Strange Love

*Note to readers: I've written quite a few crossdressing stories, many of them my own personal exploits. This is the first time I've written one from the perspective of an admirer. I hope you enjoy it.

Callie

*******

"I'm sorry, but I'm a little confused over here." There was some nervous laughter in the room. "I thought most of yuze people were gay. No?"

She smiled and said, "You people. How quaint." There was some more laughter before she continued. "You're confusing us with transsexuals, officer. Most crossdressers are heterosexual." He still looked puzzled so she asked, "Did you have another question?"

"I was kinda wonderin' if you was maybe married." The room erupted in raucous laughter. "Hey! it ain't like that!" the man shouted.

"Vinnie's got a thing for the 'new girl'!" someone shouted.

Vinnie waved his arm in disgust at all of them and said, "I was just tryin' to figguh out if you got like a wife, you know. That's all. Forget about them retards back there."

Once the room quieted down the young woman said, "No, I am not married." She looked around and said, "If there are no other questions, this concludes your annual LGBTQ-sensitivity training. Thank you all. You've been a very good group!"

Once the room was mostly cleared out, a police officer with two stripes on his sleeve said to a young officer whose uniform sleees were bare,"Hey, partner. You gonna sit in here all day or start your tour with me? We got seven minutes left. Come on already."

Officer Bryce Emerson just sat there. Finally he said, "That just blew me away."

"What? What blew you away?"

"That talk or speech or presentation. Whatever it was, it really messed with my head."

"The LGBTQ thing?"

"Not all of it. Just the 'T' part. That last...woman, Danielle, who talked to us was..."

"That was dude, kid. He's a guy wearing a dress. There was no woman there, okay? And his name is probably Daniel or maybe Ralph or Herb."

"Yeah, okay. Fine. But whoever that was.... I mean.... Okay, let me ask you something. If you saw her—or him—or whatever—sitting at a bar out in town and didn't know that was a guy, could you tell?"

His slightly more experienced partner looked at him like he was from outer space. "I'm serious. Could you? I mean, talk about convincing looking. And she...he...said there's no surgery or hormones involved. Is that crazy or what?"

"Who cares, Emerson? All we gotta know is the law and the law says that...guy...gets the same kind of protection as anyone else. End of story. What else is there?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right. It's just that you grow up thinking that girls...that women...are you know, this certain way. Like, I don't know—sugar and spice and all that and that they all have boobs and vagin...."

"The word is pussy, kid. Unless you're a doctor or an EMT and then it's vagina. Come on. Let's get movin'."

"Yeah, but then you see something like...that and it really makes you think, right?"

"Think? Think bout what, for Christ's sake? What's there to think about? Come on, we start our tour in five minutes. Let's move, rookie."

For the rest of his tour, Bryce Emerson couldn't shake the sight of this gorgeous...person...who looked exactly like a female. When he closed his eyes, she even sounded like a woman. It wasn't a soft, delicate voice, but it most assuredly could belong to a female and yet the owner was male.

Emerson was a rookie, but he wasn't naive. He'd spent four years in the Army as a military police officer and had seen his share of unusual stuff, but he'd never seen anything quite like that. He'd moved to the Bronx in New York City after serving his last year on active duty at West Point of all places. Most people only thought of the cadets and maybe the officers who taught their classes, but everywhere the Army was, MPs were there, too. He'd grown up out west near Seattle and done a two-year tour at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, a year in Afghanistan, and a final year at West Point before leaving active duty.

He had a buddy who lived in 'The City' and roomed with him until a few months after he graduated from the police academy. He'd finally gotten his own small apartment, but it was tough making ends meet in the most expensive city in America. Anywhere else, his salary would have been great for a rookie cop, but here it was a challenge to have some money left over before payday. Still, he loved being a cop even if hanging around a bunch of knuckleheads with thick accents sometimes drove him crazy. They were almost all really good guys who'd do anything for another cop and loyalty was important to Emerson so on balance, it was a pretty good gig.

