The Confession
It was not easy to keep an expression as if nothing had happened. But I managed it anyway. I had to. I wanted to enjoy at least the time while he put on the gift I had given him and showed off a little fashion show in front of me.
After a simple dinner, I finally handed him the present and poured the drinks. He made a fuss, disappeared into the bedroom to change, then came out to the table wearing a sheer negligee over the new outfit. He looked stunning. Sexy. I wanted to drag him straight to bed and enjoy a round of oral sex right then and there. But that was not what mattered now. If I lost my composure, everything could fall apart. I needed time to hear whatever excuse he would offer with his own mouth. Only after that would I choose one of the options I had already prepared.
While we passed a few glasses of wine back and forth, he chattered away cheerfully. It almost seemed as though he were babbling to make up for what he had done only hours earlier. Still, I listened with a smile. His gossip was cute, after all, and his carefully made-up face was undeniably sexy.
Then, as I stubbed out my cigarette, I asked abruptly, “Who was that man who came to our house earlier?”
That was the spark.
He froze, motionless for a moment, but perhaps realizing I already knew everything, he made no attempt to lie or dodge the question.
The man was someone he had met long ago at a cross-dressing café. Changhee, who had been curious about anal sex yet had never considered sleeping with a man, had never responded no matter how persistently the man pursued him. But roughly a month after I secretly began feeding him female hormones, he found himself noticing men without meaning to. Two months ago he had started meeting that man in secret, and somehow it had escalated to the point where he invited him home. He admitted it all honestly.
They had slept together six times in total, and the time at our house had been only the second.
Throughout the short story he kept choking up, wiping away tears, and when he finally finished he looked so pitiful that I felt a pang of guilt. Jeongsook and I had really done something cruel.
“I wanted Changhee to be my lover. I thought you had no interest in men.”
“I know. I don’t understand why I’ve turned out like this either. But…”
“But you like men?”
“It’s not exactly that I like men, it’s more that…”
“You’ve been honest so far. There’s no point hiding anything now, is there? Tell me everything. If you’re going to end it, you might as well end it properly.”
Whether he read the finality in my words, Changhee stared at me with a blank, stunned expression. While I lit another cigarette he quickly took a sip of wine, then asked cautiously, “If I really tell you everything honestly… is there still a chance we won’t break up?”
“I don’t know… I don’t like a man sneaking into my house behind my back, and the fact that it was you who brought him here makes it even worse. Whether it happened over months or days doesn’t matter. It seems like you need a man now, and maybe you always will…”
“No, it’s not necessarily like that. It’s not that I like men, it’s just… I… I…”
He couldn’t finish. I waited, smoking, with no intention of pressing him. I was going to hear everything before deciding how to end it.
For a long while he said nothing. I sipped my wine and lit yet another cigarette while he shifted restlessly in his seductive lingerie, unable to sit still.
What on earth was he struggling so hard to say? Something that would upset me, no doubt. But I had already decided to listen to all of it, so I didn’t rush him. After all, the female hormones I had secretly given him meant I carried some responsibility too; the least I could do was show that much courtesy.
When Changhee finally spoke, his explanation went like this.
While having sex with me, he felt not his own masculinity but a powerful femininity. The very sensation of being pinned beneath me, unable to move, crying out like a woman and surrendering his body, obeying every word I gave him—that passive submission itself was ecstasy. It was not unrelated to his childhood. He had often watched his mother being struck by his father. Once he had wanted to become a strong man who could protect his weak mother, but after discovering his own nature he realized he could never be that strong man. In the end he came to see that he was no different from his mother. Being weak and passive meant he was destined to be dominated. As a man it wounded his pride and filled him with self-loathing, but as a woman it felt acceptable.
Around the time this twisted, flawed way of thinking took hold in his mind, our little photo game was added, fanning the flames even higher. What began as posing for pictures inside the house gradually moved outdoors, and eventually he was posing nude in empty places—an eruption waiting to happen. Following my instructions or commands to take photos in every kind of pose, including full nudes, already thrilled him, but the moments afterward, when he looked back at those images—from covered to fully exposed—and relived the ecstasy, were beyond words.
