A Soldier's Story free porn video

A Soldier's Story. By Tanya H. A knock at my door. Without waiting for an answer Box walks in, closes the door behind him, wrinkles his nose at the smell. We call him Box due to the shape of his head - beyond that he's Scottish, powerful and short. "What you doing, Toots?" He pulls out the chair from under my desk, spins at around so its back faces me and sits, straddling it, legs wide open. "Smoking kippers," I say, concentrating, trying not to get any nail polish on my skin. "Stinks, that shit," he observed. "Coming for a game of pool?" He's in jeans and a t-shirt, Merrils walking boots and glowing from a recent shower. I start on another toenail. The cool lick of the polish over my nails feels good. "Be over in fifteen," I say. "When I'm dried." Box watches me for a few moments. Then he picks up a dangly earring from my desk and shakes it gently so the beads click. I'm still concentrating on my toenail, easing the polish up to the edge will full, smooth strokes, but I can sense him looking around my room - exactly like his and all the others in the barrack block; bed, sink, desk, wardrobe. His won't have any make-up on the desk though, no uniform skirt beside my combat kit in the locker, no stilettos toppled on the floor beside the bedside cabinet. "You were never girly before," he said and stares openly at my legs, bared , knees drawn up so I can apply the polish. I'm only wearing panties and a squadron t-shirt - not even a bra, but neither of us are bothered. He's seen my bits, before and after, and I've nothing to hide from him. "Before what?" He shrugs, momentarily confused. "Fuck knows." "You just never noticed," I said. I smiled for him, pushed my hair away from my face as I straitened, screwing the lid back on my nail polish bottle. "Want me to do yours?" I offered. "Do I look like a fucking Royal Marine," he says with a grin. He stood and made for the door. A few games of pool with Box and the lads in the NAAFI would be good, like old times, though I might substitute the planned skirt for a longer one if I'm going to be stretching over a pool table. "You walk like one," I said. "You smell like one," he replied. A year ago that retort might have had more in it, but now I my freshly washed hair must have smelt of the feminine shampoo and conditioner I liked. He paused, hand on the door handle, the door ajar. "Toots, don't take this the wrong way, but why aren't you a bloke? You'd have made a fucking awesome bloke." "How am I supposed to take that?" I said, and laughed. "Stop being a girl." "Box, you pudding. Get over it." "You were never girly before," he repeated and closed the door just in time. My perfectly thrown nail polish bottle hit the door where his head would have been. Good job it didn't burst, the Sergeant Major wouldn't have liked that, but the metallic lilac shade I'd picked out in Superdrug last Sunday would have added colour. Never girly before, I said to myself as I picked up the bottle and placed it with the others. I flopped down on the narrow bed, the mattress still too hard - no money for squaddies' bedding, not even enough for ammunition and uniforms: pensions cut again. Probably I should leave. What would I do? Box must think of me always having been a girl? Probably confusing for him, maybe he avoids thinking about too deeply. We we inseparably best mates, back then - before. Certainly wasn't girly though, not for real, although I may always have been painting my toenails - in my head; where nobody else could see. Over compensating, with the man-stuff, to make up for it? Me and Box; oh the fights, the clubs and the women! If only he'd known. If only I'd known - I'd always been a girl. No time to feel sorry for myself. After Iraq I'd resolved never to do that. It is what it is. I roll from the bed, strip away my t-shirt and drop it in the washbag. There's a mirror on the back of the locker door, not full length, but enough to show me from the base of my ribcage up. I push my boobs forwards, scoop my hair and raise it in my hands, like a page 3 model. When did I start being girly? Letting one of Connie McWatt's satin nighties fall down over my body might have been the first time I'd acknowledged the need to be the woman. Connie ran a small, village pub - too far away from the barracks to have many squaddies visiting regularly and I can't remember what accident had led me there, or why Connie had decided to seduce me. The delicate nightie had smelt deliciously of her - perfume, soap, sex and sweat. I'd trembled - not from the room's cool, but from the whisper of the fabric over my taut body. I'd swayed my hips, to the rhythm of some soft music only I could hear, and smiled a soft, guilty smile at the way the hem brushed my thighs. Then wrenched the nightie away at some imagined creak from the stairs beyond Connie's bedroom, like she was sneaking back on me and not pulling the first pints in her pub downstairs. I almost tore the nightie, god only knew what I would have done if I had. But I didn't and I trembled still though my skin was hot and my cock hard and I folded her nightdress and laid it back under the pillow for later. Without Connie I'd still be pretending I was a bloke. Probably. "You're all dirty bastards," she'd said one evening. I was sprawled naked across her bed, the bedding was tangled. A little cum leaked from my flaccid cock onto my thigh, but I was too self-conscious to move or wipe it away. The rest was inside her. It wasn't that she was referring to; she was getting dressed, and I loved watching her dress, for another evening serving pints in her pub. I envied her outfit; tight, low cut top - breasts pushed up by an enhancing bra - lots of cleavage to keep the regulars regular - stretchy mini-skirt, alluring black tights, a painted smile that hardly ever dropped until the last of them had gone and the doors were locked. Sometimes I helped; pulling pints, washing glasses. The old ladies cackled and teased - dirty bastards too. One night, when she was busy behind the bar, I stayed in her room and made myself as much like her as I could - the first time I'd drawn nylon over my legs, seen them revealed by a short skirt. Her clothes couldn't suit me, too angular, muscular, male for that, but they liberated me from myself, from the pretence. If Connie ever knew I was sporadically wearing her clothes, she never said, but I have her and her seduction of me to thank for what happened. She started the slow realisation of what I was and what I wasn't. What a revelation! I'd been brought up that girls were just for fucking, assumed that all my attraction to them was just that - sex. Growing up in care there was plenty of it too, some of the girls there just craved the attention, the feeling that they were grown up, responsible. Some of the social