Tea & Red Roses Part One

I kept hearing the entire time I was getting out and graduating that I shouldn’t go to Toronto.

It’s scummy and dirty and people are assholes.

Seriously that much I heard a lot. Like horror stories from people that moved from home and lived there and found out that life in a big city was a whole lot different than life in freaking Halifax.

But honestly I wanted to go.

And honestly, really honestly most of the people that were telling me things had this whole status of being special little snowflakes in high school and they moved out to go to university and in an actual real sized city and found out one amazing truth.

Nobody gave two shits that you were popular at home.

So when I kinda knew that the stories were coming from self-important assholes that didn’t like that no one cared that they were miss this or voted most popular of X brand high school they got very put out I’d imagine. And definitely like some of them it was a shock to the system when they pitched the usual attention fits that they did around here or around me like they did in high school that people just sort of socially wrote them off up there.

Up here, since I really, really didn’t follow their advice and moved up here to go to college at U of T.

And like I’ll let you in on a little secret.

I’m a lesbian, so that’s one reason to actually get the hell out of Halifax. It’s a small community really for gay girls down there. And some of them I really don’t like that much of those that I know now since I broke up with Emily.

Emily was my second girlfriend. She was that girl that you got wet for because she was everything you ever wanted and feared anyone to know about when you weren’t out. She was that wild step that you sometimes took past your first girlfriend.

She’s my regret story.

Hot and sexy and fun and very much into me and into partying and I will say honestly she fucked me better than anyone that I had ever been with before that including the few times I played around with other girls and then before her my first girlfriend Jill.

And then boom, Graduation year she up and bails on me and takes off at the start of the summer and moves in with this Korean girl that was in on exchange here for Dalhousie and I was dumped without warning.

And she took a lot of my favorite clothes and CD’s and DVD’s and other stuff and we had this huge fight that just sort of rolled right off her back like she really didn’t give a shit.

“You’re going to Toronto right well I’m not. So like done that.”

“So we’re done just like that!?”

“What you wanted me to like go with you? C’mon that’s not my scene and I think you like knew that and like new that this was like where it was going.”

“I loved you!”

She smiled like it was cute. “I loved you too but it wasn’t like I was in love with you Chris, like seriously grow up.”

I wanted to slug her or like rip her hair out but all I really could do was stand there and cry as she got back into her car and she took off with her new girlfriend inside. I feel sorry for her because she had likely no clue as to how Emily was likely going to play her.

That torpedoed me hard and I cried and bawled and raged about it all summer.

And I came out.

Well it was a serious surprise to my folks and dad sort of took it better than mom with a shrug and a beer and mom wasn’t even that bad with her just repeatedly asking me.

“Are you sure you’re gay?”

Or my favorite and one that still cracks me up. “Have you really seen a vagina? I mean they’re kind of freaky and I have one.”

“Yes Mom, I’m gay, I’m a lesbian and I’ve seen a vagina and I love them. I’ve seen lots of vaginas.”

It was cute in a way how that flustered her.

A little freaky in how unclued she was to her own parts though.

It had to be a generational thing.

And after a really heartbroken summer I moved up to Toronto getting a share house with some online friends and they’re all lesbians like me and no one is or was in a relationship with each other and we sort of made like a pact with that.

The last thing anyone of us wanted was to actually have shitty relationship drama at home especially when rent was involved.

Dad drove us up in a U-Haul truck which was hell really since he drives slow and the last time he was in Toronto was like twenty five years ago and while he’s not an old guy he was definitely a maritimer when it came to the traffic around here.

Though the girls thought the U-Haul was funny as shit and took pictures.

My folks so didn’t get the joke.

And that did save me lots of money getting moved in and I had lots of things for the house too with things my parents gave me and my grandparents and aunts and uncles. I swear I have every Starfrit thingy for the kitchen and As Seen on TV gadget too for the last like thirty years that still worked.

There were some cool things too like nice bedding and quilts and I had like a whole bunch of food like preserves and jams and stuff from my dad’s mom and even like six loaves of homemade bread.

Oh that so showed the differences between me and my friends. All of them from like the city or a city and they really never had homemade bread or like homemade strawberry jam or green tomato chow-chow.

And the fact that my folks brought a fifty pound bag of potatoes was just as amazing as the U-Haul.

