Traveling alone is an inherently lonely venture, no matter what the brochures and hostels promise, and having a pretty local girl listen to you for a while is comforting. But no matter how adventurous I fancied myself to be, the thought of paying for sex threatened to resurrect the many fluids uneasily coexisting in my stomach. She didn't ask for cash though (or a credit card, for that matter), and after a while that was enough to satisfy me. I kissed her; she returned the favor by grabbing my cock, and I felt the adrenaline surge that means sex is on its way.

It was around this time Uri came over and pulled me away from my newfound friend. "Hey man, we just wanted to say we don't think she's a ladyboy," he told me. "We thought she was, but now we don't think so." Now, as a rule, it's fair to say that if a friend tells you, unprompted, that the person you're making out with isn't, in fact, a transsexual, it's a good indicator you're making out with a transsexual. But somehow Uri's advice seemed unnecessary, even absurd — it hadn't occurred to me at all that my she was a he. I looked at Uri surprised he had even thought my girl was a tranny, and he was surprised I was surprised. But I really had no idea.

In any case, I went back to my dancing queen and we resumed thrusting international tongues into throats.

One might think that, with a twenty-five-year record of staunch heterosexuality on my resume to that point, I might've noticed this kiss to be different from those of X-chromosomed girls I'd kissed before. But I didn't. There was no facial hair scratching me, no toughness or forcefulness or masculinity turning me off. There was only trance music, alcohol-fueled warmth and dizziness, and the softness and excitement that comes with kissing a woman.

Feeling triumphant, I took my girl by the hand and walked across the beach. I led her through the crowd, confident as I am when I know I have a sure thing on my hands. We walked about a quarter-mile, up a path through some woods, leading to a cliff. She told me her name was Mai. We kissed again and she almost immediately undid my pants and went down on me. The blowjob was unexceptional, the hands-free straight-bobbing kind I would get back in ninth grade. One of the highlights of being gay, I'd always imagined, would be that your partner would instinctively know what's pleasurable to you. Don't all men want the same things? But I can personally and conclusively confirm the inaccuracy of this idea. After a minute or so I pulled Mai up, and brought her to eye level.

"I want to fuck you," I told her, trying to be both bold and complimentary.

She stared at me with her endearingly big eyes.

Then she looked down. "I am a man," she said.

It didn't register. "What?"

"I am a man."

I literally thought it was an unfunny joke. "No, you're not."

But she wasn't smiling. And she got more specific. "I have penis," she said. Very specific.

My smile dissolved and I began scanning her face for traces of masculinity I had missed.

"No, you're not," I said. I was apparently operating by the trustworthy theory that if one says something over and over again, it becomes true.

"I have penis," she repeated, in what must surely have been the least amount of language she could have used to convince me.

"No, you're not," I chanted, reaching for her crotch. I only half-believed her at this point — I thought this was an excuse for why she didn't want to fuck me. But I realized "I have penis" is something women rarely say to men, even to ones they're rejecting. More common rejection phrases I've encountered include "I have a boyfriend," "I think we should just be friends," and "I can only hook up with people I respect."