I’ve been trying to write it down, but I can’t remember how the words should go.

The Boston Boy is short, not small. Thick in his legs, round like apples and then broad like bodies of water. He has dark curling hair that twists into his ears and twines around my fingers.

Where was Maymay, the night of that party? I can’t place him in my mind, which makes me think he was at home. This piece will explain why I will never write a non-fiction memoir; I fill the gaps of my life in with fictions I create from the vapor of nothing, because the gaps themselves are huge and dark and frustrating. Last weekend I walked down the street with Maymay and said that I felt sad, and tried to explain my reasons. He turned to me and said gently, “That’s the same reason you were sad before we moved, six months ago. Don’t you remember us talking about it?” And I had to say no: I remember sitting, I remember words in my mouth, but I don’t remember why I was sad back then, in that anonymous time six months ago. I barely know why I’m sad now.

I remember the Boston Boy closed his eyes tight, and closed his face up as well. When he was finally against the wall of Rob’s little bedroom with his shirt on the floor at his feet, he stood perfectly still. I remember I ran my hands over his body.

“I’m sorry I’m so quiet,” he said, and his words came out odd in my ears. “I know you like it when there’re noises.” I think that I told him it was all right.

And then there is a gap. Trying to fill it with fiction makes me lonely, so I’m going to leave it unfilled.

Later, I grabbed the meat of his shoulder and wrestled him down onto the floor. He went down easy, and when I sat on top of his chest and pinned his elbows to his sides I could feel the muscles of his arms flexing and relaxing as he grabbed at the waistband of his shorts.

“What are you doing?” I leaned over him softly.

“Just trying not to fight back,” he said.

And I remember I asked him what he meant, and then I said, “Let’s try that, then,” and I kept hitting him.

I hit him until he wrenched his arms from under my body, flipped me easily and pinned me to the floor. I struggled a little, then looked him in the eyes. “All right,” I said then, “that’s enough.”

And I remember he threw himself backward, put his back to the corner and curled in a ball with his hands over his head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He cried it in something that sounded like fear. I almost melted away.

And then, another gap. Writing like this makes me frustrated, makes me miss the golden sheen of the bubble I’ve capped over my time in New York. I don’t know if capping it makes things better or worse. A few days ago Maymay and I sat in a cafe, and I said maybe I want to move back to the States. No more guesswork, no more tentative movements or subtle disconnections. My life feels faded, fragile, incomplete.

“Let’s go to San Francisco,” I said.

I remember toward the end of the scene with the Boston Boy I pressed the pointed tip of a knife between his eyebrows, and he sank against the wall and made one low noise, without opening his lips at all. I remember deciding that noise was enough, and I remember it so clearly because I keep it wrapped in my head in a bit of tissue paper, that one beautiful noise.

I’m trying to write it down now, how the scene ended. Did we sit on the floor? I think we did. Did I put my arms around him? I hope I did. Some of this piece was fictional, but my hope in that hypothetical moment is real.

Sinclair wrote a great post about butch body hair that has sparked off some really interesting comparative experiences. I hung around in her comment box chattering away until I realized I’d written an entire blog post of my own, and yanked it back over here.

So. Hair. Prepare for some personal information dumping.

I’m trying to figure out where I fit in the gender galaxy. I’m content to make this a slow, meandering process; I feel no burning need, at this very instant, to figure out exactly what I am and how I fit into the boxes. At the moment, if anyone asks I’ll say I’m standing at the intersections of queer and butch and dom and quirky, staring at the street signs quizzically and wondering how to get to the nearest deli.

But I have recently changed my attitude to my body hair, and the change is, in that peculiar meandering way, somehow connected to my gender identity.

My body hair is naturally light. I don’t grow hair on my face except my thin, arched eybrows, and my arms are barely covered in tiny glinting blonde strands.

I shave my legs. I barely have to, as the hair only really grows from mid-calf downward. But I do. For three reasons: the ritual, the texture and the look. I love folding leg shaving in with a good long bath and some relaxation. And I am obsessed with texture; when my legs are smooth and moisturized they feel amazing. I like how having shaved legs makes my sheets feel slippery. Sort of hard to explain, that.

But it is also because I still connect the look of shaved legs with the cultural images of grace and femininity. I wonder sometimes if I still shave my legs because the wealth of my body hair is still something intimately private to me. Or if I’m just not brave enough to display myself grown out. Or if I’ve still got a little femme in me. I probably do, and I think I like her there.

I pluck the stray hairs that grow on my nipples. (And yes, if you didn’t know, women do grow pubic hair on their nipples.) I don’t really care about having hairy nipples, but I like plucking them in the same way I like picking at scabs and cutting my toenails. These are the weird little body quirks that interest me.

I wrote ages and ages ago that I was growing my pubic hair out. That lasted for a while. Then I trimmed it, then I shaved it. Then I grew it out and trimmed it again. Then I had some ill-fated adventures into complicated landscaping. Now I’m growing it out again. It’s longer that the hair on my head. I like it. I also found a company that sells pubic hair dye, and am flirting with the thought of turning it blue. Because hey, why not?

The major result of my change in attitude is that I’ve grown out my underarms. I’ve never done this before. My underarms have been shaved smooth since they first started sprouting fifteen years ago. But again I thought, what the hell, why not?

The first thing I noticed of these budding new hairs is that they’re very different in texture that I expected. I had thought my underarms would sport the same wiry, rich brown hairs as my vagina. But no. They’re thin and soft and silky. They feel a bit like having a tiny, expensive fur muff wedged under each arm.

The second thing I noticed is that my smell has changed. I bear odd resemblances to the people whose smells fascinate me: Maymay, Stitch, Bear. In short, I smell like a boy. It was a disconcerting experience at the time. Standing in our kitchen I’d turn my head expecting Maymay to be standing next to me, and find no one. The scent of skin and powder has vanished, replaced by sweat and light musk.

I loved how boys dressed, and then realized I could dress the same way. I loved how boys sat in chairs like little sprawling kings, and then began to sprawl myself. I loved how boys smelled, but I always thought that particular smell was something that didn’t make it into my portion of the biological soup.

I was wrong.