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“Can I ask a trans question?” Charlie asks, almost addressing the room more than Casper themself. They’re both on Casper’s couch sitting in what God-fearing folks would consider awkward positions, with Casper’s criss-cross legs wedged against the arm of the sofa while Charlie dangles his legs off its back, currently looking at the world upside down. DD is perched on the sofa arm next to Charlie, somehow sitting the most human out of the three of them.
Casper turns their head awkwardly to make eye contact with Charlie while grinning, “Babe, if you’re about to come out to me, we’re gonna be the most powerful t4t couple the world has ever seen.” They stretch their arm to reach for the pizza on the coffee table that’s juuuuuust close enough to… nope, Casper’s going to have to sit up like a normal person to grab their slice.
“Tea for…? Uh, no no, nothing like that.” Charlie rotates to a normal sitting position in solidarity with the sacrifice that Casper is making for the acquisition of pizza, “I’m cis, or at least I’m pretty sure I’m still cis.” Well, if he’s sitting up too, may as well also grab a bite. He reaches for the other box that’s got the extra cheese pizza and happily munches on a slice. “I’m just wonderin’… why Casper?” Charlie accentuates his question with his hands, waving the pizza around his head in the process. DD keeps their eyes laser-focused on the prize, waiting for the moment to strike. “Like, we were kids and thought skateboard tricks would be cool nicknames or whatever. What if back then I was calling you Kickflip or Nosegrind? Is that what Auron’d be writing on your paychecks now?”
Casper gives Charlie a wild grin, “First of all, Kickflip would do numbers as a nonbinary name, thank you very much.” They nudge Charlie’s shoulder playfully, then hold the position to lean into their boyfriend for some cuddles. Another bite of pizza later, they continue, “Secondly, believe it or not I did put a lot more thought into it then ‘well, that’s what Ollie’s calling me anyways’ you know.” Charlie’s old nickname doesn’t come up as often as Casper’s for obvious reasons, so it catches him off guard. He smiles at the warm fuzzy feeling the old name brings him and gives Casper a forehead kiss to share some of those butterflies in his stomach. “Do you remember when I came out to you?” Casper asks, eyes brimming with affection.
Charlie thinks hard, his nose wrinkling as he stares into the middle distance while furiously sorting through the proverbial files in his memory banks. “Not in detail… Pretty sure I made a damn fool of myself, but I’m not sure how.” Charlie laughs awkwardly, “I do remember that nothing changed, though. You were still just Casper to me.”
Casper makes a loud buzzer noise and holds up both their hands to make an x, “Eaaaaaa! Wrong!” Casper gently headbutts Charlie, snuggling impossibly closer. “You were sweet, and it changed everything. That was the day I realized that the dorky mop-head who busted his ass every time we hit the skate park was actually my soulmate, and one day we would be together and he would give birth to our beautiful raccoon child.” They both crack up at this, nuzzling noses through their giggles.
This is the moment that DD strikes, taking advantage of their humans’ silly and sappy natures to lunge for the crust of what used to be a pizza slice, adorable raccoon hands easily yanking the prize before scurrying off, chittering in mischievous glee. “MY PIZZA BONES!” Charlie cries out, vaulting over the back of the couch to give chase, Casper close at his heels. The conversation is forgotten, as the new priority is now oh god no please don’t choke on the pizza crust, DD!
It was the summer between the end of middle school and the beginning of high school. There were shelves full of movies telling me that this was supposed to be the time that I “came of age” even if I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Those movies made it seem like there would be some big adventure or moment, but all I had were precious small ones. A soundtrack of burnt CDs that skip in places, the smell of burnt pancakes and maple syrup, the way Charlie’s smile went crooked when he was embarrassed, a hoodie that was 2-sizes too big but hid my discomfort deep in its pockets, loitering outside Sweet Pete's Pizzeria with single slices each, the way that I’d wake up first at our sleepovers and pretend I hadn’t reached for and held my best friend in my sleep. Which of these was supposed to bring me of age?
One day, Charlie and I were posted outside the park, staring at the teenagers who were skating there. A lot of the older skaters were cool about us making use of the space as well, but that day had an unusually rude bunch that made nasty comments as we rode by, even if we did the tricks correctly. In their opinion, we were some middle school brats that made the place less cool, and we didn’t have the high school IDs yet to prove them wrong. We didn’t want to go home, so we just waited and hoped that they’d skate off and do some of the stupid things that older teenagers do, leaving the concrete paradise for us to inherit. To pass the time, we leaned on that fence with a music player tucked into my hoodie. Charlie and I kept our heads close, delicately sharing a pair of earbuds between us as the band playing sang about a love lost- some kind of metaphor for childhood the had websites said. We both had our hands on the railing of the fence. I was on that fence. He was so close, just a couple inches would close the distance between our pinkies. Maybe I could interlock them, making a silent promise between us. I chewed on my lip and bid the thoughts away, just as I did so many times.
“Hey Ollie?” I hated the way my voice cracked. It was one of the many ways that puberty reminded me of its presence, like some bully that couldn’t pass you in the halls without a casual slap to your head to remind you of your place. “Can I tell you something?” My palms were coated in sweat, and it wasn’t just because of the thick sweatshirt that didn’t suit the summer heat.
“Of course, Casper,” Charlie’s smile was as easy as ever, not a care in the world besides enjoying our time together. “You can tell me anything.” I loved to hear him call me Casper. I’d pitched the idea of having cool skateboard nicknames as a way to try and cope with the feelings my own name brought me, but Charlie had been the one to choose Casper. I remember after school that day he showed me his notebook with a list of skateboarding tricks that could be names, some crossed out, some erased so hard they tore holes in the paper, and “Casper” circled three times with stars drawn around it. For a split second I’d thought they were hearts and mine had almost stopped.
