Ajax sighed. “Point taken.”
“Give your heart a little break. Just relax and love me.”
Ajax pulled another can from the inner tube, popped the lid, swigged.
“Just float,” ordered Logan.
So they floated.
A couple hours later, Scotia and Elliot threw themselves off the dock amidst much merriment. Ajax thought how Joe would feel left out, maybe even crushed, and she wished Elliot would stop being a kid and just go back inside where she was needed. Logan passed Ajax a colander full of warm peas. Ajax sat on a cushion on the stoop in the sunshine shelling them, rubbing her fingernail along pod seams. Logan blared swing music. Peas round as musical notes fell into Ajax’s lap, rolled out along the paint-chipped stair boards. What came to mind was a little girl she’d loved when she was seven, on a back porch forty-some years ago, shelling peas in her Gramma’s strainer. Eating more than went into the bowl. Shucking corn, ripping back husks, plucking off the silk threads stuck to the kernels. Racing barefoot to offer up husks to the neighbour’s horses. Running back to beg for sugar cubes, which her grandmother dispensed from an orderly cardboard box. Horses’ heads large and sweaty, skulls pressing the skin. Twitchy ears, swishing tails. Hair sweeping down over their faces, eyes brown and round with long lashes. Maggie was always nervous but Ajax led her forward, showed her how to hold the sugar cubes with a flat hand, fingers tight.
The sun dipped low toward the beams that photographers called sweet light; slanting in, it turned red blossoms orange.
Logan cooked Memphis-style barbecued ribs, and Ajax prepped veggies and potatoes. After dinner, under a banner that read “Happy Birthday,” Logan pulled out a cardboard hat sprinkled with glitter and set it onto Ajax’s head. Made her close her eyes and wait. Logan re-appeared wearing a tuxedo, carrying chocolate cake and special ice cream they’d brought from the city, and singing “Joyeux Anniversaire.” They presented Ajax with several wrapped packages.
“Blow, blow!” said Logan.
Ajax laughed. “Do I still get a wish if it’s a sparkler?”
“C’est une jour spécial. You get fifty wishes, and they all are guaranteed to come true.” Logan grinned at her. The kind of grin that made Ajax long for them again.
“I wish I could turn fifty every day, in that case.” Ajax made a private wish for the protection of her children, both of whom had called.
“I like you, McIntyre.”
Ajax smiled. “Only because I’m young and cool.”
“Oh yeah. Definitely young and cool. That’s what I think when I think Ajax. I think, She’s so young and cool, such a stud.”
Ajax cut pieces of cake, licked her fingers. “Maybe you just find it exciting that I could die at any moment.”
“Maybe I do.” Logan shrugged, started to eat; the cake was dark chocolate, not sweet, good with the sugary ice cream. “Or maybe, sweetheart, that one thing alone breaks my fucking heart over and over.”
Ajax cocked her head. “Please don’t start having a rescue fantasy. Because you can’t rescue me.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” said Logan. “Fuck rescuing you. Just don’t get sicker. Promise.” Logan scraped their plate. “Pinky swear.”
Ajax tore into her gifts. Logan had bought her shoes similar to their European brogues. She slipped into them, admired her feet—perfection. “I love them! Very fetish-y indeed. Now you can also like me because I have über cool feet.”
Logan surreptitiously wiped their eyes. “I want you to feel fetish-y every day. I want to make you feel special for the rest of your life.”
Gift certificate to a garden store in Vancouver; certificate for a spa day in Toronto. Ajax said, “I’m too sexy for your shoes. Too sexy for your cake. Way too sexy pour ta copine.”
“Ma copine, elle est bonne. Mais, est-elle une femme? Elle s’identifie comme une femme, mais je pense qu’il est peut-etre un garçon.”
“Oui,” said Ajax.
“Et ne te l’oubliez.”
“How could I?” Ajax laughed. She sobered. “Logan, damn, what do you want from your life at this point? What’s important to you? What makes you weep? I need to know these things.”
Logan met Ajax’s eyes and said, “I wasn’t a popular kid. I’d get picked nearly last in games even though I was a decent athlete. I was lonely a lot, solitary.”
