed before I even saw myself in the mirror.

How exactly is someone who’s been a girl for three days supposed to react when she finds out that multiple close-ups of her made-up face have been posted to the equivalent of a major city’s population? Good question. I don’t know the answer myself, tee bee aitch. Dumbfounded would be a good start. Ash’s anger makes a little bit more sense now.

The tone of their conversation, which I could still hear through the open door of my room, has mostly calmed down. “Joy?” I hear Ash’s voice call me.

“Yes?”

“She asks whether she should delete the pictures.”

“Uh… Can I think about that for a bit?”

“Sure.” They exchange a few more words over the phone, then Ash hangs up and joins me, sitting down on my bed and sighing heavily. “So. Long story short, one of her posts blew up a couple of weeks ago after a collab with a big cosmetics brand, and she got a huge following overnight. And she evidently has no idea how to handle that. She didn’t tell us because, and I quote, she didn’t want to sound like she was bragging and advertising her account even more.”

“...Wow. That was, uh, dumb.”

She hangs her head low and shakes it, looking positively defeated. “Yup. She’s coming over tonight to talk about it in person with you and apologise.” She then scoots closer to me and holds me in her arms. “You okay?”

“Uh-huh… Just a bit shell-shocked,” I reply with a shaky voice, while incredulously reviewing the photos. Despite it being my first time wearing make-up, I’m indistinguishable from all the other women in her feed. Actresses, extras, TV hosts, weather anchors… I’m simply one of the girls, just a bit more awkward looking than the others. “You think I should ask Chloe to delete them?”

“That’s for you to decide, really. Though maybe if you’re planning on coming out, they might help… spread the word, you know?”

“Coming out? What do you mean?” Come to think of it, I guess it would make sense to come out as gay, since I’m a girl who is attracted to girls. Or maybe she means… coming out as a girl?

“Well, I guess for university you can just show up as a girl, but I was thinking, maybe you wanted to tell your family? In my case, I know some of my relatives had an easier time accepting it when they could actually see me present as a girl.”

“Oh. I don’t know. The only sure thing is, I’m not telling my family. My parents would kill me.” Simply thinking about them is enough to make me shiver. They’re the root of the issue.

Ash sighs. “Yeah, I was half expecting your family to be like that, to be fair.” She then embraces me tighter and looks into my eyes. “If they actually end up not accepting you as their daughter, then they don’t deserve to be called your parents. I’ll be here for you if that happens, alright?”

As she speaks, a knot starts forming in my throat. These two fuckers will ruin everything, as usual. “I— I don’t… I can’t…” My voice strains, and I feel tears starting to roll down my cheeks. “I can’t do it, Ash. I can’t actually be a girl. E— Even if I look like one right now, it just won’t work,” I explain between sobs. “People at uni will still call me J— will still call me the… the other name. If I go there as a girl… my parents will know.”

My girlfriend starts running her hand through my hair, occasionally scratching my head. “Hey, it’s okay,” she whispers once I’m done. “I’m here. You’re safe.” I try to steady my breathing, while Ash keeps reassuring me.

“W— what should I do?”

“Well, you’re obviously not comfortable telling your family, so don’t do that, for starters. You should wait until you’re ready. As for how it’ll go down at uni, the administration is not supposed to out a trans student to their family without their consent, but I guess situations where that’s happened are not unheard of. You should be safe going there as a girl but there are still small risks.”

I choose to ignore a few words I didn’t understand in her sentence. “Huh. What about my name? If I ask them to register me as Joy in the system, my parents will definitely know, right?”

“I don’t know the specifics,” Ash admits. “It would probably be smart to visit the LGBTQIA+ club at least once, when classes resume, just so that you can ask other people how they did it.”

“Hold on… What?”

“I think that would be a good idea, anyways,” she continues. “If you’re not comfortable going there yourself right away, I can do it for you, if you want me to?”

“No, like, what do you mean ‘how other people did it’? And what is that club you’re talking about?”

