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She is four years old sitting on the floor drawing a picture for her Poppa. It’s of her and Baby Mikey and Grandma Elena, and Mommy and Daddy.
The babysitter asks her who’s who and when it gets to her gangly, sparkly, huge eyed drawing of herself the babysitter laughs. “That can’t be you, Gerard,” she says, taking the pencils off her and crossing out the upside down ‘g’ and back two front ‘e’s she’s painstakingly scratched under her self portrait.
The babysitter draws a couple of straight up and down lines with a big ugly ball head on top, like the sign Mommy taught her for the bathroom and writes GERARD underneath it.
The only thing it has in common with the pink, purple and violet confection of a figure she’d already drawn is that it’s in crayon.
“There you go, buddy,” said the babysitter, scruffing up her hair and play punching her on the shoulder. “That’s how you draw boys.”
*
Gee’s mom, the ultimate Jersey housewife, had always wanted a daughter. So when she finally got one, she made the most of it.
They shared clothes, make-up, boy-talk. Her mom had even taken Gee to get her first bra. That had been a strange, uncomfortable, vaguely mortifying experience - A trial she had somehow to pass on her way to becoming a woman. She always wondered if that’s how it was for other girls.
Her mom tried. Really she did. But, despite a mother’s clichéd attempts at understanding, the only person who really got it was Elena.
“If you don’t try how will you know?” she would say, carding Gee’s hair as she lay with her head in Elena’s lap. “You are an artist. There are no rules for you.”
She loved her Grandma, like no one else.
For her sixteenth birthday, despite a tantrum from her father that left everyone in tears and her baby brother hiding in his bedroom, Elena gave her a pair of silk stockings and a garter belt.
The first time she put them on she felt really alive.
***
Frank is just about as fed up as he thinks it is possible for a guy to get.
He’s going to be late to work again and he can’t call and let anyone know because for some God unknown reason his cell has exactly no coverage in this part of Jersey. And, joy of joys, the train that has just pulled in to his stop is full to bursting already. Clearly, it isn’t going to be his day.
He hates having to commute into Manhattan, but he needs the intern spot at the record label, needs the experience if he is ever going to have a label of his own.
They’ve got him by the balls, and they know it. He’s never been so poor or overworked, not even when he was still in school and trying to get by on tips from an evening job.
Frank knows he’s pretty lucky his mom let him move home while he isn’t earning. He sends up a silent prayer of thanks that she doesn’t mind feeding him in return for odd jobs round the house and a massive IOU redeemable the day he finally makes it.
Still - living at home with mom? Not ideal.
Another packed train rolls in and there’s a smallest of gaps when the doors open. He thinks about forcing himself into it but decides to wait. Frank’s little, but not that little. Standing on the platform, he watches the train leave and looks at his watch.
He needs to be at Rocket Records in 15 minutes but he’s a 25 minute train ride away. Frank kicks a discarded coffee cup off the platform onto the rails only to find it’s not completely empty. Half a cup of cold latte splashes over his foot.
“FUCK!” He shakes his foot out as his shoulders slump.
He’s wound pretty tight today, tighter than usual. A hipster kid walks past him in skin tight black jeans and glances at Frank, smirking at his soggy foot. “Asshole,” Frank mutters, but he can’t help noticing the lean curve of the guy’s thigh and the way the jeans hug his ass as he walks away.
Ok, so, maybe a little bit of sexual frustration is winding him up too, Frank can admit that much to himself.
He hasn’t hooked up in ages, hasn’t really wanted to what with all the hours he’s putting in at the label. But even if he had wanted to, it’s pretty hard to score when the only place he can take someone is the single bed in his childhood bedroom, just one door down from his retiree mom and her boyfriend.
Maybe he’s reached his no-nookie limit?
It isn’t that Frank was some kind of Lothario player type. It’s just that it's been a really long time. A really, really long time. It was easier when he was at school, but then isn’t everything? Love it though he does, New Jersey isn’t exactly gay-friendly. Sure, on paper the Jerz is 21st century all the way, but Frank knows that down on the corner with the Vinnies and the Sals of Belleville, men are still men and fags are still fuckin’ fags.
So, Frank Iero is a 28 year old, perma-single homo, living at home with his mother in the suburbs, getting paid dick to take shit from industry assholes all day long, with a soggy shoe and no one to hump.
No wonder he wants to punch things.
A train pulls in front of Frank and finally sees his chance. He flings himself bodily into the wafer-thin space between two guys in suits as soon as the doors open and hangs on as the train lurches out of the station.
He can’t see much past some guy’s armpit and the bouffant, curly hair of some old lady who’s even shorter than him.
Once they hit the city though, it starts to thin out a little. Not much mind, but enough to take deep breaths and stand up straight.
The rocking of the train and the heat of the bodies pressed around him put Frank in one of those early morning, commuter trances. His mind drifts to thinking about the last time he touched someone else’s cock – in the bathroom of the Loop Lounge, over a year ago. Frank snaps out of it but it’s too late. He’s feeling a little sorry for himself now. A year? Jesus.
At the next stop a bunch of school kids force their way onto the train and Frank winds up slammed hard up against an uncomfortable looking girl clutching a huge black portfolio to her chest. She tries to keep the thing flat but it won’t stay with all the bodies pressed around them.
When he first sees her he does a double take and it’s weird because Frank never really notices girls – hasn’t since high school when he started noticing boys. But something about this one, with her sooty lashes, massive eyes and messy bob just catches him off guard. He finds himself smiling at her. She blinks back, wary and maybe a little alarmed.
She looks like that painful kind of shy some self conscious and awkward girls get. Frank feels like an asshole, all pressed up against her in the crush. He’s desperate for her to know that he is no threat to her. He briefly contemplates saying something fucking moronic like, “It’s ok, I’m gay.” The thought makes him snicker, and the girl flinches. Nice one asshole, Frank thinks to himself.
