by Celia Laskey
I hide behind a clothing rack and watch him pick up and put down various winter boots. His large hands trace the curve of each shoe. He rubs the fleecy linings between his fingers. He has deep brown eyes and a trimmed, gray-flecked mustache. He’s wearing a navy-blue sweater and jeans that are just a little tighter than mine. He looks up and starts walking toward me.
“Excuse me,” he says.
I pretend not to hear him, shuffling the hangers of plaid flannel shirts.
“Excuse me,” he says again, louder.
I turn to look at him. He’s holding a Caribou boot. “Do you need a size?” I ask, even though footwear isn’t my section.
“I’m not sure,” he says, holding up the boot. “I’m debating if these are too hideous.” He smiles, and it hits me—I’ve seen him on Grindr. In his profile picture, he smiles as a man kisses his cheek, and his description says something about looking for a third. I think he messaged me once, last winter, and I turned him down because at that point I was just looking.
My heartbeat pulses in my fingertips. “I don’t know if there’s such a thing as stylish winter boots for men,” I say, searching his face for a sign that he recognizes me, though I’d probably have to lift up my shirt for that to happen.
“I guess you’re right,” he says. “I’ll try them in a ten and a half, please.”
I head to the back and wander through the aisles stacked from top to bottom with hunter-green shoeboxes, looking for the boot section. He has to be here with the task force. I wonder how it works, with him and his partner and whoever joins them in bed. I wonder who they’ve found on Grindr. It’s not like there’s a huge market in Big Burr—maybe they’ve hooked up with PB Tall Guy. The thought feels distasteful, like we’re completely interchangeable and maybe PB Tall Guy didn’t message me for a specific reason at all. Though if that’s the case, I can’t really blame him—it’s not like my profile gives anyone much to go on.
PB Tall Guy has a nondescript profile picture, too—just his bulge in a pair of gray Jockey boxer briefs. I imagine a Robert Downey Jr. type with dark features and a five-o’clock shadow. Pulling the blinds shut as he bites the back of my neck. Tracing the curve of his ass with my hand. The first flick of his tongue around my tip. Maybe the impersonality of Grindr is what men like about it—because you can imagine whatever you want.
I stand there, staring at a bar code, until my erection goes away. I find the right section and match the boot in my hand to the small black-and-white image on the box. As I walk back out to the floor, sweat from my palm dampens the cardboard.
I hand the box to the man. “Ten and a half,” I say.
He sits down on a bench and unlaces his brown leather sneakers. They look expensive. “Those are nice sneakers. Where’d you find them?”
“New York,” he says in a nostalgic tone. “Where I lived before I came here.”
“New York City?”
He nods and slides a foot into the boot, stamping his heel on the floor to get it all the way on.
“You’re here with the task force?”
“Is it that obvious?” He smiles and looks up at me curiously. “And you’re . . . from here?” A wisp of flirtation clings to the question.
I nod. “Been here my whole life.”
“Wow,” he says, shaking his head. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
He shrugs. “Exist here.” His eyes meet mine, and I understand he’s not asking how anyone exists here, but someone like him. Like me. He holds my gaze for a moment, then puts on the other boot and stands up. He walks a few paces and turns around. “What do you think?” he asks, striking a pose.
I blink a few times, coming back down to earth. “Oh, um. Well. They look . . . fine. They look good.”
He laughs and looks in the foot mirror at the end of the stool. “Well, they’re comfortable. And truly hideous. I’ll take them.”
I laugh. “Ashlinn can ring you up at the register.”
“Thanks for the help.” He turns to walk away, then pauses. “I’m David, by the way.” He extends his hand.
“Gabe,” I say.
He wraps my hand in a tight squeeze. His eyes fix on my silver wedding ring as he lets go. “See you around, Gabe.”
* * *
• • •
I LEAVE WORK early to go to my doctor’s appointment. Jean was able to squeeze me in at the last minute because she told Dr. Webber it was serious.