workers too. Not after Connie though, not after her nightie and her skirts and tights and panties. If only she'd had bigger feet I might have tried some heels. Imagine if she'd caught me? Maybe I'd have laughed it off, like Toots should. Perhaps I'd have wept. My mates back then thought I'd turned soft. Were they right? I still had a beer or two, probably never backed down from a knob who thought he could take me on in the Market Place after hours, but it wasn't me starting it after that. And after Connie, when I was posted to Germany, there was no more casual fucking. Liselotte was not the woman Connie had been, but I was true to her - while I was out there. Toots has gone soft, they said. We'll see him holding hands with some homo from the Air Force next. Toots! Even my nickname was female - remember her? The tomboy from the Beano comic's Bash Street Kids? Mine was because I could fart musically - give us a toot, Toots. I could nearly do it on demand. Still do sometimes, shocks some of the lads to hear a girl farting. Slowing the drinking, settling down and paying attention got me promoted - a single, shy Lance Corporal's stripe, some extra pay and responsibility. All the time I learned to be watching, looking, studying the women around me. I liked her dress, not her shoes. Love her plaits, not her lipstick. How does it feel to be that beautiful, that elegant, that poised? And me all the time in my boots and combat kit, carrying my rifle and my squaddyness like armour. Laugh along, make the jokes - ache and regret. And then I was back to the UK - Selected forThe Corps Engagement and Recruiting Team (tailored kit, upmarket vehicles and posing for the impressionable public all around the country.) And Box was there too! Box a Corporal now! (Which Connie had settled him down?) Chest pumping, high fiving, big genuine grin to see my old mate again. What are the chances? Fuck me, mate! Look at you all grown up. Remember when? Old Smudge and that Rover, remember? Spilling all that Avtur on the pan? Shit! And that fat fucker, outside the nightclub, ripping his shirt off to have a swing at you. God times, bro. Good times. Never a piece of lace to call my own. Not a bit of satin to touch my skin, no sheer nylons to stretch over my toes. Just the dreams, the daydreams and fantasies. Wishes falling silent. Aching regret. Until the hotel! They never put squaddies up in hotels. Not even us prima-donnas of the Corps Engagement and Recruiting Team. Even if they did, it would be a Travel Lodge, a Premier Inn. Imagine the looks on our little faces when we rolled up to that stately home in its gardens and grounds and stonework and even a fountain!. "This, my boy," said Box haughtily as we humped our bags into the peaceful, wood panelled reception, "is no place for cunts like us." "Somebody fucked up," I whispered, in case the portraits on the walls might hear us. There could have been no other explanation. We would be doing our thing at a nearby County Show over the next two days, but usually we crashed in a local barracks, sometimes in tents. Never in this kind of posh hotel. I held my bag close as we gazed around the lobby and Gringo, our Staff Sergeant, checked us in. Bergans we called them, big rucksacks for humping all our kit when we were out being proper soldiers - camouflaged and worn, bulky and functional. Mine had carried rifle bullets, link for the gimpy, compo and wet wipes, medical kit and more medical kit, sleeping bag stinking of man and sweat and gunsmoke. Today, in a hotel so posh it made me silent, I kept it close, for I had in it, concealed within a top pocket, something sweeter. "Tired tonight, lads," I yawned, in the bar later on. God we were impressively well behaved. Gringo was most impressed with us, as well as looking like a nun in a brothel in case Robbo tried to eat one of the goldfish from the tank in the corner (liked hunting goldfish after some Guinness, did Robbo). Box was drinking a G & T delicately, with his little finger crooked. He'd already asked the barmaid if there were any cucumber sandwiches to be had. Carla, the only woman on the team, had unusually taken the trouble to wear lipstick. "Lightweight," said Box, but his heart wasn't in it. Everybody looked a little worn, like it really was tiring being genteel and doing Gringo and the Corps proud. Beyond that, the tension around the hidden bag in my bergan was beginning to make me prickle. No matter what I drunk, how many pork scratchings I chomped, I was tasting the dust and blood on the roadside strip in Iraq - bad sign. Flashbacks! Not tonight, please not tonight. I tried to stop myself rubbing the scars on my hand, the groove on my cheek - Box noticed, but didn't say anything. It was tough ground even for brothers to walk on "Good night," said the lady behind the desk as I hurried past to my room, number thirteen and unlucky for some no doubt. Iraq had taught me luck was more fickle than that. "Hope you have a good stay." "I will," I promised over my shoulder. She was smiling and beautiful, so much so that I stopped at the foot of the stairs like I'd been bewitched, looking at her behind the desk without a hair falling from her bun. I'd have swapped all my remaining years for just six months as her. "Something you need?" She arched her eyebrows. I shook my head. "This place," I waved a hand, trying to encompass it all. "It's amazing." My pulse rate was too high - anticipation? Most likely it was something it had taken some time for me to name, as though denial could draw its poison. "Thank you." Another gleaming smile. "Good night." "What a twat you are," I told myself, taking the stairs three at a time. I never stopped running until I closed my door and locked it. My own room! And what a room it was. Even the officers didn't get rooms like this - a four poster bed, a bath with lion's feet and a big, long mirror I was going to put to some use just as soon as I could get my clothes off. Where was my Bergan? I'd been shitting myself ever since I had concealed inside it that carrier bag and its precious contents. What if Box or one of the other lads on the team decided it was time to play emptying out Toots's kit in the back of the truck? It had never happened before, in case you're wondering, but that didn't mean somebody might think it would be a fucking good laugh. And what then, when those women's things tumbled out? I had no plan, no cover story that could possibly stand a moment's scrutiny. Busted - horribly. Nor had I had one if somebody had asked what I was doing in the womenswear section of the Tescos I drove many miles from our barracks to shop in. Jesus, I've been under fire, from insurgents and Americans, and wasn't as terrified then as I was at the prospect of having to explain myself to somebody in there. Even the friendliest, "Need