Euphoria

“I’m not attracted to male bodies,” she told me when we first talked, “but I still want to meet up.”

I didn’t buy that at first. It took me a lot of convincing – myself and her alike – to parse the meaning of her words. In part, I blamed myself. She wasn’t a native speaker and neither was I. But unlike my own, the way she expressed herself was blunt at the best of times and ambiguous at the worst.

Yet, she was genuine. Even when I gave her a faraway date, crossed country borders to and fro my home, and fell ill for a week upon my arrival, she still insisted that we go on a date.

I humoured her. My first mistake.

We had our first encounter at a neutral location, a half-fancy, half-burlesque coffee shop just off market street. The setting was to her liking, at least that’s what I gathered. Her eyes shot wide as we went in, gaze flitting from the convincing ersatz hanging on the walls to the luxuriant flowers lounging in-between them. Though I would soon come to find out her awe was misdirected towards our decor.

Every now and then, I caught her stealing glances at me – a strange shadow cast upon her face, engilded by a stranger joy. Was she taken with me? I couldn’t tell right away. My appearance was quite striking back then, I would say.

I stood almost a foot taller than her, and my hair shone with three different colours, each of them brighter than the next. I’d worn a cutesy outfit for this outing – my frilliest cardigan, a simple, pleated skirt and white, fleece-lined leggings to ward off the autumn cold.

A minute of silence in and I’d earned my first compliment, “Your makeup is very pretty.” There was a touch of surprise in her voice, as if she had expected worse of me. Hoped for it, even. Had I been any less convincing, I would’ve made her choice easy.

But I’ve always been the kind that’s hard to get.

I don’t recall every last thing we spoke about back then, but I do remember the general impressions. We bonded over our shared condition – both aliens in this country that didn’t treat either of us too well – then took pride in our respective pedigrees: genealogic, academic, romantic.

By the end of it all, she was beaming, and when I walked her off to her bus stop, we parted with a hug that warmed us both more than our tea.

Our second date happened a week later. By the end of the month, we went from seeing each other to being in a relationship. I couldn’t help crying when she’d asked me the question, robotic as it sounded, “Would you like to be exclusive?”

Little did I know there was a reason for that phrasing.

It took me a while to notice it at first, but it started with the way she complimented me. She loved how tall I was – I could reach the top shelves at the supermarket – and how I could carry everything she could not: grocery bags, water jugs, household appliances, even her that one time we went hiking and her legs gave way halfway through. My voice was pleasantly gravelly, or amusingly squeaky. I had strong shoulders. My style was a boyish kind of cute. I had a handsome profile whenever I put my hair up.

Three months in, she’d introduced me to her friends. Most of them spoke her language – I understood nothing, but knew when to smile and nod. To those who spoke plain English, I was her partner, her lover, her sweetheart if she was coy, or her roommate if she was playful. But I was never her girlfriend. Never her future wife.

We moved in together another three months later. She had far fewer things than I – I’d never seen her outside of jeans and hoodies, nor without her beloved hat – but we shared the space evenly.

It didn’t take me long to realise a flaw of hers, which to my shame, was also a quality that allured me. I was two years her senior, but the gulf between our ages stretched much further than that.

I did all the laundry, dishwashing, dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, cooking, shopping and paid all the bills not because she couldn’t, but because she didn’t know how to do any of that well. In terms of plans, I had plenty and she had few, if any. I knew what I wanted from my career, my passions, my relationships and she had yet to figure out what she wanted to do her masters in, nor whether she’d ever want to return on home soil.

It was because of our different outlooks that I retained a sort of superiority to her, which she didn’t seem to mind. Quite the contrary, she leaned into it. She loved playing the spoiled brat, and I loved to spoil her. I’d led all my life eager to please and when it came to my loved ones, I spared little expense. But all the same, I couldn’t help feeling that something was amiss within our power dynamics.

I was the provider, the protector, the rudder and the engine, and she was the princess, the maiden, the passenger on our voyage.

“I love how you plan everything out.”

“I feel so safe in your arms.”

“You are so hot when you growl.”

We cuddled every evening in front of the TV and she always rested her head on my shoulder. “It’s not comfortable otherwise.” I always hugged her when we slept, but she never returned the gesture. “You’re too big, I can barely wrap around you.”

A year in our relationship and we haven’t had sex once.

I didn’t mind it too much – the desire was there, but the obstacles outweighed it – but I knew she wanted it. She followed every steamy scene we happened upon with a long and equally steamy bath. At times, when I came back home, I’d hear a suspect buzzing coming from our bedroom that stopped as soon as I shut the door. “I was epilating,” she told me once, when I’d asked. Needless to say I stumbled upon her ‘epilator’ the following day when I was cleaning under the bed.

A couple of weeks later, she cheated on me. It was one of her friends – bicurious then, a lesbian now – whose guilt led her to confess her sin. What started as a shock soon dulled into acceptance, then a bitterness that simmers in my heart to this day.

I’d spent a lifetime honing every aspect of myself, training my voice, practising my expressions, amplifying my gestures, adjusting my gait, sculpting every last ounce of muscle and fat in my body until I and everyone else around me were content with it all.

But there was one thing that I had yet to change because I had neither the money, nor the opportunity.

“I’m sorry,” she said when I confronted her.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. Can we still date?”

“No.”

“I see. I’m sorry.”

“One last thing,” I said before she left for good.

“What?”

“Have you ever seen me as a woman?”

She blinked, then took a step back. “I’m not attracted to male bodies,” she said simply.

Then, she shut the door.