She glanced at me. “See, this is why I can’t go on doing this.” She looked at me hopefully, as if she was waiting for me to show that I understood.
I was looking into her eyes and feeling a surge of protectiveness for her, and a surge of power I’d never felt before.
I put my arms around her. I might be small, but it didn’t mean I couldn't protect her. It didn’t mean I couldn’t save her.
She didn’t say anything, but another tear fell down her cheek and I hear a sob hitch in her chest. I tightened my arms around her.
She turned toward me and let me hug her, just like she had in the taxi that time after the Mermaid Parade, when I’d felt my soul reach out for her and somehow, magically, I thought I’d felt hers reaching back.
After a minute she sat back and sighed. She shivered, I felt it.
“I’m scared,” she said, and she bit her lip.
I wanted to kiss it, kiss her, kiss her pain away. But we were in public, and I knew we didn’t look like your generic man-woman couple, and that made me hesitant.
And she hasn’t kissed you, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. How about that part of it?
Shut up, I said to the voice.
We could kiss later.
Damaris was upset. My sex drive had no place in this conversation.
Even if I only wanted to kiss her affectionately, to reassure her.
She had taken her phone out of her pocket and was scrolling through it with one hand.
“I need to meet someone today,” she said, and glanced at me. “Will you come along?”
Meet someone?
For some reason I thought of the guy from Coney Island and imagined being the third wheel on a date with the two of them, and me charged with protecting her in case he flew into a rage because she didn’t meet his expectations of what a woman should be.
He would fold me in half and post me through a letterbox with one hand.
I couldn't protect her. No, I couldn’t protect her in any way, shape or form.
“Who?” I asked finally.
“These girls,” she said.
“Girls?” I said, surprised. I didn’t know Damaris knew any girls.
“Do you remember…” Damaris said, playing with the crumpled napkin, “when your friend wanted me to go to that community center meeting?”
Oh… I remembered that day very well. That was almost a year ago. “The trans youth outreach thing?”
“Yeah,” she said, tossing the crumpled napkin ball onto her empty plate. “Well. I’m meeting Teagan.”
The name rang a bell. “The co-ordinator?” I said, surprised. I remembered Teagan.
She nodded. “I think she’s bringing her girlfriend. Tommy. We’re meeting somewhere in Madtown. I know it’s still early, but I’m too nervous and I don’t want to go back to DT’s.”
“Of course I’ll come,” I said, although I had no idea why Damaris wanted to meet up with Teagan. That meeting had caused a huge fight between me and Sue Ellen, a fight that, to be honest, our friendship still hadn’t recovered from.
The real highlight of the day had been when we got back from the meeting, Damaris stomped into the dressing room and hurled a bottle of foundation against the mirror, cracking the mirror and making the foundation bottle explode and flecks of creamy brown liquid to fly all over her workstation.
That’s for all of you rich white sanctimonious bitches and she’d shut up, then, and sat down and started doing her make up for the night’s performance without another word, her jaw set, staring furiously at herself in the mirror, ignoring the bits of broken glass and the liquid foundation dripping, slowly, down the surface of the mirror.
I’d been too scared to say anything then, and I felt the same fear again now, and it shut my mouth tightly too.
I’d been scared of doing something wrong, and I’d also been scared of the unknown things going on inside her mind, which were clearly acting on her.What is she thinking? Is it my fault?
I had thought to myself fearfully and slunk into my chair at my station, uncapped a glue stick and started spreading it over my eyebrows, glancing at her in the mirror like Machyl had parodied me doing.
Instead of asking any questions now, I just got up from where I had been sitting next to her on the bench, signaled the server and got my wallet out of my leather jacket where I had slung it over the back of my chair.
“You barely ate anything,” Damaris remarked, looking at my plate. “Were you not hungry?”
Actually, I had been hungry when we arrived. But the intense conversation and the fear and anxiety it had provoked in me had taken away my appetite. “Um,” I said, my eyes flicking to hers.
Did she think I was being wasteful? Profligate? The food looked frankly disgusting now, the eggs rubbery, the English muffins cold and hardened to a rock-like toughness, but I said, “I’ll get a doggie bag.”
When I had paid and we were walking out the door, I couldn’t help but think how brave Damaris was to not be scared of Machyl.
I smiled to myself. Maybe when we met up with these community center women, she would introduce me as her boyfriend.
I looked at her and smiled. She smiled back.
If she wasn’t scared of Machyl, then neither was I.
I wanted to hold her hand, but her hands were stuck deep in her jacket pockets, so we just kept walking down the street until we saw the sign for the subway, and I was happy.
I was truly happy.
Trans Youth Outreach
I didn’t like Madtown.
I never had. I found it ugly, overcrowded, touristy and devoid of interest.
As Damaris and I emerged from the subway, I hoped this meeting wouldn’t take long, whatever it was for.
“It’s just three blocks that way,” Damaris said, pointing to the left and we turned. “Thanks for coming,” she said.
“Sure,” I said. The sun had risen completely and it was turning into a nice day, warmer than it had been yesterday.
