Page 9 of Best Woman
Our second round of drinks arrives and we order a few small plates to share—I don’t think my stomach could handle an hour-long train ride full of Cheesecake Factory food, no matter how bad I want to see if Evelyn’s Favorite Pasta is as good as I remember.
I ask the waiter to make sure there are no carrots in anything—I’m intensely allergic and do not need a swollen face when I’m trying to woo my high school crush into a pity fuck—and he nods without really looking up from his notepad. “Sure, man, no problem.”
Ouch. Not ideal, but whatever. This is the kind of casual misgendering I’d usually brush off.
This guy has been checked out the entire time he’s been helping us, probably counting the minutes until his shift ends, and has likely inferred, in that unthinking way most cis people do when hearing my husky voice on the phone or from the back seat of an Uber, that I’m a dude.
In the early days of my transition, I would have made a stink and corrected him, maybe even asked the manager to comp us a round of drinks.
But almost four years in, I’ve learned that it’s so much less work to just let it go because the only person who is going to be embarrassed in that situation is me.
This is a random waiter at the Cheesecake Factory who I’m never going to see again.
Who cares if he assumed I wasn’t a woman?
As it turns out, Kim cares.
“It’s miss, dude.” Miss Dude. Good drag name. “Her pronouns are she, her, hers.” She says it with such condescending disdain it causes the waiter to finally break out of his disaffected haze and take us in. He gulps.
“I’m so sorry, uh, ladies.” His cheeks are turning red. Kim corrected him in a way that made him look like an idiot, something I’ve never been able to manage. He flees.
“He’s a clueless asswipe, Julia.” Kim is looking at me with concern that I’d find condescending from anyone else, but she rests her hand on mine again, and the electricity of her touch is just as intense the second time.
She looks even more open and sympathetic than she was a few minutes ago.
“God, that guy, your family…cis people suck. I apologize on our behalf,” she says.
It could be a joke but she says it seriously, and I’d love nothing more than to roll my eyes, but they’re too busy looking down her shirt as she leans over the table.
Snap out of it, Daytona’s best Cher voice chides in the back of my mind.
“Don’t worry about it.” I’m doing my best trans martyr drag, a woman struggling to be above the constant cruelty of a cisheteronormative society.
This is true, in a way, but I’ve conditioned myself as much as possible to be unaffected by it, and insulated by queer people who get it and non-queer people who make an effort to be, ugh, allies .
Kim doesn’t know that, though, and playing it up means more sympathy. More touching. We’re going to walk down the aisle together at Aiden’s wedding, and the more time we spend together, the more protective she feels of me…maybe that hand touching could become something more.
Because that would be the real validation, wouldn’t it?
The final confirmation that I’d conquered womanhood: the first girl I’d ever been obsessed with, who I could never have because she was only into girls, being into me.
All the waiters and baristas and customer service representatives in the world could misgender me, but they’d never be able to take that away.
I’d at last be the real, actual, best woman.
“You deserve so much better than that,” she says, echoing her words from before. She’s laying it on thick, which feels like another point in my favor.
The waiter reappears and sheepishly apologizes again before telling us he’s comped our entire meal.
My ears burn with embarrassment, and I hate how he lingers, desperately eager to make sure he’s forgiven for his mistake.
But I don’t hate that Kim hasn’t let go of my hand.
I don’t hate it at all when she squeezes it as the waiter finally rushes away.
“Are you worried something like that will happen at the wedding?” she asks. “Like, outright ignorance and hostility?”
“No, everyone uses the right name and pronouns. It’s nothing…
obvious.” That would be too easily disproven at the wedding.
“They’ve been great on paper. To my face.
” I dig up that awful first year, when people were bumbling and thoughtless but, generally, trying.
“There’s what people say and then what they think, what they believe, deep down inside.
The way people like, falter for a minute when they have to introduce you to someone.
Or never call you pretty, just say you look nice.
Or pretend buddy is a gender-neutral term.
” I’d rather die than use the term microaggression, but I don’t even need to.
