Stripped Down by Tristan Taormino Page A

hour.”

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    Later, I wondered what had possessed me to phone Tracy looking for a shoulder to cry on. She was my best friend but she didn’t know how to be a shoulder. Tracy wanted to fix problems—to take action—and once she had a plan, she was an unstoppable force. “It’s Tuesday,” she’d assured me, “they won’t be there.” But Tracy hadn’t remembered there was a drag king show on and that ninety percent of the city’s lesbians had bought tickets in advance. So Tori and Jacqueline were there—Jacqueline with her hand in Tori’s back pocket, her head on Tori’s shoulder. Humiliated, I went home before they saw me.
    After Tracy left I wriggled out of my dress and unhooked my bra. Then, lifting up my pillow, I found Tori’s T-shirt where I’d left it that morning, folded into a neat rectangle. I pulled it over my head as I had every night since finding the note but this time I couldn’t catch her scent—just a whiff of my own perfume, which struck me suddenly as smelling sickly sweet. I decided that in order to sleep I’d need something more of Tori, so I opened the closet. My half was lined with dresses on hangers trimmed with lace, while in Tori’s half, the few hangers she had were mostly dangling empty and the bulk of her wardrobe was on the floor with the shoes. I rummaged in her heap until I found her khaki cargo pants. Then, putting them on, I checked myself out in the mirror.
    At first I looked out of the corner of my eye, imagining it was Tori I was seeing. But finally I looked head-on and what I saw took me by surprise; I actually didn’t look bad out of a dress. As my build was smaller than Tori’s, her clothes hung differently on me, giving me a wiry look that was wolfishly sexy and compelled me to complete the outfit.
    I found one of Tori’s ball caps—a black one—and tucked
my blond hair underneath it. I fished her thumb ring out of a bowl of pennies and slipped it on. Then I opened up the bottom drawer where she kept her sex toys and dug through the harnesses and dildos. She’d taken the best of them with her, yet I managed to find a nice thick black cock and a passable harness. I took off the cargo pants and got the goodies strapped on.
    Tori and most of the other women I’d ever dated were stone proud, so it had been a while since I’d worn a cock. But I’d always liked the feel of it and even now, when I had no one to thrust it in, I was getting juicy. I pulled the pants over the silicone and admired the bulge between my legs. Then I lightly ran my fingers over that bulge—my gaze fixed on my reflection in the mirror.
    Grinding into my hand, I imagined that the cup of my fingers was Tori’s cunt, that I was fucking her and that she was loving it—moaning and squirming like a silly bitch. I undid the zipper, let the dick spring free, and then dipped a finger into my pussy to slick the head with my own wetness. Choking the rod, as if doing it hard enough would really make it shoot a load, I felt the rub of the harness working my clit and I cocked my legs wide open. In the mirror I watched my nipples poke hard against Tori’s T-shirt and my hips thrust up and up. I let out one deep moan and came simultaneously with my reflection.
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    Two nights later I was decked out in more of Tori’s clothes when the doorbell rang. Shit, I thought, I can’t answer like this. How could I explain my queer cross-dressing to any of my friends, to my mother, or—on the off chance that it was her—to Tori? I stumbled out of the jeans, wallet chain clinking
to the ground, and threw on a floral bathrobe. “Hello,” I said, opening the door, a little breathless.
    Outside was Katie, running her fingers through her short, sandy hair. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she said. “But I wasn’t sure you’d want to….”
    I was