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The Real Me - Chapter 1
🕑 Added 2022-05-02 14:01:42 +0000 UTCAutor - N. Crescent
Note - This story is being posted with the author's permission. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means.
ALL STORY LIST | CHAPTERS - CH 2 | CH 3 | CH 4 | CH 5 | CH 6 | CH 7 | CH 8
Danny had forgotten to do his history homework. Not so much forgotten, as not bothered. He relied on his memory instead of taking the trouble to make notes. His memory, due to what else was going on in his head, was not good. He lingered around twenty-two out of thirty-one in his class. He had a brain, but concentration was difficult, his head too mixed up and he had the constant fear of being bullied at school and beaten up when he reached home. Any psychiatrist, any GP, would say, with all that going on, it was not surprising Danny’s memory was poor. What they wouldn’t know is, that Danny had problems he’s not shared with anyone.
When Danny was in trouble at school, he just bunked off, went to the Mall shoplifting or if you like plain English, stole from the stores that had too few staff, and relied on cameras to do the policing. Danny was intelligent enough, perhaps cunning is a better word, to avoid the cameras, waiting until he was obscured from view by another shopper. For these raids, he would make himself look as androgynous as possible, combing his shoulder-length hair in as girlie a style as he could manage. At school it was the reverse, he would make it as boyish as possible.
He was a chameleon. His father had told him to get a haircut but he had avoided his father’s instruction. Rachel, his sister, had pleaded for him, saying it was a stage he was going through and he would grow out of it. Rachel was ten years older and had always treated Danny as if he was her child. Looking at his school record, his teachers would not have nominated Danny, as ‘most likely to succeed’, or the most promising student. Instead, they said, must try harder.
In the staff room, if they even thought about Daniel Artherton, they had him down mentally as a failure because it would have not been politically correct to say aloud or even write that verdict on a child. In the era of being politically correct, everyone was equal in potential, sexually, in gender preferences, politics, and ability. Of course, that is all nonsense.
No species on this earth is uniformly equal. Teachers knew that and if they ever had discussed Daniel Artherton, which they didn’t, they would have said, ‘Bound to fail’. He was written off, as a kid that was not perfect, not out of the mold. like a Monday morning car, a few defects, a lemon. He was no good at sports, inattentive in class, offered homework sporadically, and bunked off. He was also the kid, that few other pupils had time for.
He was little, not just short, proportionately small, and too pretty for a boy. He enhanced this by having long hair, nearly to his shoulders. He attracted bullying, particularly from boys but also a few girls who would taunt him. If he ever volunteered an answer in class, it was jeered by Lee and Stone and their mates, two loutish boys with an entourage, good at sport and so popular, but they were without any other redeeming features.
Academically, the Lee, Martin, and Stone gangs, were also failures. In large schools, two thousand pupils or even three, children become just a commodity to be processed. They come in the door as raw material and out again after six or seven years, hopefully having acquired a veneer of education, at least enough to pass a few exams and make the school record books pass inspection. It was difficult enough educating the normal. Problem children were a step too far. Teachers feel put upon, and underpaid although many aren’t when one considers the effort they put in. It’s a job, secure in a world where security is a scarce commodity.
Long holidays and good pensions are the attraction. Oh, there are good teachers. Some manage to maintain their enthusiasm, others just become weighed down by the monotony, the repetition, the disobedience, and inattention. They become children themselves, rather than inspirational leaders. Yes, teachers feel hard done by, but then so do people in other positions, the salesman having a heart attack at fifty, for example, the nurse on an understaffed ward, the GP in his consulting room seeing fifty patients a day.
The teachers would not remember, that Danny Artherton’s parents, had never attended a parents’ evening. In a school of two thousand eleven to eighteen-year-old boys and girls, Danny was just a number. Another kid was failed by the state education system and poor parenting. Perhaps the latter was the most significant cause of Danny’s drift downwards in class, teachers thought.
