a little flesh, a little breath

a short story

Remember that it is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone.¹

Felicity leaned way over, sticking her bare ass in the air above the toilet seat. Her hair pooled on the bathmat next to her laptop. Another wave of pain passed through her abdomen, lingering low in her guts. She leaned even further forward, bracing her forehead against the cool metal of her laptop trackpad. Blood rushed to her head. She thought she might throw up. 

It subsided. She sat up, taking the laptop with her, tabbing over from Spotify to Firefox, which displayed a set of half-done coding set problems and fourteen Stack Overflow tabs. Her head was pounding. She sighed and set it back down on the floor in front of her. An MGMT song played faintly through the computer speakers. 

She looked around the bathroom. The half-open sliding door to the shower, a matted tangle of hair in the drain, the big bottle for Jordan’s 3-in-one shampoo/conditioner/body wash sitting on the shower floor, the cell phone marking the place in the book on the floor next to the laptop. She had been in there for what, an hour, two? She looked up a little further to see the mirror on the opposite side of this tiny bathroom from her. There I am, she thought. 

After exhausting Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram, she had waddled out of the bathroom and taken the one book in their shared dorm room, Jordan’s copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. It had a plain red cover, the title in a heavy, masculine serif. She had no idea why this was the only book he owned besides the EECS textbook. She hadn’t really talked to him since the beginning of the semester. She assumed some influencer on the internet had told him to read it. She imagined a guy in his thirties with a full beard and a perpetual scowl. Half-paying-attention to what she was reading at first, she had become more invested as time went on. He had a lot to say about death, which weirdly helped her regain perspective in this situation. 

The next wave of pain came more suddenly. She groaned and bent again as shit sprayed out of her with a high-pitched sound like the discarge of a nearly-empty Windex bottle. It stopped and started and continued, then it intensified. She gripped the sides of the toilet seat. 

After that was done, she felt a lot better. Right on cue, someone knocked on the door. 

— One sec! she shouted. 

Once she managed to get her tights and dress back on, she opened the door to the room to see Lily standing there, pert and clean as ever. She smiled, hugged Felicity, and pushed past her into the room. 

Whenever Felicity hugged Lily, she noticed the slight lack of give to Lily’s silicone implants, which made her feel guilty for noticing. There were a bunch of other things she always noticed that made her feel bad in a similar way: the gold nameplate necklace, for instance, or the leather keychain tassels on the lanyard that held her card key, or the understated, tasteful way she dressed, like a soccer mom. Tight dark blue jeans, sweatshirts in pastel colors, blouses on warm days. Today she was wearing an Oxford blue shirt dress that she pulled off effortlessly. It didn’t look like an affectation on her, it just looked natural, normal, female.

Lily’s visits always made Felicity feel sheepish about her living space in a way she couldn’t really explain. Maybe it was the way Lily, who was two years older, always looked at Lily’s decorations — the Sailor Moon poster, the museum postcards, the LED Christmas lights — in an appraising sort of way, as if seeing them for the first time, but never said anything about them. She sat down on Felicity’s bed, on the sheets that hadn’t been washed since the beginning of the semester. 

— Are you done with classes? Lily said. 

Felicity, still standing, didn’t say anything. Her stomach rumbled audibly. 

— You’re taking care of yourself and everything? Lily said. — I know finals is really hard, and if you want any, like, help cleaning up in here, I’m like, totally done. 

It took Felicity another few seconds to comprehend what Lily said, because her voice had shifted into an entirely unfamiliar register, not more high-pitched exactly, just different. She was trying to place it. 

— Uh, I have a coding set left to do, Felicity said. — And, uh, thanks I guess. 

— No problem. I just wanted to drop by and say hi before I head back to Montclair for Christmas. And I got you something. 

Lily searched in her bag and produced a card with a cartoon Christmas tree on it and a green-and-red foil border. 

Inside, next to the Merry Christmas!, Lily had written To my best friend in transgenderism, love you forever <3. Out of the card, a smaller, unfolded card fell to the floor. Lily picked it up and handed it back to Felicity. 

It was thick cardstock, embossed with a black Italianate border, with text in an almost unreadably swirly font in the center: 

This card is good for eight weekly sessions during the year of 2022

Dr. Valerie Brancovic, vocal coach 

Voice acting 

Lisp and accent correction 

Transgender voice training 

Vocal health consultation

And then an address somewhere in the Village. 

— Oh, Felicity said. 

She looked back at Lily, then back at the card. 

— I started with her a couple weeks ago and, y’know, not to brag, but here I am, Lily said. — Like it’s been lifechanging, like on the same level as HRT. You can start anytime this year. Whenever you feel ready. And I really think you should do it. 

— Uh, thanks. 

— She’s trans also, a real old school transsexual. You’ll love her.

— That’s good, I guess.

— Anyway, I gotta go, Lily said. — Are you staying here for break again? I hope you find somewhere to go. 

Felicity just nodded. 

— You do? That’s good, Lily said. I’ll see you later, F. I got a date with Isadora. 

