The Soldier From The Mirror Part 1 free porn video

The Soldier from the Mirror. By Tanya H. 1.Reflections on Being Girly. A knock at my door. Before I can offer an invitation Box is inside, shutting us both in and wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell. We named him Box for the shape of his head - beyond that he's Scottish, powerful and short. My best friend. "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. Manspreading. "Preparing from the zombie apocalypse," I murmur absently, concentrating on keeping the nail polish from my skin. I might not feel so nervous if it was something as routine as hordes of the undead. "Stinks, that shit." I start another toenail, enjoying the polish's cool lick. "I'm going to do it. This evening." "Still reckon I could have him," he says, looking at the prominent portrait on my desk. "Don't care how big he is. One punch." "Knobber." Box watches me for a few moments. Then he picks up a dangly earring and shakes it so the beads click. I'm focussed on my toenail, easing the lilac polish up to its 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 - a cosy en-suite. His won't have any make-up on the desk though, no uniform skirt beside his combat kit in the locker, or brand-new stilettos toppled beside the bed, or a swirly dress draped over the back of the chair ready for this evening. "All this girly shit. You were never girly before," he says staring openly at my legs. Fresh from the shower after work, I'm only wearing panties and a squadron t-shirt over a bra. Neither of us are bothered; he's seen my bits, before and after. "I'm on heat," I say, affecting a sultry tone - not easy with my Merseyside accent. Parting my knees slightly I lick my lips slowly, "Wanna breed?" "Fuck a ginger Scouser! No thanks, not while there are dogs loose on the streets!" "I'd only laugh at your cock anyway." "The list of women who have laughed at my tackle is long and distinguished." Our shared laughter fills the room. Then his smile fades. Truth is coming, I see it from the set of his mouth and the fix of his eyes on mine. "Sometimes, don't take this the wrong way, but if I'm not thinking, not concentrating, I feel like you're a bloke." "Even though you groped my boobs?" "Caress, Elizabeth, it was a caress - and only of one of them." "Just one of the lads?" "Sometimes... I wish it was like before..." "Before what?" He shrugs, off balance - I read him better than anybody else I know. "Fuck knows." Poor Box, all his memories of me, us, our time together have been overwritten and I guess it rubs, deep down where he can't get. Back then, before, there was certainly no girly shit. Had Box walked in on me varnishing my nails then... Jesus, that would have been a tough one for our friendship to laugh off. Even then, I may always have been painting them - in my head where nobody else could see. Where even I wouldn't see? Had I been over-compensating with man-stuff? All those punch-ups, nightclubs and women!? If only I had realised. I know now, I'm certain of it - I've always been a girl. I smile for him, push hair away from my face as I straiten from my toes, offering my nail polish bottle. "Want me to do yours?" "Do I look like a fucking Royal Marine?" He grins, stands, makes for the door. "You walk like one." He shows me a finger. "Cal?" That stops him with his hand on the door handle. "Elizabeth?" The approved reply to the signal I just sent. He sits beside me on the bed, close enough that our hips almost touch. I know the depth of his kisses, though we only tried once and that was some time ago. "I've got nobody else." I look at the floor - even after all this time, my childhood isn't much to look back on. I've had better Christmases with Box and his family in Perth than I ever did before I met him. "Who else do you need? You got me and the big dude." "If he says yes-" "I'll definitely knock the big fucker out if he turns you down!" "If he says yes, will you walk me down the aisle?" "Give you away?" "Nobody owns me, you Scotch misogynist." "You make it sound like a bad thing. Course I will. He squeezes my leg, briefly, intimately. "You'll have to be my best man though." "Love to." I pointed between my legs. "No cock." He frowns again, momentarily - just a flicker of uncertainty, gone before anybody else could have noticed. Has he just had a flash of memory when I was Ady, not Lizzie? "Detail. Jesus, if I can't have my best mate as my Best Man what the fuck are we fighting for? Anyway, you should have been a bloke." He reaches to tweak the dress over my chair. "All this shit, it's not you. Stop being a girl." "When did you start being a girl, Lizzie? I ask the room when he's gone. Bloody hell, Box - I'm supposed to be revving up for a big night - the biggest - not worrying about me and him. 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 fold it into a drawer. 