Past Present Tense

A Story That Both Is And Is Not True

CW: References to a self harm attempt and emotional trauma.

The teal walls of his bedroom seemed a dark, forest green in the half-lit evening. They were only lit by a soft light on the nightstand, next to the bed. Made in a halfway-acceptable knockoff of proper, traditional Japanese styling, the four tall rectangles of its sides diffused the incandescent light of its bulb into a level perfect for reading late at night. The bed, next to it, was large and secondhand, like the old, oak dresser across from it. “Gifts” from parents who had replaced them with better the year before. A little water feature burbled on the dresser, its pump a bit too loud because it hadn’t been cleaned in months. 

It was the only sound in the room except for the soft sniffles of the young teen huddled on the queen-sized bed.

I eased the wood-tone bedroom door shut behind me, hinges silent, and made sure to twist the doorknob when I did, so that it wouldn’t click. He didn’t look up at me, and I stepped softly over to the computer chair at the little built-in desk his father had installed a bit ago, part of the endless improvements he’d made to the enormous five-bedroom house.

He didn’t look over at me when I sat, and I let him have his quiet for now, just looking at him.

He was younger than he seemed. Thirteen this very day, and yet he was almost as tall as I was–and I’m near six feet. He wore a rumpled T-shirt and jeans, the same as he always wore, I knew, and his brown hair was cut into the impossibly-unflattering bowl-cut style that had somehow become popular among boys in the late ‘90’s. He’d pulled his knees halfway to his chest, and was reading a battered paperback Dragonlance novel. The Dargonesti. A very pretty blue woman with a seashell bikini looked at me from the cover. I smiled nostalgically and waited.

We had time. Strange, but… we had time. As much as we needed.

I knew that he knew I was there. I knew he didn’t want to see me. That he didn’t want to see anything right now. That he didn’t want to be right now.

I couldn’t blame him.

Even in the half-light, I could see the puffiness of his eyes, the redness of his cheeks, swollen from hours of tears now spent. I could hear his throat rasp, sore from howls and screaming and fighting.

The faint bruising on his right wrist, where his father had seized him. The torn fingernail from where that same father had wrenched the knife away, desperate to protect a little boy that suddenly wasn’t little anymore, that wasn’t facing little problems anymore, whose anger and rage and grief had overwhelmed a whole family–a family that hadn’t yet realized that his pain was building to more than childish temper tantrums and whining. That the boy didn’t understand either, and just wanted to escape.

He deserved so much better. I knew he wouldn’t get it. But tonight, I could give him a little time, time he wouldn’t have had otherwise. All the time in the world, if he wanted it.

He took a lot of it, in sniffling silence.

“Did my parents send you?” he asked eventually, turning a page of his book. He didn’t look over. I’d sat myself well out of his line of sight, so he’d have to really turn around to see me.

“No,” I said gently. More silence.

“How’d you get here, then?” he asked after a while.

“That’s a really long story,” I said. “Your parents don’t know I’m here, though. They’ll never know I was here.”

“Who are you, then?” he asked. I hesitated, then smiled a little to myself.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.

“I’m reading a book about elves who swim underwater with dolphins,” he said flatly. I laughed a little; I couldn’t help it. He was so young, but he was so sharp. It was easy to forget that about him. No filter, and too smart.

“I’m a time traveler,” I said. “I’m from the future.” That got his attention. He craned around to look at me, and then blinked in astonishment in a visible double-take. This, I had been expecting. Here was a woman with enormous breasts, full lips, and fire truck red hair, wearing a glittering, low-cut red dress that caught the little light there was and refracted it back into the room. I looked like a short-haired, plus-sized version of Jessica Rabbit. Not the waist, of course. That was too creepy, even for me. But also, that was the point. He'd remember all this, and the similarities would probably make him wonder if this hadn't just been a dream about a cartoon woman that he'd been fixated on for half a decade. 

“Whoa,” he said, staring gape-mouthed at me. 

“I get that a lot. It’s okay. Just don’t stare,” I said. I’d gotten used to the looks after my second breast augmentation. Didn’t really even mind them, but this was more about reminding him that manners were important. He struggled with that sometimes.

The boy gulped, blinked, and dog-eared his book as he set it aside.

“Holy cow,” he said. “Mom would go nuts if she knew someone like you was here.” I could see skepticism on his face. 

“I can prove it, if you want,” I said mildly. He hesitated.

“Okay.”

