“Pretty sure they’re not going to let me in there, Saoirse.”

           The Blow Hole was on a side street off of Soquel Avenue in Santa Cruz, not far from where I had last stayed with Bill when he used to pick me up for the weekend. I peered at the front door from Saoirse’s passenger seat. A group of men filed in. From the street, at least, the bar looked like any of the places Bill used to take me into when I was little. 

           From the looks of the guys who had just gone in, though, I knew Bill wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this.

           “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “This fine establishment is anything but discriminating. Plus, they know me, and I know you, so you’re good.” 

           “How do you know this place?”

           “Raúl first brought me here a couple of years ago.” Saoirse grabbed her purse and looked me up and down. “I’m not sure you’d even need me to get in there. You do not look sixteen, Dani.”

           Inside, the place was dark with red velvet wallpaper and low-hanging lights haloed in cigarette smoke. One of the men who had come in before us was leaning against the jukebox, punching buttons. When the music started, he walked back to the table where the others sat watching me and Saoirse. 

           I had never been in a bar without Bill. Trailing behind him until he parked me under the pool table or next to the dart boards, I felt no pressure to be cool or act like I belonged. The men ignored me and the barflies fawned over the little curly-haired boy who quietly sipped on his fountain Coke with the maraschino cherry. But right then, walking in with knockout Saoirse, all eyes on us as her pumps clicked on the floor tiles, I felt every bit of sixteen. 

           One of the men at the table gave Saoirse a thumbs up. 

           “You come here often?” I said as we made our way past them.

           “Not anymore. Sometimes I come back when I want to drink without getting hit on.” Saoirse pursed her lips at the man. “You, though, watch out. The sharks are circling, Dani.”

           We took a seat at the bar just as Robert Smith’s plaintive voice drifted from the jukebox speakers. 

                      Whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am home again

                      Whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am whole again

            Saoirse closed her eyes. “God, I love that man’s voice.”

            “Me, too,” I said. “It’s like he’s right next to you, singing pure honesty into your ear.”

            She gave me a sad smile. “Oh, sweetie. You are not going to make this easy, are you?” she said.

           “Make what easy?”

           She motioned to the bartender. “Good evening, Nick. The regular for me and a draft for this one.”

            Nick raised an eyebrow at Saoirse.

            “Shut up,” Saoirse said. “It’s not what you think. And make sure he only has one—I have a feeling he’ll be driving me home before this is all over.”

            He nodded with approval. “Good move, babe. Nothing but our finest reserve for your designated driver.”

           Saoirse winked at him and swayed to the chorus.

                      Whatever words I say, I will always love you

            Nick poured Saoirse a shot and slapped a mug of sickly pale beer in front of me, next to a basket of crumbling pretzels. “Compliments of the Blow Hole,” he said, pointing at the beer. 

           Saoirse lifted the shot to eye level, winked at me, and tossed it back. “Okay, so,” she grunted. A curt nod and Nick poured her another. “You know when we first met, on the patio?”

           “C’mon, please don’t make fun of me again. I was nervous. It felt like I was so out of my league.”

           “Oh, you most definitely were, sweet cheeks. Still are, in fact.” She downed the next shot and winced. “That wasn’t the first time we met, Dani.”

           I shook my head. “Nope. No way. I would remember.”

           Saoirse shook her head slowly and held me with her eyes. “Do you remember that party at Jimmy’s, like a year and a half ago?” 

           I frowned into my beer trying to recall. So many parties. 

           “Raúl showed up late with a friend?” she said.

           “Oh, wait. Yeah. I don’t remember the friend’s name, I was kind of out of it. I remember thinking that he wasn’t Raúl’s type. He was too pretty for…” 

           Saoirse stared at me, perfectly still. An exquisite portrait. 

           I felt my jaw hanging open. “Oh, shit.”

           Patiently, in between the shots, Saoirse explained to me what transgender meant for her. Fleeing her father. Raúl’s mother taking her in. The hormone treatments. Getting drunk to withstand the electrolysis. Vocal training. Neck and facial sculpting. Therapy. And for all of the medical interventions, apparently the hardest part for her was figuring out how to dress and the sorcery of makeup.

