Thank you very much to Beywriter, Taco, zekesbabe, LovelySinner7, Purple-Kissed-Wishes, Moonlight Memories, shadowphoenix101, Lamanth, Petalwhisker X Fireheart, phene-serene, my lovely flamer, Hi Kitsune and Sesshi-chan for your reviews!

An extra-big thank you with hugs to zekesbabe (You are AMAZING, zekes-mummy), Beywriter and Moonlight Memories for your very helpful ideas - also hugs for Purple-Kissed-Wishes and LovelySinner7, whose input was very much appreciated even though I'm not directly using it. Thank you very much everyone!

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I sat on a hard plastic chair, nerves tying knots in my stomach. Craning my neck, I tried to peek through the keyhole of the door opposite. The penultimate candidate (I was the last, dammit!) was being interviewed. It was taking ages. The job on offer was research assistant to esteemed sports scientist, Judy Tate - just six places were on offer but more than two thousand people had applied, with nearly fifty making the final cut to the interview stage. It was the first step on the ladder to my dream job of becoming a respected scientist just like Judy, and I was ... well, nervous didn't even cover it. Cruder words did, but I couldn't even think them for fear that I would still be in that frame of mind when I was eventually called in.

Finally, the door opened and a middle-aged man came out, looking pretty shell-shocked. The interviewer followed him out, smiled and bade him farewell, then turned to me with a carefully bland expression.

"Emily?"

"Yes, sir," I nodded and did my best to smile. He nodded his head in return but didn't smile. Dread crawled into my knotty stomach and settled down like a spider in its web. I knew what the problem was; this didn't bode well. Hiding my sudden foreboding, I stood up and followed him into the room.

However, as the interview progressed, it seemed that my fears had been off; it was all very professional, full of technical questions requiring detailed answers. The perfect chance for me to show off my 156 IQ - I breezed through the questioning. As he made his last note (his handwriting was appalling), I sat back in my chair, satisfied that the interview had gone as well as it could have.

But - oh shit! - he coughed awkwardly and pulled out from under his desk my original application form. Shit, shit, shit. Without meeting my eyes, he turned to the back page, the fold-out Equal Opportunities form. Fuck. Triple fuck.

"Upon checking your reference, Emily, we found ... something of a discrepancy," he began. I stared at his sweaty forehead (he wouldn't look me in the eye), determined that I would stay calm. The silence stretched. He wanted me to say something? Fuck that. I wasn't going to apologise. Browbeaten, he continued. "In your previous job, you were registered as ... as a male, called Emmet. But now, you're ... you've had a sex change?"

"Yes," I replied wearily. "Is that a problem?" He looked straight at me and smiled weakly.

"No, not at all." We stood; he shook my hand and told me he'd be in touch. I fought the urge to slam the door as I left because I knew he'd lied through his teeth.

--

I never got the job. Or any others. Every interview ended, or began, in a similar fashion.

--

I saw that interviewer again, getting out of his swanky car. Sat there huddled in my sleeping bag with everything aching and glared at him. He didn't as much as look, of course. I'm invisible to everyone bar those pavement-crawling perverts.

--

AIDS. That's what they told me four months ago. Now I'm dying in a doorway. Hm. Dying in a doorway. Sort of poetic, don't you think?

Ugh, I'm not too fond of this. Horrible, evil prompt. One left; I'll have it done by Saturday, promise.

So, so, sorry about the five-month random gap. Thank you so very much to everyone who's stuck with this despite my laziness.

xIlbx