I was a little worried about what was going to happen when I went off to college. But I had thought about it in advance. I had an interesting, critical choice. On my application, I could tell them I was a girl or that I was a guy, and trying to fill in that little box was what had me thinking.
If I tell them I’m a girl, but I get there and everybody thinks I’m a guy, then I suppose I get called before some official about it. I would probably have to tell them I’m trans, and my parents could confirm it for me. But I had tried that. No matter how convincingly I look like a girl, everybody is going to think I’m a guy, and most people won’t even recognize it when I am trying to look female. I’m not going to be allowed to use the women’s room, and the result would be simply that a few people know that I’m officially trans in school records, but everybody else thinks I’m just a guy, and I’m forced to live as a guy. On the other hand, if I tell them I’m a girl and everybody can see it, perhaps if this thing that affects me is only in my home town or something, then I get to live as a girl, and that’s that.
If I tell them I’m a guy, and I get there and everybody thinks I’m a guy, then nothing happens and I continue living as I have been living. If they think I’m a girl, then... maybe I can tell them the indication I was a guy was a mistake, a mistake my previous school also made that got copied into my application somehow, and then I get to live as a girl.
Which of these two cases was better? It seemed to me that the results are almost all the same, except the consequences of me applying as a girl and them seeing me as a guy could be worse. They could think I was trying to cheat the system, either to get into a girls’ dorm where I could take advantage of the other girls, or because I’m trying to get access to admissions rules or scholarships or something like that which are for women. If I apply as a guy but they see I’m a girl, then most likely it just gets taken as a mistake and corrected, because in today’s world it doesn’t really provide any advantages.
So I marked the box saying I’m male. But I was going to be prepared in any case. I packed both male and female clothes. If they see me as a girl, it’s acceptable for girls to wear men’s clothing sometimes. If they think I’m a guy, the weird reality-distortion field around me that causes that effect will make it so nobody notices, except maybe a few people I specifically tell.
The incident when the boy at the mall recognized me as a girl happened after I had sent off this application but before I heard anything back. That made me realize one possible flaw in this plan. I’m going to be living with a roommate. That roommate is going to be living with me more closely than anybody ever has. We will sleep in the same room every night; even my parents weren’t that close to me. It might be possible that he figures out I’m a girl when nobody else does. Then what? I’d have to figure it out if and when such a thing happened.
Soon after that, I was notified that I got in, and there was no way I was backing out over these worries. During the summer, word came that I was assigned a roommate named Ralph. It was an all-male dorm, too, so if I got there and they identified me as female, I imagined I would get moved quickly.
Move-in day arrived, and my parents drove me there with suitcases and boxes of my stuff. They were a little surprised that I was taking both my male and female clothes, but they had seen me regularly go out dressed either way through much of high school, so I suppose they thought I was planning to be open about being trans. They still didn’t understand the more involved details of my situation.
My roommate wasn’t there when they helped me get all my stuff into my room, so they didn’t get to meet him. And I had to go join an orientation activity he was probably already at, so they didn’t get to stick around and meet him, either, and instead simply said goodbye with hugs and kisses, and drove home.
The orientation lasted all day, and it was dark when I got back to my room and met Ralph. We were both tired out from the moving followed by the other activity, so after some “nice to meet ya” and such, we made our beds, stripped down to our underwear (my boys’ underwear, since I’d worn male clothes with my jeans out of practicality that day), and went to bed.
In the morning, I had to face the showers. They didn’t have showers in the rooms. They were in the shared restrooms on each hallway. It was pretty antiquated by most people’s standards today, both the single-sex dorms and the shared restrooms. And it wasn’t just this dorm; all the dorms here but the married students’ housing were single-sex. I had seen in brochures for other colleges that they had suite bathrooms, one bathroom with a toilet and shower shared by two double rooms, or a larger room with a bathroom for just that room’s residents. That would have allowed me to get bathroom visits alone, just having to coordinate with three other boys. But I couldn’t afford those schools, and I ended up here.