“That must have hurt your feelings.”
“Don’t you know yet that I don’t have feelings.” Logan grinned.
Ajax stuck out her tongue. “You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?”
Now Logan snorted. “You think you’re so all-seeing.”
“You were a vulnerable little kid. You got hurt.”
“I got used to rejection quickly enough, because, well, no choice. Standing there thinking Pick me, pick me, pick me. Feeling shame like a blush stealing over me as more and more kids joined the teams and I didn’t.” Logan shrugged. “I guess every kid goes through that in one way or another. I was lucky to be good with grades, at least, if not popular.” They scratched their nose. “Okay, fine, if you want to go digging, here’s something I vaguely remember from when we lived in South Africa. I had a pet dik-dik named Sally.”
“Oh, like a miniature antelope? They’re adorable!”
“I was so young. It’s hard to know if I remember her or I just remember my parents talking about her. I think I remember sharp hooves. There were baboons around, and my mother said I got pretty scared once when one tore the kitchen apart. They’re the size of adult men, the males, with pretty crazy teeth. Not that baboon encounters are anything rare, in those parts. They’re terrible citizens, very canny and highly aggressive and not afraid of people.”
“I would love to see a baboon. A dik-dik, for that matter. Why were your parents in South Africa?”
“My father was employed by a resource extraction company, my mother taught Italian at the university.”
“You’re lucky. I grew up on a farm in a town without stoplights. First stoplight I experienced, I was maybe ten or eleven. I didn’t really understand that restaurants existed.”
“I was positive I wasn’t a girl, but they said I wasn’t a boy, and nobody knew what to do with me—least of all me. Tomboy didn’t quite fit, especially when I started … you know. Boobs. Kids were cruel. No beefs against Paris, but … When Mom got a job in Montreal, after she broke up with my dad, I was fifteen, the worst age to move. Hell for a queer trans kid, I can tell you. But moving out, university—that made things better.”
“Did you and your mom always fight?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Let’s just say she didn’t appreciate my kind of person.” Logan reached to stroke Ajax’s arm. “Still doesn’t for that matter.”
“I’m sorry.”
Night slipped toward them.
“She wants me to be someone else. It wrecked me. I was already an outlier, and she just made it harder. My dad was better; my dad seemed to like me no matter what, but then he and my mom would fight about it—what I could do to fit in, how I was going to find my way in the world, if they could have done something differently when I was little, if I was ever going to find happiness in my aberrance. When I brought girls home, my mother would just freak out. Freak out. Once, she walked in on me and a girl in flagrante delicto; the girl was giving me a blow job, but I think my cock at the time was a stuffed balloon held on with elastics.”
“Jesus,” said Ajax, laughing.
“It’s a bit more solid these days.”
“A wee bit,” agreed Ajax.
There was a lengthy pause. “Sit in that chair.” Logan pointed.
“As compared to this chair?”
“As compared to this chair,” Logan said, raising their eyebrows.
“Okay,” said Ajax slowly, reluctantly, frowning.
“Not asking,” said Logan, “telling.”
“Okay,” said Ajax. She walked to the chair Logan was pulling away from the wall, sat, winced.
“Pul
l off your shirt,” said Logan. They paced.
Ajax did, a slow peel, licked chocolate from her fingers.
“Bra,” said Logan.
She yanked her sports bra off.
Logan had her strip completely before they offered her a pillow. “Don’t move,” they ordered.
Logan bent to kiss Ajax’s neck and throat, special places under her ear. Logan told Ajax to bend forward, then grabbed her wrists. “Safe word.”
“Nitro,” said Ajax. “And put it right beside us, because if I say it, I’m going to need it fast.”
Logan sat across from her, cockless, and opened themselves where they were raw and vulnerable, touched themselves. The two of them masturbated and sparked without even touching each other. Ajax saw that they could not stay in one piece. They would love hard, until they broke themselves on it.
The chair hurt Ajax’s ass.
Finally, Logan took her to the bedroom, asked her to lie on her back on the bed. Logan straddled her head and lowered themself onto Ajax’s mouth, and Ajax licked and sucked them and carefully slid her fingers inside Logan and Logan climaxed, crying out.