But then the low cut neck of her red dress gapes slightly and Frank can barely drag his eyes away. Her bust is really small, practically flat and he can see a little of the lace from her camisole, below the neckline of the dress, stoking against her pale skin. She has a freckle, just one, in the center of her chest.
Frank feels his body react. Tightening and tingling. What the fuck?
The doors shudder open at the next stop and then closed again, and everyone stumbles as the train jerks away from the platform.
“Sorry,” Frank says, holding himself back from her with one hand against the carriage wall, just by her ear, trying to give her as much space as he can. “Not a lot of room.” He grimaces apologetically.
The train lurches again, flinging Frank backwards. He can feel his feet trapped between the briefcases, backpacks and legs of other passengers. There is no way he can move to stop himself from falling forwards again and practically face-planting the girl’s chest. The sharp edge of her portfolio jabs Frank in the cheek. He grabs the first thing he can, which just happens to be her hips.
“Sorry, sorry. God, I’m...” He yanks himself back. She probably thinks he’s trying to cop a feel. He feels like such a creeper.
“’S okay,” she mumbles, pushing him back a little with her portfolio, but his thigh is still pressed against hers and she slides the portfolio down between them. Frank cringes.
“If I had a seat, I’d stand up for you,” he says, aiming for chivalrous and hitting awkward instead.
She smiles at that and ducks her head, rosy pink blush spreading across the bridge of her nose and across her décolletage. Which Frank, whose mother raised him so much better, cannot - Stop. Looking. At.
At East Street, she pushes past him and he feels her hand on his hip, just the briefest touch as she nudges him aside and makes her way through the crowd.
And that is that.
Frank looks for her the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.
If he wasn’t a confirmed Fairy, he’d think he had a crush.
*
It’s almost a week before he sees her again, at the far end of the train car, clutching her portfolio, smoothing out a wrinkle in her curve-hugging skirt. She reaches back and runs a hand up the back of her her calf. Her sharp toed heels gleam as she turns her ankle to see where it looks like she straightened the seam of her stockings. Seams...wow...
He’s got pictures of his grandma from way back in the day where she’s wearing clothes just like that.
Frank smiles to himself. He knows scene girls who go for the Rockabilly thing, the Bettie Page thing, but this girl doesn’t look like one of them. It’s like she's the genuine article, like she just stepped out of the 1953 Harper's Bazaar Spring edition. Frank’s grandma had that very magazine on her bedside table when he was a kid, said it was one of the best years of her life.
The long, white column of the girl’s throat is turned towards him; she tucks a stray bang behind her ear, cocks her hip, and chews her lip. Her eyes dart left and right, and as Frank watches, she flips up the hem of her skirt and adjusts... Frank blinks - he’s only ever seen them in magazines like his grandma’s... a suspender holding up flesh-colored stockings.
Frank can’t look away. She’s like a 50s wet dream.
She adjusts the snap and smoothes the hem of her stocking across the top of her thigh. Then she looks up, straight into his eyes.
Frank jerks back and hides behind his newspaper until the train stops.
When he looks up again, she’s gone.
***
He was on the train again this morning – the guy with the neck tattoos.
Gee arrives at school early and spends a little time staring out the window of the studio and day dreaming as she finishes her coffee. She’s still a little buzzed from what she did on the train.
She can’t seem to put a stop to the little swoop of delight she gets every time she sees him. Even though she knows it’s pointless, insane, and possibly dangerous. What if he realises? He was looking at her again today. What if he finds out?
No one’s ever hurt her before. Even when they suddenly realised. Elena says that’s because she doesn’t look out of place or strange. She's a girl and she looks exactly as she should, so no one notices. Gee’s not sure about that. No two women ever look the same. She’s never had an idea of what women should look like. Just what she should look like.
Even so, no one’s ever really noticed her before.
Well, he’s noticed. He’s noticed her. Something in her heart swoops; finally. She tamps it down.
The first time she’d seen him he’d walked straight past her, head down, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie. The hood had been up, but she’d seen his face, the tip of his nose turned pink from the cold, and that had been enough. She never, ever forgets a face.
There’s just something about his face, the line of his jaw, the arch of his brow. He looks kind, smart, interesting, and so beautiful.
She already knows he’s not a total jerk, so she doesn’t feel completely mental day dreaming like this. When he was pressed up against her in the rush hour crush he’d tried so hard not to creep her out. She’d noticed, but she’d been so freaked out that he might get too close, might feel that she wasn’t quite right, she hadn’t been able to talk to him.
Wasn’t quite right. Elena would kick her ass if she heard her talking like that.
The bright city light pours over her drawing table as she gets out a fresh sheet of cartridge paper and sets up her watercolors, and sketches the loose lines of a man, sitting reading the paper. She takes time to give the suggestion of tattoos on his forearms and to get the shaggy cut of his hair right. But she gives the most attention to his profile – all strong, clean lines. She thinks she gets it pretty right.
She flashes back to what she did today, on the train, and it feels insanely daring. Her stomach lurches with excitement sinking into shock. But she thinks, she thinks maybe he liked it? Liked the flash of her thigh. She feels like she shared a very big secret with him. When she’d looked up and seen him watching – his eyes huge, lips parted, ruddy cheeked – she’d felt so powerful. It’s confusing. She let herself be looked at, and it felt so good.
Quickly, she puts the finishing touches on the lines of the drawing’s brow before soaking a brush in water and flooding sections of the page with it in preparation for taking the color – she’s going to surround his brightness with grey, because that’s how she sees him – her bright spark on a dark day. She knows her little sketch won’t do him justice, but maybe it’ll help her get him out of her system?
She sighs. Who is she kidding? She doesn’t know anything about him. He could be an asshole, a sicko, maybe even a bigot.