“There’s a copy of Chicks in Chainmail in the rightmost drawer of your dresser, second from the top,” I said. He’d joined a book of the month club the year before specifically to get it, and had never told anyone about it. He gaped at me. I continued, “Your favorite story in it is Were-Wench. You’re embarrassed about it, and you haven’t ever told anyone you have it except for your friend, the student studying abroad from Guatemala.”

“Holy crap!” he said, and sat up properly, facing me, eyes wide, fear penetrating the sadness and pain that had dulled him. “How do you know that?” I smiled gently.

“Someday, you won’t be as embarrassed about these things. You’ll talk about them. They won’t bother you anymore,” I said. “It’s only a secret right now.” He looked doubtful, and glanced over at the dresser, then back to me.

“Did… I send you? To visit?” He asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” I said. “Time travel stuff. We can only change things that don’t change how things turn out. It’s like Star Trek.” He nodded sagely at the blatant lie, his youthful naïveté making him think he understood. I was changing things here, now, by being here at all.

“Okay,” he said. “But if you can’t change anything, why are you here?” he asked.

“I can change things. Just not how things turn out,” I lied again. “When I came into your room, I started a time loop here. As long as I’m here, the same second outside gets recycled over and over and over.”

“So… I could stay here forever? And nobody'd bother me again?” he asked. I was pretty sure that ‘bother’ wasn’t the word he wanted to use there, but instead I just shook my head.

“Not unless you have a bathroom and a kitchen in here,” I said.

“Oh,”

“Yeah.”

“Well… why are you here, then?” he asked after a while. His eyes had drifted down to my cleavage. Hard to blame him, but…

“Eyes up, hun,” I said gently, and his hazel gray eyes snapped up to mine. I couldn’t see their real color in the light, and he couldn’t see mine, of course, but that was part of the point of coming now. I was clear enough to make an impression, and faint enough that he wouldn’t remember details.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Time travelers can’t change the outcome of things, but we can give people who need it a little bit of comfort that they wouldn’t have had otherwise,” I said, and it wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either. His eyes got a faraway look, then dropped to the floor.

“Oh,” he said. “I guess you know then.”

“Yeah,” I said sadly. God, did I ever know. The silence stretched again.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said. “With the knife. I wanted to, but my hand wouldn’t move, and then Dad came over and took it.” I nodded and waited. This was more than I’d hoped for. He let the silence go for a while again. “This is the worst birthday ever.”

“Yeah,” I said gently. “It really is.” The silence, again.

“Dad was really mad,” he said. I nodded.

“He still is,” I said. “It’s only been about a minute and a half for him since he sent you up here.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Time travel.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” he asked after a while. “I make it then? Since you said I stop being so embarrassed about the book, that must mean I told someone, right? That means that…” he searched for words through the so-recent, so-sharp pain, and I let him take his time. “That I don’t try again. Or that I don’t succeed, anyway.”

“You make it,” I said, and he looked back up at me, the faintest glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Tonight is the worst night. It won’t get good for a long time, but it’ll never be this bad again.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Tonight isn’t over,” I reminded him. His face fell.

“Oh,” he said. “There’s more?”

“You know there has to be more,” I said. More shouting. More arguing. More fear–everyone’s fear. Police, even. Tonight would be a night he’d never, ever forget, down to the smallest detail. The design on the pizza-boxes. The smell of the officers’ leather equipment belts. The sound his book would make when his father tore it in half wrenching it out of the boy’s grip, desperate and afraid and frustrated. Wanting his happy little boy back. Not knowing that he’d never get him back.

Not knowing that he’d never had a happy little boy.

Not knowing how good the happy little boy was at keeping sad little secrets and telling clever little lies. 

“I guess,” said the little boy who wasn’t. His eyes dropped again. “It’ll be okay, then?” he asked after a while. I hesitated.

“No,” I said honestly. “It won’t be okay for a long time.” He sniffled, fighting tears.

“Why can’t it be? Why can’t it get better?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” I said softly, my heart breaking. Oh, how I wanted to tell him. How I wanted to give him the tiny, secret key to everything. I knew that, if I did, if I told him to never, ever tell anyone, he wouldn’t. That he’d take the secret to his grave.

That knowing would kill him. 

“Why can you tell me that I’ll make it but not why it can’t get better?” he asked. Pleaded. So, so smart–too smart. My heart broke, and I wanted to sweep him up in my arms, to take him away from here, to take him somewhere, somewhen where he’d be safe.

Not knowing would be the only thing that let him find a way out of this place of shattered hopes and a self-hatred deeper than oceans stacked on oceans. Not knowing would let him find other answers, plausible answers, answers that’d let him survive, escape.

