Maria is already at a table and when he looks over she’s like, Get whatever.
I don’t even know what to get, what should I get?
And she’s like, Fuckin’ nachos, obviously.
So he orders nachos. She has a Corona and he’s like, Holy shit do I want a beer too? but he’s only old enough to join the army and die for his country, he’s not old enough to drink. He’s glad he’s still pretty high, though, and glad that at least he’s old enough to gamble. There’s a video poker TV thing at the table where Maria’s sitting and he puts a quarter into it. He loses immediately.
They start to have this sad little lunch in Reno without speaking but after a couple minutes Maria starts talking.
All right, she says. She exhales for a second and then she starts over. Okay. This is kind of about trans stuff but mostly it’s about me being a fucking asshole, is that okay?
James actually, legitimately laughs for real, even though Maria is talking about being trans out loud and even though he doesn’t recognize anybody right now and it’s a pretty long shot, somebody he went to high school with could walk in at any moment, overhear Maria even though she’s not talking very loud, figure out that he is an autogynephile. But weirdly he’s kind of like, whatever.
He’s like yeah, totally.
Here’s the thing, Maria says. Nobody pays attention to J. Michael Bailey any more. He’s just some dude who wrote a book about how trans women are perverts, which is an easy thing to get a press to publish. You’ll never go broke selling regressive ‘common sense.’ But his buddy Kenneth Zucker is still a big deal. He runs this clinic in Canada and advocates like—
She makes a face and stops, aware that she’s already started monologuing.
Look, you know NPR, she asks.
Kind of, he says.
There was a show on NPR a couple weeks ago where they had this woman. A doctor, who was like, Well listen, if your kid is trans, you should be nice to them and support them. Kids are smart. And then there was this other doctor, Ken Zucker, who was like, Well no, actually, if your kid is trans, what you have to do is be really mean to them. Get them to cry all the time. We have no evidence that this works, but do you want your kid to be a sick fucking weirdo pervert when they grow up? Fucking your kid up so your kid represses everything and forgets how to feel anything for decades, until she realizes she has hated her whole life and needs to transition, that is what we recommend up here in Canada.
And they were both in the studio, Maria says, And you could call in.
So I called in, right, fully expecting to lay it out for him—even though this other doctor, doctor Ehrensomething, was already doing a good job laying it out. But I was going to call in and be like Hey, I’m trans, and do you really want to say that shit to my face? Do you really want to tell me that I’d be better off if my childhood had been even harder? Even though I know, from personal experience, that people won’t listen to you about trans stuff just because you’re trans. Nobody cares about the ‘well, from personal experience I can tell you’ that precedes the ‘what you think you know is wrong.’ But I was still like, what am I going to do, not call in? So I get through and the dude, the radio host, introduces me. He goes, We have a caller on the line, Dr. Zucker, who says she’s a trans woman from Pennsylvania and she strongly disagrees with your perspective. Maria?
And I’m like, Yeah! Here it is! I’m gonna solve this shit once and for all! Except I open my mouth and nothing comes out, right. I had thought, maybe I’ll get all carried away and flip out on this asshole! And I’d thought, maybe I’ll just rationally lay out the contradiction inherent in this guy’s argument, right. But I hadn’t thought of a first sentence to even start out with. If I had been like, Hello Dr. Zucker, I probably could have started. But instead I froze up in the face of institutionalized patriarchal misogyny, ageism and transphobia and I couldn’t say anything. There was this long pause and then Terry Gross was like, Maria, are you there? But I still couldn’t say anything and I guess they cut off my call but not before you hear me let out half of this one pathetic, desperate sob. You can listen to it online, I checked.
She stops and James kind of wishes she’d go on.
Fuck, he says.
Yeah, she says.
He puts another quarter into the video poker machine and he’s like, So you didn’t get to talk at all?
Nope, she says. And then she laughs and James realizes, like, whatever, it’s cool to know her, and maybe they’ll be MySpace friends or something when she leaves for the bay and he goes home. But the thing he realizes is that he doesn’t have to feel fucked up about her talking about gender and how she thinks he should transition and like, Who The Fuck Am I, because he’s not trans. Like, maybe, who knows, but he’s certainly not transitioning any time soon. He has a girlfriend and a job and even though he’s not close with his dad or anything how the fuck do you tell him that shit? So whatever. And when he realizes that he doesn’t have to feel all fucked up just because this girl thinks he’s trans and wants him to become a woman or whatever, it’s like he takes the first deep breath he’s taken in twenty-four hours and then he feels kind of serene, almost, sitting at this table. Fucked up on some level, sure, and definitely he wants to smoke again, but he always wants to smoke again.
Sitting in this shitty restaurant eating nachos and pumping quarter after quarter into this video poker machine, listening to Maria monologue about what she thinks they should do in Reno, he’s like, whatever. Cool. He’s starting to shake this fucked up feeling. It feels good. He’s made a decision. He leans back and loses at video poker again. He’s like, Who fucking cares that half the graduating class from my high school moved to Reno and they’re probably watching me eat nachos with a transsexual right now. He even starts to think, Maybe that is cool.