any help?" or a, "Nice to see a bloke shopping for his girlfriend," or a perceptive, "I'll keep watch if you want to try any of those on," from a well meaning shop worker would have had me running and screaming from the store. What if one of the lads had picked up my bergan by mistake, or had come into my room by mistake and opened my bergan and found the carrier bag and looked inside. "Fucking hell, lads! You'll never guess what? Fucking Toots has got a fucking skirt in his fucking kit!" This is ridiculous. Blood thumping in my ears, hands cold and quivering, brain frozen - where did I leave my bergan? What if the cleaners nicked it. What the fuck was I thinking of, sneaking off to buy some women's clothes to wear in this hotel? Stupid stupid stupid. Taste the metal, Toots? And it all goes quiet. I'm laid face down in the dust and shit on the side of the road and all I can hear is the sound of my own blood roaring around my head. I should be in the back of the Rover, holding on while Zann hurls it around the potholes and fights steering that is shagged through being kerbed and bounced through craters too much. Too loud even to have a conversation with Macca opposite or Jonno in the passenger seat. Zann sings while she drives, but she sings like crows. Why am I on the floor eating dust and shit? IED got us - roadside bomb. "Honeymoon period's over lads," the Ops Officer had warned a couple of days before. "Politicians have ballsed the job up! We're not liberators anymore - occupiers now. Take care out there." I roll over. Leg hurts when I move. The Land Rover, on its side, looks like a half-built kit after a soldering iron attack. The engine has come out - it's smoking. Legs stick out from under side. Lowra boots, must be Macca - he liked them, wonder if they'll fit me. Still can't hear anything. Leg hurts. Some metal sticking out of my thigh. Ouch. Leave it in. Everything's dust colour, smoke and desert and... Bright foaming red! Zann's hanging out of the cab, her helmet's gone, burns across her face, hair spilling loose and the blood! Oh my god, look at it go - just how the medics said the femoral artery would in all the first-aid training I ever did. Her fingers are slippery and wet, tugging for the tourniquet in her kit. She's white and whimpering, staring at her life splashing the desert. I already have my tourniquet out, unfolding it, fighting it over her mangled knee, get the rags of her trousers out the way and start ratcheting it around her thigh, nice thighs she had: tighter tighter tighter tight. "Fuck, that hurts," she whimpers and faints against my shoulder. Never did find my finger to stick it back on (little finger of the right hand); didn't find the back of Jonno's head either and by the time they rolled the Land Rover carcass off Macca he was gone and sometimes when I get uber stressed I am thrown right back there. I'm almost hyperventilating now - fight it, Toots. There's the bergan, in the bottom of the wardrobe where you left it - knob. Touching it makes me calmer. There's the Tescos bag, just as I'd hidden it. Nobody has touched it, seen it, laughed at it. Only me. I check the door is still locked. Do I need a drink? The counsellors said no, but sometimes in the Army that's all you've got and when you get pissed and start laughing, or crying, it all goes away for a bit. I put on the kettle, a cup of tea always helps. That lovely, plastic, well-meaning counsellors ever suggested that I should try wearing women's clothes. But I'd only seen her once and had carefully chosen what to reveal to her so nobody knows that Lance Corporal Adrian Toots Ambridge is laying out an outfit on the bed in his hotel room because the poor, deluded twat thinks wearing a skirt will soothe all the shit going around in his head. And as I laid them out, as though preparing for a kit inspection, I described them as though they were military items that had been issued to me from stores by the squadron quartermaster: Blouse, pink, plain, long sleeved, size 16. Panties, French, satin and lace, black, size 12. Skirt, pencil, black, knee length, size 12. Bra, underwired, cream, lace trimmed, size 40C Stockings, hold-up, black, 10 denier, lace topped, size large. If anybody knocks on my door now I'll have to pretend I'm asleep - no cosy chat with Box tonight. The sizes are all based on the best guesses supported by covert internet research on sizing for a tall, broad shouldered, fit 23 year old deluded man. Laying them out on the clean hotel bed linen makes me feel ridiculous again. I almost throw them to the floor, with a cry of anger and frustration bottled in my neck, because these clothes aren't an answer to my problems. They don't even help me frame any of the questions. But the skirt has a satin lining, and a neat split up the back. I've admired scores of women wearing skirts like this, envied them, now's my chance to try one for myself. I can do that little (enormously difficult) something for me, can't I? First I make tea. Then I shower, as if I'm cleansing myself for some kind of spiritual ritual. Sip some tea, approach the bed slowly, watching the lined up garments. I go to the door, check it's still locked, lower the lights - mood lighting to camouflage what I'm about to do, even from my own eyes. First the panties, trying to do this in the right order, as though there was mandated method for women to dress - a drill like we had for nearly everything in the Army. First panties, so light I can hardly feel them, like my hands are so used to the trucks, fuel and equipment of my work that my senses can't reset to something as gossamer as lingerie. Like kisses up my legs, stretch the lace waistband over my hips, such as they are. I realise I'm holding my breath and let it go with a long sigh. I'm wearing a woman's knickers. Guilty? Stupid. At least they are mine, paid for and not lifted, sneakily, from Connie's things. Next the bra. Not that I anything to put in it, never would have either, but when I'd been in that Tesco store I'd seen this one on the rack, in the size I thought would fit my pumped chest, and the lace cups looked so pretty. Having never been much of a hairy man, the ginger hair on my head was startling enough without giving me a pelt of the same colour, I'd thought the cream bra might not look too bad against my freckled skin. When it's draped across my hands self-disgust bubbles. I should just bin the lot, that's what will happen on Sunday anyway. Can't take this woman's stuff back to barracks, imagine the Sergeant Major finding them during a block inspection. Maybe he'd just put them back, touch my shoulder gently - "You're not the only one, laddie," he might say, gentling his Glaswegian for the empathy, but I doubt it - the Army might have come a long way, but not that far. An ecstasy of fumbling - a line