When she closed the door, Felicity finally noticed how exhausted she was. She only realized after she had laid down that her laptop was still playing music from the bathroom. She let it continue until the battery died and the music abruptly stopped, maybe half an hour later. 

~ ~ ~

If the inward power that rules us be true to nature, it will always adjust itself readily to the possibilities and opportunities offered by circumstance. It asks for no predeterminate material; in the pursuance of its aims it is willing to compromise; hindrances to its progress are merely converted into matter for its own use. 

Jordan didn’t come back, so she started keeping his book in the bathroom, on top of the tank next to the extra roll of TP. She started to hear Marcus Aurelius’s voice in her head while finishing the coding set, trying to remember to eat, and during the listless weeks when everyone else was out of the dorms. She imagined his voice as something like her dad’s, but deeper and more authoritative, like someone she actually wanted to listen to. 

having IBS is a lot like being hunted by god, she posted on Twitter, on one of her endless bouts on the toilet. It got four likes. 

She had a lot of time to look at herself in the mirror across from where she sat on the toilet for hours a day. The worst thing was her jawline, followed by her persistent brownish stubble. She wondered if bangs would help. Or laser. No, electrolysis. 

None of that stuff seemed real. Lily — people like her — that was just good luck, and a more cavalier attitude around money than she could afford right now. 

— Fucking faggot, she said out loud at herself, at the mirror. She winced at the sound. It looked like a perspiring quarterback was saying it to her. Then she doubled over again. 

She went out a couple times to get Clif bars and packets of instant noodles from the deli. When the Yemeni guy behind the counter said ‘sat’s it? she just nodded. 

Lower Manhattan, with its narrow donkey-cart streets and faceless grey buildings, was bustling during the day but thinned out to a trickle in the evening. From the window of her dorm room, way up on the 15^th floor, she would watch the traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and the FDR Drive thin out as the long nights went on.

She taught herself some basic FORTRAN for fun and then got bored of it, she watched the second season of Euphoria on her laptop, and she slept a lot. Eventually the term started up again, like emerging from a dream back into waking life, and she immersed herself again in the rigors of mathematics, walking between three buildings during the day and spending long nights at her desk. The more baroque her commands, the more acquiescent the machine responded to her. The tiny screen was starting to feel like an extension of her fingertips, and she saw possibilities bloom out in front of her like a spilled glass of water progressing on a tile floor.

One day a few weeks into the term, Jordan came out of the bathroom and tapped Felicity on the shoulder. She took off her big headphones and paused the psytrance mix she was in the middle of. 

— Hey, he said. 

— Huh? she said, too loudly. He recoiled a little bit visibly. 

— Were you borrowing my book dude? It was in the bathroom. 

She nodded, turning red. 

— It’s no big deal, just ask next time. 

After he left, the image of her roommate recoiling from her firmly imprinted in her mind, she remembered the card Lily had given her. She found it underneath a pile of food wrappers on her dresser and dialed the number. 

— Hello? said a woman’s voice. 

— Uh, hi, Felicity said. She somehow expected it to be the usual you’ve reached the offices of so-and-so thing and it took her a second to continue. — I’d like to schedule an, uh, appointment. With Dr. Brancovic. 

— Sure, said the voice. — When’s good? 

Was the woman on the other end of the line trans? Lily had opened up a whole area of possibility for her that she wasn’t fully aware existed before now. 

— Uh, weekends, Felicity said. 

— She can do Saturday mornings, said the voice. 

— Okay, Felicity said. 

— What time works for you? 

— Uhhh 10?

— Sure. It’s on the calendar. 

— Uh, would it be weekly afterwards? Felicity said. She wanted to listen to the receptionist’s voice a little longer, she was sure she was close to deciding if she was trans or not. 

— Yes, said the voice crisply. 

— Uhh. Okay. Thanks. See you then. 

— You’re welcome, said the voice, and then she hung up the phone. 

She made a little note on her computer and returned to the psytrance mix. Before long she forgot her embarrassment.

~ ~ ~

Love nothing but that which comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny. For what could more aptly fit your needs? 

Everyone in the West Village looked so confident to her. The window-shoppers, the beautiful young people, the tourists, everyone was wrapped in an aura of wealth and grace. Lily would fit in here, she thought. 

It had snowed for the first time that winter and the cars were driving slower than usual. The sidewalks were cleared and salted, and little piles of already-melting snow surrounded the trees. 

She had somehow imagined Dr. Brancovic’s office would be in one of those old Victorian buildings, but it was in a newer, blocky building a good walk off the subway with a lobby lit with greenish fluorescent lights. The fifth-floor hallway was deserted and shabby. 

When she knocked at the door at the end of the hallway, it immediately opened. Behind it was standing someone who could only be Dr. Brancovic. She wasn’t tall for a trans woman, but she was imposing — her face was puffy in a telltalle sign of rounds upon rounds of fillers, she was wearing what looked like two or three cardigans, she had big, dry black hair. 

— Uh, hi, I’m Felicity. 

— Right, right. Come in. 

