two

The thin bedroom door could barely muffle the raised voices coming from the kitchen. Marcel and Kamila were arguing again. This time, it was something about the dishes, and the cat, and all the other petty grievances of sharing a space. Normally, the shouting should have petered out after fifteen minutes at most, but Marcel had recently quit his job citing burnout and now everything was getting that much more tense, and that much more loud.

June rolled around in bed, and cranked up the volume in her headphones. Shouted music wasn't going to help her sleep, but at least it cut her off from the angry voices outside. It wasn't nearly late enough yet for her to yell at the two to keep it quiet; outside, the late summer day was only now starting to give in to evening gray. But June had spent hours today putting things anxiously off, getting nothing done, and still, somehow, ending up exhausted. For the first time in months, there were unread emails in her inbox, including one which was very clearly the dean himself politely requesting a meeting. Everyone seemed so excited about the new opportunities opening ahead of her.

Meanwhile, June was terrified.

The Clear Skies Foundation's offer was scarcely a week old. In that time, June had managed to confirm that, against her suspicions, it was actually real. She got a friendly lawyer she had met back in her activist days to read through the proposal and confirm that it was legitimate, and legitimately enticing. It offered good money, excellent benefits, and even a small house to lodge her in Mount Verdant, a nowhere facility a continent away, two hundred kilometers away from the nearest airport, tucked away in some absurdly scenic mountain valley. The only thing left unexplained was what exactly she was supposed to do there, other than stay.

When questioned, Victoria promptly wrote back that the Foundation had no intention of imposing a direction on June's potential research. With smug vagueness, she mentioned "unique opportunities for sex and gender research" afforded by Mount Verdant, and expressed absolute trust in June's ability to use her time in the facility in a way that would lead to quality scholarship. Which was all well and good, aside from the fact that it still failed to actually clarify what those "unique opportunities" actually were, and why they had to be located in a corporate compound at the other end of the world.

Last year, June read an essay written by some stodgy lesbian feminist who described her mostly unhappy visit to one of the Galatea's sex resorts for the ulta-wealthy. Back then, she remembered complaining that the author fundamentally lacked the curiosity necessary to engage with the pornotopia she found herself in, with all of its wild technology and wilder possibilities. There was, no doubt, something profoundly enticing about being allowed backroom access to a place like that, if Mount Verdant was actually a place like that. But it was also the property of a man who insisted on knowing whether June wanted to become a drone.

Not that there was nothing exciting in the possibilities that this threatened; only those possibilities were both mad and horrifyingly plausible.

A sharp, breaking sound made it through the wall of noise in June's ears, followed by banging on her door.

"June!"

It was Kamila, hoarse and as angry as she had ever been. June tossed the headphones off and rushed to grab something to put on, before her fellow trans girl flatmate barged unceremoniously in.

"He smashed another plate!" she half-yelled, half-whined. "I'm fucking done!"

In the kitchen, Marcel was scooping shards of Ikea ceramic off the floor, his face flushed bright red. He mouthed some sort of an apology, directed more at June than fuming Kamila, who responded in kind by telling him to either get medicated, or get off testosterone. The situation escalated from there.

It wasn't until well after midnight that June managed to drop into her bed again, rank with sweat and way too angry to settle into sleep. Mana, whom she hadn't talked in weeks, was trying to reach her over Discord; she checked the messages, then just buried her face in the pillow.


-


Maria crumpled the paper coffee cup and chucked it artfully into the recycling bin. In the bright light of the afternoon Warsaw sun, she looked even more spectacular than usual. Maybe it was that seductively modest air that her recent fascination with suspiciously clingy maxi floral dresses gave her. She liked to call it her "tradwife summer", which June could never take really seriously, because as far as she knew, the first quality Maria expected out of men was a fastidious commitment to doing housework for her.

"So is either of them moving out?" she asked, returning to June's side.

