Federal Facility for Transgender Individuals, Allston, Massachusetts

It’s midnight and Natalie knows where her girlfriend is but she isn’t ready to admit it.

She texted Emily three times, spread out across forty-five minute intervals, and has received no response, nor any visual indication that Emily has read any of the texts.

Natalie is alone in their shared rental apartment, watching cold New England rain hit the bedroom window like it’s trying to break in. The bedroom light is off. She’s currently wearing shorts and only shorts. She’s baring her breasts to the world as a means of calming down. It’s working. She’s taking steadier breaths.

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They’d had a fight, entirely whispered. The fight had been as inevitable as autumn rain and they’d been putting it off for too long. Natalie had been video chatting with a friend—another trans woman—about trans stuff, with the window open. When Natalie forgets that womanhood is something she can only do indoors, Emily blames it on the fact that Natalie was relatively safe until she started injecting estradiol two years ago, whereas Emily has never been safe, has been injecting estradiol for over a decade, and has always had just enough wisdom from the previous year to make it through the next one.

And then Natalie had insisted that she needed to process in the bedroom and she had closed the door behind her. By the time she had opened the door again, Emily was gone.

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Natalie, collecting her thoughts, remembers that she needs to make a choice. Life isn’t about choosing yes or no, until it is. She can try to save her girlfriend, and maybe grieve. Or she can continue to stare out the window, and definitely grieve. Natalie is the sort of person who finds the discreteness of this decision to be soothing.

She doesn’t have her glasses on. The rain blurs and blurs and blurs.

Natalie knows what the correct choice is, but she also knows that if she looks away from the window, even if it’s just a glance, she will make up her mind and never second-guess it. She will turn herself into a sequence of actions. If she needs to stop and cry, now’s the time to do it. She tries, and doesn’t.

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There is a third option. There always is. She thinks about it often. Tonight, she has to act as if this option doesn’t exist, or else she might not return home.

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There’s no milk in the fridge. Maybe Emily wanted milk for breakfast tomorrow. Maybe Emily went to the corner store.

And then stayed there for a few hours.

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It’s time.

Natalie turns around and takes her glasses from the dresser and puts them on and changes into boy clothes and slips her phone, wallet, keys, and lockpicks into her jeans pocket and looks under the bed and grabs the metal baseball bat wrapped up in a polyester bag originally meant for a camping tent and slings the bag over her shoulder and puts on her shoes and her raincoat and exits the apartment and locks the door behind her and takes the elevator down and steps into the pouring rain.

The streets are flooded up to her ankles. Her shoes are immediately waterlogged. Her jeans will be soaked within minutes.

She sees a bloated human body on the ground at the end of her short block. The rainwater flows around it. The face is mottled with open wounds and dried blood. Another virus victim. Second time this week. It’s becoming more frequent. She holds her breath until she’s well past it.

No one is on the streets as she walks along a memorized route. As she approaches Comm Ave she sees the headlamps of a self-driving technical. A pickup truck with a big gun in the back. There is no iconography that could link the technical to any particular group.

Natalie ducks into a doorway and pretends to text a friend until the technical drives by.

She continues to propel herself forward, thinking about as little as possible.

As she nears Packard’s Corner she sees the glow of the bands of LED strips above the building. It’s the old trans flag colors: a stripe of blue, then pink, then white, then blue, then pink.

Natalie has been in the building four times. The first time was with a cis girlfriend, back when the building was staffed by doctors and nurses. The second time was out of morbid curiosity. The third time was an ill-advised direct action. The fourth time, a year or so ago, a friend had to drag her out of there. This will be the fifth time.

There’s a wide billboard above the building. At the top of the billboard, there is blocky text that reads:

FEDERAL FACILITY FOR TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

ALLSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Below the words, spanning the remainder of the banner, is a photo. The photo is of a person with dark brown skin sitting on a beach at sunset. They are wearing a pink bikini over a flat hairy chest and a long red skirt with white lace at the bottom and their feet are bare and their legs are hairy and they are hugging their legs. They have long, thick, black, hair and a beard. They’ve applied bright red lipstick and dark, precise eyeliner. Their eyes are closed as if they are finally at peace.

There are two welcoming figures standing outside under the awning.

They aren’t cops. There are never any cops or hired security or paramilitants at Federal Facilities for Transgender Individuals because these is a Safe Spaces for trans people. Here, and only here, trans people can enter at will and do what they want, provided that what they want do to is the only aspect of trans culture that the government still permits. 

Natalie remembers the sense of relief she felt last time she stood under this awning. It would be very easy to feel that relief again.

The person to Natalie’s left is a cis man. He is dressed in a black, exceedingly well-fitted suit jacket and a white button down shirt and a blue tie. His hair has receded, but only a little bit, and he has a well-trimmed beard. His jawline is sharp and angular. The other person is a cis woman. She is wearing a white strapless tube dress. She is thin and has huge breasts and long, blond hair.

They’re supposed to make you feel inadequate. It works better than Natalie is willing to admit to herself.

