I remember the first time I saw her. I sat waiting in LAMILL on Silver Lake Boulevard when she walked in. She was radiant—her dress, her smile, how she pushed her hair from her face. The way she formed a thought moved me, concise, distinct, intelligent, emotional. She didn’t seem afraid. Her best friend sat beside her, out of focus. We discussed books, activism, our collective consciousness, and the deep intelligence of nature. Driving south down Laurel Canyon at Sunset Boulevard, I would pass a giant photograph of her, the poster for her latest film. Her beauty is dangerous, I’d think, it’ll cause a car crash.
I didn’t want to come out. I wanted to be with her, we loved each other, cared deeply and had a meaningful time together. There was a lot of goodness there, healing even. We took an epic trip to Nova Scotia for her birthday. Down to Sable River, not far from my father’s hometown on the south shore. We traveled north, stayed in a friend’s cabin outside of Pugwash. We hiked, made food over the bonfire, swam under a waterfall. I remember napping in the late afternoon, waking up to the gloaming, her favorite time of day. She slept with my head on her chest, I soaked in the silence, her smell. I wish I could bottle this, I thought. I felt the quiet pain that comes with being in love, the risk of it all. We drove along the Northumberland Strait and made our way up to Cape Breton. She told people she was meditating in Maine. I said I was going to visit my folks.
We flew from Halifax to Toronto and waited for our connections in an Air Canada lounge, the space between us locked shut. We were flying to different locations, I can’t remember where. I sat drinking the free espresso while she took the book I was reading, Sex at Dawn, and began to write in the back sleeve, an outpouring of love, one of the most beautiful letters I have ever received. How sad we never got to flourish.
It was not a sustainable relationship, just like when I had kept people hidden. The lying, the anxiety, the disgust. People didn’t “think she was queer,” but they definitely assumed I was, and I don’t think she could handle the shame. Ultimately, she had to do what was best for her, and unfortunately it resulted in my heart being shattered.
Not long after she ended things, one of my only friends who knew about Ryan encouraged me to get out and stop wallowing in my pain. Alia’s friend Sam was having a small games night, did I actually want to go? No. But it felt important to force it, to stop with the self-pity.
“Watch Ryan be there,” I joked.
“No no, she’s not in that circle.”
Which was true.
I sat with Alia on the cushy rug in the A-frame’s living room. We sipped tequila as I attempted to lighten my tone, to lift my shoulders, muster some energy that would make me give a fuck.
About fifteen minutes later the door opened, and before I saw Ryan, I heard her, that glowing warmth in her voice. And then, his voice. He was tall and handsome, an artist with scraggly blondish hair and good style. I stood up and we locked eyes, the room melting, my knees on the brink. She stopped looking, attention returning to her date, his hand on her back. I did my best not to stare.
I beelined for the spiral staircase, gripping the metal railing. Alia followed. I stepped out onto the patio, a concrete formation built into the hill. I lit a cigarette and attempted to calm down, my heart palpitating, my hands trembling. Shortly after, they walked outside with a few others. They joined us as the rules of a game were being explained. I glanced at her, taking in how relaxed she was with him.
Unable to deal, I pretended to get sick. “Oh no, I think food poisoning,” I said, hand moving to cover my mouth.
Scrambling to the washroom, I waited for time to pass, avoiding the mirror, I splashed water on my face. Back in the living room, I sat at a table, arms folded, my head resting on my forearms, looking to the side. Alia rubbed my back as Ryan’s date came over with coconut water. He had no idea about our history, of course. It was a kind gesture, but I wanted to take that coconut water and throw it. Alia tried to intervene. Eventually I got up and headed outside to wait for a car. I kept the secret.
I went from a relationship where attending something like a games night together was inconceivable to watching her being touched by him, her enjoying it, existing in the way she never could with me. I guess I should be happy for her, I tried to convince myself. I wanted to be, to be evolved, but it was too much. It unreservedly gutted me.
Someone will break your heart but you will break one, too.
