Manifest

by Alden Lila Reedy

  When I felt sufficiently rested, I tracked down my friends and got involved in an impromptu group dance. Not that I knew a single step of it, but it was fairly repetitive, so I picked it up fairly fast. I never danced, but it turned out to be kind of fun. Random people kept jumping in, and soon there was a line of people waving their heads and swinging their hips down the length of the hallway. Others stopped to watch and clap along.

  Over two and a half days of convention, we ate about four full meals and a lot of protein bars, each got around five hours of sleep per night, and buzzed around like bees on caffeine highs even before we got our coffee. On the drive back, too, we were still breathless with excitement.

  "Oh man, that concert, it was so awesome—"

  "—Did you see the guy dressed up as a scarecrow—"

  "—The one with the Queen of Hearts, right? Man, they were a couple—"

  "—And the Weird Japanese Music Videos panel, you should have come, I was crying—"

  When I got back home, my mom asked how my weekend was. "It was wonderful," I said, smiling as widely as I could. Then I went upstairs, dropped my suitcase, and slept for the next ten hours.

  The next con that summer was a bit less exciting, as it was in a smaller venue and had fewer people, but no less fun. On the way back, everyone started to share their cosplay plans for next year. Some of them were shooting rather high. I, at least, had no idea who I was going to be yet.

  When I scrolled through my list, nothing stuck out to me. I didn't think I was really up for making real metal-looking armor yet. I didn't want to make anything that required body paint or stilts. Everything else was too boring.

  Little thoughts kept creeping into my head. I could be this person, or that one. The problem was that they were all female characters. There was no way I was crossplaying. Nope. I wouldn't even look good in a skirt, anyway.

  Right?

  One night when I couldn't sleep, I started looking at more cosplay blogs. I noticed that almost every one I looked at—definitely the ones I liked the best—were written by women. And when I looked at the pictures I had taken at the conventions, most of them were of girls in kimono or fancy dresses or cosplay. And it must have been really late, because I thought... maybe I don't want to look at them, or I don't know, date them. Maybe I want to look like them.

  Which is how I ended up in my sewing room at three in the morning, digging up scrap fabric from my stash and consulting the internet on how to make a skirt. It was not a very fancy skirt, in the end, and it didn't even have a real waistband, just some spare elastic that happened to be the right color. But it was a skirt, with some fluff to it, and it... it didn't look that bad on me. It swished against my legs as I walked. I stared at myself in the mirror and on a whim, tried what I thought looked like a cute girl pose. It didn't feel wrong.

  I buried it beneath some clothes I didn't wear much, and went back to bed. All of a sudden, I was eager to fall asleep.

  The next day was a Sunday; we went to church. But through everything, my mind wasn't on what I was hearing. It was on what I had done last night. Was that wrong? It must be, right? I should have resisted the temptation. I should have prayed for guidance. I should have...

  My stomach felt queasy by the time we got home. "Are you okay?" Mom asked.

  "I don't feel that well."

  "Go get some rest, then, I'll save you some lunch for later."

  But of course, I didn't rest. I sat down at my laptop and asked the Internet for help. I think I might be a girl, I typed. There were other pleas for help: I think I might be a girl trapped in a boy's body, and I think I might be a girl but I'm in a guy's body what do I do??? There was a page about being a lesbian, for some reason. And there was one titled I think I might be transgender, now what do I do?

  'Transgender'. Wasn't that a thing for older men who dressed like women? The ones I had seen on TV were always in obvious costume. Could a young person be transgender? Could I? How did I get rid of it?

  The link looked like a help guide. I clicked on it and read it carefully, and when I finished I put my head down on my arms and started to cry. Oh God, this really was me. The guide blithely told me that I was 'normal', that I should love myself the way I was, that I had a future ahead of me! Yet how could I, if I was violating God's laws?

  It said it right there in the Bible, after all—Deuteronomy 22:5. "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God."

