The Trans Designer Waiting for Me in Bangkok

The art gallery in downtown Bangkok smelled of teak wood and of sandalwood incense drifting in through the open windows. I wandered through the pieces with my camera hanging from my neck, using it the way I always used it: as a shield. I was thirty-six, with the pale skin of a Spaniard only just beginning to tan under the tropical sun, and an old weariness from dates that ended in empty sex and conversations about the weather.

Then I saw her.

She was standing beside a bronze chrysanthemum sculpture, wearing a tight black dress that seemed in love with her body. Her hair fell straight to her waist. She wore dark red lipstick and had almond-shaped eyes that pinned me without the slightest shame. Later I learned her name was Naree and that she designed interiors. At that moment all I knew was that I was hard before we had exchanged a single word.

—You like what you see —she said. Her voice was low, a little hoarse, with an accent that stretched each syllable—. Or are you just looking for the angle for your next photo?

I swallowed.

—I’m looking for something real. For once in my life.

She tilted her head and studied me for a moment, as if deciding whether I was worth it. Her gaze dropped from my eyes to my mouth, from my mouth to the camera, and rose back up with a deliberate slowness that left me not knowing what to do with my hands. Then she gave the slightest smile, a tiny curve of those red lips, and turned toward the exit knowing I would follow her. I followed.

Half an hour later we were in the elevator of her building, kissing like we were short of air. The doors shut and I pushed her against the wall mirror. My hands slid up her thighs and I felt skin warm, soft, firm. She moaned against my mouth, a deep sound that ran down my spine.

—Touch me —she murmured—. Don’t be afraid.

In her bedroom, the city’s neon light came in through the half-closed curtains and painted blue and pink bands over us. I pulled her dress down with clumsy fingers. Her breasts were firm, and the dark nipples hardened as soon as I brushed them with my tongue. I went lower and found her sex: a thick erection, already wet at the tip. It was no secret, and I looked at her with a mix of fascination and vertigo that shamed me and lit me up in equal measure.

—I want to taste you —I said, my voice broken.

I knelt. I took her in my mouth slowly and she threw her head back with a long sigh.

—Like that —she gasped—. Slow. Look at me while you do it.

I obeyed. I sucked her hungrily, my tongue circling, tasting the salty flavor on my palate. My hands gripped her ass, spreading it just a little. She moved her hips in slow circles, setting the rhythm, controlling me with a calm that drove me crazy.

—Get up —she ordered.

She pushed me onto the bed. She pulled down my pants and freed me, already throbbing. She straddled me, but didn’t take me in yet. She rubbed her sex against mine, hot skin against hot skin, and the friction tore a groan from me.

—Look at me —she said—. I’m not a whim. I’m not a tourist fetish. I’m this, all of me.

I looked into her eyes as she lowered herself, slowly. She came in with a long, trembling moan, her body arching over mine.

—So big —she whispered—. Fill me.

We started slowly. I felt every centimeter: the heat of her insides, the squeeze, the way her erection brushed my stomach every time she rose. Her breasts moved with each thrust. She dug her nails into my hips and the rhythm turned frantic. The sound of our bodies crashing together filled the room.

—Harder —she growled—. I want to feel you all the way in.

I turned her, put her on all fours, and fucked her without mercy. She was touching herself at the same time, her whole body shuddering.

—I’m coming —she moaned—. Ah… don’t stop.

She came first, her whole body convulsing, her insides closing around me. I followed seconds later, groaning, emptying myself inside her, deep, until I had no air left. We collapsed together, soaked in sweat, breathing in ragged bursts. For the first time in years, I had no desire to leave.

***

The weeks passed. I moved temporarily into her apartment. I learned to cook pad thai by her side, to argue about wall colors at three in the morning, to sleep with the warm weight of her body against mine. I learned the ritual of her mornings: the thick coffee, the half-finished cigarette on the balcony, the way she twisted her hair up with a pencil when she was concentrating on a plan. I started photographing her without a camera, keeping every gesture somewhere deeper than memory. But I also saw the other things: the looks in the street, the whispers, the clients who suddenly “changed their minds” when Naree arrived at a meeting dressed as the woman she was.

