Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  The sad thing was he was our boss and he could talk to us like that, I thought. I was still too shaken to speak, though.

  She noticed. “Come back in here,” she said, and we took a couple of steps back into the bathroom, letting the door fall closed. She leant against the basins, thinking. After a moment, she shook her head angrily. “What the fuck, using my rack as a display case, though? That's so messed up. 'Please go and stand there and be pretty with the diamond'. Yeah, because Burov definitely won't be interested in having an actual conversation with me, but ogling my boobs? Sure. That's what chicks are for, right?”

  I wanted to be angry for her, but I was numb. I felt like I was somewhere else. Nothing felt real and I couldn't believe any of this was actually happening. I felt like any moment I might wake up from this and discover it was a nightmare.

  If only.

  Fuck, I'd been saying that a lot lately, hadn't I? If only, if only. If only things were different, but they weren't different. This was my life, this was really my job, he was really my boss, and I’d just been spectacularly outed in every possible way. I felt naked, and stupid and I had this moment of clarity where I imagined how I must look to people. Ultra-feminine and claiming that I didn’t feel like a woman? Fuck. They probably thought I was one huge joke.

  “And that stuff he said to you?” Sarah said, bringing me back to the conversation. When I didn't say anything, she looked worried, taking a step towards me and putting her hand on my arm. I gazed down at it; at my pretty pearl bracelet and delicate, feminine wrists; I couldn't believe it was attached to me. I couldn't believe any of this was attached to me. Jason was right. He was right. Who the fuck was I kidding? This was my reality.

  “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head.

  She pressed her lips together. “This is crap, Min. He can't do this.”

  My throat was dry. “Watch him.”

  “I mean, he shouldn't be allowed to. You know what? Fuck this.” She dropped her arm so she could put her hands on her hips. “I don't want to keep working in this department with him as a boss. Just before you came up from Melbourne they had this old guy who retired and he was okay. I mean, he wasn't fantastic, but I don't think anyone could be worse than Jason. I think like four people quit when Jason got promoted.”

  “Are you saying we should quit?” There was no way I could do that, no matter what happened. Mum would kill me.

  She gave me a weird look. “Hell no,” she said. “I'm saying we should stop him.”

  Like it was that easy. “Well, then, just let me get my magic wand.”

  She chuckled once, but ignored what I'd meant. “Come on, Min, let's go to HR and lodge a formal complaint against that bastard for discrimination and bullying. The law forces them to take it seriously.”

  She looked so determined that for a fraction of a second I considered it. Not really because I thought it would achieve much—I had any expectations of complaint systems working beaten out of me in high school—but mainly because Sarah wanted to.

  Then I remembered whose boyfriend ran HR. “I can't.”

  She realised what I meant. “Oh, right, Henry,” she said. “Well, there's got to be someone else. What about that other guy? The assistant manager?”

  The more I thought about it, the more I realised it just wasn't going to happen. “Yeah, about that,” I said, still feeling sick. “He's taking all his annual leave at the moment. The other HR people are just paper-pushers, according to Henry. I wouldn't trust them with something like this. And I guess we could always report Jason to his boss... except his boss is Diane.”

  Sarah groaned. “Well, who's the next person above Henry in HR? We could report it to them.”

  “Sean Frost,” I said flatly.

  Sarah's eyebrows went up. “Oh.”

  “So yeah. Not only did we just get told we're expressly forbidden to speak to Sean because of Pink, but Sean and Jason are obviously giving it to each other. So that complaint's not going anywhere, either.” I shook my head. “Anyway, maybe if we wait until—”

  The door to the toilet burst open, scaring the life out of me. It was Ian, and he didn't look too happy to be there.

  “You'd better come back to Oslo,” he said, sounding tired. “Jason's in there, timing how long it takes you two to get back, and Carlos and I can’t concentrate on anything while he’s sitting behind us and huffing.”

