James responds without thinking: This is a fuckin’ dumb town to stop in. Then he looks around. That’s not the sort of thing you’re supposed to say when you’re the public representative of the Wal-Mart corporation.
I mean, he says, Uh, look, yeah, I guess so? There isn’t really much to show you but I guess I’m not doing anything.
He has this very clear thought that while it’s weird for a stranger just to come up and ask you to hang out, especially a stranger who looks like a murderess, that even if she actually is a literal murderess, this is still probably the only chance he’s ever going to have to, like, talk to an actual trans woman. His next thought is one long whoa but the one after that is a shapeless thing about how, like obviously she doesn’t know about him and whatever his deal with gender is, and obviously he can’t let her know that he can tell that she’s trans because that would obviously be rude as hell. That this is going to be kind of complicated to navigate or whatever? And then once he’s thought all this stuff he ends up at probably the first thing he should have thought, which is like, what would Nicole think about him not seeing her tonight? For one single night out of the entirety of their desolate union or whatever, and on that one day out of like seven hundred or whatever it’s been, like sort of going out with this other girl?
So he blurts: Also I have a girlfriend so—
She laughs.
Yeah whatever James H. don’t worry, one I don’t even date dudes—James winces and tries to hide it—and two I’m probably ten years older than you so we’re not even, like, in the same dating league. Technically speaking. Ethically speaking.
Cool, he says. He has an urge to ask for that in writing, thinking whoa, she is into girls! If you read the Internet a little bit you know that there are trans women who are into girls and it’s a little bit terrifying to think about because if you can be trans and into girls then, like, that makes it more possible that he could even be trans, like legitimately for real trans, which he doesn’t even want to think about and obviously that is not even a very compelling argument. That it is a possibility. Who cares. But he’s still kind of like, thank you Divine Providence for dropping this hot, weird dyke trans girl into my lap, out of nowhere, in a totally nonsexual manner.
He thinks, maybe me and Nicole are even broken up though. He’d just assumed he’d see her in a day or two and nothing would have happened and they’d be unbroken up again, like what always happens, but now he’s like, actually, this matters. And then he realizes wait, shit, I already said it out loud, that I have a girlfriend. Obviously that is the classic defensive maneuver if a girl hits on you: no way man, I have a secret girlfriend! She lives in, um, Olympia! For college. But James was already thinking about Nicole and he doesn’t want to date anyone ever so she’s a good excuse but also he actually also, like, is in a relationship with her. In real life.
Maria asks when he gets off and instead of making a stupid joke about getting off James is like, I dunno, in like half an hour.
Cool, she says, I’m in this ugly little green car at the far end of the parking lot, there’s a bunch of embarrassing bumper stickers and it hasn’t been washed in a while.
And there’s a dog and a cat.
Haha, yeah, she says. A dog and a cat. Totally.
Half an hour later James clocks out and finds her car right away. It’s not like the Star City Wal-Mart parking lot is ever fucking full. She’s sitting under a tree in front of the green car, looking all sweaty.
Hey, she says.
Hey.
They look at each other for a second, the entirety of the terror of whatever is about to happen a physical presence in the air between them, before James breaks the tension with the totally suave acknowledgment Uh, aren’t you hot?
Yeah dude, she says, But I have this dilemma, right? I’m enough of a feminist not to shave my legs really ever, but not enough of a feminist to actually let anybody see.
But like, you’re wearing a sweater and a jacket and stuff.
She waits a beat and then goes, James H., have you ever spent a couple weeks in the same clothes?
He’s like, I don’t think so, and she goes, You just get kind of used to it and the longer you don’t take anything off the less you want to. Like y’know Spider-Man and the Venom suit? Same thing.
James tries to keep up but he’s already getting lost. He needs to smoke.
I know… of… Spider-Man and Venom, he says.
So listen, what do people do here? Is there a lake where we can go and drink beer or like a trestle where kids smoke weird shit and burn each other with cigarettes?
Uh, there’s a river. But it sucks.
