by Cynthia Dane
“Ms. Pentecost cannot accompany me to an important presentation in early October,” Eric explained without looking up from his leather-bound ledger. “I’m picky about the temps the agencies love to send me, thus I haven’t yet found one that satisfies my needs. Would you be interested in filling in, Ms. Chen?”
My heart ran a marathon beneath my ribs. While my mouth grew dry enough to stifle my words, I still managed to say, “Whatever you need, Mr. Mann.”
“Good. I’ll make sure you shadow Ms. Pentecost more than you already do. Mr. Webb can handle anything else while you’re busy.”
I wasn’t sure about that. Last I saw, Aiden was doodling in his notebook. We both had a mountain of work to get through, but my fellow intern couldn’t be assed to give a shit about anything going on beneath the roof of Mann-Garrett.
“You’re dismissed, Ms. Chen.”
I exchanged one last look with Brooke, a woman I admired… and gave great berth. One minute she was taking me under her wing and praising me for how quickly I learned in a stressful office environment. The next? She was likely to look at me as if I had personally become an intern to destroy everything she held dear.
I wasn’t her enemy. I knew that. But did she?
“Thank you, sir. I’ll take to heart what you said.”
On my way out, I heard him ask Brooke to remind him to write a stern letter to the courier company. Even better if he could dictate it to Brooke right now.
I didn’t hear the whole missive before I closed the heavy door behind me. But what I heard made me think of the floral scent still tickling my nose.
“Today I had the great misfortune of seeing archaic ideology unfold in my office…”
“Get your butt kicked in there?” Aiden asked.
I eased down into my chair. Before me were the reports I had been proofreading when that courier ruined my day. Or had he? I still couldn’t tell if what had happened in Mr. Mann’s office had been good or bad.
“No,” I finally said. “You should get off social media. We’ve got work to do.”
He scoffed. “Yes, Mom.”
I really wish he hadn’t reminded me of my mother.
Chapter 5
ERICA
I got up from the hotel bed and slipped into a robe. My date of the evening puffed on a cigarette I desperately wanted to escape. “A celebratory smoke,” she announced when she pulled out the Marlboro’s from her bag on the floor. “Because you’re so good.”
The thing about escorts? You don’t know when they’re lying.
I pretended to have messages to respond to and left her to her cigarette. Normally, I wouldn’t have tolerated those things in my room, but this wasn’t my room. It was one of my usual hotel haunts in the city, the place I went when I wanted to get out my frustrations all over some strange woman’s body.
What was her name? Kerry? Karoline? I couldn’t tell you, since I’ve never seen her again since that night. She wasn’t someone I normally saw, but she was cleared by the agency I trusted and had signed the mountain of steel-coated NDAs every woman I dated – or hired – had to sign before I could even kiss them. Kerry (let’s go with that, shall we?) exclaimed in delight when she found out “Eric” Mann had a few surprises beneath his clothes. Now I know why she came recommended when the usual women I hired were too busy at such short notice. Kerry preferred the female body.
She also claimed she would take my secret to her grave. I didn’t doubt that, if I paid her well enough.
I hadn’t intended to jet out of work that night to immediately head to my favorite hotel and meet a woman I barely knew. I didn’t care about her name. I didn’t care what she offered, as long as she was fine with lights off and not referring to me with any pronouns. That was a rule I had to establish when I wasn’t in the mood to roleplay. Sometimes I wanted the full male experience. Other times, I desperately wanted someone to acknowledge that I was a woman beneath my expensive suits and flaccid strap-on. That night, however, I simply wanted to be, to do, and to not think.
Thinking had killed me for the past two weeks. Every time I closed my eyes and had a breath to myself, I thought of Natalie, and how warm she made me feel when we were in the same room together.
I had brushed it off as infatuation. But when I had the same feelings while thinking about her at home? I knew I was in trouble. I had graduated from attraction and infatuation into liable to get into deep trouble.