Okay, Maria asks, So we’ll just go find a casino and kick it there and they’ll bring us free drinks and we can just hang out?
Yeah, cool, he says.
That’s been the plan every time he’s been to Reno.
They throw out their hardened cheese and wax paper and tinfoil and James heads for the front door but Maria’s like, hold on, I’m going to do a thing. She tosses him the key to the stolen car and walks toward the bathroom and he’s kind of like, uh, but then goes outside and gets in the passenger seat. He doesn’t really let himself know what’s happening but he opens up his messenger bag in his lap and tries to look like he’s rooting around in it, like for a wallet or something, but what he’s actually doing is opening up the glove box, taking out her sock full of heroin, taking the interior sock out of the exterior sock, unballing the interior sock, and dumping like half of the heroin into his messenger bag. He’s not sure exactly what he was expecting. Like, just raw white powder bunched up in a sock seemed possible but unlikely. But it was just these kind of orderly and mundane-looking little wax paper packets and maybe he accidentally took way more than he meant to, but whatever.
They spill into his bag and he rolls the one sock back up, rolls it into the other sock, frantically lunges them back into the glove box, closes it, and zips up his bag. When he looks up he fully expects Maria to be standing over him at the passenger side window with, like, a gun drawn or something, but she’s actually nowhere to be seen. He has, like, five minutes or maybe more to wonder whether she saw him stealing her drugs and is doing something horrible. Obviously something other than calling the cops although maybe somebody else called the cops and she knows and she’s already three towns over. Maybe the whole thing was a setup! But then she strolls out from around the back of the counter inside the restaurant, obliviously opens the door, and tries the driver door. He hasn’t unlocked it. He pushes the automatic unlock button at the same time that she pulls the handle.
This happens three times until Maria takes two steps back from the car, puts her hands above her shoulders, and he manages to unlock the door.
James has covered his tracks superbly, nothing is amiss. He is the greatest criminal that e
ver lived. Maria points the car toward the tall buildings downtown. Whatever.
28.
It’s weird because like even though he’s just stolen a bunch of heroin from this girl, which when you put it like that it is definitely the most hardcore thing he’s ever done, he’s totally cool. Maybe not showing his hand emotionally is, like, his super power. There’s no parking downtown and he still hasn’t texted Nicole so when they can’t find a place to leave the car Maria’s like fuck dude, I thought this place was slot machines and free drinks as far as the eye could see and he’s like, Well, all the really big casinos with the giant parking lots are a little bit outside of town. Pretty much you just point your shit back toward the highway and you’ll bump into one. They’re everywhere.
Maria’s like, Cool, so they head back outside of town and like five minutes later they’re parking in this sprawling parking lot in the shadow of a mountain that’s been blasted out to make room for the highway. Well it’s not really shady yet, but you can tell that the mountain is to the west of the casino so that when the sun even starts to go down there’ll be shade. There are RVs at one end of the parking lot and you can feel the air conditioning blasting out the door of the casino, this huge ultramodern dodecahedron or some complicated shape made of glass they must polish a couple times a day and all these harsh angles. Which is weird, you’d think they’d want a casino to be more inviting but maybe when there are twenty-five epic casinos in your town they can’t all have fucking covered wagons and cowboys on them. Maria parks the car and hops out and you can see on her face that she’s totally stoked to be here, which is cool, so for a second James gets kind of stoked too but then he’s like, I don’t really have any money for gambling, and it is depressing as fuck to play penny slots for even half an hour. So. Fuck.
Plus, how is he going to get home? Way to make an exit plan, brilliant strategist. Greatest criminal who ever lived.
29.
She’s like Okay, cool, let’s lose some fuckin’ money.
It’s freezing and disorienting inside, which of course it’s supposed to be. It’s this huge dark cavern where you can’t tell what’s a wall and what’s a mirror. There are lines of garish neon up by the ceiling and tons of old people smoking cigarettes, ashing into the little trays attached to the slot machines and video poker machine and machines that play games James doesn’t even know. Right when you walk in there’s a little elevated restaurant off to the side with a salad bar full of food that looks plastic and gross but the menu on a stand out front makes it clear that this shit is fancy and James is like, I wonder if I could get away with smoking weed instead of cigarettes while I play penny slots and don’t talk to Maria. Then he’s like, I wonder if I could get away with doing a bump of heroin in the bathroom. Doubtful. How much goes in a bump? What if he throws up and dies? Obviously at some point he’s going to google the mechanics and try it but he kind of doesn’t even want to try heroin at all. Whatever.
Maria’s already gone. Maybe she already forgot about him. He was a project she thought she could solve, but since he’s not doing whatever she wants now he’s old news. She’s practically saying, out loud, Fuck you, James H., get the fuck out. So he’s like, All right. Bye.
