32. The Intent to Be Lost

“The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”

—Elizabeth Bishop

“Oh my God,” Becky exclaimed, as Paula handed her the book across the table. “I didn’t know this was out yet.”

They were out at brunch a few days after the baby shower—Becky, Jen, Paula, and Paula’s mysterious new non-sexual romantic partner, whose name was Ex. Chase and Eduardo were supposed to be there, too, but Eduardo had caught a cold at the last minute and needed Chase to stay home and nurse him: “He hates being sick. He gets too lonely in bed all day by himself,” Chase had said to Jen on the phone as he apologized for missing brunch.

“It’s not out,” said Paula. “Ex had some connections so we got an advanced copy.”

“Thanks so much,” said Becky, a little more reserved as she addressed Paula’s androgynous lover. Ex nodded politely; so far, he or she didn’t seem to be much of a talker. Jen had met Ex briefly at the shower and now again today, but she still had no idea whether Ex was a man or a woman. Becky didn’t know, either: “When I asked Paula, she just said, ‘Ex doesn’t have a gender,’” Becky had said. “I tried to bug her about it, but she wouldn’t tell me anything more.”

Becky held the book up for Jen to see. Jen read the title as it floated between Becky’s bulging stomach and her beaming face.

The Deliberate Family.

“What is it?” Jen asked.

“It’s the new Groundbreakers book on parenting,” Becky said, with an enthusiasm that she hadn’t shown for any of the organic cotton blankets, designer baby clothes and fancy diapering gadgets she had received at the shower. “It’s supposed to be all about making conscious choices about your interaction with your child, instead of just doing whatever comes into your head.”

“So they think you should avoid being relaxed and acting naturally?” Jen asked. Becky scrunched her face up in rejection of this critique, then put the book down on the table so she could focus her attention back on the enormous plate of scrambled eggs in front of her.

“You might actually like this one,” Paula said to Jen. “It uses a lot of chess metaphors.”

“Chess?” Jen asked. “I thought Groundbreakers was all about construction and mining.”

“They’ve been switching up a lot lately,” Becky said. “They’ve been emphasizing competition as a theme.”

“Yeah, actually I had trouble understanding all the chess stuff,” Paula said, picking up the book and handing it to Jen. “I mean, I only skimmed through it; it probably explains more if you read the whole thing.”

Jen let the book fall open to a page in the middle. Her eyes landed on a familiar word, and she read aloud: “Zwischenzug.”

“What?” said Becky.

“It’s a chess strategy,” said Jen, trying to remember when she had seen it used. “I can’t exactly remember what the strategy is, though.”

“Does the book explain it?” Paula asked.

Jen scanned the page until she found a definition. She read the passage aloud. “In a zwischenzug, a player is in the position to capture a piece, but he delays capturing it. Instead, he makes other moves that strengthen his position and require his opponent’s immediate attention. He then goes on to capture the piece.”

Jen stopped, puzzled. She had seen that kind of strategy a number of times, but she couldn’t remember Master Park using that word; he never taught her technical chess terms. “When did I hear that?” she asked herself aloud. She remembered somebody inflecting it with the nasal diphthongs of the Midwest.

“I do something like that in tic-tac-toe,” Becky said. “No, I really do,” she added, when everyone ignored her comment except Paula, who laughed dismissively.

Jen shook her head, looked down at the page, and continued reading. “Psychologically, this maneuver is a show of force meant to frustrate and intimidate one’s opponent. It is like punching a man in the face, and then, as he lifts his arms to defend against further punches, kneeing him in the stomach. Then, as he doubles over, you punch him in the face once more.”

Jen looked up from the book again. “I’m curious how this will relate to parenting,” she said skeptically.

“Me too,” said Becky, her eyes widening with excitement. “This is great.”

“Experiment with this strategy in your own household,” Jen read. “When your child has violated your rules, do not punish him right away. Use the leverage of the situation to get him to do things that you want him to do.

“For example, imagine your child breaks something in the house—perhaps a lamp. You find the broken pieces that he has hidden in his room. Don’t play your move right away; hold on to the evidence for later. Now, you can begin to make suggestions: Why don’t you clean the bathroom? How about you take your little sister to the park? I think if we sold your video game consul, you could get a lot more homework done, don’t you?”

“Wow,” said Becky, clearly impressed. She had put down her fork so she could give her full attention to the passage Jen was reading.

“You can deploy these intermediate moves for several days, potentially up to a week,” Jen read. “When you sense that your child’s feelings of guilt and fear are beginning to subside, that is the moment to produce your evidence: show him the broken lamp, tell him that he will need to do chores to earn the money to buy a new lamp, along with extra chores as an interest payment for all the days that he did not tell you about his crime.”

“Brilliant,” said Becky.

