Tell Me I'm Worthless(52)

Alice


When I was about fifteen, I used the website Tumblr. It still exists, as far as I know. It was a strange place, and it’s hard to even describe how the culture of it felt when you were part of it: at times welcoming and at times unbearably tense. It was the first time I really read about what being trans was, and it was also where I was sent endless anonymous messages telling me to kill myself. People would often accuse others of things, baselessly, and those accusations would stick to them however much they tried to shake them away. One of my Tumblr mutuals was accused of being a paedophile and a Nazi. We hadn’t really talked much at all – she’d re-blogged my selfies a few times, and I hadn’t thought much about that until people started to accuse her. I began to wonder what her intentions had been when she shared a fifteen-year-old’s selfies. She denied these accusations, of course. Anyone would. She claimed that the people accusing her of being a paedophile and a Nazi were TERFS – and the problem was that some of them were. Or had, at least, started to share TERF rhetoric onto their blogs. Which made sense… they had just been exploited by an older trans woman, and suddenly these other older women were telling them, oh, come join us. There’s a pattern to this, and we don’t have to accept it as normal. I didn’t understand it at the time, I was just angry, angry and confused, but I get it now, with Ila spooning me. I understand why she is the way she is. I hope she understands why I am like I am, too.

“Are you sure you want to come with me?” Ila asks, sleepily.

“Why not?”

“Because…” I can’t tell what is going on beneath her words. Is she having second thoughts? “…it could be dangerous.”

“I thought you said it was just a building.”

“It is.”

“So…” I sit up and gaze down at her from above.

“Well, it could, I don’t know. Be dangerous. They tried to convert it into flats. You know that, right? Since we were there.”

I light another fag inside her room. It’s filled with smoke, even with one of the windows open, filled enough that the lamp is shrouded with it.

“Have you seen it?”

“Not up close. I’ve looked from far off, but I couldn’t see anything, not really. It was too dark.”

The cigarette is good. I needed it. The reality of what going back means has started to dawn, now we’ve fucked and sealed our bond. She might say that it’s ‘just a building’, but she knows she’s lying, and I know she’s lying, and we’re still going back anyway.

I stopped using Tumblr shortly after that whole affair, and after having other people creep on me too – most notably a nineteen-year-old fat rights activist who seemed obsessed with my hair. I turned to 4chan and other forums in that vein, where, even if there were Nazis and paedophiles, at least they were generally honest about being those things, even as they remained anonymous. It felt better to know that I was talking to someone who liked to masturbate over little boys than to talk to someone and find that out about them later.

After I agreed to come back to Ila’s flat, we got beer and got drunk and high and started to fuck. I never said, yes, I’ll go back to the House with you. But in our union it was decided.

The worst thing is that I want to. I want to see the House now. I want to see if what happened was real.

I miss it.

That’s the worst thing, actually. I miss it. I miss how it felt in that room. And you can’t know how it felt unless you were there, in that pulsing red soul. I don’t remember hurting Ila at all. But I remember feeling something, deep within, a power rising up my esophagus and crawling from my mouth. Did she feel like that when she shoved that torch inside of me? I thought I forgave you, Ila my love, but I’m not so sure. Now kiss me hard on the mouth.





“Didn’t this building used to suck?”

Ila is slowly getting dressed, in the same clothes she was wearing before. We both smell of sweat, but it doesn’t matter, really.

“Yeah.”

She pulls her shirt over her head.

“The landlord did it up, and put up the rent as well. The Sudanese family next door couldn’t afford it, and they spat on my door as they left. I was like, christ, why is this my fault? I mean, I didn’t say that, but that’s what I was thinking when I scrubbed the door clean.”

“Evil landlord shit, though.”

“Yeah.” She rubs her nose. “Evil landlord shit.”

That poor family, kicked out so that Ila could have a working lift. And then, at the same time, a horrible little voice asking what their immigration status was. Is that the House’s voice? Or mine?

We get the lift down, and out of her building. It’s freezing cold outside, and Ila, without thinking, takes my hand. I turn to her.

“Sorry,” she says, and lets go.

“No, it’s okay.” I take her hand again. She feels chilly already.

“I just wasn’t thinking, Alice.”

“We can hold hands. If you want. I don’t mind, I promise.”

But maybe she just doesn’t want to be seen hand-in-hand with a tranny. It’s ten o’clock now, the streetlights are on. We leap from pool of light to pool of light. We only feel safe beneath them, where we can see our feet and each other’s eyes clearly. So we keep going, ushering each other forwards. I wish I had coke with me. A homeless man asks me for money, but I shrug and say, well mate I’m sorry, I don’t have any change on me right now. He grimaces at me when he hears my voice and sees that I’m wearing a dress.