            “It took me a little while to learn my way around a lipstick counter,” she said between shots. “Raúl’s mother helped.”

           She opened up and told me everything. The beautiful and messy truth of her life.

            And the eventual “big” surgeries, if she could ever save up enough. An inheritance from her grandparents had gotten her this far, but the remainder and her paralegal job were just enough to tread water.

           I sat and listened to things I had never heard before, shocked at how unprepared I was to learn for the first time about the existence of something that was so real in another person’s life. I felt naked and exposed, like I had gone to sleep in a warm bed and was waking up on a windy mountain top.

            “So, when we met, you already knew who I was?” I asked, still trying to process everything.

           “Sort of. Jimmy’s party was the last time I went out as a male. Since I transitioned, Raúl had been pestering me for months to come out with him to meet all of you—again. I broke down and came to that patio party just to shut him up. I acted like I had it on lockdown, but I was scared as shit.”

            “Seems like you were pretty popular. That guy you were talking with—” Just thinking of him made me angry.

            “Ugh, thank you for giving me a break from him! He has a massive dick, but a tiny, tiny brain.”

           “Oh. You know him, like, that way?”

            Saoirse leveled the whiskey in front of her face, paused, and shot it fast. She slapped the glass down on the bar and then reached out to stroke my cheek. “You’re cute when you’re jealous, Dani. I know him from work. He’s a pragmatist—no problem whatsoever with who I am. I appreciate that about him, but other than that, he’s just this side of braindead.” She spun her empty shot glass on the damp bar. “Having people willing to screw you sideways is nice and all, but it doesn’t keep you from feeling lonely.”

           Nick refilled Saoirse’s glass and glided to the far end of the bar.

           “Of all the things I’ve heard tonight, that I get,” I said under my breath. Saoirse had this vulnerable, sad look on her face and all I wanted right then was to somehow make her feel better and I had no idea how. “Are you out everywhere now?” I said. “As you?”

           She nodded. “Almost everyone who knew me before knows me as Saoirse now. Some of them were not okay with it. Others are. Paloma recognized me the instant we re-met, those eagle eyes of hers. Poor, sweet Jimmy had no clue—partly because he can’t ever take his eyes off of Paloma. You should have seen the look on his face when we told him,” she said and laughed. “I was actually nervous about you.”

           “Why me?”

           “Dunno,” she said and held up her empty glass for the bartender. “Anyways, to be eligible for my bottom surgery, I have to live in the world as myself, like you see me. Technically, I don’t have to do it for maybe a year before the procedure. I’m nowhere close to it financially, but it made no sense to wait. This is who I am.”

            I listened and tried to sip my beer like an adult. It tasted so bad I actually wondered whether Nick could have pissed in it without my noticing. We sat quietly while I tried to act like my world hadn’t been turned upside-down.

           “How are you doing with all this, Dani?

           “I’m embarrassed,” I said.

           Saoirse’s eyes flared. She turned and held up her shot glass. 

           “No. Shit. That’s not how I meant it.” I tried to take her hand but she pulled away. “I mean—I’m embarrassed that I didn’t understand. I had no idea that—”

           Saoirse spun on her barstool and put her face an inch from mine. “That I was born a boy? That I have a cock?” She glared down the bar and tapped her shot glass with a perfect French-manicured nail. “Hey, Nick. Sometime tonight?”

           I took a couple deep breaths to calm myself down. “No. Really. I’m embarrassed that, when we went up to Sierra, I was whining about my kid stuff and meanwhile you’ve been through so much. You know so much. That you’re—” I stopped talking long enough for the bartender to refill her glass and leave again. “—that you’re living a serious life. I’m just some high-school kid dicking around, working shit jobs, getting high with Raúl and all the rest, hooking up at parties with random girls—not you!”

           “Relax, Dani.” Saoirse downed her shot and tilted the empty glass at me. “Go on.”

           “I feel really stupid saying this, but you’re, like, the first actual adult I’ve spent time with, that I’ve really talked with about serious things. That I’ve kissed.” My nose began to snot up. Oh, no. No damn way I’m going to cry like a baby in front of beautiful Saoirse in a bar, I told myself. “I’ve never told anyone the things I told you—about my family or being half-whatever. None of it. It felt good, like you understood me. Talking with you makes me feel like I’m not alone.”

