Once upon a time a star exploded, and over time some of what once was came together and something new existed. And that in turn became something new, and that begat someone new, and on, and on, and on, and so, until you and me—we. Every human is formed from stardust. Billions of years later and the stardust is still transforming into new shapes and forms every day. And the dust does not stop moving in us. We change: cells are born, grow old, and die; skin flakes away; eyes become brighter and then duller; waists stretch from thin to thick or thick to thicker; we live the Sphinx’s riddle and eventually we all return—and the world turns, and turns, and keeps turning, each day bringing a new sun and every night a new moon. Change happens every minute of every day, but it happens so slowly that we don’t notice and simply call this unending process of transitioning life.

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There is a cost to become who you are meant to be. The cost of becoming can be tallied and calculated: the dollars for estrogen, for testosterone, for a whole new wardrobe at 40, eyeshadows (Pat McGrath eye pallets cost $125 each, before tax; I own two; I own a Make-up by Mario palette—ethereal eyes, one by Melt, another by Hung Vanyo, then there is the one filled with different shades of brown, some of which disappear into my skin, by Natasha Deona, and the one by Juvia’s Place—pigmented to high heaven with fallout; that alone is nearing $1,000 just for eyes), foundation (five, but I only use three), concealers (four, and I use all four), blush (fifteen), highlighters (several, at least three different tones of gold), setting sprays, powders, finishing powders, and lip liners and lipstick (I have too many to count, but I know I own at least twenty shades of brown). My colleagues joke that I go to Sephora or Ulta weekly but they don’t understand—it’s necessary. There is the hair, the breast implants, the surgical manipulation of flesh and fat and bone. 

It is expensive being a girl—but it costs to be a tranny. We pay the toll, in mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, in friends, in love, in care, in safety. But, “if you want to cross the bridge, my sweet, you have to pay the toll,” and we will pay it. We have paid it. There is almost nothing I wouldn’t give to be cunt. I insist on it. 

Cuntiness. 

To be cunt is to be unapologetic for We have settled into ourselves. 

To be cunt is to be hyper femme. Every day I take a brush and dip it in a pot and pull it across my lips, my eyes, my cheeks and become. To be cunt is to exaggerate, to be on the other side of the margins and dare others to join. A cunty mind works faster than any cis person’s tongue, to survive. 

I slip in a slip and slip out to the streets and walk to grab some tacos, some juice, a phone left in the car and a man, someone’s man stares. 

To be cunt is to know you will be looked at so you command: Look at me.. Did I say you could blink?…look at me and hold your breath until I say when…..hold it…hold it… hold it….keep holding. Sometimes I look back, sometimes I smile. Sometimes I say yes to satisfy a need. Most times I laugh. Oh… you can breathe. 

Did I say when? 

To be cunt is to be walking advertisements of desire and pleasure.

To be cunt is to never have to ask: Do you want to fuck me? 

To be cunt is to know: You want to fuck me. You want to find out if what they say is true; Am I the best of both worlds?  

What if I am

the worst? 

I can lie to you like you do to her, except I can make you believe me: That you are special, that I am grateful, that I will wait for you, that no other guy is cumming in me, just you baby, you are safe, she is safe, your kids are safe, this is safe…I am safe. 

Someone’s friend spreads his legs wide as he reclines in my bed staring at me. The red light highlights the blood moving under my skin, glistening from the body oils, my perfumes waft in the air, and biology takes hold and someone’s connect salutes me. As I lower myself, before I even start, someone’s baby daddy says, “Damn, baby,” as gravity helps overfill my bra. Under the light moving from red to black to red again, I drag my tongue from the base to the tip and kiss it. I lick. I nibble. Before I swallow it, someone’s boyfriend says, “You’re so sexy.” And then I do it, my lips are kissing the root of someone’s pubes, and I look up and hold him in my eyes while water gathers, and, while holding him in both mouth and eyes, I exhale and, as the warmth of my air envelops him, someone’s everything says, “Fuuuuuuuuck.” And when the tear finally falls, someone’s husband breaks and kisses me and tells me I taste like sugar and feel softer than anything he has touched in a long time. Someone’s husband tells me I am beautiful and—for a second, I am scared, for boys are clumsy with precious things, but I screw the cap off the bottle and inhale and unfold.

