Streamer Accidentally Transes Their Gender

Hunter tapped the link, and sighed as it opened in a weird one-tab window of Safari inside the Discord app. He then instead copied the text and pasted it into Firefox.

Tapping on the first image in the gallery, he was immediately overcome with… feelings. 

He’d seen himself in the mirror, at least a little, but… somehow, seeing a photo was different. It was more like he was just looking at another person. Easier to separate from his normal self in his mind.

And the person he was looking at was cute! Way cuter than he was. And, frankly, he could have sworn they were a girl. And quite a smiley, happy-looking girl at that.

Mel leaned over to look at his screen. “Aw, adorable,” she said. Internally, Hunter screamed Adfajlkdjaflksjdf.

Hunter clicked his screen off and put his phone back in his pocket. The picture was giving him weird feelings that he didn’t really feel like processing right now, especially with Mel there. He didn’t want her to think that he had a crossdressing fetish or something. Although he did get a little hard looking at the photo? God, maybe he did have a fetish. Was that problematic of him, or offensive to trans women?

He sat there for a moment before deciding that for now the best strategy was to not think about it. He cleared his throat and turned back to Mel, who had just finished her burrito and was balling up the foil it had come wrapped in. 

“Think fast!” she said and hurled the ball at him. He instinctively put his arms up to shelter his face and it bounced off harmlessly.

“You better pick that up or you might get fined one thousand dollars.”

Mel laughed. “The whole narrative of individual littering being the cause of pollution was pushed by corporations in like the 60s to steer focus away from those same corporations being the real problem. But I will pick it up anyway.”

As she bent down to pick it up, Hunter glanced away uncomfortably after accidentally catching a glimpse of the top of her exposed panties. He always felt like such a creep if he ever stared at a girl. Just a creepy, unwanted dude invading women’s personal space. He had never understood how the same kind of worry never seemed to haunt other straight dudes his age, who were somehow seen as less creepy than Hunter because they weren’t always looking down.

As she straightened back up, Hunter relaxed slightly and said “yeah, I watched a YouTube video the other day about how automakers basically invented the idea of jaywalking, to reframe the danger of cars to pedestrians as being the fault of those pedestrians. Sometimes the most effective propaganda is the kind that convinces us that the bad things that happen to people are their own fault.”

“Totally, dude!” Mel said as she lobbed her ball of foil into a squat, dark green trash can nearby. “You are not immune to propaganda.”

They ended up talking about politics for an extended period, with Hunter surprised to find that he wholeheartedly agreed with a lot of Mel’s more politically radical takes. Access to healthcare was a human right. There should be a universal basic income. Workers should form their own democratically controlled collectives.

Eventually, Hunter looked up at the horizon and saw that the sun was setting. A cool breeze was blowing over the land and out to sea, and he could see Mel shivering in her denim shorts and and sleeveless button-up. I could never wear something like that outside without worrying about my shoulders getting sunburned, he thought.

“Do you want to borrow my hoodie?” he asked, moving his hand to its zipper.

Mel paused a moment before responding. “No, I have my own in my car. Uh, how would you feel about swinging by my car so we can grab that? And actually, maybe this is a weird question, but how would you feel about coming to visit a friend with me? I was thinking about driving down to Long Beach while I’m in the general area and spending the night. But I get if you don’t want to do that with someone you basically just met. And admittedly she does live in a kinda sketchy part of town.”

“Uh, actually, sure?” Hunter said. He was immediately afraid of feeling awkward as he often did around people he didn’t know, but he also wanted to extend the amount of time he got to spend with Mel. “As long as she’s okay with a guy sleeping at her place, I guess.”

“Eh, I know her and she’ll definitely be fine with you spending the night,” Mel said.