Attraction Never Dies

We met in undergrad, in a history class. This was before you transitioned. I knew you then as Amy. You must have mentioned to our professor that you were interested in me. He lived in the same part of the campus where you and I both did, and I remember at the time I was sitting outside of a Blockbuster Video (remember those?) smoking a cigarette. The professor couldn't wait to tell me himself. When you found out he had informed me first, you were disappointed. You'd wanted that for yourself.

We went on one and exactly one date. It culminated with some very awkward fooling around afterwards, which I took to mean that there was something wrong with me in your eyes. I embraced you with great purpose, but you shrank from my touch. I tried dirty talk, but instead you spit out at me: "Quit saying, baby, baby, baby." You didn't mean to hurt my feelings, but you had. No one else had responded with such discomfort before you. Following that, we decided that an appetite for physical hunger was more important than sexual hunger, and you were quite happy to share a meal with me at a local fast food restaurant.

We were just friends after that. Things moved pretty quickly afterwards. Still, something couldn't be right here. Could it be this simple? You partnered with a cisgender lesbian woman, but you retained an attraction for me. I found that confusing at first. After the tragedy of our attempt at some physical union, you went from looking for available men to looking for available women, and that was easy enough to explain.

You had always been a lesbian and were now leaving the closet. Good for you. Sure enough, with enough persistence, you located yourself a girlfriend. Except it didn't stop there. You started telling me, and the rest of the world about a word and a new identity I had never heard of before. You called it "transgender." Yes, there was a time before people used that word.

Choosing to publicly document your transition, you made a daily blog post to plot your course. Every day built on the one before it. You started to save for top surgery. Until then, you bound your breasts tightly every day. You began to talk about hormone therapy. I listened and observed, silently, with rapt attention. Your partner stayed with you this whole time. Your family did not. We mourned together.

Now you changed your name to Andrew. It took money and effort to change your name and embrace your new identity, but you did it. You underwent a ton of passive-aggressive attitudes and microaggressions from the general public and withstood it. I was proud of you. But I was shocked that you still wanted me as more than a friend.

I noted that I'd taken an interest in female-to-male transgender pornography and even you were taken a little aback. But you told me you found it hot. And then, in that context, you began to warm to me sexually. It wasn't much at first, but it grew over time. And then one day, after several sessions of clandestine phone sex, I awoke one morning to find two very salacious pictures of you in my inbox.

One had you licking a tan colored dildo seductively with your tongue. The other showed it firmly inserted into you, your microdick now swollen to substantial size. You told me that you envied those whose microdicks were bigger than yours. But hormone therapy does different things for different people. By then you'd saved up enough for your surgery and there were no mammary glands to despise anymore.

I did notice your very hairy legs and the way your pubic hair distribution resembled that of a cis male. You sported a mustache now. You kept your hair styled like a lesbian. I noticed your gauged ears and new tattoos. It was clear you had embraced a brand new you. And as I observed you, I noticed that there were new terms I could assign to myself, too. "Genderqueer". "Bigender". "Gender fluid."

I'd been wearing women's underwear for ten years, secretly. I even wore a nightgown at times underneath male clothing at bedtime. My own female partner tried to understand but failed. I fantasized about being a transwoman, though I was self-aware enough to know that transition was an option for you, but not for me. But I did give the matter much thought. And we did continue our dalliance, despite the fact that we both knew this was surely a grey area, and maybe a little too much like cheating.

Yet, we would be good for a while, then backslide into this affair. It was a low-grade affair, as infidelity goes, but it flattered my ego that, in spite of everything we knew about each other, we could be strong together in an often harsh and unforgiving world. You lived a thousand miles away, but I could hear in my head the sound of you climaxing when I would masturbate myself. I always had visual images to conjure up when the desired moment coaxed it from my brain.

And you knew me, too. You could hear and see me too, though we made sure to never physically consummate our relationship. Even when we tried to be friendly, there were always romantic and sexual overtones. Anyone who maintains this sort of quasi-polyamorous arrangement knows that fighting jealousy and possessiveness comes along with the territory. I never spoke to his partner. He never spoke to mine.

We are both products of brand-new times. And thanks to COVID, our affair has been driven further and further into the shadows. Neither of us wants it to end. I doubt passion this profound could merely evaporate into thin air. And yet, because of the way our society is structured, we don't quite fit together as partners. We could never really be in a formal relationship.

But whenever we need a sexual outlet, there we are, for each other. It is a brave new world we forge for ourselves. And for all of those outside of the gender binary, I doubt it is a completely unusual one. For those of us who want to experiment with non-monogamy, here is our chance.