  I did some frantic reading for another hour or two before sitting down to pray for a while. What should I do, God? I told myself that He would help me through this, if only I had willpower and fortitude and faith. Right?

  When my mom came up to check on me, I told her I was feeling better, even though it was a lie.

  I stopped reading cosplay blogs and forums. I played baseball and basketball with my friends. I didn't touch my sewing machine until my mom wanted me to sew up some ripped curtains. I got my dad to take me on a hike. I prayed every day. I told myself it would go away, that I would become a real normal person and not—not a cross-dresser or transsexual, or whatever I was—and hoped that it was true.

  Yet three weeks later, the skirt was still buried in my dresser, untouched since that night. I couldn't help myself. I got out the skirt. I dug around in my closet for the buried case of cosplay makeup. I locked my door. For an hour I was someone else, who had a soft laugh and big eyes and was a girl.

  In the morning, I went to toss the skirt out. And I couldn't do it. It looked lonely somehow. I wanted to put it back on again.

  Amelia was starting to get excited for next year's conventions again. Do you want to do another group cosplay?

  Maybe?

  Or a pair cosplay!

  She sent suggestion after suggestion. Some with two men. Some with a man and a woman. I was drawn back into the forums and pictures. It took me almost three hours to send the message, but I finally sent a suggestion back after finding some well-done cosplays from her favorite video game.

  How about these two~? I attached a picture of two princesses, one with a sword and one with a staff, both with impossibly fluffy dresses and with full hair flying in the wind.

  Her reply was full of keyboard smashing. YES YES YES <3, she finally got out.

  After we decided who would be which princess, we messaged back and forth late into the night with ideas about what kind of fabric we would use—plain cotton? Fake silk? Velvet, perhaps—and where we would buy the wigs and so on and so forth. I only signed off and went to bed when I was so tired I was starting to have trouble putting sentences together.

  I felt badly about it in the morning, but by then we had plans put together already. I did start, once or twice, to write a message saying I had changed my mind, but I hated the thought of disappointing her, especially since we had spent so much time talking about it last night. Instead I borrowed the family car and drove down to the fabric store with my hard-earned money and a checklist of what I needed and my ideas of how much.

  Patterns were expensive. The internet could give you some for free. I spent a couple of dozen hours looking at tutorials and patterns until I could piece together the kind of pattern we would want for our princess dresses and calculated out the yardage required—more necessary math for sewing. I checked at the fabric store anyway, but nothing looked better than what I had come up with.

  I wavered between fabrics for a while, before picking the fancier-looking not-actually-silk brocade that had just a little bit of sheen, but not so much that it would look super-shiny, especially once we started taking pictures. A dress that fluffy needed plenty of fabric in the petticoat, too, which required yards of soft organza. And then there were all the little bits and bobs—lace, ribbon, buttons—which took me an hour to pick, just by themselves.

  Sewing a dress was so much more fun than putting together a men's shirt. It was more of a challenge, too. It took three tries for m
e to get the bodice to look quite right, and I gathered the skirt onto it by hand, pinning the heavy yards of fabric onto the bottom. I didn't have an invisible zipper foot, so that took me an extra try when it ended up showing and rather defeating the point of itself. But I liked the pretty buttons and the way the glittery lace caught the light as I passed it under the sewing machine's foot.

  "Chris," Dad said one evening as we washed the dishes. "What's with that dress you've been slaving away at all week?"

  My heart rate tripled in an instant. "It's for next year's conventions," I said, casting about for a real excuse. "Um. Amelia, you remember her, she asked me to make it for her. A commission." I tried to keep it sounding casual and, well, real. "She's coming over soon to try it on."

  "I see. She is paying you, right? Or is it a gift?"

  "She's, uh, doing me a favor in return. Prop-making."

  "Well, have fun with all that."

  I refrained from bolting up to my room after that, but I did frantically message her as soon as I could. It's fine it's fine, she replied. I understand. When's a good day for me to come over?

