The Truman Capote Room

Of the three things that are so rarely true, the third at least came through. The check is in the mail, I won’t cum in you, but this time, I really was met at the airport. Matias recognized me as I came out of customs into the arrival hall, sat me down at the coffee stand and bought me a café con leche. All was well with the world this morning.  

We waited for Victor, the Chilean novelist. I’d not web-stalked the other writers who were to be my companions at the residency as there hadn’t been time. To get the month of February free I’d written enough commissioned work for two months and hustled on outstanding invoices, with some success. The rent checks would clear; the credit card would get paid. So I’d arrived in Barcelona with no more information than Matias’ phone number and some vague idea that this residency was on the Costa Brava an hour or so up the coast.  

The residency itself just dropped in my lap. I apply for these most years and never get them. I have no talent for supplication and few connections. This one found me. Do I want a month in Spain with a bunch of other writers, board and food included? Hell yes! Just pay no attention to the nagging thought that I have no project, no plan, and am starting to question whether there are any more books left in me. Maybe there are only so many to extract—like wisdom teeth. 

The café con leche sated my caffeine and sugar addictions. I was working on my Twitter fix when Victor swaggered up. Matias recognized him, introduced us. A man of my age, height, and by the looks of it, weight: sixty years old, 153 cm, 56 kilos. Turns out we’d been on the same flight, but he had checked luggage to collect, and it took a minute. He declined the coffee that he seemed actually to want so as not to delay our drive.  

Victor let me take the front seat of the car with a small display of mock gallantry. As a transsexual woman it’s hard for me not to parse even the smallest interactions. Was this part of a pattern of deferring to the needs of others? Was it gender based chivalry, and if so, was it sincere or as parody? Ambiguities of gender cause ambiguities of genre, and for all concerned. I’m a typo in the texture of everyday life. You get used to it.  

I awoke upon arrival at the residency. Matias showed us the house and grounds. Sounds and scent of the sea. The cliffs, all rust and butter, the dry leaves a grey green. Victor was to have one of the two cottages, separate. His the one further up the hill. The great man would have his private demesne up there, in which to invent a world in words. I was to be in the main house and have what Matias called the “Truman Capote room.” He wrote a chunk of In Cold Blood here, apparently. I flashed on my complicated feelings about Capote’s place in the anglophone queer literary canon, but could think of nothing to say.  

Or write. The days found their rhythm. The writers sharing the space mostly kept to ourselves, like cats, coming together for the lunch and dinner. There I got to know Marta from Madrid and Ismael from Galicia, with whom I shared the main house, and Joseph from Peru, in the other cabin, down below. In deference to me, the three of them spoke English at mealtimes. Victor didn’t always come down for meals, and when he did, said little, even though his English was fluent. He didn’t join us for Movie Nights on the weekends either.   

I spent my days alternately writing and deleting, or unwriting as I came to think of it. Negative writing. I was bored. Thoughts of Victor intruded. Something about his body interested me, and more than it should. Every day I texted my girlfriend back in New York. Jenny, to whom I was faithful, loyal, and true. Which might sound like saying the same thing thrice, but which to me are three separate qualities. I told myself one’s fantasy life should be free.  

My fascination with Victor wasn’t sexual. No, that’s not true, or not the whole truth. Victor’s body interested me, but also disturbed me, because it was like mine. I transitioned late, in my fifties. What I sensed in Victor’s body was what mine would be like, if I hadn’t. His skin, coarser; his hair, thinned. More than that, the way he carried himself, like a man resisting his age, shored up against gravity and the grave by all the gravitas he can gather.  

He had not given up on life, nor was he neglecting its fragility. Or so the Victor in my daydreams appeared, as I dozed on the daybed in my studio, under dappled light. I went downstairs to the kitchen for more coffee. Victor was at the coffee machine. I felt awkward seeing him after daydreaming about him. He nodded in my direction, lost in his own thoughts. Writer at work. 

Days went by. Most mornings I walked along the precarious paths along the shore towards Cap Roig, stopping to watch the light on water. If it was a warm day there would be other people on the narrow paths, intruding on my thinking. So instead I decided to head the other way and clamber down to the private cove. The villa which houses the residency takes its name from the cove—Sanià.  

The path to the cove is cut in rough steps into the cliff. It took all my attention not to trip. There isn’t a beach. Its rocky. I imagine Noël Coward showing up on a yacht, being rowed ashore here in a dingy, to come visit Truman Capote. They were both queers with a talent for entertaining rich people and living in their light. I respect it, but I’m not that kind of queer.  

It’s warm for February, at least compared to past Februarys. I’m overdressed. Hot, even. Mania has gripped me today. That swell of energy, a high tide. I get like that, sometimes. I pick my way over the rocks to the far side of the cove, where I shrug off my clothes. Delicately, with shaky balance, I enter the cold water, headed for a flat, smooth rock that looks like a divan upon which I feel meant to recline.  

