Baby Butch

TW: transphobia

Zee tucked their white tee into their Wranglers, slipped a sliver carabiner through their front belt loop, and put on their Tims. They slicked back their crew cut with a light pomade and evaluated themselves in the mirror. Was the look too casual? Too stereotypical? Maybe it'd be obvious that Zee didn’t know what they were doing, but it was probably too late to change.

Zee checked their phone. 2:35 PM. 99% battery. A text from Lyla.

See you soon! Parking can be a nightmare. I’ll wait for you out front :)

Zee stared at the message, not realizing they were holding their breath until a flash of movement in their periphery startled them into dropping their phone. They jerked their head over. Nothing. Zee sighed in relief. Were they going crazy? This would be the worst time to go crazy. Though nothing was making sense, really. In what kind of world could anyone find someone like Zee desirable?

*

Zee hadn’t considered themselves dateable. Only two months ago, they moved to an area where they finally felt safe enough to express themselves. Where walking down the street didn’t warrant faggot yelled from trucks whizzing by, where they didn’t get questioned for using the bathroom, where they saw two men holding hands while grocery shopping. Slowly, Dee crawled out from under the weight of suppression, though it had seeped into their skin.

Lyla had asked Zee out at Barnes & Noble, where Zee stood drooling over the Collectible Editions of classics in supple leathers and gilt calligraphic lettering.

“I really love your style,” Lyla has said.

Zee, wearing an oversized denim shirt and dirt-clodded Doc Martins—Zee, with no fashion sense or style at all—didn’t realize that they were being flirted with until Lyla asked for their number. 

Until that moment, Zee hadn’t realized that the saying “time stopped” was meant literally. The overhead AC stopped blowing, the other patrons froze in stride, Lyla’s cocked brow didn’t lower, her smirk didn’t drop. For just an instant. And then the world resumed.

.

It was shocking when Lyla asked for Zee’s number. Even more shocking that after a night of texting and little get-to-know-you questions—Lyla’s favorite movie is Safe Haven, favorite book is Night Circus, and favorite color is yellow—Lyla asked Zee out to coffee. Who would have thought such a thing possible for them?

And then it hit Zee—perhaps it isn’t possible for them. How was Lyla to know that they were nonbinary? They hadn’t explicitly come out to her. The exchange was so quick and unfamiliar. Zee’s mind flashed to the online conversations about trans people being predatory in dating, that it’s lying, that it’s like rape one woman said—is that what Zee was doing? They recalled posts advocating for LGB without the T, evidencing that other queer people find trans people disgusting too—did Lyla? Guilt washed down Zee’s arms and numbed their fingertips.

Since then, they stressed out about how to tell her. They kept remembering the reactions of the people they came out to before– losing friends, having their brother stop speaking to them, getting punched in the face by a classmate. But this meeting with Lyla would be in public, in the middle of the day, which alleviated concerns about physical safety. They played out every dialogue option in their head.

Now, Zee pinned an enamel heart with trans-flag stripes onto their white shirt. 2:45 PM. They left for the date.

*

Zee arrived at Coffee Bar before Lyla, and spent too long looking over the chalkboard menu so they wouldn’t have to stand around awkwardly for too long. They ordered a lavender Earl Grey tea, no honey, hot. At the condiments station, blue and green sticky notes plastered the wall under a sign penned in Sharpie, What’s your favorite book?

Zee wrote, Off With Their Heads on a sicky and added it to the wall. They saw one that said Night Circus and wondered if Lyla had written it. The I’s were dotted with hearts.

Lyla appeared, waving Zee’s attention away from the wall, and the two chose a table. Zee hung their jacket over the back of their chair while Lyla ordered a vanilla coffee. Zee looked around the quiet bustle of the shop again, allowing themselves to take it in, their nerves beginning to calm already. Fairy lights crawled up the white walls to the tall ceiling, and sunlight shone through the street-facing windowed wall, a handful of scattered patrons hunched over laptops or chatted lightly in pairs. Zee inhaled the lavender-scented steam and pressed their palms into the warm paper cup. Lyla returned.

“I like your pin.” Lyla pointed to Zee’s shirt with a smile.

“Thanks,” Zee grinned with immediate relief. Everything was ok.

“What are your pronouns?”

“They/them.”

“She/her,” Lyla put her hand on her chest, indicating to herself. “I’m so excited to be doing this—oh, that’s me,” Lyla looked over to the counter where her name was just called out. “I’ll be right back.” She got up.

Was that it then? Lyla treated it like it was normal. So casually. It wasn’t an issue at all. Zee was in disbelief, they had prepared for about every scenario, except for that one.

