BREAKING THE SILENCE, a dog howled, and a flock of pigeons rose on clapping wings. A tortoiseshell cat bounded across the road, its spine fully extended. Moments later there was a dull, rumbling sound; the ground trembled; windows rattled. Then it was quiet again, but only briefly, for there was a clamour of voices as people came out of buildings on both sides of the street, and in the distance, the front of a house began to crumple.
Striking in yellow firefighter trousers, topless and muscular, a man with ultra-long eyelashes, deep-red lips, and luxuriant dark hair billowing behind him, ran, shoeless, towards the house. He reached a woman who stood hunched, fingers splayed across her eyes, facing a heap of rubble spewing a mass of mounting dust.
‘You okay!?’
‘My baby!’
‘Where!?’
‘Upstairs!’
Masking his mouth and nose in his flexed elbow, the runner scaled the wreckage and was swallowed by the dust. Then, as the air began to clear to reveal glimpses of a sliced frontage and a cradle seesawing on the edge of a first-floor bedroom, he rose, greyed, from behind the pile of rubble, carrying a crying infant wrapped in a blanket in his arms. His long hair had vanished; in its place was a wig cap secured with bobby pins. The heels of his nylon stockings were torn and his feet were bloodied, but his eyelashes were still in place, and perfectly visible beneath a layer of grey, red lipstick defined the contours of his lips precisely.
Having delivered the child into the mother’s outstretched arms to gasps and applause from assembling neighbours, he strode away, shoulders swaying, arms swinging.
‘You okay!?’
‘My baby!’
‘Where!?’
‘Upstairs!’
Masking his mouth and nose in his flexed elbow, the runner scaled the wreckage and was swallowed by the dust. Then, as the air began to clear to reveal glimpses of a sliced frontage and a cradle seesawing on the edge of a first-floor bedroom, he rose, greyed, from behind the pile of rubble, carrying a crying infant wrapped in a blanket in his arms. His long hair had vanished; in its place was a wig cap secured with bobby pins. The heels of his nylon stockings were torn and his feet were bloodied, but his eyelashes were still in place, and perfectly visible beneath a layer of grey, red lipstick defined the contours of his lips precisely.
Having delivered the child into the mother’s outstretched arms to gasps and applause from assembling neighbours, he strode away, shoulders swaying, arms swinging.
*
WHEN JULIE TOOK A SEAT on the terrace of a cafe fronting a beach, Adam was at a table across from hers. She had a full view of his long, muscular legs in blue chino shorts, but what aroused her interest particularly were his sandals with diamante-embellished straps. When he turned his head in her direction, she bent forward and craned her neck in a show of scrutinising his footwear.
‘What do you think?’ he asked, stretching a foot, and as she looked up, was instantly dazzled by the gleam of her sea-green eyes. He found out later that she was wearing contact lenses.
‘They definitely make an impression,’ she said.
A strapping man with an oval face, a round chin, short black curls, in his mid 30s perhaps, he greeted her with a flash of the brow and a twinkle in the eye.
Adam had bought his sandals earlier that day on an impulse to wear something distinctly feminine openly, and live dangerously, as he saw it, but he told Julie that his flip-flops had fallen apart just now and ‘these beauties were the only ones available, beside being simply irresistible.’
‘They’re very pretty, not garish at all,’ she said, and they laughed as she covered her mouth with her hand to affect concealment.
They soon discovered that they shared the same passion for scuba diving and lived not far from each other. Julie was a healthcare project manager, Adam was a firefighter, and they were both single.
‘Is this a soulmate I see before me? Come, let me clutch thee,’ Julie thought half in jest.
They chatted for a long time – though it seemed like no time at all – and after Julie left, Adam’s lips rounded to form a soundless ‘Wow!’ as he reflected on how singularly attractive she was, with her green eyes, high cheekbones, aquiline nose and pixie cut black hair; and he approved of the way her tangerine and white floral dress complemented her mauve eyeshadow and light brown lipstick.
Back at his apartment that evening, after a leisurely soak in a bath, and having massaged his body with a moisturiser, Adam tucked himself into a pair of silk full brief panties and a cotton negligee, applied aloe vera gel to his face, and fell asleep on the settee watching TV.
‘What do you think?’ he asked, stretching a foot, and as she looked up, was instantly dazzled by the gleam of her sea-green eyes. He found out later that she was wearing contact lenses.
