We finished our remaining Lucy beers before we left, so I was feeling a pleasant buzz as we walked to the party. This was fortunate, because the frat house was a few streets away from campus, and even my modest heels weren’t super comfortable to walk in. But I didn’t care. I was going to a party! And I looked pretty! And girly! And even sexy, according to Nick!

  I tried to keep that positive mindset as we walked, but I couldn’t deny I was nervous. As much as the bangs and breast forms helped, it was pretty optimistic to think anyone would actually think I was a girl. Which was fine, obviously, because I still probably wasn't, even if the way I felt when I saw my boobed-up body in the mirror felt worryingly good. I wasn't entirely sure what gender euphoria felt like, but it did kind of make sense that a trans person would feel the way I had felt. But then again, lots of cis guys liked looking like women sometimes. Drag queens, for example, and most drag queens weren't trans.

  Some were, though.

  But I shouldn't get my hopes up. Anyway, there was no point obsessing over what I may or may not be. Tonight I just wanted to feel pretty, and the more I got used to being out in public all dressed up, the more pretty I felt. At first I had to fake it, keeping my chin up proudly even as my stomach twisted with nerves. As much as I hated to admit it, I was gd Nick was with me. It helped to have a tall, fit, intimidating man by my side in case anyone tried to start some trouble. But as we walked through campus, passing dozens of students, none of whom screamed at me for being a pervert, my confidence grew. Either I was passing better than I thought, or we had a super chill student body.

  We passed by the weed tree, and I peeked around it hopefully, just in case Miel was there. I was a little nervous about any of my friends seeing me in a dress, but if anyone was going to be supportive, it would be her. She wasn’t there, though. Probably still busy with work.

  When we finally made it to the frat house, Nick paused outside the front gate. The party had spilled out onto the wn, with inebriated college students in costumes ughing and flirting and being stupid everywhere you looked. Suddenly I felt intimidated all over again.

  “So, uh, you said you have a friend here, right?” Nick said.

  “Uh-huh,” I scanned the wn but there was no sign of Mateus. He was probably inside, hanging out with his frat brothers. Crap, I would have to go in and find him. I assumed his brothers would be cool like him, but was that naive? Mateus was gay, but he wasn't, like, fmboyant or anything. He was big and masculine and even had a beard. That was a long way off from me.

  “Is he around? Do you know where he is?”

  I shook myself out of my worries and eyed Nick suspiciously, “Why? Were you lying about being invited? That's sad, even for you.”

  “No, dipshit,” he said, “I'm gonna go find Karl and the guys, I just figured…”

  I groaned, “Oh, you figured I would be helpless without you here to protect me? Grow up, Nick.”

  I stormed ahead of him, pushing through the gate and marching up to the front door where a bored looking frat brother was standing with a clipboard, trying to look like an intimidating bouncer, which was difficult since he was dressed like a banana. Nick followed me, catching up quick thanks to his freakishly long legs.

  The guy at the door smiled at me, and I smiled back. It was nice to see a venue with a doorman, for a change. He looked up as Nick approached, “Name?”

  “Dominic Lane,” said Nick, before I had the chance to speak, “I'm friends with Cameron.”

  I scowled. The doorman checked his list and nodded, “Yeah, I got you on here twice for some reason. You're good, dude.”

  I sighed, preparing myself to expin the stupid name thing yet again. To my surprise, the frat doorman stepped aside and ushered us both in. He winked at me, “Have fun.”

  I followed after Nick, confused, “What was that about?”

  “What?”

  “He let me in without checking my name,” I said, “Maybe he recognised me.”

  “The fuck?” said Nick, “Did you have your dad's assistant fucking call ahead? To a frat party?”

  “No!” I snapped, “I mean from ACORN stuff, or like from around campus or something.”

  “He probably thinks you're a girl, dumbass,” said Nick, “Girls always get in.”

  I stopped dead, “Wait. Actually?”

  “Wasn't that the fucking point?” said Nick. Even in the front hall, the music was pumping loud. A couple of girls rushed past us, giggling and holding red solo cups. Like in the movies!

