Will Robinson

♫ Paddling Out - Miike Snow ♫

I was getting a snack from my fridge when I heard a soft voice bubble out of my living space. God dammit. Eliza was playing something on her computer again. “We’re supposed to be studyi–” I said, cutting myself short when I saw what she was watching. Wait. What the hell was she watching?

It was a youtube video of a sixty-something man, sitting in front of a bland cinderblock wall. He spoke in a heavy, wet Slavic accent. “The T-girl is the perfect sexual being. A blend of male and female.” He sniffed. “A dick and… weighty breasts. A creature of natural and constructed beauty in equal parts.” He paused. “A man willingly debasing himself to become the weaker sex, it’s… it’s simply–” He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, I have a massive boner.” He paused for a few seconds to stare at his crotch, the silence becoming nearly as awkward as his whole general demeanor. “Anyway. Picking up the shemale–”

“What are you doing?” I asked loudly. Eliza jerked up in surprise when she saw me approach, then quickly scrambled to pause the video. ‘Why is she surprised?,’ I couldn’t help but think. ‘This is my apartment.’

She tried to think of an excuse for a few seconds, then muttered, “I’m trying to feel better about being trans”–she said trans like it was a slur, by the way–“so I’m watching videos of… ‘trans rights activists.’”

I almost laughed. “You’d call that guy a trans rights activist?”

“He’s active for something,” Eliza mumbled.

For whatever reason, she unpaused the video. I couldn’t really blame her. I was curious too. “Picking up the shemale is simple. The layers of mental anguish, easily exploitable, make their personalities moldable like the finest of Hungarian clay.” Okay, I’d had enough. The video was once again interrupted by me grabbing her computer off her lap.

“Hey!” she yelled.

“We’re supposed to be studying. Finals are literally next week.” I was used to studying–it used to be my favorite pastime–though I hadn’t done much of it since I started college. I guess I did well enough just coasting by. Eliza was the opposite. She really needed to study, and she had absolutely no clue how. If we wanted to get a good grade from Professor Casella, who was a far stricter schoolmarm than ratemyprofessors.com had implied, we’d need to work our butts off.

She was probably tempted to say something like ‘this is studying!’, but I could tell she knew I was right. Right and annoying: The Devil’s Combination™️. “Fine,” she complained. “But I’m stealing one of your beers.”

“You don’t need to,” I announced, waving a can in front of her face. “I brought this one for you.” She gave me a positively ravenous look and yanked the ‘Miller® High Life™: The Champagne of Beers’ right out of my hand. She cracked it open and gulped it down with fervor, fast enough for me to bewilderedly ask “You really like that shit?”

Eliza put her index finger up in a ‘one minute’ gesture and finished chugging it down. She coughed a little bit, then smiled up at me. “No, it’s absolutely terrible.” She made a cute little nauseous face. “But I need a little buzz if we’re gonna learn about the Meiji era all night. The Meiji era sucks.” She threw the empty can in the trash, hitting nothing but net like always. How the hell did she manage to do that?

A minute later, we cracked open our textbooks and got to work. Eliza had that undiagnosed kind of ADHD that kept her from being able to focus on something daunting like studying, though the alcohol definitely helped. It may seem counterintuitive, but with Eliza, she’d sometimes worry so much about what to do that she’d never sit down and actually do it. So the alcohol helped with that, in a weird, twisted way. I’d also promised her a movie if we got through the chapters by ten, which made her even more focused. Another thing you should know about Eliza is that she’s an absolute nerd, despite vehemently pretending not to be. A surprisingly large part of our middle school friendship consisted of a shared interest in Doctor Who (pre-Capaldi, because duh!). Now that we were in college, we’d shifted our focus to more mature sci-fi properties, like, uh… Star Trek? Nah, I can’t pretend we were into it for the erudite plot. I’d only picked Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan for tonight because Eliza thought Ricardo Montalbán was hot. Specifically, she thought he was a “fleeked out megazaddy,” whatever that meant. I hoped she meant it ironically.

Ashton was into science fiction too. Less pop sci-fi and more those cheap 70s books that they stuff lending libraries with. Still, it was one thing we had in common. It was probably the only thing that held our tenuous friendship together, aside from the depressing fact that we were coworkers. He’d somehow managed to up the dickishness over the last month or so. He went off on rants about how the left was trying to cancel Joe Rogen, and made sexist remarks about our coworker Natalie behind her back. I blamed it on No Nut November, which he apparently attempted until his… premature ejaculation two weeks in. Er, sorry. Premature ejection. Either way, he was pent up.

