August 2212
Bentham, Maine
It has now been two hundred years since I came out and began the journey of transition. I've been asked to write a memoir and talk about what it was like then, since it was definitely a lot harder than it is now, by orders of magnitude. Today, we have the sort of advancements in medicine where you can go into the clinic and come out another gender, new and different parts if you want them, same day. Back in my day, it was a long and arduous process with hormones and surgery that took years if you were even cleared at all and didn't run into "professional" gatekeepers questioning whether or not you were "really" trans, and then only if you could afford it - there was no universal basic income in my day, and very few countries had universal health care, the United States had something called "insurance" and it had to be proven "medically necessary", and often wasn't due to transphobia.
I don't want to sound like I begrudge the younger folks the ease of transition in these times, and I'm glad I've been around long enough to see it. I wouldn't want the world to return to the dark and scary times that I transitioned in, even scarier when you consider I had it easy compared to people who came out in the 1970s through early 2000s. People who for the most part aren't around anymore.
And it is with that in mind, I write this memoir. I write this in gratitude to those who came before me and walked through fire to pave the way, I write the little victories and joys I experienced as an offering to our trans ancestors, to thank them for making it possible for me to find myself. And I hope that in opening up about the pain and struggles I went through, it is a stark reminder to not let the past become our future - I almost didn't make it, I know of too many people who didn't make it, and I hope that we never return to that place in history.
-Anthony Trent Hewlett-Johnson
May 2012
London, England
'You're late."
I took a deep breath, lowered my head and gave a curt nod. "I know, I'm sorry."
Today, the most stressful court case I'd had so far this year wrapped up - it was, in fact, one of the most stressful of my entire law career - and my client was found not guilty of murdering her abusive husband, the death was ruled self-defense. In my opinion it was in fact self-defense, and I was relieved - this was the sort of thing that had compelled me to become a barrister and fight for people. But even though law was a calling, it nonetheless took its toll on me mentally and physically. Driving home to Blackheath from court, I'd had to pull over and hyperventilate, shaking like a leaf and feeling nausea as the adrenaline crashed. I had, briefly, considered calling a cab and getting my car towed, but the drive wasn't terribly long and I managed to calm down and make it home, though pulling myself together had made me a half-hour late.
And that was when the twinge of guilt transmuted to the sting of resentment. "I did warn you in advance that case was being decided today," I said, hearing the steel and ice in my voice, like I was back in court all over again. "My client was found not guilty and I kind of lost it on the way home." I could see Steve tensing up, and I tried to soften my tone a little. "You understand how it is, don't you?"
Of course, he didn't.
My husband Steve and I were both barristers, and both members of Lincoln's Inn, but otherwise our careers were considerably different. Steve worked in family law, handling messy divorces and bitter custody battles, sometimes involving British celebrities. He was in court far less often than I was, since most family law cases were handled by solicitors out of court. Nonetheless, Steve made as much money as I did a year, if not more, because the family law cases that made it to court usually got nasty and expensive. Indeed, Steve had told me once towards the beginning of our relationship that he went into family law because "that's where the money is". I had found it distasteful at the time - it was clear even then we had very different values, with him being the dysfunctional family equivalent of an "ambulance chaser". But I had been so grateful for a man to be interested in me that I had been willing to overlook that difference in values as small and unimportant. Seven years later, that clash in values seemed to encapsulate everything that was wrong with our marriage.
Instead of answering, Steve glanced over at the grandfather clock and then back at me. "Go get changed," he said - a command, not a suggestion. I felt the sting of resentment sharpen even more, my fists reflexively clenching. "We're going out for drinks with the crew tonight, remember?"
I heard myself exhale. I wanted to scream with frustration. Of course, he'd told me about it days ago, but I'd mostly forgotten in the chaos surrounding this court case. "Do I have to come with you? Those are your friends." Technically I'd known them since uni, which is where Steve and I met, but I had never really connected with them and felt out of place whenever I was obligated to tag along. And the very last thing I wanted to deal with after today's court adventure was a crowded, noisy bar and having to pretend to be normal to people I didn't really like and who I knew didn't really like me, either.
"You stayed home last time." Steve pursed his lips. "It looks, I dunno, kind of bad if you keep staying home, I don't want people to assume we're having marital problems."
I tried not to sneer and shoot back the answer that my mind immediately came up with - you're a bloody idiot if you think we don't have problems in our marriage. Instead, I doubled down. "Surely you can explain to them I had a difficult day in court and I need to decompress tonight?"
