by Kris Ripper
Obviously she must have gotten there like anyone else. She’d driven or taken the bus, said hi to the bouncer. She must have walked from the door to the bar, but to me it was like one second there was a void in space and time, and the next she was filling it.
Her hair was pulled back in a few dozen tiny braids.
“Hey.” I wished we knew each other well enough for me to tuck a loose braid behind her ear.
“Hey yourself. You got room for me here, or do you want to dance?”
Just like that, as if it was a foregone conclusion that whatever happened next, we’d do it together.
“Neither, really,” I admitted. “I was thinking about another beer, but I might go home. I guess I’m not much in the mood for dancing.”
She grinned. “Come back to my apartment and have a beer there. Cheaper and the company is assured.”
I searched her eyes (blue, but liquid blue, like topaz), but I still had no idea if she was propositioning me or not. Tonight I didn’t care. “Sounds good. Do you have a car? Should we take mine?”
“You can follow me.” She grabbed my beer and sucked down what was left. “Wouldn’t want you to pay for a drink and not finish it.”
“Actually, Fredi comped that, so it was okay.”
“Fredi comped a drink? How’d you manage that?”
I stood up and patted down my coat to make sure I had everything. “It was a ‘I’m sorry you had to see Honey dead’ drink, I guess. I’m ready to go.”
She clearly wasn’t. She stared at me long enough for me to note that she had three holes in each earlobe and none of her earrings matched.
“Honey died?”
Oh hell. “I’m so sorry. Yeah, didn’t you hear?” It was on our site, on Togg’s, and Club Fred’s didn’t have a corner where at least one table wasn’t discussing what had happened. How did anyone miss that kind of information?
“No. No, I—I had no idea. I mean, not that I knew her well, like I don’t want to be one of those people who capitalizes on grief and like steals it for myself, but obviously I—I definitely knew her, like everyone did.” She took a seat on my abandoned stool. “Oh my god. How?”
“She died sometime early Saturday morning. They found her down at the waterfront.”
“God. Ed. That’s awful.”
“Yeah.”
She reached for my hands, gripping them tightly. “You saw her? Why?”
“I, uh, you know how I’d said I was sick of my job, of the kinds of assignments I keep getting?” She nodded. “So I asked my editor if I could do more challenging work. That was the first case they called me out on, to basically train with another reporter. But he ended up sending me home, because I was so— I wasn’t much help.”
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.”
She stood up, pulling my hands a little. “Come on. We’re going to my apartment and I’ll make us tea or something.”
“Okay.” At that point I would have agreed to anything that meant leaving Fred’s. “And I’m sorry I told you so badly. I guess I figured everyone had heard already.”
“I never hear anything. I kind of like it that way. Especially when stuff like this happens. I drive a bright-yellow VW bug, okay? You can’t lose me. Come on.”
I followed Alisha out the door.
Alisha’s studio was one rectangular room with an Ikea kitchen built against the exterior wall and a bathroom. Scarves were thrown up over the two lamps I could see from the front door and a longer piece of fabric had been tacked up around the fluorescent light in the kitchen, giving the whole place a kind of mystical feel, muted spheres of color meeting at the edges. The living area was blocked off from the bedroom with a bookcase on one side and a curtain on the other. Somewhat to my surprise, everything was neat and tidy. I’d imagined Alisha to be more bohemian with her domestic chores.
She really did make us tea. I was a little worried that she’d want to have some kind of deep conversation now, but that wasn’t Alisha’s style. Pressing a steaming mug into my hand, she led me to the sofa, which—along with the bookcase and a small television—made up the living area.
The books I could see from where I was sitting were almost entirely travel books. The spines proclaimed wild locations: Mali, Beirut, Cape Town. “Have you gone to a lot of places?”
“I don’t even have my passport. How terrible is that? I filled out the form and never brought it in.”
“I’m not actually sure where you go for that.”