Sun on tits, salt in hair. Vaguely aware of drifting off. Sound of ripples in the water of a new kind and I wonder if the tide is rising. How long have I been here? My skin is probably burning. Don’t care. Fantasy of Victor looming over me. Actually, it is Victor. Smiling. I smile back, confused. He must have seen me from his cottage. He’s come down, waded out and climbed up beside me. I’m about to say something, probably something stupid. He smiles and puts a finger to his lips. I say nothing; he says nothing. Just lets himself down beside me. We lie still in the sun, the water doing all the sound and motion for us.  

Victor sits up. I see the tattoo that stretches across his bare shoulders. Magnificent piece. I have questions, but it seems we’re not to talk. Just be present. No language. I’m trying to decode the tattoo, but I don’t know what it means, its provenance. It distracts me from the beauty of his skin, a little damaged. I read in it a history with the sun. His shoulders are delicate. The outline of each muscle legible. Maybe Victor works out, or maybe it is just that he is so lean, rather like me. 

He gets up to leave, gracing me once again with his warm, silent smile. I’m distracted looking at his package, bundled up in black briefs. He notices me noticing and gives me an altogether different kind of grin. This embarrasses me. I don’t want to show it, so I turn my head as he leaves.  

The sun still felt good. I was thirsty. And feeling some other kind of lack. He had seen me naked, but not I, he. He had seen my tits, my tattoos, my—I never know what to call it. Years on hormones changed my dick into—what? I have a trans sister who calls it her jane. There could be worse words.  

Thinking of Victor. Again, how to interpret this little scene I have just described to you? I decided to see everything in this same beautiful light. He just came out to this rock enjoy sun on skin. And perhaps to be near me.  

The air cooled. I wound my way back up the stairs, through the house, to the Truman Capote room. I had an impulse to write to Jenny, but somehow I didn’t want to tell her about Victor. My email to her became fiction by omission.  

Over dinner that night, the conversation turned to Truman Capote. I’d been reread Breakfast at Tiffany’s in my idle moments. I commented on its racism, but also that Holly Golightly reads as a trans coded. Nobody else had read him much, except Victor, and as usual he says very little. I admitted to never having read In Cold Blood. Victor said he had the library copy, and if I cared to come up to his cottage a bit later he could give it to me.  

Interpretation: Victor said this in front of everyone, so perhaps it was just about giving me the book. Or perhaps he said it in front of everyone to make it seem like it was just about giving me the book, so that if anyone saw me leave the main house for the cottage later, they would have a story through which to interpret my actions. I felt like I had to take this action to find out what story I’m in.  

Excusing myself from the table, I said I would go up to the Truman Capote room to write for a while, but actually I was trying on outfits. This seemed like nothing more than a fantasy indulgence. I did not know if I even wanted Victor. I certainly did know that even thinking about it put my loyalty to Jenny in doubt. Or did it? It would not particularly bother me if she had sexual fantasies about other people. I rather hoped she did. Or did that thought just give me cover for my own?  

Such quibbles fell away before the array of tights and skirts and tops I had laid out on the bed. My options were limited, as I had not packed any slutwear. The black Prada sheath brought for readings and photo shoots would be overkill, and in any case its side zipper would not be easy for him to unzip. I settled on my best Wolford tights, the shorter skirt, the more fitted long sleeve top. I chose the green eyeliner which makes my eyes seem green too.   

It felt furtive and exciting, striding up the crooked path to the cottage, even though it was just an innocent trip to borrow a book; or, alternately, a trip for which the alibi of an innocent trip to borrow a book had been established. The waves babbled on in their unintelligible language. Every movement of a twig or leaf seemed like a footnote to the footfall of my battered black suede knee boots.  

The cottage door is ajar, which I take as invitation. Through the dim light, ambient music plays from a portable speaker. Victor appears to me, looks me up and down, smiles. He gestures to the sofa, and I follow him there. There are moments when you are editing your own story in ways that will complicate subsequent acts, and you know it. I stop in front of Victor for a beat, smile, hitch my skirt a little, pause to seek, and find, him smile back, and in a move which could have been more elegant (and will be in the retellings) straddle his lap.  

We fool around on the sofa for three long paragraphs, since cut. He takes me by the hand, to the bedroom and opens his closet, revealing the full length mirror. This room, I notice, has been strategically lit in anticipation. What he wants, it transpires, is to undress each other in front of the mirror. Pulling the soft grey tee over his head reveals his narrow chest, with surprising festivals of hair crowning his nipples. I take one in my mouth but by touch he steers me away.  