“Gabe! My man!” he booms as he walks in and slaps his wide palm against my back. We went to high school together, so my medical advice always comes with a side of off-putting chumminess. He sets my chart on the counter and turns on the hot water, pressing the heel of his hand against the soap dispenser three times. The antiseptic smell of the foam fills the room. “So how are we doing, buddy?” he asks as he rubs the soap between his fingers.
“Jean made me come. It’s really nothing.”
He rinses his hands and dries them with a paper towel, then turns around and regards me, looking down at my splint. “Is it about that?”
“No, I’m here for something else.”
He picks up my hand at the wrist and holds it in front of his face. “How’d you do this, anyway?”
“I fell on it,” I say for the millionth time.
He presses on my middle knuckle with his thumb, and I just about hit the ceiling. “Yeah, and I shit gold. How’d you really do it?”
“I really did fall on it.” I shift on the exam table, the crepe paper crinkling under me.
“This here is a boxer’s fracture, champ. You don’t get it from falling. You get it from punching shit.”
I shrug.
“All right, you don’t want to talk about it.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “I’ll get you a better splint and if you ice it once a day, it should be feeling better in about six weeks.” He takes a pinwheel peppermint out of his lab coat pocket and tosses it in his mouth. “So what’s the thing that you are here for?”
I stare at an illustrated poster for prostate cancer. Dr. Webber’s brother had it a while back, so he’s become a champion for early detection. A bright red lump like a misshapen heart sits at the base of the shaft. “My stomach has been a little off lately.”
“Off.” He opens my chart and flips through it. “Can you elaborate?”
“Nausea, mostly. Not much of an appetite.”
He closes my chart. “Any vomiting or diarrhea?”
I shake my head.
“Hm. Nausea can be psychological. What’s going on up here?” He taps his temple with his pen.
The prostate cancer poster warns me that one in six men will be diagnosed with the disease. What if I die having never slept with a man? “Just the usual,” I say.
“What are your usual stressors? What makes you punch shit?” He smiles, biting down on the mint. It crunches between his teeth.
“Oh, you know. Money, sales goals at work, the house falling apart, Billy getting F’s on his English papers, Jean riding my ass about whatever.” Imagining men riding my ass constantly.
“Tell me about it, man.” He makes a note in my chart. “Let’s go ahead and schedule you for a barium swallow, just to rule out an ulcer. Depending on those results, we can talk about next steps.”
I nod.
He claps me on the back again. “Gotten your buck yet?”
“Not yet,” I say. “You?”
“Nope,” he says. “But we’ve got time.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN I OPEN my eyes at 6:10 the next morning, the first thing I think is, Dry Creek. Motel 6. Tuesday 7 pm. My stomach churns. There are twenty minutes until my alarm goes off, but I can’t fall back asleep. Outside, it’s still dark, but my eyes adjust within the room. Jean is on her side, facing me, breathing deeply. Her top lip juts out from th
e thick night guard that’s supposed to help her stop grinding her teeth. She’s doing it right now, a tendon on her jawline popping out and her teeth squeaking against the plastic.
I wonder if I’m to blame. Sometimes I tell myself it’d be better for her—kinder—to tell her. She’d ask when I knew and I’d have to say always. Trying to convince my male childhood friends to play doctor. Waiting in the bathroom stall of the locker room for my erection to go away. The night of my twenty-first birthday, when I was falling-over drunk and kissed my best friend Jeremy and the next day both of us pretended we didn’t remember. I stuffed it all down. I knew what my life would look like if I followed the path society had laid out for me. I had no idea what it would look like if I didn’t. I thought maybe once I was married it would go away. Maybe once we had a kid. Maybe once I got old enough. Wouldn’t it be better for Jean to find a man who can love her the way she deserves? She could find someone. But what if I can’t? Then I’ll be out, but I’ll be alone. What’s the point of that? Plus, I’d probably have to leave Big Burr, which would mean being away from Billy. Maybe I could wait until he goes to college? But if I don’t do it now, soon it’ll be too late. I’m already thirty-nine.
