Built Like a Brick House

Unfortunately, queer ladies find nothing more annoying than someone else being the highest of femmes in the room.

As the bar was closing after a recent birthday bender, a fifty-year-old transgender man whom I had never met before offered to take me next door to Dunkin Donuts — his treat. He bought me a kruller, and demanded the scrawny teen behind the counter produce a birthday candle to insert into it. “You deserve the best,” he explained.

You are probably thinking, “what a lovely surprise.” But while it was lovely, it wasn’t a surprise. At least, not for me.

Throughout my queer adult life, I’ve regularly had watered-down well whiskey and bottles of Miller High Life sent to me by transmasculine fellows whom I don’t know. Once, a well-dressed dandy offered me a bus swipe when I was low on change, while on another besotted occasion an OKCupid date paid my part of the cab fare home, even though I threw up out the window a little.
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Lies I Have Told

It was really sweet of you to bring me over all of this tofu that you found in the dumpster. Oh, you’re hungry? Sure, I’m happy to make you something to eat.

No, I think your mom is great.

Oh, yeah, your face looks totally better today. I think that new stuff from Kiehl’s is totally working.

Needlepoint is a fine hobby for a man to have. It’s so great that you’re so secure with, you know, everything.

It was really sweet of you to bring me over all of this tofu that you found in the dumpster. Oh, you’re hungry? Sure, I’m happy to make you something to eat.

That was a great mix tape. I especially appreciated the Ani deep cuts and those dubbed-from-vinyl Sister George tracks. Cassette recording is totally a lost art and I will listen to this all the time.
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We’ll Get Serious Eventually

He’s leaving for the summer. I know he’ll never come back.

He’s going to Peru with a buddy to hike around on some Incan ruins. I refer to this with scorn to anyone who will listen as his “Man Quest.” He will be gone for about six weeks, and when he comes back, it’s off to Houston for a visiting professorship. It’s only one year, he says. You should come visit. Everything’s bigger in Texas. He’s always making jokes about my being a size queen.
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All The Proof You Need

Here at the Hussy Hotel, the letters have started rolling in. Since the response has been so phenomenal, it seems prudent to devote one column per month to responding to reader mail. Hence, we open up the Hussy Official Mailbag (or, the HO’bag, if you will) and draw out a letter from a lonesome-hearted soul.

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The Long End of A Short Leash

Legally, they’re straight married, not gay married, but he scoffs at any suggestion of the heteronormativity of the arrangement.

He’s a painter but he dresses like a hustler. He rocks destroyed denim, shredded by honest and not-so-honest work. His slinky threadbare v-neck tees hit right at his belt buckle, so when he stretches, the mud-flap-girl tattoo on his hip peeks out at you, a remnant from another life in another city. He’s always covered in gouache.

He works at his wife’s gallery. His wife.

He bristles when I use the “w” word. Legally, they’re straight married, not gay married, but he scoffs at any suggestion of the heteronormativity of the arrangement. We totally don’t believe in marriage. You know, it doesn’t mean anything. It just makes health insurance cheaper. Their health insurance is pretty good, but it didn’t cover his top surgery. She paid for it.
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Locked Up

I have been sleeping with this guy whose girlfriend has been out of town a lot lately. He spent most of this past weekend at my place fucking me and watching prison documentaries on basic cable. On Sunday afternoon, I fixed us some ribeyes and mashed potatoes.  I think my kale-chomping lesbian roommate is grossed out by our heterosexual vibe.  She rolls her eyes as she bustles by us on her way to the kitchen, “Sorry to interrupt your anachronistic rockabilly den of romance, guys.”

“I’m just like, yo, bitch, sit there, keep me company, braid my hair.”

It was good to know that at least he was nice to his bitches.

My roommate used to be high femme and sleep with a lot of trans guys. After a while, though, she got sick of that scene, went deep lez and started wearing kaftans.  Now she hates all the “tranny chasers” and shit-talks them at every opportunity.  Converts make the best zealots.

She is particularly disdainful of the femmes who work at the local women-centric sex shop.  Her ex-boyfriend used to work there and she felt perpetually threatened by their relentless sexual advances toward him.

“They’re like prison women,” she griped, “They’ll throw themselves at anything with short hair.”
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Where He’s Gone When He’s Gone All Night

“I don’t want to be like my father.”

It’s late. I know he’ll have to go soon, because he’s not allowed to spend the night. He’s pushing it as it is; in a few hours it’ll be morning. When it comes to the “boundaries” he sets with his girlfriend, he tends to stick to the letter of the law, rather than the spirit.

We have been fucking for hours. My sheets are sticky. We are swimming around in a soup bowl full of pheromones. I am sure we both smell like sex, and like each other. He will smell like that when he goes home and crawls in to bed with her at daybreak. I can’t imagine how this is a comforting arrangement, but that’s their deal.

“I don’t want to be like my father,” he repeats.
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