I met Adam’s dog on our second date. She was a scruffy thing, fur everywhere in every direction and as sad as a wad of used toilet paper. In fact, she looked a bit like that, as dingy white as she was. I gave her a perfunctory pat that came up greasy before we went to his bedroom to fuck.
Our first hookup had been uneventful, and I wasn’t expecting anything else other than a quick connection again. But maybe it was the flattery of thinking that someone had met me and seen me and still wanted to be with me again that made me come back to his place. Maybe I let myself breathe because I knew he had an ugly dog in the other room, that he didn’t need everything to be beautiful. I took off my own shirt and didn’t have a bra. I kissed him long and hard, and he pulled me down to the bed, pinning me. We didn’t talk, and he didn’t ask. He kissed, and pressed, and when my hips came up to join his, he took off my pants and underwear and put on a condom and fucked me. We should have spoken before, we should have been speaking then, but there were no words that needed to be said, nothing but breathing and fucking and coming.
I stayed in bed a bit after, stunned at the feat, though we didn’t know each other enough to have much to say. When my legs stopped buzzing, I put on my clothes. He’d locked out the dog, who at that point I had already named Beetle in my head because of her bug eyes and long black nails. She was curled up quietly on a towel on the sofa. She looked up at me with deep brown eyes like little pools of shit. No, more like the rich dark color of walnut. I stroked her head and had to wipe the grease off my hands on my jeans.
If we’d had bad sex, maybe it would have ended up differently. I can’t imagine that I would have stayed with him. The first date with Adam had been at my place, and I was self-conscious to the point where I couldn’t take off my clothes, and so I asked if a blowjob was okay. He asked after if I wanted anything and was content enough when I said no, and he left. Apparently I’d managed to be graceful enough that afterward, I truly do not remember who, but one of us decided to text the other again.
Ginny, my coworker at the coffee shop whom I’d befriended after we both came out as trans, was adamant that I shouldn’t date straight men, and to be fair, I didn’t think Adam and I would end up going past the first Tinder date. I just wanted sex. I had been with my last ex for four years and wasn’t ready for any more commitment. I had hooked up with a couple of people to greater and lesser degrees of success, but no one I was interested in seeing again, and apparently no one who wanted to see me either. I was too far away most of the time during sex, looking down from a distance at them and my body, wondering how they saw me, this person they just met, who only knew my Tinder profile, who only knew my gender as a set of pronouns—they/them—but still showed up when they searched for women on the app. I still wore dresses and had shoulder-length hair. And I was still okay with that for the most part then, except for when it came to having sex, when I couldn’t seem to bridge the gap between my mind and body, not until Adam.
After that night, I knew I would call him again, as often as I could. I couldn’t imagine having to go on only experiencing that sensation once. Sex had never felt like this before, perhaps because my only relationships to this point had been young, or overcommitted, or one-night stands. Too tepid, too careful, too blasé, or perhaps just with the wrong people. Or perhaps I was the wrong person. Until I was the right person with Adam.
When I tried to describe it to Ginny, she was clear about her skepticism.
Have you tried fisting, she might ask. No more need for cis men.
He has fists too, I’d say, as I wiped down the steamer.
Ginny only dated trans people now, she said, who she met on trans sites and at trans meetups and at whatever weird electronic music event she was going to that weekend. But I wasn’t yet okay with how trans I felt. I was okay, or at least saying I was okay, with how I looked and walked in the world, but I was still afraid of how trans people saw me, someone who only wore a binder sometimes and still wore dresses when they felt like it.
And if I hadn’t dated cis people, I wouldn’t have found Adam. The way he fucked obliterated any distance I’d set up between my body and my self. He fucked not without a care for me but with an attention to his own self, to his own pleasure, and how my body could make that happen for him. When I moved my hips, he shifted and turned us to a new position. When I moaned, he held me there with him, not letting me drift away. His focus on himself gave me the space I needed to feel the pressure as he thrust inside of me, insistent bordering on painful, and the pleasure of him holding my body, caressing and licking and grabbing, that coalesced in undeniable waves of sensation deep within my cunt every time we had sex. Because he could fuck me like that, I could walk around and make lattes and clean counters with a certainty that my body had never before afforded me. Because he could hold me in my body, my body felt like it was at last also a part of me.
