The Spectacular

by Zoe Whittall

  “It was good, it was . . . good. It gets easier every time. We talked about you, mostly,” I said.

  “He told me he never liked Navid, last time he called.”

  “Well, he’s protective that way. But listen, Miss, I wanted to talk to you about something. Tegan and I got to talking—about you. She says you guys talk on the phone sometimes, and she couldn’t understand why we weren’t closer.”

  “Huh,” said Missy. “There’s no confusing reason, Mom. You know why.”

  “There are so many things I wish I could have done differently back then. But Bryce and I are fine now. Tegan and I are fine. I really want it to be fine with us, Missy. I want to figure out how to try and start knocking down some of these barriers between us.”

  “Well, how do you suppose we do that, Mom?”

  “I thought,” I began, “that sharing what’s going on in our lives more might be a start. Not just the small talk, but the in-depth things.”

  Missy was silent for a moment. Then she said, “And what do you think gives you the right to know the ‘in depth’ parts of my life?”

  “Because I’m your mother?” I said quietly.

  “Okay, well, it’s not something I’m completely sure about, but it’s the most ‘in-depth’ thing I’ve got going right now: I think I might be pregnant.”

  I was briefly shocked into silence, but quickly recovered.

  “Oh, Missy, that’s wonderful! Really? Who’s the—oh, that’s so, so wonderful.”

  “There is no father,” Missy said. “I’m going to do this on my own. If it happens. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. It was a thing between me and Navid, to be honest. Me wanting a baby and him not. But now I have the time and freedom to make it happen. Well, if it happens.”

  “So you don’t know for sure?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “But I’ll let you know.”

  “Well, I think it’s a great idea.”

  “You do? Are you serious, or are you being sarcastic?”

  “Melissa, I’m not a sarcastic person. I genuinely think this is a great idea. You already have such a successful career, you don’t have a man weighing you down. Go to it, sister!”

  “You think that I can do it? On my own?”

  “Missy, you’re literally the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”

  Missy was silent again and I wondered whether I had said the wrong thing again.

  “Missy, I’ll come and help you with the birth. I can stay with you until you’re on your feet again.”

  “No, you don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “Why wouldn’t I? What better way to spend my time?”

  “Okay, okay, Mom. But listen, it’s not for sure. It’s not real yet. But if it’s not this time, well, it’s something I’m working on and thinking about. And it’s really cool that you want to be there for me.”

  I heard a catch in Missy’s voice and felt tears welling up in my own eyes.

  “Well, you just let me know,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’m here.”

  I didn’t want to share my news of the diagnosis after that. I wanted to leave it on a high note and not burden her. But I did share news of my illness with others. I told Marie right away, and Tegan. And eventually, I would tell Missy. But not now, when she was dealing with so much. Pregnant! Maybe I could kick this thing before I’d have to tell her. After all, now I might be a grandmother. A potential do-over of sorts. And that wasn’t something I planned to miss.

  Chapter 7

  missy

  i woke up one morning like that scene in My So-Called Life when Angela is finally over Jordan Catalano and she dances around the room to the Violent Femmes. If you don’t know it, look it up. It will help you if you’re heartbroken. I was over Navid. And I needed a new lover. Agatha took a series of almost duplicitously flattering photos of me and showed me how Tinder works. (She and Finch were in a new non-monogamous phase and she was all over the apps.)

  The thrill of finding a new lover was different this time. I found myself mindlessly swiping at my device. All lefts, until I glimpsed a familiar-looking guy, one I had a few friends in common with, all mostly lesbians. If his community was queer, I figured he must be a cool-enough dude. He looked young but he was thirty-nine. In one of his photos he was wearing a T-shirt that looked like the Black Flag design, but it said CAT FLAG and had black cats in the shape of the flag. At least he liked good music and didn’t have any photos of himself holding a fish, or standing on a yacht. He suggested we meet at Dolores Park.

  “Just see what happens,” Agatha said. “You deserve some happiness, or at least, some good sex. This is San Francisco, you’re supposed to be able to fuck in the park here. I’m not going to stand for you being celibate.”