Officially, the cis man and the cis woman are just unarmed greeters. And yet, they hold themselves like taut springs.

“Welcome,” the cis woman says, smiling at Natalie, baring straight white teeth. “We’re so happy that you’re here.”

“Thanks,” Natalie says, reciting a rehearsed response. “I feel like this is what I’ve always wanted.” This is an easy lie to tell because it’s not a lie.

“I’m sure it was a difficult decision,” the cis woman replies in a soothing voice, “and you’re very brave to have begun your journey towards becoming your authentic self.”

“Please let us know if you have any doubts,” the cis man says. “We’re here to help.”

“Thanks,” Natalie says again.

“Did you fill out the online intake form?” the cis woman asks.

“I forgot to,” Natalie answers.

“Not a problem!” the cis woman says. “The receptionist will give you a form to fill out, and the waiver too.”

“Got it,” Natalie says.

Natalie waves them goodbye. The cis man and cis woman smile without shifting their stances.

Natalie pushes the revolving door forward.

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Inside, there is a waiting room. There’s a TV in the corner that is currently not on, a tank of goldfish near the reception desk, where a friendly-looking woman is seated. There is a changing room off to Natalie’s right. The door to the changing room is locked. In the changing room, Natalie remembers, there is a deep walk-in closet full of clothes that belonged to those that came before. There are cushioned chairs lining the walls, the sort you’d find at a doctor’s office. 

Natalie looks frantically at who is seated and she doesn’t see Emily.

Instead, there is a seated trans girl. She clearly already been to the changing room. She’s wearing girl-clothes now, possibly for the first time. Someone else’s poorly-fitted short skirt and crop top. She is staring silently at the wall and crying silently while holding a partially completed intake form.

There is a second person, in the changing room. Natalie can only see the shadows of their feet.

Natalie has been publicly out as trans for just as long as these two have, which is never. Watching them, she suddenly feels very tired. The plan was to not stop, not even for one second, and continue to be a sequence of actions, just verbs stemming from an initial choice. But, here she is, stopping for more than a second.

She considers how easy it would be to ask the receptionist for an intake form. There’s an extra line where you can write your non-legal name. The receptionist probably never reads that line, but imagine if she did. One final fuck-you to the cis. Then Natalie would sit down on one of those comfortable-looking chairs. She would share an ephemeral moment of being in trans community, as one by one the other two trannies in this room would be called up. Natalie would wait for her turn. And then it wouldn’t matter what happens to Emily or to herself or to anyone else because she’d seamlessly merge herself into a weaponized statistic.

The trans girl turns to look at Natalie, raises an eyebrow, and then nods her head to the side and, still weeping, closes her eyes. She reminds Natalie of how Emily looks in the morning when she’s still asleep and snoring softly. Natalie reminds herself that she does want to see and hear Emily again. And then she walks across the room to the front desk.

The receptionist is a short cis woman with beautiful brown hair. She’s wearing a simple off-white blouse with a name tag that says “Amanda (she/her)”.

Natalie walks right past her and her desk and to the door on the receptionist’s right.

“I understand that you’re impatient,” Amanda says, “but there’s a few people ahead of you. I could check you in right now if you want?”

Instead, Natalie unzips her raincoat and lets it fall to the floor and she unslings the tent bag on her back and pulls at the drawstring and pulls the metal baseball bat out of it and brings the bat up behind her ear, like she’s back in high school and this is baseball. The bat has the signatures of many no-longer-teenagers, from when Natalie broke her arm.

She swings the baseball bat into Amanda’s skull. 

It’s not enough force to incapacitate Amanda but she falls out of her seat and clutches her head. Natalie swings again and hears finger bones break followed by a scream.

Then she looks over her shoulder. The trans girl is looking at Natalie, eyes betraying nothing. The trans person in the changing room has opened the door. They look gorgeous in their underwear.

“I’m here to rescue someone,” Natalie tells them, while Amanda, on the floor, continues to howl in pain.

A few seconds elapse. And then the seated trans girl says, “There’s a camera.”

“Figured,” Natalie replies.

“We’ll hold them off for you,” the trans girl says.

The trans person in the changing room nods in agreement.

Natalie opens her mouth to say something sharp and convincing, but instead she says, “Please don’t.”

“You can argue with us or you can save whoever is in there,” the trans girl says.

“I really wish—”

“Solidarity, or whatever,” the trans girl says.

Out of the corner of her eye, Natalie can see the cis man and the cis woman finally turning around, mouths agape.

So she turns her back to the remaining people in the room.

“I’m Ruby,” the trans girl says from behind her.

“Maple,” the person in the changing room says.

“Natalie,” Natalie says.

She looks at Amanda’s computer. The spreadsheet lists an Eric in Room 2. Natalie nods to herself, and then opens the door to the hallway.

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The door to Room 2 is locked. Natalie picks the lock. It takes a few tries. By the time she turns the door handle, she can hear people shouting at each other in the waiting room. She pushes the door open.