And though I hadn’t opened up to Ginny about it yet, it wasn’t just the sex. After we fucked, we got in the habit of making food and chatting. It was surprisingly pleasant. We both enjoyed cooking, had each done a decent amount of experimenting in the kitchen. Conversation was playful; he was charming, I was witty. Our humor bounced off each other seamlessly, smiles and laughs came easy as breathing.
As we worked in the kitchen, Beetle would follow us pathetically, pleading for scraps that Adam would ultimately give her. I found out he’d had her for two years, since she was ten. He didn’t know how long she’d live, but she was healthy enough now.
Is she? I asked.
He laughed and assured me she was in decent shape, except for her pancreas, and so she’d often throw up. Looking at the stains around her mouth, that made sense.
I got her when I was in a low place, he said. I signed up to foster dogs. I love them, but I didn’t think I had it in me to commit. They assigned her to me because I had such a regular schedule and a small apartment, and she needs regular care and is lazy. She is still the most bizarre-looking dog I’ve ever seen, but something about her is undeniable. She’ll grow on you.
A couple months in, he asked me to come with him to his friend’s party.
As what? I asked.
My partner.
I laughed. I wasn’t used to that. When I had come out to my ex, Sarah, she said she was a lesbian, and if I wasn’t a woman anymore then it wouldn’t work. After four years of living together.
Partner sounds awful serious, I said.
Do you object to the sentiment or to the word?
The word, I suppose. I would like us to be a thing.
Is there a better word? I assume boyfriend and girlfriend are out.
I shrugged. My gender had always been a question, untouched and unresolved. There was never a time when I felt like a woman, but until the last couple of years I had never seriously considered that I could be something else, someone else. I could be undefined and I could live there. After Sarah, I didn’t know if anyone would let me do that, but with Adam, it wasn’t difficult. He didn’t seem to care how I identified.
I could live with partner, I said.
I went to the party as his partner. His friends were all nice and straight, and he introduced me as his partner who works at the cool coffee shop on Howard Street, and he used my correct pronouns, and I kissed him in front of them, but I knew when they looked at us, they saw a straight couple.
I told him I didn’t feel well, so he gave me his keys because his apartment was just down the block. I walked home and took Beetle out for a walk.
I hadn’t done that before on my own. She was curious about everything, and her little body quivered with excitement as she sniffed every wall, tree, signpost.
I was happy enough with Beetle that I called my mom, returning a voicemail from the week before. I told her I was walking a friend’s dog, and she told me to be safe. She was afraid of the city, any city, having never lived in one. She was never very perceptive, but I wondered if she could tell anything about Adam from the way I called him my friend. But I didn’t want to tell her more; she loved me, but never without argument. It was hard enough to get her to understand when I lived with a woman, I didn’t want to confuse her with a man.
I had forgotten Beetle’s poop bags, so when she pooped I picked up some leaves and stomped them over the runny turd. She looked at me like she expected a treat, so I took her home and gave her food before I fell asleep.
I woke up to Adam coming home and swearing loudly. Beetle had vomited all over the kitchen floor. It was amazing what came out of that tiny dog.
I don’t understand, he said. What’s this?
There was a small bone in her vomit, a chicken wing that she must have eaten on the walk without me knowing. I told him about taking her out.
He looked like he wanted to yell at me, but he held back. If she hadn’t thrown it up, he said, it could have broken apart in her stomach and torn her up. He worried about her so much, and he couldn’t have me making him worry about her too.
I apologized and helped him clean, and when we were done, I wiped the vomit off the corners of her tiny mouth.
I worked weekends and Adam worked a normal office job, so we got into a rhythm where on my days off, he let me sleep in at his place. Once when he was gone, I opened all the inside doors, and Beetle happily trotted behind me wherever I went. I scrounged through Adam’s things, as one does when one is thinking they are at the point where they should know if their boyfriend is a serial killer, finding only the nondescript items you might expect, until I came across his hair clippers in the bathroom.
They were also uninteresting—he kept them to keep his beard trimmed—but in my hand they felt weighty. I tried them on the back of my arm, and they trimmed my long thin hair into little upright ridges like wheat. Then I took it to my head. The hair came out and fell loose on the floor. My previous shoulder-length hair was now a buzz cut, and Beetle, who’d been at my ankles, was covered in my hair.
I sat on the toilet and put her on my lap. Somehow, in a minute, my own hair had become so tangled in hers that extracting every strand was difficult. I pulled and pulled until I realized the only solution for her was the clippers as well.
