Fired up and ready for a dip, I stood and walked toward the surf. Breaking into a run, my feet hit the ocean, splashing the surprisingly warm water with every step. The Northumberland Strait is said to have the warmest ocean temperatures north of Virginia because of how shallow it is, ranging in depth between seventeen and sixty-eight meters. Separating Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the sunsets are always astounding. I dove into the salt water, it had been ages since I was in the ocean. I surfed for a couple years in Los Angeles, my ex Samantha and I went almost every day when we were together. I do miss it, frightening but soothing all the same, it is easy to see how people become addicted. The rush, the connection, you look at the ocean in an entirely new way.
I swam farther out, warm but still refreshing. My eyes stung, and I made a mental note that goggles would be a part of the beach collection in my trunk. I resurfaced, my ponytail soaked and dripping down my back. My body went frigid, not due to the cold, but because I caught a glimpse again. It wrenched me out of the present. My head involuntarily tilted down, chin to my neck, as it did throughout the day every day. My insides tightened, my brow furrowed, puzzled by a body that did not compute. An incorrect calculation that I did not have the answer to. It was exhausting and only getting worse. How will I do this forever?
Nikki went for a swim shortly after me. I dried myself with a towel, avoiding my chest. The blanket sat in the shade. I lay on my stomach, my boobs compressed, taunting me, jogging my memory, demanding I be reminded. I closed my eyes, the sound of the waves pacified me, and I fell asleep.
Nikki and I napped on the beach together, when we woke up it was time to go. I threw on a T-shirt and we gathered our things. Walking back to the car, I looked around at the people enjoying themselves. Kids and their sandcastles. Two guys threw a football back and forth, swim shorts and no shirts. The ball flew with a perfect spin. A woman with a half tent organized snacks, children ran up for juice boxes and ketchup chips. My brain was as hot as the sand.
How do people do it? How do they shut off the noise? And I don’t mean “happy,” they may not be happy, but they seem to be able to exist at least.
People existed with a fluidity that I wished to possess. Motion entwined with the present and an engagement with life that I had lost a long time ago. I needed my routine, I needed specific food. Change or disruption threw me off, which was unacceptable due to my need for control. All I could do was cling. Every day I hung on tight, bound up. A blockage of sorts. I would need to drain the wound.
In the evening we sat around a bonfire. We sat close, sharing a joint, and leaned back to stare at the stars. I looked toward the orchard, it glittered with slithers of moonlight. The darkness behind the trees made me feel useless, no stars would ever guide me to safety, I could not speak their language.
Nikki and I could be apart for years but within moments of reuniting sync up all over again. As I write this, I will be driving up to Nova Scotia next week. The trip will be my first time to Halifax since sharing the whole trans thing with the world. My grip less tight, my mind relaxed, finally the space to hold it all. I am eager to be with Nikki. I want to hug her, look her in the eyes, to show her who I have become, to show her that I made it. It is July right now, so I am certain the beach trunk will come to good use, and this time, no ponytail and no fucking sports bra. Just there with an old friend to soak life in.
After Nikki left, I was alone in the woods again, which I love. I wasn’t sure if I could be someone who lived in a cabin by themselves in the middle of the forest for months, but turns out, I very much am and it may be necessary in order for me to get to the bottom of my own brain. I had to be isolated, I had to not be something to someone or someone to something. I’d exhausted myself, trying with all of me to figure out what was wrong, running from one place to the next, fooling myself into thinking I could find it. But the answer was in the silence, the answer would only come when I chose to listen.
27
PORTAL
When I was in the cabin, I found myself able to connect with creativity again. That muscle I was accustomed to using in front of a camera suddenly held untold possibilities. I started writing a screenplay with an old friend, Beatrice Brown.
