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First Time Out

By Marinja Prior
Do YOU have a First Time Story? We think you do. Email it to Cindy and we'll publish it!



I wore a calf-length floral skirt, plum-colored, a black top and a wrap-around red wool coat. Since I had left my wife a year earlier I had let my hair grow and now I wore it bouffant. But it was more grey than black - testimony to not just my years but to the battles that had left me alone, walking in a winter's park near my small apartment.

But to be alone was not a bad thing when I could walk like this, feeling my openess to the earth and sky, the femininity that shortened my stride and angled my hips; feeling the glances of the few passers-by taking in this middle-aged woman, elegantly-clad, as she walked in the park.

I had been out before, around the block at sunset, running the gauntlet of traffic and pedestrians. Out enough to know that no one saw anything unusual about me. But the terror was always there, clawing at me. "Will this one read me? That one? Should I hurry? Should I turn aside? Oh, Goddess, help, a cop car!"

I could not escape the terror.

In my dreams I would often discover myself in a great department store, on the women's fashion floor, and as I drifted along the display of beautiful suits and elegant formal-wear I would realise, to my horror, that I was dressed as a woman. In terror I would glance around, trying to hide myself, to not be noticed. I would wake up, heart pounding, sweating.

I had dreamt that dream right through my marriage - in the good years and in the final bad ones. And I still dreamt it in my little balcony apartment.

I walked on, loving the coolness against my stockinged legs, the touch of my skirt whispering feminine things. I walked past two workmen. They glanced at me and returned to the masculine mysteries in the hole they had dug.

I looked up and saw the city. I looked back. My apartment was almost a half-mile behind me.

I thought, "I will keep walking until I am read."

I crossed the street and waited at the lights with another woman. We crossed together. Drivers watched, waiting impatiently. A hospital was ahead. She turned into the glass doors. I glanced to see how I looked.

The bearded man coming out was a sailing-partner of mine. A medical technologist, he carried his attache-case of tools. He glanced at me. My heart stopped. He glanced past and walked by.

Weakly, I followed, passing him as his car beeped at his command.

I don't know when I realised what I was doing. But the department store of my nightmares was ahead. I walked through the lovely old Victorian arcade, past the wig-shop and the lingerie displays. I was in the mall, passing the buskers and the loiterers, women in track-suits sitting whilst women in business suits strode past them, heels echoing.

I was entering the department store's glass doors. The terror flickered around me, but was calmed by the pianist playing Cole Porter on the grand piano above the perfume counters. I mounted the escalator. A woman glanced at me and frowned, but we passsed - she going down and me going ever upwards. Up to Ladies Fashion.

I was in the land of my dreams, my nightmares.

Somewhere between the park and the mall I had seen my dreams from a different angle. I had seen that, in the dreams, the only person terrified by how I was dressed was myself. Every other participant was calmly indifferent to my state. Was that the dream's message?

I stepped off the escalator and into the scene of all those nightmares. In the ever-present mirrors was a middle-aged woman with bouffant hair and red coat, the circle of her plum-coloured skirt above her conservative shoes.

I stopped to admire a Thai-silk suit. I dropped my coat to slip on the jacket. A saleswoman glanced away from her conversation to me, and then turned back to her companion. I clearly needed no assistance. I removed the jacket and drifted on to the next rack. The terror was gone and I was filled with a peaceful joy.

And, as I drifted, I realised I had done what very few people have done. I had taken my nightmare and stepped into it...and transformed it. But, in transforming the dream, I had transformed myself.

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