Alison Rumfitt
Tomboy
Tom doesn’t get out much. That’s how Dad puts it—he doesn’t get out much does he, our Tom. Keeps himself to himself, doesn’t he. Our Tom. Tom’s room smells strange. Mum asks him to open up the windows and the doors, give it some air, but when he gives in and does what she wants, she tells him to shut the door again because that same strange smell is now seeping through the house. It’s a combination of damp and stale sweat, weed, and semen. If you washed the sheets, it would still be folded deep into them. You’d have to cover everything in bleach if you wanted it truly gone. You’d have to cover Tom in bleach, and shave off all of his hair.
His parents walk past his room with light feet, listening to the sounds from inside. The school phones and says Tom hasn’t logged in to any of the virtual classes in weeks. His mum says he’s been very stressed. The school says if he doesn’t attend soon there may be disciplinary action. She tries to tell him this, on the brief occasions he leaves his room, and he just says there must be some mistake because he has been attending; there must be a bug in their system.
Tom spends all of his time at his computer, or on one of his five phones. How does he get the phones? He comes by them, in various ways. He has no social media account and yet he has ten, maybe twenty, all of them functioning in various ways. His computer blasts hot air into the room, creating a tropical climate that attracts bugs which aren’t meant to live in the UK. Sometimes there is a power cut, and his screen is black apart from the reflection of his face, a pale chiaroscuro horror floating in an empty void.
I don’t know his real name, so I call him Tom. I don’t know what he looks like so I cast him as a skinny white boy with an unbrushed mess of brown hair. I don’t know how old he is. I only know what his voice sounds like. And even then it’s been a long time. I’m not sure if I could pick it out of a soundboard of other teenage boys’ voices. But go with me here: imagine that Tom is real, that this is what his life is like.
Here is how I talked to Tom:
I was twenty and lonely and new in a city I didn’t yet understand, working stupid hours in a stupid coffee shop that always managed to steal the majority of my tips through some sort of contract loophole that I had stupidly signed without thought. My days were a repetitive strain injury of routine. I woke up at seven, woozy. It was winter and so it would still be dark outside. My bedroom window was stuck open. The landlord had sent someone to look at it. He had looked at the state of me and smirked, then looked at the state of my window and smirked some more. We’ll get round to it, he said. Nobody had yet gotten round to it. I stuffed a couple of towels in the gap where the cold wind snuck in, but it didn’t work completely. I blasted the heating, skyrocketing my bills but managing not to freeze to death in my sheets. Still, when I woke up before work I was always cold. I would crawl out of bed draped in my duvet, hunting for clean clothes amongst the piles of things I had, until I found stuff that was warm enough for the day ahead. I brushed my teeth and combed the painful knots from my hair as best as I could.
I walked to work and wondered why the city didn’t make sense. Its roads backed into each other, jostling for space. You could get lost walking around the same square mile, if you really tried. I suppose I could get lost anywhere if I really tried. The café was at the foot of a hill. I would walk in and the owner would already be sitting there, reading The Financial Times and waiting for me to make him his morning coffee. Which I did. One late shift he got drunk, and I felt him pressing close to me, but I kept working anyway and pretended to be a clueless little girl who couldn’t possibly comprehend what he was doing. I’d be there all day long, and when I got home I would flop onto the bed and the clock would reset again. Over and over. On days where I didn’t work, I could barely move. Just laying there as the chill crept over me, thinking, when I was a kid, was this what I imagined adulthood was going to be like? When my parents had me, was this what they thought I would be doing? Not only was I a girl now, but I was a pretty shit one. Transitioning hadn’t opened up the joys of life to me. It had just made me the same person, but even more fearful, even more bitter. Jaded already at twenty years old with a bright future ahead of me. That was why I started using dating apps. If I had someone to talk to, I would have a reason to earn money beyond just to pay the heating bill. I could get drinks with someone. I could get coffee with someone, and in the evening we could have a takeaway. The dream of the minimum-wage young adult: to buy the things that everybody else buys.
