The Thrilling Sex Life of a New York City Model

For me, men were everything modeling couldn’t be: Casual. Carefree. Cathartic. They were fun to be around, to be under, and to be on top of. In a lot of ways, I was just like any other girl in her twenties living alone in New York City, navigating the waters of a large—but not always deep—dating pool.

For me, dating was the only part of my life in which I felt something like control. All day long I waited for other people to make decisions about me. My agent would call, relaying news from casting directors and fashion brands. My schedule was determined by the whims of others. When it came to men, though, I got to choose.

Maybe that’s why I slapped Jacques when he asked me to hit him.

Jacques was a hot French guy—and the VP of a luxury real estate company. We met at the Soho House rooftop on one of those summer nights when the warm breeze makes everything feel effortlessly cinematic. When I spotted him, I executed my go-to move to perfection, letting the wind blow my hair into my mouth and nibbling on it playfully. I gave him a smoldering look, commanding him to approach, and his feet obeyed.

He left behind what looked like a group of his work friends—and it was even hotter that he abandoned them for me. When he got up close, he slowly brushed back his thick dark brown hair, and I wondered who would speak first as we held each other’s gaze. Both of us were drinking Manhattans, and the aroma of smoked whiskey grew even more intense the closer we leaned into each other.

I had hooked him. By the time we got to his townhouse in the West Village, he was calling me “Bebi” and asking me to call him the same. A yellow streetlight poured in through the open floor-to-ceiling French shutters, bathing his dark wood furniture in a warm glow and casting soft shadows across the floor. Which was where his clothes started piling up before long. By the time he got down to his boxers, Jacques looked like Richard Gere in American Gigolo. He summoned me to the edge of his bed, and it was my turn to listen—but really, I was getting exactly what I wanted.

Our makeout session lived up to all those movie clichés, our breath synchronizing in a harmonic back-and-forth. He tasted like a Manhattan with a hint of Listerine.

But then when I was really on top of him, both of us naked, my body cast in silhouette from the streetlamp, he switched on the light on his bedside table.

“Bebi, can I ask you something?”

My mind raced with a million worst-case scenarios. No doubt he had clocked my T. I nodded yes, even as I prepared to flee—fast.

But then he finished his request: “Will you slap my face?”

If relief and confusion could be combined into one hybrid emotion, that was what flooded my heart in that moment. I was safe. 

But I had never done anything like that before. Slap him? I did it once—pak!—thinking it was just a one-time thing. But then he begged for more. I slapped him twice between thrusts before I stopped again.

“I can’t do this,” I said, with feigned hesitation.

“Come on, Bebi, I love it.”

“I can’t,” I said, making my voice sound girlish.

I knew exactly what I was doing.

“Bebi, please, please,” he begged, still elegant and handsome even as he was asking to be dominated. He was a man in power who wanted pain in the bedroom—and more of it. I could tell this was pure pleasure for him. But the trust in his eyes was thrilling, and it revealed who was really in charge here.

I slapped him harder. He especially liked it when my smack landed perfectly in between his left cheekbone and jawline, his plump cheeks producing that perfect high-pitched slap. Pak! His face got redder; his moans grew more intense. After my sixth slap, I started to feel uncomfortable—hello, Catholic guilt!—but by the tenth, I eased back into it, letting go of more inhibitions with each thrust. My self-imposed judgment vanished into the night.

Wrapped up in that consent between him and me, we had a sense of freedom. Our needs were being stated—and satisfied: His were literally written on his cheeks. He received all my slaps pleasurably, their rhythm a grounding soundtrack to a perfect, if unexpected, evening.

I was in control.

I was trusted.

There was a thrill to entering a bar and coming out with a guy. Especially when that guy looked like Ricardo. “He’s a Calvin Klein model,” his friend had whispered to me over the din of the Mets game at a joint on the Upper West Side—but I didn’t need to be sold on him. He looked like a beautiful blend of every race on earth, like the male version of “The New Face of America” on that famous cover of Time magazine. A bit Asian, part Brazilian, maybe some French, too. I wanted him—and I got him.

As we stepped out onto the street, the roar of the bar faded into the background, replaced by the sound of our footsteps finding each other’s rhythm on the sidewalk. He pressed his hand against the small of my back, a quiet but insistent reminder of his intentions, and I felt wanted, oh so wanted. It was a perfect moment.

But some nights that moment could only be fleeting, because as we walked the few blocks between the bar and his apartment, the reality of the situation hit me. Not even our impromptu makeout session could distract me from the nagging unease in my stomach. The truth was that men were fun—but they could also be dangerous. I hadn’t forgotten having to hide in that closet at Lake Tahoe, or seeing the look on that guy’s face in San Francisco as he drove me home in complete silence.

My steps slowed down. The horns of the cabs blaring past us sounded more like fire alarms now. Geena, what are you doing?

And then I looked over at his face—that beautiful face that looked like it was from everywhere and nowhere all at once—and kept walking. There was no way of knowing whether he’d be worth the risk, but tonight I wanted to take it anyway.

He lit some candles when we got into his apartment.

This guy got game, I thought, admiring the way the light flickered against the exposed brick wall of his loft. It was so New York—the kind of apartment you’d see on TV.

Then we were undressing, drinking in the sight of each other’s silhouettes. I tried to shush the “trans talk” inside my head—the inner voice that yelled at me, warning me not to keep putting myself in situations like this. Because if I listened to it, I would never experience anything—never feel anything. That’s the tragic paradox at the heart of transness: To live, we risk dying. To feel pleasure, we accept the possibility of pain.