What was left after was the same ugly dog, only now she was patchy. It’s much harder to cut a dog’s fur than your own smooth head. Especially small dogs are filled with tiny divots and bumps from their tiny bones. But I didn’t knick her, and by the time I was done, she was snoozing from the buzzing of the clippers.
I cleaned up and decided I couldn’t leave and let him come home and discover this on his own, so I stayed. I couldn’t stop running one hand over my own head, one over Beetle’s. She wasn’t greasy for once, and my own head felt like velvet. When I looked at myself, I held my head high. Beetle licked her back toes aggressively.
He laughed when he saw me and patted my fuzzy head. I then explained what happened to Beetle, expecting him to yell at me, but he patted her as well.
I will probably have to buy new clippers after this, huh, he said.
I’ll get them. We both have things to clip now.
When I saw Ginny, she said, Looking good. You dumped him, eh?
No, I didn’t dump him. He likes it!
She snorted. They like it until they don’t like it.
I shoved her arm. He likes it, okay? We’re good. It’s really good.
So what, she said. Is he bi?
I don’t know! We don’t talk about that.
Sex and gender aren’t dirty topics.
Look, I like talking gender with you, but it’s nice to just be sometimes, you know? Not have to think. I’m not trans because I talked myself into it. I’m the same with him, we just don’t have to analyze it.
It’s all fine until he can’t pretend you’re a woman anymore.
Shut up, Ginny. Just shut the fuck up.
She brushed me off and said, Just take it slow, okay?
I told my roommates I was moving out and brought my things to his place. Adam and I split the rent according to our income, which ended up being cheaper than my old place with three roommates. We became the center and periphery of each other’s lives. Because our work schedules were opposites, Adam working a nine to five and me working weekends and evenings, we rarely went out, and we lived for when one of us would come home, have sex, cook our dinner at ten before we went to bed. I never slept before him; I would stay up because of the coffee or the hours or both, scrolling my phone until I heard him utter a deep moan that signaled he’d fallen from wakefulness to fitful sleep, and then I would leave to be on the computer and cuddle with Beetle in the other room, occasionally calling my mom, who I could no longer avoid telling about my new relationship and who was used to late nights after a lifetime of being a second-shift nurse. It was such a comforting, easy rhythm; I felt safe. Really I was pupating in that apartment, content to stay and excited for what could emerge when I was ready.
I started to buy some new clothes with the extra money I was saving, just a little more masculine things, button-ups and men’s jeans, seeing how they could complement my body, how my body could complement me. Adam didn’t ask, and as far as I could tell didn’t bat an eye. He kissed me in public still, and I could see looks and questions around us, wondering what we were, who we were, how we were. It didn’t seem to touch us; wherever he was, we carried that cocoon of safety.
I started going to a clinic too. Just to see. Ginny went to the clinic for her hormones and PrEP and recommended it. I went for an initial STD test but ended up talking to someone for nearly an hour about hormone and surgical options. I walked away with a prescription for testosterone gel.
The doctor explained what effects the gel could have on my body, intentional and unintentional, and then said, It’s up to you. You just seem interested, and I can write a prescription for you to try it so you don’t have to come back if you decide you’re interested. It’s not a commitment, and it doesn’t turn you into a man if you’re not one. It’s just something to try. If you do, come back in a month and we’ll run your hormone levels.
I filled the script at the clinic pharmacy, and then I went home. I took Beetle for a walk before we settled into the couch to watch YouTube. She curled against me. Her hair had grown back fluffy and puffed up when we brushed her. I bounced my hand on it as she snored.
I didn’t tell Adam I started using the gel. I’d apply the packet to my shoulder in the work bathroom and wash it off at the end of the day after it had dried. I justified it by his job, his preoccupations. He worked in computer security, he played video games, he didn’t watch the news. He didn’t care about my identity. He respected me, and he loved me, and the way he fucked me showed me the possibilities, showed me how I could feel like my body belonged to me. We didn’t talk about the transition part of being trans, though, and so I did it in secret.
There was a part of me, also, that didn’t want to admit it to myself. I had convinced myself that physical transition wasn’t necessary, that I was okay with how I looked, but part of me couldn’t contemplate how I would be able to change. That change was possible, preferable perhaps. I was a pretty girl, but maybe, if I tried, I could be other, I could maybe be handsome, I could be something more true to my identity as I was exploring it. Or at least, I could try.
