I was sitting on the toilet, seat down, waiting for the wax to cool while bedazzling my leather thong when I had an epiphany. I said to myself, self it doesn’t get much better than this. Then I ripped the wax off and fought a scream. The price of being beautiful in this trying age is barely worth it. But that is the goal. I am going to be fucking fierce.

As I reapplied my eyeliner and a little rouge on my cheek bones I barely recognized the face in the mirror. All the plucking and shaping had given my face a stunning angular appearance. Alien almost, like Bowie in his androgynous phase. Slip on the purple contacts to match my lips, lip liner of frozen blue, and a dusting of glitter.

I read that the glitter was ending up in the oceans. Making the whales and sharks look nearly as fabulous as I am becoming.

—

There was a time when I looked in the mirror and hated the face staring back at me. The little fat boy with low self esteem. Unhappy with the truth the world forced on me, the person I was expected to be. I wanted to be pretty not handsome. Wear dresses and make up not play football.

Not get beat up in the bathroom for being different. Quiet. Shy. Smaller than the other boys.

My mother called me delicate. She would teach me to bake, cook dinner, sew clothes. I could darn socks and cut out patterns. Crochet a scarf and knit a stocking cap. I was good at it, enjoyed doing it. She accepted that I was special. Not like the other boys.

My dad called me faggot. He would come home drunk and make me go out back and play catch. Throw the old pigskin around. Toughen me up. And when the ball was thrown too hard, dislocated my finger and I fell to my knees crying. He just grabbed it and popped it back into joint and walked away disgusted.

Muttered his disappointment and drank another beer. He would have drowned me instead of his hate if he could have. I heard him say it during one of the many late night screaming sessions.

So the night he finally had enough and left us was more relief than shock.

He came home smelling like a brewery. I was laying in bed reading when he stumbled into my room. He went straight to my dresser and began dumping the drawers onto the floor. I was terrified. I knew what he was going to find.

I was thirteen. My aunt, during a weekend sleep over, introduced me to Rocky Horror Picture Show. She was the only one I was open with. When she pressed play my life changed in an instant. Tim Curry in lingerie, so confident and sexy filled the room. We watched it on a loop all night. All the movies I had seen, the shows, the books read and this was the first that sang to me.

The next day I went to K Mart and shoplifted a pair of black panties. I was so excited. Sweating palms and butterflies in my stomach as I rode my bike home. Not from the crime but from the secret in my waist band. I ran in and shut my bedroom door and slipped them on.

It was glorious. I stood in front of the mirror on my closet door and spun around. It felt so perfect. In my head I was Frank N Furter, just a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania. I wasn’t confused. I wasn’t anything but myself for the first time in my entire life.

And somehow dad knew. He was looking for my secret. But he didn’t know they were on me, under my boxers as I lay on the bed reading.

“Where are they?” he snarled.

“Where are what?”

“Don’t play stupid with me. It was the talk of the bar, my little faggot son spinning around his bedroom in a pair of panties.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about dad.”

“The blinds were open. The neighbor saw you. You fucking waste. You piece of shit. They always joked about it and then you had embarrass me by making it real.”

“Dad…”

“I’m not your father. I had a son. Not a fucking freak.”

He slapped me in the mouth and I spit blood at the impact. He reared back to hit me again and I knew he was ready to kill me.

The worst part was not knowing if I deserved it or not.

Then I heard a dull thud. And then a second louder one. When I opened my eyes I saw my mom standing with a now bloody ashtray in her hand. And dad on the ground.

“Get out!”

He slowly got to his knees and stared pure venom at her and then me.

“It’s your fault. Your fault he turned out this way. Teaching him to cook and sew. Made him into this, this, this thing.”

She raised the ashtray again and repeated, quietly this time, “Get out.”

And he did. Without a single look back.

—

In a tiny town rumors spread like wildfire. In this one it spread even faster. The little homo ran his daddy off. He caught me in a dress blowing the neighbor. I was fucking truckers at the truck stop. Dirty little lot lizard.

It was summer. Thank God. No school. Just honking cars and yelled profanity all day and through the night. Every morning a couple pairs of women’s underwear in the front yard. Spray paint in the garage door that said faggot leave.

My mother found me in the bath tub, long jagged cuts on my inner thighs. Bleeding out. She rushed me to the hospital. Those bastards saved me.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the black panties. I wanted to die.

In the middle of the night I snuck down the hall, it hurt to walk with the cuts. I hid and when the nurses went on their rounds I grabbed a bottle of pills and ate them all.

They pumped my stomach and put me in the psychiatric ward. Constant watch. I couldn’t be me. I couldn’t be dead. I wasted away in the prison of my mind.

But what I went through was nothing compared to what my mom was going through. Her little gay son the psycho. As I spent six months confined to my hell, the entire town was hers. The day they decided I was healed she picked me up from the hospital in a moving truck.

She smiled as she talked about our fresh start. I faced a smile back. Neither of us meant it.

She tried to talk to me about it. I knew she was trying to say she understood. I knew. But I shut down.

New town, new start.

I tried to fight who I was. I did. Kept my head down and was just another average student in another average town. High school sucked enough with out the extra baggage. But in my heart I knew average ends in rage. And that is what filled me. I didn’t want to be like this. Didn’t have a choice.

So I blended in. Even dated a girl. Took her to prom. Normal teen stuff. Her parents loved me, called me the perfect gentleman. I never tried anything untoward with their daughter. Always had her home on time. We tried making out once. It was awkward for both of us and we made a pact to never do it again. Turned out she was more like me than I could have guessed. Instead of groping each other feverishly, she taught me how to do make up. She accepted me. We were perfect for each other just had the wrong genitals. My girlfriend was my best friend and the only one I could trust.

She liked to wear my boxers. I loved to wear her bra and matching panty set. We would hide in her room and watch Rocky Horror while her parents were out. I would put on her mother’s negligee and sing along with the show. It felt so good to be who we really were. It was love, just not in the normal way.

But what the fuck is normal? Really?

—

After graduation we moved to the City. Got a place in Boys Town. She cut off her hair and I grew mine out. We embraced our inner truth. Found a theatre that played Rocky Horror on Saturday night at midnight. At first we just went to enjoy ourselves. Eventually we started to dress up.

She went as Brad. Taped down the girls and went full butch. It looked good on her. One night she managed to find her Janet. They are in apartment across the hall.

—

And me?

Darling, all is well with me.

As I roll on the fishnet stockings up my smooth muscular legs. Snap the garter belts into place and adjust the straps on my high, dangerously so, heels. Cinch the laces of my ridiculously expensive corset and wrap the black boa around my shoulders and wait for my newest boy toy to come over for dinner and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Like I said. I am fabulous. Abso-fucking-lutely fabulous just as I am.