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I don’t ask for details. Who would want them in this moment?

A part of me understands. I represent a lot of things to her. Fear, foreboding, embarrassment. In a way, it’s the same for me. Well, don’t know if I would use the word hate…

“You know what I want?” Kathleen picks up one of my arms and tucks it beneath hers, so my hand can curl up and cup her face. I roll against her back, feeling the hot water soothe my muscles while Katie’s body soothes my soul. Nope. Not love.

Definitely not love, whatever the hell that is.

“What do you want?”

It takes a few seconds for her to confess her innermost desires. For her to trust me enough with these words and not make fun of them. At this point, I may still give her a hard time about things, but I respect her enough to know that this is not the right time. Instead, I stroke her skin, hoping I can take her to bed soon.

So many plans.

“I want to combat these voices in my head that say I’m somehow weak because you make me feel a certain way. No one has made me want to submit before, Ira. I don’t know what that says about you. I try not to think about it, but I can’t deny that when you grab me, when you growl into my ear, and when you get a little rough with me I don’t feel alive. I thought I was ready last time. To explore that side of myself, that is. I realize now that wasn’t the case. Doing that with you requires letting go of everything I thought I knew about myself. As a femme, it’s terrifying.”

“You know that I would never let that leave the bedroom, right?” I am both for and against the idea of a lifestyle relationship for myself. I’ve dabbled in it, and it was fun, but I don’t know if I could handle a sub who needs me to dominate them 24/7. Not just sexually but telling them how to live their lives and permitting them to do every little thing. That sounds exhausting.

Not to mention, I like a woman with her own life and independence. They’re much more interesting. So what if one night a week I want to make her get down and devour me?

So what?

“I’m not going to think any less of you, Katie. Not for following your desires and sharing them with me. You’re allowed to be vulnerable around me. You’re not weak. You’re doing what you need to do to be happy. You work so hard to please people and to prove yourself. That’s admirable.”

I hope I don’t come across as condescending. I’ve been accused of that a time or two, and I know that Katie often thinks that about me.

Katie.

I’m the only person who calls her that. Of all the people in the world, it’s me, the fuck up whom the press can’t decide is male or female, who my own father introduces to his old buddies as “the son I always wanted.” The one my mother coddles because she still sees me as a walking minority who is going to get utterly destroyed by my peers if I show any weakness. It’s me. I’m the only one.

“It doesn’t matter how much I know that,” she says. “Things are still different. They’re different to me.”

“All right.”

She lifts her head, some of her hair falling from the clasp and landing in the water. She doesn’t care. “Let me ask you a question. Something that’s been burning in my brain whenever I go to sleep tonight. Besides, it’s your turn to be put on the spot about who you are.”

I steel myself for a conversation I expected a few weeks ago, not tonight. “Yeah? You can ask me anything.”

Kathleen slightly grimaces within my hold. Is it because this is touchy for her? Because we’ve already talked so deeply about her? Or because she’s afraid of what I might think?

“I know you’re non-binary.” Ah, there it is. At least I was prepared. “And you tell people you’re a lesbian. So… is it okay if I think of you as a woman?”

“Now, Kathleen.” I grin into the back of her head as I clench my arms around her, intentionally making her giggle a little when I blow my lips against her neck. “You can think of me however you like. As long as it’s done with respect.”

“That’s what you said about your pronouns when I asked a few years ago.”

I remember. We hadn’t seen each other for a few years after I graduated high school. College, grad school, work… then she was in my periphery, and I had become some sort of mascot in both the local queer community and the world over because of my family’s reach. There are as many people inspired by me as there are who hate me. For being queer. For being rich. Some hate me for both!

“Because that’s all I care about. I think I’m a pretty good judge of someone’s character. If they call me a woman with feminine pronouns out of insistence that I follow their script, then fuck ‘em. They’re assholes. But if they’re like you, and that’s just how you relate to me… I don’t mind. I can tell the difference.”

“Your dad calls you his son a lot.”

“Sure. It makes it easier for him. He always wanted a boy. Makes it easier, sometimes.”

“So…”

I lean back again, my hands ascending her dewy arms. “My relationship to my gender is simple, Katie, so don’t think too hard about it. I consider myself fairly privileged in that regard. I don’t mind my body. I wear a prosthetic half of the week because I like it. That’s all there is to it. And, to be frank, my girlfriends tend to like it too. If you haven’t noticed.”

She laughs. “You’re quite skilled! Way more than I am.”