This meant I was standing in line with a bunch of guys, wearing only a towel and carrying a caddy with soap, shampoo, and the like. I was wearing a towel wrapped around my waist, since that’s how all the guys wore them. That left my breasts exposed, but they had still never grown beyond an A cup. There were other guys who were clearly guys, with beards and mustaches, who had more breast mass than I did. Of course, they also had twice the total body mass I did, but there were other skinny guys too. And some of the guys had a lot of body hair, but others had only the peach fuzz I did. A couple of the guys had hair as long as mine, too. The only thing that stood out about me among the group was my lack of a dick and balls, and the towel covered that most of the time. Nobody was staring at me, though a number of the guys seemed to be looking around the whole group like I was. Were they all worried about being stared at, too? Either that or they were gay and sizing up potential partners, I thought.
Since it seemed I passed this test as a guy, I went ahead and took my shower when it was my turn, dried off, and covered myself in the same way I went there, then returned to my room and got dressed. Nothing any different happened from my experiences in the locker rooms in high school.
There was a second day of orientation activities, getting registered for classes, getting books and supplies, treks all over campus. I definitely wanted the guy clothes for comfort during all that. Well, it was a T-shirt, girls’ shorts, men’s fashion briefs, and men’s sneakers, as male as I generally got.
I saw Ralph when he came back from his own shower, but after we left the room in the morning, I didn’t see him again until we returned there after dinner. I got back to the room before him, and while I was alone, I unpacked and put all my clothes in my dresser and closet. It was a tight fit, but they had given us dimensions of everything and I had brought what was going to fit and no more. Everything old or that I just didn’t like got tossed. Because of what I’d been buying most recently, that meant I ended up with more female clothes than male, but I was sure I had enough for whatever I wanted to do.
It was only then that I got to meet Ralph at all, if you could say it happened even then. He seemed very shy. I had trouble getting him to talk much or tell me much about himself. My own story was pretty weird and there were lots of things I had to leave out as well, so we didn’t actually talk much that night.
We went to bed early, and it was hours later I was awakened by a sound. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. It was repetitive, and it was close by. Eventually I realized it was coming from Ralph’s bed.
“Ralph, what are you doing?”
“Nothin’.”
He was clearly doing something. Our lights were out, but there was some dim light coming through the window, and after a bit I saw that he appeared to be thrusting his body up and down, on top of something. Was he using a sex doll? He clearly wasn’t masturbating in the only way I’d ever seen guys do it, using their hand. (I probably shouldn’t have seen that when I did. One guy’s girlfriend had dumped him, and he was sharing a naked picture of her in the locker room for other guys to jerk off to, until the coach came and broke it up.)
I’d seen these dolls in the shop with the other sex toys, the one that by this time I would have been officially allowed to enter, though I wasn’t old enough when I actually shopped there. What I saw made the most sense if there was one of those under him. Well, unless he had actually brought a girl in here, but then I would have expected to hear something from the girl as well. And he seemed too shy to do that, anyway.
It was making me horny myself. Apart from that one time in the locker room, which only lasted a minute or two, I had never been this close to a guy masturbating before. I went to the dresser drawer where I had put all my bras and other female clothes that didn’t need hanging up, and at the back of it found where I had stashed the vibrator. I installed its batteries and took it to bed with me, rubbing it all around and inside the body parts everyone else in the world refused to recognize that I had.
Ralph clearly heard the vibrator, and asked, “Are you doin’ nothin’ too?”
“Yeah. Though I don’t do it the same way as you do.”
“That’s OK. Um, just keep doing it until you’re done, I guess. It would be too weird to do anything else.”
“Yeah.”
I’m sure he heard my moans of pleasure the same way as I heard his grunts, but eventually he seemed to finish and fell silent. But Ralph didn’t get up and go clean his toy off. I don’t know if he even came. It seemed like he fell asleep on top of the thing. I couldn’t do that; I had to go clean up in the bathroom. But the room was silent when I came back, and I quickly fell asleep again.
In the morning, I awoke before Ralph and confirmed what I had suspected. He was asleep on top of a partial sex doll. It was only the business part, from the lower torso to a bit of the thighs.
He was gone when I returned from my shower. I assumed he was off somewhere trying to clean up his toy without everybody else seeing what he had. I had the whole day free, but some people were trying to finish sorting out their classes or getting their books or whatever. I decided that today I would see how the world here views me when dressing fully female.
