The Complications of T Read online

  The Complications

  of T

  by

  Bey Deckard

  Copyright © 2015

  Bey Deckard

  Published by Bey Deckard

  Edited by Starr Waddell – QuiethouseEditing.com

  Cover design by Bey Deckard

  Cover photo by Strangeland Photography

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ISBN: 978-0-9947900-2-6

  August 20, 2015

  (rev 15.8.18)

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Author’s Note

  This book is dedicated to those who are willing to take a chance and keep an open mind.

  There's not just one trans story. There's not just one trans experience.

  —Laverne Cox

  ∞

  Thank you to Varian Krylov and Joseph Lance Tonlet for beta reading for me. You guys are awesome.

  Thank you to Starr Waddell, my wonderful editor, for your constant enthusiasm and support of my work. You are my sunshine.

  And check out that gorgeous photograph by Varian Krylov on the cover!

  Oh to be a fly on the wall during those shoots. :)

  One

  BEFORE MY LIFE WENT SUDDENLY pear-shaped, and I slunk, tail tucked between my legs, into a shitty, crowded pub, I had been sober for three… almost four years. That’s a bloody long time to go without a drink, and it seemed I’d lost any tolerance I’d gained during those fucked-up, murky years of constant binge drinking; that night I think I was only on my fifth beer and was already getting tunnel vision.

  Thing is, I couldn’t have cared less.

  Standing at the bar, I had one hand outstretched over the girls in front of me to take the beer from the bartender when I realized I didn’t actually have any cash left to pay for it. After I yelled something about getting my credit card out, I tried to set the bottle on the bar so I could reach for my wallet, but I only managed to knock the beer sideways and sprayed the folks waiting for a drink. Amidst the cries of dismay, I was shoved back a step, and I flung an arm out so I wouldn’t fall. Thankfully, I managed to grab a post—not someone’s breast or hair—and steadied myself a touch.

  “Jesus! What the fuck is your problem?” yelled one of the girls in my ear.

  “Sorry… Sorry, love,” I mumbled, disoriented by all the bodies jostling around me. I blinked and tried to focus, but it was like I was having an out-of-body experience… like this wasn’t happening to me. Worse, I was getting flashbacks to the old days—only back then, the crowd had been top-notch and it was a tuxedo I’d been stumbling about in.

  I needed to get out of the bar. Now.

  Pushing through the crowd, I managed to step on only a few toes on my way to the exit. As I nearly fell through the door, I heard a woman’s voice rise above the throbbing beat: “Hey, isn’t that Stuart Leandro?”

  The door swung closed, cutting off the voices and loud music, and I was left in the relative peace of the street.

  The cool night air felt bloody great.

  I took in a few big lungfuls and tried to orient myself. It wasn’t going so well—I had downed that last beer rather fast, and it was just then starting to hit me. The cold air turned out to have the opposite effect I’d been hoping for; instead of waking up my senses, it sent my drunkenness into a tailspin. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the curb next to a puddle of vomit, trying to convince myself that lying down on the sidewalk was not in fact a great idea, despite how much it appealed to me. I stared blearily at my hands and wondered how in the hell another beer had gotten there.

  “Stuart.”

  At the sound of my name, I looked up. Standing over me was someone I didn’t recognize. He had complicated hair. He? I screwed up my eyes at the figure. No… It was a woman.

  Am I that drunk? I wondered, trying to blink away the encroaching darkness.

  She looked… worried? Confused, I only stared at her with the weirdest sense of déjà vu.

  “Stuart, get up,” she said and reached for my arm so she could help me.

  “M’okay,” I replied, waving her off. I needed to figure out what to do next. Like how I would get back to the hotel. The bottle of beer slipped from my fingers and landed on the street without breaking. Beer ran in a foamy river around my shoe.

  “Shit,” she swore, crouching down next to me. “Stuart! Stuart, pay attention and listen to me very carefully. You have to get on your feet now and come with me. Do you understand? There is a group of people right over there who have just figured out who you are. It’s only a matter of seconds before they come over here armed with their phones. Do you want to be on the cover of every shitty tabloid tomorrow? No? Then get up. Now.”

  She made sense. I understood the urgency in her voice. The people she was talking about were not far. A big group. One of them was pointing. Bloody hell. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and with the help of the woman, I managed to get to my feet.

  Minutes or maybe hours later, I found myself in the back of a taxi with the woman from the street. I could barely keep my eyes open as I stared around like a dim twat. Then I realized she was talking to me.

  “Where are you staying? Do you remember?”

  I frowned and shook my head, which didn’t help the nausea. It looked like it had started raining; the city lights were bright, blurry smears across the car’s windows.

  “What city?” I asked in a daze. Was I still in Toronto? Had we gotten to Montreal? It was all just a mess in my head since Claire had said… had said…

  I crushed my eyes closed and banished the thought of her and Joshua.

  “You’re in Montreal.”

