by Casey Plett
“I took it,” said Raina. “Over a decade ago. It told me I wasn’t a woman and I believed it.” She was briefly silent, then said, “What brought you to the COGIATI anyway?”
“There was this long thread of stuff on Twitter with all these girls making fun of it,” said Lila. “I didn’t know what it was so I Googled it.”
“You have a Twitter?” said Raina.
“After Sophie died,” said Lila.
“Ah.”
“So did you take it?” said Wendy. “Do you know if you’re trans or not?”
Lila laughed. “I did, like, five questions.”
Aileen showed her phone. “Found it.”
“Noooo!” Raina wailed in mock sorrow. “Don’t do it!”
“Describe your relationship with mathematics—wow, you weren’t fucking around.”
“Told you.”
“You get a phone call from somebody you met for the first time a few days ago. How easy is it for you to remember who they are by the sound of their voice? What the ever-loving shit?” said Aileen. “And this was written by a trans woman? And she still has it up?”
“I’d imagine,” said Raina, “that she still thinks it helps people. That old guard’s still around.”
“I guess, hey,” said Lila.
“Kinda want to hate-take this,” said Aileen, still scrolling.
“Don’t,” said Raina. “It’s not good for you. Even if you know it’s silly.”
“She’s right,” said Lila.
“I always think,” said Raina, “how desperate this woman probably felt when she was writing it, how much she must have thought she was doing the right thing, how she was helping the rest of us. What her psychiatrists high on John Money must have screwed into her brain. There wasn’t anything else for her, either.”
“Yeah,” said Wendy.
“Still, though. Do you know even Andrea James wrote a hate-on for the COGIATI?”
“Holy shit, you’re kidding,” said Wendy.
“Who’s Andrea James?” said Aileen and all the others immediately screamed.
Hours later, they stumbled home and crossed Portage, the four of them laughing and leaning on one another. A man on the corner grimaced and shook his head, and a spit-fused “fuuuck youu” left Wendy’s mouth but no one heard it.
Wendy’s brain was a hunk of flesh lurching two seconds in front of her body.
They clattered up the stairs, Raina saying, “Heavens, fuck, I never even swear let alone drink this fucking much,” and Wendy took down a bottle of Raina’s whisky and said, “M’ dear, may I be so bold?” and Raina said, “Oh, I would.”
She made expert sours and poured the drinks and toasted everyone home again. They all went up to the living room and put on stupid YouTube clips that Wendy could barely even make out. They laughed and smoked cigarettes with the windows cracked open and The xx playing off somebody’s phone, making jokes as Wendy’s vision faded and flickered around the edges and their voices test-patterned around her brain. Wendy snuggled under the covers next to Aileen’s beautiful warm body as the others chatted, and she drifted in and out of sleep, her cheek a square on the tattoo lines on Aileen’s shoulder. She drooled a bit on Aileen’s side. Gross.
Wendy lurched up, embarrassed, kissed Aileen goodnight, told her to come down when she was ready. Raina snickered, and Lila said, “Goodnight dykes. Goodnight … trikes.”
“You don’t even make sense … pike!” said Wendy. Lila laughed, and one of Wendy’s last thoughts as she moved downstairs was that she felt younger, much younger, like she had in certain fleeting moments when she’d hung out with Sophie, and she let this thought settle and put itself at rest, and she took a nice, long, real, last deep slug of the whisky before changing into her nightgown, laying her body between her blankets, and letting herself drift further.
When she woke, Aileen was sitting beside her with her hoodie on. Wendy moaned and twisted herself in the blankets. She felt cozy and unable to sit up. She stuck a hand out into the cold air to wave. It took effort. Worthwhile effort.
“You’re up,” said Aileen.
“No-o-o-ope.” Wendy snuggled her body around the other girl’s.
“Cuddly, aren’t you.”
“Last night,” Wendy said into Aileen’s ribs, “was fun.”
Aileen gave out a short bark. “You don’t remember what happened when I came down then, do you.”