The first effect of the hormone was that I grew big fat individual hairs on my chin. I frowned at them and plucked them like I’d been trained to do growing up, but it occurred to me that this could be a desirable trait, and I kept them there after that.
Next, my voice started sliding down the scale. He loved this in bed, when I turned my voice down low and described how good his dick felt in me. He started to cock his head in confusion like Beetle did when I used that voice in the kitchen.
Then my clit grew larger, and sex turned into something else. It no longer started when he pushed into me, but when I started to grasp onto his thigh when we kissed, when I rubbed against him. It was no longer a gift from on high but something we exchanged, something we wrestled for.
I gushed to Ginny about the changes. She started our shifts by counting my chin hairs and seeing the lowest note I could hit on the scale. I was on such a low dose that things changed slowly, but we’d giggle all the same. I engaged with the customers, I tried disappointing little flourishes of latte art. I had taken charge of my body, and I was thriving.
Home was different. I told myself we didn’t have to talk about these things, but by staying silent, I had turned home into a type of purgatory for me, a place where I was waiting for him to acknowledge me. Either to tell me how sexy my jawline was becoming, or to tell me I was gross and sounded like his dad. Our conversation floundered; our cooking staled. At the end of the day, after he was snoring, I would lay in bed and think, another day. He didn’t say anything, and I can have his love, and my own, and we don’t have to talk. We just know each other. We can be like we were at the beginning, even though I’m changing. And then I’d wake up and start the cycle again.
Unfortunately, people sometimes must talk. One day, while cooking, he said delicately, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have some stuff on your chin.
I froze. Stuff?
Hair.
I know.
I haven’t seen you with hair there before. What’s that about?
I’m trying something new.
He washed a pot in the sink and put it on the stove. I don’t like it.
I didn’t ask if you did.
He washed another pot. You’ve been different lately.
I’ve been taking T.
T?
I’d been using our slang with Ginny so much that it felt ridiculous that he didn’t know something as simple as T. But then again, I hadn’t let him.
Testosterone.
What have you been doing that for?
I wanted to try it. And I did, and it makes me feel better. I like the things I see. I don’t like these scraggly hairs necessarily, but I like the idea of trying to grow hair along my jaw. And I love my voice now.
I thought it was different. Are you . . . are you becoming a man?
I laughed. God, no.
Then why do all this?
How to explain to him that I was beginning to feel what he felt every day as he went to work and home and kissed me. How could I explain that I was finally breathing the same air he breathed, finally had a body I cared for, treated as if I wanted it.
It’s just what I need to do. To feel like myself. To see how I change when I do this. I wasn’t good before we met, I wasn’t myself, and I’m becoming more myself.
I don’t understand.
I can’t explain it to you. It’s right for me.
I don’t like it.
‘It’ is my body. ‘It’ is me. Do you not like me?
I love you. But I don’t like this.
We went on and on. He asked why I didn’t tell him. I said I didn’t know. He said that he couldn’t change his feelings. I said our feelings adjust all the time. I argued about how we change, bodies change. We get hit by trucks or we grow fat or thin and even if we don’t do any of those things, we age. He dug his feet in. He didn’t know how he felt about that, but he didn’t like the hair on my chin.
I slept on the sofa that night with Beetle curled into my abdomen. She could make a tiny perfect circle and look exactly like a pompom, if you could get past the smell and the discolored spots. I faded into sleep stroking her with the television on low in the background. A couple hours later, I woke up to her in the middle of the floor, hunched over, vomiting.
I went to clean it up and get her some water. She drank it, then immediately threw it up as if it burned. She stayed hunched over, and when I touched her, she yelped.
I yelled for Adam and he came running. He told me to get dressed, and we rushed her to the car to get to the emergency vet.
The hospital was so bright, and there were only a few other people there, as tired and disheveled as we were. For once, no one looked at us like an odd couple; everyone was living their own tragedies. A vet technician took Beetle away and told us we had to wait in the lobby.
A few hours later, a doctor came and brought us in to see Beetle. She was hooked up to an IV and was breathing laboriously on the table. The vet explained that she had a severe case of acute pancreatitis and they had to keep her at the hospital for observation for a few days, but since she was already old and had a history, it would be a rough road. We left and Adam paid the vet bill at the front. At home he cried, and I cried. It was morning by then, and he had to work, but I had the day off.
I called my mom. I could hear the sleep in her voice; it was much too early for both of us.
