Chapter 1: Hitching a Ride

Author’s Note: I have decided to set this story in my homeland of Australia. It is written in ‘Australian English’ so some of you may have to look up certain words or phrases. Enjoy and don’t forget to rate it and leave a comment should you so desire.

Matraville, New South Wales, Australia – 1986

“I told you that if I ever came home and found you dressed in that shit again I’d throw you out on your arse,” Cristina’s father yelled at her.

‘That shit’ was a denim miniskirt, a pink lycra tube-top, nude pantyhose, red satin panties and a matching bra, pathetically stuffed with rolled up pantyhose to fill the cups. The ensemble was complete with a pair of cork-soled platform sandals. The shoes were one size too small and Cristina’s toes hung over the front like cliffhangers. Her shoulder-length, sun-bleached hair was centre-parted and brushed into a frizzy do and her makeup was applied heavy and not very well.

This was the third time that Christian Doyle had been caught dressed this way by his father despite Christian’s efforts to keep ‘Crissy’ a secret.

“I just don’t get it! Maybe you just have too much time on your hands ... when did all this gap year bullshit start anyway?” William ‘Billy’ Doyle raged and Crissy knew not to answer back; the question was rhetorical.

“When I finished high school you got a fucking job or you went to university. I had left home and was supporting myself at eighteen, not lazing around the house or going to the beach or hanging with my fucking friends doing fuck-all for a year, bludging off your family, like you. I think that’s why you have this obsession with dressing like a fucking nancy! Too much fucking time on your hands to explore your fucking gender identity or whatever bullshit the fern-sniffing, latte-sipping, lefty-wankers are pushing now,” Billy’s tirade continued.

“Well this is it Christian. Get that shit off your face, take off those ridiculous clown clothes and get the fuck out of my house!” Billy’s face was bright red and getting redder.

“Go find yourself a fucking job and support yourself. You can go and suck cocks for a living in Kings Cross for all I care. Just fuck off out of my sight and don’t come back until you have made something of yourself. I’m freezing your Bankcard and you won’t be getting any inheritance from me unless you buck up. I’ll leave everything to the RSL before I leave it to some crossdressed, nancy-boy, poofter! You’ve got half an hour to pack or I’ll just throw you out on the street dressed like that!” Billy pointed to his crossdressed son and then ripped open the fridge door and snatched a can of Victoria Bitter, which he popped open and began to guzzle.

The thought of being thrown out on the street dressed as Crissy was terrifying.

Crissy knew better than to argue with her father and slunk off to her room where she wiped away her makeup, took off her clothes and then went and took a shower. With the clothes and makeup removed Crissy surrendered her psyche to Christian who packed some clothes into a duffle bag. He debated as whether he should ditch Crissy’s collection of feminine requisites and on a whim threw his small collection of feminine attire and his makeup bag into the duffle. He came out of his bedroom to find his father still angry and four cans into what would likely be a full-blown bender.

“Jesus! Look at yourself! Even dressed as a boy you look like a fucking mincer. Here, take this and fuck off. I’ve told my sister in Karumba to expect you but that’s up to you. She owns the caravan park and will be able to get you a job on a trawler and that will make a man out of you but I bet those blokes up there will eat you alive, especially if you pull any of that nancy-boy shit. Come back in a year as a real man with some real money in your pocket and I’ll let you work for me and put you back in my will,” Billy growled, half-drunk and angry.

“Take this and don’t come back until you’ve sorted yourself out or don’t come back at all,” Chris’s father threw two fifty dollar notes on the kitchen table, turned his back on his son and opened the Kelvinator to get another can of VB.

Outside of the house with all his worldly goods stuffed into his duffel bag, Christian realised what it was like to be alone in the world. The few mates he had were at Uni or had jobs and the last thing they wanted was a moocher staying with them. Chris realised that his only option was take up his dad’s proposal and go to Karumba and live with Aunt Greta. The prospect of working on a smelly prawn trawler did not appeal to him but what else was there?

Getting from Matraville, New South Wales to Karumba in far north Queensland with only one hundred dollars in his pocket would be a problem. Chris still had his student rail and bus pass but he could only use that on urban transport. He made his way to the railway station and boarded a train to Sydney then on to Newcastle, which was as far as he could travel on his student pass. He could have bought a bus or rail ticket with the money he had but he was buggered if he was going to waste his money on commercial transport when hitchhiking was free.