It’s an empty, windowless room. There is a metal hook attached to the center of the ceiling. There is plastic sheeting spanning the entirety of the floor. In the far left corner, there is a small card table with a blank piece of paper and a pen.

Emily is sitting on a black metal folding chair in the center of the room. She’s still wearing her boy clothes: a baggy long-sleeve shirt and jeans with holes in the knees and soggy tennis shoes. She’s holding a syringe in her right hand.

They let you choose. Literally pick your poison. They never do it for you.

Emily didn’t expect to ever see that door open again, so there is shock in her eyes, followed by an even greater shock when she sees who is at the door.

“How’d you get in?” Emily asks, and then she sees Natalie’s bat and says, “Oh.”

“We’re leaving,” Natalie says.

Emily looks at the syringe and back at Natalie.

“I could stick this in me right now,” Emily says.

“But you won’t,” Natalie says.

“Why not?” Emily asks.

“Because you’re too angry with me,” Natalie answers.

“I’m always angry at you,” Emily says.

“More than usual, then,” Natalie says impatiently.

There is a crash and a thud from the waiting room, followed by shouting.

“There’s someone in there?” Emily asks, sounding even more surprised now.

“Two people,” Natalie answers.

“And you just left them there?” Emily asks.

“I came here for you,” Natalie says.

“I knew you were an irresponsible bitch,” Emily says, “but I didn’t know you were this cold.”

“Is that what this is about?” Natalie exclaims. “Is it really because you’re that mad at me?”

“It’s not about you,” Emily sighs. “I’m just… I don’t know why I’m still doing this. There used to be parties. There used to be rooms packed with queers. Their sweat would be all over your skin. You weren’t there. You don’t remember. But I do.”

Natalie searches for a reasonable reply to that. Then a gunshot resounds. It’s incredibly loud. Natalie hears Ruby in the waiting room scream.

Natalie and Emily look at each other, open-mouthed. What they don’t know is that there are two loaded handguns under Amanda’s desk, and that the cis man and the cis woman have retrieved them.

Natalie tries and fails to unfreeze herself. She didn’t expect any guns. The other desire she has, the one that doesn’t involve saving Emily, immediately crawls back into her brain. She suddenly, desperately, wants to curl up in a ball and welcome a bullet as a friend. But she tells herself that she can’t, because she doesn’t have choices. “I don’t have choices,” she whispers to herself. She doesn’t have choices because she is a sequence of actions stemming from a choice that she already made. “I don’t have choices,” she repeats to herself, and this time it becomes true. And then it’s time for the next action, which is: Look directly at Emily and say: “I don’t have time for your nostalgia. You’re coming with me.”

“You’re going to have nightmares about this night for the rest of your life,” Emily observes. “And I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night to you shouting, and I’ll need to calm you down. Every night.”

“Maybe, yeah,” Natalie says. She’s not really feeling anything right now but it seems probable that she will later. “But you’re still coming home with me,” she adds.

Emily raises her eyebrow in response.

Another gunshot. Ruby stops screaming.

Emily stands up, syringe in hand.

A lithe shadow moves along the wall opposite the door, and then the cis woman, the greeter, gun in hand, appears.

Too late, Natalie readies her bat and moves towards the door.

The gun fires. The bullet collides with Natalie’s shoulder. She drops the bat. It clangs as it hits the floor.

The cis woman takes a second to aim again, during which the rest of her body doesn’t move. This is why it is possible for Emily to jab her in the neck with the syringe.

The cis woman smacks Emily away and aims the gun at her. The cis woman is about to pull the trigger when she abruptly collapses to the floor, limbs spasming.

Emily chose something painful and fast-acting.

Emily looks down at the cis woman and then to Natalie and says, “At first, I honest-to-God just wanted to get us some milk at the corner store.”

“I figured,” Natalie grunts.

Emily grabs the bat from the floor in one hand and pulls Natalie up onto her feet with the other.

The cis man bursts into the room and Emily grips the bat with both hands and swings it into his neck. It’s not a practiced swing like Natalie’s but it doesn’t need to be. The cis man staggers backward and Emily hits him in the kneecaps and then the forehead and then the neck again and then the nose and then the teeth and then she points the end of the bat at the cis man’s open screaming mouth and shoves the bat in, once, twice, three times. That does something strange to the noises that he is making, and it causes him to stay on the floor, spitting out shards of teeth, clutching his throat.

Emily relaxes her stance and turns to Natalie and asks, “What’re you looking at?”

“You look great tonight,” Natalie says.

“Don’t lie to me,” Emily says.

“You look like shit,” Natalie says.

“So do you,” Emily says. “We’re going to need to get that bullet out of you somehow.”

“You’re coming home with me,” Natalie says, trying her best to apply pressure to the wound. “And then we’ll figure that out.”

“I’m coming home with you,” Emily agrees, and if there’s any grief or resignation or guilt or anger beyond those words, Natalie can’t hear it. It’s just words. And now both women have become just verbs.

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So Emily and Natalie run to the door.

And Emily shoulders the door’s bar.

And then together they leap out into the wild, ragged night.