But as she looks at him on the page, and thinks about the way he looked at her, she can’t find it in herself to really believe that.
***
In true fashion, work turns completely to shit. Frank's focus is hazy; he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the girl and what he saw her doing on the train. Try as he might to concentrate on some executive’s coffee orders, or wrangling street teams and checking rider lists, Frank can’t seem to get past the image of the girl on the Crosstown, her silk covered thigh or the way the suspender bit into her creamy skin.
It’s freaking him out. He puts it down to too many hours spent working, and not enough time sucking cock. He misses cock. Other men’s cocks, specifically. But even as he thinks it, he remembers the girl turning up her hem, the bright gleam of the nickel suspender clasp, the sheen of silk stocking, and everything gets tangled up in his head.
So when he sees her next it’s kind of a strange relief, like a pressure valve opening.
She’s got a seat this time, the train is only half-full and at first Frank thinks, with a twinge of disappointment he can barely bring himself to acknowledge, she’s with someone - a guy, hanging over her from the hand rail between the seats.
But then he hears what the guy is saying.
“C’mon, c’mon, tell me your name...c’mon, I betcha got a pretty name to go with them pretty titties...c’mon...”
The guy isn’t touching her - if he had been, Frank would have decked the guy already. As it is, the asshole’s behavior makes Frank’s blood boil. He starts to move towards them, his eyes fixed on the girl who's squirming and trying to ignore the jerk-wad invading her personal space. There are other people around, all patently ignoring what’s going on in the corner of the car. Frank can’t figure out what the hell is wrong with people sometimes.
The girl’s cheeks are stained red and she’s chewing her lip. Her eyes are fixed on the front window of the carriage and away from the asshole’s crotch which is practically in her face. She clutches her portfolio to her chest, knuckles white.
Frank gets the feeling from the way she looks that she’s holding something back, though. She’s not frightened like she had been when Frank was pressed against her. She looks uncomfortable, but also angry, as if at any second she’s going to tell this prick where he can get off. And maybe punch him in the nuts for good measure. Frank hopes so anyway.
Her anger makes her beautiful. She is so fucking beautiful. Frank feels hot all over; a tightening in his groin. Fuck.
Then the guy swings towards her, reaching out to touch her. Frank flinches, surges forward.
The guy, frustrated at the girl for ignoring him, cups himself and shakes his crotch at her. “You want some of this, Bitch? You want it? Tell me your fucking name!”
Suddenly, she pulls back looks the guy dead in the eyes and says, "Back the fuck off."
Frank comes up next to the guy, sees his eyes rolling, popping out of his head and he winds up to verbally assault her some more.
“Are you okay?” Frank asks the girl, cutting in. Her eyes are narrowed at the guy but dart over to Frank; she half-nods then shakes her head.
“Okay,” says Frank. He turns to the guy. “Why don’t you get lost, buddy? She’s not interested.”
“Why don’t you fuck off, peewee? I’m talking to her.”
Frank's seen this kind of asshole before; no class, no manners, no respect. Working with assholes like this every day, Frank knows that even though he's still the new guy at work, stuck carrying boxes of vinyl and unloading instruments, you don't back down. So, while Frank may be short, he's strong. He grabs for the guy's shirt but the train lurches and he grabs the guy in the crotch instead.
Working with what he's got, Frank crush-yanks as hard as he can. The guy yelps and clings to the railing, curling downwards as the train lurches again. When Frank wished for more cock in his life, this isn't what he meant.
“In a second I’m going to let go of your balls.” He can't believe he's doing this. “You’re going to fuck off and leave us alone." Frank squeezes harder for emphasis. "Got it?”
The guy, who’s swearing and shaking, nods once. Frank lets him go and the guy stumbles back.
“Good luck with her,” he yells at Frank. “She’s a frigid bitch. Fucking dyke, lesbian cunt!”
Frank raises his fist and the guy pushes his way to the back of the car, flinging insults over his shoulder as he goes.
Frank feels a hand on his arm and looks back. The girl, still blushing, is touching him.
Frank blinks. She gestures to the empty seat next to her and Frank sinks down into it. The adrenaline is draining from his system and he feels lightheaded.
“Are you okay?” He asks as soon as he sits.
She nods. “You didn’t have to do that,” she says, voice low and quiet.
“No, I know. Sorry. I just...” he looks at her – her heart shaped face, her small, cupid’s bow mouth. “He was an asshole. You deserve better than that.”
She frowns. “Well, thank you anyway. You didn’t have to step up. You don’t even know me.”
Her voice is scratchy and a little deeper than Frank would have expected, but it suits her.
Frank looks into her eyes. “I do know you,” he says.
As soon as the words are out of his mouth he groans internally. What the hell is he saying? What if she thinks he’s just another creep hitting on her? That’s not what he wants. He wants her to think – to know... He wants something else.
The train jerks to a halt at the next station. The girl shivers and clears her throat. “This is my stop,” she says, standing.
Frank can’t take his eyes off the sinuous curve of her body unfolding. She’s a big girl, bigger than Frank, anyway, voluptuous and dark. He shakes himself. “See,” he says with a hopeless laugh. “I knew that.”
She frowns again, lips twitching in a confused smile before she pushes her way through the crowd and off the train. Frank catches a glimpse of the seam in her stocking running up the back of her thigh where the long split in her skirt parts as she walks.
*
Every day the following week, he takes a much earlier train.
He throws himself at those coffee runs, heavy boxes, and rider checklists like there is no Frank, only an Automaton designed specifically for the needs of Rocket Records.
But at night he goes home and trawls Cheesecake Pin-up websites and wonders what the fucking fuck is going on.
How can he be having a sexual identity crisis now? He’s 28 years old. He’s been out since he was 15. One time in the 9th grade, his mother spent a night rubbing his back while he cried himself to sleep over Tommy Williams. For god’s sake, he once wore a pair of cut-off shorts to Pride. And now he’s jacking off over retro lingerie and black patent pumps?
