Victoria's Secret

I stood in front of the mirror, looking in disgust at myself. This body wasn’t right. It’s not me. It’s not what I should be. I shouldn’t’ look like this. This is all wrong; completely wrong. Why was I placed in this body? Why do I have to be punished like this?

I've always known I wasn’t right on the outside. Well, I’d like to think that I've always known, but I can’t say that, because I'm sure I didn’t feel this way when I was a baby. So, I guess if I had to put a year or an age on it, I think I’d have to say that I've known since I was six. I'm seventeen now. That’s eleven years of knowing that I don’t belong in this body I'm in. I can tell you right now, that is not an easy thing to live with.

My family accepts me though. I think they still have a hard time understanding it, but they accept me nonetheless. Even my grandpa accepts me, and he’s, well, he’s a hard-ass whose way of thinking is stuck in the 30’s when he grew up. He’s always been right there beside me, supporting everything I've ever done. He tells me that he’s not leaving my side until he sees me at the end of the aisle, watching the smile on my face as I see my beautiful bride walking down the aisle.

It’s great to have a family that supports me and my decisions, even if they don’t necessarily understand it. I've always told people that don’t get my lifestyle that they don’t have to understand something to accept it. The bad part about that is, as my history teacher tells his classes at the beginning of each year, people fear what they do not understand.

“Vic! Come on man, you’ve been in there forever! Aren’t you almost done?” my little brother Shawn called through the bathroom door.

I sighed and called back, “Yeah, I'll be right out.”

Shawn grunted in recognition and I could hear his footsteps retreat.

I picked up the ace-bandage on the counter and unfolded it, wrapping it skillfully around my chest. I've been doing this since I was thirteen years old, ever since I actually had breasts to flatten, so it didn’t take me long to do it anymore. I took the clips out of the dish next to the soap and pinned the ace-bandage tight and so it would not come undone. I grabbed my cargo shorts off of the top of the toilet and stepped into them, pulling them over my gray Hanes boxers. I threaded my black belt through the loops and started to reach for my shirt, but dropped my arm mid-grab, looking back in the mirror.

Even with my chest wrapped, I actually did pull off a boy quite well on the outside. I'm always a boy on the inside, but my outside fools people, and I absolutely hate that.

I shrugged myself out of my thoughts and pulled on my shirt, brushing myself off and shaking my head of shaggy hair out. There we go, I thought, holding my head up high and looking at myself once more. From Victoria to Victor in less than five minutes. I put all my stuff away and headed out of the bathroom, calling down the hall to my brother.

“Hey, short-shit, bathroom’s all yours!”

“Screw you too!”

“Love ya’, little bro!” I laughed, walking away and back to my room to grab my messenger bag and slide on some sort of shoes for the day. When I went downstairs, all I could smell was the strong coffee brewing in the pot, waiting for Shawn and I.

After I poured myself a cup, I rummaged through the cupboards for something to eat for breakfast and came up with a blueberry muffin. Shawn somehow snuck up on me and grabbed me around the waist, hoisting me up in the air and plopping me down on the floor. He may be younger than me, but he’s a lot stronger than me. I don’t exactly know how he was able to take me off my feet and place me on my ass, but he did.

“What do you need, Shawna?”

“Just what you need, Victoria,” he said kind of spitefully. He really disliked it when I called him Shawna, so he always called me by my birth name. It doesn’t really bother me very much anymore, at least not when it’s coming from him, because I know that he knows that’s not actually who I am. Other than our grandpa, I’d say Shawn’s probably my biggest supporter.

“And what do you and I need?”

“I just need somebody to love,” he sang, smirking at me for his not-so-clever reference to whatever old song he was singing. He’s more of the oldies music buff, but I knew what song he was thinking of. I just laughed at him and stood up, grasping the counter to help. “Am I getting a ride to school today?”

“No, I think I'll just let you walk all the way there even though I'm driving and we’re both going to the same place,” I said dryly, turning back to my coffee cup and taking a bite out of my muffin. “Yes you can get a ride, Shawn. I'm not evil.”

“Hey, there’s a meeting tonight for kids interested in playing basketball next year. You coming?” he asked, changing the subject as quickly as his mind moved along. He took a drink of the coffee he just poured and sat down at the oak wood table across from me, his chair screeching on the linoleum floor.

“I can’t, Shawn, you know that,” I sighed.

“Oh come on, man!” he cried, clomping down his cup, splashing a little coffee on the table. “You love basketball, and you’re the best player I know. Plus, it’s your senior year next year. Just go out for the team!”

“And which team am I supposed to go out for, huh? The girl’s? I'm not a girl, I can’t do that. But I can’t go out for the boy’s either,”

“Fuck if you can’t,” he scoffed. “You’re in boy’s gym, you use the guy’s john, and aren’t you even in the system as a guy? You’re a guy around this school as much as I am. They can’t stop you from joining the boy’s basketball team. If anything, since you’re listed as a male, they’d probably not let you on the girl’s team. Stop making excuses, Vic, and just join the team for next year.”

“Alright, alright,” I chuckled. I was glad he was backing me up so much; even more than I myself was. “I'll come to the meeting tonight. And I suppose I'll talk to coach Genson about joining to see what he has to say. But I'm not guaranteeing that I'll actually join the team.”

“I'm down with that,” he smiled, taking another drink.

We made other small talk as we drank our coffee and left for our small little high school. It really amazed me how intellectual my little brother could be in times like those, when at least one of us needs to be. He adds so much insight into my life and I feel as if I don’t give enough to him in return. I really couldn’t ask for a better brother than Shawn, just as I couldn’t wish for a better family in general.

The lifestyle I live is a hard one to have. It’s harder than that of a homosexual, because people actually know what that is. A lot of people need an explanation of what I am or why. Most people don’t understand that I'm not a girl on the inside. They think it’s a phase or that I'm just a butch lesbian. But it’s neither of those things are true, and I only wish that people would start to get that.

I've been lucky in the fact that I've always gone to a school that worked around everything. They changed my name officially from Victoria to Victor when my parents asked for it and they have changed me from a girl to a guy, as my brother thought. They’ve been accommodating, and the teachers have been understanding and patient when need be. Even the students have been better than most would think. We live in an accepting community and the kids have mostly been great about this. I think it’s the way it is because I've been Victor for long enough, that a lot of them don’t remember me even being Victoria.

But even with all the acceptance and tolerance, I was still wary of what the coaches, officials, and sports affiliates would say about a person such as me joining the basketball team. And I could just imagine what other teams and other schools would say if word got out that they had a biological girl on the guy’s team. I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure about this basketball meeting, but I told Shawn I would try it out. I had to stay true to my word.

I was as surprised as anyone in that room when Coach Genson slapped me on the back and said, “Boy, I’d be upset if you didn’t join this team. I've been waiting for you to try out for three years. You’d better come to try outs.” I just smiled and looked at Shawn. He gave me a look that said ‘I told you so’, so I shot back a look that told him ‘shut up before I pounce on you’. A lot of the other kids that were still in the room after the initial meeting smiled as well if they heard my question and Coach’s answer. I had a lot of support from the other guys trying out for the team and when I went to sign the paper to say that I was trying out, I got a few claps on the back and cheers. It was a great feeling; knowing my future teammates were more than fine with me on their team.