Eight years ago, when I was twenty-four years old, I went to use the bathroom at a Beyoncé concert. Someone saw my short hair and flat chest and called the police. I was in the women’s bathroom. I am a woman. But someone saw my stocky build and bald fade then thought, that’s not right.

People often don’t know what to do when they realize I’m butch. I’ll tell people that I’m an immigrant and they’ll nod, that I’m black and they’ll sigh with familiarity or deep knowing, but then they’ll look at my thick lips and strong arms, soft eyes and barrel body and I’ll see the eyebrows furrowing and sense the sirens wailing – red blue, red blue, this is not right. Of all the public aspects of who I am, “butch” is the one I’ve had the strangest time making my own.

I’m lying. It wasn’t strange. It was beautiful. It was awful. I’m still lying. Indulge me, will you? I suddenly feel the need to confess.

Locating yourself in queerness can feel a bit like a second puberty, nothing but dead ends and wrong turns to figure out who you are and where you fit. I’m thirty-two now and I still remember how hard it was, how crucial, all those little turns that led me into a wrongness that felt right and true. I wasn’t scared when the cops escorted me out of the bathroom. I was mostly annoyed that they showed up before I’d had a chance to pee. 

So here it is. Are you ready? Here are all my wrong turns and dead ends from when I was twenty-four and new. Here is my first confession:

▲

You’re leaning against the counter, ears full of bass and a fresh beer in your hand. Your third? Fifth? Who gives a fuck? You don’t know these people, and that’s okay. You’re a little bit drunk, and that’s okay. And because you don’t know these people, and because you’re drunk, you want to fuck.

A woman reaches over, taking the bottle opener from your hand. “Is that okay?” she says, gazing up at you with green eyes rimmed in gray. You smile. She smiles. She pops the top off a beer then leans against the sink.

Glancing at her, you realize she might be the roommate of your sort-of friend who dragged you to this party earlier in the evening. Smiling, you turn your feet and fix your hips, making yourself ready and open. The swish of her skirt as she glides closer tells you she wants to know you too.

“I’m new in town,” you say, “still figuring out this place, the people. There’s still so much–”

“I was new once,” she says. “I’ve been here in Vancouver for eleven years now and I still feel new.” There’s a gentle Spanish lilt to her warming words.

So you tell her about how no one can fully know anything, and she agrees. Then you tell her that who we are and what we could become rests entirely in where we have been, and she agrees. You tell her about how as more people keep moving and migrating, cultures shifting and growing, the increased liminality– 

She laughs at your fancy grad school words, then agrees. “I should show you around sometime,” she says, resting her hand on your arm. “Let you see what I know.” She strokes your skin with her thumb.

“Yeah totally,” you sputter, tongue stumbling against teeth.

Then you stand there, staring, your beer growing warm in your palm. You need to say something – as a sign, a segue, something to show her why a femme like her might wanna go home with a butch like you. 

So you straighten your back and widen your stance, soaking up as much space as the small kitchen will allow. She smiles as she dips her gaze, long lashes spread like a curtsy. The music changes, treble thumping in the air between her bright nails and your thick watch, her tight blouse and your crisp collar, both of you peacocking in pursuit of the tender experiment.

“Sounds awesome, man,” you stammer.

Her smile cracks. Man? You’re not her friend. Man? She didn’t come here to make friends. But it’s too late, you can’t stop, anxiety picking up speed as you call her “dude” and “bro” and start rambling on about the weather and the music and about whether beer tastes better from a bottle or a can. Disappointed, she puts her hand on her hip and settles back into the stature of her everyday. Later, when she turns to leave, her skirt makes no sound.

Now you’re walking home, ears full of rain and your hands balled in fists. “Man?” you mutter to yourself, “man?” Rain blows against your face, so small and faint like her fading smile and eyes gone dim as you stare, again and again in your head you stare from across the sink, nothing to say. Man? You outed yourself, naïveté seeping through like yolk from an egg. You don’t know how to do this dance. You don’t know how to tease and excite in a furtive, come here. So instead you stood there, brain spinning so fast you thought you might puke as you blabbered on and on while her smile cracked, small fissure diffusing the dream. 

Stomping through puddles as you rush for the bus, you sense that feeling – that, that feeling of, of emptiness? No. Failure? Well obviously. A semi-truck rumbles past, splashing gutter water over your shoes as you hurry towards your stop.

