They walked into the museum on a Saturday afternoon, the sky grey and doomy, like rain was going to fall at any moment. Tracy led her girlfriend Janice, arm in arm. She was hosting Janice in the big city and Tracy wanted to show her everything. Especially the pig statue, one which had gained new currency online in memes.

“You’ve got to see the pig,” said Tracy earlier that day, “you just gotta! We’ve just got to take selfies in front of it.”

Of course, Janice hadn’t seen the pig statue before. She lived most of her life in classrooms, teaching classes and auditing as a Teacher’s Assistant. It was year three of her four year plan to get a MFA and at times she felt hopelessly lost at sea, working days with students only there because their parents paid their way. And Janice’s manuscript, a novel about cults and pop stars, well, that was sitting untouched off on a corner of her laptop’s hard drive.

They walked into the museum, past the coat check and the lobby with its tall ceiling and pillars, past the little restaurant, and mounted the grand staircase up to the second floor. Tracy led the way, pointing at doors and passageways, naming all the delights within. “A Picasso's off that way, and over there’s the Warhol. We can keep going this way, and there’s a Van Gogh at the end of the hallway.” She paused, looking at Janice. “And the pig is over there, if that’s what you want to do!” Tracy laughed to fill the empty space. “I mean we’ve got all day!”

***

At breakfast that morning, as they sipped coffee and nibbled at vegan eggs, Tracy suggested the museum. It was cultured, and wasn’t culture what the big city was known for? And it was cheap, too, only $10 to get a day pass. You couldn’t even see a movie for that. She was eager to show off the big city to her girlfriend, and wanted Janice to see it the way she did. There was also a sense of approval: Janice was on her way to being a professor, and she’d be interested in high culture, too, right? Tracy wanted to meet her halfway. So, she finished her eggs, coffee and conversation, and was glad to show off the city.

***

As they walked past a series of portraits, Tracy thought back to how they met. Twitter, in a chat room set up by a mutual friend. It was partly a space for trans people to talk about their frustrations in a safe spot, but it alternately veered into talks on politics, art or television. The day they really started talking was when Janice spoke about her love for the Coen brothers; Tracy made a couple jokes from The Big Lebowski, Janice from Barton Fink, and before either of them knew it, they were exchanging numbers and talking on the phone every night. 

“I love the eyes on this one,” said Tracy, pointing to a picture of some ancient British diplomat. “They just penetrate right into you.” As she said this, she was looking at Janice, who was lost in thought, her eyes focused on a far-away spot, deep in concentration. She looked into Janice’s eyes, with their grey-green pupils, and the steely way they popped out of any selfie. What was she seeing in the portrait? She reached over to touch Janice’s hand, but Janice recoiled with a lizard’s instincts. She didn’t even break her gaze. 

***

They’d spoken on the phone every night for a month when Janice suggested a visit, for Tracy to come up north. Her apartment had plenty of space, and it would be a nice drive for Tracy. It was only a couple of hours. Tracy accepted, but they circled around each other trying to find a date, a moment to make it work, but something always seemed to get in the way. For Janice, it was the fear of making something that only existed online into something offline, into making it real. 

For Tracy, it was a deeper fear than that. She too came from a small town, but went to the city to come out. Her life with her parents was suffocating, and by the time she was 19, she was shoplifting tights and bras from the local stores, trying them on when everyone was asleep and throwing them in the trash the morning after. She lived with the fear everyone would reject her when she told them what she already knew as fact: she was a woman, full stop, and nobody would be able to change her mind on that. 

She changed her name the second week of school, changed majors to gender and philosophy after a month and hadn’t heard from her parents since she told them either she’d come home for Christmas as a woman, or wouldn’t come home at all. She couldn’t handle another rejection like that. 

Eventually, Tracy’s excuses grew weaker and weaker, and Janice stopped inviting her.

***

As Tracy and Janice walked towards the modern art exhibit, Janice’s exterior started to stir. With a blast of glee, she pointed at pictures and started naming names Tracy didn’t recognize. Riopelle, Rauchenberg, Rosenquist. She grabbed Tracy’s hand and pulled her towards a collage behind a velvet rope. “Look at the way he incorporated all these objects into a single piece. Look at the way the sense of motion flows!” Tracy could only agree. 

“Did you know he put this together as part of the artistic performance? He made it from pieces he found backstage while an audience watched.”

This all meant nothing to Tracy. To her, art was something you hung on the wall, or maybe talked about over a coffee with someone you wanted to impress. Still holding on to Janice’s arching body, she looked around the room, at the tourists with cameras, the old man sitting on a folding stool, the tour group going from picture to picture. She didn’t really understand what drew them here and wondered if they were getting the same thing out of the art she was. That Janice was.

Janice looked at her with a huge grin. “Just look at the colours on that Warhol! The way Mao’s eyes just pop off the canvas!” 

