Sunlight illuminated our bare skin, the air briney. The dog whined at the door. Their body lay heavy against mine, every limb slack, our legs splayed across the bed, bound by linen sheets and one other. Their hand swept up the skin of my arm, resting on a muscled shoulder before giving it a squeeze. They emitted a hungry, contented rumble. Their face broke into a grin.
“What?” I asked, pandering, already certain.
The dog nosed open the door, victorious, and rested her head beside mine on the bed, basting us in the smell of peanut butter.
“My boyfriend’s just so handsome. So strong.”
I smiled. Here in this room together, the duvet fallen on the floor, we were most ourselves. I traced their collarbone with my thumb and kissed their swollen lips before resting my head against their chest.
…
We sat confidently, looking beautiful and unreal, and observed our environment. The room was hazy. Cigarette smoke floated in from the back hallway, illuminated by pink neon rays that danced back and forth and up and down through the air. I wore a bikini you could ball into one fist. I leaned back into the couch’s cold pleather and crossed my legs, inhaling hungrily. The job required the performance of a stoic, unshakeable self-assuredness; subtle glances that utilized the countless mirrors, rather than overeager craning of necks; a facial expression equal parts relaxed and intimidating, one that did not betray one’s inner dialogue or insecurities. There was a complex and precarious power balance between dancers and customers, one which depended in part upon our performance and its perception, and in part upon the color of our skin, the signs of age or youth that marked our faces, the size and shape of our flesh.
I read each face and bit of body language, tallying each glance that came my way. Nowhere else did I make such prolonged eye contact with strangers. Nowhere else did I invite them to look back at me, speak to me, or approach. Here, however, eye contact was currency.
A customer walked by the couch I’d claimed and met my eyes, his smirk preceding him.
“You girls are too beautiful to look so bored.”
He looked pleased, as though he thought himself clever. The DJ’s voice crackled over the speaker and I heard my name called. I offered him an empty smile before I ascended the stairs toward the stage.
I played with angles and tempo. The right arch of one’s back created an hourglass figure; molasses slow movement and the spinning pole created an illusion of unreality. I held tightly to the belief that gender was largely artifice, more prosthetic than innate. I reminded myself of this as I got my quarterly Botox injections, as I slipped on a pair of eight inch platform heels. I admired the effect a pair of dramatic lashes and the right stroke of contour had on my face. All of it felt like a magic trick; a chimera of angles and light and sleight of hand. My body was malleable, plastic.
A man turned from his seat at the bar and stared for a moment before he approached. He sat down stageside, dollar bills stacked in front of him. He was sure I was a woman, the way my small breasts bounced, exposed and alert; the way my hips softened and my hairline framed my face. However, as he stared up at me, he squinted. I suspected there was an uncanny valley effect, my shoulders just a bit too broad, my stature a bit too tall.
“I like my women with some meat on their bones,” he declared. “You must be an athlete.”
I smiled as I floated through the air, hanging upside down from the skin behind my knee. People were quick to name me, yet I had great difficulty naming myself, nor naming the things I yearned for and feared; how they informed and sometimes began to feel inseparable from one another.
“You’re like a large, seductive beast.”
…
I watched the beautiful faggots in between sets. At two o’clock, the commercial gym on Fountain Street was like a public square. We ambled in, a mix of retirees and vain youth who worked odd hours, drunk on sleep and coffee, our skin warm from the high sun. We milled about as our eyes adjusted. We came day after day, seeking both spectacle and solitude, before returning to the grating carnivals of our jobs.
They surrounded me on the leg machines. I admired their muscles and grace, the beads of sweat that glimmered on their perfect mustaches. The way a single earring looked just right dangling against their exquisite jaws. The way their hairless, freckled delts emerged round and golden from under cutoff sleeves. They seemed so self-assured.
I’d long harbored a fantasy in which I had a body that felt both desirable and safe. One that never needed defending, nor was ever looked at with unwelcome hunger or need. I suspected that these were impossible wishes.
I wondered if I would be beautiful too.
…
A customer approached me. Sun spots speckled the skin that peeked through his thinning hair. His stomach, hard and round, reached my hip. He scanned my body with his eyes, landing on my shoes, before craning his neck upward to meet my gaze.
“You’re a tall one. I love large women.”
I laughed as he introduced himself. He wasted no time.
“I like to be spanked. I’m a worshiper. Will you hit me a bit if we go back for a few?”
I shrugged, largely indifferent to how someone preferred to spend the length of a song. He nodded, satisfied, before digressing.
After asking where I was from and how long I‘d worked here for, he regaled me with a tale of a yearly cross-country trip he took to see his favorite domme.
