Trans

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’d been meeting for six years to do the same thing: tell each other things and touch ourselves shamelessly. That night Camila promised a surprise and opened the adjoining room door.

I walked into the suite expecting a frightened woman. I never imagined what was hiding under that long skirt, or how eagerly she meant to show me.

The cabin was meant to be her refuge in solitude. Until an engine broke the fjord’s silence and Mikkel and Sigrid stepped out, bringing the end of everything Greta thought she was.

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.

We’d been flirting between monitors for a month when she took me to the back seat of my car. What I discovered weeks later changed everything, and not in the way I feared.

I’d spent months fantasizing about being with a trans girl. That night, in the passenger seat, she whispered in my ear that she’d noticed the way I was looking at her.

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’d spent years dressing in secret, but that night I put on the boots, the fishnets, and the velvet dress, and walked out the door as her.

There was a locked door next to Barbara’s room. I opened it out of curiosity, not knowing that by that same afternoon I’d end up tied down inside.

I promised him I would be his woman, no matter the cost. I didn’t know each dose would erase me until my own body no longer belonged to me.

She didn’t call me by my name the first time. She looked at me whole, without sleaze and without pity, as if my body were not a problem she had to solve.

I’ve got the face of a slut and everyone can tell. In the last carriage, pressed against bodies I don’t know, I let my hands do what my mind has already decided.

I bought black stockings with my heart in my throat, knowing that once I locked my apartment door I’d become the woman I’d been imagining all day.

I thought I had the whole house to myself. When I heard that deep voice behind me, I knew my secret had just been discovered.

They put the blue ribbon around my neck, the only one different from the rest, and I walked down those stairs knowing those six men would discover what I was hiding.

Esa mañana mi hermana me prestó su nombre, su vestido y su vida entera. Esa tarde, un chico me miró como nadie me había mirado y, por primera vez, me reconocí.

Eight years abroad turned me into the woman I was always meant to be. But when I crossed the threshold at home, the first thing I found was Mauricio’s hungry look.

I’d spent weeks imagining myself in women’s clothes. That night I put on the red strap lingerie, took a photo, and waited for someone to text me something forbidden.

I only dress up when I have a date, always in a hotel room, and that night the stranger waiting for me had no idea what he’d find under my dress.