from Wilfred Owen about exhausted, Great War Tommies struggling with their gas masks, surprised by clouds of poison. Always liked Owen's poems, one of the first books anybody ever bought me - from a Social Worker, Miss Cooper, who wasn't so left wing that she couldn't appreciate my growing interest in the military. Did Wilfred Owen even have an ecstasy of fumbling with a bra strap of his own? Fumble, fumble. God, this was awkward. I could strip an SA80 rifle, blindfolded, and reassemble it in minutes, but an ordinary, Tesco's bra strap was getting the better of me. Jodie Carr had shown me how to get one undone, many years ago, but fastening one had never been my problem. My arms are aching by the time I finally get the hooks through the eyes and settle the straps over my shoulders. We squaddies often refer to lingerie as webbing, from the belt and shoulder rig that carries just the kit we need in combat, making casual of even the prettiest things. Now, instead of camouflage, my webbing is cream and lace. What a twat I must look. Blouse. Buttons on the wrong side. My fingers were never meant for this. The cotton is cool, slightly translucent so if I look hard enough I will be able to see the bra's straps. I could have picked a white or a blue blouse, they'd had a surprisingly good selection, but I chose pink - traditionally the most feminine of colours and one I have never worn before. They'd had floral too, navy blue with great, bold sprays of roses across it, but I hadn't been bold enough for that. All my determination had gone with the skirt and stockings - like being caught in a plain, pink blouse was going to be easier to explain than in a flowery one. Should have taken some kind of trouble with my fingers, I've bitten a couple of the nails today and they snag the fine nylon something terrible. I'm rubbish at this, the clumsiest, pulling my stockings before I've got chance to pull them on. Maybe next time I should go for 15 denier, ladder resistant or opaques. Maybe next time! Who am I kidding? There are dressing services though, I know because I Googled them in case I got braver. Ease the first one over my foot, line up the seam along my toes. Connie always wore tights, her skirts were so short, most women do I suppose, but this might be my only chance and stockings are so... so... sexy. Snag them some more as I ease the tops around my thigh. The nylon smooths the angular lines of my legs, good legs - carried me and a load of kit for lots of miles, the lace top disguises the angular, knobbled scar that chunk of smoking Land Rover left me with. That hiss when I smooth my nyloned legs together... Is there a better sound? Better than a can of chilled, good stuff being cracked on a scorching day after a long shift on the pan under the rotors seeing to the helicopter's needs. And the sensation! The nylon is a nerve ending amplifier, a sensation microscope. The caress of fingertips becomes sweeter, more intimate. Women wear stuff like this all the time, every day! How does it become casual? How can something so simply sensational become ordinary. I'll never know. They will always be magical for me, always special, never bland. The thought teases a smile, gone before it's seen; something exciting for me to hold onto - something I have from stockings that maybe a real woman won't. Why do skirts have back fastenings? Though it isn't as awkward as a bra strap. As I edge the zip higher - the waist is a little snug, though the skirt has plenty of room over the hips - I think if there is a knock at the door, that some overwhelming duty compels me to answer, I will need at least three minutes to get all this female stuff off, hide it, hoof it into the bog. The last thing I must do, before I open the door, is flush the loo. Oh! And put on a t shirt - in case my bra leaves a pressure mark. This covert cross-dressing is complicated. Take a step, Toots. Go on, move away from the bed. It's not like you're teetering on some impossible heels. Tescos didn't stock any kind of womanly shoe above a size 8. The skirt rustles, narrow and constraining around my legs that have never been bound by anything. Its lining is cool and stroked my super-sensitive legs as I take one step, then another - shorter than I'm used to. It feels like... I have to close my eyes as I take another step. It's wonderful. Simply wonderful When I look again I am standing before the mirror; full length, wooden, carved. Older than me I think. Don't look above the waist, don't look for the flat chest, look at the skirt, the black shaded legs bared from just below the knee and appearing, to my expert eye, strangely feminine. For all the running and football I do, I have surprisingly fine ankles. It's a nice feeling, to have feminine ankles - even by my own judgement. Even if everything else about me is awkward and bloke, I have good ankles. Bet they'd look good with heels. Even size nines. I raise myself on tip toes; girls do that when they try stuff on in the shops - you might have seen them do it. I used to watch Liselotte do that. I go onto tip toes, trying on my new outfit, imagining - like any woman - how my skirt will look with heels. Pretty good. I will look pretty good wearing high heels. Assuming I can find a pair, assuming I don't snap one of my fine ankles in them. "Who am you trying to fucking kid?" I mutter. There will be no heels, there will be no next time. You, my ugly, ginger friend, are a man. Time you stopped this pointless daydream and got on with it." Shit! Muted voices on the landing outside - Box and Paz on their way to bed - hopefully. All at once I'm quivering again, drop onto my flat feet, my fists ball, I twist to look at the door where all my fears are gathered. Ready for that dash to the bog if one of them knocks. My conscience almost has me stripping these lovely things away there and then, but I freeze with my fingers on the skirt's zip. It's 2200. The landing goes quiet. I can breathe again. Relax a little. My room is warm, the afternoon's sunshine still lingering in the stone. An hour. One hour like this, then I will go to sleep. One hour as a woman. Maybe another tomorrow, then It'll be back to barracks and I've had my fix and maybe it will help. Another glance in the mirror. The light is too poor to see clearly, but just for a moment the shape there seems to be more woman than man - the hips are rounder, the bust filled out, a shadow looks like a plait draped across my left shoulder and a tiny, rueful, wishful smile of regret lifts my lips. I wave to her, my female reflection. She waves back. "Hello," I murmur. I almost say, "hello, Toots," but the nickname dies in my mouth. A woman like that can't have such a casual, farty name. She should be bold, strong, feminine and beautiful. A name comes to mind - the toughest, most