I downloaded three different dating apps on my phone, and in those empty, nothing nights after work I lay shrouded in bed swiping past face after face, liking more people than not, not getting many matches. Unsure why. Because I’m a trans woman, at an intersection of difficult undesirability and hypsersexualisation? Because none of my selfies are good? Because . . . and even when I got matches, we would exchange a spare few messages before they vanished into the ether. Not unmatching, just not talking anymore, in the middle of the conversation sometimes, and when that happened I imagined that they were texting while walking across the road and were hit by an oncoming lorry. That was why they couldn’t speak anymore. You see?
And it was on a night like that when I matched with her. Eating instant noodles straight from the saucepan in the dark, my phone buzzed and flashed on like a flare. You have a new match!
She had boyish hair like Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge. Her profile said that she worked in a florist near me, but I had never seen her when I walked past. The sort of futch that exudes energy and life. Her name was Lavender.
hey lavender! love the name
I said. I’ve never been good at hellos. I always fall back on a “hi” or a “hey, how are you?” but for her I tried making it a personal statement. I did love the name, too. I was telling the truth.
hiiiii
she said. There was a little bubble with ellipsis in it, indicating that she was typing a second message.
i think i’ve seen you around!
lol where?
in the co-op i think. maybe
it wasnt you?
haha no it probably was i just thought id
have noticed you!
I hadn’t seen her, but I imagined her always just out of my vision, haunting me. Now, no ellipsis bubble. Nothing. But two little ticks beneath that message marked gray, telling me she’d seen it. A little panic rose. I needed to ask her something, keep the conversation going, or else that would be it. And maybe I would see her there in the florist or in the shop but by then it would be a sort of tragic queer alternate history. What if we had talked more? What if?
how has your day been?
Stupid, pointless question, but the easiest one to ask. Everyone has had a day. Have you had a day? Have you had a nice day? And there, she’s typing again. It worked. The noodles are congealing, but it worked, and she says
ugh not TOO bad just parents
being dicks AS USUAL haha.
i have a glass of wine tho. what
about you how was yours?
mine was okay just had work. My boss is
kind of a creep sometimes
so youre trans?
she asked. Fuck. What did that have to do with anything, Lavender? If I asked every cis girl online that, though, I would never get to talk with anyone, so I shut my little mouth and reply graciously and apologise to my sisters.
yeah
how long?
um all my life. but i’ve been out since I
was 16
wow. huge respect! my ex
was a trans woman too
ah cool
and im kind of a tomboy i guess.
idk ive never understood gender.
sometimes i wish i had a dick
she says, like she is imparting some secret to me.
so where do you work?
café on trafalgar st!
and your boss is a creep?
lollll yeah he just like . . . presses up a bit
close that sort of thing
mmm well i’ll be sure not to go in there
oh i wouldn’t say that. come in if i’m
working and i’ll sneak you a free coffee
what if i prefer tea?
nah im not giving you a free tea its
coffee or a glass of wine
deal haha
And we kept talking. I pulled myself from the bed and threw out the dregs of the cooled noodles, which landed in the bin bag with a wet slop. I was tense from her mentioning her ex, but that soon melted away. She was the first person in a long time who had kept up a regular conversation with me on a dating app. And when she didn’t reply for a little bit I flicked onto her profile and looked at the image of her, hair down over her face, smirking amidst the flowers at her work. I could see myself kissing her. I could see her kissing me.
Somewhere far off, Tom was rotating in the dark of his bedroom, maybe lightning up a joint, maybe not. Maybe staying up past his bedtime for me. Maybe not. I didn’t know he was there yet but he was pushing his way into my life, unseen. Or maybe he was looking at me right then. Hiding outside my window, fingering the gap, letting his breath blow inside my bedroom. Keep the window open and you won’t have damp, you won’t have mould, is what my landlord said when my window did shut properly and I had black mould all over my ceiling and at that time it was also winter. And now the window is open and guess what? There’s still mould.
I can feel Tom looking at me undressing for bed as I continued to message Lavender. It’s getting late, but I wanted to keep talking to her.
so what are you looking for?
tbh im not sure
she said.
ive been single for ages and im like. really horny
haha same
do you want a pic?
only if youre sure!
ofc im sure, wouldn’t offer
if i wasn’t x
And then a picture of Lavender topless, posed in the mirror, breasts larger than I thought they’d be. I wondered if she used a binder, or just wore shapeless clothes.
wow.
your turn.