Anyway, Eliza and I were studying for our World War II class. We actually got into a groove, or flow, or whatever you want to call it, that took us late into the night. If you want to know what we studied, I’d advise checking Wikipedia. By nine, the vibes were off and we were both getting a little restless. “I hate this!” Eliza yelled, sliding her Japanese history textbook across the floor, ‘til it came to a stop next to Wilbur’s perch. “Japanese history is so bo-oo-oo-ring!”

I dunno, I kind of liked it. Plus… “Aren’t you supposed to be, like, a quarter Japanese?” I asked. Her paternal grandma was a nisei, the first generation of her family to be born outside of Japan. Not that anyone who saw Eliza would notice, though. She looked white as hell.

“Yeah, and I’m only a quarter interested in this bullshit. Hey-o!” She made a slam dunk motion with her hands.

I sighed. Based on how she was acting, we were probably through with studying for the night. I found myself surprisingly okay with that. I liked the topic enough, and I was never one of those guys who hated academic work, but I found myself wanting to do more when Eliza was around. Just sitting next to each other, heads silently in our books? It almost felt like a waste. “Do you want to take a walk? We can visit the bodega.”

Her eyes lit up. “That sounds great!” For someone who probably had severe depression, Eliza was surprisingly expressive. She hopped out of the bean bag, and we were on our way. Not immediately, of course. It was the start of December, which meant the temperature had really begun to drop. That night must have been in the lower 30s. It wasn’t quite cold enough for our breath to leave little clouds, but it was getting there. I decided to wear a patchwork jacket that had belonged to my grandfather (he wasn’t dead, he just liked giving me gifts). It was green with patches of blue and lime, and made of fleece, though worn down by time. I liked the roughness of it. Eliza, meanwhile, slipped on the thick heather grey hoodie she wore whenever it was cold out. This time, though, she added this red beanie that really brought out the scarlet tinge of her hair. So, at least there’d be that little splash of color in the dismal bleakness of winter. God, I hated winter. It was wet, and sad, and it got dark way too early.

Eliza shivered a little bit as we walked towards Neighborhood Supply. She kept her hands in her jean pockets and her face in the soft top of her hoodie, like a turtle hiding in its shell. Why the hell did she pick December, of all months, to switch from sweatpants to jeans? I went back and forth about offering her my jacket, but I didn’t want her to think I was trying to flirt. By the time I decided she probably wouldn’t even care, we’d already reached the store, and I was roused from my thoughts.

“Did you want to come here for anything in particular?” Eliza asked, looking around.

“Oh, not really. I guess I just thought you were getting bored.” I said sheepishly.

She nodded slightly. “Yeah, I was. Thanks.”

Our poignant moment of pleasantness was interrupted by a squeaky voice from the far corner. “Will! What’re you doing here? Trying to take over my shift?” I looked at the counter to see Ashton fiddling with the register. Fuck. I forgot he worked on Sundays.

“Hi, Ashton,” I grunted, silently willing him to not be a jerk. At the mention of his name, Eliza perked up and looked towards the register. I saw her face go pale.

“Uh–” she stammered.

“Are you…?” Ashton wondered aloud. “Wait! You’re Eliza, right?” They knew each other?

Eliza turned towards me and raised an anxious eyebrow. “You two know each other?” she asked.

Hey, wait. “I was going to ask you that!”

“Oh yeah, I know her,” Ashton said, answering our question. “And just so you know, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“Huh?”

Ashton gave me a condescending look. “She’s transgender, dumbass. I bet she didn’t tell you. Just wanted to make sure you knew before you tapped that.” Then he smirked.

Gah! He was totally pissing me off. I looked at Eliza. She stood frozen in place, obviously not knowing how to respond. I looked back at Ashton. His smarmy expression, his greasy, mussed up hair. Was this really the guy I wanted to ‘go with the flow’ for? The guy I let make my decisions for me? Fuck. Maybe it was time to retire that motto. “You’re such a fucking dickhead, Ashton. I know she’s trans, but I don’t fucking care.”

