Nevada (9 page)

It turned out that it was only kind of here, at least in any way you can access without getting your hands all dirty with it. The Internet really is so much safer than anyplace else. There was a single meeting. It happened every Wednesday at The LGBT Center on 13th Street in Manhattan. She dragged herself to it and ended up going for nine months. The Center is a pretty fancy building in a pretty fancy neighborhood, so she was like, I will just try to sneak in unnoticed. She still smoked back then, which was nice to have—something to do with your hands and focus on while you walk over to your first transsexual support group meeting and feel like you will turn around go home and die if you can’t stop thinking about the public humiliation of transitioning, scalpels slicing into the meat of your body, your parents telling you outright that they never want to see you again.

The meeting itself was also terrifying because there was no way to play it off as unimportant. It’s a scene that’s been played for comedy lots of times, but it’s not a funny scene. It’s also been played for pathos a couple times, too, but that wasn’t right either. Like, once a week, for an hour and a half, maybe a dozen male-assigned people would go into a room and discuss a specific subject like self-esteem, or sexuality, or oppression, or something. Whatever. But it was weird, because there are so goddamn many kinds of male-assigned, not male-identified people there.

There was a much older woman who seemed like she must have transitioned a million years ago who eventually explained that she was a man 98% of the time. She just read as an old pro because she had a campy voice and a skinny frame. A heavy-set person from New Jersey with this aura of frustration and resignation told stories about small victories: wearing clear nail polish to work, leaving last night’s mascara on the next day. Dignified, actually. In this totally unexpected way.

There were more folks from New Jersey than you’d expect, and everyone seemed to be older than her by about fifteen years at least. They’d go around the circle and talk. Mostly people would talk about how hard it was to be trans, or the trouble they were having with their families, or their jobs, and how impossible it seemed like it would be ever to transition. Eventually Maria figured out that half of the folks who were coming to this meeting were coming from a cross-dresser place instead of a transsexual place, that they weren’t transitioning, they had convinced themselves not to, and that they were bringing bags of clothes and makeup, getting dressed at the Center before the meeting.

It didn’t take long to feel all alienated from them. She came to the meetings in the same women’s jeans and black hoodies she’d been wearing for years and would continue to wear for the next few years, well after she started taking hormones and asking people to call her Maria. She was still terrified of makeup, and even more terrified of looking like a guy wearing makeup. It was also terrifying to ask somebody at the group like, Hey, how do you do that? Which was a funny thing. It would take at least half a year of being out as trans before Maria got as good at putting on makeup as the people in the group who weren’t transitioning. She sat silent at group and tried to feel a sense of community, but when everybody went to a diner around the corner together, in a pack for safety, she’d always bail even though they invited her. She worked five blocks away. Somebody could’ve seen her there, with them, before she came out, and then the world would’ve imploded.

So she stayed quiet at work. She stayed quiet at group. It got obvious that this was a pattern everywhere in her life: she sat back, kept company with herself in her head, and didn’t really interact directly with anything. Well, except for the Internet, where you could just spew venom or, sometimes, whatever is the opposite of venom. Sugar? Antidote? Is anti-venom a thing? She could just unload to her computer, on a blog without her name attached to it, and then it was almost like a conversation. People would say things back, acknowledge that your experience was real. The Internet got her through way more than actual human interaction.

She is practically meditating on this stuff in the Irish history aisle when she realizes that she was supposed to clock out like fifteen minutes ago. She thinks: I don’t talk to my girlfriend, but I do still talk to the Internet. The old pattern never left. Totally, unavoidably fucked up. Fucked all the way through. But she’s still so deep inside her own head that she’s got her helmet on, her chain around her waist, skirt hiked up and blinky light on when she realizes she’s riding her bike. She actually only realizes it when she thumps into the back of a cab at a light. She’s like, okay babe, chill the fuck out: you’re super-internal and feeling damaged right now because you still have not given yourself that shot. You’ve been awake for fourteen hours after only one night of sort of good sleep. If you’re not careful you’re going to get run over by a truck or fall off the bridge.

