The First Man Who Made Me Feel Like a Woman

Mauricio had said there was no rush, and I didn’t fully understand what that meant until his hand came to rest on mine and stayed there, still, for what felt like a full minute.

—Slowly— he repeated. —Pleasure isn’t a race. Your first time with a man doesn’t have to be a formality.

We were on the couch in his living room, facing a window that looked out onto the avenue. The headlights of cars washed across the ceiling in slow intervals, setting the rhythm of his breathing. I was twenty-six years old and had made love with three women in my life; with none of them had I felt what I felt at that moment, sitting beside a man who looked at me as if he knew something about me I still didn’t dare to name.

He was a lion and I, a gazelle that had finally stopped running.

—Are you sure? —he asked me.

—Yes —I said, and my voice came out firmer than I expected.

I had thought about it for months. All my life I had been the one who insisted, the one who begged, the one who seduced, the one who discovered other people’s bodies in the half-light. I wanted, just once, to be the one insisted upon, begged, discovered. I wanted to know what it felt like to spread my legs instead of asking for them to be spread. I wanted to offer my ass with the same naturalness with which, for years, I had pretended to conquer hips. The fantasy was not new; what was new was having made the phone call.

Mauricio leaned in and kissed me. It was the first kiss I gave another man. He had only the faintest stubble, and when I felt that roughness against my lip I understood, without anyone having to explain it to me, why kisses from women had always felt incomplete.

—I asked you something before —he said when he pulled away—. I want to know whether you’re going to keep your promise.

I remembered the conversation. An hour earlier, while we were drinking wine in his kitchen, he had confessed that he was the active one, that he wasn’t interested in interchangeable roles, that he needed someone who would be a woman when he was with him. Without thinking about what I was saying, I had answered that I only understood sex between a man and a woman, and that if he was going to be the man, then I would have to be the woman.

It was true. I hadn’t realized it until that night, but it was true. I had been carrying the secret for years without knowing I was carrying it.

—Well? —Mauricio insisted.

—Yes —I said. —I’ll keep it.

—Then dress like a woman for me. And not just any woman— he added, with the slightest smile—. A beautiful one. Are you capable of that?

I’m capable of much more than you can imagine, I thought, and the sentence frightened me so much that I didn’t say it out loud. But he read it in my eyes.

—If it’s our secret— I murmured—, I want to do it.

He put a finger to my lips.

—It will be our secret. But in exchange, you’re going to be my girlfriend. And when we’re alone, I never want to see you dressed as a man again.

***

I undressed slowly in the middle of his living room, not daring to look at him. When I was left in my underwear, he came closer and finished pulling them down with two fingers, as if taking off a wrapper.

—You have a small dick —he said, without cruelty—. Better for what we’re going to do.

I wasn’t offended. For the first time in my life, that part of my body stopped being a source of shame and became useful information. He took me by the hand and led me to his bedroom. He undressed in front of me without ceremony. His cock was the complete opposite of mine: long, thick, shaved, exposed. I looked at it and knew, in that instant, that it was going to enter me, and that I was going to let it.

We lay down. His chest on mine was hot, almost feverish. Every inch of his skin weighed on me with a solidity I had never felt before.

For a second, the old me returned.

—I can’t —I said—. I’m a man.

Mauricio didn’t answer. He got up, opened the wardrobe, and took out a white box. From inside he pulled a pair of flat sandals, also white, with thin straps that crossed over the instep. He sat at the foot of the bed and put them on me. He threaded the straps around my ankles and tied them with the calm of someone who had done that gesture before.

—For now, this is enough —he said.

And it was enough. I couldn’t have explained why, but as soon as my feet slipped into those sandals, everything else rearranged itself. I looked down and saw my thin ankles, my slightly elongated toes, my short clean nails. I saw feet that didn’t look masculine. A young woman’s feet, a girl’s feet, the kind getting ready to go out.

He came back to the bed and lay down beside me. He began to caress my nipples with the pad of his middle finger, drawing slow circles. I had no idea that that point on a male body could awaken what it awakened. When he pinched them, without warning, I let out a gasp so sharp that he gave a low laugh.

—That’s it —he said.