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. I push my boobs forwards, scoop my hair and raise it in my hands, like a glamour model - though I'm not attractive enough for that. You can sum up my looks with words like; ordinary, ginger, tall, lean and freckled (those little bastards swarm all over me). Even so, I'm all woman with boobs, waist and hips all in the right proportions and nothing masculine, beyond my choice of soldiering as a profession. Once may nails are dry I dress quickly - I might be a bit early at the pub where we're arranging to meet, but I'm too uptight about the whole "asking" thing to sit around waiting. Maybe my new dress is a bit much, should I go for jeans and a t shirt? No, it's a big deal - worth dressing up for. Maybe the dress is too short - mid thigh. But he loves my legs and I quite like having them out. Careful of my toes, I pull on smooth, black hold-ups, step into the dress and wriggle the zip all the way up the back. With my new heels on, leaving my hair down my back, I add a quick smear of lip gloss and I'm ready. Looking good. Better than good It feels so wonderfully casual - just slip on a dress, touch of lipstick, show off my new heels. The freedom to be, well - me, is sometimes intoxicating, but it wasn't always like this. That first time, trembling in the kind of fear I hadn't felt since I'd been a kid, with one of Liz's satin nighties held in my shaking hands as I balanced desperation against fear. Glancing at the door, listening for the creak of her steps on the ancient stairs of her pub, then shrugging on the garment, trying not to get tangled in the spaghetti straps. That was the first time I ever cross-dressed, and I need to explain about that before I get to the big moment and my final cross-dressing experience. 2.Liz McWatt, her pub and her clothes. After awhile, with maturity maybe, the thin covering of denial wears through and you start to see what you really are and more importantly what you really aren't. In the couple of years leading up to Liz McWatt's nightie I started hating myself. I'd been a soldier for those two years and before that, since I was thirteen and the care home social workers finally gave in and allowed it, I'd been an Army Cadet. I'd been pissed on the idea of getting into uniform and putting Liverpool and my shit upbringing behind me so I was a good cadet, excelling at all the good, military stuff the cadets get immersed in and not too bad at some of the softer stuff either. They had high hopes for me. I needed girl's company back then, even though I massively misinterpreted my need as sex. It was a social worker, Miss Cooper, who first cracked my gender certainty - not only because she was the only one who ever thought about what I actually wanted rather than what they thought I should want, but because the night I left the care system to join the Army she showed me the difference between a girl and a woman. Beyond merely seducing me, she made sure that I did to her what she wanted, rather than what I needed or assumed she'd like. She had quite big breasts, and had been particularly keen that I do them justice. In fact, she had an orgasm just through keeping me intent on them and later, when we were both recovering, I lay there and wondered about what she had just experienced Once you break the seal on that line of thought, there's no going back. What did it feel like for the beautifully buxom Miss Cooper to have such sensitive breasts she could cum from them alone? It's one thing fantasising about sex with Scarlett Johannsen, but something else to find yourself energetically making a fuss of yourself while imagining you are her. And once you have enjoyed those kind of fantasies you can't stop your mind taking you to them because that's where the bloody thing wants to go. It doesn't stop there, though; no matter how much you try to tell yourself you're all bloke. Open your eyes, look around you - we're bombarded with messages about womanhood; on the TV adverts at Christmas it's all perfume and make-up, springtime is smooth legs and sunblush tans, summer for must-have clothes. And the more you start thinking like that, the more you start to wonder what it would be like to suck a cock, or let a bloke fuck you, or to grow tits, a pussy; to wear high- heels, skirts, earrings, make-up, ponytails, tampons; the whole female nine yards. Even in the supposedly austere, masculine Army you can't get away from it. The Army is almost all coed now - you share barracks, laundry facilities, everything, with female soldiers. You go to the squadron washing machine and empty out a load of knickers and bras before putting in your kit and you can't help but wish you had the kind of body that would suit such things. Then when the frustrated envy of all the women around gets too much, when the self-hatred boils up... Well - all the fights and all the fucking in all the alley ways, bars, nightclubs and shitholes the Army sends you won't ever take it away. You just hate yourself some more All of a sudden, after being dropped off at the main gate by the local plod with blacked eyes or cut knuckles, when I'd been marched in front of the Major to face a brawling charge one too many times, my glittering career is starting to look a bit shit. Another pressure to my particular circumstances