“It’s good stuff, isn’t it?” Paula asked, pleased that her present was being received so well. Even Ex was smiling in peaceful approval as he or she nibbled his or her toast.

“I’ve been doing these Groundbreakers parenting meetings,” said Becky to Jen. “They’ve been talking about this kind of stuff, but no one can get the book yet.”

Jen closed the book and put it down on the table. Something had been bothering her about the analogy of chess to parenting. It had taken her a moment to figure out what it was; suddenly, it came to her. “Isn’t it kind of weird to think of your child as an opponent?” she asked.

“No, it’s not,” said Becky, her tone conveying that she had anticipated this counterargument, or, more probably, that her Groundbreakers advisors had. “But that’s what we’re taught to think as mothers, that it’s weird. That our child’s interests are identical to our own. It’s not true. Groundbreakers has been teaching me to recognize that I will have needs and desires that run counter to those of my child, and that our interaction will always be a negotiation of needs, goals, and interests.”

Jen had already tuned Becky out, as she always had whenever the Groundbreakers rhetoric got too heavy. She tried again to remember where she had heard the term “zwischenzug.”

“Oh, I remember who taught me that word,” said Jen. “It was Brittany.” She remembered the first time she had met Shane’s girlfriend, how she had seen the intermediate move that Jen had missed, the move that, it turned out, would force Master Park to move his pawn, creating an opening to set up a game-ending attack. Master Park had explained it to her later, and they had reviewed the strategy a number of times, though never again using that funny name.

“That’s the woman who was teaching you taekwondo, right?” asked Becky. “She plays chess, too?”

“No,” said Jen. “Actually it was her girlfriend.”

“They’re both named Brittany?” Becky asked. “Brittany and Brittany?”

“Well, they would have been,” Jen said, wondering how much to explain. “The first Brittany changed her name to Shane. I mean, his name.” The moment she corrected herself, she had the urge to cover her mouth with her hand, but it was too late; it was out. Jen had been working on referring to Shane by masculine pronouns during the last few weeks since she—he—had told Jen of his plan to change his gender. But she wished she had restrained her self-editing right now, so she wouldn’t have to explain.

“His name?” Becky asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah, she’s going to become a guy,” Jen said, trying to sound nonchalant about it. She had remembered, mid-sentence, that she still had no idea of Ex’s gender status.

“Seriously?” asked Becky, her unconcealed surprise making Jen cringe as she thought of what Ex’s reaction might be. “She’s switching from a woman to a man? Why would you ever want to do that? I’ve never met anyone who went that direction before.”

“You’ve met people who went the other direction?” Jen asked. Until recently, she had been pretty familiar with all of Becky’s friends and acquaintances, at least by description. She hadn’t heard anything about a transgendered woman; it was the sort of thing she thought Becky would have mentioned.

“No,” Becky said. “I guess I haven’t.”

Jen tried to find Ex in her peripheral vision, hoping to gage his or her reaction to this line of conversation. As far as Jen could tell from this sidelong glance, Ex’s face appeared as calm and removed as ever, without any sign of tension in the pointed chin, large dark eyes, or prominent cheekbones.

“At least I’d heard of men becoming women, though,” Becky continued, apparently oblivious or unconcerned about Ex’s presence. “You always hear about men who used to be women; they’re all over the talk shows. I haven’t heard too much about the other way around. Well, unless,” she said, turning to look at Ex.

Oh, don’t ask him, or her, Jen commanded silently. Just let it go.

“Did you used to be…” Becky continued, waiting for Ex to finish the question for her.

Ex just looked at her expectantly, a small, polite smile on his or her face.

“I mean, are you…”

“Are you asking about Ex’s gender?” Paula asked, grabbing her lover’s arm protectively. “Ex doesn’t have a gender.”

“I have been both genders,” Ex said, in a voice that was both melodious and gruff. Jen could imagine it belonging to a surprisingly sensitive truck driver, or the singer in an all-female punk band, or a teenaged boy trying to sound older than he was. “I spent many years projected into the world through the prisms of both ‘male’ and ‘female.’”

Now Paula was surprised. “Really?” she asked. That’s love, Jen thought. Up until now, Jen had found it a bit annoying that Paula refused to explain Ex’s gender. But suddenly it seemed charming that Paula had taken Ex’s explanation at face value. Paula really believed that Ex was neither male nor female, without any further questioning of this impossible proposition, Jen realized.

“Of course,” said Ex. “I wasn’t always this neutral figure you see before you. In fact, if you had met me then, back in the days when I was a man or when I was a woman, you never would have recognized me as the person you see today.”