The room was small and square, with two chairs in the center flanked by crowded bookshelves. The double-wide windows were crowded with tropical plants. A humidifier hummed and emitted steam in the corner. 

— So, Lily sent you, Dr. Brancovic said, looking at a clipboard she had produced from somewhere. 

There was no sign of the receptionist she had heard on the phone. Dr. Brancovic’s voice was deeper than that, but still sounded — female, Felicity thought, unable to produce different adjectives. 

They sat in the chairs across from each other. Dr. Brancovic wrote something on the clipboard, then looked up. 

— Okay, sweetie. Would you mind just talking for me? Just so I can get a sense of what we’re working with. 

Felicity looked at her helplessly for a second. Dr. Brancovic’s eyes narrowed. 

— You could say the ABCs if you wanted, Dr. Brancovic said. 

Felicity did just that, and got to l-m-n-o-p before Dr. Brancovic cut her off with a twisting-shut gesture like an orchestra conductor.

— Hmm, she said, scratching at the clipboard. — All right. Square one. That’s good, that’s good. So, she went on, her eyes darting up to Felicity before returning to her notes, — the thing I always tell my students is that you need a voice that matches your holistic self. Me, I’m going on sixty, so I sound like an old crone. The vocal tract ages just as the rest of the body does. You’re young and beautiful and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, so we’re going to get you to sound that way. It’s simpler than you probably think it is, but it requires some mastery of basic concepts. 

Dr. Brancovic paused to look up at her before continuing. — I always have to ask my students now, what do you know about transgender voice training? ‘Cause girls these days come in with ideas they get from the internet, and that’s more work for me, ‘cause they get it wrong. 

— Uh, I don’t know anything, Felicity said quickly. Her stomach was starting to rumble and she forced herself to ignore it. 

— Good! Good. That’s what I like to hear. 

Dr. Brancovic stood up and paced in a circle behind the chair. 

— Okay, so to start off with, I’m going to ask you to try to raise your primary resonance. We’re not going to do that with speech just yet, but with an unvoiced stream of air. I’ve found it’s usually better for students if they just start off by mimicking the sounds I make. Like so: 

Dr. Brancovic opened her mouth and made a noise like a valve closing. She did it a few times. 

— See if you can do that, she said. The most important thing is not to strain yourself. It’s possible to do this sound with a relaxed throat. 

Felicity opened her mouth and, with no clue what to do, made a sort of whistling, gurgling sound that didn’t resemble Dr. Brancovic’s controlled noise one bit. 

— That’s ok! Try again. 

The rumble in Felicity’s stomach was getting harder to ignore. She tried again and made a completely different sound. 

— Relax! Dr. Brancovic almost shouted. 

Felicity panted and tried a third time. Her embarrassment was starting to overwhelm any control she had of the noises she was making. 

Dr. Brancovic made the twisting-shut motion again. 

— Alright. It’s normal that this won’t be quite natural for you yet. Let’s try it voiced, maybe. That’s sometimes easier for students. Like so: 

She hummed a note, then opened her mouth into an open “Aaah,” then somehow made the bottom drop out of it. 

— Try that. 

Felicity hummed, then opened her mouth into the same “aaah,” then wasn’t sure at all what to do. She stopped. 

— How do I, I mean, what am I supposed to be feeling? Felicity stuttered. 

— Your larynx raising, primarily. You know where the larynx is? 

She walked to the wall, where there was a framed diagram of a vocal tract, and pointed to a little disc of tissue right above the cutway man’s Adam’s apple. 

— When you and I went through puberty, this entire area got bigger. 

She made a big circle with her pointer finger on the diagram. 

— What we’re trying to do now is to create the illusion of a smaller vocal tract. 

Felicity tried and failed to do the sound again. She stared at the diagram on the wall and imagined the little disc of tissue breaking free of the page it was printed on and drifting upward. 

— Yes, yes, feel the larynx raising, Dr. Brancovic said as Felicity sputtered out. 

The two of them looked helplessly at each other for a moment. Then Dr. Brancovic walked over to the windows, looked out into the fog, then back at Felicity. 

— You know what, I think your problem is that you can’t quite feel it, she said. 

Felicity nodded. 

— Yeah, yeah, you’re nodding but you’re not saying anything, Dr. Brancovic said, like she was talking to herself. — Sweetie, I have a question for you, she said. — It might sound strange, but it’ll really help me. How often do you use your voice in day-to-day life? 

— Uh, not that much. 

— Like say, under an hour a day? 

— Uh, yeah. Less than that. 

— Okay. That’s what I thought. You’re what we call in this business a vocal avoider. You actually might have some atrophy to your vocal tract, you might be missing some control over it. 

Felicity’s heart sank. 

— It’s common enough in young transgender individuals, she went on. — And it’s not a death sentence. You don’t like how it sounds, so you get by without talking, yadda yadda. But that’s a stunted, sad existence. You gotta use it if you want to be able to change it. 

Felicity nodded. 