‘They definitely make an impression,’ she said.
A strapping man with an oval face, a round chin, short black curls, in his mid 30s perhaps, he greeted her with a flash of the brow and a twinkle in the eye.
Adam had bought his sandals earlier that day on an impulse to wear something distinctly feminine openly, and live dangerously, as he saw it, but he told Julie that his flip-flops had fallen apart just now and ‘these beauties were the only ones available, beside being simply irresistible.’
‘They’re very pretty, not garish at all,’ she said, and they laughed as she covered her mouth with her hand to affect concealment.
They soon discovered that they shared the same passion for scuba diving and lived not far from each other. Julie was a healthcare project manager, Adam was a firefighter, and they were both single.
‘Is this a soulmate I see before me? Come, let me clutch thee,’ Julie thought half in jest.
They chatted for a long time – though it seemed like no time at all – and after Julie left, Adam’s lips rounded to form a soundless ‘Wow!’ as he reflected on how singularly attractive she was, with her green eyes, high cheekbones, aquiline nose and pixie cut black hair; and he approved of the way her tangerine and white floral dress complemented her mauve eyeshadow and light brown lipstick.
Back at his apartment that evening, after a leisurely soak in a bath, and having massaged his body with a moisturiser, Adam tucked himself into a pair of silk full brief panties and a cotton negligee, applied aloe vera gel to his face, and fell asleep on the settee watching TV.
*
IT WAS NIGHT-TIME. The beach was wide at low tide. A crescent moon hung in a cloudless sky over a whispery, silvery-black sea.
‘How much do you love me?’ Julie said, shouldering Adam as they strolled barefoot along the shore, guided by his phone’s flashlight.
Adam rubbed his shoulder. ‘Ow! So much it hurts.’
‘Give me the gory details.’
‘It’s too enormous to say. Can’t get round it, through it, over it or under it. You know the type.’
‘Mmm hmm,’ Julie responded encouragingly.
‘I love everything about you; your eyes most of all, the blue ones, the brown ones, the green ones.’
‘Aye-aye.’
‘I love you in buckets and spades, no less.’
‘That much, eh?’
‘And more. I love you come rain or shine, would you believe!’
‘Mmm. You may continue.’
‘I think you’re a bit of all right, like.’
‘Don’t go overboard now.’
They walked quietly for a time. Then Julie stopped and held Adam’s arm.
‘Look at all these stars! You can see the whole universe from here.’
‘Endless, isn’t it,’ Adam said, before adding, with a hint of alarm, ‘until our sun swells, oceans evaporate, and mountains are flung into space.’
‘And everything goes phut,’ Julie continued.
‘Oh, no! That’ll be the end of us.’
‘I’m sure we’ll have established new colonies elsewhere by then, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sure we will,’ he whispered, and they leant into each other.
One month after first meeting Julie, Adam disposed of his stash of women’s clothes – panties, blouses, negligees and stockings, as well as his diamante sandals, a wig and a number of cosmetic products – in street litter bins far from his apartment. Four months later he and Julie moved into a house with a garden near the beach. It would amuse Julie afterwards whenever she remembered how Adam had carried her over the threshold of their new home and all the way up the stairs to their bedroom, not in his arms but across his shoulders, to her howls of fear and laughter.
‘We are happy ever after,’ she said to her friend Sofija.
‘Awww. So, what have you been up to?’
Julie stroked a tortoiseshell kitten purring in her lap. ‘Playing house mostly, eh Mimi?’
‘Hehe, you lucky cow. Now then, does he want kids? The clock is ticking...’
‘I know.’
‘How does Adam feel about it?’
‘Hmm… You know, he can be reserved, or he retreats into levity, when it comes to “the feelings department,” as he puts it.’
‘That’s a problem, yes?’
‘Maybe. But he can be delightfully open too.’
‘Oh well, good. So, you talked about it… having kids?’
‘We did, and he’s warming to the idea.’
Julie chuckled, ‘He likes to act macho, but he’s a pussycat underneath.’
