Susan awoke next morning, and for a few moments time seemed to stand still, as his mind replayed all the events of the previous day. His previous life, so ordered and familiar was remote, and now hard to imagine, yet it was only a day behind him. In that day, he had left Benjamin behind and become Susan. He was trying to think of himself in that name all the time. He had left behind his male identity in exchange for something he did not know.
This couldn't be real, could it?, he thought.
He raised his arm out of the bed, and saw that it was as real as the peach silk of his night gown came into view. It felt good to his skin as it floated across his flesh in response to his arm's movements. He rubbed his eyes, and felt the unfamiliar hardness of the mascara still thick on his lashes. Slowly he got out of bed and walked across to open the drapes from the window.
He turned and looked in the mirror. The wig was gone of course. He had placed it on the vanity last thing before he fell exhausted into the bed. The face which looked back at him was still very much his own. His mid-brown hair was too short to be female, too short unless he was to pretend to be a cropped haired person.
What was the point of being female, he thought, if you had hair that made you look just like a man.
He looked again, and saw the smudged make-up around his eyes. He remembered Lisa saying something about creaming it off, but he had been too tired to look for the cream, too tired to do anything but lie down and sleep. He may not have done much physically yesterday, but mentally it had been exhausting.