My trans neighbor woke something I thought was asleep

Hello everyone. This is the first story I’ve ever felt brave enough to tell, and I’m going to start where it belongs: at the beginning.

I was raised in a very conservative family. I had a quiet childhood, almost a happy one, but full of restrictions. In my teens, everything was sin. I went to a religious school, and everything I did had to pass through the filter of the commandments, so I grew up practically between four walls.

When I finished high school and started working, I was able to shake off a good part of that burden. But other things were too deeply ingrained in me. When I got a boyfriend, I was convinced I had to arrive at marriage a virgin, and I did everything possible to hold him back whenever he wanted more. After a long time, and pushed by conversations with my friends, I made up my mind. We finally had sex. It was all over very quickly, me modest to the end, feeling guilty every second of it. I wasn’t prepared. As you can imagine, that relationship didn’t last long, and I preferred to stay on my own for a while.

With my mind focused solely on work, I decided to move. I rented a small house that, over the years and with a lot of effort, I ended up buying. Time passed and the person I imagined was the right one never showed up. I had one suitor after another, but nothing ever lasted. By thirty-one I was asking myself if that was going to be the rest of my life: alone, bored, bitter. And the truth is, I didn’t exactly help either. I wore oversized clothes, I didn’t wear makeup. I was the perfect example of what a woman should never let happen to herself.

***

One morning, as I left the house like always, I saw a woman closing the neighbor’s front door. I said good morning and kept going to work without giving it much thought. On the bus, I thought: looks like the neighbor split up and has a new partner. That was it. I was never very social, and sticking my nose into other people’s lives wasn’t my thing.

The scene repeated itself several times that week. The girl left at the same time I did, so we kept crossing paths. One rainy morning I ran into her at the stop. I noticed something different about her, something I couldn’t quite define, but I didn’t dwell on it. When we got on, there were only two seats left in the back, the ones I hate, where any pothole sends you to the ceiling. We sat together and she started talking.

That’s when I realized what had seemed strange to me. She wasn’t exactly what I had thought: she was a trans woman. And me, like an idiot, I got uncomfortable. So many years of conservative upbringing and religious school made me look at her as if she were the devil himself. She tried her best, and I answered with dry, stupid monosyllables. I remember it now and I’m embarrassed.

That’s how the mornings went by. Sometimes we ended up sitting together, sometimes not. Little by little I relaxed and stopped seeing her as some weird creature. She told me her name was Marlene, that she was thirty-eight, that she had moved into the house next door (I never found out when the neighbor moved out), and that she came from Rosario. Without realizing it, my head started to change. I began to see her as someone pleasant, someone it was nice to talk to. Marlene talked about everything, and there were topics that made me blush all the way to the roots of my hair.

***

One afternoon I was sitting at my front door, waiting for a plumber who never showed up, when she walked by and asked me what I was doing there.

—My house is flooded —I told her—. The drains are clogged and I’m waiting for someone to come.

—Wait a few minutes, I’ll give you a hand —she replied, and went into her house.

She came back a little later with a thick wire, shoved it into the pipes, and unclogged them like it was nothing. I couldn’t believe it. She helped me get all the water out, and when I offered to pay her, she flat-out refused.

—Then let me take you to dinner —I said—. I want to thank you somehow.

—Sure. Tomorrow we’ll get together, have dinner, and talk about everything —she answered with a smile.

The next day I prepared a nice dinner and waited for her. She arrived with a bottle of wine. I didn’t drink alcohol, but I said nothing: if she wanted it, it was fine by me. We started eating and talking about anything and everything. She poured me a glass.

—I don’t drink —I told her.

—If you’ve never tried it, try it. Sometimes it’s good to dare something new.

Part of my head said no, and the other part said yes. In that moment I let myself go and accepted. I took little sips, and honestly it didn’t taste good at all, but dinner flowed and I felt more comfortable than I expected.

***

At one point Marlene asked me why I didn’t wear makeup and why I wore such baggy clothes. I gave her a summary of my life and she understood everything. But she didn’t stop there.

—Wait, I want to show you something —she said, and pulled a bunch of cosmetics out of her purse—. I’m going to show you what you look like when you get yourself put together.

At first I told her no. But the little wine I’d had was already taking effect, and I ended up agreeing. She worked on my face for a good while and then pulled out a mirror. She had painted my eyes, my cheeks, and my lips a deep red. I looked completely different. Inside, I told myself I looked like some cheap slut, but the truth was I looked more feminine than ever. And I liked it. It was something totally new for me.

—You look stunning —she told me.

Nobody had ever said that to me. I was happy. We kept talking and drinking, and well into the night she told me she was leaving so I could get some rest. As we said goodbye, I thanked her again.

—Making me look more feminine is priceless —I confessed.

—This is only the beginning —she replied—. You’re a beautiful woman, and I’m going to turn you into everything you dreamed of and were never allowed to be.