Julie and Sofija were about to go on a shopping trip one day when the latter had to withdraw, and Adam offered to take her place. Julie made it plain that she was planning on a leisurely tour of the shops, knowing that his approach to shopping was to make a beeline for a specific item followed by a quick getaway. He was still keen to accompany her however, so off they went. It was a successful expedition, and Julie came away with a selection of underwear, several skirts, a pair of shoes, as well as a new appreciation of Adam. He’d been the perfect shopping companion in helping her select styles and colours that suited her and in showing a natural capacity to browse unendingly; and linger lengthily over lingerie, as she would later recall.
Adam had taken the opportunity to buy himself a manly watch, one that included an altimeter, a thermometer, a barometer, a chronograph, a compass and moon data.
When he laid his head in Julie’s lap that evening and she was twirling his bouncy curls, she said, waggling her eyebrows, ‘Hey, big boy, will you marry me, and work with me to make our life together gender equitable, always and forever?’
Adam quickly processed what he was hearing, and in one continuous movement, sat up, got down on one knee, took Julie’s hands into his, looked into her vibrant amber eyes, and cried out three times in the affirmative; and they discussed dates, venues, and a diving honeymoon.
In the days that followed however, Adam had a feeling of being adrift in a fog somehow. Sometimes he felt as if he’d mislaid something but didn’t know what it was, or he would sense a presence behind him and look back to nothing. Then, while he was pottering in their garden once, with Mimi running about and hiding round corners and in leafy branches, ready to pounce, the sight of new shoots rising from the stump of a bush that he’d cut down jolted him out of his stupor, releasing in him a longing to dress in women's clothing. It was a desire that felt instinctively right but that in his thoughts would soon turn into a curse, one that materialised every time he completed a task, as if rushing to fill an empty space; that became more insistent when he strove to ignore it, turning up when he was with Julie too, interposing itself between them and drawing him into its seductive orbit.
He wished then that he had had the courage to disclose his secret to Julie early in their relationship before pretensions set in motion had gathered such weight and momentum that made redress seem almost inconceivable; and the thought preyed on him that his persona was a phantasm bred over decades and fed on fear and avoidance.
Julie sidled up to him one night as he sat at the kitchen table staring blankly at a newspaper, brushed against his arm, and asked if he was okay.
‘You’ve been very quiet,’ she said.
His head tilted towards her and his nostrils flared to inhale her scent, but he refrained from wrapping his arms around her, and held on to his newspaper still.
‘Have I?’ he said.
‘You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you, Adam?’
‘I’d want to, yes.’
‘You seem distant. Something’s troubling you.’
‘Everything’s fine, don’t worry.’
‘How’s your colleague who got injured in that fire?’
‘Anil… he’s okay, recovering.’
‘That’s good… Are you unsure about getting married, perhaps?’
Adam turned to face Julie fully, and said, quietly but with resolve, ‘I want to get married, Jools.’ Then his voice perked up. ‘I want a marriage certificate more than anything. I want to put it in a frame and hang it on a wall.’
He threw his head back, smiling, but his lips tightened on encountering Julie’s furrowed brow, and his eyes darted to the newspaper.
She hovered by his side awhile, grasping her arm protectively, until a hungry Mimi appeared and began to weave through her legs, wrapping her tail around them, and headbutting her. They didn’t talk again that night, and Julie went to bed before Adam.
When she awoke in the morning, he was still asleep beside her. He heard the door closing when she left for work, got dressed a few minutes later, came downstairs and had a cup of coffee. His heart in a flurry, jolting in his chest, he paced the floor, and three times put on his shoes and took them off again, before putting them on for the fourth time and leaving the house.
He caught a bus into town and made straight for a store’s lingerie department where he went about his quest with studied nonchalance. Then he hurried back home and after a quick shower, went into the bedroom and slipped into the black ruffled lace panties and satin chemise that he had just purchased.
When he saw his reflection in the dressing table mirror he was almost surprised to find himself in women’s clothing. It was as if he had just emerged from a half-conscious, penumbral state with a clarity of vision that was completely fresh. A tightness in his chest yielded, his heartbeat quietened, and a buoyant sensation in his abdomen unfolded throughout his body.
Settling at the dressing table, he rummaged through Julie’s makeup bag for a lip liner; and jutting his face forward, smiled into the mirror and glided the liner on his stretched lips. Then he checked the colours of several tubes of lipstick until he found the deep red he was looking for, which he applied, working outward from the middle of his lips.
