Julie and I dated a long time agoāshe was the first woman I dated after I transitioned, come to think of it. sheād just graduated from Smith and I had one more semester at NYU. we felt very mature then, I think, just starting out in the city: working full-time day jobs, producing plays at night, scratching out lives as ambitious young artists.
our first date was set for August 14th, 2003āthe date of the big NYC blackout, really just the first of many times we would be interrupted by catastrophes out of our control.
she was an actress, and around that time she was performing in a play called Davidās Redhaired Death, and I donāt remember a thing about the play but I do remember watching it night after night, unable to take my eyes off her. there is nothing like falling in love with a woman by watching her totally fucking kill it on stage. julie was (and is still) a wonderful actress: funny and smart and soulful. Ā
she got cast in three of my plays, and I learned so much about my job as a playwright from her actorās instincts. she stole every scene we wrote her into. Iāll never understand how people who donāt make art ever fall in love.
our early twenties were ham-fisted years, and we carelessly wounded each other countless times. still awkwardly learning to be a man, I could not figure out that she really liked me and I uttered cringe-worthy phrases that still rattle around in my head. she rightly found me rude, and told me so, and I learned, and she was patient.
one day i asked her out on a date to a cat show (oh baby tom what in the world were you thinking?) and then promptly completely forgot about it. that weekend she ended up at madison square garden, early on a Saturday morning, all alone. she forgave me. oh, the debts we owe our early lovers; one doubts they can ever be repaid.
there werenāt many of us in those days, so I was the first trans man in her life and I know she stumbled sometimes, too. she wasnāt perfect, but today I prefer to remember her as if she had been.
even though weād coupled up with other people, by the summer of 2004 we ended up working for the same non-profit, wobbling around each other in an eccentric orbit. each morning iād ride my bike from the east village apartment i shared with my girlfriendāa different but no less brilliant actressādown the path along the east river and through the fulton fish market to our office on williams street. Iād stop by Julieās desk each morning and sheād inspect my pants for fish gutsāthe market was fragrant and effusive and flecks of seafood perpetually covered my bike and stained my anklesāand then sheād calmly spray me down with febreze from my belt to my shoes.
at lunch we sometimes walked across the street to wendyās and ordered from the dollar menuā $1.08 (including tax) for a cheeseburger was godsend when it was getting close to payday. once in a while after work weād elope to city hall park and make out for a few furtive minutes before returning home to our lovers.
sheād moved in with her new beau, a trans guy sheād met at one of our cast parties. he was a bit older than us, short and cranky, with thick dark hair and tightly knit brow. he was mean and controlling and I didnāt care for him and he hated me. i suppose he suspected the truth about our relationship.
finally Julieās guilt got the better of her and one day after work we headed east down fulton instead of west to the park, and she took me into the Met grocery store and bought a turnip. Ā we walked together to the subway, me pushing my bike and her beside me with her taproot. when we got to the entrance, she looked me in the eye and put the turnip in my hand and turned to get on the train.
"Hey, whatās this for?" I called after her.
"Just take it!" she yelled at me, not turning around.
"I donāt want a goddamned turnip!" I yelled back, but she was already through the turnstile. I donāt remember for sure, but I probably thought to myself: actors are so weird.
That night I pinged her on AIM. She was tempdiaries because upon graduation she had conceived of a clever plan to write about her experiences temping as a paralegal around New York City and turn them into a blog or book or theater piece. I was leger215 because I am profoundly boring.
leger215: what the hell is with this turnip
tempdiaries: donāt worry about it
leger215: julie seriously
we went back and forth like this for a while but I just wouldnāt take a turnip with no explanation. she finally relented: it was some pagan spell or some sort witchy trick.
leger215: for what?
tempdiaries: itās so youāll stop being in love with me
and you know what? it worked. for a while.
she stayed with that short jerky guy and for a while we went our separate ways. i quit my job at our office to go back to finish my final semester at NYU and then went on to start an MFA program. she stayed on there for a while. the jerky guy got jerkier, and he started slapping her around, I think, but she wasnāt ever too specific with me. a couple years passed.
after a particularly bad fight she rang me up. I was single now, a half a dozen girlfriends come and gone since Iād seen her. I donāt know if it was her idea or mine to get out of town for the weekend but we made a plan to go up to Northampton. I picked her up at a subway stop not near her apartment and even though it was still only March I lowered the roof of my Mustang convertible, because of course that is what I drove (oh baby tom, what in the world were you thinking?) and we took off to visit her alma matter.
hereās where I admit that this was 2006 and before I had any friendsāanyāwho were trans women and so Smith still existed in the zeitgeist as holy ground. I hadnāt been to campus since a tour in the autumn my senior year in high school. had I attended, I would have met Julie years earlier. this trip, I think, was a chance to recapture a romantic teenage dream we silently shared.
I have no idea why, but I shot a bunch of video that weekend, even though I had no way of knowing it would be the last time weād ever be together like that. she showed me the campus and the town and we pretended to be a couple. I was a cardboard cut out of a boy and she was a cardboard cut out of a girl and we held hands on the street. at night, in a small room at a quaint New England inn, we had rough, romantic, screaming sex one last time.
I forgot about the footage for over a year. by then, I was in a relationship with a boyfriend who would later break up with me by kicking me in the face half a dozen times while I sat crying on the sidewalk on 21st street at seventh avenue. Julie was still with the jerk. when I found the video of our trip to Northampton all the memories came flooding back. it felt as though Iād loved her forever. I spent an afternoon cutting it together with some schlocky gimmicks, set it to a patti smith song, posted it to youtube, and sent her the link. she was charmed by the video, but she couldnāt meet me for coffee, the jerk wouldnāt like it one bit. my boyfriend didnāt appreciate the video either, and I all but forgot it existed until today.
watching the video now, itās so clear how in love with her i was: itās obvious to me in a way that it wasnāt then. it was a boyish, impetuous love. I suppose my love for her was simple because our relationship had never been. we had only romance, never routine. seeing her in the video reminds me of how young we both were, though we had no idea. only my voice makes an appearance, Iām so young I laugh in near-giggle, and I slur my words with a childās lazy annunciation. we were so beautiful and we had no idea. we still thought that the only people who could truly love us were people who also hated us. we had no idea. (oh baby tom what in the world were you thinking?)
weāve stayed close all these years, through break-ups (mostly mine) and crack-ups (mostly hers). weāve both grown up a lot. sheās married. iāve divorced. sheās still acting, Iām still writing. ours is a friendship with deep, thick roots. itās strength has withstood a blackout, an earthquake, a tornado, a hurricane, and everything else that New York City has blown across out paths in the last 12 tumultuous years. my life today bears very little resemblance to my life when I transitioned, save for one unlikely constant: my dear and darling friend Julie.
Happy Valentineās Day, everyone.