  “Maybe I had all the sex I’m meant to have in my twenties,” I said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Clean your room before you go out, shave your legs, take Penny on a long walk. Be prepared to have some fun.”

  Two days later, I left the apartment with no expectations, except that after this date inevitably didn’t work out, I was going to go find a nice gay man to have a baby with. It had taken me forever to get dressed. All my clothes looked wrong, but I wasn’t sure what “right” would look like to meet a complete stranger. Finally, I decided on a denim dress, standing in front of the long hallway mirror, pulling down the top of it to inspect my nipples. The Internet said they would change colour, get bigger, that it’s one of the first signs. Trouble was I’d never scrutinized them enough to know what they looked like before. Were they always this big? I pulled on some black tights, stretching out the waistband and contemplating whether it was snug. I enjoyed the fantasy of a changing body. I was wrapped up in this potential journey, just me and whoever might grow inside me, and I hardly cared what happened on this date.

  He was already there when I arrived, sitting on a bench and leaning over his phone. Lanky, Converse sneakers, a plaid button-up, black baseball cap. He looked like almost every white guy his age, style-wise, but then he looked up, revealing a face so handsome I wanted to immediately turn around and run home. But instead, I screwed up my courage. I leaned my bike up against a tree and locked it to itself before joining him. What was the worst that could happen?

  “Hey . . . Andy? I’m Missy,” I said, feigning self-confidence, and then immediately dropped my bike helmet, tripping over myself to chase it as it rolled down the grass. I finally retrieved it and hooked the helmet through the strap of my purse, my arm falling around it like I was cradling a weird globe. So, so awkward. Damn.

  Andy stood up, pretending not to notice my dishevelment. He was too handsome. He looked like he should be trying to sell me an Apple device.

  “Hey, Missy, so good to see you,” he said, though he was looking over my shoulder, then at my boots, wiping his hands on the legs of his jeans. His eyes were like a fluttering bird. Was he going to bolt? We half hugged. Suddenly I cared very much about being there.

  He motioned to a bench, and we both sat down. I tucked my purse between my feet and tried to remember how to be articulate and funny.

  “It’s like we’re sitting beside each other in a car?” I laughed.

  “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

  He was nervous, too, I realized. What if he was disappointed? Aging was really teaching me something about humility. Maybe I wasn’t as cute in real life and that was why he was giving me a strange look, couldn’t quite meet my eye. Should I throw myself down the hill into obscure spinsterhood? We cleared about four minutes of small talk, most of which was a rehash of our pre-date messaging, flirty, factual. Testing the waters. But then he cleared his throat for what felt like the fiftieth time and blushed, before saying, “So, Missy. I need to tell you something.”

  Oh no, I thought, it felt too soon for bad news. Because I wanted this. I really liked him, and not just because he looked like Ryan Gosling. He made me feel like a giggly teenager, which, at my age, I didn’t think was possible.
I don’t think I felt that way even when I was a teenager.

  “We’ve actually met before. I saw you at the closing of the Lexington Club, outside in the alley?” He rubbed a hand against his beard, then opened both palms up at me, like he’d just thrown me a ball. I remembered his soft lean in the alley, our brief exchange.

  “Right, well, we didn’t really meet then,” I said. “It’s more like you watched me pee?”

  “Right, right, thanks for the free show.” He laughed. But then he went on. “But also in Las Vegas, in the ’90s. I used to be Andie with an ie, you know. Now I’m Andy with a y.”

  He unbuttoned his plaid shirt to reveal an old shirt that said Daddy across the front. “I still have this shirt, one of the only old things I kept from that tour,” he said.

  To be honest, it took me a few minutes to understand what he was saying. Eventually, it clicked.

