Bellies

by Nicola Dinan

“Was it hard?” he asked. “Like, being gay and dating a girl?” It was hard. Sarah had been my first and only girlfriend, but towards the end of our relationship the thoughts I’d long avoided had spilled in, like drops of food coloring into water, green fluid expanding until the ink was all I could see. And then my stomach would warp from the closeness of her body to mine, unknotting only as I turned my back to her in bed; and the old discomfort that grabbed me when Sarah and I fucked had gained new meaning, and I could see that the threads that had sewn us together were spun from cowardice. It was one thing to feel that I didn’t want something, and another thing to know it or to say it or to live it. My stomach twisted thinking about it again.

Nobody wants to admit that people leave the closet but not the room.

Sometimes a person, an achievement or a place—whatever is missing—seems the perfect shape to fill a void, so much so that its absence seems to be the cause of the problem and its presence the solution. But up close, the voids are always much larger.

I survey the room from the side, and note once more how most of the people at support group have fallen into the Great Regression, the involuntary rewind of speech and behavior when a person transitions, the deep psychological urge to relive youth that prejudice and self-loathing stole from them. They’re trans in the psychosomatic sense, but also trans in that they’re teenagers stuck in the bodies of adults. I’m grateful to have mostly escaped it.

I let Abby tell me about being misgendered at work while I take slow, continuous sips of my drink. “They slap wrists but, like, nothing happens,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “That’s construction for you.” “That sounds fucking horrible.” “It’s fine,” she says. “Like they say, it gets better.” Does it? I hope it does. For Abby, at least. I find it a little devastating that people can become this inured to cruelty.

I didn’t question that hate could ever be in the vocabulary Tom and I would use to speak about one another. It was my fault. I hadn’t questioned whether Tom would still like me if he couldn’t love me.

Can someone still like and respect you if they're not dating you? Only date people who can. Some of us learn the hard way. 💔💔💔