Bad Kisser
I receive her Instagram message and rage falls through me like an anchor, rapidly gathering speed and landing with a primordial thud. My thighs and arms shake uncontrollably. I skim the message. Her words are indistinct. My vision is unfocused. I comprehend enough. A year. I want to throw something—the French press on the kitchen island, my laptop, the dining room chair. Instead, I call Z. It is 9:30am.
How long were you cheating on me? I demand.
Why are you asking that? He sounds groggy.
How long were you cheating on me? Was it our entire relationship?
No. He says. Now he is a liar and a cheater.
I pause. My voice breaks. I introduced you to my family. You are the worst person I have ever met.
I become the neighbor who airs their drama out to the entire neighborhood; I am on our back patio staring out at the alley. It is a beautiful spring day. I am supposed to bike to the lake and meet friends. I shout at him. I say things I should regret but won’t. I slam our back door. I lay down in bed. The same bed where a night prior I cried because I missed him and wondered if there was a way for us to have closure, a scenario where we remained in each other’s lives. I cover my face. I should be crying. But I am dried earth, cracked, colorless. I laid in this bed after my second surgery, my head swollen, purple, and elongated. I was alone many nights. I could not fathom that he would fuck someone else instead of lying beside me. But I predicted my transformation would be an inconvenience to his pleasure; I suggested we could open the relationship. He said no.
At our first dinner party we host together, Siobhan pulls me aside and whispers, This is you two coming out as a couple, you know? I smile. I have filled his apartment with my friends, who tell me it is the happiest they have ever seen me. Our lives are beginning to intertwine. W leaves early to fuck a girl. He texts me later and apologizes for drama he may have incited after telling the girl he came from a dinner party that Z and I were hosting. The next morning, the girl texts Z, Seriously, you already have a girlfriend?
An odd message, I thought, if they had fucked months prior. He tells me she is crazy. Oh well. I trust him. But all our memories together become untrustworthy. I feel as though I am beginning to live in the third person, analyzing the hours we spent together for the small moments where I may have noticed, an expression, a stray hair, a condom. Oh, except he never wanted to fuck with a condom. He insisted he couldn’t get hard with one on. Every trans woman I talk to tells me he could not fuck her the first time. His cock is disappointing and rubbery. It is as useful as a rotten, black banana.
Of course, I suspected. When Joss pulled me into the bathroom stall at the club and asked me which one of us cheated, I told her that I noticed his Instagram following went up several followers while I was away in New Orleans. And his account is private. Or, another incident at Roscoe’s. He was adamant that we could not say hello to the trans girl who stared at us from across the bar. I did not understand why. Of course, she tells me later that she recognized him from Grindr. They exchanged nudes and he invited her to his apartment to fuck. He showed me her message after the bar, You are cuter in person. Did he feel pleasure flaunting it in my face? They continued to talk until she realized we were together after I posted a photo of us on Valentine’s Day.
I wish I had cheated, I joked to Joss. There were many opportunities. A plastic surgeon who gave me his number at the bar. A food justice organizer from LA. A union mechanic in Charleston. A musician from Mexico City. But I made a commitment. I feel guilty even entertaining the thought of infidelity.
My ex cheated on me with a bricked-up twink, Joss confesses. Oh. Dating as a trans girl is no joke. I take photos of her in the corner of the bathroom stall. She is obviously fucked up. She won’t remember this conversation. The last time I saw Joss was at her Valentine’s Day open mic. I read an essay about all my past lovers. Z was in the audience. He ignored me afterward and stood several feet away from me at the bus station. Joss invited me out, but I said no. Back at his apartment, Z became cheery again and blamed his sour mood on a stomachache. He perpetually has a stomachache. The adrenaline and excitement of sharing my essay onstage cools into resentment. He hates my writing. So, I stop writing.
A week later, Z admits, I am selfish. We have not spoken since Valentine’s Day. I bought him flowers and baked a New York cheesecake. He came home empty handed. No card. No flowers. Fitting. He lied for weeks about my Christmas gift and finally brought me a kitchen appliance I already owned. I didn’t tell him. He was surprised I was not excited to see him. I was an afterthought. We drank a bottle of wine I bought. I took an edible. I hate edibles. I started to think I might hate him. But I sucked his dick anyway. He was silent as usual. He forced his cock down my throat until I threw up. I cried in the bathroom. He handed me a towel. He did not ask me if I was okay. Instead, he slept on the couch. I could not fathom the scale of his selfishness. It is an endless valley matched only by my naivety: I continued to think our relationship could be saved.
