We had our first fight, right there outside my mum and dad’s front door. We didn’t raise our voices, and if someone were to have been passing by, walking their dog, they wouldn’t have even known we were fighting - but we absolutely were.Â
Having your first fight with a partner is an inevitability that I like to get over with sooner rather than later. I hate it just sitting there - waiting in your peripherals while you both pretend to be people you aren’t. You pretend for as long as you can get away with it, until a tangible attachment is formed and stockholm syndrome has set in. Then you let it happen, and see if all the pretending did its magic.Â
I was snappy with David because he was nervous to meet my family. Theoretically, I’m against stereotypical gender roles, so it really shouldn’t have upset me, but in practice it pissed me off a lot. In my eyes he had nothing to be nervous about - he’s a man, afterall - with a car and a job and passing interest in football. He hasn’t transcended society’s boundaries in any meaningful way, ever. I, on the other hand, am a card-carrying transsexual who doesn’t always pass. I get laughed at in public and think about killing myself forty times a day, and when I met his parents I was charisma and confidence incarnate. Like always, I did the undoable. When you’ve already defied God and Science, what’s making a good impression? I charmed the pants off of both of them, because I’ve had to learn to do it to survive. I can’t coast, I have to paddle furiously. All the time. So yes, I was annoyed.Â
What it was, was - he had hesitated to ring the doorbell. I had rolled my eyes and muttered something lightly emasculating under my breath, and he responded by trying to walk off. I grabbed his coat sleeve and pulled him back, which he really didn’t appreciate, which made me say something heavily emasculating under my breath. I shouldn’t have said it, I know that, but at the end of the day that’s why I said it, isn’t it? His very mature response to that was to press the doorbell three times and take his coat off in a huff. We waited, not speaking, with a person’s width of distance between us, for someone to answer the door. And finally, as a blotchy figure appeared in the frosted glass before us, and the door clunked and swung open a few inches, our bodies glided back towards one another - becoming one - so as to demonstrate to whoever was opening the door that all was fine, and love was indeed a possibility in these unconventional, unlikely modern circumstances.Â
My older sister Leanne was the blotchy figure behind the glass. As she laid eyes on us, she smirked - only for a nanosecond - but I saw it. It was the kind of nano-smirk that only the keenest, most well trained eye can pick up on, but I’d seen it many times before. I had seen it every time I had refused to take my t-shirt off at the beach growing up, and I had seen it the first time I had been hospitalised at 15, looking over me in my bed with my parents by her side and the doctor shaking his head. It was a smirk that said: You’ve fucked up again, and I’m loving it. Of course, the irony was she was a way bigger fuck up than me, technically. She had gotten pregnant at 17 and was now living on her own in a disgusting studio flat in Croydon. Her son doesn’t want anything to do with her right now because she lost all their money on fruit machines and has had to be bailed out by mum and dad more times than anyone can even count. But apparently, so long as you’re straight and pretty that’s perfectly acceptable. If you can pop a grandchild out, then all sins are forgiven and you get as many goes at life as you like.Â
She hugged us both, and gave David a huge kiss on the cheek before taking his coat and hanging it up in the hallway. As we entered the house, I closed my eyes for a second and tried to visualise a ladder. The ladder was in a deep, dark hole, but there was light visible at the top. In my mind, I gripped the ladder and began to climb. It wasn’t sturdy, but I imagined myself unphased by it. It was my only way out, after all, so I continued to climb. Up and up and up. I opened my eyes to see my dad in the living room, standing on a chair - trying to take out a lightbulb from the hanging light above.Â
To be continued…Â
Thank you for reading While I’m Down Here which is a serialised short story by Jen Ives. If you are enjoying it and would like to follow along, please consider subscribing for free, or become a paid subscriber for access to my secret diary.