The metal of the cage squeezes Maria’s circumcised cock head against her boxers as she walks. Her old panties were a kinder, gentler texture, but after stress eating for the past year, she no longer fits them. Now it’s boxers: sales of panties require ID which indicates female.
Maria is biologically male. Her documents say so. The Prime Minister says so. Actually, both major parties say so. It’s the one thing they can agree on, and the only bills getting passed under Labour’s new minority government are a continuing erosion of trans rights. 2030: What a time to come out as a trans woman. All Maria can do is wait until 2034, or hope Sir Keir Starmer calls a snap election in the meantime, but hope always hurts. Maria thinks it best to grit her teeth through it, continue to pay for her own hormones, continue to stay away from women’s spaces, continue to submit to the humiliation of being a man who wishes he were a woman.
She passes as well any of her older sisters, the trans woman who came out and got their documents changed before the new legislation came in. They’ve got Fs on their passports, the right numbers on their driving licences. Laws are coming in to add a marker to their IDs to make sure it’s clear they are biologically male – only identifying as a woman rather than actually being one – but no one thinks they’ll be able to implement them, because how even would they? Maria grimaces. That’s what they said about bathroom bills. While his majesty’s government was unable to handle an underfunded NHS, Great British Rail, nationalised energy, or austerity – with the threat of penis’d women using public toilets, they found a way.
Maria’s heart drops into her bladder. She is in the centre of Edinburgh, at least an hour’s walk from home. She’s dehydrated, because obviously she couldn’t risk drinking water while out, but she still somehow suddenly needs to pee. She chides herself for ever even leaving the flat. The Lex date wasn’t worth it: another trans woman just as sheepish and horrified at the prospect of existing in public as her. They could barely talk to each other at the arcade. There was a DDR machine but neither of them wanted to play in full view of other people. Maria left without so much as a hug, though she was relieved that she didn’t have to feel her cage press into her date’s.
The feeling courses through her. It’s a slight tingle that won’t be sated. It’s a fullness that won’t abate. She has to pee somewhere. There’s a shopping centre nearby. She hopes it’s one of the places that has the resources to cater for girls like her.
Maria follows the signs to the restrooms and practises her breathing exercises. She looks cute in her sundress, she thinks, and she spent ages on the full face of makeup as well, contoured to bring her hairline down. She’s spent a lot of money on contour powder and brushes, recently. She feels bad about it but it’s not like there’s much for her to do anymore in the way of hobbies.
“ID,” says the guard standing in front of the ladies’ room.
She’d been too focussed on her makeup to even realise she’d arrived. She’s not prepared. Her handbag is full of lipsticks and trash and she should have had her wallet ready to go. She keeps digging through it until her fingers touch faux leather. She pulls out her driving licence and hands it to the guard.
Blood rushes to her head, but over the pounding in her ears, she can hear footsteps coming towards her from behind. Another woman must want to use the toilet too. It’s to be expected, but Maria wishes she had taken longer, been able to let this woman go past. She turns to get a glimpse and this is clearly a real woman – they have no real visual differences except she has terror at the prospect of using a public toilet.
“Why are you using the ladies’ room?” the guard asks Maria.
They don’t have to ask this question. Really, the guards are only here to serve a single purpose, but entry for trans women is entirely at their discretion. And considering the nature of the job, power hungry creeps are the only people who really want to do it, so this line of inquiry is not an uncommon occurrence. Maria knows the right answer:
“I identify as a woman, and I am worried about being hurt in the men’s room.”
The woman behind her titters. Maria isn’t tall – from the glance she got, she’s actually pretty sure she’s smaller than the woman in the queue – so she doesn’t know what’s so funny about the idea that she could be hurt by men. But the guard finds it funny too. Maria breathes and remembers that this is all a joke she isn’t in on, this cisness and transness and transgenderism. It’s not clear why being a woman matters to her. It’s not clear why her being a woman matters to anyone else. But here she is, waiting for the guard to grope her.