I don’t have many nudes. I don’t take many. I have a couple on my phone in a distinct folder, so I don’t lose them, and I always use them so I don’t have to take more. Most days I don’t look or feel good enough to take pictures of myself naked for anyone, let alone her. I find one of me in a black lace bra and panties, but the panties are pulled to the side, exposing my cock. The underwear was actually my ex’s. I don’t need to mention that. I sent the picture. She replied with another of her own, closer to the camera this time, I couldn’t see her face but thought it was the same pair of breasts, one hand held up and touching the nipple of one, the nipple is pierced and glimmers in the light like a tiny star. I sent another. She sent another. I sent another.
ok now.
she says.
send me a video of you wanking.
umm. im sorry im not comfortable doing
that!
don’t be a little bitch come on.
what
come on
well even if i wanted to i’m not hard am i
lol pathetic
I don’t know what she is doing, not yet. But I could feel it rising up.
is this a dom thing?
don’t try and block me
what?
if you try and block me i’ll send
those pictures to your mum
lol sure
youre so stupid. i found your
facebook easily
Outside I swore I could hear an owl, far off in the trees. I was shaking. I wrapped myself deep in my covers and tried to not look at my phone, but it kept buzzing. I could hear it through the duvet.
have you stopped replying?
if so im going to send it. how
will your dad cope knowing
his sons a little tranny?
my dad knows im trans
does your grandma? i found
her facebook too
I felt like a character in a video they showed you during a special assembly at school. How to be safe online by showing you how someone wasn’t safe online. At school, a boy I knew posed as a girl on Facebook and got nudes from another boy who he hated, and he then went around the school with a printed out picture of the boy’s tiny, hairless penis showing everyone before the teachers realised what was happening. After that, I could never look at that other boy again. I knew it wasn’t his fault. I also knew he had a tiny, hairless cock, and that he had sent a picture of it to a stranger.
I thought about my grandma receiving a picture from a stranger of her grandson, who she doesn’t know isn’t a grandson now, wearing a bra and panties, his/her cock hard between his/her legs.
ok. fine. what do you want
call me
what?
now.
Lavender, or Tom, or whoever, sent me their number , and I had no choice. I called it, trying not to sob, because I knew whoever answered would be getting off on the fact that I was crying. The phone rang for a while. I wondered if the number was fake, but then a voice answered out of the nothingness, cutting off the dial tone.
“Hello,” it said. It wasn’t the voice of a twenty-something florist, but the voice of a teenage boy.
“Hello,” I said. I didn’t do a good job of hiding my tears from my voice. He could tell.
“Is this Alison?” he asked.
“It is.”
“Good,” he said.
“Please stop.” My fingernails were digging into my thighs hard enough to break the skin.
“No,” he said. “That’s not right. That’s not what you should be saying. If you want me to stop, do what I say.”
I nodded, despite him not being there to see me nod.
“Okay,” I breathed. My room was cold enough that my breath was visible in front of me.
“I want you to say that you’re a bitch.”
“I’m a bitch.”
“I want you to say that you’re sorry for being a woman.”
“I’m . . . sorry for being a woman.”
“I want you to say that you are lesser than me.”
“I’m lesser than you. I’m lesser than you. I’m lesser. I’m sorry.” I broke down, and collapsed in on myself. He was panting on the other end of the phone for a moment, short grunts like a dog, and then the line went dead. I lay there for a while. Curled up. Not able to move. I didn’t know if he would send the pictures anyway. Maybe he would. Maybe he was never going to. Lavender. The great queer what-if, a perfect tomboy. I guess she was another victim of his, and now he would use my pictures in turn. Each time, taking off the old identity and putting on a new one. Each time, wearing the face well, well enough to fool the next lonely, horny girl.
I call him Tom because it’s better to think of him as something with a name. I give him a face and a life, a bedroom, parents, all because if I didn’t I would be constantly wondering if he was around me. If he was outside my window at night. Seeping in. Sometimes I hear a teenage boy calling somebody out on the street at night to nobody in particular and I think I know the voice but I can’t be sure. Sometimes a teenage boy comes into my work and asks for a cup of tea, and I swear he winks.