Real Women Bleed
by Vivian_Burning
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I thought that vaginoplasty would help that aching hole in my soul. That clawing despair that grips me when I see myself in the mirror. The void in my heart that I fall into whenever I see a family. The surety that I will never, ever bear a child.
It didn't help. If anything, it made it worse. My therapist had warned me about that. That what I was experiencing wasn't a physical dysphoria but rather grief. I was grieving motherhood, same as any barren woman. In our next session she helpfully suggests that I treat it exactly that way.
At her urging I sign myself up for a grief class meant for infertile women. The facebook page makes it clear that it's meant for cis women but I dobn't worry about passing. I started hormones as a teen, voice trained for two years, and good genes (with the money for surgeries to supplement)
It doesn't make me feel less like an imposter in women's spaces. But the alternative is worse: staying in bed all day, spiraling into loneliness, alone. Outside I might feel like an imposter, but inside I just feel like a blank space. So I sit in a circle of real women and try to fool them.
We go around and introduce ourselves. Name, favorite color, and when you learned you were infertile. It seemed like a cruel way to start but we're all broken open, right there in front of everyone. I tell them I've known my entire life. A birth defect. Not a lie, technically.
I study the others. The woman in her 60's who had ovarian cancer the first year of her marriage. Her favorite color is sage. The woman going to a fertility clinic and is having promising test results. I try not to think of her as a bitch. She loves anything pink.
The woman who will change my life wasn't the last to introduce herself, I just stopped tracking everything after it. "I'm Evelyn. My favorite color is red, the dark, crusty red that shows up on tampons. That red that should be brown, but there's just enough brightness in it to remind you of blood."
She didn't tell us how long she had been infertile. I don't think anyone noticed. The shock was great enough to stretch the silence afterwards for nearly a minute. It's broken when the group leader gestures for the woman next in the circle to start. I don't hear her because Evelyn is staring at me.
She may have been staring at me the entire time. I'm not sure. But it's impossible to miss it now. She isn't even pretending to look anywhere else. Just deeply into my eyes. Hers are dark brown, but I swear that in the fluorescent lights of this church basement they look bright. Almost red.
The hour passes in a blur as we watch each other. I bolt for the door as soon as we're dismissed. My skin feels cold. My thoughts are absent, missing, nothing present in me but the blind panic of a rabbit under the shadow of a hawk. I make it out of the basement, taking the stairs two at a time.
I step into it, breathing deep, and nearly collide with Evelyn. She's standing outside the threshold, smiling at me.
"Oh, uh, sorry, excuse me?" I choke out, wondering how she beat me out. The surprise is enough for my voice training to slip. This many years in and I still lose it in shock.
Her smile becomes the grin of a predator. "No trouble at all." She leaves the gap between us as a bare few inches. She's close enough I can smell her, a little like copper. "Beth, right?" I nod. "Let's get a drink, shall we Beth." It isn't a question. I follow, trailing her like a lost puppy.
She takes me to a wine bar, the kind without prices on the menu. She orders for both of us, in French. Her red makes me think of what she said earlier in the group. She gets me a sweet white. She spends the first glass asking the basics about me. Where I grew up (the suburbs), what kind of work I do (tech), who's in my life (no one).
After the second glass she asks the question she brought me here for. The one that breaks everything. "Beth, would you like to be a real woman?"
I choke on my wine. "Excuse me?" She knows I'm trans. Of course she does. My voice, when I almost ran into her. Except, she was watching me before then. Like she could see through my clothes. Past my skin. Into the hole in my heart. I try to recover. "I am a woman. Want me to pull down my pants?"
Evelyn scoffs at that. "Come now, Beth. We both know that money can buy a pussy. A perfectly good one, even. But let's be honest. That's not what makes someone a real woman, is it?" I want to disagree with her. But when have I ever felt like a woman? A woman, not a trans woman, just woman. Never.
Evelyn's expression changes from slyness to disappointment. "Oh, dear. I forget the nonsense they teach the youth nowadays." Youth? She looks thirty at the most. "You don't know what makes someone a real woman, do you, Beth?" She shakes her head, taps a long nail the color of roses against her glass.
A million properly woke responses come to the tip of my tongue but I swallow them back down. They feel inadequate, trite. A sip of wine later, Evelyn gives up on me and answers. "A real woman bleeds. Do you bleed? Just when you miss your dilation schedule, mm?" She chuckles at her own joke.