It was warm, so I wore a short skirt. Not one of those super-minis that force you to avoid flashing yourself with every step, because I never let the girls convince me to buy something like that. But it was above the knee, a pleated skirt that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for shorts... if anybody else in the world had been wearing it. I paired that with a sleeveless top that let me cover the straps of one of my padded bras, but was pretty clingy and would show off my shape. The outfit should have made clear I was female up top as well.
Nobody stopped me anywhere in the dorm, despite well-communicated rules that women were not allowed to travel unescorted anywhere within the men’s dorm. I basically took a complete tour, including in the restrooms. When I went across the rest of campus, I was twice rejected in women’s restrooms, and I was addressed as “Mr. Jones” when making a purchase at the campus store. It was basically exactly the same thing I’d experienced at home.
My experience changed after dinner that night. I was sitting at my desk when Ralph came in, and at first he didn’t notice anything, but a few minutes later he crept around to where he could get a better look at me, silently, until he chose to confront me.
“W-w-what are you doing in my room?”
“Ralph, I’m your roommate Kelly.”
“No, my roommate is a guy. You’ve got boobs and you’re wearing a skirt.”
“Oh! You can see! Amazing! Um, I need to explain something, Ralph.”
As I turned to face him, he stared at me a moment. “Oh, yeah, I can see that you are Kelly. Are you trans?”
“Not exactly. It’s more complicated than that.”
Ralph sat in his desk chair and made it clear he was ready to listen to my story, but I tried to keep it brief.
“I am actually female. I have all the same parts as every other woman. But for some reason I can’t understand, nobody can see it. It’s been true from the very beginning, when I was assigned male on my birth certificate. My parents thought I was a boy, and I did too until I learned what the difference was supposed to be. Even when I dress in a way that looks obviously female, people still see me as a guy. And most of them don’t even seem to notice that I’m wearing female clothes.”
“So the fact that I saw you as female just now is... unusual?”
“Yes. A handful of people have been able to see the female clothes, and, just like you did for a moment, they think I’m trans. But even after I explained my story to them that I’m actually female and it’s the male version of me that’s trans, they still thought of me as male dressing as female. My parents and four girls I went to high school with fall into this category. There was a little boy I ran into at the mall once who returned a dollar I dropped who called me a lady when doing so. He was the only one besides you to actually identify me as female and not just trans. But his parents were aghast since they saw me as male, and hurried off with the kid before I could say anything.”
At first, Ralph seemed proud of himself, I guess for being able to do something other people couldn’t. But in less than a minute, his expression changed.
Ralph shouted, “Prove it! I’ve been made a fool of too many times by bullies and I’m not going to take it anymore. If you are lying to me, I’ll find a way to get you back.”
“And if I’m telling the truth?”
“Um...” Ralph was dumbstruck, but after a long pause quietly said, “I guess I’ll be your friend, the one friend who sees you as you really are.”
“Well, I don’t think I should have to prove myself, and the way this crazy aura around me works, I am not even sure that I will, but I’m curious whether you will actually be able to see it.”
I stood up, unzipped my skirt and dropped it to the floor, and then dropped my panties as well.
“I see... some hair. But definitely not a dick and balls.”
I put my hands on either side and pulled myself open so he could see everything.
“OK, I believe you. I know that is what a woman is supposed to look like, even if it’s my first time to actually see it in person.”
“Thank you, friend,” I said.
I put my clothes back on, and invited him in for a hug, which he accepted.
The next day, which was Saturday, we went out together, not as a date, but just doing stuff together, and learning about what we could walk to from the campus, since neither of us had a car. And he saw my reality-distortion field in action. I was wearing a dress, a floral print, something that was hard to mistake for anything that a guy would wear. I was twice called sir when making a purchase, and we were called gentlemen when a woman at a restaurant took our order. We also went into the men’s room together, with several other guys around. Of course, I went into a stall to do my business, since my clothes weren’t practical for urinal usage. But not one of the men said anything about me being there or even had a strange look, including the few who were washing hands as we were doing so and I was checking myself out in the mirror.
Sunday I talked with my parents. I had only left them a message Thursday, saying everything was going well and I managed to get registered for classes, but this time we actually talked.
“How’s your roommate?” Mom asked.