gorgeous, sexy, independent and inspirational female I ever met. She wouldn't mind if I named myself for her. "Hello, Connie," I whisper. My skirt moves like magic around me. I make more tea, Earl Grey this time. Never drunk it before, builder's tea my usual wet, but there's an Earl Grey in the hospitality tray by the kettle and its orange tang wafts around me as I set the mug beside the deep arm chair my room provides. I have to click on the table lamp so I can see enough to read, but before I open the paperback I curl my wonderfully smooth legs beneath me, tug the hem down a little and, absently making circles around my nylon-sleek ankle, I start to read. To wake some time later with a snore caught in my throat. Disorientation. Blinking. Scratching my scalp, combing hair away from my face. For a moment, then another, maybe a third, I don't know where I am. A darkened room, under the yellow glow from a warm table lamp. A hotel room. Shit, fell asleep in the armchair. The clock's red, digital figures claim it's almost two in the morning. All that big, wide four poster bed and you went for the armchair. Knob. Legs still curled beneath me. Knees ache. A man of twenty three should not have aching knees, maybe I run too much. My mouth aches after a vast yawn, I stretch my hands towards the ceiling until my back pops. Bed time. On my feet I sway a little, like a drunk. Surprised to look down and see a pink blouse. Is that a skirt? Yes it is, stockings too. Perhaps I should have bought a nightie from Tescos, if they even sell them. Would women's pyjamas have done? Usually I slept nude, a satin nightdress would be fun, I suppose. Mouth tastes foul. Need a pee. I know I must take off my lovely, female things. Time for man. Unzip the skirt, I need to push it down over my hips then it slips down my legs with a rustle and pools around my feet. Risk assessment time. The modern Army likes its risk assessments. What is the likelihood of anybody coming into my room before the phone alarm sounds at 0600 and I go for my morning run? Low. What is the likelihood of that unlikely person coming in looking in my wardrobe and finding my favourite skirt hanging properly on one of the proper skirt hangers in there? Low. If that person did come in before I got up and they found the skirt before I got chance to hide it, what is the potential for harm? High. High times Low makes a Medium risk. I can live with that, for tonight. I'm going to hang my skirt and blouse in the wardrobe as though | have every right to. Bending supply at the waist to pick up the skirt my peripheral vision is closed down by a heavy slither of some kind of curtain. Hair? Masses of the stuff. When I stand up straight some of it falls over my face and pulling it just causes stabbing scalp pain. My hair? It's the right colour, a bright copper that shines with health even in the mood lighting, and it's clearly stuck to my head. But last night I'd been cropped into a regulation coiffure. Hair cuts for me were always buzz types - clippers, no scissors - but this slippery, gleaming wig hasn't been cut for years and years. The skirt hangs almost forgotten from my fingers. I should hang it up, but I have just noticed something more fundamentally worrying than long, red hair. Tits. My blouse, which had been so slack around the chest, is now well filled in just the way its designer had intended. The filling is round, generous, but not big. The more I stare, the more I feel. Heavy is a good word. If I close my eyes and send my awareness down into my chest, past my suddenly racing heart, through my lungs - breathe deeper, Toots - and through the front ribs I can feel I have grown breasts. What a dream! Who would have thought that twenty five quids worth of girl's stuff could make you dream a dream like this? I can feel my breasts, round and full and gorgeous. Look, look at them. Stare if you like. Throw the skirt on the bed, I have boobs to feel. There, cup them, lift them - take their mass from the bra straps. I can feel my fingers through the bra cups! I can feel my very own tits through the blouse and bra! Give them a little squeeze. So firm, more resilient than Connie's had ever been, filling my hands better than Liselotte's lovely little ones ever did. More fumbling, buttons still on the wrong side. Hurry hurry hurry. Let the blouse fall, but don't look not yet. Savour the moment, the building electric anticipation. And... look! Oh my god. Is that bra filled now! Good job I bought one after all, girls with boobs like these shouldn't go without a bra. I can see the breasts rising up smoothly from my freckled chest along with a conspicuous lack of chest hair. The shadows enhance the cleavage, make it mysterious and inviting. I'm very conscious of the warmth between my breasts - MY BREASTS! Who would have thought I would ever be able to say that. I whisper it out loud, "My breasts." My voice is soft and high and tight in my throat, a woman's voice. What a dream, what a perfectly beautiful dream. My skin so soft and satin smooth. I push my hands down my flanks, eyes closed again. Waist flares, a sensual layer of womanly fat has taken away the angles of my old body. I sense the increased distance between my hands as they go further down, over the panties's waistband, over my hips to where they flow into thighs. I have to bend slightly until my fingertips brush stocking tops. Mouth slightly parted, breathing deeper and slower. Bring my hands up the front of my thighs, close them together and make a triangle between my thumbs and the extended tips of my index fingers. Inside the triangle is the satin lined, shallow dome of my pubic bone. Edging my fingers a little lower I smile with sublime satisfaction to find the first suggestion of a fold, a slit. I can feel curls through the satin, but I still can't bring myself to look in case the dream collapses and I wake to find I am nothing more than a gutted crossdresser. What must I look like as I push down the panties, feel them slip down my legs to rest atop my feet - they make a warm spot on the arch of my right foot. Make the triangle again, now those curls are intimate to my fingers and I stroke them, smiling smiling smiling. There's the head of my slit again, a nub amongst folds. A little, sharp intake of breath to brush a fingertip over that - your clitoris, Connie - then that fingertip engages with the slit, just a little resistance. Just below it I know my body opens, I can sense the opening - it's a vagina, stoopid - but I can also sense that I'm not quite ready for a fingertip there. My nipples are growing hard though. That sensation brings a laugh from me, because it's so amazingly wonderful - my nipples growing hard, my nipples! Pushing against the bra cups! Please don't let me wake just yet, let nothing disturb me, please. Not yet. I am