I open the app. There’s a new message from PB Tall Guy: U cumming tonight. Again, no question mark. I wonder if it’s confidence or just laziness. The way he spelled coming seems juvenile, but I still start to get hard. I wonder who he is, beyond the messages. I’ve been too scared to ask. Is he part of the task force, like David? Does he want to meet up just so he can out me? Or maybe he’s closeted, too, with a wife and kids and an excuse he’ll need to make up for tonight.
The alarm blares. I turn it off as Jean slides over and lays her head on my chest.
“I was having a good dream.” She slips her hand under my shirt and traces the line of my boxers, brushing against my erection. “You were, too?”
I close my eyes and picture PB Tall Guy’s thumb rubbing the underside of my cock. His fingers squeezing my balls. I turn over and pull down Jean’s yellow daisy pajama pants. I try to focus on the sensations, but Jean keeps getting in the way. Her breasts rub against my chest. Her neck smells like vanilla perfume. She lets out quiet, high-pitched moans.
“I’m close,” she whispers.
I go faster, the way she likes at the end, until she trembles and arches her neck. A streak of pale pink lights up the bottom of the window. One of the neighbor’s hens calls out her imitation of a rooster’s crow. It sounds like a sick chicken gargling. I kiss Jean’s cheek and roll back to my side of the bed. “I might need to work late tonight,” I say.
* * *
• • •
I PULL INTO the Dry Creek Motel 6 parking lot after spending most of the day in the employee bathroom, hunched over the toilet dry-heaving and writing PB Tall Guy, sorry can’t make it, then deleting it. The only way I got myself here was by telling myself I can sit in the parking lot for a while, then drive away. I don’t need to go through with anything. Lights shine from behind the curtains of two rooms on the first floor and three on the second floor. I wonder if he’s already inside.
7:12. I wait for a message while chewing on Tums. A streetlight illuminates a blue banner hanging from the second-story railing that says COME AS A GUEST, LEAVE AS A FRIEND. A red Taurus pulls into a space three away from my truck. My mouth fills with spit. The top of my head prickles. Will he look the way I’ve imagined, like Robert Downey Jr.? Will we talk first? Will he ask me my real name? Will he be gentle or rough? Will he be able to tell I haven’t done it before? Will he film it, then use it against me? I watch the car door, holding my breath. A young woman in a plaid coat steps out. She opens the back door and leans over a car seat, unbuckling a wailing baby. I swallow the spit in my mouth and turn up the oldies station. Elton John sings, It’s lonely out in space. The music swells and rises around the chorus, I’m a rocket man. The music sinks back down with a sad mechanical howl.
7:28. 7:29. 7:30. I’m here, I write. Where are you? I play a game of sudoku on my phone but can’t solve it. 7:45. A middle-aged guy with a small paunch pushing out his long-john shirt steps out of a first-floor room and walks toward the parking lot. As he passes my car, his eyes lock on mine through the windshield. He jerks his chin upward in what could be a tic or could mean, Follow me. He has a five-o’clock shadow, but not the kind I imagined. I step out and trail him to the back corner of the parking lot, to a black Chevy truck with duct tape covering the cab’s back window. I stand near the bumper. He pops open the glove compartment and emerges with a silver condom between his fingers. When he sees me, he freezes.
“What the fuck do you want?” He takes a step forward.
My stomach audibly squelches. I clench my sphincter as I ask, “Are you PB Tall Guy?”
“PB Tall Guy?” he repeats. “What kind of a name is that? That’s not my fuckin’ name.”
“I’m sorry.” I start to back away. “I was supposed to meet someone here, and I thought you might be him. Sorry to bother you.”
“Let me get this straight. You were supposed to meet somebody called PB Tall Guy at this motel?” He sucks air through his teeth and takes a step closer. “That sounds like some fag shit to me.”
I hold my hands out in front of me. “No, no,” I say. “No fag shit. Just a friend.”