He spent a lot of his days walking his beat. It was only a couple of square blocks but thousands of people lived inside it. He and his partner did their best to try and make friends (or at least not make enemies) with the people who lived in that geographically small area. They went out of their way to learn personal details about people and take an interest in their lives. That was critical to getting information when they needed help as the prohibition against 'snitching' was very strong. Every cop knew the line: snitches end up in ditches. This was especially true of African Americans who were already highly distrustful of the police. Still, they did their best to protect and serve all the people.

"What? You still thinkin' about that guy?" his partner asked during a break.

"I dunno. Maybe." He looked at him and said, "Yeah, I guess. It just really threw me for a loop."

"So...what? You thinking about askin' that guy out on a date or somethin'? Lemme tell ya somethin', rookie. You get involved with something like that and...."

Emerson wanted to say something like, "I see the training had a deep and lasting effect on you," but let it pass. There were several gay officers in their precinct and a couple of them were even married. But this transgender stuff was still relatively new and mysterious to most of these guys, most of whom genuinely seemed to really be trying to catch up with the times.

Crossdressing was the least understood of the behaviors to be sure. After Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn, transsexualism got a pretty good dose of publicity. But guys who only occasionally dressed like women were very poorly understood and Bryce counted himself among those who didn't get it. After today, he no longer viewed as 'weird' or 'sick', and he wanted to understand it better. He was driven to learn and spent a lot of his off-duty time chasing various topics on the internet from politics to religion to science to cooking to you name it. Crossdressing now had his full interest.

For reasons he couldn't yet explain, he found himself curiously drawn to this beautiful...woman. In his mind, she was a woman or least looked like one to the point where it didn't matter. The last thought he had before dispatch called them away from their unfinished lunch was, "Would you hit that?" He wasn't even sure he'd 'hit' let alone if he'd even want to, and yet she'd been as attractive as any real woman he'd ever met. Sure, he'd seen models on TV or in magazines who were prettier, but this girl was just flat out hot. He tabled his thoughts for the moment and ran out to respond to a domestic dispute half a block away.

That evening, alone and off-duty in his studio apartment, Emerson started searching for something on his laptop. He began by typing in the words 'pretty' and 'crossdresser' and ended some four hours later leaving him both better informed and even more confused.

During his search he watched numerous 'transition videos' in which mostly younger males in a very compressed format, transformed themselves into what, for the most part, appeared to be relatively attractive-looking 'females.' He also found several sites featuring hundreds or perhaps thousands of crossdressers who ran the gamut from large, manly-looking men in dresses to those he honestly couldn't tell weren't female and everything in between. He also learned several new terms, one of which was called 'passing' or the ability to appear in public as a woman with no one thinking otherwise. Most of the 'girls' on these sites weren't passable and of those he thought might be, most had one of more obvious flaws that eventually gave them away. Like a tiny handful who did not have any such 'tells', Danielle also had none.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this foray into what was completely new territory was finding himself rock hard during most of the search. And that took him full circle back to the way he'd felt after Danielle finished speaking. He found himself very attracted to 'her' even when he knew she was a he and until that very moment, he'd been 100% certain he was completely straight. That in turn made him wonder whether or not he still might be straight considering his attraction was to a person who presented—and 'passed'—as a female.

Like most single guys, Emerson jerked off fairly regularly. Well, at least he did when he wasn't dating someone. Being a very good-looking guy, he had little trouble finding dates or hooking up. Lately however, he found himself in a rare dry spell and after several hours of sporting a rock-hard erection, very much in need of some real relief. As a police officer, massage parlors were out of the question and he'd only paid for it once in his life and that was as a young soldier at Fort Bragg. The experience was cold and impersonal and had cost him $200 leaving with concerns about STDs, a mistake he'd never make again.

So as he lay down just after midnight, he fantasized. About...her. Exactly what went on between them this fantasy was murky at best, but just the thought of holding her hand and of kissing her and more importantly, being kissed back, sent him quickly over the top.

For the next week, he worked his shift from 8am to 5pm, worked out, then went back to his laptop looking (and often re-looking) at beautiful crossdressers. By this point, he'd created a pretty large electronic photo album of his favorites and it absolutely amazed him that any guy could possibly look so pretty, so feminine, and so...desirable to him. Maybe he wasn't 100% straight after all. Then again, maybe he was.

