Growing up, I always wanted to be like my brothers. I had two older brothers. I was the daughter my mother wished for. Sadly, her wish only came partially true. I remember my mother discussing me with the other mums. 

“She’s just a tomboy. It’s just a phase she’s going through.”

And then there were the arguments.

“No, girls play with dolls, not guns," or, “Don’t play in the mud, you’ll get your dress dirty.” And my all-time favourite, “girls don’t pee standing up, only boys do that.”

My Sindy doll wanted to go on adventures with Action Man, not sit around in the doll’s house waiting for him to return from whatever exciting and dramatic mission he’d been on. Girls' toys were so boring. A dolls house, a kitchen set, a cash register. I wanted the Action Man, the guns and the dartboard.

When I was younger, I thought I was the same as my brothers. We all hung out together, building dens in the garden. All three of us used to get bathed together on a Saturday night. It was like a conveyor belt as we were dunked, soaked, shampooed and towel-dried in front of the fire. I do remember a sort of curiosity about penises, as in, ‘why do they have one of those and I don’t?’ but that was as far as it went. 

Until I hit puberty. 

I didn’t fancy boys the way the other girls in my class did. I felt my eyes roll as they discussed how cute so and so was or how she’d love to kiss what’s his name. I just wanted to hang out with them. Tomboy was a useful smokescreen but the arguments still raged.

“No, I won’t wear the pretty pink dress. I want to wear my jeans.” This was then swiftly followed by “No, I don’t like long hair, I want it cut short.” 

Thankfully, they relented on the hair. The excuse that it was hard to dry and control after swimming seemed to work. But school was the worst. I’d look at the boys uniform in envy. They could just wear trousers while I was forced into a green crimplene skirt and grey knee-length socks. My ugly knees and pale skin exposed to the world. 

I think I was first called “a fucking lezzer” when I was sixteen years old. My lack of interest in fancying boys had become more and more noticeable as the years went on. This, coupled with the short hair, tee-shirt, checked lumberjack shirt and jeans look for every occasion and lack of interest in girly things had me labelled the town dyke very quickly. And therein the confusion reigned. I did fancy girls but in my head, I wasn’t a lesbian. I knew I was a boy. 

I began to hate everything that reminded me that I was a girl. Even my name was stupid. I’d shortened it, much to my mother’s horror. Matty. It had a nice ring to it. I thought it sounded so much better than Matilda. I wrote Matty Brown on the cover of my school books.

It didn’t do anything to stop the jokes, the snide remarks or petty insults, so I withdrew. I braved the outside world five mornings a week to make the way to school and as soon as I could, I was back in my room again. My plan was simple. Survive school, get the grades and escape to a university far far away and study English Literature.

I looked at the university application form. I could apply to five universities. First, I got out the atlas and turned to the map of Great Britain. I looked at the scale and marked my compass out to three hundred miles. Placing the centre of the compass over Norfolk, I drew a circle. I counted the cities. Not much had survived my exclusion zone, there was just a chunk of northern Scotland and the tip of Cornwall left.

I recalibrated. Two hundred and fifty miles. I could now see five University cities in my acceptable zone; Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Plymouth. I turned back to the UCAS coursebook. All five of them offered an English degree course. I read Edinburgh University’s prospectus.

“Explore elements of English literature such as myths, fantasy, crime and popular culture. Our academic team includes novelists, poets, scriptwriters and academics.”

I liked the sound of that. I’d read several of Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels and on that basis, gave Edinburgh the number one spot. 

For the next six months, getting the A level grades required became my only focus. I barely left my room. I studied, I ate, I slept, I went to school. When the exams were over, I just lived in my room.

I’d taken to wrapping a bandage around my boobs. I didn’t have the biggest boobs in the world but there were still bumps in my tee-shirt. I got the idea after watching the film ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and how Gwenyth Paltrow wrapped her boobs to pretend to be a boy. Once wrapped, they gave a passable imitation of a flat chest under my clothes.

I stood and admired myself in the mirror. My hair was now cur in a flat top and I loved the feel of the bristles at the nape of my neck. I pulled on my white tee shirt and let the checked shirt hang open. My Levi 501s hung low. The open shirt helped hide the slight swell of my hips. I was lucky I wasn’t naturally curvy and the virtually starvation diet I had kept myself on stopped any fat spreading to my boobs or hips. 

