“We're here,” Keith announces excitedly, “I hope you two enjoy, because this is my favorite restaurant in Chicago.” 

“Looking forward to it,” Jessica manages, though with an unintended lilt. So much effort just to focus, to speak, to move. Step by step she follows them into the restaurant. With each step, Roche is at her side keeping her steady. A hostess guides them to a booth and hands out menus as the four sit down. 

“Is there anything you recommend, Keith?” Jessica asks, trying to not sound as unmoored as she feels. 

“I always get the manicotti,” he tells her, and she nods. 

A waitress approaches them. They all pause and order their drinks. “Just a water,” she manages to tell the waitress with what feels like a reasonable smile on her face.  The waitress nods, and walks off.

“So Roach,” the woman gives a strained smile, “tell us about yourself.” 

“Roche,” he corrects, plainly. 

“I'm sorry?” 

“My name is Roche.” He annunciates his name slowly for her, emphasizing the sh sound at the end.

“Oh. Well I'm sorry,” she offers, dismissively, “it's just, that’s not a normal name.”

“It doesn’t need to be.” He glares at the woman. 

The woman scoffs, “I know that. I am only trying to explain why I mispronounced it. I mean, take Jessica’s name for instance.” Jessica winces as she is gestured toward, implicated in the woman’s excuse, “we all know how to pronounce that. It's a name a lot of people have.”

“It’s funny you mention that, her name surprised me,” Roche smiles wistfully. “When I heard her speaking this evening I immediately knew her voice, but it took me a minute to be sure because of the name. It's definitely not what she’d asked me to call her.” Please don't, Roche. He places a hand on her shoulder and looks to her. “Don't you remember that? You were so embarrassed telling me, but it was beautiful.”

“Well now you have to tell us!” Keith proclaims. 

“It's not mine to tell, Keith.” Roche turns to Jessica. Below the table his hand slides up under her skirt. His fingers find her lingering erection where she left it, pinned against her waist. “Names are sensitive things, full of meaning.”

“You can trust us,” the woman insists.

Roche begins to tease along her shaft, making her lose all focus. She wants to talk her way out of this. Invent some lie that gets her and Roche away from them. Something that won’t leave a sour taste in Keith’s mouth and compromise her future speaking opportunities. But she can’t. It takes so much focus just to speak. The necessary subterfuge is beyond her. Even without him fondling her, she’s barely capable of lying by omission at this point. 

She can either make an awful scene and accept the consequences, or she can let the night happen and focus on convincing Roche not to take things too far. She looks at him, pleading silently with her eyes for him to see what she’s going through. She can’t help but trust in him still, if only a little. Despite the years of silence between them, there was kindness and affection once. It was never just kink. 

“Do you even remember what you asked me to call you, back then?”  He pulls his fingers away.  Even in her haze she understands his implication. Tell them, or he won’t stop.

“I do,” she admits, and slips away.

A computer screen still illuminates her room in the soft purple hues of the Lost Minds Hypno forum webpage. Private message from EllipticaLunaRbit: “Get on TeamSpeak, freak.” 

She lays in her bed on voicechat with her headphones on for more than half an hour before Roche to finally show up. “Hey,” she whispers.

“Sorry it took so long,” Roche tells her, “I had a big fight with my boyfriend.” Roche wasn’t out as trans then, not even to her. And she wasn’t out to him. Not exactly, anyway. But it seems obvious in retrospect. How did she never notice then that they were the same?

“I’m sorry. We can talk about it.”

“I just wanna forget,” his voice is tired. “Is that okay?”

“Yea,” Jessica assures him, “of course.”

“Isn’t it pretty late there? Don’t you have classes tomorrow?”

“I do, but most of them are in the afternoon. I’ll be okay.”

“Most?” He chuckles knowingly. 

“My first one might be at nine,” she admits.

“Of course it is. Do I need to make you go to bed?”

“Maybe,” she replies playfully.

“Well too bad. I don’t want you leaving just yet. You’ve been listening to my file, right?”

“All the time,” she feels a warmth just thinking of it. “I think I'm kind of addicted to your voice.” 

He lets out a satisfied sigh. “You're so lucky I'm into fags like you.”

She whimpers. 

“So I wanna make you a new file, but I need something from you first.”

“Oh my god. Yes.” Her heart is racing, her body on fire. “Anything.”

