My Date with a very specia client – a crossdresser…
Monsieur told me, “I’ll be back,” and then disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar. In this suite at the Château Royal Hotel, only a faint red light glows on the ceiling, along with a vanilla-scented candle on the bedside table. I’m lying on my back on the king-size bed about four meters from the shower room. Spying on what he was up to would have been so easy from here; I’d only need to lean my torso slightly to the right, extend my neck just a bit, and I’d have the perfect view through the sliver of light. It would be so simple to watch him in secret, to study every detail of his transformation.
I can already see the scene: when he would emerge from the bathroom, I’d feign surprise, effortlessly. A subtle jump back, an audible gasp—but not too loud. Eyes wide open—though subtlety is key here too—a half-started sentence, a few words, a brief hesitation, suggesting genuine incredulity. I’d slowly turn my open mouth into a coquettish, flirtatious grin. After all, the Hetaeras are talented actresses.
The voyeur
But seeing the look he gives himself when he believes no one is watching—could there be a greater betrayal? Like reading the diary of a loved one, entering his mind without his consent… This thought chills me; I don’t have that cruelty in me. Making the heavy decision to simply wait felt like laying down my shield, exposing my Achilles’ heel, so to speak.
I press one hand over my eyes, the other over my stomach, to focus on my breathing and the scent filling the room, trying to calm myself, or maybe simply to avoid revealing that my impatience and curiosity are clashing in a bloody Tarantino-esque duel within me. I put in my earphones and listen to Une barque sur l’océan from Miroirs by Maurice Ravel; that will calm me down.
A cultured, eloquent, and courteous man
Monsieur is a movie director; his gaze is his life. He is invisible on the big screen; the images of others that he projects there are his favorite puppets. He is the queen bee of the hive he calls his set, hiding behind the alcove of his camera; on set, the Hair & Make-Up team leaves him alone. A white turtleneck in winter, a rolled-up white linen shirt in summer, navy chinos year-round. “Minimalist,” he calls it. Even small decisions take time and energy, he says. Wearing the same thing every day lets him save it all for what’s truly important. What’s important to him is the seventh art, of course.
In the first email he sends me, he sticks to the logistical aspects of our meeting. Yet, I already sense in him a cultured, eloquent, and courteous man. As our exchange progresses, I’m surprised by the extent of the overlap in our shared interests: cinema, dance, music… Everything seems very promising.
The big day finally arrives: preparations, a taxi ride, and my arrival at the hotel bar. I don’t know what he looks like, but I recognize him instantly. This man with brown hair, mid-length and slightly greying at the temples, well into his forties, sitting in a corner with an open book on his lap but gazing into the distance with a thoughtful expression, can only be him.
He offers me a glass of champagne – a Taittinger, of course. What strikes me first are his eyes—blue-green gems, joyful and full of mischief. He gets all my references, finishes my sentences, and I finish his. We jump from one topic to another, laughing a lot, and soon decide to continue this sparkling conversation upstairs. My thoughts swirl, countless images intertwining without a clear thread. He and I—we’re from the same planet.
Role swap
Something tickles my foot—a feather, I see—and my eyelids open of their own accord. He had returned without my noticing. His elegant silhouette appears backlit in the bathroom doorway; he turns off the harsh neon light, and the candle flickers beside me, then goes out. In this dark room, the roles have blurred. Monsieur has made me his cameraman; the script, however, is not in my possession.
[Clap] [Slow tracking shot from bottom to top] [Music: Hallelujah Junction, 1st movement by John Adams]
The arch of his foot in twelve-centimeter Louboutins, the small diamond patterns of fishnets on his muscular calves, his perfectly drawn knees, his athlete’s quadriceps. He shifts his weight to his other leg as my gaze reaches his crotch, like a model at the end of a catwalk. He’s wearing a long-sleeved black bodysuit. His already slim waist is accentuated by a latex corset, also black, fastened at the front with thin metal hooks. One of his long, gloved hands rests on his hip; in the other, he holds the feather toward me, like a sword or a magic wand, I can’t quite tell.
He’s neither quite Joan of Arc, nor quite Fairy Carabosse, nor quite Rothbart. Will he free me from invisible chains, condemn me to a hundred years of sleep, or perhaps turn me into a swan?
The tracking shot continues over his firm biceps, his irresistible shoulders, his pronounced collarbones, his biteable trapezius muscles, his prominent Adam’s apple, a ten-day beard, lips the color of… ripe cherries, theater curtains, Cannes Festival carpet, rocket launch button, a bouquet of thirty-six roses, the particular light of a darkroom for black-and-white film development.
And then he was a she. *
Watching me watching you
She strikes a precise pose; each movement is exact, intentional, no doubt rehearsed countless times in front of the mirror. Perhaps she’s watching herself again, even now, in the reflection of my pupils. “I’m watching you watching me,” as they say in Taxi Driver. She’s watching me watch her.
[Silence, then the sound of heels] [Zoom in on her scarlet soles, then on our feet]
Softly, my leading actress takes three steps toward the bed, lowering herself onto me. I feel her powerful, solid cock through her viscose bodysuit and the silk of my cream-colored robe. It’s the unlikely embrace of Odette and Odile. The pulse between my thighs intensifies; I burn with desire for this ravishing creature.
Her role is almost that of silent cinema; she has only one line, which she murmurs softly in my ear: “Call me by your name.” After that, she stays still; my mouth is a mere centimeter from her ear. As if to hear me better, she places the tip of her index and middle fingers on my lower lip. Never have I pronounced these three syllables with such delight: “I-sa-belle.” The tip of her nose traces down my cheekbone; her tongue entwines with mine vigorously, capturing the taste of ambrosia left in my mouth by that delicate and delectable word.
My mind races; images flash like strobe lights: the grace of charming princes in classical ballets, my erotic dreams with wigs, mustaches, and vacuum cleaners to the tune of I Want to Break Free, clips of futanari hentai, drag-queen photos by Nan Goldin and Jürgen Baldiga, my three visits to the Velvet and Rage exhibit at the Neue Nationalgalerie this summer, me applying makeup on my past boyfriends…
She gazes at me with a Mona Lisa smile; she’s read my mind, I’m exposed, unmasked. She knows, I know that she knows, and she knows that I know that she knows.
Virginia Woolf writes in A Room of One’s Own: “[I]n each of us two powers preside, one male, one female […] The normal and comfortable state of being is when the two live in harmony together, spiritually cooperating. If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and the woman also must have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties.”
Madame needs no quotation to know this better than I do; Madame is a genius artist, by day and by night.
Mona Lisa
[Narrative ellipsis] [Music: “Lady, Lady, Lady” by Giorgio Moroder]
[Red lighting, analog film negatives scroll by, showing white and black clothing and feathers strewn across the floor, an open window]
I turn onto my side, one arm under the pillow, the other wrapped around her furry chest; I close my eyes, feeling the softness of the sheets down to my navel, the cool draft on my back and left shoulder, the warmth of the underside of her upper leg on top of mine.
Now that I’ve glimpsed the seventh heaven, I hope there will be a sequal to this short film. I hope Monsieur will book another rendezvous with me… or should I dare write the script myself next time and set up a date with Madame?
~ THE END ~
* Excerpt from the song “Walk on the wild side” by Lou Reed
** Excerpt from A room of ones own by Virginia Woolf.
NB: I respect the privacy of my clients; this story is primarily a work of my imagination, inspired by various experiences, and does not constitute an accurate account of any specific date or individual.