“H-u-u-uh?”
“Bloody hell.”
Wendy realized Aileen hadn’t been responding to her touch.
“When I came down,” she continued, “you were sitting on the bed with your arms crossed around your knees. You told me to hit you. I didn’t do it, of course. You said, ‘Hit me, hit me, hit me.’ You told me to restrain you. You got up in my face and pushed me and said, ‘Come on, hold me back.’ You were trying to imitate my accent too, by the way. You looked bloody terrifying. I got a lock on you and you tried to wriggle out. You have a bump on your head?”
Wendy realized an ache on the back of her skull. “Um. I. Think,” she said. Her head was literally swimming and it was physically difficult to speak. She was trying very hard to respond in a proper manner.
“Yeah, you bashed your head nasty on your dresser while you were struggling. You almost got away once, you were trying to make a run for the door. Said you were going outside. Let’s see what else. You said, ‘You think you’re so tough, you think you’re soooo, so tough. Tough Aileen, tough fucking Aileen.’ You were blabbering on bobbins about that for a while. I got you into the bed so you couldn’t move. Raina and Lila came down to see what was going on. Raina said—I’ll quote her, ‘Wendy just gets like that sometimes.’ Told me to shout at her if you got out of hand. You struggled and told me to hit you again and you told me I was a cunt. Then you were crying. You said you wanted to die. You said you wanted to die more than a few times. You said you wanted to die in a very scary and repeated manner, Wendy. And I sat and held you while you blubbered until you went to sleep.”
Aileen stood up, and it seemed she would say something else. Like she had one more fact that was desperately vital for Wendy to hear out loud.
Wendy tried to form an apology. Her head fell forward and she got out a word that sounded like Bohh.
Finally Aileen said, “Been waiting for you to wake up for a while.”
Wendy tried to respond again, but it was hard, it was extremely difficult for her to focus, to form words in her brain and look at the other girl and make those words into sounds. Her head bobbed again. All she could see was a mat of her knotted hair.
Aileen shook her head. “I’ve got things to do.” Then she left. Wendy heard the scuffling noises of a jacket and boots downstairs and then the door open and the wind and the door shut.
Hours later, her phone rang and woke her up. She scrabbled to it with a groan. No, I don’t want to, whatever, I don’t care if it’s my favourite client, and he’s got a million dollars—
It was Michael.
Right. They were doing that today.
“Hey,” she rolled over. Her head was still buzzing. “Yeah, I’m still in,” she said, her hand mushing her cheek. “I’ll be right down. No, I’m ready, for real. Yeah, down in one sec.”
She bounced up and threw on a dress then set a timer for five minutes. In front of the bathroom mirror, she scrubbed and brushed and lined until the timer went off. She looked okay. Nice.
“So where we going?” she said in Michael’s car, a nice grey sedan with food wrappers on the floor.
“Rae and Jerry’s.”
“Rae and Jerry’s!” she hooted. “Alright.”
“You been? We’re going to the bar.”
“I’ve never been to the bar. My dad took me a few times when I was in high school. Apparently, he took my mom there on one of their first dates.”
“Good man,” said Michael.
“Yeah, and it was always such a big deal, you know; put on something nice, we’re going to Rae and Jerry’s.”
>
“It’s a good spot, man.”
“I thought it was so elegant back then, like those waiters, with the bow ties …”
“Same waiters probably still working there.” Michael gunned it down Maryland and turned onto Portage. “They probably don’t let them out.”
“Live in the basement,” said Wendy.
“Feed them cockroaches,” said Michael.
“Ew!”
“Oh, sure,” he bugged his eyes out and juggled his hands in the air. “Make a joke about eating bugs and I’m the asshole. Waiters living in the basement, though, that’s just hilarious, good clean fun.”
Wendy giggled. “I’ll have you know I’m a very delicate soul.”
When they got out of the parking lot, Wendy took out her ponytail and let her hair spill down over the collar and front of her coat. It was a clear night and the moon was silver and blue against the black.