  “Wow, from Agatha’s old band,” I said, and I could see vaguely, in his eyes, the shape of his face under his full beard, the person I shared that scorching day with, the beer by the pool, the hookup under the beach umbrella. I was shocked, but I tried not to show it. Agatha hadn’t mentioned that he’d transitioned—but they’d had a falling-out years ago. No wonder I felt such immediate chemistry. He’d been the one person from that tour who’d managed to break through to me, that whirlwind body bedding anyone I felt like in a series of tornadoes, but he’d been the one who’d kept me in the air for years.

  I tried to recover and be cool. “I thought you lived in Los Angeles.”

  “We moved here a year ago, my ex got a job at Pinterest. I work freelance, so it was easy enough to move. I don’t do music anymore. Maybe Agatha told you that.”

  “No, she hasn’t mentioned you.” I didn’t mention that his name had come up in our band meeting. “Listen, I know it was a hundred years ago, but I’m sorry that I was an asshole to you, in Vegas,” I said.

  “Were you? It was so long ago.” He shrugged.

  “We were supposed to meet up after the show. I was a real love-’em-and-leave-’em type back then,” I mumbled. I knew my whole face was red. I could feel the heat spreading across my skin. I remembered every detail about our encounter. Of course, he wouldn’t.

  “No, of course I remember that, I was just trying to be cool.” He laughed.

  He crossed his arms and looked out across the grass, at clumps of people lying out on blankets, dogs tangling in their leashes. I followed his gaze, for something to do. A man with a radio on the front of his bike played an old disco classic, yelling out that he was selling pot brownies.

  “Okay, yeah, I guess when I saw your profile, I thought it would be a chance to at least ask you what had happened. I wasn’t used to rejection back then. You shattered me!”

  “Did I?”

  “No, of course not. Well, maybe you bummed me out for a night. The road was full of hookups, so I got over it quick. But I was depressed in LA when you didn’t show up for that final festival date. I’ve often thought about how, if it had been a few years later and we’d had cell phones or Facebook, we’d probably have reunited and kept in touch. Back then it was possible to disappear so easily. I knew once I moved back to the Bay that you and Agatha had gotten tight. But I didn’t think of looking you up until I saw you at the Lex and then on Tinder.”

  “I’ve thought about that, too. I’ve searched for you on Facebook, now I know why I didn’t find you!”

  “It’s funny, that night in LA when you didn’t show up, I got drunk with a girl backstage and we ended up getting married. Well, then divorced obviously, a few months ago.”

  “Ah, well, then it was fate!” I laughed, pulling at the edge of my dress nervously. “I know the divorce train. I know it well. But wow, your relationship lasted a long time. I feel like I am a different person from the kid I was back then.”

  “You were fantastic back then,” he said. “You were the wildest girl I’d ever met. I swear, I was sure you were going to come out. Remember that time you punched a roadie in the nuts for grabbing that young fan’s tit?”

  “I will admit to not remembering that at all. And you know, I don’t think it occurred to me to come out back then in any official way. When we hooked up, I mean, I’d had lots of lovers on that tour, but what happened between us felt more significant.”

  “It did?” He looked pleased, started buttoning up his shirt. He unzipped the small backpack between us and showed me an array of beverages—LaCroix, kombucha, juice. “I usually don’t seek out dates with straight women, but I was still curious about you, I guess.”

  I was too nervous to read the labels carefully and ended up grabbing a truly foul-tasting kombucha.

  “That is, uh, certainly fermented,” I said, trying to hide a wince.

  “I’ll drink it if it doesn’t suit,” he said, taking it back and handing me a lemon soda water.

  “I’m not totally straight,” I said. “I’m figuring that out, right now.”

  “So, do you still want to have this date? I mean, I chose the park so it wouldn’t be too awkward if you didn’t,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Well, because of the trans thing,” he said, as though I’d asked a really stupid question.

  “No, no, of course not. I live in San Francisco. Most of the butch lesbians I knew in my twenties are all men now, it’s no big deal. I date men, so this is obviously cool.” But I was speaking fast, maybe not quite as confident as I was trying to seem. I gulped the water, spilling some down my dress. “Sorry, was that offensive?”

  “How could it be offensive?”

