Chapter 3:

THE MORNING CAME too soon. Mom pretty much had to drag me out of bed and to the sink to brush my teeth. I ate breakfast quickly and then got dressed to go to the soccer game. We got down to the field early and I warmed up with my teammates. Before I knew it we had started the game. I was playing sweeper on our side of the field.

The game went fast and furious, with me getting the ball off our side of the field more often than not. At one point a player ran down the field with the ball and I kicked it hard. The player went one direction (towards the ground,) and the ball went flying to my friend, Brittany, and she went the rest of the way for a goal. The coach gave me a huge pat on the back for that one. Brittany was one of the two girls that were on the team. The other girl's name was Sarah. I had grown up as friends with Brittany since she went to the same church as we did at the time.

I thought to myself, 'I could be the third girl on the team!' That thought only distracted me for a few moments though, as the ball was soon heading back and forth across the field some more. The game ended with us up over the other team seven to one. Following the game we all went out for ice cream to celebrate.

Mom had come to the game, but dad hadn't... big surprise. He did some work for a friend's company on the side occasionally, and they had called him wanting help again that night. He had been there since midnight, and hadn't gotten home by the time we left at nine. I was beginning to really resent that other job. But I wasn't going to let that get me down today. The next game we were going to play would be for the city tournament. That was going to take place over the next two to three Saturdays, depending on how we played.

The coach told us to make sure we made it to the practices that week, it was important that we all work really hard together. When we left the Dairy Queen where we had gotten ice cream I sat back in the car thinking about all of the things that had happened that week.

At home I decided to play a computer game since dad wasn't there to monopolize it! I had a Star Wars game that I was playing. I loved games based on space or flight in general. I played that for a few hours until dinner, when I decided to go read a book of some sort.

I thought about it for a bit and decided to read one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I found myself thinking not just of growing up then, but growing up as a girl. I found myself thinking more and more that night about being a girl. Truth be told, as I thought about it there had always been a nagging part of my brain that had wanted to be a girl.

There were several opportunities that I had turned down to wear girls clothing... not because I didn't want to, but because I was scared of what people would think. Another night passed of this, and then I went to bed.

SUNDAY I WOKE up after my parents did. I found I was sleeping later and later these days, something my parents were frequently making comments about. They told me that they didn't know how I could possibly sleep that long! Mom made me some French Toast that I ate while looking at the comics. She left the room to go do something and dad was gone to Wal-Mart.

It was then that I caught sight of the ad from JC Penney. It had girls' clothes on the front of it. I looked at the ad with the girls in their clothes and thought about how great it would be to wear those form fitting shirts. They looked neat. They looked a lot cooler than what I was wearing. I flipped the pages and for the first time looked at the pages with bras and panties. I thought that would be strange to wear, but kind of wanted to try it.

I turned to the Wal-Mart ad and looked at some of the toys that were for girls to play. The dolls seemed kind of foreign to me, but at the same time I could still see playing with them. They even had some Legos in there for girls. More and more I was getting curious, but I knew there was no way I could talk about this with anyone. I would get yelled at... and who knows what else. Dad had always talked about homosexuals with utter hate. What would he think about his son wanting to be a girl?

I decided that I did want to check and see if there were any internet sites that discussed this online. But I would have to wait until after school tomorrow when mom and dad were still at work. They said there was an internet site for everything! Perhaps I could learn if there were any other boys that wanted to be girls.

In the meantime I had some practicing to catch up on, I hadn't been practicing nearly as much the past couple days. I worked out of my method book and music for saxophone for two hours that day, using that as a distraction so I didn't have to think about my problems. I also did that dreaded thing called homework – my science teacher had given us even more vocabulary to copy into our notebooks... I was still mad that he gave me a C!

THE NEXT DAY was actually fairly uneventful. I hung out with Amy at lunch time, as well as her other friends. I definitely felt like we were becoming close friends, but was starting to wonder if that would mean we would be boyfriend/girlfriend. I honestly wasn't interested in that right then. I needed a friend far more.

I had gone home that day and started looking up my situation on the internet. To my surprise, I quickly discovered there were a lot of others out there like me. I also discovered there was a name for boys like me, transgender. I looked through the sites and couldn't decide if I really qualified for that statement or not. I also found a number of stories that I enjoyed of boys being turned into girls by their mothers for various reasons.

Many of the stories involved boys in similar situations that became more accepted when they became girls. I didn't know what to think about it, since I felt it was probably wrong to feel this way. My Christian upbringing just didn't really allow for me to feel completely at ease with these thoughts. That still didn't stop me from daydreaming and watching the girls more and more to figure out what it would be like though! I also discovered that it was possible, by surgery and hormones, to make yourself look like you had been born a girl.

I had a dream that night that I had several times recently. It just kept rolling over in my head over and over again. It was based on a time when I was about five at my cousin's house.

We pulled up into their driveway and walked into their house. I saw my aunt sitting at the kitchen table. "Where are Abby and Annie?" I asked.

"They're outside swimming in the swimming pool." I looked outside and saw they had a three foot pool set up outside on the lawn.

"Mommy can I go swimming?" I asked.

"Sweetie, we didn't bring your swimsuit, so I'm sorry you won't be able to go."

"But Mommy, I really want to go! Can we go buy a swimsuit?"

"No honey, we don't have any extra money, and I'm sure they'll be done swimming by the time that we got back. Why don't you go watch TV for now?"

"But Mommy!" I started to throw a fit.

"Mandy, he could borrow one I guess."

"Really?" I stopped sobbing a little.

"He could probably borrow one of Annie's swimsuits." My aunt suggested.