He stood up, and with his chin up, swept his fingers through his hair, raised his arms and spun around; and while Mimi lay on the window sill shielding her eyes with her paws, he began to dance, alternately holding the back of his head with one hand and resting both hands on his thighs, stepping forward and backward, swirling, slowly rolling and thrusting his hips. He danced almost without thinking, steeped in a sense of being that was all tactile, feeling the silky, slippery softness of his chemise, its hemline falling to his waist, the lacy panties under his fingertips, the pores on his skin opening to the air flowing around him as he moved.
Examining himself in the mirror again afterwards, he basked at length in a glow of contentment before undressing, taking his clothes up into the attic and secreting them in an old suitcase of his. He had another shower, a more thorough one this time to remove all traces of his feminine incarnation, but when he saw in the mirror that he’d recovered a more familiar version of himself in T-shirt and jeans, it was a return to a status quo that momentarily felt fraudulent and unsustainable.
He was putting the finishing touches to a spinach and ricotta cannelloni with mushroom sauce when Julie got home that evening, She went over to him, savouring the sweet, earthy fragrance filling the room, and as he placed his hand on her arm in greeting, they were both startled by a vibrant, tingling sensation and a yearning for each other that surged through their bodies.
He prepared a green salad, then they sat next to each other at a corner of the table, with a candle blazing and the sound of their wine glasses clinking hanging in the air.
‘You are back; but where have you been?’ Julie wondered to herself as they ate, drank, talked and laughed.
‘I missed you,’ Adam thought, holding her in his gaze.
‘So what was wrong? Do you want to talk about it?’ she considered asking.
That night, naked in bed, breathing in each other’s scents, their hearts throbbing into each other’s breasts, the tension between them swelling unconstrained, they were swept, ravenous, towards a convergence of consciousness in which, their bodies slippery with sweat, their fears, uncertainties and secret griefs dissolved, and they abandoned themselves, moaning and panting, to a final paroxysm in each other’s arms.
Adam cleared out his feminine clothes again only to buy more a short time later. His mood tended towards a feeling of joyful weightlessness when he crossdressed to one of moral deficiency and failure afterwards, prompting an inner voice to warn him that ‘the centre cannot hold.’ Sometimes he dreamt up convoluted scenarios where Julie would catch him in female clothes, which, to his surprise, would delight her, and the distance between them would vanish; or she would be repulsed and instantly cut him off, but mostly he avoided looking too closely into the implications of his crossdressing, so that, as part of a life that was lived in hiding, it remained in some ways a secret that he kept from himself too.
He was about to meet Julie on the promenade one afternoon and was recalling an incident that occurred many years before in the fire service when a new male recruit was subjected to the hazing ritual of being stripped naked and plunged head first into a barrel of water; except that this particular recruit was effeminate and failed to put up enough resistance, for which he was punished by being made to run a gauntlet of kicks and slaps before being plunged into the barrel of water repeatedly, and then blasted with a water cannon that sent him tumbling. He left the service soon after that. ‘What was his name?’ Adam wondered.
He saw Julie a short distance away at their meeting point, and the next moment she was rushing towards two women standing at a railing, and the three of them huddled together. Julie left them after a while, and Adam joined her. She explained that a man going past on a bicycle had shouted ‘Dykes!’ and wagged his tongue between his fingers at the two women who had been hugging.
Adam asked if the women were gay.
‘They are, as it happens,’ Julie said.
His nose wrinkled in a sneer.
‘It’s asking for it, behaving like…’ A cold, clammy sensation gripped his body and his voice trailed off as these words leaked out of his mouth.
‘Behaving like what?’ Julie’s eyes widened in bewilderment.
‘I mean… it’s risky.’ Adam averted his eyes.
‘You think they’re asking to be abused… for hugging?’
‘I didn’t mean…’
‘I saw the contempt on your face.’ Julie’s head retracted, and she fixed him with a stare.
‘I don’t…’
‘I can’t believe this. You looked absolutely disgusted.’
‘You don’t know… ‘he protested.
‘No? Speak up, then!’
‘I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.’
Julie backed away from him. ‘Don’t you dare make this my problem,’ she said.
‘Can we go home? We’ll talk about it there.’
‘Keep away from me!’
Julie put her arm out as if to ward him off and walked away abruptly, her eyes fixed on the horizon, intent on getting as far away from him as possible, propelled by anger and disappointment that there was a level of abuse towards gay people that he found acceptable.
