The room wasn't big, but it was full. Bigger rooms would come, she just had to get there. It was gonna take work before whole auditoriums would listen to her. And this wasn’t about fame, besides. It was about making the world a better place for women like us. If she reaches even just one cis person out there and convinces them of the terrible reality we face every day, then that would be enough. 

Jessica’s parents were not happy when she came out, she tells the audience. They said a lot of awful things. Do you know what it's like to look your parents in the eye and see only disgust? To have to move out suddenly, lose most of your support network, and struggle to make ends meet? Do you know what it's like to have the f-slur screamed at you? Have you ever tried to get a job as a clockable trans woman in a small town? We have to deal with a lot. This speech isn’t a pity fest though, she assures them. She just needs to make clear what our lives are like, but we are more than the sum of our traumas. She talks about finally moving out of her transphobic hometown for good. About getting involved in the queer and trans community here in Chicago. She tells them about how much it meant to her to be asked to speak here tonight. She thanks them for listening. And finally, she finishes with a twist. Her parents came around! Just this year her mother said “we love you no matter what.” Our community faces a lot of adversity, but if we show enough patience and wisdom in the face of it, she muses, cis people will come around. 

Pleasant applause fills the room, and it unwinds her. She finds a spot to sit on the lip of the stage and waits. Strangers walking up to her and thanking her for what she said is her favorite part of speaking. It just feels good. It feels like being let in. It feels like progress. 

A middle aged man approaches and tells her “we all have to stick together to get this country back to where it used to be.” He points to a teenage girl next to him. “My son is becoming trans too.” Jessica winces. It takes time, she reminds herself. She does not correct the man.

The young girl smiles awkwardly, “nice to meet you.”

The event runner—a balding gay man named Keith—approaches with a woman at his side. “Your outfit is so well put together,” the woman tells Jessica, “I’m a pretty observant person, but I don’t think I’d have known if you hadn’t said anything.  It's so nice to meet a trans woman who understands fashion.” 

The woman smiles eagerly, waiting to be thanked. After a moment of awkward silence Jessica all but mews “awww, thank you,” and then glances to the opposite side of the stage, where a man has stood on the edge of her vision. A little shorter than her, though not by much, he wears a white button up with fabric so thin it's impossible not to see his nipples, and the bilateral mastectomy scars below them. As he approaches the older woman becomes visibly uncomfortable with his presence.

“I’m Roche,” he offers a hand to Jessica. Something about his voice pulls at Jessica. Adrenaline rises in her. As though her body knows something is coming. “I’ve been wanting to ask you, do you remember me?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known a Roche, sorry.”

“I didn’t have the name then. We both had different names then. I just thought maybe you might remember my voice,” he smiles warmly, “but guess not. Maybe you remember my LMH profile then?” As soon as he begins speaking the name her brain fills it in, “EllipticaLunaRbit?” 

Suddenly she is back in her parent’s house, sun slowly bisected by the uneven skyline it collapses into. She can feel the cool tile against her bare feet, her thighs sticking to the cheap imitation leather of her chair. Her fingers digging into that spot on the armrest where it has worn through to the stuffing beneath. She feels the effete resistance the imitation cotton gives before tearing off. Picking at it calms the bubbling, giddy fear that someone might discover her.  She hears his voice drifting softly through her headphones, a ringing bell folded in on itself. She loves the way he lingers on the word faggot. The file finishes and she plays it again. 

“No, of course, yes, I remember you,” she tells him, but the person he remembers isn’t her anymore. She hopes her speech made that clear. It isn’t who she ever was. She was just confused then, desperate for anything gender affirming. A lot of us go through that phase, before we accept ourselves. And then we put it behind us. “It’s just been like almost a decade since we spoke,” she forces a laugh, “I think I was seventeen when we met.”

“You knew each other before?” Keith excitedly interjects, “so, were you two there for each other, for the trans stuff?”

“Something like that,” Roche grins. 

“That must have been so important,” the woman with Keith adds sagely, “I’m glad you had each other.”