"But that's a girl's suit..." I said. "Do you have anything else?"

"Well Uncle Bill's got the only other thing big enough and his is going to be too big for you."

I stood still for a few moments thinking about it. "Okay, can I borrow one of Annie's?" I looked up at Mom to see if she would be okay with it. She shrugged her shoulders and nodded. It had after all ended my tantrum.

"Well, let's go up and see if one of them will fit you."

We walked back to her bedroom and looked in her dresser. She held up a pink swimming suit with purple polka dots on it. When she held it next to me she said, "It looks like it'll fit, do you want to try it on?"

I nodded timidly. She told me how to step into it and pull the straps up. She led me to the bathroom where I pulled off all of my clothes and put it on. I liked the way it fit. I had a type of haircut that was a unisex cut. It was a little short for a girl, but there were many girls with this style too. I could see that I kind of looked like a girl in the mirror.

I went down the hall and my mom and aunt saw me. They gave me a hard time about looking 'cute' and 'pretty' before telling me to go ahead outside. Annie and Abby kind of gave me a funny look, but Annie said, 'you stole my suit!" smiling while she said it. "You look pretty in it."

We were playing in the pool....

I never got any farther than that since Mom woke me up. It was the first of many dreams that I was wearing girls clothing. I also based a lot of my daydreams off of this, since it was really close to what had really happened. My aunt really had offered to let me wear my girl cousin's swimming suit... but I had been too scared and hung up about it, so I had ended up going in my jean shorts instead. It became a really happy dream to think of during the day though!

As the week progressed the meeting about the Florida Experience trip came up quickly. My mom decided to go check out the meeting and dragged my dad along. They came out of the meeting telling me that they wanted to do it, but my dad just had to crunch some more numbers.

That weekend they called me into the kitchen and told me to pull up a chair. Dad said, "Okay Brandon, we think we can do this trip, but we have a few ground rules that we need to set down first."

"YES!!!" I exclaimed loudly. I was really excited! "Okay, what are your rules?" I asked calming down a little.

Mom answered first, "Well first of all we're both going to go on the trip with you." I stared at her for a second half wondering if I should be upset... but I decided it would make life better because I wouldn't have to worry so much about something bad happening.

"Okay. What else?" I asked

Dad answered this time, "You have to fundraise as much as you can. In all honesty this is going to push us to the breaking point this year. But we've decided that this is an opportunity that won't come up again. If you promise that you'll do your best to fundraise we'll go ahead and pay the deposit to Ms. Fitzgerald on Monday."

"Okay, I'll do whatever fundraising I have to do. If I have to go up and down every street in town I'll do it! You guys are awesome!" They both smiled as I gave them both hugs and when I left started dreaming about what it would be like to go to all of those places.

When I went to bed I also began thinking of how wonderful it would be to go on the trip as a girl instead of a guy...

Two Weeks Later

IT WAS SATURDAY, we had just gotten done with our second set of city tournament games. We had learned just twp hours ago that we were going to be playing two final games next Saturday. If we won the first we would go to the final match for the championship. If we lost that one, we would play a consolation game for third place.

On our way home from the game Mom said, "Brandon, your hair's getting pretty long. We're going to need to cut it when we get home unless you want to start doing something different with it."

"What else could I do with it Mom?"

"Well I suppose you could grow it out to the bowl cut that everyone has now."

"Okay, that sounds good. Let's do that." Mom kind of gave me a strange look, I hadn't wanted to do anything else with my hair for the past two years. To her this seemed like a sudden change. I thought that maybe I could use the bowl cut for a first step on my new goal of growing it down to my shoulders.

A few minutes later I decided that I would take this one step at a time. I figured that by the time I got to December it should be at about five inches long – almost longer than the "bowl cut" Mom had suggested. When she asked about cutting it then I would say I just wanted it trimmed! And get them to let me grow it the rest of the way out.

I had begun looking for guys in the media and in movies with long hair so that I could emulate them. Or at least say that I was! It had been really nice during the past two weeks because I was getting picked on less and less by the other kids. I figured it had to do with my run-ins with Matt and Jeff. The comments hadn't completely stopped, but no one was getting physically violent with me anymore. I think they all believed deep down that I was still a wimp, but they were all nervous about pushing it.

More than anything else – damage or not, the loss of face to those two made people not want to try me. That gave me the courage I needed to go ahead and grow my hair out.

Over the past two weeks I had also continued hanging out with Amy at school at every chance I got. We talked and both agreed we were just friends, not wanting to date each other. She became my first girl 'girlfriend.'

The next weekend my team won the city championship soccer tournament! It was really cool, they gave us medals and everything! We had a big party at the coach's house to celebrate the week after that. Our team had even ended up with our team photo in the town's newspaper. It was by far the coolest thing to ever happen to me.

By December Mom had to trim the front of my hair to keep it from getting in my eyes. I loved the fact that I basically had bangs now if I combed my hair forward. It had gotten to the point where it was seven inches long. Definitely longer than the bowl cut I'd told my mom I wanted to have. It was beginning to come down my neck, I was guessing it would be at least shoulder length by the time we went on the trip.

I was still trying to decide how to justify getting it longer to my parents when I got a great excuse in the form a Christian rock band I listened to. Two of the guys in the group had their hair all the way down to their back. I started pointing out to my mom and dad how cool it would be to play in a group like that. I used that as the excuse to keep growing my hair out – and my parents reluctantly bought into it. I still got a little grief from them about it from time to time, but things were generally going pretty well on that fight.

My first act of my attempt to at least look a bit more like a girl was going according to plan.

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