loving this so much, better than any wanking fantasy, better than any of those stories I might have secretly read. My fingertip smells of woman. How much female arousal have I tasted? Never my own. I kiss it delicately, then extend the tip of my tongue. I shiver, the room is cool, my nipples ache, my skin is hot. Last time I looked in the mirror a man, awkward in a skirt looked back. I am beyond awkward and gangling now - I am made of curves, not angles, a dream of woman I can't take my eyes away from. Hair falls like silk, arms hang loose, every breath lifts my breasts, the lace tops of each stocking are pressed intimately together thanks to those sleek thighs. Perhaps this me is a little shorter, a little more slender across the shoulders. I have to push my chest forward as I reach to the small of my back, fiddle with the clasp and let my bosom free. Milk soft skin, more freckles and nipples round and pink and perfect. I am a sight in just black stockings and leave them on as my dream body reminds that I still need to pee. Wider hips roll, breasts sway, thighs whisper together. I must sit now, the toilet is cold against my superheated skin, there is more of me now between my pelvis and the seat than I am used to - more comfortable. My body knows what to do and I watch, fascinated, at the clear urine arc from my reformed body. I'm laughing again, a musical sound, at the sheer incredulity of sitting down to pee like a girl because I am compelled to sit down and pee like a girl because I am girl. Am I though? When will the dream stop? How will it feel when I have to wake to my rough, bloke body; when I sleepily reach for breasts and find only hair and pectorals, when my hand wanders to touch hello with my clitoris and finds only a hanging cock? I must dab myself dry with a couple of squares of bog-roll. Flush the loo, wash my hands and clean my teeth. (Another Army rule - look after your kit and it will look after you. I might have been brought up in care homes and foster homes, but I don't have a single filling.) The mirror over the sink reflects a woman - me, hi Connie. Some hair slips over the side of my face, tumbles over one eye, but I don't brush it aside - I love it. There is still a crooked scar on my smooth, never stroked by a razor cheek. It's like a badly crayoned question mark, without the dot, and came from the same Land Rover that made the marks on my thigh and whipped off my little finger. The question mark looks wrong on my woman's face, wrong but natural. Part of me and my life, the past that defines me too much. Macca would have fancied me like this, he always had a thing for redheads. Poor bastard. I blow myself a kiss, even with the scar I make a pretty cute woman. If you like freckles - I am proper covered in them. A vast yawn makes my jaw click. Am I dreaming about being ready for bed? Must be. Time to reluctantly roll down my stockings. My skin looks ghostly without them. Even with the lights off I feel every change, every bit of it and the cotton duvet settles over me like a breeze. Leave me now please. I've shared so much, but now I'm going to make love to myself and my first female orgasm, even if only dreamed, will be mine and mine alone. Morning comes. Tits and Hips. The dreamy bliss of last night is only a dream, but am I man dreaming as a woman? Have just woken from a vivid dream of living my life as male and am now stretching and yawning my way back into reality? If so, there are gaps in my memories. My body is alien and familiar, soft and hard to focus upon. I want to hide in bed, under the duvet until my shape returns. Until my cock grows back - though the thought of that returning makes me sick with supposed loss and regret. Duty makes a bugle call. Whoever, whatever, I am I remain some kind of soldier. I must get up, get dressed, get fell in. But I feel like a ghost, not sure if I am in the hotel or not. Dust and the metal tang of mine and another's blood coat my tongue, noises come from vast distances and the sight of my combat boots on the hotel's floral carpets leaves me dislocated and uneasy - am I leaving bloodied bootprints. Any moment this hotel will dissolve into a desert roadside and Zann's catastrophic bleed will get e back into myself - show me what is real. Man or woman? Something of both? A middle-aged couple, awaiting the lift, look curiously at me. What do they see? Girl or boy? I almost want to look over my shoulder to see if they might be smiling at somebody behind. "Morning," says the man. Now I squint over my shoulder, bite my lips. As far as I can tell nobody is there. Hair slithers before my left eye, I push it back brutally - like swatting at a wasp. "My old corps," he says, nodding to the bright, identification flashes at my upper sleeves. His and his wife are dressed for hiking, they hold hands. "Course, no women in it in my day. Progress, good to see." "Um, thanks," I mumble. voice feels tight, squeaky. Woman or man? If I've always been a woman, if I was only dreaming of being man, why can't I remember how to pin up the vast length of my hair? I'm incorrectly dressed with it down. (Female personnel with hair below the collar must wear it pinned up in a neat, balanced style - mine brushes my back below my bra strap.) "Can I help you?" a woman asks. Somehow I'm in reception. I don't remember the stairs. Over pressure in my head, about to burst - like Zann's Land Rover. The question rocks me, light on my feet - ready to bolt, take cover. Her tone is soft, welcoming, friendly. When I turn there is the lady I saw last thing last night. She stands in a doorway that might lead around to the staff side of the reception desk. She smiles - open, genuine. I swallow nervously. What does she see? Am I completely delusional? Do I think I am a woman when she sees only a man? I forget how to speak. Perhaps I am unsure about using my female voice. I squeeze my fists, feel the hair net, elastic and hairpins in one hand, the hair brush I carry in the other. I'd found them on the dressing table this morning, right after I'd washed and not needed a shave. When I'd unpacked yesterday I hadn't left any hair pins out. I hadn't owned a hairbrush. Nor the lipstick, or the panties (plain cotton knickers, not the eye catching pair) or the MoD 90, my Army ID card, with Connie Ambridge's name on it. The combat uniform I'm wearing is a smaller version of the one I've worn most days since I joined, but now my boots are just size 5 and they fit my feet perfectly. My world is not mine anymore. "Would you like some coffee?" she asks. So I take a deep breath. "I need a little..." Tears prickle my eyes so I squeeze them shut. Act fast, before Box or Gringo or Carla sees me. "Help," I whisper. She takes a step, then another, beautifully poised in her gleaming heels, but it looks like she moves in slow