Natalie wasn’t just an unknown quantity to my secrets. She was my employee. My intern. It was verboten, and I wasn’t the sort of person to find the forbidden nature of that attraction, well, attractive. I had enough issues in my life. Fuck me, did I have enough issues in my life without inviting someone like Natalie into the picture!
That was what made me panic. Not the possible rejection I might face from yet another woman who couldn’t accept me, but the complications that might bring down more than my personal empire. Thousands of employees and a hundred business deals depended on my secret staying a secret. If I thought about it for too long, I exploded in a fit of anxiety that left me in no state to run my business.
It was women like Kerry who kept me functioning. Barely holding on, but functioning. The endorphins from the services she provided helped me calm down. The high of saying, “Like any man, like any rich asshole, I can bed any woman I please,” gave my confidence a boost.
But Kerry hadn’t been good enough this time. I know she was an escort, but what woman wants to hear that? So I distanced myself from her and that cigarette smoke. My brain was poisoned enough. My lungs didn’t need to join that party.
I kept thinking about Natalie.
What would she be like in bed? Feisty and creative? Docile, yet eager? A million scenarios played out in my head, each one more erotic than the last. I blamed my PMS, another reminder that I was female and experiencing the traditional hormonal fluctuations. Within a few more days, my period would come, and I would have to hole myself away in my house so nobody noticed how much I bloated or that sometimes my menstrual cup didn’t do its job. Meanwhile, I would sit in front of my TV, crying into a vat of Diet Coke because I didn’t know who I was. It didn’t matter that I had been scheduling my life around my period for so long that I knew I could get away with it and people assumed I had a chronic yet manageable disease that sometimes took me out.
Yes. It was called ovaries. I had been born with them, after all.
Sometimes I thought about transitioning to male. Cutting out the ovaries, chopping off my tits, and just embracing the idea that I was man. But I could never bring myself to do it. I couldn’t even do hormones in the hopes I would grow hair on my face or naturally deepen my voice. It felt… wrong. My father had forced me to become socialized as male and to espouse the mannerisms of his male brethren. He hadn’t been able to force me onto the surgeon’s table, although I’m sure he considered it.
My body was the only thing I had. The only remainder of who I really was. As much as it was a liability, it was mine. When I stood in my shower, alone with the hot water, the music playing on the bathroom speakers, and my angry thoughts, I had my body, unbound and unbothered. It was one of the few times I felt true freedom, even if I could only experience it cooped up in the inner chambers of my family’s fortified fortress.
Natalie… would you be bothered my body, like Brooke had been?
I knew nothing about her personal life yet. I didn’t know if she had a significant other – only that she didn’t wear a ring. I didn’t know her sexuality. Even if she were attracted to me, she was still probably as straight as Brooke. Which meant it was never meant to be. Even if I transitioned, it still wouldn’t be what she wanted.
I was cursed. Cursed by my body, and by my mind. Both warred with my heart.
Who was I?
A man? A woman? Some abomination that was neither and both at the same time?
I didn’t yet know terms like non-binary and agender, although I sometimes forced myself to think that way so I knew how to
behave in certain situations. Even if I did know them, they still wouldn’t have felt right. When I really dug into my psyche, or the one therapist I trusted probed deeply enough, I often concluded that I was a woman trapped in a man’s life. But I didn’t know what being a woman meant. I had never openly lived as a woman.
It ate me alive.
On one hand, fantasizing about Natalie was a delightful escape from my cold reality. On the other, they opened up so many cans of worms that I stopped myself before my fantasies became too raunchy for me to face her the next time I saw her.
While Kerry smoked and eventually dozed off in the hotel bed, I pulled out my favorite stress reliever from my overnight bag.
