This story features two unnamed characters, a non-binary femme (they/them) and a trans man (he/him). Content note for alcohol.
I only had one rule. I didn’t want to know any details about him.
I met him in a singles’ bar. It wasn’t advertised as such, but it was the kind of place where nine out of ten people have a handkerchief in one of their back pockets. By midnight, the tenth person will usually have caught the drift, voyeuristically surveying the crowd, deciding whether or not to whet their curious appetite.
It was the Thursday night before a long weekend. The bar was, conveniently, right around the corner from my studio. It had been a few months, and I was ready, but only for something specific, and only if it was done my way.
I sat on a stool at the end of the bar, eyeing my surroundings. I dressed the way I usually did: black tank top with a they/them pin affixed, black skinny jeans, black Docs. The only thing that changed was the color of the fabric in my back right pocket. Tonight, it was light pink.
A few people with the same bandana in their back left pocket walked up to me, eager to buy me a drink, introduced themselves by name. I declined each one. In some of their eyes, I saw thirst glisten like dry, cracked earth in desperate need of a rainy summer. In others, a cavernous ache, invisible to the untrained eye. They weren’t insincere or disrespectful or abrasive. They just longed, as I did, but we were reaching for different things.
When I was alone again, I set my sights on a man sitting a few seats down from me at the bar. His face was weathered, rugged. He appeared wholly disinterested in the dancing and the fondling unfolding behind his turned back. Most importantly of all, he had a light pink handkerchief peeking out of his back left pocket. For my purposes, he was perfect.
I approached him, platform boots and whiskey bestowing me with the confidence I needed to sit on the stool next to his. He turned toward me, nodding his head in acknowledgement of my arrival as he took a swig of beer.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m—”
“Stop talking,” I interrupted. He didn’t take offense. If anything, he looked intrigued. I continued. “I don’t want to know your name, where you live, where you work, or about your family. We can talk, but no details. Make it generic, nondescript. We both know why we’re here. I only want to know your pronouns, your age, and whether you’ve been tested recently. Does this work for you?”
He didn’t immediately respond, letting a wry smile creep across his face in place of words forming at the tip of his tongue. “Yes,” he said after a while.
“Good.” And it was. My lack of interest in the minutiae of his life wasn’t a personal slight against him. It was a protective cover for me. I needed, really needed, to experience the touch of another person, the intimacy of skin on skin. I just didn’t need to know any more than that. I couldn’t know any more than that. I didn’t want him to remind me of what I didn’t wish to remember. If I knew he shared a name, or similar interests, or a similar career as my former lover, I just couldn’t. These were my conditions.
“Is it? Good?”
“Very,” I said. “I want to empty my brain. I don’t want to feel anything but your cock pressing into me.”
He didn’t seem jolted by my talking about fucking. That was also good. We knew where we were. There wasn’t any need for hushed tones or pretense. We could let the echoes of our desire hang in the air like fruit, ripe and ready to be plucked.
He asked me if I lived nearby, if I had roommates, but made it clear he wasn’t trying to alarm or threaten me, asking the bartender to pour another round for us both. I told him I lived just a few blocks away, in a studio with thick walls. He murmured into his near-empty glass to signal his approval, coolly, calmly. I wondered if he could sense that I wasn’t usually cool or calm, that my forwardness was a part I tried to play bravely. I wondered if he was the same.
“I’m glad,” he finally replied. “And would you like it if I held your legs against your headboard while I tease your cunt with the tip of my cock? Would you like it if I told you I’m already wet thinking about how loud I want you to be tonight?”
A temperature check. Relieved to know he took what I told him at face value, just him inside me, nothing else, I nodded. I tried to speak, but my mouth suddenly went dry, words caught halfway up my throat. I worried my façade was slipping. He seemed to read my mind.
“You don’t have to say anything right now,” he continued. He ran his hand through his hair, confident, attention-grabbing. Inconspicuous as shattered glass in a silent room, he drew his hand from his hairline to his neck, down the middle of his sweater, leaving it to rest just below his belt buckle. Every few moments, his fingers flexed, just barely, but enough to see the bulge in between his legs. He was already packing.
He lifted his eyes from his lap to my face. I was sure he could see the thirst in my eyes, just as I had in the eyes of others who approached me. He glanced at my hand, then at his lap, then back to my hand again. “May I?”
Again, I nodded. He lifted my hand into his, skin softer than I expected, and placed it over his cock. Even through his jeans, I could feel he wore the kind of strap I liked to ride, silicone sturdy yet pliable to the touch. As he cupped his hand over mine, I stroked him, and he let the tiniest of groans escape his lips. That, too, was unexpected.
The sound of glasses clinking together on the counter shook us both out of our heads. I was dreaming up all the ways I’d like him to use me, this man with the unknown name, home, career. I hoped he was doing the same.
He told the bartender this would be our last round, looking to me for confirmation before requesting the check. I wondered how many intimate conversations she had heard, working behind this counter, how many fantasies and scenes negotiated over the stools of this bar. I wondered if she could tell just how badly a person pined for closeness by the look in their eyes, their clothing, their drink order.
If the electricity between our intertwined fingers could crackle, it would be the loudest sound in the room. Instead, we downed our drinks in silence. Finally, embers burning in my eyes, I stood from my stool, pulling him up afterwards.
He didn’t need to be told what was happening, but I could tell from his half-smile that he wanted to hear it.
“Please,” I begged, allowing my fingers to graze lightly over his cock again. “Take me home.”