How many times had I turned back at the first ripple of self-doubt? You had to withstand a profound sense of wrongness if you ever wanted to get somewhere new.

He could become entirely feminine, not only in essence, but actually seeming busty, cunty. I made a gesture with my fingers like I was sliding them between his wet labia and in the moment I was sure we both knew what I meant.

The dick I bought in Monrovia was a dumb glittery purple. When I fucked myself with it waves of sensation radiated upward, warming my chest all the way to my chin. The feeling was so acute that I suspected I had a polyp on my cervix that was getting bumped in just the right way. Or else it was Davey; he’d made me bloom in there.

That was his point? I was a throbbing, amorphous ball of light trying to get my head around a motherly, wifely human form.

“Divorce only reinforces the supremacy of marriage!” I complained to Jordi as we drove to the gallery where her headless women would be exhibited; she was worried about the floor plan. “You’re either married or you’re not, it’s a binary. Whereas if marriage is important but not the organizing principle, then it can keep changing, the way the

If 321 was everywhere then every day was Wednesday, and I could always be how I was in the room. Imperfect, ungendered, game, unashamed. I had everything I needed in my pockets, a full soul.

And sexy clothes. I had worn them without really understanding why, thinking of sexy as one of many styles, not realizing it was the only style. You should always be emerging from a shell if possible.

without really understanding it, I had been a body for other people but I had not gotten to have one myself. I had not participated in the infuriating pleasure of wanting a real and specific body on Earth. I lay in the center of the bed, unblinking.

Words always took things down a notch with their supposed knowing, their elaborate trying. Words kept you in two separate brains. Dance was the way to close the gap.