  I glanced at her in confusion, and it took me a second before I remembered I’d asked the question. She frowned as she looked out at the passing buildings; her features were almost elfin in profile, and I thought she was pretty, in an unusual way. The cabbie said something over his shoulder in what had to be French. Or at least that’s what I think it was—I had some French, and this sounded like nothing I knew. The woman replied to the man and then turned back to me, her expression guarded.

  “All right. We’re going to my place. I can’t just let you wander around the city like this.”

  “Brilliant,” I said happily. Then I must have closed my eyes because the next thing I knew, I was being helped out of the car by both the cabbie and the woman. There were concrete stairs going up and metal stairs going down, and I had the impression we were going into a warehouse. I got nervous for half a tick before I saw the sitting room furniture. I heard the woman thank the cab driver, and then she steered me towards a back room where there was a big white bed. I dropped down on the soft mattress.

  “Stuart, are you still with me?”

  “Mm.”

  “I’m going to take your wallet out of your pocket, and I’m going to put it right here on the nightstand, okay?”

  It was doubtful I could accomplish anything that complicated on my own, so I nodded.

  She fished around in the front pocket of my jeans and pulled out my wallet and my mobile. After taking my shoes off, she tossed a blanket over me.
A big water bottle suddenly appeared on the pillow next to me.

  “Your phone is completely dead. I’m plugging it into the dock in the kitchen, if you’re looking for it. It’s right down the hall. And… if you need to puke”—she looked around and then sighed—“just… Try not to puke on the bed, okay? If you can make it, the bathroom is just next door.”

  “Mmmhm.” Sleep was claiming me. The bed was so comfortable… Then I thought of something and lifted my head. I grabbed her wrist before she turned away. “Thank you.”

  She frowned at me. I thought for a second she was mad, but she just shook her head, looking a bit exasperated. I pulled her down, and instead of giving her a quick peck on the cheek like I’d intended, I found myself kissing her full on the lips.

  Nice lips. When was the last time I’d kissed anyone but Claire? Some part of me was completely aghast at what I was doing, but the woman only reacted by pushing me gently back down on the bed. She patted my chest like the dumb, drunk sod that I was and walked towards the door. I realized that I didn’t even know her name. I must have said something out loud because she paused.

  “It’s Tim. Now go to sleep. You’re going to feel like hell in the morning.”

  “Mm.”

  Tim is a funny name for a girl, I thought. Then I surrendered and let sleep pull me down its dark well.

  Two

  GREY LIGHT FILTERED IN THROUGH the curtains, and I lay there confused for a moment as to why I could see the window. Was I in a hotel room?

  Completely disoriented, I sat up and the world did an odd flip. My mouth tasted sour and I felt muzzy and weird. Was I sick? I put my face into my hands, and as I rubbed away sleep, reality slowly dawned on me. There was no mistaking the gritty eyes, the heaviness in my skull, the pulse that skipped like mad… the tendrils of pain that whispered of a devilish headache in my near future. I licked my lips and swallowed back the salty spit that had pooled in my mouth. Nausea. The fucking nausea.

  I wondered whether my years of sobriety had paved the road for the misery I was in or if the hangovers had always been so bloody bad. Didn’t seem possible.

  The wind pushed at the curtains, making the room a little lighter for a moment, and I took in my surroundings: dark walls—purple or grey—enclosing a space just barely big enough to hold the huge white bed I was sitting on. Black and white abstract photos on the walls.

  Snippets from the previous night came back to me. The bar… the sidewalk… the taxi… the woman. I looked over and saw that my wallet was on the bedside table, right where she had said she was putting it. I reached for it and saw that my cards were all still there.

  Thank Christ.

  My bladder full to bursting, I crawled out of the big bed and stood shakily on the hardwood floor. Just past the bedroom door was the bathroom to the right. I watched my piss hit the water in a hard stream, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. Then I leaned heavily on the counter, not wanting to meet my own eyes in the mirror; I needed to address the fact that I had no fucking clue where I was.

  Stupid idiot. Fucking twat. You fucking stupid fucking cunt of an asshole. You weak, stupid… Christ, where is my mobile? I patted down my pockets, retraced my steps to the bedroom, and looked around in the bed. When I came up empty, I remembered what the woman had said about a dock in the kitchen. The woman whose name was… Tim?

  Don’t be daft, you must have misheard her. I crept down the dim hallway and stopped at the threshold of the sitting room. It made sense that I had thought we were in a warehouse. The place was huge. The far wall was made up entirely of windows—the short, wide kind you usually see in industrial buildings. The wall to my left was one giant bookcase, filled with books and DVDs and assorted knick-knacks. Hanging from the soaring ceiling by two heavy chains was a giant flat-screen TV. It looked as if it were floating above a squat unit, centred over a big Persian rug. I took another step into the room and saw the kitchen to my right. It was just a simple set-up, with the appliances, cupboards, and counterspace laid out in a line against the wall. In front of it, there was a freestanding counter with three padded barstools opposite. To the far right, past the kitchen, the wall was exposed brown brick with big, faded white lettering—though it was cut off by the kitchen, I could see that it read: Fine Fabrics, and below that, nearly illegible: McAvoy & Sons. From a hook set in the bricks hung a bright-red, old-fashioned bicycle, and next to it was a metal staircase leading up to a door set high in the wall. I vaguely remembered climbing down those steps.