Steve shook his head. "That was why you stayed home last time, too. Come on, Antonia..."
He only called me by my full name when he was losing his patience with me - it was a warning that we would have yet another argument if I didn't comply. I stalked off to the bedroom, and once I was there I heard myself swearing under my breath. "Bloody fucking rubbish, can't cut me a sodding break, because you have to be a stuck-on-yourself, don't-lose-face poseur cunt..."
I clapped my hand over my mouth, hoping he didn't hear me from the living room, as I would never say these things to his face. My language didn't shock me - I had been mostly raised by my uncle Nigel, who was in the Royal Navy, enough said - but the vitriol did. I knew I was agitated from the demand to accompany him on a social outing when I just wanted to stay home and relax, but this sounded less like annoyance and more like hatred.
Over the last year or so I'd occasionally contemplated divorce. It felt like we'd gotten together in 2005 for entirely the wrong reason - Steve was horny and unable to get laid, he was what people would start referring to as "incels" in the 2010s, and I was lonely and routinely rejected by men and hit on by women, who I was not attracted to, though I had experimented once during uni just to see what it was like. Steve had, in fact, gotten into a bet with his mates where he'd approach different girls and see if he got rejected or not, and the stakes were especially high with me since everyone assumed I was a lesbian and and would just reject him; when I agreed to date him things got serious fast. But the intensity had fizzled out quickly, and over the last five years since we'd married in 2007, we'd been drifting apart more and more. And yet, breaking up was hard to do. I was used to him, and sometimes there were moments of fondness and affection. I was trying to make it work, though it felt less and less like making it work and more and more like trying to do damage control and keep things from getting worse.
This was one of those times where divorce felt especially tempting, and yet the conversations that would need to happen to get it done seemed utterly exhausting and I already was too tired for life. This will pass, I told myself, trying to take more deep breaths and calm down. Just go with him, zone out, having a spat will be even more stressful.
If I was going to have to do this whether I wanted to or not, I was going to be bloody comfortable doing it. I picked out a smart blue cashmere jumper and pair of khakis - classy and elegant enough for the bar, but relaxed enough that I wasn't going to feel stifled. I kept my hair short - I'd gotten a pixie cut just before the wedding, and stuck with it because it was fairly fuss-free; it was a little mussed after being under a wig all day, but didn't take long to neaten up.
When I came out from fixing my hair in the bathroom, to where Steve was waiting in the living room, he didn't even smile at me. "Don't you have anything more..." His voice trailed off.
"More what." The edge was back in my voice. I was starting to doubt we'd get through the night without an explosion. Our last one, just before Christmas last year, had given me a migraine for three days.
"...More feminine." There was a pained look on Steve's face as he said it, as if speaking the words out loud was some sort of confession of secret gayness.
I took a deep breath. "Look, Stephen." I also didn't use his full name unless we were heading into turbulence. "You knew when we got together that I am not a girly girl." I'm not even a girl, I thought to myself but kept that thought private, even as the discomfort loomed like an oncoming giant wave on a stormy sea. I reflexively folded my arms over my breasts, even though they were small, I still hated them. "Just because I won the case today doesn't mean everything is jolly joy. I. Am. Tired. Since you're being a prat about your friends judging you if I don't come along, I am doing this as a favor to you. But if you're going to make me come along, it's going to be on my terms. I want to be comfortable and not suffocate in a little black dress." Steve himself wasn't even wearing a suit and tie, just a button-down shirt under a blazer. "I'm not even sure that cocktail dress fits anymore, after the birth control." I hadn't gained a lot of weight on the Pill, just under two stone, and I had always been told I was "too skinny" so people thought it was a good look, but I had gone up a bra size and I wasn't happy about it. The weight gain wasn't why I stopped the Pill, however, it was everything else - the mood swings, the nausea, the mood swings, the spots, the headaches, the mood swings, the breakthrough bleeding, the sore breasts, did I mention the bloody mood swings.
However, Steve and I both knew I hadn't put on that cocktail dress since our honeymoon. I hadn't put on a dress, period, since the honeymoon, because I hated wearing them. My mum had been very invested in having a daughter and wanted me to be her little princess doll - even forcing me to compete in child beauty pageants - and I resisted all the way. When she started drinking, I had felt guilty about it, as if my defiance of her dress-up games had made her drink, as opposed to my father's sudden death, and though years later I logically understood it wasn't me, it was also a terrible burden to carry as a child. And even so, it hadn't burdened me enough to give me a love of dresses and makeup, and my uncle Nigel and his partner had never pressured me to dress up except for the stupid school uniform I was required to wear; Nigel half-jokingly called me the son he'd never had.
