Church Street

I don’t want people to see him differently because of me. It’s like they’ll look down on him because he kissed a girl like me. She said herself the other day; it was the tone in her voice, the way it was almost comical…In order for him to be into me, he had to be “gay”. Which in part is probably true; after all, I still have my male anatomy, but couldn’t he just be into me for me? Wishful thinking he wanted the extra package. Even his friends tried to stop him, warn him about what he might get himself into, but it didn’t work. Could you blame him though? I was wearing my tight, see-through dress and my hair down my back. I was just walking back outside to the outdoor dance floor/ smoking area because it was too damn fucking hot to be inside Red Square. I looked up, and there he was, tall as me, wearing all black, his lips juicy…I looked him straight in his face. In that moment, we locked eyes for what felt like an eternity, like in the movies when time slows and there is nothing but us. Barbie was with me, so I had to keep moving, and then I heard “Are you a man?” I smiled and said, “no but I was born one.” I saw his friends grab him, encouraging him to stop. I started to put together that he was with a group of guys the girls knew and we usually always interact with as a group. As a trans person, queer person in general, I don’t expect certain people to interact with me the same or show me the courtesy they show the girls, but they are still usually respectful, and occasionally there’s one guy who’s sweet. As I made it back to the girls and started dancing again, sipping on my drink with Barbie, I started to notice he was watching me, kinda doing laps around me. I made sure to move my body just right when he was watching and shake my ass when he was directly behind me, and he approached me again from behind…”Why aren’t you paying attention to me?” He said, and I laughed and said, “I’m with my girls, like what are you doing?” He said something like, “ I’m trying to get you,” and I asked him his name, “M, what’s yours?” I told him. He typed his snap into my phone, and quickly he was pulled away from his friends. Later, I’d learn they again were telling him not to get with me because “I wasn’t the kind of girl he thought I was,” which was funny because that’s exactly why he liked me. After mingling and dancing more, he found me again and grabbed my waist, letting me shake my ass on him, grinding my body against his bulge. I told him, “Meet me at the food trucks around 2:20, and I’d be ready.” And I was off making rounds with the girls, dying of the heat in the bathrooms, making sure I interacted with everyone I knew and had met before, being the social creature I am. Soon before I realized it, it was close to 2 am and I’ve gotta pee one last time before I leave, so I made my way to the bathroom with Barbie. When I came out, there he was sitting on the bench, seeming to be waiting for me. When the people cleared around us, I sat next to him, and he put his hand on my butt. The lights came on. It was that time, and we’ve gotta get out of red, so he grabbed me and started pulling me outside until we’re past the food truck.

Needless to say, he drove while drinking and all over the road, swerving at cops. I bought him a vape at the corner store, and he brought me to the waterfront to ride him in the back of his car. Later, he’d drive me home and tell me about the licks he hit in my neighborhood, which I proceeded to ask, “What are licks?”

But everything in me knew I knew nothing about the way he lived his life. Isn’t it wild to live so close to people and live so differently? Such different origins and dynamics are nothing alike, just the urge to kiss each other and never see each other again. I wonder how drunk he got that night, wonder if he wishes he had never made that advance on me in public. Wonder if his friends pick on him, laughing, “Cause he fucked the lady boy.”