Poor parents often have under-performing children, who have an attitude of disdain for learning. It’s self-perpetuating. Ignorance breeds ignorance. Yet Rachel, Danny’s sister, had been to University and was in training for the Bar to become a barrister.
They were so wrong about Danny Artherton. There were other things going on in Danny’s mind that he didn’t discuss with anyone. They would all be proved correct if Danny was caught shoplifting. What he shop-lifted, was even more relevant. His favorite targets were unusual for a boy of fourteen. Not for him computer games or male grooming items. Not for him, a knife from the sports shop. He wasn’t into any of that. If it was market day, he helped Roger Hannant on his market stall in return for the minimum wage. Four hours and he had over thirty pounds in his hand. Easy money, twelve till four. Danny had an engaging manner, a sweet face that possessed a ready smile and he was polite. His mum had at least taught him manners.
His father had taught him how to duck a swinging fist, to run and, how to disappear. He was resolved that when he was free of school, he would be a market trader, set up on his own. He didn’t need, as he told his one good friend, Jenny Southern, ‘No bloody stupid exams. I bet by thirty, I’m making more money than fucking college boys.’ Jenny, a model student and from a good home, giggled. ‘You sure about that?’ ‘I’m sure. I ain’t no scholar, but I know how to graft and make a profit. Buy low, sell lower than anyone else but still make a profit.’
He knew how to speak properly, his mother, from a good parental family, taught him that but, in a tough school, he had to make some attempt at being a ‘lad’. ‘Genius Einstein.’ Jenny laughed. ‘First, you need money to start, and a stall, and a van, and contacts. And a place. What’s your dad gonna do?’ That last was the most sobering thought of all. His dad was a beast, abusive, even when not drunk. He still had the bruises from the time his father, eleven inches taller, beat him up a week ago. He had blamed Daniel for his arrest because it was his bawling after another beating, that brought the police to their door. His father had received a caution. Dad was away again, practicing his nefarious trade, selling dud policies to old people, extracting their savings by offering huge discounts for up-front subscriptions. Danny didn’t know just how corrupt his father was. What they shared was a hatred of each other. ‘Shit. If he lands another fist on any of us, I swear, I’ll do for him.’ Danny meant it too.
But how? For today, he was safe. He would be safe for the next few days, maybe a week or a fortnight, a month. Father was away on business, ‘up North’. None of the family quite knew how corrupt the business was, except it was dodgy. Creepy, business associates came to the house on occasion, hard-faced, brash men, who smirked at Danny and looked Rachel up and down. To these people, Danny was a joke, a goad to poke Artherton with. A tease. Artherton was ashamed of having bred such a girlie boy. His idiot friends made that shame all the worse.
On this day, Danny walked home with good intentions. He would do the history essay and take it in tomorrow, plead that he’d had a bad earache, and rushed home without seeking permission. That was his intention. With Dad off in the north somewhere, sister Rachel at work as an associate in the big law office, and Mum on her two till ten shift in the Supermarket, the house was Danny’s. Another reason for bunking off was what he wore beneath his uniform, the panties that made him feel real but were an added danger if the thugs got hold of him and dragged his trousers down, debagging as they called it. That was another anomaly with Daniel Artherton.
Most underperforming children take little pride in their appearance. Danny’s clothes may have been old, but they were clean. His shoes were polished and his hair, face, hands, and nails, were all clean, cleaner than most. The half-moons on his nails, as Rachel called them, were clear and smooth. He had five hours until Sis came home. He let himself into the silent house to be greeted by their cat. He fed Brandy, called that because of her unusual color, and went to his room. He deposited the history book on his desk and opened it to the chapter he needed for reference.
With that and the BBC history publications on his old laptop he’d inherited from sister Rachel, he would cobble together an essay on ‘The Legacy of Napoleon in Europe.’ He took off his school uniform. First, his tie that now resembled a string because it had been stretched so often as thugs tried to throttle him, pulling on the thin end and pushing the knot into his throat, while another would punch him in the guts. They would then clear off laughing, talking about the girlie boy, faggot, queer, arse bandit. He slipped out of his so-called blazer.