When Logan came back to themself, they said, “It’s not easy for me, fucking sans cock.”
“I know,” said Ajax.
Logan went down on Ajax, kissed her, said, “You snuck up on me from behind.”
Ajax started to cry, rolled onto her side away.
“What, Ajax? What’d I do?”
Ajax shook her head. Her voice was small and full of tears. “It meant something to me, being inside you. I’m sorry.”
Logan rolled onto their back. “Sex with girl bits is always going to be a just-occasional thing.”
Ajax said, “I can’t be a masochist, you know.”
Logan looked at her.
“And you can’t be a fucking sadist with me, all the time.” Ajax said loudly. This was a bit ripe, she realized, coming from a woman with a swath of purple-blue on her ass. “I mean, of course you can be, but … I can’t be a masochist. I don’t want to be a masochist. I’m not a masochist. You’ve probably given me more bottoming than I’ve had in my lifetime, and I’m already stuffed full of it.” She ruefully smiled. “As it were. This needs to be a sometimes thing because I love vanilla sex, too.”
“You love all of this. You love the way I touch you.” But Logan had pulled back and sounded hurt.
“Yes,” said Ajax. She didn’t want Logan to think it was their skills that were being questioned. “You please me completely.”
“Why do you have to label it, then?”
“It’s just that it looks a lot to me like I’m a masochist and also, not to put too fine a point on it, apparently heterosexual again.”
“For god’s sake,” said Logan. “No, you’re not. That is an impossible interpretation.”
Ajax rolled onto her back. “I’ll bend toward you as you bend toward me. But understand; I’m queer; I’m not into guys. I’ve been screwing women for decades. I can’t go back to just hetero sex, only with a trans guy. Boobs turn me on. Cunts turn me on, way on. I like fucking women. But I like fucking your power. I like your power fucking me.” She turned onto her belly. “I’m confused, is all. I’m just confused.”
“Really, get this through your skull: I’m not a trans guy. I don’t know if I’ll ever take T. Think more: Logan, dude with boobs.”
“You call yourself trans sometimes, and I think we both know it’s a possibility. A dude with sometime-boobs and basically no cunt. I get that,” said Ajax, but she felt lonely. Very lost and afraid suddenly, because of all she might be giving up to stay with Logan, all the unknowns ahead. “It’s not your gender. It’s that our sex is so cock-centric … I love a clever dick, but it’s not all there is.”
“I don’t want you to be unhappy, Ajax, but I won’t change the way I want to fuck. What gets me off gets me off.”
“Bend toward me,” said Ajax. “We’ll both bend to the edges of our comfort zones. Maybe it’s not a natural fit—I don’t know. But it’s what we have to work with.”
“I promise I’ll bend toward you,” said Logan, “but I can’t promise how often I’ll bend toward you.”
“I will bend often,” said Ajax. She could feel pressure building in her ears. “I’m comfortable bending. I’m not unhappy. My birthday has been perfect. I’m worried we won’t be able to shut off kink outside the bedroom—’cause you know and I know that we are going to go further with it. I’m worried it will bleed over. As it were.” A small cough, a grin.
“We can make this relationship anything we want it to be, Ajax. In bed or out of bed.”
“Of course, but …” She was going to say, It’s not you getting fucking hit with the paddle. Lean over my lap and then tell me the same story. But she thought about that paddle, and it just turned her on. Regrettably. How could she really convince Logan of what she meant when, truly, she loved being punished?
Logan said, “I wish you wouldn’t worry. We can play any way we want to play. Safely.”
Ajax rolled closer. “That was hot, what you did last night, but that’s never going to be all I want.”
“Nor me, either.” Logan laughed and said, “So why are we even having this discussion?”
They climbed from bed.
“Come outside,” said Logan. “The rain’s stopped at least for right now.” They fetched canning jars with holes pounded through the lids. “Just sweep it through the air.” They showed her, capped their lid. In the dark there were five tiny lights, strong enough to read by: magic.
Ajax did the same thing with hers. “Did you know the artist Caravaggio spread the powder of dried fireflies on his canvases to get a photosensitive surface? Crepuscular bioluminescence.”