I wanted to set that little black dress on fire now, though I knew I should probably donate it to charity. And the reminder of the dress taking up space in my closet set off another reminder - this weekend my favourite cousin Judith was having a fitting for her wedding dress and her bridesmaids' dresses. Bloody hell.
Right now, I had to get through this. Steve's brown eyes locked with mine, and he set his jaw, and I braced myself for him to start yelling. But instead he ran a hand through his unruly auburn hair, took a few deep breaths of his own, and nodded. "All right. You win. I won't drag you along tonight, if you really need the down time."
"I do." I gave a small sigh of relief, and then I walked over and gave him a hug, even though my heart wasn't in it and my skin crawled when he hugged me back and his hands slid down my spine to cup my arse. "Thank you for understanding."
Steve kissed my cheek. "I'll miss having you at my side because, yanno, you do... look pretty." He gave a tight, half-hearted smile, and I felt the pit of my stomach rise.
I knew, first of all, that he was saying that more for himself than for me. It was a throwaway white lie, the sort of false compliment one gives to ease troubled waters. It also felt like he was desperately trying to reassure himself I was female - and that made the compliment feel more like an insult and injury combined. I didn't like that particular word, "pretty", because I didn't want to be female. I'd wanted to be a boy from the time I was very small, and boys weren't "pretty". I'd never told that to Steve - the only people who knew were Nigel and his partner, and once I'd told my mum and she'd said "oh, you'll grow out of it," but I never did. Telling Steve not to call me "pretty" would sound weird and I really didn't want to bring up my increasing discomfort in my own skin, with him.
But not mentioning it didn't make it go away, and it soured whatever enjoyment I could have gotten out of having a few hours to myself. After Steve left the tension lingered, even a bubble bath and changing into my pyjamas didn't help, and I found myself crying during an episode of Sherlock, for no fucking reason.
I needed to eat something - I'd had a very small lunch when court adjourned for a break - but I didn't feel like cooking, even though we had frozen pizzas for nights like this when I was wrung out and couldn't be arsed. I decided to treat myself, and called for Thai takeaway. A little while later I was in heaven with chicken satay, pad thai and panang curry. I saved some for Steve, since the bar only served appetizers.
Steve came home an hour later than anticipated, but unlike him chastising me for being a half-hour late to avoid getting into a car accident while having a meltdown, I knew that sometimes when he saw his friends it could run a little overtime, which was one more reason why I hadn't wanted to go with him. I managed a smile, pretending that I was happy to see him as opposed to feeling like four hours of alone time hadn't been enough, and his smile quickly faded when he saw the food containers on the coffee table.
"What's that?" he asked.
"Thai," I said. "The curry is really good -"
"Oh." Steve pulled a face.
I pulled one back. "You usually like Thai, Steve."
"Yeah, but I was kind of hoping for a home-cooked meal tonight -"
That was it. Something snapped in my brain. "All right, look. You know I had court today. You know how stressful this case has been for me - I haven't been eating or sleeping well for weeks. Tonight of all nights, I wanted to take care of myself, I think I earnt that. Anybloodyone else would see a veritable feast of Thai takeaway waiting for them and think it was a treat, something special, and instead you think I'm... what? Your mummy? Your housekeeper? You want a home-cooked meal badly enough, bloody cook one your fucking self, just because I have tits and a vagina doesn't mean I'm here to bloody serve you."
Steve's mouth opened and his eyes widened.
My heart was pounding and my ears were ringing. I was shaking again, like I had when I pulled over coming home from court. I normally wasn't like this - Steve and I had spats before, but this was a new level of fire and fury.
Steve walked off without saying another word to me, and a moment later I heard the bedroom door slam. "ENTITLED PRICK!" I screamed after him, because I felt it and I meant it, and goddammit, I was going to have the last fucking word this time around. It was bad enough to piss and moan at me to go out with his stupid friends and not wear a dress, but he had gone too far. This expectation that I was supposed to do more than my share of household chores and cook because I had a vagina could fuck right off.
With anyone else, this would have been disgustingly sexist. With me, who already hated being trapped in this body, I started falling apart again, not needing yet another reminder of... all of this. I had done the best I could with my life, and it still felt like I was being yanked along on a chain down a path I did not choose for myself.
Everything felt wrong.