He walks up to me, stopping when there’s no more than an inch of space between us. He reaches behind him, and his hand emerges with a pistol in it. “Friend?” He lets out a short laugh as he pushes the gun into my heart. His face looms over mine. From his mouth, the smell of old cigarettes and yogurt curdles the air. A small, sallow scar curves across his cheek underneath the dark stubble. “I ain’t no friend,” he says, pressing the pistol against me more forcefully. The coldness of the metal seeps through my shirt, making my skin ripple. “You hear me?”
I nod.
The man pulls the gun back a few inches. I think he’s about to let me go until he says, “Take off your pants.”
“What?”
“You heard me, fag.” He points the pistol at my crotch and makes a quick down-and-up motion.
Cars race by on the dark road, none slowing down to turn into the parking lot and save me from whatever this is—an assault, a rape, a murder, a joke. With my unsplinted hand, I pull back the strap of my belt until the prong slides out of its hole, then yank the strap out of the buckle. The belt hangs open on my shaking thighs, the metal prong clinking against the frame of the buckle. I unbutton my jeans and look up at the man.
“Hurry the fuck up,” he says. “This ain’t a striptease.”
I push my jeans down my legs until they’re bunched at the ankles.
“Those, too,” he says, pointing the pistol at my light blue boxer briefs.
I wince, pushing the boxer briefs down to meet my jeans. I straighten up as quickly as I can and hold my hands in front of my penis. The cold night air whooshes between my legs.
“Look who’s bashful all of a sudden. Isn’t this what you wanted? Some dude to see your dick?” The man taps the barrel of the gun against the inside of my forearms, forcing my hands out of the way, and laughs heartily. “Not much to look at.” He lets me stand there for a minute, exposed and humiliated, then says, “All right, give ’em to me,” gesturing at my jeans and boxer briefs.
I step out of them, my briefs still slightly warm from my body heat. Out of habit, I fold the jeans with the briefs inside before handing them over.
Before he heads back toward the motel, he says, “See ya later, friend.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN I PULL into my driveway, I turn off the truck and sit looking at the house, trying to see it as a stranger would. In the dark, you can’t see the peeling blue paint or the warped shingles on the roof that let water in when it rains. The porch light illuminates the placard on the front door that says THE CUNNINGHAMS and Jean’s silver pots ful
l of fake red poinsettias. Billy’s video game flashes through the living room windows. A soft light shines from the master bedroom. Jean is probably reading The Duke and I, waiting for me. If I can just make it to the laundry room without her seeing me, I can grab a pair of sweats and not have to explain what happened to my jeans.
The garage’s sensor light snaps on, illuminating a buck no more than ten feet away. He nibbles on the evergreen at the side of the house, his antlers scraping against the peeling siding. I count twelve points. Could it be the same one from the other day? I reach behind me, feeling for the smooth wood of my rifle, then I ease the door open just a crack. The deer turns its head at the clicking noise, and I stay still until it goes back to eating. I slowly slide out of the truck, then lift the rifle until the sight is in front of my eye. Bending my pointer finger sends an electric jolt of pain through my body, but I grit my teeth and think, Twelve-pointer, twelve-pointer. The buck looks to the right and left as he chews with his mouth open, then his round brown eyes meet mine. He tilts his head to the side, just like the buck mounted on the wall of the living room, seeming to say, I know.
I lower the rifle. His white ears swivel, hearing something I can’t, and he goes bounding into the woods.
Tegan
So if someone who’s transgender says they’re a man trapped in a woman’s body, couldn’t someone also say they’re a white person trapped in a black body?”
I take a long drink of water to stop myself from making my what-the-fuck-did-you-just-say face. Me and some other members of the task force are hosting a Q&A at Town Hall, the most well-attended event we’ve had yet—probably because we’re giving away a bunch of $50 gift cards to locally owned businesses. On the flyer advertising the Q&A, we wrote, There are no stupid questions! Ask us anything! “First of all, the rhetoric of trans people being ‘trapped’ in their bodies is really simplistic and reduces trans people to victims,” I say. “If anything, trans people are trapped by society’s expectations, not by their bodies.”