Sex in C Major
Chapter 93

"I get that," Yannis said. "You feel like you have something to prove. Like you can't deviate from what men do, even when other men do that, because if you do it, it means you're not really a man. They're allowed to like girly things. Because they have Y chromosomes and have had balls since before they were born. But if you do, if you like pink or flowers or celebrity gossip magazines, it means you're not a man at all, and you never will be."

"Yes," Stefan breathed.

"You know what else real men do?"

"What?"

"Fuck."

The curse was surprising, coming from Yannis, and Stefan blinked.

"Real men want to fuck. All the time. Don't they? They got dicks and they want to stick them in things. They think about sex every six seconds, it's all they talk about-right?"

Stefan frowned.

"I don't."

"I"

"And I used to think, I must be a woman, then. I must be wrong. Because women don't want sex all the time, and men do, and I don't want sex any of the time. So I must be a woman. I can't be a real man, I can't expect people to call me a man, I can't expect to be allowed to transition, if I don't like sex."

It scraped along Stefan's ears, too familiar and too painful.

"But then, how would I know if I liked sex? Maybe if I transitioned, and I had a body that felt and looked just like all the other men, then I would get into it. Maybe I just wasn't interested in sex because my body was wrong, and when it was right, it would all click and I would want to stick my new dick in anything that moved, just like real men."

"But it didn't," Stefan whispered.

"Nope."

"Did-did you "

"I held onto that hope right through my transition. I thought, when I have sex with Darian and like it, I'll fall in love properly, I'll feel what he does, and it will all be better. I thought, when I don't have breasts anymore, when I'm not soft in all the wrong places, when he can suck my dick and jack me off-then, then, it'll work. I'll want sex. I'll be in love. The missing pieces will be there. It'll work again."

"And it didn't," Stefan whispered.

Yannis shook his head.

"What did you do?"

"Cried. Swore. Trashed the kitchen. I'd run away from home, I'd received death threats, I'd got my mother beaten, I put my boyfriend at risk-and after all of it, all the pain and loss and suffering, it didn't work. We had sex ten weeks after I'd recovered from the phalloplasty, and I was just as cold as ever. My dick is three years old, I've been on hormones for eight years, and I still don't care about sex. I still hate oral. I'm still not in love."

Stefan bit his lip so hard that it hurt.

"Fact is, Stefan, what real men do is bullshit."

Stefan blinked.

"What?"

"Real men want sex and fall in love. I don't. But until I dropped my trousers and told you about my scar, you didn't have any idea I wasn't born with all the same gear that Darian was. Until that minute, you would have said I was a real man."

"Well...yeah, but..."

"I am."

"But I'm not. I mean, look at me, I'm-"

"Exactly where I was at sixteen. Hell, if you're on hormones, you're where I was at twenty-one. At your age. And now I'm here."

Stefan felt the tears beginning to burn at the back of his eyes again.

"I know it's hard to really think of yourself as counting, as being real, when you're starting out-but you are. If I called you her and she, would it upset you?"

"Yes," Stefan croaked.

"Then you're no woman. And even if you were, plenty of women would run a mile before letting Daz near their boobs and calling him Sir."

"I just—I feel like like I can't really want to transition if if I'm happy when he's...doing things to me."

"That's not you, that's your body."

"What?"

"There's nothing strange about your body. Wasn't anything strange about mine. Being trans doesn't mean it doesn't work, and if you have sensitive tits and somebody sucks on them, your body is going to love it whether you're mentally okay with having boobs or not."

Stefan blinked, and a tear spilled over.

"I have no interest in sex," Yannis said gently, "but Daz knew how to make me come. I don't masturbate, I've never had the urge to sleep with people, I've never met anyone I've wanted to sleep with but do the right things in the right places, I can come just as much as you can."

"So you're saying it doesn't matter? That-that what I like doesn't matter?"

"I'm saying, don't let what you like and don't like be dictated by whether you're allowed to like it. You can like whatever the hell you want. It doesn't mean you're not a man, or you can't transition."

"Did you like anything...feminine?" Stefan blurted out, then coloured. "Sorry. Sorry, forget I-"

"Yes."

Stefan blinked.