He takes some solace in the fact the bodies in the lingerie don’t quite do it for him, they’re not what gets him off, not what he wants to see. And none of them remind him of the girl on the Crosstown.
Maybe he’s not suddenly straight, just straight for her?
So it’s kind of a shock the next time Frank sees her. He’s not even disappointed that she’s just in jeans and a tee shirt. It’s a Saturday, after all. The portfolio leans against her knee as she stands in the middle of the empty train and clings one handed to the rail above her head. In her other hand she’s holding a comic. She looks relaxed as she leans on her arm and reads.
But Frank almost doesn’t get on the train when the doors open. He’s still trying to get his head around the last time they met, the way her body made him feel - like no woman has ever made him feel – and the almost comically pretentious things he said to her. ‘I do know you.’ Who the hell says that to a stranger?
Then she looks up from the comic book when the doors open. She looks up and smiles, huge and bright and warm.
Frank is pulled, bodily onto the train by that smile. He is so very, very fucked.
It’s okay, it's okay, he tells himself as the door slide shut behind him. He’ll explain it to his friends somehow. ‘I met a girl I like,’ he thinks. It sounds insane, even in his own head, let alone out loud to Ray or Bob or even James, who is only 'half gay' anyway.
‘I met a girl and, I think I’m going to...we’re going to...’ Frank has never been with a girl, so he has no fucking clue what they’re going to do or even if she’d want to with him. Obviously he has a clue, but not like... any practical understanding. How did he let this happen?
But then there’s her smile again and Frank can’t seem to care that much.
“Hi,” she says, bending down and tucking the comic inside her portfolio. “I’m so glad to see you.”
Frank grabs the rail next to her as the train lurches away. “Me too,” he mumbles, because his mouth is no longer his own, his brains are mush. “To see you, I mean, um...” He can’t help staring at the creamy gloss on her lips, the faint, glittery shadow on her eye lids. He needs to get a grip on himself.
“Oh?” she frowns, but it melts into a pleased smile. “I just, I didn’t thank you for sticking up for me the other day, and I felt kind of like an asshole. You know, after I ran off? I mean, I can take care of myself, right? I was just... I haven’t been doing full drag for that long. And that guy, he caught me by surprise.”
Frank’s mushy brain cycles through the words slowly. She has a strange way of talking out one side of her mouth. It is completely adorable.
“Full drag?” That’s when Frank looks at her, her flat chest and broad shoulders, her narrow hips, her ridiculously long, shapely legs. The tee-shirt is tight, barely covering her tiny, round belly, and her jeans are practically sprayed on. Frank can see the bulge of her cock beneath the leopard print belt slung round her hips.
He blinks. His stomach flips. She is fucking perfect.
“Um,” by the time Frank’s eyes make it back up to her face she is biting her lip, her painted eyes, huge and sad looking.
“Yeah. Drag,” she says and that pink stain Frank has been fetishizing all week floods her face. She looks down at the floor. “I thought...I thought you knew. When you said...I thought you got it.”
He did, he thinks. Maybe he did. For sure, no other kind of girl ever got him hot like she had, with just a look and flash of thigh.
Frank doesn’t know what to say so he smiles, leans forward and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m Frank,” he says. She looks up again and grins.
“Gee, for Gina...or Gerard.” She shrugs.
“Hi, Gee,” says Frank with a laugh. “What are you up to today? You want to get some coffee somewhere? I’d like to buy you a coffee.”
Her answering grin, lopsided and large, is all that Frank can see.
***
Private View
***
Of all the amazing things Frank does for her, she thinks their dates may be the thing she likes most. He treats her like a princess. And she feels like one, when she’s with him.
The first date was to a diner on 48th, one she didn’t know. He’d held the door open for her and then laughed out loud at the look on her face when she’d seen the interior. The place, called Cookie’s, is dedicated to cheesecake, and not the eating kind. Every wall was plastered with 40s, 50’s and 60’s pin-up girls. It was adorable.
In a booth at the back he told her about coming out to his dad, working at the label, his dream of starting a label of his own. She liked the way he told the truth, and the way he smiled when she told the truth back.
On their second date he took her to Seaside Heights. They played skee-ball on Casino Pier, made Kevin Smith jokes and recited lines from Bouncing Souls and Lifetime songs to each other.
As the sun set, he dragged her onto the Ferris wheel and fed her cotton candy. And when the ride stopped with them at the top, the breeze off the ocean swinging them gently back and forth, he kissed her for the first time, sweet, and slow.
He teased that it was her turn to pick a date next so she takes him to a gallery opening on Bleeker. She shows him strange, beautiful, nightmarish paintings of faceless girls, unicorns with orchids blooming from their sides, red tigers bursting with flames. There’s a painting of a sad eyed girl with butterfly hair and liquid weeping limbs. Her clothes peel off her like her own skin. The artist is James Jean, she tells him, someone very special to her.
When they leave, he holds her hand as they walk uptown and he doesn’t speak for what feels like an age. She’s frightened she’s gone too far, that he found the paintings pretentious, atrocious, or worse, that he didn’t understand them at all.
But then he asks her it the butterfly girl is her, if she thinks of it as her and he pulls their joined hands up to his mouth and kisses her wrist, and she knows he gets it, completely.
Later he kisses her mouth - desperate and thorough, his hand slipping down her back to cup her thigh for the merest second before stuttering back to her waist - on the steps of Belleville Train station.
He still won’t come home with her though.
He treats her like a princess. She wants him to treat her like a man.
***
For their fifth date, Frank asks her out somewhere special, somewhere specific. He’s taking her to see La Dolce Vita at a little run-down cinema on West Huston. It’s an art house kind of theater, but Frank, who’s usually more of a Cineplex kind of guy, loves it anyway. He knows Gee will like the retro charm.