▲

Why man? I asked myself later. Why that word? Maybe it’s nothing, just something to say when you’re tongue-tied and mixed up. Besides she’s not a man, and I’m not a man – but the line between man and wo-man isn’t so easy to spot when you’re butch. 

Take, for instance, how I dress. I don’t wear panties. I wear boxers. I know, I know: boxers, men’s pants, breasts bound tight beneath button-down shirts – the unofficial uniform of butch women everywhere since the inception of the term “butch women.” But I don’t bind. I love the feel of my small breasts pushing against soft shirts. 

I wear bras because social decorum says I have to, but I’d gladly go bra-less if I could. I love my breasts and don’t want to make them a secret, and I can’t remember when I stopped wearing panties. In high school, maybe? It wasn’t a decision made out of defiance for traditional femininity. Boxers are longer, thicker; they have more fabric to keep the garment in place. Wearing boxers means less wedgies. I’d be a fool to choose fashion over less wedgies. 

Wearing boxers with my titties in the wind seems discordant, baroque, as though I haven’t yet made up my mind. I’ve met so many people who look me over with a skeptical hmm when I tell them I’m butch. Maybe they think I’m confused, that I’m actually trans* but just haven’t figured it out yet. There’s more than one way to be butch – I know – and how someone looks isn’t always the truest indicator of who they are – you know – but still, for a moment in those tender early years, I wondered if they were right. 

So I gave it a shot. I tried to make “man” mine. I lasted maybe a week and a half. Hearing someone call me “sir” either made my tongue sour or made me miss what they were saying altogether because I didn’t realize they were talking to me. Could I play the role of a man? Sure, if I absolutely had to – but through that experience I realized I’m not trans, so I don’t have any interest in spending the rest of my life as a woman playing dress-up. 

Instead, I tried to be more traditionally feminine, wore my hair long and perused the selection of push-up bras at my neighborhood Target. That lasted a little longer, about three months until I realized that underwires are the devil and long hair makes me feel like a racehorse aching to be released into the wild. At the end of it all, I drowned beneath that feeling again, that feeling that no matter how or what I tried, I just didn’t fit.

So what to do? Who to be? I wanted an in-between that nobody deemed true. So I drank a lot. I stayed home, curled up in dirty pajamas with dark streaks around the hem. Are you a woman? I asked myself. Are you a man? I’m not a man. And you’re not a man. So here is my second confession. 

You are young. You are smart. You’re at home in your apartment, three-days-worn pajamas carrying a faint sour stench. Listen! Do you hear it? There’s someone knocking at the door.

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You open your apartment door to your sort-of friend holding a bag of donuts and balancing two coffees in one hand. “This is it, man,” they say, giving you a coffee then letting themself in. “This is where it’s at.” They open your laptop and pull up a fresh page in your browser. Mouth full of donut, your friend says it’s time to go online, to try that site with question after question and a little bot dressed in pink. 

Did their roommate tell them what happened? Do they know about your fuck-up at the party? You don’t ask and they don’t tell. The two of you turn to the laptop, sparing each other the heat of stilted awkwardness and bare-faced embarrassment. 

The bot flickers blue then zooms to a blinking notification: three new matches, just for you.

You laugh. “Just for me?” You haven’t even told it your real name.

Your friend sighs then squeezes your shoulder. “We live in the digital age.”

“Oh yeah?” you say. “Well, if we live in the digital age, then why is your piece-of-shit car from, like, the dawn of time?” 

You close the page as your friend shrugs then presses the button to put the laptop to sleep. But later, in the dead of night, you curl up in bed beneath the shadows on the ceiling, blankets wrapped tight against the growing cold — you, just you.

All right. Okay. So you log on, follow the little bot around the screens then click through girl after girl like flipping pages in a catalog. Pulling the laptop beneath the sheets, you message one, two, fuck it, you message them all. You don’t know these people, so that’s okay. One messages you back, notifications buzzing incessant through the night.

Hey, how are you? you write.

I’m cool, you? she writes back.

I’m cooler than cool: it’s ice cold up in this city!

Lol, I know right?

Lol, I can’t believe you found that funny, you respond.

:)

:)

Names exchanged. Number acquired. You’ve set a date to meet by the bay. 