Looking at Ex, Jen believed this; she could not quite imagine the face as belonging to either a woman or a man. It blended both elements so perfectly that when Jen tried to imagine it as one gender, contradictory features popped up that made it appear more strongly the other. But if she imagined it as the other gender, then suddenly it reverted to the first one. It was like one of those drawings in which it is impossible to tell if a box is facing up or down, projecting out at the viewer or retreating backwards into the world of the drawing.

“I was very, very good at each gender,” said Ex. “Too good. People expected things of me, certain behaviors, attitudes. I felt that I was not fully myself; yet people were completely fooled. They used to fall in love with me, throw themselves at me, take off their clothes. People like when you are the paragon of what they expect you to be; it attracts them.”

Jen looked across the table to see how Becky was reacting to this arrogance; she appeared to be completely engrossed in Ex’s narrative and not at all resistant or skeptical. Remembering Becky’s friendly façade around Eduardo, Jen wondered if Becky liked Ex or simply tolerated him or her because of Paula.

“When I was a man, I was a brick wall,” Ex said. “People expected me to be rigid, unbending. Men puffed themselves up for battle when I stated a simple viewpoint or observation; women deferred to me, deftly reorganizing their opinions to mirror mine. It was disgusting to me, this unearned power. It made me nauseated.”

As Ex spoke about being a man, he seemed to grow into one before Jen’s eyes. The jaw solidified into squareness, the voice hit deep notes that were definitely more tenor than alto.

“The worst part of it was my job,” Ex said. “I worked in commodities trading.”

Paula looked over at him in surprise. “You never told me you knew about finance,” she said.

“I didn’t,” Ex said. “I still don’t, really.”

“But don’t you need to go to school for that kind of thing?” Becky asked. She herself had gotten a business degree in hopes, at the time, of getting a fancy financial job, though things hadn’t worked out that way.

“You would think so,” said Ex. “But no, I didn’t need to. I was living in Chicago, and I got a job filing papers in an office. All the traders liked me, thought I was ‘one of the guys.’ They were always inviting me out to drinks, complaining about their jobs, and I would chime in with my thoughts and ideas. And when one of them had a nervous breakdown and quit—they were always having nervous breakdowns at that office—they offered me his job.”

“That’s horrible!” Becky exclaimed. She had worked as an administrative assistant for several years after she completed her business degree, hoping to move up in the company, and though they interviewed her for several openings, she always lost out to someone with more experience, or a more advanced degree—and always a man.

“No offense,” she added. “I’m glad it worked out for you.”

“No, you’re right. It was horrible,” Ex said. “And yet, part of me liked it, craved the approval, puffing itself up to become all that people saw me as. My body was rigid, and my shoulders stiff in their broadness. I grew strong as an oak and stiff as one. I grew to see why the men at the office were so psychologically fragile. I felt that if I were pushed too hard, I would crack through my very core.”

A look of suffering crossed Ex’s face, as though something was piercing his stomach. He frowned for a moment, pushed his shaggy hair back from his forehead, his mouth conveying strength and anger and pain all at once.

If Jen had doubted Ex’s claim about attracting people, taken it as boastful pride, she believed it now. Even as Ex spoke about his discomfort with his masculinity, Jen felt the overwhelming desire to embrace him, to throw herself against his chest and be wrapped in his arms, to offer herself as a comfort in the face of the pain he described. She had to remind herself that this was Paula’s lover, and a person that Jen barely knew, to restrain herself from leaning in to kiss his unhappy mouth.

Then his face softened, so abruptly that Jen couldn’t place when it changed, though it had changed radically. She looked at Ex’s eyes; they appeared now to be clearly women’s eyes, Jen thought, shy and dark and secretive. Ex’s brow was too delicate, her eyelashes too graceful to belong to a man, it seemed now. So odd, Jen thought, when a moment ago she was a man, and I was so attracted to him.

“When I was a woman, I was soft like butter,” Ex said. “I was tasteful. I was polite. Nothing made me so uncomfortable as someone else’s discomfort, so I did all I could to comfort and appease those around me. I felt that I was melting, changing my shape all the time, molding myself to the expectations of other people.”

Ex cleared her throat and looked around the table, checking to see that everyone was still paying attention. Becky nodded encouragingly at her. “Go on,” she said.

“Men were always asking me on dates,” she said. “And I wasn’t interested in them, but I would go, because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. I sat through endless insufferable dinners, picking at my food because I didn’t like for the men to see me eating. I stopped answering my phone so that I wouldn’t have to refuse a second date.”

“What was your job when you were a woman?” Paula asked.

“Oh, nothing too notable,” said Ex. “I worked at a day care for a bit, and at an after-school program. Those jobs were only part-time; I did a little modeling, too, when I could get work. I lived in L.A. then. I never had any money. I bought everything with coupons, like an old lady, and I sometimes let men buy me clothes, but I hated doing that.”