He asks another question first: “Have you ever been hurt in the men’s room before?”
The woman in the queue waits in anticipation. Maria hates bystanders like that. Some of them are apologetic and try to intervene. Some of them don’t care and try to barge past, showing the bathroom guard their real female IDs. Some of them are like this woman who seems to be enjoying the show. And fortunately for this woman, it’s a good show. Maria has never been asked that before.
“I have,” she says. She is putting on her airiest, fakest girl voice to make it believable, even though when it happened she was speaking normally. “It was a year ago and I had just come out and I thought it made sense for a biological male to use the men’s room, but when I went in there, there was a stag do, all pissing and snorting coke, and they realised I wasn’t like them. They said I was a danger to girls and slammed my head against the sink.”
“You got any proof?”
Maria is shocked at the abruptness of the question – no delay in the response. She thinks it’s an entirely believable story, especially considering it did actually happen. This is almost at the point where she’s willing to just leave and try another bathroom, but the guard is still holding her ID, without which she can’t pee anywhere but home. She has to continue.
She says, “I do, but I’ve used concealer to cover it up. It’s on my forehead.”
There is a tap on her shoulder.
“Here, sir,” says the woman behind her. Maria turns and is handed a wet wipe. “I think you ought to show the proof.”
Maria turns back towards the guard and he only nods. What is there to do but what they say? She rubs away contour and foundation until part of her head looks misshapen and discoloured. There’s no mirror so she doesn’t know exactly where to rub or for how long so she takes off more than is required. She guesses when to put the wet wipe down and where to point.
“There,” she says. “It should be a faint white line now.”
The guard leans in. She can smell his Lynx body spray. She can taste his breath, how he hasn’t brushed his teeth this morning. He touches her head as if to position her for better examination, then lets her go.
“I can see it,” he says. “You’re lucky it’s there, else I would have had to report you.”
She doesn’t know what that means. Report what? To whom? How is the scar remaining anything to do with luck? She doesn’t know – she only knows what comes next.
The guard reaches down and gropes Maria through her dress. The cage inspection. They need to make she is wearing a chastity cage to ensure that no women or girls are raped in the bathroom, which she is liable to do as someone with a penis. This law was initially intended as a way to appease trans activists and gender critical feminists, though neither side seemed keen on the compromise. However, Maria has noticed these self proclaimed feminists are the ones who seem to take pleasure in this display of her humiliation. She suppresses a moan as the guard squeezes her small, estrogenated balls. He has to get her as hard as he can to make sure the cage is doing its job. For the sake of expediency, she has to try to get off on this.
You look at some of the dumbest shit you’ve ever written. Your vibrator is still running but not touching your limp little girldick, itself flopped between your legs. The window is open and the night air is sighing into your bedroom, but it’s still too hot for anything more than a tshirt. Between the heat and the fading horniness, maybe it isn’t the best time to write a new short story. You want to get it done while the iron is hot, while Starmer is still only in his first month as prime minister. You know he won’t read it, likely no one will read it, and you don’t even think it’s very sexy – but maybe it’s relevant.
Bandit will read it. Bandit is in the flat, you think. You rent a room in this three bed Glasgow tenement. Two other people live there. You are slightly in a polycule with them, but you are all more in a polycule with other people, some of whom overlap between your respective webs of partners. You lead separate lives but have all fucked, though not together – except that one time if you count cucking, perversely, as having sex.
“Bandit.” You bang on their door. “Bandit. Bandit. Bandit.”
A short FtMtF they/fae opens the door and peers up at you.
“What is it, Margerie.”
“You’re doing fuck all, right?”
Bandit looks behind them to Abel. It might be spelled Abelle. It might be a situation where he/she is in a state of gender flux and uses Abel or Abelle depending on presentation, though you aren’t entirely sure how you can use your own name in the way that other people would.
“I was doing Abel,” says Bandit.
“Oh fair sorry,” you say.
“No, I mean, are you still fucked up about the general election? Cause Abel and I, I mean – Abel, is it okay if Margerie comes in?” Bandit turns from you to ask Abel this.