The best thing though was Mom bought like take out Chinese for us all on her Visa and Dad spent the night not just setting up the furniture in that Dad styled OCD way but he actually fixed a whole bunch of things too in the share house that they hadn’t known how to and that the super didn’t get around to yet.

He even cleaned out the lint trap for the dryer and he left the tools that he brought with him for us to have and use.

So that actually helped get me into a good headspace in being here.

And we had a house party the night after they left and that was fun too.

Casual sex, like actually having a mutual hook up with this girl called Fiona who was cute and sexy and hot with lots of freckles.

And that got me out of my rut after Emily.

And I went full tilt out of my shell after that.

No not sex but I did go out with the girls and met a few other girls and had a good time.

Nope instead I cut my hair, long in the top with a blue-purple tinge that worked for me and an all-around side shave underneath that you could see when I pulled my hair up and I had the side shave dyed too a sort of fading grey up to the blue color and I got two upper lip black pips and two lower lip snake bites and I loved it, every minute of it.

Ooooh…okay not every minute, when Becks got me to get my muffin waxed it hurt like hell.

But it was still worth it.

Oh I know there’s all this stuff about body hair and feminism and like that’s cool if you don’t want to fine…don’t tell me what to do with my body. I like shaved, smooth, I like the way that I feel to my own touch and honestly I feel kind of sexy grrr with the smooth and bare pussy.

First time Mom and I talked on Skype she had to check twice if I was really me and not one of my roommates.

And gotta love her mum my Grammy because she took one look at me and clapped her hands. “You’re in a band!”

I told her I wasn’t and that I was just trying something new and she was okay with it all since she was like doing the same thing back in the sixties.

But it was really cool that she thought that I was cool enough to like be in a band.

Classes were going good and I’m taking stuff towards making my way to a degree in pharmacology. I was working two part time jobs one at the university library as a clerk and bookshelver and another working at The Great Canadian Dollar Store a few days a week to help pay for things and life was pretty awesome.

Classes and work but I wasn’t like killing myself with it, hanging with the roommates when we were around together which actually was fairly often with like dates included. We’d go out to a few clubs that were local and not too skeevy and full of guys that wouldn’t get the lesbian hints and we went out to a few lesbian places but those weren’t all that great sometimes.

It was a bit too Emily in some of those places for me.

Waaaaaay too many girls that looked like and thought that they were Shane from the L-word.

It was me actually bailing out of one of those trips and heading to look for someplace else to have a drink or something when I found this literal hole in the wall downstairs of a basement place sort of like Cheers had when I found Rusty’s.

It was a pub.

Sort of a pub, I mean it was but it was nice inside and they had a bar and the rest was all set up with booths and there was a couple of pool table in like one end of it and there was a small raised floor for maybe an act or dancing on the other end and a really nice bar with lots of taps and a huge expanse of bottles some of them were really fancy looking.

And there was a lot of people there drinking and standing and talking and just sort of hanging out and they had a three dollar G&T so I tried one for my first time and it wasn’t bad and I actually started to loosen up when I saw her.

She went up with guitar and an amp to the stage and the bartender got her a stool and a folding steel chair and she set up.

Tall with long legs and a really nice butt framed in faded jeans and like real jeans and not the stretch denim stuff either and she had a tattoo of musical notes in a circle of roses in the small of her back that I could see under her fuchsia and grey flannel shirt she was wearing over a midriff revealing simple red t-styled shirt and she had this amazing hair.

Red and it was definitely bottle-red hair far too dark to be like normal and at the same time is so suited her face and it was definitely done by someone who knew what they were doing and she’s got a lot of it but she wears in in that way that it really just sort of suits her.

She had a black lace choker style necklace on and a necklace with a cross and another with what looked like some kind of silver fox head on it and another that was a tiny little Tardis from Dr. Who.

Great make-up and eyeliner and lipstick and really nice lips and I’ll admit to it she was actually really nicely endowed with a great set of D-cups and from what I could tell a really nice bra.

And really nice eyes.

Those are what get me, these really nice eyes that were actually looking at people here like they were like…people?

Kind eyes.

It was the first really, really heavy Oh moment since Emily and at the same time it was so different.

