The city didn’t feel quite real yet. Not quite what I'd spent my life dreaming of. It was all skyscrapers, dirt, and the sound of construction on every block. Everything was too tall and too loud. I’d only been here a month, but that was long enough for the novelty to fade yet not long enough to belong. The boxes in his apartment were half unpacked, the walls bare except for a mirror that leaned crooked against the wall. Work filled most of my days. Mechanical smiles, polite conversations, and anything else it took to make it through the day. All desperate attempts to stop the nights from stretching out like open wounds.
I told myself it was just loneliness that made me open Grindr again. That I just wanted to meet someone, anyone, to prove I still existed outside the mundane routine. My profile was simple: "trans masc, new to town, looking to have some fun." I watched the app's grid pulse and shift, profiles flickering in and out as if the city itself were breathing down my neck.
Disappointment, Embarrassment. Then.....Then a message appeared."You drink?"
No name. Just a black-and-white photo of a man’s hand around a glass. The kind of photo that said stern and confident without needing a face pic.
You talked. Well, if you could call it talking. Short and raunchy messages, all in a flurry, then stalled with barely anything at all, a rhythm that felt like control in and of itself. Your tone wasn’t warm, but it was deliberate, and that was enough to pull me in.
By the time I looked up, the clock had jumped almost two hours, and my boxers were drenched. I was saying yes to a drink without a second thought.