▲

 The next day at work, just twenty minutes left in your shift, you start packing your bag to leave — so you, like I still do, make sure to go to the bathroom before you go. Exhaling hard, you steel yourself then slip through the door marked with a M. 

When in public, I always use the men’s bathroom. That’s been my practice for years, ever since those two cops held me by the shoulders and escorted me out of the bathroom to the beat of “Single Ladies” booming through gray concrete. Or was it since that time an old woman cornered me by the sinks in the Seattle airport and said I must be confused, lost and confused, and when I told her I’m a woman she kept laughing then sneering, Are you sure? 

So now I use the men’s. It’s easier. And oddly, it’s safer. Men glance at me when I walk in and they see what they want – short hair, strong arms, must be a dude. And besides, in the men’s bathroom, dudes never linger too long on each other for fear of being called homo, so I take advantage of that so I can take a piss in peace. 

But I’m not a man. I’m a woman, a butch woman. I should use the bathroom that aligns with who I know myself to be. And sometimes, I do. I’ll ball my hands and grit my teeth then walk in through the door marked W to a chorus of raised brows and frightened stares. I’ll spend all of those distressing minutes with my head down and shoulders hunched up past my ears, willing my bowels to empty faster so I can leave. But most of the time—I know this is weak of me—but most of the time, I lose my nerve and end up just using the men’s. Because if a dude calls me a girl in the men’s bathroom, I just shrug and leave. But if a girl calls me a dude in the women’s bathroom, I feel exiled from the only gender I consider home. I don’t have it in me to stage that protest every single time I need to take a shit. 

Exhaling, you leave the men’s bathroom and walk back into the open air, paper towel still in hand. Pausing by your desk, you glance at the space between the two doors, wishing you could tap the wall and make a third bathroom – no M, no W, just ‘bathroom’ for all those who find themselves swimming in between. But stop staring, and zip up your bag. It’s 5:05. You’re going to be late for your date by the bay.

▲

“Brr,” you mutter then stare at the water, at the city lights reflected so bright and still.

“What a gwaan?” the girl from the dating site says.

You shrug. She tucks her shirt into her skinny jeans then wipes a bit of mud off her red flats.

“Ev’ryting sweet,” you say, digging up an accent that’s been buried ten years deep.

“Been a foreign fi long?” she says.

You straighten your back and close your eyes, digging deep, then deeper, for that time and those words that once rested so easy like playthings in your mouth. Opening your eyes, you glance at her then cough. 

“Yeah, left about a decade ago now,” you mutter, slipping into hyphenCanadian like sliding into well-worn shoes. “Maybe a lil’ longer. Stopped keeping count.”

Then she surprises you. She looks at you with a soft gaze that tells you she gets it, that she feels the tangled bigness of migration too. “Pretty shitty, eh?” she says, patting your leg.

You laugh. “You betcha.” Looking up, you watch the clouds preparing to pour. “So when did you, uh,” you blink, swallow, “when did you come a foreign?”

Sighing, she gathers her hair onto her far shoulder. She, like you, was born in the Caribbean. She, like you, lived her life in a house howling with hard questions and unyielding expectations – Become a doctor. Or a lawyer. Or a dentist. Just win. Make sure you win! Beat the white people at their own game – pressure building like living in a crucible weighted by the vexations of her family’s journey from home to here. 

You put your arm around her shoulders. She glances over. You tell her you understand. She hesitates, looking you over for a second, then with lips flushed pink she angles her chin towards you and the rumbling sky. 

Swallow hard. This is it, you tell yourself. They, queers and queens from eras past, they carved the space and claimed the names. They made the codes and drew the lines on how to flag, how to date, how to be. Now you, in your dress shoes and slacks and suspenders: this is it. It’s time for you to do your job.

You gaze at her lips doyourjob so plump and bare. You lean in doyourjobdoyourjob your chest so tight, you think you might faint. You close your eyes. . . Slumping forward, you wrap your arms around her for a hug. 

“I’m sorry,” you mutter. “I’m so sorry.” Hugging her tighter, you bury your nose in the cozy nook between her shoulder and lobe. 

Fidgeting, she pushes you away. It was a kiss, just a kiss. Standing up, she suggests you share a scoop of ice cream then call it a night.

▲

Trial and error. Process of elimination. You’re trying on all these façades just like I did and nothing seems to fit. They won’t ever fully fit. The running tagline of the LGBT movement has been, “it gets better.” And it does, for some – but don’t expect to make it out unscathed. 

