Take Me There

by Tristan Taormino

  My suit from yesterday’s funeral was the only clothing I had. I felt awfully overdressed for a Saturday morning, but Crystal didn’t seem to mind; she straightened my lapels and insisted that I tie my tie up just right, even if we were just going for a quick drive. I assented, too preoccupied to argue. Crystal was even more gorgeous in the daylight, but I felt a bit detached from things. I wasn’t upset; I just kept replaying things in my head, wondering what it all meant.

  A couple of blocks away from Nonna’s house, we passed by the church where the funeral had taken place. I felt tears gather in my throat.

  “Hey,” said Crystal, sensing that something was wrong. “I’m sorry about your grandmother. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay,” I answered. And y’know, I was. I could almost see my Nonna winking at me in the morning sunbeams that streamed through the car window as we turned onto her street. I could almost hear her saying, “What’s all the fuss about?”

  Besides, I thought, looking down at my outfit, I do look awfully dashing, if I do say so myself.

  PAYBACK’S A BITCH

  S. Bear Bergman

  You’re all dressed up, still. She’s just a little more dressed up than you are, like she so often is. Girls with four older brothers rarely get to indulge their dress-up fantasies as children, it turns out, so when an opportunity arises she takes a bath and then shines up. By now, when you hear her open the tap on the bathtub you get started ironing a shirt.

  Tonight it was a dinner in honor of someone she works with having won an award for something hardly anyone understands; you in velvet pants that made the gay boy at the store stammer when you tried them on and her in a long skirt with a high slit and tall boots, your favorite. You’re back at her office afterward, because she needs to pick something up and you follow her up there, the tall, dark office building reflecting something out of your porn star fantasies, and of course you have a plan. Of course, you have a big idea about how this is going to play out.

  Up in the elevator, you admire her ass in the long skirt and free her hair from her coat and act like you’re five kinds of good intention in nicely polished loafers. You’re going to escort her to her office, yes you are. Good boyfriend, maybe a better boyfriend because you weren’t born a boy and never learned how to disdain a woman’s fears on one hand and feed them with the other. But then again, there you are with your cock hard in your pocket and a plan born in the pages of Hustler playing behind your eyes, so maybe you’re not so far from your factory-direct brethren after all. Eighth floor. Everybody off.

  She walks to her office and you follow, maybe a little close, maybe your breath stirring the short hairs on the back of her neck. She flicks the light on in her office and you reach out and trap her hand with yours on the wall, flick the light back off, grab her and pull her close to you, your hands full of her fine ass and your voice in her ear saying, “C’mon, now, baby, I know you want it.” You chew on her neck and hold on to her tight, mutter all manner of dirty things in her ears, telling her how you like it when she struggles and that the smell of her sweat turns you on. You tell her she’ll never get away from you; tell her you know she really doesn’t want to, grind your hard-on into her and say, “Look what I’ve got for you, baby girl.” You grab her hand and make her hold on to it until she knows how big a cock you’re packing.

  She groans. She slides to her knees, pliant and generous as a really good wine, and you run your fingers through her hair, admire the curve of her neck as she dips her head to rub her soft cheek over your bulge. You shiver when you feel the heat of her breath against your skin, through your pants. Before you quite know what’s happening you’re leaning back against the desk in her office, velvet pants around your furry ankles, getting a champion blow job from your girlfriend. If the lights were on you’d be able to see the smears of her lipstick around your cock, concentric circles of passion and carelessness. You can see, just barely, that her mascara is starting to run from taking your cock all the way into her throat, and you like that. You like it a lot.

  In your secret heart you wish there were a coworker or a member of the maintenance staff around to interrupt, someone to see you starring in your first big-boy porn movie moment—tie flapping and belling as you pound your hard cock into the willing mouth of this brilliant girl, who is on her knees for you; on her knees in her own office, ruining her makeup on your cock. This is a beautiful moment, and you would love to be caught in this act, almost more than you hope nobody comes along.

