I came home from college for the weekend, and someone new was crashing at our house. She was blond, I think. Fair, small, and dainty. She seemed fragile. Perhaps I saw a mirror image, because fragile was how I felt all through college.
In spite of the fact I fell in love with her the way little girls often do, I remember only one conversation and very little of that. Mother had put us to work cleaning a high kitchen shelf. We were on a ladder, our heads together inches from the ceiling.
She said, “I’m saving up for my surgeries.”
She must have just told me she was trans, although I don’t recall that part of the conversation; but otherwise I wouldn’t have understood what she meant. She was a woman before the surgeries remark, and she was a woman after.
My holy-shit feeling was about money. She was sleeping on my parents’ living room floor. It would take her years to earn enough. I worried that in the meantime she would trust someone before it was safe. This could have been projection, because I was at the time a pretty young woman like her. I was constantly afraid a man would kill me.
Maybe she wasn’t.
Our instant intimacy foretold a lasting friendship, but I was careless with my dear ones back then, how I held them close, and then misplaced them.
Saturday, I scribbled her name and number on the back of an envelope. Sunday, I rode the Greyhound back to college. Monday… Tuesday? … Wednesday?, I lost the envelope.
I have regrets.
In spite of the fact I fell in love with her the way little girls often do, I remember only one conversation and very little of that. Mother had put us to work cleaning a high kitchen shelf. We were on a ladder, our heads together inches from the ceiling.
She said, “I’m saving up for my surgeries.”
She must have just told me she was trans, although I don’t recall that part of the conversation; but otherwise I wouldn’t have understood what she meant. She was a woman before the surgeries remark, and she was a woman after.
My holy-shit feeling was about money. She was sleeping on my parents’ living room floor. It would take her years to earn enough. I worried that in the meantime she would trust someone before it was safe. This could have been projection, because I was at the time a pretty young woman like her. I was constantly afraid a man would kill me.
Maybe she wasn’t.
Our instant intimacy foretold a lasting friendship, but I was careless with my dear ones back then, how I held them close, and then misplaced them.
Saturday, I scribbled her name and number on the back of an envelope. Sunday, I rode the Greyhound back to college. Monday… Tuesday? … Wednesday?, I lost the envelope.
I have regrets.
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