I put the takeaway food in the fridge, fighting the urge to just dump the leftovers to spite his ungrateful arse but that was wasteful. After I did that, I curled up on the couch in the fetal position with a fleece blanket over me, chilly even though it was almost summer. I wished very much we had a cat, but Steve didn't like cats. I decided for that reason to watch The Secret Life Of The Cat on BBC2, where fifty cats from a village in Surrey are tagged with GPS collars and their every move is recorded. At some point my mind began to wander to a "happy place" where I lived near ocean and forest and had a few cats, and a young hot stud who didn't expect me to be his maid. Eventually, the exhaustion caught up with me and I set the sleep timer on the television and dozed off.
I was woken up some time later by the sounds of Steve using the microwave in the kitchen, presumably heating up the Thai food he'd rejected earlier. I felt a bristle of annoyance, and it interfered with me falling back asleep.
A little while after that, Steve walked towards the couch, and stood there. "Toni, come to bed."
I looked up at him and didn't say anything. I was still furious, though I was too tired to keep arguing with him.
Steve sighed. He rubbed his chin, and then he sat on the arm of the couch and began rubbing my back. I tensed at his touch - once again I felt my skin crawl - but I didn't roll away or push his hand away.
"I'm sorry," Steve said. "I know it was unfair for me to expect you to cook after you had such a difficult court day."
That was... closer to acceptable, but not quite there. It was unfair for him to expect me to cook, period, just because I was his wife. He knew going into the relationship I was a staunch feminist, and yet here I was shaving things for him that I didn't really want to shave, and having to keep up with the cooking and cleaning which was like having a second job. I was tired of it. Even if he'd been more egalitarian I still wouldn't have been happy in this body, but his sexist attitude was like a slap in the face on top of everything else.
I thought about telling him this - how utterly soul-sick I was of this shit - but I didn't. I didn't say anything at all, hoping he would just go away and leave me alone.
He rubbed my back more insistently. "It's just that I really like your cooking," Steve said.
That was yet another compliment that was less effective than he thought it was. I used to enjoy cooking - my uncle Nigel and his partner, another Steve, were hopeless in the kitchen so I'd learnt to cook so we weren't eating from chip shops constantly, and I found it a strangely soothing ritual. You measure ingredients, put them together, and achieve expected results if you follow directions, which was one of the only things in life you could control. I liked the alchemy of it. But Steve had killed the joy in it for me - it had become drudgery when he seemed to think it was my job, and he rarely complimented my cooking or even said thank-you.
I sat up and glared, fighting the urge to tell him to just shut up and go away, and then he leaned in and kissed me.
I didn't want him to kiss me, I didn't want him to touch me, but I knew where this was going. He wanted makeup sex, and if I refused - as much as I wanted to say no and be left alone, I knew it would be pouring petrol on the flames. Reluctantly, I followed him to the bedroom and let him kiss me again, let him start pulling off my pyjamas, even though seeing my naked body with these parts I didn't want made my skin crawl even more.
I lay back on the bed and Steve climbed over me, hard cock at full attention. There was a time when I used to think my husband was sexy as hell, used to enjoy running my hands over his body and feeling his ginger fur, but now I just wanted it done and over with. Most of the time I got that wish - Steve wasn't really attentive with foreplay and tended to finish in a minute or two. But tonight he wanted to try to "apologise". So here he was kissing my neck. My neck is sensitive and I used to really like having my neck kissed, and now it just felt even more gross and my muscles tensed and stomach clenched in dread. Oh no. He's going to try to make love to me. While I wasn't a fan of his lack of foreplay, I didn't enjoy his foreplay either, clumsy and awkward.
He kept kissing my neck and I lay there with my eyes closed - I thought about pretending to get into it as a form of appeasement, but I knew I probably would sound fake rather than convincing. Part of me hoped he would just get to business, but part of me hoped he would stop even though I knew if I rebuffed him it would cause more problems in the long run.
Now he was kissing my breasts. If there was one thing I absolutely hated, it was having my breasts touched. I didn't like being reminded they exist, and here Steve was, slobbering all over them, rubbing his hard cock against my thigh. "I love your tits," he rasped.
I said nothing. I could feel the tears coming on again, my face burning with shame.
Steve continued kissing my breasts, and my nipples got hard even as my body continued tensing, not wanting this. The betrayal of my body responding to him made it even worse.
He nuzzled my stomach, nibbled on my navel, and then he started nuzzling my mound. Oh shit, oh god, oh no. I looked down at him with his head between my legs, then up at the ceiling.
