He picked me up in a restaurant. I’d learned that men would buy me food and drinks if I sat alone at the bar with a notebook, nursing a water—that was my pose. I was seventeen.

It was the mid-1970s, and underage girls didn’t have a problem getting served; the bar staff tolerated me, and besides, I was good for business. I say “girl” because that’s how I presented and how I saw myself. I didn’t cross-dress in an overt fashion, but wearing women’s slacks and blouse, with auburn hair down my back, the way I held myself, all conveyed a clear impression.

The sad truth was that by this time the ravages of an incongruent puberty were taking hold, my voice was dropping, and a close look told men what they were getting. They often liked what they saw.

My circumstances were pretty dire. My father, fed-up with my continued insistence on presenting myself as female and his inability to remake “his son” in his own image, had ejected me from his home. I had rapidly exhausted the hospitality of friends, and I was now overnighting in warehouses, prettying myself in public washrooms, and plying strangers for meals.

I inclined toward heterosexuality despite being generally frightened of men. I’d learned that they would feed me and buy me things. There were of course expectations, which were challenging to manage at best, dangerous at worst. But it was clear where all this was going were I to continue to feed myself in this fashion. After several awkwardly-ended evenings, I gave in to the inevitable. There is always a first time.

Actually, this was my second first time.

The first first time had been with a woman, a year or so earlier. I had learned to function “as a man,” although I am now and always have been a heterosexual woman. (It’s hard to explain how this works, but when you’re a woman with a penis and raging gender dysphoria, sex is complicated.)

This, the second first time, was different. The man from the restaurant was attractive, very charming, well-spoken, maybe 20 years older than I. He bought me dinner and drinks, then we headed to his place.

There is this particular feeling you get in the pit of your stomach, when he’s holding the door of his car as you get in. Then he closes it, passes round the back as you stare ahead. There is this very long twelve seconds, before he opens his door, when you come to terms with the fact that you are about to be taken to a place you don’t know by a man you don’t know. There are expectations. You tell yourself it’ll be fine.

I follow him up stairs and wait as he unlocks the door to his flat. With his attention briefly diverted, I have a moment to feel the butterflies in my belly, a little perspiration of anxiety and fear of the unknown, and an underlying sense of anticipation. He turns and looks at me; reaches out and brushes my cheek with his fingers and a slight smile. His eyes are bright. Turning, he steps through the doorway, turns back and reaches a hand toward me. A slight hesitation and I take his hand and enter his home.

Without preamble he leads me directly to his bedroom. The directness reminds me that this is transactional. I am trying hard not to shake as he undoes the buttons of my blouse, then the clasp of my slacks. He exposes me, runs his fingers through my hair, drapes it as if to frame his view.