Like the other day, I went to the grocery store. I walked in, and I pretended to size up the grapes so I could steal two and pop them in my mouth as I traipsed along for what I actually went there to get. I picked up milk, protein bars, panty liners, tampons, and cereal. The female cashier looked at me then at my purchases then gave me a hard stare. 

“Your girlfriend sent you to the store?” she said.

I looked up. She thought I was a man running an errand for the woman in my life. I paused a moment, scenarios flooding my head. Should I tell her my life story, go back to when I was ten and realized I didn’t give a damn about boys? Or should I jump on the counter to show her my vagina like some sort of biological ID? Instead I smiled and asked her how her shift was going. She fidgeted then fumbled with the plastic bag. I didn’t answer her question, didn’t confirm or deny whether I am a man on an errand for my woman. She gave me a two-word answer then said I needed to press the button for debit or credit. 

This is the hard thing about being butch: you meet another woman and think you might connect, but when she sees your masculine features she recoils. Are you a man or woman? Tricky people. Stranger danger. So your need for female kinship sometimes goes unrequited unless you play the game and be the man. 

I grew tired of the game. After a while, I decided to stop torturing myself. Putting away the bow-ties and pocket squares, I decided to let myself unfurl, like you might too. I kept my hair short, but maybe you’ll go long. Maybe you’ll wear button-downs, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll bind, maybe you won’t. Trial and error; fancy way of saying, “fuck if I know, just get in there and figure it out.” So get in there. Leave what you know. 

▲

It’s been two weeks since your date. You’ve decided to take a break from all that, so now you’re going out alone. Pausing by the front door, you tuck your ticket for the book festival in your wallet then dab perfume on your wrists.

A few minutes later, you’re leaning against a bus shelter in the never-ending rain. You wonder about the woman from the bay: What’d she look like again? Where did she say she was from? And Jesus fucking Christ, what was her name? Then you remember hugging her, your nose tucked safe in that dark crevice beyond her ear, soft dip between shoulder and lobe made cavernous by draping hair wet with rain. 

Trinidad. Yes, you think. And open-toed flats with small bows. . . The bus shows up packed with commuters and windows foggy with mid-winter B.O. Flashing your pass, you squeeze to the back. You haven’t heard from her since. 

A half hour later the bus squeals to a halt, emptying the crowd onto the wet concrete beneath the metro rat-a-tat-tatting above. Shoulders hunched against the damp cold, you stroll beneath the bright sign arching overhead: Granville Island, neon lights burning through the fog like a beacon – come, tourists, come.

Late last night, you deleted your online profile. No more websites like catalogs, no more parties so loud and strange like bad dreams. You’ve put away your suspenders, choosing to flag with nothing more than the warmth of your own skin. Glancing up at the gray clouds rumbling, you stick out your tongue to the sky. Stomping through puddles, ears full of rain – you, just you. And that’s okay.

“Got your ticket?” the attendant says. 

You hand him your stub then find a seat in the crowd. You’ve decided to relax, ride the ebb and things will fall. That’s what your friend said when they picked you up in their piece-of-shit car after that night at the bay. 

“Things will fall,” they said, the last two words swallowed by kick-back from the coughing muffler.

So here you are, on a solo adventure. You’re sitting a few feet from the podium thumbing through the pages of praise in the book that made him famous. ‘Impressive,’ one reviewer claims; ‘richly rewarding,’ another announces; the book’s been on your shelf for years and you haven’t read a word. Some aunt whom you recognize solely through your shared last name gave it to you last year as a Christmas gift – because you’re shy, you’re quiet, so that must mean you love books. Cracking the spine, you crease a few pages as the lights go dim.

“You want the true Third World experience,” he says, arching his fingers in air quotes, “you want the real authentic vacation,” he says, voice rising beneath his smile, “then playa, go to the Caribbean, burn your passport, then never leave.” The room erupts in laughter, everyone hearing the joke but not the meaning behind.

From your seat in the throng, you sense that same hard stamp just beyond his gestures and impressive words, the crucible of his immigrant upbringing kept cushioned in rolling fits of ha-ha-ha’s. You rest his book on the ground then gaze up at his bald scalp shining beneath the harsh stage lights.

“Sorry,” someone says, squeezing past in royal blue. 

“Y’all have a nice city,” he says.

