Yes, that is where Aiden and I both erred. In our defense, Grams are one of the few places to see trans folks; blame it on the peculiar manifestations of late capitalism—Saintly Secretions of Non-Solace!—but only newer media contain any evidence at all that trans people are doing more than being murdered and getting kicked out of the familial abode. One could say my Aiden-rage reached hurricane-level swells because here was a trans dude—on the public internet, with hologram status—and all he could offer my impoverished imagination was a life as sleek and empty as all architecture since 1991.

Back then, I was casually hooking up with a celebrity, and on an intellectual level, I knew how much production went into façades: the makeup, the lighting, the PA who handled credit card statements and seltzer runs. And yet, with Aiden’s Gram, I still got seduced into believing his perfection was real, and then I was left gutted, like a teen who has binged a TV series on a long weekend and was disappointed at reentering a world that is never cut into episodic bites.

I sometimes fancied myself an evolved person, but would an evolved person spend at least fifteen minutes every morning comparing my long scroll of curlicued flaws to this person, as flat as a screen?

The list included flabby abs, trauma responses to loss and sudden noises, a tendency toward fantasies of spanking someone in a field full of gently swaying flowers, midwestern sensibilities including “niceness,” a future that appeared clouded in smog.

Each morning, I awoke, went to the backyard, and immediately scanned Aiden’s bod on the Gram, asking, Why can’t I attain such delicious perfection? A holey apple staring at a waxed, genetically modified one. I had no other trans role models, so who could really blame me for moving toward this trans-parent like a toddler swimming to open, tanned, and muscular arms?

We all need parents, and mine had been dead since the avalanche.

Disgust and love are self-perpetuating states. With Aiden, I swung back and forth between loathing and longing, and the universe always offered evidence for either pole.

My friend Sid generally tried not to inflame my Aiden-obsession, but one day he couldn’t resist and told me about Aiden’s pet goose.

Sid, my first friend in the city. We’d met in a bodega. I must have been looking particularly forlorn, staring at a row of flavored water, trying to decide whether I wanted the upscale cloudberry in a glass bottle or the everyperson’s lemon in a plastic, Earth-killing one. He walked straight up to me and asked if I wanted to dog-walk with him.

He read me.

I had my carabiner attached to my shorts, and at the time I was walking dogs in the fancier neighborhoods where you were required to fill out the following after each fifteen-minute stroll:

Walk Assessment

Mood (100 words):

Negatively influencing experiences (100 words, if applicable):