— Alrighty, Dr. Brancovic said. Felicity thought she sounded annoyed. — I have your first assignment. This week, I just want you to use your voice more. Way more. Use it any-which-way. Don’t try to focus on what it sounds like. Talk to your friends, talk to strangers, talk to yourself, I don’t care. Just talk. And notice what it feels like. 

Felicity nodded. 

— Repeat after me, Dr. Brancovic said. She raised her volume dramatically and waited until Felicity had repeated each word before moving on. 

I. WILL. TALK. MORE. THIS. WEEK. 

With each word Dr. Brancovic got louder and louder until she was practically yelling. 

Hearing herself speak that way had triggered a primal unease in Felicity that she hadn’t even realized was there. It had been there the whole time, she realized.

— This doesn’t count toward your eight sessions, Dr. Brancovic said, opening the door back to that dingy hallway. 

— Oh, ok, Felicity said. Her armpits were sweating, she realized. — Thank you. 

— I have great hope for you, Felicity, Dr. Brancovic said, opening the door wider. — I don’t want you to get all woe-is-me about this, alright? It’s a setback, and we’ve got a lot of work to do, but you did the hardest thing, you got started. 

~ ~ ~

Never allow yourself to be swept off your feet: when an impulse stirs, see first that it will meet the claims of justice; when an impression forms, assure yourself first of its certainty. 

The realization she had in the office followed her as she walked back to the subway. When she got to the subway entrance, she decided to skip it and just walk downtown. The sun had come out and everything looked vivid and bright — the brick buildings, the little piles of slushy snow, the weekend window-shoppers she drifted past. She barely saw any of them. 

The words “vocal avoider” ricocheted around in her mind. That was right, so right. Her voice was horrible, anyone would want to avoid it. It was the voice of a buffoon, a clown, someone who was only suited for dumb labor. She had just felt resigned to it. Just the same way she had felt resigned to the smallness of her existence. She hated taking up space in a conversation because as soon as she opened her mouth, she betrayed herself. 

But now her avoidance of this problem a thing she could grasp and manipulate, subject to a process. Who would she be with a new voice? She could do anything. She had to call Lily to thank her for this revelation. 

All the way home, through the whole length of TriBeCa and the first half of the Financial District, she stared at people walking two by two, noticing them talking to each other. Men’s voices, loud and resonant and confident, and women’s voices, concealing and coy and undeterred by their relative lack of volume and force. She needed someone to talk to. She wanted to just talk to someone, but no one looked available. That was ok, she would find people once she was back downtown. She was itching to speak, to exorcise her voice, to extrude it like wet clay coming out of a mill, sloppy and pliant. 

She had to sprint to the elevator once she got back to her dorm building in order to make it to the bathroom in her room. Jordan was in there. She banged on the door. 

— One second! Jordan shouted. 

— Please hurry, she said. 

— Alright alright dude. 

The toilet flushed and she ran inside, barely making it in time. As the contents of her intestines emptied out into the toilet, she groaned. She often groaned involuntarily in situations like this, but this time, she paid attention to the quality of her voice as she did it. The unforced noise — would she be able to modify that, too? She tried groaning again as she pushed and pushed, determined to clear herself out, tried sustaining it for longer, then going louder. It felt like it helped. That’s the sound I make. That simple fact sustained her through the bout of burning, pulsating pain. 

It occurred to her after several minutes of this that Jordan was still in the room, but that didn’t really bother her that much. He doesn’t know anything about me, she thought. Anyway, this is real. He’s aware that I suffer, he won’t be that surprised. 

That was another thing, she realized. Her voice was the means by which she expressed the fact that she has a body. She could go to a doctor about what she knew since she was 16 was IBS, Lily had been bothering her to for months, but it had seemed impossible. Was this why? 

Even as her guts felt like they were being flayed, possibilities roiled around in her head. Eventually it was over. 

She flushed, took a cold shower, and put her clothes back on.

When she opened the door, Jordan had headphones on and didn’t look up. 

— Hey Jordan, she said. 

He didn’t look up. 

— Hey Jordan, she said louder. 

He ripped off the headphones and whirled toward her. 

— Uh, hey man. I’m kind of in the middle of something. 

— Is that the Operating Systems homework? she said. — I’m in that same class as you. I don’t know if you noticed, ‘cause there’s 58 people in that one. It would be easy to miss me. I sit in the back and I noticed that you sit up front. 

— Uh, yeah, why? Were you having a hard time with it or something? 

— No, I’m already done with it, she said. — If you need help with it you can let me know. 

— Uh, ok. I think I’m good, but ok. 

He started to put his headphones on. 

— Can I borrow your book? she said. 

— Uh, which one? 

— Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It’s the only book you own I think. 

— Oh. Sure. 

He took the book off the shelf above his desk and handed it to her.

— I thought you read this already, he said. 

— Do you like it? she said. 

— Uh, I haven’t gotten around to it yet. 

— You should read it. It’s associated with MRAs and incels on 4chan but it’s way better than that. Books like this were canonical for centuries before being discovered by those people who want to twist it for nefarious purposes. He talks a lot about how to face death, which is universal. 