We’d met when I was sixteen. The day after wrapping a film in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, I flew across the Atlantic. I had landed the lead in a film called Mouth to Mouth, which would be shot in the UK, Germany, and Portugal. It was my first time in London, and in Europe in general. I was playing Sherry, a sixteen-year-old runaway who joins a radical collective in Camden Town called SPARK and follows them to their commune on the outskirts of Lisbon. As typically happens in the movies, things go awry, and Sherry must do whatever she can to get away from the controlling and abusive leader before it is too late.
Bea was cast as Nancy, a teenager who grew up in squats, just as Bea had. The character was in part based on Bea, actually, who had often moved around Europe in a small RV, squatting on vacant land and abandoned industrial parks. There was a lot of ketamine, a lot of illegal raves, and a lot of punk music. Bea had a band called Beastellabeast with Stella Nova (aka Stella New), the guitar legend who played with the Rich Kids, Iggy Pop, and Generation X. You do not meet many people in your life like Bea, if any. She is not afraid of people’s silly perceptions and if she is, fuck it, she still takes life head-on.
That first night in London, Bea took me around various squats in Dalston. I’d never been to a squat before. We visited pals of Bea’s at one place where the floor and walls were all gray-and-white concrete with very little light. Bare mattresses, sleeping bags, and blankets were scattered around the room. As we were leaving, a dude who appeared a touch strung out threw lightbulbs at us. They smashed on the pavement as we briskly walked down the road. I worried about dogs’ paws.
“This is called Murder Mile,” Bea said as one of her nipples peeked through a hole in her torn white-and-green vintage dress.
The next squat had a very different vibe, practically posh. An old town house with a large backyard. A place with character, light coming through half-repaired cracked windows. It was packed with people, some watching a projected film, others dancing to music and milling about. Someone always offering you something.
I had my first sex scene on the set of Mouth to Mouth. It was with Eric Thal, an actor double my age who played the group’s leader. This was not a romantic, intimate scene, but coercive and abusive. It took place in a vineyard in Portugal. Outside, behind the main house, chickens pecked about. I had a half-shaved head and wore a tattered jean vest covered in black marker drawings. Eric, shirtless with broad shoulders and strong torso, towered above me. His buzzed hair left his face exposed and full. He never spoke much to me or anyone, which is of course fine, no one is required to be social. I did wonder if he was Method though, purposefully keeping himself separate.
It was a brutal scene to shoot. I was nearly naked, cold back pressed into the hard ground, and Eric, for whatever reason, kept shouting inches from my face. He’d get up, walk away, yell incoherently, and then return on top. No one seemed to mind but me. After the final take of the final shot, the director sat next to me on the cobblestones and burst into tears. I comforted her.
Beatrice and I speak of this period as adults, reflecting on our behavior, their behavior. What seemed clear and pure then is murky now. But I can hold that and also know this was one of the most important times in my life.
Sitting in the back of a pickup truck, driving through the Portuguese countryside, ponytail blowing in the wind, Bob Dylan blaring out of the stereo, speeding by the Quercus suber trees, the trees that produce cork and make up over a quarter of the country’s forests—they are everywhere. Their thick and bumpy bark is extracted and shipped all over the world. Underneath, a dark reddish trunk revealed. The color reminded me of the red soil on Prince Edward Island. They stand sixty-five-feet tall, branches contorted, climbing up to the sky and showing off their coriaceous leaves, which do not fall. Such resilience, growing their skin back again and again. I stared at them in awe, lining the road, never ending. I loved their shape, their pride, the beauty of imperfection. This is one of the moments I breathed in so hard as to never forget.
Both feelings can exist, making up the whole, a fullness that I would not trade, something I try to remind myself when old sentiments turn up.
Bea and I had always spoken about collaborating on a creative project, and now—she in Oxford, me in the cabin with Mo—we had the time, we found routine, discipline, and pushed when we were stuck. It was fun, I found myself stretching my imagination in different ways. I tacked colored note cards on a bulletin board in the cabin, I spent hours talking with Bea, writing. Thinking.