I swallowed the spit in my mouth, feeling my anxiety choke its way down my throat alongside it. “This isn’t a normal ‘anything’ though. It’s like… I dunno, like a Darth Vader moment.” I pulled my hands into my sleeves, further away from Charlie. They felt safer there where no one could see them.
Charlie looked confused, “Casper, I know you’re not my dad.” It broke some kind of tension in me and I cracked a grin despite the torrent of adrenaline coursing through me. He continued, “So long as you’re not my dad and you’re not some kind of space villain, I think I’ll be able to take it.” Charlie smiled again, reassured by his own logic, while the wind picked up and I could tell instinctively that this was my movie moment. Why else would he look so perfectly framed like some hunky lead in a romantic comedy? “Friends forever, right?” He put an arm around my shoulder in a sort of hug, which is as physically affectionate as two guys could be in public. Well, a guy and a guy .
Friends forever. I didn’t let that F word gnaw at my ribcage this time, as my best friend was truly who I needed right now. I could moon over him while listening to pop songs I swore I hated some other time. “I’m… I don’t… I… damn, this is hard,” I grumbled and pulled my hood over my head. Maybe it would be easier if I wasn’t looking at him. “It’s like… I dunno…” Charlie didn’t rush me, despite how little information he was getting while I shared a whole lot of nothing. “You know that anime we used to watch? Where the guy would change into a girl?”
“Uh, sure Cas.” Charlie looked confused again, probably trying to predict my confession so that he could react accordingly. “I don’t know how this makes you Darth Vader, though.”
I brought my sleeve up to my face and chewed on the end, soothing myself with the texture while my bones tried to gnash my insides to a pulp. “Sometimes I feel like a guy and sometimes I feel like a girl,” I blurted out, hoping that just pushing the words into the air would alleviate some of the pressure. It didn’t. “But mostly it’s like a mix of both, and sometimes it’s neither, but it’s never the same and it’s like every day I want to look different and no matter how I want to look it’s not how I look so I just throw on this hoodie and try not to think about it but I’m always thinking about it and-”
“Holy shit…” Charlie pulled his arm away from me with a look of dawning horror and my spine froze as the blood rushed from my face. This was it: the worst case scenario. My best friend thought I was a freak and didn’t want anything to do with me anymore and he was never going to want to hang out with me and I’d be alone and never have any friends again and- “Casper’s a boy name!” Charlie shouted, grabbing my shoulders and inadvertently shaking them as the intensity overtook him.
“What?” My meltdown paused like one of those freeze-frames in cheesy movies and I stared dumbly at my panicking best friend. “No it’s not.”
Charlie looked at me like I was an idiot, “Yes it is! Like Casper the ghost or Casper the… ok, I don’t know any other Caspers but I do know it’s a boy name!” He let go of me and started pacing back and forth, the earbud finally giving up on staying connected to him. “This is bad, this is bad… I’ve been making you feel like shit by calling you a boy name and you’re not a boy, or like not always a boy?” He turned back to me, “Do you need more names? I can find some girl skateboard names and we can go back and forth? Oh, but you’ll have to tell me if it’s a girl day or a boy day so I call you the right one. Then maybe another name that’s both and another name that’s neither? Is four names too many?”
“Four names is too many,” I answered, feeling my heart swell as a tickly feeling rose from my stomach all the way up to my face. It teased at my cheeks until I was smiling despite myself, “Casper is fine for a nickname, Charlie.” I dropped his own nickname to emphasise the point, “I don’t need any more besides that.”
Charlie held out his hands, miming pushing something down to pump the breaks on his own breakdown, “OK, good. I’d feel terrible if I was making you feel bad all the time.” He gave me that embarrassed crooked smile that I was so enamoured with, he must have felt self-conscious about his mini-freakout. “You’re like, my most important person. I just want you to be happy.”
“It’s not weird?” I asked, turning back to lean on the fence again. Those older teens were talking to each other instead of skating, hopefully that meant they would disperse soon. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve met anyone like that before. Just a bunch of cartoon characters, and it’s not like they wanted to be switching back and forth.”
Charlie leaned his back against the fence and slid down to a sitting position. “The only thing that's weird is that your body can’t just change to match it.” He nodded seriously and looked up at me, “I mean, my body’s changing to make me more like a guy, it only seems fair. You should be able to just wake up and look in the mirror and go, ‘Hey, looks like a boobie day today!’”
I cracked up, “Every day with you is a boob day,” I playfully kicked at him. Things were feeling normal again, and that meant some good-natured teasing.
“Hey! What does that even mean!?” Charlie brought his arms to a defensive position and curled up to protect his organs from my onslaught of not-actually kicks. The toe of my shoe nudged at a spot on his side, and I laughed at his undignified yelp.
I granted him mercy and stopped, pondering the question, “It means… wanna crash at mine tonight?” I grabbed my skateboard, seeing the teens finally make their exit. “You know, so long as it’s not weird to have sleepovers now that I’m not a normal guy anymore.”
Charlie stood up, grabbing his own board. “You were never ‘a normal guy’ to me, Cas.” We went through the gate together, and I was once again aware of how criminally close our hands were when we carried our boards on opposite sides of each other. “As I see it, nothing changed except now you might have boobie days.”
“You know I’m not just gonna grow a pair of tits, right?”
“Let me dream, Casper.”