by Kris Ripper
I looked like I was fucking gender, and I was.
Club Fred’s was packed by the time I made it there, more busy than it had been since Drag Night back in March. People had grumbled about Fred’s starting up theme nights, but I thought it was kind of fun. A lot of people came in funny costumes, and even those who didn’t seemed to be in on the party. Drag Night had included actual drag performances, but it looked like F*ck G*nd*r was going to be everyone doing the usual thing, but more of us and more deliberately fucking gender.
Also, the Men’s and Women’s signs on the bathrooms (which to be honest had never been more than suggestions at Club Fred’s) had been papered over with F*ck G*nd*r on yellow construction paper.
My kind of night.
I saw Honey before I saw anyone else, wearing a white wedding dress and holding court at a corner table in the front, telling stories. She paused long enough to kiss my cheek and compliment my skirt before going on about some kind of horrific gender reassignment surgery a doctor had tried to talk her into back in the eighties. That turned into a huge argument with her ex-and-current-boyfriend about trans authenticity, so I slipped away.
Funny thing about dramatic fights: there are the people who see them and take that as a cue to back away slowly, and the other people who see them and are pulled in as if they’re magnetic. I almost passed Alisha without recognizing her as she was getting caught up in the fight excitement.
“Hey,” I said. Like a dolt.
Apparently seeing me was enough to cure her of wanting to go watch the fight. She immediately detoured into my orbit.
“Ed, I am so glad you’re here. You look fabulous.”
“You too. I like the tie.”
“Isn’t it great? I bought it from Obie a few weeks ago, but this is the first time I’ve had an excuse to wear it. Have you met Obie?”
I shook my head, barely tracking what she was talking about. The tie, the crisp black shirt, the quilted jacket that went down to her boots over skinny leather pants. Alisha looked damn good. I wished I hadn’t wasted my compliment on a mundane You too.
“Buy us a drink, Ed, come on.”
We found a spot to stand at the bar and I bought her mojito and my beer. It would have been an awkward silence while we waited for our drinks, except that the club was throbbing and pounding around us.
She nudged me. “Thought about you all week, you know. Hey, I was wondering, do you know how to drive a motorcycle?”
Did those two thoughts relate to each other? Had she been thinking about me driving a motorcycle all week?
I shook my head and took a sip of my beer. “Nope. Always wanted to learn, but I never did.”
“Ed.” She grabbed my hands. “Let’s learn together! There are classes you can take at the DMV and get your license!”
“Well, I don’t actually have a motorcycle, so—”
“That doesn’t matter! I mean, what if you’re in a foreign country sometime and you’re trying to get around and the only vehicle you have to rent is a motorcycle or something? You’d need to know.”
“No, you’re right. You’re so right.” She was right? What, that I’d be in a foreign country where the only way to get myself from place to place was a motorcycle? That made no sense.
“Will you do it with me? Please? It’s like $250, okay?”
Whoa. “What’s $250?”
“The class, silly. But I so want someone to do it with. It’d be fun!”
I found myself agreeing, though I had no plans to be in a foreign country without transportation (surely I’d be able to walk or take a bus . . .). It seemed to make her deliriously happy to tipsy-plan an imaginary motorcycle class, so we did. After that we tipsy-planned a trip to China, where we’d motorbike all over the country (though I was pretty sure most people there used regular bikes).
Alisha’s eyes were bright. “Don’t you just want to go everywhere? I feel like I’m standing in place here, you know? Like the entire universe is out there”—she gestured widely, almost cracking the kid behind her—“and I’m in La Vista, getting stagnant.”
“You are not stagnant,” I assured her.
She grinned, deepening those dimples. “Thanks. Neither are you. But you know what I mean. Do you ever feel like one of those shots in a movie where the entire background is a blur of energy and excitement, and the main character’s standing right in the middle of all of it, perfectly still?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know what that feels like.”
“See? So we should travel. We should ride motorcycles together.”
“Even though we don’t have motorcycles?”