“To Los Angeles,” he bragged. He said her name with an air of reverence and expectation, as though I would recognize it. Hmm, he grumbled, when I shrugged and shook my head.
“There was another one I saw once, in Chicago. She was incredible, actually.”
He lowered his voice before continuing, as though he were about to tell me a secret.
“I read an interview with her recently, though. Imagine. She’s a transvestite!”
He looked surprised himself, as though receiving the information for the first time.
“A transgender, I mean. Anyways, now I get a little worried about tall girls.”
I took a moment before responding and scanned the club for other customers, choosing my words carefully.
“Was that a problem for you?” I asked. “Or are you into that?”
He grinned before reassuring me earnestly, his octave rising toward glee.
“Oh, I’m homophobic!”
I snorted in an attempt to suppress my laughter.
“So,” he continued, “you’re not, are you?”
I considered the question, unsure whether he was probing over my gender or my sexual orientation, before deciding that it was unimportant; that I owed myself safety before I owed him honesty.I grabbed my clutch from the ledge.
“No, I’m not.”
“With your name, and all, I just wasn’t sure. Why don’t you change it to Daisy or something? A nice girl’s name?”
“I like my name,” I told him, stone faced, spotting a prospect across the stage.
He shrugged.
“So, have you ever been with a girl?”
…
Our breath rose and fell synchronously, their chest buzzing against my ear as they started to speak. Their voice held both a smile and a question.
“You should let me give you a T shot one of these days.”
I suppressed a grin while my heart beat loudly in my chest. I’d been hoping that they might suggest this exact thing, taking the decision to voice my persistent curiosity out of my hands after I’d shrugged off their offer months before. I’d always learned best through experience. I often needed to feel something concretely in order to discern if it was what I wanted. I wanted to pull the oily fluid up myself and feel the needle under my skin, feel its sting as I absorbed it into my bloodstream. I wanted to properly contemplate how I felt about the changes that continued injections would bring as my cells began to respond. I wanted to try it, like I’d tried femininity and endogenous hormones all of my life. I didn’t move.
“Okay,” I replied without pause, feigning nonchalance. Inside, anticipation buzzed like bees, hitting my ribcage so hard I was sure that they would feel it through my chest.
…
The women who came to the club looked strange in their jeans and soft makeup. They looked up at us in their sneakers when we washed our hands beside one another in the bathroom. They sat stageside and shrieked, or whispered to each other just loud enough for us to hear.
I could never do this no matter how much you paid me.
Look at all the old men.
I wonder what they do in the back rooms.
It was a microcosm of the outside world, the way certain women prided themselves on their desexualized presentation and natural, minimalist makeup; the way they deemed themselves clean.
I remembered that summer when I had begun to change. I remembered the mall with my grandmother when I was ten; how I’d steered her toward Claire’s instead of the JCPenny boys’ section, where she’d bought me my first pair of big girl earrings, large silver hoops that matched her own; I remembered the turquoise eyeshadow I’d hidden in my backpack, to be applied on my walk to school, and the boldfaced lie I’d told my mother when she’d asked if I was wearing makeup later that day; I remembered the way a thick stroke of eyeliner had made me feel both invincible and at home in myself; I remembered sitting in front of my stepsister’s mirror, the air reeking of burnt hair, where she’d taught me the mascara trick-that layering two different tubes would always give you a darker, thicker lash than any number of coats from a single tube could.
I’d never cared for femininity that made itself small. Femininity that reeked of good deportment. Sometimes, I wanted those women to hate me. To see me and know that we were not the same. To think themselves better, and give me something to hate them for too.
That night as I descended from the stage, a man waved me over from across the room. A cup of chicken noodle soup, half eaten, sat in front of him, crumbs from a roll clustered at the edges of his lips. He wiped his hands on a crumpled napkin and grinned as he slid a ten dollar bill into my garter. He didn’t speak so much as purr, his voice thick with an accent I couldn’t place.
“You’re beautiful. Beautiful like a big truck!”
Every insecurity I’d ever had about my body flashed through my mind in an instant.
This place was governed and stratified by race, age, body size, and cisness, as they intertwined with beauty standards and sexual ideals. Wage-based discrimination that existed in all industries became magnified in the club in a much more overt way than most workplaces could allow, customers brazenly expressing their prejudice with both their word and their dollar. I was white and pretty, midsize and slightly older than the average. I had good teeth, so long as I smiled so you only saw the top row.
My thoughts turned quickly, searching for something with which to create a different narrative. I thought about how much I loved my broad shoulders and the ridges of my abs. The way my lats spread like wings. I thought about how much I enjoyed towering over most customers at six-foot-four. I thought about how much I loved a big, lifted truck.
“Big Truck,” I repeated, laughing. “That’s a new one. I love it.”