She grinned. “The post office. Isn’t that weird? Like, I’m not sure what the post office has to do with anything, but that’s the best place to submit your passport. Actually, I have no idea where I put that form now. Huh.” She swiveled her upper body to stare at her bookshelves. “It must be here somewhere. Oh well. Or I’ll just fill out a new one.”
“So you have all those travel books and you’ve never been to any of those places? Do you . . . read them for fun?”
“Oh, I do more than read them.” The twist became a stretch as she pulled out a book. “There’s this, like, structure off the coast of Copenhagen, built right into the ocean, and it’s like a kind of deck in a circle with the sea in the middle, so people swim and stuff, and there are bathrooms, and places to sit.” As she paged through the book I could see sticky notes poking out in a dozen places and a little stub of pencil dropped into her lap. “Oops. I wondered where I put that. Here.”
I took the book and tilted it toward the nearest lamp. “The Kastrup Sea Bath.”
“I want to go there. I want to jump off the highest part of it.”
“Looks kind of shallow there.”
Alisha laughed. “That’s very practical of you, Ed. But people jump off it all the time and live. That’s what I want to do. I want to take it on faith that it’ll be okay and then just do it.”
It took hardly any effort to imagine her as one of the people in the photographs: braids flying out behind her as she fell through the air, maybe crying out, maybe laughing even as she hit the water.
I cleared my throat. “What would you wear? I’m assuming not a bikini, for the sake of propriety. I’m, uh, asking so I can better picture you there. You know. So when I’m sitting at my desk and you’re in Copenhagen, I’ll be able to see it in my mind’s eye.”
“Oh, I only wear bikinis.” She leaned in close to take the book back. Very close. Close enough so I could see little starburst imperfections on her skin. “You know, you could come with me.”
“I don’t think my boss would pay me to go diving in the ocean off the Copenhagen coast with a beautiful woman. Unfortunately.”
“No, you’d have to save up for it. I save every penny I can, outside what I spend going out for drinks. Which you know, if I stopped doing that, I could afford to travel way sooner. But then I’d hate being here more, so I have to kind of balance it out.”
“I get that. I guess I do save money, I just never had a goal with it.” Except maybe top surgery someday. And even more than that, to not be poor. Abuela had come from people with a little bit of money in Mexico and being poor was her greatest fear. But it was one of Mom’s rare Spanish phrases that came to mind sitting in Alisha’s living room. “De dinero y bondad, siempre la mitad.”
“Something about money? Two years of Spanish with Señora Trujillo and that’s all I’ve got.”
“Money and goodness, yeah. Well there are a few ways of looking at it, but the one Mom always liked was about seeking balance—never too much money, or too little.”
“There’s such a thing as too much goodness?”
“I think it means don’t let yourself be taken advantage of.” I shrugged. “Like, the other way of looking at it is that you shouldn’t believe anyone’s claims of money or goodness because they’re probably full of shit. I mean, I’m not sure which way’s ‘right.’ My mom used to say it, but she kind of shuts down if you ask her questions about anything Mexican. But I think it’s about balance, about finding a midd
le ground with money and goodness. And everything else.”
“Wow. Yeah. That’s exactly it. Exactly.” She brushed her lips against my cheek. Not a kiss. “You so get me, Ed. It’s hot.”
I turned my face. “You’re pretty hot yourself.”
“For a while I was worried you weren’t interested. Which, obviously, is hard to believe, since I’m, like, so sexy. And available.”
“Why did you think that?”
She sat back, setting the book on her little coffee table. “I don’t know. You seem a little . . . restrained. When we were dancing you were into it, but I almost feel like you aren’t quite sure you want me. It’s weird. People don’t usually say ‘no, thank you’ when I invite them home.”
“I didn’t tonight.”
“I know.”
“The first time— I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to have sex with me or watch a movie like besties. There’ve been a couple of times lately when I sort of misjudged someone.”