On the corner of Bleeker and Lafayette, a couple of shop-doors down from the station steps, Frank see’s Gee standing outside an antiques store window shopping. It’s late-afternoon and the sun is like warm gold spilling over the pavement, splashing her tight, dark dress with dappled light. She has no idea he’s watching her as she cocks her hip to peer closer at something in the shop display.
The artfully messy ends of her hair curl down over her neck, her lips, Frank sees them glossy and red, glitter. Frank smiles. He hopes she’s wearing that cola lip-smacker stuff she bought last week. It’s not like her kisses need to be any sweeter, but he’s kind of addicted to the taste by now.
She moves away from him, gazing in the window. The long, thin line of her stiletto heel is mirrored by the seam of her stocking, the lean curve of her calf. She looks incredible. How is she his?
As he watches, she kicks up a heel slightly and fixes the lipstick at the corner of her mouth in her reflection.
That’s when she sees his reflection in the window, standing behind her grinning, and she pulls her ray bans down her nose a little and winks at him before blowing him a kiss.
She turns around and puts a hand on her hip. “Something I can help you with, mister?”
“No, no, just...admiring the view ma’am,” Frank smirks.
“The view?” She turns and looks over her shoulder at her own reflection. She wiggles her hips.
Frank laughs and pulls her into a hug. “You look...Gee, you look fucking beautiful.” He reaches up to kiss the corner of her mouth.
She squeezes him back and leans down to whisper in his ear. “So do you, handsome.”
Her words make Frank giggle bright and high, like a little girl.
*
At the cinema, Frank watches the kid serving at the concession stand go all to pieces when Gee smiles at him as she chooses her candy. I know how you feel, kid, he thinks.
Frank is pretty sure he’s in love. Mostly, because has to physically restrain himself from doing dumb shit to show off to her, like getting her name tattooed on him (he’s already got the perfect place, right over the back of his right hand), or declare something insane, like he wants to marry her, or have her babies, or give her the moon or flowers or puppies.
He does want to give her puppies, though. He thinks the one thing she lacks is an insanely possessive lap dog she can fawn over, and carry under her arm. Maybe a Chihuahua, or a black pug?
He pays the kid when Gee chooses milk duds, and wanders off with them. The kid’s eyes are practically fastened to her heart-shaped ass as she walks away. Frank doesn’t say a thing.
Gee picks seats near the back of the cinema. Date seats, as far away from the other patrons as they can get. Frank’s stomach flips. All alone in the dark with her. She smiles at him as she sits, looking up at him through her lashes, blushing.
Frank rests his arm along the back of her seat and Gee snuggles into his side. As the opening credits roll, she leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek. "Thanks," she whispers.
Frank’s chest feels tight, warm. She’s so warm. He loves her. He’s in love with her. His heart does a little victory dance, right round his chest.
Frank pulls Gee closer and presses a kiss to her temple. She hums with happiness and Frank feels fucking invincible. And just like that he thinks; Tonight. Tonight. And he smiles to himself because, if she wants him, he’s ready. He really is.
Half way through the film, Gee shifts a little and sits up. Frank moves his arm away.
A little while later Gee starts fidgeting, rustling in her seat.
“You okay?” Frank asks. “You don’t like the movie?”
“No,” she whispers, looking upset. “No, I love the movie. It’s just...”
Frank looks at her. It’s dark, but by the flickering light of the screen he can see that she’s blushing again. A hot, dreamy, fever feeling comes over him, pretty hard. It’s kind of warm in the cinema and her eyes, all kohl-lined and bright, seem enormous and lambent.
“It’s my - my suspender,” Gee says finally. Biting her lip. “It’s come undone and it’s...” She shuffles a little. “It’s pinching me.”
Frank looks around the cinema. There are only a couple of other people there, sitting four or five rows away from them. No one’s even looked around at their whispering.
“Pinching? Um...” Frank looks at her lap, her fingers twitching over the tight fabric. “Can you...do you want to leave, go to the, um, the bathroom?”
Her hand stills and she looks at him. “No...no,” Gee says, sliding her hand along her thigh. “I can...” She reaches down and tugs the hem of her dress up, lifts a little in her seat so she can pull it all the way up her thighs, around her hips.
“What are you...what are you doing?” Frank’s voice squeaks. He darts a look around the cinema. No one’s looking. No one else can see. Only Frank.
The usher is leaning against the wall on the far side of the seats, watching the film. No one has noticed them.
He looks back at her lap. Frank knows Gee’s watching his face, that she sees the way he can’t tear his eyes away from her hands, her legs, the dark tops of her stockings.
Gee’s thighs brush together as she shifts her hips. Her legs fall open a little.
Frank groans. He’s never… she’s never shown him this before. God, he wants to...It’s so hot in the little cinema. Frank clenches his hand on the velvet arm rest.
“You said...pinched,” he asks, swallowing hard. “Is it - does it hurt?”
Frank looks at Gee. Her eyes glitter in the dark. She nods her head.
“It hurts a lot,” she whispers.
“Where?”
Frank feels her touch the back of his hand where he grips the arm rest. She slips her fingers along his, loosens them gently and guides his hand towards her lap. Frank pulls his hand back, but Gee just holds on.
She lays his hand on top of her thigh, over the loose suspender. Frank swallows, lets out the breath it feels like he’s been holding since she pulled up her hem. “Gee...” he croaks.
She croons a little, and he looks at her. “It hurts, Frankie,” she whispers and slides his hand under the edge of her stocking, towards her inner thigh. “Make it better?”
“Sweetheart...” Frank can hear his voice is a dull croak. Gee’s skin is so smooth, just as smooth and soft as he’d imagined. Her hand is still on top of his, guiding his fingers back and forth across her skin.
