Chester returned from the clink the next morning, looking exactly what you’d expect him to look like: skeletal, sweaty, paranoid. I had spent the night in my car, parked in their apartment parking lot. I felt unsafe those days with Jim and Gemma alone. I knew they both could tell I was no longer hiding my feelings for Chester.

He said something oddly cordial to the cop who dropped him off—he even smiled. Just as he was about to enter the apartment, I realized he hadn’t noticed me. I stuck my head out of the window of my 1990 gray Honda Accord.

“Chester! Hey! Is everything Ok?”

“Hey, Tootie. I guess you could say that. I need to find all the coke I hid in the apartment. I’ll call you later.”

“Chester—

“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck! What did you do with it. I know you. I can tell a story’s coming about how you thought you were doing the right thing…”

“I did!”

“Oh fuuuuuck! It’s worth $20k! And you had—"

“I got one of those big, plastic bins from my house, numbered each packet, stacked them in descending order in the bin, and hid it in a hole I dug in the back yard.”

“You what..?

He rushed over to me and embraced me. Something about the moment had the completeness with Chester I’d wanted for so long., as if only “Chester and Akbi” exist now. He picked me up and spun me around a couple of times.

And I thought, “What if I were wearing inexplicable nude hose, like Madame Shapiro—would that completeness still be a possibility?”

“I love you, Tootie! I love you!”

I choked up. He didn’t love me. And it wasn’t that he was lying, It’s that what most people called “love” didn’t exist in this world. For a minute I thought, who am I to say what love is..? My heart jumped as Jim and Gemma came out of the apartment.

“She worked really hard at hiding the stuff,” Jim said, Gemma gave an affirmative nod, exhaling cigarette smoke in my direction. I started crying. Then bawling.

“What?!?!?” I thought. Jim and Gemma are defending me?! I felt like I wanted them to be threatened by me, because then I felt like part of the “we’re all just seeing if we like dating each other” game. Normally, I felt like I was looking in at it, like a kid with his face up against a pet store window eyeing a puppy he longed for. I never felt like I was worthy enough to be part of the game. And being transgendered made it all the more complicated…and other-ish.

Chester looked at Jim and Gemma emitting one of his inquisitive laughs (a lot like Rich’s).

“No! No! Yes! Yes!” were the words, energized by cocaine, jumping around in my mind. I hated “maybe.” There were no maybes in Akbi world. I wanted everything to either be what it was or not be at all. I think this was all so emotional because everything was unclear until now. Chester couldn’t comfort me in front of Jim and Gemma. By “everything” I mean that Chester could love me. I had gone out of my way to do something very labor-intensive and thoughtful for him. He was probably just grateful for that, because he got very little respect from Jim and Gemma, despite being the sole breadwinner in their odd little household.

“Thank you, Tootie. Come in and we’ll do some while I bag it.”

I demurred, getting that sick feeling when the lights were about to come up at 1722, D’verse or any of the other clubs. I hated that feeling so much, I then did a 180, and agreed to go into the apartment with him. I wanted something—just one thing—to last forever. But it’s like we were running from club to club to the next, trying to make it last forever. But no one seemed as desperate as me. Everyone else seemed like they were just doing this because they could be around other queers and had nothing better to do. I was doing it because…do you have all day?

When the last club closed, I swear to you, if I had a shotgun I would blow my brains out. I was horrified at the thought of going back into the normal world, facing in a sideways kind of way, that I should be at least attempting to be a productive member of society with a job, a goal, a plan.

Chester and dug up the coke in the plastic bin. His eyes lit up as if he were opening a treasure box full of gold. He smiled and looked at me again. I felt like he might act like a straight dude for once and be like, “Tooootie—gimme a big hug!” But Chester acting straight was like the Pope acting Protestant.

“Come in, we’ll do some as we bag it,” he said.

I said I didn’t work for free. For some reason we both found this hilarious, even though I kind of didn’t know what I meant. It just came out in one of my rare moments of spontaneity. I started bawling, because I knew if I didn’t get in my car right then, I never would. But to say it out loud would be too much.

So, through the tears, I said: “Promise me you’ll never get a gun.”

Chester looked confused. I always had a fear that because he was a drug dealer, he’d eventually get a gun. But, again, that was something a hetero dude would do. Not Chester. gave me a salute drawing attention to the eyebrow ring that irked me and said, “Promise me you’ll never stop caring.”

I returned salute, a smile, and turned around so I wouldn’t see him go. I got in my car. I remembered that old, irritating saying, “Change is the only constant.”