“Oh, he couldn’t be better. He’s pretty shy, but he can see me as I really am.”
“You mean he’s got no problem with your dressing as a girl?”
“You could say that.” I could have said more, but I was well beyond the point of trying to correct them every time they got this wrong.
When I talked with Dad, he asked, “Have you had sex yet?”
“No, Dad, I haven’t even gone on a date yet since I got here. Give me time.”
“Just kidding with ya,” he replied.
But I think he was actually encouraging me to have sex. He had given me condoms when I started dating Lisa. After Lisa had told me her religious restriction and I passed that on to him, and said that as a result, I hadn’t used any of the condoms, he just said that was fine. It was beyond his understanding of my situation to grasp that even if we had had sex, we couldn’t have used the condoms. He gave me a new batch before I came here, pointing out that they had limited lifetimes and the ones I had never used with Lisa should be thrown out, and clearly assuming I would find a new girlfriend here.
As the phone call continued, Dad reminded me of one of his earlier lessons, basically going over the whole thing again with me on the phone. It was about how to tell if a girl likes me, and also the kind of signals I could show girls before actually asking them out on dates to try to get an idea if they were interested in me. Did he expect I might use those lessons the other way around? He knew I dressed female, so maybe he did think I might use those lessons as a girl on guys. I had never been able to, though, because they all saw me as a guy. Until Ralph, that is.
All of this got me thinking after the call about whether I wanted to date Ralph. He was literally the only guy I had found who I could go on a date with without him thinking it was a gay date. I didn’t consider what we did the day before a date, but I realized that someone could see it that way. We ate lunch together and did other things together for hours. It just wasn’t a romantic date. We didn’t kiss, hold hands, or do other more intimate touching.
I decided to watch him first and try to get a better feel for what he was like. By the end of the second weekend, I had concluded he was either gay or so incredibly shy he’d never been out on a date. But one of my worst fears was allayed: He wasn’t in any way taking advantage of me, despite being the only person in the whole world who knew I was really a girl. Heck, he hadn’t touched me, apart from one hug and one time we held hands for a moment that were both touches I initiated.
At this point I started dressing as a girl all the time. Until then, it had been half and half. And I started giving him hints, mostly when we were in our room or otherwise alone together, since I didn’t want to force him to be widely known as gay. We could do things on our own, not at college parties, but still be dating. I still kept watch for any sign he was dating anyone else, and tried to sit either at the table with him or at least where he was in my sight when we ate meals. He definitely showed interest in girls, but it didn’t seem to go beyond ogling. Sometimes ogling me, sometimes other girls.
But I didn’t get him to do any more than that, so I started doing homework in our room wearing just my bra and panties. That finally got him to say something the second evening I did it.
“You, uh, OK, Kelly?”
“Yeah. You notice something?”
“Yeah, I noticed you’re not dressed.”
“What do you think about that?”
“It’s very tempting.”
“You’re not dating anybody, right, Ralph?”
“No,” he said with a sad tone in his voice.
“Did you ever ask anyone on a date?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was afraid they’d say no.”
“Hey, that’s part of it. They might say no, but you keep trying. Different people. Someone might say yes.”
“Maybe.”
“I dated while I was in high school, but it wasn’t easy. None of the boys I was interested in would date me, even when I asked them explicitly. They all thought of me as a boy, even when I was wearing a pretty dress when I asked them, because they couldn’t see me for what I really am. I finally asked some girls, and it took some tries but I found one.”
“How did it go?”
“At first I went on dates with Lisa as a guy, but later I dressed as a girl after explicitly asking her if that was OK. She thought of me as transgender after that, but she was OK with it. We never had sex or even heavy touching. Her family imposed strict religious limits that she obeyed faithfully. Kissing and light touching was her limit. I got her to touch my private parts once, and got a weird glimpse of how the distortion field around me works.”
“What happened?”
“She thought I had a dick and balls, even while touching what were definitely not my dick and balls. Come here, let me demonstrate what she did with your hand.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
So he cautiously stepped over to me, and I stood so we were at the same level, and I put his hand into my panties, and guided him to put two fingers between my vaginal lips with one on each side.
“She put her fingers about like this, and decided my dick was tucked down between my legs covering my balls, and these bits sticking out were part of my ball sack. Do you think it feels like that?”
