‘Well, I … what I feel is complex. It’s … I don’t know how to explain.’
‘Okay, Raymond, I do like you. Like you quite a bit. Like you enough to let you ask me.’
‘Ask you what?’
‘Ask me the question you’ve been wanting to ask since you first saw me earlier this evening, across the room, when you liked what you saw and then wondered what might be wrong with you for liking it.’ There was then a tense pause. ‘My sexuality. You’re not curious?’
‘Sure I am.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Okay: Teresa, are you really a man?’
Teresa looked me right in the eyes. ‘Not anymore.’ Bang. Like being hit over the head.
She then inched her left hand over and pulled her plunging neckline down a couple of plunges. ‘Like I said, these breasts are real. I had to undergo treatment to grow them, but they are real, they are all Teresa. And Teresa, nee David, is now a woman.’
‘Do you … Uhhm, what’s the state of your plumbing?’
‘Complex. But the main thing is, I don’t have a penis. I lost that.’
‘Are you a …’
‘Full woman down there? Well, I have a vagina. A functioning vagina.’
She then drew a long, sad breath. ‘And with that, I think I’ve just signalled an end to our pleasant conversation this evening. I think I have told you more than I should have told you.’ She took her wine glass and rapidly drained the last third. She had the saddest look on her face.
For a moment, I didn’t know how to respond, so I just sat there, gazing at her like a fool. ‘And you don’t have to apologise, Raymond. Or make up some lame excuse. Just tell me that you enjoyed our little intimate chat, but you can’t go any further with a woman who grew up a man.’
She sat there, staring off into the corner with a defeated expression. A few moments later, she turned back, managed a loser’s smile, then blew me an air kiss, slid off the seat and turned away.
‘No, wait,’ I called out. ‘I’m not turned off by you. In fact, I’m … I find you even more enticing now that I know the truth.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
I didn’t tell her, as I should have, that I had long nurtured this fantasy of being with a transsexual. The whole idea of being inside a woman who had once been a man was really a major turn-on. I wanted to know what it was like. In some ways, Teresa was playing right into the core of one of my kinkiest fantasies.
Our conversation then took a sharp turn to the more intimate and more friendly. We each had a half a glass more wine and then decided to take our little party for two to cosier surroundings. I was willing to take her back to my place, but was very glad when she suggested we go to her apartment instead. I was incredibly excited, more than I’d been in a long time. Hell, the moment we stepped out of the club, I was hailing a taxi I spied two streets away.
We held each other tightly in the cab and about halfway back to her place starting kissing rather passionately. I was hoping that the cabbie didn’t get a good look at her, but was willing to tell him to go to hell and mind his own business even if he did. I had taken this big step and wasn’t going to turn around now.
Back at her place, she offered me another drink, but I decided I didn’t need any more alcohol at that point, so just asked for a large glass of water.
While I was drinking, Teresa said she wanted to step into the other room for just a few minutes.
When she emerged again, she was wearing a kimono. ‘It’s genuine, from Kobe. An old boyfriend bought it for me.’
‘Oh, that was nice of the old boyfriend.’
‘And when I say old, I mean old; he had at least 25 years on me, this guy. But he was so sweet and so intelligent. He was a financial analyst, but we liked to discuss literature together. He was incredibly well-read. I really liked him.’
Back at the bar, Teresa had told me that she was a Lit major at university; NUS, in fact. I never cared all that much for literature, so I quickly steered the discussion off in another direction.
We ended up talking about the standard things, starting with where we grew up, where we went to school, all that duty conversation stuff. But with Teresa, it somehow came out relevant and even interesting.
At one point in our conversation, Teresa loosened the cord on her kimono and opened it slightly. ‘Do you know that for traditionalists, it is considered very crass to wear anything under the kimono. Anything at all.’
I suddenly realized how wildly aroused I had become. ‘I see. And are you a traditionalist? I wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘I am in some things. Very much so.’ She smiled this very warm smile.
It was almost unbearable. God, did I want to get close to her. ‘In other ways, I’m not at all traditional.’ Then that carefully poised smile again. ‘I told you I was complex.’
At this point, in the half-light of the room, I also realized how beautiful Teresa was-in a complex way. Sure, I was attracted to her from almost the moment I saw her, but this was a special kind of beauty which you only see after some time.