Juno

I felt I would be a thief among the deserving few at my first transitional support meeting at the local LGBTQI+ house, with my apparent femininity and whiteness. My late twenties felt too late to claim my queerness. I was too French, too privileged. My friend Emma and her roommates had taken me in when my marriage had gone sour, just a few months before. Having a husband felt a confirmation of my lack of belonging.

Yet I was easily forgotten; Juno was the only one to be noticed. Wearing short shorts made up of colorful flowers, with a long flowing scarf that curved around her. She knew her beauty and knew it was precious enough to be set like a stone, exposed and hidden in turn. The orange gold of the floral patterns highlighted her dark skin. Her lips were painted blue, and her dreadlocks threaded with purple and gold. She moved more than anyone in the room, standing from her sofa cushion when she spoke, bending herself in half as though to flex her curves in the light. She didn’t seem to fit in either, so feminine I thought she must be at the very beginning of her transition, perhaps a boy-to-be and yet too girly and accessorized to be so. She set my curiosity afire.

And a thief I was, listening to them while keeping my words to myself. People shared their experiences, their preconceptions, their hopes, their misunderstandings. Each one in the circle took a turn to speak, and I mumbled out my identity, my preferred pronouns, passing the torch as fast as I could. “Alexis, they/them… I don’t want a gender.” It seemed insulting to tell them I didn’t believe in gender when most present were trying so hard to be identified with one. It went further: I could look down and be confused that I had a body at all.

I think I’m demi. I think more than that: I am pan, queer, sapio… But all those terms sound so arrogant when I attempt to voice them. Demi is a way to suggest them all and give me room to hide. Give me time to grow accustomed to my suitors, to practice their presence. Usually to take a long time getting to know them, at the risk of driving them away. Juno stirred something different in me. I wanted to know her immediately.

Juno shared her pronouns: “she, her.” She was expressive, able to articulate her world with elegance. I gazed in silence, shrunken.

At the meeting’s close Juno stood, unravelling her legs and her length, and headed my way. She held out a folded piece of paper ripped from her notebook. “Thank you,” I said, eyes wider than my face, trying to absorb her. 

I held the paper between two fingers, like a sacred relic. It took a few breaths for me to unfold it. In magical black ink, her phone number was written with a note saying she wanted to get to know me. Signed with a heart drawn across a printed line. 

All the air withdrew from my body, taking my shyness with it. I followed her out to the patio. We sat, so close to each other that I could feel the heat of her knee against mine. Panic returned. I mumbled, forcing out words. 

I told her I was French, and it was her turn to freeze. She stood as though I was poison, but it was the same reverence I’d felt for her. After taking a step back, she returned, lifting the thin fabric covering her hips and showing me the contours of my homeland. A black-inked map of France.

I whispered to her in French. “Merci,” I said. “Vraiment, merci de ta note.” She shivered like a willow in the wind.

“I’m Alexis,” I said.

“I’m Juno,” she answered.

Neither of us admitted to reinventing our identities.

“Are you really French?” she asked.

I thought: would you really be interested in me either way? I didn't respond. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Juno and I walked back to my shared house together with Emma in the dusk. It was only a few blocks from the meeting, a decrepit two-story place just past the hipster center of our Southern city. Poplar trees sprinkled our path with leaves. I wanted to be alone with Juno, but how can one not share the sun? 

She was interested in Emma, too. She asked her questions. What she wanted, how far she'd come, when she'd started transitioning. Juno seemed to love everyone, and all from a platform of certainty and sobriety.

We arrived at the house and reality shifted for the better. I stepped out of my life when she took my hand. She made the move. She asked politely and then kissed me. And then she kissed Emma. 

She built our intimacy with her hands, drawing our bodies to hers, calling upon our strengths and desires to adore her. To worship her. To know who she was and what she felt just with the vibrations between our bodies. Our hands caressed the bits of her flesh which showed: shoulders, neck, hips, thighs. A massage given with the tips of our fingers and the edges of our nails, and sometimes daring lips, closed, brushing against the skin of her neck, of her throat. She smiled, her eyes half-closed, shining. 

She exposed her body deliberately, lifting and removing one small piece of cloth at a time. Our fingers followed the spaces offered to our touch. She basked in the attention we gave her. Two mouths, four hands, all about her. 

But the intimacy between Emma and I couldn’t go any further. Our hands stumbled when they reached each other across her skin. We wanted her, and not each other. I withdrew, leaving her at the mercy of Emma's appetite, and stepped out to the living room. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Juno reappeared. Emma's door remained closed. 