“No. Not at all. For one thing, the dick should have some volume to it, even if you’re not hard. It’s also got the wrong texture. Also, the part that would be your dick is actually lower than the outside.”
“Exactly. But that’s how this thing affects people around me. They ignore what should be obvious signs I’m a girl.”
“Except me.”
“Right. That gives you a... special opportunity.”
“Kelly, are you trying to ask me on a date?”
Finally! But no, I didn’t say that out loud. It was clear I had to treat him tenderly.
“Yes, Ralph. I would love it if we could do something together. Something like we did our first Saturday here, but just a little physically closer. That’s all it really takes. It doesn’t have to be as close as we are now, though.”
Ralph realized he was still touching my private parts and pulled his hand away.
“So how do we do this?”
“Did you ever go on a date, Ralph?” He’d already told me he never asked anyone out on a date, but there was still a chance someone had set one up for him once, so I asked this question too.
“No,” he said, hanging his head.
“Well we’re going to fix that! A first date doesn’t have to be too elaborate. Dinner and a movie is a classic. So we just need a movie to see, a restaurant nearby to eat at, and a time that works for both of us.”
“I guess that’s not too much to plan. But it is something to plan.”
“Yes, and I’d like you to plan it. Make sure you allow enough time for us to eat and get to the theater, even if service is slow, and make reservations if they are required. And... what are you wearing?”
“Should I dress up nice?”
“It is traditional. Not a tux, but a suit or a sport jacket and slacks that go with it, a button shirt, and a tie. I wore clothes like that when I was dressing as a man on my dates with Lisa.”
“OK, I have one outfit like that.”
“I’ll wear a dress. I have some of those I wore on dates, too. And one more thing.”
He gave me a look that was like “What else could there be?” but I just grabbed him by the back of his head and pulled him into a deep, passionate kiss. My first kiss of a boy. He just looked at me, stunned, as I pulled away.
“That’s the kind of touching that is appropriate for a first date.”
“Wait, are we having the first date right now?”
“No. This kiss was for practice. You’ve never been on a date before, so I assume you’ve never done that, either.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Thanks for the kiss.”
He wanted to start planning right at that moment, and I told him to relax.
“I’m free Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. Any type of restaurant, any movie, your choice. Just let me know no later than the evening before.”
“Thanks. I will let you know. Can we have another practice kiss?”
“Of course. And I can give you tips about how to do it better.”
I cut him off after three more attempts so he still had something to look forward to.
The next morning we went down to the shower together, topless, and he whispered to me, “You just walk in like that?”
Was he just noticing today? He had known I was a girl for weeks now. He’d stared at me the way he stared at other girls, when I was fully dressed. Did he somehow not associate being a girl with me when I wasn’t clothed that way? Maybe the field still affected him some. He definitely hadn’t noticed it the first two days, when I dressed as a boy. Again, I didn’t chide him over this. I wanted to reward him for noticing.
I whispered back, “Yeah, they don’t realize I’m a girl and don’t think anything of it. But now that you know, you’ll get a free show every morning. Lucky you. But my breasts are so small it doesn’t make much difference anyway.”
The showering went without any issue, as had happened every morning since I moved into the dorm here.
That evening, after we left dinner, on the way back to the dorm, Ralph pulled me aside for a moment and said, “Be ready to leave here Saturday at 5.”
“Great. Thanks. I’ll be ready.”
When we got back into the dorm, we both needed to pee and went into the restroom together. I was dressed casually in a blouse and shorts with a fly, naturally with my fashion briefs under them.
As we unzipped, I saw Ralph look around before he said quietly to me, “How do you use urinals, anyway? I thought women had to sit down to pee.”
I looked and confirmed nobody else was in the room with us, and said, “The secret is holding myself open. Feel free to peek over the divider if you want.”
He did so, and I continued the explanation as I peed. “Women can pee standing, but it’s a lot harder. It’s automatic for penises, but when a woman just pees without holding herself open like I’m doing, the stream hits one side or the other and splashes and gets the whole area wet. You see these tabs I’m holding? They’re stretched out from a lifetime of peeing this way.”
As we washed our hands afterwards, he asked, “How did you learn how to do that?”
