May 2019
Sören Sigurðsson was on vacation and he was not enjoying it.
He'd arrived in Cancún yesterday - he was here for the next two weeks. It was treating himself after the horrible year he'd had so far... and two weeks of trying to get some relaxation and enjoyment before the stress of having to start his life over again, yet again. He had just enough money saved for a few more weeks in a hotel, a deposit and first month's rent on an apartment based on average market costs, but no real idea yet as to where he'd go. Somewhere in the US, preferably not a red state, and preferably somewhere that the cost of living wasn't insane, like it had been in California. Of course, the cost of living had been the least of his problems there.
He told himself when he arrived he'd give himself a few days to do absolutely nothing before he had to start thinking about where he'd go once his vacation was done - at least he could take his job anywhere, doing data entry for an insurance company from his laptop - but he had never been one to just completely let go of worry, and the unsettled, life-in-chaos feeling was still at the back of his mind. And Sören had forgotten over the last few years that he had trouble sleeping in a new place, reminded of it sharply last night when he lay awake all night, tossing and turning, not able to shut his mind off, despite the comfort of his cat Snúður, who he'd taken to a pet-friendly hotel. He'd finally gotten about two hours of sleep just before the early, bright sunrise blared through the hotel room's curtains, and that was almost worse than having gotten no sleep at all.
So he'd spent the day exhausted, which made the heat even more unpleasant. Sören wished bitterly he'd gone earlier in the year - like February or March - but he'd given it till April before he said "fuck it" and planned his escape, and he'd thought, wrongly, that going in May would mean the temperatures were still reasonable. Perhaps they were by people who were used to hot weather, but he'd moved to Los Angeles from Reykjavik in 2016 and before that, he'd grown up in Akureyri, just sixty-two miles south of the Arctic Circle, where "hot weather" was usually under sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The last three years in LA had done little to acclimate him, he was still pale and burned easily in the sun. And yet, he'd still chosen Cancún as his vacation destination, telling his friend Yeyette that it was the adventurous Sagittarius in him, wanting to see the Caribbean Sea, so very different from the moody beaches of home. And now he was miserable, returning to his hotel room in the late afternoon instead of trying to watch the sunset on the beach like he'd planned - being overtired and overheated was bringing on a migraine.
To try to relax, Sören decided to take a shower after he fed Snúður. Sören paused to look at himself in the mirror as the water heated up. He was a lot more comfortable with himself since he'd transitioned four years ago, enough that he could actually look in the mirror now without wanting to hurt himself, but now he told himself, "You look like hell, dude." He had been told a number of times he resembled Jon Snow on Game of Thrones with his shoulder-length curly black hair and brown eyes and short beard framing full lips, though the resemblance ended with nipple piercings and full sleeve tattoos - flames on his right arm, ocean waves on his left, that led out to a fire phoenix and water phoenix on his back. Sören could see the tiredness on his face and in his eyes... he felt tired into his bones. Not just from the lack of sleep, he realized, but everything that had brought him here. Really, he hadn't had a break for years. He felt perpetually like the phoenix inked into his skin, burning up and starting over again. And it was getting old.
The shower felt good, with the hot water pelting down on his sore muscles, and breathing in the steam was refreshing. But it still wasn't enough to chase the headache away, and Sören desperately just wanted some sleep. He ordered a meal from room service - chicken enchiladas with rice and beans, made fresh in the hotel's kitchen - and when it arrived he wolfed it down, and fended off Snúður, who was begging like he hadn't just eaten a short while ago. The pineapple soda that came with his dinner had a festive little umbrella in it, and Sören felt like it would be a waste not to go out on the balcony to drink it, so he did, getting one last taste of salt air as he watched the waves sparkling in the golden haze before sunset.
When Sören finished his drink, he climbed into bed, and finally tried on the complimentary eye mask from the hotel desk to block out the light. But the eye mask felt too heavy on his face, so after a little while he pulled it off, put it on the nightstand, and buried his face in the pillows, closing his eyes with a grumpy noise. Snúður hopped up beside him, reached out with his front paws and began to knead and purr loudly, giving some headbutts. Sören skritched the cat fondly, soothed by his companion's attempt to comfort him...
