Today's story is about how I met my current and now longest-running girlfriend, the Lady M.
Above is the Faceborg exchange in which she established her fledgling crush on me. The rest of the story is below the cut. This story gets a bit NSFW (and is published with the knowledge and consent of Lady M). That said, enjoy!
Dear The Internet,
To talk about Lady M, I suppose I first have to talk about W. I met W back in undergrad, at a party. K introduced us - K and I met through mutual friends at our collective favorite campustown restaurant, and he seemed cool at first. After hanging out a few times, he said I had to meet his roommate and part-time girlfriend, W: “You’d like her. She’s real curvy, big tits, great ass, super-cute.” I guess that should have been red flag number one on K, but I’m kind of used to how men talk about women around other men. Or “men,” as the case may be. He went on to say that I’d be her type, as well: “Tall, thin-” I don’t think of myself as thin, but then I have an established track record of irrationally hating my body “-Lean muscles, sharp. She’d like you.”
Anyway, K introduced me to W at a Halloween party, back when everyone thought I was a bi dude. W and I stepped out back for a smoke, and she said to me point-blank, “You are a gorgeous guy, and I wanna take you home with me right now.”
I said, “I like assertive women, so OK.” The three of us got in W's car and went back to their apartment for what would turn out to be a rather boring and short-lived threesome. W said she wanted my cock in her mouth, and as I'd had a couple years to come to terms with my transness per se, my erection just wilted. It’s not that I don’t like sex - I really do! I just vastly prefer the emotional intimacy to any physical pleasure, and I’m definitely not into having my mannish features pointed out to me.
At any rate, a few days later I called them up to hang out, and we went for a walk around the neighborhood while I came out to them and answered their questions. To make a three-year story very short: I moved in with them both, and though W and I tried, we just weren’t compatible. She liked me as a guy, and for guy reasons - a line I had first heard at 19, when I rediscovered my transness after repressing it since the age of four, and told Fae Jennie (my girlfriend at the time). It wasn’t quite as devastating this time, but it still signaled the death of any sexual relationship between us. W ended up meeting a great guy, and they went on to get married.
But before that, my best friend DJ got married to his high school girlfriend, BB. I was to be the best “man” - they knew I was trans, but I was still pre-everything - and I had a plus one. That would be W. Rather than stay in the expensive hotel with the wedding party, though, we were going to stay with W's best friend, M, who happened to live nearby.
M did my hair for the wedding - an androgynous cut, down just past my ears but not quite past my jaw, and flipped out at the ends. W told her about me, and she was understanding. I didn’t look “girly” at the time - or at least not girly enough - but I still looked good. I liked her: she was a "warm" personality, cute, short, curvy, sharp, funny, well-read. Had those apple cheeks I love so much. I don’t have a “type,” I’ve dated all sorts of women and even a few men, but I kind of liked her. She was straight, though - or that’s what I had gathered, from idle talk of boyfriends past and present. For my part, I mostly just sat and enjoyed getting my hair done, feeling as much like one of the girls as I ever had to that point.
I should probably point out that I really like getting my hair done. It’s been a quasi-sexual thing for me ever since I was in high school. There’s just something, I guess "intimate," about relaxing while someone attends in detail to part of my body. While presenting as a guy, I couldn’t really justify getting manicures or pedicures (although having my feet massaged is also a really intimate quasi-sexual thing to me), and I couldn’t afford professional massages. So haircuts were all I had back then.
After hair and dinner, we watched a movie (I don’t remember what - this was 2009) and headed to bed. We all got changed into our pajamas in M's bedroom - we’re all pretty liberated, had mostly seen each other naked already, and were comfortable with nudity (if not our own bodies, cough, cough). That made M the second woman who I had seen nude on the same day I met her, come to think of it. We all cuddled up in M's bed - a Queen-Size, but with the three of us, it was rather… cozy.
M and I became Faceborg friends shortly after that, but that was really our only contact to speak of for almost ten years. When I was away at grad school for library science, we chatted a bit, but I mostly chalked that up to me being lonely and her being nice. I wouldn’t find out until much later that she had actually been developing a crush on me during this time, which was also when I shaved my goatee and started taking hormones. Those did wonders for my mood awareness, emotional processing, and self-esteem - not to mention my figure and features. I liked M already, I just wrote her off because I thought she was into guys - she had fooled around with girls, and even liked it, but girls weren’t really her thing. But she actually hadn’t been that into me as a guy - I was her type, visually speaking, but I don’t think she ever saw me as “really” a man. Which, I mean, I’m not. So… validation?
