by Miss Unity
For a while it seemed like all I did was travel back and forth to Tennessee. I went to New York and stayed with Hannah. I took the Chinatown bus back down to Tennessee. I went to Chicago to turn tricks with Krystal. We took the Megabus back down to Tennessee. Everyone went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We all went back to Tennessee. Me and Lulu took Bren’s van to Atlanta for the weekend. After that, we drove back up to Tennessee.
In Chicago it was ten degrees. February. Me and Krystal rented an AirBNB on the Gold Coast to see tricks and party. We bought overpriced meth off a teenager on Grindr. We injected the meth and did booty bumps. Lulu was mad at us. She’d wanted us all to go to Florida for vacation. I told myself I needed money, that this was more important. We invited Lulu to come but she declined. I felt comfortable in Chicago. I’d lived there before. I knew how to make a buck. How to find a good time. Plus I wanted to get away from Lulu. I loved her more than anything. That was why I had to run. I hated love, its pressures and obligations. We’d gotten too close too fast and it frightened me. With Krystal things were more casual. We hooked up sometimes. Other times, not. She was never overbearing. Always down for whatever.
We saw a trick together from Craigslist. We’d posted an ad for a double. He seemed like he was high on coke or something, young, in his twenties. He fucked me in the ass then fucked Krystal in the ass while she sucked my dick. He paid us six hundred dollars. Krystal saw another trick by herself. He only liked real girls. I waited in Starbucks for the two of them to finish. I purchased the most expensive drink on the menu. Seven dollar iced something. Blended frozen mango tea with whipped cream. Extra everything. I bought little pound cakes and sandwiches and bottled waters and pressed juices. I went to the liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka for the room. Krystal texted me when she was finished and I went back upstairs. I filled the fridge with the expensive beverages I’d purchased and reveled in the luxury. “We’ll have the best hangover ever,” I said, admiring all the bottles.
Soon it was Krystal’s turn to wait in Starbucks. My trick was Indian. He was scruffy and muscular. Mid-thirties. He asked me if we could kiss. I’d never had a trick request this before. I knew I was supposed to say no. It was supposed to be too intimate. I said yes anyway. I didn’t think it mattered. What was intimacy? It had already been ruined. I couldn’t touch another person without being fucked up. I could barely be awake unless I was high. But kissing a trick is on a whole other level. It was horrible. He wanted to kiss for the full hour. He laid on top of me, pinning my shoulders with his forearms. He pressed my legs together with his knees so I couldn’t move. He wanted me small and lifeless, like a doll. He pried open my mouth with his tongue. He began lapping, like a dog. It felt like his tongue was scooping out my soul. My mouth was a gaping flesh wound, his tongue an evil mollusk. He beat my insides with it. I tried to press myself away, down into the mattress. I tried to zone out. But I couldn’t disappear. It was the longest hour of my life. I didn’t leave my body. I didn’t watch from above. I was there, fully present, for all of it. He paid me two hundred dollars. I never kissed a trick again.
After he left, me and Krystal went to the north side so I could re-up my hormones at the gender wellness clinic. Krystal got an AIDS test while she waited. I got one too, just for fun. They’d call with the results, they said. We’d get them in a couple days.
We went downtown to eat dinner. We ordered lobster rolls, crab bisque, champagne cocktails, shredded brussels sprouts. We paid with hundreds and left a big tip. The waitresses seemed amused and enchanted by us. Everyone did. Could you blame them? We sparkled. Heads turned in the streets. People stopped and stared. We got cat-called. I loved it. Anything for attention. There’s something magical about it. Magnetic. Being all dolled up. Thrift store chic. Young and wild and free, skating on the edge between life and death. Everybody wants that when they see it in others. That freedom. That fantasy. The darkness intermingled with the light. We wanted to die. It felt so fucking good.
