That's Not How You Play [ Lily Thomson ]

The first time I saw you, it was starlight. Breaking out of the restless fields in the dead of a campfire night was this amphibian life form with your runny nose and crystal-like eyes. You were running from something, but I didn’t know what. I had come out simply to escape the boys in the dormitory and breathe. I shouted over, “Are you ok?” You jogged up to me; your pace was slowing, and your face was getting clearer and clearer. All you said was “I’m good, thanks. Who are you?” A most basic conversation, but to me it was a lullaby.

The next morning I was whispering unto a daisy in front of my little posse, “She loves me. She loves me not” and under my breath and in my head: he loves me, he loves me not. When I saw you on that Monday morning in work, standing by the water filter machine, I was transported back to that moment.  The world had changed and life had done its little dance on both of us, I could tell. That needlework. That stitching. The weaving little shoelace we call ‘fate’. I have pulled it through the hole. I am ready to face the world. Finally, darling. The question is, was I ready to face you as a colleague? This seemed much bigger than the world.

*

Oh, how awkward that encounter was, especially when you didn’t recognize me. It was cathartic in the sense that I had shed that past physical form, but also left me pretending I didn’t know who you were, and I had this terrible dread that it would all come spilling out one day with a look of recognition across the newsroom desk or at staff drinks on a Friday night. Then you would feel deceived. I also wanted you to see my personality the way you did all those years ago. We started sharing glances across the room, awkward and strange, just like we did in school after we returned from camp. This time though I started fluttering my eyelashes and playing with my hair.  I started wearing nicer tops to work. I started to embody the caricature of the office flirt, and frankly, it felt pathetic. I thought I was sure to win your attention with all my inside knowledge. It did occur to me though that was the you of 13 years ago, and I started to wonder as the days passed if you were the same person; I certainly wasn’t.

I needn’t have worried; after a few weeks of us sharing the office space, clinging to our desks and blowing the cobwebs away on the last strands of Edinburgh’s journalistic industry, I spoke my first words to you as Sophia, I said something like, “What are you working on?” You sighed, “Nothing exciting – an assault on Constitution Street, a Colinton Mains bin dispute and a fluff piece about a new restaurant in Stockbridge.” I laughed, “Ohh you really are getting the slops huh.” 

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the job description of a local paper, what exciting stories do you have in your inbox then?”

 “Ohh well, I do the arts.”

 “Ohh, so you go to the modern art gallery on Sundays and listen to half an album from an Edinburgh-adjacent musician, and then that’s it.” 

“Something like that.” 

“Hmm, interesting. So who is carrying the mantle of the Edinburgh music scene these days?” “Probably Young Fathers.”

 “Oh, I’ve heard of them.” 

“They are the best thing to come out of Edinburgh since the fire engines” 

“God, they really must be shit if they are not better than the fire engines.” 

“No, no, they are amazing.” 

“Okay, well, maybe I’ll check them out. What’s your name again?” “Sophia.”

 “Sophia? I’m James.” You went in for a handshake. When you touched my skin, I almost felt like you recognized the feel of it; I could see that curious boy jumping out of your eyes: but you said nothing, and neither did I. God, really nothing had changed.

Dear James, with your Hibs’ lunchbox, the one to which you were growing too old for, and the one in which the contents you always gave to me.  I was raised vegetarian but you gave me your little bits of luncheon meat, slivers of ham in sandwiches bulked out with mustard. You ate my cheese sandwiches instead. This seemed like a fair deal and indicative of our characters, substance for you and rebellion for me. I fully believe if it had been drilled into me at a young age to eat steak and destroy the planet, I would be vegan now and living in an ashram. I fully believe too that you would eat anything put in front of you, such was the extent of your hunger. I always wondered how you are such a beanpole when you eat so much; it wasn’t fair truly. I work for this body, I take what nature didn’t give me in little red pills, skin routines, daily exercises and a devotion to a Wilkinson Sword razor. Still, I knew I would never reach the top of the pile. I would never achieve “that perfect body”, and yet this wasn’t something you thought about. You were always so self-assured. Simply satisfied with the body you were given.

