The Greatest Liar Ch. 02: Exposure, Disclosure

As a child I reveled in my mother's porcelain beauty, flowery scent, and chic wardrobe, and was repelled by my father. I'd furtively paged through Victoria's Secret catalogs and stared at Marta out of envy, not lust. When the internet showed me that I could become a woman, I discovered my destiny: to be a sexual plaything, emulating the femininity that both obsessed and revolted macho men.

I was living that dream as a willing slut in a speeding van. Jose passed back a smoldering blunt. Salvatore took a huge hit and offered it to me. My Dexedrine buzz was fading, and I needed another brain ping, so I took a hit, and then another. We pulled up at a bright-lit bodega festooned with Mexican beer signs. I patted my purse.

"I'm broke."

"Here's a couple of twenties. Keep the change."

I went into the store as they cruised around the block. The clerk glared at me from behind bulletproof glass. The labels in the beer cooler started bleeding colors and vibrating. I grabbed a twelve pack, lost my balance, bumped a rack of Mexican pastries, recovered and steadied it just before it toppled.

Dazed by the weed, I wandered the shabby, disorganized shop, searching for condoms among garish packages of chips, jerky, and pork rinds. Their kaleidoscopic colors dazzled and disoriented me. I finally saw condoms on a shelf behind the clerk.

Cannabis paranoia overwhelmed my euphoria. I was buying condoms and beer to ride with, and get ridden, by a couple of Salvadoran thugs: vulnerable, outnumbered and overpowered. I counted the blunders that brought me to this precarious predicament. I had primped too long at home, gotten side-tracked by Sal, and wasted time and money buying trashy clothes instead of focusing on the hormones.

Now I was dressed like a hooker in Los Angeles's most dangerous neighborhood, with barely enough money for bus fare. Two stoned and potentially dangerous petty criminals expected to sexually use a girl. I was college bound, poised to escape from my male past and transform. Why was I trading my body and risking my life for fake IDs and a forty-dollar taxi ride?

But if I fled with their money they would chase and rape me. It was safest to follow through on our sleazy exchange. I pointed to a pack of lubricated Trojans and slid the money and my ID through the little tray beneath the bullet proof window. The clerk muttered "puta" and rang the register.

Salvatore opened the van's door, grabbed the beer and helped me inside. The interior was thick with marijuana smoke. I took another hit, and he passed me a beer. I gulped beer to calm my nerves and got back into character as Alexandra.

"Ugh, I hate beer. Got to get the taste out of mouth."

"Should have bought some chips."

"How 'bout your special mouthwash?"

He dropped his pants and knelt next to me. I splashed beer on his penis and slurped it noisily dry.

"Much better this way."

"Oh, yea, baby. I like it better that way too."

I heard another can hiss open. Salvatore guzzled beer while I swallowed him. I looked up at him adoringly, paused, and smiled.

"That's what I call smooth and refreshing."

I heard his beer can clank against the wall the van and he pushed back.

"Want that booty now."

"Have to cover up."

"Whatever."

I reclined on flowered futon, slid my panties to expose my bottom, he thrust, I yielded, he rough rode me, our bodies collided as the van's worn shocks pounded the potholes and Jose gunned the van through traffic. Pain shot through me like fireworks. I started talking dirty.

"Like that little hole?"

"Tight, oh yeah."

"Love it, spank me."

He slapped my ass, and when I looked back at him, my face.

"Yee-hah, love to ride puta like a pony."

He tugged my hair like a horse's reins and pulled back my neck. I twerked back against his thrusts.

I tossed my head to yank my hair even more painfully. Pain was transcendent and transformative. I reveled in self-abasement, and bucked back at his thrusts, yelping like a porn star. He tore at my hair, beat and rode me so hard that my eyes watered.

"Fucking gringa puta, works her ass when she's on the rag."

"That's why God gives chicas extra holes," Jose said.

Sal reached between my legs. To divert him, I said "Play with my boobs."

"Not even a handful, like a skanky schoolgirl."

"Pinch them."

"Beat you like bitch in heat."

His hips shuddered, his breath quickened, he finished, his breath hot and ragged.

"Sal, you OK, buddy?"

"It's a workout, it. Pull over and have sloppy seconds."

Jose honked and swerved through traffic.

Salvatore swatted my butt goodbye and scrambled out of the door. Jose tilted my head back, kneeled, thighs beside my ears, pumped my throat until I was breathless and drooling.

"Too much," I said

"S'what you get, puta."

He flung me face down on the futon, bunched a bean bag under my belly and slapped my upturned ass.

