We took the train to New York, me in makeup and a black blouse with a pattern of tiny pink roses, a string of raw pearls around my neck. Traveling with Ralph that way felt like our compromise, that I could dress how I wanted until it was time to see Ian in concert. I tried to register the world through his eyes as we got our train tickets, had lunch at a restaurant near Lincoln Center, checked in to our room, service people treating us in subtle and not-so-subtle ways like a straight couple, whether in solicitous smiles we hadn’t gotten before or Ralph automatically receiving the check. This must have been such an affront to his sense of identity, what he’d had to overcome to come out in the ’80s as someone from a well-known English family, only to be mistaken for straight when he was with his partner and feel as if he was back in the closet again. Though he also had to deal with always wondering if people perceived me as a cross-dresser, which came with its own complications. As much as Ralph tried to be tolerant of all queer people, he had still been raised in respectable British society, and a man flaunting his love of cross-dressing must have violated his sense of propriety. But it also began to dawn on me that, just as other people treated me like a totally different person when they perceived me as a woman, Ralph too began to think of me that way the more feminine I became, and that meant he didn’t see the person he fell in love with when he looked at me.

I tried to keep all this in mind as I faced the mirror to take off my makeup, an hour and a half before Ian’s concert. It seemed like a simple thing to do, as I held a wet wipe in my hand. I’d had no compunctions about going out into the world as a man just three months before. Yet facing that mirror felt like one of those fairy tales where an innocent girl is awakened to her captivating beauty. Once that power had been uncovered, it seemed cruel to lock it up against my will.

“Can’t I just keep a little bit of makeup on?” I asked from the bathroom.

“You promised,” Ralph replied, somehow both plaintive and stern, and I found myself coming back to the bedroom to face him.

“But why is this so important to you?”

“Why is it so important to you?”

“I don’t know,” I said as I shook my head and began to cry. “It just is.”