Lana
October
I saw Lana today. I felt faint. I haven’t seen her up close in years. She hates me. I met her when she was called John and I was called Adam and we were both still gay men. I was a first year and was a virgin with boys. She came up to my room when everyone was away for thanksgiving break. I had no idea what I was doing but it didn't matter, she showed me. After we fucked she spit in my mouth and pinched my nose until I swallowed it. I felt like my heart was going to explode. I couldn’t believe that I was being held by someone so beautiful. We saw each other several times after that and each time I felt something new. Looking back I know we had absolutely no business seeing each other. We’re fundamentally incompatible people but it was the first time I had been with another trans person and I don’t consider myself a whole person before I met her.
I fucked up and broke things off. It was a mess. We sat down together a while after I told her and she read me a letter filled with hollow saccharine fantasies of us as E-ed out dykes sharing cigarettes outside a party or doing each other's makeup. She told me she was a woman then, and I told her the same. We both cried a lot. All of our dreams about each other were aesthetic. We wanted to be lesbians because that would make us women, we wanted to be girls together. The letter filled me with regret and longing and also disgust. I saw her once more after that, I was drunk and soft and she was a Woman. She stopped talking to me around when Biden was elected, I found out eventually that she was in a committed relationship with a trans masc nonbinary classmate of mine I used to be in love with. I went a little crazy for a while.
I was stuck in Rhode Island alone during Christmas. I would mix a concoction of extra proof vodka and blue Gatorade (haterade) in a canteen and go on hours-long walks through the Brown University grounds in the middle of New England snowstorms, weeping and hoping that I would run into her and could explain something, whatever it was. I never found her.
I got better once the snow melted and I started painting again. I almost forgot about her until I saw her today. That’s a lie. She’s never far from my mind, not her really, but the shadow-figure I’ve concocted in my head, the one who doesn’t say annoying cringe shit about being esoteric boygirl superdykes. It’s so weird to be hung up on someone with whom I had no real connection and spent fewer than ten nights with. Maybe it’s all just because she’s prettier than me. When I saw her all the faint memories of all the feelings I had and things I was going to say came rushing back. But nothing came. We shared a glance, I think. I’m not sure she recognized me. We’ve both changed a lot since that night in my shithouse freshman dorm room. I think I’ve changed more, she’s always been beautiful. She’d hate to hear it but she looks more or less the same, that is to say she’s always looked like a woman.I wonder if she would even have anything to say to me. Maybe she did recognize me and was acting as if she didn't see me. She acts in plays sometimes.