...but he still lay awake, in pain, worn out. Wondering if he would ever get some sleep this trip, wondering if he'd wasted the money to come here and get a change of scenery - and possibly get laid, with Cancún being a hot spot for gay male hookups; that was in fact one of his main reasons for coming here, stewing in sexual frustration for years. This trip was supposed to be a treat to himself, and instead it was starting to feel like adding insult to injury... it felt like defeat. Sören found it harder to cry since starting T a few years ago but now the tears came on, silently, bitterly.
Suddenly there was music through the wall, from the room next door. A harp, playing a tune that sounded familiar - it took Sören a minute to place it, and then he recognized it, when a male voice began singing.
The sea's evaporating
Though it comes as no surprise
These clouds we're seeing
They're explosions in the sky
It seems it's written
But we can't read between the line
Hush
It's OK
Dry your eye
The harp was playing the guitar part of "Sleeping With Ghosts" by Placebo, but the voice was reminiscent of Jeff Buckley's and yet more beautiful and intense, an agile, ethereal tenor that gave Sören goosebumps. As badly as Sören wanted to tune out the world and just get some fucking sleep, he was compelled to listen.
Soulmate dry your eye
Cause soulmates never die...
Sören continued to cry quietly, this time as much from the music as the pain and fatigue. It was almost as if the song was for him, even though Sören had no idea who was in that other suite and the guy singing and playing the harp probably didn't know he existed, either.
When the song was over, ending with the shimmering notes of the harp, Sören found himself hoping there was more. And there was. The song was followed by an instrumental Sören didn't recognize, and guessed was probably an original work - melancholy minor chords, giving way to something brighter. Then there was another song, full of yearning, back and forth between delicate and stormy, with that beautiful voice singing in another language that sounded like a blend of Finnish and Gaelic, yet neither, and reminded Sören of the glossolalia of Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser or Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance. Once again Sören's hair stood on end and he broke out in gooseflesh, a frisson down his spine.
There was another song in that strange language-or-not-language, sweet and gentle. Sören let himself fall into the music, his mind spinning random images the way it often did when he listened to music while painting, trying to express with his brush what he saw with his mind's eye. Now the music took him ever inward, relaxing coming in waves, until sleep washed over him like a great dark tide.
Sören woke up feeling more refreshed than he had in weeks - as if the sleep he'd had last night didn't just make up for the night before, but all of the turbulence that had led to his decision to leave Los Angeles and start over again.
It was time to do what he'd come here for. Sören spent the morning at the beach closest to the hotel, taking in the view... and the eye candy, lots of attractive men of different ethnicities. But as pent up as Sören was, he felt shy about approaching any of the men, even though one - tall, black-haired and brown-eyed, tan skin - was making eye contact with him and unmistakably checking him out.
When the beach got too hot, Sören took a break to have brunch at the hotel's restaurant, and then he headed out to the hotel's pool for a swim. The guy who had been ogling him at the beach was there again, and this time Sören waded a little closer, hoping the guy would take the hint. The guy did, swimming over.
"Hello," the guy said. "How's it going?"
"It's going." Sören found his courage and gave a cheeky grin. "Wish it was coming instead."
The guy grinned back, and reached out to touch Sören's shoulder... then his hand moved lower, down Sören's back, to grab his ass under the water. Sören's cunt twinged and he bit his lip. "I can fix that, friend," the guy said, and swam towards the ladder out of the pool, then gestured for Sören to follow.
They walked together towards the locker room. As they approached the showers, the guy leaned in and whispered, "Are you top or bottom? I hope you're a bottom."
Sören exhaled, and his shot of courage turned to a knot of ice in his stomach. He hoped the guy would be horny enough that he'd just want to fuck and not care, but he'd been rejected before for what was about to follow. He lowered his voice and replied, "I am, but... before we get naked, you should know I'm trans. So I've got more than one hole -"
The guy's eyebrows shot up and his smile faded into an expression of disgust. "You a GIRL?" he shouted, shoving Sören backwards.
Then all of the other guys in the locker room turned and looked at him. "Get the fuck out of here, tranny!" one of the men yelled.
Sören ran out of the locker room, face on fire, heart pounding. He fled to his suite, feeling a surge of nausea, and the minute he was safely inside the room, locking the door behind him, he started to cry. He flopped down on his bed, hyperventilating and sobbing, feeling like the world was crashing down around him. It took him all he had not to pack his things, put Snúður in the cat carrier, and just leave now - it wasn't going to be safe to cruise the beach or the pool, so long as that guy was around and any of the guys who had witnessed. But he'd paid for his time here, he couldn't get a refund, and the thought of all that money down the drain didn't sit well with him.
