I was standing with Jane by the DJ booth when I heard someone say his name. It’s an unusual name, so I knew they were talking about him.
Oh, he’s in Philly now, they said. He moved in with this trans girl.
Suddenly I needed something. I went to the card table where they keep the lube and condoms and dug to the bottom of the candy jar. Beneath its crinkly white wrapper, the last lollipop was spiderwebbed like a broken disco ball. Not what I needed, but I took it with me down the back hallway and leaned into the pneumatic door.
The smoking patio was full of naked people vaping under one long fluorescent bulb, like what a life coach would ask you to visualize if you were confronting a fear of public speaking and a hardcore nicotine addiction at the same time. There were no cigarettes that I could see, but one of those wouldn’t have worked, either. What I needed was bigger and heavier, something that would fill my mouth until I could neither swallow nor close my lips; for some reason, a trailer hitch came to mind. But there was a breeze. I let the door close behind me and found an empty corner.
I stood there and looked around for a while, feeling self-conscious about my jockstrap. From other parties, I had learned the indignity of not having anything between my legs when I was needed to babysit a wasted 24-year-old or cordon off the remains of a broken shot glass. Though I was less exposed than anyone else, I had become nude in reverse by virtue of my role. Remembering my lollipop, I finally held it to my tongue: cherry.
I had flip-flops on, too, but I didn’t mind those, especially on the dirty patio, not ten yards from the BQE’s greasy black underbelly. The spa may have been packed with sweaty, slippery fuckers, but it still felt cleaner than all this. It was the chlorine. You know how chlorine is, how when you smell it you can also hear it. The torrid, bleachy odor always seems to come with the grotto-like reverberations of bare feet on concrete, of hissing steam, of water boiling with compressed air and thrashing limbs. It was like partying inside an autoclave. The smoking patio, where your stomach soon started churning from the car exhaust and vape chemicals, could never be as clean as the spa’s glistening, womb-like chambers.
The door opened again. Jane.
I knew she would find me. She slid into the crowd, where her body reassembled under the fluorescent bulb, the glow of phone screens, and a blinking LED somewhere up the street.
How is it in there? I asked, offering her the lollipop.
It’s fine, she said. She shook her head at the lollipop and held up her glass of ice cubes, as if this explained her abstention. We figured out the issue with the bouncer. How’s everything out here?
She was pretending to be in party mode, in case I didn’t want to talk about him.
All good, I said. Wanting her to believe me, I put my face in her neck and took a dramatically deep sniff, like a happy dog.
This was one of our bits, born the first time she came to my apartment. I didn’t like having other people in my home back then, especially cis people. But we had gotten in bed together and nothing bad happened. Something good happened, even.
After all this time, I’m finally here, she had said, opening her arms like a gymnast at the end of her routine. I’ve crossed the finish line.
I laughed. Well, I could tell that you’re safe.
How could you tell?
Because you’re not afraid of me.
And how do you know that?
Because of how you smell, I said. Leaning over my pillow, I had put my cheek against hers, losing my nose in her hair, and inhaled. Eucalyptus and amber, warm and almost minty.
How I smell? Someone else may have allowed themself to be distracted, but Jane had planted her palm on my chest and gently pushed me away. Why does that matter? Why would I be afraid of you?
I stayed inside her hair, a dark and silky tunnel. You can smell when someone’s afraid, I said. And no one is more afraid than a rapist. When someone rapes someone else, they do so from inside their own rape, or the rape of someone they cared about, or just a rape that almost happened or could have happened. You know, a threat that lasted so long it became real. Not that the rapist is even aware of all this. They’re not aware of anything. In the act, rapists are panicking, not thinking. And people who panic — they sweat. A lot. It’s hot and it stinks. Like when you almost get hit by a car.
I think that was the night that Jane and I told each other about our rapes, or maybe just the main ones, though it’s possible this didn’t happen until a different night, perhaps when we were traveling together or doing a lot of drugs. Now, all these years later, I had acquired a new main rape, which had displaced the one that I still considered my main rape the night our sniffing bit was born. But of course Jane knew all about it because she and I had been together for years by the time I met him.
You smell good, I told her, pulling her deeper into my corner of the patio. Eucalyptus and amber, still, as if the bacteria that makes things stink couldn’t latch to her many tessellating surfaces: the earrings and acrylics and rhinestones, the mass-produced charms barnacling the heeled Crocs on her feet.
Jane frowned. Your lips are all red, she observed.
I took the lollipop out of my mouth so we could kiss.
Are you okay? I asked.
Are you okay? she demanded, still scrutinizing me.
Someone knelt on the concrete beside us, revealing the sweep of their long, glittery face. Their lips bunched and rippled. Their eye mirrored the light slivering between the fence and the highway. Jane inched closer to me, courteously giving them some space. Like me, she wasn’t naked. She was wearing one of her string bikinis, the kind that got dirty looks on the straight beach.
I’m okay, I said. I was just surprised. I haven’t even thought about him in a while.
This wasn’t true, though I had been thinking about him less since the spring. But even if you think about someone a lot, or even constantly — even expecting them to show up at your apartment in the middle of the night with the key they still have, the key that you, for reasons you don’t understand but profoundly regret, let them keep — they lose their shape if you don’t talk about them. If their name never escapes your lips, eventually the thing that really happened becomes just a story, something you tell yourself when you’re falling asleep sometimes. After a bad breakup, you kind of expect the other person to just die, but of course they never do. Not that you could call what happened between us a breakup. We weren’t dating, just in love.
At least he’s not in Brooklyn anymore, Jane said. She touched my arm. Did you hear everything?