“Yeah, sure,” he says to Bandit, “but I’m naked though.” He looks up at you. “I’m naked though, which is okay for me but is that okay for you?”
“Yeah,” you say. “I’m also naked.”
All three of you look at the limp, dripping girldick peeking out from underneath your tshirt.
“Right,” says Abel. “Is that okay with you, Bandit?”
Bandit looks from you to Abel.
“What the fuck do you mean? Move over.”
There is wiggling as you all spread out into Bandit’s bed. You know Polly, your other housemate, isn’t home today. You can get her perspective at the party at Sandra’s tomorrow, which you know she’s going to, but you really need to show someone this story now. You bring up the Google doc on your phone and hand it to Bandit. Abel snuggles up to them and follows it as Bandit scrolls. Neither of them need an introduction to your writing. It’s not the best writing of your friend group – your friend group being the outer boundary of all the polycules that you and your flatmates inhabit – but you are the most prolific writer of anyone you know. It just feels good to write. You take a lot of requests, which your friends and partners appreciate. Though, you wish you could have somebody read something they didn’t know they wanted, something that changes them. That’s what it’s all about to you when you read.
You think, for a second, maybe this could be that. This UNTITLED LABOUR CHASTITY STORY could be something which illuminates the anxiety you are all feeling towards this new government and which makes you get off at the same time. But Bandit hands the phone back and makes a sound that indicates that all faer thoughts can be summed up in a sound. You sigh to yourself even before they start speaking.
“It’s good,” Bandit says. “I’m not sure it’s hot though, I think it’s too focussed on world building for that. It’s definitely relevant as well.”
Abel says, “Can you send it to me? Or like, do you take constructive criticism? If you send it to me and make me a commenter then I can give you constructive criticism.”
“What did you think, first?” you say to Abel.
“I thought it was good,” he says, “but it could use some constructive criticism.”
“Like what?” You stare at the ceiling as you realise this is going to be what the conversation is. Bandit pulls at your shirt slightly and squeezes your shoulder muscles in that affectionate way that fae does. You realise you’re upset because you’ve noticed them responding to you being upset. Imagine being so disconnected from your own emotions that you can only read them through others reacting to them. That could make a good character. You don’t have a setting though. Abel still hasn’t said anything so you reiterate, “Do you have any constructive criticism now? I still have the tab open on my computer.”
“Oh, yeah, so, it’s less of a comment and more of a question, but why are they wearing chastity cages all the time? Couldn’t they just put them on whenever they needed to use the toilet?”
You think about that. You hadn’t considered it, but then you realise you hadn’t considered it because it makes no sense.
You say, “Where would they put the cages on if they’re not able to use a bathroom without them?”
“Well,” Abel replies, “they could quickly put them on in a forest.”
Bandit bursts out laughing at this. Their touch turns from their slightly disquieting attempt at comfort to their genuinely comforting happy stimming. You feel their nails as they grab you, their voice as they pull themself against you.
They shout, “What forest? Also, do you think in this world you wouldn’t immediately get labelled as a sex offender for putting a chastity cage on in a forest? That would probably happen now.”
Abel replies, “Well what about an alley then.”
You say, “Abel, that's the same problem. Maria would get caught.”
“No,” Abel says, indignant, “it’s a different problem. There are lots of alleys in Edinburgh.”
Bandit turns over and punches him. Abel moans. You laugh at that. You never really got the casual punching thing but Bandit and their friends/partners/Abel seem to like it. Fae rolls back over and embraces you as much as they can bear in the heat.
“What are you feeling?” Bandit asks you.
“I don’t know,” you say. “I wish the story were a bit better. Like, if it were genuinely hot to some people but also funny enough to everyone that it entered transfemme-popular consciousness. I just find the idea of being mandated to use a chastity cage in order to use a women’s toilet really hot, but I also think there’s something to it.”
“You should send it to Daisy,” says Bandit.
“Because Daisy is a better writer than me?”