James H., Maria says, I get it. Everything here sucks. But I don’t want to drive any further toward the Pacific right now and what else are we going to do. Sit here and hotbox the car?
James is like: Well. Actually.
13.
He does the logistics. If they’re going to sit in a car with the windows up, they’re going to have to find someplace shady to do it, and someplace away from where the cops would drive by. They will have to be committed to the plan. Basically what this means is that they have to drive back to his apartment building and park in the shade of the eastern side of the building. Which is cool, he’s gotten all baked there a bunch of times, nobody cares. It’s just like, if they’re going to drive all the way over to the house, they might as well hotbox his fucking bathroom.
But she’s company so they park in a shady spot behind the apartment building and he smokes her out. It’s like she’s never smoked out before, she’s all coughing and having to take long breaks between tokes and then once she’s stoned she can’t really communicate right. Her sentences trail off, she starts laughing at nothing. It’s kind of annoying, actually. She keeps laughing at the idea of, like, that band Sublime, who are actually not bad. But since she can just barely hold up her end of the conversation, James starts monologuing and after a while she kind of gets into the groove of it, nodding like she’s following what he’s saying and stuff. Mostly he finds himself talking about Nicole. He’s like, here’s the thing, I have this girlfriend, and I really like her, she’s cool as hell, but. But the fact even that there’s a but kind of means something, right? He’s like, it’s not even that I don’t want to be in a relationship with her, I just, I don’t want to be in this context, working this job, living in this apartment, in this town, and she’s a part of that. He’s probably not doing a good job explaining it but he starts envisioning My Life and Everything as this huge, complicated braid, like a friendship bracelet, with the different threads in it representing, like, his job, and Nicole, and his apartment, and his mom, and all the things that end up making up the tapestry of his life. The friendship bracelet of his life. He knows it’s a dumb stoner epiphany but he’s going for it, he’s like, Nicole is one of the strands of that thread, she’s tied to this town and this life, and I just, I’m like, I don’t know if I can get away from all this stuff I don’t care about or want and stay with her, you know?
Maria’s like, Did she say that, and James is like, Did she say what, and Maria’s like, Y’know, did Nicole say she wanted to stay here?
James thinks about it and has to admit that no, not in so many words, probably not, but he’s like, well she’s never said anything about wanting to leave, I guess.
Here’s the thing, James H., she says, still looking all dazed but suddenly lucid. What do you want?
Not all this, he says.
No I know, Maria says, But what do you want? It’s easy to say that where you are and what you have are dumb, but it’s harder and probably more productive to name concrete things and aspire to them. You know?
James hasn’t even thought about actually wanting things before, so he’s like, Jesus, I have no idea what I actually want. Maybe to move to the bay?
Sick dude, she says, picking up the sticky green blown-glass pipe, taking a hit, holding it in, then exhaling: Me too.
James is like Haha oh yeah a
nd she’s like Haha, yeah man, and they both laugh. The smoke in the car isn’t as thick as a Cheech and Chong movie or anything, but it’s pretty intense, everybody’s eyes are starting to get watery and painful.
For real though, Maria says, Think about specifics. Do you want to be in a band? Do you want to go to college, write a novel, sit in a tree so that nobody can bulldoze it? Do you want to have lots of weird sex, no sex, lots of weird vegan food, a haircut that reads like a secret code that identifies you as a member of a subculture to other members of that subculture. Be specific, James H., because now is the time in your life when you can do anything. And anything is gonna turn out great.
She’s talking weird so James is like, What are you quoting right now, dude.
Old Faith No More, she says.
James has heard of Faith No More.
Listen, do you want to go inside and find some food and stuff, he asks.
Fuck yeah I do, Maria says, do you have frozen pizzas?
I think so, yeah, James says, thinking pretty hard about frozen pizza. Fuck yeah. Finally: something awesome.
14.