Standing on the side of the Pacific Highway with his thumb out Chris wondered what life would be like in an isolated little shithole like Karumba where entertainment revolved around the pub, fishing, the pub, hunting, the pub, trying not to eaten by a crocodile and of course ... the pub. And what would he do about Crissy? He had tried keeping his feminine alter ego under wraps but she kept popping out. Chris could just not resist the urge to crossdress. He had been doing so on a regular basis ever since as a young boy he had filched a pair of his mother’s pantyhose and knickers from the laundry basket and tried them on.

Chris had purged a number of times but it was an expensive and futile exercise so he just gave in and presented as Crissy whenever the opportunity arose. His mother was out the picture. She had gone to live in New Zealand with some sheep-shagger after a nasty divorce and it had become even more difficult to hide his feminine requisites and his father had caught him twice before today dressed as Crissy and had belted him hard and threatened to disown him and now here he was hitchhiking to whatever fate lay ahead.

A Mack truck towing a trailer pulled over onto the verge and Chris hoisted his duffel on his shoulders and ran up to the cab, opened the door and climbed in. He saw the look of disappointment on the driver’s face and half-expected the man to kick him out but he just gave a dissatisfied grunt and put the truck in gear.

“Fuck me! I thought you were a Sheila,” the truckdriver grunted.

Chris’s father’s last words rung in his ears: Even dressed as a boy you look like a fucking mincer.

Chris was dressed in cut-off denim short-shorts, a tight pink tank-top and sandals. With his slim build, long tanned legs, shoulder-length frizzy beach-blonde hair he did look like a ‘Sheila’. Chris had, much to his father’s chagrin, adopted an androgenous look when not presenting as Crissy. It was not really a conscious decision but he had been made aware that his fashion choices were questionable on more than one occasion.

Steve Kessler, the truckdriver, thought he had hit the jackpot when he saw the long-legged diminutive little blonde girl hitchhiking on the side of the highway and had been bitterly disappointed when Christian Doyle had hopped in the cab.

“Where you going kid?” Steve asked the effeminate teen sitting beside him in the cab.

“I need to get to Karumba,” Chis replied.

Christ! He even sounds like a girl! Steve lamented.

“Good luck with that kiddo, I can get you to Bris Vegas then you’re out on your arse,” he grunted.

Bris Vegas was Aussie slang for Brisbane.

Chis could tell that the truckie was contemplating kicking him out on the side of the road and knew better than to show any disappointment.

“Thanks,” Chris whispered and concentrated on the road ahead.

Steve couldn’t help but scrutinise the diminutive young man sitting in his cab, checking him out surreptitiously. Chris’s face was waiflike, with sparkling blue eyes, a cute button-nose, high cheekbones and a sensuous mouth. His legs were long, shapely and tanned as were his arms and his waist was slim. Steve could be forgiven for thinking that Chris was a girl when he had sighted him standing on the side of the road in the cut-off shorts and pink tank top.

“You really do look like a Sheila you know,” Steve huffed.

“Yes. Ok. You’re not the first person to tell me that I look like a girl sometimes,” Chris agreed but it was not a conversation he wanted to have.

“You’re not a poofter are you?” Steve asked bluntly.

Another question that Chris had had to answer on several occasions because of the way he looked. The truth was that Chris’s alter ego Crissy had never had sex. Christian had fucked a girl or two. He’d even had a girlfriend but the relationship went down the toilet pretty quickly when she caught him trying on her bra and panties. Crissy had sexual urges but they were non specific. She dreamed of being kissed and caressed by some handsome faceless masculine bloke but that was as far as she allowed her imagination to wander. She knew that there was tranny porn out there if you looked for it but she made do with filching Billy’s porn magazines and video tapes. They were all heterosexual of course but Crissy used them to fuel her masturbatory fantasies, never admitting to herself whether or not she imagined herself to be in the male or female role.

Crissy liked ‘sissy’ things like fashion magazines, boy bands and soap operas whilst Christian like to watch rugby and cricket and going to the beach. Manly things, right? But at the beach hadn’t Crissy sometimes entered Christian’s head and made him look at the bulging pouches in the young men’s Speedos?

