Liars
After I spent our second session together crying and defiantly refusing the tissues he placed on the coffee table in front of me, my therapist suggested that I should journal and try to answer this question for myself. What do you want? I stopped journaling when Z and I reconnected, considering this a healthy sign that our relationship was less defined by periods of acute anxiety or stress that I would need to reference later in therapy or when I sat down to write. Journaling was also time consuming, and I had less time to myself as I biked between my apartment and his each day. I recalled a quote from a writer who quoted another, more successful writer (both of whose names I cannot remember.) The more successful writer insisted that they never journal. If they wrote, they did so for publication, for money. I would like to get paid to write again. Compensation, no matter how pitiful, would give my self humiliation artistic merit I think.
I want to revisit that morning. Z and I did not acknowledge the events of the prior night. We silently cuddled each other in his bed before he rose and left the room. He returned with my handwritten letter, which he had left on the coffee table, and added it to the pile of bills, receipts, and unpaid parking tickets on his desk. He would likely hide the letter or toss it away like the poems that used to decorate the shelf above his TV to prevent a future lover from discovering this correspondence. While he used the bathroom, I considered grabbing the envelope, stuffing it inside my tote bag, and later tossing it into an alleyway dumpster when I made my way home, as if discarding the letter would erase the outsized sentiments within. I drafted a version of the letter at 3am the two nights prior and rewrote it the next morning, removing adjectives or modifiers that might irritate Z. I handed the letter to him when I arrived and, for once, I was reserved, speechless. I was terrified of saying the wrong thing, deviating from the script that I feverishly prepared, which I hoped would persuade him to give us another chance—to reverse his decision.
Z read the letter in his bedroom while I waited on the couch. Nearly half an hour passed. He smiled when he returned and thanked me. He enjoyed reading it. But nothing changed. No amount of pleading, declarations of love, or beautifully written recollections of the happy times we spent together would sway him. His decision remained the same. I turned away from him and cried, frantically grabbing at my face, as if I was trying to free myself from a scratchy mohair sweater and was unable to find the hem or sleeves. After consoling me, he suggested that we could make frozen pizzas and watch a movie. We laid together on his couch.
Did the letter work? I wondered. Or was it something else, nostalgia, or pity? I would never know for certain. But we slept together that night, twice.
When I left, Z and I hugged and said goodbye in the doorway. I rode the 77 Bus home and found Katia in my bed. They were crashing for a night while they tried to find a sublet. I had a dream about you last night where we had this exact conversation, they said. What? I asked. You were defensive and anxious about sleeping with your ex, and I consoled you. Oh, great, I replied, then we don’t need to rehash the conversation. Katia shimmied out from underneath the comfort and sat cross-legged beneath the window. Your room is so cozy, they told me. Thank you. You know, the lawyer I was fucking last year always said the same thing. He always asked to sleep over because he liked waking up in my room, that it made him feel at home. Though he never invited me to his apartment, probably because he didn’t want his roommate to know he was fucking a tranny. I paused and recalled his lips, the sweat, his hip flexors. His abs were crazy, like plaited bread, I reminisced. Anyway, sorry I left laundry on my bed. I’m depressed so cleaning has been a monumental task.
Don’t worry about it, Katia said. I folded some of it. Not the underwear though. I had to draw the line somewhere. Thank god, I think that would have been the last milestone on our journey from ex-coworkers from friends, and I like to have some boundaries, I joked.
I waited until we were sitting across from each other at Lula Cafe to revisit the details of our breakup sex, and the breakup itself, which required seemingly endless context, and carefully reconstructed timelines. The waiter interrupted to take our order. We ordered french toast and a burrito. Katia explained the occasional exceptions to their vegetarianism, and I made a throwaway comment about how I admired people who could adopt restricted diets. I’m incapable of giving up anything, denying myself any pleasure, no matter how big or small. Katia laughed. You don’t say, the girl who just fucked her ex? I snorted and raised my hands in surrender. Listen. Listen. I know, I’m gonna kill myself, ok. I hesitated and searched Katia’s face for a reaction.
Sorry, I shouldn’t say that so casually, even as a joke. I promised Avery I would be more mindful, that I would remove this catchphrase from my lexicon because she was saying it more often now that we spend most days together. Her coworker commented on it. It’s difficult though. I reflexively said it twice during the dinner party, and I couldn’t tell if she noticed, if she would accuse me of being a liar again. Do you think I’m a liar? I asked Katia. Maybe by omission, they said and shrugged. But that’s the danger of being involved with a writer, right? Possibly, I demurred and lifted a forkful of french toast into my mouth. I paid for our breakfast. My treat for abandoning you last night, I explained before we left and wandered into the neighboring bookstore where we ran into some of my friends. We chatted near the entrance. M showed Katia and I a video of Scrim, a stray white terrier that had repeatedly evaded capture in New Orleans and was captured on camera leaping from the second story of his rescuer’s home before sprinting out of view. We all laughed and agreed. C’mon, he’s earned his freedom.