  The two of you find a rhythm, both easy and hard, speeding up and slowing down, you watching her gag on the thickness of it and feeling your cock jump in response. You grab her throat, hold her away from it, encourage her to cut off her own air to get to your cock, to show you how much she likes it and you almost come all over her face watching her work: mouth open, tongue out, eyes closed, reaching for you. You wish you could come, just like this, all over her face, the perfect ending to this hetero-style silhouette enacted by two of the queerer people for three counties, wherever you are. Your head falls back a little bit. You gasp with how good it feels and grin when you feel her hands slide up the back of your thighs, palming your ass and using that grip to pull you closer, farther into her mouth, to take more of your cock in. You’re distracted when her hands close around the back of your belt, so close to coming, so close to losing your load and you start talking to her about how much you want to come in her mouth.

  Suddenly, there’s a cool breeze where your warm girlfriend used to be. Suddenly, you’re being tugged, then yanked around to face the desk, off balance and off kilter. Did you come? You’re not sure. You’re still distracted and throbbing when her small, cool hand grips the back of your neck, pushes you down, bends you over the desk. The surface is hard against your cheek, and you realize that your ass is in the air, nearly naked except for the harness. She spreads your cheeks with those small, cool hands and spits twice, telling you that an ass like that is enough to drive even a strong man crazy. In your brain you know that this is your girlfriend, she of the long skirt and blown mascara and fourteen varieties of herbal tea arranged alphabetically in the cupboard at home but at the moment your gut, not to mention the point of the gut’s natural conclusion, is telling you that a bad man has hold of you, and hard.

  You stiffen and try to turn around, to stand up, but she smacks your ass with something that hurts like hell, so you lie still again—maybe when she’s distracted, you think, forgetting who you’re talking about. She leans into you and tells you to lie still, that it’ll hurt you less if you don’t fight. She says, “G’head and try, pretty boy—your hole tightens up real sweet when you try to get away.” You flush a bright, terrible red and feel your knees buckle while she works a dollop of cold grease into your asshole with two fingers, making you open up for it. It’s too much all at once, and when you try to say something she smacks your ass again. It’s your belt, you realize. She’s hit you with your own belt. That bastard.

  What’s happening in your ass is delicious and terrible, beautiful and profane, and she is fucking you slow but hard, those glittering red fingernails somehow silent and safe in your body, opening you up. When you can’t keep quiet any longer you let out a groan, and she growls, “Yeah, faggot?” and fucks you harder. It’s like she’s possessed, and whatever’s got hold of her is more than big enough to take you, too. You start to push back, start to fuck back against her, and she holds the end of the belt around your throat like reins and giddyups right into your willing hole, filling you up with her hand, telling you you’d better move for her. She instructs you to stroke her hand with your tight hole, tells you that you look like a hustler hoping for a tip, and you dimly remember having thought the word Hustler earlier and know it was nothing like this. She’s banging into you, taking up space in your body with her hand and in your brain with her words, talking you right up to the edge of coming for her bent over like this, spread out under her, open and wanting nothing more than your high-femme girlfriend wh
o is apparently also your dirty faggot boyfriend, and you had no idea.

  You feel the edge of your come and tell her how much you want to come for her. You start to whimper, start to say please, and when she says, “Beg me, cocksucker,” you do with more sincerity than you could have imagined while she plows you just right and you come, hard, yelling, conquered and redeemed under her hands.

  You both slide to the floor in a heap of sweat and lube and rumpled clothes, and you have just enough wherewithal to tear her panty hose with the edge of your ring and rip them open, sliding three fingers into her like the hammer of a gun slides home. You spare her nothing, pumping her in time with the throb and grin of your own asshole until she’s whining and clawing at you, gasping and howling, and when you say, “Payback’s a bitch, baby,” she says, “Just you wait, faggot. Just you wait,” and comes, screaming into your mouth while you kiss like lovers do.