It was a simple rope, thick, sturdy, and so soft against my fingers. Tying knots became one of my favorite hobbies when I was a little kid – it was one of the only things my father and I could truly bond over. He praised me for being a good “Scout,” which I now know is a reference to the Boy Scouts, which my father fully endorsed but I could never join. It was my father who taught me how to tie intricate, complicated knots that were more art than function. The few times I was allowed at public conventions while growing up were usually at trade shows that showcased the manliest of pursuits. It was a part of my training and socialization to become a man and be my father’s son. It was also a delight, until I was old enough to realize how fucked up everything was.
When I grew up, the knots followed me into the bedroom. Using them with many of the women I indulged in was necessary. Practical, wasn’t it? Tie them up so they couldn’t feel my breasts or stroke my pussy. Neither of which they knew I had.
But, mostly, I tied knots in strings and ropes so I could destress.
“Wow. That’s so cool.”
That inane voice made me look up from my hobby to catch Kerry’s awed demeanor. She had slunk out of bed and slipped into one of the hotel bathrobes, although she hadn’t bothered to tie the front. I wasn’t as enamored with her naked body as you may think.
She was beautiful, but I had moved on from my biological needs. The only reason I hadn’t asked her to leave was because she hadn’t been a nuisance. Apparently, she took that as a challenge.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Kerry sat on the edge of the desk and gestured to my rope-tying. “I’ve never seen somebody do that before. Why are you doing it?”
“Because I like it.”
Her fingers absentmindedly threaded through her extensions. “Is it hard to do?”
I held up my Turkish knot. Some of the rope had frayed, and in the back of my head I heard my father critiquing it while showing me how much better his could be. For some reason, I always struggled with that knot when I was younger. Sometimes, even as an adult, I still made mistakes.
“Not particularly,” I said. “But I’m biased. I’ve been doing this for years.”
She nodded, eyes empty and ears closed off to what I had just said.
“Let me ask you a question.” I leaned back in my seat, hands clasped across my stomach. “If I may.”
That brought some life back to her eyes. “Sure.”
“What is it about the female body that you find so attractive?”
Kerry’s laugh was one of the most obnoxious I had ever heard. To this day, I can hear it ringing in my ears – her teeth flashing before my eyes doesn’t help the image any, either. Even so, I was eager to hear her response. Waiting with bated breath, honestly.
“I mean…” She bit her lip and searched the expanse of the hotel suite for answers. When she leaned back against the desk, her robe fell open, and I had to look away from a body I had made love to before. The deed may have been done, but decorum dictated that I afford her a level of respect. The sort of respect that made me wonder if real men bothered. “Bodies are bodies, right? Being able to enjoy somebody’s body isn’t a matter of male or female.”
“But they are quite different.”
“Guess it doesn’t matter to me.”
Was that a criticism toward my question? Had I asked something stupid? Was there something wrong with preferring one type of body over the other? Had I offended her? A woman I had paid to keep me company? (To put it loosely.) I was a master at controlling my emotions, but something about the way she said that made me seize up and wonder if my way of thinking was archaic.
That’s how I was – and I can still be like that. Sometimes I take someone else’s stated preferences and wonder if it’s really a dig at my own. When you’re wrapped up in your own world for so long, you wonder if the outside world is passing you by… and destroying you in the process.
“You only like women, huh?”
I looked back to her face. “Is woman synonymous with female?”
She lost her smile. I realized then that I had asked the wrong question.
“Sorry. I get philosophical at times.”
“No, no. It’s fine.” She scratched her head and furrowed her brows. Dear Kerry was not a deep thinker, I suppose. Or at least she wasn’t used to clients throwing curve balls at her after they had fulfilled their temporary contracts. “Guess that makes sense, though. I’ve been hearing a lot of brouhaha about sex and gender recently.”
“Yes. Same for me.” None of it applied to me. “What I’m asking is… even if you haven’t thought about it before, surely there must be some part of the female body that turns you on. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be attracted to it enough to get excited by its presence.”
She tilted her head, eyes clouding over. Yet before I could assume I had completely lost her, she blurted out, “Tits, I guess.”
