Annabelle says hey and I say hey and we hug. At the beginning, I can tell she’s thinking—maybe she has a cold. Her eyes flash to my chest, quick, and by the end of our introductions, she knows.

Every day is a new performance for me. Today, I’m on stage as Punk Boy: Mannequin Pussy tank. Black Levi’s. Nail color: black.

“How’ve you been?” I ask, sipping my coke.

“Good,” she says, “really good. So, I just finished my MSW—Master’s in Social Work, sorry. I’m starting at Boston Children’s Hospital on Monday.”

“That’s great,” I say.

“How about you?”

This is my opening. “Still living with my parents, so cringey, I know. Working at a boutique pet spa. And I’m, well. I’m different from when you last saw me. You probably saw on Facebook that my name is E instead of Erica?”

She nods, watching me.

“I’ve been going through some changes,” I say. “I’m getting to know myself better.”

Her sushi sits in front of her, uneaten. She looks the same as in college—long blonde hair, elegant nose, permanent blush in her cheeks, and a beauty mark by her nose, almost imperceptible. “That’s awesome,” she says. “Really.”

“It’s a process,” I say. My voice cracks like a boy going through puberty, and I blush, and then I blush about my blushing.

After college, I was depressed, and the longer it went on, the more I felt I needed to change something. My trans friends all seemed so happy. Every day, they announced a new development. I thought, Maybe this is it. I can give birth to a new me.

It reminded me of those pregnancy books.

Heart starts to beat (cut your hair)

Facial features form (stubble grows)

Fingerprints and toenails appear (voice deepens)

“If you don’t mind my asking, what are your pronouns?” She stops. “Wait, you totally don’t have to answer that. Only if you’re comfortable, I mean. I don’t—”

“It’s okay,” I say.

“I don’t want to put you on the spot,” she says. Is this as uncomfortable for her as it is for me? I feel my top surgery scars throbbing, like they’re glowing through my shirt.

I remember after my top surgery, when my mom was changing my dressings and emptying the drains hooked up to my bloody chest. She paused and I said, “What?” and she said, “I guess I didn’t know what I was taking on,” and I thought, What do you mean? Like, when you drove me to my surgery? When you took me to a therapist for my panic attacks? When you took me to my first pride parade? Or when you had me?

I used to vlog about transitioning, as though I knew shit.

I starred as Hipster Boy: Mustard Carhartt beanie, olive green overalls, looks cute holding tools but can’t even hang a curtain. I had a series: “Your hipster tranny next door.”

Now, I can’t even talk about it. Her lips are full and perfect, she is a Botticelli painting, I would die to see her tits again, this is my end.

“I thought…” I say. “For a long time after college, I thought I was a guy. And that’s what got me on T. Testosterone. But now…I think I might be something in-between.”

In-between. A rat. An alien. A mutt abandoned on the side of a country road.

Her hazel eyes alight on my no-boobs again, and flicker away. “I’m glad you feel safe to explore that now.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Me, too.”

Some days, like today, I want to be with her.

As a girl.

I want to giggle and tickle her and…

Back in college, when she took off her bra, I felt like the luckiest girl alive. I must be cheating, I thought. This is magic. My fingers tingled.

I almost wish I still had boobs so I could smush them against hers. It felt absurd that time I did it, like squishing pillows together, or bags of sand, and it made me laugh.

I want to land the role of Girly Girl: Jane Austen-inspired. Lacey corsets, pink bows, silk. Nail color: ballet slipper.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, sometimes I wonder if I fucked this all up, if I can’t make these monumental life decisions—I got this tattoo the other day on my arm of an anime cat eating French fries to cover my high school self-harm scars, and every night since, it’s haunted me, I think it made the whole thing worse, like covering a joke with another joke, and now it’s on my body forever, and the only thing I could cover it with would be an ugly thing, a big black blob, and then it’d be covering a joke with another joke with another joke, and I look at trans kids who know what they want from the beginning, and I wonder if I’m missing some special gene to tell me who I am now, who I’ve always been, who I’ll always be, but I’m a kaleidoscope, constantly changing.

Every day, a new performance.

Current mode: Desperate.

Her eyes are sad, or maybe I’m projecting, and I want to say:

I’m still beautiful, at least I think I am, and do you still want me?

Do you still want me

do you want me

do you want me

do you do you do you do you doyoudoyoudoyou?