When I woke up, painfully sober and back to my (admittedly few) senses, I was forced to face the fact that I was still lying on top of some man I didn’t know, in some place I didn’t know, with nothing on me but a pack of cigarettes, my ID, and a lighter. I didn’t even have the luxury of forgetting how I got there.

At least I wasn't hungover.

I hesitantly moved a little to check how strong his hold on me was, and thankfully he was sound asleep so I managed to roll out of his embrace and get off the bed without a peep from him.

It was mostly dark in the room, but some light came in from the large windows which opened onto a balcony. It was apparently dawn, though only just. I quietly crept over to the windows and slid them open. They must have been well oiled, or whatever it is you do with windows, since they didn’t squeak in the least.

I stepped onto the balcony and took out my cigarettes.

Because it was in my pocket while I slept, the packet was mostly crushed and three of the cigs were broken. When I opened it, a bunch of loose tobacco was carried away by the wind and I only just managed to avoid half of them falling out the bottom of the pack.

I let out a small sob.

After picking the least-bent of the bunch and placing it between my lips I patted my jean pockets for the lighter.

It wouldn’t light.

Just when I was contemplating throwing myself off the side of the building, the boss was there next to me and presenting a light. I flinched slightly in surprise before groaning defeatedly and accepting his offering.

“Good morning,” he greeted me, his voice low and half-asleep. He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer after lighting his own cigarette.

“Is it?” I asked dismally, still weighing up my options between this situation and jumping to my death. 

I had no idea how I was supposed to behave around this person without any liquid courage. While I’m basically myself when drunk, I tend to overthink when sober and worry about if I’m polite enough or acting strangely. I don’t interact with many people in person aside from the brief, and mostly-silent, exchanges I have with shop workers when I buy my smokes or alcohol. I tend to order my groceries online, and I work from home, so there isn’t much need for interacting with others in my daily life.

I was vastly more worried that saying the wrong thing to this man would make me look rude, rather than making him kill me or beat me up. Well, I was probably a bit afraid of getting beaten up. If I got killed then I wouldn’t have anything left to worry about anyway, so it was fine.

The boss leaned over and rubbed his face into my hair before inhaling. “You smell bad,” he told me. I was suddenly not bothered about seeming rude to this person. “You should shower.”

“Yeah, I said I would!” I shot back, smacking his arm off my shoulder.

“Oh, but cats don’t like water, do they? Should I come in with you and hold your hand?”

“You should leave me alone is what you should do,” I said, angrily sucking at my cigarette and taking a step away from him.

“Aw, okay, I’ll wait until you warm up to me,” he assured. “I gave Duchess a bath before she was used to me, and that’s how I got these,” he told me, seemingly pointing to the scars on his eyebrow and lip. I realised that “Duchess” must have been the name of his dead cat.

“You got those from a cat?” I asked, clearly a little surprised.

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “I meant the ones on my hands. I got these two from fights,” he explained cheerily. On closer inspection, his hands were littered with small white scars. “And I got this…” he trailed off while showing me his forearm and the prominent bite-mark on it that I’d made the night before. “From you.” His eyes were practically sparkling while he said that, making it difficult for me to tell if he wanted an apology or another bite-mark. “Do you have any scars?”

“Probably,” I answered bluntly. I did, actually, have several very meaningful scars, but they were none of his business. “Where’s the shower?” I asked after I finished smoking. He took a hasty final drag from his before tossing it off the balcony.

“This way!”

He took me to the bathroom and showed me where the shower was, then I shooed him back out the door. “If you even think of coming in here...” I began, but realised I had no way of threatening him. “Don’t,” I finished, rather lamely.

He looked a bit nervous and fidgety but said “okay,” eventually and let me shut him out.

There was a very big reason why I didn’t want him to see me naked, besides the hundreds of obvious reasons like it being creepy or embarrassing. The reason is that I’m transgender. 

He was clearly seeing me (correctly) as male, as did probably 95% of the people that see me on the street, but if he saw my body then I didn’t know for certain that he’d still see me that way.

It would be one thing if I’d had no surgeries and just had a female body, because then in the worst-case scenario I could probably pretend to be a woman (though I’d much rather slam my head against a brick repeatedly). But I had top surgery a couple of years ago, and even though the large crescent scars on my chest were fairly faint now, they were by no means subtle. 

