MidReal Story
Beyond the Flames: A Firefighter's Quest for Fulfillment
Scenario: Julia has always been independent, and her parents have supported her in that.
However, it was a real blow for her parents when Julia expressed her desire
to become a firefighter, as they had already envisioned a bright future for her
in the family business. Julia was happy for a while, but soon she started to feel
a sense of loneliness. She enjoyed her job, but her secret desires couldn't be fulfilled,
as people simply couldn't see beyond the firefighter's mask to the "real" her. She wanted to show people her other "me", her sexuality.
And at some point, she decided to find another way to express herself...
from a different angle.
Create my version of this story
I’m a firefighter.
I’m also a woman.
And I’m not the only one.
There are women like me at firehouses all over the country.
I’m just one of the guys, but I’m not.
I still want to be f*cked by the fireman with the body of a Greek God twenty-four seven, despite how much he pisses me off.
I want his strong hands to hold me against the fire truck as he gives it to me so hard, we wake up the whole neighborhood.
Once I have him, I have to make a choice.
He or the job?
There’s no way I can have both.
If I don’t choose, I’ll lose them both.
My dad is going to kill me when he finds out what I’ve been up to this summer.
He’s going to flip when he finds out who I’ve been seeing and what we’ve been doing together.
He’s going to lose his shit when he finds out what I’ve been doing at work and how much trouble I could get into for it.
I was born a girl in a family full of boys.
Okay, not technically, I only have one brother, but my dad is one of eight brothers and he had three sons before he had me.
I was definitely outnumbered.
I always felt like the odd one out.
My dad is a man’s man, through and through.
He’s big and burly, with a big boisterous laugh and a larger than life personality.
He’s a successful business owner and all of his friends are powerful men who do powerful things.
When they would come over to our house, they’d all sit around the dining room table, smoking cigars and talking about sports and business, while I would sit in the living room with their wives and girlfriends, who were all proper and polite, talking about fashion and interior design.
It was always so boring.
My dad tried to get me to play sports when I was younger, but I sucked at them and I hated them.
He tried to get me to take up an instrument, but I couldn’t play music for shit.
He tried to get me involved in community service activities, but they were always so damn boring.
The only thing I loved was watching him work on his cars and motorcycles in his garage.
That’s when I knew that my dad and I were nothing alike.
Even my parents recognized this fact.
My mom used to say that I had my father’s coloring with my mother’s delicate features.
She said that I was like a little porcelain doll with big blue eyes and long golden hair that cascaded down my back like a waterfall of silk.
I hated it when she said that.
It only made me feel even more out of place.
But when she died, my dad didn’t know what to do with me.
He wasn’t equipped to raise a little girl who needed to be nurtured and cared for.
So he tried his best to mold me into the perfect little princess that he thought he wanted me to be.
But that wasn’t what I wanted for myself at all.
I wanted to be strong and smart and athletic.
I wanted to be the best I could be in everything I did.
I didn’t want to be told that I needed to be delicate and ladylike all the time, when I was anything but.
I didn’t want to be encouraged to smile and nod and agree with everything the men around me said when I disagreed with them.
Sure, it was important for me to learn how to play nice with others, but it was also important for those around me to respect me enough to listen to what I had to say and take it into consideration.
They never did.
To them, I was always just a little girl.
A pretty little thing who had no idea what she was talking about and who should be seen and not heard.
And I resented the hell out of them for it.
Maybe I would have been more willing to conform if I had actually liked the things that I was being asked to do.
If I had enjoyed playing sports and instruments and doing charity work, maybe I would have been more willing to put up with the bullshit.
But those were never the things that interested me the most.
I never felt like my parents pressured me into conforming to traditional gender roles when I was growing up.
It wasn’t until I got older that it became a problem for me.
When society started telling me that there were certain ways that girls were supposed to act and certain things that boys were supposed to do.
When people started telling me that if I wanted to be treated like a lady, then I needed to start acting like one.
But if being a lady meant being weak and submissive and letting others walk all over me, then that wasn’t a lady that I ever wanted to meet.
That wasn’t someone that I ever wanted to become.
So instead of trying not to stand out, I did everything that I could think of to make sure that I did just that.
I tried as hard as I could at everything that I did.
I refused to let myself fail at anything just because it was hard or because others thought that it wasn’t something that little girls should do.
I pushed myself harder than ever before so that people would see me for who I truly was and not just as a vapid little princess who needed someone else to take care of her.
But the harder I pushed myself to be something else, the more out of place I felt.
It didn’t matter how good I was at the things that interested me or how hard I tried to be recognized for my achievements.
I still felt like something was missing.
I still felt like there was more to life than what society wanted me to believe.
And it wasn’t until I found firefighting that everything started to make sense.
I knew the first time that I saw a firefighter out in the field that it was exactly what I was meant to do.
I could see myself in his boots and his turnout gear, doing everything he could to save the world.
I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins and the heat of the fire burning up my body.
I could sense the camaraderie and the satisfaction of knowing that you did something important with your life every day.
It felt right.
