CHAPTER 27 #2
Victor stared at his profile, awash in endorphins and desperately wanting as much contact as possible.
So he shifted closer and pressed his nose and cheek against Johnny’s deltoid, loving the smell and warmth of him.
He draped his free arm over Johnny’s stomach, wanting nothing more than to hold him until they melted together.
“I think I need to wash up,” Johnny muttered before pulling away and sliding off the bed, leaving Victor a little shocked and disoriented at the sudden emptiness beside him on the bed. Johnny was out the bedroom door in a second, grabbing his pants and underwear on the way.
With a sigh of disappointment, Victor shifted fully onto his back and stared at the old painting of mustangs running along the Arizona skyline that hung across from his bed.
Who knew how old it was. It had been hanging in the exact place since Victor was a child.
As a kid, Victor had named the horses, though by now he’d forgotten what they were.
When it became apparent Johnny was taking his sweet old time, Victor sat up and swung his legs off the side of the bed, wondering if he should get dressed.
He probably needed a wash and a piss, too.
By the time he’d slid into a pair of pajama pants, Johnny appeared in the doorway in his jeans, his hands jammed into his back pockets.
“You doin’ okay?” Johnny asked as Victor turned to face him from his seated position on the bed.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“So… uh… am I welcome to stay or do I need to skedaddle?”
Victor almost laughed at the absurdity of his question. “Are you joking?”
“Lotta people kick me out afterward.”
“Are we dating or did you just say that so I’d let you fuck me?” Victor asked, a little testy now. It was starting to dawn on him that this was the second time Johnny had immediately left him alone in bed, and he dreaded this becoming a trend.
Johnny stared at him cluelessly for a second before his mouth tightened. “I ain’t a liar.”
“So why the fuck would I kick you out afterward?”
“Did I do somethin’ wrong?”
Victor let out a heavy breath, wondering if he was overreacting.
Being angry at Johnny was a force of habit for him, but it was his fault for dating someone with no damn common sense.
“No, I guess not.” He patted the bed. “I’m going to go to the bathroom, and when I come back your ass better still be here. ”
Johnny plopped himself onto the bed with a nod. “Alrighty then.”
Victor went to the bathroom, did his business, removed the diaphragm, and took a shower.
When he returned to the bedroom, he spotted Johnny across the room squinting at a couple of photographs.
Victor didn’t like to take or hang pictures of himself, but pretty much all the family photos of his father had Victor in them, so he was willing to put up a few.
“This you?” Johnny asked, pointing at one of the photos in question. It was a photo of his father seated on the back porch holding baby Oscar in his arms as a grinning Victor clung to his arm. It had to have been after mass, because Victor was wearing the most awful frilly pink dress.
Victor realized Johnny was pointing at the baby, not the toddler at his father’s side.
“No, that’s my brother.” Victor went to Johnny’s side and pointed to himself. “That’s me.”
“That’s you? Damn.” Johnny picked up the frame and stared at it more closely. “You pick that dress?”
“I’m sure my mom forced me to wear it. I always hated wearing dresses, more so as a kid. My mom was more of a stickler about it than my dad.”
Johnny put the frame back down. “You got any photos of yourself when you were older? I mean, before you became a man.”
Victor knew they still had a lot of work to do on the whole ‘becoming a man’ thing, but he decided to let it go one more time. “I’m not showing you pictures.”
“Why not? It ain’t gonna change nothin’.”
“It’s just…” Victor squirmed a bit. “Imagine yourself in middle school at your pimpliest, with braces and all that. Is that something you want other people to see?”
“Never had braces. Betcha can’t tell.” Johnny smiled, showing off the gap between his front teeth and slightly crooked incisors. Then he snorted. “I don’t see why you gotta be embarrassed. You look like a man now, don’tcha?”
“It’s just not something I like people seeing.”
“I’m only curious, that’s all.”
Victor figured this would be something Johnny would want to see, and perhaps it was best to rip off the Band-Aid now so that they could get it over with.
Most of his old photos were buried in folders in a box in his closet, and he hadn’t looked at them since he put them there.
He knew some liked to look back and consider their progress, but it felt like being forced back into his worst memories, not just the ones of him feeling extremely dysphoric but those of losing his father and his fiancé in the same year.
“If I show you,” Victor said, “you have to promise me you’ll never ask again.”
Johnny held up a hand and made a cross on his chest with the other. “Swear on my mother’s grave.”
Victor went to his closet and found a box of old framed photos he’d packed forever ago.
Finally he found an old engagement photo of him and Diego, and when he spotted it at the bottom of the box, he resisted the urge to shove it back under the other junk and tape the box shut.
Instead he pulled out the photo and went to Johnny on the other side of the room. Johnny leaned forward to see.
“Damn,” he muttered. It looked like he wanted to say something, but he glanced at Victor with anticipation.
“Just say it,” Victor said with a sigh.
“How old were you in this?”
“Eighteen.”
“Alright then. You were a pretty girl.”
Victor slumped with relief. “Oh good, I thought you were gonna say something el—”
“Also, you had great tits.”
“—nevermind,” Victor groaned.
Johnny snickered, then sobered before turning to Victor. “That’s the guy we talked to at the Stock Show, yeah?”
“Diego? Yes.”
“So he’s not bi, he just dated you when you were a woman.”
“I wasn’t a—” Victor stopped himself, took a moment to reset his volume.
“I was never a woman.” When Johnny appeared confused, Victor continued.
“I was a man. I was always a man, even before I looked like one. In here, I was a man.” Victor tapped his head.
“That’s why we say assigned female at birth and not born a woman.
People made assumptions about me based on what my genitals looked like.
It didn’t mean I was a woman.” Victor put the photo into the drawer of his nightstand and slammed it shut.
“I know the distinction might not matter to you but it does to me.”
“But you lived to adulthood as a woman, right? You looked plenty girly in that photo.”
“I presented as female, but I wasn’t a woman. Listen, I know it’s confusing and again I know you’ll never really get it because you’re cis and all that—”
“Sis?”
“Cis. Cisgender. It just means your gender assigned at birth matches your biological sex.”
“My gender… assigned at birth matches my… biological sex,” Johnny repeated in utter confusion. God, he was so clueless. Why did Victor find that comforting? “This feels like bein’ in biology class. Learning about the parts in a cell or whatever.”
Victor had to laugh. “What?”
“I mean, it’s like bein’ in class when the kid next to me knows what the fuck is happenin’ and I do not. You know all about this, and I don’t.”
“That’s fine. Like I said, I don’t need you to know the specifics, I just… I just want you to know about who I am and not hate me for it.”
“Oh, Vic.” Johnny clicked his tongue and shook his head. “I couldn’t hate you even if I wanted to.”
Victor’s throat tightened, and he swallowed several times as he fought the sudden urge to cry. Maybe this showed in his face, because Johnny reached out and dropped a heavy hand on top of his head.
“And whatever hot girl you mighta been ten years ago, you’ll only ever be a hot man to me.”
Victor sniffed and laughed, nodding his head with a wobbly smile. “Thank you.”
Johnny’s hand remained on his head a few seconds longer than necessary before he ruffled Victor’s hair and pulled away, slumping back onto the bed and stretching his legs forward. “Don’t get all weepy on me now.”