Months after my surgery, he inspects my face, pulling at the skin as if he is imagining more surgeries, different outcomes. You’ve changed a lot, he says. Do I look better, I ask? He doesn’t respond. After a prolonged silence, he suggests I should fix the texture of my forehead and temples, remedying years of scarring from adolescent cystic acne. I never critique his physical appearance. I love him. I book a microneedling session for $300 with the hope of becoming his ideal woman. He tells me he struggles to make friends. He only knows how to meet people by fucking them. Well, how is that working, I ask? He has no friends. I invite him everywhere. My friends tolerate him. He makes no effort to ingratiate himself. He is unlikable. I suggest he could win people’s affection by being more generous. I ask if he wants to fuck other people. He says no.
Of course, he has already opened our relationship. He is fucking her once a week when he tells me this. But he guilts me. I need to have sex soon, he says. We have sex. He throws his comforter over me so that only my ass is visible as he fucks me. He wishes I was someone else. I wish I was someone else. I send him a nude from my hotel room. He texts back hours later, Sorry I never responded. He says nothing else. He never kisses me. He tells me I am a bad kisser. He tells me I am bad at giving head. He tells me I am not submissive enough. He tells me he doesn’t like the way I dress. He guilts me into posting photos of him on Instagram. He never does the same. No wonder. I start to question if I am asexual. I no longer take photos of myself. I find them unbearable.
I find him sitting in the dark on his balcony wearing sunglasses. I was at the Art Institute to see Jacolby Satterwhite speak and rode the CTA to his place. I brought a few slices of pizza from Whole Foods. He does not want to eat. I ask him if he is okay. He confesses he feels alone. He realized he could have died in his apartment and no one would have known. I would have known, I say.
He has a herpes outbreak the day before we ride the Amtrak to my parents’ house for Christmas. We play crossword games on my phone. He makes me watch TikTok with him. I do it for a few minutes to appease him. I read. We eat sandwiches I bought from Red Star. He is anxious and quiet the whole trip. We play Minecraft with my sisters. My mom asks us to pick up an order of cannolis from the bakery on Christmas Eve an hour before they close. I drive. We wait 45 minutes. An older man leans against the counter and reminisces with one of the employees about his dead wife. The man misgenders me as I check out. Whatever. It happens.
Outside the bakery, he jokes, He really clocked your tea. He blames it on my outfit and lack of makeup. I am indignant. I will always fail to perform womanhood. There is no amount of clothes or makeup that will protect me from transphobia. He is determined to make me feel like a failure. I cry while driving. I apologize for getting angry and yelling at him.
I cannot fathom his predicament. I was quarantined with covid before our trip. He did not offer to care for me. I thought he was upset because I didn’t introduce him to an old friend at the club. I called him. He was silent and cruel. I considered breaking up with him. Instead, I took him home to my childhood bedroom. We cuddle in bed on Christmas Eve. He hugs me like a baby animal clinging to its mother's stomach. I glow with happiness. This trip is rekindling our love, I think; I believe we will get married. Unbeknownst to me, the girl he has been fucking the entirety of our relationship accused him of knowingly giving her herpes when they fucked days before our trip. And I am comforting him.
A week after our breakup, he suggests we should see the lesbian Kristen Stewart movie. We always liked seeing movies together, he says. I am dumbfounded. I message him the following day and enumerate the ways he has hurt me. He responds, I know I hurt you, but I think it’s what we both needed. I care about you and hope you can maybe come to an understanding of my position. Just like I tried for so long to try to understand you which was very difficult at times but not your fault. I never respond. We do not speak for a month. Until her message.
His final text: I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I am sorry. It is the first time he has apologized. I have no interest in absolving him. This should have been the happiest year of my life. Instead, he filled it with misery and loneliness.
Image: Tracy Emin, You hurt me- You hurt me- You hurt me, 2023.
Current recommendation: Björk’s 2015 album Vulnicura, which she wrote following her breakup with her longterm partner Matthew Barney.