It was late September in New York, a wonderful moment between summer and fall when the nights are just right–neither hot and humid nor cold and blustery–when Manhattan is swollen with visitors and natives are home from their summer houses. The kids are back in school. Broadway and museum shows are opening. Art galleries are showing their best. The Yankees are heading for the Series, and the Mets aren’t.
The United Nations General Assembly was in full swing; the city throbbed with motorcades snarling avenues, interpreters muttering into phones, knots of security men with earpieces at every hotel entrance. Half the world seemed to have arrived at once, yet here on the East Side, I had carved out a quiet corner, Yamibana.
From the sidewalk, it was nothing special, a plain wooden door between a florist and a tailor shop. Just inside, a long genkan where diners placed their shoes in small cubby holes and put on slippers. Beyond the mizuhiki print noren, shadows did most of the work. Dark cedar booths, pressed white linen, a few low lamps that made everyone more handsome and maybe more intriguing than they deserved.
No loud voices. Nothing and no one is showy. Mostly men. Heads huddled, voices low.
Kenji, the owner, greeted me with a nod, no fuss. He knew better. I’d been coming to Yamibana for years, always to the same booth in the back, and Kenji understood the currency of discretion. I’ve met many sources there, people who share information they shouldn’t, just as long as no names are attached. I wouldn’t be meeting a source this time, at least not the usual sort of source.
Kenji led me to my table without a word, already sending for the junmai daiginjo sake I favored.
I poured myself a cup and let the anticipation build. My hands weren’t entirely steady, though I told myself it was the draft slipping in from the vestibule. The truth, of course, was that I was waiting for her.
And then Diana walked in.
Tall. Impossible not to notice. She had presence, a quality rare even in New York, where beauty is common currency. Long straight blonde hair, a black dress that clung to her lithe, perfect body, a single strand of pearls at her pale throat, a gold bracelet flashing at her wrist. She glided through the room like she owned it.
Every head turned. Even Kenji paused mid-gesture.
She slid in next to me, not across, her hip brushing mine. Her perfume arrived first, floral and expensive, and then her hand, resting lightly on the table, close enough to touch.
“You didn’t tell me this place was hidden,” she said, her vowels carrying the trace of Moscow.
“That’s the point,” I said. “The East Side is full of restaurants for diplomats and businessmen to be seen in. This one’s for those who prefer not to be.”
“You’re full of secrets, James.”
“I’ve been a reporter for forty years. Secrets are the trade. Keeping them, exposing them, knowing which is more useful.”
“And now?”
“Right now, I trade in people.”
Her laugh was low, husky, meant for me alone. I felt Kenji’s eyes flicker over us as he set down the first small dish, but then he vanished into the shadows, leaving us to ourselves.
We ate slowly, each course on the short omakase menu arriving precisely like clockwork. Toro sashimi, grilled miso cod, wagyu with yuzu salt. Each dish was a pause, a chance to brush against each other.
I reached up once and touched the pearls at her throat. “Classic,” I said. “They belonged to someone before you?”
“My grandmother,” she said. “She would not approve of tonight.”
“Then we’ll keep her in the dark. Grandmothers and diplomats–better off not knowing everything.”
Her smile curved. “And you, James? Who would not approve of you here, with me?”
“Half the city,” I said. “And all the people who used to think of me as respectable.”
“Respectable men are boring.”
“I spent a lifetime being respectable. Now, I’m glad I’m just interesting.”
She leaned closer, whispering in my ear. “You are interesting.” Her hand rested on my thigh under the table, nails grazing my already hard cock lightly through the fabric.
I placed my hand over hers, not to stop it but to claim it. “Careful,” I murmured. “Kenji might revoke my membership.”
“Kenji approves,” she said. “Did you see how he looked at us? Lusting for me, envious of you.”
I told her stories–about Russia before she was born, elections I covered, wars I survived, editors I outlived.
She countered with tales from her week wrangling diplomats: the African foreign minister who insisted on a particular tea, the South American delegation that demanded a soundproof room for negotiations that never happened. Then a coy reference to a prime minister of a country of no great importance who cornered her in the bedroom of his suite, where she was setting up for a small cocktail reception..
“I said, ‘I’m not the kind of girl you think I am.’ He paid no attention, pressing me against the wall. I took his hand and put it under my dress so he could feel my cock. I wasn’t wearing panties. It was so funny. He recoiled like I was a leper. Pushed me away and said, ‘There’ll be no discussion of this.’ And he stormed out of the room.”
I laughed. Diana was definitely not the kind of girl you’d think she was. She was an exquisite transwoman, a Tgirl, who bore not the least semblance of her biological origin. Indeed, save for the beautiful cock and balls between her thighs, she was a total woman.
