“I don’t know who I am, Aoife.” His heart spoke the words before his brain could think to construct the sentence. When his words reached his own ears, it was like he was hearing the thought for the first time. The tears that had taken pause when Owen sidetracked the conversation, had now come back stronger than they were before.
“I was just experimenting! Castle said to just ‘go nuts’ and so I went nuts and I went to the Thrift King to grab a couple things. A couple things turned into a couple bags of clothes. Then I just… I started trying them on and I don’t know what to do! I don’t want to take it off… but it’s not me. These clothes aren’t me. But I wish they were! Is that… is that weird? You weren’t supposed to see this anyway… I was just going to keep it private. That would have been enough.”
“Would it?”
“What?” Owen hadn’t expected Aoife to speak up so soon. A part of him imagined her staying quiet for some time. What else could you do when someone is saying a bunch of nonsense to you?
“Would it have been enough? We share a room, dumbass. When would you ever get that chance? Thirty minutes on a monday? An hour when I leave for food on a weekend? Would those small glimpses really be enough?”
Would they? Owen hadn’t thought about it much. Not to the extent that Aoife had just proposed. Thirty minutes here and there, on certain days didn’t feel like enough. If he only had a chance to be Witch for thirty minutes to an hour once a week, it certainly wouldn’t be enough.
“Maybe.” He stated, knowing even the maybe was generous.
“It wasn’t enough for me.” Aoife took a very small step towards Owen. It wasn’t much, but it shot panic through Owen’s heart.
“You’re different. You’re trans. It makes total sense that it wouldn’t be enough for you. That’s who you are! Confining yourself to only be your authentic self once or twice a week would be terrible!” Owen replied, taking a small step back, to keep the distance between the two of them identical to when Aoife first entered the dorm.
“Right.” Aoife said, looking at Owen expectantly. She had felt like she set up the dominos perfectly, and was waiting for Owen to lightly tap the first domino in the line.
“Can we just pretend this never happened? I promise it has nothing to do with you telling me that you’re trans or anything. I just had a weird impulse, that’s all! Besides, I thought you would have responded to my text before getting home so you wouldn’t have to see any of this.” Owen needed this conversation to stop. Each word he heard from himself made him want to cry harder, and each word from Aoife made him want to wrap his pillow around his head.
Aoife groaned. She felt like while she was playing with dominos, Owen was off in his own room playing Jenga. “What text? You never even sent a-” Aoife paused mid sentence. The final buzz before she turned off her phone, was that from Owen instead of Jen? She held the power button to her phone to boot it back up. After an awkward few seconds of waiting for it to turn back on, her lock screen popped up to show the unread message from Owen.
“Oh. Sorry about that.”
“Just my luck.” Owen sighed as he leaned down towards the ground to start picking up the clothes that were scattered by the foot of his bed.
“Stop it! Put that down!” Aoife shouted, causing a flinch from Owen. Despite his confusion at her sudden outburst, he dropped the shirt to the ground as she asked.
“I’m not gonna let you pack up the clothes and pretend this never happened.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re gonna hold this over my head?!”
“No! No I didn’t mean it like that. I mean… there’s obviously something that you’re feeling and it’s not healthy to just pack that shit up and ignore it!” Aoife waved her arms around as she spoke. She could feel Owen pulling into himself, shuttering the windows and locking the doors to the house of his mind.
“Oh, did I miss the sign that tonight is open dialogue about our feelings or something? If we’re opening our hearts up, maybe you could talk more about that dinner with your mom?”
“She’s my stepmom, you ass!” Aoife hissed back, matching the rising anger that was growing inside of Owen. There was a volatile tension that strung itself between the two roommates. “I’m not trying to hurt you, Owen, I just want to help you! I think I know what you’re going through, and I want to-”
“You know what I’m going through? You’ve barely talked to me at all lately but all the sudden you understand what’s been eating away at me in my dreams?! The heartache that aches each morning in the shower?” Owen snapped back at Aoife, snatching up one of the skirts from the floor and throwing it into the small trash can next to his desk.
“Yes! I do think I understand!” Aoife pleaded, sliding one of her feet forward in a hesitant step towards Owen.
“Hit me.” Owen shot back as he reached out towards a shirt that lay just beside his right foot.
“I think you want to be Witchofthew3st so fucking badly that it hurts! I think she’s your only respite from that pain! I think you’ve put so many unnecessary qualifiers around being trans that you can’t even imagine it as a possibility!” Aoife was left sucking in deep breaths after her shouting ceased. The heaving breaths were the only noise in the room for a painful few moments.