Then, a few months ago, as the female hormones began to dominate his body, his chest, skin, hips, and even his genitals started reacting in strange new ways. His libido itself did not rise, yet the orgasms he reached through oral sex felt different—hotter, longer-lasting. He could not hide his surprise that being pinned beneath me, weaker than ever and completely dependent on me, excited him even more.
He was not without fear about drifting further toward womanhood, yet submitting to the power that ruled him felt natural, even comforting and happy. At the same time, curiosity about men stirred. If he were truly a woman, he wanted to be held in a man’s arms, to take a man’s sex into his mouth and body. He could not shake the thought that the final destination where he could feel like a real woman was, in the end, “a man.”
So he had done it behind my back. He had taken a man’s cock into his mouth and ass exactly as he had wanted. The illusion that he had truly become a woman, the discovery of his own passivity, the shameful excitement that only grew stronger—he felt both humiliated and unwilling to stop.
He wanted to understand these feelings better. He did not want to label himself abnormal or perverted, yet the changes in himself made him anxious. Going to a hospital felt too risky, so he turned to the internet. What he found was S&M play, something he had never considered before. Among the possibilities, he learned that he was a masochist—a sexual masochist who enjoyed being dominated and hurt.
He was shocked, but not merely because he possessed a hobby others would call perverted. He was shocked by how many people secretly shared the same twisted, hidden desires. Ironically, that discovery reassured him. The internet gave him the absurd justification that his abnormal psychology and behavior were not abnormal at all.
Humans are strange creatures. The internet makes them even stranger. They believe whatever they see, hear, and read online. The internet reigns like a god. It is a religion. He had fallen into that religion and become a devout follower.
Armed with this new legitimacy, his masochistic tendencies took root quickly. He began secretly collecting tools that would heighten his pleasure. What had started as a solitary act gradually required a man’s help, and eventually he invited that man into our home so he could indulge without worrying about time or place.
Why or how such things happen, even experts cannot easily explain. Neither Freud nor Jung managed it. No scholar has ever fully and perfectly understood the human mind, and none ever will.
One undeniable fact remained: M had taken firm hold of his sexual world, and its pull grew stronger every day.
The last thing he added—perhaps out of consideration for me—was that he had not brought the man between us because he loved him. The first one or two times had truly been about tasting a man, but after that it had been about craving a stronger “power” to bind him.
“Power? You mean you needed the power of an S to dominate an M?”
He kept his eyes on the floor and gave a small nod.
“Did it have to be a man?”
This time he shook his head—more firmly than before. A dry laugh escaped me.
“Well, isn’t that something.”
I lit another cigarette.
“All right. I can understand, to some degree, why you wanted a man. Looking at you now, you really are a woman, so I suppose I overlooked the possibility that you might want to taste one.”
As if moved by my unexpected understanding, he lifted his head for the first time in a while, eyes wide with disbelief. Those were tears. He seemed to think I was at least forgiving him, if not moved by his words.
In truth, while he spoke I had already been sorting through my own thoughts. I had assumed the hormones had given him depression and had felt guilty enough to want to make him prettier, just as he wished. But now I was certain it was not depression. He had simply exhausted himself trying to hide desires he believed he could never confess. Convinced I would never understand the new world he had entered, he had searched for his own escape.
“For now, show me the tools you’ve collected. I’ve heard enough to know a little, but I want to see what you’ve gathered and what you like before I decide whether we’re finished. I’m not so ruled by emotion that I’ll throw you out tonight just because I’m angry.”
Whether it was my calm tone or his belief that I would judge rationally, he glanced at me nervously, then hurried into the other room and returned with a large travel bag. The same bag he had brought when he moved in—one I had never touched. It had been the perfect hiding place for his secret collection.