Has anybody heard anything?



A long string of comments on Aubrey’s Facebook page asked the same question. I stood outside of the DMV pushing refresh on my friend Torrey’s iPhone. Somebody said they heard about police action near the Golden Gate Bridge, but that was it. At the top of Aubrey's feed, she had posted a picture of the choppy gray water running beneath the bridge, captioned with her words:

Being trans sucks!

I handed Torrey back the phone — mine was dead in my pocket — and we got on the bus northbound.

Digital information was the only way I knew Aubrey. Aubrey, who typed in the corner of my screen and left pictures of Pusheen the cat; Aubrey, who asked out boy-mode me in my last profile picture before transition as a joke; Aubrey, who would definitely be at the third GaymerX conference if I decided to travel down to the Bay. But now she was silent, Facebook was silent, and the only thing that could tell me whether Aubrey was alive or not was my intuition. Refusing to feel, I formed a compartment within myself – a box of cold wood that I crouched into, and waited.

As a child, I learned how to make these compartments and hide inside them. They allowed me to stay at the dinner table when I was being screamed at, or look into the mirror without really seeing myself. The dark arts of dysphoria and depersonalization is something I’ve tried very hard to unlearn, and my transition as a transgender woman — which has now been happening for two months — has been one of the ways I've searched for reintegration: a way of living without boxes and compartments.

But walking through downtown Seattle, I didn’t want to bring those pieces together. I needed somewhere to be other than myself.

I went into a coffee shop to boot up my computer. Still nothing on Facebook. I started to write a cover letter and revise my resume; a few minutes later a new update appeared on Aubrey’s status. The police had identified her body in the water. I sent a text to my friend Andrew — can I come over, I need to come over. An hour later, Andrew let me in and I climbed the stairs two at a time. I told him that I would like him to tell me it’s OK to cry. He led me to his couch and told me it’s OK to cry. And then the floor broke down and I cried, and cried, and cried, and cried.

When I stopped crying, all I could see was the image of the water running beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Aubrey was gone.