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To say that Erin had been having a bad day would be an understatement. Clearly, she was born to suffer and no good would ever come to her, and she’d die wasted and alone and miserable, never having had a single fully positive experience to her name.
As it was, she (and Clare and Orla) had been waiting on the stoop outside Michelle’s house for a solid fifteen minutes—which was WAY too long to be waiting for anyone, by the way—and neither Michelle nor James had given any indication they were planning on joining them.
“I say it doesn’t quite matter which one we get so longs as we’ve got one of em,” Orla said, absently playing with her lighter. “I just don’t wanna go to the cinema with only three of us, you know. It’s an unlucky number, it is.”
“Three is the magic number, Orla, you’re thinking of thirteen.” Erin rubbed her temples.
“We don’t have thirteen friends, Erin. We’ve just got the five of us.” Orla smiled absently. “I don’t think thirteen is unlucky though. You know I’ve got thirteen boards of wood on the floor of me room.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not unlucky, Orla, it just means you’ve got thirteen boards.”
“I’ve never counted the boards on my floor.” Clare looked suddenly very worried. “Should I have?”
“No, Clare, it’s not a thing people do, it’s just a thing Orla does. Right, well I’m going inside to see if either one of them is actually gonna show.”
“Oh you can’t, we don’t have permission to be in there! You can’t just go in to someone else’s house, Erin!” Clare was wide-eyed and squeaky.
“Clare.” Erin said. “It’s Michelle’s house. We’re allowed in. ‘Sides, her mam’s not home anyway. It’ll be just me and them. I’ll drag one of them out.”
Erin marched up the few steps between her and the door, and turned the handle. She pushed the door inwards and took a few steps into the house, closing it softly behind her.
“Michelle? James? What’s keeping yez?
“Oh fuck, right—” Michelle came barrelling down the stairs, hastily throwing a jacket on over her bra. “Do you think I need to put a shirt on, or am I fine like this?” She came to stop in front of Erin, posing seductively with her hands on her hips. Erin was unimpressed.
“Sure, you’re fine like that, Michelle. Until ye get arrested for public indecency. Go put a shirt on and meet the girls on the curb, they’re waiting for you.”
“Yeah, I know, I lost track of time.”
“No shit you lost track of time. Now hurry up and get a shirt on, I’m gonna go bother James.”
“Oh, can’t we go without him?” Michelle sounded borderline petulant. “He’s always tagging along with us.”
“Come off it, Michelle. We’re the only friends the poor wee English boy’s got. He needs us.”
“Yeah but he’s a fucking dick.”
“Go put a shirt on.”
As Michelle turned and jogged upstairs, Erin took a moment to collect herself. She then followed Michelle up the stairs, but instead turned right on the landing and knocked on James’s door.
“Oi, dick, I’m coming in, so you best not be trouserless or I’ll report you for indecent exposure.” That was all the warning she gave before she pushed the door open the rest of the way, and froze. James was sitting on the edge of his bed, shirtless. He was clutching what looked like a black tank top in his hands. He turned towards the door and his face morphed into something between shock and horror.
“Oh, shit, wait, Erin, fuck, hang on, look away, and don’t leave. Fucking hell. Hang on. Ouch. Ooh oh god. Okay. Okay it’s fine. You can look now.”
Erin, who had never turned away in the first place, wordlessly moved her mouth, attempting to force words out. James had just wrestled the tank top over his naked chest, effectively disguising a very real and very terrifying pair of breasts.
“Oi, Erin, James, are you two coming with me, or what?” Michelle called from the bottom of the stairs. “You’d best not be having a ride up there, you dumb bastards.”
“No, Michelle, we are not ‘having a ride’ up here.” Erin shouted back, letting disgust lace her tone. Her next sentence was shaky and a bit quieter. “I rather think you three girls should go on to the cinema on your own. Your cousin and I can join you lot next time we hang out.”
“Orla won’t like that, you know she’s got that thing about threes.”
“Just shut up and go to the movies, Michelle, Jesus Christ!” Erin stuck her entire head out the door to yell. A huff and the sound of a door opening and closing were all Erin needed. She rounded on James.
“I can expl—”
“Like hell you can explain! What, James, you’ve just got tits now?”
James winced. “Please don’t say it like that.”
“What’s that you’ve got on, some kind of sports bra? What are you doing with women’s underwear, James? Are you a pervert? Is that it? You get your rocks off by dressing like a lady?”