  “Nick, wait,” I said. He groaned and turned around, looming over me, his dark eyes burning with frustration even through his shades. I was too excited to be intimidated, though. I felt like something was bubbling and fizzing in my tummy, and that stupid grin was back on my face. “Do you actually think he thought I was a girl?”

  “I mean, no shit?” said Nick, “You spent an hour making yourself look like a girl. You're dressed like a french maid, and you're like five feet tall, and you have tits.”

  I looked down. I had carefully chosen a maid outfit that wasn't too low cut (this had taken some searching) so as far as anyone could tell, my boobs were totally real. Real enough to get me into a frat party, even if I wasn't on the list.

  But that was just some dumb frat guy in a banana suit. He was probably drunk already, and not paying attention. I frowned up at Nick, “I'm five five. Five six in these heels.”

  “Why the fuck am I still talking to you?” Nick wondered aloud, “You good to find your friend?”

  “Yes, fuck off already.”

  “Alright,” Nick said. He turned to leave, then hesitated, “Hey, uh, if you see Karl, maybe don't tell him we came together. Especially since you're dressed like that.”

  I rolled my eyes, “Yeah, that's what I wanna do tonight. Talk to Karl.”

  “Cool,” Nick nodded, “Later, then.”

  He disappeared up some stairs, and I ventured further into the house, following the music.

  The living room was a sea of dancing bodies in goofy costumes, lit only vaguely by multicoloured lights from a spinning disco ball thingy mounted on top of the speakers. Most of the people were indistinct shapes, revealed only as the neon lit up the edges of their bodies. I skirted around the crowd, grateful for the darkness. A few people looked at me as I passed, but still no confused faces, still nobody ughing at my totally-just-a-joke costume. Holy shit, was I actually pulling this off?

  Another banana was manning a keg. Ooh, that wasn't a bad idea. I could get a drink to steady my nerves before I went and found Mateus. The banana grinned as I approached.

  “Welcome to the Gamma-Delta-Whatever Masquerade Ball!” he shouted over the music, “Love the costume! Slutty maid?”

  “Thanks!” I yelled back, hoping my voice didn't sound too masculine, or that the music was distorting it enough that he wouldn't notice. I hedged my bets, “It's an inside joke!”

  “Oh! Haha!” he ughed, “Haha, that's so funny! I love funny girls! I'm kind of a feminist like that!”

  I blushed, smiling like an idiot. I really was passing, at least to bananas.

  “You over twenty-one?” he yelled.

  “Oh!” Crap, I had been really hoping for a drink, but even if I had been old enough, there was no way I could show him my ID.

  He winked, “Y'know, I heard girls get more flexible as they get older. If you can turn around and touch your toes, you must be over 21, right?”

  I stared at him, confused. I had never heard that, and it definitely didn't sound foolproof. I almost corrected him, and then it hit me what he was trying and I burst into a fit of anxious giggles. He was hitting on me! He wanted to see up my skirt!

  Okay, I wasn't a total idiot. I knew that frat guys could be horny and gross. And if I had witnessed him trying something like this on an actual girl, I would've been furious. It was creepy and misogynistic and predatory, taking advantage of his limited power as Banana In Charge Of The Beer to pressure women into sexual exploitation. It was unforgivably heinous.

  But the fact that he wanted to do that to me? The fact that he thought I was a girl, and a hot enough girl that he wanted to sexually exploit me? It was almost enough to make me bend over right then and there.

  “Gross, Michael!” a girl yelled. She swooped in next to me and put an arm around my waist protectively, gring at the perverted banana, “Just give her a drink already, you creep!”

  The banana, Michael, ughed, “Okay, Duni. Can't bme a guy for trying!”

  He filled two cups and handed them to us. I smiled at the girl who had come to my rescue. She was pretty, a short, curvy brown girl, wearing an orange cheerleader costume that left her midriff exposed. She grinned back at me. Based on her confidence, she was probably a little older than me. Maybe a junior. Or just really cool.

  “C’mon!” she said, “Let's ditch this asshole! Bye Michael!”