           Saoirse looked at me for a long time. “Dani, you are way more than the quiet, tough-kid persona you hide behind.”

           I forced a laugh and tried to make it look like I wasn’t tearing up while sipping on my mug of urine.

           “The things you shared with me,” she said. “They were real. And I do understand. We’re like that puzzle piece that looks like it should fit, but doesn’t. You keep trying to force it and it keeps not fitting and pretty soon it’s frayed and torn.”

           She let me take her hand this time. “Is that what it was like when you thought you were just gay?” I ask.

           “Just gay!” Saoirse tossed her head back to laugh. “Isn’t that enough? Are you and I just mongrels?” She stroked my cheek with the back of her hand. “I guess that’s not totally wrong, though. Coming out the first time was torture, but the second time was better, somehow. Better and so much scarier, I think because I knew I was getting even closer. I was circling in on the truth.” She nodded at Nick and looked back at me. “I remember being sixteen. It was hell, never feeling quite right.” Saoirse leaned in closer as Nick filled her glass. “What will you transition into, Dani?”

           I sat wondering what she meant, wondering and wishing that I did feel like I was transitioning into something, traveling towards anything that was better than where I was now. I remember feeling scared and somehow defiant, as if just her asking me that question was a challenge to get my shit together. I’ll never forgive myself that all I could do in that moment was shrug. 

           And so we sat, me nursing my piss beer and Saoirse downing shots. 

           “Maybe you should slow down?” I said at some point.

           “Chill out, rookie. I got this covered.” She leered at me, emptied another glass, and popped another pretzel in her mouth, all the while keeping her lipstick perfect. “Talk to me, Dani. What are you thinking?”

           I scowled into my beer. “You know that guy from your work, the one with the gargantuan junk?”

           Saoirse choked on the pretzel and flailed for my beer to wash it down. “What about him?” she sputtered between laughs. “Are you interested?”

           “No! It’s just…it sounds like you’re, you know, out there. Doing things. With guys.”

           “Screwing men? Yes, yes I am. Are you wondering how it works?”

           “No, I think I have an idea how all the plumbing fits together.”

           “What then?” she said. Her lips curled into an intrigued grin. “Come on, Dani. Out with it. Shit or get off the pot.”

           I stared at my shoes. “Up on Sierra, in your car…”

           Saoirse cringed. “I know, I’m sor—”

           “Am I not someone you’d want to be with?” The words came out before I could stop them.

           “What?”

           “I never felt like that with anyone before. Kissing you was different—and then you said we shouldn’t.”

           “Oh dear,” she said and lifted my chin. “Now you look sixteen.” Saoirse’s expression was a swirl of pity, amusement, and compassion. “I’m half-serious when I say I could eat you up.” 

           She turned on her stool to face me again. 

           “And so, we’ve come to why I wanted to talk, away from home and everyone else.” Saoirse bunched her lips and took a deep breath. “Two reasons, Dani. First, I didn’t want to get hurt. It’s one thing screwing around with Mr. Firehose from work. It’s another to dive in and get messy with someone you really like.”

           “Are you talking about me? You really like me?” I said.

           “Christ, are you going to make me spell it out for you?” Saoirse’s face twisted up, a mask of annoyance and embarrassment. The fact that she’d had so many shots probably didn’t help.

           “What’s the second reason?” I asked.

           Saoirse groaned and buried her face in her hands. She mumbled something I couldn’t make out.

           “I can’t hear you, Saoirse.”

            “I said it’s wrong!” she shouted. The guys at the table looked over and Nick’s stare was a warning from the end of the bar. “It would be wrong, Dani,” she said, more quietly this time. “Lord knows you look all grown up, but you’re still legally a minor and I’m…not.” She stared hard at the bar and a tear fell from the tip of her nose. “The things we talked about, up at Sierra—”

            “That was my first time,” I said. 

           Saoirse let slip a laugh. 

           “Yeah, I heard it. You know what I mean.” I forced a sip of sour beer and pushed the mug away. “It was…I can’t describe it. It was like I was starting to figure out the way home—if that makes any sense.”