  FEMME FATIGUE

  Anna Watson

  I was having a “Wind Beneath His Wings” moment. Again. It had been that kind of book tour, where people just kept smiling right past me, eager to get next to Mitch. Here in this big Chicago bookstore, on this crisp fall evening, my charismatic and famous husband had just wrapped up another standing-room-only reading in front of an adoring crowd. He was now sitting comfortably near the front of the bookstore at a table piled with copies of his latest memoir, Elemental, signing books for his public. His tie was slightly loosened, his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair, and the dress shirt I’d ironed that afternoon was far from crisp, but even slightly mussed, he looked good to me, and every inch who he was: a god in the high holy pantheon of spokespeople for trans rights and visibility. He radiated confidence and wisdom and people couldn’t get enough of him.

  I retrieved a couple of extra pens that had rolled under the table and poured him another glass of water. I was straightening a pile of books when a little chippie of a femme brushed past me and gave him a very good look down the front of her dress as she leaned over to whisper her name in his ear. Mitch enjoyed the view, knowing I was watching, teasing me a little, then began to sign her book. The chippie’s hopes had been raised, no doubt, by the piece Mitch read that evening about our own special brand of monogamy; how we sometimes branch out. I knew, however, that she was bound for disappointment, as Mitch had nothing more on his mind than a long soak in the hotel bathtub and an early night. It had been a grueling book tour, and Chicago was our last stop before heading home. I would go with him back to the hotel, of course, but I wasn’t really tired, just bored.

  Mitch is an incredible writer. Even if I’ve heard something of his over and over as he works on it, when he reads it in public, it can still make me cry. He is so caring of queers of every stripe, so generous with a world that seems determined to fuck us over, so wise as he navigates through his own journey, which turns into everyqueer’s journey which turns into everyone’s journey. I support his work with my whole heart and believe that his writing has, does, and will save lives. I already know that it has, in fact, from the kinds of mail he gets from high school students in particular. His writing is filled with honesty and love as he writes about his childhood as a queer, abused kid; how he got from there to here, to the healthy, proud transman that he is; and he just keeps changing lives and hearts and minds and the guy should get the fucking Nobel Peace Prize, in my opinion.

  I am proud of my husband, and almost all of the time, I am totally okay being in the background, keeping the home fires burning, being there to bounce ideas off of, hear endless versions of the same piece, cook nourishing, tasty meals, walk the dog and feed the cats, take care of the food shopping, make sure he takes his vitamins, keep up to date on any medical issues for transguys, keep the social calendar, iron his shirts and pick out his ties, hem his trousers and throw out his boxers when the elastic goes. I am almost always totally okay with being the odd girl out at the events he gets invited to, where, I understand, people of course want to get to know him, get his opinion on things, hear what he has to say and find healing in his presence. He and I laugh about it, sometimes, when people struggle with how exactly to include me; me, who obviously knows nothing about what it means to be born in the wrong body and to have to walk that road. I actually have a few things to say about that, but in general, I am almost always totally okay with not being a very big part of that conversation because I so completely believe in what Mitch does, so completely love his work, and, for heaven’s sake, I fucking love the guy.

  The day we got married absolutely was the happiest day of my life, and really, I am usually totally okay with being Mrs. Mitch. The whole femme thing, well, you know, I have a job I really love being a nanny, I have my book club and my quilting group, and Mitch and I have our real friends (as opposed to the sycophants who tend to flock around him), who know me and see me and love me, so what’s a little invisibility when it’s all in the service of a greater visibility for transfolk? I’m almost always okay with it. Except sometimes.

  That night in Chicago, that night I was getting more and more irritated with the ho-hum looks people got on their faces when Mitch introduced me as his wife, all eyes snapping immediately back to His Nibs, the Touter of Trans, the High Scribe of Holy Sex Change—that night, someone was noticing me. And about the time I noticed her noticing me, she was beside me, holding out a plastic cup of warm white wine like she was offering me a chilled flute of champagne.

  “Drink?”

  I don’t usually, but I took it from her and wet my lips without hesitation. She watched me sip.