She set up to play and people whistled and called out Rose and Rosie and she waved at some of them and another thing that like totally struck me was the guy behind the bar brought her a cup of tea in a tea cup on a saucer and she took a sip and smiled for having it before she started playing.

Oh it was a cover but still I’d never really paid attention to the words before as she played *What’s Going On!* By Four Non-Blondes

I have never heard anyone sing the song live before until now it but there were folks singing along. I got to admit I was too and I found myself dancing up close to the stage or rather sort of dance swaying along to it and drinking my G&T.

“Twenty-five years and my life is still…”
“Trying to get up that great big hill…”
“Of hope…for a destination.”
“I realized quickly when I knew I should.”
“That the world was made up of the brother-hood of man…”
“Or whatever that means.”

“And so I cry sometimes when I’m lying in bed…”
“Just to get it all out, what’s in my head.”
“And I’m feeling…”
“A little peculiar.”

“And so I wake in the morning to step outside.”
“And I take a deep breath and I get real high…”
“And I shout at the top of my lungs…!”

“What’s going on!”

And she’s singing it and there’s like everyone else that’s singing along with her like they’re really into it and that they’re into her and it’s definitely like a thing here or something.

And she’s like captivating, and happy, and you can feel this whole full of life feeling just rolling off of her.

She’s really kind of beautiful.

*** Rose….

So I’m trans and I live now in Toronto.

I have an apartment out in Bellhaven out towards the cemetery it’s not a great place but it’s also far from the worst place that ever lived in. It’s out back of a three story house and was made I think for students or something with a wooden set of stairs that go up to my door and there’s a small deck or landing for my door that’s about the size of two wooden shipping palates and it’s pretty sturdy but it’s never been painted or anything so the wood is all greyed over.

It’s a pain in the winter since the plow service guys can’t get around to my area and there’s no snow removal in my rent so I have to do my landing and my steps and then shovel a little path to the actual driveway of the house.

And it’s well life in a basic apartment in Toronto, one bedroom and one bath with a dishwasher and electric heat but no laundry.

It’s fairly typical for most people these days actually, I’m just lucky that I do have parking and a car. It’s an older rusting out 2008 Nissan and I bought it as a beater but I treat her gently and she’s hung on for so long.

After Toronto metro trains and the busses and the assholes that you meet on both when you’re just trying to mind your own business. Well I lasted a year and a half before I bought the car. I have no TV just my wireless and that saves money really given that I’m not home so much plus it saves on room too.
I have a decent job doing medical records work at a clinic that I’m good at and I’m finally stable moneywise at least to do some of the things that I want to do, wanted to do for a while actually.

Learn to paint a little and do art and grow herbs in my windows and have all those things that you kind of think about when you don’t actually have anything.

Yeah it’s not always been good.

I grew up in New Brunswick in a place called Devon which is sort of part of Fredericton now. Well it’s been part of it for a long time even while I lived there but it was still more Devon then than amalgamated.

And it’s poor too, just the other side of the St. Mary’s band reservation in town and alongside the St. John River on the flood plain. Which was I guess back in the really old days okay for farming and things but in my days not so much. Devon was literally the wrong side of the river.

We were poor too but not like absolutely poor but it was still us being one of those families that lived and died per paycheck and you did odd jobs and things to get any free money that you could for yourself.

That wasn’t bad, it was my dad never being there since he left when I was seven and my mom had replaced him with alcohol and a steady stream of “Uncles” for most of my young years. Most were rough guys, tough guys and pretty much really assholes since mom was taking what most women wouldn’t.

What I wouldn’t take.

Before I really even got what trans was I was a “fag” and a “girly-boy.” and I was smacked around accordingly by those assholes with zero interference from my mother and when I was thirteen I ran away from home.

Go west young lady.

And seeing as there was a perfectly good CN rail yard just a few blocks away I got a ride with the guys on the train.

And had my first non-straight sexual encounters.

Oh yeah a little girly-boy like me was taken on as long as I sucked cock and let them fuck me and that was a really horrible time. Most of those guys were just as much the macho assholes as I had left but I really didn’t have much of a choice in the matter if I wanted to get out west and have a bunk and something to eat.

I was really lucky that I wasn’t beaten up more than what had happened and even more lucky that I wasn’t killed knowing the shit that I know now about some of those people and it would have been really easy to get tossed off the train.