  Sarah and I looked at each other. “Thanks,” Sarah said, and Ian left. To me, she rolled her eyes. “There's got to be some way to complain about that bastard asap,” she said. “I seriously can't wait for this stupid project to be over.” She then coaxed me out of the toilets back towards Oslo. It took some doing, because I really, really didn’t want to see anyone who’d just overheard Jason yelling at us.

  On the way back, Marketing had returned to what they’d been up to before Jason had distracted them: being hunched over papers on their desk, parked in front of shared monitors or busy on phone calls... but in addition to those things, they were all staring at me.

  I tried not to look at anyone but I could feel their eyes. As I passed between the desks, it wasn't so much what people were doing; no one was whispering or shouting stuff out at me. Not yet, anyway. It was just that the usual laughter and chatter than happened on the floor during work hours was conspicuously absent. There was oppressive silence, and that was how I knew for sure that Jason's voice had carried all the way over here.

  This was how it had started at school, before the other students had begun to gang up on me: I’d walked down corridors and into classrooms with everyone staring. That’s not where it stopped, though. The staring was just the beginning. It was only a matter of time before the emails would start to circulate, people would start asking me questions and making 'funny' comments, and everything would become four hundred million times more awful than even the staring was. We didn't have a skeleton at Frost for people to hang my bra on — but these men were older and obsessed with their own creative genius. They'd find something else to do to me because it was oh my god so funny to tease co-workers. It was only a matter of time.

  Jason was waiting for us back in Oslo. He didn't comment on our short absence, though, thanks in part to Ian who I think really just wanted to get the project finished and get his bonus.

  Unfortunately, Jason didn't leave. He sat there for the rest of the fucking day, making snide comments and jabs at me and sighing heavily whenever he looked at any of the updates I was sending around it. It was unbearable, except that I had no choice but to bear it. The alternative was going somewhere else, and that meant running the gauntlet of silent, staring marketing clerks.

  Despite everything Jason was doing, the materials were finished by the end of the day and they looked fucking fantastic. They were definitely the best work I'd done, and the colours and text balancing looked amazing.

  I must have been smiling at them in the evening when they came back from Printing, because Jason snatched the one I was holding off me to inspect it. He didn't compliment it, though. He just said, “Better than the mess that was the Vladivostok ones, at least. I'm almost glad the pitch was cancelled so you didn't embarrass Frost by handing out sub-par information packs.”

  The rest of the team glanced at each other, but no one said anything. They didn't say anything when Jason pulled me aside as we all left for the night, either. “Don't you even think about not showing up tomorrow, or you'll end up like John.” I obediently mumbled something to agree with him, and he let me go.

  I didn't even know what had happened with John, so I asked Sarah at the lift. I'd just assumed he was still off sick. “Oh!” she said looking stricken. “No one told you? You knew he was still on probation, right? After the Vladivostok pitch failed, they decided they were going to fire him, but only after the Burov pitch so that he doesn't try to sabotage it.”

  I gaped at her. There were firing him? For one fuck up when he was brand new? Wow, that was... God. This was partially my fault for not men
toring him better, wasn't it? My actions had just gotten a young man fired.

  Sarah had been carefully watching me. “You don’t look like you’re doing too well, you want company tonight?”

  I smiled bleakly as we stepped into the lift. “Why? Are you afraid I'll throw myself under a bus?”

  She gave me a look. “Min, work was so terrible today that I'm about ready to throw myself under a bus, and I'm otherwise pretty happy with my life.” She sobered. “Seriously, though. I can't leave you alone like this. You look like a zombie.”

  I wasn't sure I liked the idea of her taking care of me, to be honest. It made me feel emasculated, somehow. Luckily she didn't need to. “Bree's at my place.” She made an 'oh' shape with her mouth. “What about you?” I asked her. “Are you okay?”

  She shrugged. “I'll be okay. Rob and I have a Skype date later tonight, we'll probably watch a movie together or something.” I nodded at her and when we walked out of the building, she gave me a big hug. “Jason's full of it,” she told me. “Don't let him get to you. At least not before we figure out how to report the bastard.”

  Easier said than done. “Okay, I'll forget about Jason,” I told her, and watched her relax before I added, “it gives me more time to focus on what crap the other thirty marketing clerks have in store for me.”