— Right, he said. — It’s about how to be a good man. That’s like, not a political thing. 

— When you put it that way it does actually sound political, she said. — But it’s also historically interesting. It shows what Roman society was like. There were chariot races, that was considered like a vulgar thing. For some reason wrestling matches were considered good though. He calls it “the Greek discipline.” The Romans thought the Greeks were smarter than the Romans, which is probably why everyone still thinks the Greeks were so smart. 

Jordan didn’t say anything. 

— And he mentions sodomy a couple times, Lily added. 

— Uh, I didn’t know that. 

— He does. His uncle or something suppressed it, whatever that means.

— Ok. 

— Anyway, I’m on page one hundred and four, so I’m pretty close to the ending. I’m gonna finish reading it on the train. 

— Cool, he said. — Where are you going? 

— Uh, I’m meeting with a friend, she said. She actually hadn’t thought of her next move, she just wanted to go somewhere. 

When she had gotten her coat and shoes back on, she stood in the dorm hallway and called Lily. She picked up immediately. 

— Hi Lily, Felicity said, and without pausing, went on: — I met with Dr. Brancovic today. What are you doing right now? 

— Uh, Lily’s voice on the other side of the phone said. — I’m on a date. 

— With your new girlfriend? Felicity said. — Remind me what her name is. 

— Yeah, I’m with Isadora, Lily said slowly. — We’re having lunch in Chelsea right now, and then we’re going to an art gallery. 

— What art gallery? Felicity said. — I need to get out of the apartment. And you said you’d introduce me to her but that was two months ago.

— Uh. 

— Well, you promised and I need to go somewhere, Felicity said, and then, picking up speed: — I need to talk. Dr. Brancovic told me I just need to talk more before I can voice train. And like, I hate my voice, but now that I know that I hate it, it’s like talking is like fighting with my own dysphoria in a concrete way. 

— We were gonna go to David Zwirner, but, F, I really just thought this was gonna just be the two of us today, and… 

— Zwirner with a Z? Felicity interjected. — Like, Z-W-R-I-

— F, c’mon. 

— You come on! Felicity yelled. She had already put the phone on speaker mode and was frantically Googling the gallery. — Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes if I make the next train. Your cool rich older girlfriend is just gonna have to deal with meeting me. I feel like I’ve been just living half a life, dude. I need to live. 

~ ~ ~

O the consolation of being able to thrust aside and cast into oblivion every tiresome intrusive impression, and in a trice be utterly at peace! 

Felicity hung up the phone and marched to the elevator, feeling weightless.

Lily, in Chelsea, put her phone back in her handbag. Isadora was, thank God, in the bathroom while all of this happened. She looked down at what remained of her steak and fries and then at Isadora’s clean plate with the leather folder next to it. The waiter came by and took it away. 

From where she was sitting, she could see Isadora walking back from the bathroom, smoothing her dress with her hands. 

— Everything ok? Isadora said when she sat back down. 

— Yeah, Lily said. — My friend called me, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. 

— Oh, ok. Wanna get going? 

— Yeah. 

When they were outside, Isadora said, — What did your friend want? 

— She just wanted someone to talk to, Lily said. — She’s kind of lonely. 

— Sure. Is she also trans? 

— Yeah, Lily said. — She’s like nineteen. 

— Wow, Isadora said. — I wonder what I would have been like if I had come out when I was nineteen.

— It’s overrated, Lily said. 

— No, I mean, I probably wouldn’t have been good, Isadora said. — I was, uh, really angry back then. It’s probably good that I waited. 

Lily didn’t say anything because she was worrying about Felicity actually showing up to the gallery. By the time they had gone a block or so away from the restaurant, disbelief had taken over. She barely left her dorm room, there’s no way. 

Isadora took Lily’s silence as a rebuff and retreated into herself. Why did you say that? she thought. Way to call attention to the age differential. 

(Isadora, who thought this was just a one-off hookup at first and then found herself falling embarrassingly hard for Lily, had spent the last three months waiting for Lily to realize that she was washed up, in premature middle age at 32, with few interests outside of her difficult, demanding job, laden with the ordinary hopes of a middle class career woman — hopes she was sure Lily would find stifled and boring; and, if anything, it made it worse when she realized how much Lily adored her back, because that meant she had to be careful with the younger woman’s feelings. It was a lot of responsibility to have a 22-year-old, even one as vexingly intelligent and headstrong as Lily, attached to her. When Lily took off her clothes in Isadora’s barely-furnished bedroom in an anonymous Long Island City high-rise, she looked at Isadora with eyes that were hopelessly open, almost worshipful. She didn’t know what to do with those eyes, especially when the primary thing she felt when seeing Lily’s perfect body was shame and jealousy. Well, the shame was real and it hit with undiminished force every time, but she could get over it pretty quick when Lily got naked. The thought of it made her slightly hard under her dress.)

— Have you been to this gallery before? Lily said. 

— No, Isadora said. — Which is funny, ‘cause I work a fifteen-minute walk that way. 

— That is funny. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been an art history nerd, but this is like, the first gallery I went to when I moved here. 

