But even later, past midnight, after I found my eyes open, staring at our high ceiling, barely visible in the dark, I had the sudden realization that in my fantasies of Richard, I had a woman’s body when he kissed and made love to me. I’d fantasized about being a woman in bed before, after I’d read books or watched movies where I found myself attracted to the male protagonist, so I didn’t notice the moment when, for the first time, I fantasized about being a woman with a man who was real.

I wasn’t in love with two people. I was in love as two people.

15.

I grew to accept the idea that I loved Ralph and Richard as different people, one as the person I was and the other as the person I could be but wasn’t, a twin spirit who lived inside me but had no permanent physical form. I searched for a metaphor that could describe this feeling, and the only one that came close was that story of a man who comes into the hospital complaining of horrible stomach pains, only for doctors to find that there was a hibernating fetus in his stomach, a twin that had suddenly started growing after he had somehow absorbed it in their mother’s womb. I read about that story in a Filipino tabloid when I was a kid, and it became one of those curious oddities that lodged itself in my mind. But once I began to consider that there were two spirits living inside me, I wondered if that man with the twin in his belly had any inkling that another spirit lived within him, and what precipitating force awakened this dormant being, what nourishment, that it suddenly decided to grow and threaten the man’s life.

Around the same time, I was walking into the Museum School when a student from one of my classes called me over. She was talking to a girl I’d seen around who had an indie rock aesthetic—short black hair artfully chopped up, a cropped leather jacket, and dark eye makeup. It was only when I stood in front of the girl that I noticed she was flat-chested under her fuchsia top.

“Marc, this is Ben,” my classmate said with a grin as I tried to contain my surprise.

“I thought you were a girl,” I admitted to him.

“I know,” he replied. “Everybody does.”

Ben turned out to be a performance art major, and I explained how I’d been exploring gender through photography that semester. He asked if I could take pictures of him, and we agreed to meet in my studio the following week.