“I’m done calling you by the name your parents gave you. It’s a man's name. You’re clearly not that. I need something more appropriate for you. It's time to tell me.”

“Tell you?”

“Oh sweetheart, I know you’ve already chosen one,” he coos. “I know what you are.” And then the aggression relents, and he adds softly, “I know how real this is for you.”

“Real?” she whispers, paralyzed by the terror of being seen, “I think I need to go—”

“Break apart.”

She becomes the sky. A long, soft sigh rises from her as her body lightens. All the worry and shame and heaviness drifts away like clouds. 

“I’ve been thinking a lot about us lately. I’m basically cheating on my boyfriend with you. You know that, right?”

He's never brought his boyfriend up like this. She knows distantly from his tone that he's serious. But she's made of air, barely able to speak.   

“He's mad that I’d rather spend my time in here. We barely fuck anymore. Do you understand? I could be fucking him right now, but I'm not. I'm here with you all tranced out and acting girly.” 

If she were capable of panic right now, she would be. “Sorry,” she attempts. 

“Fuck your apology. I'm here because I want to be. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. I don’t want him. This is what I want. My fantasies have always been about pansies like you,” she feels herself getting hard as he speaks. She knows it's inappropriate but she can’t stop herself. “I thought that meant I was into faggy boys, but I'm not into boys.”

“You aren't?” she asks deliriously. 

“No. I'm into girls I made myself.”

“Made?” she is breathless, the world spinning out around her.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” 

“Yea.”

“So give it to me,” he commands insistently. 

“It’s embarrassing.”

“It better be.” 

She giggles. 

“Fuck, you’re so hot when you’re like this,” he growls through gritted teeth, “I wanna make you like this all the time.”

“Me too. I want that.” She doesn’t know his face, but she imagines him in the room as he speaks, his voice reshaping her. “So much.” 

“Tell me your name, and I won't ever let you be anyone else.”

“Darling,” she lets it go. Gives it to him. “It’s Darling.”

“Darling.” He speaks it back to her adoringly.

She wishes she could be held. That all the distance between them could be undone. That they could just be together, in the same room. She tries to imagine a future in which they might be.

Keith and the woman stare at her with leering curiosity.

“I wanted my name to be Darling,” she admits meekly.

Something joyful and unrestrained passes over Roche’s face. He lips the word beautiful, just for her.

“Oh. Well. That's a bit,” the woman tries unsuccessfully to sound kind as she speaks, "childish and cutesy, isn't it? You must have been pretty young, huh?”

Roche fingers her erection again, her lip quivering in immediate response. “Nineteen,” she blurts out, breathlessly. As soon as the gasping admission leaves her lips he removes his hand.

“Oh,” the woman replies with pity. A silence descends.

“It's historic,” Keith offers eventually, “Candy Darling, right? An homage. I was so in love with Andy Warhol as a kid.”

Jessica nods unconvincingly.

The waitress returns. Jessica didn’t even look at the menu. Panicked, she orders the manicotti, the only thing she knows with certainty is even on the menu. Everyone else orders after her, and the waitress leaves. 

“Thanks for letting me tag along, Keith,” Roche offers with a smirk, “ I was worried I’d be a bother but I’m really enjoying myself. I’m glad we didn’t break apart the team.” 

A quiet gasp escapes her lips. There’s no helping it. The parts of her that could have stopped the sound are all gone. No one asks her what she was gasping about. They all notice, and just pretend they didn't—the machine of social niceties reasserting itself. But she knows those moments of inexplicable weirdness are never forgotten. Or she knew it anyhow, for a brief moment before the thought sublimated into an effervescent fog inside her hazy and indistinct head. 

“There was actually something we wanted to talk to you about, Jessica,” Keith smiles magnanimously, "It's why we invited you to dinner. Beth here,” he gestures to the woman next to him, “is a friend of mine who works for the HRC.”

Not now. Please, not now.

“We’re throwing a big gala for our donors,” Beth explains, “I was hoping you might be interested in being a keynote speaker for us, Jessica. With everything going on, the organizers feel a trans woman should be up there representing us, and they are asking me who I recommend. With your permission, I’d like to tell them: you.” Beth pulls out a business card and pen from her clutch and scribbles on it. “This is my personal number. I want you to have it.” Beth hands her the card.

“Oh,” Jessica replies shakily. 

