This Year's Girl - On To Grow On

"Devon’s making dinner for you, at his place?" Eva asked, clearly a little stunned by the news.

"He sure is." I told her, "I wanted to do something low-key for my birthday, and he invited me over for dinner. I guess we're up to the point where he needs to prove he can actually cook."

"And it is the third date, and we know what that means." Eva shot me a mischievous look as she sat down in the guest chair in my little office.

"Well, it's kind of the fourth date," I corrected her and leaned closer to whisper, "and besides, Eva, we've already had sex."

"But just the once, right?" asked Eva.

"Yes, just on New Years, nosy girl." I confirmed, "Devon's actually been a little weird about it lately. We went out last weekend, just for drinks, and I asked if he wanted to come home to my place afterwards, and he passed. Some story about helping Connor at the restaurant early in the morning"

Eva gave me a wicked smile. "Maybe he's just saving up for tonight. A birthday spanking as a special present!"

"I wouldn't say no to that, but we'll see." I answered, smiling, but I still had a feeling in my stomach that the real story was something different.

With Heather Nova blaring on the living room stereo, I peeled off my work outfit and flung it onto the bed.

Okay, got to pick something nice. Not too obvious, I told myself, staring into my closet. In the end I settled on sexy low jeans and a tight powder blue sweater. And a yummy surprise underneath if he wants to find it, I thought, pulling a pair of blue lace and satin undies from my drawer.

Devon's apartment was over in the North End, and the cab had me there in no time, only a little early for our seven o'clock date. I knocked on number 3B, and Devon answered, sleeves rolled up and a dishtowel over his shoulder.

"Hi gorgeous, come on in." he said, swinging the door open wide. "Let me get your coat."

As I pulled off my black leather coat, Devon stepped in close and leaned down to give me a kiss. "You look great." he said.

"Well, I do what I can." I told him as he hung my coat in a little closet near the door, and hung my little purse from the doorknob.

"Wine?" he asked, and when I nodded he said, "Come to the kitchen, I'll pour you a glass."

Devon held my hand as we went down the central hall of his apartment to the kitchen at the end. The scents of different foods - garlic, basil, and lemon - filled the air, and Devon poured me a glass of white wine from the ice bucket on the counter.

"Want the grand tour?" he asked.

"Of course!" I told him, sipping the chardonnay in my glass.

"Okay, kitchen." he said, motioning with one hand to indicate the room. Several pots and pans were cooking away on the stove, and a small table by the windows was already set for two.

"But wait, there's more." he said leading me back into the hallway. Just across the hall from the kitchen was his bedroom, small and dominated by the bed positioned outward from the center of the far wall. Halfway down the hall was the bathroom, and at the end, across from the door I came in was a living room that held only one large couch, a coffee table, and a stand with TV and stereo, but had big windows looking out onto the street below.

"It's not a very big, but it's enough for just me." Devon said.

"It's very nice." I told him as I put my arm around his waist, snuggling in close, "and let me guess, you stayed home from work this afternoon to clean."

"On that I have to plead guilty." he told me.

"Well, I'm glad to be special enough to deserve it.” I said. I had to catch myself from saying something like how I knew first hand about the cleaning habits of guys on the day of a big date.

"My pleasure. Why don't you pick some music for us while I finish dinner." he said, giving me another kiss before walking back down the hall to the kitchen. "I made my famous pasta primavera. I hope you like it." he called down the hall.

"It's famous, huh? Sounds wonderful." I called after him, "I'm starving."

And maybe he'll serve his famous 'naked Devon' for dessert, I smiled to myself, sipping wine and crossing over to the stereo.

I started an older U2 CD, making a mental note to buy him some girl rock music, and walked back down the carpeted hallway to the kitchen. I stood in the doorway, taking the time to watch Devon mixing pasta and veggies in a big bowl, deftly adding different spices and ingredients now and then. I had an acute pang in my heart, thinking about just how long it had been since someone had made me dinner on a date. Not to mention that the last time it happened, all those years ago, I was a boy standing awkwardly in her kitchen.

"Kira, you okay?" Devon asked, pulling me back out of my daydream.

"Hmmm? Fine," I lied, "just thinking about work for a moment. Sorry, I'm all yours now."

"Okay, sit here, and I'll serve." he said, pulling out a chair. I sat, and Devon scooped some pasta onto our plates, and set a small tray of garlic toast on the table. Lastly, he filled his wine glass and topped mine off before sitting down across from me.

