by Nem Rowan
I turned back to the conversation, watching Growler talk animatedly as he told a joke, watching the laughing faces of familiar people, but not hearing a word they said. I guess I was disappointed that David had done a runner on me. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Maybe he had figured out I was trans and changed his mind about me. Again, it wasn’t the first time that had happened. Sometimes people upped and left when they realised I was biologically female, because they automatically assumed that I probably still had female parts down there and therefore wasn’t worthy of their time. It was difficult and frustrating being a transgender male in a world that worshipped the phallus. I didn’t know where I stood most of the time.
Staggering out to a taxi in the early hours of the morning, I couldn’t help but wonder what David had thought of me, and as I watched the lights flashing by the window and listened to Growler and Vanessa chatting loudly beside me in the back of the car, I felt quite deflated. All I needed now was a hot mug of cocoa and something savoury to nibble on, then maybe a box of ice cream and my pyjamas, then bed. I could deal with this in the morning.
* * * *
Ping.
Grumbling, I rolled over and rubbed at my puffy face with my knuckles, my eyes blinking blearily into the light of day. Must have forgotten to close the curtains last night. I yawned and stared at the ceiling for a moment, realising I wasn’t wearing pyjamas and was instead in just my boxers and T-shirt from the night before. Must have forgotten to put on my pyjamas, too. I glanced at the empty ice cream carton on the bedside table and rolled my eyes; well, at least I got something done before I collapsed on the mattress.
My phone was next to my pillow and the tiny LED light at its corner was flashing red, which meant I had some new mail. For a while, I just stared at it and watched it blinking, my ears zoning in on the drone of traffic outside my window, accented by a particularly loud motorcycle as it roared by. It took me a moment to recall everything that had happened the night before, then I remembered how David had stood me up and I couldn’t help feeling somewhat bitter. The cool air caused goosebumps on my arm as I unlocked my phone, discovering a couple of text messages and other notifications.
A text from my big brother, Gerard, asking me when I was next coming over for a video game marathon. A text from Vanessa, asking if I had heard from Richard, Growler’s ex-boyfriend. Lots of social media updates.
I groaned for a moment before remembering what else had happened last night, then opened ChainLink and looked through my inbox. I had a new friend request from someone called Snaffle so I checked the profile to discover it was about as vague as it was empty. I at least knew it was a man, but there were no pictures and all it said in the bio section was “New to the scene and looking for my soul mate.” Well, he seemed like a romantic; I accepted his request. There was no end to the empty profiles that added me—I was used to receiving them so it wasn’t a big deal—but what really annoyed me was when they didn’t reply to my messages when I tried to make conversation. I had given up trying to speak with people years ago and now primarily waited for them to make the first move. CordialSin had liked a couple of my most recent pictures, too, pictures I had taken last night at the club. Maybe they were in them; how was I to know?
I thought of David and sulked, but in the daylight without alcohol clouding my judgement, I began to wonder if maybe he’d run away because he was socially awkward. Perhaps Growler and Vanessa really were too scary for him. If that was the case, then I couldn’t stay angry at him. Maybe I’d see him at the club again and we could talk some more, away from the terrible twosome. Maybe David was one of these blank profiles on my friend list and I just wasn’t aware of it.
I turned onto my back and gazed at the window, another mild yawn stretching my jaw. Even before my relationship with Jake—my previous submissive—had come to an end, I still didn’t have anyone to wake up next to in the morning. Sometimes I thought I was making a mistake by looking for shared sexuality first instead of focusing on romantic connections, but then I saw Vanessa and her husband together and it only reinforced the desire to find that perfect person for me. I could date a vanilla guy, but when he found out about my kinks, in all likelihood it would sink faster than it had started. I couldn’t bear to put myself through that, and that’s not even including the fact that I was trans.
Ping.
I checked my phone. Snaffle said Hi to you.
I smiled and said Hi back. Nothing.
I chucked aside my phone and curled up under the covers. Sometimes I wondered why I even bothered with social media. Nothing ever came of it. I half-opened my eyes as my stomach growled, aware that hunger was starting to set in and do dances with the need to use the bathroom. It was time to get out of bed.
I used the toilet, then grabbed my phone and shuffled down the stairs, pausing in the hallway to examine my calendar and muttering under my breath in indignation when I realised I was meant to be meeting Growler at the gym today. No wonder he had switched to drinking lemonade and Coke later in the night, yet the bastard hadn’t thought to remind me about our gym session. In the kitchen, I poured myself a tall glass of orange juice and stuffed some frozen crumpets into the toaster, contemplating whether it was a good idea to bloat myself on carbs when I knew Growler was probably going to bring it up when I saw him later. My belly gurgled as if to argue with me and I left the crumpets where they were until they were crisp and hot before slathering them with butter. Growler would be ashamed of me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t understand how he managed to survive on a diet of carrot sticks and beans.
Ping.
“What is it now?” I complained, looking at the notification on my phone’s screen.
Snaffle said Hi to you.