Ash looks a bit perplexed. “Uh… The LGBT club? And yes, it’s very common for trans students to ask to be called by their preferred name at school if they haven’t changed it legally yet.”

“Trans students?”

Ash frowns. “...Yeah?”

“What does that mean?”

Her frown drops, leaving her empty of any emotion or reaction, as if she just released all of the muscles in her face, like the photo on an ID card. She stops hugging me and just gives me a weird look. After a while, she speaks, her voice devoid of all emotion. “You… you don’t know what that… means? Are you okay, Joy?”

“Yeah, I’m fine! It’s not the first time I hear this term, but I don’t think I know its meaning?”

Ash looks bewildered. “Transgender. It’s… the ‘T’ in LGBT. People who aren’t the gender they were assigned at birth. It’s me… and you,” she says quietly.

I nod. “I see. Makes sense.”

Then my brain computes what the hell she just said.

“Wait, what? We’re LGBT? And there are others?”

Ash finally explodes. “Are you fucking telling me you didn’t know what it meant? Is this seriously happening right now? And… but… all the… you… you literally are…” she says while gesticulating towards me, somewhat scaring me.

“I don’t know! I just kind of… liked looking like a girl, so I decided I was one! I didn’t know there was more to it!”

She stands up and starts pacing around the room. “What the actual fuck. It made sense for you not to realise at first, but I figured you knew what you were doing when you started presenting as a girl yourself! I’m half bewildered by the sheer… absurdity of the situation, half unsurprised because it’s you we’re talking about. You really can be a dense motherfucker sometimes.” She stops moving. “You literally picked a new name!” she yells, turning towards me. “How does that happen?”

“Sorry! I just… I didn’t know…”

“Oh my god shut the fuck up,” she says before grabbing my head and pulling me into an absolutely mind-blowing kiss. “Don’t say sorry, you attractive idiot.”

I babble out a few incoherent sounds as an answer, before collapsing on the bed. Ash lies down as well and snuggles against me while I look at the ceiling.

So we’re not the only ones, then? Of course we’re not. I remember thinking everyone was like that, at one point. Then I realised it wasn’t the case, and I thought Ash and I were the only ones. I didn’t even consider the other option, staring right at me in between the two extreme ones: some people are like that.

Is this how humans will react if scientists discover an alien life form on a distant planet? If they find out we’re not alone in the universe? Maybe. It’s a nice feeling, all things considered. There are people out there who went, go, and will go through this. Who can relate to the emotions I’ve been experiencing this week.

“Damn. I really am a dense motherfucker.”

“Sorry about that,” Ash says, “but I think it was an appropriate reaction to finding out that one of my friends is an Instagram influencer and that my girlfriend has been transitioning for a week without knowing what trans means in less than ten minutes. This is wild. Anyways, does it change anything for you? About going to uni as a girl, for instance?”

“I don’t know. I’d love to do that, but if there is even the slightest risk of my parents learning about it… maybe it’s not the best idea? At least there’s no danger going to the LGBT club to ask around, I guess. Also, it’s called transitioning? I like the word!”

Ash giggles, before getting serious again. “Do you think your parents would… cut you off? If they found out?”

“I’m not sure… but yes, probably. Or at least they would try to force me to be… not trans? They’re mostly homophobic, but I don’t think they’ll appreciate other LGBT stuff either. Especially since we also are gay.”

“And you’re still depending on them financially,” she adds, to which I reply with a nod. “Well, if they find out and stop giving you money, I can probably get my parents to pay your half of the rent until you find a job or something. You won’t be on your own.”

I sigh. “Thanks. I hope it won’t come to that. For now, I’ll just wait and see. I’ll go to uni as, you know… a guy. And I can be a girl the rest of the time, with you.”

Ash squeezes me a little bit harder. “You’ll always be my girlfriend, Joy. I don’t care what you look like or what name people call you.” She looks up at me with a shy smile. “I… I love you.”

I feel my face heat up. “Thanks, I— I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re so amazing. I love you too.”