"Happy Birthday." he said, holding up his wine glass in a toast. We clinked glasses and sipped our wine. "I'd guess you were maybe turning 24, but I know better than to discuss things like age or weight with girls." Devon looked slyly at me as he forked some pasta into his mouth.

"Mmmm, very tricky, sweetie," I chided him, "and thank you for the low guess, but I'm 33 this year. And buck naked I weigh 140. At least before I eat all your pasta I do." I smiled at him, and continued, "Besides, I gave up keeping secrets as my New Year's resolution, so you can ask me anything. Your famous pasta primavera is excellent by the way."

"Thank you. I can ask anything, huh? Okay, you opened the door." He said with a big sip of wine. "I want to hear the whole Kira story, with all the details. You've only ever told me little pieces."

"Okay, if you want the whole sordid, melodramatic story." My heart was beating fast in my chest, and I took a deep breath and a drink of wine before I started.

"When I was a boy, maybe ten years old, I started trying on my two older sister's clothes, and I really liked it. When I got to high school, I was only focused on girls as girlfriends, and it never crossed my mind about possibly being a girl myself. I was still fascinated about how girls looked and dressed and acted, though. I can still remember the bra and panties my high school girlfriend wore on the night we lost our virginity to each other."

Devon looked up at me from his dinner, maybe with a question, but he let me continue.

"She was a year younger than me, and we split up when I came to Boston for college. I had a pretty typical crazy freshman year, and then I met my girlfriend Rebecca at the start of sophomore year. I was crazy about her, and we dated through the rest of school, pretty much inseparable. We had a lot of fun together, and we had a great sex life."

At this statement, Devon held his glass halfway to his lips, and looked at me again. It was probably strange to hear this girl with long brown hair across the table talk about her sex life with a former girlfriend.

"Rebecca never knew that every chance I got to be alone at her place, I wore her clothes. Underwear, lingerie, shoes, dresses, you name it. We were basically the same size, and I loved it. That's also around the same time I started buying my own clothes. Not very much, but a few things. After we graduated, Rebecca and I got an apartment together. I thought things were great and I was starting to think about marriage and buying a house together, and I still wore her clothes whenever she wasn't home. But after about a year and a half, she came home one night and told me it was over and that she was moving out. She had a whole thing about living on her own and being independent, and I found out later there was a new guy in her life. I loved her so much, and I was crushed when she left."

For some reason, I had trouble looking Devon in the eye as I sipped my wine before going on. Even all these years later, that pain still felt too close.

"So, still deep in my depressed rebound, I met Sue. We worked together and 'met cute', as they say, at the work Christmas party that year. We dated for almost a year, and then moved in together. She was big on getting married, but my first priority was a house. So, we bought a big nice house in the suburbs, and moved in. We got married less than a year later. It was actually while living together in our house that Kira was born, if you will. I learned more and more about crossdressers and transsexuals, and about girls who had once been boys. I read every story I could about girls who had gone through the process of changing, and it made me think about myself, and if I could ever do it. I was still dressing, but since Sue was smaller than me, I bought all my own clothes and kept them hidden. Eventually I bought everything I needed to fully change into a girl - a wig, fake boobs, makeup, all that - and like all the other girls I had read about, I created my own girl name. Kira Sydney."

I realized, looking down at my plate of pasta, that I had completely lost my appetite. And there was still so much to tell Devon.

"I loved Sue like crazy, and I wanted to tell her about Kira, but I was so afraid that she'd leave me if I told her, so I stayed in the closet. About a year after we got married, Sue started talking about kids, and I learned I really didn't want to have kids and a typical suburban life. I didn't really know if I wanted to be a girl, or what I wanted, but I knew that wasn't it. Sue and I started counseling together, and I started seeing a therapist myself about my life as Kira. At the end of nearly a year of counseling, things between Sue and I were worse and it didn't look like we could stay together. Because my therapist said it would help, and because I wanted to be totally honest with Sue before the end, I told her all about Kira in the middle of a night of counseling. She was, well, stunned is not too strong a word. Her dreams of kids and married life were gone, and she realized that I was not the man of her dreams. She never wanted to know me as Kira, or learn any more about it, and she moved out right away."

"Not long after that, we got divorced. We told our friends and family that it was all because of the issue of children. I didn't think she ever mentioned anything to anyone about Kira, but I didn't really know for sure. We sold the house, and made a pile of money on it, actually. That's when I decided, against my therapist’s advice that I wanted to be Kira for real. So, armed with all this cash from selling my house, I took a job with my company in Southern California, and I moved to Los Angeles. I didn't say anything to my family or my friends about Kira, and it was entirely my goal to disappear and become a girl. I linked up with a new therapist who was on my side about the change, and I started taking hormones and working on all the other necessary changes."