The riverside boulevards swarmed with people out to catch the nicest hours of this brilliant summer day, and June really wanted to be anything but in the crowd right now. But Maria insisted, and their favourite cafe turned out to be too full to even sit down.

"Maybe?" she shrugged.

A pair of loud men passed by them, craning their flushed heads to stare. One of them whistled, and June couldn't tell if it was meant to express lust for Maria, or disgust with her. The other laughed, saying something she thankfully didn't catch. It would all be so much easier if Ada was here, holding her hand, and reassuring her it was nothing to worry about.

"Marcel can't afford it," she muttered, trying not to think too much about the stares, or her ex. "But Kamila isn't being reasonable."

That was the polite way of describing the situation. The slightly more rude one, and the one that would be more honest to June's feelings, was that they were both immature drama queens that needed to, for once, be able to meet each other half-way. But Maria was Marcel's friend, and had her own issues with Kamila, so impartiality was off the table.

"Well, if she really said half the things he says she did…"

"Then what?"

"Then I think you really ought to have a serious conversation with her."

At least it was not Maria advocating for June to kick another trans woman out; even if June could barely manage to say one nice thing about Kamila on the best of days, there was still some vestigial group solidarity left. The problem was that a serious conversation wasn't going to help, either, because June was not Kamila's mom, even if the younger girl sometimes treated her that way. Which she had asked her not to do, to extremely limited results.

They walked down the river in silence; with the cool breeze blowing from over the water, it made for a glorious, golden afternoon. June's mind was somewhere else, however. It lingered on the messages from last night, the desperation of a friend asking her if she had heard from an old mutual of theirs. She hadn't, and now couldn't help but to worry about someone she barely knew having apparently gone missing. It shouldn't be a big deal; misfortune happened, but it felt like yet another strike from a small hammer slowly chipping away at her, as if she was the wall in Tim Robbins' cell in the Shawshank Redemption. Only, obviously, one crumbling behind a cover far less attractive than a Barbarella poster.

"And what about you?" Maria finally asked.

"What about me?" June looked away, eyes skimming over the greenery at the other shore.

"Are you moving out?"

"They want a pet professor," she murmured, and Maria had the good sense not to chuckle. "It doesn't make sense otherwise. I'd be just helping corporate pinkwashing."

There were no restrictions in the proposal, no expectations. They even left a special exception in that they specifically did not want to review before it was published, so that its "integrity" could be assured. Which made it sound so absurdly utopic that there was no way June could trust it. In fact, it made her trust it less.

"So you're just not gonna take it?" Maria raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't say that."

"Then there's hope for you yet."

Maria—Maria who wrote so eloquently about cruel optimism and institutional capture—reacted to the news of the offer with a simple piece of advice. Get that bag. If June had any actual backbone, that should have had her grossly disappointed, if not outraged. But the problem with Maria was also that she had her life miraculously together, which meant that her suggestions carried an unquestionable, frustrating weight. Especially when she wasn't exactly in the right morally, but definitely correct practically.

"I don't want to leave my life here, you know?"

"Bitch," Maria laughed. "What life? You're miserable."

"Of fuck off," June mouthed half-heartedly.

She thought again about last night, Kamila and Marcel, and the Introduction to Media Studies class she was supposed to teach next semester.


-


On the way back home, June stopped in a half-deserted Costa Coffee at the edge of her housing estate. Her plan was to get something big and sweet, and then use the burst of sugar energy to respond to at least some of the emails, and maybe even finally schedule the unavoidable meeting with the dean. She eked out enough focus to write a single response, then opened Discord, and checked her ERP server for updates.

In the scene she was currently running, she was a domineering spider-centaur creature, sadistic to the bone, but with a hidden submissive streak. The latter was yet to come to the fore. Lizardpuppy had given her a few scenes before, and now it was anxious to get its share of playing some tenaciously bratty critter getting caught in the spider-lady's web. June didn't mind, not too much; a little bit of service topping was just a good roleplaying etiquette, and it let her explore the kinks that Lizardpuppy would be too squeamish to include itself.