  She didn't laugh, she just hugged me again after she'd wagged her finger at me. “No buses,” she said sternly as she left.

  Lucky for me, there weren't any running at this time of night anyway. That meant that as I made my way home I wasn't tempted to throw myself under anything while I reflected on how well today went and looked forward to more of the same tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, which was the last day before the pitch.

  The last day to make sure everything was on track so we were ready to deliver smoothly and hopefully get that contract signed. All the materials were done, the slides were ready and all that remained was training the reluctant Sales team. I worried about that. I knew they were hesitant to properly learn the materials because the last pitch had fallen apart at the eleventh hour, and I didn't really blame them for that. They blamed me for that, though, and so did most of my team.

  At least there wasn't anything Ian and Carlos and the Sales boys could say to the rest of Marketing about my role in the failed pitch right now, but after the project was over they'd tell everyone what their theories were.

  And once people knew about my catastrophic foray into leadership on top of the fact I was a 'tranny', or whatever the hell Jason had been shouting across the Marketing floor... well, at least in high school I'd had fantastic grades. It was something else to be the butt of everyone's jokes and a fuck up.

  How on earth was I going to get through this? I had no idea how I was even going to manage to show up at work, let alone pay any attention to it at all.

  I hadn't eaten all day—thank god—or I might have actually thrown up with how much that question stressed me out. Instead, my stomach just clenched and I just wished I could get home to Bree faster. As much as I hated her indiscretion, she did always make me feel better. I thought about her all the way up to my level in the lift, and hoped she hadn't cooked me anything to eat because I was not in a place where food was going to work for me.

  As I let myself into my apartment, I expected Bree to be jumping all over me like an excited terrier, but she wasn't. In fact, I found her on the couch hugging a cushion. She looked like she'd been crying, but she completely forgot about whatever was making her upset when she saw me.

  “Oh my god, Min, you look terrible!” she said, distracting me from asking about her tears. Abandoning the cushion, she rushed over to me.

  I couldn't be touched right now, though. Not looking like this. “Let me change,” I said stiffly, and she released me to let me go have a quick shower.

  When I was getting dressed, though, I was just standing there in my bedroom holding the binder and trying to decide if it was too late at night to bother wrestling myself into it, when what Jason had said hit me. Dress-ups, I thought, and looked up at my reflection with breasts in the mirror. It is just dress-ups, isn't it? It's not real. I'm kidding myself. Look, Min, you might try to pretend you don't, but you do have breasts because you're female.

  As much as I fucking hated Jason, that didn't mean he was automatically wrong, did it? Was I actually kidding myself? I wondered if I should just give up on this whole gender thing and all the shit it was getting me into. Even though I’d be comfortably invisible again if I did, the thought of going back to being a woman full-time was so depressing that I threw my binder in a corner, pulled my hoodie on and just sat down on the bed with my head in my hands.

  I felt like there was no way out of this. I was trapped in every possible fucking way; with my boyfriend, in my job, by my family and in this stupid body. There was no way out, and tomorrow I had the churning rumour-mill to look forward to at work. There was no escape.

  I heard a gentle knock on the door. “Min...?”

  Bree. “Come in. I'm dressed.”

  She opened the door slowly and spotted me slumped on the bed. She didn't say anything at first, she just came and knelt next to me on the bed and put her arms around my shoulders. I leant into her, and she hugged me tighter.

  “I'm a mess,” I said quietly.

  “Me too,” she said beside my ear. “Why are you so upset? Did everyone find out after all?”

  I nodded slowly, and told her what happened. “And tomorrow,” I finished, “I have to put up with all of that again, and then after this pitch is finished and confidentiality is lifted someone will tell the Marketing boys how much I fucked up, so I won't just be tranny Min,” I said, my lip curling on the slur, “I'll be useless tranny Min. That's if I even have a job by then. If not, I'll just be disowned, homeless, broke, useless tranny Min.”