  “I like your husband’s book,” she said, nodding her head in Mitch’s direction. We were over by the magazine rack, where I’d been hoping to have a quick flip through a couple of DIY glossies. I followed her gaze and caught Mitch’s eye. He took in the situation and raised one eyebrow. Yes, I thought. I think definitely yes. It’s been a long time, and I’m a little out of practice, but I’d like to go—please, honey? He nodded, winked his “go ahead” wink, and went back to scrawling out his name and answering earnest questions. I saw that the chippie had more than satisfactorily taken my place as personal assistant to the writer: she had put together a little plate of munchies and was carefully topping off his glass of ice water. Fine, she could have the job. I was off duty for the rest of the evening.

  My admirer’s name was Per, short for Persephone, another butch victim of cute and unusual baby girl names. We strolled around the bookstore, stopping here and there to browse, but really just checking each other out and offering up relevant bits of personal information. Adopted from Cambodia by her lesbian moms, one of whom transitioned when she was a teenager just coming into her own queer sexuality, she told me cheerfully that she had plenty of identity issues.

  “Momdad’s over there,” she said, gesturing toward a shy, nerdy-looking older guy standing in line to get his book signed. He was also holding a couple of comics and a “Star Trek” magazine. “He’s the one who told me to check out Mitch’s blog.”

  Per had immediately related to Mitch’s eloquent exploration of the ins and outs of coming home to your own particular place in the queer spectrum, and was, in fact, here tonight doing research for her thesis. She was a grad student in anthropology at the University of Chicago, and she made me laugh with her stories of the old-school professors who weren’t quite up to speed with the hermeneutics of gender theory and the straight students who were desperate to be her friend because she was so “interesting.”

  By now we were in the deserted kids’ book section, sitting close together on a miniature couch shaped like a fire truck. I put my hand on her sleeve and asked her to tell me more about her thesis. I was still in my supportive role, still bolstering up the man (or in this case, the butch). I knew I was supposed to be off duty, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

  “Oh, maybe later,” she said, smiling. “What about you?”

  When I thought about it later, I realized that that was when the evening got really hot. That’s when Pe
r stopped being a simple distraction from my usual life and became something a lot more important. I used to have this self-help book called Brief Encounters that talked about how sometimes even the most fleeting contact with certain people can do for you what years of therapy cannot. Per was right there, fully present, looking at me, waiting. She was adorable in her version of metro modern, her hair mussed, wearing low-slung jeans with a wide belt, a plaid shirt with the tail hanging out and what were probably her momdad’s scuffed old ’80s Doc Martens. She was waiting for me to reveal myself to her, but better than that, she already saw me—saw me as a person of my own. It would have been understandable if she thought she already knew some things about me, since Mitch had read a long section that evening about our relationship, and he is so good at describing our marriage, making pithy insights about two people in love who have weathered a lot. I totally would have understood if Per had thought that Mitch’s take on me (published in several books and a daily part of his blog entries) is really who I am. But the way she was looking at me made me think, No, she really wants to hear it from me. It’s me she’s interested in, not the me on the page. And I told her. I told her about my job, where I take care of three-year-old twins, and how all the other nannies and mommies at the playground think I’m straight and it can drive me crazy ’cause I hate not being seen as queer, but somehow coming out all the time when you’re dealing with potty training and boo-boos and lost lovies just recedes in importance. I used to be such a fierce femme when I was in my twenties and me and Mitch were such a prominent butch/femme couple about town being all polyam-orous and doing play parties, and then Mitch transitioned and we got married and there was all of that to sort through. Now he’s working so hard writing and doing advocacy stuff and so when he wants to relax it’s mostly watching some BBC drama about World War I where we both drool over the costumes and hairstyles and it’s really cozy and not fraught with Identity Issues like the rest of his life and I really am just mostly cozy, like cozy has become my sexuality almost, because, really, aren’t we more than who we fuck? Aren’t your thirties a good time to explore those other areas? A lot of the people I hang out with now are straight, like the women in my quilting group—straight and a lot older than me and more concerned with material and patterns than anything else, and, I don’t know, things get lost in the shuffle. I don’t know if they’re getting lost or if they’re becoming integrated with all the other stuff, but all I know now is that sitting with Per on that tiny fire truck, my queer femme whipped up into tornado strength, and she just closed her eyes, relaxed, and let herself be sucked into the maelstrom.