Feminization

I shaved, put on the wig and heels, and talked to the camera as if someone might really show up. One night, someone did.

I climbed those stairs with my heart racing, never imagining I would leave the apartment transformed, with a woman’s name on my lips.

The stained dress still hung on the door like a trophy, and she no longer feared any mirror or any gaze.

I thought it was all over when the principal paid me and sent me away. I had no idea the real owner of my body was her, the woman at the next desk.

I accepted the date dressed as a woman, not knowing that afternoon in his car I would decide everything that came after. He just looked at me and said: “You’re going to have clients.”

Lorena dressed me as the most desired woman of the night, told me eight men were waiting, and for the first time I didn’t want to run from what I felt.

For four days the little paper with his number burned in my pocket. Every night I remembered that wetness dripping out, and I knew I was going to call.

He carried the tray trembling, the skirt riding up his thighs, while they toasted and laughed. That night he wasn't a guest: he was the party's toy.

I knelt in the center of the salon while they decided, line by line, how they would transform me. And all I could do was wish they would begin.

I wore Carolina’s black panty under tight pants, walking the city’s darkest avenue and waiting for someone to stop beside me.

I practiced in front of the mirror for weeks. The night I packed the dress into my backpack, I knew there was no turning back: this time it would be real.

We crossed the ocean to celebrate turning twenty-one with them. When we came downstairs dressed, they were waiting, and I knew nothing would ever be the same.

That night I put on the flesh-colored tights, the golden little jacket, and the long-haired wig. I had no idea the costume would unleash what it did.

Andrés was fifty-three with a broken marriage when she brushed his hand with her red nails and whispered that he shouldn’t be afraid to explore.

I was alone in my friend’s apartment when I saw her sandals beside the sofa. I knew I shouldn’t touch them, but that night I discovered what I was capable of for a secret craving I had never confessed.

They weren’t mine, and that was exactly what made them irresistible. I picked them up off the laundry-room floor knowing that night I would do everything with them I’d spent months imagining.

I’d kept that desire locked away for years. That dawn, drunk and defenseless, I let it slip in front of the one person who could make it real.

I could have changed in thirty seconds. Instead, I walked to the door in heels, knowing perfectly well what he was about to see.

I could never tell them apart. One kissed me tenderly; the other tied me up and used me. It took me too long to realize there was never a mistake: they planned everything together.

His first night in cell 118 was enough to teach him he no longer owned his body, only belonged to the man in the lower bunk.