She wants to float away, but she can’t. Her body is too heavy. Overburdened. Light, but not light enough. 

“This could be a really good opportunity for you. It’s a big step up in responsibility, I know. But you have an important story, and you’re a strong speaker,” Keith encourages. “The Human Rights Campaign, Jessica. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.”

“Doesn’t the HRC have a history of throwing our rights in the trash?” Roche spits with disdain.

“No nonprofit is perfect, Roach,” Beth condescends.

“These chances don’t come every day,” Keith reminds her, but she is lost. Elsewhere. A singular desire overwhelming all else: to discard her unnecessary weight and float away. 

“I need to be lighter,” she tries to stop the words from leaving her mouth, but she can’t. She stares at the floor. She knows they’re looking at her, trying to parse her increasingly erratic responses. She can’t stomach their judgments. The woman she has meticulously assembled for them, for the world, is collapsing around her. Jessica is crumbling away. And rising from the depths is her nascent dream, her flickering star, her lighter-than-air. 

She is on her feet, backing away, moving between tables, down hallways, into the single stall bathroom. She locks the door. She knows what’s coming. She wishes she could stop herself, but she needs her body to feel okay again. She pulls her panties down past her knees, stepping out of them as they hit the floor. She fumbles with the clasp of her bra, the small metal hooks bending as she fails to unlatch them before pulling the sides apart. She messily snakes it out of her shirt. She throws it across the empty bathroom.

She takes a deep, ragged breath. Freed of those weights, her body finally is right again. For a minute she shuts it all out and just breathes, before finally facing herself in the mirror.  

Beads of sweat drip from her forehead, fever finally breaking. Her nipples visibly tent her blouse. Sweat makes her sleeves cling awkwardly to her skin. With her panties gone, there is only the hem of her skirt left barely keeping her erection in check. She looks freshly fucked, and her body shudders with pleasure at the idea of strangers thinking so. 

Why can’t there be room in her life for both? Why can’t she be Jessica now and then Darling with Roche in a few hours? People do it everyday, without the humiliation of having their most private selves exposed. She could do it too. She could still splash her face, wipe herself down with paper towels, clean herself up, put her underwear back on, and walk out looking half decent. 

But she doesn’t. 

Instead she thinks of Roche, his eyes full of wild joy at her undoing. He won’t stop. He wants his Darling back. And right now she just wants to hear his voice, her folded bell, calling her Darling again. She wants him to say it in front of Keith and Beth, exposing her for all she is until they wouldn’t let her anywhere near their precious gala. 

Why not just let him? Keith, Beth, and the HRC can find another eager trans woman who will tear herself to pieces to please them. So why not give in? Let him remake her. The way she once begged him to. The way he promised he would. Her eyes quiver uncertainly as she gazes at herself. This is wrong, all of this is wrong. But it doesn’t matter. Her want swallows everything else. “Break apart,” she tells herself, and falls away. 

She tells her mother she’s trans. She’s a woman. She always has been and always will be. Her mother’s face recoils. Twists in on itself. They begin arguing. She had rehearsed it so much more cleanly than this, but immediately it’s falling apart. It’s all going wrong.

Her mother calls it a perversion. They scream at each other, words Darling can’t even recall anymore. After that night they stop speaking to each other at all, except for a few weeks later when her mother says she thinks it’s time for Darling to leave. She doesn’t use that name of course, or Jessica. They never even got that far. It hurts, but not as much as that word, perversion, which roils undigested in her gut. 

She stops going on the LMH forums and TeamSpeak. Missed messages from Roche pile up, increasingly desperate. She lets them. It’s easier this way. 

The only way she can be what she is is to purge all of the perversion inside her. That stuff we trans women at her trans support group only ever speak about with derision. Not about her specifically, of course. She knows better than to tell us what she’s into. But we do talk about those things: sissy hypnos, force femme, getting the boy fucked out of you. People into those things aren’t us, obviously. They’re misogynist perverts giving us a bad name. She doesn’t want to be a misogynist pervert. She wants to be a real, actual trans woman. She lays in bed wishing she were a creature without desire or want. 

Before she moves out she deletes her Lost Mind Hypno account. Her TeamSpeak account. Disappears from Roche’s life without saying a word. It hurts so much, but that’s what it takes to be one of us.