She, in the blue, she sits down on your left, her knees pressed together beneath velvet slacks.

“Real nice,” he says. 

In response, someone at the back of the room stands up, starts ranting about the covert stratification and systemic marginalization within the city’s pedagogically commodifying and paradigmatic privileging of binarized heteronormativitation and, y’know, it all comes back to patriarchy–

“Listen, Vancouver,” he interrupts with a sigh, “me saying your city’s nice–” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Motherfuckers, do not fear: I have not drunk the Kool-Aid.” 

The room erupts in ha-ha-has.

“Hilarious!” the woman in blue whispers.

“Right?” you respond. 

She stares at you, her dark brows all scrunched up. She was talking to her friend.

“You mean sitting by each other doesn’t make us besties? Well shit,” you whisper, “missed that memo.”

She chuckles, letting her face relax. “Hi,” she says.

“Hey,” you respond.

He opens his book and starts to read. A few pages in, he has the crowd in tears. “So this kid,” he says, “this broke-ass motherfucker–” ha-ha-ha he pauses to let them breathe. She leans forward, her blue jacket balled in her lap.

“I dare you to throw your panties at him,” her friend whispers to her.

The woman in blue rounds her mouth in shock.

“Triple dog dare you,” her friend says.

“Great idea,” you chime in, looking at her friend, “you first.”

Her friend snorts, staring you down. The woman in blue leans back and laughs.

“How you doin’?” you ask her.

“Pretty great,” she says.

He flips forward a few chapters. “This is it,” he says, “last one.”

Something rubs against your calf. You glance over. She’s angled her knees towards yours.

He clears his throat as you slouch in your seat. He moves down the page as you crack your knuckles, her leg growing hot against yours. She laughs at something he says. You stare, slouched in your seat, you stare at the podium, your tongue thick in your throat, nothing to say. He reaches the end of the story. She leans forward and applauds.

“Thanks for comin’ out,” he says as the stage goes black.

Getting up, she smiles at you. “So.”

“So,” you respond, rising to your feet.

“He’s so great,” her friend says.

She stares at them, her brows bunched up.

“He’s,” you chuckle, “he’s somethin’.” 

You fetch his book from beneath your seat. She waits. Tongue swollen with nervous hunger, you silently admit to yourself that you are butch but you don’t know yet what that means and besides, what happened to letting go and enjoying yourself and you have work in the morning so stop standing around like a fucking idiot ‘cause you still need to get groceries and you’re going to miss your bus so, “It was nice meeting you,” you finally mumble, starting to back away.

She tucks her hair behind her ear as her smile starts to fall.

Hands in your pockets, you slip in and out of the neat queues formed down rows for book signing and photos. You, just you. Pushing through the double doors, you pull your jacket tight. And that’s okay. Head down, you ready yourself for the cold walk back to the bus.

“Hey!” someone says. “You, in the gray!”

Clutching your gray jacket, you turn around. She’s hurrying towards you, her friend lagging behind.

“Open your hand,” she says, ripping a page out of his book then pressing it into your palm. This is how, the page reads, crumpled and worn. She asks you to write your number down. 

“I don’t have anything to write with,” you mumble, hoping that excuse will set you free. She reaches into her purse then hands you her mascara. 

“Pretend it’s a pen,” she says. 

You chuckle, uncapping the long tube. “So long as you don’t kill me if I break it.”

Her friend sticks out their tongue like they’re about to barf. So this is it. This is how. Pulling the black wand in big curves, you scrawl 7-7-8- as she inches a little closer, both of you growing damp in the tender skittering of evening rain.

▲

This is my final confession: I made that last part up. Is it even possible to use a mascara wand like a pen? I have no clue, but damn, it sure does sound good. 

Listen, I don’t know what I’m saying. No, I don’t know how to say what I’m saying. No, I’m afraid that once I learn how to say what I’m saying, I’ll have forgotten what it was that needed to be said. So I’m giving it to you now, while I can still remember, in all its jumbled pieces. I want you to love. I want you to fuck and get fucked — in the real sense, the red and raw sense, scars on your thighs and her sigh in your ears for days. I want you to be close enough, whole enough, for someone to sink through the surface and know you. So here is my puzzle without the legend. Here is how I say yes, every day. A manual, representation, call it what you must, but take this and be greedy and ruthless till you spill over and confess.