His tongue went down to one nipple and stayed there, sucking, barely biting me. The free hand descended to my groin, avoided my cock as if it didn’t interest him, and settled on my testicles. He stroked them first softly, then with pressure, and finally squeezed. I cried out, but not from pain: from something I didn’t know how to name.

His fingers slid farther back. They passed over the perineum and reached the edge of my anus. He only touched it, in circles, not going in. I was breathing as if I were running uphill. Forty minutes must have passed like that, without penetrating me, only with his mouth on my chest and his finger tracing the entrance to my body.

—Look how beautiful your feet are, princess —he said, and lifted my legs, resting them on his shoulders before kissing me again. His tongue reached all the way to the back of my mouth. I wrapped my arms around him from below and, in that position, felt his hot cock pressed against my entrance.

I saw my white sandals on his shoulders and let myself fall completely. I was a woman. I was not an imitation, not a joke, not a costume. I was a girl in new sandals, waiting for the man who had chosen her to make her his.

—Turn over —he ordered.

I did. He raised my hips, spread my ass cheeks with both hands, and spat on them. The warm saliva ran down the cleft and he spread it with his thumb. Then he pushed in his middle finger. He drove it all the way in and stayed there, moving it slowly, looking for something. When he found it, pleasure shot up my spine like an electric wire. I screamed, and my scream sounded feminine, high-pitched, without my being able to stop it.

—I told you you’d understand —he murmured.

He pulled his finger out. I felt the tip of his cock replace it. He drew a breath, grabbed my shoulders, and pushed.

The pain was exact, mechanical, impossible to turn into metaphor. I clenched my teeth and my toes, and as I clenched them I felt the leather of the sandals against my skin and the fan’s current brushing the sole of my foot. And I remembered that I no longer had to be afraid. The sandals were proof: I was already a whole woman.

***

Mauricio stayed inside me without moving, letting me get used to him. I felt the throbbing of his cock against my inner walls as if I had a second heart inside my body. When he started to move, he did it with the same patience with which he had put on my sandals.

—More? —he asked every now and then.

—More —I answered.

Every time he came out, I begged him to come back in, and he came back harder and deeper. My moans were a new language. They came out without my choosing the tone, and they all sounded like a woman. Like a girl. Like a version of me that had been hidden for twenty-six years and finally had a room in which to exist.

His thrusts quickened. His sweat dripped onto my back and I felt each drop like a blessing. For a second I thought about the years I had spent pretending. The girlfriends, the outings, the calculated gestures, the erections that had been hard to keep up. I thought about all the times I had mistaken calm for happiness. And I knew, without drama, that I was never going back.

—Say it —Mauricio ordered without stopping—. Say what you are.

—I’m a woman —I said—. I’m your girlfriend. I’m a tranny who lived hidden and doesn’t want to hide anymore. I adore your cock. I don’t want to be a man again. I want to wear sandals all the time, light dresses, put makeup on for you, get on my knees when you ask me to. I’m your girl. I’m your princess. I’m your slave.

I shouted it, with the most feminine voice I could invent, and the more I said it, the truer it became. The words came from a place I had never descended to before.

Mauricio came inside me with a deep groan. I felt the hot spurts flood me from within, and at the same time, without having touched my cock at any point, I came too. The sheets beneath me were stained. My penis had little to do with it: my orgasm came from deep inside, from my prostate, from a female place I hadn’t known I had.

He collapsed on my back. I couldn’t move. I felt his cock inside me shrink slowly until it slipped free, and when it came out, the warm semen began to drip down my thighs. That sensation—the rest of him escaping me into the air—was almost as intense as what came before.

—So? —he asked after a while, sleepily.

—So I never want to be a man again —I answered.

I meant it. I still mean it.

***

My name is Camila. Before, they called me by another name, one I learned not to use when we’re alone. I’m still shy. Almost every day I go out dressed as a man, go to the office, answer emails, have lunch with coworkers who suspect nothing. But at night, when I get to Mauricio’s apartment, I open the box in the wardrobe, put on the white sandals, and stop pretending.

For a long time, this was only a fantasy of mine. Today it’s the only real thing I have. If anyone reads this and recognizes something of themselves in it, I hope they’ll be brave enough too. There’s a room waiting for them. And a pair of sandals in their size.