four

Do you want to be my good girl?

uh huh

Do you want to be my little bitch too?

u bet

I rolled over in bed. John was snoring in the next room. He’s always done that. I have no clue how Fi sleeps.

Then I have homework for you. I want a yes list. A yes list of all the things you like to do. Do you understand that, kitten? Praise kink obviously goes on the yes list for good girls. How about degradation?

I turned onto my belly and tucked my pillow under my chin. Thorn, plus HRT, had me wet 24/7. Just a lot of goo. I promised myself I’d wash the sheets before I went back to Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

Degradation is when you call me bitch?

Or slut or anything mean. Does that kind of thing turn you on, kitten?

Okay. So that kind of thing did turn me on. I just didn’t realise that counted as capital D Degradation. I thought being called a good little slut was, like, just an implicit part of sucking dick or whatever.

That ~really~ turns me on. I also love it when you call me kitten. What should I call you? Sir? Or Mistress? Or Mx. Or something else?

I kind of already knew what I wanted to call xem, but it was so cringe I was hoping xe’d suggest it and I wouldn’t have to ask.

What do you prefer?

I don’t know . . . I don’t want to gender u if that’s not comfy??

It doesn’t matter. If it’s MY name, the gender won’t stick

Fuck. I didn’t want to say it, but I also really wanted to say it. Also, who was I kidding? Cringe? I’m already a transsexual. Like, how much more socially embarrassing could I get?

I want you to be my Daddy

I held my breath while Thorn wrote back.

Are you gonna do your homework and make your Daddy happy?

Could it be that easy?

Yes Daddy

Perfect

I felt floaty. Not in an out-of-body way. In a very in body way. I was excited, I guess? And sort of euphoric?

I knew that different kinks had different names, and I didn’t want to look stupid in front of Thorn. So I googled it. I found a subreddit called r/BDSM which seemed promising. It turns out r/BDSM is all GIFs of huge cis dudes torturing skinny cis girlies and like, don’t get me wrong, I was happy for everyone involved but . . . can’t relate.

So I googled queer kink. I scrolled past the obligatory No Kink at Pride/Yes Kink at Pride articles. I dug my way through a Tumblr post to an Instagram profile, to a link in a bio, to a tweet with the address of three free-to-download PDFs: FIST I, II and III. I spent the night reading the zines on my phone. When someone’s story made my stomach drop, I added their thing to a list in my notes app. The following night, I took that list and drafted a direct message.

I am into:

Being restrained

Being beaten, spanked, slapped and bruised

Wearing a collar for you

Being a good girl and giving you service

Obeying you and following your rules

Being your pet/kitten/plaything

Being degraded verbally and physically

Knowing that I’m doing a good job even if it hurts

Breathplay

Kneeling on raw rice

Knifeplay (with no cutting)

Being scared of you

Being caged

Clothes pegs and clamps

Ball gags and drooool

Being marked by you

Being spat on/in my mouth

I hesitated, then typed quickly:

Low key piss kink

And then hit send.

No one had ever done those things to me. But I knew people did do those things. And writing that list made me feel, like, really good.

I sat and stared at the message. One green tick marked it sent. I stared at the second tick, willing it to go green. I bit my lip and my thumbs hovered over my keyboard. The second tick glowed green. I tried to steady my breath.

Clever girl Thorn wrote. As a reward for doing your homework, you can play with yourself. But you can’t cum, okay? I don’t want you to get greedy

Warmth radiated through my cunt and belly. My eyes glazed and my breath fluttered in my chest as I typed back.