“All these important men,” she said, “with their armies and their ministers and secretaries and chauffeurs and bodyguards. But they’re just as lonely as anyone else.”
“And you?” I asked. “Lonely?”
She kissed me then–quick, firm, deliberate. Not shy. Not coy. A kiss that silenced the question.
I slipped away into memory for a moment, to five years before, when I was in Moscow working on a story and Diana was in university and going by her given name, Danil. He was a graduate student and part-time driver, translator and overall guide assigned to me. I hadn’t been to Moscow in more than 20 years, when the Soviet Union dissolved, when Gorbachev yielded to Yeltsin, who gave way to Putin.
Danil, who was 23 when I met him, spoke so hopefully about wanting to see the world, the U.S. for sure, but Italy, France, Japan, China. He was an effeminate young man, but his feminine mannerisms and facial expressions seemed to come to him so naturally. Not the clownish antics of a drag performer or the exaggerated mincing of a queeny gay boy, but just an otherwise totally normal young woman who looked and dressed like a man. When I left, I gave him my card and scribbled my personal email on the back.
Frankly, I hadn’t thought about him at all until about three years later, when an email showed up in my queue. He filled me in on his life since my visit. He’d landed a position with an international consulting firm as an event planner. Then, he dropped a bombshell at the end, that he had transitioned to become a woman, that a friend in the government had altered his records and recorded him, her, as Diana. So now, as far as the official records were concerned, she was born and had always been a woman. She attached a photo. A very lovely woman.
We began exchanging emails regularly, gradually sharing intimacies as well. Then came online chats, and later, Zoom calls. Then, a couple of months ago, she said she’d be coming to New York for the General Assembly. “I want to see you,” she said. “I want you to know how I’ve always felt about you.”
The clatter of plates from the kitchen drew me back to the moment. Others in the room were moving about, heading out into the night. But in that booth, in that shadow, there was only Diana.
We left after dessert, a matcha ice cream with two spoons. I paid the bill, and we went back through the vestibule to retrieve our shoes. With a hand on my shoulder, she teetered and slipped on a pair of black pumps with five- or six-inch heels. She towered half a head over me.
Outside, the night carried the first chill of autumn. I wrapped my jacket around her shoulders.
“Won’t you be cold?”
“Not as long as you’re beside me.”
Diana slid her arm through mine. Despite her shoes, she matched my New Yorker’s brisk pace stride for stride, her heels tapping out a sexy rhythm.
The avenue was thick with visitors. Interpreters huddled on corners, aides checking phones, clusters of men in suits speaking rapid French, Arabic, Russian. Motorcades of black SUVs and cop cars with flashing lights tore down Second Avenue.
“You planned all of this,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“The booth, the sake, the way Kenji pretended not to notice. You’ve done this before.”
“Not with you.”
She laughed. “Good answer.” She pulled me to face her. We kissed. “I fell in love with you five years ago, James. I’ve wanted this evening ever since. I was just a confused boy then.”
“Tonight, you’re all-woman. I’ve never known so much of a woman, I’ve never wanted a woman as much as I want you.”
We turned down a quieter street. Someone had strung fairy lights along a row of townhouses. It was magical. The noise receded–only the shuffle of our steps and the distant blare of sirens and taxi horns. Diana pressed against me, warm, deliberate.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked coyly.
“Your hotel.”
Not one of the UN fortresses with flags out front and black cars with dark windows blocking the door. Her hotel was more discreet, a prewar building with wrought-iron balconies and a lobby perfumed faintly with roses. The doorman gave us a professional nod, the kind that meant he’d seen everything before, including plenty of men my age with women far too young to be wives and too beautiful to be daughters.
In the elevator, Diana stood close enough for her perfume to overwhelm me. She slipped her hand into mine. “You look nervous,” she said.
“I’m old enough to know better.”
“And young enough to want it anyway.”
The doors slid open with a chime.
Her room was on the seventh floor, overlooking the street. She had left a lamp on before dinner, and the glow revealed a space more lived-in than most hotel rooms: notebooks scattered across the desk, lilies drooping in a vase, a silk scarf tossed over the chair. On the nightstand, a bottle of mineral water and a dog-eared book of Russian poetry.
“Do you live like you travel?” I said. “Half unpacked.”
“That way I can leave quickly,” she said. Then she looked at me, a flash of mischief in her eyes. “Or not at all.”
I reached out, brushing a strand of hair back behind her ear. My fingers traced her jaw, the curve of her throat, and came to rest on the straps of her dress.