            Saoirse’s expression was as close to fear as I had ever seen from her. “You sweet, sensitive, young thing,” she said. “That’s what makes this so fucking hard, Dani. The way you listened to me, the way you seemed to understand. It’s like I wanted to pour myself into you because you got it, somehow.” She pushed her fingers under her eyes and looked to the ceiling to hold the tears back. “I’ve been with my fair share of guys, Dani. They don’t all like to talk about the hard things, being in-between like us.”

            I handed Saoirse a napkin from the bar. She took it and began to dry her eyes and nose. “Look,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, mature. “I know you’re older than me, but why does that have to be a problem? Wouldn’t it be more of an issue if I were twenty-one and you were sixteen? You know, the older guy taking advantage of the younger girl?”

            Saoirse balled up the napkin and let it drop into her shot glass. “Sweet, young, and dumb to boot,” she said. “Aside from the legality—and the very dim view that polite society would have of my taking advantage of a minor—have you even thought out how this would work?”

            “What do you mean how it would work?”

            She grunted. “You. Me. Together. It wouldn’t be all heart-to-hearts up at Sierra. You’re in fucking high school. I fucking work!” 

           The shots Saoirse had put down were starting to show. Her eyes had a wild intensity I hadn’t seen before. 

           “And speaking of fucking, do you have any concept of what that would be like?” She fingered the napkin out of her glass and held it up again for Nick. “I’ve watched you at the parties, Dani. You appear to swing very hard towards the human beings with vaginas. Do you even have a concept of what we would be like?”

            I hung my head while Nick filled her glass again. Scenes ran through my head. I thought about what I knew of girls’ bodies, about what I just took for granted when all or some of our clothes came off. There were no units in Health class about anyone like Saoirse.

           “No,” I said.

            “No what?” Saoirse’s voice was sharp, close to the edge.

            “I don’t have a concept.”

            Saoirse threw her head back and emptied her glass. “Fucking ‘ay you don’t! You joke about ‘plumbing,’ but you have no clue. This is who I am for the foreseeable future, Dani, and I am many, many dollars away from where I want to go. This is real,” she said, gesturing to herself. “I’m real.” She went to take another shot. When she realized her glass was empty she slammed it onto the bar. The glass bounced off the bar, hit the floor, and shattered.

            “Alrighty then,” Nick said, wiping his hands on his apron. “Saoirse, hon, you are officially done for the night.”

 •   •   •

“You sure you got this, kid?”

           Nick slid Saoirse’s arm off of his neck and together we poured her into the passenger seat. “She can put ‘em down, but I’ve never seen her like this.”

            Saoirse’s eyes flashed. “Like how, Nick? I’m right here, I can hear you!” 

            “We’ll be okay,” I said, not quite believing it. How someone could down so many shots and still be mostly ambulatory was a miracle to me.

           I leaned over to buckle her seat belt. The whiskey coming off of her almost made me dizzy. I pulled a couple of twenties out of her purse and offered them to Nick.

           “Nope, we’re settled up,” he said. “Just get her home safe.” 

           “What about him?” Saoirse said. Her tone was ominous. “You should tell him he needs to be safe with me!”

           Nick stepped back from the car, hands up. “Good luck, kid.”

 •   •   •

Saoirse watched me from the passenger seat, her head lolling. 

           “Dani,” she said.

           “Huh.”

           “Kiss me.”

           “What?” We had just passed the Scotts Valley exit and were starting up a dark patch of twisting highway towards the summit.

           “I said kiss me.”

           “You just said that we shouldn’t do that anymore. Why do you want me to kiss you now?”

           Saoirse shook her head like she was trying to clear out cobwebs. “I don’t want to be alone, Dani.” Her words were slurred and thick. “Kiss me. A little one, just once more. I promise. Please.”

           “No.”

           “Why not?”

           “Because I’m driving 17 at midnight and you’re shitfaced and I’m kind of scared of you right now.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but I really was freaked out.

           “Didn’t you like our kiss?”  

            “Hell yeah I did, but we’re on 17 in the dark—and you already said we can’t do that anymore.” The words tasted like poison. What were Saoirse and I supposed to be after tonight? What were we before tonight? The words ‘just friends’ made me want to put my fist through the windshield. 

