As Max logged in to his email he got the same momentary buzz that this act always provided.  There was something so rewarding in the anonymous identity he was afforded in cyber-space.  For that moment each day when he entered his username and hit enter, his profound internal sense of his own gender was instantly accepted by those he interacted with online and it required no conscious effort.  When someone got an email from him their assumption was that it was from Max, a man, no questions asked.  Despite the fact that over the last few months he had begun to feel more accepted by his friends for the person he truly was, then ever before it still took work.  It wasn’t that his masculine mannerisms were put on, he had always had those even when he’d lived as Moira.  It was something more subtle, something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

If he could just figure this last piece of his very puzzling life out he felt he would truly be ready for the surgery.   His friends had been surprised that he hadn’t yet gone through with it.  He had struggled to explain that decision to himself, never mind anyone else, particularly when he knew for certain that he was going to go through with it eventually.  He needed to work out first though what it was that took so much energy every day as he tried to live in the world as the person he truly was.  It wasn’t a physical thing.  He felt pretty calm now that he had stabilised on a normal dosage of the hormones.  Once he got dressed in the morning he felt now that with his lower voice and facial hair he passed easily as a man.  Gone were the questioning looks when he introduced himself to a new person that had been so prevalent in the earlier days of his transition.  To a stranger, Max was a man, – an ordinary looking man.

Why was it then that every day when he went to bed he felt drained.  When he tried to talk to Jenny about this she had retorted that it was because he was busy trying to pretend to be a man all day long and that would drain anyone.  The idea that after all that they had been through Jenny didn’t seem to understand that Max wasn’t pretending to be a man – that he was a man –  had upset Max more than Jenny would ever know.   So, if it wasn’t that either, what was it and more importantly, whatever it was, was it a reason for him to not have his surgery.