A Shrimp’s Back-room Adventures
One of the first things that I knew when I decided to transition six years ago, was that my sexual range was going to grow, that I was probably going to fuck guys. Until then, for reasons linked to gender, I had stuck to lesbian sex. Being with a guy - obviously cis, the only thing I knew, obviously straight, gay guys weren’t interested in me - made me a woman, which was impossible for me. I was what is called a gold star lesbian, one that has never had sex with a man. Yet when I was a kid, before puberty forced me into a box that had never been mine, I had a secret notebook in which I wrote down the girls that I liked on one side, and on the other the boys. To me it was logical, because I was neither really a girl, nor really a boy, I could fish in both bowls, while remaining within the heterosexual norm. It was my way of reacting to a binary world. I must have had some sense that something was a bit awry since, even though I personally had no problem with my way of seeing things, I kept it secret.
My first experience with a guy happened in San Francisco before I began taking hormones, a couple months after my decision to transition, with a so-called trans’lover. He was gay, a bear that I had met on the internet before going, and he owned a gay and trans sauna. The fact that he was experienced when it came to FtMs, that he was surrounded by them, that he made gay porn with ‘guys’ like me, made me feel comfortable and I decided to go for it. I must admit that the fact that his dick was not the size one expects after watching porn also helped, I had barely begun working on my own body on that level and was still somewhat apprehensive. Because up until then, on top of being a gold star, I was practically stone, I didn’t like to be touched, except in a few rare cases. Back in Paris, a little more self-confident, I decided to explore the gay scene - not the back-rooms, not yet - but San Francisco is not Paris or rather Paris isn’t San Francisco! In America’s queer capital, there was no need to ‘pass’, there were enough men who know about FtMs and were attracted to them, and it didn’t matter whether you had loads of hair on your chest or looked like a 16 year old because you’ve only just begun hormonal treatment (or not even), they knew and they liked it. In Paris in 2008, it was a whole other story, knowledge about transmen in the gay scene was limited to say the least and I was often hit on by men who were really turned on by young guys and who just didn’t get it when I said I was thirty… Because I felt self-conscious not least because despite my age I didn’t know the scene’s code of conduct, I felt obligated to say that I was trans. Then either they would say stuff like “oh so you’re a girl…” (!) or they would tell me that, sorry they were into dicks, and that is why they were gay…
The next phase was that during my trips to Berlin and San Francisco, but also in the queer scene in Paris, I began to meet queer cis guys that could care less about what I had in my pants. I also had a couple one-night stands on the outside, ending up with post-adolescents who right after banging me in the restroom would tell their friend that they had just had sex with a girl for the first time…! But fucking a guy always meant explaining that I was trans, which had protected me at first but that was seriously getting old. I wanted easy access to sex the way it mythically happens in gay bars! In addition to my queer partners, I started liking doing blow jobs in restrooms, being careful to protect what I was packing - packing is when you put stuff in your boxer shorts to create the illusion that you have a dick when guys feel your package, which happens a great deal in gay bars - and which also led to a mishap once. One night, a little too caught up, I let the guy I was giving a blow job to put his hand down my pants. He pulled out what I was packing and stood there with a face I will never forget… The poor guy had felt me on the outside but had no idea what was really going on in my underwear, and in this situation I have to admit that I didn’t feel like giving him much of an explanation, I just pulled up my pants and got the hell out!