  In the mirror, I could see Bree frown. “Don't talk about yourself like that,” she said. When I just shrugged, she said, “Because, okay, you can be a total pessimist, but you're like this super smart, super talented amazing person and on top of that you’re completely gorgeous. If you're useless, what the hell does that make me? I'm kind of dumb and I can't do anything special. I don't have any talents. I'm just cute and I've got big boobs, but it's never gotten me anywhere, no matter what they say about looks.”

  I put a hand up beside her head and hugged it against my shoulder. She could be 'kind of dumb', but there were so many good things about her. “You shouldn't be so hard on yourself.”

  “Hypocrite,” she muttered.

  I chuckled at that and ruffled her curls, even though I felt like crap about everything. “I wish it would all just end,” I confessed. “Sarah's got her heart set on complaining about Jason, but I don't realistically see that doing anything except getting us in the shit with him.”

  “Aren’t you already 'in the shit with him' after that whole John-Vladivostok-thing and taking time off, though? Maybe Sarah's right, maybe you should complain. I mean, it’s not like it can make things worse than they already are, can it?”

  “With Jason? Probably not,” I said. “But then there's Diane: if we did complain, she'd kill us when she found out. Which she would, by the way, because it's Sean Frost we need to complain to.” At Bree's confused look, I clarified, “Sean Frost, the other CEO.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Sean? Like, that guy who tried to make me feel better when the debt collector was hassling me? He's a CEO?” I nodded. “He was so nice to me, though! You'd never know he was a mega-billionaire or whatever.”

  I shrugged. “Well, if you listen to anything Henry, Diane and Jason say, he's the root of all evil.”

  “Bullshit,” Bree said simply. “Jason's root of all evil. I haven't met him, but I can already tell he's a fuck.”

  I exhaled audibly. “Yeah. And he's my boss, and Diane and Sean are CEOs, and at some point in the near future Henry, the manager of HR, is going to be my ex... Sounds like a fantastic place to work, what do you think?”

 
; Bree was quiet for a few seconds, her fingers were absently playing with the wisps of hair at the back of my neck. “I know you say you can't quit because of your mum, but you're going to have a heart attack and die when you're like thirty,” she told me. When I frowned at her in the reflection, she added, “Seriously. Stress kills people. Everyone knows that.”

  I sighed. “Well, what do you suggest? I quit, get turfed out of here and just be homeless on the street with my career over?”

  Bree made a face. “Can't you just withdraw some money and rent somewhere? You'd have savings, right?”

  “Sure, if you consider my Mum a savings account.”

  “Your mum has all your money?” I nodded, and she gave me a look. “Whoa,” she said. “Fuck.” She thought about that a bit more. “You couldn't even ask her for any, could you? Because if she's like what you said, she'd be really nosy about it.”

  I agreed with her, exhaling. Everything was just so fucked up, and literally, there was no escaping it. I had no idea how I was going to get through this, it was all so much that I didn't even know where to start. “Well, I need a drink,” I said, and went to stand up, but Bree didn't let me go.

  “Isn't this relaxing?” she asked, hugging around my shoulders.

  I squinted at her. “Not as relaxing as a glass of red.”

  She pursed her lips, and didn't take her arms away. “Not that drinking heaps isn't fun, but I'm still feeling kind of sick after all the wine we had last night.”

  I was, too, but given the choice between being physically ill and emotionally unstable, well, there were always painkillers. “You don't have to drink with me. I'm perfectly capable of drinking alone.”

  “Yeah, you are,” Bree said pointedly. That stung a bit, and I think it showed on my face, because she quickly changed the subject. “I read heaps of stuff on the internet today about all sorts of alternatives to drinking to help you relax. Maybe I could run a bath for you, or we could watch a really happy movie, or I could give you a massage or something?”

  I looked across at her, about to tell her that none of those things contained as many antioxidants as red wine, but the words never got past my lips. She looked so earnest with those big puppy eyes. I ended up looking at them longer than I'd intended to while I tried to think of some polite way to decline those suggestions, and I think she mistook that as me asking her for something completely different. She drew a little breath and put her hand on my thigh.