I took off my jacket. I didn’t really like wearing the same clothes two days in a row. I also hadn’t had a shower and the combination of those two things made me feel kind of gross and unpresentable.
“Look,” Damaris said, touching my shoulder. I turned toward her instantly. “I need you to not tell anyone about this meeting.”
I felt my eyebrows rise in surprise. “Why?” I blurted, then regretted it. “I—I mean, it’s your business,” I said.
She smiled tightly, and her eyes met mine, but I felt there was something guarded about her look.
I decided to just shut up and not ask any more questions. I was here for her, regardless. I didn’t need to know the ins and outs of everything she did.
Why won’t she tell you, though? A voice said in the back of my head. Doesn’t she trust you?
Her hand caught my forearm tightly, surprising me and filling me with alarm.
“That’s them,” Damaris hissed, her eyes falling on two figures walking half a block ahead of us.
Without another word to me, she started walking faster, then running a little, to catch up with them. I followed, feeling awkward.
“Teagan!” Damaris called, and they both turned around at the same time.
We caught up to the two white women and stood there, panting a little, which was more than a little embarrassing, and not exactly the way that I normally liked to start a social interaction.
“Hi,” Damaris panted.
“Hey,” Teagan replied, and they hugged.
I recognized Teagan from the meeting all those months ago.
She had shortish hair cut in an early 2000s emo punkish style, with a long hank across her eyes, short sides and the back all gelled up into spikes, and the whole thing was dyed dull orange.
She was wearing those giant tent pants from the same era, and her wrists were covered in raver bracelets and bangles. She had on a burnt orange knit sweater which I would call oversize if it didn’t look so stretched out of shape and baggy.
And her face was just covered in silverware, from her eyebrow to her nose to her lips.
I was always alert to early adopters and innovators, even if my personal style was rather more mainstream.
So the presence of a blatant early 2000s rave goth-emo on my style radar elicited an instant response to analyze and investigate.
But Teagan was dressed laissez-faire, quite sloppy, and I stood there, watching her hug Damaris, studying her and trying to figure out if the lack of irony was done on purpose or not.
“This is my girlfriend, Tommy,” Teagan indicated the other woman, who was standing there with her arms wrapped around herself self-consciously.
“Hey,” Tommy said, and hugged Damaris as well. Tommy was shorter, scrawny, and pale.
She had lanky curtains of hair falling to her shoulders, obviously dyed black with an inch of dirty blond roots peeking out of her middle parting, no make up, unplucked eyebrows.
She was wearing a loose dark tank dress patterned with little flowers, with a center row of buttons all the way down to the hem which brushed the top of thick fluorescent socks rolled on top of battered 9-hole Doc Martens.
The socks were different colors, one yellow, one green. The dress was low cut over her small pointy boobs, no bra, and when she reached up to hug Damaris I saw that her armpits were unshaved.
Tommy was a lot younger than Teagan, and I could tell Tommy’s style was, at least in part, the conscious product of hipster deliberation.
Whereas Teagan, who looked to be in her late thirties, I assumed had just kept relentlessly wearing the same clothes she’d thought cool as a teenager, as though she was in firm denial of the passing years.
How did she find stores that sold these clothes to replace them? Or were these the actual same clothes, like historical artifacts?
I was desperate to see what shoes she was hiding under the sidewalk-brushing hems of those giant pants.
“This is Anthony,” Damaris said, breaking me out of my thoughts, “we work together.”
We…. work together?
The two women turned to me and I saw them both, at the same time, look me up and down.
Their eyes took in the limited edition designer-collab sneakers, the women’s cropped flared jeans, the designer leather jacket, the subtle silver jewelry. Even the traceback tank I’d thrown on worked well, its low cut neck exposing my sharp collarbones.
Five minutes ago I felt grubby and unwashed, but now next to these ladies I felt like I’d walked out of an article on Top 10 Tips For Weekend City Dressing.
Their eyes took in my sculpted eyebrows, the perfect styling of my smooth, straight weave.
I realized I had forgotten to put in my contact lenses that morning, and they were still sitting in that glass of tap water in Duane Tyrone’s bathroom.
St. Sebastian …
Duane Tyrone was going to find those contact lenses.
When he woke up and lumbered out of bed and into the bathroom, when he was washing his hands, he was going to see that glass sitting there next to the cup that held the toothbrushes, and he would frown and look into it, and he would see those two little jelly discs with the gray circles printed on them, and he would pick the glass up, swish the water around, and he would know.
He would know I had spent the night there with Damaris.
We work together???
“Hi,” Teagan said, not smiling, and she didn’t try to hug me. She didn’t even stick out her hand to shake mine.
“Hi,” I said, trying to force my mouth into polite smile.
“Hi,” Tommy said, smiling a little at least.
I smiled back a little more at her. “Hi,” I said.
Then Teagan spoke to me again. She leaned forward a little—and down a little, since I was a lot closer to the ground than she was—“I’m Teagan and I use the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’.”
I blinked. “Um. I’m—I’m Anthony and I use the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him’,” I said, hoping that was what she wanted to hear.
Teagan turned to Damaris. “I don’t think he should come.”
