Chapter 20: Part 20 - Invite Me Over

Part 20 — Invite Me Over

When I was 13 years old, I loved a boy once. His name was Rafa Couzins. I still feel bad about the way things ended between us. Not about what I did — I did what any sensible, self-respecting person would do — but about how far I let things go before I did it. I was still going by Errol then, and convinced I was secretly dating the most eligible gay boy in my school. 

“Wow, your neighborhood is so pretty!” Rafa remarked as we walked down the long road that led to my suburban house. It was fall, and the leafy boulevard rustled in the light breeze. 

We walked a good few meters apart (nothing like a little distance to hide a secret relationship), but part of me yearned to be near him. I wanted to feel the softness of his hands, the flex in his long, thin fingers as they intertwined with mine. But most of all, I wanted to feel his lips against my own. Tender and caring. And then rough and dangerous. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen tonight, but I was pretty sure it was going to be a first for something. 

Rafa was the first person I’d had for a sleepover since I was in elementary school. Turns out, he was going to be the last person I invited to stay over too. When you come out as a trans girl, your parents don’t exactly trust you to have other girls over, and you can‘t invite boys over for pretty much the same reason. Besides, it draws far too much attention to the quiet and midnight parts of your identity. The you-that’s-just-for-you. And if you’re not out in public: it’s a major no-no. 

At this time in my life, I didn’t even know if I wanted to come out, let alone what I’d come out as. There’s something about being young, I think, that makes you believe things can carry on forever like they are. Even when you know they’re wrong. Part of me believed that I could maintain a secret relationship forever, and it wouldn’t make any difference to the quality or depth of it. I still don’t know what great or deep looks like in love, but I know now it wasn’t Rafa Couzins. 

“You wanna get some fresh air,” Rafa asked, and shot a glance over to me. 

“We’re getting fresh air,” I smiled back innocently, looking up and around at the open sky and the serious lack of city. 

“Okay,” he replied. Then his tone changed. It dropped and became more nasal and more quiet. Secret even. Clandestine. “But do you wanna get fresh in the air?”

Get fresh? Like—?

“Um—” I replied, looking around nervously and hoping he’d pick up on it, hoping he’d see that I was starting to feel uncomfortable and back off. 

“Come on,” he cajoled. “I’ll let you hold my hand in the woods…”

Then he fired that wide, open smile at me and let his eyes wander down to my waist. It was enough. People like me didn’t get people like Rafa as their boyfriends. He was a 10. An 11, even. I was more of a 2. 

“Okay,” I said, allowing his smile and confidence to fill me up like too much sugar. 

It wasn’t long after we hit the woods that he took my hand in his. The fall trees closed around us like a warm embrace and before very long at all, we had disappeared from the view of the world and its judgment.

“Do you like me?” Rafa said after we’d walked a while. 

“You know I do,” I answered, squeezing his hand affectionately. 

“How much do you like me?” he asked. 

I stretched our joined arms out as wide as I could and replied, “This much!”

He smiled, but didn’t reply. 

“Do you love me?” he asked after a moment’s silence. 

I didn’t know how to answer that question. I’d never been in love before. I’m still not sure that what I felt was love. I mean, I hope it was. But in another way, I hope it wasn’t. I hope that love is more than what I had with Rafa. But, when he asked the question on that fall evening, I knew that I felt really strongly for him. 

“I love being around you,” I answered.

More smiling. 

More silence. 

“Would you prove it to me?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to laugh off the end of the sentence, but not quite managing it. 

I suddenly became aware of how far we had walked into the woods. And how dark and cold it felt in the mid-fall evening. 

“We’ve been dating for nearly two weeks now, Err,” Rafa explained. “But we’ve never gone beyond kissing.”

“We did some shirt stuff,” I offered. I didn’t mean for it to come out as desperate as it sounded. 

“We did some shirt stuff,” Rafa repeated. He waited a cold moment, then added, “Maybe we’re ready for some pants stuff.”

I felt my pulse quicken; my blood surged, my heart felt like it was ready to explode out of my chest and temples. And a thick, gooey feeling gnawed at my stomach. 

“I never—” I began, but he cut me off. We’d stopped walking a little while ago and now he turned to face me and took both my hands in his. He pulled me close. So close that I could smell his breath. It didn’t smell sweet anymore. No longer minty fresh. Something acrid and rank had taken its place; something that had always been there, just behind the glassy smile that now wore his face. 

