At registration, Sunny paws through a spread of nametags. If only my name were less feminine and I had a channel listed like everyone else. I once came out in a DM to a trans YouTuber whose profile made him look older than he probably was. His answer was so spammy and generic—Go for it! Age matters not!—that I never reached out again.

My conference registration was a hundred dollars. I’m still in the red from my move, and every month I go deeper, eating plain pasta to add to my surgery fund. Sunny doesn’t know the cost of the conference and so snatches the gift tote with a victory shout, counting the free pin, free condom, free hamburger-shaped eraser, and free pack of nuts as an unimaginable windfall.

Off the atrium shoots a hall lined with doors. Each door boasts a sandwich board with the day’s panel schedule, a fresh lineup every hour. At the end of the hall is the auditorium for celebrity events and the keynote. Nut packets and half-sucked lozenges litter the floor.

Participants study me, as though decoding this middle-aged woman’s purpose. Am I Sunny’s mother? No; Jen’s cameo is Sunny’s most popular video—her smug appearance as perfect mom—you gotta do right by your kid—so if they know him, they know Jen. I should’ve brought a hoodie, but when I dress masculine everyone thinks I’m a lesbian. I’ve dated few men, but in my butch periods I haven’t landed any. Until I can hover deep enough in the middle to range beyond lesbian—with a micro-dose of T hardening my face and speckling my chin with hair—until I can look more like a girly boy instead of a boyish girl, until I can scrape these breasts off my ribs and stand up straight, what I wear seems secondary. Except for here.

I dodge through the crowd. I’ve stepped inside my computer, everyone newly dimensional and visible, for once, from head to toe. There’s Irish Danny Ray Kyle, a tiny copy of Justin Bieber, trailed by waifs in pancake makeup. There’s Paulie G from Norway, who, at twenty, is a community elder. Paulie G transitioned late—“late” is seventeen—so his hips are wide, a detail he’s disguised in his videos. My heart pulls for him as he shuffles by.

A pair of famous transgirl sisters strolls past. The older one transitioned second, after a suicide attempt, coming out on the younger one’s channel with her wrists wrapped and her voice too soft for the mic. The sisters’ red hair is tied into contrasting scrunchies, and they skip through the conference collecting greetings like they were never sad a day in their lives. Maybe transitioning is like that. Once you settle into your new form, a peace descends and, for the first time in years, you skip.