Then, clothes. I slid open the door to my closet, which was overflowing with stuff I got from sample sales and online. Clothes are my one serious vice. I couldn’t afford to buy any of this stuff new, obviously, and even buying it resale made dents in my bank account I struggled to justify to myself. But, you know, being trans, you have to put in a lot more effort to be taken seriously, or that was what I told myself. After some deliberation I chose an Eckhaus Latta top with an opalescent, sequined texture like fish scales, and some high-waisted black pants I had thrifted and tailored to add pleats around the hips. Over top of it, a green leather trench coat. This would turn heads, I thought, angling my body in my mirror, feeling slightly giddy as the amphetamines kicked in.

An hour later I was standing in front of a row house on Bedford, shivering. It had gotten colder and somehow damper, and it felt like the streets were being scooped out by wind. The door opened.

“Come in, come in,” Ambrose said before I could even see his face clearly. I followed him as he scampered up the steps.

The first time I met him was at a party uptown, back when neither of us had transitioned yet. He was wearing a white lace dress, and had his eyes closed and was spinning in circles around a stripper pole installed into the middle of a living room floor. I walked up to him and placed my hands on his shoulders, and he stopped, opened his eyes, and looked up at me.

The eight months we dated were disastrous for both of us. We were both mentally ill and violently in denial about being trans. We wanted to preserve our sense of being normal, functional, heterosexual, preprofessional; when that didn’t work out, we resorted to becoming codependent, talking about getting married, having bigger and bigger fights, clinging and clawing at each other like the proverbial drowning people. Finally, one night he stabbed me in the arm with a fountain pen and I had to get it removed in the ER. He went with me and apologized the whole time. When I got discharged at four in the morning, I finally just told him that I needed to not see him for a long time, and that he should lose my number. He sputtered and wailed on the street, his long red hair plastered to his face with snot. He said I love you I love you I love you over and over and it felt like he was stabbing me again. I walked away from him, feeling weightless, not sure how I was supposed to feel beyond that I was “making the right decision.”