Thank u Daddy

Do you have those dreams about trying to find a public toilet? I’m sure everyone has this dream. For example, you’re running around uni, going up and down stairs, and then you find a bathroom and you go to sit down and you’re about to pee but none of the stalls have doors on them? So you pull up your panties and you’re off again to find another toilet, but this time it’s a PE changing room and it’s full of teenage boys and you’re half-naked, top off, cause it’s a boys’ changing room, but your tits are hanging out ’cause you’re actually a grown-ass transsexual woman and now you’re terrified and embarrassed, but you still need to pee, but you can’t do it here, and now all toilets are located in changing rooms and all changing rooms require nudity, and you finally find a women’s changing room at the public pools, and the toilet has no walls and it’s just right in the middle of the changing room, but now it’s your girl dick that is the problem, so you’re sitting down on the toilet with your gock tucked between your legs and you really have to pee, but there are mothers in here, and they know what you are, they are revolted by you, and one of them starts screaming and screaming and you are so so so so so ashamed and you know you are basically a monster, and you’re disgusting, and you’re a violation, but you still really have to pee and then it’s too late, you’re peeing and you’re half-awake and relieved and panicked and your leg is wet and you swear and grab your gock and tighten your pelvic floor and cut off your stream like they taught you when you pissed the bed from ages five to seven and when you had that kidney infection, and you’re up and awake and you hope no one sees you as you skip-run down the hall to the bathroom and lock the door and turn on the light, which is far far too bright and the toilet seat is cold and you pee, in the right place this time?

So, I had that kind of dream. I went back to my bedroom and pulled on some panties and a big T-shirt. The wooden floors in Fi and John’s old state house are really pretty but also really squeaky, and I made a lot of noise getting clean sheets and dumping the wet ones in the laundry. I can’t have been louder than John’s snoring though, because no one woke up to spot me wiping down my thighs with a wet flannel.

I crawled back into bed and checked the time: 4am. I’d received a message from Leon. Are you out tonight? And then another. Up 2?

I stared at those messages for a while. It was the end of a Saturday night. Leon was probably drinking. Maybe he’d remembered that I was in town, and he was being friendly. Maybe there was a punk show on at Nothing. Maybe he thought, I remember seeing that kid at shows; since they’re in town, I’ll hit them up and let them know. Kirikiriroa is a little place and stuff is normally word of mouth. I mean, maybe?

It didn’t feel like that kind of text, though. Like, if a guy texts you after 2am, it has a certain vibe, doesn’t it? I don’t think I’m imagining that, and sorry if it sounds trashy—like, I know that if that’s what’s up, it’s total fuckboy behaviour on Leon’s part—but I didn’t totally, a hundred percent, hate it either.

Over the next few days, the ward waiting-room got fuller and fuller with cousins and aunties from all corners of the country. I didn’t even recognise some of them. But they knew who I was. I was like a little transsexual celebrity. I tried to keep my meet-and-greets to a minimum. Hannah goofed around with the older cousins, but I just gritted my teeth and kept my eyes down. No one said anything deliberately awful to me. The aunties all knew my new name.

The little kids were fine. Little kids generally are. Most kids have better gender literacy than their parents, to be honest.

One of the smallest cousins, Ash, asked straight out, ‘Are you a girl or a boy?’

Ash was dressed like a character from a Wes Anderson movie, in rust-coloured corduroy dungarees and a forest-green cap made of felt. They had a serious face and the same deep-set gothic eyes as me and Fi. I don’t know how to gauge kids’ ages, but I was pretty sure Ash hadn’t started school yet.

Aunty Jane was giving Ash this wide-eyed look, like they had really fucked up.

Before Aunty Jane could say anything weird, I replied, ‘I’m wearing girls’ clothes, aren’t I?’

‘Boys can wear dresses, if they want.’

Okay. Shit. Well, they had me there. This kid must have been going to a really nice kindergarten, because I was certain Jane wasn’t teaching them this stuff at home. I bet they knew about non-binary people too. I was the problematic one for relying on the girls wear dresses and boys wear pants shtick.

I reminded myself that this was the future I wanted, and took a breath. ‘You’re absolutely right. Anybody can wear whatever they want. But I’m a girl.’

Ash nodded thoughtfully. ‘Okay . . . you just kind of look like a boy, though.’

I shrugged. ‘Some girls do.’

Aunty Jane was blinking and pursing her lips frantically.

I leaned forward in my chair and addressed Ash directly. ‘Did you know that there are people who aren’t boys or girls?’

Ash narrowed their eyes. Okay, so maybe they didn’t really teach actual gender diversity at whatever hippie preschool Jane was sending them to.

‘It’s true. And you can switch, too: from boy to girl, to not a girl or a boy, to girl, to girl and a boy, to something else, to boy, to something in between, or any which way. You get to decide, anytime you want.’

Ash crinkled up their face. They were doing one of those little-kid big-thinks.