Those words sent me to heaven. We said goodbye, but as we did she kissed me on the mouth. I froze. Seeing my reaction, she gave me another one, and this time —surely because of the alcohol— I kissed her back. Then she kissed me hard, slowly and deeply, and I didn’t want her to stop. I knew it wasn’t right, but something inside me refused to stop it. In the blink of an eye we were on the sofa, devouring each other with kisses.

***

With my new face I felt like someone else, a woman capable of anything. In a matter of minutes she had taken off my T-shirt and had her mouth on my breasts. She did it like an expert, and boy, was she one. She played with my nipples in a way nobody ever had: licking them, sucking them, lightly biting them. I didn’t want her to stop. I felt her hot saliva sliding over my skin, her lips closing around each nipple and her tongue circling insistently, wetly, brutally. She moaned into my mouth when she gave a harder suck and I arched, trembling, with my hands buried in her hair, pushing her against me as if I wanted to merge with her.

I felt her hand sliding over my leggings, stroking me through the fabric. By then I was already surrendered, ready to let her do whatever she wanted. And she did. She slowly pulled down my leggings along with my panties, without taking her mouth off my tits, and started rubbing me with her fingertips. She spread my legs firmly, left me completely exposed, and let her fingers sink into my wet lips, sliding in my growing slickness. I was breathing in ragged gasps, shame and desire tangled together in one knot, feeling myself open under movements that grew more precise until she found that exact spot that made me shiver.

Pleasure left me still, breathless. Already naked, she kissed her way down my stomach until she reached between my legs. She began to lick me with a softness that made my skin prickle. Up and down she went, lingering on my clit, then starting over. She pulled my thighs farther apart with her hands and buried her face in my folds, eating me with hunger, slurping my juices as if she wanted to drain me all at once. I felt her moving her tongue from side to side, pressing it against my most sensitive point, alternating long licks with short sucks that made my hips jerk. It didn’t take her long to bring me to the first orgasm of my life. I didn’t understand what was happening to me: a current running through my whole body and concentrating down there. I let out a scream. I had never felt anything like that with any of my boyfriends. At that instant I knew what real sex was, and she kept going without stopping while I floated in some kind of trance.

When she finally stopped, I asked for a few seconds to catch my breath. She kissed my whole body, down my ribs, my stomach, my navel, and back to my legs, and as soon as I was lucid enough she settled between my thighs and started to go in very slowly. I felt her fitting herself in at the tip, pushing centimeter by centimeter, opening me with immense pressure. I felt discomfort, a little pain, and she had only gotten the tip in. That’s when I realized she was bigger than anyone I’d been with before. As she went deeper, I felt her filling me completely, stretching me in a brutal and delicious way at the same time, and the pain slowly turned into pleasure. She went in and out calmly, getting a little deeper each time. I clenched my teeth, my breathing broken, while she held me by the waist and set a slow, deep rhythm, making me feel every centimeter of her flesh sliding inside me.

When she was all the way inside me, she started moving faster. Her hips slapped against mine with a wet, obscene sound, and each thrust tore a louder moan from me than the last. I couldn’t bear the urge to come, and I came again, with a scream even louder than the first. I was soaked and she didn’t let up. I felt her pushing harder and harder, in and out with a savage, deep cadence, as if she wanted to rip that knot out of my belly and from down between my legs all over again. Marlene let out some hoarse sounds, gripped me harder, and kept going until, with her whole body tensing, I felt something hot exploding inside me in thick pulses. She stayed there for a second, trembling, while I was still shuddering with my legs open. Then she pulled out right away and, with that, I ended up exhausted, nearly fainting on the sofa, my body convulsing and my breathing in tatters.

***

I woke up the next day alone, still on the sofa. I looked at myself and felt dirty, guilty, like a total slut from head to toe. I got into the shower in terror. I hadn’t been careful, and the idea of pregnancy terrified me. I spent the day crying.

In the afternoon someone knocked on the door. It was her. I let her in and blurted out everything at once.

—You took advantage of me —I said—. What we did isn’t normal, and on top of that I might be pregnant.

Marlene tried to calm me down. She spoke to me patiently, gave me a thousand different ways of seeing it. She told me it was logical for me to feel that way, that it was my first time with someone like her. Then she started asking me things: whether I had had a bad time, whether I had ever felt anything like it. And with everything she asked, I ended up agreeing with her.

—Don’t worry about the pregnancy —she added—. I can’t have children. That’s why I never had any.

More calm now, I gathered the courage to set a boundary.

—This can’t happen again —I told her.

—All right —she replied—. But you’re a beautiful woman, and it’s a shame you’re still locked inside a childhood trauma. Someday you’re going to have to change.

She turned around and left. And I stayed there, staring at the closed door, knowing that something in me would never be the same again.