The transvestite I discovered inside myself

I always knew there was something different about me. I didn’t call it anything in particular when I was little, because I didn’t have words for it. I only knew that when I saw my cousin Luciana’s closet, I felt something like hunger: an irresistible attraction to dresses, lace blouses, skirts that flared out with the slightest turn of a hip.

I was seven or eight the first time I put on something of hers. It was a summer afternoon at my grandparents’ house in Monterrey, and the adults were napping. Luciana and her sisters were too. I, on the other hand, tiptoed into the room they shared, opened the smallest drawer of the dressing table, and took out a peach-colored satin slip. The fabric slid through my fingers like warm water.

I put it on over my underwear. I walked to the full-length mirror behind the door.

The image I saw didn’t surprise me. It was exactly what I expected to see. As if that reflection had been waiting for me for years.

***

During the following years, that was all it was: small stolen moments in other people’s rooms. My cousins’ clothes, my aunts’ clothes, once a neighbor’s skirt left forgotten on the clothesline in the patio. Never anything scandalous. It was enough for me to feel the fabric against my skin, put something over my pants, and look at myself for a few minutes before putting everything back where it belonged.

I did it with meticulous care. I folded the clothes exactly as I had found them. I made sure not to leave any sign, any trace. The fear never disappeared completely, but over time I learned to live with it, to use it almost like fuel: the risk that someone might walk in gave those moments an intensity they wouldn’t otherwise have had.

I noticed things. That clothes fit me in ways I hadn’t expected. That the hips I thought I didn’t have appeared under a stretchy skirt. That if I tied my hair up and closed my eyes a little, the image in the mirror could belong to someone completely different from who I was the rest of the time.

***

What changed everything was a pair of high heels, when I was already an adult and visiting my aunt’s house.

I found them in my Aunt Remedios’s closet, and she wore exactly my size. They were black seven-centimeter stilettos, with a thin ankle strap. She wore them for special occasions and rarely took them out.

I was alone in her house while she went to the market.

I put them on in front of the hallway mirror. First I wobbled, then I found my balance, and then I saw it: my legs, once ordinary, looked different. Longer. Better shaped. The angle of the foot changed everything: it arched my back, thrust forward the little I had in the way of curves, made my walk —awkward at first, more controlled with each turn— become something completely different.

I walked from one end of the hallway to the other. Once, twice, three times. I stopped in front of the mirror and stared at myself for a long while.

I had never felt anything so much like being myself.

***

The following years were equal parts discovery and frustration. Discovery because with each passing day I understood better who that person in the mirror was. Frustration because I lived in a large family, in a house without lockable doors, and private moments were scarce and always too short.

I bought my first lipstick with money from a weekend job. It was a dark red from a cheap brand, I bought it at a neighborhood pharmacy and kept it inside an old bag. I put it on in the bathroom before the others arrived, looked at myself for a moment in the dirty mirror above the sink, and wiped it off with toilet paper before going out.

It was the closest I had ever come to presenting myself to the world as I really was. And although it lasted less than a minute, it was enough to carry that image with me for the rest of the day.

***

At twenty I moved out on my own. It was like opening a window after years in a room with no air.

The first month I spent almost all my rent money on clothes. Not many: a tight black skirt, two low-cut blouses, a pair of seam stockings, a navy-blue lingerie set that seemed to me the most beautiful object I had ever seen in my life. I also bought a wig at a costume shop downtown, long brown hair with a little natural wave that fell to my shoulders.

The first night I dressed fully in my apartment took me almost two hours. I did my makeup wrong three times before it came out the way I wanted: the shadow too smeared the first time, the foundation too dark the second, the eyeliner uneven the third. But when I finally looked at myself in the mirror, with the wig on, burgundy lips, the skirt clinging to my hips, and the stockings pulled tight, I felt something I couldn’t describe any other way than relief.

I gave myself that name that night: Canela. I don’t know why that name and not another. It just appeared and stayed.

***

In my twenties I was slim. I had long legs and the hips I had always wanted, although very little of what was above. I experimented with padding until I found what convinced me: rolled-up socks at first, then balloons filled with fine sand that gave a more natural weight and shape, and finally Styrofoam balls the exact size I needed so the bra would sit the way I wanted.