“We’ll borrow them! I bet we know people who have motorcycles!” She grabbed my hand again. “I want to do things, things that aren’t going in to work every day and just sitting there.”
“Where do you work?” Somewhere boring, probably. An office job filing paperwork and sorting mail.
“Oh, at the Adventure Connection.”
“The what?”
She rolled her eyes, executing some kind of alluring head-tilt thing that shook her hair free of its bun. “The Adventure Connection? We coordinate these trips for people—white-water rafting, skydiving, that kind of thing. It’s like a travel agency for extreme sports, you know?”
I didn’t know. But any questions I might have had were a little wrapped up in watching her pale fingers working through her hair, then braiding it, then twisting the braid back into a bun.
“So, like, I’ll answer the phone and it’ll be Pasty Beer Gut Accountant. And that’s not shitting on accountants or anything, it’s just the first thing that came to mind. Anyway, Pasty Beer Gut wants to go skydiving because he just had his, like, twenty-year frat reunion, and he feels like he’s never done anything cool in his entire life, and he got a divorce and whatever, so he calls me up and says, ‘Hi, can you hook me up with an airplane so I can jump out of it?’”
“Seriously?”
She laughed. “Seriously. This is my life. So I give him the whole rigmarole and get him signed up for our services and I take down all the information—”
“Wait, what information? Like, what more can he say after ‘I want to jump out of a plane’?”
“Oh, tons of stuff. Does he want to do it here in California? A day trip? Does he want a weekend in Napa with wine tasting as well as skydiving? Maybe he wants to go to New Zealand and work in some backpacking, you know? People have these very specific dreams about their perfect adventures, and it’s my job to give them exactly what they want.”
“That seems—” I shuffled a little closer to her. “That seems actually really cool.”
She sighed. “I know. That’s why I got the job. It sounded cool, and my interview made it seem all, like, romantic and fascinating, connecting people to the adventure they’ve been waiting for all their life! But, I don’t know, now it all seems so . . . made-up. Pasty Beer Gut wants to go to New Zealand for two weeks of adventure. He wants to stay in hostels and experience the outdoors and eat cheap food. But three days into his big adventure he calls me to bitch about how his three roommates at the hostel all snore and his feet hurt and they don’t even have Foot Locker in New Zealand, so what is he going to do? Because he had this whole thing in his head about how it would be, and it wasn’t. So I get him a room at a hotel, and he spends his days at the pool, eating room service, and if I’m lucky, he doesn’t blame me for his failed adventure, but he’s still not satisfied.”
“Does that happen a lot?” I couldn’t imagine being in another country and crapping out because my feet hurt, but then again, the only other country I’d ever been to was Mexico when I was four, and my dad hated it so much we never went back.
“Oh yeah. Not all the time, but a lot. We do these follow-up calls to check in with people after they get home. It helps us keep up on where the best service is at our contracted sites, and it makes it more likely that people will come back to us the next time they want to go on an adventure. Sometimes people had, like, the
greatest time of their lives, but probably the majority just sound sort of . . . dejected about it. They can’t pinpoint anything that was really wrong, but it wasn’t what they’d hoped it would be. And it’s just so sad, that all these people invest so much in their dreams and then miss the adventure they’re actually having.”
“Yeah. That sounds— Wow. Yeah.” I studied her, trying to imagine her traveling the world. It was easy, picturing Alisha with a backpack and a boarding pass. “So then what’s your idea of an adventure, if it’s not skydiving?”
“Oh, I’d skydive. But I wouldn’t want to plan it weeks in advance, or anything. I’d just want it to happen. And if it didn’t happen, then maybe I’d go hiking somewhere really cool. Or find a street vendor selling a food I didn’t even know how to pronounce.” She pushed a bowl of nuts across the counter, maybe to illustrate mundane food choices. “I want something different. I want to sit somewhere that isn’t here, look up at the sky, breathe in the air. Not rely on some kind of dream of what a ‘real’ adventure looks like, but make my own.”
