“Elfi,” a male voice barked, directly to my left. I winced as the sound exploded against my eardrums, and angry flecks of saliva slapped against my cheek. “Get back to fucking work. Now!”
If that sounded harsh written in English, let me tell you it actually made my skull vibrate in the original German. German is a perfect language for shouting.
The words came from my boss, Klaus Richter, Head of Entertainment at the Christmas market in Berlin, where I worked. My muscles tensed, my hands started to tremble, and I immediately dropped the hat with the cute koala face on it back onto the stall.
I turned ninety degrees to face, the fat, bearded Prussian leaning down towards my face. I arched my spine backward as his face got even closer to mine. My five-foot-three body felt even smaller than usual next to this flabby, six-foot giant.
“I don't pay you to shop, Elfi. I pay you to work,” he rasped, his spittle again spraying over my face and down my glitter-covered cleavage.
“Sorry, Herr Richter,” I said, meekly, desperately trying to stop myself flinching at his closeness, “but it's meant to be my break.”
“If you want to take a break, take it in the van. Have you ever seen an angel out shopping?” Herr Richter said. He let his words hang triumphantly in the air for a second. “No, you haven't, have you? Nor has anyone else. That's because angels don't fucking shop.”
His comments referred to the fact I was dressed as an angel, a 'Christmas angel,' in fact. It was my job to walk around the vast market with two other girls, holding lanterns and providing eye candy to the onlooking visitors. Apparently, we were a major draw.
I gulped, not knowing how to respond. Of course real angels don't shop... but nor do they tend to work at Berlin Christmas Markets. And even if they did, I'm willing to bet they wouldn't strut about in tight white jackets, unseasonably short, white skirts, push-up bras, and stiletto knee-boots. I'd also be willing to bet that their halo wouldn't be constructed out of wire and tinsel.
My heart thumped in my chest as my mouth opened and closed pathetically.
“Save your excuses,” he snarled. “It's Christmas Eve. We don't have time for breaks anyway. Go find Heidi and Mitzi and start marching.”
“Yes, Herr Richter,” I whispered. I hung my head so that my long, blonde hair shrouded my humiliated, red face. I shuffled past my unmoving boss, out from the protective shelter of the stall and into the snow that drifted down from the black Berlin sky. I wiped the globs of Herr Richter's saliva from my face and chest, and avoided the temptation to look back at the hat. Objectively, it wasn't anything special; in fact, it was rather cheaply made, but it had a koala on it, and that was enough for me. I loved koalas. Or at least, I loved what they represented to me.
My mini-obsession with the animal had started around five years ago and had recently become more intense. When I had fled my parents' house, just after I'd turned sixteen, my grandmother took me in. To cheer me up, she had bought me a soft toy koala. It wasn't much, but it gave me something to cuddle during the long nights of tears that had come from having my life torn apart.
The reason why I had left my parents' home was an open secret in my family. It was because I was trans, and that was something neither my mother nor my father could accept.
Twenty years ago, I was born in Munich and given the male birth-name, Eckhardt. It was a hard-sounding name, and I always hated it. Unfortunately, it wasn't the only thing I hated. I hated my clothes, my short hair, and the fact that people kept calling me a boy. And yes, maybe I was a boy, at least in the outward physical respects, but I knew I was a girl on the inside. My soul had always been female.
When I was a child, my parents had just laughed off my predilection for dressing up in girls' clothes and my assertion that my real name was 'Elfi.' However, as the years passed, they came to realize my belief about who I was wasn't just a phase. In fact, as puberty started, my terror as to what I was becoming developed a new intensity. I was a girl trapped inside a male body, and that body seemed to become more masculine by the day. I became unruly, my grades fell, and I ripped up my male clothes.
My despairing, and increasingly angry, parents sent me to psychiatrist after psychiatrist. They kept getting an answer they didn't want. They kept being told that my 'gender dysphoria' was so intense that the only option was for me to begin treatment to become a girl physically, and the earlier, the better. But that was not acceptable to my parents. They wanted someone who could change who I was mentally, so I would be the boy that they knew I was meant to be.
I begged them to change their mind and to let me start hormones before my bone structure had set, or my face had grown stubble, but they resoundingly refused.
“I might not have a real son,” my dad would rasp, “but I'm not going to pretend like I've got a daughter.”
My mother's anger developed into outright rejection. My father's anger developed into violence. After the second bloody nose in one week, supposedly dolled out to, “man me up,” I knew I had to leave. I fled to the one person I could trust: my maternal grandmother from Augsburg, Grandma Jutta. She was the grandma who always kept a secret box for me: one with dresses and makeup and other girlie stuff. She could see past my male exterior and focus on the girl within. Even when I was little, she'd sneakily call me 'Elfi' when nobody was watching.