That Friday was his first day off in the last ten days as Emerson worked all of the extra tours he could to try and get ahead financially. Rather than go do something he enjoyed, he spent his day calling around to other precincts trying to see if any of them had LGBTQ-sensitivity training scheduled and if so, did they have someone named Danielle slated to speak?

Three of them had already had their annual training and one of the equal opportunity officers remembered her by name. He was about to call it quits after his seventeenth call when he struck pay dirt. "Yeah, we got a Danielle lined up to speak to us next Wednesday morning around 10 o'clock. Why? What's goin' on?" his fellow officer asked.

"Oh, nothing really." Emerson lived and died by the truth yet he found himself wanting to make something up rather than admit the real reason he wanted to know. He thought about saying she'd left something at his precinct but couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead he just thanked the guy on the other end and made a mental note of where she'd be and when.

Emerson was part of the '44' squad in the Bronx and Danielle would be speaking to the 47 up north and he was going to be there. No one gave him a hard time when he'd asked for a half day off because he'd volunteered to work so much overtime. Even so, he almost felt guilty as though he was somehow abandoning his partner even though he knew it was no big deal.

It was late September and already getting chilly as Emerson headed north. He'd only been to the 47 once, but he knew exactly where it was. He parked in the 'police only' area of the precinct's parking garage, then walked upstairs and around the front and waited. It was 9:30 and a pretty typical morning New York City at that time of year. He was glad he'd worn his leather jacket as he shifted his weight back and forth while he watched.

He'd been there about fifteen minutes when a sergeant from the 47 approached him. "You been out here a while. You got some ID on you?" Emerson flashed his badge and the sergeant said, "What the hell are you doing up here hanging out in front of my precinct? You're a long way from the 44, officer."

"Just waiting for a friend, sarge."

"Yeah? Okay. Just had to make sure, you know." He smiled and nodded as the sergeant went back inside.

A couple more minutes passed as he continued looking left and right and then he saw her. Even though he'd only seen her for a few minutes that one day, he'd recognize her anywhere. She had long, dark hair, beautiful almond-shaped brown eyes, high cheek bones, a perfect smile, and soft, full lips. She was wearing a black coat but he could still 'see' her hard, tight body and those beautiful (fake?) boobs, as well as her long, shapely legs and tight, round ass. She was wearing a black sweater and a gray skirt along with a pair of grey, ankle-strap high heels.

If all that wasn't enough, it was the overall package that he still couldn't wrap his head around. This woman, this...person...was just stunningly beautiful. He cleared his throat as she approached and then met her at the steps leading into the building.

"Ma'am? Miss? Pardon me," he began. Danielle stopped when she saw his badge on his belt. "Um, hi. I'm Officer Emerson. Bryce Emerson. You spoke to our precinct a while ago and...."

"Oh, hi!" She smiled at him and said, "I remember you."

"You do?" he said trying to stay in control.

"I do," she said again. "I always remember the cute ones and you're very cute."

That caught Emerson completely off guard. "Oh, um, well...thanks. You're um...very attractive yourself."

"Thank you, officer, but I really need to get inside. I'm speaking here today, as well."

"Right. I knew that." She tilted her head and he said, "I called around trying to find you. I just...."

"You tried to find me?" she said pleasantly with a bright smile.

"I did," he replied. "I'm not a stalker or anything...."

She looked back down at his badge and said, "I certainly hope not." She looked back up at him and said, "Is there something I could help you with, officer?"

"Um, well, it's just that I really thought you were um...a really good speaker and you know, you're also really um...attractive so I was...."

She smiled brightly again and said, "Are you trying to ask me out, officer?"

"Well, see, that's the thing. I know you said over 90% of, you know...."

"Crossdressers?" she said finishing his statement.

"Right. Crossdressers. I know most of them...you...they're um, straight, but I didn't know if you, you know, dated guys or whatever so...."