— New York has so much in it, y’know, Isadora said. — I had no idea this place was even famous. 

Isadora cringed inwardly at what sounded to her like a banal statement, but Lily gripped her hand tighter and smiled. 

They had come to see some Hilma af Klint paintings after Lily had remarked that a piece of abstract art on Isadora’s wall reminded her of the Swedish painter’s work. Isadora sheepishly admitted that she had bought it at an art fair in Nebraska, and a week later Lily had sent her the gallery’s website. Wanna go? 

Once they got inside, Lily picked up a program card from the front desk and realized that the exhibition they had meant to go was actually at the gallery’s other space uptown. Fear and shame gripped her innards, but then her usual collected demeanor took over and she decided to stall a little bit. 

— Wanna go in here first? she said, gesturing to the open doorway that led to the first-floor area. 

— Sure, Isadora said. 

Isadora lingered by the entrance, which had a a big block of text on the wall, while Lily strode right into the exhibition space. Lily, who had been continually reading books on art in an obsessive rush since she was fourteen, liked to experience what was there to be experienced before inputting yet more recieved ideas into her brain. Drawings on the walls, sculptures in the middle, like hundreds of other rooms she’d been in. The drawings were all charcoal on brown paper, and all depicted stark, desolate landscapes and buildings with rough, sketchy linework. There were a lot of them, most of them smaller than a piece of printer paper, arranged in big zigzags on the wall. 

There wasn’t much to them, but she found herself strangely captivated by the first one she looked at closely. It was about the size of a postcard and depicted a grain silo bisecting a frame house, with what looked like hills and farmland in the background. It was small and perfect and oddly radiant, like it contained some secret in the middle of it. 

— Did you read the wall text? Isadora said, having drifted over next to Lily. No one else was in the room, and she was whispering. 

— No, Lily said, still looking at the drawing. 

— The artist’s name is James Castle. He was born deaf and never interacted with the art world until he had been drawing for most of his life. It says that he never learned to read, write, or speak. Or he chose not to. 

— Huh, Lily said. 

Her gaze drifted further and further into the background behind the house, implied with a few smudges but so indubidably there. Hills, farms, fields, distance. Always the moment when, looking closely enough at an image, you see the brush stroke or the charcoal line that proves that you’re looking at something a person made. The little lines overlapping the big ones. 

Unexpectedly, tears started to well up in her eyes, and she leaned into Isadora as her vision blurred. 

Just then, Felicity opened the front door to the gallery. After looking around the front area, she found the gallery where Lily and Isadora were. 

— Hi Lily, she said across the empty gallery. Isadora looked up, but Lily didn’t seem to hear. 

Felicity closed the space between them, her steps echoing on the concrete floor. 

— You know, there’s so many places like this in New York, and you can just walk into them, Felicity said. — No one’s stopping you. It feels like something you’re supposed to have to pay for. Like the MoMa. Are you Isadora? 

— Yeah, that’s me, Isadora said in the same stage whisper as before. 

— Nice to meet you, Felicity boomed. — How’s your afternoon going? 

— Pretty good, Isadora said. — Saturday, you know. 

— Do you go to places like this a lot? Felicity said. — I don’t. 

— I don’t either, Isadora said. 

— She sure does, Felicity said, gesturing at Lily with a limp hand. 

Lily finally turned to look at Felicity, wiping her tears on her sleeves, the moment she was having with the drawing totally broken. The feeling of twisty embarrassment in her guts was intensifying.

— I had my first voice training session this morning, Felicity said, directing the comment to Isadora. — Lily got me eight sessions for Christmas. The voice coach told me I’m a vocal avoider and I need to talk more. She’s right. I kind of find talking scary, which is why I have to do more of it now. 

Lily was looking at her in total disbelief. 

— Y’know, I’m a computer science student and the university put me with a guy roommate, so I don’t have a lot of opportunities to talk. Nothing I do requires it. I’m like the definition of a shut-in autistic trans girl, except I don’t really get the whole catgirl thing. 

— Oh, I’m a staff engineer at Google, Isadora said. — So I get it. I go whole work days not talking to anyone. 

— Nice, Felicity said. — FAANG, those companies basically rule the world now. I’d like to think that I have the morals to not end up doing your job, but I probably will. I like money. I don’t have enough of it right now and it’s sort of horrible. The more money you have, the more insulated you’re gonna be from, like, climate change. 

Isadora narrowed her eyes a bit, but she smiled. Felicity didn’t even register the change. Lily was sort of glaring at Felicity, similarly to no avail. 

— If I could choose my ideal job, I’d want to be a software engineer for the electrical grid, Felicity went on. — Building out like the most redundant systems possible, thinking of every imaginable problem, doing something with life-or-death consequences, it sounds perfect for me. I think those jobs are impossible to get if you’re not a super-genius. But I guess that’s true of Google too. 

— Trust me, a lot of the people I supervise are not anything like super-geniuses, Isadora said. 

