Pas de Deux

She—no, they slam the apartment door. They’ve left each night this week. At first, Xavier tried inviting me. “Come on,” they said. “We haven’t had date night in weeks.” It hasn’t been that long, I think. We haven’t gone out in only one, two, three…okay, it’s been two weeks. Working two jobs each made our schedules sporadic, but we had always found time for each other. Even after the alienation of work, we had managed to rejuvenate one another. But I feel none of that now. Coming back to the apartment after finishing a shift at The New Erding Market and Empire Clothes Factory Outlet remained draining. Xavier tried to kiss and hold me to make it better. But I just stand there, being kissed and held but neither kissing nor holding. No electricity sparked; no desire or lust made the hair on the back of my neck stand up like a porcupine’s quills. I’m just tired, I say to myself. Missing a few date nights shouldn’t matter as long as we still love each other, right?

But tonight, Xavier left angry. They had stopped inviting me the last couple nights. I think they expected me to ask about it; to beg for an invite. But I figured it was fine to stay in another night. “Theresa,” Xavier had called from the bedroom. When I entered, they asked, “do you still love me?” I couldn’t pin down the tone. It sounded tongue-in-cheek, but—I asked what they meant. “Do you”—the playful paint peeled from their tone—“still love me?”

“Of course,” I told them.

“Then what did I do wrong?” They asked.

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Jul—”

“It’s not Julia.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. I’m still getting used to—”

“Save the excuses,” they said. “You told me how much you hated those when you transitioned.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“So why won’t you go out with me tonight?”

“I’m exhausted. Working two shifts between two different jobs really kills you.”

“I know. I do the same thing.” They walked out and slammed the apartment door. How can this be happening to me? I think. Why is this happening? Everything was fine until tonight. What’s their problem? Not going out for two weeks isn’t so bad. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes you’re too busy or too tired. Sometimes nothing’s wrong. The only that happened two weeks ago was Xavier started to transition.

#

“How does Xavier sound?” they asked me a few weeks ago.

“For  what? Like a pet or DnD character?” I said.

“No, for my name,” they said. Now I feel like an asshole, I replied. “I didn’t frame the question right, sorry,” they said.

“It sounds fine, but it’s very—how do I put this—stereotypical trans masculine?” I said.

“How?”

I said, “there’s this joke how trans femmes always name themselves after a flower or their mom’s maiden name, and trans mascs name themselves Stone Brody or Heraclitus or Rad Heroman.”

“Those are great ideas,” they said to themself. “But why did you pick your name?”

“Theresa sounded pretty” I said.

“Well, Xavier sounds handsome,” they said.

“Xavier it is, then,” I smiled at them lying against my shoulder.

As abrupt as that conversation appeared to me, Xavier started to transition socially and medically. Of course, something’s appearance and essence tend to be contradictory. The foam of a river masks the current below. Yet, the foam was the result of that current, that essence. I imagine their question had been bubbling up like foam on a river.

“Anything else I should know?” I asked Xavier.

“What do you mean?” they said.

“You want me to call you Xavier now, so what pronouns are you going by now?”

“He/him,” they said. “Though, I guess they/them can apply to everyone, can’t they?”

“Unless someone says specifically not to, yeah.”

Xavier started wearing men’s clothing. They threw out their pleated skirts, skinny jeans, cotton blouses, and lowcut tops. No matter the gender expression you want when transitioning, you have to be an extremist first. The cis public takes your identity as something in contention. We have to be seen as a girl or boy or neither first before you can be seen as a feminine man or masculine woman or non-binary with any expression other than pure androgyny. Time and patience will then let you express yourself however you please. One of these days, I’ll start being butch, just not yet. As conflated as they are, there isn’t much similarity between trans men and butch lesbians, even early in the former’s transition. They wear their masculinity differently, in ways that can only be seen rather than told.

Yet, Xavier had never been happier. Again, on the surface that seems contradictory. They were even more anxious about the cis public trying to pass. Their growing gender dissonance meant they spent even more time in front of the reflection of shop windows trying to get the most perfectly unassuming man look; trying to lower their voice before speaking to the barista or cashier to get that perfect pitch. But that was like cleaning your room or doing laundry: it was the messiest right before it becomes its cleanest. Jeans and shirts must be thrown across the room and on the bed before they can get in the dresser and closet. Change is messy. Xavier was closer to their self than ever before.

#

Is that what Xavier thinks this is all about? I think. Because they transitioned? The timelines do match up, but that’s preposterous! I’m trans too! Why would I be avoiding them just because they transitioned. Before they transitioned, we both identified as lesbians, and we both only ever dated girls and non-men. I’ve never considered dating a man. I don’t think I’ve ever found one attractive. But that can change, right? What does it matter that Xavier is a man now? I loved them for them, right? They’re my soulmate, right? So, their body is changing, all of ours do in one way or another. It’s what’s on the inside that matters, right? Cause inside, they’ve always been a boy. They had a boy’s soul or whatever. We’re soulmates. And Xavier knows my last relationship ended because I transitioned. How could she think I’d do the same to them?