She slowed her pace eventually when she began to wonder whether she had misjudged his reaction or he had simply made a mistake, ‘like we all can,’ but caught herself straining to reconcile these possibilities with the vile facial expression that she had witnessed.
When she got back to their house he wasn’t there, and she became increasingly irritated at being held in suspense as she waited for him. When late at night he had still not returned, she went to bed and listened for the sound of the door opening downstairs until she fell asleep, with Mimi by her side.
She had a dream in which she was freediving in a luminous cathedral when she came across a school of tadpoles propelling themselves vigorously into its crypt. Then the water turned murky, and she became disoriented. She was being swept away by currents and was on the point of drowning when she awoke, thrashing and gasping. She remained wide awake afterwards, listening to Adam grunting and groaning beside her in his sleep.
They held their breaths as they passed and side-eyed each other in the morning, and spoke only to confirm that they would talk at the end of the day.
An edgy feeling stalked Julie at work that morning, and a bleak outlook absorbed her thoughts, hindering her ability to focus on her tasks. She took a mental health break and arrived home several hours earlier than usual.
She removed her shoes, took the stairs to the bedroom, and opened the door. Another woman was there, in a set of bra, knickers and high-waisted garter belt in matching pink. She was fastening her garter belt to her stocking, a leg raised on a chair, her long dark hair shielding her face. She looked round. Her lipstick glistened deep red; her fluffy eyelashes fluttered.
‘Wha…?’ Julie’s voice faltered.
‘Uh, um,’ the stranger mumbled.
‘What?’
‘Er, sorry.’
‘It’s you! Oh, my goodness!’ Julie exclaimed, recognising Adam’s voice.
He grabbed hold of his trousers draped on the back of the chair, and made for the door. She
raised her palm, signalling for him to stop, which he did, while she inspected him.
‘What’s going on?’ she said.
‘I crossdress,’ he muttered.
‘You don’t say!’ She prodded him in the back as he scurried past her. ‘Come back here, you coward! My goodness, I get your reaction towards these women yesterday; it was towards yourself. It’s yourself that you despise.’
He ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, with Julie at his heels. She snatched his trousers.
‘You don’t need these, you fake!’ she snapped.
Mimi leapt out of the window. Julie waved the trousers, baiting Adam, and nimbly stepped aside when he lunged to grab them, which sent him crashing into the wall behind her; and they gasped as the whole room shook to a sound resembling a thunderclap, windows rattled, and cabinet doors flew open causing glass dishes to fall out and shatter on the stone floor.
Adam shouted ‘Quake!’ and they dived under the table and clutched each other wordlessly until the shaking stopped. Then, as Julie urged him to hurry, he picked up his trousers, slipped them on, and unhooked his bra; and they came out of the building onto the street.
‘How much do you love me?’ Julie said, shouldering Adam as they strolled barefoot along the shore, guided by his phone’s flashlight.
Adam rubbed his shoulder. ‘Ow! So much it hurts.’
‘Give me the gory details.’
‘It’s too enormous to say. Can’t get round it, through it, over it or under it. You know the type.’
‘Mmm hmm,’ Julie responded encouragingly.
‘I love everything about you; your eyes most of all, the blue ones, the brown ones, the green ones.’
‘Aye-aye.’
‘I love you in buckets and spades, no less.’
‘That much, eh?’
‘And more. I love you come rain or shine, would you believe!’
‘Mmm. You may continue.’
‘I think you’re a bit of all right, like.’
‘Don’t go overboard now.’
They walked quietly for a time. Then Julie stopped and held Adam’s arm.
‘Look at all these stars! You can see the whole universe from here.’
‘Endless, isn’t it,’ Adam said, before adding, with a hint of alarm, ‘until our sun swells, oceans evaporate, and mountains are flung into space.’
‘And everything goes phut,’ Julie continued.
‘Oh, no! That’ll be the end of us.’
‘I’m sure we’ll have established new colonies elsewhere by then, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sure we will,’ he whispered, and they leant into each other.