16
SPEEDO
I was utterly distraught when the final coed season for soccer was ending at age nine or ten, as if I were nursing a torn-up heart. My parents asked the league if I could play one more year, stalling the inevitable transition to the girls’ team. To “not be separated from her friends” is how people perceived it. Yes, of course, but the seemingly undue agony wasn’t just about that. The league allowed me one more season. But after that, I was with the girls.
It was humiliating when the ref would turn to me with a probing glare. My short-haired self would be setting up the ball for kickoff but then be interrupted with: “Boys can’t play on this team.”
“I’m a girl,” I’d respond. Not precisely meaning it, but what else was there to say?
A smarmy smile would spread across his face.
Turns out, I preferred that embarrassment, the sensation that indeed I should not be on the team, an innate feeling the instant boys and girls could no longer compete as one, I’d rather that than what came next.
My chest began to grow, leading to awkward conversations about training bras, forcing me to try to find those perfectly oversize concealing T-shirts; my posture began to fold, shoulders caving in. My confidence dwindled in conjunction with my self-disgust rising. And then my period came. While I was snowboarding with my father in Wentworth, an 815-vertical-foot ski hill about an hour and a half from the city. That smell of metallic blood, a robot leaking. My dad went to the store and got pads. I fussed and fiddled until it was secure in my underwear. I’m going to have to wear this diaper every month? I thought. I wished I could wear a tampon due to the chafing, but no fucking way was I attempting that.
My weight redistributed in a way that I did not understand, my clothes from the Gap’s boys section began to betray me. I could not detect myself. I didn’t transform into me—the me I knew I was—like the other boys did. I was desperate to wake up from this bad dream, my reflection making me increasingly ill. Closing my eyes I’d find the memories, the moments of euphoria, of witnessing myself, praying I’d find that again.
An unlikely source of hope emerged. There was a kid I played soccer with until I had to be with the girls. Tim. Tim’s parents had moved to Halifax from Germany around when he was born. His parents were both engineers who lived on South Street, opposite the Holy Cross Cemetery, in an older, tall red house with a storm porch welcoming you. Mr. Peltzer was a superb and exuberant soccer player, he’d give us pointers, explaining the use and importance of empty space, the movement, a small turn, one touch to find it, head up, to push it forward into the unknown.
It was sweltering out, well, my idea of sweltering at the time. Nova Scotia’s summer temperatures hover around twenty to twenty-five degrees Celsius but can rise as high as thirty to thirty-two degrees with humidity. A few of us boys were at Tim’s. We kicked the soccer ball around the backyard, parents would have been thrilled to know of the imminent exhaustion. Tim’s dad lugged out a kiddie pool. In my memories, it is more substantial than one of those tiny ones, but maybe that’s because I was the tiny one. He began to fill it up, and it struck me, I did not have my bathing suit. Out of sight, out of mind, I hated my swimsuit. I loved swim shorts. Swim trunks, my dad would call them. The words, direct, with two syllables, roused elation in my mouth. Swim trunks. A satisfying crunch.
“We have extra,” said Tim’s dad, upon sensing my concern, “you can use one of Tim’s or Ben’s.”
My face brightened. Tim’s or Ben’s?
I followed him into the house, behind the odor of cigarette smoke. He marched up the stairs, returning to the kitchen with a small red Speedo. Holding it before me, the white drawstring dangled, as if waving.
I’ll just always forget my bathing suit, I thought. I despised those fucking straps, stretching it over my body, concealing my stomach. Every sticky, wet disrobe, I’d wince as it clung, you’re stuck in here. Boys would pinch and pick their drenched and dripping trunks from their thighs. Some glistened in the sun, their small Speedos sleek and tight, Superman’s bathing suit.
“Here, you can wear this.”
Exchanging hands, I was careful not to drop it, a sacred talisman, I felt acutely aware that I could not soil it in any way. Closing the bathroom door behind me, the slam unintentionally forceful, I was intoxicated by the nylon-elastane cardinal treasure. Hurriedly guiding my feet through the holes, I yanked up the Speedo. I climbed onto the toilet, or the edge of the tub, high enough so I could see in the mirror. I tightened and tied the drawstring, looking up triumphantly, grinning ear to ear.