Ricardo was gentle with me. His thrusting flowed like dance. When he was on top, his face moved in and out of my vision, the brick wall behind him coming in and out of focus. For a second, my mind went still. As we climaxed, it was just the two of us in that room—not us and the nagging voice in my head.

Afterward Ricardo asked me to stay overnight, and I agreed. He wrapped me up in his enormous wingspan, and I snuggled up into him, inhaling his musky, peppery scent. To me, this was a continuation of the sex, an exchange of heat and intimacy just as vital as the act itself. If you had eavesdropped on us, you would have heard us humming to each other, gently, back and forth, call and response. I felt as if I had defeated the “trans talk” for good and could finally just . . . relax.

But then a jolt of fear hit my heart.

Ricardo is a model, I realized, remembering his friend’s bragging in a panic.

I needed to get out of there. It didn’t matter that our bodies were intertwined, or that seconds ago I had been floating off to sleep on an ocean of postcoital bliss. He was in the industry, and if he caught on to me, I could be outed. Word of my transness would travel from his lips to infinite ears. Suddenly wide awake, I peeled his arms off me as he started to drift off.

“I have a super early call time,” I lied.

He looked confused. Hadn’t we just shared something special? Couldn’t I just set an alarm?

“Sorry, I have to go,” I said, searching for my clothes on the floor.

This wasn’t as jarring for me as it was for him. My life was full of these extreme swings between comfort and fear, between pleasure and danger. I could let myself stop performing for a few hours, maximum, and then I had to shift back into stealth mode.

Ricardo tried to get in touch afterward. He was nice, and he couldn’t help it that he was a model—anyone that hot was basically legally obligated to be photographed for a living—but I had to hold it against him. I couldn’t take the risk. Did I ever envision us walking around the Reservoir together, holding hands and sipping coffee? Yes. Was he a guy who got away? Not quite, but I always wondered how he would have reacted if I had told him.

But I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t.

Then I wondered if I should tell Jacques, whom I met again for dinner one night not long after seeing Ricardo. In between bites of pasta, I opened my mouth a half-dozen times to say it. But the words never came out. I felt comfortable around him. He wasn’t a model. And we had a sensual connection—the sexy slapping was proof—but I still didn’t know very much about him.

This was our first official date, and people hide things on first dates: addictions, gambling problems, even histories of violence. Not that my being trans was anything like those things, but still, we were both holding our cards close to the chest, and I didn’t want to play mine too early. I would soon learn the dangers of getting vulnerable too fast.

Sometime amid my liaisons with Ricardo and Jacques, my best friend Danmark flew out from San Francisco for a visit. I wanted him to taste all the best perks modeling had to offer. I took him—where else?—to Cain. We were determined to relive our glory days in San Francisco, dancing all night. The drinks came in a steady stream, the sweat we built up evaporating into the air, alchemizing into pure fun. The music thumped so loud, it filled our chests.

Then from a distance, a familiar face came toward me, clearing the crowd—Dmitry, the sexy Ukrainian model and one of the only people in the industry I considered a friend.

I introduced Dmitry and Danmark to each other, and the three of us danced together in the crowd, chugging vodka crans. When we sat down for a break, we still got jostled around because the place was so packed. In a rare moment of calm, humming from the alcohol running through our veins, I felt a wave of pure joy at the sight of Danmark and Dmitry sitting next to me, an old friend next to a new one. The whole world was at peace—but maybe that was just the vodka talking.

Danmark went back to the dance floor, leaving me alone with Dmitry.

As we sat together and talked, reminiscing about the families we had left behind, Dmitry boasted to me about one of his scars. He had gotten it during a fight, he said. Each scar was a story, he said, usually a scary one, and together they made him who he was. He might have been rough-and-tumble, but I found him disarming. He was being vulnerable with me, disclosing pieces of his past unprompted.

Maybe it was all the talk about scars, but then in a moment of stupidity, I felt like I should return the gesture.

“I love that you met Danmark!” I shouted to him over the music, leaning over to put my mouth close to his ear. “He’s my best friend, and you’ve been a good friend to me, too!”

And then the words just spilled out of me before I even knew it. Nonchalantly, naïvely, suddenly: “By the way, I’m transgender, but no one knows, so keep it a secret, okay?”

He pulled his head away to look at me and make sure I wasn’t kidding, but my steely expression proved it wasn’t a joke. His eyes widened slightly for a split second, and then he looked calm again.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re good, you’re good.”

And I believed him. I thought maybe for once someone could just see me as normal, that my transness wouldn’t be an asterisk permanently attached to Dmitry’s perception of me. He had shared with me; I had shared with him. We were cool, right?

I saw Danmark off in the distance, laughing, having a blast as if he were in a Mariah Carey music video, blissfully unaware of the bomb I had just dropped on my own life. Already, only seconds later, I regretted what I had said.

When I saw Dmitry after that, something felt off. We went through the same rituals, our same comings and goings, even grabbing a slice of pizza for lunch after one casting we both attended. While he didn’t acknowledge the secret I’d shared with him, he did act overly reassuring, as if he wanted me to know everything was still cool between us. But the air of goodness he put on felt a little too good. Could this be real? Could I really tell people and be accepted? Was he masking his true feelings with a performance of coolness?

Sharing my secret with Dmitry had come from a place of wanting to feel more connected to him, but the prospect of being fully seen felt too intense, like staring directly into the sun. I had been performing for so long, I wasn’t sure I knew how to be the real me.

From the book Horse Barbie by Geena Rocero. Copyright © 2023 by Geena Rocero. Published by The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Photographs by Evan Woods 
Make up by Ryanne Cleggett 
Hair by Gani Millama