She floats back to the table, her feet barely touching the floor. She doesn’t know how long she’s been gone, but in her absence their food arrived. “Sorry,” she mumbles as she sits back down.  

“That’s quite alright, Jessica,” Keith assures her, but she catches his eyes tracing concerned over her dishevelment. “We understand this is a major decision. It’s okay to feel a bit overwhelmed.” He looks to Beth who nods uncertainly. “ But are you sure you’re feeling alright? You look a little…” Keith trails off, searching for a word.

“Messy,” Beth finishes the sentence for him.

“I feel light,” she assures them and takes a bite of her manicotti. For a few minutes they all eat in silence.

“I was thinking about your speech tonight,” Beth begins, “and I was thinking it might be nice if your mother was on the stage with you, so you wouldn’t be under all that pressure by yourself. It would be a beautiful visual to show everyone the progress that’s possible.”

“It was a lie,” Darling admits with a laugh. She must sound drunk to them.

“Excuse me?” Beth’s face twists in on itself. Beneath the table Roche squeezes her hand.

“My mother,” she tells them plainly, “still calls me my deadname, still uses he/him pronouns. She did tell me she’d ‘love me no matter what’ so that part is technically true I guess, but she meant that about her son. Not about me.”

“I’m so sorry, Jessica,” Keith offers, empathetic but clearly uncomfortable with the fabrication.

Beth gazes at the table. Her face goes flat for a moment, then re-animates. “You really sold it,” Beth commends, impressed.

Darling giggles.

“Darling,” Roche begins. She bites her lip just hearing him say it. Her eyes flutter. “I missed that laugh.”

“Hold up now, Roche,” Keith spouts, “that’s not her name.”

“But I like it,” she glows, rolling her head onto Roche’s shoulder and gazing up at him. He gazes down at her. They stare at each other, neither seemingly able to believe the moment, not caring about anyone or anything else. No one says a thing. Eventually, she lifts her head back off his shoulder and resumes her meal. “The manicotti’s good by the way, thanks for recommending it.”

“Glad you’re enjoying it,” Keith replies with the weariness of a disappointed father. He sighs. “I mean, please tell me you don't expect the rest of us to call you Darling.” 

She feels the rush of defiance rising in her, “I do prefer Darling, actually.” Keith looks diminished. The worst part is it's not dysphoria compelling her answer. She has no dysphoria about the name Jessica. It’s not her, but it’s fine. It’s not even because it'll please Roche. It's the embarrassment; the need to be humiliated. To be seen as pathetic and childish by these people who once respected her. She wants it because the embarrassment gets her off. It's wrong, involving them in a kinky game of humiliation and exhibition. They never consented. But she can't help herself. 

“I do hope you understand we’d still be introducing you as Jessica at the Gala. Jessica is still your legal name, right?” Beth interjects, almost bitterly. 

“You'd deadname a trans woman on stage?” Roche scoffs, “the fuck is wrong with you?”

“She was fine with Jessica a moment ago, before your little reminiscence,” Beth almost barks, “I hardly see how it's a deadname.”

“I'm Darling.” She claims it. It feels so good to claim it. “It's non-negotiable.”

A smile crests Roche’s lips, his delight feeding her delirium. She feels Roche’s fingers caress her hard-on and free it from the hem of her skirt. She feels it floating free there beneath the table, finally unrestrained.

“Beth, when I told my mother I was trans she called me a pervert. I felt awful,” Darling explains, “but I guess she was right.” She picks up the business card from the table. “Thanks for the opportunity. I’ll be in touch.”

“Break apart, faggot,” Roche commands, no longer couching the trigger phrase in believable conversation. No longer hiding the game.

She moans as the words undo her. The last of her shame and self control fall away. Filled with pleasure and light she rises, ethereal, from her seat. As she stands she feels her erection momentarily catch on the underside of the table before she twists to maneuver it past. She feels her skirt visibly deforming around it. She watches their eyes tracing to it in disgust. 

The earth lets her go. It’s pull can’t hold her now. She is weightless. She is floating in air. What is left of her knows only one gravity now, her own, and so she falls inward, collapses on herself—condensing into a single point. 

Then she erupts. She is a star being born, spewing outward into the space around her. She makes a guttural noise, a small dark stain blooming onto her skirt. She dribbles a few drops into her half eaten manicotti. Beth gasps. Who knows how many people are staring at this point. Darling hopes it’s a lot.