After finishing my graduate studies, I got a job just far enough from my mom's house to be a pain in the ass, but not far enough to justify getting my own apartment, so I moved back in with my mom to get a little financial security to counteract the crushing student debt I had accrued. Which meant I was back in the neighborhood where DJ, BB, and I had all gone to high school. Which was also where they had gotten married. Which was fairly close to M’s neck of the woods (she was half an hour’s drive away, just the next county over). I thought about her, even fantasized about what it might be like if she was into… if not girls, then at least me. It was kind of a lonely and isolated time for me - I mean, I had my job, and my family, and DJ and BB, but… well, I guess there’s nothing for it but to say it plainly. I felt like nobody could want me for who I was right then: the people who liked me as a guy, wouldn’t later like me as a girl; and the people who would later like me as a girl, wouldn’t like me now as a guy. I was still presenting male at work, and I still had an entirely manly wardrobe (Pro Tip: three piece suits conceal budding breasts). On top of it all, grad school was the hardest work I had ever done in my life, and I just didn’t have time for any relationships. With all the transness and other miscellaneous issues, I hadn’t had sex in those ten years since meeting Em, apart from a brief weekend out of state with my first high school girlfriend. Not quite incel territory, I know, but uncomfortably close. Even though I was in the best mental health state of my life, I still felt unlovable. Undesirable. Doomed.
I knew that was dysphoria talking, but I didn’t have much else to go on. I would tell myself: “One day - one day, I will find someone who likes me for me. Someone who appreciates me. Someone who sees me as a girl, who likes me for girl reasons, who loves my soft skin and my long legs and my cute freckles and my silky hair. One day. Just not today. Probably not tomorrow. I don’t know when, but one day, I will be loved, and desired, and cherished, and treasured.” It was a useful bit of self-talk, and gave me a reprieve from the desperation and depression that otherwise accompanied me every waking moment, always threatening to hijack my mood. I hadn’t had many Gone Days since going on hormones - not nearly as many as before - but they still happened from time to time. And sure enough, sometimes even my positive self-talk would backfire, and I’d start down a spiral with, “Look at how pathetic you are: your wild fucking fantasy is for someone to simply like you.” I could go on, but no.
Christmastime came, and my extended family was all meeting upstate on the 29th, which meant that I had a narrow window to buy them last-minute gifts while taking advantage of after-Christmas sales. I sent M a Faceborg message, knowing that bargain-hunting was her family’s version of cardio, asking if she wanted to help me shop. She said Yes.
Fun Fact: I didn't realize I'd said "it's a date" until much later, when Lady M called this our first date.
I had an ulterior motive, though: I had recently bought a pair of nice patterned tunics, and I wanted to get some bras, and I thought maybe M could help me with that as well. And, y’know, if something were to happen…
So in the early evening of the 28th, we went shopping. I wore one of those tunics I had bought earlier, and one of my nice pairs of jeans - I had sent her a picture of me in it, and she said I looked cute, although She's probably just being nice. (Holy Christ am I a useless lesbian!) M helped me find a respectable pile of gifts for my folks at a local shopping mall, she was a huge help, and it wasn’t quite dinner time when I decided to try to switch gears.
“So,” I said, hoping that stalling would somehow reduce the anxiety, “I’ve got everything I need for everyone else. Buuuut…”
“But?”
“Well, so I have these tunics, which are cute, but no bras.”
“No bra? You naughty girl.” Playful smile. She’s probably just being nice.
“Yeah. Right. Do you, uh, think you could help me fix that?” I hastened to add, “I’ll buy you dinner, if that sweetens the deal for you.”
“Sure! I mean - sure, I’ll help you with bra shopping. You don’t need to buy me dinner, though.”
“I know I don’t have to, but I want to. You helped me shop for my folks, now you’re helping me shop for bras, we’ll both need to eat, I figure the least I could do is buy dinner for your trouble.” I know that sounds kinda smarmy, but I honestly was trying to do something nice without attaching any strings. I wanted to have a nice dinner with her, hang out, see how things went, but I didn’t want her to feel like she had to pay for something because of my shopping trip.
“OK, then,” she said. “You like sushi?”
“I love sushi! It’s one of my three Ss.”
“Three Ss?”
“Yes. There are three things for which I have a bottomless appetite, and they all start with S: sushi, sandwiches, and slaying the undead.”
“Ha! That is not where I thought that was going.”
“Right, that’s what makes the joke funny.”
“I never said it was funny.”
“No, your laughter did.”
“Yeah, but… hmm. Touché,” she said with significant side-eye. Banter good. Yeah, for being “just friends.” (Useless lesbian.)
She took me to three stores. Three! Stores! I had never gone bra shopping in my life - except for that one time I dressed up as Wonder Woman for a low-rent Superfriends theme at a Halloween party - and now she was dragging me through three separate stores, each with their own cohort of cisnormatively judgmental staff! DEAR GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE.