They swung their jars like lanterns until Logan poked Ajax, Ajax shrieked and tickled Logan, and the two of them ran, yelling and laughing. They stopped and hugged hard, Ajax’s heart pounding.
“Smell the world, Logan. Petrichor.”
“The thing is, Ajax, you notice things about me. Things you weren’t supposed to notice.”
“That you’re gentle?”
“I am sometimes.”
“That you care for your mother even when she irritates the hell out of you?”
“She irritates the fuck out of me.”
“You’re a great architect. I’m proud that you made that happen in your life, that you went back to school.”
“Hardly anyone notices. It was a lot of work.”
“That you’re letting love build a world inside you.”
Logan didn’t reply.
“No? Am I wrong?”
“Sugar,” said Logan.
They watched the bugs circle in their jars until finally Ajax took pity, released them, and watched them climb into the sky.
“Give me five minutes,” said Logan.
When Ajax went back in, Logan took her to the bedroom, where they’d scattered peony petals on the bedspread. Vases of peonies and poppies stood on the floor, the bureau, the TV stand, the bedside tables.
“Happy birthday, honey,” said Logan.
“Oh, god,” said Ajax, her hand on her chest, eyes welling, taking Logan’s hand, leading them to the bed, curling up beside them in the silky petals, the fresh scent, the sudden sound of rain on the roof. “Logan, thank you. Thank you so much. When the hell did you do all this?” They must have had the vases already prepped somewhere, hidden. “This weekend is precious to me.”
Logan looked at her across the white pillows. “You open me.” The words were right, but Ajax noticed they were twisting a handkerchief.
Ajax said, “Me, analog can opener. You, can. You never know what’ll come out.”
“And that, my dear,” said Logan, “would be why I love you.”
Ajax grinned drunkenly at them. “Maybe yellow wax beans, asparagus tips, maybe artichoke hearts. If I’m extremely lucky, balloons. Have you tried canned balloons?”
JOE
When she heard the shouts, Joe
struggled up from the couch to see Elliot and Scotia stripping down on the dock, Scotia pushing Elliot into the lake, jumping in after, legs raised, back-flopping nearly on top of Ell. So much for Elliot having the flu …
Scout had taken maybe three minutes to ramp herself up and then hadn’t been able to calm down; she’d been crying for half an hour. If Joe could hear shouts at the lake, certainly Ell and Scotia could hear Scout wailing in the house through open doors and windows. Joe had tried what she could, but still the baby’s cries escalated, and Joe’s helplessness and panic escalated with them. To have Elliot romping with some kid when she could be in here helping—no, it was beyond the pale. Joe stuck her crinked baby finger in Scout’s mouth to give her something to suck, but now that Scout had been trained to expect nipple, the finger infuriated her. She was now too agitated to latch. Joe already knew trade tricks—how to encourage her to make a wide mouth, get her to press her small tongue down against the bottom of her mouth, how to try changing her, irate and exposed on the change table, so that nursing would seem like refuge.
Joe grew frantic. The baby’s cries cut into her, buzz saw.
She’d assumed Scout would be an exceptional child, a child who could prove that even moms who’d had childhoods with difficult parents could be raised healthy and whole, but what hubris that had been—already Joe could see that that wasn’t how parenting worked. Parental flaws were a fungus in the air their kid breathed. Nobody had been raised by wolves, but instead by imperfect, angry, neurotic humans. And they were passing it on. Anger was a mist in the air of this house, a mist that Scout breathed. Joe didn’t imagine that the child understood this, but assumed it would become part of her tapestry of the acceptable, the known, the familiar—what she, in later life, would turn toward. And now, this shrill inescapable cry from the face that Joe had fallen for, this face screwed up tight and red, not even aware of her mother’s attempts to soothe her. Not even noticing her mother’s desperation.
Not even noticing that, on the dock, her other mother was cavorting with some—kid. Joe didn’t know if Elliot was likelier to come back up to the house or jump in Scotia’s skiff and go off with her. Still, still, this child was Elliot’s too, and she had to step up. Right the fuck up. Now.
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