What she did mind, however, was the fact that she was into her thirties now, and still getting excited at seeing a notification from her ERP partner. Yet another humiliating habit she couldn't help to shake, even after having written a relatively well-received essay for it for, off all things, the Journal of Homosexuality. It had even gotten cited again, recently.

She typed an extended message describing the way that the spider-lady's special poison rendered the puppygirl brainlessly docile. The inspiration here were the descriptions of tarantula hawks dragging paralysed spiders back into a nest, but since neither June, nor Lizardpuppy were into oviposition, or snuff, there would be no stingers involved at this time. Whips, however, and arachnid claws, were definitely on the menu.

All too late June remembered that Lizardpuppy was actually squeamish around blood. She apologized at length, and spent the next fifteen minutes editing her message to remove the gore. The worst part was re-reading her own prose, those clunky, overwrought descriptions that seemed the only thing she was capable of producing. At least the fixed narrative, now with welts instead of cuts, seemed to please Lizardpuppy significantly more, even as it left June with an aching hunger for things she could never have, physically, conceptually, and especially ethically.

Unfortunately, Lizardpuppy had to go soon after; it had a call scheduled with its girlfriend all over in Pretoria. June dallied a little longer in the cafe, until her phone notified her that her article on erotics of violence in Gretchen Felker-Martin's Cuckoo was being returned to her for the fourth round of "revise and resubmit".

Kamila wasn't home, and Marcel was sulking in his room. Last time June had checked, he was posting vague references to his mistreatment on Bluesky, without naming names, but leaving enough hits that June's DMs were exploding by proxy. Also, the dishes were still piling up in the sink. It wasn't her mess—she hadn't eaten at the apartment in a few days—but she still felt responsible, and besides cleaning something up felt like an appropriately productive distraction.

When she checked her Discord afterwards, hoping for some more updates from Lizardpuppy, she learned that a missing person case was being opened with regards to that one mutual. Katie? Kathy? It was embarrassing that June couldn't even remember her name, now that the girl was most likely dead. She knew she was supposed to care more, be torn up with grief about the horrors befalling her community; she even remembered those feelings, but the recollections were dull and distant. They belong to the other June, the one that wasn't indulging in the millennial self-loathing fantasy of being too tired to care. Those were some tough weeks, for sure, but they in no way justified her being so cold.

Maybe that was the real reason why they offered her that position. The thought felt like live voltage to nerve, so she quashed it by firing up a very loud, and very dumb game where her character's sword was at least twice as long as she was tall.


-


"So I understand that your reluctance is mostly on ethical grounds?"

The dean's office was airy and bright; large windows let in fresh sunlight, illuminating the modest, but tasteful decor. Scandinavian minimalism, of course, all very 2014, back when the dean himself was at the height of his world-trotting career as a new media scholar. Department gossip was that he directed the renovations of the offices himself, but even Jude had to give it to him: the result wasn't terrible. It certainly improved on the dusty socialist era mess that she'd managed to glance once or twice during her grad school years.

"And professional," she shifted anxiously in her chair, staring at the little sparrow perched precariously outside the window. "Not that the two are separable."

"Not in our field, for sure," the dean nodded.

June wasn't sure what this "our" was supposed to mean. If there was one shared point of scholarly interest between them, it was that they both worked with things that were on the internet, sometimes. But the man was known for trying to be genial. It added to his broadly friendly reputation.

"I just struggle to imagine how I could retain my academic integrity when my work is being sponsored by such an institution," she muttered. "I worry it would seriously jeopardize my ties to the community."

Another way of saying that would be that being a kept porn studies researcher patronized by an extension of a controversial multinational was certainly going to get her branded a traitor to all things good, holy, and radical on the internet. And not without a good reason. God himself knew that she'd have joined in the digital torches and pitchforks crowd if anyone she respected accepted such an offer.

"Mmm," the dean nodded again. "That is a concern, yes. Though obviously, you wouldn't be directly affiliated with them. That should help to ameliorate the concerns, I hope."