Steve started doing the alphabet with his tongue, which tickled uncomfortably rather than being pleasurable. When he got to E, he asked, "Did you come yet?"
"No," I said, my voice flat. I wasn't going to come from that. I usually couldn't come from oral, and it wasn't just him, it was every partner I'd had up to that point - granted, that wasn't many - and that included the one girl I fooled around with at uni.
He kept trying, going through the alphabet. His stubble was like being rubbed with sandpaper down there, and his tongue felt slimy and weird, more almost-painful tickling. When he got to L, he asked again, "Did you come yet?"
I was this close to getting up, getting dressed, going to a hotel, and seeing about getting the ball rolling for filing for divorce in the morning. But the response to freeze was stronger than the response to flee, or argue. I wasn't enjoying this - the more he did it the less I enjoyed it. I decided to change tactics, before I ended up having a meltdown. If I was going to have to endure this makeup sex, I was going to try to enjoy it on my terms. "I'd really like to suck your cock."
If there was one thing I enjoyed and was good at, it was giving head. I had watched enough gay porn to learn how to do it, though I would never tell the male partners I'd had where I learned. Though I found Steve repulsive these days, it was easy to pretend there was someone else's cock in my mouth. My mind's eye started its go-to fantasy - some hot young Viking or rocker looking guy getting sucked off by me, calling me "daddy" as I pleasured him, as I made him lose control. I reached down and started playing with myself as I indulged in my fantasy. I used to feel guilty, thinking about other guys, but now I knew it was a necessary evil to get through it. My fantasy got me wet, especially when it turned into Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, moaning as I sucked him. Especially when Jon Snow reached down and began playing with my cock, which turned into a sixty-nine, him sucking my cock as I sucked his. Fuck yes.
I was hoping Steve would finish in my mouth, roll over, go to sleep, and that would be the end of it. I could tell from his ragged breathing he was getting closer, and my free hand went to his balls to gently rub them, encouraging him to just come already. But then he pulled his cock out of my mouth and reached for the condoms we began keeping at the bedside after I went off birth control.
I was almost always the one to put the condom on him, but now he rolled it on himself quickly and I lay there cursing my entire existence. I turned over - I didn't like being fucked from behind, but I also knew he finished faster in this position and I didn't want to look at him, didn't want him to touch me, especially not my breasts.
I buried my face in the pillows and my mind went elsewhere as he thrusted away inside me. I thought about trips to Brighton and seeing the ocean, I thought about visiting the Forest of Dean - the woods that had inspired Tolkien - and hiking there. I thought about cats. I thought about Jon Snow again, but before I could get back into my fantasy of him, Steve came, groaning. Thank god, I silently mouthed - I wasn't religious, nominally Church of England, but I could have genuflected right then at the sheer relief that he was fucking done.
Steve pulled out, tossed the spent condom in the wastebasket next to the bedside table, and then he spooned me. My body tensed even more at the feeling of his chest at my back, his arms around me. I used to like snuggling - it had been one of the reasons why I hadn't asked for a divorce yet, hugs and cuddles were comforting with my high-stress job - but now it was like being trapped in a vise. I felt like I couldn't breathe.
"Did you come?" Steve asked.
I fought the reflex to facepalm. "Yes," I lied through gritted teeth.
"Good," Steve mumbled.
A few minutes later he was snoring and the grip of his arms loosened. I rolled away, to the far side of the bed. I thought about going back to the couch, but I knew that would cause problems in the morning and the couch was far less comfortable than the bed.
But I was still uncomfortable. My thighs were wet - I was dripping, even though I hadn't enjoyed the fucking, but my body wanted to finish what I started. So after I got up and put my pyjamas back on and got under the covers, my hand slipped down my pyjama bottoms and I resumed pawing myself, thinking about sucking Jon Snow's cock. Then thinking about having a cock of my own and fucking him - doggystyle like I had just been fucked, except Jon Snow enjoyed it, rocking his hips back at me. Then watching him ride me, stroking himself furiously as my cock slid in and out of his slutty hole, begging Daddy for more. Watching him ride me as men sucked and fucked around us in an orgy, like the ancient Greeks and Romans. Men oiling each other, worshiping each other's muscular bodies, each other's cocks... my lover and I doing the same, basking in male beauty...
...I came, and bit my lip hard enough to draw blood. Then I buried my face in the pillows again and began to cry silently, the victory of my court case dashed by the utter defeat that was this marriage, this body, this life.
That night, I cried myself to sleep.
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