“Because she will read it and then will want to talk to you about it at the party tomorrow.” Bandit sighs into your chest. You get the feeling you’re a lot to put up with. “You’re not a worse writer,” they continue. “You just do different types of stories. You write way more than she does.”
“Yeah but people talk about her novel on Twitter.”
Bandit pulls faeself up to you and kisses your cheek.
Fae says, “You know that isn’t anything. You know she doesn’t think that’s anything. It’s not like it’s made any money.”
You smile at that. Sometimes there is vague solace knowing that it’s going badly for all of you.
Sandra’s flat is small and cold. You don’t know how it got so cold in one day, but it rained so heavily on the way to the party that you’ve had to hang your jacket up above the bath and towel your hair off before joining the rest of the partygoers. You also promptly left the rest of the partygoers to spend time in the kitchen. There is a board game happening in the living room which you wish to avoid. It’s supposed to be funny. You can’t stand things that are supposed to be funny.
You open the fridge and find two half-completed four packs of Red Stripe. Something about this upsets you, so you combine them into one full four pack and throw the remaining packaging into the recycling. You want to drink a beer but you don’t want to undo your hard work. There’s more on the table in the main room but you don’t want to go back there again without a beer. It’s difficult.
“Y’alright?” asks Daisy, suddenly standing in the doorway. She must have just arrived because she wasn’t in the games room when you got here.
“I need a beer,” you say.
“Probably some in the living room.”
You can’t stop yourself from sighing as she says that. She notices whatever expression is on your face because she raises a finger and steps out of the kitchen. You stand and stare into the doorway for a minute where she was. She’s very pretty in the way that trans women find other trans women pretty. Her khaki trousers and suspenders betray a huge cock that you have to not stare at every time she first appears in your vision. There is a hanky in her back pocket indicating that she’s an S&M top as well as some extra, slightly more inscrutable kink/colour pairs. You left your black hanky in the back right pocket of your shorts at home. Not that it matters – she already said you aren’t that kind of friend.
“Here,” she says, returning with a can of Red Stripe for each of you. After your respective first sips, she asks, “How’s it going?”
“Good. I mean, you know, bad, but good.”
She laughs and then doesn’t say anything. You find it basically impossible to talk to Daisy, even though you think she is funny and smart and insightful and kind and all of the things that make the idea of her stepping on your face a romantic prospect. You wish you knew how to talk to her. Other people seem to be able to – people with whom you yourself are able to hold a conversation – but with Daisy it’s like you’re trying to start the car in fifth. You don’t know why you learned how to drive. You’re pretty sure you’ll never earn enough to have a car, even if you wanted one.
“Did you get the message I sent you?” you ask. She keeps her Discord on offline at all times so you never know if she’s seen anything unless she responds. She never uses reacts either. It makes you feel awkward just fumbling into atemporal online conversation with her, never knowing how you’re doing with no discernible feedback from her.
“Oh I read your story, yeah.” She raises her finger again and walks into the hall. When she comes back, she is holding up a notebook. “Did you want some of my thoughts?”
You say, “Yeah, I mean, yeah. That would be cool, if you have thoughts. I didn’t think there was enough there for there to be thoughts.”
“No, no, there’s a lot going on, even across just a couple thousand words. Your stories are always so dense so it’s really fun to talk about.” She flips her notebook until she finds what she’s looking for, and then looks up at you with a smirk before looking down again. You feel squidgy inside. You know she knows she makes you feel like that. She continues, “I liked the ‘kinder, gentler texture’ line.”
“Thanks,” you say. “I was trying to – I mean, I guess you get it considering you brought it up.”
“Yeah. It was funny, and a bit sad.”
“I guess that’s how I feel about Labour winning now, without even really getting more votes than in 2017.”
Daisy laughs and rolls her eyes. She drinks more Red Stripe as you drink yours. Nothing is said for about a minute.