My stomach drops at just the mention of it, a period. Because without it, what do I have? Not a uterus. Not the ability to have a child of my own. Evelyn looks at my dismay and orders me to the bathroom, to wash my face. "We can talk more after, dear, when you look presentable."
I follow her orders, mechanically, wash my face in the sink, stare at my reflection and reapply my eyeliner and lip gloss. I feel sick, shaky. Is she trans? Do cis people know that much about SRS? My mind seizes on the one rational and safe explanation. She's a chaser. Has to be. That's all.
I return to my table with more resolve than when I left it. I take a gulp of wine to steady myself. As I put the glass back down I notice the swirl of red in the glass. The shade of yellow is just a little darker, maybe. The taste a little metallic. I take a sip to check. Then another. And another.
"Isn't that better?" Evelyn asks, the words dripping from her lips.
I nod. I do feel better. Warm, not cold.
"Would you like to feel even better?"
I nod.
"Why don't you taste what a real woman tastes like, then? Isn't that what you type like? To pretend, to play, to lick up our leavings?"
Her words are confusing. I don't know what she wants me to do. She takes pity on me and gives me plain instructions.
I return to the bathroom, go into a stall, sit on the toilet seat with my clothes still on. I reach into the little metal disposal container for menstrual products.
I reach inside.
My fingers brush past crinkling plastic and smear against the wet, slimy, cold leavings of women who have sat here before me.
Real women.
I shiver. I hear it in Evelyn's voice. I dig deeper in until I finally find what I want. A tampon, wet, and heavy with period blood.
I pull it out. It sits heavy in my hand. My stomach churns with revulsion, nose filling with the smell of curdled crustaceans. Some distant part of me is screaming to throw it away, to clean my hands, run from here, run from Her. Instead I stick the bloody tampon into my mouth.
It tastes worse than it smells, like a rotten thing. I'd earned my red wings before, a girlfriend in college. I'd felt proud at the time that I still finished her with my tongue after, bragged that she tasted like a blood mary, perfectly nice. I hadn't been exaggerating too much either.
This is a different beast all together. The time in a small, airtight container blended together with the leavings of a dozen other women had turned a collection of natural and normal secretions into a fermented and clotted lump. But I wanted to taste a real woman. She told me to. I suck it dry.
I stay there until the taste is gone, then return it to the cannister as instructed. I leave the stall, walk back to Evelyn. She hadn't told me to wash my hands or face again, so I turn heads as I come back, reeking and stained. I don't notice. I see only Her. Her, and the promise behind Her smile.
We leave, together. I never go back home. She takes me to Her house, in the outskirts of the city. There She cuts open her arm, has me drink, taste another real woman. She tastes fresh, bright like the full moon, washing away the stale taste coating my teeth. I drink deep, nursing.
When I've had my fill, I settle down into Her bed, sleepy, ready to doze. She shakes me awake. Her bed is for Her, and only Her. My place is in the basement. She guides me downstairs and what I find is enough to make me stop with shock, even after everything that's happened already tonight.
What waits for me in the basement is myself, repeated a dozen times.
Young, beautiful women. Passing, feminine, post-op.
Trans, each and every one. Nude, it's easy to spot the GRS scars, the extra breadth to their shoulders, the wider spacing of breasts. The things I will always see in myself.
Each sit perched above a basin. Into that basin they flow, an uneven rhythm of red pattering onto white porcelain long stained into a rusty brown, with just enough brightness in it to remind you of blood. As one they turn to me. Their newest sister. I'm frozen in place until Evelyn pushes me.
I stagger forward a few steps, nearly falling. Evelyn laughs. "Go on, Beth. Don't you want to be a real woman?" Sickly, I nod without turning. I do. Truly. Whatever has happened to me this night, that desire predates me meeting this predator. I brace myself and walk forward, past the staring dolls.
I find my place past them, an empty seat I may rest while I wait for my own flow to start. Time passes in silence. There is no fellowship here, only waiting for the return of the one who can make us real. She comes occasionally to feed us, and in return take her own sustenance from us. It's only fair.
Eventually, I feel wet between my thighs. I reach down and my fingers come back up stained red and smelling faintly of brine. I smile. Tears run down my face. The hole is filled. After all, I never really wanted to bear a child, just have the option.
I just wanted to know that I could.
There's one way that I'm special, as the youngest, and newest. I still have my words, for now. I go to meetings, support groups. I find my fellow sisters. I give them a shoulder to cry on. Take them for drinks.
And ask them, wouldn't you like to be a real woman?
All it takes is a little blood.
Thanks for reading! Follow me at: https://bsky.app/profile/vivianburning.bsky.social