Kim is one hundred percent the kind of girl who has read Conflict Is Not Abuse .
This part is true. My whole life, I’ve been the odd duck, not quite the black sheep but maybe…
the gray goat. Before people knew what was different about me, they still knew something was, and that difference was like bulletproof glass between us.
They could see me, and I could see them, but sound and meaning had no way to travel through.
As the years went by and more and more family members coupled up, figured themselves out, and started having kids and mortgages while I moved across the country and changed almost everything about myself that I possibly could, the distance between us became a chasm, one I didn’t know how to cross.
But remarkably, transitioning had been the bridge.
People who’d always thought I was quiet or sensitive suddenly had an explanation as to why, and though the mechanics of it confused them for a while, it also brought into focus some element of me that had previously eluded them.
I made more sense than I ever had before.
But Kim didn’t have to know that.
“Have you thought about just, I don’t know, not going?” She’s treading carefully. “That’s shitty, but it would be understandable if you bailed.”
Too far, too far, now I have to backtrack. I need something a little more logical than just playing the martyr. Kim would want a woman who stands up for herself.
“If I don’t go, I’m the bad guy. I’m a drama queen, I’m making their special day all about me.
I’d be the snowflake so sensitive she skipped her own brother’s wedding, and the rest of my family…
” I trail off. I must be careful here and not say anything that will be too obviously disproven by reality.
Is there a relationship in my life so inscrutable, so intrinsically complicated, Kim would never know if that person and I were obsessed with each other or wanted each other dead?
I think again of Kim’s senior year and know exactly what to say. “Anyway, my mother would kill me.”
I can’t even look up to see how she takes this, but her hand spasms against mine. She shifts our palms so that we’re holding hands on the cold marble tabletop.
My stomach falls directly into my ass and my head is starting to throb like it’s been stomped on by the mules my drink is named after. It’s a brutal combination of success, guilt, and lust.
“I get it,” she says, voice tight. I am, officially, horrible. “And hey, you won’t be in this alone.” She grins. “ I’m the maid of honor now, and I’m gonna make sure you have the best time.”
I’m riding too high on my win to see it as the loss—for my conscience, my self-respect, whatever—it really is.
“I’m going to show up at that wedding and be so fucking happy for them,” I promise, which was already the plan, but now there’s sexy intrigue behind it.
I’m going to convince Kim that everything sucks by being completely normal.
It’s kind of genius. Evil genius. But whatever, it’s a couple of days of little white lies to get some attention from Kim Cameron .
“I’m going to be so fucking nice about it and I’m going to look fucking incredible ! ”
The warm, sympathetic look she’s been giving me turns speculative, and if I’m not mistaking it…appraising? Maybe even…hungry. “I could see that,” she says with a little smirk.
The waiter drops off our appetizers and scurries away as we dig in. I eagerly shove food into my mouth to stop me from running it and getting in deeper than I already am.
Kim starts putting together a Thai lettuce wrap, and even her hands are sexy. “Are you bringing a date?” Am I going crazy or is there a bit of sheepishness in her tone?
“I don’t have a lot of prospects right now.
” My last relationship—if you can call three months of admittedly incredible sex with a married Park Slope lesbian a relationship—ended in August when Sharon decided she’d rather take her toddler to Disneyland than fuck me in the back seat of her Subaru.
“What about you?” I scoop artichoke dip onto a red tortilla chip.
“Flying solo,” she says. “Ugh, I don’t know why I said it like that. I’m not bringing anyone. I’m single.”
We catch each other’s eyes for a moment, but the moment’s broken when the hot dip burns my mouth. I squeal and spend the next few minutes with my tongue pressed against a glass of ice water as Kim laughs delightedly.
“I suppose I can save you a dance at the reception,” I say, keeping my tone light but letting my interest show a bit. “The maid of honor and the best woman should be able to…get along.”
She leans back against the booth, too beautiful to believe. “I think we’ll get along just fine,” she says, and I hope she’s right.