It felt good.
It felt like home.
My dad didn’t agree.
He thought it was stupid for me to want to be a firefighter and he let me know it in no uncertain terms.
He said that it was too dangerous and too demanding.
He said that it was dirty and smelly and beneath someone like me.
He said that it would be too hard for someone as small and delicate as I was to handle.
But it didn’t matter what he said.
I knew in my heart of hearts that this is what I wanted to do and there was no one who could stop me from doing it.
So even though he told me that it would be easier for him if I just went back to school and got my degree like everyone else in our family, got a good job working for someone else and eventually got married and had babies, there was no way in hell I was going to let him make me do it.
I didn’t care how long it took or how much work it took to get there.
I was standing on the hot pavement, my skin sticky with sweat, my lungs choking on the smoke from the building in front of me.
The sirens of the trucks and cars around me were blaring in my ears, creating an almost deafening effect.
The heat from the fire was so strong, even from where we were standing on the other side of the street, that it felt like my entire body was being scorched.
But all of those things faded away in comparison to what was happening inside of me.
I felt something igniting deep in my chest, something powerful and fierce.
I felt something taking over my body and my mind, something that was telling me to go inside and take care of business.
I could hear the voices in my head, telling me to turn around and go home, to give up and save myself before it was too late.
But there was no way in hell that was going to happen.
I had always been the kind of person who liked to prove people wrong, who liked to show them what they were missing out on by not believing in me.
And this time was no different.
I was going to take this head on and win, no matter what happened.
I pulled my long, dark hair up into a bun and tightened my helmet around my head.
I zipped up the heavy coat over my t-shirt and made sure the thick gloves fit snugly around my hands.
I put on the mask and the airpack, checking to make sure that everything was in working order.
I looked to my left, catching the eye of my partner, Steve.
He was already suited up and ready to go, watching me with a mixture of admiration and desire, almost like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
Almost like he was feeling it too.
I couldn’t help but feel something tighten in my chest as I watched him, something that felt like anticipation and excitement, something that made me feel almost giddy with the idea that someone else out there got it, got the reason why I wanted this so badly.
I had known Steve for a long time, ever since we both started training for this job in college together almost five years ago.
We were friends, partners, even roommates for a while, before things got complicated between us.
We had always been competitive with each other, fighting for the best scores in our classes, trying to prove who was stronger or faster or smarter than the other one.
We had always been attracted to each other too, even when we were seeing other people or pretending like we weren’t.
It was hard to ignore sometimes when you’re working so closely with someone who gets you, someone who is on the same page as you are about everything that matters most.
So even though we had always tried to keep things professional between us, to only ever be friendly and nothing more, it was getting harder and harder for me to do that when he was looking at me like that.
But all of those things disappeared as soon as we charged into the building together, ready to face the flames side by side.
I was in the living room playing with my Barbie dolls, trying to figure out what I wanted to dress them up in next, when I heard the sound of a siren blaring outside of our apartment window.
I dropped one of the dolls onto the floor and ran over to the window, pushing the curtains aside to see where the noise was coming from.
I squinted into the bright sunlight, trying to see through the smog and the heat to figure out what was happening in my neighborhood.
And that’s when I saw it, barreling down the street with its lights flashing and its horn blaring, racing towards something very important indeed.
It was big, bright red, and beautiful, like nothing I had ever seen before in my entire life.
It filled up an entire lane of traffic just by itself, with its long ladder jutting up into the sky behind it and its massive tires rolling on the ground beneath it, leaving behind a trail of smoke and rubber in its wake.
It was everything that I never knew I wanted and more, and I knew that I had to have it right then and there, no questions asked.
I watched in awe as it disappeared around the corner and out of sight, the whole world seeming to turn grey as soon as it was gone.
All of the houses and cars and trees around me were suddenly so boring and so small, like they were nothing compared to what was happening out there on the streets.
And I never wanted to see them again.
I turned away from the window and ran into the kitchen to find my father, who was sitting at the table with his coffee and his newspaper, looking very important and very serious indeed.
“Daddy!”
I yelled, running up to him with my arms outstretched, “Daddy, can we go see it?”
“Can we go see the firetruck?”
My father looked down at me with his dark eyes, studying me for a moment before he set his coffee cup aside and placed his hand on my cheek.
“What do you say?”
“Would you like to go see it?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a frown, “That’s not really something that little girls do, you know.”
“But why not?”
“But I want to see it!”
I whined, “Please, Daddy, please please please!”
My father looked at me for another moment before he finally sighed and pulled me into his arms, “Fine,” he said, “We’ll go see it.”
And I smiled for the first time since it disappeared around the corner.
We drove to the fire station together in our old car, listening to the radio as we went and watching the buildings fly by outside of our windows.
It didn’t take us very long to get there, even though it felt like it was taking forever, and we parked in front of the small brick building just as another truck was leaving behind us.
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as soon as we stepped out onto the pavement, like it was trying to break free from my body and run inside without me.
I was so excited that I could hardly stand it, so ready for what was about to happen next that I could hardly breathe.