Blankage

The water from the shower rasps against my skin. With the lights off, I don’t have to see my flat, hairy chest, but I can still feel it beneath my fingertips. I close my eyes and try to imagine that I am touching the soft flesh of my breasts, that there is nothing dangling from between my legs. It doesn’t work. All I can think about is the college dormitory I’ll live in next year, the communal showers with their bright lights that I won’t be able to turn off. My best chance at avoiding all of that is the cardboard box that just came in the mail. It’s from “Ecrica,” a friend from the gender dysphoria forums. About a year back, she apparently saw one of my posts about how much I hated going through high school as a boy, how I wished I could have done the things that girls get to do, learning to put on makeup, shopping for my first bra. Out of nowhere, Ecrica messaged me to tell me that she could make my dreams come true. I thought it was ridiculous of course, but that was before learned