Then Daisy rolls her eyes again, which you only just realise you’ve been staring into, and continues, “I like your portrayal of performing traumatisation – how there’s an expected way to respond to being hate-crimed. And in the story the demand for proof is something that a man is doing to the main character, a woman, while another woman watches, which speaks to how TERF complicity in transphobia ultimately harms all women.”
You hadn’t intended to speak to how TERF complicity in transphobia ultimately harms all women. You had only thought that it would be easier to write to have a cis woman there for contrast. She was another doll you could move around in the story. Anything insightful to do with her lack of action was coincidence, but you’ll take it. That’s what’s nice about these conversations, you suppose: now that you’ve seen it, you can write it in.
“I figure all the stag do stuff comes from experience,” Daisy says. “It reads like it comes from experience.”
“Yeah,” you say, trying to keep focus on the story rather than your own life. “I mean, you’ve probably noticed the scar.”
Daisy nods. “I thought it would be dumb to ask about cause if there’s a funny answer then you’d bring it up. But I’ve noticed that bathroom assault scenario in a lot of the stuff you’ve written. I do that too, for what it’s worth. Everything I write has something about someone being sexually assaulted in a safe place by someone they trust. I try to justify it as like, you know, sexual assault is pretty common and stuff, but really I think it’s a bad habit. I want to remove myself as much as possible from my writing.”
“I didn’t know you had written more than one story.”
You wait until Daisy laughs to grin. It’s good that joke landed or else you would have just seemed unhinged.
“I’ve got a few works in progress,” she says. “Have you read any of the extracts I’ve been sending around?”
“No. I think Polly’s talked about them but I haven’t seen them.”
“I’ll send them to you if you want, but anyway, we were talking about your writing.” Daisy raises a finger again and looks back through her notebook. “I think the idea of needing to get off on your own abuse is really compelling from an erotic angle also. I’m really excited to see where it goes. That’s all the broad strokes stuff.” She shuts the notebook. “I also liked the DDR mention. Have you been playing it more since our little arcade trip?”
Your face scrunches into a smile at which Daisy lets out a giggle. “Yeah,” you say, “I’ve been doing a bit better now. I think I prefer using the rail.”
“Nice! We should go again soon. You’ve gotta show me your new skills,” Daisy says with a smirk.
“That would be nice.” You feel the air of the party bleed into the kitchen. Polly passes by, stripping off her jacket. Daisy is going to want to talk to better friends than you and this moment will end. You still have something to ask:
“Daisy?”
“Mhm?”
“Is it hot?”
She looks at the ceiling and then back at you. It’s clear that she has no qualms about what she’s about to say, she just wants to find the right words to convey exactly what she means. You could probably learn something from that. You realise you won’t.
“No. Not to me, at least. I think Maria wouldn’t exist if she weren’t in chastity, which diminishes the eroticism for anyone who isn’t already into chastity. It’s too preoccupied with the present state of politics to be viscerally sexy, and it’s too short to show the characters grappling with political change. Which is something I would say and is why I write things which are so long, but it’s not clear to me what the conflict is and what the fantasy is – those are the two parts to me that make up erotic fiction. It’s kind of funny and kind of sad in a way that works as a story, but you didn’t get me off.”
That last remark would be pointed from anyone other than Daisy. You know she doesn’t even think about you as a potential prospect, even if you want to be. What she says makes sense to you, even if a voice in your head tells you that she’s being nice by pretending it’s good at all. There’s a tightness in your body that you wish would go away. You aren’t offended and you don’t have the right to be upset since you asked for feedback and she gave you good, thoughtful feedback. You wish you could convince her you had something sexually unique going on. You wish you could ask, “How do I write a story that will make you like me like I like you.”
Instead, you say, “D’you have any advice on making it hot?”