I went to the school to collect my results. 2 As and a B. I was off to Edinburgh. The next few weeks went by in a daze. I sent off the birth certificate, filled in the acceptance and accommodation forms and finally, I was on the train. As the train made its way up the east coast, towards York, Newcastle and finally Edinburgh, my mind wandered as to what would happen. I still couldn’t believe it. I was off on my own, to somewhere nobody knew me. Time to start again.

I stood in the line for matriculation. We slowly shuffled forward. There were various tables arranged around the room. As well as the Registration stand, there were Bank stalls set up to lodge the grant cheques, there was a poster sale, and a stall manned by the Students Union. I glanced around and shook my head in amusement. The different banks were trying to get everyone to lodge the cheques in their bank with offers like a free alarm clock or book tokens.

Finally, I reached the front of the queue.

“Brown, Matty Brown,” I told her. 

She flicked through the list and checked the application form. 

“English Literature?”

I smiled. Yes, it was all happening. With a whirr and a buzz, the printer slowly printed out my student ID. 

“There you go. You’re best opening the bank account and lodging your cheque today as it will take a couple of days for the money to come through.”

I nodded and made my way to the bank stand. It was only as I was opening the folder to get the cheque that I looked at the student card.

Matilda Brown. I felt the tears well up in my eyes. I sat on a chair and pulled the forms from the folder. Everything was in the name of Matilda Brown. I felt my brave new world begin to crumble. It was as if the fresh coat of paint was being washed off to reveal the old Norfolk version of Matilda ‘lezzer’ Brown.

I’d sat with my head in my hands for god knows how long when I realised someone was talking to me.

“Are you OK?”

I looked up. A young woman with big brown eyes and dark hair in a bob was looking at me, her head tilted to one side. I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve and nodded.

“I’m fine. Honest. I just had a bit of a shock.”

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

She slid into the seat beside me without really waiting for an answer. 

“I’m Elspeth,” she continued. “I’m one of the Student Union volunteers. We’re here to help you freshers find your way around.” She looked at me. “What’s the problem?”

For some reason which I can’t explain, and for the first time ever, I told someone all about me and my miserable life in Norfolk. How I’d changed my name to Matty. How I was determined to be a boy and how the student card had my full birth name and made me a girl. She let me talk, and when I had finished, she just smiled and held my hand. It felt good to have finally shared with someone.

“Did you speak to the Admissions desk?”

I shook my head.  She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up.

“Come on, we can get this sorted out.”

The queue for Admissions had gone by the time we got back. The lady was just handing a folder to the last person when we showed up.

“Hi Joan,” Elspeth began. “There’s a wee bit of an issue here. Matty here wasn’t expecting his birth name on all the documents. Is it possible to change everything?”

I stood there, gobsmacked. 'Could this be happening? Was it really going to be that easy? No, of course not.'

“Well you see, Matty sent us all the documents, birth cert, etcetera and name filled out with his birth name.”

“I just thought I had to have the same name as my birth cert, “ I blushed. “I thought putting Matty in brackets meant you’d use that.”

“Well, it has to be the name on your birth cert for your official documents. For example, your degree certificate when you graduate. If you want a different name on that, you will have to change your name legally, by deed poll.”

My face fell and both Joan and Elspeth noticed. Deed poll... legally... that would take forever and what about Mum and Dad?

“However,” Joan went on. “You can change your name on your student card and the name on the class register. Those are not legal documents.”

My heart soared. I could feel tears threatening to run down my cheeks again as I saw Joan and Elspeth both smiling at me.

“So, is it Matty then?” Joan enquired.

“Actually, can it just be Matt?”

A couple of clicks of her mouse later, a new student card was slowly making its way out of the printer and Matt Brown was in town.

“I’ll need to come with you to the bank here and explain that your bank account will be in the name of Matt Brown but your cheque is made out to Matilda. I’ll say it’s just a clerical error.”

I could feel the grin spreading across my face as I stood with Elspeth as Joan explained to the bank teller and soon my bank account was opened. I turned to Elspeth who was still standing beside me.

“Thank you so much.” I felt tears threaten for the third time. “You’ve saved my life, honestly.”