“…Tits.” I don’t think I had ever said tits out loud before that. In my life.
“Yeah! Tits!” She pulled back her robe and made sure I had a generous view of her glorious Double-Ds. “You know what it’s like to stick your face in them! That!”
“I suppose that is quite the attraction.”
I had hoped for more than mere breasts, however. I wanted to hear about the curves of one’s hips, the way the female body contoured and aged with reverent grace. Soft skin. Softer hair. Lips as full as the monthly moon.
For God’s sake, even pussy talk would’ve been wonderful.
I didn’t bother asking the other questions brewing in my mind. Even though the one consuming me was, “Do you think it’s possible for a woman who has never been with another before to suddenly find it attractive?” A part of my sad self wanted to believe that I still had a chance with Natalie, a woman I assumed was obviously attracted to me because of my wealth and presumed gender.
Well, my wealth wouldn’t change if she learned the truth. That would always attract a certain subset of women enamored with money and not much else. But what if she became disgusted with me? What if she felt I had betrayed her, even if we didn’t do anything but exist as boss and intern?
I had been burned before. I had given my heart to a woman before. I had heard, “You’re so unlike other men, Eric.” I had also heard how heartbreaking it was for someone to discover what it was I had in my trousers.
It didn’t help that I was disappointed as well. Not in my body, which I’ve always had a strange relationship with, but in the way the world projected its insecurities onto me. To think. At one point in my existence, I had been born knowing nothing but basic bodily functions and my trust in my mother. And my trust in my brother.
My mother had long broken my trust. My brother? He was the only one I still truly trusted, but only because he hadn’t lived long enough to break my heart.
Chapter 6
NATALIE
Sunday afternoon, and I couldn’t have a moment of peace in my own house.
All right, so it wasn’t my house, even though I helped pay the mortgage. Ever since the alimony payments dried up four years ago, my mother insisted. Because while she had been rewarded payments to make up for the standard of living she lost when she divorced my father, she had never replaced the income stream.
My mother was of the opinion
that big, rich men paid a lady’s way through life. Childhood, adolescence, adulthood… a man controlled them all, and she was quite happy to let that unfold. My father had been my provider when I was younger. Those child support and alimony payments from halfway across the globe paid for my schooling and all the tutoring and college prep courses I could lap up. Whenever I mailed copies of my grades and SAT prep scores to my aunt in Taiwan, I almost always received a nice paycheck from my father a few weeks later. Paychecks that went straight into my college savings account or to finally getting those sweet shoes I had been saving for my reward.
Those checks had dried up as well. I make it sound like my father either died or completely abandoned me. Well, he’s not dead. But can he truly abandon me if he never really cared to begin with?
My aunt’s excuse is that my father is busy being the vice president of a Taiwanese bank. Very busy. So time consuming. Can’t call, can’t visit, and certainly can’t entertain me. I had sent them both invitations to my graduation, but only my aunt made an effort. She took pictures and video before showing them to my father. Or so she claims.
To be fair, I wasn’t invited to his wedding with a new Taiwanese bride eight years ago, so what did I expect? I didn’t find out about his son until my aunt coolly mentioned him.
Carlton Chen is going to get 90% of the inheritance. Money, properties, and statuses I’ve never seen in my life. He can have it. I’m content to pave my own way.
My mother, on the other hand…
“How dare they refuse to let you in,” she cooed into her Chihuahua’s ear. The cream-colored rat dog growled every time it saw me. Since we had been sitting in the same room for five minutes, it was one long, constant growl I had tuned out. “Any place that doesn’t allow my sweet little Miffy-kins doesn’t need our money anyway!”
What money? My mother lived off investments. Not very good ones, either. Enough to pay her share of the mortgage and have lunch with other inane ex-wives every other day, but hardly enough to save for a decent retirement. (Oh, wait, she was already retired!)