“Is it about what happened with Laney?”
“No. Yes. A little. I don’t fucking know.” I sighed.
“Something else happen?”
I dropped onto a weight bench. He got me to talk after all. “My anniversary is coming up.”
Armin sat beside me. “Of your transition?”
“Yeah. Starting T.”
“How many years will it be?”
“Five.”
“Wow.” He swept a hand through his hair. That body of his was insane. I like girls—at least, 99 percent of my attraction is to girls—but T ramped my libido so high that preference sometimes mattered less than a beautiful body in my immediate vicinity. I looked away. Armin went on, “I don’t know if I have it in me to devote myself to something like you have.”
“It’s not devotion. Devotion is a choice.”
He thought about that. “Getting tired of it?”
“I’m not sure.” I raised my head, felt the tethers of muscle twining down my neck. “I sort of feel tired of everything.”
“That sounds like depression. Still seeing your therapist?”
“Yep,” I lied.
Not going to tell him I didn’t have the cash.
Not going to fess up that exhibiting myself to a million viewers twice a week paid peanuts. That I needed a real job but had probably boxed myself out of ever having one. Google my name and you’ll find Renard Grant’s entire medical history. His surgeries. His scars. This TERF blogger actually put together a mock medical chart for me, full of words like mental disorder and elective amputation. So thoughtful of her.
People don’t hire weirdos like me. Once you cash in on your weirdness, you’re stuck milking it for a living.
I would always be seen as trans before anything else. I’d guaranteed it.
“Okay,” Armin said. “But you don’t have to save it all for him. We’re your friends, Ren. Talk to us.” He clapped my delt. Strong but gentle. “We’ll shoulder your burdens with you. That’s what friends do.”
I looked away again, with a different sort of awkwardness.
Testosterone inhibits crying. It’s a documented biological phenomenon: men don’t cry less than women because we’re uncaring assholes; we cry less because T jams it up. We still feel everything that makes women cry. We just can’t express it as freely.
So I sat there with my throat closing around a tiny pearl of pain, unable to push it out.
Armin twisted a towel and said, “By the way, there’s a job opening at that clinic you go to. Intake screening, no medical training required. I could drop your name.”
I frowned. “You know people there?”
“I volunteered. After Laney’s . . . exposure of my past, I wanted to serve other people. To offset what I’d taken.”
Penitence.
Strange, how Laney was more forgiving of her demon than I was of mine.
“It’s merely an offer,” he said. “You don’t have to—”
“Did she tell you I’m broke?”
He shrugged, noncommittal.
“Armin, I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t want a handout.”
“It’s not a handout. You do the work, you get paid.”
“I don’t need your help.” I totally did.
“Okay. Like I said, simply an offer.”
“It’s not okay.” Here came hothead Ren again. “I’m sick of people treating me like I need special considerations. Like I’m weak and helpless. I’m a normal fucking guy with an unusual history. That’s all.”
“Maybe I phrased it badly. Of course you’re a normal guy, Ren. You’re not helpless, or weak. But you are marginalized, and I’ve treated people like you poorly in the past. And people like Laney, and Blythe.”
“And Ellis.”
“Lots of people.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t change that. The world has always been harder for you than it is for me. But if I can tilt the balance in the right direction, I will. Using my privilege to correct imbalances is the right thing to do.”
“Sorry. I appreciate it, man. I’m just—touchy, lately.”
“Job offer stands. I’d rather it went to a friend.”
Me at an LGBT health clinic. Counseling scared kids whose parents didn’t know. Telling them it was going to be okay, the way I told millions of strangers online.