She smiled back and swept her hand through her hair. She was really cute. ‘Stop it,’ I thought. 'You’ve only arrived. You can’t go trying to get off with every girl you meet.'

“Well, if you are serious about saying thank you. You can always buy me a pint tonight in the Students Union. I’ll see you at the Freshers Disco... Deal?”

I grinned. “No bother. I’ll see you there.”

“About 10 pm. In the Potterrow Building. That one over there.”

She pointed through a window across the square to a low white building with a domed glass roof.

“I’d better go rescue some other hapless fresher,” she giggled before skipping off back to the Students Union stand. I watched her walk off. Her arse was wiggling in a pair of tight jeans. She looked back, grinned and waved then carried on. I felt my grin threaten to engulf my face.

I was living in the Halls of Residence. I pulled the key from the folder and excitedly opened the door to my room. A single bed, a desk and chair with study light, chest of drawers and wardrobe. It took thirty seconds to fully recce the room. I sat down, grinning. My new home.

I practised in the mirror.

“Hi, I’m Matt.”

“Hello. I’m Matt, I’m doing English.”

“Hi, my name’s Matt.”

“No, just Matt.”

“Hi, yes, I’m Matt, I’m from Norfolk.”

I smiled.

“No, not Matty, and definitely not Matilda. Just Matt.”

I walked out of my room and down to the communal kitchen/living room at the end of the corridor. There was a gaggle of about ten guys and girls mingling, trying to cook toast, make coffee and heat pot noodles.

One of the guys looked up and saw me.

“Hiya. Welcome to chaos. I’m Dave by the way.”

“Hi, I’m Matt. I just arrived.”

“Hi Matt, do you want a coffee?”

I nodded a ‘yes, please’ but inside my heart was singing. I was accepted, just like that. No weird looks, bitchy comments or rude gestures. Just, “Hi, Matt.”

Over the course of the next couple of hours, I got to know most of the rest of the people on my floor. We were a mix from all over the UK and beyond. There were a few Scots and an Irish girl but I was surprised by just how many English people there were. It turned out that Edinburgh was very popular. It was one of the Russell Group of Universities and it caused great amusement when I told them I’d only applied to come here as it was far away from home.

At some stage of the evening, as if by osmosis, and without any formal announcement, we all started drifting towards the Students Union. A show of the student card, a stamp on the back of the wrist and I was in.

I looked at my watch as I stood at the bar. It was almost half nine and I glanced around, wondering if Elspeth was here yet. There was no sign of her and I went back to join the ever-growing group of first years as friends of friends arrived. The introductions were beginning to fill my head. I had met so many people, and all of them had just smiled when I told them I was Matt.

A little while later, the Irish girl, Maeve or something, was trying to explain to me where she was from but it was no good. She just talked too fast and I was feeling like the village idiot, grinning and nodding. She’d shown me her student card in a vain attempt for me to pronounce her name but that just made things worse. Meabh. I mean what sort of name is that. It’s just a collection of scrabble tiles. I was relieved when I felt a tap on my shoulder. 

I spun around and almost threw half my pint over Elspeth.

I watched in relief as she gave a very nifty swerve of the hips and avoided the lukewarm larger as it arced from my glass onto the floor.

“When I said you could get me a pint, I didn’t mean like that.” 

“I’m so so sorry,” I flustered. Fortunately, she just grinned and apologised to Meabh. I watched in awe as the two of them managed to have a conversation, while I had absolutely no idea what they said.

“Right, Matt. Looks like you need another drink.” She took my arm, much like she had done earlier and led me back to the bar.

We stood drinking and talking. Me with my pint of Stella, her with a weird dark ale that was called a pint of 80. She explained it was called 80 shillings but no one called it that. Apparently, it was something to do with the amount of alcohol in the beer and related to the excise tax or something. Considering shillings hadn’t been legal tender since before I was born, I just grinned and nodded.

I quickly realised Scotland was another country. They still used pound notes and I felt like I was the character Loadsamoney as I waved a wad of notes in the air.

I found it was so easy to talk to Elspeth. She seemed the perfect listener. She was going into her third year and was studying archaeology. She told me she knew quite a few people who were trans and there was even a Student Union society that met regularly and there were LGBT nights in the Union and everything. She seemed to know everything and as the night went on, I became more convinced everything was going to work out alright.