One month after first meeting Julie, Adam disposed of his stash of women’s clothes – panties, blouses, negligees and stockings, as well as his diamante sandals, a wig and a number of cosmetic products – in street litter bins far from his apartment. Four months later he and Julie moved into a house with a garden near the beach. It would amuse Julie afterwards whenever she remembered how Adam had carried her over the threshold of their new home and all the way up the stairs to their bedroom, not in his arms but across his shoulders, to her howls of fear and laughter.
‘We are happy ever after,’ she said to her friend Sofija.
‘Awww. So, what have you been up to?’
Julie stroked a tortoiseshell kitten purring in her lap. ‘Playing house mostly, eh Mimi?’
‘Hehe, you lucky cow. Now then, does he want kids? The clock is ticking...’
‘I know.’
‘How does Adam feel about it?’
‘Hmm… You know, he can be reserved, or he retreats into levity, when it comes to “the feelings department,” as he puts it.’
‘That’s a problem, yes?’
‘Maybe. But he can be delightfully open too.’
‘Oh well, good. So, you talked about it… having kids?’
‘We did, and he’s warming to the idea.’
Julie chuckled, ‘He likes to act macho, but he’s a pussycat underneath.’
Julie and Sofija were about to go on a shopping trip one day when the latter had to withdraw, and Adam offered to take her place. Julie made it plain that she was planning on a leisurely tour of the shops, knowing that his approach to shopping was to make a beeline for a specific item followed by a quick getaway. He was still keen to accompany her however, so off they went. It was a successful expedition, and Julie came away with a selection of underwear, several skirts, a pair of shoes, as well as a new appreciation of Adam. He’d been the perfect shopping companion in helping her select styles and colours that suited her and in showing a natural capacity to browse unendingly; and linger lengthily over lingerie, as she would later recall.
Adam had taken the opportunity to buy himself a manly watch, one that included an altimeter, a thermometer, a barometer, a chronograph, a compass and moon data.
When he laid his head in Julie’s lap that evening and she was twirling his bouncy curls, she said, waggling her eyebrows, ‘Hey, big boy, will you marry me, and work with me to make our life together gender equitable, always and forever?’
Adam quickly processed what he was hearing, and in one continuous movement, sat up, got down on one knee, took Julie’s hands into his, looked into her vibrant amber eyes, and cried out three times in the affirmative; and they discussed dates, venues, and a diving honeymoon.
In the days that followed however, Adam had a feeling of being adrift in a fog somehow. Sometimes he felt as if he’d mislaid something but didn’t know what it was, or he would sense a presence behind him and look back to nothing. Then, while he was pottering in their garden once, with Mimi running about and hiding round corners and in leafy branches, ready to pounce, the sight of new shoots rising from the stump of a bush that he’d cut down jolted him out of his stupor, releasing in him a longing to dress in women's clothing. It was a desire that felt instinctively right but that in his thoughts would soon turn into a curse, one that materialised every time he completed a task, as if rushing to fill an empty space; that became more insistent when he strove to ignore it, turning up when he was with Julie too, interposing itself between them and drawing him into its seductive orbit.
He wished then that he had had the courage to disclose his secret to Julie early in their relationship before pretensions set in motion had gathered such weight and momentum that made redress seem almost inconceivable; and the thought preyed on him that his persona was a phantasm bred over decades and fed on fear and avoidance.
Julie sidled up to him one night as he sat at the kitchen table staring blankly at a newspaper, brushed against his arm, and asked if he was okay.
‘You’ve been very quiet,’ she said.
His head tilted towards her and his nostrils flared to inhale her scent, but he refrained from wrapping his arms around her, and held on to his newspaper still.
‘Have I?’ he said.
‘You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you, Adam?’
‘I’d want to, yes.’
‘You seem distant. Something’s troubling you.’
‘Everything’s fine, don’t worry.’
‘How’s your colleague who got injured in that fire?’
‘Anil… he’s okay, recovering.’
‘That’s good… Are you unsure about getting married, perhaps?’
Adam turned to face Julie fully, and said, quietly but with resolve, ‘I want to get married, Jools.’ Then his voice perked up. ‘I want a marriage certificate more than anything. I want to put it in a frame and hang it on a wall.’
He threw his head back, smiling, but his lips tightened on encountering Julie’s furrowed brow, and his eyes darted to the newspaper.
She hovered by his side awhile, grasping her arm protectively, until a hungry Mimi appeared and began to weave through her legs, wrapping her tail around them, and headbutting her. They didn’t talk again that night, and Julie went to bed before Adam.