"I really need to get inside, but yes, I do date men. Had you asked me that just six months ago, I'd have told you without hesitation I am a totally straight guy who only dates women. But since then I've been discovering a lot about myself and perhaps the most surprising thing is I find myself attracted to certain men. Specifically, cute ones like you and yet I still consider myself to be straight."

She saw the confusion on Emerson's face so she tried to explain. "Okay, so as Danielle, I see myself as a woman. She is attracted to, and therefore only dates, men. As Daniel, I'm still very much attracted to women and he only date females. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's the best explanation I have."

"That makes a lot of sense and it actually helps me understand what I've been experiencing since your talk."

"I still need to get inside so unless you have something else...."

"Um, yeah. I kind of do," he said. She stopped again and looked at him. "I was wondering if you might like to maybe go get coffee or lunch after you're done?"

Danielle smiled warmly and said, "That sounds nice. Yes, I'd love to join you. I'll be about an hour or so and then we can go somewhere together."

"Yeah, that's perfect," he said. "I'll meet you right here if that's okay...Danielle."

"I look forward to it...Bryce," she said flashing another beautiful smile at him.

As she turned to walk away and go inside, he ran ahead of her to get the door for her. She smiled again and thanked him for being such a gentleman. As he watched her walk down the hall, he became aware that she'd done it to him again. He was thankful he was wearing jeans or the bulge in his pants would obvious to anyone and everyone. He waited for her to go inside one of the rooms, then showed his badge to the officer at the desk and asked if he could wait. "Suit yourself, buddy," the officer told him.

Almost an hour to the minute later, he saw her walking back his way. This time, her coat was draped over her arm and he could see all of her beautiful body. He loved the way her sweater firmly hugged her breasts and highlighted her narrow waist. He was reasonably sure they were silicon breast forms of the type he'd seen advertised for sale on several of the sites he'd visited. He also knew various pads were sold that gave this kind of girl the kind of shape that made her look convincingly feminine and that's exactly how Danielle looked.

He stood up and smiled as the sound of her heels clicked on the hardwood floor. "Hello again," she said sweetly as she stood just in front of him.

Emerson was 6' even and in her heels, Danielle was almost exactly his height. He'd only been out with two other women who were as tall as him although he'd once dated a woman who was nearly six inches taller in heels. She played college basketball and he remembered what it was like kissing her while she was standing. Danielle wasn't even close to that size and Emerson wouldn't have cared if she was taller than him. He thought she looked absolutely perfect.

"Hi," he replied. "Here, let me help you with your coat. It's kind of chilly out there."

He held it for her as she slid into it. The scent of her perfume wafted his way and he found himself once again growing hard.

"Thank you," she said as she buttoned it. "Handsome and a gentleman. I like that," she said with another great smile.

"You look really great," he told her as they headed toward the door.

"Thank you, again," she said as he held the door open for her.

"I don't know this part of town too well. Do you have any suggestions? Are you hungry yet by any chance?"

"Um...I think I'd just like some coffee if that's okay. If you'd like to eat, I know a nice place close by."

"No, coffee's fine. You can take me wherever you like," he said.

"Be careful, officer. While I do consider myself to be a woman, I'm not exactly a lady."

Both of them laughed as she pointed to the west. "Right down this way about a block there's a very nice coffee shop."

Emerson offered her his arm and she slipped hers inside his. "So how did you manage to find me?" she asked as they strolled slowly along the street.

He explained how many calls he'd made and Danielle said, "I think that is so sweet!" She paused and added, "Even romantic."

Bryce was encouraged but still felt very much out of his depth. "Danielle? It may sound cliche but it's true when I say I've never dated a woman like you so if I don't say or do all the right things...."

"Don't worry so much, Bryce. You're fine. You're also fine, but that's a whole other story. There aren't any rules, per se. I just want to be treated like a lady—even though I may not always act like one—and if you do that and respect me, I'll be very happy."

"Then I think you'll be very happy," he told her as they arrived at the coffee shop. He opened that door for her too, and said, "Ladies first."

She smiled, thanked him, and walked in. "Morning, Danielle," Emerson heard the girl behind the counter say.