That day at camp was when I realized that bodies were more than just the device that carried us around, they were something that could be enchanting and alluring. I started imagining things I didn’t yet have the terminology for, and when some of the boys in the changing room started to discuss how they were starting to get boners and hairs, I was thinking about what your changing body might look like. I thought about the soapy bubbles forming on your body in some shower block in another building in the campsite. I thought about the water dripping off you, and I knew I had to see you again somehow. Somewhere. I thought mostly about your mouth and how it might taste and how I had kissed Rene at the primary school disco and how I didn’t know what I was doing and how I didn’t see the attraction, not  really. I was seeing it now. I thought of how her lips tasted of cherry lip gloss and blackcurrant squash. I thought what  that fruity cocktail might taste like coming from you.

The next night I saw you running again, and you locked eyes with me. We became friends. We both loved nature, Imagine Dragons and the Hunger Games trilogy. When you are 12, this is enough reason to be friends.

It was a few days later when I would taste those lips: when we were out climbing in the woods in the dark. The branches held our weightless bodies, and we sat up in our little nest we made in the trees – you kissed me, and of course it had to be that way. You had observed me as I watched you changing tops with a knowing look on your face, and once you were changed, you gently brushed my hair back and did it. Your lips didn’t taste of fruit, but the earth. You told me you were bisexual and I said, “same” even though I had only heard that word before and didn't really understand what it meant.

The next morning camp was over and my mum picked me up. I didn’t see you for two weeks, I thought I would never see you again. When we started at high school, I saw you in registration. We were in the same friend group and would kiss in secret after school and at break in the bathroom cubicle. Sometimes we would touch each other, but that was as far as it ever went.

Now, we are two opposing genders staring at each other across the bar, waiting for the ice to crack: waiting for those looks doused in something more than friendliness to pour over. It happened, of course, after a night of heavy drinking because we are Scottish and this is the way these things are done. We were reeling through old men’s pubs at the speed of light, we had broken off  the four of us, you, me, Liz and Sebastian from a staff do. We were on our sixth pub, and they were all starting to look the same; Liz and Seb had gone out for a cigarette, and I was slowly touching your leg and then your hand more and more frequently,  begging for you to take my not-so-subtle hints. When the ice cracked and you kissed me  I felt the bristles that had just started appearing in our little nest that day now  fully formed on your chin brush against me.  I loved it. I knew in the morning though I would feel guilty. The problem is that was the morning, and this was the night, the here and now, and I just want what I want when I want. Danger, you see, I’m always courting it.

When you took me home that night and we went further than we ever had, when I smelt the smell of your sheets and saw the way you decorate your house with those burning Yankee candles and your New Yorker posters I was terrified. Of  the future, of the present, of the past. It all seemed some messy order of events with no chronology, just vignettes of bodies and director’s cuts too dull to include here. I was angry for a life I could have had. If your mum hadn’t taken you away to England to start her new job. If we had been brave enough to walk hand in hand in the corridors. Instead, I had watched you for a year with a girl you said you didn’t like. Deep down I knew you did, though. And when you left, she was sad, and she got all the sympathy. The heartbreaking story of  Two childhood sweethearts pulled apart. I had to sit in my silence and clench my teeth and carry on like nothing had happened. Is this what we would do now, at work? Would we continue the same patterns, our parallel lives? 

When you came through with breakfast in bed with your world’s best chef apron I thought we had both changed. You made me eggs and avocado on toast; we chatted about work and gossip and how you quote, “ had enjoyed last night very much” After breakfast you held me in your arms in bed. The sun slowly shining through a hole in your still-lowered blinds, “So, when did you transition then, Sophia?” 

“When I was 17,” which was a short concise answer to a complicated process which is ever-evolving. “So you kept pretending for another four years then after I left?” You brushed my hair away and kissed me. “You bastard.”A  shocked look formed on my face, and I slapped your hand teasingly. “You knew.” 

“Of course, I couldn’t forget you.” I could sense the grin on your face as you kissed my chest. “Ohh, shush, now you want to flatter me?” You moved down gently, your tongue brushing my nipples. “These are new.” I lay back and chuckled. “So, do you like them?” “Very much.”

We stayed in bed watching the morning turn to afternoon. We rose in the evening, and I showered. The scent of your body wash reminded  me of the taste of your earth meeting with Renes cherry lip gloss. Of those oh-so-complicated first times.

Lily Thomson  is a trans writer and poet who lives in Edinburgh. Her work explores themes of identity, alienation, travel and intimacy, and has been published in Queerlings, Novus literary, Five on the Fifth, The Honest Ulsterman and One Hand Clapping amongst others