It happened the first time Sweet and I spent a night sleeping all spooned up together in the same bed. We lay in the pitch blackness of her bedroom, basking in the afterglow of mind-blowing sex. She was the inside spoon, I was on the outside with my arms wrapped around her, kissing her shoulder. I’d been moderately distraught, as I mentioned, over my neurotic inability to flat out say, “I Love you.” I kept thinking it, kept feeling it, just couldn’t say it.
“You know so much about me now,” she said, having finally come out to me as transsexual. And not with the subtle references and allusions that had formerly led me to see Sweet as a cross-dresser, but with real words:
I used to think of myself as CD, but as my understanding, access to information and vocabulary increased I realized who I was, where my place in life was, and why I’ve felt as I have all my life. Now I place myself more in the non-op TS category.It made little difference in our relationship, beyond my initial frustration that it took her so long to trust me enough to tell me, and the evident switch from the male to female pronoun. But I was ready for it. I had a sense her genderqueerness was more extensive than she had yet shown me, so it was kind of a relief when she finally said it in words. It showed me that she realized exactly how embracing I am, and that I am truly an ally of and advocate for the transgender community.
“There must be some secret you have,” Sweet went on that night. “Is there nothing you’ve been keeping from me?”
“There is,” I told her. “But, see, if I say it now it’ll seem like a big deal. It isn’t. I mean, it’s something I tell my friends all the time, but I’m just so afraid it’ll scare you somehow. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m some obsessive fatal-attraction psycho.”
Sweet laughed, facing away from me in the dark. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“It’s just that…” I held my breath. “…I love you.”
“Oh,” Sweet replied. “Well, of course you do. I already knew that. Don’t you have any other secrets?”
“No…”