With the right clothes, the wig on, and my makeup done well, I could pass for a young woman from behind. From the front it was harder, but less impossible than I would have imagined. Contouring softened my jaw, the wig framed my face differently, and I learned that posture changes everything: shoulders slightly forward, chin a little higher, body weight on one hip.

I spent entire nights dressed as Canela. I didn’t do anything in particular: I cooked, read, played music, danced alone in the living room. Sometimes I sat in front of the mirror and studied myself for a long while. I looked for the angles where I was most convincing, the gestures that felt most natural, the expressions that belonged to her and not to whoever I was the rest of the time.

***

It was around that time that I started fantasizing about someone seeing me.

Not necessarily touching me, at least not at first. Just someone coming in, seeing me like that, and reacting as if what they were seeing were completely normal. As if Canela were the person who had always existed and not a secret kept in the closet.

That fantasy stayed with me for a long time before I added other things to it. What I added came on its own, without me planning it. One night I was dancing in the living room in my heels and imagined there was someone sitting on the sofa watching me. A man. He didn’t have a specific face; he was more a presence, a weight of gaze resting on my body. The idea drenched my cunt in a way I hadn’t expected and couldn’t ignore.

That night I put my hand under my skirt for the first time while dressed as her. With the wig on, lips painted, heels planted in the carpet. My cock was hard under my lace panties and I was surprised by how much it turned me on to feel it pressed in there, hidden beneath women’s fabric. I pulled it out slowly, without taking anything else off, and started jerking off in front of the mirror. I watched Canela looking at her own cock in her hand, wig falling over her shoulder, red mouth slightly open, and I came in less than two minutes. The semen splattered over my thigh above my stockings and I stayed like that for a while, panting, not moving, watching myself.

From that night on I started masturbating differently. I no longer turned off the lights or took my clothes off. I stayed dressed as Canela, with the wig, with the makeup still on, and imagined that faceless man watching me from the sofa. That he asked me to walk, to turn around, to sit in front of him slowly, to show him my ass over the stocking, to show him the bulge outlined under my panties before taking it out and starting to give him a handjob.

Those nights were the most intense I remember from that whole stage. Sometimes I would spend two straight hours stroking my cock slowly, not letting myself come, imagining him giving me orders in a low voice: “slower, Canela,” “open your mouth,” “turn around and bend over.” And I obeyed a ghost on an empty sofa, my legs shaking in my heels.

***

The first time I bought a toy was on a Friday night.

I bought it in a downtown shop, in a discreet black bag, paid cash, and left without looking anyone in the eye. It was a small silicone vibrator, ergonomic shape, nothing I couldn’t handle. At home I used it dressed as Canela, with the room light on and the standing mirror in front of me so I could see myself.

The first night I didn’t dare put it inside me. I ran it over my panties, pressed against my cock, feeling the vibration run through my whole pelvis. I squeezed my foam tits over the bra with my other hand and watched myself in the mirror like any woman fucking herself with her new toy. I ended up coming inside my lace panties, soaking them from within, with an intensity I had never felt before dressed as a man.

It took me weeks to dare to do more. I bought lube at another pharmacy, in another neighborhood, so I wouldn’t run into the same cashier twice. And one night, after a long bath and dressing completely —lingerie, stockings, skirt, wig, makeup— I lay back on the bed, hiked my skirt up to my waist, pulled my panties down to my ankles, and spread my legs in front of the wardrobe mirror.

I started slowly. One lubed finger first, going into my ass little by little, feeling the ring open and close around the fingertip. Then two. Then the vibrator, resting just at the entrance, pressing without pushing, letting the vibration relax me before I put it in. It took time. I breathed deeply, loosened up, pushed a little more. When it finally went all the way in, a sharp moan escaped me that I didn’t recognize as mine, more woman than man, and I stayed still for a while with my eyes closed, feeling the fullness.

Then I started moving it. First slowly, then faster, then shoving it all the way in with each thrust. With my other hand I grabbed my cock, hard and dripping with lube, and started pumping it to the rhythm of the vibrator. I watched myself in the mirror: Canela with her legs spread, the wig messy over the pillow, the heels still on, one hand full of cock and the other shoving the toy up her ass. The image finished breaking me. I came shouting, semen streaming from my fingers down to my belly, splattering my padded bra, my stomach, my groin. I kept the vibrator in until the orgasm had passed completely and I collapsed there, trembling, staring at the ceiling.

