What if everything you knew about yourself was wrong?

What if you had never known yourself at all in the beginning?

Was it neglecting the playing musician on the street, just because you decided to save up?

My hands trembled. I watched the cigarette box being passed around, I was still some sort of mamma’s boy, someone who would still pick up the call and say that I am okay, lying. Knowing that standing up to the rest of the family meant something my mother would never do. It was the least she could do, with her misgendering me. Maybe somewhere deep down I was meant to be a woman but ended up as Frankenstein’s monster on the way. Or maybe I was too much like my mother, keeping the mouth closed in a very thin line and displeasing everyone was at the end of my list, even if I had done it.

I had walked through the labyrinth and through poverty growing up, so what would be different this time? What was there all over again? I was like a new spectacle, but that was simply because I was a new person, a new person to look at the surroundings and get asked if I was alright. I was offered food and water. Was that enough? When does the world end to erase everything? I couldn’t decide on which lie I wanted to dwell on, which one was the reason I was here. No one asked many questions, I guess it was because it was still about cigarettes at the moment. No heavy drugs would be dealt with, as far as I understood. Some looked far too skinny and their backs carrying the strains of growing up. We were all chucked into a world where we all held our problems and had to suddenly grow up with a joint in our hand.

I recalled an interview of a favourite musician where he laid down on the floor, laughing and that had been what I had feared. I had the shivers, knowing that one day I would open up to all these people which were already using my name and they had their own speculations on me. They had their own thoughts which I couldn’t control, which I could just journal about.

I could just draw them in hope that someone online would look at them.

I spent some time in a hostel, wasting the last money and avoiding people like the plague, while here no one flinched at the fact that I couldn’t grow a beard yet. I eyed the guy on the corner, reading, he seemed cute. But would he fuck a trans guy? With all the commotion, I was just left without touching myself. I just wanted some misery sucked out of me. Everything seemed like a dystopia with classes left on top to attend and to answer stupid questions to the few friends I had, who had no clue what a trans person was.

I wanted coffee. So I excused myself into the kitchen, watching a few curious eyes lose interest very fast and I had settled on water. I still had a brief allowance, it was just that I didn’t know what to do with my life anymore and it wasn’t like I wanted the degree either. I was free-falling and I couldn’t stop, I didn’t want to stop. I just wanted it all to end, like last night while staring at the wall of the hostel. I couldn’t journal my thoughts, I couldn’t put pen to paper. I just needed it all out, but nothing was working.

I walked outside, I walked down, all the way down the hills, past the music bars, back onto the main street, shuddering, even if it wasn’t as cold today and my feet were sore from the Doc Martens I had bought before I had told my family I was trans.

It wasn’t that she was there. She was sitting on the bench, smoking a cigarette. Like I had said, it was early for weed.

Would it be okay only because it’s straight?

I don’t think there is love at first sight, but there is attraction at the first sight. Just watching her, I knew that everything she would say would be true. I could feel some sort of two sided street, I could feel her anxiety. The mixture of her thoughts to be dumped into ash was my greatest fear. I was no phoenix, I was no fool, if I were discarded I would be done so.

I would lie to myself, if I wouldn’t describe her cut with scissors bangs, her hair hidden in a beanie, leaving the evidence of anxiety of meeting me again, outside, it was something we both agreed on. I wanted to hear her. So I just stood, as she played her guitar, making only a few euros, which seemed to be the way things go.

Love is such a scary word, because I could never tell her that. It was shrouded with the fear of an unwanted confession. I would never be able to write again, unless I spread the truth out like a map. My mind is immersed in love, which I fear I’ve spilled over.

It’s a full transformation.

“I should’ve told you this after sex.” I wouldn’t even recall what she had said. What was the origin of dispute that time, but it was the last time I would go outside of the weed smelling halls with the ukuleles in different corners and some people scattered on sofas with flip flops in winter.

And there she was. Applying make up, lipstick, dark eyes looking way past beyond me, anxiety leaving no trace of being high a few minutes ago. I knew that I was no longer wanted.

But it still gives me nightmares.

Women scare me, because it’s such a boudoir performance.

It was a true story. She had told me that and kicked me out of her heart, now her hair longer and in a bun with walking on eggshells where we both block each other, wondering far too much what the fuck had happened to the man who had seen us both as men. He perhaps saw us as lovers, but he never told us anything he thought of us as he would speak to us.

Instead she would look at me, dark eyes focusing in me in a love now long gone.

I couldn’t look at her in the eyes and I knew she was the woman to make love one more time.

And I had left. It was never my fault, it was just my unlucky roll of the dice with women and even unluckier with the fondest of men, because the stars wouldn’t align. But at least I understood men and wanted them.

Sitting outside on the same bench we had met, I wondered of the labyrinths I would never see again. But fuck them. Fuck women.

–

It’s odd to think about this story, because I had left so much unwritten and so much had been changed to prose. So much is going to be left to rot and so much had been written at the same time. Originally these were two separate stories and this one was called cold spilled coffee.

I hope you enjoyed both parts and I’ll resume posting Offside next week. Back into the gay we go.

Jamie