Grandma Jutta looked after me, and cared for me, and supported me through my transition. It had caused a family schism, but Grandma was tough, and she fought my corner. Few people were brave enough to argue with the undisputed matriarch of the family.
Despite my mother and father's protests, Grandma did what the doctors recommended. She allowed me to transform into the girl I always knew I was. I took hormones and watched the results slowly unfold. My shoulders ceased to grow broader, and my facial and body hair growth stopped before it ever began. I developed breasts, I developed an ass, and my face shape softened and feminized. I soon became passable. In fact, I'd even allow myself to say I became pretty. Nobody but those who were told would ever suspect my past.
I'd lived with Grandma Jutta for four years.
The first year was tough. I was young, stupid, and prone to tantrums– tantrums that I sometimes directed my grandma. I still feel guilty about them now. In the background, the family was sniping, and I was angry that the hormones were taking their time to work their magic. I looked in the mirror, and I still saw a boy.
The second-year was better as my appearance became undeniably feminine. By the latter half of the year, nobody I met thought I was a boy. I looked like a girl, and I was treated like a girl, even if I was legally still male.
The third-year was horrible again, as I geared up for the awful, humiliating, and costly “Transsexuellengesetz” process that would allow me to change my gender in Germany legally.
Then in the fourth year, after the court had deliberated, I was finally granted my wish and legally became a girl.
For ten months, I was happy, really happy. Then, last Christmas, Grandma Jutta died suddenly, aged seventy-seven.
- - - -
I pushed my way through the market crowds. As I passed the trinket stalls, the bratwurst stands, and the glühwein vendors, the cold winter breeze lapped at the hem of my skirt, and icy flakes of snow stung against my exposed skin. It was fortunate that my cold-tolerance had always been high, otherwise every night since late November would have been torture.
I suspected Heidi and Mitzi would be enjoying a cigarette behind the old Volkswagen van that doubled as our changing room. If koalas were my indulgence, tobacco was theirs. My suspicions proved correct. My two blonde co-angels were exactly where I'd thought they'd be.
“Klaus says we need to get back to work,” I said, my voice still trembling from the encounter.
“We're on our break,” said Heidi nonchalantly, expelling a leisurely plume of smoke from her pink, glossed lips.
“I know,” I said, with a sigh, “but he says we don't have time for breaks tonight.”
Mitzi laughed, taking a drag on her own cigarette. “Klaus can go fuck himself,” she said.
“I kinda want to say that too,” I said, looking at them with pleading eyes, “but it's our last night, and I don't want to piss Klaus off. I need him to put a good word in for me if I'm going to get any more work like this.”
“You go work then,” said Heidi, sneering, “be a good girl for your darling Klaus.” Then she exhaled, deliberately directing her plume of smoke towards my face.
I stifled my reflex to cough.
Neither Heidi nor Mitzi cared about future work. They were college students and came from good families. For them, the angel job was just a bit of extra cash to buy some new jewelry in their favorite boutiques along Kurfürstendamm. For me, it was a necessity.
With the money left over in my grandma's will, I'd secured myself a small flat in Berlin. It wasn't enough to buy a place, but it did help with the rent.
I'd chosen Berlin for two reasons. Firstly, I'd heard rents were cheap, a hang-over from the time when the city was divided and few people, barring broke artists and spies, actually wanted to live there. Secondly, it was meant to be a city of tolerance, far removed from the Bavarian conservatism that I'd been used to.
On both fronts, the popular beliefs had proven correct. Rents were still relatively cheap, and Berlin was, indeed, tolerant. It was safe to be openly gay or lesbian on the streets, and I saw same-sex couples holding hands and kissing multiple times a day. I was, however, still feeling out how accepting Berliners were of people who were trans. Most of my time had been spent in a constant search for work. I'd shifted from one temporary, inconvenient, low-paying job to the next. I'd made a few friends, enjoyed a few sexual encounters, but my search for romance had resulted in soul-destroying failure.
“Please, guys,” I begged, “I don't know how many times I've covered for you over the last month. Do me a favor. Please.”
“You're not our boss. And we've covered for you too,” said Mitzi smugly.
She was technically telling the truth. However, she avoided the fact that I'd covered for them five or six times each, whereas, between them, they had covered for me precisely once.
“Yeah, run along now, Elfi,” Heidi said. “Be an angel.”
I suppressed my rage, grabbed my lantern, and walked off into the crowd.
