Blithe was so sunken that he did not respond to the Operatrix’s words, which would normally have set off spirals of reverie.

“I myself was summoned to the Rhiz in college. One of the Keepers called me on the telephone in my hallway dorm. Can you believe that?”

Blithe was not really listening. He traveled along the outline of the Operatrix’s speech.

“When I got to the compound, the site of an old Catskills summer camp, I first had to answer the One Hundred Questions, which is no longer part of the Rhiz initiation. I slept in a tent and was not-so-secretly watched to see how I would handle the various crises and romances of rural community living and the prospect of traveling around the world, trying to help out queers in trouble, back when we only had word of mouth, zines, pamphlets, members belonging to international government agencies, rattling pickup trucks, and the currency of scrappiness, of survival. And here I am before you, somehow less weary than I was in my hard-won youth.

“Okay, time for your intake. I need to get a sense of the shape of your transition. How did it begin? This could be a vague glimmer, an ominous portent, a forbidden crack, a slimy loathing, a cold withdrawal, a green bowl—whatever form fits your experience.”

Silence on Blithe’s end as he heard footsteps on the parking-lot gravel. He envied the simple rhythms of the tourists’ lives.

“Do. Not. Worry. We secure all stories of queer shame in our archive.”

Silence.

“You know what I told my parents about being trans?” the Operatrix asked.

Silence.

“First of all, I didn’t transition until decades after joining the Rhiz. I didn’t know that was a possibility for myself. My parents had vaguely tolerated my dyke years and had sort of given up on me performing their way of life. I texted them because, while I love talking, I don’t have a great track record with them listening. I texted:

Do y’all know the best part of being trans?

So many people lament:

Oh, I wish I could start a farm with a hydroponic mullein grove, maybe when I’m retired.

Whereas trans folks ask,

So where are the shovels and the AP-100 air pump?

See, there’s no cushion of toleration, no boring nest of succumbing.

The status quo is a guillotine and it’s positioned at many junctures along the body and the parts remain alive and numb and if you take a look at a cutout of a cutoff organ, the veins have looped back and formed a new, different circuitry of pain.

“It was kind of emo, but they make me feel like I’m thirteen years old.”

“Wait, what?” Blithe was annoyed at the Operatrix’s digressions.

“How did it all begin for you?”

Blithe was not ready to go there. To begin, he would have to start in the aching place of absence.

The hologram began to crackle with impatience.

“If you cannot vocalize, there is another way.”