Fresh From Workshop

The places we call home do not stay the same. They roll and change, the road commissioner comes and says more here, less there, a little bit of grading, and there is a pile of dirt in the middle of the road and we’re driving on the wrong side to pick up flowers for the wedding, trapped behind a flock of wild turkeys.

The places we call home twist and bend, navigating new curves. They slow at construction zones, deconstruction zones – following orange cones and blinkers. A curve straightened, a mountain shorn off. This past weekend, your body was my home-scape. Never before has your body felt so new and your love felt so familiar.

Last Saturday, after the wedding, it was almost like the first time we fucked except that I looked into your eyes for the longest time. It was almost like the first time, but I knew your body differently and your body was different, four months on T, and your body is my home landscape returned to and returning. It was almost like the first time, but we weren’t drunk, and we were in love. Your curves are straightening, without orange cones. Your landscape still fits -- fits you more. You still fit inside me, like you always have, but differently now that I look into your eyes. You still fit inside my mouth, but more because of this change and more because I’ve loved you in this changing. Like an old landscape in a new season. Roadwork sucks, a renumbering of exits, a repaving of roads can throw a whole population for months, the bumps and turns have changed, but the light still hangs the same on the trees in the fall, and the light still hangs the same behind your eyes. Your breath on my neck still has the warmth of a spring day.

We slipped into bed, after flirting and dancing and a day so perfect that now it feels like a dream. I cried through the ceremony, and you danced with my mom, and met my dad. I sat at dinner with an old family friend and you offered me your jacket and went to get some wine and she said, “TP seems great, but I’m not sure about pronouns”.
“Either, both, it’s a mixed bag” which is the honest answer. She nodded and said, "It looks like a good decision. " You were wearing the suit that you and your mother had picked out together – gray for weddings, and it hangs perfectly, the pants hang perfectly. I love a woman’s hips in men’s pants, and a triple Windsor knot in your tie to make it the right length. I can’t imagine your mom and you in a Salvation Army store in northern Mississippi trolling for a perfect gray suit until she found one that you looked handsome in, maybe this is her way of blessing you through her faithful fear of all you are – with her thrift store skills. It is a good decision.

You don’t remember the first time, you were too drunk, and you rely on my recollections. I remember that we fucked and dozed and fucked and I remember that you didn’t want to lean into me after we were done because you were afraid that you would hurt me. It was almost like the first time, we fucked and dozed and fucked again – much more quietly than the first time because my mother was in the very next room in an old house with thin walls. Afterwards you curled into the spaces, I lay on top of you, and we held each other close until morning. And this time you will never forget the way I screwed you. That is the difference.

People always ask me how transitioning has changed me, how it is to be with someone as their body changes and I don’t have the metaphors down yet. It’s like watching a child grow up – without the pedophilia reference. It’s like watching someone you love become more and more themselves, and that is liberating for both of us. It is like riding a rollercoaster and falling out of a window. It is like coming home to a season I’ve never known.

The first time we fucked I didn’t know your body, and you didn’t know your body. Now it is something we both explore and they always worry that the sex will be bad, or that I won’t continue to find my desire in your skin. But they don’t know the difference it makes to make love to someone who is comfortable in their body, to watch as their body is tailored to fit them, like your gray suit, picked up at salvation army, like the road commissioner looking down a stretch of highway and saying “more here, less there”.

In a month I will travel to your landscape and it will be different, it will be Texas in October and I will look through the crowd to find your profile, a button down and triple Windsor, and a slightly straightened hip, waiting for my hand, and tongue to show you the way home.