in the modern Army is it's trendy, relaxed policy on homosexuality. You can be a gay soldier now and it's okay. Mostly it had gone on in quiet before, for lads and lasses, but now nobody's going to get locked up and booted out for it. Being gay is now alright, and that's an order. But I wasn't gay - I hated myself because I was actually a woman and part of my chaotic struggle against myself was a fantasy about discovering what sex with a man would be like. The thought of experiencing another man's cock fascinated and repulsed me equally. Al Deere was the first lad to come out in our regiment, a couple of girls got the prize for being first same-sex couple, but Al beat the trail for gay men. I knew him from training, we'd supped some beer together and I thought he was a good lad. Then he was gay, by his own admission. Was he still a good lad? He wasn't bad looking, in a conventional way making me proper confused, by him and me. One night me and Al Deere got pissed together and what I was kind of hoping might happen, happened as we walked back from the pub - he kissed me and I kissed him back; a full-on snog. He put his arms around me and everything. For about ten seconds until I pushed him away with a roar of "For fuck's sake!" In the moonlight I saw how he'd gone instantly from hard-on excited to shit-yourself scared. I felt my hands squeeze into punching fists and my teeth were bared. He held his hands up, backed up a few paces, then turned and ran. Like that would do any good, I could have run him down and kicked in his fucking head before he'd gone fifty metres, but I just squatted down on the side of the road and held my head against my knees until I knew he was long gone. "I'm a cunt," I said to him, next day. "Can I be honest with you?" he said. I nodded. "You've got some fucking issues to work through, mate." Classic, British understatement. Issues? You'd better believe it? But who was I going to take them to? The Army? Fuck off! I'd drink and fight and fuck my way through them. When did I start being girly? Letting one of Liz McWatt's satin nighties fall down over my body was the first time I actually acted on the need to be the woman. Liz ran a 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 Liz 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 guilty smile from the hem brushing my thighs. Then wrenched the nightie away at some imagined creak from the stairs beyond Liz's bedroom, like she was coming up and not pulling the first pints 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. Liz was older than me, divorced and no-nonsense. Her pub was an establishment of two halves; a nice restaurant, where you could get posh food on square plates cooked up by a toffee nosed Londoner and a snug bar, where the red-faced farm boys from the village could have pint of real ale while they moaned about how shit it was being a farmer. "You're all dirty bastards," she'd said one evening - she knew men well. 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, but it wasn't sex she was referring; she was getting dressed for another evening serving blokes in her pub. I envied her and 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 - but one night I lied about being tired, though we had been on exercise, and while she was busy behind the bar, I stayed in her room and made myself as much like her as I could. It was 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 self-hatred. If Liz 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 eased the slow realisation of what I was and what I wasn't. More importantly, wearing her clothes drew the poison - for a while at least 3.Furtive Shopping at Tescos. After Liz took me to her bed and after I took to her nightie and her skirts and tights and panties, I changed. 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 Aynho should. Perhaps I'd have wept. But crossdressing calmed me, it really did, and my mates thought I'd turned soft. Were they right? I still had a beer or two, 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 fights after that. When I was posted to Germany and said goodbye to Liz, I didn't go back to casual fucking. I found myself a German girlfriend - Liselotte. Gorgeous, blonde, teutonic, she was not the woman Liz had been, but I was completely true to her. Toots has gone soft, they said. We'll see him holding hands with some homo from the Air Force next. Too late, lads - I've already snogged Al Deere! (didn't actually say that aloud.) Toots! Even my nickname is really female - remember Toots? The tomboy from the Beano comic's Bash Street Kids? Though I'm named Toots because I can 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 with a grin on her face. Slowing the drinking, settling down and being the professional soldier got me promoted, so that was positive, wasn't it? I got 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, though I never took the opportunity to wear Liselotte's clothes. While my muckers might be commenting on breast size or long legs I'd be thinking 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, be