Nevada (21 page)

18.

The stupid thing is that obviously James knows that transitioning isn’t just, like, you put on a dress and go to work. He knows that’s what stupid ridiculous people think. And he was already kicking himself for saying really a girl a minute ago. He knows better than that. But it’s weird how hard it is to talk about stuff even though you want to talk about it. His brain just shut off and went all stupid.

Maria really wants to talk about it though .

She’s like, So it’s something you’ve thought about?

And he’s like, I don’t know, I guess so.

And she’s like, Like, seriously?

He’s like, I don’t know, I guess so.

She has this gleam in her eye like she is just so totally stoked that James is telling her this but his brain is freezing up even more, like there are a hundred million things he wants to say but he wants to say them all at once so all he can say is like, Do you wanna smoke? and I dunno and Uhhh, and Duuuhhhh. He sees pizza boxes and dust in the corners of the room, a layer of dust on everything, and he can’t quite get his head around the fact that this person is here and in his apartment.

Maria is like, So you knew I was trans?

And James is like, I dunno, yeah.

Because obviously you don’t just tell someone you could tell they were trans and how do you tell someone that you figured out they were trans and that the reason you could tell isn’t anything they did or anything about them, it’s because probably on some level every day you’re looking at everyone and hoping you can figure out evidence that they are trans so you can make friends with someone who is trans who can tell you that you are trans too and like solve that problem for you?

Anyway she winces but then she, like, she shakes herself almost, like when a dog is totally flipping out about finding a dead animal that’s been run over a bunch of times but it knows it’s not going to be allowed to eat the dead animal so it backs away a couple of steps and shakes itself off like it’s soaked, like it just climbed out of a river, like it’s trying to reset its nervous system or whatever. Or whatever the opposite of that feeling is, the bad version of finding a carcass you’re excited to lick, either way she shakes it off and she goes, Yeah.

James goes, Yeah.

She’s like, Well, uh, I guess if you want to talk about it I transitioned a long time ago and I know a lot about trans stuff and mostly I came back into the Wal-Mart because I kinda guessed that you were trans but I wasn’t sure but you kind of looked, um, exactly like me when I was twenty and I was like, I wish I had had somebody to talk to about this stuff when I was that age, instead of just the stupid 2002 Internet?

James has this weird feeling of dots connecting, or like the fog of being a dumbass stoner from the desert who works at Wal-Mart was lifting for a second, like maybe a moment of clarity or whatever. Because honestly since she asked if he was trans it was like this fog descended, like not weed smoke but something thicker, and he checked out pretty hard. Which made him want to smoke more, even though he was already smoking and smoking. But it was like for a second a beam of light cut through that fog and all these things hit him at once: she’s trans but she’s not like the weirdo trans people on the Internet. No offense. And: I think I just told someone out loud that I think about being a girl sometimes, even if I didn’t admit how much or how bad I think about it. And like, at the same time, there are these two conflicting feelings: like, on one hand, who the fuck is this girl trying to talk to me about shit I don’t want to talk about, but on the other hand, maybe I could get into her car and leave town with her and live with her and wear her clothes and bum her hormones and maybe everything would be totally okay forever. So James feels a little bit like his breath got punched out of him but also like this new and better kind of breath got punched into him? Or something, it was weird.

But all he could say was, Yeah, the Internet. It’s like sometimes I think about being a girl but I would want to be like Nicole, you know, not like these ladies with the makeup and the boring stupid jokes and beige shoes or whatever the fuck

Yeah, Maria says, The problem with the Internet is that most of the trans women who manage to transition and still be dirtbags or punkers or weirdos or dykes or radicals or whatever stay way away from those people, too, and there’s this narrative of ‘deep stealth’ that makes it seem like maybe we don’t exist or we stop being trans but actually what happens is that we keep living our lives and being dirty weirdos we just—I should only speak for myself, I guess, but I just got bored of talking about it. Like, I have a livejournal, and I know some people on the Facebook who I’ve met
IRL
a couple times but mostly, like, the Advocate doesn’t want anything to do with trans women who can’t afford face surgeries and hate capitalism so it can even just be hard to meet anyone

James is like, Well I don’t know anything about capitalism or anything.