“That’s new, eh?” Michael said. “The coat.”
“Yeah,” said Wendy, startled. She’d just gotten it last week, telling herself it was to be more pro for work. It was sexy but subdued, black and snug, lined with wool, and tied with a belt.
“Looks good on you. It’s pretty,” he said, holding open the door.
They entered the restaurant. Wendy hadn’t been here for over a decade—well, damn. Since she was a boy. There were the same fake candle lamps, white tablecloths, dark wood panelling, red vinyl chairs and booths, and paintings of mountains on the walls. A waitress in a white shirt and red bow tie went by with a steak. Michael ducked through a wooden door on the left. “In here,” he said.
The bar had darker, more pronounced and spaced panelling, swivel chairs of the same red vinyl, round Formica tables with no cloth, jazz on the speakers, the fake candle lamps turned into boxy lights, and a long bar with glass and racks of wine. Michael shrugged off his coat. “I maintain that if the Coen brothers ever shoot a movie in Winnipeg, they’d have to do it here.”
Wendy laughed. “You never told me you were funny.”
“Oh, fuck off!” He had a horse-y laugh. “See, I’m not your boss much longer, so I can say all sorts of shit to you now. What you want to drink?”
“Rum and Diet Coke.”
“You got it. What kinda rum?”
“Oh. Um, I don’t know.”
“They got everything, just say it.”
“Shit.”
“Captain? Kraken?”
“I don’t know—Kraken. Sure. Kraken’s good.”
Michael waved the waitress down. She knew him.
“You come here often?” Wendy said.
“I don’t live too far.”
“Oh yeah, you’re in, like, western Wolseley-ish right?”
“Not for long.”
“Huh?”
“You know I’m getting divorced.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Fuck me, thought I told everyone. Well, Wendy, I’m getting divorced.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Wendy steadily. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Lose the wife, lose a job—pretty cool Christmas, huh?”
“That’s awful.”
“Eh, the job I’ll be fine on. I’ve already got a promise for some interviews. No one’s gonna hire a manager during Christmas season, but I’ll find something before the end of winter.”
Their drinks came. “Well, I guess we should switch to whisky after this, then,” said Wendy.
“A whisky girl,” said Michael. “Shoulda known you were a whisky girl. Let’s get some appies. Chicken fingers?”
They got in the car around eleven as the bar was closing down. He ran through a close yellow on Portage. “Guess I didn’t notice that,” he said. “I’m a little bit drunk.”
She laughed. “It’s cool.”
“I had fun with you, Wendy, I had fun. You are cool. I think you’ve been holding out on how cool you are. We got two more weeks together at least, eh?”
“At least,” she said.
Michael’s brown eyes were pure and smiling.
“At least, yes.”
They were silent for a short while as she sat in his car. Then she leaned over and hugged him. “Goodnight, Michael. I’ll see you in a couple days.”
He gave her a quick peck on the neck. “Hey … maybe I should walk you to your door?”
It was so cute. He was a goofball and nearly two decades older than her but he had a good heart, she’d never had reason to doubt. And still didn’t.
He really was the nicest, purest guy to be interested in her, in a certain sense. When was the last time a guy was actually interested in me? Let alone had an idea of the person I actually am? Michael may not know all about me, but he knows I’m a transsexual and he knows I’m a drunk and—well—I’ve spent more hours around him than almost anyone else in the last two years. He’s seen me snarling and mouthing off to customers and co-workers alike, seen me slouching in to the store hungover more times than I could count—and Michael has always been good to me, always, when I’ve deserved good and when I haven’t. Always.
Oh, what am I thinking? He just wants to get laid! Maybe suck the dick he doesn’t know I don’t have. Nice fantasy, tranny-brain.
“It’s cold,” she slurred. “But maybe next week we could do this again? Or maybe, I don’t know, Christmas!?”
She felt stupid but open and honest, and Michael looked confused but hopeful.