“If all you’re going to do is wave to me from across the street then I’m afraid you’ll have to work a bit harder than that to get my attention,” I sighed and put my phone on the counter before biting into a crumpet.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get away without showering before heading out, so I went for a soak and washed away last night’s stink of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke, using the opportunity to clear my head under the hot water. I grabbed my gym bag on the way out, jogging down the steep steps from my narrow, three-storey house to the pavement below where my car was parked alongside the busy main road where traffic was already starting to pick up.
Inside the car, I strapped myself in and pegged my phone to the dashboard; pulling into the traffic was always a pain in the rear and I cursed as the car lunged forward out of the parking space, forcefully taking my place in the flow of vehicles. The weather was good today, cool but dry, and the trees on the roadside were starting to shed their leaves. I wound down the window and let some of that autumn air blow in, but the chemical stench of exhaust fumes made me cough, so I wound it back up again.
My phone started to ring and my brother’s face appeared on the screen, so I swiped to answer the call on speaker.
“Tenny, how’s it going, bro?” Gerard’s jolly voice answered.
“Good, good, how are you?” I replied, impatiently drumming my fingers on the steering wheel as I waited at the traffic lights.
“Just wondering why my little brother never answers my text messages.” He chuckled.
“Sorry, man, I was out late last night. I only just saw your text.” I felt guilty that I hadn’t responded to him. Gerard, and my older sister Juliette, were the only members of my family who still talked to me and usually I made the effort to stay in contact with them.
“So how about it, then?” he prompted and I heard his cat meowing in the background as he opened and closed a door.
“Yeah, just pick a weekend. I’m up for it.” If I tried to pick one, he’d do what he always did and say he couldn’t make that one.
“Alright, I’ll take a look at my calendar. Listen, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about. Juliette phoned last night to say that mum’s come back from London. Apparently she saw your dad while
she was there.” Gerard’s cheery tone had suddenly dropped to one of hesitance.
“So? What do I care if Cruella wants to start dating Hitler again?”
Sometimes I forgot Juliette and Gerard were my half-siblings. It was only on occasions like this that I was reminded I was biologically different to them. I was the product of my selfish mother’s desire to do something exciting with her life; her career in journalism had been dwindling so she’d travelled down to London after the death of Gerard and Juliette’s dad, and that’s where she’d met my father, Eric. Supposedly, they’d had a whirlwind romance and my mother had moved to London to be with him within the year. They’d married about three months after, finding out she was pregnant with me. Six months later, little Miss Fleetwood was born, but unfortunately, she didn’t grow up to be the pretty girl her parents had wanted her to be. Fifteen years later, Sue Lowe and Eric Fleetwood divorced and it was all their little girl’s fault, of course. Still, it came as a surprise that my mum had met up with my dad, or even that she had gone back to London in the first place.
“I dunno, Tenny. I just thought I’d let you know what’s going on, that’s all. I’ll let you know if I see her.” I detected a hint of concern in his voice. “Anyway, gotta go now, stuff to do, people to see.”
“Alright, see you soon,” I replied and he ended the call.
Great, that’s all I needed was my miserable mother making mischief. We hadn’t spoken face to face for several years and I had no intention of seeing her now.
When I arrived at the gym, I found Growler waiting in the foyer for me. He was already dressed in his vest and shorts with his pale hair tied up in a ponytail, and when he saw me coming, he frowned. “What’s with that look on your face? You look like someone took a dump on your lawn,” he remarked as I approached with my bag slung over my shoulder.
“Oh, nothing, just my mum and her crap again. Shall we get on with it?”
“You look like your mum took a dump on your lawn,” he rephrased as he followed me into the corridor that lead to the locker rooms.
I ignored his comment as I pushed open the door into the Men’s changing room, holding it ajar so he could follow me in. “Am I late or something?”
“No, I got here early and went for a swim. Y’know, get the juices flowing and all that.” He leaned against a row of lockers, watching me unzip my bag on one of the benches.
“You could have reminded me last night; I wouldn’t have drank so much booze.” I looked disapprovingly at him through my eyelashes.
He grinned at me with his cheeky, foxy face and shrugged. “I wasn’t about to stop you from having a good time.”
“I wasn’t having a good time. I got stood up, remember?”
“Oh, that weird guy you brought over? Maybe he got locked in a cubical and couldn’t get out.” Growler chuckled, seeming to find the idea very funny indeed. “Technically he didn’t stand you up because you weren’t on a date. If anything, he did you a favour.”
“Oh yeah? How’s that?” I frowned as I pulled on my vest over my head.
“Didn’t you see the way he kept hiding his hands? He might have had a knife up his sleeve. Maybe he didn’t come back because he got arrested.”
I blew a raspberry in disbelief.
“Mock me all you like. It’s happened before. Anyway, the guy was a creep—didn’t take an expert to work that one out.”
I sighed as I folded my clean clothes and put them in my bag. “Just because he was shy, it doesn’t mean he’s a creep.”
“Why do you even care, anyway? He’s a nobody and he ain’t gonna come back to the club after he used the cheapest escape tactic in the book.” He made a scoffing laugh.
“I don’t care,” I insisted, but I knew inside that I did. People used to think I was weird because I was shy. I had a soft spot for introverts.
