Daily: I walk the city without direction, cross roads with intention, find solace in the setting smile in that strangers face. When we meet eye to eye at the CTA I panic. The last thing I want is to see you and know that you've seen me, I don't want to know that I've shown myself. I'm spoken for and it humbles me, the silence angers me, the answers - they punish me. But who am I to say "Excuse me./?/!" Definitively and definitely not trusting, "I'm not very trustworthy," I think and admit only once to myself I am living a lie and I am not combatting it, not ready, not strong enough, and not yet willing to sink into it - I am sitting quietly. It is the act of violence - PART 1, that disturbs me.

I send her a message from the 76 in response to my discomfort. I knew only the name of the street which prepared me - inside I prepared myself by getting to know myself as foreigner, acknowledging quietly how little I knew the direction in which I'd be traveling and quieting my eyes so as not to tell the stranger anything.

So, it's got to start somewhere. If not here then noway in my lifetime will I conquer this. My ability to kiss fear upon meeting for the first time is better. I was just introduced to this and...I had a thought. What if I told you. What if I welcomed you like I welcome fear - what if I am right deep down inside and I let myself actually act on the impulse my heart beats, forgetting this whole reality thing existed, never exists again. Suppose it's that easy. Really I think it is. I think we learn a lot of bullshit and I think time did a finite job, an abstraction perhaps of what I now sense as something else, other. The other person I am chatting with is sitting adjacent to me, his face looks at mine without falling out of place, maintaining the lines and shape as though perhaps this is not the first time. Maybe. Maybe is some version of our collective response to the person who is leaving and from my back I can sense their eyes on me, hear their words reflecting "I look like him and he looks like me," no that's not right. I swear they just asked if we were twins and I almost screamed. INstead I laughed insincerely at this question that was more of a statement since this person seemed to have no question in their mind about how this in so many way was wrong. Since we had nothing but the same hair to call short and sweaters that matched in darkness in color, similar in the neckline that was cut in a "V" and restricting, limiting, like nearly everything else. Our layers of chosen clothing are covers for the anatomy that presupposes us invisible but intimate. Our differences push beyond anything I own or wear like he does but then our insides didn't relieve us. The moment confronted us individually, attacked from the inside and a far stretch but we're reminded the premises of our first engagement - outlaws. Gender fucks, that reminded us. Reunited at the self that steps outside of the self to get back to that place where it's ok in light of the situation, in the company of other men challenging the civil right to live and breathe within the rights of humanity. And in my experience the humans existing within this society could use to lose a few fights and really can't stand the truth. When all alone I can't remember the strength of walking with members of this other body, the power in numbers when we get together to discuss the binaries and misses of living on the outskirts of the gender-non-conforming, tiptoeing and hushed whispers to subvert yourself and what's worse the body to conform and days like to I can't help but be angered at the plain injustice of groupings - we have our own story man (you might refer yourself as "woman" but it really doesn't matter for the sake of this I'm writing) get it right or leave it, let it go on or fight with us. Come take every other one's place, stand next in line to the boy I'm aligned to here in power and outlaws within the constraints of gender and recognize us - we look nothing alike. See us and move forward like you would with most anybody. See: we have our story. But we're tangled in two and- I can't find my own.