The condom wrapper crinkled, and he pummeled me.

"Don't move-"

"Trying to help."

"Stop, Sal. Don't want potholes ruining this ride."

The van pulled over. Sal turned up the blaring hip-hop and sparked up another blunt. I gripped the bean bag and smothered my face in its plastic folds. He penetrated me, my body went numb, then my senses burst into flames. Red sparks dazzled my retinas behind my squinted-shut eyes. A howl gathered in my belly and I screamed.

"Too big."

Jose reared back and plunged harder.

"Can't take it."

I heard a whoop of triumph from Jose and a cackle of laughter from Salvatore.

"Now the greedy West Side gringa pays full price."

I bit my knuckle to distract myself with a separate point of pain, our bodies synchronized, my suffering lessened, my mind relaxed and drifted.

I am a transitioned transsexual re-enrolled at Uni, walking in dazzling sunshine past a row of parked cars. A van's door bursts open.

"Need a ride?"

"I'm good."

But I'm dragged into the van, doors slam, it roars off.

My dress is over my shoulders, my panties are at my ankles, I smell a bittersweet aroma, feel the smooth texture of black skin, the power of an athlete's muscles. Thad Jones is atop me. My arms pinned, my legs spread, he plows my moist depths, he and the fulfilling my football gang rape fantasy.

I blinked my eyes open to see Jose's contorted face, and remembered this ride was not high school hijinks. I was the captive of criminals who thought they were doing a girl. My body was bathed with a dew of perspiration. Strands of my hair were plastered to my cheeks. Sweat dripped from Jose's chin and puddled on my lower back. The windshield of the van was steamed translucent. Marijuana smoke billowed from the front seat.

Our bodies got slippery with our mingled perspiration. I conserved my strength by listlessly absorbing his thrusts and withdrawals, but the battering shook my shrunken prostate awake. Then my body craved even more violent pounding. I banged back against his thrusts.

"Yeah, twerk that ass, bitch."

A long-idled engine inside me roared to life, demanded more fuel.

"More, more, harder."

A wet mist formed and fell inside me, washing away months of Spiro and HRT. My ass vibrated, my cock hardened and slid against my moist taint. I imagined it was a clit rubbing against labia. That image pushed me to completion.

"Oh, God, oh, oh, oh."

I orgasmed into the cocoon of tape that protected me from exposure.

Jose finished with a manic burst of energy, pounding my insides, flailing my ass with blows.

"God damn fucking whore."

When Jose's body stopped shaking and his heaving breath slowed, Salvatore passed back another smoldering blunt.

"Good to go now?"

Neither of us answered. I was speechless with anxiety. My pee break at Bonitos, combined with sweat and semen had weakened the adhesive securing my tucked genitals. They had fallen free and dangled down my thigh. I shifted myself to cover it, but Jose's hand had touched it. He sprang away from me.

"What the fuck? You're a guy-"

"No, transsexual, a ladyboy."

"Sal, you dumb fuck, you hooked us up with a shemale."

Jose lurched away as though my flesh was poison and looked at me menacingly.

"Let's kill this fucking faggot."

Sal laughed.

"That's why you wanted your ID?"

"I should have told you, I thought you knew."

I was scared, but more than that, I hated myself. I had misled them to prove I was passable and fuckable and failed. I was a fraud.

"Fooled me until the cock slipped. Let's kill him to prove we're not faggots."

"Fucking me doesn't make you gay. Transsexuals are a kind of girl."

"Trannies are faggot freaks."

Jose slapped my face, I toppled to the floor at his feet. One of his filthy work boots pressed into my groin, as though he were trying to obliterate the tiny cock that had humiliated him, and me.

"My priest says trannies are homos."

I didn't want to die but begging for my life from an enraged transphobe was hopeless. But his subservience to priests gave me an angle.

"Kill me, put me out of my misery. I deserve it, for wanting guys like you, when I'm untouchable. Strangle me and dump my body in the mountains. I don't care, no one will care."

Jose looked away.

"Kill yourself."

I played my Catholic card, held up my mom's crucifix.

"Suicide is a mortal sin. If you kill me Christ can accept my soul."

Sal started up the car and looked at us in the rearview mirror.

"Jose, chill out, go to confession, you'll get off with a few Hail Mary's."

Jose's rage ebbed to self-loathing.

"Get out."

He flung the van's door open.

Salvatore laughed as he lit up a blunt.

"Now I can cross trannies off my bucket list."

"Fuck you Sal. I feel like a fag."

Sal blew out a cloud of smoke.

"You're not a fag 'til a tranny fucks you."