the bloke, the soldier - ache and regret. After a couple of tours in Iraq, one bad and the other horrible horrible horrible, I'm back to the UK and based on my record, reaffirmed military prowess and lack of brawling I'm posted to our depot regiment and attached to The Corps Engagement and Recruiting Team. Superficially this means tailored kit, upmarket vehicles and posing for the impressionable public around the country. It also means that I, the 23 year old, 6 year veteran, ginger Scouser from the care system am a poster-boy for the Army in general and my Corps in particular. Best of all, Box is on the team too! We'd been separated when I was posted to Germany. Box must have found a Liz of his own to settle him down, or I'd been a bad influence, for he had already made Corporal. Amazing to be with him again. Chest pumping, high fiving, big grins. 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.) Then 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 roll up to that stately home in its gardens and grounds and stonework and even a fountain!. "This, my boy," says Box haughtily as we hump our bags into the peaceful, wood panelled reception, "is no place for cunts like us." "Somebody fucked up," I whisper, in case the portraits on the walls might hear us. There could be no other explanation. We'd be doing our thing at a nearby County Show over the next two days, but usually crashed in a local barracks, sometimes in tents. Never in this kind of place. While Gringo, our Staff Sergeant, books us in, I hold my bag close, keeping it away from the others: Bergans we call them, big rucksacks for humping all our kit when we're out being proper soldiers - camouflaged and worn, bulky and functional. Mine has 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 makes me silent, I keep it close, for inside, concealed within a top pocket, is something much sweeter. "Tired tonight, lads," I yawn, in the bar later on. God, we're well behaved. Gringo is most impressed with us; Box drinks a G & T delicately, with his little finger crooked - having already asked the barmaid if there are any cucumber sandwiches to be had - while Carla, the only woman on the team, has unusually taken the trouble to wear lipstick. "Lightweight," says Box, but his heart isn't in it. Everybody looks a little worn, like it really is tiring being civilised. Beyond that, the tension around the hidden bag in my bergan is prickling me. No matter what I drink, how many pork scratchings I chomp, I'm tasting dust and blood from that roadside strip in Iraq - bad shit. Flashbacks! Not tonight, please not tonight. I try to stop rubbing the scars on my hand, the groove across my cheek. Box notices; doesn't say anything. It's tough ground even for him to walk near. "Hello," says the lady behind the desk as I hurry to my room, number thirteen and undoubtedly unlucky for some. Iraq had taught me luck was more fickle than that. "Hope you have a good night." "I will," I promise over my shoulder. She's smiling and beautiful, so much so that I stop, bewitched, at the foot of the stairs. I'd have swapped all my remaining years for just six months as her. "Something you need?" She arches her eyebrows and smiles some more. I shake my head, conflicted by the desire to stay and talk with her and the need to get to my room. "This place," I wave a hand, trying to encompass it all. "It's amazing." My pulse rate bounds - anticipation? Most likely it's something I'd refused to name, as though denial could contain its poison. "Thank you." Another gleaming smile. "Good night." "What a twat you are," I groan, taking stairs three at a time. I never stop running until I lock my door behind me. My own room! And what a room it is. Even officers didn't get rooms like this - a four poster bed, a bath with lion's feet and a big, long mirror I'm going to put to some use just as soon as I get changed. Where is my Bergan? I've been shitting myself ever since I'd concealed inside it that carrier bag and its precious contents. What if Box or one of the other lads on the team had decided it was time to play emptying out Toots's kit in the truck? It's never happened before, in case you're wondering, but that didn't mean somebody might think it a right good laugh. And what then, when my women's clothes tumbled out? There was no plan, no cover story that could possibly have stood a moment's scrutiny. Busted - horribly. Nor had I planned a response 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 that wasn't as terrifying as the prospect of having to explain myself to somebody 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 from the store. What if one of the lads had picked up my bergan by mistake, or had blunderd into my room and looked in that carrier bag. "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? Bad sign. I haven't had a flashback for seven months, the nightmares crowd more regularly, but the iron puke taste fills my mouth when it's coming. Squeeze the fists until it hurts. Not now not now not now not now. I'm almost hyperventilating - fight it, Toots. Look, there's