Above all other things, with all the pain in the world that he was weeping and screaming his way through, he must not learn that he was trans under any circumstances.

That the sad little boy was really a sad little girl.

That he was me.

It was 1998. They killed trans kids in 1998. They killed them dead with hatred and neglect and conversion camps.

Other little girls made it, holding their secret selves close, like a candle-flame, until they could let that self roar aflame. But not her. Not me. She was holding on with her teeth right now, and one tiny extra bit of weight, one more burden to bear–I closed my eyes, remembering the pain she was drowning in.

It would be too much for her. This one tiny, enormous thing.

“Because if I tell you why, it won’t,” I told her. Her mouth dropped open again.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s that bad?”

“No. It’s not bad at all,” I told her. It’s wonderful, I wanted to tell her. It’s the best thing you’ll ever learn about yourself. “But…” I trailed off, finding myself searching for words now. “Time’s funny. It’s the weird stuff that changes everything. Sometimes something wonderful can make everything fall apart.” It was too close to the truth, the words out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

She looked confused.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

“Star Trek, remember? The time travel episodes never make sense until the end,” I lied. She thought about that for a while.

“I guess,” she said, agreeing but not really agreeing. She let the silence go for a while. “You’re going to have to leave soon, aren’t you?” I nodded. I didn’t really–I could stay here as long as I wanted but now that I was here, now that I was seeing her pain, my pain, all over again… I had done the small kindness I had come here to do.

“Is there anything you can tell me before you go?” she asked, and the question pulled me back out of myself. I thought for a moment, then stood, walked over to her, and brushed her hair to the side so I could kiss her gently on her forehead.

“It’s worth it,” I said softly. “You shouldn’t have to live through this. Nobody should. But I promise, it’s worth it.” A moment, then she wrapped me up in her gangly arms, too thin from too much growth in too short a time, pulling me close. I held her as she started crying again, clinging to me desperately.

“Can you take me away from here?” she asked.

“I wish I could. I really, really do.” She sniffled and wormed her head deeper into my chest. I let her have the moment, squeezing my eyes shut to hold in my own tears.

“Now you’re just trying to feel up my boobs,” I said teasing her with a levity I didn’t feel, once I pulled myself back together. She let me go, shrinking away in fear, and I giggled, then kissed her forehead again. “It’s okay. They are pretty great, and you deserve something nice after all you’ve been through tonight.” Besides, it'd be kind of self-defeating to get mad at yourself for fondling your own boobs. 

“You’re not mad?” she asked. I shook my head.

“Promise,” I said to her look of suspicion. I stood and walked to the door, to the end of the time loop.

“Why didn’t I come back myself?” she asked. So, so smart. I hesitated, my hand on the doorknob, and searched for a lie, but couldn’t find one.

“Would you want to come back to tonight?” I asked, lying with the truth instead. She shook her head. I turned the knob.

“What’s your name?” she asked. I froze. In that moment, I needed to tell her, needed to, and damn the consequences.

“Zoe,” I said.

“Wow,” she said. “It’s pretty.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“My name is Zack, but you probably know that already,” she said.

“I do,” I said.

“I don’t like it very much,” she said. My heart broke again, and I looked back at her with a sad smile.

“Well, you can be whoever you want to be, you know,” I said. She blinked, as if the thought had never occurred to her before. I knew it hadn’t. I opened the door.

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked.

“Not for a long while,” I said, and stepped back into my own time.

Afterword

My family tried the best it could with me after this. They got me therapy right away, and after a few false starts even found a really good guy who stabilized things for me. It didn't get much better but... well, it was 1998. Heck, he even told my parents that my story was an almost archetypal match to the experiences of teenage LGBT+ people, and to support me if I turned out to be queer.

For two years, my family went out of it's way to make it clear that they would love me if I was gay.

We tried. We tried so hard. But even a therapist versed in LGBT+ therapy missed it, because I didn't know I wanted to be a girl, because I didn't play with dolls (that weren't available to me), because I didn’t crossdress (in my mother’s clothes, which never could’ve fit) because I didn't have girl friends (or any friends, for that matter), and when it became clear that I was attracted to women, not men, the question of whether I was queer was firmly closed, both with him and with my family.

Because trans women were attracted to men.

It was 1998. We didn’t know trans lesbians existed. We didn’t know nonbinary people existed, which at least might’ve kept that particular hat in the ring. But it was 1998.

We tried our best.