What she wants to say will put her on a list at best and get her visited by fascists at worst, so Maxine keeps her head down, makes preparations she never should’ve had to make, thinks about all the ways in which a country can come undone on the macro level while on the micro, a life can be this fulfilling, this bright and wide and golden and make all the sense it now does: a tweaking of biochemistry, hormones suddenly where she always wanted them, and everything seems manageable, or at least not impossible.
She learns how to tuck after years of just never bothering, practices her voice she’s already perfected to get that cis-girl-lift, vocal fry to sell, her life and future hinging on a liminal interaction with TSA, and having to act like it’s all just routine, another day, and not this phoenix fire, ashes before the rising, sun coming up out the airplane window, cat on lap in a bubble backpack, her entire life crammed in a single piece of luggage, stowed above her head.
She’s learning to accept this isn’t the worst case but just a case, that if the many-worlds interpretation is true, which she no longer has any reason to doubt, this timeline is just one of a fractaling infinity of others, every decision a branch, and this might not be the world she wants, but it’s the one she’s got, and she has to work within it.
As the plane engines hum, she remembers the early days, the minute changes that were all of them landmarks, revelations and miracles, the dully aching buds on her chest, the way her body filled out, the instructions kicked on after so much dormancy, giving her the body she always knew she was meant to have.
And then it’s the cis who acted like they got it but who never did, the ones who stuck with her through everything, but suddenly a new name, new pronouns, and a nice rack was the final straw for whatever reason, and it was easier for them to distance themselves, convenient to keep sleeping, ignore what was happening, anything to maintain the precious status quo, and Maxine doesn’t want to be bitter, but she’s had a lifetime of making excuses for others, so this final fuck-you is cathartic, because when people show you who they really are, it’s best you listen.
Her cat in her lap murring, blissfully unaware, and her unaware as well, of where she’ll end up, what’s next, all the imagined possibilities twisting and convulsing into barely recognizable forms, shifting until she can hardly believe this is the same life, this blistering thing where everything seems unreal, where sleep is a luxury, and all her fears and worries have somehow come to pass. And yet. One of the benefits of dealing with anxiety and trauma all your life is that once the worst finally does come to pass, you’re ready.
All this because she upsets their stupid little hierarchy by just existing. She proves their tiered way of thinking and living is bullshit with every injection of estradiol valerate, with every held door and ‘yes ma’am’ and ‘I love your hair!’ If someone could refuse to accept one shitty lot in life, then they could question everything else, and that just wouldn’t do in the so-called land of the free.
All she wants is to be cute and cuddle with her cat and love her girlfriend and eat snacks and write her queer little stories. That’s her trans agenda. She has to laugh about it because if not that then she’ll break down, and that isn’t an option on this final flight, rubber kissing tarmac briefly before coming free of it, floating through and finally allowing herself to imagine what she could have, the best-case after surviving the ‘worst-case,’ all the ways she can be happy, live to spite the fuckers, to win by simply existing, vital-signs-as-middle-finger.
She laughs, the tears finally flowing, and the person sitting next to her goes ‘nerves?’ and all she can do is laugh some more, that and go, ‘yeah. something like that.’