the bergan, in the bottom of the wardrobe where you left it - knob. Touching it calms me. There's the Tescos bag, just as I'd hidden it. Nobody has touched it, seen it, laughed at it. I check the door is still locked. Do I need a drink? The counsellors would say no, if I thought any of them would do any good, 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. Would those lovely, plastic, well-meaning counsellors ever have suggested that I should try wearing women's clothes? Fuck that. Nobody knows that Lance Corporal Adrian Toots Aynho 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, satin lined, 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 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 have for nearly everything in the Army. Panties so light I can hardly feel them, like my hands are too moulded to the trucks, fuel and equipment of my work that my senses can't reset to gossamer 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 Liz'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. 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. An ecstasy of fumbling - a line from Wilfred Owen about exhausted, Great War Tommies struggling with their gas masks when surprised by clouds of poison. Always liked Owen's poems, one of the first books anybody ever bought me - a gift from Miss Cooper - my favourite social worker. Did Wilfred Owen even have an ecstasy of fumbling with a bra strap of his own? Fumble, fumble. God, this is awkward. I can strip an SA80 rifle, blindfolded, and reassemble it in minutes, but an ordinary, Tesco's bra strap got 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 ache 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. They'd had floral too, navy blue with gaudy 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 draw 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. Liz always wore tights, her skirts were so short, and most women do I suppose, but this might be my only chance and stockings are so feminine. 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 a smouldering chunk of Land Rover left me with. That hiss when I smooth my nyloned legs together... Is there a better sound? 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 I find the waist is a little snug, though the skirt has plenty of room over the hips. If there is a knock at the door, that some overwhelming duty compels me to answer, I will need at least three minutes to tear off this female stuff, 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. Covert crossdressing 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 strokes 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. 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 Robbo on their way to bed - hopefully. All at once I'm quivering again, drop onto my flat feet, my fists ball, I twist to stare through the door where all my fears gather. Poised for that dash to the bog if one of them knocks. Guilt, disgust 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. It must be a trick of the light, contorting my own fantasy into a reflection looking more female than I deserve to be. Imagine having those breasts, rolling round hips, sleek legs. I must be tireder than I thought, the beer I'd supped muddling me, but 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, Elizabeth," 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. Its orange tang wafts around me as I set the mug beside the deep arm chair. Before I open the paperback I curl my wonderfully smooth legs beneath me, tug the hem a little and, absently making circles around my nylon-sleek ankle, I start to read. At some point I have to admit no more and go to bed, after all - as much as it's lovely to be sitting here playing a woman of leisure I have a run, breakfast and work tomorrow morning. If I don't get sorted I won't be fit for any of them. So I brush my fingers regretfully over the skirt, hanging so innocently next to my uniform. One more night and I'll have to bin it, seems like a waste. Maybe I can take it to a charity shop. 4.Lights out. Only it's not over. Time to dream, of skirts and curves and smooth, of silken hair and graceful legs and swaying breasts. I'm a woman, walking along a woodland path, sunshine slanting through the leaves and dappling the ground. A summer dress flows around my legs, my hair catches the breeze and lifts around my face. I walk with no particular purpose, content with my own company. Until I find a rough track and a faint whiff of diesel smoke intrudes. Off to my right the sits boxy intrusion of that sandy painted Land Rover, engine ticking over with a dry rattle. Fear squeezes my bladder. Zanna waves cheerily from the cab. "C'mon, Toots. We'll be fucking late." Banging, rattling, thumping. Bouncing out of my seat in the back of her Land Rover, bumped amongst the radios and kit and water and Macca. It's so baking hot, stifling. Sun blasts through the dirty windows so fiercely it's one stinging slap after another. Dust and debris jump from the floor at every bounce. Zanna sings as she drives, but she sounds like crows