A drip of tea that had collected in the rim of the hot cup lid began to float up. The drip paused momentarily before Zee’s eyes. They blinked hard at it. When they reopened their eyes, the drip still hung in the air, then continued its trail up to the ceiling.

 “What are you looking at?” Lyla returned chuckling

Zee looked to Lyla, then back up at the ceiling. The overhead light flickered.

“Nothing.”

.

The two chatted amiably, and Zee tried to forget about the floating tea, but didn’t drink any more of it. Zee learned that Lyla grew up with 7 siblings, went to college for musical theatre, and currently lived in an apartment with three other people. Lyla mentioned her nonbinary roommate. Her lesbian friends.

“We all go out for karaoke on Thursdays. You should come,” Lyla said, “I want them to meet you.”

“I’d love to,” Zee beamed, energy buzzing in their chest.

The idea of being around other queer people felt like some romantic fantasy after being isolated for so long, so entirely lacking community. The mere notion of acceptance uprooted their entire understanding of the world–it disrupted the reality that there was something fundamentally wrong with them, something that made them unlovable.

Lyla smiled. Then shuddered. Blinked too many times in rapid succession. Her mouth twitched before the corners curled up again.

She stood abruptly, oddly swinging herself out of her seat. As if sitting down in reverse. Lyla pointed to Zee’s shirt.

“I like your pin,” she grinned.

Zee didn’t know how to react. They looked around wildly. Did anything else seem amiss? The other patrons sat calmly drinking their coffees, on their laptops, engaged in their own conversations. The table before them was speckled with crumbs, though neither of the two had ordered food. Only Zee’s cup sat steaming on the table before them.

“Vanilla coffee,” The barista called gently. Lyla stalked away to grab her drink from the counter.

“What,” Zee mumbled gently to themselves.

Curling up the post beside their table, fairy lights flickered like stars.

Zee fingered the liquid spilled in the lid of their tea. The paper cup was freshly hot in their hands. They removed the lid and released the smell of lavender earl grey tea—and, they could swear, an undertone of honey. The entire contents of the cup floated upward as a single mass, moving as liquid suspended in zero-g. Single droplets escaped the main blob and dripped up toward the ceiling.

Zee stood quickly, alarmed. Their chair clattered loudly behind them. Still, no patrons looked over. Everyone was undisturbed, engaging in what they had been doing before.

Lyla too, bound back over, smiling too widely.

“So, next Thursday—it’s a date?”

Then, everything froze in a disturbing silence. Lyla, the baristas, and the patrons became as fixed in space as statues. Outside, the cars, the pedestrians, the flying birds, the litter blowing through the street—all halted. A cloud of steam hung still above the espresso machine.

Everything paused, except the slow drip of the tea up toward the ceiling before Zee. The silence, the lack of background noise, became so oppressive that it almost became a noise itself, a physical pressure on Zee’s ears.

Zee’s footsteps seemed to echo as they walked to the door. They stepped outside and jumped at the sudden restart of sound and movement. A car horn, wind blowing across their face, a kid on a skateboard blurring past them. The world resumed in an instant, but rather incorrectly.

A man walked backward down the street, briefcase swinging in step. On the bus stop bench, the same woman sat in every seat—another one of her stood, leaned against the bench, checking her watch—each in a different color blouse and the same pair of slacks. The traffic light glowed both red and green, the yellow flashing, and cars fazed through one another in the intersection.

Time seemed to be happening all at once.

Zee looked back into the coffee shop, with the fleeting glimpse of hope that Lyla would be sat at the table, and they could return to their coffee date. But Zee couldn’t see inside, the entire doorframe now filled with a solid pane of textured glass, with obscured light dancing across it, indicating some movement inside. The rest of the windows were as black as a TV screen.

Zee, hopeless and exhausted, walked past the backward man, past four of the same woman, back toward their apartment. The sidewalk squished slightly with each step. Five feet ahead of Zee, a pigeon landed and began sinking into the concrete. Zee stopped next to it on solid ground and looked down.

“Oh, pigeon,” they spoke woefully to it, “nothing is making any sense! The whole world is falling apart.”

The pigeon wisely continued the calm bob of its head until it was fully sucked underground. Then, Zee continued their walk, sulking and hunched, as the world flitted chaotically around them. With the same logic as a child believing their leg is somehow safer from monsters under a blanket than it is sticking out—Zee wanted to go home.

On their doorstep, Zee’s phone buzzed, and they took it out of their pocket. 2:85 PM. 0 % battery. A text from Lyla.

That was fun! Hope to see you Thursday :)

Zee went straight to bed. It didn’t seem to matter if it was night or not—or if night would ever come, for that matter. Maybe they would dream of a tornado tearing through the complex, or of being chased by a faceless killer, or of all their teeth falling out. Whatever it would be, it would make more sense than this.