“Gee...God...” He pushes his hand further into her stockings, cupping her thigh, kneading the flesh.
The edge of his little finger slips along the crease between her leg and the edge of her panties.
“Oh,” she sighs, and her legs slip further apart. She puts one foot up against the back of the chair in front of her and cants her hips.
“Fuck,” Frank breathes. He can see the dull sheen of her satin panties in the flickering light, the suspenders striping the white skin of her legs. His cock throbs, he cups it with his free hand and tries to give himself more room, tugging on his jeans.
Her hand slides further up his arm and she squeezes his bicep. She leans forward and presses her mouth to his shoulder, almost-moaning quietly.
Frank just strokes her skin, panting like a dog, until she pulls his arm closer, his hand higher, and his breath catches in his chest.
His fingers brush the leg of her panties again and she slides her hand back down to cover his and guide his hand to cup her. She sighs. “Frank, Frankie...”
Frank feels the hard hot length of her cock beneath the satin. She presses her hips into his touch.
“Fuck...fuck...Gee...”
“Yeah, Frankie.” Her hips stutter up again and Frank can feel how hard she’s getting, the small damp patch under the heel of his palm where the head of her cock is leaking already.
She’s all but whimpering now, rocking her hips steadily against his hand. Frank can’t tear his eyes away from the dark junction of her thighs, the way her pale hand glows against his.
Then he thinks something has gone wrong with the screen because there is a flash of white light in his eyes.
“Hey! You two.” A voice cuts in over the soundtrack of the film, the sound of Gee panting and cursing under her breath. “This isn’t that kind of cinema!”
The usher’s flashlight is right in his face, Frank yanks back his hand and stands up. “What the fuck?!”
He sees Gee frantically shuffling her skirt back down from the corner of his eye and moves to stand in front of her, shielding her from the torch light. She leaps out of her seat.
“Frank!” she yells, half hysterical, half giggling. “Frankie, c’mon!” She grabs hold of his hand again, but now she’s tugging him down the aisle towards the exit.
He follows her laughter out, trailing through the lobby and into the street. By the time he hits pavement, he’s laughing too. “Holy fuck!”
“Oh my God! Did you hear that guy? ‘This isn’t that kind of cinema!’ What an asshole!” She leans back and laughs before turning back to the cinema and flipping it the bird. “Screw you, buddy!” she yells. And they hang off each other laughing and staggering up the street, a little drunk on adrenaline.
Frank tucks her arm inside his as they go. After a while he glances at her. “He was probably jealous,” he says, grinning when she ducks her head and grins herself.
Before Frank can say anything else, Gee squeezes his arm and starts tugging him up the street. “Hey, Frankie. Come down here?” She slips her arm around his waist and leads him down a short alley next to a bakery.
She pulls him into the shade and leans back against the brick wall and pulls him in for a kiss. The sun is close to setting and the alley is empty. At the far end is the back door of the bakery and a few broken down boxes and trash cans. Frank presses himself up against her, leans up and captures her cherry red lips with his again. “Gee, angel,” he says leaning back. “Would you...”
“Frank?”
He licks his lips and takes a deep breath. “Would you… I could come stay...stay with you, tonight?”
Gee cups Frank’s face, pressing her lips to his again. “Are you sure, Baby? Because I want to. I want to so much. But I know it’s – I can wait. I can. But I won’t lie. I want it. I want to be with you.”
Frank slides his hand down her side and cups her hip, her thigh. He nods and squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m - I want you, Gee,” he says, looking up at her again. “I want you too. So fucking much.”
Gee grins and leans down, her lips next to his ear, her hot breath curling against his neck. “I’ll make it so good for you, Frankie. Make you feel as good as you make me feel, every day. Better, because I’m going to touch you, Frankie. I’ve been waiting so long, to do that.” She leans back and looks him in the eye. “To make you come.”
“Fuck,” pants Frank, gripping her sides tightly.
“That’s the idea...” She smiles, raising her neatly penciled brow and winking. She takes one of Frank’s hands. Frank lets himself be led out into what's left of the light.
*
They walk a couple of blocks, aimless, buzzing – Frank’s buzzing – clinging to each other, murmuring the sweetest of nothings, as they make their way towards a subway. They press kisses to one another’s cheeks, bury their noses in each other’s hair, squeezing and stroking and clutching at hands and arms and waists.
Love-drunk, that’s how they must look. Until they get to a crossroads and Gee looks up. “Oh!” She says. “I didn’t realised we walked this far,” she says and tugs Frank down one of the streets – East Street, Frank notices.
“C’mon,” she says, and Frank lets her tug him left onto East Street, away from the Subway.
“Where are we going now?”
“Some place,” she says grinning over her shoulder at him. Frank’s blood is on fire. His fingers are still tingling where he’s touched her. How does she do that? How does she get him so hot with just a look, just a wiggle of her hips in that ridiculously tight dress? It’s even hotter now that he knows how her skin feels beneath it.
“Stop, baby, stop,” he whines jokingly, and he can’t help laughing because she won’t let up. She just keeps tugging at his hand and smiling back at him until they get to a building with a wide row of steps and huge double doors painted with a big, stylized, red flower.
It’s the SVA, Gee’s school, her faculty, Frank realizes when he reads the plaque by the doors.
“Want to come see my studio?” she asks, grinning, because she already knows the answer. Yeah, Frank wants to see. He wants to see where she goes to every day when she leaves him on the train.
She bites her lip. “Would you like to come up?” she says after a second. “There’s something you might-- you should see.”
Frank nods and follows her through the doors.
Gee tells him it’s usually pretty quiet on a Saturday afternoon. She often comes in then when there’s no one around to distract her. In fact she says that’s what she’d been planning to do today before he called and invited her to the film.