It’s hard though. She’s going home to break up with her girlfriend of four years. She thinks about texting Piranha something wry about it but she is riding and she’s resolved to pay attention.

Thank god for bike lanes. One time, Piranha decided that she was going to be a tough bike punk like Maria—well she decided to ride her bike more, she didn’t actually say anything about being anything like Maria—so she rode her bike into the city from Brooklyn. Except she didn’t know about the bike lane, she thought you were just supposed to ride your bike on the car lanes, where you are right on the ledge about to fall a million feet into the water—which is full of sharks—and the cars almost knock you off, over and over again, every time they pass. Furthermore, the sun wasn’t up, so their headlights were disorienting, whipping by her head as they drove by. Also it was pouring rain. That’s why Piranha rides the train into the city when she needs to go in. She brings a book.

Now that it’s about to happen Maria’s thinking about everything except this conversation with Steph. She should be thinking about contingency plans and stuff, for like what if something horrible happens. Should she bring home Thai food? Too much.

She’s going to show up at the apartment and watch what happens happen. It’s frustrating but you can’t just be like, okay brain, think. Because your brain is like, I am thinking! I am thinking at you, and then you’re like, Jesus, brain, relax, I just mean, we need to think about this conversation. Do we just break up with her right at the beginning? Do we let her bring up the subject, talk for a while, and have it be an actual, present back and forth? The problem with that is that, obviously, if it’s a conversation instead of a simple statement, like for example I am breaking up with you, then it could go anywhere. They might not end up breaking up at all.

But on the other hand, if she says it flat out right away, it’s like, well fuck, what a shitty conversation will follow, where nobody will get any release or closure or anything. How do you work through anything when you skip through to the end. She’s like, are you listening, brain? What should I do?

This is way too meta, her brain says. What a stupid way to try and figure out how to spare your girlfriend’s feelings as much as possible while you break up with her.

She comes off the end of the bridge to a green light and decides to totally clear her brain, get in a little Zen bike meditation, like Bob Pirsig probably does in his stupid book, except she bumps into the back of another cab.

19.

Steph’s waiting at the apartment, which is odd because she drives to work, and New York traffic means that riding a bike is usually way faster than driving. But she’s on the couch, in her work clothes, with a bottle of organic red wine because she knows that estradiol and non-organic red wine don’t mix. The fact that she’s got the whole bottle of wine on the table, her own glass half full and Maria’s empty, waiting, says that they are going to have a long conversation. A bottle-long talk.

Hi, she says, and she stands up. Hugs Maria.

I left work early, she says. Do you want wine?

Thanks.

She pours a glass. Maria wonders about food: she barely ate lunch and probably ought to eat something. Steph’s on the couch now though, ready to launch in, so eating gets deprioritized. Maria’s like, maybe I should have that shot first? It wouldn’t really make her feel more lucid untill tomorrow, though, so a shot gets deprioritized too. She sits on the couch a thigh’s width away from Steph.

Look, Steph says, I am breaking up with you.

20.

Ten minutes later, Maria’s on her bike again. There will be no closure, no conversation, no figuring out what the fuck is going on tonight. She slugged down that glass of wine without any food and now she’s on her bike, flying down Jamaica Avenue. Piranha doesn’t live anywhere nearby and who knows what her neighborhood is even called, it’s just way the fuck down, south and west, toward where the signs are all in Russian and the avenues have letters for names. Maria hasn’t called her yet, and she also hasn’t decided whether she’s going to stop into a bar for another drink or two. Probably not. The desire to self-obliterate isn’t as intense as the fear of dealing with people. And Piranha is maybe the greatest fucking genius who ever lived at not dealing with people.

So Maria rides for a while, fast, until her legs hurt and her lungs won’t breathe right any more, but she doesn’t really know which way south or west are. She thought she’d been pointing in the right direction, but maybe she’s never ridden from her own apartment to Piranha’s, maybe she’s always gone there from work or taken the train. Weird. She’s in some kind of clean-looking neighborhood full of two-story apartment buildings and parking lots. She’s like, I bet I’m either near the ocean or in Queens.