I learned to breathe differently, to relax, to enjoy each phase without rushing. Within a few months the vibrator felt too small and I bought a bigger one, cock-shaped, with visible veins, a suction-cup base. I stuck it to the bathroom mirror and fucked myself standing up, skirt hiked up and ass pushed back, watching my face in the reflection while I rode a rubber ghost. I ended up coming against the tiles, semen dripping down the wall, and I stayed like that for a while, with the toy still inside me, breathing.

I thought about that faceless man while I did it. Over time I gave him details: big, well-kept hands, a thick veined cock like the toy’s, a low voice saying my name —Canela— while he slid all the way inside me. The way he would look at me without hiding desire, without confusion, without needing me to explain anything. How he would grab my wig and fuck my mouth. How he would turn me over against the bed and pry my ass open with his thumbs before spitting in my hole and jamming it all the way in.

***

What I remember most from those years is not loneliness, although it was there, and sometimes a lot of it. What I remember is the intensity. The certainty of discovering something important about myself with each night in front of the mirror. The feeling that that image —Canela with her skirt and wig and heels, with semen still drying on her thigh— was more real than any other version of me the world knew.

There were nights I would stand in front of the mirror for a long time, not moving, just watching myself. Not with sadness. With something like recognition.

There you are. At last.

***

I’m thirty-four now. Canela is still here.

I don’t dress as often as I used to, but when I do it’s different. There’s less nervousness, less need to convince myself of anything. My makeup comes out right the first time. I know exactly what clothes suit me and what garments make me feel most like myself. Canela’s closet is small but precise: nothing extra, everything has its purpose. The toy drawer has grown too: two vibrators, three dildos of different sizes, a plug I use for hours while I do housework, my cock clenched under my panties and a smile nobody sees.

What has changed most is that I’m no longer willing for her to exist only for me.

For a long time that was enough: the nights with the living room to myself, the mirrors, the toys, the fantasies built with patience and detail. It was enough because it was all I had. But I don’t want that to be all anymore. I want a real cock, not a silicone one. I want a real tongue in my cunt, in my ass, in my mouth. I want the weight of a body on mine and not the imagined weight of a gaze on an empty sofa.

***

I know what I’m looking for because I’ve had time to think it through.

I’m looking for someone who won’t need me to explain anything when he arrives. Who will know from the start that he’s going to be with Canela, not another version of me. Who understands that this is not a performance, not a role-play that ends when the lights go out: it’s simply who I am when I’m completely honest with myself.

I want a man to sit on that sofa and watch me walk. To tell me he likes what he sees without his voice trembling with discomfort. To call me slut affectionately, to tell me I’m his slut, to make me kneel between his legs and slowly unzip his pants. I want to suck his cock while looking him in the eyes, with the wig falling over my face, the red from my lips smearing onto his cock with every bob of my mouth. I want him to grab the back of my neck and shove it down my throat, make me gag, cover my face with spit and pre-cum and not let me wipe myself off.

Then I want him to lift me up, turn me against the sofa, hike my skirt up and rip my panties off with his hand. To pry my ass open with his thumbs and spit in my hole before he fucks me. To fuck me slowly first, feeling how I open around him inside, and then hard, grabbing my waist, the hair of the wig, my neck. To tell me in my ear how good his cock feels in my ass, how slutty I am, how much I had always wanted this. To say it to me in the low voice I imagined thousands of times.

I want to come with him inside me, without touching my cock, just with his hitting me where it needs to hit. I want to feel my cock jolting under my skirt while semen stains my stockings and the sofa upholstery. And then I want him to come wherever he wants: in my ass, in my mouth, on my face, over my padded tits. Wherever he fucking wants. I want to stay like that for a while afterward, with his semen on me and my makeup smeared, sitting on his lap, neither of us saying a word.

I’m looking for patience. I’m looking for genuine curiosity. I’m looking for someone who cares how I feel, not just how I fuck when I come into the room dressed and made up and ready to be Canela for a few hours.

I hope I find him soon. And when I do, I’ll know him when I see him.

With love,

Canela