I’m shimmying on stage, apoplectic in the harsh blue neons, when I remember
I’ve loved you my entire life. I’ve been doing drag to retrogress, back inside the boy days—
dysphoric and oily-haired, playing Candy Crush in national parks, when my reasons to go
unloved were good. A slender couple from Belarus collaborates on a wry, laconic novel
about a mischievous pole vaulter from Wales. He hurdles at inopportune locations—
a busy White Castle, a sun-perfused train station, a gay shotgun wedding in Reno.
Hamburgers, ticket stubs, bridesmaids hurl through the unforgiving air in a period
of Olympic training and mandatory infidelity. I am twerk-splitting to a mashup
of Fiona Apple’s Criminal, Avicii’s Levels, and lo-fi ambient water-park sounds.
At nine years old, I heard Criminal play over speakers at Typhoon Lagoon, creating
a memory of feeling guilty underwater. Jung said memories don’t return “to the fore again
without sufficient reason.” I survey the crowd of stodgy, luminous Brooklynites
who regard me as transgender—not a boy, nor a drag queen, nor a real girl. One cannot
go back. But you can perish trying: you can sip macchiatos on a sunlit, ivy-slung terrace
in Belarus, where your daughter does remedial gymnastics in the living room, your wife
texting her mistress in the hyacinth garden. I stuff sweaty dollar bills into a wig pillowcase
and emerge into the blustering night. I wear a pyrite wedding ring to White Castle,
take the sunrise train from Minsk to Moscow, passing normal landscapes and eigengrau
powerlines, protons shivering from heat into nothing. I dream semi-fondly of you—
editing a novel, venting to God, lying to your shrink, eating croutons from the bag,
leaving a drag show. It’s good being a girl, even alone in the Museum of Cosmonautics,
riding the Mir into sidereal blues. I love everything about myself but me and her and you.