— Sure. That’s reassuring, I guess. I’d love to talk to you about your work. What are your trans benefits like? I think I want to get FFS. 

— They’re good, Isadora said. — I wouldn’t ask for better. 

— Cool, Felicity said. — Like, I have done nothing besides estrogen yet, and I sometimes forget that there’s more that you can do. When I just said ‘I want to get FFS’ out loud, I realized that that’s actually true. But I forget a lot. I guess that’s something I can get out of talking more. 

Isadora just nodded. Lily had walked away from the two of them and had started examining other drawings, trying desperately to recapture the moment of aesthetic bliss that she had experienced before. Now, the drawings were totally inert to her, and every time Felicity spoke in her loud, deep voice Lily almost winced. 

— I don’t want you to think that I’d just be in it for the surgeries, Felicity said. — I like, would love to talk to you about your work. I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone who actually does the thing and isn’t some soulless career ambassador type. 

— Sure, Isadora said. — I’d do that. 

— I bet you don’t talk to Lily all that much about your job. Not that you’d want to. But here you are, participating in her interests. 

— Isn’t everyone supposed to be interested in art? Isadora said. 

Lily had given up on having an aesthetic experience and kept nervously looking back at the two of them. She had no clue how annoyed Isadora was — she would be annoyed in her place. She presently started pacing around, looking at her feet, willing something to change.

— Well, yes, Felicity said. — But so much of this stuff, I just don’t understand it. And I’m not supposed to, you know? Like you have to know everything about art just to know what they’re specifically doing. It’s for specialists, just like what I do. Some people think that’s pretentious but it makes sense to me. I don’t even try to get it. I’ve accepted that I’m just an idiot about some things. 

— Susan Sontag says something like that somewhere, Isadora said. 

— She says she’s an idiot about art? Felicity said. — That seems unlikely. 

— Never mind, Isadora said. 

Felicity turned to look at the drawing that a moment ago made Lily cry. Isadora looked with her, trying to figure out what it was that affected Lily so much. Maybe I’m an idiot about art, too, Isadora thought. There was something freeing about it. 

— Lily didn’t want me to come here, Felicity said. — But I didn’t have anyone else to talk to. My roommate is a moron and I think he hates me. Once that vocal coach told me I just need to talk more, it was like I realized a bunch of stuff at once. I realized how fucking bored I am all the time. School is a joke, it’s like everything I’m doing just feels like playing a little game, and I don’t really have any friends. I’m taking four math classes and four CS classes and it’s like, I still just find myself with nothing to do, scrolling on Twitter all the fucking time. It’s a joke. The only reason I’m not at Stanford or something is ‘cause I was getting beat up every day when I was in high school for being gay. There were other gay kids, so that wasn’t the only reason, but it was definitely one of them. So, like, I stopped showing up and my grades tanked. 

— I’m sorry, Isadora said. 

— Don’t be, Felicity said, putting her face really close to the drawing. — All I’m saying is that I’m bored. I just need the piece of paper, and then I guess I’ll try to get a job where I can get all my trans shit sorted out, and then I’ll find work that’s actually interesting. 

Isadora appraised Felicity while she was scrutinizing the drawing. She was pretty in the face, and had long wheat-colored hair that would probably look nice if she washed it. She was wearing big jeans and a big featureless grey sweatshirt under a black parka. She had a sort of shapeless torso with a little bit of a belly that nudged the kangaroo pocket of the sweatshirt out. 

Lily had drifted back. 

— Was she the one who called you when I was in the bathroom? Isadora said with a smile. — Did you tell her she couldn’t come meet us? 

— Yeah, Lily said, blushing. 

— I did call her, Felicity said, drawing back from the picture on the wall. — She told me she was on a date, but y’know, I’ve heard so much about you, so I wanted to meet you in person. She’s always talking about you. 

— Really? Isadora said, playfully smiling at Lily. 

— I’m surprised you didn’t know that already. She’s always talking about how nice it is to date someone older. How much more mature you are than, like, her previous girlfriends, who were all cis and didn’t shower. 

Isadora was grinning now. 

— And, I don’t know, Felicity went on, — respectfully, I’m straight, or like straight-ish, but I think you’re gorgeous. Is it true you’ve only been on hormones for a year? 

— Yeah, Isadora said. 

— Nice, me too, Felicity said. — I guess this stuff really is magic, just like they say. I assume you take better care of yourself than I do, so that’s a factor too. 

Isadora, animated by a sudden perverse desire to crack this whole situation wide open, found herself saying, — What else does Lily say about me? 

Lily grabbed Isadora’s arm and sort of pulled on it in a gesture neither of them really knew the meaning of. Isadora pretended to ignore it. Felicity wasn’t looking at them, so she didn’t notice the silent distress unfolding between the two of them. 

— She says you’re good in bed, Felicity said, her face two inches from the surface of the paper. — That your dick is nice. That it’s a relief to find someone who actually seems to enjoy being dominant. 

Isadora blushed and Lily’s face was ashen.

