I Woke Up Wet, Like the Trans Woman I Am

Today I woke again to damp sheets, just like so many other dawns. I had fallen asleep with my substitute still inside me, looking for you and not finding you. You, yes. Looking for your weight on top of mine, your mouth prying my lips open, your tongue silencing me. I woke with the sensation still intact and empty all at once, with my body on fire and the bed in disarray, with no one to hold on to.

I’ve spent years going to bed like this, with silence for company and a silicone object doing the job a real man should do. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I learned long ago that lying about what one desires is the only way never to live it.

I need you. You, who already know every inch of me. And you, who still don’t know I exist.

The one who knows me is called Damián, or that’s what I call him, because his real name doesn’t matter when the lights are off. He came into my life on a winter night, in a dive bar where I was drinking alone and he pretended not to be looking at me. It took him three rounds to come over. Men like him always take their time, because first they have to forgive themselves for wanting me.

—Are you alone? —he asked me, with that awkwardness that gives more away than any confession.

—I was waiting for you —I answered, even though I didn’t know him from Adam.

He laughed, nervously, and I knew that night he’d sleep with me.

***

I remember every detail of that first time with Damián, and I remember them more vividly the lonelier I wake up. We went up to my apartment without speaking. In the elevator he kept his hands in his pockets, like a teenager, while I watched him in the mirror and enjoyed his discomfort.

When I closed the door, everything changed. His shyness evaporated all at once and he shoved me against the wall with a force I hadn’t seen in the bar. He kissed my neck, moved down over my collarbone, ripped my blouse off me without patience. I let him. I like letting a man think he’s in charge, at least at first.

—I didn’t know it was going to be like this —he murmured against my skin.

—No one knows until they try it —I answered.

I dragged him to the bed and took off his shirt button by button, slowly, looking him in the eye so he’d understand that I set the pace. I buried my face in his chest and kissed him desperately, listening to him breathe deeply, feeling his heart race under my lips. That broken, ragged breathing is my drug: knowing my mouth can stir in a man a fever that can only be cured with me.

I went lower. I went down over his belly, over the line of hair disappearing beneath his belt, and I unbuttoned his pants with my teeth while he tangled his fingers in my hair. When I had him in my mouth, Damián moaned a name that wasn’t mine, and I didn’t care. I ran my tongue over all of him, from the base, searching with the tip for every place that made him shudder. I had him at my mercy, trembling, begging without words.

This is what I am. The one who pays attention, the one who knows dark desires and takes care to fulfill them one by one.

That dawn he filled my mouth with what I’d been waiting for all night, and I took it all, not turning away, looking him in the eye. Afterwards he fell asleep holding me, and for a few hours the apartment didn’t seem so big or so cold.

***

But Damián doesn’t come always. He has a life that doesn’t include me: a wife who cooks, children waiting for him, a tidy routine in which I am the secret detour, the number erased from his phone. He shows up when desire wins over guilt, and disappears when guilt wins again. I learned not to ask.

That’s why, on the nights he doesn’t come, my body knows nothing of absences. The body only knows hunger, and mine wakes hungry.

Today was one of those mornings. I lay there for a while, gray light slipping through the blinds, running my fingers over the skin no one had touched in weeks. I thought of Damián, of course. But I also thought of the delivery man who brought me a package on Tuesday and kept looking at me a second too long. Of the neighbor on the fourth floor who greets me in the elevator with a cracking voice. Of the bartender, of the stranger who sat across from me on the train last week and couldn’t stop watching my legs.

I don’t know any of them. And yet I desire them all. They fascinate me for the simple fact of being men, for what they hide under their clothes, for the possibility that any one of them could be the one who makes me forget my name tonight.

***

I got up, took a long shower, and got myself ready as if I had a date, even though I didn’t. It’s a ritual of mine. I put on makeup, I wear the lingerie I like best, I look at myself in the mirror until I recognize myself. There was a time when that reflection handed me back someone I didn’t want to be. That time ended long ago. Today the woman who looks at me from the glass is exactly the one I chose to build, inch by inch, with patience and with rage.

I went out into the street with no fixed destination. Sometimes desire needs air, needs to go looking. I walked to my usual bar, the one where people don’t ask questions and the bartender already knows my drink. I sat at the counter, crossed my legs, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.

His name was —he said his name was— Tomás. In his early thirties, big hands, a wedding ring he took off his finger and tucked into his pocket before coming over, thinking I wouldn’t notice. I always notice. It’s part of the game they think they’re playing alone.

—Can I buy you something? —he asked.

—You can buy me whatever you want —I told him—. But then you’ll have to take me home.

I watched him swallow. That hesitation in their eyes, that instant when a man decides whether to cross the line or stay on the safe side, is what I like most in the world. Tomás chose to cross it. Most of them do.

***

In the taxi he put his hand on my knee and let it slide upward without hurry, as if asking permission. I didn’t stop him. When we arrived, he was already breathing differently, and I knew that night I wouldn’t be sleeping alone with my silicone substitute.

I undressed him slowly in the dim light of my room, repeating the ritual I know by heart. I kissed his chest, listened to him hold his breath, felt him surrender to that fever I set off and that only I know how to calm. I knelt in front of him and took him in my mouth, and Tomás gripped the edge of the bed with white knuckles, muttering nonsense.

—God... I never... I’ve never felt anything like this —he babbled.

—Shut up and let yourself go —I ordered, and he obeyed.

After that he laid me face down and sank into me with a care I hadn’t asked for, but appreciated. He kissed my back, my nape, held my hips while I buried my face in the pillow so I wouldn’t scream loud enough to wake the whole building. At last, a real body, a real weight, a heat no object can imitate. At last, someone breathing against my neck and trembling at the same time as me.

When he finished, he collapsed beside me, sweating, staring at the ceiling as if he had just discovered a new country. I laughed softly.

—What are you laughing at? —he asked.

—At you —I said—. At how easy you are to make happy.

***

Tomás left before dawn, like them all. He dressed in silence, put the wedding ring back on his finger in front of the hallway mirror, and left without leaving a phone number or asking for mine. It didn’t hurt. Long ago I stopped expecting them to stay.

What they don’t understand is that I don’t need them to stay. I need them to exist, for a few hours, in the only version of myself that makes me feel complete. Damián, Tomás, the delivery man, the stranger on the train: they’re all the same thirst with different faces.

Today I need you, and you too, and all of you. I don’t care what you call me for wanting you like this, without measure, without shame. If that makes me what some people whisper behind my back, I take it with my head held high. There are names that hurt only if you accept them, and I stopped accepting them long ago.

I’m a trans woman who learned not to ask permission for her desire. I belong to this community, to this tribe of bodies seeking one another in the night, and I also belong to it: to every man who dares cross the line, to every stranger who one day will sit across from me and not look away.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up again with damp sheets, probably alone once more. And I’ll get dressed again, go out again, look again. Because this is what I am, and for the first time in my life, I don’t want to be anything else.

I’m waiting for you. You, who already know me. And you, who still don’t.