Sören curled up with his cat, trying to calm down, but the shame spun through his mind over and over again like a broken record. He'd left Iceland for two reasons - he was raised by his abusive aunt and uncle after his parents died, and they not only didn't accept his transition at all but his uncle decided to start making his life a living hell, showing up random times drunk and spoiling for a fight "since you think you're a man now"... and there wasn't much keeping Sören in Iceland, since it was a small country with an even smaller LGBT population and he'd pretty much exhausted his options for trying to find a queer guy open to being with trans men. He'd thought he would have better luck in Los Angeles, but he either ended up getting rejected or finding himself fetishized, treated as not a real man and some sort of exotic variant of woman. He didn't think the odds could keep being so bad, especially someplace like Cancún that was well-known as a hookup hot spot... but here he was, again. Being treated like an impostor in the gay community, an object of scorn and revulsion.
Even if he was doomed to spend the rest of his life alone, Sören had no desire to go back to living as female. He'd had dysphoria as long as he could remember, feeling trapped in the wrong body to the point where he'd tried to kill himself; his tattoos were based on a painting he'd made during the recovery period of that time, a commitment to rise from the ashes in glory. But that still didn't change the fact that it hurt to get this sort of treatment over and over again, and it hurt even worse when he was here to try to learn to enjoy life again after having such a bad time in Los Angeles... a bad time in general, with so much trauma over the twenty-four years of his life, feeling much older, worn down to the bone.
Sören eventually stopped crying, listening to his cat's purr. And then, the harp music started from next door again. This time it was a song Sören knew very, very well.
There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to Heaven
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to Heaven
One of Sören's very few memories of his mother was of her singing "Stairway To Heaven" as a lullaby - she loved classic rock from the 70s like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, and Queen to name a few. Tears came to Sören's eyes again, a frisson went through him, as that angelic voice sang and skillful hands transmuted Jimmy Page's masterful guitar to the harp, like something one would expect to hear in an Elvish hall or enchanted forest.
When the song was finally over, Sören got up from his bed. Not thinking, just feeling, he stepped out of his hotel suite and knocked on the door of his neighbor, who had just begun to play the opening chords of something else. The music stopped, and Sören waited, and after a long moment where it seemed like his neighbor wouldn't answer the door at all, it opened.
Before him stood the most gorgeous man Sören had ever seen in his life, even hotter than the guy who'd propositioned and rejected him earlier. The guy was just a little taller and had a mane of silky black hair spilling down to the middle of his back, piercing grey eyes, thick eyebrows, high cheekbones, a sensual mouth. He could have been a supermodel, and somehow managed to make his Metallica shirt and jean shorts look classy. "Yes?" the guy asked, his voice soft and a little husky.
"Um." Sören's cheeks were burning again, his stomach doing flip-flops. He desperately tried to find his words, translating Icelandic to English, but no words really seemed adequate for what he wanted to say. "Uhhh, I'm staying next door, and, um... your music."
"Oh." The man frowned. "I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you. I -"
"No, you're not. It's. Ah." Sören bit his lower lip, looking into those silvery eyes, mesmerized by that silvery voice, heart beating faster. He blurted out, "It's beautiful. You're beautiful."
Then, realizing he'd just made an ass of himself, he clapped his hand over his mouth and took a step back. The guy blinked, and Sören didn't wait for him to respond. He tore off back to his room, hearing himself making a tiny little "meep" which was even more mortifying, knowing it made him look even more ridiculous.
Sören went to the balcony for some fresh air, his head spinning, in a panic again. He cried a little bit, once again embarrassed, and then he pulled himself together, not wanting to spend his entire vacation a total wreck. He lingered, watching the sunlight glinting on the waves, the tide rolling into the white sands, wishing he had the courage to go back out there and not care what anyone thought of him. When he came back into the suite a few moments later, there was more music through the wall. This time, the harpist was playing "Beautiful Day" by U2.
You're on the road
But you've got no destination
You're in the mud
In the maze of her imagination
You're lovin' this town
Even if that doesn't ring true
You've been all over
And it's been all over you
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Sören wondered if that was intentionally directed at him, or just coincidence. Either way, the message was received. Sören put on more sunblock, grabbed his satchel of art supplies, and headed out, back to the beach. If he couldn't enjoy the company of a hot guy, he could enjoy the company of the world itself, the beauty of nature which had always sustained him when times were rough.