motion. "What's wrong?" My throat is closing, I drag at the air like I can't breathe. The hairbrush bumps my calf, but I don't know why I dropped it. Whisper, "I've forgotten how to put my hair up." What a stupid thing to say. She thinks so too, you see it in the little crease appearing between her brows. No real woman with hair like this would ever forget how to put it up so I'm not a woman, I just think I'm one - hallucinating. Oh god. "I'll show you," she says, bends smoothly at the knee to recover my hair brush. Her touch butterfly light on my bicep. "Come and sit down." She leads and I follow, mute. Is her smile mocking, condescending yet? "It's very beautiful hair, suits you so well. I can't imagine why you would want to wear it up, it should down, wild, fired by the sunlight." From a great distance I know tears running down my cheeks. Somebody cries out, is it me? My shoulders heave with great sobs, arms hang useless, a band tightens around my chest, hurting as I cry. Standing, crying. What's happened to me. Get a grip of yourself, Toots. But when I try to take that grip there isn't anything there - mist, mercury, ghosts, memories. Somehow I'm curled up in a deep, leather armchair, my boots on the cushion, knees tight to my chest and held there by my arms aching with effort. Nose full of snot, I sniffle at it miserably, keep my eyes tight shut - ashamed. There are a couple of people close by, they murmur and I can't tell what they say, but they must be exchanging opinions about me, my weakness. "I'm okay." Take a big sniff. Wipe the tears away on the back of my hands, push hair behind my ears. "Just give me a minute." A hand touches my shoulder. "No rush, Toots. Take your time." Her voice is lilting Welsh, it's Carla - the only woman on the team, (the other woman on the team?) She's a chunky, dark haired lass from Cardiff - hasn't been with us very long. I don't think much of her, but when I broke down it's her they fetched. A weight on the chair arm beside me makes it creak. Fingers brush my hair. "Is Toots really your name?" That's the woman from the hotel, who offered to help me with my hair. "Everybody calls her that," says Carla. Her surprise is clear in her inflections. "I don't even know what her real name is. How rubbish of me." Her? "Would you mind going to the kitchen and asking them for a pot of tea, for three, please?" says the hotel woman. "Sure, no problem," says Carla. Pleased to get away from me? Box is my best friend. If I wanted anybody in here with me, it should be him. Though he'd be squirming and uncomfortable around real emotion. "I'm sorry," I mumble. "Don't know what came over me." "Shush," she admonishes gently. "My name's Hazel. It's my hotel. I'm always here to help my guests." "I'm fine." The lie tastes so foul it brings more tears and I push my face into my knees, squashing impossible breasts. I'm shit. Too shit to have beautiful hair. "I have PTSD," I whisper to my legs, my breasts, my woman's body. An apology? I've never said those words before, though the counsellor wanted me to. PTSD is for above and beyond, courage under fire - I refuelled helicopters in the desert. And remembered enough of my med training to scrabble two tourniquets onto Zann's mangled leg. Which they saved. Amazing medics. "But they couldn't have saved her leg if you hadn't stopped the bleeding," Hazel says. She pours tea. I didn't hear Carla come back with it, didn't realise I'd spoken about that Land Rover. "We ask a lot of people like you." Hazel strokes my hair for a few minutes before I feel her reach away for something. A moment later she strokes my hair again, but this time with the brush. It makes a smooth, silken noise as it passes through. Having your hair brushed is actually very pleasant and it's easy to blank everything else but the swish and the, long, slow pull along my hair. The way I'm hunched makes it awkward, she can't reach where I'm crumpled onto most of it. I uncoil slightly, eyes closed still, lift my shoulders and back so her gentle strokes can cover all my tresses. Centre all my awareness on the pressure, the massage on my scalp, match my breathing to her rhythm. The tension runs down into the chair. I find I'm crying again, tears drip into my combat jacket, but Hazel doesn't stop brushing so I let the tears run silently out of me. Phones ring, people talk, pots clatter, but it all seems a long long way away and doesn't concern me. I taste hot tea, smell delicate perfume; feel her fingers moving deftly around my scalp and when she finally says, "there," I can reach up to find a solid bun at the back of my head where it won't upset the line of my beret. All that hair has been caught and tamed and netted and pinned. "You look like a soldier," she says. "Don't feel like one." She puts a mirror into my hands, it's a moment before I look. My eyes are red rounded, pink where they should be white. My skin is blotched, a tear still caught in that scar. With my hair drawn back severely into the bun I look a little like I did yesterday, still Toots Ambridge, but different. Her. "What does being a soldier fell like?" she wonders. Five years in uniform and what does it feel like? What does it mean in this age of unpopular wars and such an awareness of self to give yourself up to the Army? "Pride. Belonging. Capable. Sarcastic." "Nothing's changed." I snort. "Everything." Her fingers are cool when she lifts my chin and very very gently makes me meet her eyes. Is this what having a mother feels like? "You are what you were, only now nobody needs to be deceived. Do you understand?" She knows. Hazel knows that I was a man yesterday. Where people who- should-know see only Her, Hazel sees me. Like she's seen through me. Letting go of my chin she steps back, crisp, immaculate - warm. Glancing down, my shape is all but hidden beneath my baggy, asexual smock. Skirt and lace and nylon is a world away. But the potential, think of that: the dresses, shoes, hair, the make-up, the nails, jewellery - everything I have ever dreamed of, envied, longed for - the Her. I can have it all. But- "I don't know how to do this." Hazel takes the mirror from me, places it on her desk. "I can teach you." "Is it real?" "Yes." "Forever?" "Yes." Take a deep breath - I'm not very well, I have a problem, but I have spoken it. I'm a woman, I'm a soldier, I'm hurting, I'm strong - let the breath go. "My name's Connie." A Selection of My Firsts - 1)First time Box saw me after I became me: Arm around my shoulder, wary glance at the rest of the team waiting in the trucks outside the hotel so we could get off to that County Show. "Fuck me, Toots! Didn't know, so sorry, mate. Should have been there, mate. Never saw it coming. Sorry. You good?" "You smooth bastard," I said. I couldn't really say much more, my throat was closing up again. As much I hated that, because they would just see some weepy girl, I was comforted, in a mouse-like way, to be feeling something. 