I did a double take, but she was looking at Damaris. I glanced at Tommy, but she just looked back at me with an impassive stare.
Annoyance flared in me. Her nose was a little too large for her face, and her hairline was a little too square to be really feminine.
I looked at Damaris, waiting for her to tell Teagan exactly where she could stick that attitude. Damaris glanced at me, then at Teagan, then back at me. “Anthony,” she said. “Would you mind waiting for me?”
I felt my eyebrows rise in shock as hurt poured through me. I was so embarrassed I wished I was a piece of blackened gum stuck to the sidewalk, so no-one would notice me.
“Please, Anthony?” Damaris said. “I won’t be long. I swear.”
I glanced at Teagan, who I could have sworn was looking back at me with a satisfied little pout on her lips.
I felt my lips pursing and I looked at her jaw, which was a little too heavy and her brow bone, which jutted out a little too much to look female, and I felt my stomach curdle in distaste.
Damaris is beautiful.
Unlike you two witches.
And then an idea came to me.
A brilliant idea, maybe the best idea I had ever had. I turned to Damaris, took her hand, and reached up and kissed her on the cheek.
“I’ll be waiting,” I said. “I have a surprise for you when you’re done.”
Damaris, who had moved backward a little after I kissed her, blinked at me. “Okay,” she said. Then she looked at her phone. “I’ll see you in an hour? Message me?”
That was when I realized I didn’t have my phone. I had left it sitting on the nightstand in Damaris’ bedroom.
I don’t need my phone.
“I’ll be here,” I said, pointing to the spot on the sidewalk where I was standing.
Damaris looked at the random stretch of sidewalk doubtfully. “You’re just going to stand here?” She asked.
Her eyes flickered to the stores lining the sidewalk. There was one of those old general stores with a huge glass window display full of neatly arranged but incredibly odd things, like baby dolls next to a border strimmer next to trash bags.
The next store down, I noticed, following her gaze, was a beauty supply. “Oh, do you need to go in there?” She asked.
I felt the gaze of the other two women, who were looking at the beauty supply as if they had never set foot inside such a place and would seek immediate de-contamination if they ever did.
“Um,” I said. I hadn’t even seen the beauty supply. I just couldn’t go anywhere if I didn’t have my phone and needed to wait for Damaris. “Sure,” I said. “I need, uh. Mascara,” I invented lamely.
“Okay,” Damaris said, with a little wave, and then turned away and the three of them started to walk away. I watched them go, a couple of blocks, until they turned and disappeared from sight.
It was weird to wait for someone without a phone or any other means of telling the time. I thought about actually going into the beauty supply and browsing around a bit, but I felt a strange reluctance to leave the spot where I was standing, in case she came back.
Maybe it would only take a few minutes. Maybe she would get sick of them being condescending and cut the meeting short.
Maybe she would find the urge to pluck Tommy’s stray eyebrow hairs overpowering and there would be a tussle as a result and she would come stomping back to me, fuming and angry, and I would pull out my ace, and she would melt, and smile, and maybe even kiss me.
I thought about going for a walk.
Over to the bakery I could see across the street. There was a flower shop I could look at. Further down there was a taqueria.
But I wasn’t hungry, and I didn’t need flowers.
I could see a branch of a chain coffee shop about a block in the opposite direction to the one the women had walked in.
I could go and sit in there. It would be better than sta
nding on the street.
But if I did that, even if it was for a short period of time, I would have no way of knowing if Damaris had come back.
And the whole time I was in there, I would be thinking about if she was looking for me, saw my spot was empty and gave up, and went off on her own.
So I stood on the sidewalk in front of the general store.
In front of me to my left was a bus stop. Behind me to my left was a chain-link fence enclosing a small wasteland of rubble and plastic bags.
It wasn’t the most prepossessing part of New York City but I would stand here all day to wait for Damaris.
Why did she need to see them?
The thought crossed my mind that maybe this had been Damaris’ plan all along, when she wanted me to stay with her last night.
It was so she would have someone to go with her to meet those trans women in the morning.
She doesn’t need a reason, I could hear Sue Ellen’s voice in my head. She was probably just trying to make friends with them.
Sue Ellen had said that Damaris needed to make friends with some other trans women, which was why she had suggested that outreach event last year.
I could feel my back teeth grinding together. A dull pain was traveling up my spinal chord at the back of my neck and sending a headache across the surface of my skull.
I crossed my arms tightly and stared at a fire hydrant which sat right in my line of sight, squat, ugly and solid, with those little chains connecting the plugs so they wouldn’t get lost.
I’d like to unscrew them and see what happens. Blow this street sky-high. The blast would burst right through the glass panes of the general store and swamp the baby dolls and the trash bags.
I’m not a drag queen. I’m a woman.
I knew that was true. Or at least, I knew that she was a drag artist and also not a drag artist.
It sounds like you hate drag.
I thought of the way that Teagan and Tommy had looked at me, like I was someone else’s used band-aid they had found stuck to their foot at the gym.
I don’t think he should come.
The headache gripped my head in its tentacles and squeezed.
I crossed my arms tighter.
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