Maria is like, Well let’s talk.

James is like, We are talking.

Maria laughs and James is like, What.

Okay sorry, Maria says, Let’s not talk about capitalism or anarchism or anything except I do want to say that those things ended up being totally essential to my understanding of being trans and feminism and my location and the things that suck about being trans. All that stuff. So maybe like we can table them for now and get back to them.

James is like, Okay.

Maria’s like, Well, what do you want to talk about?

James thinks for a second, and then thinks for another second, and then when he realizes that actually he’s probably too stoned to come up with anything he’s like, Do you want breakfast?

She gives him a look like I can see that this dumb kid’s brain is full and says, Yeah, sure, probably.

19.

The only food James has is some old peanut butter, some bread in the freezer, and the butt end of that bag of shitty coffee, so they eat peanut butter toast and make more weak coffee. Having Maria in his kitchen makes James feel like his kitchen is a dusty, grungy and kind of sad mess, in a way that having Nicole in there never really does. He’s like, I guess my apartment sucks. Weird how you don’t notice that.

So they make food and he still kind of feels like his head is in orbit or whatever but eating food and changing the subject makes him feel like maybe intense stuff is put away even though probably in his body and his nerves he’s still feeling it. Like he is probably kind of lightheaded.

They don’t talk for a while, they just kind of make food and eat it or whatever but then out of nowhere Maria is like, You’ve been to Reno, right?

James is like, Yeah.

She’s like, You wanna go to Reno? Right now?

I don’t know, he says, mouth all stuck together with peanut butter, I kind of have to go to work this afternoon or whatever.

Your call, Maria says, But you kind of have to ask yourself, do I want to have the kind of life where I call out of work to go to Reno with a cool wingnut stranger lady, or do I want to have the kind of life where I work loyally for Wal-Mart until I die?

There is probably some middle ground between the two and also that kind of felt like a weird and manipulative thing to say, but thinking about it and swallowing James is kind of like, well, I guess I actually do want to have the kind of life where I bail on work to go to Reno with a transgender murderess I just met or whatever. And the more he thinks about it the more he’s like, whoa, this is actually what freedom feels like. Deciding to skip work to hang out with a stranger feels like something people in Star City don’t do, but it is probably something that cool people with weird hair and clothes he wouldn’t even know how to put on, like in Portland or Austin or something, probably do.

Okay, he says, But like what are we going to even do in Reno? Gamble?

Dude we are going to party as hell, she says.

Oh.

Yeah dude.

You know I’m not old enough to drink though right?

She makes a face like hmm and then swallows.

Well uh, she says. Then she’s like, Nah, never mind.

He’s like, What, and she’s like, Uh, well, this is kind of a weird offer but I kind of have a bunch of heroin?

20.

At this point James has to acknowledge this feeling that’s been creeping up and down his spine since he first saw her at Wal-Mart but which so far he’s been able to ignore. He’s like: who the fuck is this person in my apartment.

Probably she can see that he’s kind of weirded out so she starts talking but he kind of talks over her, he’s like, Uhhhhh, who are you? Like for real, all I know about you is that you’re trans and you have a pretend dog and cat and maybe you have pretend heroin, too, but maybe it’s real? What are you doing here?

She’s just like, Yeah, okay, and then neither of them knows what to say so again James is like, For real, who are you.

Maria is sitting on the floor and James is on the futon. She looks up at him from across the room with her bangs in her eyes, pushes her hair back off her forehead—her kind of big forehead—and sighs.

Okay, she says. Sure. I’m twenty-nine. I grew up in a shitty little cow town in Pennsylvania, moved to New York City after college, transitioned six years ago, and work in a bookstore. Well. I guess I used to work in a bookstore. I don’t know. Like a month ago I figured out that I was really unhappy with my life so I borrowed-stole my girlfriend’s car and, like, I guess I just pointed it west.

James thinks, like, yeah and you’re a heroin addict? And like, you were inevitably unhappy with your life because you’re trans, right? Meaning, transition doesn’t work. But what he says is, It took you a month to drive a couple thousand miles?

She smirks at him and pushes her hair back again. I dunno, she says. I guess so. I did a lot of hanging out in parking lots and stuff.

James goes, Like, on heroin?