I grabbed my shopping bags and purse and got out of the van. Jose chugged Tecates to dull his transpanic into a drunken stupor. Salvatore U-turned the van and rolled down the window.

"Always wanted to try a tranny."

"Your friend didn't."

"A few more Tecates and he'll get over it."

"Was I good?"

"Great, but too skinny. Get big tits and I'll do you again."

He rolled up the window and screeched away.

I walked home past the battered RV's of the itinerant, homeless veterans of camped out by the Veteran's Administration hospital. Would I end living in similar degradation? As a whore who sold herself on the streets, perhaps dying alone in a decrepit trailer was my destiny. Or would I die in trans-panicked bloodbath?

My parents' house was dark. I showered and went to bed in the quiet house that I would soon leave forever. My brilliant turn as a girl had ended in a fiasco which I'd barely survived. I was stranded in a no man's lands between the male and female genders. To escape that purgatory would I, like so many transsexuals before me, be forced to abdicate honors and achievements for a life of deceit and hustling?

I wasn't sure which life I belonged in, but I refused to retreat from transition. I would reinvent Alexandra and her world.

Take Off

My flight to Ann Arbor was booked as Alex, so I travelled dressed as a boy. My briefs ill-fitted my round behind and my jeans slid from my slim waist. I flattened my boobs with an ace bandage and wore a bulky Wolverines sweatshirt. I barely resembled the photo on my real California driver's license, my transition had taken a turn toward androgyny and beyond. Could I pass at TSA as Alex?

My mom had booked my flight with frequent flier miles, so I was routed through Las Vegas and Denver on an eighteen-hour odyssey. She helped me pack my checked luggage, so I stashed my girl clothes and shoes, hormones, jewelry, purse and makeup in my carry-on. I loaded a handful of DVD's and books on top as camouflage.

"Mind driving, dear? I have such a headache."

My dad was pursuing a foreign grad student and a job with a Swiss pharmaceutical giant. She had the forlorn look of a woman who had said goodbye, perhaps forever, to both her husband, and her only child. She rubbed her temples as I drove down the 405 to LAX. I glimpsed silent tears streaking down her cheeks.

"The life I imagined for you isn't-"

"But it's my life."

She started sobbing.

"If your dad had been more involved, and I played a smaller role, everything could-"

"My being transsexual isn't your fault unless you take the blame for the hormonal vagaries that altered me in utero. And dad's such an asshole that I'm glad he wasn't around."

"Don't hate your father."

"He ran off to Switzerland to escape both of us."

"I shouldn't have to live in an empty house."

"Better that I transition away from home. You'll only see only the final result instead of the difficult process."

"I'm afraid for you."

"UM has a program for transsexuals."

"Any mistake you make could be fatal."

"We've read the same websites. I'll-."

"Don't take chances with strangers."

"Everyone I meet will be a stranger."

"That's why I am so afraid."

"I'll deal with it."

I doubled parked in traffic at LAX, unloaded my suitcases and kissed her goodbye. I felt an almost unbearable lightness as she drove off, and I escaped the burden of her fears and tears.

I boarded the plane, stowed my carry-on, put on my Raybans, Dodger baseball cap and headphones and zoned out. I thought about the five fucks I had collected. I was in the mood for another, but I had to choose carefully. For every Seth or Salvatore, who accepted my transsexuality, there were others, like Miguel, whose transsexual compulsions were mixed with revulsion, or Jose, whose homophobia intensified against trannies.

I dozed off to mental slideshow of images of fantasy fucks. I jolted awake when a fat white guy squeezed into in the seat next to mine. His belly bulged over his belt and stretched his polo shirt. His flaccid forearm dislodged my elbow from the arm rest. He opened a smelly 12" Subway pastrami and Swiss and started chewing on it noisily.

"Bring your own food, son? This airline will starve you."

"I'm good. Aren't we stopping in Vegas?"

"That's where I get off. Straight to the buffet, and then the slots."

"Have good times, and good luck."

I flipped down my shades and put my phones back in my ears. Behind my closed eyes, I was getting fucked by a muscular jock in the airliner's bathroom, 6 miles high. I dozed off while the plane was still taxiing and woke up as we began descending.

My neighbor was snoozing, so I could look around without him noticing. Two rows ahead on the other aisle I spotted a tall, blonde guy in camos, but all I could see was the back of his head. Then he got up and loaded his laptop into the overhead. He was ruggedly built, 6 feet, with tanned skin, a squared jaw and brilliant blue eyes, the living embodiment of my bathroom fuck fantasy. I looked out the window before he noticed me staring. Why couldn't I have gotten him as my seat companion instead of fatso?