“It’s not a sports bra, Erin. If you would just stop talking, I’d explain everything. I just need you to sit down and trust me for a moment. I’m gonna get a shirt on.”
Against her better judgement, Erin sat down on James’s desk chair. She watched, almost unable to tear her eyes away from him, as he slid a simple white t-shirt over his head and ran a hand down the front of his chest, pulling the shirt away briefly and rearranging it so the seam sat further back on his shoulders. He walked to the window and checked the pavement outside, as if verifying the others had gone.
“Okay,” he said, whirling around to face her. “Okay. Oh god I knew this would happen someday but I had no idea it would be so soon.” He started pacing. “It’s gonna be all right. I know it’s gonna be all right. I just have to stop overthinking and actually explain things to you. Oh god I have to explain things to you. I don’t even know where to start with this, oh man—”
“James, sit down, you’re gonna give me an aneurysm.”
“I don’t think you know what an aneurysm is, Erin.” James sounded nervous still, but he sat on the edge of his bed all the same. “What do you need to know?”
“Who’s questioning who here?”
“Nobo—what? This isn’t an interrogation, Erin, I’m just going to answer your questions.”
“That’s an interrogation James.”
“No it’s not, it’s a bloody conversation! No, I’m not yelling, I’m calm. I’m calm.” He took a few steadying deep breaths. “Erin. I assume you have questions.”
“Uh, yeah I do, now that you’ve calmed down from your little asthma attack.”
“Anxiety attack.”
“I know what I said. Now that you’ve calmed down, I’d like you to tell me why you, a boy, happen to have bigger tits than me?”
“Is that what this is about? Cause you can have them, Erin, I don’t want them.”
“You’d give them to m—what, no, how would that even work?”
“Stupid joke, never mind. Is your only concern really the size of my chest?”
“Of course it’s not! It was just the most pressing one. The second most pressing one is why do you have tits in the first place?”
“I asked you not to call them that—”
“Answer the question, Englishman. You are a man, right?” Erin said it scornfully, but the curiosity and almost-fear that were building up in her throat seeped into her tone.
“Yes, Erin, I am a man. I feel like I’ve been very firm on this topic.”
“Well I don’t right know what to believe anymore, do I?”
“Your question was?”
“Why have you got tits, James. That was my bleedin question you dick.”
“Well, to put it simply, I guess I’m not a man in the...traditional sense?”
“You mean you’re a woman.”
“I most certainly am not!” James stood indignantly. “I am a man, I’m just, well I’m...transgender, is what the word is. I didn’t know the word for it until recently, but—.”
“Trainsgender?”
“Erin I can’t tell if thats how ‘trans’ sounds in your accent or if you’re actually saying the word ‘trainsgender’ and I need you to help me out here.”
“Transgender,” Erin repeated.
James smiled softly. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Is that like being gay?”
“Christ why does it—why does it always come back to me being gay, Erin?”
“Well, are ye?”
“No, I’m not! I’ve been very firm on this!”
“Well if it’s not a fancy word for gay, what’s it mean? You like women’s clothing, James?”
James turned away from her in frustration, throwing his hands in the air. “Erin, your continued presumptuousness never ceases to amaze me. If you stopped making ill-informed guesses for more than a minute at a time, I might actually be able to explain it.”
“That was a lot of big words and you are already on thin ice, James, so choose your next words wisely.”
“I was born in, I guess, a female body. What I mean is, biologically speaking, I’m exactly the same as you.”
“No you’re not, I’m biologically Irish, and you certainly aren’t.”
James fixed Erin with a disbelieving look that could have meant anything, but Erin nodded and mimed zipping her lips.
“What I mean, Erin, is that for the first maybe, eight years of my life, everyone around me thought I was a girl, me included.”
“Easy mistake to make James, we’ve been saying that all along.”
“Isn’t your mouth zipped?”
“Zippers come undone, Maguire. Keep talking.”
“Basically, Erin, I’m male in all ways except biological. Emotionally, socially, mentally, presentationally—”
“I get it. So you’re a boy with tits.”
“Yeah.”
“And you don’t want anyone to know about those tits ‘cause they’ll think you’re a girl and you’re not, but you don’t wanna get into all that.”
“Yeah.”
“Makes sense to me, I guess.” Erin glanced at her fingernails.
