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When Bob was a kid, his mum told him once that he got named Roberta because the doctors said they were having a boy and they never got around to picking out a name for a girl. And little Bobbie, as he was then, in her muddy trousers and messy braids thought that was daft.
“You should have named me Robert,” Little Bobbie told her mum and her mum laughed and said back, “But Roberta’s a pretty name for my pretty little girl.”
Bob can remember the crawling, creepiness unhappiness at the words and the fond look in his mum’s eyes as she tucked loose pieces of hair behind her daughter’s ears. He can remember.
***
The funny thing is, at sixteen Roberta wasn’t Bobbie any more, she was Roberta. Roberta in little skirts with long hair and facefull of garish makeup slapped across her eyes and cheeks. Roberta wore heels and big earrings and nicked fancy pantiesfrom the store and stuffed them into her bag.
(A therapist Bob had to see back when he was getting himself sorted once told him that he didn’t have to talk about his past like it happened to someone else. He said back that it had happened to someone else, a bit. Because there are things Roberta did that Bob will never understand.)
Roberta’s first kiss, that Bob feels a bit guilty counting for himself, happened behind the garden shed with a boy named Tony who had big hands that fit nicely on her arse and a bit of reluctant trouble with, “Enough’s enough, then. Piss off.”
Bob doesn’t remember it feeling fake at the time. Everyone, so far as Roberts knew, thought they looked crap. Everyone thought their face was wrong and their limbs were wrong and it was all so bloody tragic and they’d never recover. She, Roberta, just sort of assumed that was long and short of it.
That it’d go away.
***
Bob was eighteen the first time he looked in a mirror and thought, Bob. Not Roberta, not Bobbie with the girlish I-E on the end.
Just Bob.
Bob’s your uncle, he thought and ran his palms over hair he’d cut in his own flat with a pair of cheap dog fur clippers. The long blond hanks were curled on top of the bin. He felt like he had a row of leather belts wrapped around his lungs, slowly being yanked tighter by someone with hands so strong they’d never stop.
And then he pushed a pair up rolled up socks in his pants and it got better and worse. It was a bit like everything between muddy Bobbie and her braids and name and Bob sitting in his flat disappeared.
He said, “Fuck,” to his mirror. “Fucking hell.”
***
He really did think about running off and disappearing into the big, old world. He figured he could save up and scrape together enough to get to Amsterdam or maybe even America. Leave it all behind and find somewhere that didn’t have a history.
But that didn’t happen and maybe only because plane tickets are fucking expensive and Bob has never really felt like he had enough cash on hand to be safe. He stuck to secrets at first, hiding vials under his bed and sticking needles into his arse at three in the morning when no one would walk in and accidentally see.
He got a bit hair on his chest and a rash of bloody spots across his face and down his shoulders and back. Bob hated that bit, but the first time his voice cracked something light expanded right in the center of his chest and he had to fuck off to the loo to keep from crying in front of people and looking the idiot.
Bob still thought about running, maybe not as far. Just far enough.
***
In the end Bob didn’t have to work out how to tell anyone what was what, because Mumbles pulled him aside all casual one day and said, “I’ve got the feeling there’s something you’re wanting to get off your chest.”
You’ve got no bloody idea, Bob remembers thinking, because it was the middle of summer and it was hot and sweaty when he was naked and his binder was a murder of uncomfortable, sticky itching.
He looked at Mumbles feet and felt his face burn bright red and that stupid fucking tears burn at his eyes again. It was hard, really hard to look Mumbles in the eye because he really did expect to see a bit of revulsion there. Like Bob was month old left overs rotting in the back of the fridge or a dead animal strewn across the road.
“I’m your mate,” Mumbles said, really kind. “I promise, Bob.”
It was probably the name that did it. Bob from someone else’s mouth, even though everyone and their mum was calling him Bob by then. It all came tumbling out, the hormones and the therapy and the being a lad part most of all.
Mumbles listened to the torrent of things Bob hadn’t told anyone. Not his parents, who didn’t much want anything to do with their criminal kid any more, and not One Two who made something hot coil up in his belly. None of the girls he tumbled in the dark who never knew it was a plastic cock.
When he was done, Mumbles said, “That’s all right, then,” and clapped Bob on the shoulder.
***
One Two, because he’s bloody One Two, was harder.
Bob actually practiced that one, standing in front of the same mirror. He wouldn’t have done it, probably, except that One Two was going in for his stretch and Bob actually had a date for his surgery and it felt like there were too many changes threatening to crush it all.
So Bob practiced, pacing his room in boxers and a binder, smoking until a haze covered the top six inches and he felt like he was fucking choking on his own air.
It didn’t even fucking end up mattering, because as soon as Bob saw One Two three days before he was going in, he blurted, “I got to tell you something and you’ve got to promise you won’t hate me.”
One Two’s an idiot and a bastard, but a friend. Bob’s fucking friend and Bob still supposes, even looking back, it went as well as it could have gone. Because One Two also isn’t so good with his friends flipping on him. At least he just looked shocked.
“Are you fucking sure, Bob?” One Two asked, face pulled into something uncomfortable. “That’s. That’s a fucking hell of a thing.”
“I know,” Bob said, rubbing at his head like he always did, just to know that his hair was cropped and he wouldn’t blink and wake back up again as Roberta. “It’s who I am.”
***
The day One Two went in, as Bob was sitting with Mumbles getting steadily more and more pissed, he got a call from One Two. He said, “See you when I’m out, Handsome Bob,” and that was it.