I bit the bullet, but the rest was kind of a blur. She helped me in the fitting rooms - I had only ever put on one bra before, one time, and that had kicked up a bunch of dysphoria because I felt a tiny bit closer but still so far away. This time was different, though: I was with someone I trusted, who was being supportive and nice, and while I still felt anxious, I also felt safe. When she looked me over appraisingly with each bralette, I didn’t feel inadequate or halfway - just new at this. But also, in a way, renewed - like I was finally able to really be myself. And her roving eye - No, stupid, she’s just being supportive. Don’t read too much into it. Of course not. Her? Attracted to me? That would be silly.
Finally, I died we finished, and at last it was dinner time. We gorged ourselves on sushi, had a couple drinks each, boxed up the leftovers, and left a really good tip. I felt good. Really good. M asked on the way back to her place if I had seen Moana yet. “No, not yet,” I said. “DJ told me to watch it, he said I’d like it, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Busy with work.” DJ's got a toddler son now, so Disney movies kinda have to be his jam for a few years.
“Would you want to watch it when we get back?”
“Sure,” I said, trying like Hell not to betray my excitement. She invited me to watch a movie! Don’t get too excited, dumbass. You’ve watched a movie with her before, and nothing happened. Yeah, I know, but this is different! Yeah, it’s ten years later and nothing has happened. I mean, I guess you got a point there… Of course I do. Because nobody’s into you, except chasers like that Rando you were sexting on Kik the other night. Yeah, but she’s not a chaser. Right, which means SHE’S NOT INTO YOU. OK, I get it. God, just shut up. Shut up? I’m all that’s stopping you from embarrassing yourself! Well, that’s probably right.
Have I mentioned that dysphoria sucks? I mean, I don’t like to dwell on it, but at the same time, I don’t want to forget how bad things were, which is part of why I’m putting all this into writing. And I will forget, so if I don’t have something like this to remind myself, then it’s gonna bite me in my firm-yet-supple ass whenever it does decide to come back. So I want a reminder whenever I read this of how truly God-awful things got at points, even on relatively good days. Shit, even on otherwise great days.
We chatted for the rest of the drive, but I was mostly trying to just keep it all together. By the time we got back to M's place, I was somewhere between “not getting my hopes up” and “not quite wanting to crawl in a hole and die.” God, what if I mis-read some cue, or something slips out I don’t really mean, or any of a number of things that could ruin tonight?
Back at M's, she showered (she’s a night showerer) and changed into pajamas. When she came out of the bathroom in a white tank top and pink pants, drying her hair, I almost had time to think about how pretty she was before she said, “Hey. No pants in bed. It’s a rule.”
“Oh. OK.” I had been sitting on the covers in my jeans, fiddling with my phone after brushing my teeth in another bathroom (she had a spare toothbrush). I had boxer briefs on, and it’s not like it was anything she hadn’t seen before anyway. I had already taken off my tunic, and was wearing the olive drab faux-satin bralette she helped me pick out (it goes great with the heather grey of my boxer briefs). She offered me a white tank top, and I took her up on it. See - she’s not trying to get you naked, she’s trying to cover you up. Aren’t you glad you didn’t get your hopes up? Actually… yes. Because this means we can have Platonic Cuddles without having to worry about sexual tension - well, without her having to worry about sexual tension, at any rate. And whatever awful Woulda Coulda Shoulda feelings I get later because of this, I’ve got a shot at some genuine comfort now.
As M sat down in bed next to me, I opened my arms and said in my best Welcoming But Not Needy voice, “Cuddles?”
“Yay, cuddles,” she exclaimed, beaming. We cuddled up in bed and started the movie. It was good. Really good. I mean, as a librarian, you’ve got to be well-versed in children’s media and literature (at least, you do in public and school libraries - there are others), so you get to know what makes something good or bad for kids.
But we didn’t finish it.
Right when Moana opens up the entrance to that cave where she finds the ocean-faring boats, when it gets real dark on the screen, I noticed in my peripheral vision that M had turned her head up at me. I had been idly stroking her hair and scritching behind her ears, and she had been responding by lazily stroking my sides. I looked down at her, and I saw a look on her face that I’ve seen a couple dozen times before: the sleepy-yet-determined look that says, “I want to kiss you, but you are very tall.”
I met her halfway.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on her warm, soft lips pressing against mine, and releasing, and then pressing once again. I felt her hands roaming over my arms and back and sides, drawing soft little moans out of me, and I took that as an OK to stroke her thigh with one hand while I cradled her head in the other. When my hand reached the nape of her neck, I felt her tongue dart out and tentatively lick my lips. I leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Do you think we should turn the movie off?”
She replied in a voice low and hungry, “God, yes.”
No comments:
Post a Comment