  She grabbed my free hand and led me across the dancefloor. I looked back at Michael, who was shaking his head ruefully. I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for him. He wasn't that bad. Was he really into me?

  I gulped down some of my drink and the girl turned to me with a flirty smile.

  “Hi!” she shouted, “I'm Duni! What's your name?”

  “Um!” I hadn't thought this far ahead. I didn't think I would need to, back when I was telling myself my costume was only ever going to be a joke. But I didn't want to spoil things by saying Dominic, and by now I had been taking way too long to figure out my own name, so I begrudgingly settled for old reliable, “Nick!” No, I could do better than that. “Nikki!”

  “Hi Nikki!” Duni shouted. I didn’t love it, but it was at least kind of cool to be referred to with a girl’s name. She continued, “Sorry about Michael, he's a piece of shit!”

  “It’s okay!” I shouted back, “Thanks for helping out, though!”

  “Any time!” said Duni. She raised her cup in salute, then took a big sip. I followed suit. I was starting to feel more than buzzed, and couldn't stop thinking about the way Michael had been looking at me. Suddenly my secondary goal, finally losing my virginity, was seeming more and more likely. I gulped down more of my drink.

  “Careful!” said Duni, “Don't go crazy!”

  “I'm okay!” I said, “So that guy Michael, do you know him? Like, did you, like, go out with him or…”

  “Ew!” Duni ughed, “No way! I'm gay!”

  “Oh!” I grinned, “Me too!”

  Duni’s eyes widened, and so did her smile, “Really? I thought I knew all the hot lesbians on campus!”

  I froze. Shit. I was getting so used to being openly gay that I forgot it had a different connotation if I was pretending to be a girl. Suddenly I felt icky, like I had been leading Duni on. It was the same creepy feeling I felt when I was in the girls’ dorms with Shawnee and Jess.

  I could keep pying along, pretending I was a lesbian, but that felt wrong. I didn't want to trick Duni the way I had tricked Michael or the doorman. She was a girl, and she was queer, and she deserved better.

  “I'm… I'm not really…” my voice caught in my throat and I took a deep breath, “I'm actually a guy, usually!”

  “Huh?” said Duni. She studied my face and her mouth opened in a surprised O, “Oh, wow! Okay, yeah!”

  “Sorry!”

  “It's okay!” she said, although she looked a little disappointed, “So you're, like, for real a guy, though? Like is this costume like a joke, or what?”

  “Um!” I felt suddenly very hot, and not just from the heat of all the dancing people around us, “I mean! Kind of, but also I… I kind of like looking like this? A lot?”

  “That’s cool!” Duni shouted, “So it's just like a drag kind of thing? You're not, like, transgender or anything?”

  “Um, I mean!” The answer danced on the tip of my tongue. No, right? That was the easy answer, the answer that I had pnned to give when I left the dorm tonight. Sure I had some issues to explore, but until I actually got the chance to explore them in a safe, private way, it was better to just say no and avoid any negative consequences.

  “I might be? I'm not really sure!” I shouted. Shit!

  Duni grinned, “Let me know if you figure it out! You're cute!”

  I blushed deep red. Duni noticed someone over my shoulder and waved, “Casey! Hey girl!”

  She disappeared into the crowd, and I finished my drink, heart racing. Oh my god! I just… I just told someone I might be trans.

  Oh my god, I might be trans.

  I felt a dizzying wave of dread, followed by an even more disorienting wave of excitement. I might be trans. I could be a trans woman. I might actually be able to transition! I clutched a hand to my chest, squeezing my breastform numbly. A Batman in the crowd nodded with approval and I ughed breathlessly.

  I needed another drink.

  *****

  Michael behaved himself this time, clearly nervous that Duni was lying in wait in case he tried to make a move. I was getting used to the taste of cheap beer, or maybe it was just easier to ignore it when I had already had a few drinks. I sipped politely from my pstic cup as I tried to get my head straight.

