Evan saw Kay’s new body at the same time she did. It’s nice to have an audience.

Kay grew up in constant fear of her anatomy: yearly physicals made her squirm, she quit playing soccer because of the way the jersey fit her torso, and she was a virgin until a less-than-ideal sexual encounter happened at 19. She had dreams about her soul floating out of her body and occupying some other vessel, like a water bottle or a lava lamp. A deep envy of vapors and orbs and ghosts festered in her since her thoughts began to form. In second grade, she scared the shit out of a teacher who found her face-down on the playground mulch, claiming she was in the process of decomposing. But despite her distaste for her own body, Kay was obsessed with bodies that weren’t her own. 

If you zoomed in on any given point in Kay’s young life, you would most likely find her in front of the TV beside her mother. Every night before Kay settled into her slightly worn, butt-shaped territory on the couch and her mother lowered herself into her recliner, there was a quiet ballet: Kay fixing her mom a drink (usually vodka and Sprite), her mom fixing them each a frozen Lean Cuisine meal. Basking in the blue glow of early 2000s television programming, Kay received premature lessons in sex, womanhood, celebrity, money, how to get famous overnight, how to lose 100 pounds. She can still remember the first time she saw Pamela Anderson on one of those E! True Hollywood Story-type shows. She took note of how certain parts of Ms. Anderson’s body didn’t move while the right parts danced in slow motion. Admiring Ms. Anderson’s body became somewhat of an obsession for Kay. This would have been a healthy and normal fixation except for the fact that Kay didn’t yet know about the wonders of plastic surgery. And at age 12, she learned about the way that Ms. Anderson’s body was constructed by doctors and about how the moving and unmoving parts of her body were intentional. They were paid for. Not given at birth, but bestowed upon her after the fact, presumably for doing good deeds. 

If anyone was on Reddit between 2005 and 2007, they probably came across Kay’s work. She was the preeminent Reddit scholar in the field of celebrity body alterations and plastic surgery. This was an easy role for Kay to fill, aside from the added labor of deleting every picture of a starlet’s near-naked body off of her mother’s computer shortly after downloading. 

Psychologists and doctors alike would agree that Kay’s obsession was counterproductive to her developmental growth. As her own body changed and morphed through puberty, she was busy fixating on the ways that public figures willingly altered theirs. Her body became foreign to her, but she learned how to describe, with medical accuracy, every time Pamela Anderson went under the knife. In chronological order. 

In 10th grade English, Kay’s class read a dystopian short story about genetic mutation and plastic surgery. Women slowly evolving into plastic dolls and losing their individuality, DNA warping forever and the human race suffering for it. A class discussion ensued while Kay fidgeted quietly in her seat, the metal bits on her American Eagle jeans scraping slightly. In another world where Kay was allowed to be herself, she would have spoken up. She would lecture about the importance of body autonomy and the influence of the male gaze. She would pull up her Reddit portfolio. Everyone would combust under the weight of her intellect, their Ugg boots catching aflame. Unfortunately, everyone in 10th grade English saw the result of male puberty in Kay’s body, taking away any permission to speak on the physical alterations of the female form. Nobody could know about her Reddit scholarship, and nobody could know about the real Kay. 

Despite her tenure as a Reddit contributor, her skillset and expertise didn’t exactly align with higher education. Listening to professors is hard when you’re imagining what they’d look like with different facial reconstruction surgeries. It wasn’t that she wasn’t smart–– she just didn’t find college to be important. She had other plans. 

By age 20, Kay found herself in a rundown one-bedroom apartment in a town that didn’t matter to her. But, she was completely alone and that’s what she needed. By this point, she was out to the people that needed to know (her mailman, her weed dealer, her endocrinologist), and estrogen was slowly replacing the testosterone that coursed through her body. Most importantly, her consultation with Dr. Adams was booked. 

Because of her Reddit career, Kay knew every plastic surgeon in the greater LA area. And most of California. Against her better judgment, Kay settled for Dr. Adams, the best and only plastic surgeon in her area of Not California. So by the time that Evan saw Kay’s new body, she was also seeing herself for the very first time. 