  A couple weeks later, she knocked on our door, all bright smiles. "Thank you so much for making it, Chris!" she exclaimed. My parents sipped on their coffee, keeping a close eye on us.

  I picked up the folded dress from the table and let the hem drop. "What do you think?"

  She shrieked. "It's gorgeous! Let me try it on!"

  It didn't quite fit her, the waist a little off and the whole thing too long on her shorter frame. But still, she jumped around to make the skirt fly about, and chattered about how wonderful she thought it looked. It even seemed to charm my parents. It felt odd to see it on her, though. I wanted to be her in that moment, the fabric smooth against my skin, the petticoat rustling against my legs.

  After a few minutes, we went up to my sewing room to 'pin it to take it in and make it fit better'. "It does look gorgeous," she said as she folded it up for me. "I'm so glad you thought of this, it's going to be great." She grinned at me and handed the dress back over.

  Months later, a week before the con, I tried it on again in the dead of night to make sure that it still fit me, along with the wig that had finally come in. At first, on seeing myself in the mirror, I felt exhilaration. I twirled and swung my staff, imitating the movements of the character I was dressed as, feeling, for a moment, as if I too could have been fighting off shadowy enemies

  But the longer I looked in the mirror, the deeper the guilt became. What was I doing? Dressing up as a woman even though I wasn't one. The face in the mirror was a masculine one; I became aware of the difference between my imagination and reality.

  This was wrong. I stripped as quickly as I could and threw the clothes on top of my bed. It was late, but I knew Amelia would still be up, so I called her.

  "I don't think I can do this," I told her.

  "What? We've been planning this for months and all of a sudden you have a problem with it? Come on, Chris!"

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't give me a fucking excuse!" I flinched. "I'm sorry, but—I know you worked hard on that costume, you put a lot of money into it, and a lot of hours, and it looks great! What happened?"

  I couldn't say anything. My mouth opened, but there were no words in mind to say.

  Her voice turned plaintive. "What's the problem? Are you too shy to go out like that? Think you're too ugly? Did someone find out?"

  She waited, silent. Finally, I managed to make words. "It... I don't look like a girl wearing it and—"

  "Isn't that what makeup is for? Anyway, nobody at the con is going to care, and I swear you looked great when you showed me that picture." I had deleted it as soon as I had sent it.

  "It's not..." I hesitated. That wasn't the real issue, right? "I can't help but feel it's not okay to do it sometimes."

  "Ugh. Your church, right? Look, I'm not religious. I can't tell you what's right or what's wrong except for what I think. But you obviously thought it was fine and dandy before. Are you really going to change your mind and throw everything out over a few doubts?"

  "I guess not."

  "Come on, even if it is a sin, it can't be a bad one, so just donate some extra money to church instead or something."

  "Not a Catholic."

  "Well, whatever. I'll see you next week with dress in tow, right? I've been really looking forward to it."

  My mouth twitched into a smile. "Yeah, you will."

  I did end up going with that costume packed alongside last year's prince, which I wore on the first day. And on the second... I felt nervous just getting it out in the hotel room. But one of the girls staying there was crossplaying too, wearing some kind of military outfit. I held my breath as I stepped out of the bathroom, fully dressed and wig pinned to my hair, but no one batted an eyelash; someone said a compliment and that was it.

  Amelia helped me with the makeup. She lined my eyes in black with a steadier hand than my own, and I had to ask how she kept the mascara from clumping up. "I'll show you later," she said as she drew a soft brush over my face, adding highlights and shadows. "There, what do you think?"

  I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror. "Oh, wow." I had no idea what magic she had just performed, but while there was still something off about my nose, my face looked softer, feminine, without looking unnatural or painted. "Wow. Thanks!"

  As shy as I was about my costume, I soon fell back into the spirit of the con. "I want to see the magical girls panel," I said as we waited in line for a panel about the depiction of angels in anime and Christianity's history in Japan.