  Oh shit, maybe asking that was offensive. I felt like an idiot.

  “Oh, you mean that all the butch dykes are men now. Nah, it’s mostly true,” he said, laughing. Dolores Park was now buzzing with laughter, shouting, crowds had formed, the way they normally do on a Sunday afternoon. But then a drum circle got louder, the insistent beat of their instruments drowning us out.

  “Oh no,” I whispered, and he laughed.

  “Should we go get a drink or some food?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m sober now. I’m a man and I’m boring, ha ha. Bet you’re psyched about both.”

  “Well, I don’t do drugs anymore, or drink much either. I got tired of waking up feeling like I had the flu. And I don’t think I’m my best self when I drink.”

  We got up and gathered our things. I pushed my bike along the sidewalk as we walked to a nearby bakery.

  “Do women really bolt when they find out you’re trans?”

  “Not often, no. But I’m also new to dating. I’ve never been single as a guy before, except for the last year or so when my ex and I were poly. But I don’t know, I guess I always wondered if you didn’t, you know, enjoy yourself when we hooked up last time. When you ditched me, I figured I was a bad lay.”

  “Oh my god, no,” I said, probably too emphatically. “I don’t know what it was, but I think it was the opposite. I think I couldn’t handle it. Like I said, it felt significant in a way that kind of threw me off.”

  “So, sexual orientation panic?”

  “Yeah, probably,” I said, smiling sheepishly. I stole a glance at him and saw that Andy was smiling, too, though he kept his gaze on the sidewalk as we walked.

  “It’s so different now,” he said. “The kids are all bisexual and non-binary and whatever. I have a thirteen-year-old and all her—sorry, all of their—friends think I’m boring for being a man. They say I’m too binary. Like, this is my dad, he’s ‘binary trans’ and then they laugh.”

  “That is very funny. I saw a documentary about non-binary kids, and there were some femmes, you know, talking. I realized that if the option had been around for me at twenty-two, that’s probably how I would have identified.”

  “Not now?”

  I shrugged. “I’m pretty okay being this person. Agatha calls me a low femme. I suppose kids are luckier these days.” The more I talked, the more square and ancient I sounded. “So, you hav
e a kid?”

  “Three actually. The thirteen-year-old is my stepkid, and then my ex and I had two, they’re seven and three.”

  We reached the bakery and there was a lineup outside. We decided to hang out and wait.

  “How did they take the divorce?”

  “We haven’t told them yet, actually. I’m still living at the house. I’ll probably stay until we figure out all the details and let them adjust.”

  “Are you and your ex getting along?”

  “We have to, because of the kids. It’s odd that way.” He took out his phone and showed me photos.

  “Getting divorced was hard enough for me—and it was just me. I can’t imagine what it would be like with kids. But I guess it’s good that you’re doing it?”

  “Yeah, it’s good,” he said.

  I wished I could’ve gone back in time and not fucked up our first meeting. Was this one of those fateful moments I could put in a hack love song, about getting a second chance?

  When we finally got a table, we stayed for hours, nibbling pastries and sipping our coffees. The time unravelled easily as we spoke excitedly, like kids who had just met at the playground, delighted to have found a friend.

  The chemistry between us was so present I felt like it had to have a colour. We should have been able to hold it in our hands. I had so many questions for him. Was he just looking for casual hookups? Was he the kind of post-divorce dude who wanted to never get married again? Was he cynical about love? But I stopped myself. Agatha had made me promise not to babble. “You’re intense right now, just try to tamp that down a bit when you meet new people,” she’d said. “You used to fuck too quickly, and now you talk too much.”

  “Balance has never been my strong suit,” I told her.

  So I tried, pretty hard, to keep my interrogation at a minimum.

  Andy had given up music and become a graphic designer, but had started playing the drums with old friends in the last few years. We talked about making music together. He seemed really excited about that.

  “It’s part of this new post-breakup life. I could start drumming again. Ceci didn’t like my touring, especially after we had kids. Now I have some more freedom, when the kids are with her, anyway.”