I get up and change into my cutest outfit then grab my apartment keys and coat.

#

Natali had left me when I told her—that’s not true—it wasn’t telling her that made her leave; it was following through that made her go. You always word it weird when you start telling people. You say dumb things like, ‘I wanna be a girl.’ It’s the kind of stuff that makes it sound negotiable or temporary. For some people it is, I guess. But not many. Not enough. But a lot of people don’t even give themselves the chance to re-forge themselves with such certainty. I said ‘I wanna be a girl,’ and Natali just looks at me like ‘yeah okay sure whatever you say’. Then I started ‘being’ a girl, and Natali wondered where she went wrong. She never took me seriously, I suppose. Then you start saying how things really were, like ‘I’ve always been a girl,’ and they rightfully point out that wasn’t what you said before. But you were stupid. You barely understood what you meant. But Natali, she acted like she understood better. And as infuriating as that was, I started to think maybe she did because I was up shit creek without either a paddle or map, so any degree of confidence came off as truth. Now, of course, I know she knew less than me.

You think everything will be alright, anyway. What does it matter that she finally knows you’re a girl now? She loved you for you, right? She was your soulmate, right? So, my body is changing, all of ours do in one way or another. It was what was on the inside that mattered, right? Cause inside, I was always a girl. I had a girl’s soul or whatever. We were soulmates.

“I can’t do it,” Natali said as she started packing. “I’m not into girls. I’m not a lesbian.” She held back from yelling. Or bi or pan or whatever, she said so softly it was almost a whisper.

“You’re really just gonna leave?” I said. “We can talk about this, Nat. I promise we can compromise, work this out. It’s not gonna be that big of a change for you, I promise.”

“You already made your decision, Br—Theresa,” she said as she continued to throw everything her burgundy duffel bag as if it where bottomless despite looking as though it was begging to burst.

“What do you want me to do, Nat?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she yelled. Then she stopped. She felt the blouse in her hand in silence before finally saying, “stop.”

“What?”

“Stop. What do I want you to do? Stop.”

“I can’t, I won’t do that,” I said as my sadness turned to anger.

Natali started packing again “then there’s nothing stopping me from leaving.”

The only sounds I could pull out of my mouth were incomplete and incoherent: just a bunch of stammering of “well’s” and “I’s” and “if’s”. But she continued to pack. I made excuses. I told her I wasn’t thinking about bottom surgery and that she didn’t have to call me Theresa if she really didn’t want to and that we could still get married and gave kids and a house like she always wanted. After a while, I just sat on the floor, a spectator to my own life. My anger was temporary. When she finally grabbed her duffel bag and slammed the apartment door behind her, an emptiness crawled its way through my stomach and guts again. She was gone. And even if I did ever see her again, would either of us want that? There was a finality to her door slam, at least, even if she did make her friends come around a couple days later to pick up leftover property she forgot in her torrent. Literal closure. I watched these familiar faces take things that felt so essential to the apartment that it was as if they came with it. Within a week, there was an emptiness to the place that I couldn’t stand; an agonizing kind of emptiness that wasn’t like the absence of something like how darkness is the absence of light. No, this emptiness manifested itself into a physical object: an antimatter or black hole that annihilated or pulled out the habitability and bearableness of certain rooms and corners.

I began spending less time at home. No, home wasn’t the right word. The apartment I was leasing. I had no ownership of it. It was disposable. Or, I was disposable. I first knew that when the real estate agent started showing the apartment to potential renters. I felt like a zoo animal that the agent and potential renter simply walked and talked around, the first thing to be cleaned out by the end of the month like the old keys or garbage.

I hadn’t been a part of the gay bar scene before. The unfortunate part of new millennia gay bars is that they aren’t seen as hives of scum and villainy anymore, so voyeurs and tourists frequent them more and more often. So, the regulars—the real gay regulars—are suspicious of newcomers, and the new gay patron themself is suspicious of anyone. Another problem is that some bars are more focused on one kind of patron than others. Some bars truly represent the diverse coalition of queers. But most are simply gay men bars, lesbian bars, ‘gay’ bars that have a drag show once in a while but mostly appeal to straight women who will threaten to call the cops if another woman hits on them. And if you have one gay bar in a 20-mile radius of your town, you just have to accept it. The only reasonably gay bar near me was just a few blocks away but most prominently housed gay men. They make fine company. But I needed a place to be with other queer women, not even just for lust or love. I needed somewhere I could be confident in sisterhood, because gay women are already seen as predatory enough, but add being a trans gay woman and they’ll kill you in the streets. It was a lot of luck that Xavier came one night. They had been a newcomer like me, with no knowledge of how Guillaume’s normally functioned.