“Practice, and out of necessity. This was something everybody expected I could do, and so I simply figured out how to do it in a way that worked. It took me two years of practicing in front of my toilet at home multiple times a day to get to the point I felt confident enough to do it at a urinal.”
But we didn’t do anything else that night.
Since I didn’t have to prove myself to Ralph anymore, I continued to dress casually the rest of the week until our date. But I stewed over how to prepare for the date.
One of the thing I had learned during all those shopping excursions and lunch sessions with the girls in high school was just how much stuff some girls do to prepare for dates. Hours and hours of preparation. Not just bathing, but hairstyling and shaving various body parts and skin treatments and makeup and multiple perfumes and stuff that I wouldn’t possibly notice my date had done. But I also learned that not every girl does all that stuff, or at least she does not do it for every date.
Even after I heard about all this, I never went through such a routine for any of my many dates with Lisa, even when I was going as a girl. Bathing, yes. Shaving, nope. I don’t have male facial hair, and I don’t have especially noticeable hair on other body parts. Nearly everybody sees me as a guy anyway, and even Lisa just thought I was a guy dressing as a girl. Hairstyling, no, or minimal. Same reason; I just washed it the way I normally would as part of the bathing. Mom had showed me how to use a curling iron to make the ends curl up in a way that reminded me of a certain girl’s hairstyle I had seen, though I didn’t know what it was called, and I did that sometimes. Skin treatments? At most I’d try to hide a zit or something. Makeup? I didn’t spend more than 5 minutes on it. Perfume? I had exactly one cologne I used on dates I was going as a guy and one perfume I used on dates when I was going as a girl, and I just used a little at my neck and that was it. I never spent more than an hour getting ready.
But how should I prepare for my date with Ralph? Unlike my other dates, he could actually see that I was a woman. I decided, though, that I was just going to be myself. Maybe take a little extra care getting ready but not try to go overboard doing things I’m not even familiar with. I was pretty sure I wasn’t competing with any other girl for Ralph, anyway. So it was 3:45 when I went down to the dorm shower to start the process. And when I got back from the shower I kicked Ralph out for a bit while I was doing some of that prep naked in our room, but only for 15 minutes.
It was a 10 minute walk from the dorm to the restaurant in the “village” of stores near campus. Ralph picked an Italian restaurant I had noticed and thought looked nice, and it was great. He had allowed plenty of time, during which I told him some of my other misadventures of people not being able to see me as a girl. And he saw more of the weird way I faced the world, as we were greeted as “gentlemen” multiple times during the dinner. Ralph chuckled at least three times after that happened.
Ralph picked a newly released romantic comedy as our movie. I wasn’t sure if that was what he really liked, or what he thought I’d like as a girl, or if he thought it would help me get closer to him. I didn’t really care; I had told him he could choose any movie and that was what he picked. But the movie was awful. The comedy fell flat. The romance... well, it was fine if you wanted to see a man and woman kissing. But it seemed forced. The one thing it was good for was making opportunities for you to kiss your date if you were there on a date. So maybe that was the point of the whole film. But I’d watched every romantic comedy of the last three years on dates with Lisa, and none of them were this bad. It’s not anything against Ralph, though. I’m sure he didn’t know. The bad movie just happened to be in the theater when we went. But he caught on, and in the second half of the movie he was ready to kiss me every time the couple in the movie kissed. He definitely got better at it.
But it left me in a weird spot. He had kissed me so much I figured he would want to kiss me in more casual settings, settings where it would make other people think we were gay. I decided I didn’t care, for myself. Other people had me wrong already anyway. But was Ralph OK with it? Would he even think about it? I decided I had to speak with him about it on the way back to our dorm.
“Ralph, the plot of that movie was terrible but it gave us lots of chances to kiss, and I could see you really enjoyed that.”
“Yes, I did, Kelly,” he said as he planted a quick one on my lips.
“That’s actually what I want to talk to you about. Because you know how this thing with me affects other people.”
“It makes them think you’re a man.”
“Yeah, so if we go kissing in public they will think we’re gay.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t care, for myself. They already have my gender wrong; if they think I’m gay on top of that, it’s not any worse. But I want to make sure you’re OK with it.”