Ex seemed to fold into herself as she recalled these difficult times; she pulled her knees up to her chest and shivered, despite the warm temperature in the restaurant. Her long bangs fell over her forehead, shading one eye, which only enhanced the brilliant green of the other eye, which Jen could swear was bordered in dark eyeliner.

Again, Jen felt the powerful desire to embrace Ex—to pull her close, to touch her hair, her face, to rip open the buttons of her shirt so she could touch the soft skin below them. A confusing set of conflicting emotions tore at her chest; she wanted to protect this fragile woman—but also to devour her.

What is wrong with me? Jen asked herself, rubbing her eyes to try to straighten out her vision. Paula’s lover, Jen said to herself, several times over, as a mantra, her eyes closed against the apparition.

“Did that explain everything?” Ex asked. Jen opened her eyes, and Ex had returned to his or her previous state of optical illusion; the man and the woman were both gone.

“I have a question!” exclaimed Jen, with the poor manners of one who has just awakened from a trance. Then, realizing that the question she wanted to ask might very likely be perceived as rude, she added, “I mean, if you don’t mind.”

A look of fatigue, or annoyance even, passed over Ex’s eyes, and he sounded irritated when he spoke. “No, go ahead,” he said.

Oh no, Jen thought, horrified that she might have broken the fragile spell, that Ex would be angry with her. “Oh,” said Jen, feeling her face grow warm with embarrassment, “it was nothing.”

Ex’s face softened, and her voice grew softer, more patient. “No, it’s okay,” she said. “Really, that’s why I asked.”

“Oh, well,” said Jen, stumbling over her words in embarrassment. “Were you…I mean, which were you first, a man or a woman? I mean, a boy or a girl? Which one were you born as?”

She heard Paula breathe in sharply. Jen knew it was rude to ask, but she felt that she needed to know, that it would help her understand who this mysterious person sitting in front of her was.

“That is an interesting question,” Ex said.

“Really?” Jen asked, surprised. “I would think people asked you that all the time.”

“They do,” said Ex. “That’s what is interesting about it. I suppose people think that it means something.”

Now Jen really wished she hadn’t asked the question. But since she had, she decided to commit to it; after all, there was nothing wrong with being curious. Ex had told her a story, and she wanted more information about it.

“Well, doesn’t it mean something?” Jen asked.

“What do you think it means?” Ex replied.

Jen wanted to say, It means who you really are. But she knew that was the wrong answer. Growing up, her next-door-neighbors had been Mormons. The children, who were born into Mormonism, weren’t any more Mormon than their parents, who had converted. In fact, some might say that the parents were all the more Mormon because they had made a conscious choice to be so.

“Maybe you’re right,” said Jen. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Ex. “I just asked a question.” It was true, Jen thought; she had just assumed, for some reason.

“Which do you think I was born as?” Ex asked Jen.

Jen studied the lines of Ex’s face, the sharpness of the chin and soft curve of the cheekbones, the glowing brown skin showing no sign of an evening shadow.

“I have no idea,” Jen said.

“I sometimes forget, myself,” said Ex. “A girly boy, a boyish girl. Years pass, and it all begins to run together.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Paula, grabbing Ex’s arm and twining her own around it. “I bet you were adorable, either way.”

“I have a question,” said Becky. “Which way is sex better? As a man or a woman?”

“Becky!” said Paula sharply. Jen looked over at Becky, who, unlike herself, did not seem the least bit self-conscious about asking personal questions. It wasn’t in Becky’s nature to be shy, Jen thought, but this was pushing the boundaries of politeness even for her. It’s the pregnant-lady prerogative, Jen thought—they are allowed to be brutally honest, what with their own private business so publically on display for all to see.

Still, Jen thought, it seemed a particularly inappropriate question to ask an avowed celibate.

Ex didn’t seem annoyed at the question. “I didn’t like it either way,” Ex said. “It never made any sense to me.”

“You didn’t like sex?” Becky asked, incredulous. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Of course I didn’t like it,” Ex replied. “Why do you think I gave it up?”

“I thought it was some kind of spiritual thing,” said Becky.

“It is,” said Ex. “You know, perhaps I enjoyed sex at the time. All I remember now is that it made me crazy. It made me have connections to other people that were…” Ex paused to choose a word: “unhealthy.”

Becky nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. Jen noticed her absently rubbing her hand across her belly as she spoke.

“When I was unhappy with my gender, I thought another gender would make me happier, would be truer to myself,” Ex continued. “I was wrong.”

Ex turned and looked straight at Jen across the table.

“Remember that,” said Ex. “Tell your friend: if you don’t like your car, you could get a different one, but someday you will not like that one either. It is an endless cycle of neediness. I think you are better off to get rid of your car and just walk on your own plain feet.”

Chapter 33