You can’t tell how deep the casino is. It keeps looking like, okay, here’s the wall at the other end, and there’s definitely a wall there, but then your eyes follow the wall fifteen feet and there’s a corner that opens out onto a whole new collection of green felt tables and people playing actual physical cards. She’s gone, dude, James has no fucking idea where Maria is, but looking for her is a project so he goes for it. It’s kind of cool to take in a casino and look at the people and stuff, and it’s cheaper than buying drinks or pumping quarters into slots. There’s this movie that came out ten years before James was born called Joysticks, this stupid eighties teen sex comedy that is pretty much unwatchable, and in the opening scene there’s this girl playing Frogger, or Moon Rover, or something, wearing these tiny shorts and this tiny tank top, while the singer wails this song that goes, ‘Totally awesome! Video games!’ James has an mp3 of that song because it’s so fucking dumb that it rules and that’s what he’s thinking about while he walks around watching people play totally awesome video poker and totally awesome video slots and totally awesome who even knows what. Keno.
Eventually he finds her. Turns out there are a bunch of other entrances but she’s not far from the one where they came in, she’s just around a corner a little. She’s playing a Munsters video slot machine, a quarter at a time.
He’s like Hey and she’s like Hey and he’s like Uh and she’s like, did you get a drink? He’s like, a buck for a Coke, fuck that, and she’s like, Want me to get you a beer? He goes Nah, I think I’m gonna go smoke.
She’s like, Cool, and the stupid rockabilly Munsters theme song plays for a couple seconds while the wheels spin again.
James goes outside to find a place to smoke.
Would anybody even care if they caught him smoking weed? Like, bouncers or whatever. Do cops patrol casinos? They must.
He does a whole lap around the casino, which takes a while because it’s fucking huge, but there’s nothing to hide behind anywhere unless he wants to either climb that mutilated mountain or try to figure out a way around it. He’s like, god dammit, this is fucking stupid, what am I doing in Reno with this stranger who doesn’t give a fuck about me. He flips out pretty hard for a second and then without even really thinking about it he wanders over to the downtown shuttle and people are getting on so he lines up and gets on too.
30.
Nicole comes and picks him up in a couple hours. He lies and doesn’t mention Maria or heroin or anything, he says he bumped into Mark this morning and rode into Reno with him, then lost track of him.
Mark isn’t answering his texts, James says. I don’t know.
Nicole drives him past the gas station where he and Maria pulled over so he could smoke out. The sun’s on its way down but it’s not really dark out or anything and he’s thinking about whether they could pull over at the truckstop outside Star City where they went to on their first date. He wonders whether the yellow light and nostalgia can turn his body inconsequential enough to get hard. He wonders whether there’s enough room in the back seat of Nicole’s car for her to give him head.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
IMOGEN BINNIE writes a monthly column in Maximum Rocknroll magazine, as well as the zines The Fact That It's Funny Doesn't Make It A Joke and Stereotype Threat. Her work has appeared in Aorta magazine, The Skinny, PrettyQueer, and the Topside Press anthology The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard. She lives with her girlfriend and their dog Pants.
Her website is keepyourbridgesburning.com.
OTHER TITLES AVAILABLE NOW FROM TOPSIDE PRESS
THE COLLECTION
Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard
edited by Tom Léger & Riley MacLeod
A dynamic composite of rising stars, The Collection represents the depth and range of tomorrow’s finest writers chronicling transgender narratives. 28 authors from North America converge in a single volume to showcase the future of trans literature and the next great movements in queer art.
19.95 paperback • 32.95 hardcover
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MY AWESOME PLACE
The Autobiography of Cheryl B
written by Cheryl Burke
A rare authentic glimpse into the electrifying arts scene of New York City’s East Village during the vibrant 1990s, My Awesome Place is the chronicle of a movement through the eyes of one young woman working to cultivate her voice while making peace with her difficult and often abusive family.
An unlikely story for someone whose guidance counselor recommended a career as a toll taker on the New Jersey Turnpike, Burke was determined to escape her circumstances by any means available–physical, intellectual or psychotropic. Her rise to prominence as the spoken word artist known as Cheryl B brought with it a series of destructive
girlfriends and boyfriends and a dependence on drugs and alcohol that would take nearly a decade to shake.
15.95 paperback • 25.95 hardcover
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UPCOMING RELEASES FROM TOPSIDE PRESS
FREAK OF NURTURE
stories and essays by Kelli Dunham • May 2013
Freak of Nurture demonstrates that hilarity and chaos reign when you combine what Kelli’s therapist calls “deep biological optimism” with a hearty midwestern work ethic and determination to make bad ideas a fantastic reality. Whether she is writing about hitch-hiking across Haiti to help out with disaster relief or living on a houseboat in Philadelphia in the winter, Kelli Dunham’s humorous interpretation of difficult situations is both inspiring and entertaining. In the tradition of authors such as David Sedaris and Ellen DeGeneres, Dunham’s “slice of life” stories remind us that even though humans are deeply flawed, we’re also seriously hysterical that way.
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READY, AMY, FIRE
a novel by Red Durkin • Summer 2013
Hans Tronsmon is an average 20 year-old transgender man. He’s the popular chair of the transmasculine caucus at his women’s college and the first draft of his memoir is almost finished. But his world is turned upside down when his happily married gay dads decide to stop paying for his off-campus apartment and start saving for retirement. Hans must learn to navigate the world of part-time jobs, publishing, and packers if he wants to survive. Ready, Amy, Fire is the harrowing tale of one man’s courageous journey into boyhood.
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