Then a Facebook message half an hour later: I wish I had kissed you. I just wasn’t sure if you wanted to. I’m not always totally sensitive to—blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

“How was your date?” her mom asked the next evening.

Hazel savoured the excited look on her mother’s face, letting its image settle and take root in her mind.

“He had a wife and kids.”

“Ew!” her mom said instantly.

“I know.”

“Ugh! I. Well. You deserve better. I suppose that’s all I’ll say. You deserve better than someone expecting you to—slink around.”

Hazel didn’t tell her she wouldn’t have had to slink around, that that was the thing that pissed her off, the burning phrase in her head: “She’s cool with us being here.” I don’t care how goddamn cool your wife is. So the wife gave the other woman her blessing now? That was supposed to change things? Why wouldn’t Marina have mentioned this? (Would she have done so with a cis girl?) If this was how things were, was it really so weird she wanted to see what Christopher was up to these days?

Months later, after the new year, she was restless. Her mom was spending more time at her boyfriend’s. She’d filled out some job applications for real, but her heart wasn’t in it. Plus, firmly committing herself to alcoholism and sex work for much of her twenties hadn’t done much for her resumé.

The nascent sex workers’ rights organization was plugging along, though. It had grown to ten members and consisted of two factions: white academics/camgirls and twinky Metis social workers. The latter were starting to get their way after a disastrous public event led by the former.

Hazel didn’t say much in the meetings. When she’d joined she’d hoped to just do boring legwork, but once it became clear the group was in its infancy—and the others discovered her to be not only the sole transsexual but also the sole person who’d sucked dick for money—suddenly everyone wanted her opinion on things, and a decade of Facebook and queer culture had made Hazel very tired of needing to have opinions.

So when Festival du Voyageur came along, Hazel went, and she went alone. She wanted to be in a crowd and watch people get stupid. She put on her old faux-fur coat and vamped up with thick makeup and a purple toque and caught the 29 up Route 70 and then the 10 over to Saint Boniface and began to feel alive and did not want to drink, not one iota. Hazel felt good about it. Those two things had been connected for a long time.