trans.monster

Matthew in the Mirror

by Rowland Smith III (They/Them)

Maddison’s reflection was bloated. She was on the floor, sitting in front of a full-length mirror, a bong resting in her lap. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, so she pulled her cheeks until they hurt. In the purple haze of her smoke-filled bedroom, her reflection couldn’t sit still. If she stared into her eyes for too long, they’d expand then shrink then expand again, and it would make her head swim. Everything felt numb. She had to be careful; if she got too dizzy, she risked leaning too far forward and spilling dirty bong water all over the carpet. When her hands ran through her long bangs, she fell in love with the sensation, and soon, both of her hands rustled her hair into a huge, tangled mess. But even with her hair fluffed and ratty, she still thought her smile was cute. Her nose was cute too, even if it was crooked, and her freckles lit up like little stars in the purple light.

It was insane that Steven didn’t love her anymore, if he had ever loved her to begin with. She’d tell herself, “His loss,” but she knew saying it too many times would make her cut his face out of all her Polaroids or post all 56 screenshots of their breakup online. Her sorority would demand that she delete the thread, and that would be the final thing to make Maddison realize, you know what, fuck this, and fuck you guys—I’ve always hated our chants, how every sister is forced to bleach her hair Sophomore year, and those stupid bylaws that say no trans sisters allowed. She wondered, by what means did they judge that? Had they even considered the nuance between sisters who were born boys and sisters who were men but hadn’t realized it yet? Would there even be a difference, or were all queers barred from the sisterhood, regardless of if they were already initiated or not? She could bet that half of them had never even heard the word “nonbinary” before, too coddled by white, upper-class complacency. Either way, the sorority was suffocating. She wanted to move out as soon as possible.

Since Maddison had the room at the end of the hall, she could play music at night, so long as she stuffed towels under her door first. It was raining and that always reminded her of classic movies like Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The roads in such movies were always covered in rain, so the lighting looked better, and that always felt romantic somehow.

To capture this aesthetic and imagine she was her own Hollywood star, she put on a playlist of songs from the ’60s. The first song featured Skeeter Davis. While she sang, with a voice that seemed two rooms distant from the microphone, and thus, was angelic in a sort of way, Maddison fully embraced her fantasy with a costume. A tweed, speckled-gray suit from the thrift store found her, and she tied back her hair to make it seem slicked back. She wasn’t Holly Golightly, the aspiring socialite, no, she was Paul Varjak, the handsome but moody writer. Really, she looked like her uncle, David. She wondered if he ever thought of his childhood. It puzzled her to consider what it must be like to grow up in the ’60s. She couldn’t remember her own childhood in the ’90s, but she liked to imagine David as a kid filled with childlike joy and wished she could still ask him about it. She wondered just how blond his hair had been, and if he had always liked camping and watching creature features on Friday nights. She remembered his smile, his teeth always perfect. In middle age, his eyes had had a charming set of crow’s feet, which she thought always made the other kids at summer camp take him more seriously. He was the first role model that popped into her head when she considered the word “gentleman.”

Her heart started to hurt like it hurt every time she thought of David. Getting high was always a gamble. Would it let her find some beauty in the situation, or would it make her feel guilty for yelling at him? She wondered if he could hear her apologize while unconscious in his hospital bed and if she had actually slipped into his dream that one night. One moment she was nodding off in the chair by his bed, and the next, she was crawling through a cave. She could still feel the suffocating walls, how wet they felt, how they throbbed, like the inside of veins. She had a pageboy’s hat on and was terrified to turn around because if she did too early, Death would drag her invisible lover all the way back down to hell. So, she just kept a hand on the wall—David had told her to do that once, said that if she were ever lost in a maze, she could keep her right hand pressed flat against the wall, and eventually, she’d find her way out.

The cave was terribly hot. Maddison was sweating and longing for an exit, some form of reprieve. The squelch of some liquid sounded from just around the corner. Before she rounded it, she stopped and heard large splatters hit the floor. She gulped, turned the corner, and there was David, tall as the cavern, eyes bulging, his stretched lips wrapped around the head of a smaller, naked version of himself. He bit down, screaming. Blood splattered everywhere…

When Maddison helped David’s new wife Penelope clear out his studio the next week, she found a poster with the same image on it: “Saturn Devouring His Son,” by Francisco Goya. Once she had sat in on one of David’s lectures and remembered him explaining that there was evidence Goya had given the man, who was named Saturn by those who discovered it post-mortem, an erection. He had eventually hidden it behind strokes of black paint. Maddison thought the dream must have represented how David felt about his illness, how his body seemed to cannibalize itself, some inescapable self-inflicted horror. Beforehand, she never would’ve dreamt of something like that on her own. She must have invaded her uncle’s head that night. Maybe it was the last thing he wanted to show her for some reason.

Whenever she thought about his death, it made her tremble. She missed him, of course, although that was getting better with each passing day, but David’s death made her contemplate her own mortality. How fragile the body could be. She worried that the cancer was hereditary in a way that didn’t skip a generation—it didn’t matter that he was her uncle but maybe it mattered that he was her father’s brother, not her mother’s. Maybe it targeted the men in her family.