I couldn’t believe how easily she had accepted me. I’d been terrified about people staring at me, thinking I was pretending to be a boy but all my friends in the Halls had just said, ‘Hi, Matt.’ Elspeth just called me Matt and after the initial conversation back at registration, it hadn’t been mentioned again.

I was so happy, feeling like I finally belonged somewhere that I threw my arms around her and gave her a hug. It was the first time I’d hugged someone apart from my family and it felt amazing. 

I suddenly thought she mightn’t want to be hugged and was just starting to pull back again when I felt her arms wrap around me and she hugged me back. I buried my nose in her hair. It was so soft. I could smell her shampoo. 

Finally, she loosened her grip and we moved our heads back and looked at each other. Elspeth was smiling and biting her bottom lip. Her eyes sparkled. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fancy her. When I‘d watched her swerve out of the way of the spilt beer, I’d archived the image of her in her little blue summer dress with the white polka dots. Her bare shoulders were an expanse of smooth pale skin, only broken by the two spaghetti straps of the dress and the darker black bra straps. 

We gazed into each other’s eyes. My hands held her hips while she had her arms draped around the back of my neck. We swayed slightly to the sound of the music for a millisecond, and then she kissed me.

She kissed me. My heart stopped and my brain went for a celebratory lap of honour running around the club screaming while my eyes closed and my mouth moved. I clumsily followed the rhythm of her lips as we moved our mouths together. 

I couldn’t believe it. Not even at university for twenty-four hours and here I was, kissing a girl. I didn’t want this moment to stop. I was scared that if I stopped the kiss, it might never happen again. We swayed slowly as we kissed, our bodies pressed closer together. My senses were overloaded. smells, touches and tastes combined.

Finally, we came up for air. She grinned. She seemed to have so much confidence.
I went to kiss her again but she put her finger on my lips. I froze. 'Had I done something wrong? Misread the signals? Had she not wanted me to kiss her?'

She must have seen the worried look on my face because she giggled and told me not to worry. She took my hand and whispered, “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”

We walked outside. Edinburgh was having an Indian summer and the late September night was warm. Elspeth had wrapped a white cardigan around her shoulders then held my hand as we walked and talked as we strolled across a patch of grass by the Union.

“Do you know you are walking on dead bodies?” Elspeth giggled as we strolled across the grass.

“What?” I asked, looking down at my feet and trying to step back onto the footpath.

“Aye, this is where they buried all the plague victims. It’s called the Meadows. A huge expanse of greenery right in the middle of prime real estate. Kinda creepy.”

I felt her hold my hand a bit tighter as she leant her head on my shoulder. She was just a little bit smaller than me. 

“But Edinburgh is full of it. There are closes, streets that they bricked up during the plague and left the people in them to die. You can go on tours to see the houses. They’re underground now. They just built on top of it afterwards.”

I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, but it was nice to be out in the quiet, away from the club and the music and the mayhem. 

We left the Meadows and were walking along a row of tenement flats when she stopped and turned to me.

“Well, thanks for walking me home.”

She gazed up at me. Her hair hanging over one eye. 

“Would you like to come up for coffee?”

A hundred different thoughts ran through my head. I’d never been with a girl before. 'Would she expect me to act like a real man?' She must have seen the hesitancy in my eyes because she leant in and kissed me softly on the lips. Her eyes were so beautiful.

“We can just kiss,” she whispered as her lips brushed my neck. Her voice whispered honeyed thoughts into my ear. “Or do whatever feels right.”

Her fingers slid down the front of my tee-shirt, over my bandaged breasts and down to the belt buckle and back up again. I swallowed.

“I’d love a cup of coffee,” I whispered. 

She turned and skipped up the three flights of stairs to her flat. I sat in her room, on her bed while she hung up her cardigan, then looked at me.

“Milk and sugar?”

“Just milk would be great.”

She disappeared and I was left sitting alone. I looked around the room. There were archaeology books everywhere. Photos of Elspeth and various girls and guys were pinned all around her dressing table. I bent my head sideways to read the writing on the rows of blank tapes. The Cure, Blur, Oasis, Pulp. I recognised some but others I’d never heard of. I pulled out one cassette labelled RDF figuring it wasn’t the Red Army Faction. I shrugged when I saw it was Radical Dance Faction. Just then, Elspeth returned.