“Like you thought they were into you and they weren’t?”
“Or I thought we were hanging out and then they wanted more.”
“And you didn’t?”
“Kind of. At least, I don’t want to be a novelty. Not that you’re thinking that. But sometimes I get the feeling that maybe a person is interested more in seeing what it’s like to be with me than they are actually being with me. I probably sound foolish.” I definitely felt foolish.
“You mean because you’re trans.” Her voice was totally steady, maybe even warm.
“And everyone who already knows isn’t interested, which leaves the people I have to tell. Who either aren’t interested once I’ve told them, or get this . . . look. In their eyes. That makes me feel like a freak show attraction.”
I hadn’t meant to say all that. To anyone, really. It made me sound ungrateful. Or maybe like I was ridiculously picky. I studied the books on her shelves and waited for her to laugh at me.
“I don’t think you’re a freak. And I know what you mean, about people. Like sometimes what they want from you is this experience, and you’re mostly just an actor playing out some script they have in their head.”
“That’s— Yeah. How’d you know that?”
“You think it only happens to you? I got breasts when I was like eleven, Ed. I was all kinds of curvy woman by the time I started high school. I got hit on by teachers and bus drivers and the guy who used to own the liquor store on Twelfth. Remember him?”
“Balding and always wore sunglasses?”
“Yeah. Well, the day he asked me if I wanted to see something special he had in his storeroom, he tilted his glasses down, like he was real cool.” She shook her head. “I was fourteen. I did not want to see his storeroom.”
“Shit.” I felt a rush of pointless anger. “What douche bags.”
“They weren’t all men. It doesn’t matter. No one ever did anything to me, but sometimes I played it coy to get away from them, like when they had something to hold over my head. So I kind of played the game and it made me feel powerful, but it also made me feel sick, all at the same time.”
I nodded. “I think I can understand that.”
“You were wrong before.”
“Um. Okay. About what?”
“You said everyone who already knows isn’t interested in you, but I’m sitting right here. And I am.”
Which was obvious, or should have been, since the first night we’d kissed on the dance floor. “Was I really stupid about this? I’m feeling really stupid about this.”
“You aren’t stupid. Drink your tea and I’ll tell you more about all the places I’m gonna go someday.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
I liked watching her. The way she moved her hands when she spoke, as if they were hummingbirds, quick and flashing, illustrating her stories with wrist-flicks. For years we’d lingered at the periphery of each other’s small worlds, and during that time we’d probably never been alone together long enough to exchange pleasantries. Now we sat on her sofa and she described faraway places, painted pictures in the air with nimble fingers, and I could see every one of them.
The written word has always been more comfortable to me than speaking, but the way Alisha spun a story required me to see it the way she saw it, which was the kind of skill I thought only related to especially good writers.
When we finished our tea she put aside the four—no, five—books she’d pulled off her shelves. She stood up, drawing me up beside her. “I’m not gonna lie, you totally turn me on. But I don’t think it’s because you’re trans. I always liked you, Ed.”
A chill hit my spine, making my breath catch. That I’ve always been Ed, even when I was called something else, was something not a lot of people understood. I wanted to believe that Alisha did.
“I’ve always liked you too.”
“Cool. Want to see my bedroom? If you look through the shelves, you can see it right now.” She bent down, peering into the space above some books.
I laughed a little and did the same. “I wouldn’t mind a closer look at your bedroom. If you’re offering.”
“I’m pretty much insisting.”
“That would be good.”
But before she pushed back the curtain she grabbed my wrist.
“You actually like me, right? I’m not just the person you’re doing because you’re bored and you haven’t been laid in a while.”
“Hey, who’s been talking? How do you know the last time I got laid?”
Her fingers tightened.
“Alisha.” I brushed that damn braid back. “I definitely like you. The night you asked me here and I said no—Carlos bought me a drink to drown my sorrows because I was so depressed after.”