I eased them down slowly. The fabric slid, whispering, pooling at her feet. She stood before me in black lace, deliberate, defiant. She didn’t flinch. She let me look. A vision in black against her smooth alabaster skin, from her snowy blonde hair to her pointed pumps..
Her tiny breasts filled the lace bra. A garter held up her sheer stockings. A tiny thong barely concealed her swollen penis, its pink tip shyly emerging over the top.
“You’re too beautiful,” I said as I held her and gently stroked her through the soft silk.
“Too young, you mean.”
“Both.”
Her hand rose, loosening my tie with tender amusement. “Your age is why I came, James. Why do you think I wrote to you in the first place? You were so strong and so polite to me back in Moscow so long ago. I dreamed of you. I longed for you.”
Then she loosened my belt and slipped her hand into my briefs.
“Mmm,” she whispered. “And now, you’re so hard. So hard for me.” She caressed me, her fingers gently working down the shaft to my scrotum. “I’m glad I can do that to you. It makes me feel so sexy.”
“I think it’s because you are sexy!”
“You’re sweet. You know, I don’t get hard anymore. The HRT. But I feel so wet for you. My boy-pussy is aching for you.”
I kissed her. “Shhh, don’t call it that. It’s your sweet pussy I ache for.”
I quickly undressed, but I didn’t strip her bare. That would have been vulgar, hurried. No, I wanted her framed by her lingerie. I left the lace where it belonged, reading her with my hands, savoring each curve. She sighed into my ear, her breath hot and urgent.
“You’re careful,” she whispered. “No one my age is careful.”
“I’ve had practice.”
She pulled me down onto the bed on top of her, the quilt rustling beneath us. I felt the press of her body through the thin fabric of her lingerie, her heartbeat racing under my palm. My lips traced the path from her throat to her shoulder, to the hollow of her collarbone. She arched to meet me, a silent command for more..
I slipped her bra down just enough to expose her enflamed nipples. I cupped each breast in my hands and kissed her, slowly at first, then faster, hungrily, kneading her flesh and biting a bit.
“I love it,” she moaned. “I love it.”
Then I worked over to her bare underarm, kissed and licked it, working my way down her side to her tummy, all the while as I alternated between stroking her soft clitoris and fingering the rim of her pussy. Soon, I was at her thigh. I pulled her tiny shaft from its silken cover and covered it with my mouth, caressing her balls as I flicked my tongue over her glans.
“You taste so good, Diana. So sweet.”
She reached into the drawer of the side table and pulled out a bottle of lubricating oil. She squeezed some in her hand and stroked my hardon.
“I want you in me, James. I need you in me.”
“Not yet, my sweet. Not yet.”
I leaned back, took her ankles, and pulled her legs up on my shoulder. Her pussy was pulsating, beckoning me. But not yet. I teased her rim with my oiled cock. Then I leaned into her and drove my tongue into her. The oil tasted of strawberries, but not enough to overpower the musk of her bottom. She writhed as my tongue probed her. Then I inserted a finger. Then another. And another. Before long, I had half my hand in her. She was groaning.
“You’re almost ready,” I said as I slowly withdrew my hand and placed the head of my dick just in her opening. She clamped down on me, a vice of passion. I gently pressed into her. “That’s it, baby. Just relax and let Uncle James in you. You feel so tight, so soft and tight.” I inched in more. She was pressing back against me, as if her bottom was trying to swallow my cock.
Soon, I was all the way in her, my balls against her cheeks. And then I began to move in and out of her, as she countered each gentle thrust. As we synced our movements, I took her limp cock in my hand and stroked it with each thrust.
Our rhythm built in increments, unhurried but unstoppable. Touch after touch, kiss after kiss, each one deeper, more certain. Her low, throaty laughter broke free once as I teased her. I hushed her with my mouth.
We moved together like water, each motion deliberate, each pause meaningful. The heat spread between us, a slow-burning current that neither of us tried to resist. She guided, I followed. I steadied, she surrendered. And when at last we collapsed together, breathless, the world outside had shrunk to lamplight, scent, and the weight of us pressed close…
Later, the lamp was off, and only the city’s glow leaked through the curtains. Diana curled against me, her pale hair across my shoulder, her breathing deep and steady.
I thought of the Assembly still raging a few blocks away, of ministers rehearsing speeches about peace while their motorcades blocked traffic. I thought of my own years–wars, elections, secrets, deadlines. A fairly interesting life.
And then I thought of her. The way every eye had followed her into the restaurant. The way she had chosen to sit in the booth beside me, not across. The way she put her arm in mine and held me close as we walked through the city. The way she had let me take my time.
What was it she had said? “Respectable men are boring.”.
–End–