We spoke on the couch, interlaced fingers discreet, below the line of sight, beneath our official attention. The entanglement of our bodies laid aside for a moment, we spoke as old friends do, bits and pieces of unfinished conversations, meaning in fragments, in bursts like jewels. “So, you’re married?” I nodded, almost wishing she didn’t know. “Does it mean I can’t come see you sometime?” My eyes widened. “Why would you want to?” “You are fascinating, Alexis. Can you tell me something in French?” “Je ne sais pas quoi dire…” I had forgotten the potency of being liked, of being noticed. Juno’s interest made all the surface of my being tingle. 

“What did he want from you, this husband?”

I shook my head, not wanting him in the room with us, but it is costly to ignore the query of a goddess. “Sometimes someone will say they want you, but you can’t feel it. Their promises, their commitment, all superficial, all words. You start to question every word after a while, even little ones. I spent years oscillating between being his fantasy and being myself, and myself was never good enough.”

Juno kissed my neck and I melted into her. She wanted me, c'était clair. As the light withdrew from the room the darkness swallowed the features I was trying to learn by heart. I sat wondering how I’d come to be trapped by her shape, her dreadlocked hair falling around my legs. I watched her until dawn, tired yet content, unable to detach myself. 

In the morning, I slipped away from under her, leaving a note, my phone number and the contours of a heart. Juno’s superpower was presence, mine was invisibility—but she had somehow pulled me out of me and I felt exposed. I wished to be a pause along her journey, a safe haven. I couldn’t detach her from the image of the bee, finding flower after flower without a sense of betrayal. I wanted to be today’s flower, wishing nothing more.

~~~~~~~~~~~

There was something electric between us, unfinished. Juno came knocking later that day. I was surprised to see her. The afternoon light was crowning her in gold, an aura of wonder, skin warm.

She embraced me the French way, delighting in my culture. One kiss on each cheek, slow and deliberate. I giggled, embarrassment surging in me.

We drifted back to the couch from the morning, now familiar. She offered her neck for me to kiss, my mouth snatched the surface of her being as if that air was precious. Her heavy braids brushing against my face, a waterfall of black hair mingled with gold and purple threads. 

“Whisper to me in French,” she said.

“Tu es la plus belle femme que j’ai jamais vue,” the words flowed easier now.

She shivered, opening her neck to me, rolling her head in pleasure. 

“Merci, merci, merci, merci.”

My fingernails traced circles on her lower back. Juno led me into my own room. The portraits on the walls stared her down with no effect. I left the door ajar as if afraid of her spell.

She sat on my tall, queen-sized bed with grace, curving the white duvet around her, visibly unaware of breaking down my walls in the process. This was my private space, a space I claimed after the separation, my own, never breached. No one had ever sat on that bed, least of all laid on it. The black metal frame creaked as she moved. My bed had never been so alive. It would smell like orchid and vanilla now, her presence imprinted on the sheets.

I stood between the couch and the bed, staring, a stranger in my own space. She beckoned me and I came to sit in her heat, her thigh against mine. She spread herself back over the white bedding, pulling me with her. 

“May I kiss you on your bed?” 

I nodded, eyes cartoonishly shiny. 

She leaned toward me. Her soft sugar-brushed lips, painted blue, breath like lilac, met my lips. I half-closed my eyes and responded, my hands slipping around her waist, fingers brushing against her curves, warming my fingers on her smooth skin where the flesh was exposed. She was a buffet for the senses. 

“I don’t often have sex with people,” Juno said. 

I wouldn’t have believed her but the hint of discomfort and dysphoria was clear. I left my hand on her hip.

“Me neither.”

We agreed we both liked kissing. 

Lifting herself, she slid out of her top, discarding it onto the floor. I held my breath. She cupped her own breasts as if to display them. 

“They’re too small, still.” She was embarrassed, half-showing and half-hiding herself. She was more vulnerable than I realized. 

“I started HRT a year ago,” she explained. “I’ll show you photographs one day. I was already very athletic.” There was pride in that. It straightened her shoulders.

I shook my head. “They’re perfect. One handful, one mouthful.”

Watching her, I veered toward her right nipple, expecting to be stopped. I placed it in my mouth, my eyes still on her. She might have blushed as she started to stir, my tongue playful. My hand came to cup it. Naturally, my hips aligned with her body, as if trying to merge with hers. She let herself fall back onto the mattress and my body followed the way a snake dances with its prey. 

I kissed around each breast and along her collarbones, hands scratching her exposed flesh, mischievous unconcerned nails obeying their own laws. All of my body was following its private, secret rule and taking clues from her motions. Everything was under her silent command. I did not have to think anymore. 