When she awoke in the morning, he was still asleep beside her. He heard the door closing when she left for work, got dressed a few minutes later, came downstairs and had a cup of coffee. His heart in a flurry, jolting in his chest, he paced the floor, and three times put on his shoes and took them off again, before putting them on for the fourth time and leaving the house.
He caught a bus into town and made straight for a store’s lingerie department where he went about his quest with studied nonchalance. Then he hurried back home and after a quick shower, went into the bedroom and slipped into the black ruffled lace panties and satin chemise that he had just purchased.
When he saw his reflection in the dressing table mirror he was almost surprised to find himself in women’s clothing. It was as if he had just emerged from a half-conscious, penumbral state with a clarity of vision that was completely fresh. A tightness in his chest yielded, his heartbeat quietened, and a buoyant sensation in his abdomen unfolded throughout his body.
Settling at the dressing table, he rummaged through Julie’s makeup bag for a lip liner; and jutting his face forward, smiled into the mirror and glided the liner on his stretched lips. Then he checked the colours of several tubes of lipstick until he found the deep red he was looking for, which he applied, working outward from the middle of his lips.
He stood up, and with his chin up, swept his fingers through his hair, raised his arms and spun around; and while Mimi lay on the window sill shielding her eyes with her paws, he began to dance, alternately holding the back of his head with one hand and resting both hands on his thighs, stepping forward and backward, swirling, slowly rolling and thrusting his hips. He danced almost without thinking, steeped in a sense of being that was all tactile, feeling the silky, slippery softness of his chemise, its hemline falling to his waist, the lacy panties under his fingertips, the pores on his skin opening to the air flowing around him as he moved.
Examining himself in the mirror again afterwards, he basked at length in a glow of contentment before undressing, taking his clothes up into the attic and secreting them in an old suitcase of his. He had another shower, a more thorough one this time to remove all traces of his feminine incarnation, but when he saw in the mirror that he’d recovered a more familiar version of himself in T-shirt and jeans, it was a return to a status quo that momentarily felt fraudulent and unsustainable.
He was putting the finishing touches to a spinach and ricotta cannelloni with mushroom sauce when Julie got home that evening, She went over to him, savouring the sweet, earthy fragrance filling the room, and as he placed his hand on her arm in greeting, they were both startled by a vibrant, tingling sensation and a yearning for each other that surged through their bodies.
He prepared a green salad, then they sat next to each other at a corner of the table, with a candle blazing and the sound of their wine glasses clinking hanging in the air.
‘You are back; but where have you been?’ Julie wondered to herself as they ate, drank, talked and laughed.
‘I missed you,’ Adam thought, holding her in his gaze.
‘So what was wrong? Do you want to talk about it?’ she considered asking.
That night, naked in bed, breathing in each other’s scents, their hearts throbbing into each other’s breasts, the tension between them swelling unconstrained, they were swept, ravenous, towards a convergence of consciousness in which, their bodies slippery with sweat, their fears, uncertainties and secret griefs dissolved, and they abandoned themselves, moaning and panting, to a final paroxysm in each other’s arms.
Adam cleared out his feminine clothes again only to buy more a short time later. His mood tended towards a feeling of joyful weightlessness when he crossdressed to one of moral deficiency and failure afterwards, prompting an inner voice to warn him that ‘the centre cannot hold.’ Sometimes he dreamt up convoluted scenarios where Julie would catch him in female clothes, which, to his surprise, would delight her, and the distance between them would vanish; or she would be repulsed and instantly cut him off, but mostly he avoided looking too closely into the implications of his crossdressing, so that, as part of a life that was lived in hiding, it remained in some ways a secret that he kept from himself too.
He was about to meet Julie on the promenade one afternoon and was recalling an incident that occurred many years before in the fire service when a new male recruit was subjected to the hazing ritual of being stripped naked and plunged head first into a barrel of water; except that this particular recruit was effeminate and failed to put up enough resistance, for which he was punished by being made to run a gauntlet of kicks and slaps before being plunged into the barrel of water repeatedly, and then blasted with a water cannon that sent him tumbling. He left the service soon after that. ‘What was his name?’ Adam wondered.