She says, “I think tone is a big deal, like, really try to focus on Maria’s feelings rather than your dystopian world-building – which is cool I think, again, in a sad and funny way. But also just figure out the conflict and the fantasy. The story takes place after Maria has already lost most of her agency, the fight to be a real woman. The conflict could be that she needs to get off, which I think is really compelling, or it could be something else, but I think for that you just haven’t written far enough yet. As for the fantasy…”
Daisy stares at the ceiling again. You give yourself a second to stare at her small breasts, freely pointing straight out under her sheer white shirt. You look at her pits and think about how good they must smell, slightly damp with sweat from her walk here. She walks everywhere around the city in these platform docs, which do not work at all with the rest of her 70s office worker aesthetic but they make you want her to step on you so badly. You’ve cried over it twice, once after you got back home from a party where she accidentally stepped on your hand while you were sprawled across the floor. It was the closest you’ve come to something exciting. You have to not be weird about her to your partners whom you remind yourself you love and with whom you get to have amazing, fulfilling sex. You have to restrain yourself while writing so that it’s not all about her. She stares back at you and you blush.
“I guess the fantasy with these kinds of stories is this reassurance that you can actually bargain with people – that your oppression isn’t arbitrary. Maria can wear a cage and get hard in it to prove that she’s allowed to use a toilet, which is almost nice, right? She gets to make decisions about what she wants and what she’s willing to do for it. In real life, if someone thinks you’re a tranny they might beat you up, regardless of what you look like, sound like, or which bathroom you use. Trans hatred doesn’t follow any even self-consistent logic, so there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Neither does romance, you suppose.
She continues, “You can either play into that or subvert it, whichever feels sexier. I tend to aim for whatever hurts the most to write. I might be way off base though.”
“That sounds right, honestly,” you say, suddenly wanting a way out of this conversation. “I’ll give it a think. We should get back to the party though.”
Before Maria can get erect, the guard quickly yanks down on the cage. Her half hard cock spring outward, revealing its presence beneath her skirt. Ultimately, a chastity cage isn’t that hard to escape from. A combination of online trolling and sexless Labour MPs meant that it was taken as fact that they would be effective. But anyone who knows anything about chastity knows that they just come off unless you’re erect already. This guard evidently does.
The woman laughs and the guard sneers. Maria is frozen. She would need lube to put her penis back in, and she would need to go to a bathroom. But she’s no longer allowed to access the ladies. All she’s able to do is stand silently, feeling the cage awkwardly tug at her balls. She doesn’t know what happens now.
“Looks like you’ve got a faulty cage,” the guard says.
Maria is silent. The guard has her ID so it’s not like she can run away. She wishes she could say something here. She wishes there were anything to say.
“I have to report this.”
Maria says, below the threshold of hearing, “What?”
The guard takes out a tablet and starts to tap. Maria doesn’t know what reporting this entails. She’s never heard of this being done.
She says, “What are you reporting?”
“Well it’s an unusual situation,” the guard says. “Most people put on their cages correctly, but yours came right off.”
That’s not true, Maria thinks, but she can’t say that. She instead says, “I’m sorry. I might have shrunk with HRT and need a new one. Can I go and put it back on and try to make it more secure?”
The guard asks, “Which bathroom?”
“I can use the men’s, it’s okay, I just need my ID back and I’ll get it sorted.”
“Oh.” The guard smiles something awful. “You can use the men’s now?”
The woman laughs behind Maria and she realises she’s misstepped. If there ever was something correct to say, the time for it has passed. All she can do now is beg and pray.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” the guard says, then looking to the woman behind adds, “Apologies miss, this may take a minute.”
“Oh, take your time dear,” she says. “This is why you’re here.”
The guard turns back to Maria and turns the tablet around.
“Can you sign here, sir?”
Maria almost does, and then she stops. What happens if she signs this? What happens if she doesn’t? She needs her ID back, but surely the guard has no right to do this.
She asks, “Why do you need me to sign?”
“It expedites the process for you to acknowledge you have committed an infraction,” the guard says in a rehearsed monotone. Maria gets the feeling this has happened before.
“What happens then?” she asks.
“Oh just hurry up,” says the woman in the queue, whose need to use the restroom has overcome whatever enjoyment she has been getting out of this situation. “Can I go?” she asks the guard, flashing her ID.