“It was,” Jessica agrees meekly, thankful for their presumptions. Roche, if you still care then let this go. It’s inappropriate here. You have to know how fragile they can be. Please don’t make us seem like too much to them. The paths that lead us to ourselves are complicated, but they don’t need to know about all the mess. They need digestible ideas, ones they can easily understand and empathize with. How the fuck do you make sissy hypnos digestible for a cis person?

“We did,” Roche agrees. “It can be so hard without anyone who gets you. You feel like you might break apart sometimes. We were lucky to know each other.”

The phrase slides through her, leaving each inch a little lighter as it passes. Taking little pieces as it goes, leaving pleasure in its wake. Her body is lighter. Her mind is lighter. 

So powerful after all these years. 

“Wonderful to hear,” Keith affirms. “Now Jessica, we wanted to ask if you might want to get dinner with us. There’s a great Italian place not that far from here.”

“Umm…” she tries to pull herself back into the room. The conversation. But they’re heavy and far away—

“Don’t even think of saying no to that, Jessica,” Roche insists, “we’ll just catch up later.”

The woman frowns, “Oh I’m sorry, did you two already have some kind of plans. We wouldn't want to get in the way.”

“Or,” Keith smiles invitingly, “you both could come. Our treat, truly.”

“I wouldn’t insert myself like that,” Roche tells them.

“It’s no problem,” Keith insists, “Would you like that Jessica?”

Roche turns to Jessica. The pull is too much to resist. She knows she should say no. If Roche is playing with their old trigger phrases like that, god knows what else he might try. But she forgot how good this feels. “You want me along?” he asks, grinning. 

She nods helplessly. 

“Think of it as our way of saying thank you for helping Jessica become the wonderful woman before us,” Keith smiles.

Jessica turns to the man and his daughter, standing silently at the edge of the group. She utters the same numbingly rehearsed words she always says to strangers in this kind of situation. “It was nice meeting you both, please reach out if you ever need any guidance. My socials are always open.” She’s thankful for its practiced familiarity in her dazed state. 

Her and Roche follow Keith and the woman outside. “We’ll get the car,” Keith tells Jessica, and they disappear around the side of the building.

“You can’t do that to me in public!” She whispers intensely to Roche.

“Pretty sure you’re enjoying yourself,” he whispers back, smirking as he nods at her visibly tented skirt. She looks around, mortified, to see if anyone is watching before adjusting herself, pinning her erection against her waist with her panties. 

“Are you stalking me?!” She demands. 

“Not really. Chicago is where I’ve always been. Cities like these are just magnets for freaks like us, I guess.”

“We’re not freaks,” she insists, her voice cracking.

He leans in close, his eyes boring into her. “We are though.” She feels his face’s heat on her cheeks. 

“I’m not that person now. I don’t like this kind of thing anymore,” she insists, desperate. She would never call the police. She knows cops aren’t kind to us. But she finds herself hoping one shows up anyway, and saves her. “I don’t consent to this, Roche!”

“Of course you don’t, but you do want it.” She feels his breath on her face, and her own breath catches in her throat. “Look what you’ve made yourself into. For them.” She hears the disdain in his voice. He runs a hand along her cheek as Keith’s SUV emerges from behind the building. “Don’t you want to be what you really are?” Every knotted up thing rises inside her at the threat of exposure, not just terrified but wanting the terror too. He leans away. “Now do keep blushing for me, my girly little faggot, and break apart some more.”

He says faggot just like he always has. 

The knots inside her fall away. More keeps falling. Less inside her. Less weighing her down. Lighter now. She wants to stay grounded but everything that keeps her here is slipping away. She is terrified of what might happen when nothing is left. What she might do.

He smirks at her and offers his arm. “Hold onto me. Wouldn't want you floating off now.” Despite herself she grips tightly to his arm, and true to his word it brings her back, solidly, to Earth. For that moment she is thankful that he's there, anchoring her. She knows she should despise him, that he's become something awful, but it's so hard to hold on to any thought or feeling right now. It all just drifts away. He is the only thing she knows with any certainty. Her eyes rise toward the darkening sky as Keith pulls up in front of them. Roche opens the door for her. “You first,” he commands, his hand on the small of her back guiding her as she slides inside.

