This is my story and is also published elsewhere.
*****
I began testosterone at the age of 25, but my androgen levels soon asserted the fact that I would appear soft and hairless forever. I turned desperately to masculine dress, as though my hairless face and breasts would simply relent to being called "he" if I wore a silk vest, tie and sports jacket everywhere.
My cunt made this even worse. In the one instance of virginal swooning at close contact I can recall, his hand dipped below my belt with an unhesitating grip. He knew. I ran away.
It was years before I had the strength to enter a gay bar again. This time, I had no illusions of success. I had been trying to get what I needed from a man for years, and none seemed to know how to dominate me without making me feel like a woman.
So fuck it, I thought. At least let me be a pretty sexless trans boy.
I used far too much dark black eyeliner that night. The simple charcoal blackness of it had a smoldering affect on my hazel grey eyes. I used a fair bit of highlighter to bring out my unnaturally sharp cheekbones, hoping the angles of my face might make me more masculine.
I was alone as always when I sat down at the bar.
Warmth suddenly crashed into me from behind. I yelped as my cold beer hit my lap and soaked through my pants.
"Fuck, sorry," came a voice from beside me. It was slurred, deep, and distressingly familiar.
Warmth from his chest was still spreading to my back, but I found I couldn't move away. That's when he finally looked at me: hunched over me from behind, his face hovered inches from mine.
"I know you, right?"
Yes, he did. He fucking did. He was my subordinate at work.
Subordinate is a stretch, I guess. More like a subordinate to a colleague in another office. Just subordinate enough to make my inability to move away from him inappropriate.
"You're Wynn, right?" I said, trying to keep my voice deep and calm.
I knew his name, alright. Simon Wynn. We only spoke formally once, but his name had been ringing in my mind for months. He was a foot taller than me, and the urge to lean back as we spoke, arching toward him, had made the mundane conversation monumentally awkward for me. He was the only man in the company I knew of with longer hair than mine, his a blue-black color. But it seemed somehow wrong to call us both men, me being what I was and he being what he was.
Simon was broad, but his frame had that triangular cinch in his waist that made him seem muscular and slight at once. He was pale, but gold-tinted, and the lines of shadow carved his face into strong curves. His smell was musky and yet so delicate I had to concentrate to catch it. The worst part of him was his lips: only a shade rosier than his skin, the top one thin and angular and the bottom slightly thicker. When he smiled, as he did now, half his mouth would cut into his cheek, defining the line near its hollow, and the other half would hang open slightly. His mouth was cruel, bordering on torturous as it glided closer to my ear so he wouldn't have to shout over the music.
"You remembered me?" he asked.
"Can I help you?" I didn't mean for it to come out like that, and I bit the inside of my cheek, scared I might send him away. Instead, he laughed and his breath hit my neck as his chest throbbed against my back. Something else throbbed too.
"I was sure I recognized you." He finally noticed my drenched jeans and his eyebrows crinkled together in guilt. "Was that my fault?"
I didn't have time to answer before he grabbed the hem of his black T-shirt and pressed it into my thigh.
"You don't have to do that!" I said with a bit too much energy. I'd worn my ripped jeans, and the ragged, square holes were over my upper thigh. The bottom of his knuckles grazed me: his skin was so warm. I gasped.
I hoped he didn't notice, but his eyes snapped up to mine, and the soft flesh of his palm absently fell against my leg. He leaned in closer than before, and the tip of his nose ruffled the hair tucked behind my ears.
"I live upstairs," he said. "I could lend you something."
My own gasp was still ringing in my ears. If he didn't know about my unfortunate monastic life-style, he probably just thought I wasn't getting any. Either way, he had noticed the burning heat in my face. I couldn't decide whether or not to take him up on his offer, until he raised his hand up into the crease above my thigh. Then, as though the decision had been made for me, I said:
"I think that's a good idea."
As soon as the door closed, Simon reached for my hip and pushed me against the wall. His lips overtook mine, fumbling gracefully to force my mouth open.
I expected to have to grab his wrists to stop his hands from slipping under my clothes: as most of my experiences told me, I had to be very explicit about the parts of my body that cause me dysphoria. But the moment never came: his lips stayed magnetically to mine, only slipping over my cheek or jaw occasionally.
He must know. He must get it. Unlike 98% of gay men I'd met at these places, and plenty of the bi/pan ones too, he saw my body as I did: as a man's, with the kind of sensitivity that could shatter me at any moment. He could break me if he wanted to. Or grab my cunt and laugh, or squirm into me while ignoring my meek protests. But he only held my neck and face and kissed me.
Occasionally, he pulled away to talk. I realized, with a sort of delirious hilarity, that he had the faintest English accent. His voice often scraped the ground in a gravelly baritone, making it all but impossible to identify his accent. But the corners of his sentences lifted into his larynx with a sonorous lilt that luxuriously curled in the air between us.
I barely grasped what he said: I carefully stored his words into my mind to savor after I left.
You've been avoiding me, huh?
Put your hands up.
Shh, you okay?
What are your pronouns, by the way?
Fuck, you're gorgeous.
It was such bullshit, and so heartbreakingly wonderful.
The throbbing of my clit had persisted since Simon had first touched my thigh, and my cunt was aching painfully, whining incessantly about his emptiness.
Yes: my cunt's a 'he'.