  Was I transgender? The question had been nagging at me for some time, no matter how firmly I decided not to think about it. A trans person would know they were trans, wouldn't they? But then, surely a cis person would know they were cis.

  I needed to test it more! Sure, I liked dressing like a girl, and looking like a girl, and I liked it when people treated me like a girl. But there were hundreds of alternate expnations for that, even if none were occuring to me right now. It wasn't conclusive proof. I had spent years wondering if I was gay, too, but I only knew for sure once I actually got to test it out in the real world. If I could just test out being trans in the real world, then I would know. But there wasn't, like, a thing I could do to definitively prove it, the way sucking Nick’s cock definitively proved I liked men. The only way I could think of to confirm whether I was actually trans was to actually transition.

  But what if I didn't like it?

  Everyone would know that I was so stupid that I mistakenly thought I was a girl, and then I wouldn't even get to be a girl afterwards.

  Fuck that. Fuck that so hard.

  I downed my drink and steeled my resolve. I was not worrying about bels right now! Look pretty. Fuck a guy. Those were my goals for tonight.

  I should find Mateus. He was the one who invited me, so it was only polite to say hi. Plus… he was gay. And pretty attractive. And if he wasn't interested in me, he might have equally attractive gay friends who would be.

  I wandered around the house, squirming my way between drunken partygoers. God, people had no situational awareness when they were drunk. I almost got hit in the face a bunch of times until I finally made it out of the living room and into the kitchen. No sign of Mateus, just a gaggle of Taylor Swifts doing shots and a lone Minion who ran his eyes leeringly down my legs. I blushed and smiled at him as I passed. God, it felt good to be looked at that way, by a guy who seemed to really think I was just another college girl. Okay, focus. Gay guys, gay guys…

  I couldn't find Mateus anywhere downstairs, so I made my way back to the staircase, squeezing between another banana and a Joker who smelled like he’d been using the same costume, unwashed, for a few years in a row. I almost wished I had Nick with me. If nothing else, he was good for getting through crowds.

  I reached the top of the stairs, and as if I had been overheard by some asshole genie, there was Nick.

  “Back up!" he yelled, in concert with three or four other drunken voices. I pulled my head back and a toilet plunger went flying past my face and bounced off the far wall, where someone had hung up a rge portrait of the Dean. The voices all groaned. I poked my head out of the stairwell and gred at Nick, who was hanging around with a bunch of costumed goons I recognised from the track team.

  “You almost hit me, you idiot!” I said.

  “You just came barging in out of nowhere, dumbass!” Nick shot back, “We’re doing shit!”

  “Yeah, stupid shit!” I snapped, “Do you guys think you're in a fucking eighties movie or something?”

  “Can you fuck off already?” said Nick.

  “Whoa, hey,” said a guy in a basketball jersey, apparently dressed up as someone named James, “Go easy on her, Dom.”

  “It's fine, I know h… we know each other,” said Nick. He walked over to collect the plunger, and the few other plungers scattered around it. Did the frat guys buy a bunch of plungers specifically for throwing purpose? At least that was hygienic. Nick looked over his shoulder as he passed me, “Did you want something?”

  “Yeah,” I stuck my chin up stubbornly, “I want you to stop throwing plungers at people like a bunch of morons.”

  “Oh, so you're allowed to protest the Dean but we’re not?” said Nick. He stooped to pick up a couple of plungers and wedged them under his right armpit.

  “Oh sure, this is a totally coherent political statement,” I scoffed.

  “It's practice,” said Nick.

  “The word is praxis,” I said. I actually kinda knew what that meant now.

  “Nah, I meant practice, cause it doubles as javelin training,” said Nick.

  I rolled my eyes, but before I could offer a retort, Karl had joined us. He had made even less of an effort with his costume than Nick, wearing red short shorts and a tanktop that showed off his pale, not-impressive-at-all muscles, with only a pair of pstic devil horns to indicate he was even dressed up.

  “Hey babe,” he beamed at Nick, “Thought you might need some help with the plungers.”

  Nick tensed, “Dude, I'm fine. I got it.”