Devon still sat quietly as I talked, but he did pour more wine in my glass.

"I met a lot of other girls like me in Los Angeles, some who were girls now or still part time. They were always super supportive of me during the whole switch. I quit my job when I thought the transformation was getting pretty obvious, and I hadn't talked to anyone from back home in a long time. It seemed totally natural that the boy me was basically gone, and there was only Kira. I still remember the day, about a year after moving to L.A. that I threw out the last of my boy clothes. I hadn't worn them in a long time, and anyway, part of the whole legal process of changing your name and gender from a boy to a girl is showing how you live full time as a girl. Even with all the mood swings from the hormones, and the drama of multiple cosmetic surgeries and everything else I went through, I was really happy."

  "That was almost two years ago, and I was legally and physically a real girl. Well, physically I still had the decision about the final re-assignment surgery to think about. Even though I didn't think getting my boobs done or anything else I went through was a big deal, I still considered having my penis cut off was a big deal, and I put it off. Besides, I knew plenty of girls who'd never gone that far, and they were good and happy, so why bother, I thought?"

I wondered then if Devon was uncomfortable hearing about this topic. He didn't squirm in his chair the way I'd seen other guys do when talking about SRS, though. Maybe he was genuinely curious about me.

"So, still living off my house profit, I was a blonde, crazy Southern California girl. I had this new body, created with hormones and surgery and starvation, and I took every chance I got to show it off. I went out drinking and clubbing nearly every night with my girl friends, dancing and having fun. I did a lot of things over the next six months or so that I'm not entirely proud of doing. I drank a lot and never ate, the girls and I would take whatever drugs we were offered or got our hands on, and because I loved all the attention I got from the guys I met, I went home with anyone who would take me."

Now Devon shifted in his chair, clearly not wanting to hear about my promiscuous beginning. He asked, I thought, he has to hear the whole story.

"Anyway, about a year ago, it all came crashing down. I woke up one morning, naked, in an apartment I didn't know, lying in bed with a guy I didn't recognize. I couldn't remember anything about the night before, or how I got where I was. I found my clothes, swiped some money from the guys wallet for a cab home, and spent the rest of the day throwing up, and lying on the floor of my shower crying. All I could think of was this question my first therapist used to drill at me when we talked, which was 'Is this why you want to be a girl?' That ran over and over in my head that night - is this why I became a girl, for this kind of life?"

Devon's face was pale now, and I'm sure mine was as well.

"I decided that I had to get out of L.A., but I was now nearly totally broke since I hadn't worked in over a year. I was desperate so I called the only person back home that I thought I might be able to talk to, my sister. It didn't even dawn on me that she might not recognize this girl on the phone, crying, calling herself Kira as the brother she hadn't heard from in over a year. Well, it turned out that when I had disappeared, my sister had contacted my ex-wife, worried about me, and Sue told her the real story about the divorce and about Kira. So, my sister did know who was calling, her new sister, hysterical about leaving L.A. and moving back home. She bought me a plane ticket to Boston for that night, and I packed a few bags of clothes and I left. I basically abandoned my apartment and didn't say a word to the girls I knew in L.A. I just left."

"My sister and her husband picked me up at the airport. I had moved away more than two years ago as her brown-haired little brother, and now there I was, a girl with long, bleach-blond hair, sickly thin, shaking and cold from withdrawal. They took me to their house and I slept for pretty much the whole next two days. My sister called the rest of my family and my friends and told them that I was back and alive, but nothing else. She told them that the whole story was for me to tell. I lived with them for a few months. I started seeing my old therapist who helped me get on the path of living life as a normal girl. I had to sit down with my folks and tell them what happened. Believe me, it's not easy to introduce yourself to your dad as the daughter he didn't know he had, the one who use to be his son."

"Luckily I had managed to keep from getting hooked on anything, or picking up something incurable, and my sister helped me get back on my feet. Last spring I got my apartment here in the city, and found my job. I met Eva, and got started on a real girl's life. It's actually going pretty well, and at New Year's, you became part of the story."

Devon sat across from me, motionless and speechless.

I shifted the fork on my nearly untouched plate of pasta. "Dinner really was excellent. I'm just going to use the bathroom.” I told Devon, my voice breaking.