“Gay,” Ashton coughed into his hand. If he was trying to piss me off, he was doing a bang up job of it.

“I’m not even trying to fuck her, asshole! Not every woman needs to be a sexual conquest!” I moved closer to the register. I’d never been in a fight before, but fuck. College was the perfect time to try new things.

Eliza suddenly got her voice back. “You’re a chaser, Ashton,” she twined. “You wanted me because I was trans.”

“N-no I didn’t,” he stuttered. We had him on the back foot. Good. I unclenched my fist. When did I clench my fist? Deep breaths, Will. Deep breaths.

“Yeah you did,” Eliza volleyed back. “If I remember correctly, you even said trans women were better than cis women. Guess the ‘dick makes it better,’ right Ashton?”

I guess he wanted to protect his masculine pride, not that he had much to begin with, because he lashed out even more. “Like I’d want to experiment with you,” he patronized. “Like, look at you. I don’t know how you expected to trick Will here into sex, because we can all see who you really are under that padding.” He made a disgusted face. It wasn’t nearly as cute as Eliza’s.

Okay, I was back to being livid, and Eliza was back to looking like a ghost. “Jesus. I cannot believe we were ever friends. Was Eliza the trans girl you were talking about dating back in September? I’m glad she had enough pride to reject you. She’s kind, and funny, and way out of your league. Let’s go.” I grabbed Eliza’s hand and gently pulled her towards the door, careful not to take my anger out on the person I was trying to defend. On the way, I grabbed a two liter bottle of coke from one of the refrigerators. “I’m taking this, by the way. Fuck you.” I gave him the finger with my open hand, as I still held Eliza’s tightly with the other. She didn’t complain. It was like that the entire way home. She just stared off into space, tears brimming in her eyes but failing to spill, while I acted as protective and comforting as humanly possible.

But the moment I opened the door to my apartment, Eliza started to cry. Hard. It took a couple minutes of heaving sobs before she was calm enough to speak. “We only went on one date! One!” she bawled. “I don’t–” sob “–know–” sniffle “–why–” sob “–I’m crying.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I patted her on the back, then sat next to her until she stopped crying.

When her tears finally stopped, we both sat down on my bean bags in silence. A few minutes later, she spoke up, her voice scratchy and phlegmy all at once. “Were you really friends with him?” she asked, in a tone halfway between anger and amusement. “Because I never would have guessed that.”

“Um, yeah,” I answered, chastened by what I was saying. “Work friends,” I clarified. “I sort of went along with whatever he did because I wanted to try new things, but now I’m realizing that I didn't really like most of the shit he pushed on me anyway. I’m sorry.”

Eliza bit her lip for a moment, then nodded. “No, I understand. I want to be mad at you, but I get it.” I didn’t have much to say to that, so we sat in a mildly uncomfortable silence for a bit, before she came in with what felt like a total non-sequitur. “I had a fight with Zoe the other day,” she drawled.

“Okay…? What happened?”

She quickly started rambling. “Um, they were trying to make me look more feminine, but then I looked in the mirror and still saw an ugly guy, and I totally took it out on them, and I feel bad but I also wasn’t really wrong–”

“Whoa, slow down. Take it from the beginning?” And she did. Eliza told me her side of the story, from the moment she arrived at the Sepulveda house to the midnight train she took back to New York. As she finished, I couldn’t help but feel her pain. I knew Alicia and Zoe thought she paved over her issues–they had both told me as much–but I saw an Eliza who was trying desperately to accept herself, and floundering.

“So yeah, that’s what happened,” she concluded. “I want to feel confident in my body, and I desperately wished their dumb gambit had worked. I just… I don’t know where to start.”

A lot of things made sense now. “Is that why you were watching that guy earlier?”

“You mean BeautifulTGirls Bucharest? Yeah.” Wow, what an incredible name for a YouTube channel.

“And that’s why Ashton got under your skin?”

Eliza nodded sadly. “Thanks for standing up for me, by the way,” she nearly whispered.

“Of course. It wasn’t hard. I… really care about you.”

I saw a little disbelief flash behind her eyes. “Did you really mean all that stuff you said in the store?” she asked.

“About you being kind, funny, and beautiful? Yeah. Of course.” I said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, because it kind of was. She smiled a genuine smile. The disbelief was gone, replaced by… was that mirth?

“I don’t think you called me beautiful,” she chuckled slightly.