I was recently talking to a FtM friend of mine about becoming a part of the gay community, notably its sex scene, to be able to be a part of it at least in appearance without really knowing how to act at first, because it is only really when you pass as a gay guy that you really discover all its aspects. I then that I realized two things, first that I had come a long way in six years and also that gay sex it is not everything it is cracked up to be, that it is really different from what I had experienced over the past four years! I now know the codes, I even put them into practice to the extreme like the time when I used a guy as a “bio-dildo”. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the fact that I performed in a queer porn short two years ago called “bio-dildo”* gave this idea or my frustration made me do it, probably a bit of both. It’s the story of a business man who is straight in appearance who longs to have a dildo that would be made not of silicone but of flesh (and miraculously his stay-at-home wife makes it come out of the porn they are watching). I had been making circles in the back-room for some time, the guys with whom I had begun to interact couldn’t seem to stay hard and even if I didn’t necessarily want to be fucked, I didn’t want to have to work some stranger for hours just so he could have a hard on, cause that is exactly what turns me off and that night I wasn’t as patient as I usually am! I had had a couple unlucky strike-outs and the guy following me around seemed a little too confident for me to feel like giving him any attention. After a while though, I sat down in a booth, and he came and stood right in front of me. I glanced down at his package and told myself that if after all he was the only one to have a hard-on, I was going to make the most of it. Everything went really quickly because I was really turned on, I checked with my hand to make sure that my eyes had not deceived me, brought him into the booth, sat him down, pulled out a condom, lubed up and used him as a dildo. Once I had come, I furtively pulled up my pants and boxers while I slipped on the shoe that I had taken off - a pants’ maximum width is still a problem to me, I need to slip off at least one leg - and bang I stood up while pulling the rest of my clothes with me and left before he had the time to say anything! One of the rules that I have learnt in back-rooms is that it is about your own satisfaction only and usually I am the one who remains frustrated because once a guy has come, well it’s the end of the game!
Of what I imagined or fantasied about before being able to enter, the wildness remains. Few words are exchanged in a back-room, one can obviously hit on a guy at the bar and go in with him, but that has rarely happened to me, body-language comes first and guys are very direct but in most cases, will not insist if you brush them off - ironically pretty much the opposite of what I have experienced in queer sex-parties. But the myth of the cis gay guy always ready to fuck and with a massive hard on in any gay environment has crumbled, my sex-drive is as strong as theirs and alcohol and drugs do not have the same effect on my body as it does on theirs! Unfortunately, I have yet to succeed in making my way into mainstream gay porno but I know that there too, behind the gang-bang fantasy lurks the reality of fluffers whose role is to help actors stay aroused.
Coming back to me, I hardly pack these days, I have decided to shoo the hand that gets close to my genitalia, or not, and if the guy runs away, probably because he thinks I have a tiny dick or that in any case that there is something strange going on, I don’t take it personally, I mean I have a friend who told me that some guys reacted that way to him because his genitals did not fit the size expectations of some of the men he met. But then, if you can’t get it up, I leave too, there is no reason why I shouldn’t! Since those first moments, when I was ok with giving guys blow-jobs while discreetly masturbating without letting anyone undress me, I have ended up totally naked in back-rooms a couple of times, for if once my partner knows that I am different, he still wants to fuck me, that is enough for me to feel safe and I tell myself that I am making a stand by being visible. I have gone from always feeling obligated to explain my difference - to leaving back-rooms because guys wanted to talk about it forever, whereas I just wanted to fuck! — I have become non verbal. I know that it is probably not the case of all FtMs who want access to gay sex — but I have the advantage of not having a problem with fucking in front of a camera or with a customer — but finally, thanks to self-empowerment theory, my difference has allowed me to transform what seemed to be a potentially dangerous situation that frightened and excited me at the same time, into one where I consider that I hold the power, just like when I’m with my customers. Of course there are days when I don’t feel like I am strong enough to do it, but who says that doesn’t happen to cis guys too?
So now that I have discovered reality and understood its codes I can not only adapt to but that I actually enjoy, I like being non-verbal, the directness, the anonymity — one of my favorite situations in a back-room is a glory-hole, no idea whose face or body is linked to the dick I am pleasuring — I can take from back-rooms the fantasies that I had before going in: (relatively) easy sex, on hand when I want it! On this note, I will leave you to it, I suddenly feel like going out!
*BioDido I de Christian Slaughter avec Jiz Lee
Text i wrote in French for the 2nd POV magazine, a quarterly mindfuck about gender and sexuality, with a focus on photography, illustration, and text. http://www.povpaper.com/ https://www.facebook.com/povpaper?fref=ts
Translated by Viviane Morey
Reading in April at the Berkeley Books of Paris
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