            Saoirse’s eyes burned holes into me. “I don’t want to be alone, Dani.” She breathed heavily for a moment and I was terrified that she would start crying. “You get to play Mexican with Raúl and Paloma. I don’t get to be Vietnamese with anyone.”

            “Fuck y—stop mixing things up! What am I supposed to do about that?” I said, almost yelling. “You just said we’re done. Besides, we’ll still see each other—you know, at parties and stuff.”

            Saoirse started to thump her head against the passenger window.

            “Stop, girl. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

            “The fuck you care? Won’t even kiss me,” she said, banging the window now. “Why don’t you care, Dani? What’s wrong with me now? Is it what I told you?”

            That I was born a boy? she said at the bar. That I have a cock?

            I gripped the steering wheel. “You said we can’t anymore!”

            “But that’s not all, is it?” The thumping stopped. I was too afraid to look at her. “Is it, Dani?”

            I thought about everything she had said, that what we had been doing was wrong because she was an adult and I was a minor. And that she had a cock.

           She said that. She did.

           I said nothing. I wanted to lie. I needed to lie. But I couldn’t.

            “Asshole.” Saoirse’s tone was pure venom. “Pull over and let me drive.”

            “No fucking way,” I gasped. I had never been in so far over my head and I had to force myself to not cry like a baby.

            We crested the summit and began to speed down the other side towards home. Pine trees loomed briefly in the headlights and then disappeared behind us. In my panic, I couldn’t remember if there were any turnouts up ahead, and I couldn’t pull over without risking getting rear-ended in the dark.

            I had just started to think that Saoirse would settle down when, without warning, she lunged across the car and grabbed the wheel. The VW’s tires stuttered on the fogline before I jerked us back into the lane. 

           “Knock it off!” I was so scared it wasn’t hard to sound dangerous. “You’re drunk as shit and I’d like to get home alive.” 

           All hell broke loose. Saoirse screamed and went for the wheel again. If she were your average girl, I’d have had a decent shot at holding her back, but this was Saoirse—almost as tall as me and inconveniently drunk-strong. 

           Just when I thought I’d managed to fight her off with my forearm, she literally growled and sank her teeth into my wrist. I screamed as the car slid off the road onto the one and only turnout overlooking Lexington Reservoir. We slid sideways across the gravel, coming to a stop inches from the guardrail and the black emptiness on the other side.

           I jumped out and began to pace back and forth in the cloud of dust that hung over the turnout. My heart slammed so hard in my chest I thought I might pass out. “The fuck just happened? The fuck just happened?” I said, over and over, my wrist wrapped in my shirt to slow down the blood.

           Saoirse watched from the passenger seat, stone still, her face contorted in shame. After a few minutes she rolled down her window.

           “Dani, baby. I am so sorry.” She closed her eyes and tried to compose herself. “Please, babe. It’s okay. I’m better now. Just get in. Come on, let’s go home.”

           “Screw that!” I shouted. “I should throw your keys in the goddamn reservoir and hitchhike back and leave your sloppy, drunk ass here.” I was literally shaking, ticking off in my head all the most hurtful things I could say to her. “Girl, you’re a fucking mess. Your makeup looks like an airsick unicorn shat rainbows all over your face!” was the first thing that came out.

           Headlights from a passing car flashed across Saoirse’s tear-streaked face. She was smiling. We gaped at one another in the dark. She began to giggle, and then the giggles swelled into full-throated laughs. Big drunk cackles that left her breathless and gagging on her own spit. I was furious at being mocked, but she seemed so damn amused, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, too.

           “You can’t hitchhike home, Dani. You know what they say about these mountains,” she gasped. “You’ll get picked up by some Ed Gein type. He’ll take you to his sex dungeon and murder you. You’ll be the sweetest meat he’s ever eaten and they’ll find your buttery half-breed skin stretched out between two sequoias in Boulder Creek. The Mercury will say you were some runaway teen prostitute whose life took a tragic turn.”

           We cracked up until we cried. I walked up to the passenger window, kissed her on the forehead, and wiped the mascara off her cheeks. 

           She cringed at my wrist. “Oh, shit. Did I do that?”

           I turned my arm over to get a better look at the bite she had taken out of me. “I guess I should have taken you seriously when you said you could eat me up.”