But before they could say anything, Aunty Jane scooped them up. ‘Let’s go see Daddy, huh, baby boy?’

Jane gave me a weird tight smile, and I blasted her with a cheesy grin. I wasn’t trying to trans her kid. She was the one making Ash call their biological father Daddy. Gross. I slouched back into my waiting-room chair and checked for messages from Thorn.

Thorn was messaging me several times every day. Xe had instructed me to play, but on no condition to cum. When xe didn’t message, I’d get desperate. And when my phone lit up with xyr name, my hands literally trembled. I played with my gock every night before I went to sleep. I didn’t have my vibe and I was still trying to work out how to feel good without it.

Girl dick just isn’t like boy dick. You can’t just yank on it till it squirts, you know? It’s more like a clit than a dick. Which is challenging, because it’s not a clit. You can’t just transfer your clit skills or your boy-dick skills. It’s just its own thing. But the really nice part about having a girl dick is that estrogen pleasure is, like, a lot better than testosterone pleasure. Before E, cumming was like scratching an itch. It was urgent, and it was satisfying, but ultimately it was insignificant. Now, the thing is, I don’t actually know if that’s what it’s like for real men, because obviously I was just a girl pretending to be a man the whole fucking time, so I can’t really generalise, but for me anyway, estrogen pleasure is the best. Even just playing, not cumming, was like a hundred percent better than a testosterone orgasm.

So, every night I was playing and trying to work it out, and then when I did work it out, I was riding these big wild swells of pleasure right up to the breaking point and then stopping, and then doing it again and again. And it was so fucking good, and so fucking torturous, and so fucking good because it was so torturous and because it was Thorn doing the torturing. I was following Thorn’s rules. It was like I could feel xem there. I don’t know what that’s about. I don’t. But I really fucking liked it. I felt so good and so proud whenever I told xem I hadn’t cum. Xe always responded with a good girl, and every time I read that, I felt like I would actually perish with joy. I spent a week and a half like that: Nana and the hospital all day, then me and Thorn and my phone screen all night.

One night Thorn video-called me, and I did the whole thing for xem on camera. I set up a lamp so the lighting was warm and cute, and hiked up the bottom of my T-shirt to bite down on like a gag, with my little pink titties out for xem to look at. I worked my hand under my skirt, and sucked goo off my fingers for xem. It tasted sweet. The translucent sheen of the goo made my lips look glossy and full, pouting back at me on the tiny phone screen.

Afterwards, Thorn told me what a good girl I was, and then I asked xem about xyr day. I don’t know why, I guess I just didn’t want the call to be over.

Xe told me about xyr boring office job, the cute tranny who worked on the floor below xem—which made me feel kind of jealous—the cold-water ocean swim xe’d taken with xyr girlfriend at dusk—which made me feel super not jealous—and the anime xe’d started watching. ‘I reckon you’d like it. It’s about this nice but dorky teenage wolf who is desperately trying to resist the primal urge to hunt and devour a very cute and slutty bunny who goes to his school.’

I giggled. ‘Um, okay? That’s very fucking horny of him.’

‘Right?’ Thorn grinned. ‘Extremely relatable content.’

I just batted my eyelashes and blushed.

Another day, before we left the hospital, Aunty Jane’s husband, Perry, gave me a big tight hug. He held me and said, You’re so brave, man. You’re so brave. His voice was shaking, and I knew he really meant it. I didn’t know exactly what it was though. Perry had taken care of me plenty of times when I was a kid. I remember being little and cracking up at the kitchen table, while he danced around the kitchen with a bunch of bananas, hooting like a monkey, and flipping buckwheat pancakes. I knew he loved me, but I hadn’t seen him since I moved to Te Whanganui-a-Tara. He’d been fumbling my pronouns all day, and I didn’t know how I looked to him, but when he said what he said to me, it sounded like he might cry. I just said Thank you and hugged him back. It’s kind of a funny story, I guess? Or like a sad story? I didn’t know what any of it meant to him, but he was feeling something big.

Nana didn’t wake up. They moved her to a different ward, and then all the aunties were talking about hospice.