Maddison remembered the skateboarding incident she had had just a year prior, and the summer that insufferable twink Carson pushed her out of their canoe. Her lungs still recalled how tight they felt while drowning, how years and years of marijuana micro-burns had only made them feel tighter. She wondered what her last words may eventually be and who will be the one to hear them. David’s had been in French, a language she didn’t speak. When Penelope asked if she wanted to know, she declined. She wasn’t sure when, if ever, she’d finally change her mind. There was a sense of finality to knowing them, and until remembering him stopped hurting, she would rather remain ignorant. Their shared dream was the perfect send-off.

Maddison would occasionally have a similar dream, particularly on stressful days when her clothes wouldn’t fit right, or when the only thing she could manage to eat was instant noodles. It played out mostly the same: another cave, wet, suffocating. She’d round the corner and see a giant version of herself devouring her own smaller, naked body. After a while, it stopped being a nightmare, and Maddison started finding catharsis in the ingestion, as if the subtle feelings of self-hatred she felt whenever she looked in the mirror were finally given an outlet.

After another long bong rip, and a minute’s worth of coughing, Maddison thought about Steven, how hot he looked when he played the bass. Maddison had always loved watching his moppy hair hang loose from his bowed head. She loved his tight black shirts, his ripped jeans, his dirty Converse, and she sort of liked that he always smelled like cigarette smoke. He never hugged her as tightly as she would’ve preferred, but he was tall enough that her face would get smothered in his chest. She’d always lose a bit of air and that had just started to be enough.

She really wished she hadn’t caught him kissing his roommate in the bathroom at Tommy’s party. The two were so interwoven that in the brief moments before she slammed the door shut with an, “I’m sorry,” she could barely tell whose skin was whose. Maddison spent the next hour puking up beer while Tommy held her hair back. After, Maddison kept Steven in the corner of her eyes, and for the rest of the night, saw two little red horns had sprouted from his head.

When she asked herself what she even liked about Steven, besides him being a musician, and how pathetic he was with his little untrimmed mustache and tendency to sigh all day, she thought about his body. She liked how boxy he felt, how square his hips were, and how good of a pillow his chest was. Even if it was flat. Whenever he’d whimper, she could see his ribs, and it would always make her bite her lip a little too hard, but there was something sexy about the pain. She liked the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck, the stubble on his chin. Even as a bass player, he managed to keep his hands soft. Used a special cream, was the only guy she knew who got manicures. Maddison’s hands were calloused, haunted by ghosts of summer camps past, but she liked that. They were like badges of honor to her, proof she had learned the lay of the land, that she was one with the woods. Sometimes, she would stand in the mirror and trace her hands around her sides, pretending they were Steven’s. At times, it was disappointing when it was actually him touching her.

Maddison took another bubbling bong rip then blew it at the mirror. Her reflection started to change. Her hair shrunk and her face filled out. There was even some stubble on her chin. For a moment she looked like Steven, but that left a sour taste in her mouth. She closed her eyes hard and shook her head. She wouldn’t open them until she was ready to accept whoever looked back at her.

She took three deep breaths. The room smelled of cinnamon. A hum buzzed from the mirror. She felt something warm approach, like the sun itself was waiting in front of her. It was time.

When she opened her eyes, this scruffy-headed guy looked back at her. She couldn’t help but laugh. Her reflection laughed too and then put his hand up to the glass. Maddison placed her hand flat against his and the two interlocked fingers. His hands were rough too, but it was a soft touch, one that sent shivers up her arm. Looking at him, she already sensed his name: Matthew. He gave her a reassuring smile, and for a moment, Maddison worried she might cry.

“It’s okay. Really, it is,” said Matthew. He wasn’t like Steven at all. More like David. Maddison nodded her head in agreement and when Matthew offered her a cigarette, she gladly took it and pressed the tip against the glass so that her reflection could light it. He used matches and explained that it was all about the flavor, that wood tasted better than butane. It smelled better too; the sulfur reminded her of warm summer days. She thought about camp, and lighting the firepit’s tinder with matches, eating gooey s’mores under the stars with her uncle.

Maddison took a long drag from the cigarette, so long the ash fell to the floor in one large coil. When she finally exhaled, the smoke hit the mirror and briefly obscured it. She waved it away. The glass was gone. Instead, a dazzle of lights swirled in its place. Matthew was nowhere to be seen. Maddison could feel her heartbeat quicken and worried his absence may cause her to panic. After just a minute, however, his hand reached out from the swirling void. It beckoned for her. Maddison sighed in relief and took it.

Before leaving, she turned to look at her sorority’s anchor on the wall and knew that she wouldn’t really miss any of her sisters. She wondered if Matthew was in a fraternity and if he had his own version of David. She was eager to finally discuss his death with someone who would understand exactly how she felt.

Maddison snuffed her cigarette on the room’s scratchy pink carpet, and without another word, let Matthew lead her into the mirror.