“You know…?” Those were the only words that Owen could squeak out from between his lips. He stood completely still, the shirt in his right hand hanging helplessly from a tightened fist.
Aoife couldn’t decipher Owen’s reaction. She was desperately reading the features of his face, along with the tenseness of his body. Was he furious? Relieved? Confused? Aoife wasn’t comfortable betting a single dollar on any of the options.
“Yeah.”
“The night of tryouts.”
“How?”
“The message. Buttercup. It clicked.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
The conversation was stilted and hollow. Like the two had become robots in order to have a discussion late at night. Aoife was still awaiting a reaction. Her hands were shaking ever so slightly in the anticipation of some reaction. The absence of any sort of emotion was beginning to frighten her more than a simple response of anger. It was like someone had dialed out all of the emotion from Owen.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You had to know the moment I moved in.”
The shirt fell from Owen’s grip. He stepped back towards his bed and collapsed onto the mattress, springs gently squeaking as he did so. He fell backwards onto the mattress, throwing his feet over towards the bottom of the bed. He never responded to Aoife’s question. Instead, he devolved into a miasma of sobbing tears, all directed into the pillow that he had pressed up against his face to afford him some small sliver of dignity. Not that he felt like he had much left, laying in a skirt and sock-stuffed bra in front of his roommate.
“Woah, hey hey Owen it’s okay!” Aoife immediately ran towards his side of the bed, kneeling at the edge next to his head. Her mind was racing with thoughts about how to help, or what to say. Where could she even start? The evening that she had come to terms with her own identity she hadn’t slept at all. The entire night was consumed with anxieties about how she would tell her family. “Owen, it’s okay! I’m not upset! I just want to help you.” It was mostly true. She absolutely wanted to help Owen, in any way possible. She still felt scorned about the secret being kept for so long, but that didn’t matter right now.
Owen wanted to be furious. He wanted to curl his sobs into some kind of anger towards Aoife. A target, one other than himself, could maybe cause the aching to dull. He felt like he should be mad. She’s known for days and just kept it to herself, ignoring him all the while. But that hardly made sense. He’d been keeping a bigger secret for far longer. It was pointless to attempt to conjure up some kind of spite towards Aoife. As hard as he tried, it just dissolved immediately, flickering away as she uttered more comforting words into his ear. This wasn’t a girl he could be upset with. Not with the care she displayed.
Owen and Aoife were locked in a momentary cycle. He would sob into the pillow, to which Aoife would respond with a string of comforting words. Silence would ensue, before the cycle began again anew. The cycle stretched on for close to ten minutes, until Owen’s sobs had slowed to the point where he could once again speak.
“You were right…” He said, pulling the pillow away from his face. “About Witch. I don’t know if I want to be her exactly, but I certainly want to be like her. I always have. The Witch in UMDK is just the current iteration of this. I’ve made that same character in every game I’ve been able to my entire life. It was nice to pull her along on all of those journeys. She was the greatest comfort I think I’ve ever had. But I think she became a problem for me.”
“How so?” Aoife replied, gently.
“I would always pick a girl character, pick Witch, because it was easier than exploring any of my feelings further. She made it very easy to be complacent… Not to mention you kind of opened the floodgates when you told me about being trans.”
“Right… sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize, you idiot.” Owen said, choking out a noise that could only be described as both a laugh and sob at the same time. “I needed it. These feelings have been lingering around in my mind for a while, but I never had the words to understand until you said them. I had the dots, you just gave me the tool to connect them.”
Between slowed sniffles and the occasional cough, Owen leaned up in his bed and crossed his legs in front of him. Aoife took it as an invitation to sit across from him. While he hadn’t done it with that intention, he certainly didn’t complain when she sat across from him, resting her legs towards the side gently, as it was the only way she could make sitting on the bed work whilst wearing the elegant black dress from her dinner.
“I thought that I was picking a girl character, because it numbed the pain, filled the hole that I couldn’t seem to fill any other way. But that wasn’t what I was really doing. I picked a girl character because I want to be one, that’s all. It just took a hell of a long time to come to that realization.” Owen’s words were quiet and tender, which made sense to himself. It felt as though he was plucking away at pieces of his heart to show them to Aoife. It made him feel emotionally naked in front of Aoife.