“What if I am?” Chris replied sulkily, immediately regretting saying anything.

“Well it’s Brisbane and then you’re out on your arse,” Steve said gruffly.

But during the long haul along the highway Steve kept finding himself side-eying the young faggy-looking boy in the shotgun seat and Chris was intently aware of it and it was uncomfortable. Steve didn’t have a gay bone in his body but he kept thinking about when he had first seen Christian on the side of the road and mistaken him for a girl and the lewd fantasies he had conjured up about getting the ‘passenger seat princess’ into the sleeping compartment in the back of the cab. He shook his head and concentrated on the road.

“I was sure you were a Sheila,” Steve grumbled and then became stonily silent.

Nearly twelve hours later, stopping only once to use the toilet and get snacks, Steve put on the indicator as he approached the slip road that led to a roadside truck stop just outside of Brisbane.

“I’m going to get a feed before I hitch up the rest of my road train at the depot,” Steve said as he entered the slip road.

“Road train? I thought you were only going as far as Brisbane?” Chris came out of his fugue where Crissy had taken control of his dreams and was thinking naughty thoughts about the surfers on Cronulla beach.

“Yeah, well I’m going on to Cairns but you’re not coming with me. Anyway I’m not supposed to pick up hitchhikers. It’s against company policy,” Steve countered.

“I bet if I was a Sheila you wouldn’t be kicking me out of the cab,” Chris said sulkily.

“Yeah, well you ain’t a Sheila so this is as far as you go sunshine,” the brakes hissed as the truck rolled to a stop.

The truck stop was quite large with designated fuelling stations and a parking area for heavy commercial vehicles and trucks that was separate to the fuelling stations and parking area for passenger cars and small commuters. A large building housed the restaurant, snack bar, mini-mart and toilets. The truck parking area had its own ablutions block so that truckies could clean up before going into the restaurant.

“You can have a shit and a shower over there but they don’t allow hitchers to tout for rides in the parking lot so you’ll have to drag your arse back out on the highway to hitch a ride,” Steve pointed at the truckers ablutions block and walked away towards the restaurant without even saying goodbye.

Chris eyed the Besser-brick restroom with some trepidation. Someone had scrawled ‘truckers only’ on the wall but Chris was in no mood to eat or shop so he slung his duffle over his shoulder and made his way to the ablutions.

The smell of stale sweat, hot shit, urinal cakes and cheap bath soap invaded his nostrils as soon as he entered the place. He made his way to a toilet stall and took care of business and then made his way to the shower stalls. At least the shower stall was roomy with a small bench, a towel rail and two clothes hooks screwed to the back of the door. Chris sat on the little bench, the wooden slats digging into his buttocks as he rummaged around in his duffel looking for a change of clothes and a towel.

He was travelling light and had packed mainly t-shirts and shorts with one pair of jeans and one work shirt. He would have to buy boots somewhere along the way because he bet everything in Karumba cost twice as much as elsewhere. He pulled out his little toiletry bag and the small towel he had packed and his fingers brushed against the plastic bag at the bottom of the duffel. A faint odour of perfume assailed his nostrils.

Chris was still determined to get to Karumba with as much of the one hundred dollars he had in his pocket as he could. He would have to hitch to Cairns and then find someone who was willing to take him to Karumba. He recalled what Steve Kessler said about it being against company policy for truckers to pick up hitchhikers. The only reason Steve had picked him up was because he thought Chris was a girl.

Crissy’s personality emerged uninvited and planted a thought in Christian’s head.

“Fuck it! What have I got to lose?” Crissy’s effeminate voice giggled.

Christian surrendered his psyche to Crissy and let her take control.

A hairy-arsed trucker taking a dump in one of the four toilet cubicles thought that he heard a girl’s voice coming from the showers but he knew he must be dreaming. He was dog tired and nearly home and looking forward to dragging his buxom-arsed Missus into their swimming pool and rooting her right there in the warm water.

Crissy stripped and took a long shower and shaved the few rogue hairs that sprouted from her mainly whiskerless body. She dried off, bushed her hair and laid out the denim miniskirt, pink lycra tube-top, nude pantyhose, red satin panties and matching bra on the seat. She dithered about the pantyhose. It was warm and would be getting warmer the further north she got. She knew that her long tanned legs looked good bare but clad in nylons they were stunning.