The Objectively Most Rational Decision

-- Day 16 --

Of fucking course the elevator was out of order. That was simply the state of my luck. Today, the day I set my appointment at the blood lab, just so happened to be a 36 degree (Celsius, who even used Fahrenheit? Americans?), bright, sunny day.

I missed the comfort of my air-conditioned bedroom. As someone accustomed to a coastal climate, moderated by the oceanic winds of the Pacific, I had not often experienced summers that exceeded 30 degrees. Unfortunately, due to the short-sighted morons who ran just about every corporation, every consecutive summer kept getting hotter and drier and more terrible to experience.

At least I didn't live in the interior.

My mother was at work, I didn't have a car - or a driver's license, for that matter - and I refused to take a bus. Therefore, I opted to walk. It was only two blocks away, I thought, how bad could it be?

I was sweating profusely, soaked hair clinging tightly to my scalp, before I even stepped into the building. I knew that I wasn't physically fit. I hadn't had a PE class in years, and I never got any exercise. Nevertheless, I still managed to over-estimate my own physical ability.

And now, I had to walk up four flights of stairs. God damn it.

By the time I reached the top I could barely stand, and a painful stitch had developed on the left side of my waist. I was also three minutes late.

Maybe I shouldn't have worn a hoodie in early August - I liked the anonymity of it, okay?

Needless to say, I was severely pissed - and exhausted - when I arrived at the desk to hand in my requisition form and show the whatever-their-job-is my health card. Looking around, the waiting room was full of boomers. Weren't old people supposed to have trouble getting around? I looked more exhausted than them, and I was in the peak of my youth! Ugh.

There were a few people that looked young - one of whom my eyes instinctively locked onto: masculine features, feminine clothing, minimal breasts, feminine hairstyle. A trans person, most likely. What a coincidence.

I retrieved my health card and fumbled it into my pocket, then made to sit down next to her. him. her. Whatever.

I considered the unlikeliness of this interaction - were trans people really so common these days, or was it a cognitive bias? - like when you learn a new word, and then you start noticing it everywhere. It didn't suddenly become more common on account of your knowledge of its meaning - your eyes simply brushed over it before, not understanding what it was and, thus, subconsciously ignoring it. It was something for me to think about.

The fact I'd never had a regular reason to go outside since high school might also be a factor.

Anyway, I didn't want to waste this opportunity - a trans person, early 20s, who I could study in order to more accurately impersonate one. I absolutely needed to contrive some excuse for continued correspondence, so I could properly study her behaviours.

After a long moment of staring at her - punctuated by a steadily increasing rate of uncomfortable squirming on her part - she gave me a sharp side-eyed glare and spoke with exasperation, "Uh. what?"

The voice was masculine, so I knew I was right. As usual.

"You're trans," I eloquently replied.

She was, quite clearly, taken aback by my bluntness. "Wh- that was- incredibly rude. What the hell?"

I blinked. Yeah, I mean, it was - but politeness was simply societal expectation smothering succinct speech. "Oh. I'm trans too," I lied - I understood that conversations worked best when one found a commonality to bond with the other participant over. Even if it was a false one.

“Um, okay,” she didn’t seem to be paying much attention, glancing all across the waiting room and vibrating her leg in a very annoying way. I knew that the conversation would end at that without my intervention, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Then her name was called - “Luna Paskowski, chair three!” - and she rushed away to get her blood taken. I didn’t know why she was in such a hurry. The conversation, if you could call it that, ended as quickly as it started.

It certainly could’ve gone better.

God damn it, Eric.

***
-- Day 23 --

When I was in the 3rd grade, my class went on a field trip to a dairy farm. It was, for the most part, entirely forgettable - save for one incident.

For several weeks prior to that trip, a few classmates of mine had seemingly become my friends - they would laugh at what I said, and played with me during recess: always a game of tag, though I was the only one who was ever ‘it’.

During the field trip, my class was split into groups of four, each chaperoned by a teacher or volunteering parent. Since I figured they were my friends - I mean, of course they were. right? - I inserted myself into their group before anyone else could. They weren’t too enthusiastic about it.

They always walked faster than I did. I constantly had to speedwalk just to keep up with them, but I’d too easily get distracted by all the sights and sounds and smells of the farm, and I’d end up trailing behind. At one point, one of them stopped and waved his hand in front of his face, and then they both started walking even faster.

I ran faster to keep up with them - but then, unfortunately, I figured out why he stopped. My left foot landed on something squishy, and a bit viscuous, and a lot gross, and then I tripped, and fell onto the ground with a painful thud.

I realized immediately that it was cow dung. The next thing I realized was that my friends - or who I soon figured were anything but - were laughing at me. The pain from the fall, combined with the humiliation of the whole thing, caused me to start crying.

This made them laugh harder.

I got angry. Really angry. Really, really, really angry. I grabbed a handful of cow shit and threw it at the one who was laughing the hardest - Peter Williams. He scrunched up his face and gagged when it hit him.

“Gross! What’d you do that for?!” he scowled and then pointed at me, “Eric throws poop! He’s a monkey!”

Then they started making obnoxious ‘ook’ noises. The parent who was chaperoning us finally realized something was going down, but it was too late by then.

Faster than I realized I could, I scrambled to my feet and rushed him. I didn’t care about the potential of getting in trouble, nor did I care about the wet squelching of my ruined sneaker - the only thing I cared about was Peter’s stupid, annoying face.

His nose started bleeding a few seconds after I punched him.

As punishment, I got in-school suspension for two days - I didn’t really mind, because the social aspect was the worst part of school. It was also far from the last - or even first - time I got in trouble for attacking another student. I got angry easily. I knew that.