Two days later I sent Avery a voice memo to confess that Z and I texted after our final tryst. I guess I thought that would be the last time we saw each other, that we were consummating our separation physically because language kept failing us, I whispered into my phone, hoping my roommate and her partner couldn’t hear from her room. But I think that was naive in retrospect. Maybe I hoped we would have to talk again. I probably did. But I cannot figure out what he wants from me, if he wants anything. What are we to each other now—friends or lovers? Avery intervened gently yet decisively after receiving my voice memo: Can I suggest that the thing you are is recently broken up? Her text fractured my prolonged delusion, like a seam of water that freezes and expands, rupturing a stretch of concrete sidewalk.
Avery and I reenacted our daily routine the following day, walking to Foodsmart and then Unity Park, where we sat beside each other on the westward-facing bench, separated by an armrest. We were both melancholic, breaking our silence a few times on our walk to the park only when we passed a man that we both found attractive, confirming the other noticed his curls or jawline or eyes. Avery always made direct eye contact with the recipient of our affection while I averted my gaze, feigning indifference. I can’t stop thinking about what you said the other day, Avery said as the sun began to set. What did I say? I asked. She explained, When I told you that I woke up in a bad mood and you almost spit out your coffee in the parking lot before pointing out that I am never having a good day. Sorry, I said, I suppose I could have delivered that more gently. We were both silent again. I hesitated, adjusted my tote bag in my lap, and segued our conversation while I watched an husky crouch at the end of its leash and piss in the grass.
I think I’m worried that this is what life will be like as a trans woman. That every lover will treat me this poorly, that I will be cheated on and lied to and disregarded and kept a secret. Because men do not see me as human. You know, one of the last times Z and I spoke, he asked me if I really thought he treated me differently because I’m trans. I was dumbfounded by the question. He had a cis girlfriend for five years who met all his family, who went with him to weddings, who he traveled with. We never did those things. He claimed he didn’t invite me to Italy because he thought I wouldn’t like his high school friends or that I would be uncomfortable, which is laughable because I’m pretty agreeable and interact with cis people all the time. And he told me that he never cheated on her, even though they were long-distance for years. So he was only unfaithful with me. He could’ve been lying, I guess.
My voice cracked on the second syllable of lying, but I coughed into my elbow, hoping Avery wouldn’t notice the warble.
A week later I invited Avery to see a 35mm screening of Birth at the Music Box Theater. We met Nomi and Evan in the lobby. Nomi offered us black licorice from the candy shop near the theater, which we both refused politely, watching as she fumbled with the plastic wrapper. During the film, I occasionally glanced to see if Avery had fallen asleep, worried that she agreed to accompany me only because I bought the tickets without confirming that day. She appeared to be awake.
Near the end of the film, Anna, a wealthy New York widow played by Nicole Kidman, visits her fiancé at work to confess that she made a mistake: the ten-year-old boy who claimed he was her reincarnated husband was a liar. She wrongfully called off their engagement. But Anna was indignant, despite kissing a child and plotting to run away with him, and insisted on her innocence, What happened to me was not my fault. There’s no way I could have behaved differently… I can’t be held accountable for it. There is no way I could ever have said to him ‘Go away.’ I laughed aloud at her delivery, Kidman’s sheepish expression, the way she trembled yet continued to make eye contact, her gaze irreproachable as she asked for forgiveness. I avoided looking to my right, afraid to discover if Avery was looking at me.
I thought about my letter again, the last paragraph, the sentences, adjectives, verbs, and nouns that I cannot remember. But I know they were arranged to form an exaggerated recollection of the sex we had when I returned from Michigan, a description of how he kissed my neck and whispered my name. Boyfriend sex, I think he called it later.
Outside the theater we ran into several of my friends and huddled on the sidewalk beneath the marquee to discuss the movie. That end sequence, oh my god, I raved. When Nicole Kidman asked for his forgiveness, for him to still marry her, I was amazed. I absolutely loved how they captured her indefensibility. Her derangement. And it didn’t even matter, her love, because he had been cheating on her from the beginning. He never even read her love letters, gifting them to his lover unopened as proof of his affection for her. How awful.
Avery watched me impassively and mumbled—characteristically—I thought you would enjoy that scene. I almost nudged you. You should have, I smirked but avoided looking at her directly, momentarily unnerved to realize she also observes my actions and listens to my stories to understand my motivations and character, that she regularly quotes my writing back to me. She understood, perhaps more than anyone, why I prolonged this grief.
When Avery dropped me off at home, I wrote in my journal: I want to remember walking past her on Central Park Ave, how she slowly walked, her feet turned slightly inward, her clogs landing heavily as if she’s a clumsy fawn who scrambled to her feet still coated in amniotic fluid. I want to remember so I can remind her later and express how happy her idiosyncratic movement made me that evening. To confess that I should have listened to her advice sooner, but that I’m grateful she allowed me time to make the decision myself.
Image: Still from Jonathan Glazer’s 2004 film Birth.
Currently: Notice by Heather Lewis.