One night, after a dinner in which an acquaintance of mine let slip a veiled comment about “sex tourism,” we went home in silence. She yanked off her heels in a rage.

—I’m not going to be your hidden lover, Adrián. I’m not going to be the story you tell half of. I want you to introduce me. To say my name in front of your people.

I held her from behind. I rested my forehead against her nape and breathed in her perfume.

—I see you —I whispered in her ear—. I see all of you. There’s nothing about you I want to hide.

That time I took her to bed slowly. I undressed her carefully, as if I had all the time in the world. I kissed every inch: her breasts, her stomach, her sex already taut and pulsing. I took her in my mouth slowly, savoring her, while my fingers opened her little by little from behind.

—I want you to know that you’re mine —I murmured—. And that I’m yours.

I entered her from the side, holding her tight against me. Slow, deep movements. Each thrust was a promise I didn’t know how to put into words. She moaned softly against my shoulder.

—Like that —she whispered—. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

I felt her thighs trembling, the smell of sex and expensive perfume mingling. When I bit her neck, she came with a muffled sob, her whole body shaking between my arms. I came inside her, slowly, while I kept repeating in her ear that I loved her. That I loved her completely, without asterisks or exceptions. We fell asleep glued together, marked by each other.

***

The call from my mother in Seville was the trigger. “When are you coming back? Do you have a decent girlfriend yet? Your cousin is getting married next month.” Suddenly I felt the weight of my whole former life, waiting for me intact on the other side of the world, ready to swallow me whole.

That same night there was a party. Naree was launching her most important project: the interior design for a boutique hotel on the riverbank. All the clients that mattered would be there, all the people whose respect she had fought for over years. And I, in the taxi, with my tie loose and my phone still hot from my mother’s voice, made a decision.

I arrived with her on my arm. I introduced her as my fiancée, looking each person who came up to me in the eye. There were camera flashes, looks that lasted a second too long, murmurs I didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. I didn’t care about any of it. She squeezed my hand so hard she left marks from her nails, and that was the only sign of what it meant to her.

We got back to the apartment after two in the morning, dizzy with champagne and victory. The moment I shut the door, I pushed her against the living room wall.

—Now you’re mine in front of the world —I whispered in her ear.

I took her right there, standing up. I hiked up her dress, pulled aside her underwear, and entered her in one single thrust. She screamed, not from pain, but from something she had been holding in for too long.

—Yes —she panted—. Don’t stop.

The rhythm turned brutal. I lifted her almost off the floor with each movement, my hands buried in her hips. She touched herself furiously, her back arched against my chest, her neck thrown back searching for my mouth.

—Come inside me —she begged—. I want to take you to the next party, under my dress, without anyone knowing.

I turned her, bent her over the back of the sofa, and fucked her as if the world were going to end at dawn. Sweat, saliva, skin. The smell was thick, animal, completely real. She came with a long cry, her body undone. I roared and emptied myself inside her, again and again, until there was nothing left of me that wasn’t hers.

We stayed like that, joined together, our breathing ragged, her back rising and falling against my chest.

—Beyond the chrysanthemum —she murmured against my arm, quoting the title of the book I never finished writing, the novel I had carried like guilt since before I met her.

I smiled, still inside her, still unwilling to separate.

—Now the real story begins —I told her—. Ours.

And for the first time I understood that the real thing wasn’t on the other side of a lens, or in the perfect photos I collected so I wouldn’t have to look anything in the face. It was inside someone who looked at me as if I, with all my cowardice, were enough too. I took thirty-six years to find it, I thought, and I almost let it pass me by out of fear of what they’d say over dinner in Seville.

That night we didn’t sleep. We talked until the sun began to slip through the curtains and turned the body of the woman who had finally decided not to hide anyone gold.