He lifts my top off over my head and throws it on the floor, over his. I think about cat hair, before remembering that unlike at home there are no cats here, and no Jenny here either, but I delete that line of thought. He grazes my nipples with his thumbs. They responded kindly to that information.  

This goes on for pages. I had forgotten what it felt like to hold an almost hard cock in my hand; meaty, elastic. Densely scented. There’s a vector of electric energy running from my tits to my ass. I want him to fuck me. That want gets overlaid by complications. About condoms, about lube, that I’m not on PrEP, that I didn’t douche, and, truth be told, don’t. And then on top of that I’m writing in my head the scene where I tell Jenny, because I will have to.  

Victor signals me toward the bed. “I’m on PrEP,” he says. Surprising. I thought he was straight and what does it say if he is a straight man on PrEP? He must read the query on my face, in my movement. “I like to play and play safe,” he says. I am choosing to believe him as believing serves what I want.  

What lends credence to his narrative is that he radiates want and calm all at once. Whereas I am just vibrating with anticipation. He knows how to calm me a little, but not too much. I’m on his bed, on knees and elbows, head down, ass up, guiding the head of his cock into my ass. I think of Jenny’s cocks. This one is smaller than both of hers. I imagine his meat dick is actually one of her silicone ones. Perhaps I prefer artifice; perhaps I prefer fake cock and real love to real cock and just plain want.  

He wants to fuck fast, but is reading my body through his hands and knows that I don’t want fast, I want deep. I want him to take his time. I want the line of his body intending towards mine, and the line of my body back against his, which primes, in turn, his back toward mine, a carriage return. Moves with gentle rests, like commas. I am already writing this scene in my head while he fucks me.  

When he comes, I hear it, but don’t feel it. I’d wanted, more than anything, a splash of hot cum in my ass. I think of all the times, in a former life, when I fucked someone, and then after, took off the condom, tied a knot in it to keep the jizz in, and threw it on the floor. There’s no condom. Just Victor, savoring a mild orgasm.  

He rolls me over, kneels between my legs, inserts a finger into my ass. He’s search for prostate to press, but its barely there anymore. Shrank. Probably an effect of hormones, but nobody tells a girl these things—that you might be wanting bigger cocks than nature can provide. He’s touching my jane with his other hand, looking at me with a question in his eyes. Yes, I’m fine with it being touched. Made peace with this piece.  

It takes a bit of arranging, and all with wordless signs. This other language. I don’t want his finger in my ass, I want to press my ass against his knee. Having a jane rather than a dick means it won’t get hard like a cock but will swell like a clit. To some girls it is a clit but not to me. My body, my language of the body. Suck it.  

He sucks it pretty well although I’m sensing some lack of familiarity. Orgasms aren’t the same kind of punctuation anymore, they’re not a—. Still less a—! But at least not the—?—that they were for a while; more like a—… as cum leaks out and the last long slow wave recedes, like the ones lapping the rocks somewhere outside.  

There’s no semen, just cum, which Victor swallows, imbibing small amounts of calcium, citrate, fructose, glucose, lactic acid, magnesium, potassium, and zinc, according to WebMD. You’re welcome.  

Victor bows his head towards my belly, holds my thighs gently for a few moments, then gets up and heads for the bathroom. I’d rather be held, but seems that’s not his style. I hear the shower splash against his body and imagine it raining cum. I pull myself together to leave.  

Where does the story go from there? Victor mostly stayed in his cottage, up the hill, rarely coming down to the main house. I saw him at mealtimes. Over the next few days, he neither acted like something happened nor was he pretending nothing happened. He let a little communication eddy between us but not enough that the others would notice.  

The story I am making up in my head is that he was just curious about my body. Wanted to write on it. The top writes; the bottom is written. I never liked the language of top and bottom. Are you a writer or the written? That’s the language of the body. Which poses in its own way the question of passivity. Writers may imagine themselves the active parties, but it’s the written that wrote them.  

I was stuck for a next move. For a few days, at least. How much was this his intention? His script? Am I just a character he fabricates into existence? Then I got his first text. How did he get my number? Ah, it must have been in the email exchanges with Matias so we could meet up at the airport. Here we are: I’m sixty years old, at a residency on the Costa Brava, getting my first booty call by text.  

I tell myself it’s just fucking. It’s just curiosity. We’re each a book the other won’t read too closely beyond a few pages. There’s just this, then it ends and there’s no more, no ongoingness. Like most things in the world.  

Some nights, Victor would text me, but most nights, not. If he did it would just be two emojis: eggplant and peach. I’d text back the rocket.  