***

A few weeks after Janice’s final offer, Tracy made one of her own. Come to the city. Her apartment was small - cozy, as the ad put it - but it was big enough for two, and there were a lot of things to do. They could go to the big park and walk around, arm in arm. They could go to a concert - lots of bands passed through here. They could dine out, getting anything from cheap diner breakfasts to fancy steakhouse dinners. The city was an oyster, Tracy said, and it was theirs to pluck.

I’m not sure that’s how the metaphor goes, said Janice. She accepted anyway, eager but nervous about finally meeting her girlfriend in person.

***

As she looked around the modern art wing, Janice found the pictures all blurred into each other and she was unable to tell what exactly she was looking at. She reached back to her freshman art appreciation course to feign excitement for her girlfriend’s sake: she didn’t want to let down Tracy. But as the colours of a Riopelle swirled and sank into each other, moving in silence across the canvas, she felt an energy rising within her. She couldn’t ignore the rut she felt with her work and in her life.

True, she liked school. She’d come out as a freshman, started hormones as a sophomore and changed her name in time for graduation. She felt safe and accepted at school, a small little cluster of buildings in a small town in the countryside. The cashier at the local grocery store called her ma’am when she got her weekly order of beer and pretzels, and the diner on the main street knew her order of a cheese omelette and hash browns by heart. 

But something was missing, something she couldn’t identify. As school slowly went from a place where she learned to a place where she worked, she withdrew. She stopped dropping in on friends' classes, spent more time in the library. Her thesis project had wilted under the strain of teaching and grading. She only went out on weekends, and before long, not at all. Twitter was her only respite, where she cut loose and wasn’t afraid the wrong remark or friendship might cost her a job.

Tracy was the first new friend she’d made off-campus in years. She didn’t want to lose that, but she didn’t exactly feel like she knew Tracy, either.

***

Together, Tracy and Janet walked hand in hand through the modern art wing. They stopped briefly at a large sculpture of a hamburger, pausing to make jokes about its size: ‘That’s for when you’re really burgin’,” said Janice. 

‘When you really want it king sized,” replied Tracy. 

They exchanged weak grins as they continued past.

***

The night before, Janice had arrived after dinner. She was starving after being stuck in traffic for hours, in the long queues of cars on the freeway. She’d gotten lost, made a wrong turn or two, and then struggled to find parking. Eventually, after texting Tracy, she realized she could park in Tracy’s spot: Tracy didn’t drive and usually her reserved spot stood empty in a sea of hatchbacks and sedans. 

When she walked up to Tracy’s, she was frustrated and hungry, her temper primed to blow. She wanted to complain about all the traffic, the confusing layout of the city and about how nobody here knew how to drive. But when Tracy opened her door, saying “Well there she is” with a grin, Janice knew she’d have to swallow it all: this wasn’t the time or the place.

“I’m hungry,” she said, knuckles clenched white around the suitcase, slowly speaking each word. “Do you have anything to eat?” When Tracy turned around to look into the kitchen, Janice let out a large sigh and stooped over. She was glad her travels had ended.

They sat around Tracy’s small table, snacking on toasted bagels and cream cheese, and Janice recounted her drive: the guy who passed on the right and cut her off, the truck who tailgated and flashed its high beams because she wasn’t speeding enough. As she spilled it out, Janice felt silly: how petty she was to care about the drive. She should be happy now that she’s here. She felt like a drink, like a cigarette, like she needed something to do with her hands. 

“You okay, honey,” said Tracy. “You kinda just stopped your story in the middle there.”

***

As they walked out of the modern art wing, Janice’s unease kept growing and growing. She felt something growing in her until they stopped in front of a Rothko painting. Suddenly, she realized she couldn’t fake the enthusiasm, cover over the rut any longer. She needed to lash out.

 “He was funded by the CIA, you know,” she said, trying to provoke a response. “His whole thing was just a conspiracy against communism.”

“That doesn’t make it any less powerful,” said Tracy. She was looking deep into the painting, the way the pale colours melted into each other in a canvas so large it’s like she could just walk into it. It was like a sunset, like a landscape, like where the sun meets the water, with colours so intense it invited her to get lost in them. 

She couldn’t say any of this, though, not without worrying about sounding silly or pretentious to Janice, the smart one, the one on her way to being a professor. Instead she clutched Janice’s hand, pulled her close and leaned into her shoulder. 

“I love you,” she said.

Janice reached out and put her arm around Tracy, pulling her closer. She didn’t speak, just looked into the painting, at the piece of agitprop designed to counter socialist realism, the work of a colonial superpower, and at the painting that was just two colours. Who cared about a piece of propaganda anyway? She certainly didn’t. She didn’t belong here, she should be back home, working and being alone. She didn’t deserve this. 

“I love you too,” she said. 