Wendy got out of the car and waved. “I’ll see you at work Sunday! I’ll pick the bar next time!” Michael laughed then and gave her a thumbs-up. She went up the stairs, turned off her phone, and hopped into bed.
It all made her think again about how the lady pills had made her like boys. Or maybe it wasn’t the hormones at all. Or any such mystical thing. She had always loved boys, had tried to make out with boys in high school, but it just didn’t work. And maybe that made sense—how could she like their touch when her body was so wrong? Yes, there was a part of Wendy that needed validation from men, always, but millions of cis women needed that too, didn’t they?
Did she want to fuck Michael, though? Would that be fun? She tried to remember the last time sex with a boy had actually been fun. Did she even like sex any more? With anyone?
It was all a muddle. Boys, work, her dreams, girls, the chopped-up clit buried in her pussy. She had gone into the laundromat the other day. Taj and his dad were both there, and the three of them chatted like pleasant neighbours. I almost had sex with your son, but he was disgusted by my body thought Wendy as the dad talked about an upcoming snowstorm, about how he wanted to expand and put a coffee shop next door to the laundromat.
For years now, sex kept changing on her. Her own desire felt milky, like silt, something in a river, something she could see until she tried to hold it and make it function, and it ran through her fingers into nothing.
Well, not just sex even.
What did she want from her life, exactly?
Wendy was thirty years old. Her life had kinda never really changed. Sure, she transitioned at twenty-two, she was on her second stint as a hooker, but—honestly? Her adult life at thirty looked a lot like it had at nineteen. She worked a lot and drank too much and hung out with her dad. As much as her living sitches had varied, she still lived within the same five square miles she’d lived in since birth—never south of Corydon or north of Ellice, save that one disastrous year at U of M.
Now, this morning, smoking in her fluffy slippers and moon-blue nightgown, air snaking into her window, this question turned itself around in her mind.
What about the future?
What, she was going to live forever?
Did she know any trans girls older than her, besides Dex and that old lady at the support group? If Wendy made it to sixty, that’d be alright, no?
So, okay, what if her life was half over?
What did that feel like? Why did this thought not bother her?
Wendy wasn’t happy, but she was moderately stable, and her l
ife was rich with drinks and roommates and stupid hot boys and girls and her fun dumbass dad. She had so much good; she really was blessed. Should she want her life to change? What would that look like? What did life satisfaction look like for someone like her? Was she supposed to look for a retail job again and quit hooking? Ask Michael to help her score a manager gig somewhere? Try school again, disastrous as the first time was?
Go back to church?
Quit drinking?
Move away?
Was any of that going to make her happier?
And if Anna had been a woman Wendy could talk to and be honest with, what would she have said? If Anna could have joined her wisdom to Wendy’s truths, what would Anna have to tell her? And what if that trip hadn’t hurt Wendy; what if Wendy had left the older woman’s house full of warmth and unpoisoned insight? What if, instead of feeling an immediately sealed-off devastation to Anna’s anger and bitterness, she could pick up the phone right now and think about Anna’s words and repeat them back to her and ask Anna more about what they meant. It is un-Christian to believe God must be asked in order to give. I don’t think unhappiness matters much, in the end.
And what about Sophie.
Sophie’s life had included an infinite whiplash of much bigger changes than Wendy’d ever dealt with. Sophie had moved heaven and earth to improve her life many times—and she was dead.
Wendy wasn’t as strong as Sophie. That’s how Wendy felt. But there was a difference between strength and resilience. Though Sophie had been resilient too. That was true. It was.
No. She wasn’t fucking stupid. She was a pissy, alcoholic tranny hooker, for better and for worse, and probably always would be. She would die too soon or late in life, depending on your point of view. She would probably die alone. When Wendy thought coldly and rationally about her death, she mostly just hoped she’d go after her dad. She felt raw thinking about Ben having to bury her.
What, she thought broodingly now. Her manager’s kindness and affection already evaporated into resurgent anger. Like Michael would give a shit about her? Like he was not going to end up like every other fucking asshole who fucked her?