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Memory 5

In the end I scraped a passing grade.

Bluebird changed her name. Her legal name, I mean.

She was Sophie now, though I couldn't help but think of her as Blue.

God, that day I met her after my exams I...

It seems selfish to even say it, but that was the start of my bad year.

From that day I met her right up until the morning I woke up in Cecil's apartment - having no idea where I was or why there was a red thong in my pocket and a frantically scrawled number on a shred of paper with the name CYNTHIA written scruffily in all caps above it - was a seemingly endless succession of hardships, though I'll admit it was becoming clearer and clearer that I was to blame for a lot of it - all of it, maybe - but finding clarity in that moment wasn't possible.

Last night was a blur.

It had been a bad night.

A bad night to cap off a worse year.

I don't even know what happened first anymore, it's all a distorted blur of color and noise under a flickering light. It felt like the worst year of my life.

I couldn't keep it all inside, time turned back in my mind and...

Blue. Blue. Blue. It all started with Blue, of course it did. How could it not?

I had messaged him after my last exam, just asking how he was.

He said: I've been thinking about you.

I couldn't breathe.

He said: that was probably a weird thing to say.

I said: I've been thinking about you too.

He asked if I could go and meet him, you know, if I was free.

Of course I was free. Of course I could go, you know I could go. I couldn't not.

He owned his own apartment now; he gave me the address and asked me to meet him there. Until recently he was living with his parents. He told me he couldn't bear living with them a single day longer. I'm sure they helped foot the bill to his new home.

He got a real job though - unbelievable, right? - he was a retail store manager now. He was pretty quick at getting promoted to management, but that's only normal for a rich kid I guess. Though neither of us could've claimed to be kids anymore.

I don't know why I was being so cynical. Maybe I was trying to protect myself from the pain of the disappointment that I was half-expecting to face. I wanted him so badly.

I didn't ask about that photo before I arrived. Whether it meant something or was just a vibe I don't know. I let it slide.

It was only the next day that I saw him anyway.

He answered the door in a dress and heels, fucking eyeliner.

It sorta threw me off, but I had to admit it was pretty hot. I wasn't sure whether I wanted him to power bottom or totally submit to me more.

So, he was into drag? I could get down with that.

God, was I really that stupid? Why would I assume so much of someone I'd barely talked to in two years?

He greeted me politely.

My first words: You're lookin' cute.

He smiled wide and bobbed his head and welcomed me in. All the warmth in the world went into his grin.

Thought it would be a sin to keep him wrapped up in all those clothes too long. I was thinking far too far ahead when I barely knew the Blue in front of me. I should've seen it. I would've if I'd thought for even a moment, but, I guess, why the fuck would I do that?

He sat me down and bought us tea. I had green, he had Earl Grey. He talked a little different now, still effeminate, but not so much campy. I sorta suspected the truth, I wasn't totally blind, but I sorta didn't believe it. Sorta didn't want to.

Bluebird was more myth to me than mortal. He was my storybook ending. That's what I'd been telling myself on restless nights spent anxious and antsy, I found firmness in my theory that he was my all and always would be.

He said: so how have ya been?

I told him my exams were over, and that I was hopeful I would pass. I talked about Cecil and Ruben, and told him that I missed him.

He went all quiet.

I couldn't keep it inside.

I asked if he remembered that kiss we shared the day he left all our lives.

He looked like he was about to cry.

He told me he left for a reason.

He told me he'd been living a lie.

He told me he couldn't look me in the eyes and go on and survive like that. Something had to give, something had to change, so she did.

She did.

She said she goes by Sophie now, that she's a girl, always has been really. She said she's going to start hormone therapy soon. She said she still likes the nickname well enough, that she can still be Blue to old friends like me. She's just Sophie too.

It split my brain in two. I wasn't sure what to make of it or even who was in front of me or why any of this had happened.

In my mind Blue was a guy, always had been. I didn't get it. Blue didn't have to act masculine to be a man. There's nothing wrong with bucking male stereotypes or wearing dresses, but doing that doesn't make you a woman.

I hesitated.

I think I said: wow.

She let out this little insecure laugh.

She said: yeah, wow.

She said: I know we haven't been close this year, but for a time you were the most important person in my life, that's why I wanted to see you. That's why I wanted you to be one of the very first to know.

She said: I'm sorry for leaving that day, after we kissed, without a word of explanation.

She said: I wasn't ready to tell the truth back then, not even to myself.

She said: I loved you, but the person you loved wasn't real.

She said: it felt so wrong, living that life.

She said: I had to get away. And I did.