and a big ball of something-awful's-going-to-happen roils heavy in my gut. Macca leans across to yell something, I can hardly hear him, shake my head - speak up! He gestures to my legs. Look down, freeze in horror! Skirt tight around my legs. How am I wearing a pencil skirt in the back of a Land Rover that's about to blown to shit. And stockings. Black ones. I see my toes clearly through the thicker material around them. Dust sprinkles the nylon, one of them has a slight tear and my skin gleams white through it. Wake with a shout, pain tears through my scalp as I try to sit. Hair's length pinned under my arm. Lurching away I fall from the bed to a bang so loud you can't hear it. Everything's wrong. Shit shit shit shit shit. What am I? Scream caught in my throat. My mouth tastes of metal and I'm laid in the dust and shit on the side of the road deafened from my own blood roaring around my head. I should be hanging on in the back of the Rover. Why am I on the floor eating dirt and sand? "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." Roll over. Left leg screams with the movement. Metal chunk, with scorched sand paint, sticks from me. Blood wells around it. Fuck. Metal's hot when I reach to shift it, left hand misshapen - little finger swinging from a strip of skin. Bone white in the blood. Fuck. Land Rover, on its side, twisted, burst. Smoke hangs. Ears numb. Macca's arm droops from the back door. All dust colour, smoke and desert and... Bright foaming red! Zanna falls from the cab, helmet gone, burns across her face, singed hair spilling loose and the blood! Oh my god, look at it go - just how the medics said the femoral artery would. Her slippery wet fingers scrabble for a tourniquet. White and singed and whimpering, she stares at her life hosing the desert. Can't remember how I get there, leg's fucking killing me, but I have my tourniquet out - where have I been carrying a tourniquet in that skirt? Trousers now, dirty mucky torn combats of the pattern we used to wear in the desert. Forget that, see the blood, Zanna's bright blood. Dangling finger gets in the way while unfolding the tourniquet - fuck it, pull it off. Don't need it now. Fight that tourniquet around her mangled thigh, yank her trouser rags away and start winding it, nice thighs she had: tighter tighter tighter tight. "Fuck, that hurts," she whimpers and faints against my shoulder. Jonno has the vehicle battery blown into his abdomen. Fucked. Macca's face is staved in on one side, poor fucker. Drag him out, sort his airway, lay him on the roadside in a recovery position and keep talking to the poor bastard until I sit numb in the back of a helicopter watching the medics do everything they knew until the he was hanging with leads and tubes and dead. "Okay?" asks a medic, bandaging my leg. "Fine." "Okay?" asks my Sergeant visiting me in the field hospital. "Fine, Sarge." Always fucking fine. Stumble to the toilet, mind ringing with aftershocks and spastic flashes of dead faces, retching hopelessly as all the hair in the world gets in the way. Tits bump the cold toilet rim and I sob at the contact. Where are they from? Always had them? Late! I'm late! Missed the alarm, get downstairs, don't be late - Zanna's out there, on the lawn, bleeding to death. Blood coats my hands, or water? Can't tell. Sob some more. Scramble on some kit. Hair in the way, only had it cropped the other day. How is there so much? Duty's bugle calls. Whoever, whatever, I am I remain some kind of soldier. I must get fell in. But I'm a ghost in a nightmare - hotel or desert? Tongue clagged with dust and the metal tang of mine and another's blood, noises come through fog. Sight of bare feet against floral carpets leaves me dislocated and uneasy - am I leaving bloodied footprints? Any moment this hotel will dissolve into a desert roadside and Zanna's catastrophic bleed will get me back into myself - show me what is real. Hair crops my peripheral vision, tits bulge out my squadron t-shirt. Am I a man or a woman? A middle-aged couple, exiting the lift, look curiously at me. What do they see? Her face wrinkles in disgust. "Lord, she's drunk?" She? I wobble a look over my shoulder to who's pissed-up behind me. Is it Carla? Carla wasn't in Iraq that time. "No," says the man stepping forward, supporting my arm. "Are you okay, love? What's happened?" "Fine," I mumble, shaking my head. Hair falls across my face. I'm incorrectly dressed with it down like this. Female personnel with hair below the collar must wear it pinned up in a neat, balanced style. My chest bloats and sags, my hips spread too wide. "What's the matter?" a different woman asks. Somehow I'm in reception, but don't remember the stairs. Over pressure in my head, about to burst - like Zanna'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 hotel lady from last night, standing in a Staff Only doorway beside the reception desk. She smiles - open, genuine. I swallow nervously. What does she see? Am I completely fucked up? Do I think I am a woman when she sees only a man? "Would you like some coffee?" she asks. "I need..." Tears prickle my eyes so I squeeze them shut. Deep breath. Act fast, before Box or Gringo or Carla sees me. "Need a little..." A moan escapes me. Tears pour from me now and the woman dashes forward, like I'm about to collapse. "Help." She takes my arm, firm, reassuring - miles away. I should shake her off. "What's wrong?" My throat narrows, I drag at the too thick air. 