Six months into my gender transition, my voice plummeted from a sweet Sara Bareilles alto to a gritty, sultry baritone. Testosterone will do that. It relaxes and reforms the vocal cords, the way a shot of tequila can loosen up even the primmest sorority girl. My new voice was buttery. It was dark, with a growl in its belly. When I talked to women, I could see how my words crept into their ears. They weren’t just listening to me—they wanted me to keep talking. They wanted me to use my newly roughened voice to make them feel good.
I didn’t notice this strange power until I met a woman I’ll call Meaghan. She was my age—in her early 30s, slogging through her pre-med exams, and sick of dating men. We met outside a club in a cloud of other people’s cigarette smoke. Her black hair was glossy and cut into a severe shoulder-length bob that nearly grazed her shoulders. Pearls dotted her earlobes.
Her perfect eyebrows knitted together as she listed the inconsistencies and failings of the men she’d gone out with over the last year. These men didn’t text in full sentences unless they wanted to hook up; they pitched temper tantrums when Meaghan wasn’t available on-demand; they were intimidated by her smarts, which usually outshined their own.
I caught myself nodding in sympathy as she listed the ways that men were letting her down. I was used to this—it was how women related to one another. There were two teams, girls versus boys. In my years of living as a woman, I learned that there is no faster way of making friends with a straight girl than to share your romantic disappointments. It wasn’t about bashing men—we loved men, or else why keep going back for more—but about establishing which team we were on.
Meaghan wanted me on her team.
“Why bother?” she snapped. Her pointed chin seemed to quiver. “I can’t even talk to a man without it being ‘too much.’ What’s a relationship without talking?”
I nodded. “Intimacy isn’t really their thing. I’m around if you want to have coffee. I like to talk.”
Her eyes widened. She was too polite to ask about my voice, but I could tell by the way her eyes suddenly hooked on my face that she was reconsidering me. My skin was smooth, and I hadn’t grown the scanty beard many testosterone patients do.
My already crisp jawline fleshed out into a masculine square shape. With my chest binder on, in a white undershirt and denim jacket, I blurred the line between male and female. I didn’t look like a man, but I looked undeniably masculine.
I could tell that Meaghan liked it.
We exchanged numbers.
Overhead, scanty clouds skidded across the stars. It was nearly midnight, temperature dropping. The bright bubble of noise and talk that Meaghan and I stood in with the rest of the club-goers was surrounded by inky dark. I offered to walk her to her car, which was only down the block—but you couldn’t be too careful at this time of night. I was surprised that she slipped her hand under my arm, a gesture that I knew signaled attraction because I’d done the same thing.
“It was so good to talk to you,” she said. Her hug was close and an instant too long. I felt the pressure of her body through my thick, cotton binder. When she stepped back, she was blushing.
“Call me?”
The next morning, I texted to ask when she was free. That night, we had our first date—voice to voice.
It didn’t start out as a date. At first, it was just a call. Meaghan picked up where she’d left off. The man she was semi-dating wouldn’t make plans more than a week in advance. She decided to stop seeing him based mostly on this, but there were other things, too. Without people around us, in the privacy of our separate apartments, her descriptions grew saltier. Men were a letdown for her: their dicks shriveled after five minutes in bed; they didn’t eat pussy without a formal invitation; they feared commitment and broke out in hives when she said the word “intimacy.”
That’s what she wants, I thought as I listened to the litany of male failings. Intimacy. Meaghan, with her overstuffed schedule and scant free time, was lonely. She wanted to feel close to someone. Pouring her heart out was a way of scratching that itch, even with a near-stranger.
“You deserve so much better,” I said. Silence prickled through my phone. She was the one listening now—and listening intently.
“You think?” she asked. What she meant was, go on. So I did.
I told her what I knew, which was that she was beautiful and smart and she ought to have a partner who appreciated her strengths. Empathetically, I told her that it was easy to have single-serving mini relationships, which would never satisfy someone with a bigger appetite for connection. I said the comforting words that I knew (from experience) that women share with one another. I’d both given and received those types of pep talks. However, repeating these same supportive words in my new voice seemed to transform their meaning from comfort to foreplay.
Meaghan’s voice changed as we talked, too. The shrill tones of disappointment melted into a sultry purr. Her laugh softened from slightly bitter to silky-soft. I swallowed hard. Was I hearing her right?
“I wish more guys could talk like you,” she said. “I could talk to you for hours.”
“Just talk?” I ventured.
She paused. I could practically read her thoughts. She was thinking, I’m straight. I would never date a woman. But Claire isn’t a woman. They don’t sound like a woman. So maybe this is different.
But in a moment, she’d made her decision. She cleared her throat.
“What would you do if you were here with me?” she said, and just like that, we crossed the line from foreplay to phone sex.
My own voice floated lower and lower as I talked. I was stunned that Meaghan was flirting with me, a straight woman who was eager to break medical school’s glass ceiling. She knew her way around with men, knew how to get them to notice her. My tongue loosened as I imagined, then repeated the words I once wished men would say to me.
“Are you lying on your bed?” I asked. “You sound so relaxed and soft right now. If I were there I would tuck you in.”
“There’s enough room for both of us.”
“So I can slide under the blanket and lie next to you?”
“Yes, you can whisper in my ear.”
“I might like that,” I said. “Can you do something for me?”
“Of course,” she breathed.
“Put your fingers in your mouth,” I said. “I want you to suck them while I talk to you.”
Her moan vibrated through my ear. My voice was a cat’s sandpaper, licking her neck, her nipples, lower and lower as she gave in to the fantasy we were both creating. Whatever my body looked like, whoever she assumed she was attracted to—that didn’t matter, in this moment. She loved my throat, my tongue. As I talked to her, I felt her riding my lower lip toward her own climax. I gave her more of my voice, listening for the whimpering edge of her sighs as she touched herself, one hand in her mouth and one bladed between her trembling legs.
When she came, her hoarse shout almost deafened me. It was long and hot and hard, a sound wave of pleasure that engulfed us both.