Okay Maria didn’t mean to get too stoned to have a real talk but like a baked-ass Machiavellian genius, she managed to turn the conversation toward serious stuff right away. Even baked out of her head she could tell right away that this kid’s relationship with his girlfriend wasn’t the problem. Nicole is probably nineteen and cool and way ahead of James in terms of pretty much everything. James just doesn’t know how to be in a relationship because he doesn’t know how to be himself and you can’t be one of the people in a relationship if you’re busily refusing to be a person.
Right?
And his apartment doesn’t look like the apartment of a person. It isn’t the standard 20-year-old boy apartment though—there’s no sink full of dishes, no armpit smell. It’s like a nonapartment, a ghost apartment. It’s literally, like, an overhead light, a futon, a computer desk, a beat up old little kid’s dresser, and a flimsy-looking entertainment center with an enormous old 27-inch tube television. There are ways you could tell it was a Young Dude’s apartment: speakers so large they look out of place, hooked up to the stereo that gleams more brightly than anything else in the room. The extensive and neatly arranged library of DVD cases. It’s all, like, Classic Films, too, instead of complete anime series or something.Pretentious, fully enmeshed in patriarchal systems of validity determination, but at least not weird and annoying.
It takes her a second to figure out why a space so sparsely populated with stuff could feel lived in at all. It hits her: it’s because everything is saturated in weed smoke. The dust on the TV screen and the DVD shelves is clearly as least as much ash and THC as it is old skin and the dust mites who love it. It’s seeped deep into every surface.
There’s no pizza.
Can we order in, Maria asks.
I dunno man. I guess. I mean, there’s a Domino’s, but that shit sucks and it’s expensive. There’s a spot by the Wal-Mart but I guess I’m kind of avoiding it.
James doesn’t mention that he’s avoiding it because he’s avoiding his girlfriend. He hasn’t really acknowledged this to himself.
15.
They eat some frozen tater tots and then Maria just, like, hangs out. This is probably James’s first clue that this girl isn’t going to give him the adventure in personal growth, or at least the cool story, that he was sort of hoping for. It actually gets kind of uncomfortable: he keeps smoking even though she stops and then he’s like, well, I guess maybe we could watch a movie? She’s like, yeah, cool, and falls asleep upright on the futon pretty much as soon as he puts on whatever it was he put on. Twin Peaks or something. Then he’s like, fuck man, now what do I do? He sits down at his computer like, I wish I knew if she was a heavy enough sleeper that I could jack off.
Not really an appropriate thought.
But it starts to occur to him that this Girl From Somewhere Else isn’t going to show him what it means to be cool, or explain the secret of getting out of your shitty home town, or involve him in some mysterious occult ritual under the glare of the half moon or something. He probably should have just called Nicole. It’s like eight o’clock and he hasn’t even texted her so he digs out his phone.
Three new texts. Fuck.
They’re all from Nicole, increasing in forced nonchalance:
hey james what are you doing?
hellooooo
okay im making a mix tape nbd
He texts her back like, Hey im actually feeling kinda shitty, fell asleep after work, see you tomorrow?
She texts back right away: cool
He knows on some level that he’s being a stoner asshole but every syllable in those exchanges made him feel like the world was ending. What’s up anxiety. Fuck. He packs another bowl and smokes it. Stares at the computer. You can’t see the computer monitor from the futon and Maria is sleeping like she’s dead, but she’s definitely breathing so James looks at sleazy porn captions for a while without masturbating, lurks at a message board for an hour without absorbing anything, looks up a half-remembered Nickelodeon show from when he was little, puts in an ear bud and goes down a youtube rabbit hole of videos about transitioning, looks up and sees that it’s past midnight. Maria hasn’t moved, she’s like a garbage bag full of wet leaves on his futon. So James is like Oh, I guess you’re sleeping over, hunts down his sleeping bag in the back of his closet, and goes to sleep on the floor across the room from her.
He goes to sleep thinking about the last thing he googled before locking up the computer, ‘how do you politely ask if someone is trans?’