She said: it took a lot to get to where I am today, but I'm here.

She said: and I'm proud.

She said: and I'm me.

She said: finally.

And I didn't know what to think.

My whole world broke apart. I felt that I was in freefall, as if I was somehow the one who had been wronged. It was selfish of me, unthinking, unfeeling, but I couldn't see. I made everything worse, obviously.

Of course I did, that's what I do. As does the foot fit the shoe.

I asked if this decision had anything to do with me. She looked my way aghast, but recovered and gave me the benefit of the doubt. More fool her.

Nothing to do with me, she said.

I said: There's nothing wrong with being gay, you don't have to turn into a girl to 'fix' that.

I could tell it was the wrong thing to say immediately, but I didn't know why.

Blue asked if I was serious.

I said: you make such a beautiful man.

She froze in shock. I'd hurt her. She seemed to me to be at the edge of tears, but she didn't cry.

She came back alive, held her head high and said: so it's keep the dress and lose all those pesky thoughts and feelings swimming about in this pretty little head of mine, right?

I said: maybe you're just confused. What makes you so sure about all this anyway?

She said: what makes me so su-?

She stopped. She closed her eyes and exhaled. The whole world went pale.

It was clear the answer should have been obvious to me.

I shouldn't have said anything. I shouldn't have opened my stupid beak. Certainly not again. So of course I did.

I said: look, I don't see what the problem is. You were born a guy, you're good at being a guy, why would you want to fuck with that?

She glared at me, immediately and obviously both upset and angry. She gave me a few seconds to realize the error of my ways - I didn't - then she told me to leave.

I laughed.

Seriously? I asked.

She didn't find it funny. I got the picture.

I left, of course, but not without a flowery assortment of language aimed her way. I said the kinds of things I wish had never even crossed my mind but, alas, such words were all too easy to find.

She hated my guts.

And I hated hers. Though in my head I hated his.

God, I was angry and ignorant, self-concerned and willfully awful.

I had wanted Blue so badly, idolized her so precisely, that her admitting her truth felt like the end of my world. I was worse than selfish. I saw her worth more in what she could have offered me than in who she really was. I was arrogance incarnate, spurned and made martyr.

I carried my anger and disappointment around with me. Started using sex as a weapon, an escape. Fucked so many guys with such little passion I didn't remember any names.

When I finally talked to Cecil about what had happened with Blue he gave me this weird side-eye, said he didn't think I was being very understanding.

I pressured him about it and he seemed confused, then upset, then angry. He said he didn't think I was that kind of guy. I asked what kind. A bigot, he said. We fell out pretty hard after that, started arguing about anything. I couldn't take it or he wouldn't put up with it. Either way I stopped seeing so much of him and started seeing more of Ruben.

Ruben had been dumped and left alone in his apartment. We got to talking and he invited me over. I ended up crashing round for a few weeks.

He knew all about Sophie from her online presence, she had become a lot more public with things over the past couple weeks. I had no fucking clue how brave that meant she was back then and, god, it meant she was brave.

Ruben hadn't talked to her about any of it, he didn't want to. He had lost all respect for her in an instant without a single conversation taking place between the two of them.

Instead he spoke to me. He made fun of Sophie without a second thought, as though the time we'd all spent together meant nothing, or at least meant nothing in comparison to the apparent sin of being transgender. He would call her a him at every available opportunity. He'd call her Blue at best, deadname her at worst. In the back of my mind I knew there was a line that had long since been crossed, but I didn't intervene, in fact I'd often join in.

I hate thinking back on that, on who I was and what I did. It stings to think I ever could have been the bird I was back then. I'd rather drown out those memories with weed and gin. I tried to for a time, but no, nothing. It didn't work. I'm left haunted and hurt and...

It took me far too long to realize what was happening with Ruben. First it was Blue, then it was his ex. He'd go on these rants about her, tell me humiliating 'facts' and stories, drag her name through the dirt. I thought he'd ease off, but he didn't. It stopped being about her and Blue and started being about any woman.

I thought for a while it was mere venting, that he was only working through his breakup - albeit poorly - but it became clear it was far more than that. He had a hatred inside of him. For women, obviously, but not exclusively. He had hate to spare for anyone he couldn't identify with.

He called Cecil a snowflake for siding against me. He said Cecil only came out as bi because he wasn't having much luck with the ladies. Ruben called him a thirsty slut, a manwhore and worse.

I look back on it in shame. I wish there was someone else to blame. I wonder how I ever could have listened to Ruben for more than five minutes and not either run away or hit him.