Faraway street lights flicker past SUV windows. She feels Roche’s voice sliding into her. With so much falling out, it's the only thing that seems to stick inside. He reminds her how pretty the streetlights are, high above like stars. He encourages her to watch the stars as she floats by them. Up there, unbound by gravity. On full display. Nothing hidden. Radiant, begging us to bear witness. “Do you remember the stars?” 

Of course she does. Back before either of them had transitioned, when Jessica saw him as the freaky cis girl she knew online. Though what he saw her as was a bit more complicated, Jessica recalls. She remembers the heat still radiating from the engine as she lays on the hood of her car. She remembers the empty parking lot, the one not far from the community college she is about to fail out of. The rubbery pressure of the earbud in her left ear. Roche’s pleasant intake of breath that starts the recording. It makes her breathe in too, alongside him, every time. His voice, that folded bell, mixing with the rumble of passing cars, break apart, becoming light. Stars become brighter in the cold. She unbuttons her pants and slips out of them. Her erection begins to strain against the soft pink panties Roche bought for her. 

“Easier for a girl to get them than a guy,” he’d explained to her the day he’d bought her the matching pair of bra and panties. A funny thing to say, in retrospect. She remembers them coming in the mail, the first femme clothing that was to be truly hers—not borrowed or stolen in desperation, then discarded later in shame. 

She remembers retrieving the package from her parents’ mailbox. Remembers Roche’s return address plainly displayed, states away from her, and how for a moment it had made him feel more real—substantiated in the world. She'd been so excited when she opened the package, only for her giddiness to crumble to humiliation. Across the front in thick permanent marker both the bra and panties said my girly faggot. Roche had howled with glee when she told him there was no way she would ever wear those. 

Her pants slide away like unimportant thoughts along the curve of the hood, exposing her lightness, her bare skin, break apart. She pulses with need, squirming out of her shirt and throwing it dramatically off the hood. It feels so good to watch it float away. There is the rumble of a slowing car moving through the dark. Understanding distantly the implications of it, she glances to the road to see a green flatbed truck pulling hesitantly onto the main road before she looks away. Did they see her shirt? She ought to leave now, but she is so weightless and every inch of her is alight, so instead she puts in the other earbud, blocking out everything but his voice, break apart. 

The stars call to her. Their light is her light. Break apart. No more thoughts to weigh her down, break apart. Pleasure fills every empty space. She needs this. All she has to do is break apart. There is only the sky above, immense and endless and full of light. Desire becomes lighter than air. Break apart. 

Gravity lets her go. 

Her body lifts off, rising unbound. She floats above. Perfect, glowing, exposed. All of her condenses into a single point of pleasure, suspended, and then explodes outward—break apart. She is reshaped, the strands of her dispersing light guided by his voice into more perfect arrays. He arranges her, heavenly.

At some point she returns. Her limbs thud weakly against the hood. Her fingers dangle off its edge. Her vision flickers. Light enters and exits her lungs. She begins to feel her body again. Her flaccid arms, the bras fabric teasing her chest. Her first pair of panties now soaked with her own cum. She lifts a hand to pull an earbud from her ear as his file winds down to its end. It clatters away onto the pavement. The engine rumble returns, so much louder now. She can barely think or move, but panicked she looks around. The green flatbed truck. Headlights still on, driver's side door hanging open. And about a foot from her—tall, broad shouldered and unshaven—a man holds his phone sideways in front of his face, aimed at her. He laughs openly, loudly. She tries to cover her crotch and her chest, the sites of her humiliation. She needs to roll off the hood, run for her car door, something. But instead she just stares as he lowers his phone just a bit. His glasses have a dent in the frame. His eyes take her in. 

“This a free use kind of thing?” His voice is coarse. 

She shakes her head terrified, unable to speak. 

He laughs again. “A shame.” He turns his phone around to her. A video of Jessica writhing in pleasure on the hood of her car, making obscene noises, and then cumming hard. “Thanks for the material, faggot,” he scoffs, and leaves.

The file ends, leaving her alone with her stars.