John walks in. I am dilating. He brings me tea. Rooibos with honey granules. My favorite. Nice boy.
I sit up carefully, taking the mug. He says nothing. I smile.
“Still bleeding?” he asks.
“I haven’t been,” I say. “But you might see spots when I take out the dildo.”
“Dilator. It’s called a dilator, right?”
“Yes.”
I sip.
“Thank you, again.”
“You’re welcome.”
He takes care of me, still. I think about him living alone here. Like my divorced grandpa. Surely he has girls over. Girls, where I used to sleep. Girls, where I lived.
“What are you working on?” I ask.
“The midterm project. It’s dumb.”
It is not dumb. It seems important, actually.
“It can’t be so dumb,” I insist. “More ‘optimization’, I guess.”
“I don’t really enjoy these assignments. I wish, you know, that I was still taking AI ethics.”
I wonder, to myself, about the purpose of a class on ethics surrounding artificial intelligence. It would seem that the professor of that class should just tell everyone to drop out.
“Well,” I say. “Maybe you could read for pleasure.”
“Yes.”
He sits. I ask about the new painting.
“Yeah,” he says looking over. “I just wanted some warmth.”
“Since when?”
John sighs.
Moving on. He walks away.
John comes back. I take the dilator out. No spotting. I hand him the thing.
“What a gift you’ve given me,” he announces. “I shall cherish this dildo. Dilator.”
I don’t laugh. He goes to the bathroom. I hear the sink running. He returns empty-handed. We start to cuddle.
“Is it painful still?” he asks. “Or, you know, how painful is it?”
“Only a little.”
“That’s good.”
I wonder what it would have been like to be born with a vagina. Maybe I wouldn’t have appreciated it as much. I tell myself that being trans has shaped me, and that I might have wound up being less empathetic than I am as a trans girl. I am very empathetic, I tell myself. I am radical. Really, though, it might have been nice to care a bit less. I care too much. About friends, about exes. John never loved me.
“You know I appreciate you,” he reminds me.
Was I thinking out loud?
“I know.”
“You taught me,” he insists. “You taught me to care!”
John always cared. I think it’s fine that his passion was computers. A lot of trans girls love computers. I don’t, but I get it. It’s a private world of exploration. It’s a safe dialogue.
“You always cared about other people,” I tell him.
“I didn’t. Not in the ways I cared about you.”
Past tense.
I hope John feels normal, or alright, about looking after me. Who else was going to feed me? Who else would tuck me in and remind me to dilate? Who else? I have nobody, really. And the whole time we were dating, even in the first months, John said that he could be my recovery person. As time went on, I oscillated between pursuing a vaginoplasty and trying to manage dysphoria without surgery. He was fine with me doing whatever I wanted. He let me make my own choice.
John is great. I know he feels bad about how things ended. I’m glad that he’s still in my life. He’s making the pain less painful. He sees me, and I hope we’ll stay friends after my recovery. If not, I’ll deal. But I want him in my life.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” he says with radiance.
I wonder about the kinds of movies he’s been watching without me. I moved out so long ago that he could have gone through any number of nauseating phases without my scholarly guidance. I want to show him something good. He suggests a sweeping Soviet epic. I tell him that my little world of recovering from vaginoplasty has rendered me allergic to all things sweeping and epic. I want a chamber piece. Today, I want a room without a view.
“Okay,” he says.
I miss him. I know that he’s being nice. What he’s doing for me is beautiful charity. And yet I hope that he likes spending time with me again. I never really wanted to break up. I only wanted more of a view.