In reality I did worse than listen, I enabled him. I was a conduit for his rage. I laughed at my old friends, subscribing to his rhetoric. I thought of them as gullible snowflakes for eating up all that social justice shit. I remember laughing at Cecil, dragging him for virtue signaling with his little pro-trans retweets, feigning solidarity. He didn't really care, surely, we'd never even talked about transgender issues when we were in college, plus he was barely even in contact with Blue as far as I could tell. I was convinced that he was parading fake empathy for social cred and nothing more.

God, I was a sad, entitled little ball of frustrations and unmet desires. Thank fuck it only took me a week away from Ruben to realize that.

As for Ruben, the fox I'd grown so close to? Something had happened to him. He was fueled by his self-prescribed righteousness, his pettiness and ignorance, his self-aggrandizement. His hatred. It was all that drove him now.

I wondered how things got this way.

Was this always who Ruben was, deep down?

Could I have seen the signs sooner?

Could I have turned things around?

I didn't have answers, only regrets.

Having escaped his influence I was left a directionless wreck. I couldn't face my past and I had no idea what to do next.

In the end there was only one option: I had to move back in with my parents.

I couldn't bare staying there long.

I started working some shitty waiting job, saved money. Didn't have much use for it other than drinking and dancing anyway.

Soon enough I moved in with this random hyena girl and two of her friends.

I met her on a night out. Of course I did. We hit it off after some flirting, not due to the flirting itself but because we spotted one another playing tongue tango with a different person - her with another girl, me with another guy - later on that same night. We caught eachother's eyes and there was this moment of connection.

I saw her again the next night and we got to talking. She offered me a line and some electric conversation. A month later I was living with her. Not sharing a bed, just sharing bills with her and her friends.

Her name was Simone, her friends Percy and James were both mutts. They all lived together in a house share and they were looking for a fourth. There I was.

The whole lot of them were massive fucking drug addicts. I didn't realize that before I moved in, but I definitely should have. I would say there were clues, but calling them something as cryptic-sounding as clues would give me far too much credit. It should've been obvious.

I never got as close to the three of them as I did with Cecil, Ruben and Bluebird back in the day, but we liked each other well enough. Or at least they accepted my presence in the haze of their near-constant highs, lows, comedowns and comeups. I didn't talk much about myself, I didn't want to. I couldn't face all my fuck ups. It worked out for me though, I think they liked the mystery I presented. James called me the man with no past. Percy didn't say much of anything. Both the boys were straight, or at least too out-of-their-head to ever show interest in fucking. Simone always wanted to party and she was pretty much constantly down to fuck but, I don't know, I didn't really want to sleep with her. I found her attractive and, in spite of her glaring struggles with addiction, I generally enjoyed her company, but I knew her too well by then and fucking somebody I actually cared about hadn't worked out so well for me in the past.

I hadn't talked to Blue in months. She had blocked me. Obviously. I hadn't talked to Cecil since crashing with Ruben either.

Weeks with Simone and her crew stretched out to months at a disconcerting rate.

My housemates' lifestyles seeped into my own, as was inevitable for someone as weak willed as me. My life was like clockwork. Get up, blaze, get ready, go to work, get back, get high, go out, crash into bed, repeat. I was a fucking mess, and my money was draining fast.

At some point I woke up with the knowledge that I'd sent Cecil a message. I didn't recall sending it but there it was, staring at me, as soon as I'd unlocked my phone. I had told him I was sorry. I had told him I was a fuck up. I had told him I'd had a shit year.

He hadn't blocked me. Worse, he'd responded.

He said: that's a start.

He said: it doesn't make up for what happened with Sophie.

He said: but I hope you continue to work on yourself.

He said: I'll be here if you do.

He said: and I hope to see you again.

He said: and I miss you.

He said: <3

I didn't say anything.

Days passed. Weeks.

Then - on one messy, awful night - he found me. It was total chance; I lucked out. The next morning I woke up in his apartment.

I had a killer headache and a mind full of bad memories and terrible ideas, that was normal. The strange thing was finding something new rattling around up there: hope.

I got up, smelling like trash, and found Cecil. He was walking about in his boxers and a baggy tee making breakfast and coffee for two.

He said: I'm making enough for the both of us.

He said: you don't have to, but you can stay a while if you like, there's no need to rush off.

And I hesitated.

And he said: Please stay.

And I told him I would. And I thanked him. And I started to cry. And he hugged me. And I hugged him.

He said: you told me you've had a bad year.

I said I had.

He said: do you want to talk about it?

I said I did.

And I talked.

And he listened.