#

Outside the apartment, the autumn New Jersey wind funnels the flaming leaves like embers between the brick buildings. New Erding feels like a huge, colonial college campus in its uniformity. I walk in a galloping speed toward downtown. The area glows like the Seaside Heights or Ocean City boardwalks of my childhood. People walk up and down the sidewalks and crossed the street as they pleased without much attention for cars. But if you lived here long enough, you know how stupid it is to drive down Main Street most nights.

I window shop the restaurants trying to spot Xavier in the dimly lit rooms. I even check restaurants we have never been to together out of desperation. But I can’t recognize a single face through the tinted glass lining the east side of Main Street. I check harder on the west side, even stopping in my tracks to press my face in the window. I scan the outside seating areas like a parent looking into a crowd for their lost child before moving on. It’s funny; no matter how many lights downtown tries to illuminate the darkness with, you can still always tell it’s getting darker, it’s getting harder to see. Yet, if you ever end up in downtown when there are no lights at night, the darkness is almost invisible, as if our eyes alone can cut through it. Finally, I walk back to Guillaume’s as though it’s some point of origin.

#

Xavier sits with a group of friends, some mutual, some acquaintances, some I haven’t talked to much. Xavier looks like a stranger to me to the point where I feel like I got the wrong person. Despite how physically close they are to me right now, it seems like I’m staring into a different world and different life. I have to look down at my own two feet in order to feel grounded again. This is Guillaume’s, my usual bar. And that is Xavier—my partner—sitting in front of me.

“Come home with me,” I say.

The entire table looks up at me. All their faces have different expressions like a collage of drama masks. But Xavier looks the most dumbfounded; a mix of complete surprise, confusion, anger, and happiness. The table is silent. Then, like a scratched disc finally moving on to the next song, Xavier says, “Theresa.” They still sound in disbelief as though I’m a ghost levitating in front of them.

“Xavier, please come home with me,” I reiterate. My voice cracks. I feel my eyelids try to clean away the tears beginning to pour from my eyes like windshield wipers as a drizzle turns to a storm.

Xavier looks at me in silence for a few long seconds before looking back at their friends. They all look back at Xavier with a variety of non-verbal nods and hand motions displaying a variety of advice and opinions. Xavier looks back and forth between their friends and myself before grabbing their own stuff and coming towards me. I grab their hand as soon as they are in arm’s reach. Once we exit the bar and entered the outside night, I pull them close and kiss them more passionately I’ve done in weeks.

#

As we enter the apartment, we’re kissing each other. Xavier’s eyes are closed the entire time. But we’ve been together in this place so long, we can navigate it blind. I lead them to the bedroom. I wanted them in the bedroom, our clothes off, as if then we will connect brain to brain as though it will strip away all that has been different these last few weeks. But as we continue to kiss, as I place my run my fingers through their hair, as I place my hands on their back and thigh, I feel myself become drained. Xavier kept a rough grip on my butt and thighs. The more I kiss them, the more it changes. At first, I thought it feels like kissing a stranger, but that isn’t it. No, it began to more and more feel like I’m kissing a friend; purely platonic. It’s as if Xavier is pecking my cheek or forehead even though they are pushing their tongue down my throat. But I keep taking Xavier’s clothes off and they start to take off mine. I push Xavier onto the bed.

We are against each other. I feel Xavier trembling beneath me and my hold is tight enough to crack. “Oh my God, yes,” Xavier keeps moaning over and over. But my head feels broken off from my body and thrown away. My eyes look straight forward at the shaking headboard as I count in my head. And then this is the way.

This is how it is.

Xavier lies next to me, asleep. I try hard to separate my brain from my body, but a red string keeps them connected like a nerve. It’s just one bad lay, I tell myself. It doesn’t mean anything. We haven’t had sex in weeks, maybe we’re just out of practice. That’s right, we haven’t had sex in weeks, not since Xavier transitioned. Maybe we are out of practice, but Xavier looked so content lying next to me. I could tell he was satisfied. I don’t love Xavier anymore. Is it because Xavier’s a man now? Is it because I’m only attracted to girls and non-men? Is that okay to think? I tell myself that it isn’t. If it is, then I’d be no better than Natali. If it is, then that means what Natali did was okay, right? That she had every right to treat me like she did, to make it harder and more dangerous and less acceptable for the people like me who needed to cross gender boundaries to be able to do so? I can’t be like her. She did everything wrong. There has to be a way to fix everything, to get Xavier and I to work out. My brain has to make my body understand this. But it can’t. Looking at Xavier, rubbing his forehead, my body sent a message to my brain. I thought of myself as a brain or soul crammed inside a body or shell. I fooled myself into accepting that whatever my brain or soul or mind was stored in was not important, not a part of my consciousness, that I am trapped inside here, and I use it only as a vehicle or form of travel for my soul or whatever. But I can’t just separate my mind and body, because it was never separate. It’s a totality. Whenever I thirst or hunger or feel pain enough, it becomes the only think I can think of. And stress and grief never stay in my head as they ache and exhaust me. Feeling ill or well, my body feelings make a vital and substantial contribution to myself.

