I Moved to New York City to Get D*cked Down, but I Got So Much More
I found love, acceptance, community, and men who weren’t afraid to kiss me in public.
Original illustration by Clover Ajamie
I’d been living on the coast of Maine for five years, enjoying quaint, bucolic seasons. I picked apples in autumn, had snowball fights in winter, admired daffodils in spring, and skinny-dipped on hot summer days. It was a fairytale. But you know what doesn’t happen in fairy tales? Fucking. I mean, when was the last time you read about Snow White’s hookup with Grumpy? Or Cinderella’s ménages à trois with Prince Charming and Rumpelstiltskin? This is the trade-off of living in a fairytale land.
Rural areas are notoriously more queerphobic than urban areas. While I was grateful to live in a small, politically progressive community with its own little Pride every summer, there were very few men around to date or shtup. And most of the men in the area who were interested in me were ashamed of that attraction. They hid behind blank profiles on Grindr or begged me to keep their secret—that they desired me, a trans woman.
I was getting tired of being someone’s dirty little secret. Maybe I would’ve been more amenable to clandestine play if the men had been hotter. But most of them were crusty lobstermen whose gruff, “good ol’ boy” tendencies turned me off. I wasn’t about to spend a weekend fishing and dirt biking. Their dating-app-contemporaries included chain-smoking line cooks who looked like they’d been on the wrong side of the needle for too long and frat bros from UMaine who wore gold chains and only wanted vanilla blowjobs.
I yearned for a relationship. And I yearned for great sex. But what Northern New England boasts in nature, it lacks in fucking. So, in the winter of my 26th year, I packed up my belongings and, with big-city dreams of sex, transplanted to Brooklyn.
I’d joined FetLife about a year prior and had long admired all of the kinky events advertised in the city. It was my first week in New York, and my little country mouse ass was still too freaked out to go to the bodega around the corner without having a panic attack. Could I really attend one of those seedy events if I could barely muster the chutzpah to buy groceries? To my surprise, I realized I could. Perhaps it was a testament to how long I’d been deprived of kinky fun. Or perhaps I simply wanted to pop my sex party cherry.
Finding your first sex party is like trying to find the perfect hookup: chill and not too big but not too small. After hours upon hours poring over the events page on FetLife, I finally found the boyfriend dick of all events: kinky game night. Not too big, not too small, very chill, and very queer. At least, that’s the impression I got from the description and the number of RSVPs.
So I pulled on a thong, a pair of crotchless lace stockings, and a red dress. I even put on my big gold hoops (the bigger the hoops, the bigger the ho). Then I hopped on the subway, nervously fidgeting the whole way there. I knocked at the apartment door, and someone with a clipboard checked my username against their list. I handed over my bag for safekeeping and sheepishly entered the dimly lit space.
It wasn’t a large apartment—two lofts with beds and a bed in the living room. A blue light cast the space in a sultry glow. People were laughing, drinking, and talking over the booming music. It felt like…well…any old party. Except some of the femmes were dressed scantily or were wearing bondage gear. I found the host in the kitchen, and she immediately introduced herself. She offered me a drink, and I downed the liquid courage in a couple of gulps. My anxiety waned a little. I began to mingle. And that’s when I knew that I’d made the right choice.
I’d found a community of like-minded perverts. We were all enamored with sex. The word fanatic misses the point because it doesn’t conjure images of hypersexuals humping anything that moves. Sure, we all possessed fetishes that common society frowns upon, like being choked, tied up, and gangbanged. But the erotic fascinated us as much as it aroused us. It was poetry made flesh. We were practitioners and scholars.
Would I have felt less anxious if I’d known what would happen at that first sex party? That I’d make friends who’d support me through some of my most challenging periods? That I’d play with a man who would soon become my boyfriend? There’s this cheesy line from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. He writes, “...I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” There’s no other way to describe Clark’s and my union.
My last boyfriend had been kinky. In fact, he’d introduced me to the joys of entering sub space, the ecstasy of a good spanking. But we’d ended things because I realized I was polyamorous, and he was assuredly not. To deny that part of myself and pretend that I was okay with monogamy felt like setting myself up for cheating and hurting the man I loved. But it was a terrifying decision nonetheless. There are fewer practicing non-monogamous people than there are practicing monogamous people. And since I’d already been dealt a truncated dating/hookup pool due to my transness, I was further limiting my dating pool by “coming out” as non-monogamous.
Clark assured me of his polyamorous nature when we first met at that party. We even joked about how so many issues in movies or shows could be solved if the characters just tossed away monogamy. Something fundamental within me now felt aligned like it never had. Still, my insecurities were ever-present.
Clark and I fell in love. And we did so through our love of sex parties.
One night, the music was pounding in the rainbow lights of the party. I walked into the kitchen without a stitch on me besides my stockings. I relished the men’s eyes drifting to my round tits. I used my nose to follow the earthy skunk musk of marijuana to its source: a joint in Clark’s fingers. I stole a kiss, as well as the joint—breathing into my lungs his hot breath and then hot, intoxicating smoke. He grabbed one of my fat ass cheeks and jiggled it, inciting a fit of giggling from me. I kissed him on the cheek. He beamed.
By this time, I was on a first-name basis with many of the recurring partygoers. “Hey, Lexi!” I called. “Can I get one of your special drinks?” I quickly imbibed the fruity cocktail. Then, it was time for dessert: the ski slopes. I bent over a plate in the kitchen and snorted, through a rolled dollar bill, a white line of cocaine followed by a white line of ketamine. My nostril went numb, and gunk formed in my throat, which I swallowed down—it tasted like the chalky pills the doctors had prescribed me.
I played wingman for Clark and connected him with a cute girl sporting pink braids across the room. I was beginning to experience compersion, that joy of seeing one’s partner experiencing joy.
A new face entered through the front door: a man, probably mid-30s, with dark scruff. If only the old me could’ve seen me now: walking to this skittish-looking noob with the grace of a seasoned ambassador. I welcomed him. “We don’t bite—unless you like that,” I added with a wink. He gave a sheepish, toothy grin, clearly excited to speak with a topless gal so soon into his kinky forays.
By this time, midnight had come and gone. The party would no doubt be winding down soon. But as John, the newcomer, and I exchanged pleasantries, blissful moans began leaking from the loft overhead. I saw Clark, across the room, grab Pink Braids by the hand and lead her up the steep staircase.
I wiggled my eyebrows at John. “Wanna check it out?” I asked, nodding up to the loft.
He grinned. “Uh…sure?”
We climbed the staircase and found, in the dim alcove of the loft, a tangle of human bodies writhing on a king-sized mattress. Several people stood by, watching with voyeuristic glee.
I watched for a second, but it was too tantalizing for me to merely spectate. I dove in, kissing Clark and relishing the sensation of his facial hair on my cheeks. There were perhaps seven or eight of us; it was difficult to count—some left, others joined. The body heat was like a humid cloud. We glistened. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was my lips on the insides of a woman’s dark brown thighs—my kisses wetting the pillowy flesh. I’m not attracted to women, but the hive-mind of our bacchanalia had converged on this young woman. And then we, moved by our own kind of Holy Spirit, swarmed with goodwill to help her reach heaven. We converged. We were a community, contributing all of our focus to the pleasure of another human being. Clark was kissing her other thigh, tending his way to her soaking wet pussy.
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