And, this is just an aside about me: my nipples were removed and resized for the surgery and when they were grafted back onto me, one was put slightly higher than the other. I don’t mind it that much at this point, but I get self conscious about other people seeing it. I could have gotten revision surgery to fix it but the pain of the first surgery was bad enough and I felt like it was rude to say I had problems with my results. I guess that was stupid, but what’s done is done.

I looked at myself in one of the mirrors in the bathroom and realised I had quite a bit of stubble growing, so decided to borrow one of his razors and shave. It was a much closer shave than what I got with the disposable razors I use, so I hoped it might take a bit longer to grow back.

I used to really want a lot of facial hair, but now that I can grow it (thanks to hormone replacement therapy) I’ve realised my folly. My face is way too round and young-looking to be able to pull off facial hair.

I glanced at the door once more before undressing and getting in the shower. 

I was actually a little surprised that the boss hadn’t made any advances that night. If he had, I’m not sure what I would have done. Well, he sees me as a man, so if he did try something then it’s safe to assume he’s at least a little bit gay. In that case maybe there wouldn’t be too much issue with me being trans?

Yeah, who was I kidding, right? Plenty of gays hate trans people. I thought “if I let him try something and he finds out, will he hate-crime me?” while hastily washing myself.

I then spent about ten minutes wondering if I could use “hate-crime” as a verb like that.

At that point it’s not like I could say for sure what the boss’s intentions with me were, anyway, so there was no point getting ahead of myself and worrying. Well, even now I’m not totally certain about his intentions, but I’d decided that anything was fine so long as he never saw me naked or confronted me about my gender. I may be indifferent to most things, but this was a firm line for me.

When I finished showering I saw that there was a fresh pair of underwear and a t-shirt folded next to my clothes. Seeing that, I nearly had a heart attack. He must have come in while I was showering and left them there, but I didn’t hear him at all.

Once the initial panic wore off, I realised that I had the shower curtains drawn the whole time, and he didn’t open them even though he could have, so he hadn’t seen me naked.

I put the underwear on, and realised that it was obviously too big for me, but figured it would be fine since I was going to wear jeans over the top of them anyway. The shirt was all black and felt nice. I put my cardigan on over the top.

When I picked up my used shirt and underwear I realised that I hadn’t done my laundry at home in way too long. Thinking that bothered me, though it’s not like I especially wanted to go back and have to do it. There were so many unwashed dishes as well. It might have been easier to just forget about it, but I had only been away for one night so I didn’t want to just assume that meant I was never going back.

I walked out of the bathroom and decided to ask the boss. “Hey,” I started, trying to get his attention. “I’m just asking to be sure, but...” I wondered how to word it. “Can I leave? Or do I have to stay here now?”

“Do you want to leave?” he asked, his voice level but probably a bit hesitant or maybe even sad.

“I didn’t say that. But my rent is due in three days,” I explained, having only just then remembered that fact. I tried to get my landlord to let me use online banking but he found it too confusing so I ended up just paying cash each time. “And I need to do my laundry…” I tugged at the shirt he’d given me to wear.

“Oh! I get it! You want to go get some of your clothes so you’re more comfortable here. Well, I could just buy you new ones, but you’ll feel better with the ones you’re used to. I see. Let’s swing by your place after breakfast, then!” 

My first thought was “do other people actually eat breakfast?” so I missed my chance to argue with him about if I did or didn’t want to go home.

“But my shirt does look good on you,” he told me, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “It would look better if you weren’t wearing anything else, though.”

“You say that, but you’re the one that gave me underwear and left my other clothes,” I reasoned. His eyes widened like he’d suddenly realised his mistake.

“Well, never mind that for now. Let’s eat.” He gestured for me to follow him and led the way to a kitchen. “I just made this quickly while you were showering, but hopefully you like it,” he explained, nodding his head to the food while he fidgeted with his fingers. He looked nervous, so I figured I might as well humour him and eat whatever it was.

It was just toast and a fried egg, so it’s not like it was going to be especially bad or amazing. He asked if it tasted okay while I was chewing, so I just gave him a thumbs up without raising my head.

“Hey, so, um,” I began after I finished eating. “What’s your name?”

“Duke,” he answered, with perhaps the most reserved smile I’d seen on him so far.

“Wait a minute. Wasn’t your cat called Duchess?”

“That’s right.”

I opened my mouth to say something about that, but decided it was too much hassle, so I just sighed around a laugh. It clearly wasn’t worth thinking about.