The plane landed, and my obese neighbor left with the other Las Vegas passengers. GI Joe stayed behind until the through passengers were counted. Then he and everyone else got off during the lay over, probably to drop coins in the airport slots.

But I stayed on the plane, for I was laying a different kind of bet. I had gotten Sal and Jose to go for me, but my accomplishment was tarnished by my gender fraud. And beneath their good looks they were a couple of petty criminals. I aimed to seduce GI Joe as a transsexual.

In the cramped bathroom I kicked off my Nikes, changed out of my jeans and jockeys, pulled off the Ace bandage and sweatshirt. I swallowed a Ritalin for confidence, and my daily doses of Premarin and Aldactone. I scrubbed my face, applied light foundation, blush, two colors of eye shadow, a faint trace of eyeliner and mascara, and luminescent pink lip gloss. I pulled my hair from beneath the Dodger cap and brushed it out, so it flowed flat and silky to my shoulders, replaced my boyish silver studs with dangly hoops. I lacquered my nails pink to match my lips, slipped on silver bangles and a slim gold ring.

I put on flowered panties and a foam enhanced push-up bra, and a flowered sun dress whose spaghetti straps gave a peek a boo glimpse of my white lace camisole and bra straps. I hung a simple gold chain around my neck and spritzed my neck with cologne. My transformation startled me. I looked like a waifish schoolgirl on vacation. I stuffed my boy clothes into the bottom of the carry-on and took the window seat next to the soldier's spot.

The passengers began drifting aboard and taking their places. He was one of the last to board. He took his seat, smiled and said hi. I smiled, pretending to be preoccupied with my music.

I bobbed my head and hummed a chorus. When he glanced at me, I pulled out my ear buds.

"Sorry to disturb you."

"No worries, I love that song."

"Me too."

"What else do you like?"

"Green Day, and Nirvana and Pearl Jam of course."

"We have a lot in common."

"Do you like Vegas?"

He shook his head.

"Only checking email, no gambling."

"Where would you go if you could go anywhere?"

"Where we're going, Colorado, to the mountains. Pack a tent, sleeping bag, fishing pole and rifle. I could show you how to live off the land."

"Sounds like an adventure, but I'm on my way to college."

"Better use of time. By the way, my name's Jake Aldridge."

"I'm Alexandra Rios."

"Pretty name, for a pretty girl."

I blushed. "You have a strong name, for a strong man."

"I'd better be. I'm going to the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan."

"So exciting, but dangerous. Did you volunteer?"

"Needed money for college and didn't want to borrow or flip burgers. ROTC paid my tuition, room and board, but I owe them three years of active duty, shipping out to Bagram Air Base in two weeks. Just emailed my parents and my girlfriend about my deployment."

"Oh, you have a girlfriend?"

"Had. Didn't want to waste a year, so she dumped me."

"Her loss."

"Not really. The only Afghan girls who'll come near me will be wearing explosive vests, so I'll be celibate anyhow. Where are you going to school?"

"Michigan."

"Figured you as a California girl."

"I need a change."

"Got my degree at Michigan. Need to party hearty to keep the blood from freezing in Ann Arbor."

I faked a shiver.

"How does a sunshine girl like me keep warm?"

"No such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. The locals will tell you what to wear. Friendly people, nice town and a great school. And Detroit has a great museum, though it's a burnt-out, post-industrial cesspool."

He told me about all the best programs and professors, the little theaters and cozy coffeehouses. I resisted the temptation to quiz him about the sin centers of Detroit.

"Paradise in a barren Midwest tundra."

"A rare gem. Travel west from Ann Arbor and the only signs of intelligent life 'til Seattle are Madison and Minneapolis, and they're even colder."

"I need a break from LA."

"Why? Perfect weather, great food, creative culture."

"Most of my high school classmates were zombies or criminals."

"Nobody's high school is-"

"Everyone's obsessed with appearances, diversity as a fashion statement, not because they believe in the right to be different."

"Liberty means you can earn the right to be different."

"It's not fair to ration freedom and reward the rich."

"You're complaining about capitalism."

"What do my clueless classmates or my parents' phony friends have to do with capitalism?"

"Corporate America needs low cost conformists. It would be happier if they could replace them robots, which it doubtless will, eventually. That's what K-12 education provides."

"Robots would have been preferable to my classmates. Some of them were evil."

"Not everyone fits on the conveyor belt. If the education machine can't smooth off the corners, it spits them out, and the rejected kids know it. When they realize they've been marginalized, they retaliate against those who beat the system."