As a starter - I'm gay and (mostly) stealth. I play in an all gay sports league a couple nights a week.

Last night after the game, I went out with a bunch of my teammates and I ended up chatting up this one guy. He's super hot, a total sweetheart, and he also loves to smoke. We spend the next few hours hanging out and making friends with all the folks that were at the bar with us after the game. At some point he suggests we leave the bar to come back to my place and smoke together.

We came back to my place and in the beginning all was good - we listen to the same music, have the same sense of humor, and we've got some equally funny stories about dating in this city. We discuss relationships, our pasts, our pet peeves - etc. We make out a bit here and there, but nothing too heavy.

I know this is probably the part of the story where I should have said no to us being physical, or disclosed, or whatever - but for once it felt good to have an organic connection with someone that I met just by being myself and hanging out like every other guy? I've had a lot of success meeting guys on apps, or in certain spaces where I know that other people know that I'm trans - but I hate the way that I feel constricted to preface every potential sexual interaction outside of these spaces with "the talk", and I didn't want to do that last night.

After a couple hours of this, we cuddle for a while and it was clear that it was going to go further than just light making out. I awkwardly stop, apologize profusely, and then tell him that I need to go to bed. He in turn apologizes because he thought that he had done something to offend me, orders an lyft, and I walk him out. We kiss, and then he took off.

To be perfectly honest, I feel like a fucking idiot today. For one, I put myself in a potentially shitty situation in the first place. Secondly, I feel like an imposter - I'm usually really good about separating my spaces where I play and where I just hang out, and making sure that I'm not "surprising" or "leading anyone on" by not disclosing. But I almost feel guilty for cultivating this connection with someone when I knew that it would probably go no where? Underneath it all I'm just shook - I don't want to talk to my other transguy friends because I don't want to hear the "I told you so" in regards to me trying to build a broader gay community for myself. It just sucks that what would have been a super innocent night of fun turned into this super awkward moment because of something out of my control.

I'm not letting this deter me from going out and doing my thing - it just hurts that I can't just "hang" and not think about it, ya know? Other gay transguys, how do you navigate these situations?