“Then why did you say no?”
I shrugged. “Some nights it’s worth going home with someone, even if they end up not getting me. Some nights it’s not.”
“Do I get you?”
I really hope so. “Let’s find out.”
She kissed me. “Yeah.”
We went through the curtain and into her bedroom.
Someday I probably won’t feel like this every time I have sex with a new person, this roiling, impossible sensation that I’m standing at the edge of a cliff and the only way down is a flying leap. I want to be confident and cool, but until I get top surgery, until I’ve been taking T longer, when I take off my clothes I still feel like a guy wearing a woman suit.
I sat on her bed and pulled her toward me, skimming my hands up her sides. “We’re having sex, right? I don’t want to misinterpret.”
Alisha laughed, touching my jaw, tilting it higher. “Hell yes.”
“Good.” And it was. I ran my hands under her shirt now, and kissed the swell of her belly. She sucked it in, and I brushed my knuckles over her skin. “Are you self-conscious?”
“You know, I try not to be, but, like, everywhere you look there are these pictures of gorgeous women.” She slid her fingertips between mine, pressing deeper. “I’m soft where I wish I was hard. But I’m not going to spend every hour in the gym, and I’m not going to stop eating, either.”
“De dinero y bondad, siempre la mitad. Only with food and exercise and self-image.” I pressed my lips to her. “You’re gorgeous. Not that it matters what I think, but you are.”
“Thanks.” She pulled her shirt off, which I took as an invitation, sliding my hands higher. Her breasts were plump and round with nipples I desperately wanted to tease with my teeth, but I settled for running my thumbs over them until she shivered.
My heart was pounding. “Thank you,” I whispered, looking up at her.
“For what?”
“For this.”
Her fingers grazed my collar. “Are you okay with taking off your shirt?”
My binder suddenly felt impossibly tight, a life jacket protecting me. “I haven’t had top surgery yet.”
Alisha leaned down, kissing me sweetly. “Your chest isn’t what makes you a man, right?”
“No.”
“Trust me to know that, okay?”
I did. I trusted her. She unbuttoned me slowly while my heart pounded like it was about to explode. Even after she slipped the shirt from my shoulders, she didn’t touch the binder. I was glad, suddenly, that I’d worn one of my two relatively decent binders. If I decided to take it off, I would look more like a contortionist, but older, looser binders just looked kind of silly.
We stared at each other for a long moment, her face in dark shadows staring down at me.
I swallowed. “Do you have a light in here?”
“Kind of. Watch.” She leaned all the way over and fumbled with something at the wall, lighting up a double string of white Christmas lights strung along the wall in an L-shape above her bed. “Come on.”
Alisha sat back and held out her hand.
Once both of us were on the bed, her room—part curtain, part bookshelf—became a little bubble of white light.
“This is really cool.” I made myself comfortable beside her, glancing around. “You have different books on this side.”
“Yeah. That side’s all stuff I can make conversation about.”
“And this side?”
“More for me. Silly stuff. Mystical stuff that, you know, has a lot of meaning to me, but probably other people would find ridiculous. Do you have books like that? Like, they changed your life completely even though you’d probably be embarrassed to tell people that?”
My eyes skimmed over her shelves, thinking about my own. “I guess a few. I mean, I loved the Harry Potter books. I used to read them and reread them for days. And, uh, I kind of didn’t hate Fifty Shades of Grey, either.”
She gasped. “You. Did. Not.”
“Well like, okay, the writing, and yeah, wow, over-reliance on bad tropes, but they kind of held my interest—”
Her face was arranged in comic shock.
“Never mind. Shut up. Jerk.”
“Oh man.” She swung a leg over mine. “You want me to pin you down, boy?”
“Maybe I want to pin you down.” I ran my hands up to her breasts again, rolling her nipples.
She threw her head back, thrusting them harder against my palms. “Hey, read some better kinky literature and then we’ll talk.”