***

After their dinner and talking, Janice brought her suitcase into Tracy’s room and began to unpack. The nice blouse and pencil skirt, the pajamas with cartoon animals on them. Underwear with dots and a little bow. She looked into the corner of her bag: condoms and lube. She paused for a moment over them and looked around the room. Tracy’s floor-length mirror, her discount mattress on an Ikea bed frame, the stuffed shark and pride flag rippling over the window. 

“You okay in there,” said Tracy from the other room. “I’ve got the movie all ready to go when you are! Popcorn’s ready, too!”

Janice looked back into her bag and zipped it up.

***

As they walked along the museum, they passed a floor-to-ceiling window looking out on the courtyard. The sky had darkened and Janice saw spots on the sidewalk below where it showed the spitting rain. 

“Looking gloomy out there, eh?” said Tracy.

Of course it is, Janice wanted to say. Of course it is, on the weekend I get to come down and visit my girlfriend, of course it’s raining, the traffic is bad, I wake up with a headache and spend all day walking around a museum, looking at pictures that weren’t even of anything in particular. She wanted to walk out, get a cab back to the apartment, jump in her car, drive until she was back home and work on her thesis. That’s what she deserved for putting work in front of her for so long. What was she even doing here?

“Yeah, pretty gloomy,” she said.

***

“Are you still awake,” said Tracy. She sat up in bed, and stretched out to pick up her phone. It read 3:40am. She could feel Janice tossing and turning, and in the twin-sized bed, every movement felt amplified. 

“I’m fine, I just can’t sleep,” said Janice. It was true: she’d been awake the whole night. After the movie ended, she and Tracy shared a kiss, and then moved to the bedroom, but that was as far as they’d gotten. Janice said she was tired after a long drive and wanted to call it a night. After another kiss, they’d gotten changed and went to bed. That was three hours ago, and Janice had spent the night laying there.

“What’s wrong, honey?” said Tracy, propping herself up on a pillow. She turned on a lamp, and turned to face Janice. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just can’t sleep.”

“But I thought you said you were tired?”

“I was, but this bed, it’s unfamiliar.” Janice paused and took a breath. “I’m used to sleeping on my own.”

“Used to sleeping alone, you mean,” said Tracy. 

Now Janice propped herself up and looked at Tracy. “That’s not what I said.”

“Look, if you want, I can get up and sleep on the couch. I mean you’re the guest and all.”

“No,” said Janice, “No, it’s fine. It’s fine.” She laid back down and put the pillow over her head. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind.”

“It’s. Fine.” said Janice, letting her words hang in the air. 

***

“Come on,” said Janice, taking Tracy by the arm. “Let’s go to what we came here for and get back before it really starts to pour.” She started going for the ancient history wing.

They’d gotten a few steps when Tracy pulled her arm free and stopped. “What do you mean, what I came here for? I came here to spend a nice afternoon with my girlfriend.”

“No, you came here to look at the pig statue. You wanted to take selfies with it. And it’s over there,” said Janice, pointing a finger down the hall.

“No,” said Tracy, brushing her hair back towards her ears. “That’s not why I came here. What’s gotten into you?”

Janice put her hands in front of her face and took a deep breath. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Okay? I just want to get this over with.” She started off again, this time by herself, remaining oblivious to the small group of onlookers watching the argument. 

“I just wanted to spend an afternoon with my girlfriend,”  said Tracy.

***

That morning, Janice sat facing Tracy in the too-small kitchen, each of them silent over coffees. She wasn’t sure, but it was so quiet she thought she could hear the steam coming off hers. She took a sip as Tracy spoke:

“So, I was thinking maybe today we could go out somewhere? I was thinking about the museum? It’s big, cheap and they have this pig statue, it’s pretty popular online. Have you seen those memes?” She opened one on her phone, showing the pig statue wearing pants and snickered. “Here, take a look!”

Janice didn’t get it, it was just a pig statue. Who cares? Why not do something fun, like a record store or go to the mall. Maybe, she reasoned, she was grumpy because she was tired and had a headache. Or maybe she just needed more coffee. Or maybe coming here was a mistake. But maybe it was too early to tell. 

‘Fine,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. “Museum.”

*** 

The Etruscan boar vessel waited inside its display case. It’d been around for some 3,000 years and it’d seen it all. A couple fighting was nothing new. It could tell from Janice’s body language, the way she stomped up and glared that she was angry. It could see Tracy come hurrying up after her, flustered and confused. And it watched as the two of them began arguing, fighting in a language it couldn’t understand, but from the tone and gestures, it could guess the meaning of. It watched the finger pointing and the way Tracy struggled to keep from crying. And it watched Janice take out her phone, point it at itself and take a picture, before walking away, leaving her girlfriend sitting and holding her head in her hands. 

It’d seen arguments like this before. It wanted to tell Tracy things would be okay, that there’s always someone else and to give her girlfriend space. It wanted to remind her it wasn’t her fault and to give her some comfort. It couldn’t do any of that though. It just sat there and watched as Tracy began to cry.