Pretty much everybody agrees that there isn’t a polite way to do it. But what else is he going to do? He smokes once more before bed but he can’t stop worrying about it. He kind of needs to talk to her about it.
Worrying when you’re stoned is the worst.
The next morning he just asks her, though. She’s laying there like in that way where you can tell she’s awake, she just doesn’t know what to do with herself, like rolling over and sighing and probably she has to pee but didn’t want to wake him up by getting up. A classic politeness stalemate. James tries to roll over really loud but she doesn’t look over. He coughs and fakes a sneeze, checks the time on his phone. It’s early, but she’s just lying there so James is like, okay, fuck it, and starts packing a bowl. He’s pretty quiet about it but she must decide that that’s enough movement and noise because she’s like, Oh hey.
James is like, Oh hey.
He tries not to notice that her face has, like, stubble.
So uh, he says, staring deep into the bowl of the pipe like he’s going to find something in it, breaking up a nug and trying to look like he wasn’t asking something inappropriate, You’re trans right?
Fuck, she mutters. She gets up off the futon, walks over to the bathroom and closes the door behind her.
16.
Maria, in the bathroom, is thinking, Dude just straightup asked if I was trans! That might not ever have happened to me before. When she was first transitioning, people would give her shit on the train and stare at her and she heard a lot of That’s a dude and You a fuckin man, but in James H.’s little bathroom with the water faucet that felt like you could snap it off by accident she’s thinking, Is that even rude?
Like, it had been her plan since yesterday to tell him she was trans so she could talk about it and they could get him to stare down his own trans stuff. And it should be a value-neutral question, isn’t it? In a world that was less fucked up about trans people, it would be a perfectly legitimate question: maybe kind of rude, like do you dye your grey hair or something. But in this world that question was making her hyperventilate.
She intentionally takes some long slow breaths, splashes some water on her face, decides that she won’t smoke any weed today no matter how politely this kid offers it to her—no matter how innocent and tired his face looks when he asks—and pushes down the panicked, angry, anguished, and affronted thing th
at had risen up her chest into her throat. She looks at her sleepy face in the mirror, yesterday’s mascara smudged under her eyes, a futon crease up one cheek: James H. is allowed to ask if you’re trans, stupid. That’s the whole fucking point, Maria! The fact that you’re not the one choosing when to disclose is probably for the best anyway since we left it up to you yesterday and all you did was get high and fall asleep.
She’s like, okay, I’ll just talk about being trans. No big deal. I talk about being trans all the time! Just not out loud. And she thinks, maybe it’s been a long enough time since I had to talk about this. Maybe now this conversation doesn’t have to be all panicky and sad.
Basically she’s like, okay, I can do this. Even though I guess I already decided to do this.
She thinks for a second about shaving and putting on makeup before leaving the bathroom. She actually really wants to; if you’re going to be talking about being trans it would’ve been nice to put on some small show of, like, look how passable you can turn out, look how pretty and poised and together you can grow up to be. Obviously that is a misogynist patriarchal mandate: look pretty! But let’s be real about the fact that before transitioning, how many trans women have a good handle on breaking down patriarchal mandates for women? Also, who hasn’t internalized that stuff? Stockholm syndrome with patriarchy, it’s unavoidable, even when you’re resisting it and not shaving your armpits, you have to hear about it from every mook on the subway every day. And when you’re a trans woman, patriarchal mandates about presentation get extra twisted up with narratives of disclosure, validity as a human being, violence, the possibility of ever being found attractive, and probably a bunch of other stuff you haven’t even identified yet. It makes it actually pretty complicated to leave the bathroom once you’re in it. Anyway the whole thing is moot because she left her makeup bag with her razor and stuff out in the car, so she finds a hairbrush and almost runs it through her hair before noticing, in the mirror, that this brush is pretty much bulging in every direction with long, stringy, dishwater brown hairs that she doesn’t really want to touch her head. Never mind. She puts the hairbrush down, runs her fingers through the length of her hair a couple times to untangle the knottiest knots, and opens the door.
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