He tried to sound pensive, although June suspected him of being simply annoyed. She looked away from the bird tenaciously clinging to its glass perch, and into the half-empty cup of tea on the desk before her. The teabag was still drowning inside, slowly staining the liquid coffee-black.

"However, I also think," he added after a moment, "that the offer is ultimately no different from any other work we do in tandem with the private sector. Many of our colleagues cooperate closely with business and NGOs to various extents."

Not in my field, June wanted to say. But her field was not, actually, represented at her university; she brushed shoulders with sociologists who made bank helping businesses internally reorganize, and new media specialists engaged with national institutions that were still somehow interested in the agenda of gender mainstreaming. There weren't that many trans scholars here, nor radicals—if June even still counted as one.

"Again, I appreciate your concerns," he said, when June failed to think up a response. "You are remarkably conscientious. However, it is a significant opportunity, both for your career, as well as for our department."

He was being incredulous, she realized. He simply couldn't believe that she would not just at this opportunity. And that made sense; she'd been bothering him for a year now about any hopes for a more permanent position, and now that a chance like that dropped into her lap, she was suddenly resistant? Honestly, she was starting to disbelieve her resistant reflex herself.

"Let me be more direct," he slurped his coffee. "The biggest obstacle to employing you on a full-time basis is the lack of funds, and a lack of major grants on your resume. This offer solves both of those issues. Please remember that professor Krońska is poised to retire in two years."

The implication was clear, and necessarily unappealing. And the world would definitely be better off having a trans girl replace professor Krońska and her in-depth studies of Catholic solutions to the population crisis.


-


About two weeks ago, someone had spraypainted the trans anarchy symbol on a wall by the university. This, in turn, launched a small war—another someone painted the symbol over, and then added a white celtic cross for good measure, only to have it covered with antifascists' triple arrows. They stuck around for a few days, but now, they were gone, replaced by the sword-in-hand emblem of one of those noxious neo-nazi parties that simply refused to die. If June had a spraycan with her, and it was not the middle of the day, she'd have pushed back by adding a gallows to the symbol. Or some witty commentary. Instead, she just passed by, checking her phone for the tram schedule.

Thankfully, there was one coming right up, saving her from having to swelter on a stop in the middle of the asphalt desert of a busy road. Less fortunately, it was mostly empty, aside from a trio of buzz-cut twenty-somethings in t-shirts emblazoned with patriotic slogans. She sat away from them, and hid herself in her phone, checking every other moment if they noticed her.

There was no reason why they should. She went out en drab, or, to use a more modern terminology, in deep boymode. But, somehow, she expected them to know who—what—she really was, and react accordingly. Which was stupid; nothing bad had ever happened to her in Warsaw, leering and cursing aside. She didn't have it nearly as bad as some of her cis women friends. But that knowledge was never enough to make her brain shut up, and besides, someone had painted a fashy symbol by her university.

Maybe it was nothing; a crude symbol that was a nasty, but familiar part of the urban landscape. Reading it sticking a few days longer than usual as a proof of fascism's ceaseless march forward wasn't going to help her feel better about herself, or anything else, for that matter. Besides—and the idea felt like an admission of guilt—she was going to be fine, wasn't she? She could just retreat into the safety of the closet, further shielding herself from the world with the lousy veil of mediocre class privilege. She was going to be safe, because she was, at the end of the day, a coward.

Two stops later, the boys left, trailing loud music and rowdy jokes. June breathed out, and finally looked up from her phone, only to come face to face with a balding ticketer. She fumbled for the city card.

"Thank you, sir," he said mechanically, blissfully oblivious to how much the honourific stung.

June chuckled dryly, at herself, and her hard-won sense of safety. On Discord, Lizardpuppy was typing again to explain how its bunnygirl would react to being locked in permanent chastity. On another server, people were consoling Mana over her missing friend.