But as horrible as it was it left me with one concrete but mind boggling fact.

I didn’t like men.

And I really wasn’t one of them.

That really screwed me up too for some time as I was a boy but I really hated everything about it and all it took was me seeing some of the Davey street scene in Vancouver and I knew. Well it sort of synched and after a bad year of teen shelters and drugs and doing whatever I could for cash I found myself with some street friends that weren’t too bad.

And it was a girl named Krista that had sort of taught me about trans and knew a few people that were and I met them too and that’s when things started for me.

And by started it was sort of stop screwing around and try and be my real self.

Which actually took me until I was seventeen to get out from the parties and drugs and the sex…I know it’s bad, bad cliché to be in the sex trade but it was part of things in my life, it was easy money for a young trans person and it was easy money.

And yeah I said that twice.

And also with no birth certificate and no ID really to speak of and not really any education I was kind of screwed when it came to getting a regular job sort of thing.

It took me to seventeen to really get scared.

An angry Jon in February beat me really hard and then in May I had a blood clot from the illegal hormones I was using without any actual medical guidance from a professional and I ended up in the hospital with that which made the ID thing a hassle again and then in July I had an HIV scare.

That was like more than enough to get me scared into getting my act together.

I took my stash of cash and moved into a motel and then I got myself turned into child services and that took things into another sort of rough patch with them calling my mother who didn’t recognize me on the phone and things went even more sideways when she found out that I was trans and she said a lot of filthy things.

And the social worker got me into a group home for a year and got me seeing a doctor for my transition and I got on proper hormones after that…and went through detox.

That really sucked, that sucked enough that I’m not really too much a fan of drugs.

At eighteen I moved into a decent women’s trans inclusive halfway house and met a few nice girls that were just friends but they introduced me to other sides of things out here on the west coast.

Like jobs.

Seriously I ended up getting a real job waiting tables in a nice bar that ran its own microbrewery beers and had decent people going to it and went from doing that to going mushroom picking with some of the guys that went there and sold their mushrooms to the restaurant suppliers here in the city.

And no not the illegal mushrooms but things like morels and lobster mushrooms and bears paws and yellow trumpets all were really big sellers and it was really hard and yet fun stuff too. Out in the British Columbia foothills of the Rockies with like a dozen pickers living in tents and all of that stuff.

I really took off I think as a person that year, a whole summer of doing that and being out in those thick woods and these super steep hills and the flies and the heat and the bears.

I never had a bad encounter with one but I was within a hundred feet of one once and I have a few pictures of that one plus some others I seen and a few other really great shots too.

But that changed me.

Camping out and living rough only going into town to get a few things or to sell or pickings and showering and taking baths in a really cold brook that was mountain fed and cuddling around a fire with blankets to get warm.

Guitars and singing and falling in love with both and learning all of that too.

And the food…You can’t sell broken mushrooms so we kept those that we had like that and there was an old gal named Heidi who was this grey haired old hippy chick that made things like wild mushroom risotto with butter and cream over the campfire and we’d have fire roasted baked potatoes and just things I never had really before.

Including lots of fresh air and exercise and water.

And no drugs, and no sex which was cleansing in its own way too.

And heck as odd as it sounds for a trans woman I went full feminist hippy like a lot of the girls there and stopped shaving.

No, no beard I don’t have one. I was taking things early enough and I’m fair skinned naturally so that helped but when I was in the group home one of the things that I had done was electrolysis. One of the girls was learning it with her beauty course at the community college so I got that and haircuts too for like ten dollars.

Well thirty, since the girls there were just kind of like me and stuff more than like the whole average high school grad I’d give them like twenty bucks whenever I could.

Seriously, I know enough folks that do this that like ninety five percent of them are paid for crap money.

Getting my act together there got me to where I wanted to get my GED and then after getting that I had a friend tell me that her work was looking for a medical records clerk so I went actually to school at Compu-College and got my medical records clerk certificate and when I got that I was given some job listings for that since my friends job spot she told me about had been filled and I did some temp work here and there until I heard about where I’m at now.

It was full time right off the bat and I came out and stayed with a few of my trans friends here in Toronto while I had my interview and I got the job.