It doesn’t matter. I already knew too much. His move to Philly was surprising. Not long before I blocked his number, he told me that he wanted to stay here in New York for the rest of his life. But a new girlfriend, however, made more sense than anything in the world. That he hadn’t had one when we were sleeping together was out of character for him. Unlike me, he was pretty straight and exclusively t4t. That had somehow been validating, that he saw me as feminine enough for his purposes. Being the lone FTM in the sea of sad and beautiful dolls had made me feel like a real girl, an unexpectedly pleasant experience.
Well, now it was someone else’s turn. I hoped he wouldn’t do anything bad to the girl in Philly, whoever she was. But if he didn’t, I would have yet another reason to wonder, why me?
The people next to us were getting a little carried away, so Jane and I went back inside. In the locker room we bumped into a friend who’d come down from Boston for the party and joined her, for a minute or two, to watch a few faces get pissed on in a shower stall. We moved on to the dry room to find that the DJ was now playing techno, though she had promised Jane house. But some people were dancing, so Jane let it go. Other than the fisting train over by the upholstered pillars, everyone else was standing around and talking. In the corner, the bartender yawned over her phone. A middle-aged straight man, still dripping from the wet room, was desperately complimenting everyone in his line of sight. It was getting late.
A cis girl tapped Jane’s shoulder. I recognized her, but didn’t know her name.
Hi, Angel, said Jane. Jane threw a lot of parties, not all of them here at the spa. She knew everyone’s name.
Can you help me? Angel asked. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. She was holding a wadded up towel to her belly. Her cheap vanilla perfume burned through the chlorine, only to be engulfed by Jane’s superior top notes.
Jane locked in. What happened?
Angel’s eyes flicked to me uncertainly, but Jane had put her hands on her hips. She took a shaky breath before she began.
So a little after I got here, this . . . this person I didn’t know came up to me and my friend by the hot tub. They asked if I wanted to hook up. I said I wasn’t interested. Angel squeezed the towel, as if she were testing its ripeness. I’m, like, queer and everything, but this my first time at something like this so I wasn’t ready to do anything yet.
Jane nodded. And then what?
Well, the person, they went away, said Angel. She was sniffling now. But I saw, um, them smiling at me. Sometimes I would look up and they’d just be there, you know, doing things with people. One time we were standing by the massage tables and they got close enough to touch me.
And did they touch you? pursued Jane.
Well, no, said Angel. They were with someone, I think. But they looked like they wanted to. Really creepy.
The straight man walked by us again, staring at my jock. Hard to know if it was a cruise or just curiosity. Out in the world, people don’t usually get that far down. Confused by my face, their eyes seek out my chest for clarification, but its flatness doesn’t help.
So what do you need from me? asked Jane.
I’m not sure, Angel said. Chewing her lip, she took Jane’s hand in hers. Jane allowed it. I just thought you should know that I felt really unsafe. And this is supposed to be a safe space, right? It was the way that person was looking at me. Just so aggressive. I don’t even feel comfortable going in the wet room anymore.
As if on cue, the fisting train burst into screams, startling me and Angel. Jane’s expression didn’t change, but she freed her hand from Angel’s and lifted her heels to peer over her shoulder. Angel’s mournful eyes met mine again before slowly dropping down the length of my body, stalling like the straight man’s did, though at different places. I received an image of her standing in front of a classroom, fully clothed and preparing to read from a piece of composition paper. I recognized her bravery, which I knew didn’t have to be at odds with my feelings about what she was trying to do. Behind her, the screams resolved into laughter, seemingly at the expense of the bottom, who had the word HOLE scribbled on her chest with pink lipstick.
Satisfied that she wasn’t needed, Jane returned her attention to Angel.
Listen, she began.
But Angel interrupted. I’m a survivor, you know? This — she gestured at the rest of the dry room, at the nude bodies and shabby speakers — isn’t something I would normally do. But I can’t let what happened before define me. Now when I get triggered, I always speak up. When someone feels dangerous, I always say something.
Now she looked at my face, this time defiantly, as if expecting me to laugh at her earnestness.
And I guess I did want to laugh, although I wouldn’t have let myself. There was always a cis person like Angel, and tonight Jane would explain some things to her, from one raped girl to another. Maybe every girl is like Angel, only not all of them know it yet. I couldn’t look at Jane the way I wanted with her there, so I found another way to signal what I was thinking. Carefully, so as not to catch her long, black hair on my lollipop, I put my arm around Jane’s shoulder, leaned in close, and sniffed.
There was a new smell now, stronger than Jane’s, that came from deep in my armpit. It was bitter and metallic, like the wet room’s chlorine, but organic, too. Dirty. Even meaty. Like I had almost been hit by a car.
I sniffed again, this time more furtively. How long had I smelled like this? Had Jane noticed?
Suddenly I remembered Jane’s other rape. She had told me about the main one a long time ago, maybe the same night our sniffing bit was born, but there had been another. There always is. I can’t talk about it yet, she had told me. Someday, though. I’ll tell you everything. I had wondered why her main rape had been easier for her to discuss than this other, supposedly lesser, rape, but of course I respected that she needed time. For a couple years after that, I would occasionally ask about this other rape, this secret that she kept from even me, to let her know that I was there to listen if she wanted to talk. Once I asked her about it when we were on Governor’s Island. We were lying on a cotton blanket downwind from a rick of sun-baked oyster shells, and she looked so pretty, and I just had a feeling. But she hadn’t been ready that day. After a while, I stopped asking.
Davey Davis is a writer living in Brooklyn. They’re the author of Casanova 20: Or, Hot World, X: A Novel, and the earthquake room. They write DAVID, a weekly newsletter on sex and sensation.
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