The school had chosen black terylene, strong fabric with a variety of uses, from shirts to sailcloth. With use it became shiny and his jacket was very shiny, having been bought in the school hand me down the sale. His grey school trousers were newer. They had been pressed and still had creases. He hung his jacket and trousers, emptied out the linen basket and added his shirt and socks to the pile, and went down to the kitchen in the nude.
He fed the washing machine, selected the three-hour 30-degree program, and made sure the machine started. Whatever one might say, Danny liked to be clean. His clothes might be old and worn, but he looked and smelled clean. His nails were clean, shaped, and free of cuticles. He checked the dryer and found it full. He took everything out and folded and smoothed as he went, placing things in the laundry basket if they needed ironing; making separate little piles of his mother’s and sister’s items. He observed his sister’s undies.
So small, one would think they were a child’s. That set him off. He felt the intense sadness of deprivation. Fifty-one percent of the world was enjoying what he should have. He ran upstairs again, not to his room but to Rachel’s. He opened drawers and took out his bra and panties, knickers as his mum called them. He put his arms behind his back and fastened the bra. He was proud that he could do that. It proved something, that he was actually a girl and not a pervert.
He got a thrill from being a girl, because he was himself, became the person in his mind’s eye. He didn’t ‘wank’. Wanking would mean touching that thing, the thing he hated possessing. No, he wasn’t that. He didn’t want to be a pervert and yet there were times, when he was in a down mood, down on himself, he would call himself just that, ‘a fucking pervert.’ He slipped the straps up his arm and settled them on his shoulders.
He took a stocking and stuffed one breast and then the other. He picked up the matching cool blue panties and stepped in, drawing them sensuously up his legs, up to his thighs, and made himself comfortable. He added tights. He loved the really sheer ones, but they laddered too easily. He chose some older, twenty deniers, black that he was less likely to ruin.
From her closet, he took the dress he loved above all the others, red, retro, the fifties, halter neck with a full circle skirt, the dress Rachel wore for her swing dancing nights she no longer found time for. He sat at her vanity and used eyebrow pencil, eyeliner, mascara, and lippy. Finally, he combed his longish hair into as girlish a style as possible. He slipped on a pair of heels, two sizes too large but he loved them. He went to his room, sat at his desk to start work, then thought he would lie on the bed and read the chapter first, so his essay was done from memory rather than copied off the page.
He woke with a start as the book dropped to the floor. He sat up. That’s when he saw Rachel. ‘My fucking dress, what the fuck you little bastard?’ He could do nothing, say nothing. How could he defend what he was, a cross-dresser, a trannie, an object of ridicule? Instead, he burst into tears, His eyes filled, his nose filled with mucous. He was disgusting., he knew it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped at last, ‘I didn’t mean He reached behind to lower the zip but she knocked his hand away. ‘To get caught! No, you little fuck, I bet you didn’t. Just as well I came home early. Jesus.’ Daniel can’t speak., he sobs silently, rocking back and forth, humiliated, a boy caught pretending to be a girl. Is there anything in this world more demeaning in the eyes of masculinity, of people? He was, in the eyes of many in the male world, a miserable apology for a boy, an object of mockery, the lowest of the low. He had betrayed his male birth-right, the superior sex, and appeared effeminate, weak, perverted. There’s silence between them.
A boy in panties. Jeez! At last, Rachel says, ‘We'll stand up, let’s see you in all your glory, my glory. Stand up, sissy boy!’ Danny stands. He straightens and smooths the dress. Rachel wipes his tears with a tissue, taking him by surprise. Whatever is she going to do with him? ‘Yes, you’ve crushed it lying there. Well, you will have to iron it.
What have you underneath.’ She lifted the hem, and he tried to hold the dress down, an action so curious for a boy, so natural for a girl. Marylyn Monroe in the famous white dress standing over the grill. He received a sharp slap on his hand and Rachel raised the skirt and underskirts of her dance dress. ‘Well, at least you are not wearing my best tights.’