- - - -
As I stomped through the crowds of people, I saw a young woman walk with a stroller. She was engrossed in conversation with what looked like her husband. The boy in the chair was probably around two years old. He was holding a brightly colored woolen doll - a decidedly female looking doll. As the family passed me, I smiled and waved at the child. He laughed and flapped his hand back at me excitedly.
He continued waving for so long that I had to swivel my head as the stroller retreated behind me. Then I saw him drop his doll to the snow-covered ground. Almost instantly, his face started to change. Tears began to come. He reached after the toy in futility, but in the busy crowd, it seemed his protests went unseen and unheard.
I rushed towards the fallen toy, grabbed it from the ground, and brushed off the snow. Then I raced after the stroller. Before I could reach it, a big hand firmly grabbed my arm, jolting me to a standstill. My body convulsed in shock, and I almost dropped my lantern and the toy.
“Elfi,” a familiar harsh voice shouted in my ear. It was Herr Richter again, and he sounded madder than ever. “What the fuck are you doing? And why are you on your own? I told you to get Heidi and Mitzi.”
I gulped. I'd been wandering around on my own for the last twenty minutes. Heidi and Mitzi were nowhere to be seen. But what could I do?
“They're finishing their cigarettes,” I murmured. “I'm sure they'll be here in a minute.”
I looked desperately at the rapidly disappearing stroller and the screaming infant who was straining towards me. Herr Richter, slapped the doll from my grasp with his free hand, sending it falling into a pile of slush. Then he grabbed my arm tighter and pulled me towards him. I almost lost my footing as I stumbled across the snow-covered ground.
“Fuck the doll,” he screamed at me. “It's no toy for a boy. And I told you to tell the other girls that there were no breaks tonight.”
“I told them,” I whispered. My eyes flicked from Herr Richter's red face, down to the doll on the floor.
“You're fucking useless,” Herr Richter said. “I bet you didn't even speak to them.”
My throat went dry.
“I promise Herr Richter,” I said, on the edge of audibility. “I… I just don't have the authority that you have.”
Herr Richter leaned down so close I could feel his breath on my face all over again.
“If I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it, okay? That's how employment works.”
I yelped as his grip became tighter. How was I meant to respond? My mouth hung open.
“Sorry, Herr Richter... I tried,” I stuttered.
Then I heard another voice I recognized, or at least half-recognized.
“Fräulein, is this man bothering you?” it said.
- - - -
About an hour earlier, I'd walked with Heidi and Mitzi into one of the temporary wooden beer halls that littered the market. This one was part of our regular marching path. The room had two doors, one each end of the building. Our route took us through one door, across in front of the long bar counter, then out the other.
Our arrival prompted whoops of joy from the patrons. Glass clinked, and loud cries of “Prost,” the German equivalent of “Cheers," filled the room. I didn't dare look at anyone directly, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see the stares from the customers, and the broad smiles on Heidi and Mitzi's faces. I tried to emulate them, but my shyness got the better of me. I fixed my eyes straight forward and tried to suppress the rapidly increasing pinkness of my cheeks.
Just as we were about to leave the building, I heard someone shout in my direction in American-accented German.
“Hey, shorty!”
I knew the comment was for me. Heidi and Mitzi were tall, around five-nine or five-ten. I was the short one, even in heels.
I turned to see who had called out to me, and my eyes met with those of a handsome man. An exceptionally handsome man, in fact. He was tall, rugged-looking, with tan skin and dark brown hair. A long black coat was draped casually over his shoulder. His legs were clad in a pair of dark-blue jeans, and a short-sleeve plaid shirt adorned his upper body. The shirt wasn't tight, but I could instantly recognize his strong, broad chest and powerful arms. I felt my mouth open involuntarily, as a rush of excitement surged through me.
Then he smiled a wide smile. It was like a wicked beam of mischief. It hit my eyes, pierced through my defenses, and turned my brain into a jumbled mess of desire. My knees went weak, and my cock started to expand - at least as much as it could, I had it securely tucked back between my legs.
I couldn't stop staring back.
Then I walked smack into the door frame of the exit to the beer hall.
I yelped in surprise and pain, fell to the floor, and dropped my lantern, which clattered across the floorboards. The candle inside snuffed out, and a little trail of molten wax dribbled onto the wood. Then the laughter hit me, both from the room and from the other girls. Almost instantly, the red heat of embarrassment rose up my chest, consumed my neck, and blazed out from my face.
In a slight daze, I scrambled on the floor, checking my face for blood and correcting my halo. Then I saw a big male hand being held out for me. Without thinking, I took it, and it drew me upwards. I clumsily stumbled and reached out with my free hand for stability. My hand touched the man's chest. Beneath his shirt, I could feel the muscle. My lips parted, I looked up, and I saw the guy again. He was grinning even wider.