I wouldn’t say that event was the catalyst for me resenting my peers - it was already there in some ways, and it didn’t fully develop until middle school - but I never did have anyone I considered a friend after that point. Definitely not the mere acquaintances to whom I talked - more like ‘at’ - on Discord or Reddit.

I wasn’t lonely, though - that would imply I wanted friendship. Which I didn’t.

What I wanted, really, was something to do - besides sitting in my room and figuratively twiddling my thumbs. I never did much. It wasn’t a desire for friendship or companionship per se, I just needed some sense of fulfillment that I got absolutely none of from my daily routine.

Fuck, I needed a hobby.

I hadn’t been on my computer as much, lately. That wasn’t to say I was doing anything productive - I mostly laid in my bed. I wasn’t quite sure why, but everything suddenly felt more... real. It was like a miasmic fog so omnipresent it wasn’t even noticed was abruptly lifted, and I could finally breathe.

Is this what women felt like all the time? I could certainly get used to it.

If only this newfound sense of - for lack of a better word - wonder could motivate me to do anything with my life. Sure, I was taking my estradiol tablets every day, but it was hard to feel productive doing that when I was still alone in my shitty, severely messy bedroom.

I rolled over and screamed silently into my pillow. All I ever did on this bed was masturbate and ruminate on past regrets. Usually, the former before the latter. Constant replay reels of all my life’s greatest failures, for my own viewing pleasure! What a joke.

At least I was masturbating less, now. It was still two or three times a day, but it was a far cry from the six or seven of my baseline. I also, usually, felt less post-nut shame afterwards. I suppose it was because I had already embraced my own degeneracy for lack of a better path in life - so what was there to feel guilty for?

There were exceptions - the very first nut after I returned home from retrieving my estrogen prescription was particularly shameful. I blame the encounter with that asshole for drudging up old, relentlessly repressed fantasies.

I wasn’t gay, by the way. It- It was just-

A tentative knock on my bedroom door liberated me from my train of thought. Only one person could it be.

“What?” I exasperatedly yelled at the door. She was probably going to nag. Ugh.

“I was just thinking,” my mother’s muffled voice came through, “Is there anything I can do to help you, Eris? I could buy some clothes for you, or we could just talk...”

No. I definitely didn’t want to talk. New clothes could maybe be helpful, but I wanted to see how the hormones altered my form before I ended up buying clothes that would outlive their usefulness. It’s called practicality.

A hoodie and jeans were perfectly serviceable, after all.

I didn’t respond, and she eventually walked away from the door - I heard her footsteps.

Honestly. Why was she always trying to insert herself into my business, now? It’s like she’s stopped giving up on me, like she had for the past two - or maybe more - years. I didn’t particularly like the feeling.

During the latter years of my ill-fated high school career, I cared less and less about actually attending class. I had no future ahead of me, after all. My peers may have cut class to do something out on the town. Not me, though: I stayed in my bedroom, wasting my time and my life in front of my computer.

The worst part of it all was the nagging in the mornings. The fruitless attempts to wake me up after another meaningless all-nighter I pulled just to avoid acknowledging the passing another day - a desperate grasp for extra time to waste on nothing. When I eventually woke up, it’d already be the afternoon - or, if I managed to wake up in the morning, I would refuse to get out of bed. Absolutely refuse.

I would get my way eventually, but the scathing disappointment each day was difficult to experience. It was easier in many ways when she lost hope. When my not attending became so rote she didn’t even try anymore.

About the only reason I showed up at school at all in those days was to watch Sean fucking Murphy be superior to me in just about every way (except intelligence, of course), as a way to derive some weak vicarious enjoyment of life.

That interaction, just now, reminded me of the urging, the pleading, to please just get up and go to school. I could feel her disappointment that I refused to open up to her radiating through the door, and lingering in the air. What did she expect me to do? Talk about my feelings?

Ha. As if. I wasn’t nearly that female-brained yet.

***
-- Day 33 --

“So, since your hormone levels are as expected,” explained Dr. Rousseau, “We can increase your dosage to one milligram of estradiol twice daily - it’s best done 12 hours apart, so take one in the morning and another in the evening.”

I nodded in reply, not feeling a particular need to speak.

“If your hormone levels are still good in a couple months, then we can up the dose again to two milligrams twice daily. After that, we’ll measure your T levels to see whether blockers are warranted, or if the estradiol suppresses it enough already.”

I was excited for the dose increase, if you could call it excitement. It was more like a mildly hopeful sense of anticipation. What I really wanted, above all else, was a sign that something was happening. Sure, some weird mental stuff had occurred, but nothing physical.

My body fat distribution was normal. My chest was as flat as ever. I understood, obviously, that these things took time. I knew I wouldn’t instantly, magically become a woman; the real world wasn’t a work of fiction.

Still, the wait for something was killing me almost as much as my normal routine was. I wanted to stop being me, Eric Henderson, as soon as physically possible. I hated being me. I always did - I’d never done anything with my life because there was no point to it. No matter what I did, I’d always be me: a pathetic loser with no shot of getting laid or reproducing. An evolutionary dead-end, strained out of the gene pool by natural selection.

The doctor, in our previous talk in which she prescribed my starting dose, had told me that the hormone replacement therapy would eventually render me infertile. I didn’t care. The sperm inside me was only ever destined for a piece of tissue paper, so its existence was hardly necessary. I was never going to fulfill the biological goal of all life, so I didn’t have anything to lose.

At least I could enjoy the objective social benefits of womanhood for the remaining duration of this brief, meaningless existence.

“Okay,” I replied.