I thought there was conflict between my brain and my body. I thought my brain was in the right place and my body was misbehaving like a child. Or maybe it was vice versa? But perhaps there had been some miscommunication, not just between my brain and my body but in my understanding of this conflict. Maybe my body was trying to say something to my brain. Maybe I was shooting the messenger. The totality of my being needed a change, and I was too busy focusing on the individual components of it, reducing myself to parts as though I can separate myself from my body or my brain. If your dashboard tells you that you need to fix your breaks, you do not replace the dashboard.

I get out of bed so not to wake Xavier. I feel sick to my stomach. Natali was right, I think. I put my clothes back on. My duffle bag rested on the shelf at the top of the closet. I took it down and began packing some of my tops. A few of the blouses were ones Xavier gave to me when he started transitioning. I didn’t know if I should take them or not, so I put them to the side on the beige carpet. I can’t fit all my tops in the bag; I move on to the pants and underwear from the fake wood dresser. Again, there are a few items of Xavier that he gave me. I put them with his former tops. My bag is almost full, and I still have so much to pack. I stand up and walk through the apartment. There’s no way I can take everything of mine in one trip let alone one bag. I wonder if I’ll need to get a few friends to come by later and pick up the rest. Natali was right, I think. But I still hate her. Nothing about this is right. I returned to the bedroom and flipped the duffel bag over to let all the clothes fall into the floor. If Natali was right then why do I hate her still? I think. If she was right, why does this feel so wrong. I have come to turns that I don’t love Xavier anymore, not like a lover. I know how Natali felt when I transitioned now. I understand her better than before. But don’t—no, I can’t understand how she handled it. I understand her, but that doesn’t make her right. Instead, I’m not sure if understanding her makes me want to forgive her or hate her more. Even if I no longer loved Xavier like that, there has to be way to make something work out; to make it easier and safer and more acceptable for the people like me who needed to cross gender boundaries to be able to do so. I sit back on the bed next to Xavier but don’t fall asleep.

#

I lie in bed till Xavier wakes up. His eyes open tenderly like he’s only been resting them but he’s been snoring for the last couple hours. He pushes his head closer to mine. He looks like a little brother to me. “Xavier,” I say.

“Yes, Theresa?” He says.

“We’re not gonna work out,” I say.

“What?” He’s fully awake now. Nothing is a better alarm clock than a jolt of anxiety. “Theresa, what are you talking about?” I hear him start to whimper.

“I’m talking about us, Xavier,” I say.

“What’s wrong with us?” He asks. I don’t say anything. As true as the cliché, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ has become, it will have been worse to say than nothing at all. “It’s because I transitioned, isn’t it? I know, I know that’s the reason. I’m not stupid, Theresa. It doesn’t take a scientist to notice that you’ve become so distant ever since I started. But that’s so hard, so fucking hard to admit to yourself. I could hear myself screaming about it. But I still believed you when you just said work had gotten hard and that you were exhausted. Even when I stormed out, I blamed myself,” Xavier says.

“You’re right,” I say. The look at Xavier’s face is crushing, so I can only imagine how crushed he is. He puts both hands on my face. In the past, my face always turned warm and red at the prospect, but now it’s as sterile as a friend’s touch.

“Theresa, I love you. I love you so much that I’ve never felt more comfortable with anyone else. And I thought, and I thought that meant I could finally be me. I could be me with you! You know what that means because you’ve been through the same! I finally found someone with a commonness, a sort of bridge between souls unique like ours,” Xavier got better at holding back tears. I was good at that too when everyone thought I was a man including myself. Now, I cry every time we’re out of coffee in the morning.

“Yeah, but I’m finally being honest for once,” I say. “At first, I thought I didn’t love you anymore. But I felt it so hard to see you suffer. Maybe it was guilt. I’m sorry, but it’s complicated.” Xavier still lays in bed, his gaze not leaving me. “I’m not leaving,” I say. To make it easier and safer and more acceptable for the people like me who needed to cross gender boundaries to be able to do so, that’s the point. “Let’s be friends,” I said. “Best friends.”

__________________________________________________________________
About the author:
Nico Bailey was born and raised in Pennington, NJ and has an MFA in Writing from the University of New Hampshire. This is her debut publication.