He saw Julie a short distance away at their meeting point, and the next moment she was rushing towards two women standing at a railing, and the three of them huddled together. Julie left them after a while, and Adam joined her. She explained that a man going past on a bicycle had shouted ‘Dykes!’ and wagged his tongue between his fingers at the two women who had been hugging.
Adam asked if the women were gay.
‘They are, as it happens,’ Julie said.
His nose wrinkled in a sneer.
‘It’s asking for it, behaving like…’ A cold, clammy sensation gripped his body and his voice trailed off as these words leaked out of his mouth.
‘Behaving like what?’ Julie’s eyes widened in bewilderment.
‘I mean… it’s risky.’ Adam averted his eyes.
‘You think they’re asking to be abused… for hugging?’
‘I didn’t mean…’
‘I saw the contempt on your face.’ Julie’s head retracted, and she fixed him with a stare.
‘I don’t…’
‘I can’t believe this. You looked absolutely disgusted.’
‘You don’t know… ‘he protested.
‘No? Speak up, then!’
‘I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.’
Julie backed away from him. ‘Don’t you dare make this my problem,’ she said.
‘Can we go home? We’ll talk about it there.’
‘Keep away from me!’
Julie put her arm out as if to ward him off and walked away abruptly, her eyes fixed on the horizon, intent on getting as far away from him as possible, propelled by anger and disappointment that there was a level of abuse towards gay people that he found acceptable.
She slowed her pace eventually when she began to wonder whether she had misjudged his reaction or he had simply made a mistake, ‘like we all can,’ but caught herself straining to reconcile these possibilities with the vile facial expression that she had witnessed.
When she got back to their house he wasn’t there, and she became increasingly irritated at being held in suspense as she waited for him. When late at night he had still not returned, she went to bed and listened for the sound of the door opening downstairs until she fell asleep, with Mimi by her side.
She had a dream in which she was freediving in a luminous cathedral when she came across a school of tadpoles propelling themselves vigorously into its crypt. Then the water turned murky, and she became disoriented. She was being swept away by currents and was on the point of drowning when she awoke, thrashing and gasping. She remained wide awake afterwards, listening to Adam grunting and groaning beside her in his sleep.
They held their breaths as they passed and side-eyed each other in the morning, and spoke only to confirm that they would talk at the end of the day.
An edgy feeling stalked Julie at work that morning, and a bleak outlook absorbed her thoughts, hindering her ability to focus on her tasks. She took a mental health break and arrived home several hours earlier than usual.
She removed her shoes, took the stairs to the bedroom, and opened the door. Another woman was there, in a set of bra, knickers and high-waisted garter belt in matching pink. She was fastening her garter belt to her stocking, a leg raised on a chair, her long dark hair shielding her face. She looked round. Her lipstick glistened deep red; her fluffy eyelashes fluttered.
‘Wha…?’ Julie’s voice faltered.
‘Uh, um,’ the stranger mumbled.
‘What?’
‘Er, sorry.’
‘It’s you! Oh, my goodness!’ Julie exclaimed, recognising Adam’s voice.
He grabbed hold of his trousers draped on the back of the chair, and made for the door. She
raised her palm, signalling for him to stop, which he did, while she inspected him.
‘What’s going on?’ she said.
‘I crossdress,’ he muttered.
‘You don’t say!’ She prodded him in the back as he scurried past her. ‘Come back here, you coward! My goodness, I get your reaction towards these women yesterday; it was towards yourself. It’s yourself that you despise.’
He ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, with Julie at his heels. She snatched his trousers.
‘You don’t need these, you fake!’ she snapped.
Mimi leapt out of the window. Julie waved the trousers, baiting Adam, and nimbly stepped aside when he lunged to grab them, which sent him crashing into the wall behind her; and they gasped as the whole room shook to a sound resembling a thunderclap, windows rattled, and cabinet doors flew open causing glass dishes to fall out and shatter on the stone floor.
Adam shouted ‘Quake!’ and they dived under the table and clutched each other wordlessly until the shaking stopped. Then, as Julie urged him to hurry, he picked up his trousers, slipped them on, and unhooked his bra; and they came out of the building onto the street.
Born in Mauritius, Moossa Casseem immigrated to England in 1967, aged 18 years, when he was recruited to work in the NHS. He has published non fiction in Nursing journals and contributed to poetry and flash fiction anthologies.
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