I kissed over her hard stomach, muscle lines followed beneath the skin. I caressed the tattoo which had emboldened me, trailed grasping lips over the edge of her pants. I didn’t push. I just moved up and down her stomach, fingers like plentiful explorers on a wonderful new world. 

She unfastened the button, she pushed off the linen, she revealed her blue striped, French cut panties. Then she rolled over in embarrassment. Juno looked over her shoulder, tilted jaw, still trying to hide but smile warming and body purring already.  

“I shouldn’t.”

I interrupted the contact between my lips and her cheeks for an instant. “You can do whatever you like.” 

I felt the unclenching against my jaw. She released her thighs, allowing me to spread them. My hands lodged themselves on her hips and I pressed myself up and close, awakening every inch of her back.

When I had discovered and mapped her back from shoulders to feet she stirred and turned again, hiding her middle with her thigh, her folded leg over herself. I didn’t press her hands apart, I just smiled. 

“Merci,” I whispered. 

She fluttered like feathers caught in a breeze, uncrossed her hands and released her thigh again. I scratched at her stomach. I could feel the tension of the muscles under her skin, exposed to my curious fingers.

She drew a breath. “I normally have a long talk with someone before I get in bed with them. I make sure that they understand. It’s a five-step process, really, with questions.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t normally have sex with people,” I said.

She nodded.

“I’m trans,” she said, and I grinned. 

“I am aware. I don’t actually care about gender, you know.”

“Well, I usually say that when we start to kiss, not when we’re half-naked.” 

“So?”

She clenched her jaw, her face hardening. Her hands tightened on the hem of her underwear.

“I didn't have surgery yet. I have a... penis.” 

I nodded, and shrugged. “Okay.” 

Her jaw softened and fell back into place. Her eyes shone again. I put my hands on hers. Her fingers were still tight around the cloth. I kissed the corner of her mouth, and then nibbled her lower lip. In the same motion, four hands brought her last remaining piece of clothing down. 

I knew I wasn’t supposed to, that the expected thing was to pretend there was nothing there, but I looked. I placed my hand on her thigh and I left it there, looking. 

“You’re beautiful,” I said. 

“Can you just tell me I’m a girl?” Juno asked.

“You’re the most beautiful girl ever.” I smiled so wide my words came out warm.

I kissed her stomach again, but neither of us could pretend she wasn’t naked. My hand slid down and pressed on her thigh. She let herself be exposed, a glorious pillow princess.

I was a bird, dancing its mating ritual, armed with only my lips and the soft tips of my nails. My field was her stomach and her thighs, and sometimes when I dared step out of my allowed area, I would kiss her neck again, and peck at her lips to catch her quicker breath. I could see the waves of pleasure rippling down her flesh.

When my lips came so close that I could feel her hard against my cheek, she reached for me again.

“I’ve never even let my ex do that.”

“Do you not want me to?”

Juno didn’t answer. The certainty of the girl I’d met at the queer meeting wasn’t gone, but it was veiled. 

Still looking at her I touched her with my hands, cupping her length in one, caressing her underneath with the other. I lowered my face until she was within reach of my lips. I kissed the tip as if that kiss was innocent. Her face curled up. 

“You just have a large clit,” I said. 

And then I closed my mouth around it, tongue twirling and dancing, exactly as I had treated every other clit before. When I came up for air I told her again, hand brushing her below softly. “You have a beautiful clit.” 

She started to moan. I kissed her balls and her shaft with tenderness, murmuring about her gender, hands caressing her thighs. The soft way I clasped her skin between my lips, the hunger I was showing, melted into conviction. I said it enough to convince myself it was a clit, and I played with it as such. I didn’t have to convince myself Juno is a woman; she is the epitome of femininity. She was wide open, reclining against my pillows, exposed to me, naked and golden. 

I reached up for her breast as I licked her, pressing her flesh under my tongue, playful with her folds, my other hand clenching her hips to find stability. Her undulations still dance in my mind. She moaned and gasped and breathed with abandon. I took her in my mouth again, her clit pulsating against my tongue. Then she exploded, letting herself run free. I felt her shiver against my open palms.

I licked her clean, kisses climbing her stomach and chest to find her lips again. Her reddened cheek and heaving breath welcomed me and she shared whatever brief kisses she could manage. I pressed my head against her collarbone, my hand on her swaying stomach. 

“I like your clit,” I said. “Tu es tellement belle.”

I ran my fingernails over her skin and she purred. She rolled to the side, curled and fell asleep, napping against my body, warm and impossible. 

“I don't want you all to myself,” I said when she awoke. She was too young, her eyes too bright to not taste more of the world. I only wanted her to curl into my bed from time to time, when her own passion brought her to me. There was a flame inside me now which dared let me imagine she would feel her way back to me, and not disappear.  

Photo by Nappy