This, of course, happened after a long recovery. Against her doctors’ best judgment, Kay opted to endure as many operations at the same time as possible without her flesh falling off. Kay sat for weeks and weeks in her dingy apartment waiting for the healing process to end. When the nurse had asked who was helping her recover, cook her meals, change her dressings, she lied and said that her boyfriend was. He was in medical school anyways, he would know what to do. The thought of a medical student caring for his young transsexual girlfriend was enough of a sweet idea for the nurse to stop her questioning. Kay was used to doing things on her own. Her favorite time of the week was bringing every plate, dish, and cup that had accumulated in her bedroom to the kitchen in one trip. She didn’t need help. Except from the Uber driver who shepherded her from the hospital and immediately asked her what happened. “Accident,” Kay mumbled. 

Kay learned a lot in her recovery. She learned that she could survive on only one meal per day, that she liked talking to herself out loud, that painkillers feel good. One morning, as she hobbled from the couch to the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. For a second, she thought she might cry, in the way that children cry when their mom gets a haircut or their dad shaves his goatee. But as Kay made eye contact with the mummy that stared back at her in the mirror, she thought of her 10th grade English class. The thought of a smile formed behind the gauze. 

Evan wasn’t a chaser. No part of his small-town upbringing led him to lust after trans girls, nor did it teach him what being trans meant. He stood at 5’10” and had the shoulders of someone who had just been yelled at. His brow seemed to be in a constant state of furrow, his cheeks ruddy regardless of temperature or anxiety level. He worked a normal job that Kay didn’t particularly care about, and his dating profile read, “Looking for someone to share moments with.” He was just mediocre enough to be safe, and he was just attractive enough to be worth her time. 

Kay wasn’t well-versed in dating, per say, as much as she was well-versed in dating apps. She studied the things that worked and the things that caused tumbleweeds to roll through her chat section. Kay was familiar with pretending to be someone else online, and her skills transferred. By the time Evan got to her dating profile, she had settled on the perfect tone of sexy-yet-kind. Evan liked her dark sense of humor and the way she used emojis ironically. When he showed up to the door with a bouquet of grocery store flowers just a month after she got out of the hospital, Kay still wasn’t totally sure that her body wouldn’t just evaporate. That the person she had created wouldn’t be swallowed and eclipsed by the one she was trying to leave behind. 

After a spaghetti dinner, it was time to sit on Kay’s bed. Which Kay knew, from her limited experience, was what happened before things turned to sex and bodies and touching and nakedness. They talked about shows they liked and music they listened to. She closely monitored her voice, every pitch reverberating in her head to make sure she didn’t give herself away. Everything must have worked because before she knew it, he was kissing her. Their kissing tempos clumsy and dissonant, it was clear to both of them that it had been a while. He began to impatiently fiddle with her belt loops, and then the buttons on her blouse, and then the hooks of her bra. 

At one moment, Evan decided to try biting at her neck, something he saw in porn once. As he fumbled around her neck and where her Adam’s apple used to reside, her eyes darted downward to her own body. Showering in the dark had saved her from looking at her naked body for years, and that wasn’t a habit she had broken by the time Evan came around. Sure, she had consumed her body in parts, catching glimpses of her thighs when she masturbated or of her feet when she got a pedicure that one time. But there, on a Tuesday night, in her run-down apartment in her area of Not California, in the warm light of her bedside lamp and a Glade candle, Kay saw her new body for the first time. 

At first, she looked through unfocused eyes, the ones that saved her from seeing too much on too many occasions. She wanted to make sure that her body was still there, still experiencing what she thought it was. Then, she began to really look. Her eyes began to focus, gripping tightly around her body’s perimeter. The parts of her body that went from foreign to medical had now gone from medical to normal. The borders where her body ended and the bed began were clear to her. The mole on her stomach was the only reminder that this body was in fact hers, the compass rose in the corner of the map. She always morbidly thought about the mole as a way her mother might identify her body to the police. She didn’t know she was crying until Evan made his way back up from his journey to her neck.

He knew enough to stop and ask what was wrong. With a wet face, she quietly asked him to leave, and he did. Wrapped in a blanket, she shut the door behind him and hurried to the bathroom. And with the scrutinous eye that only belongs to those with a doctorate in body modification from Reddit University, she dropped the blanket and eyed herself in the mirror. Her body looked good. It looked okay. It looked inhabitable.