There are so many collisions throughout a lifetime. Even through a day, we may bump into this or that, may clip a wall by taking a corner too tight, or bump hips with a partner, or even just smash ideas together to see what new thoughts come of them.
Or perhaps it's the way a car, lowered too close to the ground in order to show off at some car show, scrapes over each and every speed bump as it goes. Perhaps your truck floats gently along a slick of ice and bumps against the truck beside you on an icy February night's drive. Perhaps it's the collision of ideas, where your future husband thinks you're dating your friend, who thinks you're dating your future husband, and you think your friend is dating someone else. A collision of knowledge that leads to a tangled skein of relationships that never actually existed in the first place.
And, of course, a collision may be a simple knock against a friendship that sends the entire thing toppling over. You watch as, almost in slow motion, it totters on its base and then goes crashing down, shattering into thousands of pieces that go skittering across the floor --- they never shatter on carpet, right? It's bound to be on some marble or tile. The noise is fantastic. The mess is stupendous.
It begins with a comment, it seems, though perhaps the true beginning was some time sooner. It begins with you laying together on a bed while each of your partners plays around in the other room, the both of you cozied up under the covers in your much quieter bed. It begins with a few smug words from your very own Elihu.
"I'm honestly disappointed that you would do something like that."
"Like what?" I asked.
"Like what you did with Younes."
I frowned. "What about it? I didn't even know that it was something you'd seen."
"Why bother hiding it? I watch those artists, too," she said.
"It felt personal."
"What, appropriating the experiences of very real people? Pretending to be what you aren't just to get your kicks?"
I don't remember what I said. Perhaps a mumbled apology? I live a sometimes apology, after all. Perhaps I simply lay silent.
I like to think that it was the latter. I like to think that we settled into an awkward silence, even while the rest of ourselves remained there in comfort, there beneath the covers while our two partners played around in the other room, in some noisier bed.
That's what I mean by a simple knock. I don't know if we were under the covers. I don't know if there was noise in the other room. Perhaps Andrew was simply showering while JD was asleep — I think he was working first shift at the time, so perhaps indeed. I don't remember when this happened, though I do remember that it was this simple conversation that bumped its elbow against our friendship, sent it rocking back and forth, and eventually left it in pieces on our imagined tile.
It was this knock that led to her blocking one of my accounts on AOL Instant Messenger (which should do well to date this story), then forgetting she had done so and accusing me of blocking her. It was this blocking episode that led to her silently dropping most all contact with me. It was my wedding to JD in the interim (which should date it further; sometime in May), to which only family was invited (and, in her mind, pointedly not her), that sent the friendship tumbling to the floor. There was a sudden silence, only a few words exchanged and only ever in reply to something that I had said directly do her. She stopped coming over with Andrew, and soon, he stopped coming over, as well.
I don't have it saved anywhere, but our final communication was a letter and a gift. I sent her a book — a comic, really, a limited edition of *Rruffurr* — along with a hand-written note apologizing for what I had done, though at that point I wasn't clear just which of these wobbles of our dynamic had been the true cause of her silence.
> O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell
> and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise.
> But if I worship You for Your Own sake,
> grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.
>
> \parencite[35]{rabia}
> I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to Allah. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of Allah. \parencite{rabia2}
Up until that point, my interaction with gender had been the tentative pressing against a bruise. It hurt, yes, but one cannot help *but* press on bruises, yes? There it is, blue and purple, an angry discoloration that aches at the slightest touch, and yet you cannot stop touching it, defining the edges of that ache with an apophatic walk of the fingertips.
This exploration began to stutter as doubt began dart around and in between the wandering feet of curiosity, tripping it up and making it hold still so that it didn't fall flat on its face.
I would interact as Younes for a day or two, and then back off in a wave of self-loathing. I would log in as Makyo, that other character who remained stolidly male, and be just Matthew, that gay man who would most certainly never be anything but, right? I would log in as him and park myself in the PN where I was a gay man, where other gay men would congregate, and I would put on my brightest smile and pretend that that bruise was not there.
And then, I would hit that ache with my exploration, and I'd log back onto Tapestries to prowl around as Younes. I would find new ways to engage with his body, with the femininity inherent in his form, finding the euphoria inherent in that in turn.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Guilt and shame.
Exploration and euphoria.
Masculinity.
Tentative gestures towards femininity, towards specifically *not* my inherited masculinity.
And with each of these alternations, with each of these swings of a pendulum, came the reasoning.
As I swung closer to Younes, I began to feel those tentative wrigglings toward gender as it applied to myself.
As I swung further away, I began to feel that doubt. Gender? But how could it? I was a guy, yes? I was comfortable enough in my body, yes? He/him! Bepenised! That was fun enough, was it not? And certainly easier than the path of anything even resembling transing my gender.
And then as I swung back, there were these feelings of euphoria. Surely it couldn't be *that* hard to trans my gender. I would...what? Drop my testosterone and up my estrogen? That wasn't too difficult. I could perhaps even do that myself, if I was willing to order the medications required online. After all, JD had his own experiments with such.
And always there was the discomfort with myself. There was JD and I on that couch, the way our own intimacy began to feel strangely misshapen.
The pendulum would swing, and I would promise myself that I could simply ignore that. Bodies are bodies, and sometimes they are stupid. Perhaps I could just not engage with mine whenever I began to feel bad, and focus my energy on something else.
The friendship had crashed the ground and shattered, and then the shards began to crumble, themselves. Now, even my engagement with gender began to crumble, or at least the surface began to flake away.