Back at the AirBNB we drank vodka with orange juice and got ready for the club. I wore my black sequin dress with the white collar. It made me look like Courtney Love. Aubrey gave me the dress the year before, when I was first starting transition. It was secretly from Ann Taylor. I told no one this fact. I put on red lipstick. We both did our eyes, painted giant wings with jet black gel liner. We dissolved some meth in a few drops of water at the bottom of an empty enema. We took turns lying on our backs, squirting the bumps into each other’s rectums. We got high. We stared in the mirror and examined our pupils. We took selfies. We were demon sisters. Fallen angels. We looked like we could have been twins.
“You can do anything you want to me,” Krystal said. “I don’t care. You can kill me if you want to.”
“Same,” I replied.
Meth is not the best drug for clubbing. It is better suited for intimacy. Small groups, hotel rooms. Deep conversations, deep fucking. For dancing and disco lights what you really want is molly. We didn’t have molly, though. Just meth and booze. We drank Jägerbombs and vodka Red Bulls. I tipped the bartenders a ten for each round. I felt aggressive and lonely. The more we drank the worse it got. I wanted to fight. I felt ruthless. Dancing felt terrible. I danced with an older white guy for a while. He invited us back to his hotel in the Loop. “Trump International, baby,” he said. “He’s lying,” Krystal whispered. She was probably right.
Out on the sidewalk we smoked cigarettes and argued with drag queens. I hated drag queens back then. For political reasons, I would have said. It was probably some kind of subsumed jealousy. They were so good at make-up. They got all the attention at the club. Maybe I saw myself in them and didn’t want to. I was so insecure. Self-conscious. Unsure about my identity, and overconfident to compensate. I was very concerned with how other people saw me. I needed others to recognize and validate my womanhood. I thought cross-dressing was evil. Like cultural appropriation. I didn’t do it for some sick sexual thrill. This was me. Who I was. Drag was even worse. Like a mockery of my being, on a stage. In public. And for cash.
One of the drag queens outside the club saw through my facade. She saw right through the bluster and into my soul.
“Bitch, you’re a drag queen,” she said.
“I’m not,” I shrieked. “I’m not a drag queen. I’m a real woman. Biologically female. See?”
I pulled up my dress and whipped my dick out of my panties. Already shrunk down by amphetamines, in the subzero cold it was double extra shriveled. The drag queens were not impressed. They flicked their cigarettes in our direction and flocked away.
“Fuck ‘em,” said Krystal. It was us against the world.
The AirBNB expired. We needed another night to come down, so we rented a cheap hotel in the Loop. The place was seedy and dark. Half the lamps in the lobby were dead. The kid working the front desk seemed more cracked out than we were. Our room was at the end of a long dark hall. The door seemed almost sideways. Everything was crooked. The air in the room was bitter and stale, the vibes totally haunted. We laid in bed all day, miserable. My skin hurt. My eyes, my gums. I felt like a giant blister. I bought bananas and iced tea at Starbucks. I ran into a girl I knew on the street. Sloan. She looked beautiful. Bright and happy in the crisp cold sun. She was working canvassing for the Human Rights Campaign. Stopping tourists as they passed to talk about gay rights. We waved at each other and smiled. What a square, I thought. “You should eat,” I told Krystal. I peeled a banana. I broke off a piece for her and a piece for me. Krystal didn’t want hers. I chewed mine for a minute before I was able to swallow. It tasted disgusting. Like wet gray sand.
Back in Tennessee I was somehow broke again. I’d made eight or nine hundred dollars and spent almost all of it. Expenses add up fast for fledgling entrepreneurs. The AirBnb, the hotel. The dinners. The drinks. The drugs. The bus tickets. While I was away the gender wellness clinic had called. The nurse practitioner left a message. She told me to call her back. It was urgent. We had to talk about my tests. She didn’t leave a message for Krystal. I knew what it meant. I sat on the old leather couch in the Tennessee commune kitchen and dialed the number. Lulu held my hand while I received the news. I felt weirdly calm. I didn’t cry or scream. It wasn’t surprising. It was almost a relief. I’d been having risky sex with junkies and scumbags. I’d shared needles. My ex was a sex freak. Adac. Poor kid. He moved in dangerous circles. He spent his weekends in sketchy highrises downtown. He let groups of rich meth fags tie him up for three days at a time. He let them do whatever they wanted. “It feels fucking awesome,” he said.