2)First stupid question from a bloke: Directed to me and Carla by a pompous local-radio journalist at the above County Show. Hack: What's it's like being a woman in the army, girls? Carla: Just like being a bloke only we sit for a piss. Connie: I'm not your best source on this matter, I was a bloke myself until yesterday. While he walked away muttering we high-fived each other. 3)First kiss (as a woman): Box. Sorry if that's predictable. We were a bit drunk, on the grass under a tree in a dark corner of the airfield. After the kiss turned into a snog, after he put his hand up my hoodie, and became the first bloke to touch one of my boobs, I started giggling. Without the boob it might have been some stupid drunken prank we'd have done in the first few months after we met and, as much I didn't want it to, one of those stupid drunken pranks came to mind and the giggles followed. Box stiffened up then, no euphemism intended, so it was also the first time I bruised the fragile male ego. It was only awkward for a couple of heartbeats though, we were giggling together after that. "That was a shit idea," Box said a few minutes later. We sat on the grass, back to back. "It so was." But I reached round and squeezed his hand. Being female meant I could do stuff like that. "You'd only have laughed at my cock anyway." That was the last time I had any beer. Told the team I was pregnant - the looks on their faces! 4)First date (with a man): BMW bloke I met at a gym class in the town near our barracks. His name was... let's just stick with BMW Bloke, in case you think I'm too shallow to remember names. It was almost six months After Her and summing up my sexual orientation would needs words like; not sure, or, experimental. BMW Bloke was very easy on the eyes, very smiley, attentive without being cheesy and funny. Didn't seem to mind I was a squaddie either. He took me, in his immaculately turned out silver, sporty BMW that he drove way too fast - hoping I'd be impressed and fluttering my eyelashes, or shit-scared - to a nice restaurant. I wore my first dress - black, knee length, fitted, low neckline. (I have not yet got tired of how lovely a skirt, long or short, feels around my legs.) Hazel, my Zen- Master in womanhood, had not yet judged me sufficiently expert/graceful/casual/safe in high heels and I wore glittery black ballet flats with very expensive tights. A social worker once said to me, "You can always judge somebody by the way they treat waitresses and cleaners." BMW Bloke was a complete twat. Having ridden in his car, eaten with him, laughed dutifully at some of his jokes, he'd assumed I'd be chuffed when he put his hand on my leg, fingers under hem, and pulled into what folk might once have referred to as a, "lovers" lane." "Do you need a piss?" I'd wondered, carefully removing his hand - wondering how I was going to let him down gently. "You know what I need, babe," he said seductively, returning to my thigh. "You do too, I know you do." Suddenly, horribly, I knew that I had once been the one with a semi-on tenting my trousers, cornering some girl I didn't care for because I knew what I needed and wanted her to help me out with it. Do you know, for a moment (which I have always hated myself for) I almost let him - just because of the way I'd been once. Instead I took his hand and put it on his own thigh. "Not tonight. Wrong time of the month." Arm around my shoulders, leaned in for the kiss, took the hand I had moved his hand with (are you following this) and tried to put it on his knob. "Come on, baby-doll," he whispered persuasively in my ear. "You have such a sexy mouth." Which he then tried to kiss. 5)First blow job (giving): Only kidding. It took a while, and some robust, squaddie feedback, but BMW Bloke drove me back to camp, dropped me at the main gate and drove away in a squeal of rubber and wounded pride. "Good night, Toots?" said the gate guard, leaning out from his little hut and grinning. "Pint and a fight, Mac," I said strolling past, twirling my little handbag and smiling. "The Great British night out." 6)First Time I Went to Combat Stress. The Regimental MO (Doctor, Army GP if you like) referred me when I went to see him and had a little cry. The woman I met a week or so later was lovely. I haven't had a flashback for a year now, the nightmares still come, and may always haunt me, but relatively infrequently and never with the taste. 7)First time out in High Heels. Probably a defining moment in many women's lives. After signing me off on wearing of precarious heels, intricate hair braiding and precision eye lining, Hazel and her husband took me out for dinner in a quiet pub down the road from the hotel. It was something of a driving test - 4" heels versus gravel car park, narrow steps, wooden floors and a little bit of lawn - which I passed with dignity. What an amazing feeling to be wearing heels with confidence, to walk into a room with the click click click of my womanhood confidently announcing my arrival. I won't have my gender defined by pretty things or elegant shoes, but after a day in combat kit I can't wait to put on a skirt. I am happily the skirtiest woman in my regiment. And I still go back to Hazel's, when she's busy or short staffed, to play barmaid or waitress. 8)First time I kissed a girl (After). Told you I was categorised as sexual orientation "not sure," didn't I? This kiss was with Zann, remember her? The Land Rover? Catastrophic femoral bleed? I bumped into her during a promotion course at our depot. She was on a pilot's course, hoping to fly Apache. "This chick saved my life!" she crowed in the NAAFI after we'd had a big hug. Later we had another hug, we cried together over Macca and Jonno, then we started kissing and then... Mind your own business. 9)First time I marched in a Freedom of Andover Parade, with drums playing and bayonets fixed. Why oh why does the Army make us parade with rifles and bayonets in bloody skirts! 10)First Date with a bloke I actually enjoyed. His name is Gary and I met him on a crowded train when it jerked over some points or something and I accidentally trod a stiletto heel into his foot. Fortunately Gary is not the kind of man who enjoys having stiletto heels trodden on him. He is a surprisingly gentle agricultural engineer, muscular, quietly funny, steady and uncomplicated - the perfect counterpart for me. Our first date was in a Costa Coffee shop, near the railway station where I heeled him, where I bought him a latte and some flapjack. I like him so much I let Box meet him. Box likes him enough that he's offered to give me away if I'm able to persuade Gary marry me. 11)First Time Out as a Bride. He said YES! Watch this space.