Odie

[Abigail Genevieve]

It was hot that August day, even in Hall J.  Hall J was a freshman dormitory, and Odie had just unpacked his stuff.  He sat on the edge of his bed.  He had made it. He was here, five hundred miles away from home.  His two roommates had not arrived, and he knew no one. His whole life lay ahead of him, and he thought of the coming semester with excitement and dread.

 

No one knew him.  No one. Suddenly he was seized with a desire to live out the rest of his life as a woman.  With that, he realized that he had felt that way for a long time.  He had never laughed when guys made jokes about women, and often he felt shut out of certain conversations.  He was neither effeminate nor athletic, and he had graduated just fine, neither too high in his class to be considered a nerd or low enough to not get into this college, which was more selective than many. He was a regular guy.  He had dated some, he liked girls and they liked him.  He had friends, neither fewer than most nor more than most.

 

Drama club in high school: he had so wanted to try out for female parts but something held him back.  He remembered things from earlier in his life: this had been there, although he had suppressed it. Mom had caught him carrying his sister's clothes to his room when he was eight, shortly before the divorce, and he got thoroughly scolded.  They also made sure it never, ever happened again. He had always felt like that had contributed somehow to the divorce, but it was not discussed, either.  He was a boy and that was the end of it.

 

Dad was part of that.  He got Odie every other weekend from the time of the divorce and they went hunting, fishing, boating, doing manly things because Dad thought he should be a man's man. The first thing that always happened was the buzz cut.  Dad was always somewhat disappointed in Odie, it seemed, but never said why.  He was a hard man and he had contempt for sissies, although that was never directed at Odie. Mom always said she loved him no matter what, but never explained what that meant.

 

Odie looked through the Freshman Orientation Packed.  Campus map.  Letter from the Chancellor welcoming him.  Same from the Dean.  List of resources: health center, suicide prevention, and his heart skipped a beat: transgender support.  There was something like that here?

 

He tore off a small piece of paper.  With sweating hands he wrote on it "I need to be a girl." He looked at it, tore it up and put the different pieces in different trash cans, even one in a men's room toilet the men on this floor shared. He flushed it and made sure it went down.  No one had seen him; he was about the first to arrive.

 

He returned to his room.

 

He looked in the mirror.  He was five-ten, square jawed, crew cut.  Dad had seen to it that he exercised and he had muscles.  No, he said to himself, not possible. Not likely.  He had to study and he had succeeded so far by pushing this sort of thing into the back of his mind or wherever it came from.   A man was looking back at him, the hard, tough man Dad had formed him to be, and there was absolutely nothing feminine about any of it.  With that, Odie rejected all this stuff about being trans.  There had been a few of those in high school, and he had always steered clear of them.  A few minutes later he met his roommates.

[Abigail Genevieve]

He pushed it out.

 

Years passed.  Graduation, engagement to Lois.  He was 5'10", she was 5'3".  People thought the height difference was amusing.  At one point he thought to himself I will never fit in her clothes.  Bewildered as to where the thought had come from, he suppressed it. Marriage.

 

Wedding night: sitting, waiting in anticipation of what was to come.  Lois had left her dress on the bed and was in the hotel bathroom.

 

He drew in a breath and touched it.  Lacy, exquisitely feminine.  He stroked it.  Incredible.  A whole different world, a different gender, enticing. 

"Like it?" she said, as she came out.  He nodded.  But she was meaning her negligee.

 

Later she noticed a small tear in her wedding dress and wondered where it came from.

 

Over the years there were dresses that had not been hung up properly in her closet, as if they had been taken down and hung up incorrectly.  It made no sense. Her underwear drawer had been gone through.  She checked the locked windows. They had a landlord at that time.  Pervert, coming into apartments and doing this.  She felt violated.

 

Then they bought a house.  They had two kids.  Her underwear drawer was being regularly gone through. Not Odie. It could not be Odie.  Odie was as macho as they come, something she liked.  It could not possibly be Odie. Finally there was a slip with a broken strap.

 

"Odie, I found the strap on my black slip torn.  How could that have happened?'

 

He didn't know.  He looked guilty, but he didn't know.

 

The rifling stopped for a while, then started up again.  She read up on cross-dressing. 

 

"Odie, I love you," she said, "I've been reading up on cross-dressing."

 

He had that deer-in-the headlights look.

 

"I've read it is harmless, engaged in by heterosexual men, and is nothing to be ashamed of."

 

He looked at her. No expression.

 

"Look, I am even willing to buy you stuff in your size.  A friend of mine saw you sneaking around the women's clothing department at Macy's, then you bought something and rushed out.  No more of that, okay? The deal is that you don't do it in front of me or the kids. Do we have a deal?"

 

They had a deal.  Lois thought it was resolved, and her stuff was no longer touched. Every now and again a package arrived for "Odi", deliberately misspelling his name, and she never opened those.  Sometimes they went and bought things, but he never tried them on in front of her.

 

"The urge just builds until I have to, Lois.  I am sorry. It's like I can't control it."

"That's what I read.  But your Dad would kill you."

"There is that."

 

Lois thought the deal would last.  Things were under control.