Then moved, it was kind of scary doing that and coming to Ontario which I didn’t know so well and starting over like again. But it was also a good scary too, that sort of Oh My god I’m actually adulting sort of scary and all that.

And the rest, this with me here was finding a nice little bar that’s friendly to all kinds of folk and had an easy atmosphere and after a little coaxing by some of my friends here we all sort of went from music played by the bar to having some karaoke to some open mic nights to me after a few weeks of that being up here.

It’s a great stress releaser and it’s fun once you get over some of the jitters and the crowd here at Rusty’s sure helps because there’s such a mix of people with the whole LGBTQAI+ crowd here that I don’t really get misgendered even if I like mostly pass.

And there’s all sorts of people here that come here just for that, shake your butt with other cute whoevers and no judgements.

It’s a good time, and I was having a really good time and then there she was. Skater front long bangs, side shave, piercings and all in that new and fun and shy just here to have a good time thing.

She smiled at me as she danced and sipped on her drink through her straw and I smiled back and we sort of kept that up as I played through what’s up and then did my own rendition of *Ironic* By Alanis Morrisette and a soul music styled rendition of *Moulin Rouge.*

Contrary to music videos that song has been sung solo before.

She came over to me with these wonderful green eyes that are set off with her blue hair and she is really pretty even if she looks a few years younger than me.

“Wow that was great.”

I blushed. So much heavy eye contact and dimpling.

She was really cute.

And then she asked me.

“You want a drink?”

I looked at my tea cup. “I could go with another cup of tea.”

She blinked in surprise. “You’re actually drinking tea?”

I smiled because I actually get this a lot. “I am, I’m not so much a fan of drinking for myself these days.”

“Oh, well I mean I didn’t…I oh is it okay that I asked you because I didn’t mean to like make you uncomfortable or anything.”

“No, it’s cool we are in a bar. It’s just I really, really don’t drink too much these days just a personal preference.”

“Oh okay cool, well can I buy you a cup of tea then?”

“I would love that.”

We headed to the bar together and she was definitely looking me over and she was checking me out and there’s still more eye contact and she did that little dimple smile that’s a little bit buzzed meets that whole definite girl meets girl thing.

And I really wanted to go there like everyone else does. I mean I’m a lesbian, I went through the whole thing where I thought that I had to be straight because I was a trans girl and that liking men and boys was something that I had to do. It was like if I didn’t then I wasn’t really trans I was just whatever the hater crowd is currently using.

I’m not up on all the hate either really, there’s this whole thing between all these horrible people like the so called Men’s Rights Activists and then there’s always the religious haters that see and call you an abomination or worse but there’s this like whole sort of sub section of feminists that have had a really huge hate on for trans people and especially trans women for like close to sixty years or seventy now.

And that’s the rub for me because there’s all their bullshit that has really sank into the lesbian and the whole community and there’s now a days a pretty good chance of catching as much if not more shit from a woman that you like and thing there was a connection with that fizzles when she finds out that you’re trans or can get downright rude and hostile.

It’s a good reason I stay away from a lot of trans stuff online with like Facebook and stuff.

Riley made me another cup of tea and she ordered a club soda I think because I wasn’t drinking and sometimes people will do that if I’m not.

I took a sip of my tea and I offered her my hand.

“I’m Rose.”

“I’m Christina but please call me Chris.”

She held her hand in my a little longer than what people just greeting each other do and there it was again that little bright look in her eyes and that cute smile that went along with it and we sort of almost have a moment.

I almost let myself forget all the complicated stuff.

But I just couldn’t and I took another sip of tea before I asked. “So I don’t mean to pry or anything but is this your first time at a trans heavy bar?”

She looked like it hadn’t quite occurred to her, then I could see her turn it over and over in her head and she looked at me again and the look was different. The bright sparkle was gone but there was a thoughtful look instead of anything that I’ve seen that might mean trouble.

But her hand slid from mine ending the extended handshake and she looked me over again and this is a look I know, it’s that just found out and seeing if I pass, if she can tell or if she can pick out my many faults and flaws.

“So you’re a trans woman?”

I nodded and took another sip of my tea.

Chris took a drink of her club soda and set it down and looked out to where others were dancing and then back at me.

“So do trans girls dance?”

She offered me her hand and took hers and she led me out to where everyone else was and we started to dance with the crowd.