My mouth expelled a dizzy, nervous pant.
“Are you okay?” he asked, in American-accented German.
I nodded, unable to think of the right words to respond with, my mind was too clouded with mortification.
He leaned forward, brushed my hair from my face, and kissed me on the forehead. My knees buckled all over again. The crowd laughed, but I managed to stay standing.
“Do you need your lantern relighting?” he asked in German.
I nodded. “Ja, bitte,” I said meekly in German, before switching to English. “Yes, please.”
He retrieved the silver-colored contraption from the floor, pulled a lighter from his pocket, lifted the little lid on top of the lantern, and re-lit the candle.
“There you go,” he said, also switching to English.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I released his hand, then bolted out of the beer hall. A chorus of cheers erupted behind me.
- - - -
“Fräulein, is this man bothering you?”
Yes, his accent was distinctly American. And no native German uses the term 'fräulein' to refer to a young, unmarried woman anymore, at least not in Berlin.
The expression on Herr Richter's face changed, but he didn't let go of my arm.
“He's my boss,” I whispered, letting context say the rest.
The American placed his hand on Herr Richter's chest.
“I don't think that's how you're meant to touch your employees,” the American said.
“This is none of your business,” Herr Richter growled back. “Get out before I get security to kick you out.”
“Let her go before I knock you out,” the American replied.
“The guards are going to fucking pummel you,” Herr Richter sneered.
“You wanna bet how much I could pummel you in the time it takes them to get here?” he responded.
The two men's eyes locked. I tensed, inhaled, and held my breath as they squared off against each other.
Then Herr Richter released my arm.
“Now piss off and let your angel do her job,” the American said.
Herr Richter snorted and marched off.
I looked up at the American. He was breathing heavily through his nose.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I reached down with a trembling hand and grasped his palm. “Thank you, very, very much.”
I looked into his eyes; they were magnetic and powerful. My toes curled in my boots.
Then I released his hand and turned away. I knew there was no way he'd want me if he knew what kind of girl I was.
- - - -
Although it was me who walked away from him, and although I was sure that nothing would ever happen between us, I couldn't help but look out for the American for the rest of my shift. The image of him smiling at me was indelibly inked into my mind. Even once Heidi and Mitzi had rejoined me, I couldn't stop myself from carefully scanning every stall.
But no matter how far we marched, he wasn't anywhere to be seen. With every step I took, my heart sank a little deeper. The American had saved me, then I'd stupidly just run away. He had probably already left, and I'd blown my chance to talk to him. Why did I have to be such a fucking idiot?
But then again, what else could I have done? Even if he was attracted to me, he didn't know I was trans. Revealing myself could be dangerous, and he was a lot bigger than me. What if he got mad and accused me of tricking him? And even if he didn't get mad, he'd probably reject me. And even if he didn't reject me, he'd only want to fuck me.
My past year had been littered with rejection and heartbreak. Sure, I'd had a few nights of passion. Every so often, I'd use a specialized dating app to find a hot guy who'd let me greedily suck on his cock, or fuck me until I spurted all over the sheets. Once a guy had even given me a delicious spanking. Unfortunately, I just couldn't find someone to date me.
At best, I was a dirty little secret. Some guys might want me as fuck-toy, but they would die in a ditch before they let their family or friends learn about me. They might fantasize about going to bed with a girl with a dick, but they wouldn't take one home to mama and papa. The pinnacle of my romantic achievement was to be a guy's fuck buddy for a month or so. That lasted until I hinted that I wanted something more serious. The look of horror on his face when I said it would be nice to meet his friends still sometimes makes me cry.
Then there were the guys who wanted me for one night and one night only. It was helpful, at least, when they were upfront about what they wanted. At least then, I had my expectations. I could just enjoy the sex, and leave before I got any stupid ideas that they might want me as a girlfriend. Sadly, some guys didn't even give me that basic courtesy. They just feigned romantic interest to get sex. Their deception was not only unnecessary but also left my heart in tatters.
My last experience, where I woke up in a guy's bed after a night of fucking, only to be asked, “why are you still here?” left me on the verge of a complete breakdown. The worst thing was, he had seemed so lovely and charming the night before. I actually thought I'd finally met someone who was boyfriend material - but I was wrong. The experience had scarred me and left me numb to the prospect that anyone would ever actually love me.
That's why I'd invented my two rules: rules to keep me safe, physically, and emotionally.
Rule one, I'd only reveal myself when I was sure it was safe to do so.
Rule two, If I did have sex, I'd be the first to leave. I'd make a point of it. I'd go before anyone had the chance to kick me out. At least that way, I got to make the decision and could spare myself the emotional battering of yet another rejection.
