Originally I was going to write a blog post about this:
In my newsletter, I mentioned that I no longer feel safe in the US because while I’m not trans, I am trans-adjacent and shit is looking real bad. I thought that was a pretty basic thought but I had two different cis people tell me I just needed to move to a blue state.
It became alarmingly clear to me in that moment that cis folk are experiencing this administration wildly differently than trans folk. I feel like I’m still comforting cis women on what might happen to them instead of any of us having a conversation about what is already happening to the trans community. It’s wild to me that anyone could say “just move to a blue state” when Dems have pretty strongly turned against the trans community for the sake of a “wider tent.” And even more bizarre that people who are supposed to be allies don’t see it…
But I decided I don’t want to write about that. I’m tired of centering what people outside of my community think. Instead I want to hyper-focus on who I can trust and who I can’t. I’m no longer interested in arguing with people about where I can be safe. Instead, I want to find community with people who already create safe spaces for me.
So, instead of a traditional blog post, I’m going to share a short story I wrote years ago that I randomly decided to return to because I think it could be a fantastic novel one day.
lifetimes
I met her in an underground speakeasy. A certain spark in her eye glistened and called me over. I walked over, confidently until I tripped… Before I could even stand back up, he got to her first.
He walked over like an athlete, a slight hammering in every step, as though he had to threaten gravity to gain hold of him. The air choked in around him as every scant glance across the room landed on his chest, on his puffy Northface vest that hugged his abdomen too tightly as he laughed.
I listened to their introductions. His name was Jeffrey, hers Maggie. He told her a few jokes he’d seen across the web, playing them off like they were his own. Still, she laughed as if they were written by Kerouac. I could see it immediately. She was charmed, instantly.
With no move left to make after an hour of eavesdropping and half a bottle left of my regrets, I decided it was time I went home. I lit a cigarette on the walk home and thought nothing more of it.
They were married not long after that. Two kids. A house not far from Berkeley. She had become suburban, grayscale.
I saw her again, three years after she’d married. She stumbled, broken, into my favorite bar. Turns out his charm has an expiration date but her dreams hadn’t. She felt trapped in a painting she didn’t choose with a painter she didn’t trust. We assessed the tiny little fractured moments that ultimately dictated the life before us. How our tiniest choices led the strangest outcome, dominating our rear view of what could we have done instead…
At sunrise, I asked her to run away with me. I gave little to no heads up, no ramp up in fear she’d shoot me down. I shot it out like a cue ball expecting to fall off the table entirely. But I had loved her for years, how could I not?
She said she would, that she just needed to say goodbye to her kids first. But we both knew she was lying. Days later, I left town on my own. Lost myself in Thompson’s neon and Ginsburg’s spite. She found me in the street one night, fully unaware how I got there. And so our half-life began. Years faded by as I saw her only in secret, less and less as the years went by.
She died in a car accident. I died in the hills. At the time I thought it was poetic. Now I know it was just a punctuation to my relentless loneliness.
…
I met at her a rally. She was there for a protest. I was there to try to get into the brunch place the protestors were blocking. She asked me if I needed a sign and I figured blending into the protest would at least get me into the entrance easier so I said yes. I didn’t even realizing what we were protesting until I learned the brunch place was pre-emptively closed.
I figured while we were on the street, I might as well learn her name. And I asked but she never said. She told me a fake name that’s not worth writing out and I told her, like the Death card, I had no name.
Over the hours, we talked about the universe, about the endless luxury of never really knowing what’s out there, how small we are in the grand scheme things juxtaposed with how large we can be when we just simply try. We traded astrology readings while admitting we both thought it was a bit bullshit and traded fake numbers neither of us knowing the numbers would leave us searching for the rest of our lives for the other.
To be honest, I think the permanence of history makes it hard for us to understand what’s at stake. That we could lose each other even if our stories are written down. That we could spend eternities searching for each other through the pages. How our souls can be anchored to another without us ever really knowing.
But that’s the catch-22 of being young and infinite, you forget none of that is true.
Unsurprisingly, we were both arrested at the protest. I found out years later she married an English teacher and together they had two cats and a very nice apartment in Brooklyn. I married a lawyer who I never saw. We were happier that way.
And by some trickster god’s twist of fate, we died the same day the exact same way.
…
I met her at a party. Well, kind of.
I stumbled out of a frat party, happy to be drunk not drugged. If years of reincarnation have taught me nothing else, it’s taught me that poison by choice is always a better option. I threw up as I walked out the door and kept moving; I didn’t have the patience to stop. I was on mission to be home.
I suppose that’s why I didn’t see her. Too focused on my own disaster I didn’t immediately notice hers.
I tripped over her and landed on the sidewalk. She had been “resting” there, taking a break from walking. To be fair, I still think she was napping.
It didn’t help though that as I fell, I accidentally kicked her in the stomach.
“Ow!” she shouted, about three minutes after I’d kicked her. A delay that to this day still causes me to laugh so hard I cry.
In the moment though I groaned, trying my best not to thow up again. It wasn’t until I barely lifted my torso that I truly saw it: I’d known her before, across lifetimes. She smiled back at me and we stayed there in silence. Letting the years of our history, the lives before and the ones still to come surround us.
“Do you think this time we’ll work out?” she whispered, glistening under the stars.
“No,” I answered honestly. “But we’re bound by lifetimes. So not this one but maybe the next one.”