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 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, please don't let anybody I know see me like this. "I'll show you," she says. "Come and sit down." She leads and I follow, mute. Is her smile mocking, condescending yet? "You have very beautiful hair, suits you so well. I can't imagine why you would want to wear it up, it should be 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 cruelly around my chest. What's happened to me. Get a grip of yourself, Toots. But there's nothing to hold onto - mist, mercury, ghosts, memories. Somehow I'm curled up in a deep, leather sofa, feet on the cushion, knees tight to my puffed out chest and held there by arms aching with effort. Nose full of snot, I sniffle at it miserably, keep my eyes tight shut - ashamed. A couple of people murmur close by, too discreet to hear what they say, but they'll be exchanging opinions about how shit I am. "What am I?" I whisper. The flashbacks are worsening, mixing up with my gender imbalance. "What do you see?" "You're a woman," she says, her mouth very close to my ear. "My name's Hazel, this is my hotel. You're safe, you're a lovely woman. Everything will be better, I promise." I'm a woman. Have I always been like this? Surely I can't have dreamt all my male yesterdays. Take a big sniff. Wipe the tears on the back of my hands, push hair behind my ears. "I'm fine. Give me a minute." A hand touches my shoulder. "No rush, Toots. Take your time." This voice is lilting Welsh, Carla's - 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 break down it's her they fetch. A weight on the chair arm beside me makes it creak. Fingers brush my hair. "Is Toots really your name?" says Hazel. "Everybody calls her that!" Carla's surprise comes clear from her inflections. "I don't even know what her real name is." Her? How can I be a her? You've always wanted that though, Toots. Haven't you? "Would you mind going to the kitchen and asking them for a pot of tea, for three, please?" says Hazel. "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 this emotion. "I'm sorry," I mumble. "Don't know what came over me." "Shush," she admonishes gently. "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. "Toots?" she murmurs, close to my ear. I can scent her perfume - fresh and delicate, disturbing the blood stench. "What am I? I can't tell what's real and what's nightmare." "You're a woman, Toots. A lovely woman. Its okay, everything's okay." "My head's messed up," I mumble, some more sobs corrupt the words. The Army offers counselling, pin up posters about PTSD everywhere, but PTSD's for heroes. I refuelled helicopters in a desert shaded by plumes from burning oil wells. And remembered enough of my med training to scrabble two tourniquets onto Zanna's ruptured 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 a hair brush. It makes a smooth, silken noise through my very long hair while the swish and long, slow pull of the brush is strangely soothing. Tension drips from my arms. After a minute or two of the shush shush shush I'm able to extend my legs and touch the carpet with my toes. I centre all my awareness on the pressure, the massage on my scalp, match my breathing to Hazel's rhythm. Pain runs down into the sofa, tears drip into my t- shirt, but Hazel brushes on so I let the tears flow silently. Phones ring, people talk, pots clatter, but from a long long way away and don'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 in my hands, it's a moment before I dare look. My eyes are red rounded, pink where they should be white. My skin is blotched, a tear still caught in that crooked scar across my left cheek. With my hair drawn back severely into the bun I look a little like I did yesterday, still Toots Aynho, but different. Her. "What does being a soldier feel like?" Six 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, Toots, only now nobody needs to be deceived. Do you understand?" She knows. Hazel knows I was a man yesterday. Like she's seen through me. Letting go of my chin she steps back; crisp, feminine, immaculate - warm. Glancing down, my shape is all but hidden beneath my baggy, asexual uniform. Skirt and lace and nylon are a world away. But the potential; I'm a woman, think of that! Everything I've ever longed for - the Her! "I don't know what to do." Hazel takes the mirror. "I'll teach you." "Is it real?" "Yes." "Forever?" "Yes." Take a deep breath - I'm not very well, I have a problem, but I'm a woman, a soldier, I'm hurting, but strong - let the breath go. Look her in the eye. Something incredible, amazing, mindblowing has happened to me. "My name's Elizabeth. Lizzie." "Hello, Lizzie," she says, with a warm smile.