“Sure,” he said, without enthusiasm.

THE STORY OF R

I went to the Cape last summer to have a breakthrough in a bungalow, to finally cut through all my bullshit as a chorus of seaside insects chirped and dolphins flipped into the air.

I took a bus from Penn Station, switched in Boston, and took another one all the way to an outpost called Howard’s Way and found my friend Minna’s cousin’s cabin behind three tall stripped birches, as described. The little dwelling smelled sweetly of pine and had an ant problem and a straw mattress oozing onto the floor. Once I got over my initial horror that there was no plumbing and that an orange extension cord siphoned electricity directly from the boatyard next door, all I could think about was having sex.

It was only my second summer on T, and the first summer I’d been so hungry and worried about being a believable dude that I didn’t go on a dick-bender. I let all my anxiety and energy ferment into a disastrous brew, and then it was late August and the time of sexual frenzy in the city had passed.

The cabin baked in the sun. Once I sent Minna’s cousin my daily email trying figure out the logistics of bathing (at the showers on the next beach) or eating (at the diner or from the tiny grocery store that still kept produce in wooden boxes), I would walk to the ocean, which was emptied out of all its rejuvenating power because I was so fucking tense.

I called Sophie, my therapist, to give her a typical “I think I’m going crazy” report and when I told her that all I wanted to do was have sex, she said, “Thank god, you’re finally turning into a person.”

“But you know I fall apart when I’m not working.”

“So think of sex as work.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

I was being one of those girls I always heard on the subway whining to their parents about insurmountable issues: understanding APR (okay, I had no idea), taxes (my former guardian’s accountant does mine), separating white and dark clothing (no segregation, just cold water).

“Uh, go on Tinder, go to Provincetown, come back to New York and cruise, jerk off, do you need me to keep going?”

“No.”

I took a rickety bike and rode to Stallions, the one gay bar in P-town that was not cis-only.

Going to a gay bar hardly made any sense. I would end up getting hit on by a bear seeking a cute cub or an otter and might have to end up explaining that I was str8 in a queer way, a trans guy who needs to sleep with femme women to prop up his half-assed masculinity.

But a str8 bar? Those were not my people.