She laughs kind of too loud.

Nah, she says, That whole thing is fuckin stupid. When I was like sixteen, I had a friend who was really into heroin, right? Used to buy hundreds of dollars worth at a time, right, and just do it recreationally. Shootin heroin on a Friday night. Or a Tuesday night, didn’t matter. It was, like, dumb teenage shit. Check out how tough we are. I latched onto him. When he’d go to Philadelphia and buy four hundred dollars worth, I’d give him a twenty and have him bring me back a couple dimebags. Whatever. No big deal.

She stops talking for a second and then nods, like she’s figuring out how much of this story to tell him, and she’s decided: all of it.

So yeah check this out, she says. I sort of just broke up with my girlfriend. We had been together for a bunch of years and developed this routine where we had an apartment and cats and stuff and our bills were under control, she had a grownup job that was turning her into a grownup kind of, and I realized. Like. I guess I just figured out that I wasn’t happy, right? I was blaming her for stuff and getting pissed that she was turning into a grownup or whatever but mostly I was just so checked out that I didn’t even understand if I was mad or sad or confused or what, you know?

James is like, I
do
know.

So some dumb stuff happened, Maria says, and then we broke up and I was like, well shit, the problem is that I’ve been trying to be responsible, and accountable to everyone else, and to make sure that nobody was freaked out by me or my feelings or desires or whatever. I was like, the solution is to become as irresponsible as I can. Obviously, that turned out to be a totally stupid theory though. Here’s the thing James H.: while I was driving across the country, right, and hanging out in like small town parks and route 80 off-ramps and drinking truckstop coffee refills in the middle of the night—what I realized was, that was not a pattern that started in my relationship with Steph. This was a pattern that went back my whole fucking life. I was totally checked out in high school, to the point that it seemed like a good idea to try a little heroin now and then. I barely made facial expressions in grade school. I learned to fake it well enough that people didn’t mistake me for an autistic kid; actually, it’s fucking wild if you think about it, how well being totally checked out emotionally can look like normal American masculinity. So looking back I was like, holy shit, I don’t remember much about being a little kid, but I must’ve checked out of my life: meaning, like, started the pattern that me and Steph broke up over. When I was a little kid, when I started to develop a personality and a gender and to express that personality and gender, a tiny little dirtbag punker who didn’t know anything about being trans or saying I want to be a girl. Or: I am a girl. Who only knew that she wanted to be in Poison, to dress and act like the rock stars who were boys but who got to wear all the makeup and outfits. Everybody everywhere started socializing that stuff out of me. I was an observant kid, you know, I looked around and I was like, well shit, I’d better listen to these messages I’m getting from TV and from the grownups around me, instead of whatever the fuck my obviously incorrect brain is telling me. You know? Being completely checked out, that shit started when I was a tiny little kid.

I started really hating myself when I figured this out, like, in a way that I’d never even felt before. Like my fuckin’ astral hate chakra had been revitalized. I was like, whoa, I have a lifetime’s worth of unprocessed shut-down emotions to work through, so it’s a good thing I’m by myself out here. I thought about it and wrote about it and stuff and eventually, when I was like, cool, I have all this heroin, it’d probably be easier to overdose and die than it would be to work through, what, twenty-five years of self-invalidating habit? So I called my friend Piranha, who’s always been way leveler-headed than me, and she was like, Hey stupid, did you ever stop to think that that pattern, that coping mechanism, was actually a brilliant strategy to keep yourself alive? She was like, listen up dummy, when you are a little kid and it is the mid-eighties, saying ‘I need to be a girl’ is not the sort of thing that tends to be met with love and appreciation. It is the sort of thing that tends to get met with, Well you are a boy and We’d better butch him up and Welp we had ourselves a little freak baby, that sucks, and Shut the fuck up, junior. Piranha was like, Maria you dolt, the smartest thing you could have done in that no-win situation was to be like, Okay, I’ll play your game until I’m old enough to run away from it and figure out my own stupid game. She was like, Which you did, right? You moved to New York. You transitioned. You fuckin solved it. The problem wasn’t the coping mechanism, the problem is that the coping mechanism become a pattern of behavior, and it is really hard to just up and end a behavior pattern.