All change?

Prompt ▼

Write a story or poem about a person who is allowed to go back in time and change one decision. What do they do? How does it affect everything going forward?

Context ▼

When I was a teenage boy, I was forced by school bullies to wear women's shapewear. I've written about this elsewhere on WDC. I was forced into it, photographed, and the pictures used to blackmail me into wearing it regularly. But what if I could go back and talk to my younger self?

959 words

I arrived in a quiet back street a few hundred yards from the bus station where my younger self would shortly be turning up. I looked around, trying to convince myself that it had worked, that I had actually travelled back to 1978, but there were no obvious signs. A dingy late 20th century urban side street had little to distinguish it from a dingy early 21st century urban side street. I hurried towards the bus station...and suddenly there he was. Or should that be “there I was”? I decided to stick with “he” – it made thinking simpler. God, he looked miserable. The thought was out before I remembered why. Of course the poor little shit was miserable. This had been one of the worst days of his life. It had been over eight hours since those bastards had ambushed him on his way to school and forced him into that awful thing, and he'd now been wearing it all day.

Curiosity overcame me. When I had been in his shoes, I'd been terrified that people could tell what I was being forced to wear. Now was my chance to have a look. I moved closer, trying to look him up and down without drawing attention to myself. His uniform blazer covered his suspiciously smooth backside, and I had to really look close to convince myself I could see faint rings around his thighs. I was genuinely surprised at how little indication there was of what he had on. You would never suspect that this normal-looking teenage boy was wearing a panty girdle.

The bus arrived and he got on. I followed, paying the driver with the correct currency of the time. Wear the right clothes – use the correct money – don't use modern slang when speaking – the list of things that I'd had to consider was incredible. It would be so easy to make a mistake. I went to the back of the bus and watched my younger self sit with his school bag on his lap to hide those tell-tale rings.

This has all happened so quickly that I hadn't had a chance to think through what I was going to say to him, and time was running out. It wouldn't be long before he'd be getting off the bus and trying to hurry home to get out of that monstrosity. I closed my eyes and recalled that moment, back in my bedroom and almost crying with frustration as I frantically undressed.

What could I say? Play it softly-softly?

“Hi. I know it's tough, but you need to report the bullies.”

Be harsh and to the point?

“If you don't listen to me, you'll still be wearing that bloody girdle four years from now.”

Either way, he'd run a mile. Well, jog awkwardly.

The bus stopped and he got off. I'd been so distracted I'd missed it and had to run forward to ask the driver to let me out. I'd now lost sight of my younger self, but I knew where he would be. When I caught up with him he looked a pathetic sight, trying to hurry along in his tight-fitting shapewear, desperate to get home and be free of it after a long, excruciating day. And for the first time I stopped and really thought about what I was doing.

I'd suffered wearing a panty girdle for four years, and for four years the bullies had checked on me, enjoying my torment. I remembered my fear of exposure and humiliation, and the decision I'd made – a decision the younger me hurrying along the road would be making tomorrow morning – that suffering the bullying was the lesser of two evils. I'd regretted that decision in the years since, but that was the regret of an adult looking back, wishing he'd made the decision that an adult would have made in that situation. But over the distance of time, I'd forgotten what it had really been like for this poor kid – bullied for being smart, bullied for being a loner, bullied for having asthma, bullied for being overweight. As I watched him, he turned round, saw me looking at him, and the look of terror on his face was too much to bear. He thinks I know, and he's right.

I now remembered that fear vividly. If I went ahead with my plan to get him to report it, and in the process let everyone know what had been happening, it would destroy him. In that moment I knew I didn't have to find the words any more, as there was no way I could go ahead. I watched him hurry away, knowing he was going through the agonies of hell – a combination of intense shame at being forced to crossdress and equally intense discomfort as his tight girdle firmly held him in – and I turned away.

“Good luck, kid,” I murmured, “it gets a bit easier to bear in the long run.”

So that was it – all this effort, all this preparation for nothing. Not a thing had changed, not a thing would change. I walked back to the main road to get a bus back to my pickup point. I had a few hours to kill, but I wasn't in the mood to take advantage of my once-in-a-lifetime trip to the past. All I could think of was the ordeal that panicky kid faced the next morning, having to make a decision no young boy should have to make and trying desperately not to lose his shit completely as he stepped into his girdle and dressed for school. And, appalling as it may be, I now realised that outcome was probably for the best.