27 (fiction)

CW: gender, arguments, abortion, religion, trans issues, self harm, alcoholism, mental health, et all

Two months back, I lost my friend of seven years over a conversation that lasted twenty-seven minutes. We talked over the phone, and when she hung up all I could do was stare at the time stamp on the screen. Looking into that black mirror showed me how angry I was, but I didn't feel anger in the moment. I drank some water and recalled my voice reverberating my apartment. My jaw was stiff. The tendons in my hand ached. Out of whiskey, I went to the liquor store. Jack helped me get through the night but the hangover didn't make anything right.

When I was nine my step dad asked me what number a trinity of trinities would be. I thought about it and decided that it was twenty-seven, because three cubed made three threes wherever I looked at it. He was upset, not that I came up with a different answer, but because I wasn't as dumb as he wanted me to be. The only right answer was nine, because it was the answer my step-dad wanted it to be. He was trying to be cute or funny, but all it did was set the tone of our relationship as people who both loved the same person.

At the age of twenty-seven I was depressed. I was miserable. I wasn't taking my meds and it wasn't doing me any good. Blind dates had left me mute. Every stranger, regardless of how attractive they were, gave me that same look of expectation as my step-dad. They wanted me to say something masculine or insightful, but I kept answering twenty-seven. I'd say something dismissive or measured and the hope in their eyes died. The desperate ones dropped any pretense of intelligent discourse to get the dick, but my luck dispersed. The last date I had before the phone call was the worst by far, I couldn't say anything of value. I kept waiting for a signal for the right words to say, and she went to the bathroom – at her house.

I used to take two pills every morning at seven, but I wasn't taking my meds because I didn't get mad enough at my ex-girlfriend. When she broke up with me she didn't just break my heart, she broke the windshield of my car. I could've pressed charges. I could've given her jail time or made her pay for the damages, but I let it go. At the time I thought, “she's already going through enough, she doesn't need me adding on to that,” but wasn't I going through a lot? I needed the money. I had to beg my step-dad for cash because I wasn't able to punish her. He pat me on the back and told me, “it's all part of being a man.” I didn't know men needed to suffer property damage with unspoken resentment.

Free of emotional chains, my anger was loose. I could speak my mind. I could yell at my boss for scheduling me two seven-hour shifts in a row. I could work out my aggression at the gym, and rant with my fam from college about this fucking country. I was back to feeling alive and that meant no more holding back my punches, but when it came to women, I couldn't get mad at them. They were the crystalline princesses of the world and didn't deserve my wrath. No one would love a mad man, and if I was going to fit one definition I couldn't embody the second.

My used 2007 Mustang got me everywhere in college. If my ex didn't have that abortion we would've conceived in that car, instead it turned into my choice. Instead I was the one who turned her into a murderer all because I was there to drive her to and from the clinic. She wasn't on meds, so she got to feel the full weight of her loss, guilt, and ultimately her rage. My pills muted those feelings and turned me into a “robot” in her tear stained eyes. I couldn't give her what she needed to move past that pain, so she replaced my hand over her chest with a cross. When I wouldn't bend my knee to a house built on guilt she found a new place to rest her head.

She found another answer to the question of a trinity of trinities, and that was nothing. For there was only one trinity and that was the one in heaven. When we got together she only believed in her instagram feed. There wasn't the right photo filter to express her loss through selfie. She never got enough hearts to replace the loss in her chest. She followed Romans 2:7 and sought the glory, honor, and immortality of living with absolute morality. Our pain became her pain. Our choice became my sin. Our life became a broken windshield.

Picking up the shards of glass left scars on my fingers, but I didn't need the reminder. I'd failed as a man. She was my woman and I couldn't carry her through the turmoil of the world. I could take the blame and damnation, but not the shame. I never denied her accusations. I only apologized because I thought that was what she needed to hear to feel better. Bleeding didn't make me feel better. I was too consumed with my part in our misevents to find pleasure in self harm; besides, I wasn't in high school anymore.