  Quietly, I stepped into the kitchen nook. On the stained butcher-block counter, between the range and the big metal refrigerator, was my mobile charging in an iPhone dock. As I reached for it, I heard a soft rustling behind me and turned. Curled up on a small red sofa in front of the suspended TV was the woman from the night before. She blinked sleepily at me.

  I just stood staring at her, not sure what to say. The tendrils of headache were becoming claws, and I shivered as the moment stretched on.

  “I should go,” I finally said, crossing my arms awkwardly.

  The woman swiped a hand across her face and reached for the mobile that lay on the carpet in front of the sofa.

  “It’s only past six,” she said in a soft voice, squinting at her phone. “There’s no rush. Sleep it off some more. There’s some extra-strength Advil in the medicine cabinet, and if you finished the water I left you, take another bottle from the fridge.”

  I shifted on the balls of my feet, unsure. It was tempting… I could sleep for another few hours, then leave clear-headed. She didn’t seem crazy and hadn’t stolen anything, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she knew my name, I could have sworn that she didn’t even know who I was. I glanced down at the phone in my hand and saw that I had a whole slew of messages waiting for me. Most of them were from my agent, but I saw that a few were from Claire. I quickly unlocked my phone and thumbed them away. I typed up a brief reply to Greg:

  I’m fine. Met up with a friend. I’ll msg you later.

  Greg was probably tearing out what little hair he had left. I held the button down until I could swipe the power off on my mobile. I didn’t want to see his reply or anything else for that matter.

  Fuck ‘em.

  “You sure you don’t mind?” I asked the woman, my voice sounding hoarse and more full of gravel than usual.

  She smiled tiredly and shook her head.

  “Go to sleep.”

  I took her advice on the painkillers and gratefully padded back to the bedroom in my socks and lay down in the soft, cloud-like bed.

  WHEN I OPENED MY EYES next, I could hear rain spattering the big windows beyond the long white curtains. My head was throbbing, but the Advil I had washed down with a quart of water seemed to be shielding me from the worst of it. I turned over onto my back, and I noticed then that the walls of the bedroom only extended about nine or ten feet into the air. I could see boards, struts, and beams, as well as a dented, rusty ceiling fan high above me. It was definitely an interesting place to live.

  I glanced over at my mobile and decided to ignore it for just a little longer. Gingerly, I lifted my head, and when it didn’t protest too much, I pushed myself to my feet. Looking down, I realized that I must have spilled a beer on myself, judging from the size and colour of the stain on my shirt.

  Dismayed, I looked at the clean, crisp white sheets, hoping that I hadn’t left behind a mess. I would buy her, the woman whose name really couldn’t be Tim, a whole new set of sheets regardless. Without her help, my drunken arse would have been smeared in the papers, and good luck coming back from that; my career was already half down the bog as it was. I wiped a hand down my shirt, trying to smooth it out, and patted my hair down with the other. In doing so, I got a nose full of myself and grimaced.

  Yeah, two new sets of sheets… finest Egyptian cotton.

  After a quick trip to the bathroom, I made my way to the sitting room to the sound of someone typing frantically. My heart seized when I r
ealized what it could mean. The woman could have taken pictures of me passed out in her bed. What if she was sharing them over the Internet?

  Christ, how could I be so trusting?

  However, when the woman glanced up from her laptop with a friendly smile, I unclenched my fists and tried not to panic. My phone messages had been unread, my wallet intact… I was still wearing my clothes. Maybe it would be all right.

  “I should go,” I said. “Ah… for real this time.”

  She tilted her head slightly.

  “Okay,” she replied after a moment. “But… Trust me when I say you’re not intruding and that you’re welcome to stay for a while.” Her voice was lovely: melodic but low, and with a hint of an accent.

  I took a few steps into the room. Past the desk where she was seated, the wall of windows showed a grey sky, heavy with rain, and an uneven skyline of dark rooftops. I felt a ridiculous pang of homesickness for a moment but shook it out of my head before Claire or Joshua crept back into my thoughts.

  “Are you okay?” asked the woman. Her black hair was swept back from a high forehead, and the sides of it were shaved nearly to the skin. Like a mohawk but not quite, with a few little braids hanging down on one side. She had light brown eyes, and they were wide with concern.

  I chuckled and shoved my hands deeper into my pockets.

  “Yeah. I will be.”

  “I mean it. Stay as long as you want. I don’t mind.” Her smile returned. “Not that I’m trying to keep you here… You just seem a little lost.”

  I hesitated before I nodded. Time heals all wounds, doesn’t it? But I felt like I was imposing, no matter what she said.

  “I really should go.”

  “Do you want to take a shower before you leave? Clean up a bit?”

  I frowned at my soiled shirt and plucked at it. That did sound nice. She had one of those brilliant rain showers with multiple heads. However, I didn’t fancy getting back into my dirty jeans afterwards, so I shrugged.