For Gia, the transformation of her body was more than just about feeling “comfortable” in her skin, the classic medicalized binary of the trans experience: I was born into the wrong body, now I’m in the right one, or, I was born a man, now I am a woman. Gia’s was a lifelong journey of eternal transformation, a sublime state of perpetual becoming. For Gia, it was nothing short of a spiritual quest. She was asking: Why live your life in just one body? She was pushing her body beyond the limits, pushing it through the obscene into a conversation with the gods, demigods, and all the mythic creatures that once roamed the earth.

Two days later, Gia was discharged from the clinic. We had arranged to visit our friend Julian, who about six months earlier had moved back to his family’s farm, two hours outside of Guadalajara. The farm was a sprawling, terracotta-roofed property nestled in the arid agave fields not far from the town of Tequila. Julian was a prodigious cook and had run a popular Mexican restaurant in west Toronto called Naco, which had become as well known for its steamy queer dance parties after hours as it had been for its food. Julian’s family lived on the farm, as did their chickens, roosters, goats, donkeys, kittens, and two dogs — a German shepherd in heat named Camelia, and Xolo, a rare breed of hairless dog once prized by the Aztecs. We were told if we saw Xolo mounting Camelia just to pull him off; they didn’t want to spay her but also didn’t want a dozen strange puppies on their hands. I hated interrupting the two dogs mid-coitus; sometimes it was pretty hard to pry them apart, and it usually took a minute or so for Xolo’s lipstick dick to retract back into its leathery foreskin. After the charmless surgery clinic, Julian’s farm felt like paradise. We ate fresh eggs from the chickens, drank homemade horchata, and plucked avocados and papayas straight from the trees.

One night, we were all woken from the dead of sleep by a banshee wail. We ran out into the yard with flashlights just in time to see the backsides of two coyotes scampering into the darkness, leaving a young goat eyes lolling and bleeding in their wake. As the goat tried to push herself away from us, we could see her massive neck wound. She could barely keep her head up.

“We have to put her down,” Julian stammered. “It’s cruel to let her suffer.”

I held the flashlight as Julian and his father placed a blanket under the goat, lifted and ferried her pharaoh-like into the garden, tied her back legs up to an acacia tree, and slit her throat.