-


Marcel and Kamila were arguing again. This time, without shouting. Rather, they were sitting at the table in the kitchen and trying to have a conversation, which meant that Marcel was crying into his coke zero, and Kamila took a break every five minutes to smoke on the balcony. In practice, it meant no resolution, just a simmering, thickening tension. June shut herself in her room, and tried to do some work.

The heat made it borderline impossible to focus. June's attention swam, trying to capture words of her paper's reviews and arrange them in sentences, but this was July in Warsaw, The entire estate was a 90s abomination of concrete and cobblestone, with barely any vegetation to keep it from becoming an oven in summertime. Built too late for socialist Poland's affair with urban greenery, and too early for capitalist Poland's embrace of air conditioning, it stubbornly refused to dissipate any heat. Last year, June got a large fan for her room, which somewhat helped, but also ran really loud and Marcel claimed it scared her cat, so she tried not to use it too much. Especially not when the man himself was sobbing a door away.

She did some doomscrolling, checked the porn feeds, and tried masturbating to a really good picture of a puppygirl mid-abduction. Her body refused to collaborate, and after fifteen sweaty minutes, she ended up simply cursing the transgender condition in literally pent-up rage. Maybe the weather was to blame, or maybe her anxiety, or the anti-anxiety meds. Or maybe Venus was in retrograde. She had no idea.

Unpleasant, needy thoughts swirled around her. Recently, she'd run out of shelf space, and now books were spilling out onto the floor and the desk, as if Duke University Press' publications have managed to develop into a strange kind of an academic creeping mold. She threw herself on bed, only to be hit by the stench of her sheets; she'd changed them a week ago and already they were rank with summer sweat. She stood up, only to realize that she had no idea where to go. The room was a cage, and beyond its door, an emotional cold war raged quietly on in the kitchen. She paced, two steps and the wall and back again, and again, and finally snatched her laptop, grabbed her bag, and dashed out. Maybe outside, it would be easier to focus.

At first, the AC-cool interior of the Costa Coffee offered a respite. June settled into a cushioned seat, and slowly worked herself into catching up on her emails. As with most tasks she'd been putting off for days, it only took half an hour once she actually managed to focus, leaving her with a half-finished drink and no clear direction on what to do next. There was an article she had to rewrite, so she opened it, then immediately tabbed out to idly browse. There was a new clip taken from some trans performer's OnlyFans that was making the rounds among her friends; with the cafe being mostly empty, June risked opening it, and was immediately rewarded by another pang of dysphoric jealousy as a body she could never hope to have submitted itself to humiliations she could only dream of suffering. She closed it immediately, and checked the news, which turned out to be about as painful in aggregate.

A woman sat down at the table opposite to her, tonic espresso in hand, short mesh top on her svelte shoulders, short hair bleached peroxide blonde. There was something so casually graceful in the way she moved, in the way she caught June's stray glance and responded to it with an ally's serene "it's good that you're here" smile. The obsessive, nagging understanding that if only Jude had started hormones ten or fifteen years earlier, maybe she'd be able to look and move the same hit her straight in the gut. She fled to the bathroom, stared at her reflection in the stickered mirror, and tried to have a small cry about it.


-


"It's not that I want to do it," June said half-heartedly, struggling to hold a baozi in between chopsticks, "but what choice do I have?"

Maria shrugged. She didn't seem particularly offended by the fact that June was very clearly making excuses for herself. In fact, she looked rather proud.

"I mean, you could continue to fester here?" she chuckled.

June looked around. Online, Kamila's callout post about Marcel was slowly accruing likes. This morning, she found out that the dean was going to try to send in Krońska to Mount Verdant if June didn't cooperate, "if only to give her a much needed sabbatical" as he diplomatically described it in his email. Mana was now accusing several other trans women of failing to take proper care of their missing friend back when she was around. And the mayor of Warsaw had just managed to say something profoundly stupid about the queer community in order to appeal to the putative median voter. The hammer kept chipping, day after day, update after update.

"No," June conceded. "No, I don't think I could."