“Hurry up and get dressed. I’ll meet you on the bikes,” he declared as he wandered off, too impatient to wait for me to do up my laces.
Perhaps Growler was right and I shouldn’t have cared, but David’s shyness reminded me of Jake when we had first met and instinctively, I felt we might be able to work together, but of course it was silly. He probably wouldn’t dare to come back to the club, knowing I had figured out that he hadn’t really needed to use the bathroom but the Exit door instead.
Even so, I couldn’t help but gently stoke my curiosity later as I stared at my reflection in the mirror whilst cycling side by side with Growler, curiosity that I likely would never get to sate. I had lots of curiosities about people, all the time. Everyone had secrets they liked to hide. That’s how I found out about BDSM and the Fetish scene, because of Vanessa’s secrets. It made me wonder what other adventures I could go on and what other places I could visit if I opened the hidden doors in people’s lives. It made me wonder what kind of adventures other people could go on if they opened my hidden doors, too. The things we hid at home were keys to our true selves.
“What’s the story with Richard, anyway?” I questioned as I watched Growler’s reflection wiping his neck in his towel.
“I’ve had enough of his bullshit,” he murmured, sounding as if he didn’t really want to talk about it. “Has he spoken to you?”
“No, not at all.”
“Good. I’ve washed my hands of him.” He hung his towel on the handlebars of his exercise bike. He sat there resting while I continued to cycle, sweat beading on my forehead.
“You two were never a good match,” I told him.
He only rolled his eyes. “I know, but I had a great relationship with his credit cards. Those sweet babies were so good to me.” He made a grim smirk. So typical of Growler.
It was my turn to roll my eyes.
“That’s what you need,” he continued, “a rich slave to serve you. Maybe you should go into Financial Domination,” he suggested, before gulping down a mouthful of water from his bottle.
“That’s more your thing, not mine.” I glanced at him sideways.
Growler hummed thoughtfully, apparently considering this to be true as he smiled and slipped from the cycle seat. “I’ll meet you by the racks. Hurry up, slowpoke.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t be so slow if someone had reminded me about the gym last night!” I called after him as he walked through the rows of machines being used by other visitors.
“Maybe someone should check his calendar more often!” he called back but didn’t turn to look at me.
I huffed and looked at the screen on the bike. Only another six minutes to go.
* * * *
When I arrived home, the traffic wasn’t as substantial as it had been earlier and I was able to slip easily into my allocated parking space without any trouble or having to wait to turn. My body ached all over and was crying out for some vitamins and water; last night’s booze binge hadn’t done me any good, and it was only after twenty minutes into the gym session that I realised I was probably too hung over to even drive, let alone work out.
Growler and I had gone for a coffee in the café afterwards—well, I had a coffee and he had a fruit smoothie—and I ignored the pinging of my phone in the pocket of my jeans, up until the point where I had to turn my phone to flight mode to prevent the intrusive texts and notifications from the net. I don’t know why I’d bothered to be polite when, five minutes later, Growler took out his phone so he could have a ten minute conversation with someone while I sat in front of him, stirring my spoon in my latte. If it weren’t for the fact that I had known Growler since we were kids, and the fact that he had been there for me and saved my ass more times than I could count, I would have gotten annoyed with his rude behaviour, but I at least knew he was like that with everyone, so there was no need for me to take it personally. Besides, he more than made up for it by always defending me from people who hurt me, and we often lent each other money if we were short.
Now, I put on the car alarm, got out, and climbed the steps to the house, unable to stifle the yawn that erupted from my open mouth. I beg
an to feel too lazy to even thumb through my keyring to find my front door key, so when I eventually did, I filled with relief and jabbed it into the hole. That’s when I got the strangest sensation that someone was behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder, but there was no one there. A woman was walking her dog down the other side of the street and a van passed by at a steady speed. Waiting, I looked this way and that before deciding I was imagining things.
Turning back to the door so I could unlock it, that’s when I heard a rustling sound.
Again, I peered down the steps towards the row of hedges at the borderline of my front garden. Through the thinner areas of foliage, I could make out someone’s red jumper and the movement of the stranger as they began to creep away.
“Hello?” I called, my brows dropping into a frown. Curiously, I put down my gym bag and descended the steps, and when I reached the bottom, the stranger took off. I leapt onto the pavement and swung to the left, managing to catch a glimpse of a man disappearing around the corner at the end of the street six doors down.
“Hey!” I shouted, but he was gone. A bus passed alongside me and the noise of the engine drowned out my voice as it came to a halt, the doors hissing as they opened to allow passengers to alight. Several people got off and I waited until they had moved away before I went up the steps to the house.
Was someone following me? Why was he hiding behind my hedge like that? I finally unlocked the door, but I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder, expecting to see someone waiting there for me. Even when I had stepped into the hallway and dumped my bag on the ground, I still felt uncomfortable. I opened the front door a fraction and peeked out, checking that there was definitely no one before I returned to the car. I knew if I stayed in the house on my own I’d be constantly looking out the window, so I figured I’d pay Vanessa a visit instead.