My weak masculinity caused that twenty-seven minute phone call to fall apart. My best friend listened to me complain about women and dating and offered what advice she could to a man raving without glowsticks. I didn't have the look of models and superheroes so I had to get by with personality, but inside I was snips, snails, and puppydog tails. Still I believed that there was some magic formula that would make women want me again, but all she had was words to improve the person inside. I couldn't fix that. I'd lived my whole life carrying that mess around and airing shit only made it stink.

“I can't be a man!” I shouted.

“Then don't.”

I was a man. That's all that I was. I was muscles. I was a job that required a white button up shirt. I was a penis that craved women. I was a drop of blood on my razor that was only an accident if someone asked. I was bottle of jack with a hole in the bottom. I was a broken windshield. I was two hands with seven stitches. I was a man.

“What else am I supposed to be, a fucking trans?”

“If it helps? Yes.”

“I can't do that. I can't walk through life living a Goddamn lie! I'm not a twink with perfect skin and feminine bones. No one will ever look at me and see anything other than a man wearing a dress. I'm not a caterpillar, I'm a piece of bird crap in caterpillar shape. 'If it helps?' How the fuck would walking around as a motherfucking joke help me? Do you have any idea how stupid you sound?”

She was silent in that way where I'd ask for her to talk and she wouldn't respond. It was the kind of silence that let my mind wander. I heard her yell at me for everything I did to her in the seven years of our friendship. She called me a bigoted transphobe, a coward, and a toxic narcissist. Yet the silence of the phone call was worse, because I couldn't respond to that. I was at the mercy of her kindness and too mad to grovel for forgiveness.

“How long have you been off your meds?” she asked me plain.

“Like that has anything to do with anything! You couldn't even tell the difference.”

She laughed, but it was a laughter full of mirth and malice. “Right. I can't tell the difference. I wasn't there when you blew up about fucking hot wings? You hate yourself for being a doormat, I get that, but being mad at all women won't change anything. It won't help you to be mad at all men either. You are what you are and you don't have to be this ball of rage who refuses to break out of the gender roles while complaining about it every fucking chance you get!”

She let out a hiss like she was seething or sighing through her teeth. “You're not alone in hating yourself. We all hate who we are, but some of us don't take it out on the world. I really hope you find what you're looking for by turning into this fake asshole playing macho man on tinder.”

That was the last thing she ever said to me. When I tried to call her back I didn't get an answer. I must've called her seven times until I finally left a message. With no one to yell at I paced the room and screamed at nothing. I punched my head until my fists went numb. I seethed until drool caught on the carpet. By the time she texted me back, I was relieved to have someone to share my anger, but it just said: “Leave me alone.”

Jack was there when I woke up. He laughed at me for trying to vomit. Tossing him in the trash didn't help nothing neither. I was sick with regret but too fucked up to do anything about it. I looked at my bedroom clock from the tiles of the bathroom, it read 9:27. I couldn't escape the irony in it. My answer of twenty-seven was just as terrible as nine, because it honored the spirit of the question. It didn't matter that I multiplied instead of added, what mattered was that I played my stupid step-dad's game at all.

Time and time again I accepted the narrative I was given. Something fucked up, so someone had to be at fault. Abortion was wrong, so I was to blame. I didn't react the way my ex wanted, so my mind was broken. I needed to be the man they dreamt of, or something was wrong with me. I didn't believe in God, but swore His name when I was upset. I didn't have a story of my own to tell, I was just trying to land a role in their play.

I got off the floor and drank water until I puked.

Two months back, I lost my friend of seven years over a conversation that lasted twenty-seven minutes. She had the courage to do something harmful because she believed it was right. Losing her friendship changed me in ways that I couldn't even put to words. That pain helped me play guitar for myself again, to buy clothes for the weekend, and listen to my therapist. I dreamed again and envisioned a me that I didn't hate.

Two pills turned me into a muddled zombie that could barely eat -- I thought that was as good as life got. Now seven pills sit on my counter. It's my first step towards transitioning away from a man and into myself. I wish I could call my best friend and thank her, but I have to live with the consequences of my mistakes. Sometimes we have to swallow seven bitter pills.