  “It's okay,” Karl soothed. He pulled the plungers from Nick’s underarm grip and turned to me with a smile, “Hey, I'm Karl, I’m Dom's b–what the fuck?”

  Nick sighed and kept collecting plungers. Karl stared at me, eyes agog.

  “Hello, Karl,” I said, “I thought this was a costume party.”

  “He's the devil,” Nick called out.

  “Yeah, but where’s his costume?” I smirked up at Karl.

  “Little Dom?” he said

  “Ugh. Just Dom.”

  “What the fuck are you wearing?” Karl said. He sounded more confused than angry, but he did sound angry.

  I blushed, suddenly not feeling quite as confident. But fuck Karl! He was the one person in the world whose opinion I cared about less than Nick’s. I stuck up my nose.

  “It's an inside joke,” I said, in my most condescending tone, “Nick is always giving me crap about how we don't have a maid, so–”

  Karl turned to Nick, who had just arisen with another couple of plungers in hand.

  “You asked him to dress like this?” he said, and now his voice sounded much more angry than confused.

  “Whoa, what? No. What?” Nick stared back at him.

  “Well you sure didn't look fucking surprised to see him,” said Karl.

  “I already saw him!” Nick protested, “We fucking live together.”

  “Is that why you got here so fucking te?” Karl said, his voice low and dangerous.

  “I didn't think he should be walking around on his own dressed like that…” Nick muttered, avoiding Karl’s eyes as he reached for another plunger.

  “Give me the fucking plungers, Dom,” Karl snatched for them.

  Nick recoiled, “Dude, I told you I fucking got it!”

  “Hey, so I was just–” I started.

  Karl whirled around at me, “Get the fuck out of here, cocksucker!”

  I flinched, “Jesus! Fine!”

  I fled down the stairs, face burning, and kept going until the sounds of Nick and Karl arguing got swallowed up by the music. Fuck! So much for not telling him about the stuff we had done together! Just spread all my secrets around, Nick! Don't worry about giving me a heads up or anything!

  Fucking Nick. Fucking Karl. Fucking Mateus not being around so I could actually have some fun at this fucking party. Stupid fucking boys!

  I marched right back up to the keg, where Michael the banana was still working.

  “I need another!” I shouted over the music.

  “You okay?” said Michael, “You look pissed off!”

  I crossed my arms in a huff, “I’m fine! You're a brother, right?”

  Michael shrugged, “Pledging! S’why I gotta be one of the banana bitches tonight!”

  “Do you know where Mateus is?”

  “Beard guy? I dunno!”

  “Ugh!” I stamped my foot in frustration. He was probably upstairs, blocked off by Nick and Karl and their stupid drama and their stupid plunger game which I doubted was politically motivated at all.

  Michael frowned, “Are you sure you need another drink? You seem kinda, uh…”

  I gred at him. Another stupid fucking boy ruining my night! Duni was right, Michael was a piece of shit.

  Wait. That gave me a really good idea.

  “If I was drunk,” I purred, tapping into my tipsy brain's best approximation of feminine wiles, “Would I be able to do this?”

  Michael tilted his head, which in his banana costume meant that his whole body tilted. I giggled and turned around, took a deep breath, checked one st time whether or not this was a good idea (it was), then bent over and touched my toes.

  “Oh, fuck yes,” I heard Michael’s awed voice behind me and grinned. Stupid fucking boys!

  In my maid costume, bending over like this was extremely perilous. My skirt was so short, especially when boosted up by the little built-in petticoat underneath, that it provided basically zero coverage, allowing Michael to get a peek of my smooth, pale thighs peeking out of the top of my thigh-highs, and my pert little ass in my almost-modest bck panties. But I was securely tucked, and Nick had taken enough peeks of my ass that I knew it was worth showing off.

  I straightened up and turned back to Michael with an expectant smirk. He nodded approvingly and filled up a cup.

  “You're the first girl to actually do that tonight!” he shouted over the music.

  I winked, “Who knows what else I'll do?”

  Michael's jaw dropped and I gave him a little wave of my fingers as I took my drink and disappeared into the crowd.