“One second, miss,” the guard says, then turning to Maria: “You can either sign this now or I can call the police and ask them to sort it out.”
“But what does signing it mean for me?” Maria is almost on the verge of tears now.
“If you sign it now, they might not need to inform your doctor.”
Maria staggers. “I need to–” she says, “I need to sit. I’m sorry.” She finds a wall and slides against it until the guard and the woman are staring down at her. “I’m sorry,” she says, again.
The woman shrugs and tries to walk into the toilets, but the guard plants a hand firmly on her chest. She looks like Maria looked the first time she was stopped: a combination of indignation and fear.
“ID,” the guard says, leaving Maria to wallow for the time being.
The woman hands him her ID and waits to pass, but the guard doesn’t move. Instead, he reaches down and gropes her between the legs.
She yelps, but doesn’t run. She doesn’t form any words through her tight lips. She doesn’t try to stop him.
The guard says, “Sorry miss, you never know anymore. Some of these men have managed to get female ID,” and lets her go.
As she gathers herself, she shoots a glare at Maria, as if it’s her fault that all of this has happened. As if all the oppression that men perpetrate is Maria’s fault, as if trans women make it necessary for cis women to give up their safety. They’re buying a future where they know they’ll be groped and they know who will grope them. They know they’ll face worse access to medicine and more demeaning questionnaires about who they are and what they’ve been through. They are taking on the burden of proof for things they used to just be able to say and be believed, all because they can’t bear that privilege being extended to the likes of Maria.
And then she paces into the restroom and out of sight. All that remains is Maria and the guard. He holds out the tablet.
“Will my hormones get taken away if I sign?” Maria asks.
“That’s between the police and your doctor.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“I don’t make the rules.”
But Maria knows he does. Everything is fake. Everything is a construct. Everything is about whichever behaviour feels easiest in the moment. And right now, nothing feels easy.
The rain whips against your bedroom window. You hear the wind create some kind of screaming sound elsewhere in the house. It’s two in the morning and it’s going to be light soon and you have an eight o’clock shift at the café. You don’t know how to finish the story, despite Daisy’s suggestions. You watched her make out with Polly for half the party, even while you made out with Artemis. Judging by Polly not being back yet, you know they probably went to Daisy’s together. Bandit and Abelle stayed the night with Sandra, who has this super king size bed. She calls herself the middle spoon.
You get up and begin to pace your empty house in the dark.
Maybe Maria could suck the guard's dick? That seems like the logical climax but you’ve backed yourself into a corner with world-building and tone. It’s too realistic for there to be sex now. The whole thing is so thoroughly sexless you don’t even see why you tried to make it erotic. The groping is an expression of power more than anything else. It’s just sad, and a little funny.
Maybe you could extend the start and ending? It could be a dystopian novella focussed on a Kafka-esque police state oriented around the fear of trans women. You haven’t read much Kafka. You read the Metamorphosis. All you had to say about it was “mood.” You know you read more than Daisy but it seems like you get less out of it than she does. Whenever you talk about a book you’ve both read, she outpaces you in discussion and you’re left listening to her lecture.
You love it. You could do it forever. Your ideal date would be reading Sissy Bitches together and then letting her analyse each story for you. It would be so much more than just reading it by yourself, thinking about it by yourself. It was the first thing you read after you came out and it’s what made you start writing – but still, you feel it’s not complete without her.
Maybe you could give up. You can stop writing this and focus on something better. It’s all practice. It’s all for fun. This story won’t make Daisy like you and won’t get anyone off. It veers too far from chastity to even really be for the sorts of people who find that hot outright. You brush your teeth in the dark and splash your face with warm water. Your shirt is wet now.
Your bed is cold when you get into it. Scenes play out in your head that you can’t put into writing. It makes so much more sense when you can see Maria, but you can’t. It feels like there’s something else, just beyond the veil of what you yourself can experience. All you have to do to get there is put the right words in the right order. You’ll try again tomorrow.