Tom had driven a van for a hospice. He dropped off supplies for home-care patients. When the patients died, there was always medicine left over. None of it was tallied or accounted for. One night I sat in Tom’s flat with several half-empty vials of pharmaceutical morphine and two clean needles. He was playing, like, Plastic Beach or something, and we were both kinda sweating. We did lots of drugs together back then. So it made sense to do this: it was free, easily available, and uncut. It wasn’t like either of us had an aversion to opiates. We both loved eating codeine when we could get it. But I was absolutely being a little bitch about the needles. Tom wasn’t sure, either. In the end I convinced Tom that if we started with this, he was bound to get busted, and then he’d lose his job, and anyway how about I just roll us a nice fat spliff and we can watch some vintage Southpark and drink a few beers and forget about it, okay? Okay.

Anyway, I was sitting with Nana, and Hannah was there with me, and I was feeling okay because it was lunchtime and everyone else had basically cleared out to hunt and gather, or take a nap, or whatever. I was thinking about Tom and hospice, and the nurse had just topped off Nana’s drip with painkillers, and Hannah looked up at me from Nana.

‘Did you know her dad was a laudanum addict? Our great-grandfather, Linus, I mean.’

‘I thought he was a drunk?’

‘That’s right. But he was also addicted to opiates. He trained as a pharmacist, after World War 1.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I’d never heard that before.’

‘Aunty Linda told me that Fi used to be Linus’ favourite. He used to take Fi out for drives on her own—which was pretty special treatment for her. You have to remember that Mark was the only boy, amongst all the aunties, and Fi was Mark’s twin, so she used to get overlooked a lot.’

‘But not by Linus?’

‘Apparently not.’

I didn’t know what to say to that. I studied Hannah’s face, but she seemed oblivious.

Hannah yawned. ‘Are you really gonna do a master’s on anime? They actually let you do that?’

My head was full of the Linus story. I didn’t have the brain capacity or, honestly, the inclination to lie to Hannah, so I stretched my face into a big dumb smile. ‘I don’t know. Don’t tell Fi, but I haven’t even written an application yet.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘I was supposed to submit something on Friday, but obviously—’ I opened my hands to Nana, the ward ‘—I’ve been busy.’

Hannah cocked her head. ‘It’s not exactly action-packed in here. You’ve got your laptop, don’t you?’

I shrugged. Hannah was right, of course. She had been working away on her computer, getting shit done, all week. It was really impressive, like, it’s amazing the way she hustles, but I’m not like Hannah, you know? I don’t have that kind of energy or drive. I’ve never had that. But I didn’t know how to explain that to Hannah without sounding like I was just making excuses for being lazy, so I ambushed her with a question of my own. ‘You got any cuties missing you? In Tāmaki?’

Hannah snorted. ‘No! I’ve got a business to run.’

She’s a Capricorn moon, so I guess that follows; it’s just that my Cancer moon plus my Cancer ascendant could never. ‘You’re your own boss then. Make time. You’ve got Tinder, don’t you?’

Hannah rolled her eyes.

‘Bumble? OkCupid?’ I paused. ‘Her?’

‘I don’t need apps.’ Hannah replied. ‘If and when I want to date, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way, thank you very much.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Bring your laptop in tomorrow. I’m sure you can submit something late, if it’s something good. Don’t just give up on yourself, okay?’

I nodded, trying to remember what we’d been talking about.

Hannah went on. ‘I know I give you a hard time, but you’re not a total idiot. You’ve got the smarts to—’

‘Do you reckon Linus diddled Fi?’

Hannah blinked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I mean, that’s what it sounds like, doesn’t it?’

‘Does it?’ Hannah squinted. ‘You don’t think Fi would have said something if our great-grandfather was a pedo?’

‘I don’t know.’ I dropped my gaze. Fi could have easily not said anything.

‘I think we’d know,’ Hannah said, with an air of finality. ‘Also, I don’t think it’s very cute to speculate about stuff like that. Fi is your mum; Linus is your great-grandfather. You can’t just say things like that about them, okay? Especially not here.’ Hannah tilted her head at Nana.

She was probably right, and I was probably projecting. I grimaced. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’ She rustled around in her bag, then pulled out a pack of cards. ‘Too much serious stuff, eh? Has Fi taught you how to play Five Hundred two-handed?’