“O-oh. Nevermind, then.”

Eliza leaned towards me a little, and I leaned back in surprise. “Not ‘nevermind.’ You really think I’m beautiful?” She asked the question jokingly, but I could tell she really cared about my answer. Her eyebrows had more anxious creases than a poorly made paper plane.

I looked at her deeply, then confidently declared, “Yeah. I do.”

Eliza’s entire face lit up with a slight blush. She moved even closer to me and stared into my eyes, causing my brain to whirl with what I could only describe as an ecstatic anxiety. ‘Oh my god, is she about to–’ She frowned. “You’re stressed too. What’s going on?” she quietly queried.

I was briefly taken aback. “W-what?”

She smirked, then leaned back from her imposing position. I took a breath. “Dude, you totally have a tell.”

“A tell?” I asked, as I took off my glasses and began to clean them, despite the fact that they weren’t foggy in the slightest.

“That.” she asserted, pointing out my restless fidgeting. I immediately put my hands in my lap, realized I couldn’t see, then scrambled to put my glasses back on. She might have found it endearing if it wasn’t so awkward. “Speak to me, Will.” Eliza sat up straight in her bean bag, acting every bit the therapist she wasn’t.

‘Um. Okay, geez, I guess we’re doing this now,’ I thought. “Do you think I’m boring?”

She hesitated. “Um. Not really.”

“You hesitated,” I pointed out. I felt a quick yet deep pang of sadness. I wasn’t good enough for her.

But Eliza just looked me over and smiled to herself. “Fine. A little bit. Like, you totally look like a spokesman for Muji, but I think it suits you. The parts of yourself that you think are boring, I’ve always found really refreshing. You’re a good listener. You’re not overly focused on appearances. And you’re not afraid to speak your mind… much.”

I huffed a little bit and shook my head, then adjusted my glasses. “I don’t know. I’m glad that you like it, I guess, but I don’t. I’m only like that because I feel more like an empty shell than a real person, with real interests and real friends.” Hell, even my voice was a grinding monotone. The perfect timbre for a perfectly dismal person.

“Yeah, don’t we all,” she responded laconically.

God, she just wasn’t getting it! “Isn’t that a bad thing?! I don’t have anything I’m really passionate about. I just do what everyone tells me to do, in the hopes that eventually I’ll adopt some magical hobby that’ll turn me into less of a wet blanket.” I just wanted to be a dry blanket, dammit!

Her tone got a little more piteous. “I don’t think it’s bad to force yourself to try new things, if that’s what you’re asking. But you need to stop being so down on yourself, man.”

“How am I being down on myself? It’s the truth! Like, I spent ten years practicing classical piano every single day. But I didn’t even like piano! I just did it because I was supposed to! All that time, all that effort, and I still didn’t feel like it was something I did because I genuinely enjoyed it.”

“Let me turn the question back around on you: is that such a bad thing? Is it a bad thing that you spent so much time practicing classical piano?”

“Of course it is. I didn’t like doing it.”

“But that didn’t make the experiences less valuable,” she asserted. “You can still play piano, right?”

“Yeah, but–“

“So use that skill to play something you’re interested in. You’re so focused on resenting what people made you do, that you don’t put that energy into something you like.”

“That’s the problem, though. I don’t like anything!”

“Hmm. What music do you listen to on the subway? Like, when you’re riding to class in the mornings?” Eliza asked.

“I don’t know, jazz?” It was sort of a guilty pleasure, but I liked gentle classical voices like Nina Simone and Billie Holiday.

“So learn to play some fucking jazz! Even if you spent time doing things you didn’t enjoy doing, you can still use those skills as a jumping-off point. The fact that those years sucked doesn’t make them completely worthless. So don’t throw away your experiences with Ashton just because he was a dick. And yeah, I know you’re still feeling guilty about that.”

What she was saying actually made a lot of sense, and gave me a sense of freedom I’d never felt before. I could just… pursue the subjects I was interested in. I didn’t need to justify my decisions to people like Ashton, the douchebags who I would never really be like, who I never wanted to be like. One little thing was nagging me, though, and I quickly realized what it was. “Maybe you should take your own advice?”