  Amelia, squinting at the pocket-sized version of the guide with its tiny fonts, sighed. "And I wanted to go to the music video workshop. I guess we can split up for a while."

  When I went to the panel alone, I slunk into one of the seats near the aisle and tried not to be noticeable. The room gradually filled up with people as the time ticked toward the start of the panel, and one of the last free spots was next to me. A girl dressed as one of my favorite characters, the edge of her cloak chiming with tiny bells, sat down next to me and sighed.

  "I like your costume," I said in a quiet voice.

  "Thank you!" She smiled and her eyes flickered over my own costume. "Yours is pretty nice too. Did you make it?"

  "Mmhm."

  "I like the fabric you picked."

  "Oh, thank you."

  We managed to start up a conversation—well, it was mostly complaining about fabric stores and the lack of good ones in our areas, as well as tips on getting deals on the good stuff and avoiding fabric that was cheap in quality. Even after the panel, we both had friends to wait for, so we dawdled about together in the hallway for a while and made ourselves into internet friends by the time Amelia found me.

  It was strange to walk around like that, not just dressed as a girl but also feeling like one, and God help me, I liked it. But of course, I didn't know how to be a girl. When Amelia sat down, I copied how she sat. I tried to figure out how the girls we passed in the hallway walked, how it was different from how the guys walked, though to be honest I couldn't tell the difference. I listened to the girls around us and tried to copy how they spoke, pitching my voice as high as I could while still being able to talk easily.

  It was kind of disappointing, coming back to the hotel room and becoming Chris again. Without the wig, without the dress, without the makeup, I was just another guy. I couldn't face that in the mirror for very long before turning away.

  Sarah was disappointed that we didn't get any professional photographs this time around. I told her that the photographers were really busy, which was true, even if it wasn't the reason we didn't go to the studio.

  I was eighteen. In the autumn, I started college. The day before I left, my parents sat me down for a talk. It was about what I expected: focus on your studies, it's easy to make a fool of oneself when drunk, try to resist the worst temptations. The secret I had made my throat feel thick, so I didn't talk very much. Sure
ly what I was doing was worse than most of what they were warning me against.

  And yet it felt so right. I was already planning next year with Amelia, and I was definitely going to be a female character of some kind. This excited her a lot, since her favorite characters and favorite groups of characters tended to skew female, and it opened up more possibilities. It was still going to be a couple months at least before we decided on who we were going to be for sure, though. Amelia might take even longer.

  The second week I lived in the dorm, I got a package. Ordering it took three days and a couple of episodes that started to approach panic attacks. Lots of heavy breathing, and I felt my pulse skyrocket while I clicked out of that tab. I didn't even open it until my roommate went to a fencing club meeting that I knew would take a few hours.

  I sliced it open, careful not to catch my scissors on what was inside. Soon the contents were spread across my bed: women's clothes. A striped shirt with an embroidered anchor. A cardigan, soft to the touch. A full navy skirt with white polka dots. Blue knee socks. I double-checked that the door was locked before putting them on.

  And there was the same magical effect that I'd had while cosplaying as the princess. I didn't feel like a guy in a skirt. I sat on the edge of my bed and swung my legs back and forth, marveling at how my feet seemed smaller. For a while, I just skipped around the room, refusing to look in the mirror, before the difference between my headspace and the realities of biology made themselves known. The way my hips felt too narrow when I walked. How absolutely flat my chest was.

  At that point, I changed back and folded the women's clothes away in my bottom drawer, underneath a couple of sweaters.

  During the school year, I bought a few more sets of clothing. I rarely had a chance to wear them, usually only when I knew my roommate was going to be out for the weekend. Twice, I felt so guilty about them that I put them in old plastic shopping bags and threw them under my bed, promising myself that I would donate them and stop doing this to myself. Both times I took them out again. Maybe it was a perversity to wear fake breasts and enjoy the way skirts made my hips look fuller, but it made me feel better when schoolwork started to stress me out.