“That sounds incredible. Seriously, Alisha. That sounds absolutely amazing. You should do that.”
“It’d be a lot more fun if I had someone to do it with.” She didn’t exactly bat her eyelashes at me, but her voice sounded like eyelashes batting all the same.
“I’ve kind of got work,” I mumbled.
“I’m quitting my job. I’ve decided. I have to. I hate it.”
“Yeah, but don’t you have, you know, rent and stuff?”
“That’s why I haven’t quit my job—yet. But I have to, Ed. It’s sucking my very soul out through my ears. Every time the phone rings and it’s another middle-aged, middle-class white guy who’s bored, I want to scream.”
I raised my beer. “To not screaming at work.”
Her glass clinked against mine. “I’m sorry I’m complaining. It’s just getting to me more and more. Like there are some days when it’s fine, it’s even okay, and I don’t want to kill anyone. But then there are these weeks where everything is so mind-numbing that I feel like I might literally die. Like just sitting there, at my desk, no cause of death, no foul play, one hand on the phone, the other on the keyboard, eyes wide open, totally dead.”
“Okay, no. Don’t do that.”
She grinned. “Okay. I won’t. But tell me about your job, now that I’ve bitched and moaned about mine. Let me guess: it fulfills you, right? It’s what you always wanted to do, you worked your ass off to get there, and now all the hard work was worthwhile?”
“Not exactly. I mean yes, in some ways. Kind of. I work at the Times-Record.”
“Ohhh. That must be really interesting.”
“I . . . thought it would be. It turns out it’s not that interesting. At least at my level. I mean, obviously it’ll take years before I get to work the really interesting stories, but I’m in a rut right now. Or maybe I’m just super impatient.”
“So what does that mean? You work boring stories?”
I took her hand, gravely, and patted it. “Do you want me to tell you about the blind cat that can predict when people are about to die?”
“You’re lying.”
“Nope. I’ve seen it do the prediction, though I don’t know if that particular one came true.”
“But, like, seriously?”
“Seriously.”
She shook her head slowly, eyes never leaving mine. “I really want to meet this cat, Ed. Like a lot.”
“You do? Why, you still planning to die at your desk?”
“No, like, I don’t know. I want to pet the cat that knows when people are dying. That is so freakin’ intriguing to me.”
“Me too. I mean, the lady who owns it takes it over to the assisted-living place on the north side pretty much every day, so I can probably actually introduce you if you ever want to go.”
“Wait, are you for real? Because I totally want to go.”
“Sure.”
“That’s awesome. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to meet the cat.” She tipped her drink back and pushed away from the bar. “I gotta get home. I’m required to answer some very important adventure questions in the morning.”
“You really work Saturdays?”
“Yeah, and I’m off Mondays. I guess more people realize they absolutely need to go parasailing in Hawaii on a Saturday. We get more couples on the weekend too.” She leaned in to kiss me, and I could have pretended that everything until that moment was casual, but Alisha’s lips were anything but. She lingered, looking right at me.
I didn’t gasp when she broke contact. I think.
“You could come home with me for a little bit, you know. If you wanted.”
The offer took me so by surprise I couldn’t process it for a minute. Then, when I did, I had no idea what it meant. Was this a one-night stand? Did she want to talk more about adventures? Hell, was she even attracted to trans guys?
“Um,” I said. Like a genius.
“Maybe next time.” She kissed me again and slid her index finger under the knot of my tie. “Really like the look tonight, Ed. See you around.”
She didn’t wait long enough to hear my weak “You too.” Which was probably for the best.
What just happened? What did I do?
“There, there, boy.” The guy on the next stool patted me on the back. He was Carlos, which I knew because Club Fred’s only had one regular who was a little person, so even though we hadn’t actually met, I knew who he was.
“What did I just do?” I blinked at my empty glass. “Oh my god.”
He laughed. “Either dodged a bullet or missed the chance of a lifetime. Tom, would you get this man another pint and put it on my tab?”
The incredibly tall blond bartender put a beer down in front of me. “She’s a good kid. Mostly.”