Eliza looked a little taken aback, but she quickly readopted the thin veneer of confidence she’d held for the past few minutes. “Psh. I don’t even take other people’s advice, let alone my own.” She patted me on the shoulder in what was a decidedly awkward motion for all involved parties. “Seriously, though. You need to put more stock in yourself. You really are a great guy.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that. People had said faff like that to me in the past, but it sounded more meaningful coming out of her mouth. “Thanks,” I said, and I meant it.

---

I was back in The Crouching Tiger, with its bright lights and soggy floors. I looked around in confusion. How’d I get back here? And was that Eliza across the bar? I groaned. At least it wasn’t Ashton. Before I could get my bearings completely, Eliza approached me. She looked a little taller than I remembered her. Oh, she was wearing heels. She didn’t normally wear heels, right? “Thanks for taking me here,” she said, grabbing my hand.

“U-um, yeah. Totally.” What the hell was happening? All the nice places to take a date in New York City, and I chose The Crouching fucking Tiger? Wait. We weren’t even dating! I looked at the stage and saw one of my favorite bands, Canadian Joe and the Mounties, playing their hit song “Go To Tim Hortons (With You.)” Wow! I’d wanted to see them in concert for years!

“To be honest,” Eliza observed, “I didn’t really think this band would be good when you first invited me. But it’s… actually amazing!”

I beamed. “You really think so?” She liked my music taste! I tried not to put too much stock into her opinion, because we all know what happened when I did things like that. But still. She liked my music taste!!!

“Yeah, I do. The slow, sensual bass paired with the fast drums is just so cool.” She was rubbing my hand now, leaning against whatever you call the region in-between my shoulder and my sternum. “I used to think you were sort of dull, but it turns out you’re interesting, and kind, and so cultured.” With each word, she got closer to my face until we were nearly smushed together. “Thank you,” she whispered into my ear. Then she kissed me. It was like–well, I didn’t have any meaningful words to describe it. It was long, and hungry, and it was everything I’d hoped my first real kiss would be. It was like a really cute vacuum cleaner had gone to town on my face. She tasted like cucumbers.

“Um!” I must have been blushing. Surely my leg was shaking out of joy. “Are you sure about this?”

Her voice was husky, playful, and dominant. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. You’re the best boyfriend a girl could ask for. But as much as I like this band, I think I’d enjoy something else a lot more.”

“H-huh?” I might as well have premiered in theaters on September 24, 1993, because I was Dazed and Confused.

“Sex,” she asserted. “I’m talking about sex.” In retrospect, it’s kind of funny. Even in my dreams I was completely and utterly oblivious.

“Oh. Yes, please.” She pulled me up from my chair with the force of a really cute vacuum cleaner.

With the sudden skip in time only dreams can provide, we were back in my apartment, and I was desperately removing my clothes. I turned towards Eliza, who was still fully clothed. “Do you want to use my bathroom to… change?”

“Of course not, silly. I want you to see me. All of me.” As soon as she said that, she started taking off her blouse. It was more feminine than what she normally wore; she never wore blouses, and she certainly never wore a skirt. But the skirt dropped on the floor too, and she was left standing in her underwear. In my bedroom. With me.

“You’re so pretty,” I said. I wasn’t thinking, but it was true. Her body just looked so good. She had soft cream-colored skin, lightly smattered with freckles from her cheeks to her thighs. She’d always hid her figure under hoodies and sweatpants, but she actually had a figure! I wanted to rest my head on the crux of her hips and feel the smooth lines of her curves. Not as much as I wanted to absolutely rail her, of course. On reflection, that was probably the main desire I was feeling.

It seemed she was feeling the same way. “Thank you,” she said, bashfully. “You don’t look so bad yourself.” Her eyes trailed down my body. I never thought I looked handsome, per se, but I had also never obsessed over my desirability the same way a lot of other guys did. I could see her eyes moving between my chest and my dick. “God damn,” she whispered.

“Are you drooling?” I asked, lightening the mood.

She finally unclipped her bra and pulled down her underwear. “No. Fuck. Come over here.” She didn’t need to tell me twice. Within a moment, we were embracing each other, kissing even more intensely than we were in the club.

---

I woke up in my bed, gasping. It was dark and cold, and I was alone. And rock hard, my mind added blithely. I got up to pee and decided to wash my face with cold water while I was in the neighborhood. As I looked at my damp, tired face in the mirror, one all-pervasive thought flickered through my mind: Was I falling for Eliza?