Page 27 of Best Woman
“Back then? Definitely.” I shiver. It’s because of the AC, I tell myself. “Now…I’d like to think I let people in a little bit more. The people who count, at least. But I still feel so, I don’t know, passive all the time. Like my life isn’t something I’m participating in, but something that’s just happening to me.”
“I think that’s bullshit.”
I choke on a piece of cake and Kim magnanimously offers a sip of water from a reusable bottle in the cup holder. “Care to elaborate on that?” I ask once I’ve recovered.
“I won’t presume to knowthatmuch about you, but I don’t think a passive person would be living the life you’re living. You fuckingtransitionedin a world where that’s still a pretty radical thing to do. The world told you that you were one thing, but you said fuck that,you’re wrong. That’s fucking badass.”
“I know all that intellectually, I guess, but I can’t alwaysfeelit. When I came out, it mostly felt like…a lie I just couldn’t keep telling anymore. That’s what no one here seems to get. At first, everyone saw me as this impulsive weirdo who woke up one day and decided poof, I’m a woman! And I couldn’t judge themtooharshly for that, because I have always been impulsive.”
There’s nothing Kim hates more than a liar,Rachel whispers in my head. But I’m not lying. I’m just…curating the truth.
“That doesn’t give them a pass to be shitty. You don’t have to apologize or make excuses for them. It sucks that they think that.”
And I let myself do the thing I shouldn’t do, in fact justpromised myself I wouldn’t do: I dredge up all the old hurt and paranoia of four years ago, the fears my family disproved almost immediately after I came out. “It sucks to know that they think this is something I’m going to change my mind about in a few years.”
“Damn,” Kim says, sucking a breath in through her teeth. “That’s brutal.”
“One of the most—and believe me I’d love tonotuse this word—affirmingmoments when I first started transitioning was telling my grandparents. I was terrified, so sure that they wouldn’t get it, that they’d just have no way to even conceptualize what I was talking about. But when I told them, my grandma said, ‘When you were little, you used to always tell us you were a girl.’ ”
The story is spilling out of me in a way I can’t control.
“And that was great, because they got it, and they’ve been supportive even if they get a pronoun wrong or slip with my name now and then. But like, if Itoldthem”—and I hate so deeply that I can feel my throat getting tight, my eyes burning—“why didn’t they justlisten? I know, I know, it was a different time and there wasn’t the fuckingvisibilityandresourcesthere are now, but it’s what makes me furious because you’re right, Kim.” I lift my head up to look into her eyes, which are wide and unblinking. “Deciding to transition was one of the first times in my life I took real agency, where I made a big scary decision about who I was and how I was going to show up in the world, and I worry sometimes that they think twenty years from now we’ll be sitting around Aiden’s perfect house while his perfect children and their golden retriever run around the backyard, laughing about that time I decided to be a girl for a couple years.”
For a moment there’s just the sounds of the AC blasting, the faint hum of the radio playing Fleetwood Mac. I did it again, took something real but made it uglier than it was, made myself the victim, all so Kim would look at me with that same frank, open expression on her face, no pity or sympathy or unease at my extreme overshare. Just letting me vent, letting me dig myself into a deeper hole of lies and drag her down with me, all so I can prove something to my sad little inner child. I have to salvage this, somehow.
“I’m sorry, that was a lot. Too much.”
“It wasn’t,” Kim says. “And I can’t say that I get all of it, because I’m not you, but I think I get a little bit of it.” There’s a moment where she seems to teeter on the edge of a decision, searching my face for…something. It looks like she finds it. “Do you remember Emily Sullivan?”
“Oh god,” I groan. “I haven’t thought about her in years.” Emily Sullivan was every high school archetype come to life: perfect, pretty, popular, and mean enough to make you cry if you crossed her. She’d been in Kim’s year and so far away from my subterranean social status that we’d never even interacted, but every school had an Emily, someone who shone with their own self-importance, making everyone around them that much duller in comparison.
“We…dated isn’t even really the right word for it. We hooked up all through senior year. I was totally, ass over tits in love with her. And the crazy thing is, I think she loved me too. At least a little bit.”
I’m shocked, but not that much. I distinctly remember hearing at some point that Emily had come out after college. “She wouldn’t tell anyone about us,” Kim continues, “especially herparents. It wasn’t because of the gay stuff, or at least not just because of it. She said her parents might be able to handle her having a girlfriend. But not a Black girlfriend.”
“Fuck.”
Kim shakes her head with a haunted look in her eyes. “I haven’t always been as self-possessed as I appear.”
I snort. “That can’t possibly be true. I bet you came out of the womb cool, calm, collected and flirted with the doctor.”
“Something like that, yeah.” She’s smiling again, so there’s that. “I let Emily keep me her dirty little secret for far too long because at that point I…maybe I didn’t agree with her, but I loved her enough to hurt myself for her. So yeah, I know a little bit about not fitting into someone’s idea of what their life should look like. I know what it’s like to watch someone say one thing and do another, and how much that hurts.”
I am a monster. I am the worst person who ever lived. Not only because I’m another girl who has used Kim, but because I’m not going to stop.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I say, grasping her hand where it’s still resting on my thigh. “Thank you for sharing that and…for everything.”
We gaze at each other for what feels like an eternity, but is only long enough for the Fleetwood Mac song to end, giving way to Kate Bush.
“…you had a temper like my jealousy, too hot, too greedy…”
“I’m really glad to be here with you,” Kim says.
She shouldn’t be. I know that now more than ever. But I’ll take it.
Deciding we’ve spentfar too long around straight people tonight, Kim makes the executive decision that we need to find the closest gay bar and “recharge.” The closest gay bar happens to be a spot I know rather well, as it was where I used to cruise the summer between high school and college when I realized I was about to move to New York City and had no ideahowto cruise. Hudson’s didn’t exactly prepare me well, because I was young and cute enough that all I needed to do was walk in to have my pick of the patrons—not that the selection was huge.
As we enter, I realize not much has changed. Same weathered vinyl booths, same stale smokey air, same peeling Tom of Finland posters dotting the walls. The jukebox in the corner is playing Donna Summer but no one is grooving on what could only generously be called the dance floor. There are only a few patrons scattered around, but they all swivel toward the door when we enter and immediately dismiss us when they see we’re women. Some things never change.