Carlos laughed again. “Sure, she is. Dancing with that girl is like dancing with fire: it’s gonna be hot, and you’ll definitely get burned.”
“I don’t know what she was asking! I have no idea what I just said no to. I didn’t mean to say no!” I sucked on my beer, and he patted my back again.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, kid. She’ll be back. I saw that look she gave you. Alisha never takes three steps when she could leap off a cliff instead.”
I almost said, What if I want to leap off the cliff with her? Except that would have been pathetic, so I didn’t. I stewed in misery instead. Much less pathetic.
Beside me, Carlos hooted laughter. “Now, look what the cat dragged in. Sweet, sweet Jaqueline! Here with her lady love.”
“Quit mispronouncing my name, you buffoon. Oh good, Ed, I’ve been meaning to call you.”
I managed to drag my face up, though I didn’t bother trying to look less miserable. “Hey, Jaq.” Then I did a double take. “Whoa.”
She twirled to whatever extent she could twirl with people pressed pretty close against her on all sides. The satiny hot-pink dress she was wearing attempted to twirl too. “You like?”
“You’re, uh, definitely fucking gender.” I’d never seen Jaq in a single article of women’s clothing. Let alone a pink dress.
“Bet your ass I am. Hannah, you gotta meet Ed. Ed, Hannah.”
Hannah was wearing a suit, which was also pretty awesome.
“Good to meet you,” I said.
“Oh, you too. Tom? Be a love and get me a glass of wine and Jaq a soda?”
“Sure thing. You two look great.”
Both of them preened.
“What’s up your butt?” Jaq asked me, backing all the way into the woman on the stool behind her (who muttered “Hey” so low that Jaq ignored it).
“Nothing.”
“He turned down Alisha,” Carlos said helpfully.
“I didn’t! I didn’t turn her down. I just didn’t know what she wanted.”
“She said, ‘Come back to my place’ and you said ‘Uh.’”
Oh god.
Jaq laughed. “If Alisha’s anything, she’s forgiving. I
’m sure the next time you see her she won’t even remember that happened. Now, are you in a sulking mood, or can I ask you a few questions?”
“Questions?” I took a sip of my beer. “What kind of questions?”
“I have this student who I think might be trans. What’s the protocol on that? I mean, I assume I don’t say anything to her, but I’d like to find some way of being less than a fucking dumbass about it.”
“Why do you think they’re trans?”
She pointed at me. “Like that. I keep saying ‘she’ even though it feels off to me, but you said ‘they.’ Why didn’t I think of that?”
Hannah nudged her. “Tell him about Merin, sugar. I’m going to bring my knitting woes to Honey.”
“Because Club Fred’s is the perfect extension of knitting group. Go on. I can survive without you for a couple of minutes.”
“That’s all you have.” Hannah held up her glass of wine. “When I’m done with this, I’ll require dancing.”
“I’ll be right here, ready to do your bidding,” Jaq shot back. She focused on me again once Hannah was lost in the crowd. “Listen, even if Merin was the kind of kid I could walk up to and be overt with, I wouldn’t, because it’d be inappropriate. But there’s got to be something I can do so if—or when—she needs anything, I’m available. Damn it, they. I’m waiting for QYP to open, which would I think at least help, but right now it’s a great big warehouse with practically nothing in it.”
“QYP? I saw that somewhere recently. Wait, is that the drop-in center? I just scheduled an interview with them.”
“Yes! So you know about it? That’s good. I was starting to think no one had ever heard of it but us. Listen, are you going down there to talk to them? The place is at the far end of the Harbor District where the waterfront kind of takes over for a few miles of old cars and dead washing machines before it becomes Albany, and Merin’s been working to clean it out, so she might be there. Will you— Fuck, Ed, I don’t know. If you see Merin, will you at least tell me if I should be worried?”
“Because I’m the only trans person you know well enough to ask? It’s not like there’s a secret language, Jaq. How would I know if you should be worried?”
