Looking Back
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters
I keep think that John could have had any woman that he wanted, but instead he demanded that I should be that woman.
He was a gay man, and I was too. It was just that it did not matter to me, but it did to him. He was a professional sportsman. He is no longer competing, but he still lives off his past, so for that reason I refer to him only as John, but that is not his name. I bear him no ill will, despite everything. I will keep his secret. For me it never was a secret who I was.
It is also no secret that I loved him. I would have done anything for him. I think that I have proved that.
He knew that I cross-dressed occasionally. A lot of gay men just do it as a joke. I never regarded myself as particularly effeminate. I met John in the gym when we were both working out. I knew he was gay despite his best efforts to hide it. He is very good at hiding it, as is evident by his life since us.
I made a proposition, and he feigned disgust, but I could see the desire in his eyes. He said that we had to be “discreet” as he presented as straight. I just laughed at first, but then I learned about his playing contract, and I understood. It is not a sport that tolerates homosexuality.
We were discreet. That is easy when your relationship is casual, but we fell in love. We needed each other. He knew it as much as me. We could not be apart – it was that simple.
He suggested that I move into his new place, bought with the money paid up front by his team, but I could only leave the house dressed as a woman. I could be “his mysterious girlfriend” – that was what he called it. It did not require a lot of effort at first. I was always in the distance – driving away in a fast car. And I was not walking and talking.
But as he became successful and more well known, there were questions about his girlfriend and photos of her were sought after. He told me that I would need to be able to appear female at close quarters. Not be interviewed or anything like that, but be seen and perhaps photographed on his arm.
I was proud to be a gay man so of course, I resisted. But my love for him was stronger than my pride. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with that.
I took advice from transgender types. The gay community is not the same as the TG community, but there is crossover. I would not be the first gay man to experiment with living as a woman. It is just a question of how far you are willing to go.
Because it was important to John, I tried very hard. He knew it. He told me that I made a very pretty woman, and I suppose that I did. But shaved legs and some padding can take you only part of the way. That was when we needed to talk about hormones.
I understood a little about hormones, and I was told that even when taking them regularly and in quantity, a man dressed as a woman can still function as a man sexually. The best way to take them was by suppository where they have maximum effect and reduced liver problems. John thought that inserting them could be fun. It was what he wanted. He said that he wanted to show me off – I was looking that good.
Hormones not only helped with my appearance. My skin softened and so did my whole body. I was starting to develop a female shape, and I was not looking froward to that. But my hair looked good, and I was able to swap the wig for extensions. I realized that my face really had been androgynous all along, and that I could pass for the woman I was pretending to be.
But the effect on me in the bedroom was not what I wanted. I went flaccid. He got me Viagra and that seemed to work, but somehow it was not the same. I sort of fell into being the receiver only. Part of being a gay man is giving what you get. It is an equal partnership, or it should be. Somehow I was less of a man. I hate it when people think that a gay man is not a real man. A proud gay man feels more like a man for not being attracted to women. But now in bed, I was like a woman – just taking it.
Added to that was the fact that I had learned to walk and talk like a woman. Men don’t understand how hard this is, but I needed to learn for John. Any hint that I was other than a woman could compromise him and his career, and that was the last thing I wanted.
The thing is that you find yourself acting like a woman even without thinking. I had not become effeminate, I had become feminine.
Maybe the tears were a by-product of the hormone treatment, but he knew that I was suffering. He said that he was grateful. How could he not, when I asked him whether he would do the same for me if the roles were reversed? He had no answer, because to say yes would be a lie.
He bought me clothes and handbags, hair and beauty treatments, and he bought me jewelry. He bought me everything a woman would want, even though I wasn’t a woman. It just seemed to be salt in my wounds.
But I learned to cope by throwing myself into womanhood. I now had enough confidence to join in occasional get-togethers with the team’s “WAGs” – wives and girlfriends of the players. Many of them just looked good and were not much else. But the smart ones were people I could talk to, and I realized that since I had moved in with John, I did need to be with somebody other than him.
Even before tragedy struck, it was those friendships that made me realize that I was no longer a man like John, but more like a WAG. I was interested in supporting my man, and being somebody that he could be proud to be seen with, but I also wanted to express myself and show that I was my own person. In those things I had a few allies, who completely accepted me.
We got together sometimes with our guys, and sometimes not. Maybe it was the pool parties that were to blame, when I had to wear a bikini and that meant concealing the contents of my crotch in a very uncomfortable way. John would laugh about it, but then the pain would not seem to go even when I was hanging free down there. But it was the fever that saw me seek medical attention.
But it was too late. Atrophy can be treated, but not in my case. The fever was caused by my testicles rotting away inside my body, and the advice was that they needed to be removed. I cried more tears. A man tries not to, but what was I now?
I was very angry with John. I basically held him responsible for what had happened to me. I had become like a Barbie doll as a gift to his ego, and because he did not have the courage to tell the world about his sexual orientation, and now I was maimed because of it. But he swore to me that it changed nothing. He said that he was in love with me, not my balls. I believed him.
But you cannot downplay the effect of losing the very essence of your maleness. It is no small thing, even though the physical mass actually discarded was almost nothing. I was now a eunuch, dressed as a woman.
The only physical effect was that those female hormones that I was on ran riot and my breasts started to grow. Some of my friends asked if I was pregnant. I told them that we would be married before that, John and I. I told him about it, and he laughed.
I started to have dreams about weddings and being pregnant, and breast feeding a baby. It seemed if I had been tipped over the edge – I had been walking a narrow path between the chasms of male and female, and now I had fallen into the female one.
John told me later that it changed me in ways that were not natural. It was part of his excuse for his infidelity.
Of course, he found a young man whom he could fuck and who could fuck him the way I used to. I was not surprised, because he needed that the way I did. Nor was I surprised that he would break his promise to me. Men are like that.
I told my girlfriends and they rallied round. They all said that “all men are bastards” and it seemed to me that was right. I suddenly realized that I had been like that – seeking gratification and being ruthless in how I got it. I started to wonder if I had ever truly loved John until I started to become a woman, and that it had just been sex.
Women seem to love in a more genuine way. As a woman I was a better person.
I found myself being upset because the hardest thing about losing John would be losing all my women friends who were associated with his team. That was when somebody suggested that I should meet someone else.
I will call him Bob, because we are not using real names here. He was the assistant coach and the brains behind the team’s strategies. He was not that old, but older. He had two teenage children and he had been widowed, and apparently, he had seen me and desired me.
It seemed crazy that I would even consider somebody other than a gay man, but then it was clear to me that I was not a man anymore. We met a couple of times and I liked him a lot. He agreed that I could not stay with John if he was having a affair – he assumed with another woman. He said that he had a pool house I could move into.
It seems crazy, but our relationship blossomed from there. I thought that it would all end when I told him my secret – although I did modify it a little. I said that I was a transwoman, and yet to have bottom surgery. He told me that he was not surprised that John was with me because I was clearly female, just with a birth defect that could be corrected.
I was glad to be able to leave John, but as I said, with a promise to keep his orientation to myself. It was better for me to break it off, but without being critical. It was not that we had grown apart – it was me who had done the growing. I had become somebody else.
Bob paid for my bottom surgery. It seemed a small thing to remove something that served no function, and now I have another man to please. It was a small sacrifice in comparison to what I gave up for John.
And I know that Bob loves me, and so do his children. It is a purer love somehow, in being more traditional and less about sex. A man, his wife and his children.
Looking back, I have ended up with the life we all dream about - we women, that is.
The End
© Maryanne Peters 2024
1989
