“I didn’t believe it myself. It arrived shortly after I moved here, to New York. No return address. I almost thought…” He trails off and I wait in silence, letting the seconds stretch out until he shakes his head and forces himself to finish. “I could tell it was sent from North Carolina, though. I’ve talked about liking Wilke in interviews…. But there’s no way the book came from her.”
“From…?”
He swallows visibly. “My mother.”
He talks like he hasn’t spoken to his mom in years. Or like she’s dead. I don’t know how to respond. I don’t know what would be right here.
“Why not?” I say eventually. “Did you ever ask?”
I do in fact regret the question as soon as it’s out of my mouth because it’s clear from the way Wyatt’s lips twist that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Too late now, though. My mouth is faster than my brain.
“Sorry,” I say. “You don’t have to answer that. I—”
“It’s okay. I just don’t talk to my mom much. Or…at all.” He rubs both palms against his thighs, then grips his knees, fingertips digging into the denim of his jeans. At last, he manages a grim smile. “My family didn’t want much to do with me after I came out.”
The admission hits me like a bullet to the chest. Wyatt isn’t meeting my gaze, and I know why. I know that feeling too well—the sickly blend of shame and anger, even after all these years still not being sure who to blame more: them or yourself. The deadly undercurrent of hope that one day, just maybe, they might change their minds and come back for you.
“Shit,” I whisper. “Wyatt, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”
But he shakes his head, and I swear I can see the exact moment he pulls bravado over himself like a coat—slim protection against the cold. He looks at me again, at least. “No. I’m not the one who ought to be embarrassed. Honestly, even now I’m not sure if it was being trans that did it, or the fact I got kicked out of the military when my commanding officer found out. My dad was a marine too. I think that was the only reason he was ever proud of me. I might have been a good-for-nothing girl, in his mind, but Semper fi or what the fuck ever.”
I sit there on that sofa, trying my best to process what Wyatt just said. It’s similar to how I used to feel in shul when we talked about G-d, like I was trying to comprehend something that defied comprehension.
“I didn’t know you were in the Marines” is what I end up saying.
Wyatt shrugs. “It was kind of the only option in my town. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college—hell, some of us never graduated high school. Where I grew up, there weren’t that many options for kids like me. And since my granddad served, and my dad, my aunt, all my cousins…Even my brother was planning to enlist. It just seemed like the best choice. Besides, at least if you joined the military, you could see the world, make something of yourself. I thought maybe I could be happy—like maybe if I was a girl in the Marines, I wouldn’t mind the whole girl part. Idiotic, I know.”
“That’s not idiotic. You made the best decision you could with the options you had.”
He arches a brow. “Is joining the US military ever a good decision?”
“I don’t know. You would know that better than me.”
He gives me one of those looks that say, You aren’t gonna trick me into talking about politics. I’m only too familiar with it; it’s the same look my sister used to give me across the dinner table every time I tried to rile my parents up. A feat that was usually disappointingly easy to accomplish.
“Well, I guess that’s another thing we have in common,” I mutter. “Both our families fucking hate us.”
That earns me a laugh, which feels like a step up from bitter smiles, even if Wyatt quickly hides it behind a sip of his coffee.
“How did you get into photography anyway?” I ask after a beat. I don’t want to let this conversation shrivel up and die, not after I just got Wyatt to talk to me properly. To talk to me like a friend, not like a student.
He makes an ambivalent gesture. “It was kind of a slow evolution, I guess. I was having issues with drinking already, and that turned into…well, you know. I don’t have to tell you the kinds of shitty things you’ll do to get a fix. A buddy and I held up a tourist one night who’d stayed out on the boardwalk a little too late. I’d like to say it wasn’t my idea, but I’d be lying. We just wanted the cash. Took it straight to my guy and spent the rest of the night nodding off on my friend’s ratty old couch.”
He keeps searching my face, no doubt looking for the reaction we always expect: disgust, revulsion, disappointment. The same emotions we usually see painted over everyone’s faces when we confess our darkest moments—the stolen credit cards, the used needles, the blow jobs in back alleys that you swore you’d never trade for dope until you did.
I hope he doesn’t find any of that there when he looks at me.
I hope he knows how deeply I understand.
“Anyway, one of the things we grabbed off him was a camera. Nothing super fancy, just your basic tourist Canon. We could have gotten decent cash for it at a pawnshop, but I started messing around with it. Taking pictures of my friends at first, but then it was more. Fishing boats heading out of the harbor at dawn, the cats roaming around the herb garden belonging to that crazy lady who took in fifty strays, the sun going down over the trash littering one of the beaches that isn’t all cleaned up for tourists. Nothing super artistic, but I liked it. It made my world feel just a little more permanent, you know? As if life wasn’t just crawling from one fix to the next. As if there were beautiful things, if you knew how to look.”
There’s a soft smile on his face, small enough that I’m not sure he even realizes it’s there. For a second he looks across the room, unfocused, like he’s gazing off into the past.
“Of course,” he adds a second later, “I ended up pawning that camera after all and spending the money on dope. But the seed was there. And after I got out of detox I got a cheap phone and started taking pictures again. Once I’d moved to New York and could afford it, I bought a camera of my own.” He clears his throat and shakes his head, like he’s trying to get fog to clear. “Anyway. I didn’t mean to get all…Sorry. We were talking about you.”
“I don’t mind,” I tell him honestly. “I like to hear about you.”
He avoids looking at me, staring at one of the pieces of student art hanging on the wall opposite instead.
I press stubbornly on. “Listen, I was thinking I might try again and go to that Shabbos dinner thing this Friday night, with Michal. I think if someone came with me, I might stick to the plan this time. So…maybe you want to come with me?”