 

[Abigail Genevieve]

Years passed.  The kids grew up and they were empty-nesters.  Lois went full-time at her company.

 

"We have a Halloween party every year."  He had heard of that. 

 

"You've upheld your end of our bargain for so very long.  How about - do you have something appropriate to wear in the female line?"

 

Did he.  She was dressed like a penguin, but he wore a women's skirted suit, dark hose, one-inch heels, gold jewelry, well-done makeup and a wig.

 

"I would not recognize you.  What's this?"

 

"Padding." 

 

"If I didn't know better I would think you were just a rather tall businesswoman.  No one at the party knows you, no one is expecting a man in drag.  How about your voice and walk?"

 

He had obviously been practicing them.

 

The party was a blast.  Odie was happier than she had ever seen him, freer somehow, reveling in being feminine. Lois liked "her" as a charming friend.

 

"That was fun," he said, driving home.

 

"It is hard now to think you are a man," she said, and looked at him.

 

"To tell you the truth I had such a wonderful time I never want to wear men's clothing again. I will, because I must."

 

"I mean, you are convincing as a woman.  More than you are as a man."

 

"I think we need to get some professional help."

 

And they did.  Lois was determined to walk through this, as was Odie, and when he learned she was not walking out but working through, he was overjoyed.

 

 

[Abigail Genevieve]

"I feel like I lost my husband," Lois told the therapist,"I want the man I married."

Dr. Smith looked at Odie, sitting there in his men's clothing, looking awkward and embarrassed.

"You have him.  This is just a part of him you did not know about. Or did not face."

She turned to Odie,"Did you tear my wedding dress on our wedding night?"

He admitted it.  She had a whole catalog of did-you and how-could you.  Dr. Smith encouraged her to let it all out. Thirty years of marriage.  Strange makeup in the bathroom.  The kids finding women's laundry in the laundry room.

There was reconciliation.

"What do we do now?"

Dr. Smith said they had to work that out.  Odie began wearing women's clothing when not at work.  They visited a cross-dressers' social club but it did not appeal to them.  The bed was off limits to cross dressing.  She had limits and he could respect her limits.  Visits to relatives would be with him in men's clothing. 

 

"You have nail polish residue," a co-worker pointed out.  Sure enough, the bottom of his left pinky nail was bright pink  His boss asked him to go home and fix it.  He did.   People were talking, he was sure, because he doubted he was anywhere as thorough as he wanted to be.  It was like something in him wanted to tell everyone what he was doing, and he was sloppy.

 

His boss dropped off some needed paperwork on a Saturday unexpectedly and found Odie dressed in a house dress and wig.  "What?" the boss said, shook his head, and left.  None of his business.

 

"People are talking," Lois said. "They are asking about this," she pointed to his denim skirt. "This seems to go past or deeper than cross dressing."

 

"Yes.  I guess we need some counseling."  And they went.

[Abigail Genevieve]

The counseling session was heated, if you could call it a counseling session.  Sometimes Lois felt he was on Odie's side, and sometimes on hers.  When he was on her side, Odie got defensive. She found herself being defensive when it seemed they were ganging up on each other.

 

"This is not working," Lois said angrily, and walked out.  "Never again. I want my husband back. Dr. Smith you are complicit in this."

 

"What?" said Odie.

 

The counselor looked at him.  "You will have to learn some listening skills."

 

"That is it? Listening skills?  You just destroyed my marriage, and you told me I need to learn listening skills?"

 

Dr. Smith said calmly,"I think you both need to cool off."

 

Odie looked at him and walked out, saying "And you call yourself a counselor."

 

"Wait a minute."

 

"No."

[Abigail Genevieve]

"I love you so much,"  Lois said.  They met in the driveway.

"I could not live without you."

"Neither could I."

"What are we going to do?"

"Find another counselor?"

"No. I think we need to solve this ourselves."

"Do you think we can?"

"I don't know.  But what I know is that I don't want to go through that again.  I think we have to hope we can find a solution."

"Otherwise, despair."

"Yeah.   Truce?"

"Okay,  truce." And they hugged.

 

"When we know what we want we can figure out how to get there."

 

That began six years of angry battles, with Odie insisted he could dress as he pleased and Lois insisting it did not please her at all.  He told her she was not going to control him and she replied that she still had rights as a wife to a husband. Neither was willing to give in, neither was willing to quit, and their heated arguments ended in hugs and more.

 

They went to a Crossdressers' Club, where they hoped to meet other couples with the same problems, the same conflicts, and the same answers, if anyone had any.  It took them four tries before they settled on a group that they were both willing to participate in.  This was four couples their own age, each with a cross dressing husband and a wife who was dealing with it.  They met monthly.  It was led by a 'mediator' who wanted people to express how they felt about the situation.  Odie and Lois, as newcomers, got the floor, and the meeting was finally dismissed at 1:30 in the morning - it was supposed to be over at 10 - and everyone knew how they felt about the situation.

 

There was silence in the car on the way home.

 

"We aren't the only ones dealing with this." Odie finally said.

 

"Who would have thought that?  You are right."

 

"Somebody out there has a solution."

"I hope you are right."

 

"I hope in hope, not in despair."

 

"That's my Odie."