She finds a subway station, carries her bike down the stairs and checks a map, chest heaving, face damp in the humid night. She’s in Queens, near the ocean. She pretty much went in exactly the wrong direction, which is more due to the way she rides her bike than her emotional state. She tends to just point in a direction and trust that she’ll get there; it almost always works. Who knows how she got so turned around, but whatever. Riding feels good so she doesn’t get on a train. She lugs her bike back up to the street and starts to ride.

As soon as she’s going pretty fast, she gets doored. Shit luck. She kind of bounces off, falls on the ground, bounces up, and glares at the person. She doesn’t say a word to boring-looking white guy in the car, just makes a feral face, gets back on her bike, and bails. Almost immediately she’s going fast again, cutting through a busy-looking intersection as the light turns yellow.

Soon she recognizes her own neighborhood, then she recognizes the neighborhood next to it, and then the next one. It’s dark out at this point, and the air is all misty around the streetlights. It’s like a picture inside a New Jersey punk record from the nineties, all serene and lonesome and pretty. Her face is kind of wet and she starts to worry that it’s going to rain for real, that she’s going to show up at Piranha’s with a total butt stripe. It doesn’t though. It’s just misty.

Turns out Piranha’s neighborhood is really far away, though. Inevitably Maria runs out of adrenaline. She stops at a red light, even though when there’s no cars you’re supposed to totally blow through stoplights to show how anarchist you are. She sort of starts to process the conversation she and Steph had half an hour ago. Ambush! While Maria was freaking out about how to have that conversation Steph figured out how to communicate more directly than either of them has ever done before.

There wasn’t much to say after that. Maria was like, I was going to break up with you, too, and then they just kind of looked at each other. Steph cried, and for a minute Maria felt like she might not, and she felt heartless and mean down to the bottom of her lungs, but then she cried too. Just a little. They hugged and Maria said something about figuring out logistics tomorrow but that she had to go get drunk right now. Steph laughed, which made Maria feel like probably one day they’d be friends.

Dykes.

It feels shitty not to have gotten to say all the shit that Maria is just realizing she needed to say about patterns of checking out in her own life and stuff, but
I am not your girlfriend any more
is pretty close to
I don’t have to listen to your shit any more
, and plus, who actually wants to say those things out loud? No matter how bad you need to.

The light changes and Maria realizes, Wait, shit, hold on, I am elated. It’s that feeling like you just left on a car trip for Arizona or Michigan or something, and you don’t have to worry about rent or work or feeding the cat or anything at all for a whole week. Except there’s no time limit. I don’t have to take care of myself. Or sleep. Or bathe! This might be kind of a bad news train of thought.

Past that stoplight the road goes downhill for a really long time and her bike feels like a Pegasus or something. It’s trite to say you feel like you’re flying, but it’s like flying. She spreads her arms out like Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic.

At the bottom of the hill is the edge of Park Slope. Piranha’s house is still like miles away and even though it’s not raining the mist is soaking through her clothes so Maria decides to take the train. This is the actual reason that she doesn’t know the way on her bike. It’s a pointlessly far ride. She realizes she’s gotten bored right around here before. She’s a catharsis biker, not a distance biker.

Plus, on the train, you get to read books and drink whiskey, so she stops in a liquor store and buys a flask. She doesn’t want to be drunk, but she does want to be drinking. It occurs to her to text Piranha.

Um, Steph broke up with me. Coming over.

She gets on the train without waiting for a reply, because what’s she going to say, no? Plus, Piranha’s not going to be doing anything, she hates everybody way too much to go out when she doesn’t have to.

The Q train is pretty full because it’s a Tuesday night and people who work in the city live in fancy two-story homes out by Piranha, so they’re all on their way back. Maria gets into the role of dirty punk with bright fake-colored hair, taking up too much space, smelling bad and drinking whiskey. Like, she’s known real crusties, and she is not a real crusty, but in comparison to these investment bankers, she’s like, Boxcar Bertha.