“People always never,” he replied. “Until they do. Then they wanna keep doing it. Forever.” 

He leaned in a little closer to me. That kind of close where you can’t really see each other anymore. Just feel each other’s warmth.

“I don’t know how—” I pleaded, starting to shiver. 

“It’s okay,” he replied. “I’ll show you.” 

I felt his hands moving down below my waist. Felt those fingers, those perfect fingers, cupping around my mistake.

I suddenly felt paralyzed. Like a small creature stuck on the road with an 18-wheeler barreling down on it. Certain of its own destruction, yet certain at the same time that if it just stayed still, just did nothing, the danger would pass. But Rafa didn’t pass. And Rafa didn’t stay still. 

I could feel him. Moving. Breathing. I started to feel sick. Until finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. 

“No!” I cried, and pulled back immediately. 

“Don’t be so frigid,” he hit back, even quicker. 

“Rafa, I’m not ready for this. I don’t want—”

“—You don’t even know what you want, Errol!” he retorted. 

“I know I don’t want this!” I proclaimed. 

“Oh yeah?” he replied, pointing at my waistline. “Your body says otherwise.”

He was right. I felt such shame. Such a betrayal by my body. My mistake was sending him all the wrong signals. Pointing at him like it was picking him to be my first. 

“That’s biology, man,”I summoned up the words for a response. “It doesn’t mean—” 

“—You don’t love me.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a question, if Rafa was finishing my sentence, or if he was just making a statement. I suddenly became aware of how much bigger than me Rafa was. He was two years older and had me and those hands — those long, slender fingers — had buried mine only moments ago. That used to make me feel safe. 

Protected. 

Loved. 

I didn’t feel any of those things now. 

“Rafa, there’s more to love than doing stuff together.”

I don’t know where I got the courage from to speak those words, what insane reserve of risk and reason I tapped into. 

I was right next to him, but we were worlds apart. 

“You don’t know anything about love,” he argued. “Let me show—”

“Rafa, please stop telling me what I know,” I asked, quietly. 

“You’re just like all the others,” he spoke, throwing the words like knives from a foot away. They buried themselves deep into my heart. Buried themselves like I had buried my hand into his mitt, or my head into his chest when we used to hug during our secret bathroom trysts. I assume he meant I was just like ‘all the other lovers’ he’d taken. I didn’t know, in that moment, if I wanted to own badge that or not. Just that his rejection hurt more than any pain I’d ever felt. 

“Rafa,” I begged him — he was turning to leave — “it’s not that I don’t love you. I— I’m just not ready yet!”

“You would if you loved me!” he replied, without turning.

That was it. 

That was the moment I’d been dreading. The moment that I’d read about in the books and magazines I used to sneak from Anna’s room. 

Those words. 

That cliche. 

That awful ultimatum: either love me the way I tell you to, or leave me alone forever. 

I wish I’d been stronger. 

I wish I’d stood up and told him no, told him I was worth so much more than he was seeing. 

I wish I’d run all the way home and locked the door and never gone back again. But I didn’t do that. I did the other thing.

“Okay,” I said in a defeated whisper. “Show me—”

I won’t detail what we did next in the dark, fall woods, so far from any warmth. Nor how he left me when we were done and just went home. I find it hard to talk about how I wandered for nearly an hour, not sure if I dared go home. Or, when I did, how dirty I was with filth from the forest. And how I washed that dirt in a lie. 

“I was just out playing with the boys,” I told my dad; his face flushed with pride. Just a boy doing boy stuff with other boys. 

I scrubbed and I scrubbed in the shower, but some dirt never washes off. It wasn’t an attack. I want to be clear. Rafa didn’t force himself upon me. Not physically, anyway. But his words were such perfect poison that in the end I felt like I’d invited the whole thing on me from the start.

I think love died in me that day. I haven’t felt anything remotely close to it since. 

The following week, I quit Rafa Couzins and I quit Pride Club. I quit boys too. Nothing like a little distance to help the heart heal faster. 

In theory. 

I felt as though I’d bared to Rafa Couzins some vital, essential part of my soul. And he’d played with it like putty. Molded it into whatever shape suited him. And then threw it away. And, as the modern-me watched Bobby Brandon slump away, hands thrust into pockets and head down, I couldn’t help but feel if I’d made him feel that same rejection. 

The trouble with firsts is that you only get one. Some people don’t even get that. I put my hand to the pendant below my shirt and suddenly felt so wicked.