“So does this mean…”
“I guess…? I’m pretty sure, at least. I just don’t know what comes next. Nor do I think I’m ready for it. Fuck, we’ve got practice tomorrow! I can’t be thinking about any of this just yet.” Owen sighed, realizing that without a care for the two of them, the world would keep spinning and tomorrow would be another day.
“...I’m happy for you, Owen. I really am. I’m so sorry if I went about this too harshly.” Aoife smiled, brushing one of the bangs that hung out of her hair behind her ear.
“No, don’t be sorry, really. I’m not sure where I’d be if you hadn’t become wrapped up in all of this. I’ve done a pretty good job of missing the point my whole life.”
“Pretty good? Honey, you’re the undisputed champion of dodging the point.”
They both laughed, the motion of the laughter shaking free the last few tears that clung onto Owen’s eyelashes and cheeks.
“Please let me shop with you next time though. I made enough mistakes that I’d rather not see you repeat. Like pairing those shades of black together.” Aoife pointed towards Owen’s clothes with a lighthearted smile.
“Right… shades of black.” Owen looked down at the clothes that he wore, struggling to understand exactly what Aoife found wrong with it. Aoife had always seemed to put together good outfits, however, so he’d just have to take her word for it. Get faster updates on novelping(.)com.
“I should definitely get this off now. I wasn’t planning on someone walking in on me with a skirt and bra today. Or ever…”
“You’re gonna take it off? I thought you said that bitch Tumnus threw it all on you and you couldn’t take it off?” Aoife smiled, a mischievous sort of glint springing to life in her eyes.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, that bitch Tumnus. I’m sure I can find a way to get around his Faun fuckery and get it off though.”
“Oh I don’t know. Faun magic sounds like it would be pretty difficult to work around. Maybe you just leave it alone for tonight and see if you have more luck tomorrow?” Aoife smiled, the glint shining even brighter.
“Tomorrow…?” Owen asked, questioningly.
“Professional point misser at it again.” Aoife rolled her eyes.
“Oh? Oh!” Owen realized the point that Aoife had been suggesting towards. Keeping the clothes on for the rest of the night? It was a strange idea, but one that pulled intensely at his feelings. It would be kind of nice to keep the clothes on for a while longer. It’s not like a third person could walk in on him in the dorm.
…..
‘Just making sure’, he thought to himself after pausing to make sure no one would suddenly barge through the door.
“I suppose it wouldn't hurt.” Owen smiled towards Aoife, feeling suddenly very flustered about the idea of sitting next to her on his bed whilst he wore feminine clothes and Aoife wore what looked to be a high class black dress. “Just promise me if you see that half goat douche you’ll give him what for, yeah?”
“Absolutely. I’ll kick his ass right back into the wardrobe for you.” Aoife joked.
“Oh my god.” Owen moved his hands to the side of his head to hold his temples.
“What?”
“IS THAT WHAT YOU MEANT? You said ‘did you just get back from Narnia’. You were asking if I just came out of the wardrobe. As in if I just came out of the closest…”
Aoife burst out laughing and rolled back onto the back end of the bed. “Oh fuck that’s good. I definitely did not mean it that way but now that you point it out I definitely should have thought of that. God that’s good.”
“Does that mean all the kids in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are gay since they came back out of Narnia?” Owen laughed.
“It’s a Christian allegory, Owen, I don’t think he meant it that way.” Aoife replied, still coming down from her outburst of mirth.
“It’s a Christian allegory, Aoife, I think C.S. Lewis happened to Freudian slip his way into that metaphor face first.”
The two burst out laughing once more, reminding Owen of the previous time the two of them had just spent the night hanging out with one another.
“Well I’m glad you stumbled your way out of Narnia, then. It seems like it was a long time comin’, girl.”
Owen’s heart skipped a beat at Aoife’s address. It was the same feeling he had gotten when first playing girl characters in online games, but this time, in real life, it was so much stronger.
Girl. To think, that could be him. Or not… him, in that case. Her.
“Do you want to play some UMDK?” Owen asked, tentatively.
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely I do.” Aoife replied, leaping off of the bed to head towards her side of the room.
“Let’s go then!”
“I think what you meant to say was, let’s get our giddy gooey groove on.” Aoife smirked, before plopping herself onto her desk chair.
Owen shot up from her bed to instead sit down at her desk. She was face to face with the blank screen of the monitor. There it was again. The smile in the reflection matched that of a familiar face Owen had come to recognize. Witchofthew3st.
"Let's get our giddy gooey groove on."