I’d started using meth on Adac’s recommendation. He was twenty-one. I was twenty-seven. I had just gotten hot. I had embarked on a second teenager phase, exponentially more destructive than the first. Adac was my guide. We were just teenagers. We didn’t know any better. We only wanted pleasure. The slightest taste of death. I lied the first time. I wanted to seem cool in front of the hot guy who offered me this poison. Yes, I’d tried it before, I said. “But could you light it for me? I suck.” The man’s name was Justin. He’d messaged me on Grindr. “It’s my birthday,” he said. “Want to party?”
Adac came over first with liquor and mystery pills. He said the pills were molly. I crushed one up and snorted it. Nothing happened.
“Well,” Adac said. “I don’t know what it is, then, Mabe.”
“Great,” I said. “Thanks.”
When Justin showed up he began pulling electronics out of his bag right away. Screens and tangled wires formed a heap at the foot of my bed. “Want to buy an iPad?” he said. “Need a new computer?” He was the hottest guy I’d ever seen. “Turn on some porn,” he said. We sat on the bed and he pulled out a pipe. I watched him heat the meth in the bowl and swirl it back and forth. The bowl filled up with vapor. He held it to my lips and the devil took the reins.
Oh God, I thought as the vapor hit my lungs. I’m fucked.
This was different. Something new. It was rapture. This is going to be a problem, I thought. And it was.
Meth and sex have a synergistic effect. You can’t do one without the other. Well, some people probably can. But I never could. Eventually it got so I couldn’t even conceive of sex without meth. I would decline it in almost any non-sexual setting. When I smoked or injected it, all I wanted was to fuck. I was suffused with a sense of hideous purpose, nothing more than a hole. A slick wet tube that needed to be used. But I also felt powerful. Invincible and perfect. At home in my body for the very first time. This is what the demon voices whisper when you’re high. This is you, they say. This is life. This is magic. This is love. They promise you the kingdom then snatch away your soul.
Justin was just some random hustler. His brain was shot. He chatted on about shadow people and tried to hawk his stolen iPads. Objectively the sex was bad. But it was the most intensely pleasurable experience I’d ever had. I fell in love immediately. In love with the drugs. With the sex. With the fantasy. His body and its motions. All the bad feelings I had about myself melted away. I felt beautiful and perfect. He fucked me for three minutes. Adac filmed the sex on one of Justin’s stolen phones. At the end Justin pulled out. He had to use his hand to finish. He jerked his dick faster and faster, holding his breath. His face was beet red by the time he came. “Fuck,” he said. “I’m gonna have a heart attack.” A few weak droplets splattered against my ass. He pushed them together then inside me with his dick. Was that when it happened? I’ll never know.
I don’t care who “gave” me the virus. The physical transmission was beside the point. God gave it to me. I gave it to myself. Viruses and drugs are just teachers. Like all demons, they are messengers from God. The universe is full of harsh teachers like these. If you can’t learn the easy way, drastic measures become necessary. I can’t recommend the path that I chose. It was long. It was tortured. It snaked through the deepest, darkest corners of the woods. But it was the path I needed to take to find my way back home. I try to be thankful for everything.
The Tennesseee commune was a good place to find out you have AIDS. Probably one of the best. Of course everyone knew within minutes. The gossip mill was ruthless. But nobody judged. Not for things like that. It was part of our struggle. The weight we carried together. We all knew people who had it. It wasn’t a death sentence, not anymore. It was more like a battle scar. It made me hard. There was a certain prestige involved. A certain clout. I didn’t fuck around. My nihilism was legit.