I unfold into the expansive blackness that holds everything, reaching out and around, wearing the planets like bobbles and the stars like jewels, the sun is just the ring on my finger, the moon a pearl for my ear, and he is a comet shooting through me, a snowball of frozen gas and dust, a speck I shall forget. 

But someone’s husband/boyfriend/lover/son/brother/father/friend/everything shall remember me always. 

As he dresses and texts his wife that he is on his way, I look in the mirror, fix my hair and think: I should be better, have some dignity, some sisterly solidarity but right as the guilt hits I walk him to the door. As he kisses me goodbye, I hear the voices of granola-loving women and protein-pre-workout-guzzling men who insist I have no right to the noun, woman, and thus no sisterhood. And it dawns on me, with no right to sisterhood, there is no need for solidarity to anyone but another doll. He asks me if he can see me again while at my door while Beyoncé warns from my bedroom on top of a dark, cluttered beat: Be careful what you ask for cause I just might comply. I think: Do you know of what you ask? I can write your life and they will call it myth, when everything is gone, the wind will still sound your name. Or, I can write your life and they will call it a warning; I can tell your story and they will weep tears. I can make you the last one to ever bear your family’s name just by saying “yes” to your request. But instead, I say, “Yes.” Part of me means it.  

Maybe a tranny with needs is a dangerous thing.

It is dangerous when a thing insists on being an object, and an object is dangerous when it insists on being a subject, and a subject becomes particularly dangerous when it rejects being the other and uses the pronoun I, and I becomes disruptive when she tells you she is real: see these eyes, this hair, this skin—touch this skin; is it soft? So soft. See these lips, taste these lips and tell me, how do I taste? Like strawberries? Like chocolate? No. Like sweat, like salt, like pH. Like real, so fucking real that you must render me fantasy: a safe thing with no needs but a hole that needs you, only you to fill—never compliment, not even complete, me. But, to fuck me is easy, but to satisfy me, to feed me, requires a little bit more. 

So alone in my room, with the red lights still on, I lay on my bed and traverse my new body. I am not a fantasy. I am a dangerous thing with needs. My fingers become diligent explorers. The right ones circle my right breast, the index finger rubs the ridges showing my blood rushing to the tip. My left fingers go in my mouth to replicate the weight of when you were there, and then the hum and whir of a toy, the moans of boys on screen. I think briefly, I am a bad tranny. Maybe I should watch something else, a doll get fucked by her “stepson.” But then the light skin top’s moan pulls me back. Back to bodies not like mine, in configurations I will never be in, and oscillate between where I was under you and where I am, alone. I sniff and whir and moan, louder than I did with you and I close my eyes and once again I unfold and expand but this time, alone, I become the blackness right before everything was carved out of it, before the first star shattered, before the first star twinkled, before light was born.  

Later, as his potential slides out of me, I press play on a podcast about Greek myth. The podcaster recounts a story of the queen of Olympians’ revenge on some poor mortal Seleme. Seleme had the misfortune of being beautiful and catching Zeus’ eye. Hera tricked Seleme into convincing Zeus to show her his true form. Zeus promised Seleme anything her heart desired. She said to prove to her that he was Zeus the king of the Olympians. Zeus begged her to change her mind. If you love me, you will show me you in your true form, she said, and Zeus loved her. He showed her his true form, and she burned, for no human can look on a god’s face. 

This is just one of many stories where Hera is cast as a jealous bitch, but in truth, she is cunt. She can look upon a god and see that Zeus is just another nigga, and just like a nigga, Zeus takes her for granted. Just like a nigga Zeus wants to protect and love a woman who can’t handle who he is in his entirety. Once he showed this woman who he really was, she could not survive the truth. 

I have received, hosted, and seen the truest face of many a taken man; in place of children and oaths of protection and vows of love and fidelity, they give me their moans, their mouths contorted, their sweaty brows, their wants, and confessions that they can’t give voice to at home and the tears they hold for the shower and the rain. As I wash my hands I look in the mirror and think again on Seleme and how she burned when seeing Zeus’s true form; I then thought of my own schooling, how in Sunday School we learned that when Moses spoke with god, god took the shape of a burning bush because—no mortal can see the true face of a god. As I analyze my face, spot my pores, look over my wrinkles, fold up an eyefold and do fantasy surgery on my face, it occurred to me, 

No man has ever seen my truest face but I have seen so many. 

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