“We can put that on if you like. It’s really good, a mix of punk, dub and ska.” She grinned sheepishly. “Kinda a perfect choice really.”

She took the cassette off me and put it on while I sipped my coffee. As the music filled the tiny room, Elspeth sat beside me and kissed me again.

I loved kissing her but a nagging thought kept screaming from the back of my mind. 

'You don’t have a willy. How are you going to shag her?'

Eventually, in order to shut the voice up, I broke the kiss and took her hands in mine. I could feel my face going scarlet before I had even opened my mouth.

“Um, Elspeth, you know I don’t have a willy.”

“I know,” she whispered, kissing me again. “But you have a mouth and fingers and I’m not a big fan of penetrative sex being the be-all and end-all so why don’t you stop worrying.”

She stood up and let her dress fall to the floor. She was beautiful. Her boobs looked quite big on her petite frame and she had a tiny waist and curvy hips. She stood between my legs and reached behind and unfastened her bra. Her dark pink nipples were already swollen and hard. I bit my lip and watched as she slowly slid her panties down her legs.

I’d never seen a pussy up close before. I’d tried not to look in the changing rooms after PE at school. The moniker of Lezzer Brown meant I kept my eyes averted at all times. Here, however, was different. Her curls were so dark they were almost black. I reached my hand out and slowly, gently, caressed her mound. I could feel her wetness as my fingers brushed her labia.

I figured she’d probably like what I liked so as she straddled my thighs, my right hand slowly caressed between her legs. Our tongues swirled in our mouths, fighting a duel as we kissed hungrily, my other hand squeezed and caressed her breast. I dragged my thumb around her nipple, tracing the areola.

I copied the same movement with my other hand as I teased her clit in ever-decreasing circles going closer and closer but never quite hitting the mark as she whimpered in my mouth.

“Fuck me, Matt. Fuck me.”

My fingers slid along her slit, smearing juices over her folds as she groaned into my mouth. I felt her heat as I pushed my middle finger inside her. Her wet velvet walls gripped the knuckle as she ground herself against my hand. Her fingers clawed at my clothes, tugging the shirt open, she slid her fingers under my tee shirt and stroked my skin and the bandages.

“That feels so good.” Her whispered words of encouragement helped to quell the rising panic that I wouldn’t be able to perform. She arched her back, her hand, on the top of my head, guided my mouth down to take her nipple into my mouth. 

I kissed and sucked first one then the other. I moved my head greedily between them as she continued to ride my finger. I felt her writhe, squeezing her thighs, encouraging me to push my finger in deeper, harder and faster as I suckled her boobs.

I could feel her juices oozing out of her with every thrust of my finger. I curled it inside her. The pad of my finger pressed on her spongey spot. Her arms wrapped around me, pulling me tight to her as she bucked on my hand.

“Fuuckkk,” she squealed as she pressed her face into my hair. Her muffled squeal as she orgasmed gave me such a sense of pride. I held her to me until she lifted her head and kissed me again.

“Mmm, that was delicious. Now it’s my turn to show you what you can do with your mouth.”

She reached down and unbuckled my belt. The button fly popped open easily and in seconds she had my jeans down around my ankles. She ran her fingers over the boys grey boxer shorts I always wore. Her fingers swirled over the damp patch. 

I threw my head back and arched my neck as she kissed her way along my jaw. I was so turned on and watching her slide down onto her knees as I sat on the edge of the bed made me squeeze my muscles in anticipation.

She tugged my boxers down and I groaned with pleasure as she ran her fingers through my curls. I felt her breath blow over me before she giggled. “And this is why it’s called a blowjob.”

She brought me off faster than any late-night masturbation session and soon I was lying back on the bed, my hips jerked as she made me cum all over her face. I could see her face glistening when she lifted her head. Her tongue snaked out of her mouth and licked her lips before she crawled up the bed and kissed me. I wrapped my fingers through her hair as I pulled her face to me and tasted my flavour on her tongue.

"I think you might need to show me that again,” I giggled, in between kisses. 

“You think?” she laughed as she snuggled into the bed beside me.