Everyone was extra nice to me for a while. Lulu was no longer mad at me. Suddenly all was forgiven. We drove to Atlanta, just the two of us. We saw tricks and ate supermarket sushi. It was nice. But I was already planning it out in my head. My next moves. I had to run. The land was too much. Like middle school but worse. We all walked on eggshells. Paranoia reigned supreme. The people there were not bad people. They were complicated, like everyone. The intentions of the community were noble. I found sanctuary there, for a time. For a time I found acceptance. I found other things, too. Dangerous things. Poisonous things. I try to focus on the good.
Winter turned to spring. By April I’d hatched a plan. I would move back to Chicago and establish myself there. I would put down roots. Re-tether. Reground. I’d left Chicago back when I started transition. Now my hair was long. I was better at make-up. I was “cam girl hot,” according to Lulu. My tits were as big as they were going to get without surgery. I had my own little business. I’d grown into myself. It was time to make my debut. I found a room to sublet in Pilsen. It was cheap: three hundred a month. I sent the rent ahead to my new roommate. Lulu drove me to the bus station in Nashville. We went to the city early so I could see a trick before I left. The trick and I had been talking on Tinder and he’d agreed to my donation. Lulu dropped me off at the trick’s hotel and waited in the van for me to finish.
The man was in his late fifties. He was well-fed and muscular. He seemed healthy and happy. He had a salt and pepper beard and salt and pepper hair. He told me his name but I can’t remember it now. It might have been John. He asked me to strip to my underwear and sit on the bed. He wove in circles around me, inspecting my body. He complimented my skin. My small breasts and my face. He stroked my hair. He massaged my shoulders and back. He couldn’t stop smiling.
“I’ve been a successful man,” he said. “But I’ve always been lonely. I need someone to take care of. A girl just like you. Someone special. You’re just what I’ve wished for. When can I see you again?”
He had a house in the country. I could live there, he said. We’d get married. He would pay for all my surgeries. He would pay for everything. My whole life. I’d heard stories about this sort of thing. A girl would meet the right trick and boom! Her whole life would change. I thought the whole thing was a myth. I never believed it could happen to me.
“Girl,” Lulu said when I told her what happened. “You’re about to level up, girl. This is it. Get ready.”
We drove to a Thai restaurant at the top of a hill. We had just enough time to eat before my bus. We opened the hatchback and ate take-out. Red curry, Thai iced tea, spring rolls and Pad Thai. It all tasted good. It felt so good to sit there and eat Thai food with my best friend. My sister.When you’re leaving somewhere, fantasy overtakes reality. Anything is possible before your new life begins. Running away is a form of perpetual reinvention. Until you get where you’re going, that is. Then you have to figure out how to run away again.
The bus pulled away from the station. I waved Tennessee goodbye. I opened Tinder on my phone to message my future husband. I wanted to give him my number at least. We could talk on the phone and send messages. I’d be in Chicago a few months. Maybe he could visit me there. He could get a hotel. We could go out to dinner. Get to know each other. Do the courtship thing. When I opened Tinder my jaw dropped. My account had been deleted for violating the rules. I had indicated on my profile I was looking for someone “generous.” There was no way to retrieve the lost messages. My future husband was gone forever. Fuck me, I thought. So much for that fantasy.
Where would I be today if my account had survived even one extra hour? Would I be married to that man in rural Tennessee? Would I have gotten all those surgeries? What kind of person would I be, would I have become? Would I have settled into the housewife role? It seemed appealing at the time. But I would have lost my mind. Would have longed to run away. All I could do back then was run. I did drugs to run away. I took buses to run away. Transition itself was a way to run away. He probably thought I blocked him. I must have broken his heart. But I’m sure he kept looking.
I hope he found another girl to be his wife. Someone special.
I really hope he did.
about the author
Miss Unity is the stage name of Mathias Todd Mietzelfeld, an American writer, drag queen, and singer-songwriter, and the reigning fifth-place runner-up of the annual karaoke contest at the Otsego County Fair. His first book, WHO KILLED MABEL FROST? will be published in 2023 by SF/LD Books