They walk to the elevator, and when the doors close behind them, Frank can’t stop himself from pressing her back against the wall and kissing her. “So you’ll think of it, everyday,” he says, when the lift dings and the doors open again.
“Frankie,” she sighs, blushing.
Frank strokes his thumb across the red stain on her cheeks. He presses close, runs his hand up her waist and cups her chest. “So fucking beautiful, Gee,” he breathes. “So fucking lovely.” He kisses her the long white column of her throat.
She moans a little when the elevator stops. “I wanted to show you something. C’mon,” she says, pulling him out and down the unlit hall.
Gee shares a studio with seven other students, a shambolic semi-partitioned riot of color and visual noise. Frank can’t imagine what it’d be like full of people working. Paint is splashed over nearly every surface except a set of ceiling to floor windows which run along one side of the room. Music filters out from another studio further up the hall, but the fluorescent lights are off in Gee’s workspace. They’re alone.
“There’s great light in here,” she says, gesturing to the windows.
There is too. The setting sun floods across the work spaces, gilding everything.
She goes to a tilted drawing board in one corner and opens the portfolio lying on top of it. Frank recognizes it as the one he’s seen her with every morning. He stands beside her as she flicks through the drawings.
Her work is a little unsettling, strange – twisted superheroes with monkey bodies, tiny children with huge, cruel, knowing eyes, a woman shaped like a violin. They’re good though, clear and purposeful. Gee flicks past them to a picture of a man reading the paper. He’s sitting with his elbows on his knees, the paper hanging down between them. The windows behind him are like the ones on the crosstown train, small, round cornered squares of dirty light.
The dashed brush strokes on the character’s arm form themselves into tattoos. He blinks.
“Is that...that’s me!”
Gee twists her hands together, nods. “I used to see you all the time on the train, but you never noticed me. Not until I was wearing the dress.”
Frank laughs and shakes his head. “You drew me?” is all Frank can say because he’s so stunned. No one’s ever done anything like that for him before. Then he realises what Gee said and he looks at her.
She’s biting her lip, eyes fixed on the drawing board.
“No,” he says, touching the back of her hand. “No, it wasn’t the dress, Gee.”
But maybe it was? Frank hasn’t really thought it out. Not since they started dating.
Gee grins at him. “It’s okay if it was the dress,” she giggles, leaning forward to turn the page. “It’s a pretty great dress.”
It’s another picture of Frank, this time he’s hanging by his outstretched arm from a hand rail. He flips another page to find himself on the Ferris wheel, face half buried in a froth of pink cotton candy. On the next page he’s laughing. They’re like little inky snapshots. He’s stunned that her mind works this, captures seconds so perfectly she can recreate them on stretches of blank white paper.
His awe washes his worry about what she said away. Frank feels so fucking good right now. It’s a relief to know he’s not alone in this love-drunk craziness. Maybe she’s as into Frank as he is into her.
Gee leans her chin on his shoulder and wraps her arms round his waist. “But, I just...I want you to know, it’s just a thing I do, the clothes.”
Frank stops flicking through the portfolio and turns to her.
“It’s not...I’m not just Gee, not really,” she says, biting her lip. “I like to wear the clothes. But I don’t have to wear the clothes. You know?”
Frank doesn’t, not really. He’s worn make-up and belly tees on occasion, and, yes, the fucking cut off shorts. But he’s never really seen the point in the arcane mysteries of woman’s clothing. Bras are an enigma, slips, stockings and tight, tiny, panties. He’s never thought about them before. Not until Gee.
And he’d thought...he’s ashamed to admit it to himself because he hadn’t even bother to ask her, but he’d thought she wore the clothes as part of her transition. To him they had been part of Gee. He’d never stopped to ask her what it was really all about.
Now he wonders if Gerard’s been doing full-drag more often just for him. He feels like such an asshole.
“Do you – should I? I think of you as ‘she’. I never asked you though. I’m so sorry, Gee.”
“It’s not...I don’t want to be a girl, Frank. I love my cock,” Gerard says, matter of fact, without embarrassment. “I just, I’m not...manly? Not really a man. Not a woman. Something else. Something I decide.” She stakes a deep breath. “I like the ...aesthetic, the layers. There are no layers to being a guy, no mystery. So ‘she’, ‘her’, ‘girl’ those words feel right, even if they’re not, but only because there’s nothing else that works as well.” She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“But you don’t need to explain it,” Frank says, frantic for her to understand that he knows, squeezing her arm. “I mean, you just are. You’re you. And I just...I’m...”
He takes both her hands. Gee nods. She steps out of her heels and, okay, so she’s still a couple of inches taller than him, but it’s much nearer his height than when she’s in them. He looks into her eyes.
“I like you,” he says. “I like you, Gerard. In the dress, out of the dress; heels, no heels; Gee, Gerard. I like you. I... lo... I...”
Gerard presses her forehead to his and leans in to kiss him quiet.
“Admit it, you’re into the stockings though, right?” she whispers after a second.
Frank leans back and laughs out loud. Fuck.
Grinning back, Gee takes his hand. “C’mon, there’s something else I want to show you,” she says and leads him back out into the hall.
“I met this guy on my first day here,” she says, looking over her shoulder at Frank. “He asked me to help him, to model for his project.” She stops at a door along the corridor and fishes around in the pocketbook for her ID and swipes it through a reader on the wall before pushing a door open for Frank.
“Do I need to be worried, Gee?” Frank asks, only half joking.
Gee rolls her eyes. “God, no. He’s a total Muscle Mary. Anyway," she continues, flicking on a couple of lights as they go. “He’s super talented.”
They walk a little way up the corridor and Gee opens another door. Without turning on the lights she pulls Frank in behind her.
There are heavy drapes over the windows; Frank can see slivers of light peeping out from between them. Gee pushes him slightly into the room. “He kind of made me his project.”