“What, really?” James stood up from the bed again and started pacing. “It took me months to convince my mother I was sure about being a boy, and even longer for her to wrap her head around it, let alone for it to make sense to her. And now suddenly you just ‘understand’?”
“It ain’t rocket science, James. The doctors yelled “it’s a girl” and then you grew up and proved them wrong. Bit of a dick move if I’m honest, but you always were a bit of a dick, weren’t ye?”
“Yes, I suppose I am. A bit of a dick, I mean.” James looked a little shell-shocked. Erin rolled her eyes but smiled all the same.
“Now there’s no need for that look. I just have a few more questions. What was the tank top for?”
“Oh I sewed that myself, actually. Out of old spandex. They don’t really make them professionally but using bandages or strips of cloth is really unhealthy. It’s called a chest binder, and it’s like a super tight tank top that keeps…well…”
“Keeps the boys from acting up.” Erin nodded sagely.
“The whats?”
“The boys. Like when girls call their tits ‘the girls’, but since you’re a boy with tits, yours can be ‘the boys.’”
James looked at her with wet eyes and Erin sighed. “God now don’t go getting all teary-eyed at me you British bastard.”
“I was just worried. Cause you weren’t all that kind to Clare when she came out. I thought you’d be really rude about it.”
“Wow, watch it with the assumptions. I’ll have you know I learned my lesson soundly after the Clare fiasco, and I love and support the wee lesbian. Ain’t we all wearing those pins?”
“Well, yes, but I was worried it was performative.”
“Well it’s not! I’m a friend of the gays now, James.”
“Still not gay, Erin.”
“So you like girls? That is what you mean when you say you’re not gay, right?”
“I am positive I am attracted to women, Erin.”
“Sure, yeah, all right, I believe you.” She sent him an exaggerated wink.
“Why are you winking. What are we winking at. I don’t understand.”
“Does Michelle know?”
“Nobody knows but Michelle’s mum and Sister Michael. Not in Derry anyway. A couple of folks back home do, but as you’d say, they’re English, they don’t count.”
“Oh, so…what I’m hearing is…I know something Michelle doesn’t.”
“Oh Erin, no, for my sake, please keep this under wraps. It’s something I’m really not open about. I’m actually kind of crazy sensitive about it. More than anything else.”
“Relax, you dick, I wasn’t gonna tell anyone. I do think you should tell them, but It’s not my secret to tell.”
James let out a breath Erin hadn’t known he’d been holding. He collapsed backwards onto his bed, arms splayed to the sides, staring up at his ceiling. Erin crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. Without looking at him, she reached over and patted him on the leg.
“You’re all right, you daft bastard. I don’t think any differently of ye. Sure, I don’t think any more highly of ye than I did, but really, you’re the wee English fella. You’re not gonna stop being the wee English fella just cause you’ve got a, frankly spectacular, pair of tits.”
“Are they really that nice?” James asked. He was clearly just humoring her, but Erin pretended it was a proper question.
“Much nicer than mine. It’s not fair is what it is. It’s sexist! Giving a boy a lovely set of tits and hanging me out to dry with the rest of the ironed out sheets!”
James laughed, still staring up at the ceiling. “Sure, Erin. Sexism at its finest, yeah?”
“Bloody well is!” She paused. Something unspoken passed between the two and she let herself slump down into a more relaxed sitting position.
Half a minute passed with the two of them just sitting in each others company, basking in the glow of a shared secret. Erin eventually flopped down on her side so that she was fully lying down next to James. He turned his head to look at her and offered a weak smile.
“Are you gonna tell the others, James?”
“I wasn’t planning on it, really. But now…I just mean…it’s nice to have someone on your side, is all. I feel like if I needed to come out, you'd be there.”
“Ugh, you fuckin' sap! So now you feel as if it won’t be such a big deal if you do come out, you mean?”
“It was a big deal for Clare. You guys were really awful to her. I guess that scared me. A lot.”
“If any one of them tries to say shit, James, I’ll beat her up. There’s plenty of other shit to tease you about.”
“I mean, ideally, I wouldn’t get made fun of at all.”
“That’s a pipe dream, Maguire. Don’t get your hopes up.”
Another long silence stretched between them. James finally cleared his throat nervously.
“Uh, thanks, Erin.”
“For what?”
“For being a friend.”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it! Read the lapel pin, James, I am officially a friend of the gays.”
“I’m still not gay.”
“Aye. But ye are transgender.”
“That I am, Erin. That I am.”