If I came home, I asked, would that be okay?
She was quiet for a few moments, but said, Of course, honey. You’re my daughter, you’re always welcome home.
I wanted to snap, I’m not your daughter, but how could I? I hadn’t bothered to tell her either. I didn’t want the rejection, didn’t want to explain, didn’t want to relive the pain that put me here asking this question.
Are things not working out with Adam? She asked.
Not really, I said.
You can come home anytime. I miss you. It’s quiet here, she said.
Here too, I said.
A few hours later, Adam came home and broke up with me. But you can move whenever you want, he said.
This is bullshit, I said. But I wasn’t angry. I knew he couldn’t understand. I always knew he couldn’t understand, or else why would I lie?
It hurt too much to give up on us yet, so I stayed on his sofa while I looked for a place. When I came home from work, he was already in the bedroom with the door closed. It was so empty in the apartment at night, him in the other room and no Beetle to hold. I came so close to knocking on the door, wanting him to hold me but afraid even more that he would say no. I couldn’t cook, not without him, so I just brought home work leftovers and ate them while I searched Facebook and Craigslist for a room.
I didn’t tell Ginny about the breakup; I didn’t want to vindicate her misgivings about Adam. I just told her that Beetle had to stay at the vet. She knew how much I loved that dog.
Adam called me a couple days later and asked if I was working and if I could pick up Beetle for him. I was working, but I left, saying I was sick, and borrowed his car from the apartment where it was parked on the street. At the vet, she looked like a whole new dog. They had groomed her and pampered her, and after days of fluid and rest, she was as healthy as she’d ever been. They gave me her new feeding instructions and prescription food and I nearly maxed out my credit card paying the rest of her vet bill on the way out.
She started screaming in the car, and I mean screaming. She hated the car, but I’d forgotten since she was practically comatose on the way to the vet. I had to pull over and let her out of the carrier. She climbed onto my lap and trembled, burrowing her way into my pelvis as far as she could go. I drove home like that, the vibrations of the car melding with the vibrations of her trembling body and I felt that oneness that I hadn’t felt since she left.
At Adam’s, I packed my things and without much forethought, packed Beetle away as well. I carried her and pulled my luggage the dozen blocks to the bus station and bought the several tickets it would take for me to travel from Baltimore, Maryland, to North Platte, Nebraska. I’d see my mom in just a few days.
Beetle was fine in her carrier until the bus and her yelping started. I pulled her out and onto my lap. The person next to me looked at me sideways but didn’t say anything. Beetle stayed, curled against me.
On the bus, I had to apply testosterone in the bathroom at the rest stops. I had to try to stick to Beetle’s feeding schedule, sometimes holding dry food in my cupped hand for her to eat on my lap when the bus wouldn’t be stopping for many hours. I texted Ginny, told her I was leaving town and quitting work, and she made me promise to call when I’m settled. I blocked Adam’s number.
I try to justify what I did, taking Beetle, leaving. She’s a pretty dumb dog. She won’t miss Adam, she loves me just as much. Adam doesn’t need Beetle. He could find another Beetle. He has a home and money and security, rescues will just throw dogs at him.
But really, I just need her. I need a tiny little fucked-up body like hers, loved by him and me so much that we’d go into debt at the vet in the middle of the night, that we’d hold her greasy fur, that we’d scoop up her gnarly poop. I need a body we had both loved, and so I took her.
I’m sure he’ll think I stole her because I’m pissed he broke up with me. I’m brokenhearted, but I can’t be too angry. He didn’t like the chin hairs, and that is just how he works.
Next time, I’ll find another person who can love a body in flux, who can fuck me and see me, who I can revel in the changes with instead of hide myself from. I’ll find them and Beetle will charm them, and we’ll have fights about the dishes instead of my body.
Beetle flops onto her back in the grass at the rest areas, wiggling and peeing. I think she will like having a yard, and the plains. Adam’s apartment wasn’t small, but nothing is as big as the sky out there. We’ll both have room to breathe.
I wonder if my mother likes dogs. We never had them growing up, but not for any particular reason I can remember. She’ll like Beetle, at least.
I wonder my mother will recognize me. I wonder if she’ll be angry, if she’ll be hurt. Why are you upset, I’ll say. We have so much in common; we both made this body. It’ll be a joke, even though it isn’t.
***
Artwork by Beatriz Camaleão