“Hmm. Maybe we should keep this private.”
“On the DL,” I agreed.
“Huh?”
“On the down-low,” I elaborated. “Secret. Don’t let others know we’re dating.”
“OK. Down-low. That’s a new term for me, but yes, I agree.”
So that’s how it was. We started going to dates in another area we could walk to but which was farther from campus, so we saw fewer of our classmates. The people there saw us as two men as well, but few students who knew us saw us there.
We went on dates like that about once a month, but we also had time together in our room. And still, Ralph was slow to step up our relationship. It wasn’t until after our fourth date, three months after the first, that he touched my private parts again, and that only after I took the initiative to reach down his pants.
In the last week before spring finals, one night I caught Ralph using the sex doll. When I did so, I told him, “Toys like that are for guys who don’t have girlfriends.”
“Um, you mean...”
He knew what I meant. He was staring at my panties. It wasn’t unusual by that time in the evenings for me to sit in just my bra and underwear, either panties or fashion briefs, whichever I’d worn that day, and this happened at that time of night.
I stripped my remaining clothes, and he quickly got out of the bed and was ready to jump me, standing, but I pushed him back. He looked hurt, but understood when I retrieved a condom.
“Oh, yeah.”
I enjoyed feeling him inside me, but it wasn’t as good as when I used my vibrator. But I hoped we could practice and improve that. And I could see he was thrilled.
I had talked with my parents several times during the year, telling them I had gone on a date with a boy, then more dates and that I considered him my boyfriend. When I was alone I called them and told them I had finally had sex.
“With this boy?” Dad asked.
“Yes, in my vagina,” I told him, knowing he would take it as a euphemism for my ass since he was unable to believe I had the female organ.
“Well, that’s fine if that’s what you want. He hasn’t coerced you into this, has he?”
“No. Like I told you before, he’s very shy. If I hadn’t gotten him to open up he probably would never have had sex.”
I kept them informed as well as I could.
Ralph and I were allowed to stay in the dorms during the summer, but we had to move at one point to our room for the next year; the room we’d initially been assigned was reserved for incoming freshmen only. That worked out, though, because the other rooms were a little bigger and I didn’t have to cram my clothes quite so much. We both got summer jobs on campus, and were more open with our dating with few students around. And we had more sex, weekly at first, and roughly twice weekly by the end of the summer. Ralph got better at sex, and was also getting over his shyness, even being the one to ask for sex sometimes.
Our social life improved during sophomore year, with more regular dates and more regular sex. Ralph blossomed under my encouragement, now able to ask for dates and for sex, and being able to ask for help also helped him in his classes. We did the summer job thing again, though I helped him find a real job programming that he could do remotely from our room for real money, rather than just something on campus. I spent most of each weekday out of the room, a lot of that at my own job, and we were together nights and weekends. We had sex almost every night that summer.
A lot changed junior year. At the start of the year, we enrolled in drivers’ ed. That cost extra money, but the money from our summer jobs paid for it. The fee included insurance, the driving test, and use of school cars for taking the test. It was a one-semester class offered pass/fail with a pass if we got a license, and we both did.
But somehow, some other students figured out Ralph and I were dating, and almost immediately after we finished getting our driver’s licenses, we became widely known as a gay couple. Ralph was upset and even had a long cry with me, but I consoled him, told him that it didn’t matter. What mattered was that we had each other.
Ralph was too upset to have sex the night the “gay” issue erupted around us, but we did it the next night, and I helped him bounce back. So much so, in fact, that in the spring he proposed to me. Same-sex marriage was just approved in a ballot initiative November of that school year, so we could get married even if everybody thought we were both men. We both told our parents about the engagement and they were happy for us.
There was also a gay and lesbian club on campus, and even though we refused to accept the label for ourselves, several members invited us, and we accepted the friendship and attended their meetings.
Ralph had a second summer of real work, and the money he earned from both summers let him buy a cheap used car which let us get out even further from the campus for dates senior year.
Throughout senior year I wore the engagement ring, and most people didn’t notice it, but the ones who did realized that it meant Ralph and I were getting married, and made even more gay jokes about it. But we were strong and took it all. Those people didn’t matter. Ralph and I had each other; that was what mattered.