She flicks on the lights and rows of small spots blink on. The room is divided up by floating display panels hanging from the ceiling and it’s completely dark but for the light flooding over various pieces of art on each panel.
Gee leads him to the last one, tucked away in the corner.
Before they come round the last panel she puts her hand over Frank’s eyes.
“In the dress, out of the dress?” she whispers in his ear. The feeling of her hot breath against Frank’s ear makes his skin tingle. He’s shivering and can’t seem to stop himself.
“What about in a birthday suit?” she whispers and pulls her hand away.
Frank blinks. It’s a photograph, hanging on the panel – all brightly lit candy colors, just like one of the pin-ups at Cookie’s.
But it’s the subject which takes Frank’s breath away. Gee. Naked, knees sinking into the fur rug beneath her, her body turned away from the camera, arms up, hands cupping the back of her head, eyes half closed, lips – plump and pink and wet – parted. The way she’s posed Frank can’t see much detail, no cock or abdominal cut, just the slightest hint of dark hair where Gee’s thighs meet. Her back is arched back, hands behind head, as Gee pushes a broad, flat chest out for anyone to see.
Something in Frank’s chest leaps, ice cold excitement rushing straight to his cock. He can feel every beat of his heart. That’s the person he wants. That’s the person he loves.
He feels Gee come up behind him and hears the rustle of fabric.
He turns.
“Was it just the dress, Frank?” She asks, looking down at the floor, at the dress she’s wearing. “Was it just the dress you wanted?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No.”
She comes closer, stands toe to toe with him. “That’s me,” she says looking over his shoulder at the image behind them. “No stockings, no bra, no breasts.”
Frank nods. “It’s beautiful, Gerard. You’re beautiful.”
Gee smiles.
“Let me see,” he breathes, pulling her closer. “Let me see?”
He cups her face, pulls her down and touches his lips to hers. He reaches behind her and slowly lowers her zipper, slipping his hand inside to feel the soft skin over her spine. “Softer than silk,” he breathes as he caresses her.
She sighs and Frank presses his mouth to the sound, to her throat.
He holds her body against his, her hands clutch at his shoulders. And they kiss again, tongues touching and darting away.
“I want to see you, Gerard,” he murmurs, and slips the shoulder of her dress down, follows it with kisses. “I want to touch you.”
Frank reaches down and flips up the hem of the dress, cupping the back of her knee and sliding his hand up and under the suspender, up her thigh to the crease where her thigh joins her ass. She moans, clutches him tighter, lifts her thigh and lets him press between her legs.
He cups her ass, squeezes and leans back a little to watch her face. Gee’s eyelashes flutter on her cheek turned a deep crimson.
Frank can feel her, through all that fabric, hard against his hip. He slides his hand around, across the front of her panties, and cups her cock.
“Sweetheart, sweetheart...” he murmurs as she rocks into his palm. “That’s it. That’s it.”
Gerard whimpers, spreads her legs further, as much as she can with only Frank’s hand at her back holding her up, only Frank’s shoulders to cling to. Frank presses her closer. Moves the heel of his palm of the hot head of Gee’s cock behind the still damp satin and lets her rock against it. “That’s it, that’s my Gee,” Frank whispers. “Finish what we started. So beautiful.”
“Oh. Oh, Frank,” Gerard sighs, pulsing her hips, wriggling against Frank’s hand. Frank bites at Gerard’s throat, licks the little marks, kisses her collar bone. His fingers cup Gee’s balls, kneading them.
“Fuck my hand, Gorgeous. Don’t stop,” Frank pants. “Come for me. Want to see you come.”
Gee’s hips pulse, harder and harder grinding against his hand. Then she shudders once, cries out as her hips stutter and Frank can feel hot, wet, heat spreading across the fabric beneath the heel of his palm.
Gerard buries her face at Frank’s neck and clings, whimpering. The feeling of her melting against Frank makes Frank’s chest swell with pride. He strokes her back, slips his hand out of the dress and gently pulls up the zip.
He straightens out the hem of Gee’s dress, smoothing the fabric back into place and wraps his arms around her waist.
“That was...that was...” Gee pants against Frank’s neck.
He holds her until her breathing calms, until she can stand on her own two feet again.
She leans back and looks into his eyes. “Frank,” she smiles.
“This dress is lovely,” Frank says, stroking her flushed face, and the fabric on her hip. “But not as lovely as you.”
Gee snorts. “Yeah?” she says smiling. She leans in and kisses him, his nose, his cheek.
“Yeah,” Frank grins.
“But," she says and she sinks slowly to her knees and starts to undo Frank’s jeans, "I still think I’m right about the stockings.”
***
She’s never been in love before, but she knows what it feels like now; it’s kind of like that moment when a girl tries on a new dress.
Frank's curious. "How so?"
Gee takes a puff off her cigarette. “It's like, you don’t know if it’s going to fit, if the style will suit you, flatter your difficult shape. Maybe the color will clash with your eyes?" She tugs a lock of hair behind her ear. "Or maybe it will highlight all your faults; your too broad shoulders or your narrow hips. It’ll make you look boxy, or mannish. It’ll make you see all the stuff you try to hide."
Scrunching up her face and putting out her cigarette, she continues. “But a girl will try it on anyway, because it’s pretty, because she just really wants it, even though dresses like it have never really worked out before.
“A girl will zip it up slowly and take her time enjoying the way it feels before she turns to the mirror and looks.” Suddenly, Gee grins wide.
"Love is like the moment when you finally look in the mirror and everything, everything, is perfect."
He lunges at her then, roaring with laughter and picks her up in a fireman’s lift as she giggles and squeals and kicks her heels. He dumps her on their bed, and throws himself over her, smothering her with kisses. “Love is like a dress?!” he complains, as he divests her of hers. “A dress? C’mon!”
But yeah, she thinks as her giggles melt into moans, yeah, love is a little like that.