He smiled, and I let a beat pass.
“Take me for a dance?”
…
Framed by red light and shadow, I straddled the man, my arms around his neck. I nuzzled his ear, moaning softly. His hand continued to fumble between my legs, despite my having already pushed him away multiple times. He had crossed into the territory of blatant disregard of my boundaries and desires, a common entitlement here, likely excused in his mind through a twisted logic around money and consent; that the exchange of payment erased our right to set limits or say no. I was exhausted by the routine.
He pulled himself out of his waistband shamelessly, tucked up against his stomach, and I leaned over to hide him from onlookers instead of protesting as I often did. I slipped into my mind as he stroked himself and muttered into my chest, ascending so that it was as though I was looking down on the writhing bodies of strangers.
This is not even my body, I thought to myself, as he attempted again to push past the scant, iridescent fabric. Do with it what you want. It’s only flesh.
I repeated these lines to myself again and again, unsure of where they had come from.
Soon, this will not even be my body. I don’t want it. I’m not even here.
He moaned suddenly, and I was thrust back into myself. The dark tufts of hair which sprouted from his soft navel were webbed with gloss. For a moment, I imagined that it was mine. That it had come out of my body instead, landing on his stomach satisfactorily. The song ended and he pulled his hand away from the small of my back before tucking himself back into the waist of his track pants. He wiped his hand on the couch before reaching for his wallet.
“Thanks, beautiful.” He smiled. “I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.”
…
I changed into my street clothes and descended to my natural height. My falsies had begun to itch at the corners of my eyes and my foundation had worn, revealing red blotches that bloomed across my chin, jarring under the dressing room’s fluorescent light. I avoided eye contact and wove between tables toward the exit, dodging a night girl’s heel that extended off of the stage, my duffel bag hanging pendulously from my shoulder, liable to take a chair down.
“Goodnight, Dylan,” the doorman called. “Get home safe.”
The Walmart Supercenter was peaceful on Sunday nights. I pulled into the parking lot. The car beside me beeped, headlights flashing in acknowledgement, as a woman walked toward the light of the sliding doors. I assessed the state of my face in my rearview mirror. A self conscious anxiety descended upon me when in the interstices of my work and home life, moments where I did not exist firmly in either identity, but was instead something strange and unglamorous and in between. Though this compartmentalization of selves rested only on the walls of my workplace and the boundaries of a name, acknowledging their interconnectedness felt as though it invited danger. I worried that I was outing myself; that somehow, every other shopper would know where I’d come from and what I did.
My oversized hoodie and scuffed sneakers contrasted strangely against my dramatic lashes and earrings that dangled nearly to my shoulders, the silver plating worn and oxidized in places. Here, this dramatic femininity felt garish, the attention it might draw uninvited. I’d been looked at all day; I didn’t want to be the recipient of anything resembling erotic attention for a moment longer. I took my earrings off and placed them in the cupholder, and wet my finger with spit, attempting to rub away the smudged eyeliner that had crept beneath my eyes.
I wandered through the maze of produce displays and read over my list, the wheels of my cart squeaking in alternating pitches. I meticulously turned over bag after bag of green grapes, finding each burst and browned, beginning to rot. As I started on the reds, a deep voice suddenly shouted from across the displays, calling out my work name with an authority that made my head turn on reflex before I could think.
“Hey! Do you want the multigrain or white?”
A young towheaded boy, his arms precariously stacked with oranges, looked toward his father. I laughed under my breath with relief as I felt my cheeks redden, my heart racing in my chest.
…
I traced their eyebrow with my thumb, tucked a dark curl of hair behind the shell of their ear. Our fingers interlaced, their thumb drawing languorous figure eights on my palm. There was so much space here.
I did not think of what might happen if that viscous liquid made me feel euphoria, or some unknown feeling I’d never before considered. I did not think of what it might mean if I tried it once and realized that I wanted to do it again and again. I did not think of how I earned my livelihood, and whether I was ready to forfeit access to my workplace. I did not examine too closely whether what I was yearning for was a different experience of my body and my gender, or simply a body that felt safe. I did not challenge the flimsy notion that gender nonconformity or masculinity could save me from violence. I did not examine the possibility that a sense of safety might come from within me, rather than by way of tools that existed outside of me.
Instead, I allowed my desire to feel uncertain and amorphous. I smiled into their shoulder, my arms wrapped tightly around their waist, their body pressed into mine.
2024 EROTIC Contest Finalist: Nonfiction
Kianna Eberle lives and writes in Providence, Rhode Island. They were the recipient of the 2022 Bernice Slote Award for best work by a beginning writer, as well as a semi-finalist in the 2022 Schooner Summer Essay Contest. You can find their work in Prairie Schooner and elsewhere.