— I guess that’s a problem for lesbians, Felicity said, looking at another one of the James Castle drawings. — I think Lily shouldn’t repeat that around anyone else our age, any of her ex-girlfriends are the types to probably think that she’s being groomed or something. I mean, 22, 31. People got married with that kind of age gap in the 1950s and no one really seemed to care. 

— That’s true, Isadora said. 

— We can’t, like, assume that all those relationships were uniformly horrible. But you say that to a young queer person and they lose their minds. I need to spend less time on the internet, she said, as if she was just realizing it for the first time. — I mean, Lily’s been out as trans for 5 years, and you’ve been out for less than one, so it sort of balances out, power-dynamic-wise. Also, Lily’s gonna graduate in like four months and then it will be dramatically less weird. 

— That’s for certain, Isadora said. — I worry sometimes that people at work will find out that I’m dating her. I wish I could just tell them, like, it’s just what happens when you’re trans, and in some ways, she’s a lot older than I am.

— Sure, whatever, Felicity said. — Anyway, I think Lily tells me all this stuff because she assumes that ‘cause I have no friends, like, who am I gonna go tell it to? But I’ve turned over a new leaf. I’m making friends this year. 

She turned to face the two of them. She couldn’t quite read their facial expressions, but something about them made her realize that something was off. 

— I hope I haven’t already ruined it, Felicity said, quieter. 

— I don’t think so, Isadora said. 

— What do you think of this art? Lily said. 

— I don’t know anything about art, Felicity said. — That said, I think these are sort of juvenile. But they’ve got a sort of charm to them. Who’s the artist? 

—Why don’t you walk with me over here, Lily said. — I want to talk to you.  

They went to the other side of the gallery. Isadora pretended to look at the drawings but because there was no one there, she could still clearly hear them. 

— You need to leave, Lily hissed. 

— I’m sorry, Felicity whispered back. 

— Like seriously.

— I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. 

— Like what the fuck were you thinking, all that stuff about the age gap in our relationship?

— I mean do you talk about it? 

— No.

— It’s kind of an elephant in the room.

—Whatever. You just need to leave.

—I need to shit anyway, Felicity said, looking nervously around the gallery. 

— Fine. Go do that. 

— Like kind of really bad. Is there a bathroom here?

—Ask at the front desk, I don’t fucking know. 

Felicity ran out of the room. Lily and Isadora both winced. 

— I am so sorry, Lily said once she was gone.

— Don’t be, Isadora said, putting her arm around Lily. — Is she gonna be ok? 

— Yes, Lily said through gritted teeth. — She’s going to the bathroom. I want to just, like, look at the fucking drawings. 

Isadora drifted over to the center of the room while Lily returned to the drawings. Under glass, there was a collection of boxes of several different sizes, some of them scuffed and dirty, all of them with twine wrapped around them. Isadora leaned down to read the card. 

These “bundles,” as his family called them, were the storage system Castle used for his drawings. He meticulously filed all of his drawings away into these boxes, and hid them in various places around his family’s property. Some of them were buried under the dirt floor of their house. 

That’s why Lily couldn’t look away, she thought, examining the boxes one by one, feeling herself almost magnetically drawn to them. I get it now. 

Lily was slowly moving between each drawing, examining them closely. After what felt like a long time, Isadora walked out of the gallery to look for the bathroom. 

~ ~ ~

Be like the headland against which the waves break and break: it stands firm, until presently the watery tumult around it subsides once more to rest. 

In the gallery bathroom, Felicity pulled out the copy of Meditations. There was already some wear along the edges from getting jostled around in her bag all afternoon. 

She was certain Lily and Isadora had left. I can’t believe those are my only friends, she thought. And Isadora wasn’t her friend. 

She had read on the internet that IBS was psychosomatic. She wondered what Marcus Aurelius would have said about that. His book seemed insulated from such indignities somehow, just as it was from the contingencies of real people. The better part of it was about the triumph of dignity over pain, a manifest impossibility. Pain is the king of the world. It wins every time. 

Maybe she had learned something from him, though. She opened the book to the last few pages and mouthed the words. 

When she finished reading, she was deep in the throes of an episode. The stolid, plodding prose was comfortable somehow, and without it, it was worse. 

Staring at the tile, she tried to make the valve-closing sound from before. Her breath came out shaky and she couldn’t sustain it for long. 

She cried a little bit. 

Right on cue, someone came in to the bathroom and knocked on the stall door. 

— You ok in there? It was Isadora’s voice. 

— Yeah, Felicity sort of groaned. — Uh, sorry about that. I’m sorry. 

— Don’t be, Isadora said. — Lily’s going home. I’ll wait for you. I’ll be by the entrance. We can talk about my work if you still want to do that. I don’t have anything going on this afternoon. 

— Oh, Felicity said. — Ok. 

— See you out there? Isadora said. 

— Uh, yeah, Felicity said. — Sure. This might take a while. Just so you know. 

— That’s fine, Isadora said. 

Felicity believed her. It really was fine. It was somewhere in the way she said it. She was almost sure of it. 

1. The section epigraphs are from Maxwell Saniforth’s 1964 translation of Mediations