I never lingered long in his cottage. Sometimes there are moments of playful intimacy. We’ve just fucked; I have that just-fucked feeling. I never felt that as a writer. I only feel it when I am written. I’m on my stomach, on his bed. “Lie still,” he says. Something tickles the small of my back. “Gave you a tramp stamp,” he says, brandishing a Sharpie. “What does it say?” I’m killed-the-cat level curious. He just flashes that smile. I wanted to give him one too, but he hid the Sharpie from me. I didn’t insist as I didn’t know what to write on his body.  

Back in the Truman Capote room, I tried to read Victor’s marks on my body in the mirror,  but couldn’t make it out. Perhaps it’s better that way. 

Victor texts me his emojis; I text back mine. During the day he is careful to give no sign of what we get up to at night. I wonder if his discretion has to do with not wanting anyone to know he’s fucking a tranny. How many men did I meet on the apps who would text me about wanting to fuck me on the DL who would never be seen with me in public? We’re the subtext of the sexual economy. 

On pushing open the door to Victor’s cottage, I find him standing in the shadows. Things have been getting a bit predicable, so I mix it up. I stand in front of him and meet his eye, then drop to my knees, open his pants, take out his cock and raise it into my mouth, gently. I never particularly enjoy sucking cock. My knees hurt on the bare tile. Victor is into it. He got hard fast and has a rhythm going.  

I would say I’m enjoying the smell of him but enjoy is not exactly the word. I’m savoring the experience. He reminds me of how I used to smell, and sometimes still if I overdo it with testosterone gel. It brings out a musky note. I don’t miss the tang and the hair my flesh used to exude. I’m drawn to the attributes of Victor’s body as mine’s negation.  

When Victor cums its always just a blip, salty and dense. He turns away from me and heads to the bathroom. I hear the shower run. This was a test. He always takes a shower after his cock was in my ass and he does so again now that his cock was in my mouth. I am, it seems, in both a practical but also an abstract way, unclean.  

The next night I get his emojis again, but instead of sending the rocket emoji, I send him the ghost. He texts a question mark. I ignore it.  

The morning after is a little frustrating as the internet is down and I don’t have my distractions. I’m reading the Capote biography instead. One of Capote’s lovers was a Smith College academic by the name of Newton Arvin, who among other things, was a collector of pornography. At the time this was illegal to possess, and he was busted for it, in 1961, coincidentally the year of my birth. He got out of the charges by informing on some other collectors that he knew.  

That it would be illegal to possess porn seems ridiculous to me, but then on the other hand, this is an era in which there is a concerted attack on libraries, including criminal penalties, for possessing children’s books deemed to be pornographic, usually because they contain factual knowledge about sexuality, or more often, simply have queer or trans characters in them. There’s a struggle over what texts may be public. 

I’m thinking that there was a shift from a regime of writing to a regiime of texting. The speed, distribution, form, economy, and powers of language are not the same. The struggles over the freedom and its limits for writing will have to be fought all over again with texting.  

It seemed radical during the writing regime to push formerly private matters into the public realm. Capote did a little of that himself in his first novel, the southern Gothic Other Voices, Other Rooms, via the character of Randolph. Whom you could read as a queen, or in some sense even trans.The famous Holly Golightly character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s gets by through extracting money from men in exchange for her time and attention. It’s not exactly sex work, and it’s not not sex work. It’s a sympathetic portrait of a girl trying to fuck her way to the top.  

In these books, Capote played delicately on the edges of what writing could pass between the private and the public domain, and all with the alibi that it was fiction. Capote himself appeared in public as a self-created character, the effect of which depended on a background of conformity. An exception to the rules.  

Compared to the writing regime, the texting regime changes what can be considered public and what private. Or rather, changes the zones of contestation over public and private. If the internet wasn’t down right now at the residency, I could ditch this paragraph, watch porn, and play with the little portable vibrator I brought along for when I’m horny, and ignoring Victor’s texts.  

There’s few kinds of porn that work for me. Usually, its tranny porn, where hot transsexuals get railed. In fantasy, I am that girl, even though in most conventional porn the viewer is not supposed to identify with the girl getting fucked, but rather with the cock that fucks her. the writer, not the written. Or perhaps rather the texter rather than the texted.  I suspect, however, that the sexual wants to which porn caters are far more ambiguous and polymorphous than its conventions acknowledge, but that’s another story. 

The internet being down, no porn for me. One gets so used to the ubiquity, of both the internet and porn. The world appears as a vast surface of text, on which so much is visible that you forget to look for what isn’t. Porn is at least still supposed to be viewed in a private space, although I did once observe some dude watch porn, on his phone, on the New York subway. At least he had his earbuds in.  

Its late morning, and I’ve finally torn my attention away from the internet. It’s time for more coffee. After writing not much more than a dozen words. At the moment I have the luxury of writing without an assignment or a deadline, and like most luxuries, I’ve done my best to squander it, by writing this.